The intriguing bit is that Trump is likely to attend the talks in Islamabad this weekend -- if he does, it will be the clearest signal yet that the US is ready to exit the war with some sort of win to show, since he cannot afford to go for the talks and return empty-handed, notes Prem Panicker in his must read blog on the Iran War.
'The Strait of Hormuz isn't social media,' the Iran consulate in Hyderabad snarked (external link). 'If someone blocks you, you can't just block them back.'
Donald Trump is finding that out. Multiple reports say that Saudi Arabia has been talking (external link) to Trump, asking that the US blockade of Hormuz be lifted forthwith. And the reason why is written on the map of the region.
Hormuz Blockade Disrupts Oil Flows
If the Hormuz is completely shut -- the tracker indicates (external link) that a mere three ships crossed the Strait in the past 24 hours against the pre-war rate of around 60, though Reuters reports (external link) that at least eight ships including three Iran-linked tankers crossed the waterway -- and the Houthis and their proxies deliver on their threat to close the Bab el-Mandeb Strait, Saudi Arabia's main oil export routes will be severed.
Key Points
- Shipping through Hormuz has collapsed sharply, disrupting global oil flows and exposing limits of US blockade strategy.
- Saudi Arabia faces severe export constraints as alternative routes remain vulnerable to Houthi threats and regional instability.
- Mounting pressure from allies is pushing the US towards renewed talks with Iran as a potential war exit strategy.
- European nations are increasingly distancing from Israel, suspending defence ties and tightening diplomatic and economic pressure.
- War costs, supply depletion, and rising geopolitical risks are straining the US while China's role adds strategic complexity.
Saudi Oil Routes Under Threat
The kingdom has one theoretical escape route -- the East-West Pipeline running to the Red Sea port of Yanbu.
But with the Houthis threatening the Bab el-Mandeb, tankers leaving Yanbu have no easy route -- north through a contested Red Sea to the Suez Canal, or a grinding 10-plus-day detour around the Cape. Saudi Arabia's Asian customers, its largest market, would be the hardest hit.
Recent events underscore vulnerabilities: The East-West Pipeline itself was hit by a drone (external link) (attributed to Iran) on a pumping station just hours after a US-Iran ceasefire in early April 2026, temporarily reducing throughput before quick repairs restored flows.
US-Iran Talks Back in Focus
Saudi Arabia would likely need to cut crude production to match reduced export capacity, ramp up Red Sea refining to export products where possible, and draw on strategic storage.
Overall, the Asian markets that are Saudi Arabia's largest customers suffer severe disruptions, with only a fraction of normal export volumes reaching Western buyers at much higher costs and logistical strain.
With Saudi Arabia in his ear, Trump needs an off-ramp.
On cue, there are reports that US-Iran talks (external link) could resume in Islamabad by the weekend.
The intriguing bit is that Trump is likely to attend -- if he does, it will be the clearest signal yet that the US is ready to exit the war with some sort of win to show, since he cannot afford to go for the talks and return empty-handed.
Where could that notional win come from?
Nuclear enrichment is the most likely option: The US has demanded a 20-year moratorium while Iran, in recent reports, has offered five years (external link).
Somewhere between these two positions lies the off-ramp, assuming the US delegation is willing to negotiate rather than draw unilateral 'red lines'.
Europe Hardens Against Israel
From Verona to Brussels, the doors are closing
Much of the war coverage, including on this blog, has tended to focus on the US.
Less noticed is that Israel's diplomatic and military isolation across Europe is hardening by the week.
The latest crack came Tuesday when Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni announced (external link) that Rome would not renew (external link) its longstanding defence cooperation agreement (external link) with Jerusalem. The pact, signed in 2005 and renewed automatically every five years, covered joint military training, equipment exchanges, and technology research. It expired Monday. Trump is 'shocked', he says (external link).
Meloni's terse explanation: 'In view of the current situation.'
