The President's Daily Brief - November 14th, 2025: Why Iran is One Spark Away From Chaos & Russia’s Oil Bottleneck

Episode Date: November 14, 2025

In this episode of The President's Daily Brief: Pressure is building inside Iran, as political repression, public defiance, and a deepening water crisis collide. I’ll explain why these forces are feeding off one another and creating one of the most volatile moments the regime has faced in decades. More bad news for Russia’s chief export: nearly a third of Moscow’s seaborne oil is now stuck in tankers under U.S. sanctions. Plus—the U.S. hits companies, including one in Ukraine, accused of helping supply parts for Iran’s Shahed drones. And in today’s Back of the Brief—China agrees to tighten controls on chemicals used to make fentanyl after a visit by FBI Director Kash Patel, marking a rare moment of cooperation as America’s opioid crisis worsens. To listen to the show ad-free, become a premium member of The President’s Daily Brief by visiting https://PDBPremium.com. Please remember to subscribe if you enjoyed this episode of The President's Daily Brief.  YouTube: youtube.com/@presidentsdailybrief Birch Gold: Text PDB to 989898 and get your free info kit on gold TriTails Premium Beef: Feed your legacy. Visit https://trybeef.com/pdb  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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done. Welcome to the President's Daily Brief. I'm Mike Baker, your eyes and ears on the world stage. All right. Let's get briefed. First up, pressure is building inside Iran as political repression, public defiance, and a deepening water crisis all collide. I'll explain why these forces are feeding off one another and creating one of the most volatile moments that the Iranian regime has faced in decades. Later in the show, more bad news for Russia's chief export. Nearly a third of Moscow's seaborne oil is now stuck in tankers, thanks to U.S. sanctions, leaving millions of barrels backed up at sea. Plus, the U.S. levies new sanctions against firms helping supply parts for Iran's Shihed drones, including Ukrainian companies.

And in today's back of the brief, China says it will tighten controls on chemicals used to make fentanyl, following a visit from FBI director Cash Patel. It's a rare moment of cooperation, well, if it actually happens, as the U.S. opioid crisis continues to deepen. But first, today's PDB spotlight. We'll start things off today in Iran, which is entering one of its most volatile periods in decades, not because of a foreign enemy or a battlefield setback,

but because of the pressures, building at home. Pressures that the regime can't fully control. let alone contain. Three forces are converging right now, a sweeping political crackdown, a wave of unexpected public defiance, and a worsening water crisis that's starting to affect a daily life for millions. Any one of these would be hard for a government to manage. All three at once, well, creates a potentially combustible moment that Tehran's leadership is struggling to control. Let's start with the political crackdown. According to Human Rights Groups, and activists inside the country, Iran is carrying out political executions at the fastest pace since

1989, averaging about four per day this year. That's four political executions per day. Now, that's only the confirmed cases. Thousands of journalists, students, lawyers, and activists have been interrogated, threatened, or detained. Several new laws passed in the last few months, expand the death penalty, accelerate trials, and criminalize, online posts deemed, quote, false information. Now, in a somewhat ironic twist, this new wave of repression is coming alongside a relaxation of social restrictions. In recent months, authorities have increasingly allowed women to walk unveiled.

Ooh, how generous of them. Permitted mixed gender gatherings. Oh, very daring. And even tolerated Western music. Uh, not you, nickelback. While at the same time, tightening their grip on anything that resembles political opposition. position. One analyst called it a, quote, release valve on appearance paired with a hard ceiling on dissent. In other words, the regime knows frustration is building. It's easing rules that people can see

while cracking down brutally on the things that threaten its power. But despite the crackdown, signs of public defiance are still breaking through. Earlier this week, a video went viral across Persian language social media. Two men, dressed in military uniforms, stood inside a busy metro station, in central Tehran. They raised Iran's pre-revolutionary flag, the old lion and sun emblem, and it's a symbol of resistance among many in the diaspora, and declared war against the criminal regime. Commuters stood frozen around them, watching. One bystander tried half-heartedly to pull the flag down, then gave up. Metro police later arrested the two men, and state media claimed their uniforms were fake. But that wasn't the point. The point was, where

