As the Trump administration struggles to articulate its plans for an endgame with the war it started with Iran, bodies and debt are piling up, as global oil supplies tighten.
The confirmed death toll has climbed past 1,330, with hospitals, schools, and residential neighborhoods hit.
During a report provided to U.S. congressional committees on Tuesday, the Trump administration said it spent $5.6 billion in munitions just during the first two days of strikes against Iran. The Pentagon expects to spend at least a billion dollars a day waging the war.
Neither of those figures accounts for the estimated hundreds of millions to billions in costs to mobilize fleets in the region. The U.S. national debt is expected to pass $39 trillion before the end of the month.
Independent oil analyst Rory Johnston called it the largest-scale disruption to the energy system since the 1970s oil embargoes. Johnston told Breaking Points, "The supply loss is so large, what you need to do is incentivize demand destruction across a whole variety of sectors: air travel, freight, consumer consumption, everything must go."
Johnston said that the required demand loss to accommodate the lost production would be roughly equal to what markets saw at the peak of COVID travel restrictions in 2020.
"During that period, we were all locked in," said Johnston. "Planes were not in the air. So, what we're talking about is what price would be needed to replicate the conditions of the bottom of COVID."
The effect is expected to ripple through the global economy. The Gulf states affected by the conflict provide most of the jet fuel to Asia and most of the diesel to Europe, a dynamic that greatly increased following sanctions against Russia after it invaded Ukraine.
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lib224
Republicans love to bomb stuff, but not feed the hungry or provide medical care. China meanwhile provides aid and builds relationships.
Wednesday, March 11 Report this
kmskepton
But according to them: 1. it’s not a war and 2. they didn’t start it. Good lord. What a freaking nightmare.
Wednesday, March 11 Report this