As I jumped on Paradigm Press’s all-hands conference call early last night, I had a few minutes to say hi to my colleagues far off and chew the fat. We were talking markets, as we always do, when I said I was happy that gold would resume its upward trend, but skeptical about silver and copper.

My good friend and ace geologist Matt Badiali chimed in and said, “Are you kidding me? Those mullahs have got more moolah than they’ve had in years!”

Mullah moolah. My goodness, he hit the nail on the head.

It’s bad enough to realize we’ve paid for a stupid war up front. But to realize we’re going to finance Iran’s reconstruction was too much. And what’s worse, I can’t get the tune to Wooly Bully out of my head.

Matty told Seanie
About the copper price
Iran has the cash now
War makes oil rise!
Mullah Moolah, Mullah Moolah
Mullah Moolah, Mullah Moolah, Mullah Moolah

Here's the dirty secret nobody in DC wants to say out loud: the most generous donor to Iran's reconstruction isn't China. It isn't Russia. It's an oblivious Ohio patriot who drives a pickup truck.

Every time oil spikes because America reestablishes air supremacy (whatever that means nowadays), Israel sabotages ceasefire talks, or some Iranian drones fly over the Strait of Hormuz, consumers from Tokyo to Seattle, London to Melbourne, pay the toll. Iran gets the loot… now paid in Chinese yuan over the Chinese CIPS payment system, thank you very much.

Quick note: I’ll be writing in the future about how we can’t see a bunch of the world’s money flows anymore because of Joke Biden’s asinine decision to weaponize the SWIFT system.

The Pentagon deploys a carrier group. You pay for that too.

We've turned sanctions into a subscription service… and, to our collective head-smacking, Iran is collecting the fees.

The Toll Booth in a More Ancient Part of the World

The Strait of Hormuz is a 21-mile-wide chokepoint. About 20% of the world's oil consumption passes through it daily. Iran sits on the north shore with a cup of tea and a missile launcher, watching ships go by.

They don't even have to close it. The threat of closing it is enough.

Oil jumped from $67 a barrel to $100 a barrel because of the war. That's a 50% price spike. The U.S. burns through roughly 20 million barrels a day. Do the math:

Do the math: $33 × 20 million barrels × 365 days = $240.9 billion a year in extra costs to American consumers. That's what a Hormuz tantrum costs the American economy. Iran exports 1.8 million barrels a day at $100 a barrel. That makes Iran’s annual haul $65.7 billion.

Iran opened a toll booth. We opened our wallets.

You're Paying Twice. At Least.

Let's count the ways American money flows toward Tehran.

First, there's the pump tax. When oil is artificially inflated because of Middle East tension, you pay it directly — every fill-up, every delivery truck, every airline ticket. Both gas and diesel, remember.

Second, there's the war tax. The U.S. deploys carrier strike groups, fighter jets, and logistical assets to "contain" Iran. That runs $8–12 billion a year in regional deployment costs. That comes out of the Pentagon budget, which comes out of your paycheck.

Third, and many miss this, there's the inflation tax. High energy prices don't stay at the gas pump. They ripple into everything: groceries, rent, manufacturing, shipping. The Fed can't cut rates because inflation won't come down. (Note: Even with Warsh in there, we may not get a rate cut this year. In fact, the earliest the market prices in a possible rate cut is December 2026.) Your mortgage stays expensive. Your savings earn less than inflation.

You're paying for Iranian oil… and for Iran’s foreign policy.

The Copper Joke

Now here's where it gets genuinely funny.

Iran sits on 30 million tons of confirmed copper reserves, not counting additional ore deposits that would add billions more tons. They produced only 321,000 tons in 2022. At that rate, it would take them 93 years to extract what they already own.

In short, they have a fully stocked fridge, but they're ordering DoorDash.

The reason they can't mine their own resources? These damn sanctions that always blow up in the sanctioners’ faces.

American and European sanctions block Iran from importing modern drilling equipment, deep-mine machinery, and heavy excavators. Iran knows the copper is there, but it can't reach it past 150 meters' depth without the technology that sanctions prevent it from buying.

The sanctions designed to cripple Iran also prevent Iran from developing the resource base that could replace oil revenue. We're not punishing them. We're locking them into the one revenue stream that keeps the Hormuz toll booth profitable.

Not only that, but we’re paying more than we should for copper because of the lack of supply.

You couldn’t design a worse policy by accident.

Reconstruction Math

Recent strikes caused roughly $1.4 billion in infrastructure damage. A serious national rebuild would cost somewhere in the neighborhood of $200 billion over time.

If Iran puts 40% of its $65.7 billion oil windfall into a reconstruction fund, that's $26 billion a year. That would fund a full rebuild in only 7.6 years.

Where does that $26 billion come from? Inflated oil prices. Who inflates oil prices? Geopolitical tension in the Gulf. Who pays for that tension? The guy in Ohio. Or Germany. Or South Korea.

But really, Americans are funding Iran's Five-Year Plan one tank of gas at a time. The Mullahs should send a thank you note to every gas station in the Midwest.

The Final Accounting

Let's be blunt about who pays and who benefits.

American drivers absorb roughly $182 billion a year in inflated energy costs. American taxpayers cover $8–12 billion in military deployments. American households absorb the inflation that ripples through the entire economy. And the rest of the world pays part of that inflation tax because inflation, unfortunately, is America’s signature export.

Iran collects $65.7 billion in oil revenue. Uses a chunk of it to buy the Chinese-sourced mining equipment that sanctions-proof supply chains can actually deliver. Steadily builds out a resource economy that will eventually let them sell copper instead of oil.

Their plan: collect the Hormuz toll, use it to fix the infrastructure gaps that sanctions created, and export their way to post-oil solvency.

Our plan: pay the toll, deploy the carrier, wonder why sanctions aren't working.

Wrap Up

Iran has an estimated $700 billion in mineral reserves, with potential added value closer to $4 trillion. They can't fully access it because sanctions block the equipment. So they're using American inflation money to route around that problem through China and Turkey.

We sanctioned their technology imports. We’ve freed their oil exports. We inflated oil prices through military posturing. In essence, we’re handing them the capital they need.

The greatest friend Iran ever had isn’t Putin. Or Emperor Pooh Bear. It’s an unwittingly complicit American commuter at a gas pump in Ohio.

We're not sanctioning Iran anymore.

We're crowdfunding it.