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Bessent On Iran: "We Are Suffocating The Regime"

Zero Rss
3 months ago
Bessent On Iran: "We Are Suffocating The Regime"

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent joined Fox News' Sunday Morning Futures with Maria Bartiromo to discuss how the Trump administration is "suffocating" Iran with economic and financial pressure amid an ongoing U.S. military blockade of the Hormuz chokepoint.

"We are running a marathon over the past 12 months, and now we are sprinting toward the finish line"" Bessent told Bartiromo earlier this morning. 

Bessent explained how the U.S. maximum pressure campaign on Tehran has become "a real economic blockade," claiming the regime is "not able to pay their soldiers" and that oil infrastructure is quickly deteriorating, as crude oil storage quickly rises while export channels remain shuttered.

Bessent warned that Iran may have to start shutting in oil wells within the next week as exports remain constrained.

Bessent on Iran:

"We are suffocating the regime. They are not able to pay their soldiers." https://t.co/dX3LvhAPtl pic.twitter.com/3rICBw9nzL

— Adam Scott (@chefcascottccc) May 3, 2026

"Their oil infrastructure is starting to creak," he said. "It hasn't been maintained, again because of our decades-long sanctions against them."

Bessent said no tankers are transiting the critical waterway from the Iranian side, "and we have increased the pressure on anyone trying to remit money into Iran to help the IRGC," referring to Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.

Amid the impact of Economic Fury, Iran’s currency has hit an all-time low.

The Iranian people deserve a new era, which the corrupt and shambolic Iranian regime cannot provide.

With their oil industry closing and their currency plummeting, it is past time for the Iranian regime… pic.twitter.com/k7QvKoWbl2

— Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent (@SecScottBessent) April 30, 2026

Late last week, the Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Assets Control imposed sanctions on Chinese independent "teapot" refineries, particularly those in Shandong Province, for their continued purchase and refining of Iranian crude.

By Saturday morning, Beijing announced that companies in the country should ignore and not comply with U.S. sanctions targeting five domestic refineries.

"The Chinese government has consistently opposed unilateral sanctions that lack authorization from the United Nations and a basis in international law," Beijing's Commerce Ministry wrote in a statement. 

President Trump's maximum pressure campaign on Tehran comes as the latest U.S. national average for 87-octane gasoline at the pump has topped $4.446 per gallon. Demand destruction starts around $5 per gallon, with numerous Goldman notes indicating that working-poor consumers are already dialing back purchases or trading down at gas stations and convenience stores due to the recent fuel price shock.

On Saturday, President Trump stated that he "can't imagine" a new peace plan from Tehran that he will review would be acceptable. He added that Iran has not yet paid "a big enough price for what they have done."

Axios reported earlier that the U.S. and Iran are "still exchanging drafts of a framework agreement to end the war."

Last week, Iran delivered an updated 14-point proposal to the U.S. for a framework agreement. Sources told the outlet that the proposal sets a one-month deadline for reopening of the Hormuz chokepoint.

Tyler Durden Sun, 05/03/2026 - 14:35
Tyler Durden

Congrats, Elizabeth Warren, On The Death Of Spirit Airlines

Zero Rss
3 months ago
Congrats, Elizabeth Warren, On The Death Of Spirit Airlines

Submitted by QTR's Fringe Finance

Elizabeth Warren has built an entire political career on presenting herself as the righteous defender of ordinary Americans against powerful corporations.

Every speech is some variation of the same script: she’s fighting for workers, fighting for consumers, fighting for families, and standing up to greedy executives and monopolistic corporations that are supposedly rigging the system against everyone else. It is a message carefully designed to make her sound like a populist champion of the middle class while putting a polish on inherently broken socialist ideas.

When her flawed ideology collides with reality, it repeatedly produces outcomes that hurt the exact people she claims to represent. Spirit Airlines may be one of the clearest examples yet.

When JetBlue moved to acquire Spirit in 2022, Warren treated the deal like it was Apple, Netflix, Meta, Microsoft, Google, Amazon and the Third Reich all merging into one new authoritarian Orwellian company called Dystopian Evil Holdings, LLC.

She aggressively pushed regulators to block it, warning that the merger would reduce competition and raise ticket prices. The Biden administration’s Department of Justice embraced that argument and sued to stop the acquisition, ultimately succeeding when a federal judge blocked the deal.

Warren and her allies framed the decision as a victory for competition, arguing they had protected budget-conscious travelers from corporate consolidation. It was a neat political story: another giant corporation had been stopped before it could crush the little guy. Spirit Airlines and JetBlue have had their boot on the neck of John Q. Consumer for just too damn long.

The problem was that Spirit itself was never some stable, healthy company that simply needed to remain independent for the good of consumers. It was a deeply troubled airline with serious structural problems, mounting financial pressure, operational issues, and a business model that had become increasingly difficult to sustain. Investors knew it. Employees knew it. Executives knew it. That is precisely why a sale made sense.

JetBlue wasn’t trying to acquire a thriving competitor at the height of its strength—it was purchasing a distressed company that many people believed would struggle to survive on its own. There is an enormous difference between stopping anti-competitive monopoly behavior and preventing a struggling business from being absorbed by a company willing to keep its assets operational.

That distinction appears to be completely lost on Warren because her worldview requires every transaction to be bourgeoisie vs. proletariat. This corporate merger, to her, fit into the same simplistic narrative. In that worldview, corporations are almost always villains, regulators are almost always heroes, and any transaction involving large sums of money must be treated with suspicion. It is an ideology built for campaign speeches and social media clips only — not for reality.

