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Thursday Afternoon News Updates: Oil Surges as War on Verge of Major Escalation — July 23, 2026

Your midday update has arrived.

Ben Meiselas and MeidasTouch Network Jul 23 ∙

Hi all, Ben here. It’s Thursday, and there is a lot to get through, so let’s jump right in.

Top stories we’re tracking today:

• Oil surges past $100 a barrel, with Brent crude up 42% in twenty days

• The 10-Year Treasury yield spikes above 4.70%, its highest since before “Liberation Day,” while the 30-year climbs past 5%

• Dow, S&P, and Nasdaq all sell off hard at the open, with the Nasdaq down nearly 2.7%

• Overnight Houthi attacks strike two Saudi oil tankers, the Encelia and the Layla, with a third vessel reportedly set ablaze near the Yemeni border

• Iran’s Revolutionary Guard declares the Strait of Hormuz closed to any ship that doesn’t coordinate with Tehran, while CENTCOM insists that’s false

• Trump tells Israel’s Channel 12 and then Axios he’s considering a “massive attack” on Iran bigger than anything so far

• Nearly a dozen US troops were flown to Germany for treatment after Iranian strikes, per the New York Times, with medevac logs showing ten flights in 23 days

• Iran retaliates near the Iraq-Kuwait border and allegedly hits Camp Buehring in Kuwait and King Faisal Airbase in Jordan

• Trump formally approves a civilian nuclear deal with Saudi Arabia, tying it to the Kingdom joining the Abraham Accords

• New Fox News and Emerson polling shows Democrats with their biggest generic ballot lead in decades

• Vance Boelter, who assassinated Minnesota House Speaker Melissa Hortman and her husband, is sentenced to two life terms plus 40 years

• Virginia Giuffre’s family publicly urges senators to reject Todd Blanche’s nomination

Before I go any further, if you haven’t yet joined as a paid subscriber, consider doing so now by clicking here to support our work. This is how we grow. It will give you access to all recaps like this, our exclusive Ask-the-Editor series, and more. Plus, it is the best way to help support the growth of this network.

Now let’s get into it.

The Markets Are Cratering and Trump Is Escalating

Donald Trump is boxed in. Iran refuses to surrender, Iran is striking back, and now Trump is doing what he always does when he’s cornered: making things worse.

Oil just crossed $100 a barrel, exactly as we predicted it would. I expect it to keep climbing toward $150, maybe even $200, as this unlawful and completely avoidable war grinds on. The 10-Year Treasury yield has surged past 4.7%, worse than the spike Trump himself branded “Liberation Day,” which most of us just call Liquidation Day at this point. The 30-year is over 5%. Translation: interest rates are going up, and everything you’re already struggling to afford is about to get more expensive. Meanwhile the stock market is not reacting well to the news.

With all of this going on, Trump called Israel’s Channel 12, where he announced he’s considering a massive attack on Iran, bigger than anything he’s carried out before, bigger than so-called Operation Epic Fury. He says he’s close to making a decision.

I want you to focus on this for a moment, because there’s a detail buried in the reporting that tells you exactly how bad things actually are on the ground.

The Medevac Numbers Nobody in the White House Wants You Looking At

We’re now learning that ten medevac flights have moved through the region in the past 23 days, including two trips back to Walter Reed. This is one of the red flags we flagged for you weeks ago. Back when there were only three medevac flights, we said we believed casualties were being covered up. We said we believed there were deaths being hidden from the public. We were right then, and now the number has more than tripled.

If you pull up the satellite imagery coming out of Chinese open-source surveillance and other foreign outlets, you’ll see containerized barracks destroyed across Kuwait and Jordan. The US has banned American companies from publishing this kind of surveillance footage for private use, which tells you everything about what they don’t want you seeing.

Iran’s Parliament Speaker Is Mocking Trump With a Cartoon, and It’s Devastating

Iran’s parliament leader posted a meme that captures this entire war in one image. The caption: “They wanted to punish Iran. Punished themselves with triple-digit oil instead. 10/10 ten strategy.” The cartoon shows a cyclist labeled “World/US economy” trying to blockade Iran and then crashing spectacularly, with the final panel reading oil at $150, global recession, gas at $7, the 10-year Treasury above 6%, 30-year mortgages at 10%, and the caption “Iran did this.”

He’s not wrong.

Rubio Is Whining About Iran’s Lego Videos at an International Conference

While all of this unfolds, Secretary of State Marco Rubio is at the ASEAN conference on the sidelines, and he starts complaining about Iranian propaganda videos made with Lego animation. He says despite their “tough talk” and their “stupid Lego videos,” Iran is suffering tremendously and will suffer more until they come to their senses. Is the United States government really rattled by memes?

