For the last 47 years, time was the Islamic Republic’s most reliable weapon. Every crisis the regime ever faced, it survived by waiting. Take a look at the hostage crisis in 1979. It lasted 444 days. Then take a look at the Iran-Iraq war that lasted for 8 years and the regime won by outlasting Saddam. They did the same thing in every single negotiations that ever took place on their nuclear program.
Their goal was to just wait, wait, and wait and let the Americans grow tired in every single conflict, whether it be militarily or diplomatically. The Islamic Republic knew that it had more time than its enemies. Unfortunately for the IRGC, though, that math is now changing, and it’s changing because of the US blockade.
You see, in the peace plan that Iran just submitted to the United States 2 days ago, the regime is asking for the blockade to be lifted in less than 30 days. That’s because time is actually not on Iran’s side when it comes to their economy being choked off. And that’s why before we look at the peace plan that Iran just sent and all the new details that we learned yesterday, let’s look at exactly how bad things are getting inside of Iran and how regime is running out of storage for the oil that it’s pumping out of the ground. Signals suggest the US naval blockade is starting to slowly affect mainland Iran. Iran’s Ministry of Industry, Mine and Trade spokesperson warned people to be careful when buying cars, saying recent price increases come from artificial market manipulation and lack any real economic basis. The same office confirmed plans to import used cars.
At the same time, Tehran has started cutting crude output early to avoid hitting storage limits rather than waiting for tanks to fill. A senior official said that the move is precautionary. Years of sanctions and repeated shutdowns have pushed the oil sector to adapt. Engineers can now idle wells without long-term damage and restart them quickly.
Hamid Hosini, spokesperson for Iranian oil, gas, and petrochemical products exports said the industry has enough experience and is not concerned. Now, this is a common trend that we’ll see throughout this video. Any news that’s coming out of Iran will make it seem like that Iran is really not desperate. That’s why we have to focus less on what officials are saying and rather what they are doing.
And the fact that Tehran has already started cutting crude output. Basically, they’re not pumping oil out of the ground because they are worried about hitting storage limits. And once that happens, results could be catastrophic for the infrastructure that they have built around the oil wells. If they have to shut down the oil wells, that means it may be very, very hard to turn them back on.
And of course, as you guys know, on top of this, there’s also Operation Economic Fury that has been ongoing. That basically refers to sanctions and freezes that the US Treasury Department has been living on Iranian funds and Iranian companies or companies that are helping Iran.
Well, just this morning, Secretary Basant gave an interview and here’s what he had to say about how that operation is going. Take a listen.
“Can you give us an update on the economic choke that you have been putting in place in Iran? Are you still looking to apply secondary sanctions or sanctions on Iran or those doing business with Iran?”
“Yeah. And Maria, just to remind you and you and your viewers, this began with the order last March from President Trump on max pressure. And 3 weeks ago, the president gave the order to Treasury myself to begin economic fury. And the way to think about that, we were running a marathon over the past 12 months. And now we are sprinting towards the finish line. And I can tell you that we are suffocating the regime and they are not able to pay their soldiers. This is a real economic blockade and it is in all parts of government all hands on deck. It is the blockade that our great navy is doing. No ships are getting through and we have upped the pressure on anyone trying to remit money into Iran to help the IRGC. You know, they are corrupt institution. They’ve been stealing from the Iranian people for years. They have money offshore. We’ve tracked that down, and we will continue to track that down and we’re going to preserve those assets for the Iranian people on the other side of this conflict.”
He also talked about how Iran kind of shot itself in the foot when it started attacking the Gulf countries, more specifically the UAE, because UAE has been a country that was willing to look the other way when IRGC was using companies or shell companies inside of the UAE to evade sanctions. But after Iran fired 2,000 missiles and drones at the UAE during the war, UAE officials are now not willing to look the other way. They are in fact now being very proactive in finding out these Iranian accounts and basically freezing all the money that’s in there. Here’s that update from Secretary Basant. Take a listen.
“They really miscalculated when they started bombing their Gulf neighbors in a kinetic fashion and in response the Gulf neighbors who I would describe as somewhat permissive in allowing Iranian IRGC money, Iranian regime money into their banking systems have been very wholesome and come forward and given us the details and allowed us to freeze those assets. So, you know, the IRGC is watching their stolen assets for years, decades, for 47 years, get frozen and go down the drain very quickly. The UAE has decided that OPEC is not for them. Most monopolies eventually collapse under their own weight. And Maria, we could talk about it now or in a minute, but this gives me a lot of optimism that oil prices on the other side of this conflict are going to be much lower than they were going in or at the beginning of the year or at any point in 2020 2025.”
There is one leakage in this whole system that Iran has continued to use to basically survive or prolong the death of its economy. And that leakage is actually the Iranian-Pakistani border. As you guys can see from the clip on your screen, there are a lot of trucks and motorbikes that are taking oil or taking other goods from one side and taking it to the other side.
This is Iranian way of circumventing the US naval blockade that has choked off its trade, choked off its exports and imports. Now, this is a bit puzzling because you would think that Pakistan is on the US side considering how much the United States actually helps them. But this is where I guess money over everything.
Pakistan is sort of like a military dictatorship. They do have a civilian government, but they don’t really have that much power. There’s a military side of the whole economy that controls everything that matters. And unfortunately, all that smuggling that’s happening on the Iranian-Pakistani border, well, military profits from it heavily.
