US Loses Gulf States, Starts New Front, Demands Impunity

The unfolding exchanges captured in the conversation make a stark claim: what appears to be a widening set of regional conflicts is not merely a local or episodic crisis but a signal of deeper strategic unraveling. The Gulf has become a testing ground for competing visions of order—one premised on coercive control and unilateral impunity, another oriented toward negotiated equilibrium and regional autonomy. As the talk traces strikes, counterstrikes, political posturing, and a parallel assault on institutions of accountability, what emerges is a portrait of an empire trying to reassert control by force while losing the very partnerships and moral capital that once underwrote its reach. ## A theatre of multiple wars, not a single conflict The conversation frames current events less as isolated flare-ups than as a concatenation of wars that are colliding across theaters. The war in Ukraine is only one axis; the Gulf now represents another axis where hostilities risk conjoining into a broader pattern of instability. What is important here is the sense of simultaneity: air strikes, proxy engagements, and naval threats are proliferating almost in parallel, stretching the capacity of external patrons and regional actors alike. This is not yet a global conflagration of the scale of a world war, the discussion cautions, but the dynamics are worrying precisely because multiple smaller wars can interact in unpredictable ways—disrupting commerce, fracturing alliances, and forcing states into contested choices about alignment and autonomy. The spreading conflicts also reveal how the logic of escalation feeds on grievances and miscalculations. Each strike begets a strike; each sanction produces creative circumvention. The consequences are systemic rather than merely tactical. When economic chokepoints and critical infrastructure—airports, oil terminals, straits—become battlefields or bargaining chips, the fallout goes well beyond the immediate combatants. In that sense, the Gulf’s instability has global reverberations, given the region’s outsized role in energy markets and maritime commerce. ## Saudi escalation and the Yemeni response A focal point of the discussion is Saudi Arabia’s decision to intensify military actions against Yemen and the ensuing Houthi response. The bombing of airports and other facilities, coupled with retaliatory strikes against Saudi targets, underscored the depth of the spiral. What should alarm observers is that such escalation is unlikely to resolve the original grievances that produced Yemen’s protracted conflict; instead, it amplifies insecurity for both belligerents and civilians alike. More than a clash of arms, this escalation is a political gamble. For Riyadh, a renewed offensive may be interpreted as an effort to reassert regional influence or to eliminate perceived threats before they metastasize. But the risk calculus is adverse: heightened military operations impose further economic and reputational costs on Gulf monarchies that are already balancing budgets, diversification programs, and domestic stability. For Yemen, the response of disrupting maritime routes and threatening chokepoints is a form of strategic leverage—low-cost, high-impact—that weaponizes geography to offset material disadvantages. The net effect is a mutual degradation of security that spills into trade and energy markets. ## The Strait of Hormuz: fantasies of tolls and control One of the most striking elements highlighted in the conversation is the notion—voiced in public rhetoric—that a foreign power could assume the role of gatekeeper for the Strait of Hormuz and levy tolls on transiting commerce. Framing passage through this maritime artery as a service to be priced exposes two things: a misreading of regional sovereignty and an overestimation of coercive reach. Turning a waterway into an instrument of rent extraction requires not only naval dominance but also regional consent and a toleration by third-party consumers, none of which are assured. The imagery of tariffs and tolls is useful as a political metaphor. It dramatizes the temptation of external actors to monetize security rather than cultivate legitimate, mutually agreed arrangements. But such thinking also betrays a brittle strategic imagination: it assumes that coercive leverage can substitute for stable norms, diplomatic architecture, and the complex local relationships that underpin maritime order. In practice, attempts to treat chokepoints as fiscal fiefdoms invite resistance, raise transactional costs for global trade, and incentivize regional actors to seek alternative alignments or harden their defenses—thereby fragmenting the very order that tolling proponents claim to secure. ## Oman and the reassertion of regional autonomy Perhaps the most consequential signal noted in the exchange is the emergence of more independent Gulf voices—most notably through cautious, yet pointed, commentary from a traditionally