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Authored by Michael Every via Rabobank,

Invasion (of the Inflation Snatchers)

Yesterday’s US CPI report was slightly stronger than expected; and yet the day ended with US bond yields substantially lower, 10s down some 8bp intraday from over 1.70% to below 1.62%. So something and yet nothing. For once one doesn’t need to point a finger at the Fed not pointing its finger at inflation like Donald Sutherland at the end of the 1970’s version of ‘Invasion of the Body Snatchers’. Yes, there was a good 30-year Treasury auction, with a heavy indirect bid. Yet more important, the US paused the use of the Johnson & Johnson Covid vaccine, which has played a huge role in its rapid roll-out efforts, because of blood clots effecting 1 in a million people who have taken it so far. The bond market saw that no shots means no shot in the arm for the economy. Indeed, that’s now three global vaccines with question-marks over them from some sources: Astra-Zeneca and J&J for blood clots, and Sinovac for not working effectively (in a now-retracted statement from a key Chinese health official).

The US NFIB small business optimism index meanwhile rose 2.4 points in March to 98.2, its first return to average levels since last November. However, business uncertainty increased too, about whether it is a good time to make capital expenditures, and 42% reported job openings that could not be filled, a record high. The key quote was: “Main Street is doing better as state and local restrictions are eased, but finding qualified labour is a critical issue for small businesses nationwide. Small business owners are competing with the pandemic and increased unemployment benefits that are keeping some workers out of the labour force.” So unemployment benefits are ironically helping to push up wages, at least temporarily – which I am sure nobody intended, but underlines just how radical policy has to get in the US to make it happen. The problem is that small businesses trying to get past Covid are least well placed to lead this socio-economic charge; and if this points to a wage-price spiral –which is still unlikely– then the bond market will soon be pointing its finger at the Fed like Donald Sutherland.

Now let’s focus on the ‘invasion’ part. As Russian news reports NATO has amassed 40,000 troops on the Ukrainian-Russian border vs. Western estimates of anything up to 83,000 Russians on the other side, President Biden called President Putin, discussed “a number of regional and global issues”, and invited him to a summit in a third country “in the coming months”. The high-stakes Cold War atmosphere is clear: less obvious is if this is US statesmanship or a stalling action, the latter given some intelligence sources suggest that *if* Russia wants to move on Ukraine, it could do so as soon as May. The Kremlin read-out of the call noted President Biden also “expressed interest in normalising the state of affairs on the bilateral track and establishing stable and predictable interaction on pressing matters such as ensuring strategic stability and arms control, Iran’s nuclear programme, the situation in Afghanistan, and global climate change”. So this is either summit – or nothing,…and we haven’t got a ‘da’ from Putin yet.

There would certainly be lots to discuss, because Iran has announced it will accelerate uranium enrichment to 60% vs. a 3.67% level allowed under the defunct nuclear deal. Again we see Tehran’s tactics of maximum resistance. Against that backdrop, another Israeli commercial ship has been attacked off of the coast of the UAE. It’s not only uranium-enrichment that is accelerating in that region and its key sea lanes.

And because –like inflation– geopolitical problems tend to come in a sudden surge, and more so if authorities have long ignored them, there is further US-China tension. Last week’s National Intelligence Council report painted many dark scenarios for the world by 2040. Now the press is noticing the linked 2021 Annual Threat Assessment published 9 April named “China’s push for global power” as the leading threat to US national security, while Russia’s efforts to undermine US influence and assert itself as a major actor also pose a challenge. (President Putin can perhaps discuss that at the summit too.)

Naturally, markets prefer to cling to headlines like China being taken off the currency manipulators list by the US Treasury – while overlooking the same story said the US will be refining the metrics it uses to make such calls to include how non-government actors operate as proxies (which is aimed at few others than China). Markets also don’t react to geopolitical tensions until they blow up like they have over Xinjiang cotton – on which, yesterday saw the Chinese MFA spokesperson on Twitter attack the US for ‘trying to smear the white, innocent cotton. The accusations of “genocide” and “forced labour” should be better left to the US itself.’ No backing down there, obviously.

