Christiaan Triebert

Because let's say something happens with one of these Shadow Fleet tankers, who the hell is going to pay for it?

So one striking thing that has happened after Trump met with European leaders at Davos is that Macron tweeted and said, hey, we as France...

also stopped and boarded a tanker that was carrying Russian-sanctioned oil.

So that's a striking spillover effect of Trump's gumbo diplomacy, where at least a one-time ally, France, is now doing the same thing as the US is doing, which is stopping and boarding these Shadow Fleet tankers.

But also, what I'm looking at right now is at a completely different side of the world, but very much linked, and that's Iran.

On Thursday night, Trump said that he's moving an armada of military vessels towards the region.

The US Treasury Department announced a new set of sanctions specifically targeting oil tankers because the US wants to put more pressure on Iran given their crackdown on the anti-government protests.

So what I find very interesting is that when we remember how this started in Venezuela...

Where you had the U.S.

military building up its forces around Venezuela and the U.S.

threatening and then stopping and boarding tankers linked to Venezuela's oil trade.

We see something similar happening with Iran right now.

The U.S.

is moving its military vessels there.

We see that actually happening on satellite imagery.

And the question is now, are we going to see something similar happening regarding Iran as what we saw happening in Venezuela?

Totally.

Iran and Russia are reliant on their income that they have from exporting their oil.

And there may be less shippers willing to transport their oil.

And that means that it will be harder for them, for Iran and for Russia, to get their oil out.