Posted on 06/21/2026 5:57:04 AM PDT by MtnClimber
It’s not Israel. It’s not even Iran. Look closer to home.
At this point, everyone is familiar with the 14 points of the Memorandum of Understanding between President Trump and remnants of Iran’s power structure. The document appears to use careful, ambiguous diplomatic language, but it actually serves as a raw political instrument. To decipher its true meaning, one must strip away the mannerly phrasing and read it in the plain political lexicon — the language of power, elections, and survival.
Article 1 states that midterm elections in America will take place in November 2026.
Article 2 specifies that they will occur on November 3, 2026.
Article 3 notes that these elections are nearly four months away.
Article 4 calculates the remaining time as approximately 20 weeks.
Articles 5 through 14 continue in the same vein: They emphasize the narrowing window and the need for visible results before voters go to the polls. They manifest the importance of avoiding distractions that could shift media focus. Finally, they raised the requirement that any international agreements produce measurable domestic benefits in time for Election Day.
The document never says these things directly. Instead, it speaks of “regional de-escalation,” “energy market stabilization,” and “confidence-building measures.” Translated into the realpolitik domain, however, every clause points to one overriding objective: securing a conservative majority in Congress on November 3, 2026.
Basically, these articles make the metric explicit. To win those elections, the average price of gasoline across the United States must remain below $4 per gallon — roughly less than $1 per liter. That single number has become the administration’s key performance indicator for the next four months.
(Excerpt) Read more at americanthinker.com ...
Dear FRiends,
We need your continuing support to keep FR funded. Your donations are our sole source of funding. No sugar daddies, no advertisers, no paid memberships, no commercial sales, no gimmicks, no tax subsidies. No spam, no pop-ups, no ad trackers.
If you enjoy using FR and agree it's a worthwhile endeavor, please consider making a contribution today:
Click here: to donate by Credit Card
Or here: to donate by PayPal
Or by mail to: Free Republic, LLC - PO Box 9771 - Fresno, CA 93794
Thank you very much and God bless you,
Jim
Dateline: Dubai.
“source said...”
Look - I don’t doubt the American companies will eventually get on board with this *IF* Iran gets their act together. Why wouldn’t they. But this reporting is a crapload of hopium.
The IRGC and the mullahs haven’t won a damned thing. Other than a temporary lack of “rain” as it were.
I suggested:
There is something like $166 billion in potential tariff refunds that could be subjected to a special 100% income tax and the proceeds used to issue Gas Price Help checks (~$600 each) to owners of insured motor vehicles.
Call your Congressman’s main office now!
********
There was $166 billion that could have countered the gas price increase for most American drivers. It’s probably nearly completely in the bank accounts of importers by now.
Thoughtful political disagreement among conservatives is not “nipping at the heels” and it’s certainly not “siding with the media”. Thoughtful disagreement is an essential element of our representative Republic, as it always has been. Cheers!
“A glut of oil will soon hit the market”
Trump’s deal is bound to fail.
If it owned an oil well, the crew would be told to limit production to merely meet financial obligations.
If makes sense to increase oil production if the price is high and lower it if the price is low.
Russian oil exports might be eliminated. The EU, UK and Ukraine are trying to eliminate them.
The Iran war was about Israel wanting regime change, for their actual
goal of ending Iran’s nuclear weapon ambitions and support of terror.
But Trump was not told the whole story and went
into the $trillion dollar war blindsided by Israel.
It would make more sense for America’s petroleum producers to keep the price under control if not reduce it at the cost of profits until the elections are over. They should have learned from the Democrat Party’s war on their industry that they’re survival is best assured under Republican administration.
The stockholders will whine but it’s better to moderate and insure survival than to piss off your consumers so much that they turn back to the party dedicated to killing your business.
This line that prices are dependent on traffic through the Strait is smoke being blown up everyone’s keisters. We are an exporter that has no dependency on Middle Eastern oil that’s not the result of bad policies.
The tragedy here is our President being coerced to appear surrendering after having just demonstrated why America shouldn’t be fooled with. Bad precedent by who has been a good president.
Oil companies aren’t going to subsidize politicians to the tune of tens of billions of dollars.
Your conclusion that because we export, we have no dependence on global supplies is nonsense, unless we reinstitute the Energy Policy and Conservation Act of 1975 which Congress repealed in 2015 as fracked shale crude began to flood the market.
Maybe Reuters is putting out false or unverified info, could be, but its reasonable to believe that a fund and potential market of this magnitude is certainly going to attract significant capital inflows. And then again, we’re not getting any info from the administration at all on this reconstruction fund. That in itself sparks questions. As I initially stated the central issue here is transparency. A little bit of color would help to dampen questions about who stands to profit. Anytime there is a lot of money sloshing around like this it deserves some scrutiny.
If we can get along without foreign oil we should. I recall one chain of gas stations always having lower prices than the others. A fuel trucker pumping gas into one told me they got all their fuel from Venezuela (pre-screwed up Venezuela).
If the price was lower even with the added cost of shipment that tells me America’s being gouged for the sake of sheer greed - as standard business policy. I stand on my statement that those companies, if they had good sense and any love for the country, would throttle that greed back for a few months.
I know it will be a hardship for some executives to settle for a lesser sports car, but sacrifices have to be made.
So, the last thing I am going to do is put Mahyer Tousi forward as an unbiased source, but he brought some receipts on a recent podcast, and it looks like factions within the Iran regime are murdering each other left and right, right now. That’s part (not all, but part) of why there is mixed-message craziness on getting the talks started.
Sorry. But that doesn’t sound to me like “Iran won.”
Butr that’s just me.
Because, let me say it again, NONE OF THIS HAPPENS UNTIL WE GET THE NEXT DOCUMENT SIGNED!!!!!!!!
The MoU was just an agreement to sit down and talk about stuff, the stuff listed in the MoU.
There is rarely as significant difference in the actual cost of gas between chains in the same area. But they market differently. One is selling 87 octane as “regular” for a few cents less than the 89 octane their competitor is selling as “regular”. So they are apples/oranges comparisons.
We *sell* most of our crude overseas because most of our crude is light/sweet and costs more per barrel, and our refineries are designed to handled heavy/sour crude, which is cheaper. That means in part we are being environmentally conscious, because the “sour” part is things like sulfur that *we* capture for other uses (think chemical industry), but many other countries would just dump into the environment - AND we get lots of stuff like asphalt, etc., out of the heaviest fractions that our construction and infrastructure industries use.
If we switched to refining light/sweet crude at our refineries we’d have to find other sources for the heavy products. What we are doing now is to our benefit all around.
Investment with ROI is way different than handing over planeloads of cash.
These executives run public companies.
I’m a shareholder in many energy companies and partnerships. Any CEO that sacrificed shareholder interests for political ends would be quickly out of a job.
Is this just your opinion? usually you post all sorts of back up to point you are trying to make.
From published reports.....found all over the net.
Sounds like we should stand back and watch for now.
And I know I go to the internet for “truthiness”. “Published all over the internet,” means squat without details.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.