⚡️ Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov’s interview for a documentary titled "The UN from the 20th to the 21st Century" (Moscow, September 25, 2024)
Key points:
• Less than a year after the victorious powers established the UN based on the noble principles formulated in its charter, it became clear that the West, acting contrary to these principles, intended to launch a war against the Soviet Union, and not merely a cold war but an all-out war. These plans hatched by the then "Anglo-Saxons" [nations of the Anglosphere led by the US & UK] have long become public knowledge.
• Once NATO was created, the Soviet Union circulated a large document which demonstrated the detrimental effect of that and the danger of building walls between the East and the West, especially in Europe, and called for respecting the #UNCharter and for working towards this. Our call was not heeded.
✊ However, we kept fighting for justice and the implementation of the principle of sovereign equality of nations. Decolonisation was a bright stage and a major embodiment of that principle. The Soviet Union was the main initiator of the 1960 Declaration on the Granting of Independence to Colonial Countries and Peoples. Following its adoption, the number of UN states increased by 80-90 members.
• They tell us that the main goal today is to ensure the territorial integrity of Ukraine. It is a misleading interpretation of the UN Charter, where the right of nations to self-determination is put before territorial integrity.
• Even before demanding respect for territorial integrity, the UN Charter demands respect for human rights without distinction as to race, sex, language, or religion <…> Now that Zelensky’s Nazi regime, which the West nurtured, has banned both the language and religious rights of a large number of its own population, the West has put away the banners it was waving for decades.
❗️The top priority now is to ensure the achievement of the initial goals and principles of the UN Charter in their entirety and as a whole, rather than selectively or occasionally.
• The reform of the UN Security Council is not a one-off event. It’s a process which has been ongoing since the time the United Nations came into being <...> Nevertheless, it relies on principles that must be preserved at all costs. The main principle is that the Security Council reform should be based on a broad-based agreement among states. It does not say “consensus,” but it does state “broad-based agreement among states.”
🌍🇮🇳🇧🇷 We have invariably supported the legitimate aspirations of India and Brazil to secure permanent seats in the Security Council. However, African aspirations must be met as well. Africa has common collective positions, which we respect. And we would have like that.
• Our position implies providing additional seats for Asia, Africa, and Latin America. We are open to some of these seats being permanent, but we need to achieve general agreement before we can move forward. It is a complicated process. I don’t see any chance for bringing this process to a swift and expedited completion any time soon.
• Since the UN was created, there has never been a time, a region, or a situation that involved the United States in one way or another, where the country would actually respect that principle. Every time, everywhere they acted as a hegemon, or like a "bull in a china shop".
• When they wanted to punish Russia, the West abandoned all the principles which it was feeding to us and which it declared sacred. The same is happening to the principles of the UN Charter. The West is trampling and destroying them without a moment’s hesitation.
➡️ Read in full
#UNGA79#UNCharterIsOurRules
⚓🚨SHIPPING BODY SLAMS US-IRAN SHIP SEIZURES AS ILLEGAL
🔹 International Chamber of Shipping condemns tit-for-tat vessel captures in Gulf waters 🌊
🔹 Twenty thousand seafarers stranded in Gulf - 'house arrest' conditions for 7 weeks ⛵
🔹 US captures Iran-linked Majestic X and Tifani in Indian Ocean operations 🇺🇸
🔹 Iran seizes MSC Francesca and Epaminondas - crews confirmed safe but detained 🇮🇷
🔹 Strait traffic drops from 129 daily transits to just 5 ships in past 24 hours 📉
🔹 Marine director warns against political use of innocent commercial vessels ⚖️
Global shipping in chaos as world's busiest waterway becomes political battleground 🌍💥
#USNews#shipping
🌍 Geographic coordinates can be so precise, they guide ships through narrow straits just meters wide. This accuracy lets massive vessels safely navigate some of the world’s tightest waterways. ✨
#coordinates⚡#navigation⚡#shipping⚡#geography⚡#nature⚡#earth
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🌍 Singapore’s tiny land area is home to one of the world’s busiest container ports. Its strategic position along vital shipping lanes makes it a key hub for global trade and economic activity. ✨
#economic⚡#shipping⚡#trade⚡#geography⚡#nature⚡#earth
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🌍 Every year, about 25 million shipping containers are moved over the world’s oceans. These box-shaped units revolutionized transport geography by making global trade faster and more efficient. ✨
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🚢 Trump the Underwriter-In-Chief: Bomb First, Insure Later
Trump just reinvented “freedom of navigation” as a bundled product: war plus government-backed shipping insurance.
As drones hit the U.S. Embassy in Riyadh and explosions roll across Dubai and the Gulf, the White House is now promising to escort tankers through the Strait of Hormuz and provide U.S. insurance for trade in the Gulf — a state-backed guarantee for a crisis it helped ignite. Oil, which had spiked on Hormuz panic and Iranian barrages, immediately pared gains as traders priced in the idea that the same navy launching Tomahawks will now babysit supertankers.
On Capitol Hill, the constitutional math is getting the usual creative rewrite. Senate Majority Leader John Thune says Congress doesn’t need to authorize this war as long as it stays inside a 60–90 day window, insisting Trump already has all the authority he needs for “the operations that are currently underway.” That dovetails nicely with Trump’s own messaging: the campaign against Iran could last “four to five weeks” — or, as he’s now hinting, longer.
