“I underestimated how emotionally committed much of the press is to rallying around Anthony Fauci. His reputation is more important to them than anything. . .”
– Matt Taibbi
The baleful afterburn of Dr. Fauci’s one-sentence testimony (“On the advice of counsel, I respectfully decline to answer. . . .”) seeps over the land like some ghastly pestilence now. You couldn’t have seen a more vivid demonstration of manifest evil than the master bureaucratic grifter formerly self-styled as “The Science” stonewall his way through that fateful reckoning in Sen. Rand Paul’s committee hearing last Wednesday.
The score so far: over a million dead in America from the Covid-19 virus that Dr. Fauci helped develop starting as far back as the 1990s, with Dr. Ralph Baric of the University of North Carolina. Tens of thousands left with serious, lasting injuries from the vaccines they promoted. The exact number of vaccine-connected deaths unknown because the public health agencies refused to report honestly on an operation that they caused to happen. There are whole legions of high officials and doctors behind Dr. Fauci now desperate to cover their asses.
Along with the mendacious news media. HHS Sec’y Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. happened to be on Dana Bash’s CNN Sunday morning program. By the way, Dana Bash used to be married to one Jeremy Bash, Chief-of-Staff to CIA-Director Leon Panetta under Barack Obama. CNN lied consistently to the American people during the years of the Covid emergency. You have to wonder if CNN takes direction from the CIA, or maybe rogue elements in (or retired from) the agency. Sunday, Dana Bash went on offense against RFK,Jr.
Didn’t work. RFK, Jr. kept his cool. The harshest thing he said to Bash through all her hectoring was “you were part of the problem,” a startling understatement. Ms. Bash otherwise only wrecked herself, over-speaking her guest at every opportunity, pettifogging, and filibustering. Everybody could see what she was up to. Imagine how desperate CNN was to think that Dana Bash could bluster her way over Mr. Kennedy. He helped her expose herself as a tool.
The news media has been a very active co-conspirator in the Covid operation. You’d think Senator Paul might want to subpoena some network executives from CNN, CBS, NBC, MSNOW (especially), plus Executive Editor Joe Kahn of The New York Times (and his predecessor during Covid, Dean Baquet) to find out why they reported so much pure falsehood around the so-called pandemic. How did they happen to become the propaganda department for the Democratic Party, and what was the party’s interest in the Covid operation? D’unh. . . .
Everybody knows. Even the super-hyped-up cat ladies, nose-rings, NPR stars, and moiling transsters of the lefty-left know. They have kin and friends who either died on respirators with IV lines of remdesivir in their arms, or were gifted by the vaxx shots with turbo-cancer or myocarditis or neuromuscular disease or immune system failure or some mystery illness. They have been harmed even more than those of us who declined to get vaxxed. Sooner or later, that’s got to mean something.
As for Dr. Fauci’s motive in this huge fiasco. . . it’s got to be clear both from the record of his career — nicely reported in RFK,Jr’s 2021 book The Real Doctor Fauci — and from the 1000-plus-page personal diary he recorded on the HHS computers, that Fauci was doggedly in pursuit of glory. Glory! And that his personal holy grail was to find a “universal vaccine” that could defeat any virus, so as to be acclaimed by all mankind! Glory! Glory! Glory! Given what is understood now about viruses and their interaction with vaccines — for instance, the flu vaccine which uniformly fails to adapt to annual virus mutations — that Dr. Fauci’s quest was quixotic, very basically foolish. All he ever produced, from the AZT wonder-drug for AIDS he developed back in 1986 (that probably killed as many people as died from the disease itself) to the Pfizer / Moderna mRNA shots for Covid in 2021 . . . all that frantic, questing “science” just ended up killing and harming the credulous in large numbers. The buttoned-up little fellow appears to be guilty of mass-murder on an epic scale.
Of course, he is presumed to be protected by the autopen-signed peremptory pardon he received from minions of “Joe Biden.” Perhaps Dr. Fauci’s invoking the Fifth Amendment under those circumstances will prompt an overdue look at just how this autopen thing really worked. In any case, Dr. Fauci is liable to be voted in contempt of Congress this week for not answering any questions put to him. The connected legal procedure will keep Dr. Fauci’s misdeeds under public scrutiny for at least months to come.
It’s also a fact that the autopen pardon does not shield him from charges brought in state courts. The AGs of Florida, Louisiana, Alabama have declared investigations. Louisiana and Missouri have already made Dr. Fauci sit for depositions, and now they can compare his answers with the entries from his diary. It is obvious that on countless occasions and on many vital issues, Dr. Fauci told the public one thing while he believed (and recorded) the opposite in his diary.
One question that the public badly wants Secretary RFK,jr. to answer: how come you haven’t pulled the mRNA Covid vaccines altogether?
They don’t work and they harm people.
Why are they even still available? Would such a move amount to an admission that the whole emergency was a fake and a failure? And that the government’s own public health agencies are culpable? Would the survivors of the 268-million Americans who got the shots be a little pissed-off? What, then?
Trump Speaks to Reporters, Addresses Iran (non)Talks
President Trump has told reporters in the Oval Office that the Iran conflict is “working out very well” and that this is Tehran’s “last chance to sign a good document”.
“I think we’re going to maybe get something, but I want to give them every last chance before decapitation,” he said, reiterating a threat to launch a major attack on Iran.
On Hormuz, he said:
“It has to be [free], I am not going to let them charge. If anybody is going to charge, we will charge, we are the ones … with a total control,” he said. “We have a thing called a blockade … No, no, there is not going to be charging. We are not talking about charging at all. There won’t be charging.”
