Trump says the war is very close to over.
The White House says it feels good about prospects of a deal.
Pakistan's army chief Munir has flown to Tehran carrying a new
message from Washington. Pakistan's Prime Minister Sharif
is on a four day tour of Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Turkey to
build regional support for a second round.
The S&P 500 and the NASDAQ have hit fresh record highs, erasing
every war loss since February 28th.
And a fire broke out overnight at Australia's largest oil
refinery, a facility that supplies half of the state of
Victoria's fuel, at the exact moment Australia is scrambling
to replace energy supply disrupted by the Strait of
Hormuz closure. It is Thursday, April 16th,
2026, day 48 of Operation Epic Fury.
The ceasefire expires in six days.
The second round of talks is coming.
No date and no venue yet confirmed, but the diplomatic
machinery is clearly moving at pace.
Pakistan's army chief is in Tehran.
Pakistan's Prime Minister is touring the Gulf.
This and P500 is at a record high and the world that this war
has been reshaping for 48 days is showing new fracture lines
with every passing hour. The latest of which is an
Australian refinery fire that has nothing to do with the war
itself and everything to do with what the war has done to global
energy supply margins. This is episode 48 of Epic Fury,
the US Iran War podcast. Follow on Spotify and Apple
Podcast to stay with this story as it develops.
Let's get into it. Start with a diplomatic picture,
because on Day 48, it is moving faster than the blockade that
was supposed to have replaced it.
Trump told Fox Business Network on Wednesday that the war is
very close to over. A statement that, coming from a
president who launched the operation 48 days ago and who
has described its progress in maximalist terms throughout,
carries more weight than a boast.
It is a signal that whatever the back channel has been producing,
Trump believes it is converging. He told ABC News correspondent
Jonathan Karl that he's not thinking about extending the
ceasefire. He does not think it will be
necessary, he told Karl. I think you're going to be
watching an amazing two days ahead.
I really do. That is presidential forecasting
of the most specific and consequential kind.
Trump is not predicting a general outcome.
He is predicting something remarkable in a defined and
short time frame. Whether that confidence is based
on back channel signals from Tehran, on the phone call from
the right people 2 days ago, or on something else entirely is
not confirmed. What is confirmed is that the
White House told reporters on Wednesday that it feels good
about prospects of a deal and that any US delegation returning
to talks would very likely go back to Islamabad.
The most significant diplomatic movement of Wednesday is
Moonier's flight to Tehran. Pakistan's army chief, the man
who brokered the ceasefire in its final hours, who ran the two
phase proposal past Vance and Arachi simultaneously, who wore
combat fatigues for the Iranian delegation and a suit for the
Americans, flew to Tehran on Wednesday carrying a new message
from Washington. His arrival in Iran is
remarkable for several reasons. Munir is a military officer, not
a diplomat. When a military chief of the
stature of Pakistan's Field Marshall arrives in a foreign
capital to deliver a message, it carries weight that a diplomatic
note or a foreign ministry communication does not.
He is speaking directly and personally to the level of the
Iranian establishment that actually makes decisions, the
Revolutionary Guard leadership, the Supreme National Security
Council, and by extension, Common A himself.
His visit is the clearest signal yet that the back channel
between Washington and Tehran, routed through Islamabad, is
active and operating at the highest level.
Whatever message Munir is carrying, whether it is a
modified version of the US final offer, a proposed framework for
the second rounds agenda, or a specific ask about what Iran
needs to hear before sending its delegation back, represents
Washington's most direct communication to Tehran's
decision makers since Vance left the Serena H4 days ago.
Munir is not making a courtesy call, he is delivering terms.
Whether Iran's response constitutes the movement that
could make the second round productive where the first was
not is the question that the next 48 hours will answer.
Pakistan's Prime Minister Sharif, meanwhile, departed on a
four day diplomatic tour of Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Turkey,
the three countries that have been most active in a diplomatic
ecosystem around the ceasefire, alongside Pakistan itself.
The visits are explicitly aimed at rallying support for a second
round and, critically, at building the regional
architecture of a potential deal.
