The Duran Podcast - Diesel Crisis Worsens as Houthis Tighten Grip on al-Mandeb Strait

Episode Date: September 12, 2026

Diesel Crisis Worsens as Houthis Tighten Grip on al-Mandeb Strait

All right, Alexander, let's talk about the energy situation. Diesel is at historic highs, I believe. Oil is rising. The price of gas is rising in the United States. I think over Labor Day, a historic high for the price of gas as well. Trump is now admitting that the price is high, and he's making promises that the price will come down after the midterms. and after the United States wins the war,

so he's admitting that the U.S. is now in a war. They haven't won the war, they're in a war. He's basically taking this to the midterms and past the midterms, and he's promising that the price will come down after the midterms. Besant is making similar promises. But at the end of the day, these price surges, these price increases, are going to cause all kinds of trouble in the global economy,

especially gas, of course, but diesel. Diesel's going to cause all kinds of price increases and troubles in the global economy because it all runs on diesel. Absolutely. That's the point. That's the point to understand. Industry, the economy runs on diesel. Trucks use diesel. Freight trains use diesel. Ships use diesel. Farmers use diesel in their tractors and their harvesters and all of these kind of things. The construction industry runs on diesel. The economy runs on diesel. Gasoline is what people put in their passenger cars if they still use gasoline passenger cars. But diesel is the really important refined oil. And that is now an increasingly short supply. And there is a developing problem, a crisis around it. And the rise in the price of diesel is going to have two effects. Firstly, it's going to increase

inflation. Inflation rises. Inevitably, there's going to be mutterings that the central banks across the West in the United States in Europe are going to have to put up interest rates because the classical way to try to keep inflation under control is to increase interest rates. That is going to create many problems, problems for people and businesses who are in debt because they'll be going to be paying higher interest rates. And higher interest rates, of course, is a cost which people carry and it reduces demand. But it's also going to be very, very difficult for governments because governments are up to their ears in debt already.

yields on bonds have been rising already and if interest rates go up, then bond yields are going to go up higher still, which means that governments are going to have, and including, by the way, the US government, which now has $40 trillion of debt on its books, and rising, is going to have to pay more and more money out, to repay the interest on its existing debt. So this is very serious and it's serious in the United States and it is even more serious, actually, in my opinion, in Europe. Because on top of the shortages of gasoline and diesel, which are leading to higher prices of these things, we have something which, by the way, we were far and away.

the first people to talk about. We were talking about this in the spring. Natural gas reserves across Europe are very low. They are lower than I think they've been since, well, recent records, certainly worse than they were in all the recent crises that we've had. If there's a colder winter or if winter turns out colder than some people expect, there's, there. then we're going to see another surge in the price of natural gas coming on top of surges in the price of gasoline and diesel, higher inflation across Europe, more deindustrialization across Europe. And unlike 2022, when governments spent very heavily subsidizing businesses and consumers in relation to their fuel bills, because of the high levels of debt, government debt,

the fiscal space to do that simply does not exist, especially at a time when interest rates and bond yields are rising. So at the moment, it looks like a perfect storm. And I'm going to say something else. What Trump is now saying about the United States being in a war, about the situation not being resolved until after the midterms, what that tells you is that there is no end to this conflict in the Persian Gulf in sight. The Strait of Hormuz, in other words, is going to to continue to remain closed, the Americans and the Iranians regularly launch missiles at each other. It's not all-out war of the kind that we saw in March and early April, but it continues at that sort of level all the time. And adding to the sense of crisis, we now have another war

taking place in the Middle East, which is, of course, connected to the war between Iran and the US. But this is a reopening of the war between the Houthis and the Saudis. The Houthis have regained a significant amount of territory in Yemen, which was previously controlled by a Saudi-backed government with Saudi troops. And they are now starting attacks on Saudi- oil installations, which could make the situation in the global energy markets even worse over the course of the next few weeks and months. Now, this is an expression I actually detest, but I'm going to use it. We are looking at a perfect storm.

Yeah. Yeah, and Trump, you know, he moves the goalpost significantly over the past week. He's admitting that the U.S. is in a war. He was spending three months, four months, constantly saying we've won the war, we've defeated them. It's not even a war. It's an excursion. Yeah. It's small potatoes, he said.

And now he's talking about the U.S. being in a war. In a war. He's admitting that the price of gas is high. And he's putting everything to the midterms now. He's even going so far as bribing Americans with the $5,000. dividend, a check if they vote Republican in the midterms. So we're going to have this war going on with Iran. The price of gas is going to remain high. But after the war, we'll sort it out. And in the meantime, vote Republican in November, and you'll get $5,000. It's absurd. It's

absolutely absurd what he's done and the stuff that he's saying. And instead of, limiting, removing Iran's proxies, which was one of the accomplishments that the U.S. had achieved with this war with Iran or was in the process of achieving with Iran. They've emboldened and they've empowered the big Iran proxy of the Houthis in Yemen. And they're advancing. They now control the town of Mokka last I read. They have better control of the coast, better control of the coast, better control of the Alman Dab Strait, which means that they can now choke, choke off the energy from that

straight more effectively. What a freaking disaster from the Trump administration. Absolutely. Again, it's very difficult to understand why the United States got into this situation. When Donald Trump became president, it's not that long ago. But all of the signs pointed to an agreement being made between Iran and the United States. He was going to negotiate. There was going to be progress made on the nuclear deal.