*TRUMP: WANT TO GIVE IRAN LAST CHANCE BEFORE ‘DECAPITATION’
On engaging Iran in talks even while the Iranians themselves insist they will not participate in any new talks:
When we talk we say ‘we’re talking’, if we’re not talking, when you ask me, ‘no we’re not talking’, I’ll say it. But we are talking right now, we’re talking, and we’re talking at the request of Iran, backed by Saudi Arabia, backed by UAE, and backed by Qatar in particular, but others also, many countries called, many-the leaders of many, I’m friendly with a lot of them–This is a last chance, this is not something-if it doesn’t happen, this is a last chance for them to sign a… good document.
President Trump on Monday issued a new Truth Social, perhaps trying to explain his latest weekend TACO move, accusing Iran’s leadership of being “unbelievably duplicitous,” claiming Tehran privately sought and sheduled talks while publicly insisting it is only dealing with Oman. He asserted that the Strait of Hormuz is already “completely controlled by the United States Navy” through what he called the “United States Wall of Steel,” adding that “nothing gets through to Iran” unless Washington allows it. Trump also insisted discussions toward a resolution are underway despite Iranian denials, while reiterating his bottom line: “IRAN WILL NEVER HAVE A NUCLEAR WEAPON!”
U.S. officials say that no novel negotiations are scheduled with Iran despite Trump’s statements, maintaining that ongoing talks are limited to indirect discussions via mediators involving envoy Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner. – CBS
Trump is increasingly letting his frustration and ‘exasperation’ go public. This seems to only confirm that indeed there are no talks taking place at this point. The US president continues to insist that the whole crisis was “caused” by the Iranians “for decades” but that it is the US now looking for a “solution” – but Iran won’t play ball, after apparently ‘begging’ for talks…
We’re only 5 months in… one wonders what the narrative will be with the US still bogged down in Hormuz by November:
To get a sense of how long the MAGA base will keep falling for Trump’s bullshit-through-military-defeat, during Dubya’s presidency it took until mid-2006, or 3 years after it was obvious what a disaster his Iraq war was, for his GOP base to begin to peel.
We’re only 5 months in. https://t.co/Mozz60zX1y
Trump Claimed Talks Set For Monday Afternoon, Tehran Balks
President Trump now says new talks with Iran will begin Monday afternoon after he called off a planned “massive attack” – following high level Saudi intervention, and also likely White House advisors and Pentagon leadership failing to agree on a strategic vision.
“The Saudis expressed concern and asked for clarity about the plan of action,” one US official told Axios over the weekend, with another saying that crown prince Mohammed bin Salman urged Trump to de-escalate and refrain from launching the strikes. Trump aknowledged all of this to reporters aboard Air Force One while returning from Bedminster, New Jersey, to Joint Base Andrews. He claimed the canceled attack would have been “the biggest attack since World War II” and could have been “disastrous” for Iran.
“I was asked to by Saudi Arabia, the UAE, by Qatar, and by Iran to hold off strikes,” Trump said. “It would have been a massive attack.” He added: “When the allies asked to call it off, you gotta say, Well, let’s see.”
.@POTUS “We had an attack that would have been the biggest attack since WORLD WAR II.
“I asked the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia, ‘What would you rather have us do?'” Trump said. “He said, ‘We would prefer a deal rather than an attack.'” And more: “Allies think there is a deal,” Trump explained. “There is a deal on Hormuz, and it will be a deal on the nuclear.”
Iran says No Negotiations Happening
Iranian officials said there are currently no negotiations with the United States and that Tehran is not planning to send or host any delegations “these days.”
However, Iran has confirmed that it is deep into negotiations over managing the Strait of Hormuz with Oman, and that it desires to get more ships moving through the vital transit waterway. According to Bloomberg on Monday:
Iran suggested negotiations to get more ships moving through the Strait of Hormuz are making progress, after President Donald Trump called off what he said was a major attack on the Islamic Republic.
Oil fell on Monday, with Brent crude down about 4.5% to just over $83 a barrel, after Iran’s foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, said discussions between Tehran and Oman over management of the strait are in the final stages.
While Tehran officials acknowledged that negotiations with Oman are ongoing and that progress has been made toward securing a temporary passage through the Strait of Hormuz, they stressed that reaching an agreement with Oman alone would not be enough to reopen the waterway, warning that the situation will remain unchanged as long as US “aggression” continues.
Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmail Baghaei conveyed also that China is concerned about “the escalation of conflict and insecurity in the region” and is working to prevent the situation from worsening. He described that there is no new mediator involved in contacts with Washington, with Pakistan and Qatar continuing to carry out that role.
On the broader conflict, Baghaei argued that the US-Israeli war on Iran is not merely a war against one country, but “a war against the entire region.” He laid out that Iran once again rejected attempts to tie developments in Yemen to the conflict with Iran, calling such claims “a form of evasion of responsibility.”
“We currently do not have negotiations with America,” and Iran had no plans to host foreign delegations or send negotiators abroad in the coming days, Foreign Ministry spokesperson Esmaeil Baghaei told reporters.
🔴 Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmaeil Baghaei says there are no talks with the US currently, adding that there are talks with Oman over Strait of Hormuz
🔴 Baghaei says working with Oman on a temporary safe route through Strait of Hormuz
Iranians ‘Won’t Bend’ – Reuters Analyst Points Out
Meanwhile, the on-again, off-again style of escalation and de-escalation pattern we are witnessing is likely only helping Tehran’s side in terms of leverage, as the conflict grinds on and potentially becomes more politically costly for the White House.
Referring to the Iranians, Reuters writes in new analysis, “They see an opportunity in what they regard as President Donald Trump’s reluctance to become deeply entangled in another Middle East conflict ahead of November’s midterm elections.”
“The Iranians…believe that by widening the war and increasing the pressure, he will eventually give in,” a Gulf source is cited in the report as saying. “Trump thinks he can hit the Iranians hard and bring them to the negotiating table, but they won’t bend.” That much should be obvious by now, as Trump Tacos once again.