Yet markets still don’t cotton on that other products will logically follow this pattern. Bloomberg is now talking about Xinjiang producing nearly half the world’s polysilicon, a key component in the solar panels in demand as the West goes ‘Green’ (and, they add, polysilicon produced by burning coal). Could that key green input into Building Back Better become the next cotton? Could this mean a lot less trade and a lot more making ‘green’ in the US or EU, etc.? That will please the latter, but concern China given the y/y surge in imports we saw in March, which far exceeded the expected surge in exports. Notably, that’s not a trend they want to see – but higher commodity prices in the inflation-we-aren’t-having will push the import side of trade higher. And equally notably, only by China importing more than it exports is its growth going to be the major contributor to global GDP the IMF is waffling on about.

Of course, markets will also ignore China warning the US: “Don’t play with fire” over Taiwan, as the White House continues the Trump administration policy of deepening ties; and headlines such as “Australia war with China ‘likely’ in five to 10 years, former defence minister Christopher Pyne warns”. Indeed, anyone who talks about things like that automatically gets the Donald Sutherland finger: “Stop talking about invasion, and let us keep making money from central-bank inflation-snatchers!” Indeed, perhaps we need to hark back to the 1950’s vintage of the same film too:

Dr. Kauffman: A strange neurosis, evidently contagious, an epidemic mass hysteria. In two weeks, it spread all over town.

Miles: What causes it?

Dr. Kauffman: Worry about what’s going on in the world probably.

I guess that all makes me the guy yelling at the beginning and the end of this trailer.

But let’s give markets some breathing space. They have the problems with Huarong in China to deal with, which Bloomberg reports in two weeks have gone from trading as quasi-sovereign to junk; and there is news today that Beijing says local government financing vehicles that are unable to pay debts should be restructured or liquidated – which given LGFV’s key role in the economy is like casually saying we should turn off QE and let all the corporates restructure or liquidate. On the upside, however, it’s anything but inflationary for both China and the world.

With median prices for both existing and new homes at all time highs, and soaring at a record annualized rate of almost 20%…

… increasingly more Americans find themselves priced out of homeownership and, unwilling to rent shoeboxes in those liberal bicoastal, record tax incubators, are instead opting to not purchase expensive (and stationary) homes altogether, and are picking a far cheaper (and mobile) option.

According to the RV Industry Association (RVIA), an industry association trade group that monitors the RV industry, manufacturers are shipping a record number of new units to dealer lots across the county that are being snapped up almost as soon as they arrive.

A February survey of manufacturers showed total RV shipments for the month topping out at 48,286 units, an increase of 30.1% compared to the same period last year, making February 2021 the best February on record.

“As people begin to think about their spring and summer vacations, RV trips continue to be the preferred way to travel for millions of Americans,” said RV Industry Association President & CEO Craig Kirby. “As evident in this month’s record shipment report, RV manufacturers and suppliers are committed to meeting the demand from new consumers as well as those looking to upgrade their existing RVs. According to the report, the industry remains on track to build more RVs in 2021 than in any previous year.”

It’s part of a continuing trend the RVIA has been watching closely: “We’re on quite a streak right now,” said Monika Geraci, a RVIA analyst and spokesperson. “November and December were record-breaking months, too.”

According to the recent study commissioned by RVIA, RV wholesale shipments appear to be headed to their highest levels in 2021. Those projections show total RV shipments ranging between 523,000 units and 543,000 units for the coming year, representing a 23% increase over the 2020 year-end total of 430,412 units. It suggests a 5% gain over the record high of 504,600 units shipped in 2017.

“RV shipments in 2021 are forecast to reach record highs as the industry continues its over 40 years of long-term growth,” said Kirby. “We expect consumers to continue to turn to RVs not only because they allow people to recreate responsibly, but also because RVs allow people the freedom to live a fun, active outdoor lifestyle.”

Those numbers surprised even RV insiders, who said they thought 2020 would be a down year.

“A year ago when RV plants shut down for nearly two months, who would have thought we would be talking about record-breaking shipments less than a year later?” said Jeff Rutherford, president and CEO of Airxcel Inc. and RV Industry Association chairman. “The fact that 2021 is projected to be the best year ever for RV shipments speaks to the strengths of our industry and the incredible appeal of the RV lifestyle.”

One factor helping drive the stronger demand for RVs seems to be that they have found a new audience with younger customers. Studies show that 18- to 34-year-olds now make up 22% of the market of new RV buyers, a significant increase.

