The Duran Podcast - US-Iran Deal Is Dead, Strikes Resume. Hormuz Set To Close as Oil Reserves Run Low

Episode Date: July 9, 2026

US-Iran Deal Is Dead, Strikes Resume. Hormuz Set To Close as Oil Reserves Run Low

All right, Alexandra, let's talk about the restarting of the war between the United States and Iran. Trump said that the memorandum of understanding is dead. And we've had two to three days of intense U.S. strikes into Iran and the big Iranian retaliations into the Gulf countries, mostly. So we were talking about this over many videos that the MOU was not going to hold up. You described the MOU as another Minsk type of agreement. The MNSK agreement effectively broke down after eight years. The MOU has broken down after three weeks. Trump did say on Air Force One that Iran is calling him and they want to make a deal.

badly. Of course, the markets went up on this news. Who Trump is speaking with? You know, who knows, but anyway, we're back to this game, it seems. The war goes on. Trump says we have a deal. Trump then says we don't have a deal. Markets go up, markets go down. Oil goes up, oil goes up, oil goes down. It seems like we're back to where we started with all of this. Your thoughts. Well, I think that's exactly where we are. And I think you've summed up the situation exactly correctly. We always said, we said in program after program that the problem with the MOU is not in the terms of the MOU itself. About that, I think we both agree that in fact, if you take it objectively, the MOU is actually a good deal for both sides.

It's a good deal because it would have enabled the United States to work towards extraducting. acting itself from these many complicated problems in the Middle East, which are not in its true interest to be involved in. And of course, it would be a deal for Iran because it's a pathway towards peace for Iran. But the reality was that the United States was never going to fulfill the terms of the MOU, except in that one respect which benefits. it's the United States, which is securing the opening of the Strait of Hormuz. So what the Iranians discovered was that they'd loosened their grip on the Strait of Hormuz. Shipping was passing through the Strait of Hormuz, maybe not in the vast quantities

that we saw before the 28th of February. Maybe most of it was going to China and Elyar. but the very fact that shipping was passing through the Strait of Hormuz was taking some of the pressure off oil prices and was enabling the US to slow down its drawdown on its own strategic reserves. And as a result, the Iranians were losing leverage over the Americans who were not complying with any other part of the terms. So two days ago, the Iranians said enough. They started to conduct attacks again on tankers that were trying to pass through the Strait of Hormuz. One of the tankers that they attacked was a Saudi tanker. It became increasingly clear that the Iranians were going to tighten their grip on the Strait of Hormuz. Again, Trump, who has been always under pressure ever since he signed

the MOU from the hardliners in Washington, from Netanyahu in Israel, from some of the hardliners in Britain who have been very active. That is, by the way, a little discussed story. And the result was that he took the decision to restart the war in effect, and that is where we are. So we are now back in effect to where we were before the first week before the ceasefire was announced on the first week of April. We see strikes and counter strikes, the latest American strikes on Iran, were on a big scale.

They were much bigger than anything we've seen since the first week of April. And the Iranians are reciprocating. And no doubt there will be lots of diplomatic efforts by all sorts of parties, the Saudis, the Pakistanis, the Chinese, to get this thing together. again. I doubt actually that Trump is talking to anybody in Iran at the moment. He said this so many times you remember during the war that he was involved in all kinds of negotiations and discussions

and meetings that the Iranians wanted a deal and that they were about to agree to a deal. And it never quite happened until he signed an MOU, which was basically a shopping list of Iranian demands. I don't think there are any substantive. contacts between the Iranians and the Americans at the moment, perhaps some kind of diplomatic process will restart. The trouble is that trust was already poor before the MOU was signed. And trust has now come to pieces completely since the MOU was signed with the Iranians seeing for themselves that the warnings they were getting and some of the warnings that were made within Iran itself, that a paper, a document, a treaty signed with the United States, at least

with Donald Trump, is not worth the paper it is written on, that those warnings were true. So 200 million barrels. They got through the strait of Hormuz over the past three weeks of the MOU ceasefire. according to oil experts, Alexander, that is about two days of global demand. 60 million barrels of that 200 million was Iranian, which was sanctioned. Trump lifted the sanctions. Trump has now put the sanctions back on. snapped back on Iranian oil. But of the 200 million barrels, 60 million were Iranian, and you have

to imagine that oil most likely went to China. So in three weeks, we got two days of global demand of oil was shipped out of Hormuz. So the situation, what you just mentioned, with the strategic petroleum reserves and the shortages from the 60-day war, none of the that was really relieved or resolved during the three weeks of the MOU? No, none. Or a little bit, a very, very small amount. Very little bit. But if it had continued through the summer and the autumn, the way I think that the Trump