A permanent settlement of this conflict cannot be negotiated in
a single bilateral channel between the US and Iran.
It requires regional buy in from Gulf states that have been
bombed for 48 days and that needs security guarantees, From
Turkey, which has been publicly offering to mediate a ceasefire
extension of 45 to 60 days, and from Saudi Arabia, whose oil
infrastructure and regional political relationships are
central to whatever a post where Middle East looks like.
These countries are not bystanders, they are parties to
the consequences and any deal that does not address their
security interests will be built on an unstable foundation.
Sharif's tour is building the scaffolding around a second
Islamabad session that is not yet scheduled but is clearly
being planned in the assumption that it will happen and that it
needs regional support to hold. What is now known about how
close the first round actually got is more significant than the
headline failure suggested. The Islamabad talks Wikipedia
entry drawing on multiple sided sources confirms that the teams
were able to agree on the main points of Iran's 10 point
ceasefire framework with exception of the Strait of
Hormuz and the Iranian nuclear program.
A source involved in the talks told Reuters the parties came
very close and were 80% there before running into decisions
that could not be settled on the spot.
Arachi said Iran was inches away from a memorandum of
understanding before encountering what he described
as maximalism, shifting goal posts and blockade.
Vance said the Iranians moved in the US direction but did not
move far enough and that the Iranian negotiators had to
return to Tehran to get approval for any final concessions.
Those three accounts, 80% there inches away, needed to go back
to Tehran. Paint a consistent picture of a
process that did not fail because both sides wanted it to
fail. It failed because the remaining
20% involved decisions that require authorization from
Common A and the Supreme National Security Council that
the Iranian delegation did not have in the room.
That is a profoundly different kind of failure from the failure
of the pre war Geneva and Muscat talks in February where both
sides were genuinely far apart and the process ended in
bombing. The Islamabad failure is the
failure of a process that got close, that agreed on most of
the points of a 10 point framework, that moved from
proximity to direct engagement, that generated 21 hours of
substantive discussion and installed at the final
authorization stage. The gap between 80% and 100% is
not a gap of will, it is a gap of process.
The Iranian delegation arrive in Islamabad without full authority
to make final concessions on the nuclear question and on Hormuz
governance. When the talks got to those
questions, the delegation could not say yes, it can only say we
need to go back to Tehran. The structure of a second round
is therefore different from the structure of the 1st.
In the first round, the delegations were establishing
what was and was not possible in the second round.
If Iran's delegation returns with the authority that the
first delegation did not have, the remaining 20% may close
quickly if it returns with the same authority it had the first
time. No final decision on nuclear, No
final decision on Hormuz. The second round produces the
same result as the first. Munir's mission to Tehran is
specifically about ensuring that does not happen.
He is trying to establish before the delegations fly to Islamabad
again whether the Iranian government is prepared to send a
delegation with the authority to close.
That is why Pakistan is now calling this the Islamabad
process, not a single event, but an ongoing diplomatic track
where the second round is intended to cross the distance
the first identified. The blockade is producing
economic effects that are accelerating that process.
CENTCOM confirmed on Tuesday that the blockade has been fully
implemented, with U.S. forces maintaining maritime superiority
across the region. Admiral Brad Cooper, the CENTCOM
commander, put the stakes in direct economic terms.
An estimated 90% of Iran's economy is fueled by
international trade by sea. That is the blockade.
Strategic logic in one sentence. If that figure is accurate, a
fully enforced blockade of Iranian ports is not a military
inconvenience for Tehran. It is an economic existential
threat. In less than 36 hours of
implementation, the US had already turned back vessels and
established A credible enforcement posture.
U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Besson
announced on Wednesday that the United States is now willing to
apply secondary sanctions on countries that buy Iranian oil
or take Tehran's money. That announcement extends the
blockades economic reach beyond the physical straight into the
financial architecture of Iranian oil trade globally.
Secondary sanctions are a powerful instrument.
They do not require the US Navy to intercept a ship.
They require the financial institutions, insurance
companies, and correspondent banks of any country trading
with Iran to choose between continuing that trade and
maintaining their access to the US financial system.