According to more from Reuters: “Iran is betting it can outlast Washington by turning the Middle East’s trade routes, shipping lanes and energy infrastructure into pressure points that steadily raise the cost of confrontation, according to Gulf officials and analysts.”
Who can outlast? This is currently month #6 of the war…
“Rather than seeking a decisive military victory, Tehran is pursuing a strategy of calibrated escalation aimed at widening the conflict without triggering full-scale war,” the report continues. But that much should have been obvious and anticipated from week one of the war, and clearly the US side underestimated things.
More Latest Developments
via Newsquawk
US President Trump said the US is locked and loaded and ready to go against Iran, but they “have just been asked by Iran, and other Middle Eastern Countries, to hold off any attack in that the perimeters of a deal have been agreed to. This would include the Immediate, Complete, and Total OPENING OF THE HORMUZ STRAIT, and an end to Iran’s nuclear threat. Based on this request, I have agreed, for the future benefit of the WORLD and, likewise, the survival of a successful and prosperous Iran, to cancel the attack, subject to being able to rapidly make a DEAL.”
In further comments, US President Trump said the Iran attack would have been a massive one if not paused, adding there’s a deal on Hormuz and there will be a deal on denuclearisation. He added that he was asked very strongly by Iran to hold off the attack. On negotiations, he said they will begin tomorrow afternoon.
US CENTCOM was reported on Friday to have prepared a large-scale operation in the form of a decisive two-week bombing campaign should President Trump choose escalation to break the deadlock in the Middle East, according to The Hill reports, citing sources.
US Central Command intelligence official wrote in an email that they are seeking new and unconventional ways to increase pressure on and punish Iran, according to an internal message circulated among military analysts, according to CNN
Iran’s Foreign Ministry spokesperson said negotiations with Oman are progressing, with the two sides holding constructive talks on a new framework and exchanging maps over the past seven to eight days for review, IRNA reported.
Iran’s Foreign Ministry spokesman Baghaei said Iran is working with Oman to establish a temporary security corridor in the Strait of Hormuz, adding that Tehran is not currently in dialogue with the US and is holding talks with Oman on the waterway. Baghaei added that issues with the US should be addressed at a later stage and that there are no plans to receive a US delegation or send an Iranian delegation in the coming days.
Iranian Foreign Minister Araghchi told a cabinet meeting on Sunday that the negotiations with Oman to manage shipping through the Strait of Hormuz “were in the final stages”, according to FT. It was separately reported that Araghchi held phone calls with Saudi, Pakistan and Iraqi counterparts and exchanged views on the latest developments in the region, while he warned on Saturday against any adventurous action by the US and stressed Iran’s readiness to respond decisively to any aggression.
Iranian lawmaker Qashqawi said there are no discussions with the US or talks on the nuclear issue, adding that US sanctions amount to war; lasting peace can only be pursued once the military, economic and media conflict ends, SNN reported.
Iran’s Mehr News Agency rejected US President Trump’s claim that he halted attacks at the request of Iran and Middle East countries, while it called it “a new lie” and emphasised that Iran’s forces are on full alert.
UKMTO said on Saturday it received a report of an incident 21 nautical miles northeast of Oman’s Khasab, where the master of the tanker saw a large splash and explosion in close proximity to the vessel, although no damage to the vessel was reported.
Israel told the White House it has significant security concerns over a proposed Hamas disarmament agreement, saying intelligence suggests Hamas intends to rebuild its military capabilities rather than genuinely disarm. Israel added that it will not withdraw from most of Gaza until Hamas has fully completed the disarmament process.
Palestinian civil defence said Israeli drone and airstrikes hit multiple locations across the Gaza Strip, killing at least 18 people, including two women and four children, with residential apartments, tents sheltering displaced people and civilian areas among the reported targets.
Kpler shipping data showed 18 vessels passed through the Bab al-Mandeb on Sunday, compared to the 27 vessels on Saturday.
Renowned geopolitical and financial cycle expert Charles Nenner is usually way ahead of market moves. When nobody wanted silver ($29), he was buying it. When everyone wanted silver a few months ago ($120), he was selling it.
“The crazy thing is, based on all my analysis, is crude oil looks weak for the next year. I am not sure what it means. . .. I see oil going down longer term.
Maybe other countries are going to find oil because they cannot rely on oil (from the straight of Hormuz) anymore. By the way, Saudi Arabia has plans to make a pipeline through Israel to bring it to the sea. So, they won’t need the Strait of Hormuz anymore.
Intelligence will find a solution. I think they are going to pump more oil. If people think they will flood the world with oil from other countries, then the price will come down. . .. there may be an outside chance of oil hitting $101 (per barrel).”
On gold, Nenner predicts, “Some cycles are very interesting. The gold cycle came down at $5,300 (per ounce). We have a 30-day free subscription, and you can see those cycles. They are close to bottoming now.”
” Soon, there should be a new up move for gold. We had a (downside) price target of around $3,800 per ounce. We are very close. So, gold starts looking good into 2027.”
Nenner says the next gold bull market starts next month in August.
On silver, Nenner says:
“Silver was a catastrophe because we had the cycle top at $121 (per ounce), and we couldn’t get people out of it. . ..
Silver is also going to be in a new bull market. It could go back to the old highs of $120.”
On the stock market, Nenner says:
“The cycles in 1926 and 1927 line up like they did before the crash of 1929.
This is almost August, and big investors have time to be very defensive.
I want to repeat my forecast of a very big downturn in the stock market.”
Nenner likes cash, and he says watch out for big losses coming from some big banks.
Nenner says:
“Real estate is a bad investment.
I know big pension funds, and they have real estate in New York, and they are selling with a loss. Other banks have losses, and nobody speaks about it—yet…
So, there is a lot going on that the average person doesn’t know.
I know it because I work with these people, and things don’t look very safe…
I think we could have a banking crisis.”