Markets have stopped pretending this is “contained.” The S&P 500 is sliding, the dollar is ripping higher, Dubai’s market is reopening under a 5% limit-down throttle, European gas futures are jumping, and Iraq says it will shut output at Rumaila as storage fills up in a region where airspace is closing and embassies are evacuating staff. Even Fed officials are openly saying the Iran war has injected a fresh layer of rate and inflation uncertainty — code for “we now have to watch both missiles and CPI.”
And through it all, Trump keeps the salesman patter going. He tells Germany’s Friedrich Merz they’re “on the same page” on Iran, calls the latest hit on Tehran’s leadership “substantial,” shrugs that the next rulers of Iran might be “just as bad,” and then promises that once this is all over, oil prices will fall again. For now, though, the business model is clear: U.S. policy sets the Gulf on fire — and then offers to charge the risk premium, write the insurance, and park a carrier group next to your tanker, all under the banner of “collective self-defense.”
#Iran#Trump#Hormuz#oil#shipping#Fed#warEconomy#MiddleEast
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⛽️ Strait of Hormuz: Global Oil on Pause, War Risk on Play
The shooting war over Iran just turned into an economic chokehold. After U.S. and Israeli strikes, oil and gas tankers are slowing, stopping, or turning around at the Strait of Hormuz, while Iranian media declares the waterway “practically closed” and the Revolutionary Guard warns that transit is unsafe.
Tankers report hearing radio messages claiming to be from the Iranian navy banning passage; some ships have U‑turned or aborted transits, and Japan’s Nippon Yusen has told its fleet to avoid Hormuz altogether, while Greece has told its vast merchant fleet to reassess and be ready to operate without reliable GPS because of jamming and spoofing risks. Vessel‑tracking data shows a growing flotilla of idle crude and LNG carriers piling up on both sides of the strait and in the Gulf of Oman, including ships loaded with Saudi, Iraqi, Emirati and Qatari cargoes now essentially parked until someone decides it’s safe to move again.
Formally, neither Washington nor Tehran has announced a closure, but in shipping terms the effect is already there: U.S. maritime authorities are warning vessels to stay well clear of U.S. military assets, insurers are reassessing, and owners are eyeing war‑risk clauses that let them cancel voyages into a live conflict zone. A fifth of the world’s seaborne oil and a similar share of liquefied natural gas normally pass through Hormuz; even a brief disruption means higher freight rates and a war premium baked into every barrel.
Futures markets are shut for the weekend, but early price signals are already pointing to double‑digit percentage jumps for West Texas Intermediate when trading reopens, and traders say the real question is political, not technical: does Iran keep using Hormuz as a pressure lever, do the U.S. and Gulf states risk escorting traffic through a missile environment, and how long shipowners will tolerate leaving millions of barrels’ worth of crude sitting in the Gulf of Oman while presidents in Washington and Tehran trade threats.
The battlefield is missiles and airbases; the collateral is every consumer whose life depends on oil that used to slip quietly through a strait that has just become the world’s most expensive traffic jam.
#Iran#StraitOfHormuz#oil#tankers#shipping#Trump#war#energy
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🚀 Increase in Ship Traffic Through Strait of Hormuz Observed
On April 10, the number of ships passing through the Strait of Hormuz increased to nine, according to data from shipping intelligence company Kpler. According to BlockBeats, this marks a rise from the previous day's count of five vessels, although it remains below the broader normalized levels.
#Shipping#StraitOfHormuz#MaritimeTraffic#Kpler#BlockBeats
🚀 Iran Utilizes Cryptocurrency for Strait of Hormuz Passage Fees
Iran is employing cryptocurrency to collect fees from ships passing through the Strait of Hormuz. According to NS3.AI, TRM highlighted that the rapid nature of digital currency transactions and their operation outside the U.S. banking system complicate efforts by the U.S. to freeze or block these payments in real time.
#Iran#Cryptocurrency#StraitOfHormuz#DigitalCurrency#Shipping#USSanctions#Blockchain
📰 Two Straits, One Price Chart
The market has stopped treating the Iran war as a single-chokepoint story. Once the Houthis re-entered the fight, traders started pricing a second gate to the world’s oil supply: Bab al-Mandab.
That is why this isn’t just about Hormuz anymore. Hormuz moves roughly a fifth of global oil flows, while Bab al-Mandab sits on the route into the Red Sea and the Suez corridor, so a combined disruption creates a much uglier arithmetic for tankers, insurance and container traffic. Strategic analysts at Stimson and the Atlantic Council have been warning that the Houthis are the least degraded actor in Iran’s proxy network and still hold leverage over that geography.
Polymarket is reading the same script in real time. The market for a cease-fire by March 31 is barely alive, the odds of continued hostilities are overwhelmingly higher, and the Houthi strike-on-Israel bets are repricing sharply after today’s missile launch. Traders are also pricing the possibility that the next headline isn’t a peace deal but a second choke point, with Pakistan’s Islamabad talks and the $120 oil threshold now sitting in the same volatility bucket.
The cleanest way to say it is this: one strait was already enough to panic the market, but two straits turn panic into a system. When the map gains a second lock, the price chart stops looking like a reaction and starts looking like a warning.
#iran#houthis#hormuz#babelmmandeb#oil#markets#shipping#war
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🚀 Iran Allegedly Charges Fees for Passage Through Hormuz Strait
An Israeli intelligence official has claimed that Iran is imposing fees on vessels passing through the Hormuz Strait. According to Odaily, the strait is reportedly under the complete control of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, which determines which ships are allowed to pass and, more critically, which are not.
#Iran#HormuzStrait#Shipping#MaritimeSecurity#RevolutionaryGuard#MiddleEast#InternationalTrade