That study also found RV ownership has increased over 62% in the last 20 years, and now a record 11.2 million American households own RVs. Those numbers are split almost equally between those over and under the age of 55. Additionally, the study found 9.6 million households intend to buy an RV within the next five years. And of that, 84% of Millennials and Gen Zers who own RVs plan to buy another RV within the next five years, and 78% of them saying they want to buy a brand-new model.

According to the report, usage for RV owners remains steady at 20 days a year, while people who say they now intend to buy an RV also say they plan to use their new units for an average of 25 days per year. This increase is thought to be the result of changing attitudes toward working remotely and distance learning. Both give families more ability to be away from home, but still working, than in the past.

Nearly a third of the respondents in the study are “first-time owners,” underscoring the growth of the industry in the past decade. Ownership is spread widely not only across age levels, but also across genders.

In 2017, the industry’s best year to date, manufacturers built and moved just over half a million new units to dealer lots around the county, but those numbers pale when placed against the anticipated growth expected throughout this year.

“It looks like a significant increase over our best year ever,” Geraci said. “And that’s because many people are still looking forward to taking that RV trip they dreamed of. There’s really continued customer demand. Inventory on dealer lots continues to be at historic lows because of the demand by consumers. Based on those two factors alone, it should be a really strong year for the industry.”

Demand for new RVs was strong before the pandemic and stronger still during and after. Geraci said RVIA has been watching demand steadily grow over the last decade.

“If we look back 13 months ago, the RV numbers were really strong. They were up over 2019. So even pre-pandemic, people were looking at RVs. Add the pandemic on top of that, where you had people who had maybe thought about RVing suddenly jumping in,” she said.

While large segments of the travel industry suffered due to the pandemic, it appears that people’s appetite to travel failed to decrease, making RVs a great alternative. Geraci said an RV allows people bring along their own bedroom, kitchen and bathroom, giving most the travel solution they were looking for.

RVs became hot in 2020 when more traditional travel and vacation plans, including air travel, cruising and hotel stays, were crushed by the pandemic. Instead, Americans opted to snap up RVs and hit the road as a safer alternative for their time off.

“It’s easy to social distance in an RV,” she said.

Traditional trailers, units that are pulled behind a truck, still dominate the industry and account for the lion’s share of all sales. But demand for fifth wheels, vans and motorhomes are all up by as much as 20%.

Authored by Peter St.Onge via The Mises Institute,

One popular critique of bitcoin is energy cost per transaction. This doesn’t begin to capture bitcoin’s massive energy savings compared to fiat currency…

Bitcoin’s cost per transaction is well known, and often critiqued; one article in Wired magazine called bitcoin “[a] big middle finger to earth’s climate.” This is because bitcoin’s security, redundancy, and architecture are more energy intensive than traditional payments relying on a single point of failure.

Comparing the energy of a single transaction barely scrapes the surface of the dollar’s carbon footprint, which includes the entire financial infrastructure supporting fiat—8.4 percent of GDP in the US alone, slightly behind manufacturing. This includes 80,000 bank branches, 470,000 ATMs in the US alone, and forests of skyscrapers towering over most cities on earth.

Alas, that’s still only the beginning. Because paper money allows governments to print unlimited amounts of debt, that causes various collateral damage including inflation, recessions, and trillions in wasteful spending or endless wars whose costs are hidden by debt financing. These all, of course, carry catastrophic human costs that can only be imperfectly expressed in a carbon footprint.

Still, we can take a stab at addressing that disconnect by estimating the carbon footprint of just one element of fiat collateral damage: the modern recession.

First, how does fiat money cause recession? This was well known in economics for centuries before the Keynesian dogma turned mainstream economists into court jesters.

The key element is that central banks push interest rates below the market rate, flooding easy money into the economy. This boom gradually sparks price inflation, at which point central banks slam on the brakes and jack up rates, tightening money. That whipsaw leads to a mass extinction of low-quality projects funded by easy money.

The end result is a boom-bust cycle that, like a tissue fire, burns too bright and too short, leaving behind ashes.

How does bitcoin fix this? Bitcoin takes purchasing power out of central banks’ manipulation space, dulling their ability to cause cycles. If enough dollars are sold for bitcoin, this drains that space until central bank manipulation no longer sends the entire economy into recession.