There is much more in the 40-minute interview.
Join Greg Hunter of USAWatchdog as he goes one-on-one with renowned cycle analyst and financial expert Charles Nenner for 7.31.26.
Crime rates have fallen to “historic lows” across the United States, with homicides this year on track to register the lowest level in at least 126 years, according to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).
In the first half of 2026, homicides were down 18 percent compared to the first half of last year, DHS said in a July 31 statement. Carjacking crimes tumbled 47 percent during this period, motor vehicle thefts fell 20 percent, robberies dropped 17 percent, and residential burglaries declined 13 percent.
The numbers come from a July 2026 report from the nonpartisan think tank Council on Criminal Justice (CCJ) that assessed crime stats across various U.S. cities.
Compared to the first half of 2022, the second year of the Biden administration, homicides in the first half of 2026, the second year of the current Trump administration, were down by 51 percent, according to the CCJ report.
For violent crimes, 2 percent fewer aggravated assaults and 6 percent fewer gun assaults were reported in the first half of 2026 compared to the same period last year. However, domestic violence incidents were up 8 percent, and sexual assaults by 3 percent for this period.
When compared to the first half of 2019, the year prior to the COVID-19 pandemic onset, homicides, aggravated assault, gun assault, sexual assault, domestic violence, robbery, and carjacking crimes were all lower in the first six months of 2026, the report said.
In its statement, DHS gave examples of some of the illegal immigrants with criminal histories who have been deported from the United States: A Salvadoran national with convictions for homicide and assault, a Costa Rican with convictions for property crimes and burglary, a Honduran Tren de Aragua gang member convicted for robbery, and a Vietnamese national convicted for armed carjacking.
“President [Donald] Trump promised to make America safe again, and he has done just that,” Lauren Bis, assistant secretary at the DHS’s Office of Public Affairs, said in the statement.
“Crime has fallen to record lows under the Trump Administration.”
“It’s no surprise that this drop in crime coincides with deportations of dangerous criminal illegal aliens. It is common sense. When you remove criminals from the country, crime rates fall,” Bis said.
In the first year of the current Trump administration, almost three million illegal immigrants had left the United States, then-DHS Secretary Kristi Noem said in a Jan. 20 DHS statement.
Declining Homicides
The CCJ report said that there is no single explanation for the historic low in homicide crimes in the first half of the year. It cited potential impacts from changes in criminal justice operations and strategies, shifts in society and culture, and technological advances.
In a July 23 statement, CCJ said it planned on convening a two-day summit in September with researchers from fields such as criminology, psychology, economics, and sociology to examine the factors likely driving the decline in homicides.
“Murder and other crime rates are falling across the map, in cities with different political leadership, housing and economic conditions, policing and prosecution strategies, violence reduction models, and levels of federal enforcement activity,” CCJ president Adam Gelb said in the statement.
“Local policies and programs surely matter, but the striking consistency of the decline suggests that macro-level forces are exerting enormous influence as well,” Gelb said.
The White House attributed the crime decline in the first half of the year to the Trump administration’s policies in a July 29 statement.
America’s neighborhoods are now safer, registering fewer victims and a decisive end to the crime surge seen in the last decade, the White House said, highlighting that this was “not accidental.”
“It is the direct result of the Trump Administration’s relentless efforts to enforce the rule of law, back the police, and surge resources into communities,” according to the White House.
On Jan. 20, 2025, the first day in his second term, President Donald Trump signed an executive order restoring the death penalty, highlighting that capital punishment was an “essential tool” to deter and punish those who would commit heinous crimes.
The same day, Trump signed another executive order targeting illegal immigrants. In the order, Trump clarified that it is the policy of the United States to faithfully execute immigration laws against all removable illegal immigrants, especially those who “threaten the safety or security of the American people.”
And in April last year, Trump signed an executive order that focused on providing new best practices to local and state law enforcement to “aggressively police communities against all crimes.”
Trump Blasts Oil Majors: “Get Gas Prices Down Now!”
President Trump blasted oil companies on Monday morning for high gasoline pump prices, telling them:
That goes for other Oil Companies as well…and get your consumer (retail!) Oil Prices DOWN, NOW! Thank you for your attention to this matter. President DJT
As of Monday morning, the national average for 87-octane gasoline at the pump stood at $4.09 a gallon, according to AAA data, marking the second consecutive week above the politically sensitive $4 threshold. Pump prices surged following the tit-for-tat strikes between the US and Iran, although upward momentum has begun to moderate as both sides signal a willingness to pursue a negotiated resolution to the conflict.
Trump’s pressure on major oil companies to bring down gasoline prices comes as the national average remains above the politically sensitive $4-a-gallon threshold, with the midterm elections now less than 100 days away. Elevated fuel costs risk becoming a political liability, which helps explain why Washington is racing toward diplomacy following the recent tit-for-tat strikes.
President Trump on Monday issued a new Truth Social, perhaps trying to explain his latest weekend TACO move, accusing Iran’s leadership of being “unbelievably duplicitous,” claiming Tehran privately sought and sheduled talks while publicly insisting it is only dealing with Oman. He asserted that the Strait of Hormuz is already “completely controlled by the United States Navy” through what he called the “United States Wall of Steel,” adding that “nothing gets through to Iran” unless Washington allows it. Trump also insisted discussions toward a resolution are underway despite Iranian denials, while reiterating his bottom line: “IRAN WILL NEVER HAVE A NUCLEAR WEAPON!”
Trump is increasingly letting his frustration and ‘exasperation’ go public. This seems to only confirm that indeed there are no talks taking place at this point. The US president continues to insist that the whole crisis was “caused” by the Iranians “for decades” but that it is the US now looking for a “solution” – but Iran won’t play ball, after apparently ‘begging’ for talks…
We’re only 5 months in… one wonders what the narrative will be with the US still bogged down in Hormuz by November:
To get a sense of how long the MAGA base will keep falling for Trump’s bullshit-through-military-defeat, during Dubya’s presidency it took until mid-2006, or 3 years after it was obvious what a disaster his Iraq war was, for his GOP base to begin to peel.