For most global institutions, that choice is not difficult.
the US dollar centrality to global trade means secondary
sanctions effectively deputize the entire global banking system
as an enforcement mechanism for American foreign policy.
For China, which has been importing Iranian crude through
intermediary mechanisms and state to state arrangements that
evade direct designations, secondary sanctions represent a
significant escalation of the economic threat China's state
banks and oil companies would face.
A stark choice, continue buying Iranian oil and lose access to
the US financial system, or stop that pressure is one reason
Trump's announcement that China has agreed not to provide
weapons to Iran carries weight. Beijing's calculus throughout
this conflict has been to protect its economic interests
while publicly condemning the war.
Secondary sanctions make protecting those economic
interests significantly more expensive.
Trump said on Wednesday that China has agreed not to transfer
weapons to Iran, resolving one of the most significant open
questions of the past week. If that agreement holds, it
removes a scenario that would have dramatically altered Iran's
military position and created a direct US China confrontation at
the worst possible moment for diplomacy.
Iran's National Petrochemical Company announced on Wednesday
that it has suspended exports of petrochemical products until
further notice, prioritizing domestic supply disrupted by US
Israeli strikes between February 28th and April 8th.
That announcement is a direct economic consequence of the
blockade. Iran's petrochemical export
infrastructure, already damaged by the bombing campaign, is now
further constrained by the inability to ship products
through a straight that is either mine, blockaded or both.
For Iran's civilian economy, petrochemical suspension
compounds the already severe shortages that Posseshkian had
privately warned were approaching collapse before the
ceasefire was even announced. And then there is Geelong,
Australia. A fire broke out late Wednesday
night at the Viva Energy refinery in Geelong,
approximately 1 hour South of Melbourne.
The facility is the largest of Australia's 2 remaining oil
refineries, operating at a capacity of 120,000 barrels per
day and supplying more than 50% of the state of Victoria's fuel.
State fire authorities said the blaze had been brought under
control by noon on Thursday. No injuries were reported and
the cause of the fire and the extent of the damage were not
immediately determined. The timing is acutely difficult.
Australia imports 80% of its fuel needs under normal
circumstances, an unusually high level of import dependence for a
developed economy. Unlike the United States, which
has domestic oil production that insulates it partially from
global supply disruptions, Australia is almost entirely
dependent on imported refined products.
The Viva Energy refinery in Geelong is one of only two
operational refineries left in the country when it produces a
capacity. It supplies more than 50% of
Victoria's fuel needs and roughly 10% of Australia's
national supply. It's incapacitation, even
temporary, removes A meaningful buffer from a system that has
very little buffer left. Since the Strait of Hormuz was
effectively closed in early March, Australia has been racing
to replace disrupted supply from alternative sources.
Prime Minister Albanese announced last month that the
government would have the fuel excise and suspend a heavy Rd.
user charge for three months to help households absorb the
surgeon costs. In some parts of the country,
panic buying had already doubled local fuel demand.
The refinery fire is not caused by the Iran war, but it lands in
a country operating at the edge of its fuel security margins
precisely because of the Iran war.
At a moment when the alternative supply routes Australia needs
are stretched, the shipping insurance costs that govern
those routes are at historic highs and the domestic refinery
capacity that would otherwise buffer supply disruption is now
itself temporarily offline. Industry analyst Tenant Reed of
the Australian Industry Group said Thursday is going to be a
very bumpy and expensive few months for the households of
Victoria. It will feel like the Iran war
arrived on their doorstep overnight.
That observation, bumpy an expensive, is a precise
description of the global economic situation this war has
created. The Geelong refinery fire is 1
domestic local expression of a supply chain stress that began
in the Strait of Hormuz 48 days ago and has since propagated
outward through energy markets, insurance premiums, shipping
route diversions, fertilizer supply chains, jet fuel
availability concerns in Europe and now the production capacity
of refineries on the other side of the planet from where the war
is being fought. The war's economic reach extends
considerably further than its bombs.
