"Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in!"

 I know we've been banging this drum for a long time and I realize that I keep promising to move on, but the disconnect between market swings and the latest news and analysis continues to fascinate me.

[That and I love the mental picture of investors as golden retrievers.] 

 

Golden retriever runs 15 feet after owner mimes throwing tennis ball

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— Tim Carvell (@timcarvell.bsky.social) March 30, 2026 at 8:13 AM

 

 From Josh Marshall:

The U.S. is talking variously about degrading Iranian missile, drone and nuclear capacities. But if you look closely at words and especially actions the real aim appears to be to force Iran to let the U.S. out of the war with something it can call a win. “Say we won and stop fucking with the Strait and we’re all set,” the administration is basically saying. The problem is that if this scenario is basically accurate the U.S. is escalating with nothing it can call a “win” that isn’t 100% at the discretion of Iran, which now seems even more under the control of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps than before the war, to offer. So what if the U.S. does a limited ground operation and Iran says, Nope, we’re still not giving you your win. What then? Full-scale invasion? As I’ve written, military planners and heads of state who are smart really want goals they can at least realistically try to achieve entirely on their own terms. So we want this piece of territory. Or we want to break this specific thing. In that case, you don’t need the other side to agree to anything. You can achieve your goals by force.

Eventually, you’ll want to make peace. But you can leave that to the other guys to worry about. You have what you want. But if your goal is entirely at the other guy’s discretion, you’ve got a big problem. And that really seems like what the U.S. is getting into now.

 

 From Patrick Boyle:

First, there’s the problem of the shut-in wells. Because the Strait of Hormuz has essentially been blocked for a month, Gulf producers were forced to stop pumping as their storage tanks hit their limits.

This is a much bigger problem than just pausing a production line. When you stop the flow of an oil well, the environment inside that well changes immediately. Without the constant heat and movement of flowing oil, the crude starts to settle and separate. It can become waxy and thick, physically clogging the tiny pores in the rock that the oil needs to travel through. In some cases, the surrounding groundwater can even seep into the oil layers, which can permanently drown a well’s productivity.

To make matters worse, many of these wells will have been closed using heavy mud or cement plugs, which are needed to keep them safe during the fighting. Those plugs will have to be painstakingly drilled out before any oil can move again. If you try to force the pressure back too quickly, you risk cracking the underground formations and ruining the field forever. It’s a delicate, multi-month restart process that doesn’t just happen overnight.

The second hurdle is the naval gauntlet. While the U.S. and Israel have spent a month bombing Iran, they’ve achieved almost no substantive gains in loosening Iran’s chokehold on the strait. This is why the Pentagon is currently sending in 10,000 additional troops, including units trained to seize and hold land. Their mission appears to be prying the strait open by force — physically taking the islands and coastal slivers where Iran hides the drones and missiles that are keeping the American Navy at a distance.

Even after those launch sites are secured, the waterway remains, at the very least, a suspected minefield. Whether or not Iran has actually laid thousands of mines, the mere risk of them creates what experts call a psychological blockade, which is just as effective as a physical one.

Reopening the strait safely requires a careful naval operation: first hunting down any remaining threats like speedboats and drones that have been harassing shipping, followed by the slow, painstaking process of sweeping the water for mines. Only then can the final phase — providing continuous naval escorts for commercial tankers — actually begin.

Finally, there’s the logistical logjam. Traffic through the strait has dropped by 97% this month. The few ships that are moving are often “dark fleet” vessels or those willing to pay the $2 million safe-passage fee that Iran is currently demanding. Insurance premiums for the region haven’t just spiked — in many cases, policies have been canceled entirely.

Ship captains and their crews are not going to steam back into a recently cleared war zone the moment a Truth Social post goes out. They’ll wait for a sustained all-clear from naval authorities and for insurance markets to normalize.

When you combine all of these issues, the Oxford Economics timeline of the strait remaining largely impassable until May starts to look very realistic.