administration, or at least some people at the Trump administration, were hoping and expecting that it would, well, it would have made the difference. And of course, the other thing that he did, and for Trump himself and for the Republicans, it is important, is it lowered the price, the headline price of oil and the price of gasoline at the gas stations in the United States, in the run up to the midterms. So it may not have moved the dial, you know, radically in terms of the energy situation. But if it had continued through the summer and through the autumn, it would have been bad for the Iranians. The other thing, of course, was that during the period of the ceasefire, the United States was able to staunch its expenditure of precision-guided weapons, which it is having massive problems replacing. Now that has resumed all over again, so we're going to get more depletion of inventories the longer the war goes on. The Iranians, we've discussed in many programs the pressure on the Iranians from all sorts of external parties, first and foremost China, to agree to the opening up of the Strait of Hormuz.

India too. When Pezishan last spoke to Modi, the Indian Prime Minister, Modi insisted that the Strait of Hormuz must be reopened. So the Iranians have been under significant pressure, but they saw what was happening, what the United States was doing. They could see that they were being strung along. And that made them very alarmed. And I think something else probably changed the mood in Tehran. And that is the funeral of Hamannek, the former Supreme Leader. the man who was assassinated, because what we saw was an enormous turnout of millions, probably tens of millions of people to Harmoni's funeral.

And I think that gave the Iranian government and political system an extra boost to its confidence. It told them that the population is still supporting the people. political system in Iran, that it still commands mass support, that it's prepared to absorb the blows that the United States is inflicting, that there is, in other words, a reserve of political capital that has not been depleted in Iran, and that worries, fears of internal destabilization have been over-emphasized. This has always been for Iran the major weakness. How internally stable is Iran?

Well, we saw that they got through the 40-day war successfully. We've now seen, as I said, this enormous turnout of people. And that possibly has given the Iranian government a sense that they can keep going for many more months without an internal crisis. and that they can also stand up more firmly to their friends and allies, China, Pakistan, India, who have been asking them to reopen the Strait of Hormuz. So where do we go from here? Will there be a block of the Strait of Hormuz? Will we get back to the MOU, only to have it broken again?

will the Trump administration impose a sea blockade? Will they reimpose a sea blockade? Well, as to the last, if things continue as they are, in other words, with each side launching strikes against the other, and with the Strait of Hormuz closed, because it is closed. By the way, I just checked before we started doing these programs, the Iranian media, and they are saying that the Strait of Hormuz is closed. So if this continues, then I think the United States will move to reestablishing the sea blockade.

There are some U.S. warships in the region, nowhere near as many as we saw back in March, but no doubt the United States will try to redeploy them. That will cause enormous stresses within the U.S. military system, and it will accept many of the sailors and their families. We will no doubt start to see that happen. But eventually, I have no doubt the United States will move back to reimposing the sea blockade. I think that is a given. The only question is whether the diplomatic pressure is going to be enough,

and there's going to be a lot of diplomatic pressure, is going to be enough to get the Iranians to change their stance and to go back in effect to the MOU. demanding more guarantees from the Americans, which of course the Americans might agree to, but which won't act on. So here, again, I think that there is the split within Iran itself. There's people like Pezishkan and Galibaf, who are committed to this diplomatic process with the United States. There's various lobby groups within Iran. people connected maybe to the Basar in Tehran. I mean, I'm not sure I'm perhaps wrong about attributing opinions to particular groups within Iranian society.

I don't have that granular knowledge of the political and societal system in Iran to be able to speak with confidence. But there are undoubtedly many people in Iran who still favour some kind of understanding and rapprochement with the US. and who are prepared to make significant concessions to achieve it. And that group remains strong. Now, the question is, will they prevail, or will the more hardline groups in the IRGC, in the clerical leadership, will they prevail instead?

I think that, as I said, Harmony's funeral, has greatly strengthened the second, group as against the first. But we'll just have to see. It is always the way this wall, the way this conflict develops has always depended first and foremost on internal developments within Iran. I think now the kind of political crisis that we thought about, thought might happen back in February, you know, millions of people on the streets.

government collapsing regime change. That now looks extremely unlikely, at least for the next few months, year perhaps, but splits within the government, the political system. That's another matter. Well, you know, if you take into account what you said with Iran, the domestic issues being resolved because of the large turnout for the funeral. That means that the conflict, how it ends, how it develops and how it ends, will depend on the strategic petroleum reserves. How much does the United States have? Because if it starts to four weeks, five weeks, if it starts to run low, if Iran takes

this to a conclusion, to these. conclusion where they say, you know what, Hormuz is going to stay closed until you guys run out of oil. It's that simple. That's how we're going to do this. The United States will have to hit Iran as hard as they possibly can if they're starting to enter a scenario where they have one week left or two weeks left of SPR. Or they're going to have to, I don't know, they go back to the MOU.

