In A Nutshell

KRUGMAN: “Iran won. Iran is in a much stronger position and 🇺🇸 in a much weaker position than before the war. And the deal is vastly inferior to Obama’s, that Trump ripped up.”https://t.co/nnoY9hOw0L pic.twitter.com/STCJZ0d6Yo

— The Tennessee Holler (@TheTNHoller) June 22, 2026

"In fact, he should have made this deal about a week in when it became clear the whole premise of his enterprise was not going to work.” 

It was actually obvious long before that.

Yes. Can be done. Air-ground US campaign. Three division Corps. 150,000 troops. 90-180 days of fighting. Serious combat. 200,000 IRGC troops. 600,000 soldiers. Iran can interdict throughout Persian Gulf …. not just the Strait. THEN WHAT? https://t.co/IRT27rMile

— Barry R McCaffrey (@mccaffreyr3) June 21, 2026

And we’ve burned through half our stockpile, and the Pentagon told Congress it needs $80 billion now, to be able to continue normal operations.

And then there’s the oil:

U.S. crude stocks have fallen sharply in recent weeks due to high refining ​and export demand for American oil to fill supply gaps caused by the Iran war. Overall U.S. inventories, including commercial and SPR stocks, have fallen by 79 million to 77.6 million ​barrels, the lowest since 2023, after the war began at the end of ​February.

Inventories at Cushing, the main storage hub for oil in Oklahoma and the pricing point ‌for ⁠U.S. West Texas Intermediate crude futures, have eased to 21.6 million barrels, near operational lows, raising concerns of supply tightness.

That article is a week old, and reports the SPR at 340.3 million barrels. DOE now says it’s down to 331.2 million barrels. As someone said on Stephanie Ruhle’s show this morning, the SPR is about to scrape bottom. The releases have been suppressing the U.S. cost of oil, but the price has been volatile, reacting every time there’s news about the Strait. Imagine the market reaction to news that the SPR was “empty.”

That’s scared Trump into making a deal, any deal, to get the Strait reopened.

Traffic visible via https://t.co/bYX0jXrfTw in the Strait of Hormuz shows at least 2 dozen vessels have transited over the last 24 hours, with all but one vessel visible using the Iranian traffic separation scheme. It is highly likely more transits occurred than are shown with… pic.twitter.com/qrXTF8xhn8

— OSINTdefender (@sentdefender) June 22, 2026

Traffic visible via http://MarineTraffic.com in the Strait of Hormuz shows at least 2 dozen vessels have transited over the last 24 hours, with all but one vessel visible using the Iranian traffic separation scheme. It is highly likely more transits occurred than are shown with vessels turning off their automatic identification system transponder for the transit.

20 million barrels a day on average flow through the Strait when it is not constricted. The average number of tankers daily through the Strait before the war, was 80.  It’s not clear that all 24 ships in the last 24 hours were oil tankers, but it’s still less than 1/3rd of the daily flow the world is used to. And those tankers have a long way to go. If they all were tankers, all carried 1 million barrels each, and all came to America…it would be a little over 1 days consumption of oil for the nation.

That supply chain is not going to rebuild itself rapidly, and the SPR is not going to be refilled anytime soon.

Ain’t no gusher coming to a gas pump near you. Hope you weren’t expecting one.