Market Rapidly Evolving Towards Positive Outcome In The Middle East

Authored by Peter Tchir via Academy Securities,

While the fighting continues between Iran and Israel, the market is pricing in a positive outcome in the Middle East. Casualties continue to mount as Iran and Israel continue to attack each other, but an optimistic narrative is emerging.

• Israel has the upper hand militarily. Through a combination of traditional military force, intelligence, espionage and even sabotage, Israel has demonstrated the ability to target specific leaders and sites, with a high degree of success. Iran on the other hand, seems to be confirming what many of our GIG stated back when Iran launched a thousand or so missiles and drones against Israel – the weapons weren’t as effective against Israel’s Iron Dome and other defenses as feared.

  • The proxies have gone quiet. Rather than seeing Israel attacked on multiple fronts, the proxies have been quite quiet. Damage done to the proxies since Hamas attacked Israel on October 7th 2023, has been substantial.

• Iran is afraid to risk escalation to the point of direct U.S. involvement. While Iran has managed some strikes into Israel, the missile barrages seem dangerous, but not overwhelmingly so. Would they dare risk bringing the U.S. into more direct involvement? That would seem like a bad idea strategically from Iran, given their performance so far.

  • Straits of Hormuz likely to remain open. Threats about potentially trying to close this are largely being ignored (crude prices are slightly lower). Do they have the capability? Maybe, but that could bring the U.S. into the conflict in a more meaningful way. It would also not be surprising if China, via back channels, has messaged its preference to continue receiving Iranian oil.

• Regime change is on the table. From the messaging Israel is sending, it is clear that they believe there is a potential to kindle a regime change in Iran. We should all assume they have some degree of intelligence giving them the confidence to go ahead with that messaging. While the IRGC is allegedly still a major force to be reckoned with (we will come back to the word “allegedly” shortly) this would be a major positive development for the region. As the GIG has been pointing out for the past 2 years, with increasing emphasis, Iran has become the outlier and the “enemy” of the Middle East rather than Israel. Many of the nations want to move on and continue to develop post fossil fuel economies – just look at the deals President Trump struck on his recent trip to the region. One can even wonder if Regime Change might be easier to accomplish than knocking out all the Nuclear Capabilities?

While anything can still happen while the fighting continues, the optimistic narrative seems plausible and is very positive.

Which brings us to the point where we need to think about further ramifications. Since China, the Chinese military and the possibility of attacking Taiwan come up in so many of our meetings, we cannot help but wonder if China has some doubt about their own military:

• Russia turned out to be far less superior in the field than one would have expected on paper. They squandered a massive advantage in equipment early on, and while they continue to pound on Ukraine, they have failed to progress much beyond what they held before this all started.

• North Korean troops made headlines by fighting alongside Russians in Ukraine. By all accounts, they had incredibly poor tactics (World War I style charges, leading to their own slaughter). While North Korea has nukes and missiles, and we need to continue to take them seriously, their military seemed lacking in practice (at least what we witnessed in Ukraine).

• Iran’s “vaunted” missile systems. Not to diminish the deaths that have occurred, on both sides, but this has not been “shock and awe” levels of performance. While Iran has no air force, nor navy, so to speak, their air defense systems also seemed particularly vulnerable.

• China, a year or so ago, had dismissals in their “elite” rocket and missile forces. During the brief altercation between India and Pakistan, the Chinese fighter jets supposedly performed well, but the Chinese anti-air defenses did not (that is the intelligence scuttlebutt that came out of that fighting).

If you are Xi, it seems almost impossible that you aren’t at least a tiny bit worried that your own rapidly growing military is merely a paper dragon.

• Maybe this will encourage China to negotiate more fulsomely with the U.S. on the trade front?

  • In any case, hopefully given the recent talks and the focus on rare earths and critical minerals, the U.S. will embrace the policy of National Production for National Security which we touched on in this weekend’s On Shaky Ground.

The fighting continues, and there are risks, but what seemed like optimistic outcomes, now seems to be the most plausible outcomes.

At this rate, the FOMC meeting might be important, and we continue to expect the market to be surprised by a shift to dovishness from this Fed (as described in more detail in Sunday’s T-Report, linked above).

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