Alan Eyre helped negotiate the original nuclear deal as the State Department's Iran hand, and his verdict on its successor is blunt: in Tehran's assessment, the land of milk and honey, the $300 billion reconstruction package, the lifted sanctions, none of it is ever coming.
So Iran has stopped playing for a deal and started playing for cash.
That explains the strait.
Iran already agreed on a traffic scheme with Oman and still keeps the water closed, because a closed strait is pressure while an Iranian-run strait is revenue, a bouncer deciding who enters and who pays.
They'll negotiate while fighting, Alan says, but insurance markets have already done what no navy could, and 130 ships a day isn't returning for years.
It also explains Monday's six decrees.
Five are furniture; the one that matters sends Hossein Taeb, the cleric at the crossroads of military, security, and intelligence, to wire the Basij down to the neighborhood level for a long war.
What finally reopens the world's oil artery?
"Two words: cash money."
@AlanEyre1
