Donald Trump has not only made war on Iran. He has traded through it.

In the first three months of 2026, an account in the president’s name executed 3,642 trades worth hundreds of million of dollars. US regulators are examining oil futures trades placed shortly before major Trump policy shifts on Iran. In March, roughly $580 million in oil futures changed hands in a single minute before Trump posted about talks with Iran — nearly nine times the average volume for that window over the previous five trading days. On Polymarket, nine linked accounts made $2.4 million betting on Iran war outcomes, with a 98% win rate.

War has become tradable information: a post, a leak, a threat, a denial — each one capable of moving prices before it moves warships. Traders are profiting from privileged access to the imperial court. But the deeper scandal is that the world economy is being forced to organise itself around the whims of a power that can start wars, manipulate expectations, move markets — and then fail to control the consequences. This is the surface corruption of a deeper disorder: an imperialist war setting off a global struggle over who controls scarcity, who profits from it, and who is made to pay.

The US-Israeli war on Iran has brought traffic through the Strait of Hormuz close to a halt. Under normal conditions, the strait carries around a quarter of the world’s seaborne oil trade, along with significant volumes of LNG and fertiliser. The disruption is passing through the world economy in sequence: first into oil, freight and insurance; then into fertiliser, food prices, currencies and public debt. The shock is sharpest in the countries least responsible for the war and least able to absorb it.

The IEA’s 32 member states have agreed to make 400 million barrels of emergency oil reserves available to the market — the largest coordinated stock release in the agency’s history. The measure may calm markets. It cannot reopen a chokepoint closed by war. Even on the IEA’s own account, options for bypassing Hormuz are limited.

The danger is not confined to the next petrol bill. Around one third of global seaborne fertiliser trade passes through the strait. That turns today’s shipping shock into tomorrow’s harvest crisis.

The war is already becoming a hunger multiplier. The World Food Programme warns that almost 45 million more people could fall into acute food insecurity if the conflict continues and oil remains above $100 a barrel.

The first domestic responses have been uneven but familiar. India has raised fuel prices and moved to attract foreign capital to support the rupee. Across South and Southeast Asia, governments have turned to fuel quotas, work-from-home orders and reduced office travel. Elsewhere, states have cut fuel taxes. Behind these actions lies the same question: who will be made to absorb the shock?

The default response is already familiar: higher prices for households, sacrifice for workers, rationing for consumers, higher interest rates to defend currencies, and protection for oil companies, shippers, insurers and creditors. A response in the interests of the majority would turn the pressure upward: price controls, windfall taxes, capital controls, public guarantee of essentials, wage protection, and subsidies directed to those who cannot absorb the shock.

Alongside short-term responses, imperial planners are seeking ways around Iran’s Hormuz chokehold by advancing Netanyahu’s ambition to run oil and gas pipelines “west through the Arabian Peninsula” to Israel’s Mediterranean ports, “doing away with the choke points forever.” The India-Middle East-Europe Corridor (IMEC) is the clearest expression of that project: a sea-land-sea corridor linking India to the Gulf, then Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Israel, before reaching Europe through Haifa. India’s Adani Group acquired Haifa port in 2023, placing a key node of the route in the hands of a conglomerate closely aligned with New Delhi’s regional strategy. IMEC is designed to rival China’s Belt and Road, deepen normalisation between Israel and Arab states, and turn Israel into the indispensable gateway between Asia and Europe.

But the map remains contested. Türkiye has been excluded from IMEC even as Israel continues to depend on oil routed through the Turkish port of Ceyhan. The BTC pipeline, the Southern Gas Corridor and the dormant Iraq-Türkiye pipeline offer rival westward routes that bypass Hormuz without handing Israel full control of the corridor. The struggle over Hormuz is also a struggle over the next arteries of energy, trade and war.

The crisis is also pushing states along another path: away from exposure to US power. Gold has overtaken US Treasuries as a share of official reserves, partly because bullion prices have surged. The dollar system still stands. But around it, some states are building insurance against confiscation, sanctions and financial coercion. China has continued to reduce its Treasury holdings and expand alternative payment systems. For many central banks, gold has become a hedge against the instability of the old order rather than proof that a new one has arrived.

Iranian counter-pressure through Hormuz does not mark the end of the dollar, or the end of US American power. Declining hegemons do not disappear that quickly. They lash out, weaponise their remaining advantages and try to prevent any successor order from being born. Gaza, Lebanon and Iran are a military face of that decline. The oil, food and reserve shocks are its economic face.

In the months ahead, the same hard choice will confront every government: organise scarcity against the majority, or build sovereignty against the empire that produced it.

