The failure of US sanctions to exert its hegemony, coupled with the protracted power struggle in the Middle East, conceals new investment opportunities.
2026-06-30 21:29:55
Following two recent rounds of clashes between the US and Iran, Trump stated last night that he would hold talks in Doha today regarding a series of issues, including the security of passage through the Strait of Hormuz and the implementation of the memorandum. Iran subsequently denied the possibility of talks. Given that Trump proposed talks after the bombing of a US military base, the decision to offer peace instead of military retaliation suggests a concession from the US. However, Iran's continued refusal may cause fluctuations in US sentiment regarding peace talks. The market is currently pricing in this pessimistic expectation to some extent, leading to a rebound in oil prices and US Treasury yields, while gold prices fell.
However, market sentiment is currently relatively stable as Iran has agreed to negotiate with mediator Qatar regarding the US-Iran agreement.
In June 2026, with the signing of a temporary waiver by the U.S. Treasury Department and the gradual resumption of navigation in the Strait of Hormuz, the global financial market seemed to have finally found a much-needed respite after months of violent turbulence.
However, the core price setters in the commodities market know full well that the current calm is by no means the end of the geopolitical crisis, but rather a painful structural transition driven by the primary principle of great power rivalry.
From the failure of the "soft financial weapon" in 2025 to the setback of the "hard physical strangulation" in early 2026, the evolution of US-Iran relations is becoming an excellent window to observe the changing global control of the United States, the restructuring of global oil transportation routes, and the systemic rise in the central level of commodity prices.
For a long time, Washington’s economic policies have relied on its massive financial infrastructure. However, 2025 will be a watershed year in which the myth of traditional “secondary sanctions” in the United States will be completely shattered.
In early 2025, the Trump administration, entering its second term, once again imposed the "highest level" of extreme energy sanctions on Iran.
However, in its review at the end of 2025, the U.S. Department of Commerce was shocked to discover that Iran's crude oil exports had not only not plummeted by 75% as they had in 2018, but had instead continued to rise against the trend, secretly and steadily supplying nearly 1.4 million barrels of crude oil per day.
The physical essence of this systemic failure lies in the fact that non-US clearing networks and underground logistics chains have completed the construction of the "minimum feasible scale" in recent years: non-US clearing tools such as cross-border interbank payment systems are fully operational, and crude oil trade is settled directly using other non-US currencies.
The funds did not physically pass through any U.S. banks, completely blinding Washington regulators.
A "ghost fleet" of hundreds of old oil tankers operates routinely, turning off their radars and frequently carrying out "heavy-load transshipment" on the high seas, disguising and labeling Iranian crude oil before sending it to refineries in non-compliant networks.
Even the ancient barter trade of "oil for infrastructure" has revived, making financial sanctions ineffective.
Since the "soft knife" couldn't cut through, the only option left was to use the "hard strangulation." Having discovered that financial sanctions were ineffective, the US government completely lost political patience by the end of 2025, and the policy balance began to tilt sharply towards military control.
In early 2026, the U.S. military deployed a carrier strike group, stripped of its financial veneer, and directly imposed a comprehensive maritime military blockade on Iranian ports, attempting to sever Iran's financial lifeline through pure physical violence.
However, the war in the spring of 2026 proved that comprehensive military-physical control is equally difficult to achieve in today's macro environment.
Faced with a military blockade by the US, Iran unleashed its ultimate geographical bargaining chip in March 2026—the complete blockade of the Strait of Hormuz. This extreme "black swan" event, causing a sudden 15% drop in global oil supply, exploded in global geopolitics.
This physical confrontation quickly made the United States realize the limits of its maximum pressure strategy:
The unbearable political burden of high-frequency friction: Although quantitative models confirm that, thanks to the shale oil revolution and the overall economic dependence on crude oil, the US macroeconomy is extremely immune to oil price shocks (the annualized growth rate of real GDP was only damaged by 0.26 percentage points).
However, the surge in global oil prices affected global supply, instantly igniting secondary inflation in the United States and directly threatening the political security of the ruling authorities.