it happened and how bold it was. A political protest in the heart of Tehran, inside a government-run metro station, men dressed as soldiers, calling for the overthrow of the Islamic Republic. Ten years ago, that kind of act was unthinkable. Two years ago, well, still unlikely. Today, it reflects something deeper, a population that doesn't appear to fear the state the way that it once did. And it's not an isolated moment. Since the June war with Israel, Iranians, especially in Tehran have largely abandoned the compulsory hijab. Security forces try to enforce it in some neighborhoods and then pull back in others. Videos of unveiled women dancing in street concerts circulate widely. The regime arrests some protesters, threatens others, but the overall trend is

unmistakable. Compliance is fading. And that brings us to the third factor, and possibly the most dangerous one, because it hits every household, regardless of ideology. As we're we've reported here on the PDB in recent weeks, Iran is now facing its worst water crisis in history, what experts are calling water bankruptcy. Decades of mismanagement and corruption, coupled with the worst drought in 60 years, have left major cities with reservoirs at critically low levels. Tehran, which is home to some 10 million people, has begun nightly water shutoffs. Officials are warning that parts of the capital may need to be evacuated if rains don't arrive soon. One of Iran's top water experts says the government is actually understating the danger,

worried that honest messaging could spark panic. In Mashad, Iran's second largest city, some reservoirs have fallen below 3% capacity. 19 major dams across the country have run completely dry. Now, this isn't a distant theoretical crisis. This is now affecting drinking water, household use, and the stability of infrastructure in a country where temperatures can hit extreme highs. Water shortages have already triggered protests in recent years, particularly in Kuzstan province. Those demonstrations were met with a harsh crackdown.

Now, imagine that scenario repeating, but this time in Tecran, a city 20 times larger and already simmering with frustration. Each of these factors might be manageable, perhaps, on their own. A government can survive a political crackdown. It can survive pockets of public defiance. can even survive a water shortage. But taken together, they show in Iran entering a combustible moment, because each one is intensifying the other. The crackdown fuels anger. That anger drives people to push back. That defiance now collides with a daily life emergency that affects every household. And that emergency,

in turn, well, that pressures the regime to squeeze even harder. It's a feedback loop that the government can't easily break, and it's creating a level of internal volatility. that Iran hasn't seen in years. Now, I'm not suggesting that Iran is on the edge of a revolution. I'm cynical, frankly, when it comes to the possibility of change from within in Iran, and we've seen internal flare-ups there before. The security apparatus is still strong, and the regime has survived plenty of turbulence in the past. But this time, the pressure isn't isolated.

It's hitting the system from every angle at the same time, and that's a far more dangerous place for the problem. the leadership to be. As an aside, check out this weekend's episode of our PDB Situation Report. We'll be talking about this water crisis with Shaheen Gobadi, a member of Iran's parliament and exile, and spokesman for the National Council of Resistance of Iran. He'll give us a look at what's happening inside the country and what may come next. You can catch you tonight at 10 p.m. on the first TV, as well as over the weekend on our YouTube channel, at President's Daily Brief, and, of course, on podcast platforms all over podcast land.

All right. Coming up next, Russia's seaborne oil runs into another bottleneck. And the U.S. moves to sanctioned companies, including a Ukrainian firm tied to Iran's Shahed drones. I'll be right back. Hey, Mike Baker here. Well, it is that time of year. That's right. It's the one time of year that Birch Gold Group gives away free gold with every qualifying purchase.

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Ask your doctor about Ebglis and visit Ebglis.lis.lily.com or call 1-800-LillyRX or 1-800 545-97579. Welcome back to the PDB. Sanctions continue to impact Russia's energy exports. Tankers carrying close to a third of Russia's seaborne oil exports are idling with no buyers willing to touch them under new U.S. sanctions. Now, you may remember how this started. President Trump hit Rosnev. in Luke Oil with direct sanctions just last month, and the Treasury Department gave the world until the 21st of November to walk away from both the oil giants or risk U.S. compliance. And the impact was almost immediate.

Tankers that once traveled straight to customers are now slowing, stalling, or circling, as buyers quietly reassess whether any discount is worth the political bruises that come with sanctioned Russian crude. J.P. Morgan's analysts put a number to what we're seeing. roughly 1.4 million barrels per day now riding in limbo, a floating reminder of how sensitive Russia's oil machine is to even a modest shift in western pressure. I want to point out that buying sanctioned Russian crude

isn't just a paperwork headache, it carries the risk of being cut off from the U.S. financial system, and that's a penalty serious enough that most shippers, refiners, and insurers want to steer clear of sanctions busting. Take India and China, the two main buyers. keeping Moscow's wartime budget alive through their purchases of discounted Russian crude. Both countries have already pulled back on December purchases, not because they've suddenly stopped needing oil,

but because the math no longer works when U.S. sanctions are in the equation. The result is a growing fleet of vessels with nowhere to unload, racking up storage costs while their cargo loses value. The financial hit is already showing up in the books. The International Energy Agency, the IEA, says, Russia pulled in just $13 billion from crude and refined products in October. That's more than $2 billion less than a year ago. The agency attributes the drop not only to discounted prices, but to falling export volumes and ongoing Ukrainian drone strikes that continue to damage

