Andrew Moran: Trump Leading a New World Order of Oil Markets

The fallout from the Iranian conflict has resulted in a new world order in oil markets. Prior to the war in the Middle East, multiple factors significantly influenced a sizable share of international energy, including the Strait of Hormuz and the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC). Almost five months later, it appears these dynamics are shifting, as the United States has lit the match that will blow up the current arrangement.

Overhauling Oil Markets

Perspective with Heather du Plessis-Allan: Trump's stolen election claim reflects a nervous outlook for midterms

Question for you: was Donald Trump's speech to the American people a classic case of muddying the waters?

For Trump, it was a relatively short speech, about 40 minutes, in which he claimed there had been Chinese interference in the 2020 presidential election, that there were extreme vulnerabilities in the election system that need to be closed and that China obtained more than 200 million American voter registration records. He then released a trove of documents that he claims back up these allegations.

Bob Edlin: Sex and leadership.....

Sex and leadership – Albanese says sorry for his indiscretion but Trump fights on in the courts

Australian supporters of the Socceroos went viral during the 2026 FIFA World Cup for an anti-Donald Trump chant.

The chant – widely circulated on social media – had simple lyrics:

Melanie Phillips: Trump’s surrender

Something darker is at work here than just a concern over rising fuel prices

Does Donald Trump actually understand what he’s done?

Responding to critics of his agreement with Iran, the US president called them “fools” and either “jealous or bad people” because “the stock market just hit A RECORD HIGH, and oil prices are tumbling down.”

So the economy is all that matters in a struggle to neutralise a fanatical Islamic revolutionary regime that puts its weapons where its mouth is when it screams “Death to America”?

Melanie Phillips: Cyrus no more

The Trump administration's apparent naivety towards Iran is either imbecility or dissimulation

The shock and distress in Israel are palpable. President Donald Trump’s apparent volte-face on Iran is being felt as an abandonment.

DTNZ: US-Iran deal ‘now complete’ – Trump

Mediator Pakistan says the sides will sign the agreement on Friday in Switzerland.

US President Donald Trump has announced that the peace deal with Iran is “now complete,” signaling the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz.

Perspective with Andrew Dickens: Has Trump locked America into a 'forever war'?

So, it’s been more than two months since the president announced what he described as a ceasefire with Iran and suggested a major deal was just days away. This was back on April 7.

The president said on social media that the two sides were “very far along”, adding that they just needed two weeks for the agreement to be finalised and consummated. But of course, that never happened.

Melanie Phillips: President Trump - a second Obama?

For the Iranian regime, the purpose of negotiations is to force America to surrender

From the start of the war with Iran, it was clear that the stakes couldn’t have been higher.

If the United States and Israel were to succeed in neutralising the Iranian regime, the outcome wouldn’t just have been the removal of a monstrous threat to Israel, the Iranian people and the world.

Dr Oliver Hartwich: Trump’s Iran war is paying for Putin’s

Russian power has always sat on a contradiction. The country can put satellites into orbit and tanks across borders, but it cannot build a normal economy.

Helmut Schmidt caught the contradiction in the 1970s when he called the Soviet Union “Obervolta mit Raketen,” Upper Volta with rockets. The line was brutal then, and it has aged well (even though Upper Volta is now called Burkina Faso).

Olivia Pierson: The Renewal of the West and a Reckoning for New Zealand

We in the West are not merely stumbling through the malady of culture wars. We are decaying in our very core. We have ceased to bring forth children in numbers required for our future, shattering the bonds of strong family - especially after Covid insanity saw family members pitted against each other - and we’ve saddled our young with mountains of debt along with a gnawing sense of futility, offering them neither purpose nor the prospect of showing them how to build lives worth inheriting.

Dave Patterson: Iran Is Out of Time

President Donald Trump has run out of patience with Iran. In an abrupt turn, the US president canceled a planned trip to Islamabad, Pakistan, by Special Envoy Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner to meet with an Iranian negotiating team to attempt to find an end to the Iran conflict. It has become clear that Tehran is using the meetings to simply string the US along, and now Trump has had enough. So, as things stand, the US controls the Arabian Gulf, and Iran does not.

