Neil Freiman

Vance said the biggest hang-up was Iran refusing to give up its nuclear ambitions, a non-starter for the United States.

So now we're staring down a double blockade of the Strait of Hormuz that won't make oil markets happy.

David Ignatius at the Washington Post, who has kind of a line into what discussions are happening in the White House, said the strategy here is a quote credited to Eisenhower.

If you cannot solve a problem, enlarge it.

So this is the this is the way the U.S.

is trying to just tighten the economic screws from Iran, because, as I mentioned, they're making about one hundred fifty million dollars.

a month from these tolls, as well as selling its own oil out into the open market.

Oil prices are above $100 a barrel, but Iran can actually fetch around $140 per barrel for this actual physical crude.

So it's making now annual run rate, we're talking like in software terms, but of billion dollars a year in selling its own oil.

What this also will do though is test how much

economic pain America and the rest of the world will take because right now there's going to be no oil or no fertilizer or any other sort of these key raw materials flowing from the Persian Gulf out to the rest of the world.

And that's why you're seeing oil markets actually react very significantly this morning.

They're up 8% to about $105 a barrel.

Energy prices are absolutely skyrocketing.

I know we previewed the inflation report on Friday.

It came in at 8.30 a.m.

Eastern after we were done recording.

It showed that consumer prices were up 3.3% in March from a year earlier.

That's up from February's gain of 2.4%.

It's the highest reading in two years.