Checkmate
Checkmate is the ultimate winning position in chess. It occurs when a player’s king is under attack (in “check”) and has no legal moves to escape capture. Fittingly, the term comes from the Persian “Shah Mat” meaning “the king is helpless.”
After eighteen days of Operation Epstein’s Fury, King Trump is cornered, with no escape route. He’s even asking China for help to reopen the Strait of Hormuz:
Iranians are good chess players. They told the world what they would do if attacked - target US military bases, close the Strait of Hormuz to enemy shipping and hit the zionist entity. They’ve demonstrated to the Gulf vassals that the US bases weren’t there to protect them but to protect Israel; they’re singlehandedly dismantling the US petrodollar grift; and they’re giving Israel the worst beating it has ever had.
By contrast, the only strategy the US/Israel had was “Shock and Awe” which has epically failed.
By controlling the Strait of Hormuz and demanding payment in Chinese yuan from ships that are allowed to pass, Iran has detonated an economic atomic bomb. The petrodollar system which has been in place since 1974 is a giant Ponzi scheme. By forcing the Gulf vassals and Opec to sell their oil - the world’s most traded commodity - in US$ and recycle their dollar profits back into US Treasury bonds and stocks, the US has maintained the dollar as the world’s reserve currency and financed US Big Tech, the Military Industrial Complex, its forever wars. Most importantly, it hasn’t had to pay its $40tn debt. All of this is now coming to an end and the Empire is in a panic.
There are more than 700 LNG tankers stranded on both sides of Hormuz. Trump’s desperate pleas to for allies to help unblock the Strait have been rebuffed by the Netherlands, Germany France, the UK, Spain, Australia, Finland, Greece, Italy and Japan. Predictably, he threw a tantrum:
Yesterday, Iran allowed the first tanker through the Strait after it paid for the cargo in Chinese yuan.
This single change means the world’s most critical energy chokepoint is conditional on currency denomination. The result will be a two-tier global oil market: yuan-denominated oil going through Hormuz and dollar-denominated oil having to be re-routed at considerable extra cost and time. The war premium that western importers have had to absorb since March 1 could become permanent.
Iran already uses the Chinese Cross-Border Inter-Bank Payments System (CIPS), an alternative to SWIFT that facilitates international trade in the Chinese RMB (Renminbi). At the end of 2025, CIPS spanned 124 countries and regions, providing cross-border services to over 5,000 banks. The global south is taking note. We’re watching in real time as the international financial architecture flips.
Where does this leave a cash-strapped Europe? Not in a good place.
EuroFuhrer Fond of Lyin warns that going back to Russian oil and gas would be a “strategic blunder.” She and her fellow eurocrats are driving the continent into an economic black hole, and they don’t care.
Of course she’s more than happy to toss billions more to the little green Narcofuhrer.
Here in the failing UK, the hapless Ed Milliband just locked the UK into a 20-year contract with private German company RWE to generate wind electricity off the UK’s shore! His solution for the energy crisis isn’t to take energy back into public ownership, but to tell pubs to turn off their fridges and serve warmer beer.
His clueless boss blames Russia and Iran for the UK’s privatised energy disaster:
Until we get ourselves off the rollercoaster of international oil and gas markets and onto clean, homegrown British energy, tyrants like Putin and the Ayathollas will be free to attack our energy security.
But like his pal Ursula, he’s determined to keep throwing money into the Narcofuhrer’s golden toilet to prevent Putin getting another windfall.
“It’s vital that we continue to focus on supporting Ukraine, we cannot allow the war in the Gulf to turn into a windfall for Putin.”
Who is going to tell him?
Iran to the US and zionist entity and, by extension, to its European puppets: Checkmate.