📝 🇮🇷 🇺🇸 Mario Nawfal on X: Is Iran really losing control of the Strait of Hormuz, or are we being misled about how much oil is getting through?

I've been trying to understand something that doesn't quite add up.

Iran has demonstrated that it can strike commercial ships in the Strait of Hormuz. Yet shipping data suggests millions of barrels of oil are still leaving the Gulf every day.

So I brought maritime expert Sal Mercogliano and economist Philip Pilkington together to challenge each other's conclusions.

Sal says the evidence is there. Tankers can be tracked loading, leaving the Gulf and eventually unloading at foreign ports. He estimates nearly 12 million barrels a day were getting through before the latest escalation.

Philip doesn't trust those figures. He suspects wartime information management is making the shipping situation look considerably better than it really is.

What made the discussion interesting was that they actually agreed on something important.

Neither believes the current situation is sustainable.

Sal thinks continued Iranian attacks could eventually make tanker operations too dangerous and expensive. Philip believes Iran already has the military advantage in a prolonged war of attrition.

And there's another possibility we explored: some shipping companies may be quietly paying Iran for safe passage, although the scale of any such payments remains unverified.

We still disagree about the numbers.

But the debate left me wondering whether we've been asking the wrong question.

Maybe the real issue isn't how much oil America can force through the strait today, but how long it can keep doing so without losing ships, exhausting its resources or accepting Iran's demands.

📝 Mario Nawfal is joined by Philip Pilkington and Sal Mercogliano

📎 Mario Nawfal