Season 2: Boots on the Ground is now loading, the world should brace for accelerating oil shortages, and the quagmire that will make Vietnam and Afghanistan look like weekend excursions is moving from pre-production into principal photography. The Strait remains weaponized. The oil price will rise further. The realtors are flying home. And the Empire, having won this war every hour since Hour 1 of Day 1, is preparing to win it even more decisively by sending its young men into Persia on foot.

In a diplomatic masterstroke delivered via Truth Social approximately six hours after acknowledging that negotiations had produced nothing, the Warmonger-in-Chief announced that the Navy of the Empire will begin blockading every ship attempting to enter or leave the Strait of Hormuz — a strait that Iran has already effectively weaponized — until the Empire reaches what he described, with characteristic precision, as an "ALL BEING ALLOWED TO GO IN ALL BEING TO GO OUT" deal. The strategic elegance is breathtaking: having failed to negotiate the reopening of a chokepoint that one party controls, the Empire has decided to close it more thoroughly, ensuring that the 20% of global oil supply already disrupted by the war the Empire started is now disrupted by the blockade the Empire is adding.

Oil markets, energy-importing nations, and the governments— currently implementing fuel rationing — are understood to be processing this development with the equanimity of people who have just been informed that the fire brigade has decided to assist the arsonist. The Ministry of Victory reports that this represents maximum pressure. The oil price reports that it represents maximum opportunity. Both, for once, are correct.

In what Brussels will celebrate as a triumphant restoration of European democratic values — and what students of electoral timing will note occurred with impeccable convenience — Kozak Orbán, Europe's most obstinate obstacle to the globalist war agenda, has conceded defeat after 16 years of uninterrupted rule. Election results show the Tisza Party on track for 128 seats against Fidesz's collapsed 62, a swing so dramatic that even the Cokehead Dancer on High Heels in Kyiv — who allegedly dispatched funds to populate the protest movement and was simultaneously attempting another pipeline false flag to refresh European hatred of Russia — could not have choreographed it more effectively.

https://www.pbs.org/newshour/world/hungarian-prime-minister-viktor-orban-concedes-defeat-after-painful-election-result-ending-16-years-in-power

The new Kozak-in-Chief, Magyar — that 43-year-old former Fidesz insider who transformed a fringe movement into a governing force in under two years with the suspicious efficiency of a project that had considerable tailwinds from Brussels — has hailed his victory as Hungary's democratic turning point, which is one way to describe the replacement of one former Fidesz member with another former Fidesz member who has simply chosen the more lucrative side of the European funding equation. Magyar has pledged to restore Hungary's relationship with the EU, unlock billions in frozen funds, and join the European Public Prosecutor's Office — a package of commitments that will delight Brussels and cost Hungarian taxpayers whatever price tag comes attached to reintegration into the continental war consensus.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/apr/10/peter-magyar-leading-polls-hungary-election-tisza-opposition

To the people of Hungary: what has been taken from you this weekend is not merely an election — it is the last sovereign buffer between your children and a war that Brussels has been architecting for years. Romania was the rehearsal. Hungary was the main event. Any government that refuses to subordinate its national interest to the continental war agenda is destabilised, delegitimised, and replaced — and your new government will in due course present your sons with the same conscription papers Germany is already preparing. The draft does not announce itself in advance. It arrives, as all imperial impositions do, dressed as a democratic necessity. Plan accordingly.

The modern wisdom of Don Tzu, that most venerable of strategic philosophers, has finally resolved the Strait of Hormuz crisis with the elegance that only a Truth Social post can deliver: break an enemy blockade by blockading their blockade. The logic is impenetrable. Iran closed the Strait. The Empire will now also close the Strait — but from the other side, and with considerably more aircraft carriers — until a deal is reached in which everything is allowed to go in and everything is allowed to go out, which is, one notes, the definition of a strait that is simply open. Don Tzu's contribution to the canon of military strategy is therefore as follows: to reopen a chokepoint, close it more thoroughly. To restore the flow of 20% of global oil supply, interrupt it from both directions simultaneously. Sun Tzu spent a lifetime studying the art of war.

Don Tzu apparently spent a lifetime studying the art of the deal and has concluded that they are the same thing.

The Ministry of Energy Independence of the venerable Eurostan announces, with its customary confidence, that Europe remains fully committed to eliminating Russian gas dependency by 2027 — a commitment that coexists, without apparent contradiction, with a 22% year-on-year increase in Gazprom pipeline exports to Europe in March 2026, averaging 55 million cubic meters per day through the TurkStream pipeline that sanctions were designed to render irrelevant.

https://www.bruegel.org/dataset/european-natural-gas-imports

Total Russian gas exports to Europe in the first quarter of 2026 rose 11% year-on-year to approximately 5 billion cubic meters, while LNG shipments jumped 17% to 4.8 million tons — driven, the Ministry declines to mention, by the energy crisis created by the war that Brussels enthusiastically supported. Europe has been under more than twenty rounds of sanctions against Russia, has formally agreed to phase out Russian gas by September 2027, and is simultaneously importing more of it than at any point since the sanctions began.

The Ministry wishes to clarify that this is not hypocrisy. It is energy security. The distinction, like the gas itself, continues to flow through TurkStream regardless of what the official communiqués say.

Epstein’s venom lingers—fueling the epic fury of chaos.

