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Trump Says US Could Remain In Iran And Keep Oil, Similar To Deal With Venezuela

Authored by Jack Phillips via The Epoch Times,

President Donald Trump on Sept. 13 said the United States could ultimately remain in Iran and "keep the oil" in a similar manner to his administration's move to control some of Venezuela's oil reserves.

"We'll ultimately get out [of Iran], unless we decide to stay and keep the oil like Venezuela," Trump said at the Trump International Golf Course in Ireland, adding that the U.S. revenue from Venezuela has "paid for the war many times."

The president did not elaborate on a possible oil agreement with Iran or whether he would be willing to deploy troops in the country. The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Sept. 13.

Just over six months ago, the United States began strikes against Iran in a bid to end the country's nuclear aspirations as Trump has repeatedly said Tehran cannot be allowed to obtain a nuclear weapon.

Iran has launched strikes on commercial oil vessels in the Strait of Hormuz, a key waterway through which a significant portion of the world's traded oil passes, leading to spikes in gasoline and energy prices worldwide and in the United States.

On Sept. 12, the British military's UK Maritime Trade Organization said it received a report of an "incident" in the Hormuz Strait as a "vessel has been struck by an unknown projectile while transiting" the waterway. A fire broke out on the ship and local officials are moving to evacuate crew members, it said.

Speaking at the Irish Open golf championship, Trump also said that the price of gas would "drop like a rock" once the Iran war ended. He added that he believes the Iran war will end this year.

Trump said that he would only make the "right deal" and wouldn't do one that he believes wouldn't be good for U.S. interests while asserting that Iran was "calling constantly" for peace talks.

Earlier this year, the U.S. military launched an operation to capture Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro before extraditing him to the United States. He faces felony drug charges and pleaded not guilty in January.

The White House in August announced a deal with Venezuela under which the United States takes control of 65 billion barrels from the South American country's vast oil reserves.

"This deal is a huge win for both the American and Venezuelan people," Secretary of State Marco Rubio wrote in a post on X in late August. "It demonstrates how President Trump's bold foreign policy is driving America First wins: securing stable reserves and low-cost oil in our Hemisphere and lowering gas prices here at home."

Oil prices have remained relatively elevated in recent days amid strikes in Saudi Arabia. The price for both Brent crude and West Texas International barrels remained above $100 as of Sept. 13.

According to the American Automobile Association, the average gasoline price in the United States increased roughly 17 cents to $4.31 per gallon in the past seven days.

Saudi Arabia's energy ministry last week announced it was shutting down its East-West oil pipeline after it was attacked and as the Yemeni-based Houthi terrorist organization moved to capture cities closer to the Red Sea in recent days. The Houthis in the past week also launched strikes inside Saudi Arabia.

Tyler Durden Mon, 09/14/2026 - 12:40

Ukraine Pummels Black Sea Resort Near Putin's Villa With Air & Sea Drones

Ukraine sent some 400 drones across various parts of Russia and Crimea overnight, with UAV attacks having long been a nightly thing.

In this latest instance, the Black Sea resort city of Sochi suffered the most casualties, with five people - including a child - wounded in a drone attack. Several homes were also damaged in the assault.

The injuries in Sochi were due to "falling UAV debris" - local officials indicated Monday on Telegram. Sochi Mayor Andrei Proshunin later confirmed firefighters extinguished fires that resulted, with citizens being warned not to approach drone debris left from the attack.

Sochi has long been where President Putin has a sprawling vacation resort. He also used to frequently host foreign heads of state at the house.

Massive fire erupts at Sochi port, Russia, following reported Ukrainian drone attacks. pic.twitter.com/cm2WsiA4jS

— Clash Report (@clashreport) September 9, 2026

The Telegraph reports that Putin's vacation residence may have been targeted in the overnight drone attack:

Ukraine launched strikes near Vladimir Putin’s seaside villa in the Black Sea resort of Sochi overnight, injuring five people. Footage posted online purported to show Ukrainian drones descending on the city, with large explosions and the thud of local air defence audible.

...Local Telegram channels reported strikes on an S-400 anti-aircraft missile system, many of which have come under fire in recent weeks after military intelligence found that the defensive systems were being repurposed to strike ground targets in Ukraine.

One channel claimed that drones had targeted Putin’s Bocharov Ruchey summer dacha, a coastal compound in a busy area of the city. The Russian president is believed to have largely stopped visiting the residence since it came within range of Kyiv’s drones.

The city mayor has ordered a temporary beach closure, also after last week sea drones unleashed even greater casualties and mayhem.

It is reported that Russia's Krasnodar Krai was attacked overnight. Ukrainian drones targeted Sochi and other localities. Local residents reported a series of explosions and air defense activity. Due to the attack, restrictions were introduced at the Sochi airport. pic.twitter.com/JdPuodaDsO

— WarTranslated (@wartranslated) September 14, 2026

"Proshunin later announced the closure of Sochis beache’s due to the ongoing risk of drone strikes," Moscow Times writes.

The prior incident saw seaside resorts and nightlife venues specifically targeted. One regional outlet details:

Ukrainian sea drones — which Russia’s Defense Ministry calls “uncrewed boats” — struck the waterfront in Sochi on the evening of September 9. Twenty-eight people were injured, including two children, Krasnodar Krai’s operational headquarters reported. All those injured have received medical treatment; three adults and one child remain hospitalized.

The attack began around 9 p.m., just as singer Tatiana Bulanova was performing a concert at the Festivalny House of Culture on the waterfront. The concert was halted and the audience evacuated.

One local resident recounted what happened: “My wife was at the concert. During the evacuation, people were falling, running in panic. Explosions could be heard all around. She fell while running to the car. She was knocked down by the blast wave. You could really feel the shock wave after each explosion. They were very close.”

Ukraine has been seeking to impose a steep cost on the Russian population of late, hoping that it puts enough pressure on President Putin to come to the negotiating table while willing to compromise.

#BREAKING

Ukrainian is attacking former Olympic city Sochi, Russia pic.twitter.com/XGVPQiysmn

— Brian’s Breaking News and Intel (@intelFromBrian) September 14, 2026

However, Russia's own ballistic missile and drone attacks have only intensified in response, with the southern port city of Odessa getting severely hit of late. Recently, a shopping center in Ukraine came under attack, resulting in a mass casualty event.

Tyler Durden Mon, 09/14/2026 - 12:20

AI is transforming modern life, but not without worry for some that it may be abused or have an adverse environmental impact.

Michael Mayer could have waited. Played out the season. Reached free agency next March. Found out how much another team would pay him to become its featured tight end. There would have been something understandable about that decision. Maybe even predictable. When you spend your career working toward becoming an NFL starter, accepting a place...

The award-winning costumer famously outfitted pop stars through many decades.

The award-winning costumer famously outfitted pop stars through many decades.

Willy Wonka And The Compute Factories

By Benjamin Picton, Senior Market Strategist at Rabobank

Oil prices are rising again on news of the shutdown of Saudi Arabia’s East-West pipeline following drone strikes, and the Houthis’ seizure of strategic locations on the Red Sea coast.

Bond yields surged late last week on rising oil and inflation (and debt) concerns, while Asian equity indices and US equity futures are broadly in the red today. Geopolitical friction remains at the forefront of investor concerns as the Middle East and Eastern Europe simmer away, leaders of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland plot the dissolution of the United Kingdom, and Canada hatches a cunning plan to avoid becoming the 51st US state by (in effect) becoming the 28th EU member state.

So, another quiet week ahead.

Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei caused a sensation over the weekend by publishing an essay arguing “we must slow the pace at which we improve the capabilities of AI models”. Amodei’s call quickly found support from Elon Musk and Sam Altman, erstwhile Arthur Slugworths to Amodei’s Willy Wonka. Strange bedfellows indeed.

Amodei opens his essay by extoling the transformational potential of AI to create a Utopian world of superabundance where most major diseases are a thing of the past, economic growth is greatly accelerated, and a new renaissance of democracy and freedom is forthcoming. Come with me and you’ll be in a world of pure imagination.

The vision then turns darker with Amodei arguing that AI capabilities are advancing too quickly for society to appropriately manage the risks. That’s a sentiment that his fellow tech leaders apparently share, with Musk in particular previously arguing that AI could prove more dangerous than nuclear weapons. Curiously, this places founders in the unusual position of not only agreeing with each other but also favoring tighter regulation for their own businesses with future growth throttled.

Amodei points particularly to the recent emergence of ‘recursive self-improvement’ –AI building AI – as a source of potential risk, particularly following the OpenAI-Hugging Face incident whereby swarms of AI agents went rogue and began conducting cybersecurity attacks on targets that no human had asked them to attack. For anyone that has seen the Terminator or Matrix films, or read Frankenstein, or the Bible, the idea of Creation rebelling against Creator with disastrous consequences is a well-worn fear.

Fear is a great motivator, but any good markets person knows that greed is too. It didn’t take long for the cynics to emerge with alternative theories as to why founders might like to see tighter regulation, international coordination, and a slower pace of development. One commentator translated Amodei’s call as an admission that open source models are competing AI margins to zero while CAPEX burn rates threaten viability. The solution: regulatory intervention to limit competition and maintain margins.

Translation: our gross margins are getting competed down to 0 by open source models and our capex burn rate is too high.

Let’s maintain our margins with regulatory capture, ban open source models, and slow down the capex arms race. All with a virtue signaling cherry on top. https://t.co/70pusgSX8o

— Grant Hummer (@gphummer) September 12, 2026

Chair of the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology, David Sacks, said that “if the unreleased models are scary enough that you think you should slow down. I support your decision to be responsible.” However, he then went on to suggest that the founders’ motivations were less than altruistic, that China was unlikely to join any agreement to slow the pace of AI development, and that founders were effectively lobbying for regulatory capture. His message: if you want to slow the pace of development, just do it yourselves.

The point about China is an important one. In a world of geopolitical competition, games that require coordination for humanity to come out a winner are hard and suboptimal outcomes can be Nash equilibriums (just look at Javier Blas’s recent tweet about soaring coal demand).

CHART OF THE DAY: Global coal demand has surprised the @IEA massively to the upside: it’s running ~1 billion tonnes higher (~9%) than the agency had expected only five years ago.

The forecasting error equals to the anual demand of the EU, Japan and the US — combined! pic.twitter.com/BfCHlV0DQ1

— Javier Blas (@JavierBlas) September 12, 2026

AI is national security, and China’s regular provision of Sputnik moments like the release of DeepSeek’s R1 model in January 2025 and Moonshot’s Kimi K3 model in July this year have raised concerns that China is closing the gap in terms of the capabilities of frontier AI, at lower cost, and with open source models. Effectively, another Arthur Slugworth’s almost-as-good recipes (the model) have been made public, and that is a big problem for Willy Wonka (and also for Arthur Slugworth).

While calls from CEOs for regulation might be viewed as self-serving, the imperative for national governments to control AI should be sufficiently underscored by recent revelations from Anthropic that users in northern Yemen – home to the Houthis – tried to use Claude AI to develop advanced missiles, and that Iran had tried to use Claude to target American warships. There is a sense that a Pandora’s Box has been opened and that both the United States and China have an interest in forcing the lid back down to control access to such a potentially dangerous technology.

Izabella Kaminska argues that AI safety concerns are being proffered as a “credible off ramp from the hyper scaling narrative”, which she views as defunct since the release of Kimi K3. Emphasis shifts from the models themselves to the compute, power and chips used to run them. If AI models are Wonka and Slugworth’s increasingly commoditised recipes, the datacentres, energy sources and semiconductors are the factories used to convert recipe into product – and are the real strategic assets. Turns out real production can matter more than IP, who knew?

Kaminska argues that hyper scaling was never driven by expected demand, but by an arms race of sorts. The financial firepower to fund AI investments was determinative, but if the raison d’etre for hyperscaling disappeared in July, so did the need for immense private capital flows. Could we be approaching a scenario where US AI capabilities are brought under a kind of Manhattan Project where freed-up liquidity flows constitute the asymmetric information that Scott ‘I am the House’ Bessent has been warning markets about?

This, plus the fact that the AI cycle will need $1.5 trillion in private credit funding, is why the US will have to throw private credit in the bailout bucket too.

Yes, a lot of things will need a bailout to win the AI wars. That's why the $ is reserve for now. https://t.co/ozlvzvD98K

— zerohedge (@zerohedge) November 18, 2025

This week might provide some clues in that respect as the FOMC meets to set the Fed Funds rate. Following last week’s firmer than expected core CPI reading and two weeks of rising oil prices the markets are 87% priced for a hike. RaboResearch’s Fed watcher Philip Marey has recently updated our forecast to also predict a hike at this week’s meeting. Meanwhile, the FT reports that hedge fund manager Stanley Druckenmiller (mentor to both Bessent and Fed Chair Warsh) recently told a closed audience that “given what’s going on in the economy and the capital spending boom and the war for capital, if anything, [bond yields seem] a little low”. Any indication that the war for capital might de-escalate would be a signal to pay close attention to!

Druckenmiller says that his fund has cut its AI investments to around 20% of previous levels, saying that “it has been an incredible ride on the whole AI thing... I think we’re getting late enough in the build-out that one has to start to worry a little”.

For his part, President Trump says that the pace of AI development should not slow down. Equity investors may be relieved to hear that, but given the geopolitical and bond market imperatives, and the increased prevalence of economic statecraft, perhaps they should pay some heed to other orange men with unusual hairstyles:

Oompa, Loompa, doom-pa-dee-da
If you're not greedy, you will go far
You will live in happiness too
Like the Oompa, Loompa, doompa-dee-do

Tyler Durden Mon, 09/14/2026 - 12:00

The Emmys red carpet is always a ton of fun.

Get up to $1,500 back in bonus bets if your first bet doesn't win with BetMGM bonus code POSTBET.

Kidman took her younger daughter to the men's semifinals.

Kidman took her younger daughter to the men's semifinals.

Costco Begins Rationing Kirkland Signature Motor Oil As Refined Crisis Spreads

Costco's Kirkland Signature motor oil has doubled in price, and customers now reportedly face a purchase limit as the Gulf energy conflict, combined with the Russia-Ukraine war, has sent the global refining market into a tailspin.

Auto news website The Auto Wire reports that a 10-quart package of Kirkland full-synthetic oil now costs about $58, up from around $30, with a new purchase limit of two packages per week.

Costco's online sales platform confirms an order limit: when attempting to order three packs, an alert message reads, "Item 997930 has a maximum order quantity of 2."

Another auto blog, MotorBiscuit, provided more detail on the refining crisis and its impact on the global liquids market:

The ongoing military entanglement with Iran and the blockade of the Strait of Hormuz have effectively choked off these crucial exports. To compound the supply chain disaster, the massive Pearl GTL facility in Qatar sustained heavy damage from Iranian airstrikes in March 2026, instantly crippling a major portion of global production for at least a year.

Refineries Chase 40-Year Profit Highs

Typically, when Middle Eastern supply lines fracture, South Korean refiners step in to pick up the slack. Unfortunately, those refiners are currently struggling to secure raw crude oil themselves.

Furthermore, the petroleum industry is aggressively shifting its manufacturing priorities. Right now, global profit margins for diesel and jet fuel have hit staggering 40-year highs. Motor oil, diesel, and aviation fuel all originate from the same barrels of raw crude. Given the choice between producing essential base oils for passenger cars or cashing in on incredibly lucrative aviation and commercial diesel markets, refiners are overwhelmingly choosing the latter.

This geopolitical squeeze is hitting at the exact worst time for everyday drivers. Today's highly stressed, turbocharged, small-displacement engines require incredibly sophisticated oil chemistries to prevent catastrophic failure and comply with strict environmental standards.

Because modern engines are so sensitive, automakers demand rigorous chemical testing and licensing. General Motors, for example, requires vendors to pay double licensing fees (both per product and per unit sold) just to print the "Dexos-approved" badge on their packaging. This certification appears directly on Costco's Kirkland brand.

Combine a fractured Middle Eastern supply chain, international refiners chasing diesel profits, and the expensive licensing fees required for modern engines, and you have the perfect storm for empty shelves.

It's not just motor oil. Households relying on heating oil face the risk of sharply higher bills as the Northern Hemisphere winter approaches. With the national average retail diesel at a record $6.23 a gallon Monday morning, the squeeze on distillate fuels and other refined fuels is causing a shock. However, electric vehicle owners are just sitting back, watching this all unfold. 

Tyler Durden Mon, 09/14/2026 - 11:45

George Kittle waited until Iowa reclaimed the state’s bragging rights to reopen his favorite argument with Brock Purdy. The Hawkeyes rallied from a 10-point deficit and defeated Iowa State 16-13 on a 42-yard field goal in the closing seconds Saturday. Soon afterward, Kittle posted the final score to his Instagram story and addressed his 49ers...

"These kids didn’t ask to be born into this, they’re finding their own way in life,” the Oscar winner argued.

"These kids didn’t ask to be born into this, they’re finding their own way in life,” the Oscar winner argued.

Common courtesy isn’t always plane and simple — especially at 30,000 feet.  A New York City tourist is receiving death threats after asking a fellow airline passenger to help lift her heavy luggage into an overhead bin on a recent flight to Hawaii. Her request — and her seatmate’s alleged “rude as f*** response” —...

Caitlin Clark repeatedly told a reporter to stop trying to pit her and Angel Reese against each other after the pair helped lead U.S. women’s basketball to a 97-79 victory over France in the FIBA World Cup final on Sunday.

What spell do we need to cast to watch Practical Magic 2 at home?

A My Little Pony superfan has broken the world record for having the largest memorabilia collection of the toys on the planet.

Altman and rival Elon Musk, who were earlier this year locked in a legal battle, made a rare alliance over the weekend as they backed a lengthy letter from Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei urging global companies to slow their work on top AI models.