Russ's refineries and pipelines. As a result, crude exports fell by another 110,000 barrels per day just last month. Still, the Kremlin is trying to improvise its way through. The IEA says three new shipping companies, all created since May, managed to move about one million barrels per day of Russian crude in October. They're the latest additions to Russia's, quote, shadow fleet. It's a patchwork of tankers that we've been tracking here on the PDB, that the Kremlin uses in an attempt to dodge Western oversight. But even that fleet has limits.

It can move barrels, that's for sure. What it can't do is conjure up buyers willing to risk taking on sanction crude. And that's their chief problem. Russia's oil is technically still flowing, but the path to buyers is narrowing, slower deliveries, deeper discounts, fewer customers, and more tankers sitting offshore waiting for a port call that may not come. Okay, shifting gears. Washington is ratcheting up its pressure campaign on Tehran again, this time rolling out sanctions aimed at choking off the Mullah's missile and drone programs. Tucked inside the new sanctions list is a surreal twist.

Included on the list are Ukrainian firms allegedly supplying parts for Shahed drones that are then purchased by Russia and used to strike at Ukraine. Can't make that up. A Wednesday readout from the Treasury Department reveals the latest sanctions sweep up 32 individuals and entities across eight countries, a patchwork of front companies, procurement agents, and shadow networks that allow the Islamic regime to rebuild its missile and drone capabilities, even as Washington keeps tightening the screws. And in the Trump administration's view, that's the core of the problem.

No matter how many channels get shut down, another seems to pop up somewhere else. Often in corners of the global market, most capitals wouldn't think to check. Which brings us to the most jarring revelation on the list. Two of the targeted companies, Echofera and Imperative Ukraine, operate out of a country that's been living under the flight path of Iranian-made Shihad drones for more than two years. Ukraine knows this threat better than anyone, yet according to American officials,

these firms on the sanctions list help move attitude indicators and magnetometers straight into the supply chain of HESA, which is the Iranian aerospace manufacturer behind those drones that are used against Ukraine. For those unfamiliar, HESA has been under American sanctions since 2008, but its products continue to show up

wherever the regime's influence reaches, including Russia's battlefields. To Washington, the Ukrainian connections say less about Keeves' intentions, and more about how deeply Tehran's procurement networks have seeped into Europe's commercial landscape. The company, imperative Ukraine's own paperwork, did little to hide its roots, listing its owner, Bahram Tabibi, as an Iranian citizen. And while no Ukrainian firm officially registered as Eklera exists, A company with that name sits just over the border in northern Slovakia. That's a detail.

Treasury Department officials say fit the pattern of Iranian shell companies slipping through the cracks of Europe's smaller states. From the Treasury's vantage point, none of this is accidental. John Hurley, the Undersecretary of the Treasury, overseeing terrorism and financial intelligence, said, quote, Across the globe, Iran exploits financial systems to launder funds, procure components for its nuclear and conventional weapons programs, and support its terrorist proxies, end quote.

These networks, he warned, endanger American personnel in the Middle East and commercial shipping in the Red Sea, and that's before factoring in how they bolster Moscow's drone fleet. The new sanctions block all transactions between American citizens and the designated entities and open the door to secondary sanctions on foreign firms that continue to deal with them.

In practical terms, it means anyone who continues doing business with these networks risks being walled off from the American financial system. Wednesday's move also marks the Treasury's second major non-proliferation sanctions since the U.S. pushed the re-imposition of U.N. sanctions on the Mullahs in September. It was after the regime continued breaching its nuclear commitments and enriching uranium far beyond the levels of civilian use. The goal now, the Trump administration says,

is to stop Tehran from reconstituting the missile capabilities that were destroyed during the 12-day war, cutting off everything from electronics to missile propellant before they reach the Mullah's assembly lines. Still, Kiev maintains tough wartime export controls on dual-use goods, but Western capitals have long cautioned that sanctions evasion channels still funnel Western-made electronics and components into Russian and Iranian weapons systems through intermediaries scattered across Europe, including, as sadly ironic as it is in this case, Ukraine. Right. Coming up in the back of the brief, China bludges new controls on fentanyl precursor chemicals.