And it came to pass on the seventh day, which was a Sunday, that the Warmonger-in-Chief did not rest. Instead, he ascended unto Truth Social to smite the newly anointed Pope Leo XIV, declaring him "weak on crime" and "terrible for foreign policy" — a theological assessment delivered by a man who has spent the holy season of Easter threatening to send civilisations into darkness and hell. The Pontiff, that ancient keeper of the eternal flame, had spoken with prophetic clarity: "a whole civilisation will die," he warned, calling Don Tzu's Iranian threats "truly unacceptable." Heaven, it appears, has issued its verdict. The Oval Office has filed an appeal.

The mystical pattern now reveals itself in its fullness: the Warmonger-in-Chief, having already claimed divine mandate for Operation Epic F**k-Up, absorbed the Armageddon prophecy of his partner in war crimes Satanyahu, and received the blessing of his evangelical priestess Paula White-Cain, now finds himself in open spiritual conflict with the Vicar of Christ himself — suggesting that his true ambition extends beyond the presidency toward a grander ecclesiastical office.

The ancient oracles taught that when a ruler declares war on both Persia and the Pope at the same time, the Mandate of Heaven has not merely been questioned. It has been formally revoked. The oil price, that most honest of prophets, continues its own divine ascent. Selah.

While Armageddon is now promised to every ship attempting the Strait of Hormuz, The Macro Butler was live on Asharq Bloomberg TV delivering the only number that matters right now.

The verdict:

🛢 $125/barrel — the next floor in the coming weeks

💥 $200+ — the Season 2 scenario if boots hit Persian soil

🥩 Diesel. Jet fuel. Food. Plastics. The shortage wave hasn’t peaked, it just started.

📉 Global stagflation is coming your way wherever you are on the planet.

This is not a forecast. This is arithmetic.

🎙 Watch the full interview — because the gap between what the market is pricing and what is actually coming is the trade of the decade.

https://themacrobutler.substack.com/p/interview-with-asharq-bloomberg-tv-426

Because clearly what this crisis was missing was another shortage, China is now planning to halt sulphuric acid exports from May—tightening an already stressed market for one of mining’s most boring yet absolutely critical chemicals. Who could have guessed that shutting the Strait of Hormuz might ripple beyond oil? Prices, of course, have responded with admirable enthusiasm: sulphur up ~70%, sulphuric acid in Chile up 44% in a month—and that’s on top of a casual 500% surge before the latest geopolitical brilliance. Nothing says “well-managed supply chain” like exponential price charts. Meanwhile, countries like Indonesia—now responsible for over 60% of global nickel production—are discovering that relying on Middle Eastern sulphur imports during a regional conflict may not have been the most resilient strategy. And with China pulling supply just as feedstocks are already scarce, replacing those volumes should be… straightforward.

The result? Higher costs, tighter bottlenecks, and a growing realization that sulphuric acid—yes, that unglamorous chemical nobody talks about—is quietly becoming a strategic choke point. But don’t worry, it’s definitely just transitory according to those siting in their Oval Office in Washington.

While investors remain fixated on the Strait of Hormuz, the Empire quietly signed a “defence cooperation” deal with Indonesia—sold, as always, with soothing phrases like “maritime security” and “capacity building.” Translation: better surveillance, tighter control, and a clearer view of everything moving through Southeast Asia’s chokepoints. In other words, while everyone watches one bottleneck, Washington is busy weaponizing another—Strait of Malacca—where much of China’s energy lifeline still flows. A century after Alfred Thayer Mahan explained that sea power decides everything, the strategy hasn’t changed—only the marketing has.

https://media.defense.gov/2026/Apr/13/2003911810/-1/-1/1/READOUT-OF-SECRETARY-OF-WAR-PETE-HEGSETH-MEETING-WITH-INDONESIA-MINISTER-OF-DEFENSE-SJAFRIE-SJAMSOEDDIN.PDF

Of course, China didn’t wait for chokepoints to become fashionable—it’s been quietly building detours for decades. The Central Asia–China gas pipeline, stretching roughly 1,800 km from Turkmenistan to Xinjiang, has already delivered over 500 bcm since 2009—conveniently supplying more than half of Turkmenistan’s exports while reducing reliance on maritime routes everyone suddenly cares about. With three operational خطوط totalling 55 bcm/year and a fourth (Line D) promising another 30 bcm—eventually, once contracts and pricing stop being “work in progress”—the message is simple: while others debate chokepoints, Beijing has been busy drawing alternative maps.

https://multimedia.scmp.com/news/china/article/One-Belt-One-Road/gasPipeline.html

China also quietly built the China–Myanmar Economic Corridor to go around it. The twin oil and gas pipelines—running roughly 800 km from Kyaukpyu to Yunnan—have been operational for years, moving up to 22 million tons of crude and 12 bcm of gas annually straight from the Indian Ocean into China.

https://www.irrawaddy.com/opinion/analysis/militarized-pipelines-how-chinas-security-priorities-harm-local-communities.html

The Bureau of Labor Statistics has delivered March PPI data with the reassuring headline that wholesale prices rose a modest 0.5% — a figure that requires one to look past gasoline jumping 15.7%, diesel and jet fuel surging, energy PPI leaping 8.5%, and transportation and warehousing costs climbing 1.3%, all courtesy of a war won comprehensively on Hour 1 of Day 1. The Ministry of Propaganda will be particularly pleased that core PPI — that ingeniously curated measure that excludes the things actually getting more expensive — rose a mere 0.1%, pulling the year-on-year core reading down from 3.9% to 3.8%, which the same analysts who missed the inflation surge of 2021 are already describing as "good news." It is not good news.