If a full-scale, multi-dimensional war of annihilation were to be waged in the Middle East, the US military would inevitably have to drag trillions of dollars and core strategic resources back into the quagmire of the Middle East. This would be completely contrary to the US's current global strategy of fully investing in AI technology competition, great power chip rivalry, and containment in the Asia-Pacific region.
Ultimately, in a physical power struggle between the US and Iran, characterized by "extreme mutual loathing yet extreme fear of total loss of control," a fragile interim memorandum was signed in mid-2026.
The US lifting of the strait blockade and granting temporary exemptions has transformed US-Iran relations from an "acute hemorrhage" into a "long-term chronic inflammation."
This complex and protracted conflict clearly reveals the strengths and weaknesses of the United States' current global control:
Core advantages: The United States possesses irreplaceable structural power and the ability to strangle others: The United States has an absolute monopoly on advanced semiconductors, AI training chips (Nvidia controls more than 80% of the market), and design software.
This control over the "new era industrial mother machine" has successfully slowed down the iteration speed of the opponent's top models and is currently the United States' strongest trump card.
Platform power and market power: American companies still control 70% of the global cloud services market and the vast majority of smart terminal operating systems.
At the same time, the United States, as a huge consumer market accounting for more than 25% of global GDP, still has enormous bargaining power with its allies in trade negotiations.
Fatal weakness: physical decoupling of multipolar networks, “resistance” to financial weapons: long-term abuse of sanctions (the US has sanctioned more than 17,000 entities) has generated a powerful backlash.
Once countries like Russia and Iran complete the minimum scale of their alternative networks, the dollar's hegemony will completely fail in certain geopolitical blind spots.
The United States has achieved energy self-sufficiency, but it still suffers from a fatal weakness in its physical industrial chain, which is heavily reliant on overseas sources for rare earth elements, basic pharmaceutical raw materials, and civilian shipbuilding (with a global share of less than 1%).
Looking ahead, it is unlikely that the US and Iran will reach a genuine reconciliation, but they are also unlikely to easily escalate into a full-scale war. The game between the two sides will enter a gray area of "frequent micro-conflicts becoming the norm".
Gray standoff: Within the current interim agreement window, Iran is attempting to impose "passage management fees" on merchant ships in the Strait of Hormuz in order to assert its sovereignty over the strait and test the bottom line of the United States; while the US military has firmly rejected this.
These "slice-like" attacks on ships and warnings will occur frequently.
A tit-for-tat dynamic balance: Once the agreement expires, it is highly unlikely that the two sides will be able to reach a fundamental compromise. The norm in the future will be: Iran will use speedboats, mines, or drone proxies to conduct precise, asymmetric "slice-and-grab" attacks on ships, keeping oil prices at a high level that is favorable to it; while the US military will maintain a strong escort fleet and conduct "equivalent precision airstrikes without escalating the war" against Iranian missile bases or military power grids that have crossed the line.
Against the backdrop of increasingly frequent micro-conflicts, global crude oil transportation routes will undergo a historic structural restructuring, officially entering the "dual-track shipping era":
The West's "Southern Strategy" for compliant shipping lanes: In order to circumvent Iran's de facto control over the northern part of the Strait of Hormuz, the United States, Britain and other countries are fully supporting Oman to open up a "southern security shipping lane" close to the Omani coastline, providing regional zenith coverage through drones and patrol ships.
Many compliant Western merchant ships have even had to choose to detour around the Cape of Good Hope for extended periods, which has directly led to a significant increase in global shipping days and a substantial tightening of tanker capacity supply.
Independent operation of geopolitical shadow shipping lanes: The northern Strait of Hormuz will be completely transformed into a dedicated channel for non-US shadow fleets, which are completely independent of Western shipping insurance and use non-US currencies or barter for settlement. The global energy transportation network will be physically broken into two parallel worlds that do not intersect.
In conclusion, the paradigm shift in the geopolitical game between the US and Iran has created a "bottom support" and "central rise" logic for the world's two core commodities—crude oil and gold.