Translation: The escalation in Lebanon, including an incident in which Israeli forces fired warning shots (external link) at a convoy of Italian UN peacekeepers, made automatic renewal politically impossible.
The symbolism is hard to overstate.
The hard-right Meloni had positioned herself as one of Netanyahu's staunchest backers in Western Europe.
Her reversal is the clearest sign yet that even former allies are peeling away, which in turn indicates that popular opinion is hardening against Israel.
The rest of the continent is moving in the same direction, if at varying speeds. Spain has enacted a total arms embargo -- exports, imports, and transit -- and written it into law.
Slovenia became the first EU member to ban all weapons trade with Israel outright.
France has faced an outright Israeli boycott of its defence exports after Paris's increasingly sharp criticism.
Germany, long Israel's biggest European arms customer, has quietly frozen new licences for anything that could be used in Gaza or Lebanon.
Belgium and The Netherlands have imposed partial restrictions; Ireland and Norway have gone further rhetorically, pushing for sanctions inside the EU.
At the bloc level, a citizens' petition (external link) to suspend the EU-Israel Association Agreement has gathered more than a million signatures (external link).
The European Council's latest statements are blunt: repeated calls for compliance with international law, an immediate ceasefire, and unimpeded humanitarian access.
Eurovision-style cultural boycotts and campus protests add to the ambient pressure. To be sure, not every transaction has stopped.
A handful of Eastern and Central European governments still buy Israeli drones and missile-defence tech for their own Russian border worries.
But those deals are pragmatic exceptions, not strategic partnerships.
The overall trend is unmistakable: The diplomatic cordon around Israel is tightening, and the military one is fraying.
The geography that won't move:
Despite the ceasefire, shipping through Hormuz has fallen to a fraction of pre-war levels -- roughly nine vessels a day against a pre-war rate of over 130, and the WaPo's cartographers explain why geography, not just politics, is the reason.
Iran's rugged coastline, shallow funnelling lanes, and the psychological weight of mines give Tehran leverage that no blockade announcement dissolves.
Essential reading for understanding why 'opening the strait' is easier declared than done. [Washington Post (external link)
The commander in chief, after midnight:
Tom Nichols in The Atlantic on Trump's Truth Social binges -- attacking the Pope, positioning himself as Christ, announcing a naval blockade as a casual news-feed item at 12:43 am.
The president is the sole steward of the codes to a massive nuclear arsenal, US forces have been at war for almost six weeks, and China is reportedly helping Iran rearm.
Nichols is asking the question elected representatives should be asking. [The Atlantic (external link)]
The bill coming due:
The New Yorker's Garrett Graff on what the war has cost America's arsenal.
The US used more than 850 Tomahawks in just the first month of fighting, against a total estimated stockpile of 3,000 to 4,000, while the 2026 defence budget funds the purchase of only 57 new ones.
Elbridge Colby spent years warning that Middle East adventures would hollow out America's China deterrence. He wasn't wrong. [New Yorker (external link)]
The nuclear dominoes are wobbling:
The Economist's interview with IAEA chief Rafael Grossi is the clearest public statement yet of where proliferation risk stands.
Grossi confirms that countries across the Gulf, Europe, and Asia are privately debating nuclear options, and warns that if a race begins, a domino effect will 'inevitably' lead a good number of countries to follow.
The cynical counter-argument, that Kim Jong Un is alive and Gaddafi isn't, is also in here, and it's not easily dismissed. [The Economist (external link)]
Beijing's fingerprints:
The Financial Times' investigation into TEE-01B, the Chinese spy satellite secretly acquired by the IRGC, is the week's most significant piece of original reporting.
Leaked Iranian military documents show the satellite monitored Prince Sultan air base in Saudi Arabia on the days US refueling planes were struck, and conducted surveillance of US facilities in Jordan, Bahrain, Iraq, Kuwait, Djibouti, and Oman.