neutral Gulf state. The conversation emphasizes that some countries in the region are reasserting the primacy of regional solutions and warning against the risks of external entanglements that privilege outside strategic interests over local security. When a state known for diplomatic discretion publicly identifies an external threat as more destabilizing than its immediate neighbor, it indicates a recalibration in how regional elites conceive their interests. This recalibration matters because it opens space for diplomacy that does not default to external protection. States that preserve balanced relations with neighbors, while avoiding permanent basing arrangements, offer a model of hedging that reduces the incentives for zero-sum competition. Such approaches create opportunities for mediated arrangements over navigation, energy security, and conflict de-escalation. The conversation suggests that if more regional actors embrace this posture, the Gulf could shift toward arrangements that privilege mutual coexistence, crisis management, and the insulation of commercial arteries from geopolitical payoffs. ## The assault on international law: impunity as policy A dark strand running through the discussion is the observation that alongside kinetic escalation there is a parallel political offensive directed at institutions that constrain state behavior—chiefly, the International Criminal Court. The claim is stark: when powerful states perceive that legal accountability constrains their operational freedom, the reflex is not reform but delegitimization. The conversation frames recent policy pronouncements as a deliberate attempt to wrench legal checks and balances from the international system under the rubric of protecting “sovereignty.” Interpreting “sovereignty” as a synonym for “impunity” is a pivotal diagnostic move. It exposes how political narratives recast legal accountability as an external threat to national dignity, rather than as a mechanism to deter abuse and protect victims. The practical risk is that dismantling, weakening, or immunizing certain actors from international scrutiny establishes a two-tiered system of accountability—one for the powerful and another for everyone else. That bifurcation corrodes the normative foundations of international order: reciprocity, enforceability, and the predictability that underpins both diplomacy and commerce. The conversation also traces this logic into recent high-profile prosecutions and extraterritorial legal assertions, arguing that such tactics normalize the idea that domestic legal claims can be exported to punish foreign conduct. The reaction—an effort to shield nationals from external legal processes—may enjoy short-term political salience but imposes long-term costs on the rule-based order that governs interstate relations and humanitarian protections. ## Decline, desperation, and the strategic consequences Taken together, the elements discussed point toward a broader diagnosis: a hegemon experiencing diminishi

US Loses Gulf States, Starts New Front, Demands Impunity The US-Israeli war alliance is losing its allies in the gulf. The resumption of the Iran War is a reflection of US desperation and the best idea Washington has? Start a new front against international law itself. The decline of the empire is accelerating. Support us on Substack: https://pascallottaz.substack.com Merch: https://neutralitystudies.com/shop Donation: https://neutralitystudies.com/donate #Pascal Welcome back, everybody, to Neutrality Studies. This is Pascal, and I want to do a very short update with you about the spreading of the wars—plural, because it is several wars right now that are kind of coming together. I do not think that we're yet in a Second World War scenario, where the slow spreading of everything then actually leads to a Third World War, but the way that things are going is very frightening. We see how the war in Ukraine, the NATO proxy war against Russia, is spreading. It's not very much of a proxy war anymore since NATO managed to take the fight straight into Russia. But today I would not want to focus on that one. I want to focus on the other theater— the incredible kind of spreading of the war now again in the Gulf region. We read now that Saudi Arabia is starting to chime in with more attacks on Yemen. It just bombed Sana'a airport, where the delegation from Yemen, from the Houthis that was attending the funeral of the slain Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in Iran, was supposed to come back and wanted to land. And then the Saudis actually bombed the airfield, so that airplane had to go to a different airport and land there. And now the Houthis are striking back at Saudi Arabia, or the Yemenis—Yemen is striking back—and Yemen is now officially thinking or talking about closing its strait on its end of the Arabian Peninsula, which would of course exacerbate the problems that the United States has with global oil supply, while at the same time the