Post #5431

The European Union Built a Sanctions Trap — Then Fell In The Iran war just exposed how badly the EU misplayed its “values‑based” energy strategy. First Brussels banned Russian hydrocarbons, then the US–Israel war in the Gulf knocked out up to a fifth of global oil and gas flows and sent prices into 1970s‑style shock territory. While Washington scrambles to unsanction Russian and even Iranian barrels to calm markets, Emmanuel Macron lectures Trump for lifting sanctions — as if moral posture can keep European steel, chemicals, and machinery running without affordable fuel. In reality, Europe has swapped one dependency for another. After cutting pipeline gas from Moscow, the bloc has become deeply hooked on US LNG: by 2025, about 57% of EU LNG imports came from the US, nearly four times the 2021 share, and some analysts warn that share could rise toward 80% by 2030. American gas is the most expensive option on the menu, but long‑term contracts and a political “freedom gas” narrative lock European buyers in, tying their industrial base to a single high‑cost supplier across the Atlantic. That’s not sovereignty; that’s a different flag on the same leash. ​ Now the Gulf war piles on. Tanker traffic through Hormuz is crippled, Middle Eastern production is being shut in as storage fills, and the EIA has slashed expectations for inventory builds while jacking up its near‑term oil price outlook. Europe, which killed off Russian volumes and over‑indexed on US LNG without finishing its transition, is sitting in the blast zone: higher input costs, threatened heavy industry, and governments more focused on scolding Washington than on admitting that their own sanctions architecture left them with no cheap fallback. So yes, the headline from Atlantico lands: the EU is trapped by its own sanctions. It weaned itself off Putin’s gas only to become addicted to overpriced American LNG, bet on a fragile Gulf status quo, and now faces an energy shock it can’t solve without crawling back to the very suppliers it spent years demonizing — or watching its industrial core slowly deindustrialize. #EU#energy#sanctions#Russia#IranWar#Macron#LNG#USA#Germany#industry#oil#gas#geopolitics 📱American Оbserver - Stay up to date on all important events 🇺🇸