We’re only 5 months in. https://t.co/Mozz60zX1y
Trump Claimed Talks Set For Monday Afternoon, Tehran Balks
President Trump now says new talks with Iran will begin Monday afternoon after he called off a planned “massive attack” – following high level Saudi intervention, and also likely White House advisors and Pentagon leadership failing to agree on a strategic vision.
“The Saudis expressed concern and asked for clarity about the plan of action,” one US official told Axios over the weekend, with another saying that crown prince Mohammed bin Salman urged Trump to de-escalate and refrain from launching the strikes. Trump aknowledged all of this to reporters aboard Air Force One while returning from Bedminster, New Jersey, to Joint Base Andrews. He claimed the canceled attack would have been “the biggest attack since World War II” and could have been “disastrous” for Iran.
“I was asked to by Saudi Arabia, the UAE, by Qatar, and by Iran to hold off strikes,” Trump said. “It would have been a massive attack.” He added: “When the allies asked to call it off, you gotta say, Well, let’s see.”
.@POTUS “We had an attack that would have been the biggest attack since WORLD WAR II.
“I asked the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia, ‘What would you rather have us do?'” Trump said. “He said, ‘We would prefer a deal rather than an attack.'” And more: “Allies think there is a deal,” Trump explained. “There is a deal on Hormuz, and it will be a deal on the nuclear.”
Iran says No Negotiations Happening
Iranian officials said there are currently no negotiations with the United States and that Tehran is not planning to send or host any delegations “these days.”
However, Iran has confirmed that it is deep into negotiations over managing the Strait of Hormuz with Oman, and that it desires to get more ships moving through the vital transit waterway. According to Bloomberg on Monday:
Iran suggested negotiations to get more ships moving through the Strait of Hormuz are making progress, after President Donald Trump called off what he said was a major attack on the Islamic Republic.
Oil fell on Monday, with Brent crude down about 4.5% to just over $83 a barrel, after Iran’s foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, said discussions between Tehran and Oman over management of the strait are in the final stages.
While Tehran officials acknowledged that negotiations with Oman are ongoing and that progress has been made toward securing a temporary passage through the Strait of Hormuz, they stressed that reaching an agreement with Oman alone would not be enough to reopen the waterway, warning that the situation will remain unchanged as long as US “aggression” continues.
Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmail Baghaei conveyed also that China is concerned about “the escalation of conflict and insecurity in the region” and is working to prevent the situation from worsening. He described that there is no new mediator involved in contacts with Washington, with Pakistan and Qatar continuing to carry out that role.
On the broader conflict, Baghaei argued that the US-Israeli war on Iran is not merely a war against one country, but “a war against the entire region.” He laid out that Iran once again rejected attempts to tie developments in Yemen to the conflict with Iran, calling such claims “a form of evasion of responsibility.”
“We currently do not have negotiations with America,” and Iran had no plans to host foreign delegations or send negotiators abroad in the coming days, Foreign Ministry spokesperson Esmaeil Baghaei told reporters.
🔴 Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmaeil Baghaei says there are no talks with the US currently, adding that there are talks with Oman over Strait of Hormuz
🔴 Baghaei says working with Oman on a temporary safe route through Strait of Hormuz
Iranians ‘Won’t Bend’ – Reuters Analyst Points Out
Meanwhile, the on-again, off-again style of escalation and de-escalation pattern we are witnessing is likely only helping Tehran’s side in terms of leverage, as the conflict grinds on and potentially becomes more politically costly for the White House.
Referring to the Iranians, Reuters writes in new analysis, “They see an opportunity in what they regard as President Donald Trump’s reluctance to become deeply entangled in another Middle East conflict ahead of November’s midterm elections.”
“The Iranians…believe that by widening the war and increasing the pressure, he will eventually give in,” a Gulf source is cited in the report as saying. “Trump thinks he can hit the Iranians hard and bring them to the negotiating table, but they won’t bend.” That much should be obvious by now, as Trump Tacos once again.
According to more from Reuters: “Iran is betting it can outlast Washington by turning the Middle East’s trade routes, shipping lanes and energy infrastructure into pressure points that steadily raise the cost of confrontation, according to Gulf officials and analysts.”
Who can outlast? This is currently month #6 of the war…
“Rather than seeking a decisive military victory, Tehran is pursuing a strategy of calibrated escalation aimed at widening the conflict without triggering full-scale war,” the report continues. But that much should have been obvious and anticipated from week one of the war, and clearly the US side underestimated things.
More Latest Developments
via Newsquawk
US President Trump said the US is locked and loaded and ready to go against Iran, but they “have just been asked by Iran, and other Middle Eastern Countries, to hold off any attack in that the perimeters of a deal have been agreed to. This would include the Immediate, Complete, and Total OPENING OF THE HORMUZ STRAIT, and an end to Iran’s nuclear threat. Based on this request, I have agreed, for the future benefit of the WORLD and, likewise, the survival of a successful and prosperous Iran, to cancel the attack, subject to being able to rapidly make a DEAL.”
In further comments, US President Trump said the Iran attack would have been a massive one if not paused, adding there’s a deal on Hormuz and there will be a deal on denuclearisation. He added that he was asked very strongly by Iran to hold off the attack. On negotiations, he said they will begin tomorrow afternoon.
US CENTCOM was reported on Friday to have prepared a large-scale operation in the form of a decisive two-week bombing campaign should President Trump choose escalation to break the deadlock in the Middle East, according to The Hill reports, citing sources.
