Georgi Kantchev

So there could be a real debate for many Republicans running for Congress, running for the House, and running for the Senate, whether they would support such a move, or perhaps they feel like this is President Trump's party, these are his policies, he knows how to do populist economic messages, and this is the kind of thing they're gonna have to get behind.

[instrumental music] Well, in Dallas last night, Trump promised that oil prices would go down as soon as we win the war with Iran, something he said was, quote, "taking place right now." But as foreign correspondent Georgi Kantchev reports, the picture on the ground suggests otherwise, as Iran intensifies attacks on US Navy warships, including using warheads possibly acquired with help from Russia or China.

While CENTCOM reports that US warships have thus far evaded those attacks, Georgi said that any direct hits risk triggering a fierce response and a return to full-scale war.

So this by Iran is ultimately a significant gamble that with those attacks, it can make the status quo untenable for the US, and the reason for that strategy is because the economic pressure that has been building over the past months, now it is coming to a head because Iran cannot export any oil from, uh, the Persian Gulf since mid-July, since the US instituted its blockade again.

Turning to the Middle East, the US says our forces in the region have been keeping oil traffic flowing through the Strait of Hormuz, but independent trackers can't seem to account for all of it.

The Wall Street Journal's Georgi Kantchev looked into the discrepancy.

He joins me from Dubai.

Georgi, welcome.

The Journal is a co-production of Spotify and The Wall Street Journal.

Additional reporting in this episode by John Emont, Rory Jones, Georgi Kantchev, Hena Moosavi, Lawrence Norman, Summer Said, and Alexander Ward.

Thanks for listening.

See you tomorrow.

Independent tanker watchers, however, which count ships and oil output, say they're only seeing a range of between 2 and 6 million barrels a day.

Wall Street Journal foreign correspondent, Georgi Kantchev, says that divergence could come down to a few different factors.

The U.S. Navy has a better overview than the commercial trackers, uh, because a lot of the ships right now that are crossing the Strait of Hormuz are doing that at night with their transponders off, uh, in which case that means they're difficult to track by satellites, and satellites and transponders is what the commercial players use to track ships.

So the Navy might have a better overview.