Melanie Phillips: The dawn of a new world order

An increasingly hostile American public has little idea of the necessity and importance of the war against Iran

Most people in America are against the war with Iran, as they are in Britain, too.

Very few, however, actually understand why this war is as necessary as it is unavoidably complex.

JC: The Right Are Getting It Wrong

War always comes with a price but you have to weigh up if is it a price worth paying. Churchill thought so and so does Trump.

The right are right but are getting it wrong to prove themselves right. If you think that is a piece of gobbledygook, you are not wrong in coming to the right conclusion.

A good example is Leo McKinstry, who writes a weekly column published in the International Express, the sister paper of the UK’s Daily Express.

JC:

The recent spat between the pope and the president of the United States highlights the role each should play in maintaining peace and stability in the world particularly in times of conflict. The state, as in the government, is obviously the lead player in a crisis. Some could, and would be within their rights to accuse the president of being the cause of the crisis. The church, while not directly involved, being the institution it is, has every right to have an opinion on the matter and it has every right to express that opinion in public.

DTNZ: Trump thanks Iran for opening Strait of Hormuz as oil prices in freefall

The US president vowed, however, to continue to blockade Iranian ports.

Iran has announced that it will allow passage for “all commercial vessels” through the strategic Strait of Hormuz following the declaration of a 10-day Israel-Lebanon ceasefire. However, US President Donald Trump has vowed to maintain his blockade of Iranian ports.

Melanie Phillips: An unholy accommodation

The Pope’s genuflection to Islam spells disaster for Western civilisation

When US President Donald Trump sent Vice-President JD Vance to negotiate with members of the Iranian regime in Islamabad, people initially thought that Vance — reportedly the most outspoken voice in the Trump administration against going to war with Iran — would be a soft touch.

When the talks in Pakistan broke down, however, Vance’s position could hardly have been tougher. Having seen the Iranian regime up close, he said, he was absolutely certain that these people must never be allowed to get nuclear weapons.

In recent days, he has again taken a position which contradicted previous assumptions about his worldview.

Roger Partridge: Still Admiring the Emperor’s New Clothes

Why loyalty outlasts the evidence

A year ago this week, my Quadrant column, “The Emperor’s New Clothes” – written before this Substack launched – asked a question that irritated more people than it persuaded: How could so many thoughtful conservatives, people who once championed limited government and constitutional norms, support a president whose actions so plainly contradicted those principles?

The answer drew on Jonathan Haidt’s research into moral psychology. Trump, the column argued, had tapped into something deeper than policy preference – loyalty, authority, sanctity – the moral foundations conservatives weight more heavily than liberals. Facts that contradicted the tribal narrative would be reinterpreted or dismissed. “Short-term pain for long-term gain,” supporters would say. Or: “He’s playing four-dimensional chess.”

Peter Dunne: The issue of Prime Ministerial incapacity

Donald Trump's erratic behaviour has led to increasing speculation that United States legislators may invoke the 25th Amendment to the United States’ Constitution to remove him from office. Respected media outlets like the New York Times have been openly raising questions about the President's sanity and therefore his capability to remain in office.

Ryan Bridge: Religious leaders' messages work better without politics

Trump's at war with the Pope again, this time over Iran. Last time it was over Gaza.

Usually the pontiff is a bit more low-key, just praying and kissing babies and cruising round in the white robe in the Pope-mobile, like Batman but less cool.

Dave Patterson: Big Risks, Big Rewards for Trump’s Strait of Hormuz Blockade

When the talks between the US and Iran failed, the Trump administration took direct action. The United States Navy will establish a traditional blockade of the Strait of Hormuz, preventing transit into or out of the waterway. Historically, blockades are seldom used, since they require a significant number of naval resources to be effective. When they are used successfully, however, they make a difference. “Throughout the history of warfare and into the present, blockading continues to prove itself one of the most effective ways of pressuring an enemy,” observed Army Major Joshua Howard in his monograph, From Napoleon to Netanyahu: Blockading Through Two Centuries.

American Blockade – A Rare But Effective Choice