How to translate that into carbon cost? We have a very elegant instrument connecting the two: the energy cost of a dollar of GDP. Because every watt that humans use is to achieve some goal—to seek “a more satisfactory state of affairs”—it means we can estimate the carbon footprint of a dollar of lost wealth, specifically how much energy it would take to rebuild that wealth were it destroyed. Tally up the dollars lost in a recession and we can estimate the carbon footprint.

So let’s plug in the numbers and compare bitcoin to the dollar.

First, what’s the carbon footprint of bitcoin today? This is trickier than it looks, because a large share of bitcoin mining is powered by green energy. Smart Energy says 39 percent of bitcoin energy is renewable, while the Global Cryptoasset Benchmarking Study estimates that three-quarters of cryptocurrency mining uses some renewables in its energy mix. Either way, bitcoin is far greener than the rest of the economy, which averages 11 percent renewable use.

A big reason why bitcoin loves green energy is that bitcoin mining can be located almost anywhere on earth, while renewables are often located in strange places like the Himalayas, the Sahara, or the Quebec tundra.

This means that bitcoin can use otherwise useless energy, and it also means bitcoin miners actually “bootstrap” new renewables, paying the operating costs until regular customers can relocate. As even a hostile article from Vox admits, “Many renewable power generators are so poorly located and underused that mining Bitcoin has become the only viable use for that electricity.” Without bitcoin mining, that energy may have just been flushed.

Still, for now we’ll ignore bitcoin’s green preference and just take the total, because, as we’ll see, it’s not even close. As of March 22, 2021, the widely cited Digiconomist estimates a total energy use for bitcoin of 86.1 terawatt hours (TWh) per year, comparable to Switzerland’s 8.5 million people, for the perhaps 100 million people worldwide who use bitcoin. In terms of nationality, given that 19 percent of bitcoin nodes are located in the US, Americans might account for roughly 19 percent, or 16 TWh, of that usage.

So that’s the cost: 86 TWh per year, of which perhaps 16 TWh is Americans.

Now, it’s central banks’ turn: What is the energy cost of a recession? It’s fitting that our most recent recession, in 2008, is the very event that drove “Satoshi Nakamoto” to create bitcoin.

There are a variety of estimates of how much wealth the 2008 crisis destroyed, depending on what’s counted and on the time period. According to the Federal Reserve itself, from peak to trough the 2008 financial crisis destroyed $11 trillion in household wealth in the US, going from $70.9 trillion in Q3 2007 to just $59.9 trillion in Q1 2009.

Outside the US, many countries in Europe suffered even larger drops in GDP, while other countries, such as China, suffered little. To get a rough sense, Credit Suisse estimates that 31 percent of global wealth is held by Americans, so one might multiply America’s $11 trillion by about three to get worldwide losses.

Next, we can put an energy cost on those trillions. According to the US Energy Information Administration, in 2018 it took about 5,000 British thermal units (Btu) to produce a dollar of GDP. The World Bank gives similar estimates for the rest of the world, at 5,200 Btu per 2017 dollar. There are 3.4 Btu in a watt hour, so that converts to 1,500 watt hours, or 1.5 kilowatt hours (kWh), per dollar.

Now, multiply the trillions lost by 1.5 kWh and you get 16,500 TWh in the US alone. Scale by 3 and you get perhaps 50,000 TWh worldwide in lost wealth. Between 500 and 1,000 times bitcoin’s annual use, all from a single recession.

Put differently, it would take between 500 and 1,000 years of mining just for bitcoin to match the carbon cost of the 2008 recession alone. Add in the other 17 recessions the Fed has created in the past century alone—one every 5 years—and that’s an awful lot of carbon. Indeed, divide that 2008 recession footprint by a recession every 5 years and you get an annual recession carbon footprint about 100 to 200 times higher than bitcoin.

Several fun implications follow.

First, that central banks are vastly more polluting than bitcoin, indeed more polluting than the worst industrial offender you could imagine.

Second, this estimate implies that if bitcoin makes it harder for central banks to cause recessions, it could pay back every watt many times over. For example, if bitcoin reduced the odds or magnitude of central bank recessions by just 2 percent, bitcoin would actually save us far more energy than it uses.

Of course, considering recessions destroy millions of lives in addition to the evaporated wealth, it sounds like a fantastic bargain. Throw in the possibility that, by reducing central bank manipulation, bitcoin could help limit inflation, prevent Wall Street bailouts, and reduce unnecessary wars with carbon footprints all their own, it’s pretty unbeatable.

