Jun 10, 2026 · 41 min · 11 segments
Editor’s note: This episode of Frontlines was recorded June 5, 2026. Despite the ongoing closure of the Strait of Hormuz and rising concerns over global energy supplies, financial markets continue to…
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I've been giving you full props in some of my speeches, and this week in Iowa I did exactly that, where you had told us the end of the Iran war and the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz on different trajectories.
I guess the question is, what is it going to take to get the Strait of Hormuz reopened?
You know, I've been contemplative about this the last two or three weeks or so because the first project I ever did as an intern at Stratfor, the first company I ever worked for, I was an intern red teaming an Israeli-U.S. attack on Iran.
And one of the things that we concluded was that there was no way that that attack was going to happen because if you close the Strait of Hormuz, oil prices start to levitate.
And the thing that's remarkable is if you could go back in time and tell intern Jacob 15 years ago that the Strait of Hormuz is going to be closed and Brent Cruz is going to be at 90 a barrel and the S&P is going to be making new record highs, he would have been absolutely flabbergasted because he would have thought it was Mad Max Fury Road and we're killing each other for petrol and going to the diesel station and everything else.
Like even all these oil analysts that I trust that are literally lighting themselves on fire on social media, the market is telling you sort of what it's priced at.
So my answer to that question before, Sean, would have been when markets get too high and when the global economy comes to a halt, That is the point at which the Strait will reopen.
But I think I, among other analysts, just underestimated how less important oil is relative to the global economy than it used to be in the 1970s, underestimated the amount of reserves that were out there, underestimated the ability of oil markets to cover themselves.
And that doesn't mean that it's over quite yet, but I think there's this weird chicken and egg situation where everybody, including the Iranians, thought that if you stop traffic through the Strait of Hormuz, markets suffer.
And if you look underneath the hood in Southeast Asia, things are not going well.
I've been giving you full props in some of my speeches, and this week in Iowa I did exactly that, where you had told us the end of the Iran war and the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz on different trajectories.
I guess the question is, what is it going to take to get the Strait of Hormuz reopened?
You know, I've been contemplative about this the last two or three weeks or so because the first project I ever did as an intern at Stratfor, the first company I ever worked for, I was an intern red teaming an Israeli-U.S. attack on Iran.
And one of the things that we concluded was that there was no way that that attack was going to happen because if you close the Strait of Hormuz, oil prices start to levitate.
And the thing that's remarkable is if you could go back in time and tell intern Jacob 15 years ago that the Strait of Hormuz is going to be closed and Brent Cruz is going to be at 90 a barrel and the S&P is going to be making new record highs, he would have been absolutely flabbergasted because he would have thought it was Mad Max Fury Road and we're killing each other for petrol and going to the diesel station and everything else.
Like even all these oil analysts that I trust that are literally lighting themselves on fire on social media, the market is telling you sort of what it's priced at.
So my answer to that question before, Sean, would have been when markets get too high and when the global economy comes to a halt, That is the point at which the Strait will reopen.
But I think I, among other analysts, just underestimated how less important oil is relative to the global economy than it used to be in the 1970s, underestimated the amount of reserves that were out there, underestimated the ability of oil markets to cover themselves.
And that doesn't mean that it's over quite yet, but I think there's this weird chicken and egg situation where everybody, including the Iranians, thought that if you stop traffic through the Strait of Hormuz, markets suffer.
And if you look underneath the hood in Southeast Asia, things are not going well.
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