but the MOU wasn't working. So you negotiate a new deal, but how do you get both sides to comply to that deal? How do you get the Trump administration to comply to that deal? So it just seems to me that the natural progression of this, unfortunately, is going to be Iran saying Hormuz is closed until you guys really feel economic pain. And the U.S. saying, you know what,

we're going to hit you as hard as we possibly can to avoid that economic pain or to prevent that economic pain. Well, I think you're absolutely right, and I think that is more than likely the way this is going to go. As I said, I do think, let's call them the hardliners. Or if you like, the realists, I mean, because ultimately, I think they're the more realistic faction, in the sense that they're the faction that recognizes within Iran

that any paper signed with the United States is worthless in the sense that the United States will never see, through the concessions that it makes. I think they have been greatly strengthened by the events of the last three weeks. The fact that the United States did not comply with the key provisions of the MOU and the fact that, as I said,

all these millions of people turned out for Harmonese funeral suggests that the sentiment within Iranian society is backing them. So I think they've been greatly strengthened. And I think they're making exactly the argument that you made that it's foolish, to agree anything with the Americans. What you need to do is to hold out until the reserves in the US are

drained. And then at that point, the US will be in such a weak position that you insist that their forces are removed completely from the Persian Gulf and that they recognize full Iranian control of the of Hormuz and act on that as a condition for the Iranians eventually opening the Strait of Hormuz. That's probably the plan that, as I said, the Iranian hardliners are advocating. But that would not just be a defeat for the United States. That would be a total defeat for the United States. That is not something that Donald Trump would accept.

that's not something that a lot of people within the political system in the United States would accept. So I think that we are very likely again back to drifting towards an all-out war between Iran and the United States, in which case sooner or later, in some form, there is going to be deployment of ground troops. And I was looking at various posts that various people in the US are publishing. and I saw Mark Levin, for example, and it seemed to me that he is definitely pushing in the direction of the US deploying ground troops and starting some kind of ground operation against Iran.

He would argue, no doubt, to reopen the Strait of Hormuz, rather than to reoccupy or occupy the whole country, but it's increasingly looking as if that's the direction that some people and the United States say this should go. Of course, if that does happen, if we start having ground operations on top of what would by then be an already existing crisis in the Western economies, a situation where reserves

are down to one week almost inevitably involves things like rationing, for example, something that we have not seen in the West since basically the 19th, 73 crisis. Well, then, I mean, it's difficult to try to calculate what the political effects in the West of that would be. Do we get back to the MOU? Is there any chance that we get back to it? Yeah. I mean, there is. Absolutely is. There is. There is. I mean, as I said, China, India, Pakistan, the Persian Gulf states, all sorts of people around the world are going to be pressing very hard to get back to the MOU. The hardliners in Iran are now saying this is completely wrong. They appear to be backed by the new supreme leader, Moshada Harmane. When the

MOU was signed off, he came out and said that he in principle really didn't agree with it, but that he went along with it because he felt that there was no choice. The reason there was no choice was because at that time the diplomatic pressure seemed to be too strong. And I think he probably worried that if things, if he held out, there would be splits within the political system. And he didn't want those splits at that time. I think, as is the hardline is in a much stronger position this time.

But the others have not gone away. They are still there. And they will be arguing that ultimately it is not in Iran's interests to get involved, drawn into an long-term confrontation with the US, that Iran would take enormous damage, that the Iranian people would suffer massively, all of which is true, by the way. And that the better way forward is to do some kind of deal and see whether things can be moved forward and go back in effect to the MOU with perhaps a few extra conditions thrown in. So that argument is going to happen in Iran. It's going to play out. Iran does not have what it did have before the 28th of February, which is one individual.

the former supreme leader, Ali Harmoné, who had undisputed authority over all the factions and could make the final decision. Ali Harmoni said that in the event of a conflict with the United States, there should be no temporary ceasefire. He essentially agreed with the hardliners, but he is gone. And he's son, who has replaced him, clearly does not have his father's authority. And he's said to be wounded still and was not able to attend his father's funeral,

which again perhaps highlights the fact that he's not in such a strong position. All right. We will end the video there at the durand.com. We're on X. We're on Rumble. We're on telegram. We are also on substack. Go to the Duran shop. Pick up some merch. We will see everybody tomorrow. Take care.