Chairman, Observer Research Foundation @orfonline ; Tweets are personal; Keenly follow Energy and Resources; Enjoy Mountains and Music
Delhi / Mumbai
Joined October 2013
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@AJEnglish reports a supertanker carrying 200 million barrels of crude has struck a mine in the Strait of Hormuz today aljazeera.com/news/liveblog/…
The GFS Pride sank on October 13.
This is not escalation. It is a toll notice.
🧵
In 1503, Albuquerque trained his guns on Hormuz and invented the cartaz — a permission slip every merchant vessel needed to trade, on pain of being treated as pirates.
The 21st-century cartaz doesn’t need to be printed on paper.
🧵 (1/2)
Freight costs in the Gulf now account for ~1/3 of cargo value. Up from <5% before the war.
The insurance market does what the Iranian Navy doesn’t need to do. This is "Phase 1” of Iran’s Montreux play — make the Strait uninsurable, and let Lloyd’s of London do the rest.
The full paper orfonline.org/research/the-c…
#Hormuz #EnergyGeopolitics
(2/2)
The Strait is not blockaded. It is being priced. The distinction matters: a blockade invites intervention; a toll invites negotiation.
The White House invokes the 1950 Korean War-era Defense Production Act — to expand a 74,000 bpd Texas refinery as diesel soars above $6/gallon.
The cause: too little fuel making it out of the Strait of Hormuz.
The world’s largest military power raids its Cold War legal toolkit to deal with the consequences of an Iranian chokehold on a 39km-wide strait .
The 15 million barrels in the Russia diesel deal: covers half of a single day of global demand.
Strategic overextension looks like this
Paper @orfonline : orfonline.org/research/the-c… #Hormuz #Diesel #EnergyPolicy
Sunjoy Joshi retweeted
Who will own the value created by AI, Bitcoin & brain-computer interfaces - and who will have the freedom to walk away?
In “Sovereign Capability Economics in the Age of AI, Bitcoin and Brain-Computer Interfaces,” I argue that progress should give individuals more power to own, build & choose.
herbertrsim.com/sovereign-ca…
The UN was designed to protect the Sovereignty of nations through Collective security and International law.
That framework was declared obsolete on the podium of #UNGA2026
xitter.cf/SunjoyJ/status/2103152…
This quoted post is unavailable.
The United Nations was founded on a promise:
Nations retain sovereignty through collective security and shared rules.
No single power can dominate others. All are bound by international law.
Did that framework just die in real time on the UNGA2026 podium?
Barely anyone noticed. (1/7)
"Reclaiming Sovereignty" isn't arguing nations should defy the US.
It's arguing: The multilateral architecture for sovereignty is no more.
Nations need coordinated capacity to function independently.
That's what the Sovereign Arc is. (6/7)
Pezeshkian at UNGA calling for multilateral protection.
Trump at UNGA celebrating unilateral seizure.
Same institution. Opposite outcomes.
This UNGA moment proves why regional/plurilateral coordination must resuscitate failed multilateralism.
Read the framework: orfonline.org/research/recla…
#UNGA2026 #IndoPacific #Sovereignty #Multilateralism #Geopolitics(7/7)
The #DonroeDoctrine in real time.
#SaudiArabia just revealed it EXITED 8 16 months ago.
They joined in June 2024. They tested it. They quit in May 2025.
The official story: "planned technical trial"
The actual story: tested the boundary, hit the cost, retreated into darkness.
This is how chokepoint vulnerability works.
A thread on sovereignty & constraint.🧵 (1/8)
Read "The Indo-Pacific Under Siege" for the full argument.
When a nation retreats from alternatives to dollar primacy—claiming it was always planned—they're admitting the boundary exists.
And that crossing it, alone, costs too much.
The question now: Can the Sovereign Arc hold the line together?
orfonline.org/research/recla…🧵 (8/8)
Read the full analysis with the companion paper @orfonline
1.🔗 The Indo-Pacific Under Siege (OP 570) orfonline.org/research/recla…
2. Want the foundational context on Hormuz/chokepoint strategy? 🔗 The Cartaz Remix
orfonline.org/research/the-c…
#IndoPacific #Sovereignty
Quote from @ORF Occasional Paper 570 on sovereignty and constraint. Thread continues below.