The Russians were going to be involved. I remember all of that. And it was all being prepared. We had negotiations going on with the Iranians. The Chinese and the Russians were putting pressure on the Iranians. on the Iranians, as we now know, to make concessions. All of this could have been avoided. And so easily, had he continued with that course, what exactly happened?

Well, of course, many people will say that he always wanted to go to war with Iran. And he himself has told us in the past that it was all duplicity and trickery. He was lulling the Iranians before the attack in June, in June 2025, and that he and Netanyahu were working together. Well, after the attack in June, especially after that attack, he should have realized that the Iranians were a tougher proposition than people were saying. And nonetheless, he resumed the war in February. I mean, the way he has made these mistakes is extraordinary.

And, well, clearly he's been listening to bad advice and clearly he's been given bad advice. But he is the president of the United States. The responsibility is his. Absolutely. 100% his, whether he's actually making the decisions or not. It still falls on him. And that's how history is going to look at all of this. He's talking about renaming the Strait of Hormuz, the Strait of Trump or the Trump's

straight or whatever he's talking about. Meanwhile, he hasn't only lost the strait of Hormuz, which was open and free before this conflict. But you're not going to lose the Al-Mandab straight as well. And Saudi Arabia is in big trouble. The Houthis, they smelled the weakness. They understood the weakness of Saudi Arabia. And they have a much better understanding of what's happening in the region than the United States does. That's obvious. And they saw the opportunity and they jumped on it. And it's paying dividends now. They are advancing.

They're advancing very quickly if you go off of the latest reports. Absolutely. So the thing to understand, and this goes back to your point about proxies and about Iran weakening its proxies instead of being weakened, they've been emboldened and strengthened. One of the major restraints on what these proxies were doing, so-called proxies were doing, was the Iranians before June 2025 and even more before February 2026, the Iranians were trying to avoid a war. And they were telling Hezbollah in Lebanon and the Houthis in Yemen hold back. They were the restraints on these people.

We actually discussed this in many, many programs where we discussed the various attacks on Hezbollah in Lebanon, especially, that the Israelis had done. You could see this. This was creating tensions between Hezbollah and Iran, because Iran was telling the telling Hezbollah, hold back, don't escalate this into an all-out war. What the attacks on Iran have done is that it's completely changed that calculus. So that instead of Iran acting as a restraint on Hezbollah and the Houthis, it is now giving them free reign. And with the Houthis especially, who are an extremely well-organized and very tough and experienced force, will we see what is happening. So the messed up situation with all of this is that, at least going back to the energy situation, the crisis there, is that they're trying to manipulate things. The best inside is trying to use financial manipulation to deal with the increase in prices.

But they don't want to address the actual supply. They're actually destroying the supply. They're hitting tankers. The Europeans continue to seize tankers, and they continue to isolate themselves from Russian energy. Instead of actually trying to remove sanctions, to not engage in piracy, to not destroy oil, oil that is at sea. They're doing the reverse. Well, they do the river. It's weird.

And Besson is just, his job appears to be, let me see if I can just do it. some clever financial engineering to keep the price as low for as long as possible. Well, indeed, absolutely. That's exactly right. I mean, of course, now we go back to the program that we did with Ryan Perkins about Bess. I don't believe, and I should make this clear, I don't believe that the United States deliberately engineered an energy crisis, an energy shock in order to destabilize China. But I do think it is possible that Besson, is trying to use the energy shock he has been given in order to try and destabilize China by doing the things with the R&B, the floating R&B.

As Ryan Perkins said in that program, it's the kind of thing, as I said, that he does and that he is thinking about. I'm going to say it straight away. If he tries to do that, firstly, it is going to fail. It is going to fail with China, which, again, as Ryan Perkins said, is always. aware of all of the risks and is creating the buffers and is working fast with the Russians to secure oil and energy supplies. And it is going to deepen the crisis in the energy crisis, the energy shock in the West.

What I'm a little afraid is happening is that people like Besson, who might be thinking in this way, you know, trying to do this thing with China, they might. be telling Trump, you know, just hold out a little longer. We've got some things going with China. You know, you've got Xi Jinping coming. Just keep it going a little longer and we can fix it. We can do financial manipulations that will keep energy prices at a stable level here in the United States. They've gone up a lot, but we won't let them go up further. We're going to use financial engineering in some way to stop that. And at the same time, we're going to create this problem for the Chinese by jacking up interest rates in China, enforcing China to the negotiating table

and negotiating a plaza-type accord with them. So, you know, if these siren voices for and Besson are influencing Trump's decisions and are explaining some of this really irrational aggressiveness, attacks on tankers and all of that that is going on, then all I can say is that the Americans have taken leave of their senses. And Trump needs to tell Besson, look, I'm hearing what you're saying. You are an extremely clever man, but my responsibility is the United States, and I'm looking for a way out of this. Unfortunately, I don't think Trump is that kind of president. That's the trouble. Not going to happen. Yeah, I agree with you. All right. We'll end the video there, the durand. Dotlocals.com. We are also on substack. Go to

the Duran shop, pick up some merch, all those links in the scripture box down below. Take care.