We'll see if that happens. More on that when we come back. Hey, Mike Baker here. Well, you may have noticed, I'm sure you have. It's now November. So that means, of course, Thanksgiving is just around the corner. Now, the great thing about Thanksgiving is it's one of the few times of the year, when we can all slow down just a bit, right? Gather as families and remind ourselves of what we're thankful for. And remember, don't talk about politics or religion around the Thanksgiving table. Do yourself a favor. It's all about gratitude, not just for the past, but for the future.

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Choice Hotels gets you more of what you value. Comfort in, it's calling your name. Save on the stay. Oh, and free waffles are yours to claim. Book direct at sourceotels.com. In today's back of the brief, Beijing is signaling a rare shift in the finger-pointing war over America's opioid crisis. After a visit by FBI Director Cash Patel to Beijing last week,

Chinese authorities agreed to impose tougher restrictions on key fentanyl precursors and bring certain chemical manufacturers under tighter export control. The move follows months of pressure from Washington over China's role in the flow of synthetic opioids that are fueling the ongoing U.S. overdose epidemic. Specifically, the CCP placed 13 precursor chemicals on a restricted list and flagged seven manufacturing firms for heightened regulatory oversight. Shipments of fentanyl precursors to the U.S., Canada, and Mexico from these chemical subsidiaries will now require licenses, and exporters may face criminal liability when shipping to certain, quote, high-risk countries without proper authorization.

The Chinese Commerce Ministry confirmed the changes this week, just days after Patel wrapped up talks with his counterparts in Beijing. It was a significant trip, marking the first time in a decade, that an FBI director has ventured to China to discuss the fentanyl crisis. Patel hailed the agreement in an exclusive statement to Fox News on Wednesday, calling it, quote, a victory that will ultimately crush fentanyl traffickers and save so many American lives for generations to come. He added, quote, we are dismantling the infrastructure that fuels this crisis at its source. By targeting these flows and dismantling supply chains before they ever reach our hemisphere,

we're saving American lives. end quote. Indeed, on its surface, this looks like a major breakthrough for Washington. For years, U.S. officials have accused Beijing of being too slow or unwilling to rein in chemicals that end up in Mexican drug labs and ultimately implicated in overdose deaths in America. Now, with China publicly committing to take action, America could have the largest source nation of the deadly opioid aligned, in principle, with a key domestic priority. But there are still major questions to consider, namely enforcement. Listing chemicals and companies is one thing, but monitoring tens of thousands of shipments

is another. American officials caution that change will likely take time to show results, and smugglers will inevitably look for alternate routes. Second, the deal is closely tied to broader U.S.-China negotiations on trade involving tariff reductions, rare earth minerals, and semiconductor carve-outs. Some analysts say that China's commitment on fentanyl might be more of a symbolic gesture than a genuine disruption, a move to placate the U.S. as deeper negotiations on trade continue. It's also worth noting that Chinese officials continue to say the U.S. is politicizing the opioid

issue. Ultimately, we'll have to wait and see how the agreement impacts the bleak reality of opioid addiction across the U.S. Drug overdoses continue to plague U.S. communities, claiming the lives of more than 100,000 Americans in both 2022 and 2023, with 70% of those deaths involving opioids like fentanyl. Opioid-related overdose deaths declined slightly in 2024, and U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi recently said seizures of fentanyl at the southern border have significantly decreased, signaling the border crackdown is disrupting the efforts of not. narcot traffickers. But drug overdoses still remain the leading cause of death for Americans

between the ages of 18 and 44, and a CDC report from June, warned that the national downward trend has begun to reverse in some states. And that, my friends, is the president's daily brief for Friday the 14th of November. If you have any questions or comments, please reach out to me at BDB at thefirsttv.com. And don't forget, if you'd like to listen to the show, add free, you can do that and it's very simple. Just become a premium member of the PDB by visiting PDB premium.com. I'm Mike Baker and I'll be back later today with the PDB afternoon bulletin. Until then, stay informed, stay safe, stay cool. Ryan Reynolds here from MintMobil. I don't know if you knew this, but anyone can get the same

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