Iranian protests/revolution

I’ve seen regular sometimes exceed $6 near me depending on location and diesel close to $8.

Or two years ago.
And the premium is a dollar more than regular? I get that it’s 93 Octane (we only have 91 in CA), but still.

I’m glad I just don’t drive enough to ever care about gas prices.

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Interesting twist, I’d forgotten about the Iran allied militias in Iraq, they attacked a Saudi oil pipeline. Regional war successfully unlocked ahead of the midterms!

https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/iraq-saudi-pipeline-9.7341679

Out driving around today and I saw diesel was $6.69 at a Mobil station in CT.

$7.99 at a Chevron down the street.
Chevron is usually more expensive, and i believe that some consumer companies get big discounts there.

Driving from Santa Barbara to Zion today we saw diesel for $8.35!

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The mid-terms sure are going to be interesting when oil heads to $150 and diesel hits $7+

We have now reached the end game scenario of what an Iran conflict should have been designed to avoid at all costs.

  1. Hormuz blocked
  2. SA pipeline closed (cant now divert to avoid (1))
  3. Bab al Mandeb strait controlled by Houthis
  4. SPR drained in the US below minimum level

Seems like we have a bit of a mess here. I wonder if it could have been avoided.
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/09/14/world/middleeast/saudi-iran-trump-yemen-houthis.html?smid=nytcore-android-share

And that level was hit and exceeded just as everything is getting worse.

The past ~6 months have been gas prices buoyed by releasing the SPR.

Yes. SA is in trouble now.

They have no way now to get their oil to the market in large quantities. And the US has basically thrown them to the wolves in the ME (MBS doesnt strike me as a person who will forget what Trump and Israel have done)

Mecca on emergency alert: Saudi Arabia warns of ‘potential danger’ as Houthis fire ballistic missiles at west coast

Houthis expand war on Saudi Arabia

Saudi Arabia is finding out that having people cosplaying as a military are no match for people who have been fighting for 20+ years (on home ground no less).

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And like many others are finding Trump a less than reliable ally.

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There’s no great option for the US here, but committing more military support to defend Saudi Arabia from Iran in the middle of the stagnant Iran War would echo Afghanistan/Iraq even more.

Then again, it makes us look weak that we can’t defeat Iran while they can simultaneously aggress our allies. Midterms are looming!

I don’t think that our inability to defend Gulf countries is going to factor much in the minds of midterm voters.

What will matter is that a President whose big campaign promises included “no new wars” and “cheaper gas” has gotten us into a new war that has significantly driven up gas prices.

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You’re surely right. But the SA situation staying bad will cause gas to go up even more. I noticed another $0.30 above recent records locally at the pump yesterday!

What has been shocking is the level of news censorhip about the war in the US, as well as western media in general.

I used to think that the west had at least a degree of journalistic credibility when it came to something of this magnitude.

But what we have seen is just how much influence the Epstein class and their supporters (in Govt and in the private sector) have over the media and govt.

Its really opened my eyes to just how much of a threat these people are to western democracies in general.

From the Intercept:

The U.S. military is straining under the pressures of the Iran war, according to two U.S. officials familiar with operations in the Middle East. One cautioned that this stress could lead to a “breakdown” in the military’s ability to effectively continue a war that President Donald Trump said would end in early April.

Iran’s ability to overwhelm U.S. air defenses in the Middle East using attack drones and advanced ballistic missiles, as previously reported by The Intercept, has left the U.S. military in a precarious state. The Trump administration failed to appreciate Iran’s military prowess, said the first official. The other pointed to a “complete lack of planning” for the war. Since July 7 alone, there have been hundreds of U.S. casualties caused by Iranian attacks, according to official Pentagon statistics.

The officials said the military’s ability to function at peak capacity was crippled in the opening hours of the conflict when an Iranian missile and drone attack on February 28 destroyed Navy facilities in Manama, Bahrain, the region’s most critical logistics hub. The Pentagon claimed for months that the strikes did not significantly impact military operations, but last week acting Navy Secretary Hung Cao admitted “they blew the hell out of Bahrain.” More than six months after the attack, Naval Support Activity Bahrain remains a shambles. “We’re not getting back in there anytime soon,” said Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Daryl Caudle, the Navy’s highest-ranking officer, during a recent town hall.

The US has been at war more-or-less continuously for 25 years.

American masses, at this point, are burned out and perceive little ability to do something about our war footing…unless, of course, someone runs for office on a slate of “no more war”…and we can see how that’s turned out.

If the masses are burned out and are unwilling to expend the time and energy to follow the subject, economics of the mass media business impose constraints on the resources spent to report on the subject, particularly given the evolution in how the masses consume information.

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