Latest from the Movement

Colombia heads to runoff under Washington’s shadow

Colombia’s presidential election will be decided in a second round on 21 June, after far-right outsider Abelardo de la Espriella topped the first round with 43.7 percent of the vote against 40.9 percent for Iván Cepeda of the Pacto Histórico. The result leaves Colombia facing a stark choice: between the continuation of the popular reforms opened by Gustavo Petro’s government, with Cepeda and Indigenous leader Aída Quilcué, and a hard-right project backed by forces seeking to reverse Colombia’s transformation and restore the country to Washington’s regional order. More than 23 million people voted in the first round, one of the highest turnouts in Colombia’s presidential history.

The election has unfolded under intense external pressure. Before the vote, the PI Observatory warned that a US delegation including Republican Senator Bernie Moreno — who had already urged Colombia’s electoral authorities to consider disqualifying votes from “parts of the country that are not secure” — risked becoming an instrument of political intervention under the cover of election observation. The Observatory later issued a Red Alert after reports that Moreno planned to meet with the leading right-wing candidates to facilitate their rapprochement ahead of the runoff. As Colombia enters the decisive second round, the Progressive International will return to observe the vote and defend the Colombian people’s right to determine their own future.

Peru at the polls

On Sunday 7 June, Peruvians go to the polls in a razor-thin presidential runoff between Keiko Fujimori, leader of Fuerza Popular, and Roberto Sánchez of Juntos por el Perú. The latest Ipsos poll places the candidates in a statistical tie, with Sánchez at 43.8 percent and Fujimori at 43.2 percent, after a fractured first round in April whose results took nearly a month to confirm. Fujimori now stands one election away from returning Fujimorismo to the presidency: the authoritarian political machine built by her father Alberto Fujimori, who dissolved Congress in a 1992 self-coup, oversaw massacres and mass forced sterilisation, and whose heirs have spent years destabilising governments, weakening prosecutors, and attacking Peru’s democratic institutions.

The Progressive International Observatory has published a special briefing on Fujimori and the threat her victory would pose to democracy, Indigenous rights, judicial independence and popular sovereignty in Peru and across Latin America. What happens in Lima on Sunday will be felt far beyond Peru: another front in the continental struggle between democratic transformation and the Reactionary International. The Progressive International will be on the ground to observe the vote and help ensure that every ballot is counted with integrity.

Genocide cargo turned away

The Danica Violet has been forced to reroute. The Danish-flagged cargo ship, carrying military materiel for Elbit Systems, Israel’s largest arms producer, did not dock at Kali Limenes, Crete, as planned on 1 June, after sustained pressure from the No Harbour for Genocide campaign. The ship had left Chennai carrying reported missile components, artillery gun barrels and other defence components bound for Elbit facilities in Israel, according to reporting by The Ditch. Its diversion is another victory for the people’s embargo: the workers, organisers and movements tracking the ships that arm Israel’s genocide and making every port a site of refusal.

Justice for Mokoena Letsie

The Progressive International mourns Mokoena Letsie, a gifted organiser with the Solidarity Action Committee Collective and Potch4Palestine, who was shot dead in Potchefstroom, South Africa, on 27 May. Letsie organised among shack settlement communities, fought for housing, jobs and service delivery, and stood in solidarity with the people of Palestine. South African unions and movements have condemned his killing as a political assassination and called for an urgent, independent investigation into the gunmen, those who financed them, and the networks behind the attack. We join them in demanding justice for Mokoena Letsie — and an end to the violence used to silence those who organise the poor.

Britain urged to stop IDF war criminals

Declassified UK and the International Centre of Justice for Palestinians have launched a campaign demanding an end to impunity for British nationals who served in the Israeli military during the genocide in Gaza. Earlier this year, Declassified revealed that more than 2,000 Britons had served for Israel since October 2023 — information obtained not from the UK government, which does not collect such data, but through an FOI request to the IDF. The campaign calls on the UK government to track the movements of Britons who served in the IDF, subject them to secondary screening where necessary, and support robust war crimes investigations in line with domestic and international law.

Our History

31 May - The Mavi Marmara

Israeli forces killed nine members of the Gaza Freedom Flotilla and wounded dozens more in the Mediterranean Sea on 31 May 2010.

Learn more about this history with this beautifully designed Instagram carousel.

5 June - James Connolly is born

James Connolly, the Irish republican and revolutionary socialist, was born on 5 June, 1868, on the Cowgate, Edinburgh, Scotland. He led the militant and intellectual struggle against British imperialism in Ireland, organised its proletariat and made the case for Marxism abroad.

Learn more James Connolly with this beautifully designed Instagram carousel.

Art of the Week

Ahmad Kaabour (1955 – 2026) is best known for his protest song Ounadikom (I call to you), which he composed upon the outbreak of the Lebanese Civil War in 1975, with lyrics by Palestinian poet Tawfiq Ziad. Ounadikom became an enduring anthem of the resistance against Israeli oppression, “orphaned, unclothed, barefooted.”

Kaabour grew up in a musical household, and his creativity extended to performance, writing and composing for stage and screen. Progressive International would like to thank his son, Marwan Kaabour for granting permission to use his father’s image, and to his contribution of a fundraising edition which you can find at: workshop.progressive.international