United States is bombing and continues to bomb Iran. We are hearing that now a third and fourth wave of strikes has been conducted on the Iranian mainland. And tomorrow, we will be talking again to Larry Johnson in order to get an expert update on what exactly these latest bombings on both sides mean. But the war—the war against Iran—is in full swing again. And there is not even any point anymore in talking about the Memorandum of Understanding, which now is more or less shelved, although most likely at some point the United States will start begging Iran to come back to it. But for now, the pause in the war is on pause. So the continuation of the bombing is going on. We are seeing how the U.S. wants to take over the Strait of Hormuz. -- 1 of 9 -- Donald Trump, yesterday and the day before, was talking about being the security provider for the Strait of Hormuz and proposing really kind of lunatic numbers. He's talking about charging 20% of the value of the cargo that a ship passing through the Strait would have to pay in order to be allowed through by the U.S. administrators. Now, this is, of course, an absolute brain fart of Donald Trump, but it shows the mindset that he would even write about or talk about something like that. I mean, this to me is a typical moment when he has the idea that, oh, I can create new leverage, I can threaten everybody with a 20% toll fee. So when I go down to 5%, they will all lick my boots and be so happy that I'm so kind. But this is a typical negotiation strategy that he has displayed before, when he thinks that he has an unbeatable kind of leverage, so that he then sets an astronomical figure at first, so that when he goes down and basically gives it away at a 75% discount, everybody will go along with it. He has done this time and time again. Just think about the tariff war of last year, how he thought he could use tariffs and then threaten everybody with like 50%, 100% tariffs. So when it then only was 20% or whatever it was in the end, all of them would say like, yeah, we are glad and we are happy and dear Donald and so on and so forth. This tells me that Donald Trump is actually thinking of the Strait of Hormuz as something that he can implement in a way that, in the end, this waterway will be an American waterway, will be under control, and that he will be able to actually throw Iran out of its own neighborhood. I don't know where he gets that weird idea from, but he's already talking about it. But then again, Donald Trump lives in a fantasy world, and a lot of the U.S. war hawks, including the neocons, of course, live in a very bizarre fantasy world. Mr. Abbas Saeed yesterday then took to Twitter and actually seized on the opportunity to remind everybody what a benign regional hegemon Iran actually is. He wrote about this idea of Donald Trump saying that POTUS, so the president, is absolutely right. Whoever provides a secure and safe passage of commercial vessels through the Strait of Hormuz should be compensated for this service. Iran has always been the guardian of the Strait and will remain so forever. 20% is, of course, too much. We will be fair. I mean, the Iranians at this point are really, really good, not only at trolling Donald Trump, but basically paying back in kind, including taking over some of the really ridiculous language, including the all-caps kind of intermissions or underlined words in all caps, just in order to take over, you know, this baby language. This is the grown-ups using baby language to talk to baby Trump, right? And to troll baby Trump and to troll the United States. But it actually shows that we have the Iranians who properly understand their own leverage. I still do wonder who gave Trump this idea, if it was the recently deceased Lindsey Graham, one of his last things on the way out, that he whispered into Trump's ear that you can be the toll master of the Strait of Hormuz, and you can make a lot of money out of this, and we can squeeze the Europeans, we can squeeze the Asians, we can squeeze the Gulf states, and just squeeze them hard, so you should put the price tag already, put it as high as possible, and then go down later. -- 2 of 9 -- But it seems to me that, at least for the moment, Donald Trump, also with these kinds of ideas, is again following the neocon line of the administration and is convinced actually that he will get this. Now, on the other hand, one very important thing at the moment to me is what is happening in the Gulf states themselves, so that Saudi Arabia actually escalated the war with Yemen. That is, of course, a very negative development. It seems to indicate that Saudi Arabia judges that now the moment is ripe to maybe finish off a job that it itself never managed to complete. But then again, an escalation at the moment, what is that supposed to achieve other than even further economic duress on the Gulf states, including Saudi Arabia? This is something open to see. But yesterday, also, the foreign minister of Oman did something