Iran Ceasefire Extended; Strait of Hormuz Closure Affects Global Economy

Turn any article into a podcast. Upgrade now to start listening. Members can share articles with friends & family to bypass the paywall. Hello and happy Saturday. President Donald Trump announced Tuesday that he would extend the ceasefire with Iran, hours after Vice President J.D. Vance’s trip to Pakistan for negotiations was delayed and then canceled, and hours before the ceasefire was set to expire. The Strait of Hormuz remains effectively closed. Iran seized two ships in the strait on Tuesday, and the U.S. has maintained its blockade of Iranian shipping. So even though the ceasefire is holding, the war is still affecting the global economy. As much as we’re all feeling the pain of high gas prices, the closure of the strait has also affected jet fuel prices, the availability of fertilizer, and even helium—which is used for a lot of things besides party balloons, including semiconductors. As we wrote in The Morning Dispatch on Thursday: The shutdown also bottlenecks high-tech sectors, with semiconductors, rocket launches, and medical imaging—along with party balloons—all reliant on helium, which Qatar has been the main exporter of. Semiconductors—included in every car, computer, and data center—require helium for their production process. Taiwan—home to the world’s leading contract chip manufacturers—gets most of its helium from Gulf markets. The shutdown also bottlenecks high-tech sectors, with semiconductors, rocket launches, and medical imaging—along with party balloons—all reliant on helium, which Qatar has been the main exporter of. Semiconductors—included in every car, computer, and data center—require helium for their production process. Taiwan—home to the world’s leading contract chip manufacturers—gets most of its helium from Gulf markets. With a pause in the shooting and attention turning toward negotiating a possible end to the conflict, it’s worth looking at who is actually running Iran right now. Mojtaba Khamenei was named supreme leader after his father, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, died in an Israeli airstrike on the opening day in the war. But Khamenei was reportedly seriously wounded in that attack and has not appeared in public nor released any audio statements since his elevation. Arash Azizi, a Yale lecturer and author of two books about Iran, wrote an in-depth piece explaining who’s really in charge at the moment: the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, which he says is “better understood as a decentralized hodgepodge of various networks.” He writes that “a few different centers of power have grown inside the ranks of the IRGC, often around particular personalities. Perhaps the most powerful such figure today is Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf.” Ghalibaf is the speaker of the Iranian parliament, is close to Mojtaba Khamenei, and led the Iranian delegation in the (failed) round of negotiations in Pakistan two weeks ago. But, Azizi notes, “no one man, not even the wily Ghalibaf, wields unchallenged control over the Guards.” He predicts that factional infighting will continue to dominate Iranian politics. Meanwhile, it’s also worth asking what’s going on with the Trump administration’s strategy for the conflict. In Boiling Frogs, Nick Catoggio wonders, “Where’s Marco?” After all, Marco Rubio is the secretary of state and the national security adviser, and has been hawkish on Iran throughout his career. And yet it was Vance who led the U.S. negotiating team in Islamabad. What gives? Nick has a few theories. Maybe Rubio is sidelined—the Iranians would probably object to his presence, Trump would have to share the credit if Rubio helped bring the war to an end, and Vance has huge incentives to keep Rubio out of things. But, Nick suspects, maybe Rubio just doesn’t want to be anywhere near the mess that the Iran war has become politically. And he’s keeping busy trying to effect regime change in Cuba, the country his parents fled in the 1950s. Rubio stands a real chance of parlaying the subjugation of Nicolás Maduro’s regime in Caracas into successful gunboat diplomacy in Cuba, ending communism on the island at last. And if he does, it’ll be a political master stroke in four or five different ways. It will give him an airtight alibi with Trump and Americans writ large for sidelining himself on Iran. (“I was ending Castroism!”) It will create a favorable contrast between him and Vance, whose diplomatic efforts with the Iranians are likely to be far less successful. It will thrill the right by engineering an outcome that White Houses of both parties have sought since 1959 and further endear him to Trump, who reeeeeeeally wants an easy win after the Iran mess to reestablish perceptions of his strength. Rubio stands a real chance of parlaying the subjugation of Nicolás Maduro’s regime in Caracas into successful gunboat diplomacy in Cuba, ending communism on the island at last. And if he does, it’ll be a political master stroke in four or five different ways. It will give him an airtight alibi with Trump and Americans writ large for sidelining himself on Iran. (“I was ending Castroism!”) It will create a favorable contrast between him and Vance, whose diplomatic efforts with the Iranians are likely to be far less successful. It will thrill the right by engineering an outcome that White Houses of both parties have sought since 1959 and further endear him to Trump, who reeeeeeeally wants an easy win after the Iran mess to reestablish perceptions of his strength. Meanwhile, Kevin Williamson sees no chance for a good outcome. He writes that the best hope is for a domestic uprising by the Iranian people but says it’s both unlikely and no guarantee that a better regime will take over. But his reasoning has as much to do with our domestic politics as it does international relations. He writes: There is no victory coming in Iran because it is an illegal war that will leave our constitutional mechanism, already running rough, further out of balance for a generation, with the presidential warmaking power now entirely untethered from Congress. There is no upside to that. Repairing the damage would take a generation of work by better men and women than we currently have in Washington. There is no victory coming in Iran because