Now, there is a second, more sophisticated, line of attack which admits that fiat is polluting but argues for other cryptocurrencies that use less energy. These alternatives might be “proof of work” altcoins with smaller rewards, or they could be “proof of stake” coins that replace energy with capital deposits.

While these alternatives could well use less energy, at the moment we simply don’t know if either is secure enough. After all, if bitcoin is already 100 times greener than fiat, trying to eke out another 1 percent in savings while putting the entire project at risk would be picking up carbon pennies in front of a fiat steamroller.

Given we live in a world of irresponsible bankers and still immature altcoins, for now bitcoin remains the safest bet for reducing the enormous energy wasted rebuilding our economy every 5 years. So, if you really do prioritize the environment, stop obsessing about altcoin deck chairs and come help us steer around the fiat money iceberg.

Despite growing vaccine hesitancy and global COVID cases resurging, oil prices are rising for a third straight day after the IEA lifted its forecasts for demand and API’s report pointed to another decline in US crude stockpiles. Additionally, news that China is clamping down on independent oil refiners in an effort to curb overcapacity and stamp out illegal practices is helping push WTI back above $61 ahead of today’s official production and inventory data.

“The main price driver this morning is the monthly IEA report that foresees a significant rise in global oil demand in the second half of the year. This, in turn, will increase demand for OPEC oil and deplete worldwide and OECD inventories,” said PVM Oil Associates analyst Tamas Varga.

But…

“Continuing setbacks on vaccine rollouts and global cases nearing January’s peak is likely to hold a firm cap on crude’s ascent in the short term,” said Vandana Hari, energy analyst at Vanda Insights.

Further weakening in the dollar is helping but a disappointing official inventory print could spoil the party.

API

• Crude -3.608mm (-2.5mm exp)

• Cushing +917k

• Gasoline +5.565mm

• Distillates -3.006m

DOE

• Crude -5.89mm (-2.5mm exp)

• Cushing +346k

• Gasoline +309k

• Distillates -2.085mm

Analysts expected a third straight weekly draw in crude stocks and were right as official data showed an even bigger draw than API. Additionally gasoline stocks rose far less than API reported…

Source: Bloomberg

US crude production remains “disciplined” despite the rising/stable prices and rising rig counts (for now)…

Source: Bloomberg

WTI was at the highs of the day, above $61.60, ahead of the DOE print, and spiked up to $62.40 after the big crude draw…

“A combination of unprecedented fiscal stimulus and vaccination campaigns will provide a solid base for the oil demand recovery in the latter half of this year,” said Stephen Brennock, an analyst at PVM Oil Associates Ltd.

This is the highest price for WTI in a month…

But we do note that many also suggest oil markets are priced for perfection here.

Naturally, a CNN camera crew was in tow for last week’s visit of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to an area near Mariupol in Donetsk where he “walked the front line with the troops” amid renewed fighting with Russian-backed separatists in the eastern Donbass region.

Days later CNN’s homepage dramatically hyped the story with a recent headline of “Ukraine’s President runs for cover on front line against Russia” . The story kicks off with: “Ankle-deep in thick black sludge, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky moves stealthily with his troops in single file through the warren of trenches and tunnels that form the tense front lines in the east of his country.”

And the front line feature gets even more dramatic from there: “It feels more like the early 20th century than a modern conflict, with tired, nervous soldiers gripping their rifles around him as they reach open ground, scanning the area for movement across no-mans-land,” the CNN correspondent reports. “They know snipers, likely trained by Russians, say Ukrainian officials are looking for a chance to fire. More than 20 of their comrades have been gunned down already this year.”

But more important and hugely revealing in terms of what’s perhaps the real purpose of the CNN puff piece portraying Ukraine’s former comedian-turned-president (and now apparently an ‘action hero’ of sorts) is the following section…

On board the aging presidential chopper, which retains a degree of well-worn comfort, Zelensky shouts above the engine noise of how the US is a “good friend” of Ukraine, but that President Biden “must do more,” to deter Russia and help bring this conflict to an end.

More weapons, more money to fight, and, crucially, more support to join NATO, the Western military alliance where an attack on one member commits all to respond, he explained.

“If they [the US] see Ukraine in NATO, they have to say it directly, and do it. Not words,” Zelensky told CNN.