Markets are not morality plays. Companies fail, industries consolidate, assets change hands, and stronger operators often absorb weaker ones. That process is not inherently exploitative, it is often what prevents total collapse.

And that is what makes this situation so politically revealing. Warren constantly brands herself as a defender of workers, yet her preferred outcome here appears to have been the complete destruction of a company rather than allowing a private-sector solution that may have preserved jobs, routes, and infrastructure.

What exactly is pro-worker about that? What kind of politician claims to care deeply about labor while helping create an outcome that leaves thousands of workers unemployed? Pilots, flight attendants, mechanics, baggage handlers, gate agents, airport vendors, hotel workers, rental car companies, and countless businesses connected to Spirit’s network all now face the consequences of a collapse that regulators helped accelerate. These are not abstract numbers on an antitrust white paper. These are actual people whose livelihoods depend on functioning businesses.

Or, as Warren put it: “This is a Biden win for flyers!”

And consumers were supposedly the people being protected. That argument looks even weaker now. Spirit may not have been beloved, but it played an important role in many markets by forcing larger airlines to compete on price. Millions of travelers tolerated the stripped-down experience because the fares were significantly cheaper than alternatives. That pressure matters. When low-cost carriers disappear from routes, prices frequently rise because legacy airlines face less pressure to offer aggressive pricing. Warren blocked a merger over the fear of hypothetical future price increases while helping create a scenario where an entire low-cost competitor disappears altogether. Consumers now get fewer choices, less competition, and likely higher prices—the exact outcome regulators claimed they were preventing.

This reflects a broader flaw in modern progressive economic thinking: an almost religious belief that government officials are uniquely qualified to outsmart markets.

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The assumption is always that regulators can better allocate resources, predict outcomes, and manage industries than investors, executives, workers, and consumers operating within those markets. That belief has repeatedly failed in practice because markets are dynamic and often messy. Politicians frequently intervene with enormous confidence and then act surprised when unintended consequences emerge. The people making those decisions rarely bear the cost of being wrong.

That may be the most frustrating part of this story. Elizabeth Warren will not suffer from Spirit’s collapse. She will not lose a paycheck. She will not be explaining layoffs to families. She will not be dealing with reduced travel options in underserved markets. She will not face higher airfare costs. She will continue appearing on television and telling voters she fought greed and protected consumers. The workers and travelers dealing with the consequences of her policies are the ones who will absorb the damage.

To be clear, Spirit was not a perfect company. It had major flaws and serious operational challenges. Bad business models fail all the time, and capitalism requires that poorly run companies face consequences. But capitalism also includes mergers, acquisitions, restructurings, and private-sector rescue attempts. If another company sees value in preserving assets and maintaining operations, that is part of how markets correct themselves. Preventing that process simply because it conflicts with an ideological hostility toward corporate transactions is not economic justice. It is performative politics masquerading as consumer advocacy.

Elizabeth Warren wanted to stop a merger because it allowed her to posture as a warrior against corporate power. She got her headline. She got her applause from anti-corporate activists. She got to claim another victory over big business. What she did not get was a better outcome for workers or consumers. Instead, she helped create a scenario where an already struggling airline disappeared entirely, leaving employees without jobs and consumers with fewer affordable options.

For someone who constantly claims to fight for working Americans, that is a remarkable record of harming them in the name of helping them.

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Tyler Durden Sun, 05/03/2026 - 14:00
Tyler Durden

Large Cargo Ship Near Hormuz Reports Being Attacked, In First Escalation Since April 22

Zero Rss
3 months ago
Large Cargo Ship Near Hormuz Reports Being Attacked, In First Escalation Since April 22

A large cargo ship near the Strait of Hormuz has reported being attacked by multiple small craft, the British military’s United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations center said Sunday, marking at least two dozen attacks in and around the strait since the Iran war began.

All crew on the unidentified northbound carrier, which could be the Pasargad 11 General Cargo Ship with a destination of Dubai after it reversed...

... were safe after the attack off Sirik, Iran, east of the strait, the monitor said. Iranian officials have asserted that they control the strait and that ships not affiliated with the United States or Israel can pass if they pay a toll.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the attack, the first reported in the area since April 22, when a cargo ship reported being fired upon, the monitor said. The threat level in the area remains critical. Tehran effectively closed the strait by attacking and threatening ships.

Iranian patrol boats, some powered only by twin outboard motors, are small, nimble and hard to detect and have attacked several ships. President Donald Trump last month ordered the U.S. military to “shoot and kill” small Iranian boats that deploy mines in the strait.

Separately, Iran's FARS news reported that several vessel captains in the Ras Al Khaimah area of the UAE had been instructed via VHF radio to vacate their anchorages. However, media reports indicate that it was business as usual 5 hours after the Iranian warning, with ship positions largely unchanged.

UAE 🇦🇪 Ras Al Khaimah anchorage spotted TODAY 1417 UTC 👇

Looks like business as usual 5 hours after Iran 🇮🇷 channel 16 "orders". It is not like place is empty or something. https://t.co/tF2xQ7FR43 pic.twitter.com/51nja93xkF

— Tom Bike (@tom_bike) May 3, 2026

The fragile three-week ceasefire appears to be holding, though Trump on Saturday told journalists that further strikes remained a possibility

Tyler Durden Sun, 05/03/2026 - 13:56
Tyler Durden

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