Midweek Update #7: The Most Corrupt War In US History
Trump Is Passing The Initiative To Iran; Oil Markets, Watch Out If They Lose Their Optimism
All wars are horrible and this is no exception. However the US-Iran War of 2026 will never be the most horrible war in US history, the longest, the most destructive, etc. That is a good thing. However, something pretty horrible is unfolding in front of us. The US government is being used as a tool to corruptly enrich certain people, to a tune of billions of $’s. And that means US service personnel and Iranian civilians (the people who are suffering the most in this war) are being sacrificed so that others who have enriched themselves through their loss can enrich themselves further.
For the US military, this has to be a devastating situation. Soldiers sign up to defend the Constitution of the USA, on the assumption that when they are put in harms way, it is being done for the greater good of the country. To understand that they are now tools for corruption of their masters, not for the country at large, has to destroy the whole idea of serving the country.
For the Iranian people, whom Trump encouraged to rise up for their freedom, with no intention of actually helping them, the effect is something similar. They might have had hope for a while, even with Trump’s track record, that the USA would help them. Now they know the US cares not at all for them, used them for what Trump had hoped to be his political advantage, and has now abandoned them to a worse version of their original government.
So those who serve or want freedom get nothing. However, the corrupt at the top seem to be using every opportunity, even manipulating the course of the war, to cash in wherever and however they can. That becomes the big story of the week, as we have the most extreme example of this.
Also, the blockade/negotiations dance continues with the same basic problem that we have seen since early March. Trump wants out, desperately needs a “deal” that he can say is better than the JCPOA, but the Iranian government is under less pressure to give him that. As such, escalation remains on the table. Finally, the oil markets are rather optimistic, worth noting.
The Most Corrupt War In US History
On April 17, a $760 million bet on falling oil prices was placed minutes before Iran’s foreign minister publicly announced that the Strait of Hormuz would be open to commercial vessels. The announcement triggered an immediate market reaction, with crude oil prices falling as much as 11 percent within minutes. The trader who put the massive bet made a huge financial windfall in just moments.
This was no accident it was almost certainly corruption. Indeed it was just the latest of series of obviously corrupt trades, using inside information that could only have come from the top of the US Government, to make illegal benefits on major market shifts that the “investor” knew were only minutes away. It fits a pattern of trade which has caused hundreds of millions of $’s (at least) of gains for those with the inside information—and losses for many honest investors.
Other trades include:
March 9, 2026 (TV Interview): During a media interview, the President stated that the conflict with Iran was “very complete, pretty much,” signaling de-escalation. Oil prices subsequently dropped by approximately 25%. Market data shows a surge in futures trades betting on a decline in oil prices 47 minutes before the interview was made public.
March 23, 2026 (Truth Social Post): The President posted on social media shortly after 7 in the morning regarding productive talks and a delay in military action against Iranian energy infrastructure. Roughly 14 to 15 minutes prior to the post, unidentified traders executed an estimated $500 million bet on falling oil prices. Trading volume was approximately nine times the average level for that time of day. Following the post, crude prices plummeted by more than 10%.
April 7, 2026 (Ceasefire Announcement): Hours before the administration announced a two-week ceasefire with Iran, market data recorded an approximately $950 million wager predicting a decline in oil prices. Following the announcement, oil prices fell by roughly 15%.
These corrupt trades are just one example of how suspect money seems to be at the heart of so many of the political decisions of this war. For instance, the other day, the UAE was reportedly asking the Trump administration for financial assistance to prop up their economy which is suffering because of the war Trump started. Trump, when asked about the request, responded positively saying "They’re very good for this country, so yeah, if I could help them, I would."
However, what was not widely reported in these stories was not how the UAE was “good for the country” but instead how the UAE had been very good for Trump personally. UAE backed money seems to have piled into the Trump family crypto ventures right before Trump became president for the second time. One story is that they purchased a stake worth $500 million of Trump crypto (and Steve Witkoff got a nice kicker) at the start of the administration—and the Trumps this summer cashed much of that in.
And earlier, who else do you think benefited from massive UAE, Saudi and Qatari investment? Well that would be the President’s son in law, Jared Kushner, who is slated to be one of the two leading negotiators with the Iranians—if the next round of talks take place (see below). In this case we seem to be talking about at least $4 billion being handed over to Kushner to invest through his Affinity Partners investment fund. Again some details are:
Six months after Kushner left his role as a senior White House adviser in 2021, Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund (PIF) committed $2 billion to Affinity Partners.
By the end of 2024, the firm’s total assets reached approximately $4.8 billion. Reports from late 2025 and early 2026 indicate that Affinity’s assets under management have since grown to between $5.4 billion and $6.2 billion.
When you boil it down, the policies of the USA do not seem to be being developed or run by those who care about the USA at all, but instead policies seem to be vehicles to openly (and secretly) enrich those with close Trump ties
And this is only the things we know about.
This is what I mean about what we are seeing being the most corrupt war in US history. Every element of US policy seems to be crafted with an eye towards making money. Announcements seem to be made to benefit insider trading, deals made to reward past bribes, and government policy is in the hands of those with massive financial stakes from countries who are trying to influence US policy.
The US government is now arguably the most corrupt institution on earth—at least in terms of overall value of corruption. Everything seems to be for sale, from pardons, to the most advanced microchips, to tariff favors, and now even war and peace.