Curiously, the interview was published the same day that NATO’s Ukraine council announced its Tuesday meeting to consider the rise in tensions on the Ukraine-Russia border, coming after widespread accusations the Kremlin is mustering a nearly unprecedented number of troops there – numbers not seen since 2014, according to US officials. 

It also came as the Group of 7 foreign ministers issued a statement earlier this week condemning Russia’s “destablizing activities” in the region. 

The G-7 statement urged for Russia to “cease its provocations” on the Ukraine-Russia border and said they are:

“…deeply concerned by the large ongoing build-up of Russian military forces on Ukraine’s borders and in illegally-annexed Crimea.”

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken also spoke by phone with NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg on Monday, with the two also reviewing Russia’s “aggressive military buildup along Ukraine’s borders and in occupied Crimea,” according to a State Dept. statement. 

So by all appearances and with these latest appeals out of the West, things don’t look to de-escalate anytime soon – instead tensions remain on a knife’s edge. 

Summarizing the big bank data dump this morning, Bloomberg’s Jenny Surane writes that “as usual, you see a bit of push and pull between banks’ divisions that cater to Main Street and those that focus on Wall Street.”

And this quarter, she concludes “it seems as though Wall Street took the win. Again.”

• Goldman Sachs posted record profit, helped by a standout performance from its traders and dealmakers. The firm just a few months ago had expressed some real skepticism about the trend of blank-check firms going public. But that didn’t scare it away from the business, which helped boost equity underwriting revenue by more than 300%.

• JPMorgan’s traders also had a strong quarter, with revenue climbing a whopping 25% (analysts were expecting volume and revenue to moderate across the industry). But those results were overshadowed by weak loan demand. In a conference call, JPMorgan’s top executives warned that consumers who received the most recent stimulus checks are simply setting aside the funds for savings or paying down debts rather than going out and spending it. The firm also warned that expenses will be slightly higher this year than it previously thought.

• Wells Fargo doesn’t really have much of a Wall Street operation to lean on, so it’s got nowhere to hide from stubbornly low interest rates and tepid demand for loans. The firm’s net interest income dropped a whopping 22%, and CEO Charlie Scharf warned that low rates would continue to be a drag on earnings.

Source: Bloomberg

Israeli media is widely reporting that another Israel-owned commercial vessel has come under attack in regional waters – this time off the coast of the United Arab Emirates (UAE) in Gulf waters. 

“Israel’s top-rated Channel 12 quoted unnamed Israeli officials as blaming arch-foe Iran for the assault, which it described as a missile strike,” Reuters reports of the Tuesday incident. “There were no casualties and the ship continued on its course, the TV channel added.”

It was later identified as the Bahamas-flagged vehicle carrier Hyperion Ray which was en route to Fujairah port from Kuwait. The New York Times has in follow-up cited “a person familiar with the details of the ship’s voyage” who describes that the ship avoided the attack and was not hit, though details remain murky.

Just last week an Iranian ship called the Saviz was hit in a mysterious attack in the Red Sea. While Iran claimed it was a civilian commercial vessel, Israeli sources claim the Saviz was actually a spy ship.

Regardless that and this latest attack appear part of the growing tit-for-tat ‘tanker war’ between Israel and the Islamic Republic on the high seas as Tel Aviv continues to try to put pressure on all parties meeting in Vienna to abandon the 2015 nuclear deal (JCPOA).

More crucially, this fresh vessel attack incident comes just two days after the Natanz sabotage attack on Sunday. Iran has since formally blamed Israel for mounting a covert operation to bring the nuclear enrichment facility offline. Thus Tuesday’s Hyperion Ray attack looks to have been Iran’s immediate act of retaliation.

Israeli vessel #Hyperion Ray allegedly attacked by Iranian missiles/UAVS last position in the Gulf of #Oman pic.twitter.com/lO41ekeW5J

— Manu Gómez (@GDarkconrad) April 13, 2021

Israeli for its part appears to have conducted at least a dozen attacks on Iranian ships in the region since 2019, which was revealed in a bombshell Wall Street Journal report last month.

The series of covert sabotage attacks mostly targeted ships carrying Iranian oil bound for Syria. If there’s not any attempt at serious de-escalation fast, and Vienna talks continue to linger on with no significant breakthrough, we can expect these tanker attacks to continue, and to grow more brazen.