The United States will be "out of Iran pretty quickly" and could return for "spot hits" if needed, President Donald Trump told Reuters on Wednesday, hours before he was scheduled to make a primetime address to the nation about the war.

With the conflict in its fifth week and Trump under pressure for an off-ramp amid rising gasoline prices, the president scheduled a 9 p.m. EDT (0100 GMT) speech to discuss the way forward. His address will end a day that began with Trump making a historic visit to the Supreme Court.

Trump, in a phone interview with Reuters, said one element of his speech would be to express his disgust with NATO for what he considers the alliance's lack of support for U.S. objectives in Iran. (Reuters – Continue Reading)

President Donald Trump is setting the stage to take an off-ramp in the five-week Iran war, dispatching Vice President JD Vance to deliver an ultimatum to Iran to make a deal or face attacks on key infrastructure.

Trump is scheduled to deliver a rare primetime address on Iran as the Strait of Hormuz remains largely shuttered, with markets in turmoil and economic growth threatened worldwide. (Bloomberg – Continue Reading)

The coming month will see an intensification of the oil supply glut that has driven prices sharply higher since the start of the Iran war, according to the head of the International Energy Agency.

Speaking to the “In Good Company” podcast hosted by Nicolai Tangen, CEO of Norges Bank Investment Management, Birol said the energy crisis sparked by the U.S.-Iran war was the worst in history.

“The next month, April, will be much worse than March,” he said. He explained that in March there were already some cargo ships carrying oil and gas that transited through the Strait of Hormuz before the war broke out.

“They are still coming to ports, still bringing oil and energy and other [things],” he said. “In April, there is nothing. The loss of oil in April will be twice the loss of oil in March. On top of that you have LNG and others. It will come through to inflation, I think it will cut economic growth in many countries, especially emerging economies. In many countries the rationing of energy may be coming soon.” (CNBC – Continue Reading)

The expanding war in Iran is disrupting, if not devastating, the global economy. Meanwhile, the sound of silence from normally voluble leaders of China and Russia is telling. From their point of view, silence is the best way for them to let Washington entangle itself in a protracted war in the Middle East, opening space to expand the influence of President Vladimir Putin of Russia in Europe and for President Xi Jinping of China in the Indo-Pacific.

Iran’s strategy of closing the Strait of Hormuz using naval mines, coastal missile batteries, and drone swarms is holding the global economy hostage as energy prices have surged. If the US plan with Iran was to mirror the Venezuela playbook by achieving a swift, overwhelming action to remove a perceived threat and declare victory, it has backfired horribly.

Meantime, China and Russia are sitting on the sidelines. Why? China is dependent on Iran, which supplies 13 percent of China’s oil imports at discounted prices. Since 2021, Iran has been locked into a 25-year cooperation agreement with Beijing, securing $400 billion of oil at below-market prices in exchange for Chinese investment and security cooperation. Russia, for its part, has relied on Iran as its most important Middle Eastern partner since Western sanctions on Russia began in 2014. Both countries had been propping up Tehran financially, militarily, and diplomatically for years. Yet their response to the strikes amounts to little more than condemnations of the US. (PIIE – Continue Reading)