US Central Command intelligence official wrote in an email that they are seeking new and unconventional ways to increase pressure on and punish Iran, according to an internal message circulated among military analysts, according to CNN
Iran’s Foreign Ministry spokesperson said negotiations with Oman are progressing, with the two sides holding constructive talks on a new framework and exchanging maps over the past seven to eight days for review, IRNA reported.
Iran’s Foreign Ministry spokesman Baghaei said Iran is working with Oman to establish a temporary security corridor in the Strait of Hormuz, adding that Tehran is not currently in dialogue with the US and is holding talks with Oman on the waterway. Baghaei added that issues with the US should be addressed at a later stage and that there are no plans to receive a US delegation or send an Iranian delegation in the coming days.
Iranian Foreign Minister Araghchi told a cabinet meeting on Sunday that the negotiations with Oman to manage shipping through the Strait of Hormuz “were in the final stages”, according to FT. It was separately reported that Araghchi held phone calls with Saudi, Pakistan and Iraqi counterparts and exchanged views on the latest developments in the region, while he warned on Saturday against any adventurous action by the US and stressed Iran’s readiness to respond decisively to any aggression.
Iranian lawmaker Qashqawi said there are no discussions with the US or talks on the nuclear issue, adding that US sanctions amount to war; lasting peace can only be pursued once the military, economic and media conflict ends, SNN reported.
Iran’s Mehr News Agency rejected US President Trump’s claim that he halted attacks at the request of Iran and Middle East countries, while it called it “a new lie” and emphasised that Iran’s forces are on full alert.
UKMTO said on Saturday it received a report of an incident 21 nautical miles northeast of Oman’s Khasab, where the master of the tanker saw a large splash and explosion in close proximity to the vessel, although no damage to the vessel was reported.
Israel told the White House it has significant security concerns over a proposed Hamas disarmament agreement, saying intelligence suggests Hamas intends to rebuild its military capabilities rather than genuinely disarm. Israel added that it will not withdraw from most of Gaza until Hamas has fully completed the disarmament process.
Palestinian civil defence said Israeli drone and airstrikes hit multiple locations across the Gaza Strip, killing at least 18 people, including two women and four children, with residential apartments, tents sheltering displaced people and civilian areas among the reported targets.
Kpler shipping data showed 18 vessels passed through the Bab al-Mandeb on Sunday, compared to the 27 vessels on Saturday.
China’s AI Knife Fight: DeepSeek’s New Model Runs 100x Cheaper Than Anthropic’s Flagship
The price of artificial intelligence just printed a new low. DeepSeek’s V4-Flash, officially released Friday, costs roughly three cents to run through a standard battery of benchmark tests, according to San Francisco research firm Artificial Analysis. Moonshot AI’s Kimi K3 costs 86 cents; OpenAI’s GPT-5.6 Sol, $1.86; and Anthropic’s Claude Fable 5, the industry’s top-scoring model, $3.15. In realized terms, the Chinese model is more than 100 times cheaper to run than the American flagship, according to Reuters.
V4-Flash is the cheapest well-known model in the world, and by a wide margin. The figure is even more striking because of a detail buried in the firm’s write-up: V4-Flash is unusually verbose. It consumes tokens heavily and still lands at three cents. The per-token price is doing all the work.
The same firm supplies the caveat. V4-Flash scores 50 out of 100 on the Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index, a composite of nine benchmarks spanning coding, reasoning, and workplace tasks. That ties Google’s Gemini 3.6 Flash and puts it one point behind Meta’s Muse Spark 1.1 and Zhipu’s GLM-5.2. Moonshot’s Kimi K3 scores 57, while Anthropic’s Claude Opus 5 and Fable 5, along with OpenAI’s GPT-5.6, score at least nine points higher.
That said – V4-Flash kicks massive ass at routine tasks, but the frontier models still own the heavy lifting. In difficult, multi-step agentic work, small reliability gaps at each step compound into enormous end-to-end differences. Essentially that’s the current state of play for frontier pricing. But for the routine volume that makes up most production traffic – summarization, boilerplate code, and back-office automation – V4-Flash is where it’s at.
Chinese Knife Fight
V4-Flash’s 3-cent print is the fourth shot in an 18-day barrage: China’s AI labs are cutting each other for domestic share, and the fallout is repricing the model market everywhere else. On July 16, Moonshot shipped Kimi K3, a 2.8-trillion-parameter model that promptly took the number-one slot on Arena’s Frontend Code leaderboard from Fable 5 and GPT-5.6 Sol. On July 19, Alibaba rushed a preview of Qwen3.8-Max onto the stage at the World AI Conference in Shanghai. There was no pricing, no model card, and its claim of ranking “second only to Fable 5” rested on Alibaba’s internal evaluations.
On July 27, Moonshot answered by open-sourcing K3’s full weights, the largest open-weight release in history. DeepSeek shipped V4-Flash on July 31. Then on August 3 – Monday, the same morning the Reuters story ran – Alibaba took Qwen3.8-Max to general availability: 2.4 trillion total parameters, 95 billion active parameters, a one-million-token context window, and flat pricing of $2 per million input tokens and $6 per million output tokens, with no long-context surcharge.
Qwen’s release promptly landed at No. 4 on the Frontend Code Arena with 1,668 points – one point behind Claude Opus 5 at high effort, eight behind Kimi K3, and ahead of both Fable 5 at 1,630 and GPT-5.6 Sol at 1,620. Of the five models Arena identifies on the cost-performance Pareto frontier, four are Chinese: Kimi K3, Qwen3.8-Max, GLM-5.2, and V4-Flash. The lone American entry, Opus 5, occupies the expensive tip, defended by 37 Elo points.
Qwen3.8-Max by @Alibaba_Qwen has reshaped the cost-performance Pareto frontier in Frontend Code Arena, with pricing of $2 per input MToken and $6 per output MToken.