And that’s probably why this is happening. Now, President Trump was actually asked about this because this has become a major news. If you think about it, if the US plan is to choke off the Iranian economy, it seems like a US ally, Pakistan, is actually helping Iran survive. Well, just take a listen to his answer. It wasn’t the best.
“The very dark and consequential… I know everything about it. Yeah, I have great respect.”
“When you… Pakistan?”
“I have great respect for Pakistan and for the field marshall and for the prime minister. Yeah, I know too.”
Now, there is some positive to all this and that is that this whole smuggling thing is still a very small leakage. Iran cannot possibly replace what it was able to, you know, export through oil tankers that carry 2 million barrels of oil in one go.
It’s just impossible to replace that kind of volume in one go with cars and motorbikes. You would need 17,000 motorbikes carrying those 5-gallon buckets that you can get at Home Depot. 17,000 just to replace one tanker. So yeah, there is a leakage, but hopefully it’s very small compared to the trade that Iran was carrying out on sea.
Now shifting focus to the negotiations. It seems we have some details as to what was included in the new plan that Iran sent to the United States. Now before we get into those details, there is a fair warning here. All the details that we are getting is coming from Iranian media.
So one thing we have to keep in mind that they only going to share stuff that’s positive for Iran. They’re not going to share stuff that’s negative for Iran. Aka, they’re not going to talk about concessions that Iran is willing to offer. I’m guessing concessions are included in the peace plan, but all the information that we have does not talk about a single concession.
Here are those details. Sources said that the Iranian plan has three main stages and aims to transform the ceasefire into an end to the war within 30 days. It envisions a pledge of non-aggression, including from Israel, to ensure there’s no return to war and an end to fighting throughout the Middle East.
I’m guessing this is probably referring to Lebanon and an Israeli war against Hezbollah. Continuing, the first phase would gradually open the state of Hormuz and lift the US siege on Iranian ports. Tehran could take charge of dealing with sea mines. The second phase of the proposal stipulates Iran’s return to enrichment after the time limit at 3.6%.
In accordance with zero storage principle. The plan includes the US and Israel refraining from attacking Iran and its allies in exchange for Iran refraining from launching strikes. The proposal rejects dismantling nuclear infrastructure or destroying Iran’s facilities. Lifting sanctions includes the gradual release of frozen funds.
In the third phase, Tehran proposed entering into a strategic dialogue with Arab neighbors and building a security system that includes the entire Middle East. Now again, this is not all the details. I’m guessing stuff concessions that Iran is offering, those are not included since details are coming from Iranian media.
But it’s important to point out here that even this proposal mentions that Iran agrees to zero enrichment for a period of time. Now, we don’t know exactly how long that’s going to be. We know from previous negotiations that the United States wanted that time limit to be 20 years. Iran wanted it to be 5 years.
We can assume it’s going to be in somewhere in between, but we don’t know exactly. Now, another interesting point here is that Iran rejects dismantling nuclear facilities it has. That’s something the United States would want Iran to include. They would want Iran to stop rebuilding the nuclear facilities that were destroyed. But lastly, the third phase is a bit important.
This is something we would need more details about where Tehran says that hey they want to talk with the Arab neighbors the same neighbors that Iran was just attacking 30 days ago but now they want to work with them to build a security system that could safeguard Middle East when in reality Iran is the one endangering everyone in the Middle East but nonetheless these are all the details we have and again we have to keep in mind these are coming from Iran so it’s not going to include everything all the concessions that Iran is offering now this is a statement President Trump made yesterday relating to this proposal. Take a listen.
“Have you seen the proposal that Iran has?”
“No, I haven’t. I haven’t. I’m looking at it up here.”
“You’re looking at it?”
“Yeah. I’ll let you know about it later. But…”
“Last night you said we might be better off not making a deal with…”
“Well, I wouldn’t have to. I didn’t say that. I said that if we left right now, it would take them 20 years to rebuild. But we’re not leaving right now. We’re going to do it so nobody has to go back in two years or 5 years.”
“Mr. President, you also said last night that…”
“They told me about the concept of the deal. They’re going to give me the exact wording now.”
He also put out this tweet: “I’ll soon be reviewing the plan that Iran has just sent to us, but can’t imagine that it would be acceptable in any way. They have not yet paid a big enough price for what they have done to humanity and the world over the last 47 years. Thank you for your attention.”
Then he also talked about eliminating rest of the missiles that Iran still has. Take a listen.
“Look at like 85% of Iran’s missile making capability has been eliminated.”
“United States needs to eliminate them.”
“Well, I’d like to eliminate them. I’d like to… it would be a start for them to build up again. And yeah, I would like to eliminate.”
Now, to understand why Iran is behaving the way it’s behaving right now, we have to go back and look at how Iran got to where it is today. That doesn’t just mean going back to 1979 when the Islamic Revolution took place. In fact, we have to go further back to when the Qajar dynasty was ruling Iran in the 19th century and look at how the decisions the ruling class made back then still affects Iran to this very day.
Well, guess what? That’s exactly what we’re doing in our multi-part podcast that just came out today. So, if you’re someone who’s interested in the history of Iran and how we got to where we are today, definitely go check it out. You can watch it by clicking the links in the description or you can just watch it by clicking the end screen on your screen. Basically clicking the video that’s on your screen.