The sluggish pricing in the commodity market from March to May, driven by the US-Iran peace talks, may be brutally shattered by harsh physical realities. The overall price floor for crude oil and gold may be gradually raised due to this "chronic inflammation" in the Middle East.
However, market sentiment is currently relatively stable as Iran has agreed to negotiate with mediator Qatar regarding the US-Iran agreement.
In June 2026, with the signing of a temporary waiver by the U.S. Treasury Department and the gradual resumption of navigation in the Strait of Hormuz, the global financial market seemed to have finally found a much-needed respite after months of violent turbulence.
However, the core price setters in the commodities market know full well that the current calm is by no means the end of the geopolitical crisis, but rather a painful structural transition driven by the primary principle of great power rivalry.
From the failure of the "soft financial weapon" in 2025 to the setback of the "hard physical strangulation" in early 2026, the evolution of US-Iran relations is becoming an excellent window to observe the changing global control of the United States, the restructuring of global oil transportation routes, and the systemic rise in the central level of commodity prices.
From a soft financial weapon to a hard military strangulation: The 2025 wave of bankruptcies shaped by US sanctions.
For a long time, Washington’s economic policies have relied on its massive financial infrastructure. However, 2025 will be a watershed year in which the myth of traditional “secondary sanctions” in the United States will be completely shattered.
In early 2025, the Trump administration, entering its second term, once again imposed the "highest level" of extreme energy sanctions on Iran.
However, in its review at the end of 2025, the U.S. Department of Commerce was shocked to discover that Iran's crude oil exports had not only not plummeted by 75% as they had in 2018, but had instead continued to rise against the trend, secretly and steadily supplying nearly 1.4 million barrels of crude oil per day.
The physical essence of this systemic failure lies in the fact that non-US clearing networks and underground logistics chains have completed the construction of the "minimum feasible scale" in recent years: non-US clearing tools such as cross-border interbank payment systems are fully operational, and crude oil trade is settled directly using other non-US currencies.
The funds did not physically pass through any U.S. banks, completely blinding Washington regulators.
A "ghost fleet" of hundreds of old oil tankers operates routinely, turning off their radars and frequently carrying out "heavy-load transshipment" on the high seas, disguising and labeling Iranian crude oil before sending it to refineries in non-compliant networks.
Even the ancient barter trade of "oil for infrastructure" has revived, making financial sanctions ineffective.
Since the "soft knife" couldn't cut through, the only option left was to use the "hard strangulation." Having discovered that financial sanctions were ineffective, the US government completely lost political patience by the end of 2025, and the policy balance began to tilt sharply towards military control.
In early 2026, the U.S. military deployed a carrier strike group, stripped of its financial veneer, and directly imposed a comprehensive maritime military blockade on Iranian ports, attempting to sever Iran's financial lifeline through pure physical violence.
Disillusionment under extreme physical pressure: backlash and the clash of trump cards
However, the war in the spring of 2026 proved that comprehensive military-physical control is equally difficult to achieve in today's macro environment.
Faced with a military blockade by the US, Iran unleashed its ultimate geographical bargaining chip in March 2026—the complete blockade of the Strait of Hormuz. This extreme "black swan" event, causing a sudden 15% drop in global oil supply, exploded in global geopolitics.
This physical confrontation quickly made the United States realize the limits of its maximum pressure strategy:
The unbearable political burden of high-frequency friction: Although quantitative models confirm that, thanks to the shale oil revolution and the overall economic dependence on crude oil, the US macroeconomy is extremely immune to oil price shocks (the annualized growth rate of real GDP was only damaged by 0.26 percentage points).
However, the surge in global oil prices affected global supply, instantly igniting secondary inflation in the United States and directly threatening the political security of the ruling authorities.
If a full-scale, multi-dimensional war of annihilation were to be waged in the Middle East, the US military would inevitably have to drag trillions of dollars and core strategic resources back into the quagmire of the Middle East. This would be completely contrary to the US's current global strategy of fully investing in AI technology competition, great power chip rivalry, and containment in the Asia-Pacific region.
Ultimately, in a physical power struggle between the US and Iran, characterized by "extreme mutual loathing yet extreme fear of total loss of control," a fragile interim memorandum was signed in mid-2026.