Top models on the Pareto frontier:
– Claude-Opus-5
– Kimi-K3
– Qwen3.8-Max
– GLM-5.2
– DeepSeek-V4-Flash
Alibaba’s own benchmark table is more candid. Qwen3.8-Max edges Fable 5 and Opus 4.8 on Terminal-Bench, 86.6 to 84.6, while trailing badly on hard repository engineering: it scores 67.7 on SWE-bench Pro against Fable 5’s 80.0. The preference-judged coding moat is gone. The deep-engineering moat remains intact – for now.
All of this raises a more basic question: who is paying for three-cent inference?
Until this spring, DeepSeek had never taken outside money. Founder Liang Wenfeng bankrolled the company through his quant fund, High-Flyer. In late May, DeepSeek closed its first external round – more than 50 billion yuan, or roughly $7.4 billion, at a valuation above $50 billion – as first reported by The Information.
The round’s structure is unusual. Commercial investors, reportedly led by Tencent and CATL, bought into a limited partnership controlled by Liang, with no voting rights and a five-year lockup. Exactly one party received direct equity and a vote: China’s state-backed National AI Industry Investment Fund. Within weeks, DeepSeek was in talks for a follow-on round at roughly $71 billion, with proceeds earmarked for data centers and chips.
Add the 75% API discount the company made permanent earlier this year, and the arrangement begins to resemble industrial policy conducted through an API: state-privileged capital underwriting below-cost tokens to capture global share. It is working: in June, DeepSeek accounted for nearly 23% of the tens of trillions of tokens flowing through Vercel’s enterprise AI gateway, compared with Anthropic’s 32%.
Meanwhile…
As we (and now Wall Street) have been noting, the Token Expenditure Index – a usage-weighted average of what the market pays per million tokens, blended across frontier APIs and open-weight platforms – peaked above 2.0 in May after nearly doubling from its December launch, and is now slip sliding lower.
Strategist Andreas Steno Larsen called it the one everyone should be watching, warning that sustained weakness in token pricing would end the memory, hardware, and data-center trades for this cycle. The index last printed 1.3394, roughly a third below its May high.Bloomberg flagged the rollover in early July as evidence that AI vendors were losing pricing power with increasingly cost-sensitive customers; Silicon Data’s own commentary interpreted it as usage drifting back toward open-weight models.
Also relevant – the pushback to data centers amid a capex boom running north of $700 billion. As we reported last month, from the nationwide July 18 protests organized by Tea Party veteran Amy Kremer’s Humans First to the widening fracture inside the Republican coalition over land, water, and power – domestic politics has entered the chat, something Beijing doesn’t have to deal with – so now they’ve got athree-cent benchmark financed on terms no Western lab can match. Through open-weight releases, it is also portable onto American silicon, where US inference providers will happily serve Chinese models at commodity margins. Export controls cannot contain a set of weights on the torrent.
The model to watch is V4-Pro, the heavier system DeepSeek has confirmed without naming a release date. Flash at three cents pressures the budget tiers at OpenAI and Google. If Pro lands anywhere near frontier scores at DeepSeek prices, the last 37 Elo points – and the frontier premium that OpenAI and Anthropic both charge to underwrite the buildout – will be directly in play.
By Benjamin Picton, senior market strategist at Rabobank
It’s Monday morning again and it feels like Groundhog Day as I sit down to write that the US President has (again) halted strikes on Iran and teased that a diplomatic breakthrough is close. Brent crude prices have dutifully fallen in early trade, risk currencies are rallying and equity markets are poised to extend the gains posted late last week.
In his trademark bloviating style, President Trump posted to Truth Social that the USA was “locked and loaded” to unleash “levels of Military Terror, Strength, and Power not seen since World War II”, but that “for the future benefit of the WORLD” he had responded to a request from Iran and other Middle Eastern countries to hold off as the outline of a deal had been agreed. Trump went on to claim that the deal would include the “Immediate, Complete, and Total OPENING OF THE HORMUZ STRAIT”, as well as an end to the Iranian nuclear threat.
Obviously we’ve heard this one before. Iran’s Fars news agency reports that “informed sources” deny that any agreement has been reached on the status of the Strait of Hormuz, and that policy regarding the critical shipping route remains unchanged.
Meanwhile, Iran’s IRNA news agency reported that negotiations between Iran and Oman over the administration of the strait are in the final stages. Foreign ministry spokesman Esmail Baghaei said that talks have centerd around agreeing a new route for shipping, and that the talks are unrelated to the question of whether Hormuz is open or closed. He said that issue is a separate discussion. However, markets will take the positive signal that agreeing a new shipping route implies future shipping. What it does not tell us is where the ships will head to and under what conditions.
Of course, the other aspect of the Hormuz Groundhog Day is that later in the week strikes typically resume, oil prices rally, equities sell, and bond yields rise. While there is every chance of that happening this week for now the impression seems to be of ‘strikes for strikes’. This would require somebody to break the current pause that seems to suit the purposes of both sides for the moment. Encouragingly, Iranian sources continue to stress “proportionality” in responding to US aggression, which seems to imply an unwillingness to escalate, but there also continues to be a sense that the civilian government in Tehran is not on the same page as the IRGC – who broke the most recent pause in hostilities by attacking US targets in Jordan.
Less than five days left until Trump announces the next massive Iran strikes at 4:01pm on Friday
The relentless logic of arithmetic continues to be the critical factor in Middle East developments. Markets have so far taken large draws in global inventories in their stride with price rises mostly insufficient to cause severe demand destruction. At the same time, higher prices have induced a supply response by lifting US oil rig counts by almost 11% since the war broke out, increasing refinery capacity utilization, and prompting OPEC+ to announce another 188,000 lift in production quota from September onwards.