The New Yorker piece worries in the abstract about China watching American stockpiles deplete. This piece shows China doing something about it. [Financial Times (external link)]
Global Economic Risks Rise Sharply
The numbers behind the fog:
Martin Wolf in the Financial Times uses the IMF's new World Economic Outlook to put hard figures on what chaos costs.
In the fund's adverse scenario, global growth slows to 2.5 per cent this year with inflation at 5.4 per cent; in its severe scenario, growth falls to around 2 per cent.
Wolf's framing -- how long can a resilient economy coexist with farcical politics -- is the right question, and he doesn't pretend to have a reassuring answer. [Financial Times (external link)]
The Lebanon thread:
The New York Times on the Rubio-hosted Israel-Lebanon talks -- significant less for what was agreed (nothing firm) than for what it signals: Both Israel and Lebanon now share the goal of disarming Hezbollah, and the US is insisting this track remain separate from the Iran negotiations, explicitly refusing continued Iranian influence over Lebanon.
Iran will resist. Worth watching. [New York Times (external link)]
The squandered hand:
Aakar Patel in the Asian Age with the sharpest India-specific piece of the week: India is possibly the only country with functioning relations with all three parties to this war, and has chosen to do nothing with that position.
Patel frames this against Manmohan Singh's 2013 foreign policy doctrine -- development-first, good-neighbourly, pluralist -- and the distance between that compass and the current government's instincts is the argument.
The line about Israel being India's 49th largest trade partner, yet somehow a foreign policy obsession, is the kind of thing that should make readers uncomfortable. [Asian Age (external link)]
The view from orbit:
Will Self in Le Monde examines war through the Pizza Index, the informal intelligence that spikes in late-night delivery orders near the Pentagon precede crises. It sounds like a joke.
Self uses it to build a serious argument about what he calls 'orbital history': Events that descend from technological systems operating beyond human scale, legible only as weak signals in mundane data.
Baudrillard, McLuhan, Ballard, and a delivery driver in Arlington all make appearances.
Read this one when the news has exhausted you.
It won't make things better, but it will make them more interesting, and the writing alone is worth the price of entry.[Le Monde (external link)]
In passing...
So here is where things stand midway through the week:
The ceasefire is a ceasefire in name only -- nine ships a day through Hormuz against a pre-war rate of over 130 tells you everything about the gap between announcement and reality.
The blockade Trump declared in a midnight Truth Social post has added legal jeopardy to physical danger for any shipping company contemplating the transit.
Saudi Arabia, watching its main export routes tighten like a noose, is in Trump's ear asking for relief.
Iran is collecting tolls and sitting on geography that no executive order can redraw.
Into this, reportedly, comes the weekend and with it, the possibility of resumed US-Iran talks in Islamabad.
The signals are there if you choose to read them: Trump's approval ratings are falling, the economy is softening, the munitions cupboard is barer than anyone in Washington wants to admit publicly, and even Giorgia Meloni has found her limit.
The pressure for an off-ramp is real and growing from multiple directions simultaneously.
But the gap between pressure and deal remains wide.
Iran has offered five years on enrichment; the US has demanded twenty.
Somewhere in that fifteen-year chasm lies either a negotiation or a continued war. And hovering over all of it, as the Financial Times's satellite investigation makes plain this week, is China -- not a passive observer counting Tomahawks on a clicker, but an active participant providing the intelligence architecture that helped Iran find and strike American assets.
Any deal that doesn't address that dimension is a deal that solves less than it appears to.
The weekend will tell us whether the Islamabad channel is real or theatre.
Trump going to the talks himself would be the clearest possible signal that Washington is serious about an exit.
Trump staying home would tell a different story.
Shubho Nababorsho, Vishu Aashamsagal, Puthandu Vaazhthukal, Happy Baisakhi and Happy Rongali Bihu to all who celebrate.
Photographs curated by Manisha Kotian/ Rediff
Feature Presentation: Ashish Narsale/ Rediff