The S&P 500 and NASDAQ hit fresh record highs on Wednesday,
erasing every war loss since February 28th.
That is an extraordinary market signal.
Stocks and oil prices are moving in the same direction, both up,
which is unusual and specifically reflects the dual
pricing of a deal coming soon and energy markets remaining
tight until it does. In normal conditions, rising oil
prices weigh on equities because they raise input costs across
the economy. The current situation has both
rising because the market is simultaneously pricing energy
scarcity now and economic recovery soon.
The NASDAQ at a record high, while oil is near $100 a barrel
and an Australian refinery is on fire as a market saying three
things. A deal is coming, the damage
will be repaired, and the recovery will be stronger than
the disruption. The last time the S&P 500 made a
record high during an active U.S. military engagement was
during the periods of the Iraq war, when the market had decided
the conflict was contained and the economy will be fine.
Whether this moment resembles that one, or whether the market
is mispricing A ceasefire that is more fragile than investors
believe is the question the next six days will answer.
The Senate voted for the fourth time this year to reject a
measure that would have required congressional approval for any
future military action against Iran.
Republicans blocked the war powers vote again.
The consistent failure of these measures is a political reality
that shapes the negotiating environment.
Trump is conducting this war and this diplomacy with no binding
congressional constraint. That means any deal he reaches
with Iran does not require Senate ratification.
He can implement it by executive agreement, which is faster and
politically cleaner than a treaty process.
But it also means any breakdown that leads to renewed military
action can proceed without the democratic deliberation that a
formal declaration of war would require.
The political freedom that the war powers vote failure gives
Trump is both an asset in the final six days and a risk for
the durability of whatever comes after them.
The petrochemical suspension is 1 visible indicator of a broader
collapse in Iran's economic position.
Iran's rial, its Internet infrastructure, its power grid,
its airport capacity, and its export revenues are all
compromised simultaneously. The IMF has projected a 6.1%
contraction of the Iranian economy in 2026, a figure that,
if it materializes, would represent an economic
contraction. Approaching the worst years of
the Iran Iraq War, Posseschkian is governing a country whose
civilian population has absorbed 48 days of bombing, A ceasefire
that has not produced full relief, a partial blockade mine,
contaminated waters, suspended petrochemical exports and the
accumulated psychological weight of a war that the government has
simultaneously described as a historic victory.
The political pressure on Kamane to deliver a deal that allows
Iran to present itself as having achieved something is real and
accumulating. He cannot accept terms that look
like capitulation to his domestic audience, but he also
cannot allow the Iranian economy to continue deteriorating
indefinitely while the ceasefire window closes and the blockade
tightens. The window that Munir is
attempting to open with his Tehran visit is the window
between those two constraints, a deal that Iran can frame
domestically as protecting its sovereignty while giving the
United States enough on the nuclear question to declare
victory in Washington. Whether that window is wide
enough to drive a deal through before the ceasefire expires on
April 22nd is the central diplomatic question of Day 48,
and of every day that follows it, until either the second
round produces an agreement or the clock runs out.
Six days remain. Munir is in Tehran with a new
message from Washington. Sharif is touring the region.
Trump says something amazing is coming.
The S&P 500 believes him. Australia's largest refinery is
cooling down from a fire that struck at the worst possible
moment. And somewhere in Tehran,
Khamenei is deciding whether to send the Iranian delegation back
to the Serena Hotel with the authority to close the remaining
20%. If this podcast is helping you
make sense of what is happening, please take 30 seconds to leave
a review on Spotify or Apple Podcasts.
It makes an enormous difference to how many people find the
show. This has been episode 48 of Epic
Fury, the US Iran war podcast. Day 48, Six days left on the
ceasefire clock. Pakistan's army chief is in
Tehran with a message from Washington.
Pakistan's Prime Minister is touring Saudi Arabia, Qatar and
Turkey. The S&P 500 and NASDAQ are at
record highs. The Geelong refinery fire is
out, the damage still being assessed.
Trump says the war is very close to over and something amazing is
coming. The clock is running.
We will be back very soon with the next episode.