The physical realities of war in the Eastern Europe and the Middle East have rendered the latter a mostly theoretical increase for the time being, but could contribute to a structural reshuffling of the energy deck on the other side of the current crisis. Product markets continue to provide the clearest hints of the seriousness of the current supply squeeze, with Singapore gasoil spot prices still sitting more than two standard deviations above the long-run spread to Brent.
China continues to play the role of balancing entry in global energy trade while also pedalling faster than most to reduce its dependence on imported energy. The manufacturing investment boom in solar panels, batteries and electric vehicles is helping to offset the slow-motion trainwreck that is the Chinese real estate market, while also building supply chain resilience and doing planet Earth a solid with regards to climate change.
While geopolitics and a protectionist tilt away from Chinese goods in an effort to safeguard domestic supply chains is underway, some are still happy to take the subsidy from China and import those cheap goods to boost domestic living standards. Australia is one such country, where new household battery installations in the first half of 2026 was roughly equal to total household battery installed capacity in the United States, a country with more than twelve times the population. BloombergNEF reports that Australia now ranks third globally in terms of installed battery capacity, behind only the USA and China. This sounds good in the short term, but critics will note that this perhaps invites new risks for Australia’s domestic energy infrastructure – not to mention the trade and security relationship with the United States.
Electric vehicle sales has similarly surged since energy flows through Hormuz were interrupted, with battery and hybrid vehicle sales reaching almost 50% of total sales in Q2 and interrupting Australia’s long-running love affair with diesel pickup trucks. The surge in EV sales has accrued mostly to new market entrant brands from China and to (largely Chinese-made) Tesla. Year-on-year sales growth in June was 131% for BYD, 89% for Tesla, 327% for Geely, 569% for Jaecoo, 1660% for Zeekr and 316% for Leapmotor. Four of the top ten, and seven of the top twenty best-selling brands are now Chinese.
The success of those new entrant Chinese brands highlights the challenges faced by legacy manufacturers in the US, Japan, South Korea and, especially, Europe – where marques such as Fiat and Citroen have already exited the market, while Peugeot is reportedly considering a similar move. In an era where supply chain sovereignty and industrial capacity matters for national security, how can legacy manufacturers compete with the Chinese industrial juggernaut without meaningful restrictions on Chinese trade or massive export subsidies of their own?
“Really Only One Thing Worries Us A Lot”: Here’s What Keeps Goldman’s Commodities Guru Up At Night
Samantha Dart, co-head of global commodities research at Goldman, joined Bloomberg TV on Monday morning and warned that diesel sits at the epicenter of a worsening global fuel supply squeeze, as Ukrainian drone and missile strikes disrupt Russian refining and the US-Iran war disrupts tanker flows through the Strait of Hormuz.
Dart joined Haslinda Amin on Insight with Haslinda Amin to discuss growing risks in diesel markets.
She warned, “The situation in Russia is really one thing that worries us a lot,” adding, “The Russia issue has been going on now for, what, four years? So this can keep going.”
Amin asked Dart: “And finally, your conviction call. What’s the one bet in the commodity space for the next 12-24 months?”
Dart responded:
“Yeah, so I’ve mentioned a couple of things. I’d say on the oil side, as I mentioned before, diesel, I think is the oil product that is most vulnerable right now, not just because you have your seasonal demand strength ahead just in the winter, but on the supply side. And to your point in the beginning, it’s not just that you run war, it’s what’s happening to the Russian refineries as well. And Russia is usually a pretty big exporter of diesel. And now they have restricted it.”
Dart continued:
“So we are recommending a long diesel time spread. So going long the December contract of this year and short, the March contract of next year, so a spread trade.
And on the natural gas side, the sort of controversial call that we have is that after this crisis is over, this is a market in oversupply. So we look at the forward end of the curve, the back end of the curve, and it’s overpriced. So we have been recommending a short for summer 2028 European natural gas TTF.“
Struyven introduced a new global refinery-runs nowcast, estimating that global refinery runs have plunged to their lowest seasonal level since the Covid era.
Last week we noted that European gasoil crack has surged above $70 a barrel as refiners run near capacity, with diesel and jet supplies constrained by outages, shipping risks, and reduced Russian exports.
The diesel market is increasingly becoming a focal point for Goldman’s commodities team as tight global supplies head into the seasonally stronger winter demand period. Disruptions stretching from the Hormuz chokepoint to Russian refinery outages and export restrictions are tightening an already constrained market, raising the risk of further price increases. If these supply pressures persist into winter, diesel could emerge as one of the most closely watched commodities.
Kamikaze Drone Slams Into Crowded Russian Black Sea Beach, Killing 3
The Russia-Ukraine war has dangerously spilled over into the Black Sea, with cargo ships, tankers, and oil and gas infrastructure being targeted by both sides. The sharp escalation in fighting across the region has also come at a cost to civilians.
Shocking video circulating on X Monday morning appears to show a Ukrainian suicide drone striking a crowded beach in the Russian Black Sea resort city of Gelendzhik.
Russian media outlet Interfax reports that three people were killed and more than a dozen injured “when a drone crashed in the village of Arkhipo-Osipovka near Gelendzhik.”
The outlet continued:
“A tragedy has occurred in Gelendzhik. Three people were killed in the village of Arkhipo-Osipovka due to falling UAV debris, according to preliminary information. (…) Another 13 people, including children, were injured. They are receiving necessary medical care,” Kondratyev wrote on his Max channel.
He noted that the attack targeted civilian infrastructure. Emergency and special services are working at the drone wreckage sites.
Footage:
In Gelendzhik, Russia, a drone crashed directly onto a beach with tourists.
Audio from the footage appears to capture Russian air-defense forces firing on the incoming drone moments before it struck the crowded beach. It remains unclear whether civilians were deliberately targeted or whether the drone was damaged by automatic fire, causing it to deviate from its intended flight path.