it is an illegal war that will leave our constitutional mechanism, already running rough, further out of balance for a generation, with the presidential warmaking power now entirely untethered from Congress. There is no upside to that. Repairing the damage would take a generation of work by better men and women than we currently have in Washington. On that cheery note, I will thank you for reading and wish you a happy weekend. The Problem With Today’s Anti-Feminists To give the anti-feminists their due, I assume in good faith that most of them want to protect women in “traditional” families. Scott Yenor, the Chair of the American Citizenship Initiative at the Heritage Foundation, has advocated for allowing businesses to support “traditional family life by hiring only male heads of households, or by paying a family wage.” But this doesn’t take into account the broader economic forces that are shaping women and men’s work in the United States. Anti-feminists often focus on elite jobs: the increasing number of female lawyers, for example, or women in prestigious academia. But whatever the impact of more women accessing the Ivory Tower or sitting on the Supreme Court (which, for the record, I think is good), this trend is not causing the average working-class man to lose his job. Nor does it explain why so many blue-collar men struggle to find work that pays well. Instead, men are coming out the losers as the U.S. economy shifts away from manufacturing and construction jobs, which are traditionally held by men, into health care jobs, which are traditionally held by women. … Put another way, even if we eliminated all the gender studies departments in colleges across America tomorrow, this is no help to a middle-aged man currently working at a brass plant in Ohio that recently announced it was closing and sending its jobs to Asia. The Enduring Lessons of Fusionism In the age of MAGA, a variety of insurgent factions—including new right populists, postliberals, national conservatives, and antisemitic groypers—compete for influence in a right united less by shared principles than by a common hostility to both the left and the conservative mainstream of the late 20th century. This is not the first time the American right has been little more than a loose collection of competing dogmas. In the years following World War II, the American right was a jumble of ideological impulses. One faction included traditionalists such as Russell Kirk and Richard Weaver, who themselves disagreed on fundamental questions – for instance, on whether Burkeanism represented the best approach for the right. Pro-market thinkers like Friedrich Hayek exerted enormous influence, despite insisting they were not conservatives at all. Ayn Rand’s anti-religion Objectivists, the remnants of the Southern Agrarians, and conspiracy-minded cranks like Robert Welch likewise all occupied space within the broader right-wing ecosystem. The eventual consolidation of several of these factions into a recognizable conservative movement was neither automatic nor inevitable. It required intellectual leadership, institutional development, and a willingness to draw lines. The Price of Crossing Crypto Could Be Higher in 2026 When Illinois Lt. Gov. Juliana Stratton emerged victorious from the state’s Democratic Senate primary in March, she didn’t just defeat her Democratic opponents, she also overcame a $10.3 million campaign by the crypto industry’s largest PAC, Fairshake, to sink her candidacy. Over the course of the primary, Fairshake spent around $9.8 million on advertisements opposing Stratton, while one of its partisan affiliates, Protect Progress, simultaneously deployed more than $400,000 in support of her opponents. As the state’s lieutenant governor, Stratton was second in command to Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker when, in 2025, he signed legislation regulating digital assets in the state. That regulation drew ire from the crypto industry and put a target on Stratton’s back. She also received a prominent endorsement from Sen. Elizabeth Warren, a vocal crypto critic, and was later labeled by Stand With Crypto—a nonprofit advocacy group started by Coinbase that ranks candidates based on how supportive they are of the cryptocurrency industry’s agenda—as strongly against the industry. … With a crypto-friendly president in office and a growing number of allies in the House and Senate, the industry has already notched one substantial legislative win under the Trump administration. Its signature achievement, however—a landmark market structure bill that crypto advocates believe would propel the industry into the mainstream—remains elusive, and the Republican majorities that have opened their arms to the industry could vanish in November. Four Decades Later, Threats Persist at Chernobyl It’s not just radiation: Workers at the site fear the return of Russian troops. We Need a New ‘Evangelicals and Catholics Together’ Movement Donald Trump’s attack on Pope Leo is the latest blow in an unnecessary split. Why Our Economic Intuitions Are Often Wrong Such tendencies stem from our evolutionary psychology. How Jihadism Takes Root in Liberal Democracies The ISIS caliphate may have fallen, but the allure of Islamic holy war is still a potent force—even in the West. Earth Day’s Bad Bet Against Humanity The Malthusian mind does not see the human capacity to cooperate, trade, discover, invent, and adapt. Online Gambling Is Breaking Containment An explosion of virtual vice is on the horizon—unless Congress steps in. I Am a Free-Range Parent. I Probably Won’t Be When I Move to America. Safetyism looks more rational when public disorder enters the picture. The White House Won’t Let Kennedy Be Kennedy HHS secretary returns to Capitol Hill for the first time since pivoting away from his vaccine agenda. Overturning Religious Precedent ‘That’s some premium grade malarkey!’ Does Trump Have the Patience to Win a War? Plus: Justice Clarence Thomas takes on progressivism. America’s Greatest Public Servant | Interview: Bob Crawford A bass player and Jonah walk into a bar ... Rachael Larimore is a managing editor of The Dispatch and is based in the Cincinnati area. Prior to joining the company in 2019, she served in similar roles at Slate, The Weekly Standard, and The Bulwark. She and her husband have three sons.