very interesting in an interview with one of the Western media outlets. The Omanis, you must know, are very, very careful people. Sometimes they're lumped together with the other Gulf states, together with the UAE, with Qatar, Bahrain, and, of course, Saudi Arabia, as part of the Gulf Club, and they are part of the regional arrangements for trade that they've got over there. However, Oman is the most careful of all of the Gulf states to try to have a balanced foreign policy, which is why we actually don't hear much about it, which is why it is not often in the news unless it is one of the meeting grounds for negotiations. Much of the Iran negotiations actually happened in Muscat, Oman, and Oman has always been ready and willing to help as a diplomatic service provider of last resort. Just as a piece of information for you, this is the homepage of the Omani foreign ministry, and how they talk about themselves and about their role in the world, even on their own homepage, is very, very prudent. I'll just read a few words for you, just one sentence from the main page on its foreign policy. It says that the foreign policy of the Sultanate of Oman is founded on a profound and enduring vision of Oman as a friend to all. A friend to all. And if you go to its foreign policy principles, we can read a little bit more about this approach. The foreign policy of the Sultanate of Oman is dedicated to peace and security. It is based on certain core principles, which are rooted in an understanding of Oman as an active participant in a mutually supportive global community. Oman strongly believes in developing and maintaining good relations with all its neighbours. It has been a consistent aim of Omani foreign policy to ensure that its relations with its neighbours are characterized by friendship, mutual respect, non-interference, and understanding. Oman's neighbours include the fellow members of the Arab Gulf Cooperation Council, with whom Oman has developed extensive economic and security collaboration, contributing substantially to mutual security during a period of uncertain regional stability. Very importantly now, in the next couple of sentences, for Oman, the concept of neighbour extends beyond immediate adjacent countries to embrace other important partners whose proximity and significance qualify them as neighbouring states. Yemen, Iran, India, and Pakistan are thus among the most important neighbours. So I'll stop here. I just wanted to read this out to you so that you understand just how different Oman is from the other Gulf states, which built their entire security structure around an alliance with the United States and, you know, basically getting the idea that if -- 3 of 9 -- you have a lot of US bases on your soil, you will be safe and you just need to make sure that you are in the right club. The Omanis never played in anyone's club. The Omanis don't have United States military bases on their territory. Oman, in my view and in my definition, is a poster child for a neutral country—neutral in the political sense of actually maintaining proper neutrality, a proper friendship with all sides. That includes Iran, which is why Iran is actually discussing with Oman how to manage the Strait of Hormuz, which is why Iran and Oman are constantly in diplomatic contact, which is why Oman is able to serve as a go-between for negotiations between Iran and the United States, although there's really not much negotiation going on. But I just wanted to point this out before showing you this article here from Al-Mayadeen, a Lebanese outlet that reports about an interview the Omani foreign minister, Mr. Badr al-Busaidi, gave, in which he said that the greatest threat to Gulf security comes from Tel Aviv rather than Tehran, and that he argues the recent war exposed the failure of decades of US-led containment. So this, to me, is quite significant again because Oman is very, very careful whenever it criticizes any one of its neighbors. And although Israel is removed geographically from Oman, and the entirety of Saudi Arabia and other states is in between, still Oman is very careful. That now the foreign minister actually comes out and points his finger at Tel Aviv, at Israel, is quite significant. It tells me that Oman now not only feels empowered enough to do so and to point out the obvious, but that it also finds it necessary to signal to other Gulf states that it itself, as a Gulf state, is of the opinion that the Gulf should find a way to arrange its affairs with Iran and get to some sort of agreement on how to wind down the conflict, the violence. But that the Gulf states should be very wary and very careful about what they're doing in regard to Israel, which is, of course, a main recipient of this message — the UAE, the United Arab Emirates, Dubai, Abu Dhabi, and so on. They've been quite openly supportive of Israel in the very recent past. And this kind of statement that Oman is saying out loud, to me, is also a message to the UAE that the