"Iran must not have nuclear weapons..."

Key Markets report for Tuesday, 17 Jun 2025

The world is sinking deeper into all-consuming wars. Good news seems to be nowhere in sight. Missile exchanges between Iran and Israel have continued into their 5th day and neither side seems inclined to back down. Under the peace maker President Trump, the United States seems to be putting the pieces in place to join the war on the side of Israel, making itself yet again the Empire’s chief mercenary force and its perennial useful idiot.

Iraq Iran has weapons of mass destruction!

Mainstream media is in full psyops mode, following the “Saddam has weapons of mass destruction” playbook almost to a T! And just because the US intelligence community “continues to assess that Iran is not building a nuclear weapon,” this does not mean that we shouldn’t go to war all the same. As Donald Rumsfeld wisely pointed out, there’s always the unknown unknowns and it could turn out that Iran does indeed have weapons of mass destruction!

26 March 2025 was forever ago; the science changed since then.

The trusty and reliable FOX News just came to the rescue with the sensational new story about the "secret, previously unknown” nuclear weapons facilities. This should, of course, send a chill down any civilized person’s spine. Iran must not have nuclear weapons! That simple assertion must be repeated over and over again until everyone and their pets know it, believe it, and are willing to kill and die for it. For sure, the mainstream media would never lie us into another war.

The mullahs in Tehran are evil, they must be removed from power and that’s that. You are either with us or you are against us. Iran has proven itself intolerably dangerous by invading zero countries since 1738. Benjamin Netanyahu who is known to have never, ever uttered a lie, says that Iran is intent on committing the next holocaust. Only an antisemites would ever point out that Iran is the home to the second largest Jewish community in the Middle East, which has existed there unmolested continuously for over 2,000 years. Somehow, the evil mullahs didn’t get around to exterminating them. Still, that does not mean that we shouldn’t exterminate the mullahs: you can’t be careful enough these days.

Will the US come onboard?

Of course, the most disconcerting question of all is, what role will the US play in all this. Behind President Trump’s mixed messaging, most recent reports suggest that the US is painting itself into a corner: it is moving significant military assets to the region, including a large-scale deployment of aircraft, Navy destroyers as well as the USS Nimitz aircraft carrier strike group, now moving to the Middle East from the South China Sea.

Meanwhile, the administration declared that they won’t join the war unless US assets in the region get attacked by Iran. That’s about the polar opposite from a reassurance: if an invitation to stage a false flag attack could be any more obvious, it would have to look about like this:

The Nimitz is a 50-year old ship, scheduled to be decommissioned next year. There’s high likelihood that Israel has submarines in the region, and they could stage a similar attack as they did on 8 June 1967. On that day, Israeli aircraft and navy ships launched a surprise attack against the USS Liberty, killing 34 US sailors and wounding 174. The Israelis’ clever gambit was to blame the attack on Egypt and get the US to smash their enemy, but fortunately the attack failed to sink the Liberty.

Today, the Nimitz is just one of the potential targets for a false flag attack. The whole region is full of potential targets for an attack. Rather than a reassurance, the US position that it will stay out of the Iran-Israel war unless attacked, seems like a virtual guarantee that the war will escalate and that the US will end up drawn into it.

Trump goes ugly

On top of all that, Trump cut his participation in the G7 Summit short, apparently “due to the situation in the Middle East.” He then issued a statement on TruthSocial saying that, “Everyone should immediately evacuate Tehran!” This is an ugly threat; Tehran is a city of nearly 10 million people and issuing such a menacing message to its population is borderline terrorism, all from the leader of the “free world.”

All ingredients for WWIII are now in the pot

In Friday’s TrendCompass report I mentioned that the events will have an unpredictable impact on the internal politics in Egypt, Turkey, Syria, Jordan and Saudi Arabia among others. But since Friday, we’ve seen unusually sharp statements also from Russia, China and Pakistan indicating that they will not stand idly by as the Empire runs another war of choice in the Middle East.

There is a widely held perception that if the Iranian regime falls, China may find itself in the Empire’s crosshairs next. Russia is similarly concerned as it has a significant strategic interest in Iran. All in all, the ingredients for the outbreak of a full scale World War are now in the pot and the Empire, together with its media, is stirring it furiously, without any intention, it seems, to reverse course. The Iranians, essentially, are given one choice: to capitulate and submit to the Empire’s diktat, or else…

Will war ignite the festering imbalances in western economies?

In the hailstorm of competing narratives and extensive psyops that always accompany military conflict it is easy to forget that the conduct of war depends on the belligerents’ economic and industrial base. In this sense, the West is not in a good position. JP Morgan’s CEO Jamie Dimon wrote in his annual letter to shareholders that the geopolitical events “may very well be creating risks that could eclipse anything since World War II.”

He added that this “may lead to stickier inflation and higher [interest] rates than market expects,” higher energy costs. Dimon’s warnings were written in April of 2024, not this year and the situation hasn’t improved since then. Even if the markets seem to levitate amidst the geopolitical chaos, there’s risk that something might break suddenly and trigger an avalanche of large proportions.

As Dimon suggested, the fallout will likely be felt in interest rates (and treasury prices) and energy markets. Further jumps in the price of precious metals and a possible correction in equity prices are also likely to materialize. If the war escalation materializes in the way it appears at this moment, there’s no telling where the prices might go: $200/barrel crude oil is entirely within the realm of possibilities.

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Today’s trading signals

With yesterday’s closing prices we have the following changes for the Key Markets portfolio: