---
title: 'The Iran War JUST Hit Rock Bottom.'
source: 'https://youtube.com/watch?v=2pSUF0ITjAk'
video_id: '2pSUF0ITjAk'
date: 2026-09-16
duration_sec: 1005
channel: 'Meet Kevin'
---

# The Iran War JUST Hit Rock Bottom.

> Source: [The Iran War JUST Hit Rock Bottom.](https://youtube.com/watch?v=2pSUF0ITjAk)

## Summary

The video provides a detailed analysis of the current geopolitical situation in the Middle East, focusing on the Iran conflict, its impact on oil prices, and the broader economic implications. The creator discusses the breakdown of negotiations, military losses, and the potential for demand destruction, offering a bearish outlook on the market.

### Key Points

- **Iran Situation at Rock Bottom** [00:00] — The situation in Iran is described as rock bottom, with the loss of the memorandum of understanding and a return to blockade. Oil is at $108 per barrel, above the preferred $107 level, and Bernstein forecasts temporary suppression of oil prices.
- **Postponed Iran Meeting** [00:45] — A meeting between Iran and Arab states scheduled for Monday was postponed indefinitely, with no new date set. This is seen as a negative catalyst, indicating stalled negotiations.
- **China Meeting Unlikely to Help** [01:32] — The upcoming meeting between Xi Jinping and Donald Trump on September 24 is expected to yield little progress, based on historical patterns. The meeting is seen as a 'nothing burger' with no significant outcomes.
- **US Links China to Iran Strike** [02:43] — The US has linked Chinese satellite imagery to an Iranian strike that killed three Americans, as reported by the Wall Street Journal. This complicates US-China relations and sets a poor stage for the meeting.
- **Operation Epic Fury Casualties** [03:55] — A Pentagon report reveals 417 US service members wounded in action, 7 killed in action, and 7 killed in non-hostile events. Iran has caused $184 million in infrastructure damage and $3.7 billion in equipment losses.
- **Equipment Losses Detailed** [05:36] — The US has lost four F-15s, one F-35, one A-10 Warthog, seven KC-135 refueling aircraft, an E-3 Sentry, an HH-60W helicopter, an MQ-4C drone, four AH-6 helicopters, one AH-64 helicopter, and up to 30 MQ-9 Reaper drones.
- **Iranian Drone Downings** [07:40] — Iran has downed another MQ-1 drone over Hormuz, the third in a day, indicating improved Iranian targeting capabilities and increasing US equipment losses.
- **Strategic Inventory Shortfall** [08:06] — A report to Congress highlights a strategic inventory shortfall and industrial-based bottlenecks for replenishing supplies, indicating the US is struggling to keep up with losses.
- **Bernstein's Bearish Outlook** [10:20] — Bernstein notes that the Middle East conflict is more prolonged than expected, with both sides far apart on key terms. They highlight the use of strategic oil reserves, averaging over 2 million barrels per day, which could lead to demand destruction.
- **Strait of Hormuz Transit Decline** [12:12] — Transits through the Strait of Hormuz have dropped from 700 ships per week to about 50, with 12 million barrels per day of supply lost over the last six months. This is partially offset by the dark fleet but not entirely.
- **Demand Destruction Risks** [14:22] — Global demand has averaged 5.8 million barrels per day below February's figures, suggesting potential demand destruction. This could hurt GDP and keep oil prices high for longer.
- **Oil Price Upside Expected** [15:16] — Bernstein believes there is further price upside in the short term through the midterm elections in November, with key events being strategic oil reserves and the US-China meeting.

### Conclusion

The video concludes that the situation in the Middle East is worsening, with no clear resolution in sight. The creator remains cautiously optimistic that the worst is in, but acknowledges the risk of further escalation and its impact on oil prices and the economy.

## Transcript

The situation in Iran feels like it is rock bottom right now. Obviously, we lost the memorandum of understanding. We went back to blockade. Oil's sitting at $108 a barrel right now, just above that $107 level we'd prefer to reject.
We're over it. It feels like this is just not getting any better, and it's problematic, especially since Bernstein is forecasting that oil prices might be temporarily suppressed right now.
We're going to go through all of this, and we're going to talk about some of the bearish and problematic catalysts that we have. The number one that I really want to start with is we still don't have a rescheduled meeting with Oman and the Iranian counterparts.
So on Monday, there was supposed to be a meeting between Iran and these other Arab states. That was postponed, quote-unquote, indefinitely, which is really unfortunate. that was postponed late Sunday, and we have had zero talk about a potential new meeting.
That's problematic. In addition to that, the Pentagon is now reporting that we've gotten hit a lot worse than we thought, and there have been other attempted, I don't know if you'd call it an abduction,
of another United States waterborne drone, but we'll talk about that in just a moment. Instead, focus on just, in order here, the problems. So, the meeting that could have been a catalyst for some form of resolution in the Strait of Hormuz has fallen apart.
That's bad. The second thing that's not great right now is China's meeting with Donald Trump is probably not going to get us anywhere. If there's anything that history tells us when Xi Jinping comes to the United States and talks to Donald Trump,
It's a whole lot of talk and a whole lack of action. This meeting right here is expected to take place on 9-24. So a lot of people are going to be talking about this meeting and are going to see this as a bullish meeting.
I don't actually think the meeting does anything because historically it just doesn't. We also have expiring tariff arrangements with China. Those technically don't expire until later in November and December, but they're coming up.
So there'll be talk at this meeting about Iran, there'll be talk at this meeting about oil reserves of China and Taiwan, but usually nothing comes out of those meetings, so I don't actually see September 24th as something that matters.
If anything, this is really what should be brought up, is that the United States has now linked Chinese satellite imagery to a strike by Iran that killed three Americans.
That's bad. This is in the Wall Street Journal. before Iran carried out its attack that killed three U.S. troops in July, the capital of Iran, acquired high-resolution satellite images of a base in Jordan from Chinese entities,
according to U.S. officials familiar with the matter. It is the clearest evidence so far that Chinese support for Iran has led to death. That's not great. So that sets the stage up relatively poorly for actually getting good progress out of China
and some form of meeting later this month. I'm not holding my breath for that. I'm more hopeful that a deal can be achieved, but so far we're kind of rock bottom in even negotiations happening.
And this postponement of this Monday talk, where potentially other regional entities and countries could come up with a deal, that's not great either. It's a sign that negotiations with Trump are in the toilet
and negotiations with other countries in the region are in the toilet. And that's probably why Bernstein is a little bit bearish about what's cooking with oil levels and what that could mean for demand destruction for the United States.
But we'll come back to this, because first I want to talk about some of these highlights in this Department of War piece, or it's still labeled Department of Defense over here, but this is a report to Congress on Operation Epic Fury and what it indicates is that 417 U service members have now been wounded in action More potentially have been wounded outside of action
This is another distinction in terms of how they channel this. But 417 wounded in action. We've got a report that seven service members were killed in action, and seven were killed in non-hostile events.
So those could be accidents related to transportation in the region or otherwise. We have also now estimated that Iran has caused physical infrastructure damage of $184 million to American facilities.
And on top of that, we have lost even more equipment than we've previously been aware of. Take a look at this. This is, by the way, this totals $3.7 billion in equipment losses.
You can see that right here. The Department of War estimates that we have spent $7.4 billion in cumulative obligations regarding Operation Epic Fury since June 29th.
So only since June 29th. We spent a whole lot more before that, potentially upwards of $100 billion before that. But since June 29th, we've spent $7.4 billion existing. We spent $22 billion on bombs.
and then we lost 3.7 because since June 29th, Iran has managed to continue damaging our equipment. Look at this equipment that has been damaged.
We have lost four F-15s. We have lost one F-35, one A-10 Warthog, seven damaged or destroyed KC-135 refueling aircraft.
We have lost an E-3 Sentry for surveillance, an HH-60W helicopter an MQ-4C drone crashed an AH-6 helicopter
we've had four of those actually destroyed we had one AH-64 helicopter that was shot down over the Strait of Hormuz that's not great we had an MH-60 helicopter that crashed into the Arabian Sea
and then we also had as many as 30 MQ-9 Reaper drones destroyed Al Jazeera is actually reporting, and this just shows, like, the Iranians are landing more attacks on us.
This is not great. If you haven't seen it yet, I highly recommend watching the 60-minute segment where you had the pilot, Bravo, who was the one that was behind enemy lines for, what, somewhere around 30 hours.
Really impressive interview, and the guy is like a hero. and the way he just described his trust in American forces and America. I loved it. It was really motivating. Highly recommend watching that segment from 60 Minutes.
But it's also sad what's going on because Iran is targeting us more and they're hitting their strikes. I mean, this pilot describes how he hit the ground at 70 to 100 miles an hour
because his ejection seat was damaged because of a successful Iranian strike against their plane, which also prevented him from getting his survival kit out of the ejection seat when he landed.
That sucks. So he was really just left with what was on his vest to survive and communicate. But this is from Al Jazeera today. The IRGC downs another MQ-1 drone over Hormuz.
this is the third such drone down today in the area. In other words, the Iranians are getting better at targeting us,
and they're striking us and damaging more of our equipment. This is getting worse, not better. All of that sucks. And then, of course, I mean, it's not popular for the United States to want to talk about how we're losing all this equipment, but we actually are.
I mean, here's literally a report to Congress that tells us we have a strategic inventory shortfall and we have industrial-based bottlenecks for replenishing that supply An official letter to Congress a report to Congress not you know a Trump Truth Social tweet or whatever you want to call it saying everything fine This is an official
report from the Pentagon saying, guys, we're kind of getting screwed over here. That's not good. A little bit of history over here is what they talk about. Funds for repairs, they do talk about here that in some of their estimates, they don't even yet have cost estimates
for how much it's going to cost to repair the infrastructure that has been damaged by Iran in the region. So bases of ours were getting hit, equipment of ours was getting shot down, and we don't even yet know how much that damage is going to cost,
and we're critically short on munitions. So this is really, I think we're at a place where we are without a doubt, maximal fear around this war is going to last forever,
It's going to last the rest of Trump's term. We are running out of munitions. We're getting stuck more. And now talks aren't progressing with Iran, with its neighboring countries,
and China on the 24th will probably be unfeeling burger. Here's the example of Iran has unsuccessfully attempted to seize an unmanned vessel. Tedcom saying that they ended up striking some of the fishing boats
or smaller boats that were trying to capture this unmanned vehicle. But it just shows you this issue is continuing to go on. When we look at Bernstein, it makes sense why they are bearish oil prices,
or I should say bullish oil prices, bearish market. We'll look at that in just a moment. Secretary White, he comes out on like a daily basis saying, hey, we're going to get flows going through the Saudi East-West Pipeline again.
Bernstein doesn't think so. And so that's the other issue that we have right here. See, we wrote down Saudi Pipeline. Oldies so far bearish. strategic reserve, we talked about equipment, let's talk about strategic reserve, that comes up in the Bernstein piece, and it just shows you just how much of a cluster F this is from
all angles right now. And that's why it's so critical for Trump to deal with this before the election, because I don't know how you could expect to win any seat without a solution on this.
So take a look at this commentary. The Middle Eastern conflict, or the conflict in the Middle East is proving more prolonged than Marcus initially expected. Both sides remain far apart on key terms of a potential agreement,
with neither side willing to compromise. This is all bad. Like, it's so bad that I think we're, like, at the bottom of optimism. Like, if this is the optimism curve
for the Iran war, we're, like, down here in the toilet right now. Like, this is the Iran war starts. This is the memorandum of understanding. I feel like we're, like, down here right now.
that's how bearish things are. And to me, I hope that means there's only upside from here. Like, you can only get better from here. Although, of course, Iran could end up using a cruise missile or something and actually causing severe damage
to an aircraft carrier. And boy, that would really send this over the cliff. That would just be worst case scenario. I'm still hoping and praying that this could just end. But, you know, I don't have much to go off here. So I'm frustrated.
I think that's the way to put it. I'm bullish for markets that the worst is in. But I also recognize that things can get worse, and I have very little reason to be hopeful. So I'm kind of blindly hopeful.
I'm just being transparent about that. Both sides remain far apart on key terms of a political agreement. Neither side appears willing to compromise. Withdrawals from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve have averaged over 2 million barrels per day.
We are creating demand destruction, especially in China. and China has actually been tapping into its commercial and strategic oil reserves. Now, why is that a problem?
Well, it's a problem because, first of all, we're seeing way fewer oil exports through the Strait of Hormuz. Bernstein estimates that 12 million barrels per day of supply have been lost over the last six months
and that we essentially running out of how much capacity we could use from strategic oil reserves in the United States and China Which means we could be artificially suppressing oil prices right now And as soon as China goes back to the open market, oil prices could pique again or spike again.
This is why on a chart they argue that. See this decline right here in China's imports of oil? There's a belief that they're trying to offset these higher oil prices with their own strategic reserve.
and there's a limit to how long they can do that. When we look through that actual transiting of the Strait of Hormuz, we could see we previously had 700 ships transit the Strait of Hormuz every week,
and we're probably down to about 50 per week right now, which is really bad. Now, some of this is offset by, you know, the dark fleet and shipping that we're seeing at night,
but not all of it, by any means. So this is, I think, what leaves Bernstein worried that inevitably China is going to have to increase their imports, and that so far they've been acting as a supply buffer, but that buffer is not unlimited.
And therefore, they think that we are out of our capability to utilize the strategic oil reserve. China is about to run out, and all of that is going to create demand destruction and hurt GDP and keep oil prices high for longer.
In other words, like why you have to hike rates, right? But they translate this to there is real risk we're going to cause demand destruction in the economy. I don't think that's true of the AI sector.
I think that is likely true of consumers. So far, retail spending has held up. But how long that goes on, we don't know. So these are real risks. And they say here there's a genuine, what did they say here?
In the bare cases, demand destruction is doing the balancing work, and that is not trivial. Global demand over the past six months has averaged 5.8 million barrels per day below February's figures,
which basically suggests if we're reducing demand for oil, what are we not doing? Are we not traveling as much? Are we not flying as much? Are we not spending as much? How is that going to end up showing up in GDP? What sectors of the economy are at risk because of that?
We don't know. we just know that higher oil prices suck. And so Bernstein is unfortunately bullish oil prices, and they have a whole report here on, you know,
ultimately what oil companies they think are a good investment. And it's sort of like, all right, I don't see oil prices coming down anytime soon. In fact, they literally say here, we believe there is further price upside in the short term
through the midterm elections in November, In addition to tanker traffic through the Strait of Hormuz, key events to watch are the strategic oil reserves, as well as that meeting between the United States and China on September 24th.
I personally, again, think that is a nothing burger. Best case scenario, we get some form of wild taco from Donald Trump. The way I think he does it is he just walks away from the situation
and says, you guys deal with it, and points at Middle Eastern countries. I don't know that that actually is a real long-term solution, but at least in the short term it could be. Who knows? But when looking at what we've got going on in Iran right now,
with the expectations of the Saudi east-west pipeline will take four to five weeks, maybe even six weeks, to get up and running again, and you've got fighting, obviously, between the Saudis with the Yemeni military against the Houthis
to try to reopen up that diverted oil flow through the Red Sea, dealing with a multi-ton load of crap. I had thought, and so far there's no indication any of this is getting better.
Just indication it's getting worse. All right. Now you know how to advertise these things in each little tier. I feel like nobody else knows about this. We'll try a little advertising and see how it goes. Congratulations, man.
You have done so much. People love you. People look up to you. Kevin, pass that there. Finance, wireless, and YouTube. You've got me, Kevin. Always great to get your take. you