While today's market session has been broadly calm for the time being, that has not prevented Oil from falling back to its old norm of being impacted by the merest rumor of geopolitical tensions, of which we have had quite a few of already, following car explosion attacks targeting Israel embassy officials in India and Georgia. While Iran has yet to make any announcement on these events, which oddly enough resulted in no deaths, Israel has already blamed Iran for everything. From Reuters: "Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Israel's arch-foe Iran "stands behind" bombers who targeted Israeli embassy cars in India and Georgia on Monday. Netanyahu linked the incidents to reports of foiled attacks in Thailand and Azerbaijan last month for which, he said, Iran and its Lebanese guerrilla "proxy" Hezbollah were responsible."Iran, which stands behind these attacks, is the largest exporter of terror in the world," Netanyahu said, addressing his Likud party faction in parliament." It appears that when it comes to car bomb assassination plots, Iran still has to learn from those which targeted its own nuclear scientist successfully a few weeks ago. Yet this latest escalation in attempted provocations is not unexpected: it comes on the heels of the announcement of a US Naval Official who said that "Iran is building up its forces in the Persian Gulf and has prepared speedboats loaded with explosives." Whether it actually has or has not is irrelevant: all that matters is that the US navy 'says so.'
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The pre-emptive attack posturing continues via RT [9]:
"They have increased the number of submarines [to 10], they increased the number of fast attack craft," the commander of US naval forces in the region, Vice Admiral Mark Fox, told reporters on Sunday. "Some of the small boats have been outfitted with a large warhead that could be used as a suicide explosive device. The Iranians have a large mine inventory."
The head of US’s Fifth Fleet also added that the United States has been watching with interest how Tehran develops its long-range rockets and various ballistic missiles, not mentioning the country’s nuclear program.
The 2000 suicide attack of Al-Qaeda’s small boat on the destroyer USS Cole in a Yemeni port, which killed 17 sailors, exposed a relative vulnerability of huge battleships before such attacks. Now, the US command says it takes these threats seriously, also adding that it is prepared for them.
"We are very vigilant, we have built a wide range of options to give the president and we are ready… What if it happened tonight? We are ready today," Vice Admiral Fox assured.
And so the jawboning continues, even as Iran's economy continues to tumble down a hyperinflationary abyss, yet we are all led to believe all Iran wants to do is commence war on the world. Which in itself only brings us closer to one, pretty much as hoped for by those who truly stand to profit from one breaking out. Such as the producers of the sequel to "Wag the dog."
One commodity that is not waiting is Crude, which just took out triple digits again, and is back to 2 weeks highs. That this will have an impact on gasoline prices, which as we reported yesterday [10]are already at 5 month highs, is to be expected. What is also to be expected is the economist prop-armada attempting to spin how another spike in unleaded to $4.00 is beneficial and in fact essential for the economy.