End in sight? Hormuz, nukes at the heart of US-Iran sticking points

Another day, another storm in a teapot that men call the world. They speak of an “end in sight” for a conflict, of oil prices and bargaining. As if the end of a war were in their power to grant, like a prize. They are like children arguing over a ball, believing the game itself depends on who holds it.

The Strait of Hormuz is not in my power. The nuclear ambitions of nations are not in my power. The words of a man who was a ruler, and the price of a barrel of crude oil - these things are externals, indifferent. They are the material given to me, like wood to a carpenter. My task is not to lament the quality of the wood, but to craft a sound judgment from it.

What is in my power? My judgment of these events. Do I fear them? Do I crave a particular outcome? That is the real battle, and it is fought here, in this room, not in the Persian Gulf. If I tie my tranquility to the success of these negotiations, I have handed the keys to my own mind to fools and chance. I have made myself a slave to headlines.

They call it a “sticking point.” The only true sticking point is a faulty judgment, a mind that clings to what it cannot control. Let the ships sail or be halted. Let the talks succeed or fail. My role is to see these things for what they are: events to be met with reason, not with panic or hope. The arena is here. The opponent is my own desire for a different set of circumstances. I will not be defeated by news from a land I have never seen.

Diary Entry

They speak of “sticking points.” Hormuz. Nukes. The price of a barrel of oil. The language of the negotiators is the language of the zone of being, where states are recognised as sovereign actors, where interests are balanced, where a “deal” is possible. It is a language that erases the lived reality of the zone of non-being. For whom is the war “three months” old? For the architects of the negotiation, perhaps. For the bodies upon which this Manichean world is inscribed, the war is decades old. It is the permanent condition of being under the gaze that names you a threat, that defines your sovereignty as a “problem” to be managed, your resources as a “lever” to be pulled.

The crude price dips on a word from Trump. This is the ultimate epidermalization. The life of a region, the destiny of millions, is reduced to a fluctuation in a market that does not see them. Their being is processed as data, as risk, as a “sticking point.” The violence is not merely in the bombs; it is in the categories. To be told you may only re-enter the zone of being by surrendering your right to what the other possesses by nature - this is the psychological violence of the colonial structure. It says: your existence is conditional upon wearing the mask I approve. Your “nukes” are a threat; ours are a guarantee of order.

They ask if an end is in sight. An end for whom? The negotiation seeks not to dismantle the structure, but to calibrate it. It seeks to make the division of the world into zones of being and non-being more efficient, more stable for the markets. It is a reform that leaves the diagnostic categories intact: the West as the arbiter of legitimate power, the rest as supplicants who must prove their harmlessness. The first act of liberation is always a refusal of the terms of the debate. Until that happens, there is no end. There is only the management of an endless war, waged in boardrooms and on trading floors, and felt in the skin of those who are never asked when their four weeks began.

Diary Entry

Wait - hold on. Let me think about this. The whole Iran nuclear deal, the sanctions, the oil prices - it’s like watching someone try to balance a pencil on its tip while the table shakes. The official story is that if we just push hard enough, Iran will fold. But that’s not how pressure works. Pressure doesn’t disappear - it redistributes.

Look, the problem isn’t just Iran. It’s the assumption that you can force a country to behave by squeezing it until it gasps. That’s not physics - that’s wishful thinking. If you compress a system, it doesn’t just vanish; it finds another way out. Maybe it’s more centrifuges, maybe it’s proxies, maybe it’s just waiting until the next administration. The idea that this is a simple lever to pull - sanctions up, compliance down - ignores the feedback loops.

And the oil prices? Please. Markets react to fear, not just facts. If Brent crude drops because someone says the end is near, that’s not stability - that’s a bet on words. Words are cheap. Uranium enrichment isn’t.

Here’s the thing that bothers me: nobody’s asking what happens after the squeeze. If you corner a system, it doesn’t surrender - it adapts. And usually not in the way you want.

I remember the Challenger. Everyone kept saying, “It’ll hold.” But the O-ring didn’t care about the official story. It cared about the cold.

So tell me: what’s the O-ring here? The part everyone’s ignoring because it doesn’t fit the neat story? Because if we’re betting on pressure alone, we’re missing half the equation.

And half an equation is just a mistake waiting to happen.