Any news story written about this war that does acknowledge such financial interest is not worth the paper it is printed on. We are witnessing a war by the corrupt for the corrupt, with Iranian civilians and US service personnel tools in the corrupt game.
This is what the USA has become.
Trump Is Passing The Initiative To Iran
On April Fool’s Day, I published one of these midweek updates which got some people mad. It made what seemed to me an obvious point. Donald Trump, who went into this war with no actual strategic objective beyond personal glory and enrichment, desperately wanted out. He had gambled on devastating air strikes to get him something he could call “victory” which would involve the installation a more malleable Iranian government that could serve his interests. However, he had failed to do that, and what he seems to have done is entrench even more hard-line interests. This led to the initiative in the war was switching to the Iranians.
In a nutshell, at this point Trump wanted out, but the Iranians were not letting him leave.
And they are still not. There has been talk for days the US-Iranian negotiations were on the brink of restarting in Pakistan. Indeed, the Trump administration was the prime spreader of that news. However, with the date of the supposed negotiations about to start, it seems, that the Iranians are now delaying. This has caused the Trump administration, as of just a few hours ago, to delay sending its negotiating team led by VP JD Vance to Pakistan. As of now, there is no set date for the talks to resume.
And Trump is left hanging, in a very public and humiliating way. If you want to see just how stuck he is, take a look at these three Trump tweets, given over the last few days. First, Trump was obviously getting frustrated with the Iranians stringing out the negotiations and decided to make another threat of historic war crimes to supposedly intimidate them.
They better do what he wants, or all their bridges and power plants were doomed! Doomed, I tell ya!
And yes, this is a war crime and the US will pay the price in the future for making it.
Unfortunately for Trump, however, the Iranians have a very different timeline, and just the act of stringing him out is in their interest. They clearly did not respond to him in a way he needed (to get some victory in the negotiations) so he basically caved in last night and admitted the war crime tweet was a bluff. Now Iran has an indefinite ceasefire.
Then, just a few hours ago, there was a desperate attempt, to prove to himself as much as anything else, that Iran is about to cave in.
This, btw, is the great problem with the blockade strategy as laid out in my Blockade primer last week. The blockade strategy will hurt Iran (and every state that relies on the Gulf—thus the world economy) but it will take time. Iran has built up cash reserves and the Iranian regime will do what it must to stay in power. It is not going to cave in to Trump because of a few weeks, even months, of financial shortfall. Here was the operative section on that.
Trump is so desperate to get out of the war that he started, that he seems to be convincing the Iranians that the time initiative is in their hands. He wants negotiations now, and the simple act of Iran delaying them is tying him up in knots. Even former Trump officials are now admitting that Trump’s desperation is showing and the Iranian regime almost certainly understands this. According to Miles Taylor, who served as Homeland Security deputy chief of staff under Trump, this is the situation:
“Officially, if you are in Tehran right now and you are part of the new government that has supplanted the people who were there before, you are reading this message right now and thinking you are in control of these negotiations…You are seeing what Donald Trump said and realizing the President of the United States has caved — that he has run out of cards and that he is terrified to do what he just said hours ago he was going to do, which was that he was so eager to begin bombing. He said if the deadline passes, he's going to resume bombing and that the military would.”
In that way, things have really not changed materially for a month. The only thing that has been revealed is that Trump does not want to escalate to ground troops. If he did, he would have. However the problems that presents clearly are panicking him, and he is left making his increasingly desperate threats.
Where we are is where we were—Trump will not get a deal better than Obama got a decade ago (which is his baseline negotiating position) and he clearly feels if he cannot do that, he cannot declare victory. However, that means he is stuck in strategic purgatory. We still cannot rule out escalation, btw, for as long as he is stuck, he might decide to just do it to try and break the logjam.
Iran has the initiative and he either must back down or escalate. Brace yourselves.
Oil Markets, Watch Out If They Lose Their Optimism
To see how effectively the Trump administration has manipulated the oil market (to its own benefit) here is the price of Brent Crude (a major benchmark) over the last month.
Notice that there has was a significant drop on April 7 when the ceasefire was announced (one of the cash-in moments). I would say that much of this is optimism, as it is based on the fact that an agreement is close because Trump says it is.
If there is anything we can say about the oil market (and the stock market) is that they seem to have an inbuilt bias towards optimism built into their fluctuations these days. What is worth noting is that this optimism has manifested itself while, arguably the economic threat has worsened. We now have a double-blockade of the Persian Gulf. Both the Iranians and Americans are controlling the traffic out. If this continues, what we will see is far worse for the world economy than the situation a month ago.
The markets are putting a great deal of credence in the tweets of Donald Trump. I hope they are not wrong.
Advice to trump on the art of negotiating from rudyard Kipling:
Now it is not good for the Christian's health to hustle the Aryan brown,
For the Christian riles, and the Aryan smiles, and he weareth the Christian down;
And the end of the fight is a tombstone white with the name of the late deceased,
And the epitaph drear: "A Fool lies here who tried to hustle the East."
I would assume the confidence is not so much in Trump succeeding but in the belief that Trump will TACO and really wants out of the war. Therefore the confidence is that he will make this happen (and presumably declare victory regardless of reality) one way or another. Madness through really, as you describe there aren't many good routes out.