The US lifting of the strait blockade and granting temporary exemptions has transformed US-Iran relations from an "acute hemorrhage" into a "long-term chronic inflammation."
A Two-Sided Mirror of American Global Control: Monopoly of Advantage and Diminishing Margins of Control
This complex and protracted conflict clearly reveals the strengths and weaknesses of the United States' current global control:
Core advantages: The United States possesses irreplaceable structural power and the ability to strangle others: The United States has an absolute monopoly on advanced semiconductors, AI training chips (Nvidia controls more than 80% of the market), and design software.
This control over the "new era industrial mother machine" has successfully slowed down the iteration speed of the opponent's top models and is currently the United States' strongest trump card.
Platform power and market power: American companies still control 70% of the global cloud services market and the vast majority of smart terminal operating systems.
At the same time, the United States, as a huge consumer market accounting for more than 25% of global GDP, still has enormous bargaining power with its allies in trade negotiations.
Fatal weakness: physical decoupling of multipolar networks, “resistance” to financial weapons: long-term abuse of sanctions (the US has sanctioned more than 17,000 entities) has generated a powerful backlash.
Once countries like Russia and Iran complete the minimum scale of their alternative networks, the dollar's hegemony will completely fail in certain geopolitical blind spots.
The United States has achieved energy self-sufficiency, but it still suffers from a fatal weakness in its physical industrial chain, which is heavily reliant on overseas sources for rare earth elements, basic pharmaceutical raw materials, and civilian shipbuilding (with a global share of less than 1%).
A scenario study of future US-Iran relations
Looking ahead, it is unlikely that the US and Iran will reach a genuine reconciliation, but they are also unlikely to easily escalate into a full-scale war. The game between the two sides will enter a gray area of "frequent micro-conflicts becoming the norm".
Gray standoff: Within the current interim agreement window, Iran is attempting to impose "passage management fees" on merchant ships in the Strait of Hormuz in order to assert its sovereignty over the strait and test the bottom line of the United States; while the US military has firmly rejected this.
These "slice-like" attacks on ships and warnings will occur frequently.
A tit-for-tat dynamic balance: Once the agreement expires, it is highly unlikely that the two sides will be able to reach a fundamental compromise. The norm in the future will be: Iran will use speedboats, mines, or drone proxies to conduct precise, asymmetric "slice-and-grab" attacks on ships, keeping oil prices at a high level that is favorable to it; while the US military will maintain a strong escort fleet and conduct "equivalent precision airstrikes without escalating the war" against Iranian missile bases or military power grids that have crossed the line.
The likely trajectory of global crude oil transportation: the physical disruption of the dual-track supply chain.
Against the backdrop of increasingly frequent micro-conflicts, global crude oil transportation routes will undergo a historic structural restructuring, officially entering the "dual-track shipping era":
The West's "Southern Strategy" for compliant shipping lanes: In order to circumvent Iran's de facto control over the northern part of the Strait of Hormuz, the United States, Britain and other countries are fully supporting Oman to open up a "southern security shipping lane" close to the Omani coastline, providing regional zenith coverage through drones and patrol ships.
Many compliant Western merchant ships have even had to choose to detour around the Cape of Good Hope for extended periods, which has directly led to a significant increase in global shipping days and a substantial tightening of tanker capacity supply.
Independent operation of geopolitical shadow shipping lanes: The northern Strait of Hormuz will be completely transformed into a dedicated channel for non-US shadow fleets, which are completely independent of Western shipping insurance and use non-US currencies or barter for settlement. The global energy transportation network will be physically broken into two parallel worlds that do not intersect.
The price centers of crude oil and gold may still rise in the short term.
In conclusion, the paradigm shift in the geopolitical game between the US and Iran has created a "bottom support" and "central rise" logic for the world's two core commodities—crude oil and gold.
The sluggish pricing in the commodity market from March to May, driven by the US-Iran peace talks, may be brutally shattered by harsh physical realities. The overall price floor for crude oil and gold may be gradually raised due to this "chronic inflammation" in the Middle East.
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