Trump Tells Axios He’s Ready to Go Bigger

After reaching out to Israeli media, Trump called up Axios, where Barak Ravid, who at this point functions as Trump’s personal stenographer, reported that Trump said he’s considering a massive attack bigger than anything that’s happened before and that he’s close to a decision.

Trump told Ravid the Iranians “haven’t received enough pain yet.” Trump thinks that the bombing hasn’t worked so far, so maybe more bombs will work. What’s the definition of insanity again?

According to two regional sources with knowledge of the mediation efforts, Iran isn’t interested in mediating with the United States at all right now. Trump is out here begging for a deal while claiming Iran is the one begging. Meanwhile CNN reports both the CIA and the Defense Intelligence Agency have assessed that the exact kind of bombing campaign Trump wants to escalate will only entrench the IRGC further and make negotiation less likely, not more.

This is Trump’s predatory pattern playing out on the world stage. He’s someone found civilly liable for sexual assault, someone who doesn’t understand the word no, so his answer is always force. It’s the same play he ran on Canada with tariffs. Some people bend. People with pride, people who care about their countries, don’t. And when they don’t, Trump can’t process it, because deep down he’s still a lifelong loser.

Trump’s Houthi Reversal

Trump posted a Truth Social statement overnight claiming that a year ago the US attacked the Houthis “very powerfully” for interfering with shipping, and that since then, and during the Iran war, they’ve acted “very responsibly.”

Then he pivots and says he’s “very disappointed” because they struck two Saudi tankers overnight, and he threatens that any repeat attack will be treated as an Iranian act of war.

Where do I even start. Yesterday the United States was bombing the Iran-Iraq border and killing civilians there. Trump has killed plenty of civilians in Iran throughout this war, including children, all while claiming he obliterated Iran’s nuclear weapons program, a claim that clearly wasn’t true since we’re still fighting this war and he’s now handing Saudi Arabia a nuclear program of its own. Tonight will be the 13th consecutive night of strikes.

It’s worth rewinding to May of 2025, when Trump surrendered to the Houthis outright and then praised them on camera as brave and honorable, saying he trusted their word that they’d leave shipping alone. People forget this happened. That surrender, and that press conference, is exactly what taught Iran and the Houthis what they needed to know: that if the US escalates far enough, Trump folds. That’s precisely the playbook being run right now, with the Bab el-Mandeb Strait effectively shut down and the Strait of Hormuz under real dispute.

Here’s Trump in May 2025:

The Saudi Nuclear Deal

Trump announced, via Truth Social, that the US is approving a civilian nuclear deal with Saudi Arabia, insisting there will be “no enrichment of material,” and tying the whole thing to Saudi Arabia joining the Abraham Accords.

Start with the baseline problem: Saudi Arabia should not be getting a nuclear program at all, especially not from an administration with well-documented financial ties to the Saudi royal family, and especially not a kingdom implicated in 9/11 and in the killing of an American journalist.

But beyond that, Trump’s own language shows he doesn’t understand the thing he’s negotiating. Even civilian nuclear facilities require enriched material. It’s simply enriched to a lower grade than weapons-capable material. The entire dispute with Iran, the entire justification for this war, hinges on exactly that distinction between civilian-grade and weapons-grade enrichment. Trump’s post is either an admission that Saudi Arabia will get exactly the kind of enrichment capability Iran has always had, since he explicitly says the deal is “for nonmilitary uses, such as the ones that Iran” already possesses, or it’s proof he genuinely does not understand the premise of the war he started.

Rubio Begs the Houthis to Stop

Back to Rubio at the same conference, this time addressing the Houthis directly, saying he hopes they’ll stop, that they “got suckered into this by the Iranians,” and that they were smart to stay out of the broader conflict until now.

Suckered? Does Rubio understand the actual relationship between Iran and the Houthis, or is this really the level of analysis coming out of the State Department right now?

He also noted that one of the recently targeted vessels was a Chinese-flagged Saudi fuel ship, raising the question of what happens if China’s shipping becomes a target too.

Rubio Also Says China Never Came Up in His Meeting on Election Interference

Remember when Trump gave a full national address, the kind reserved for major moments, accusing China of interfering in US elections? Reporters asked Rubio directly whether he raised that with China’s foreign minister, Wang Yi, at this same conference. Rubio’s answer: they didn’t discuss that topic.

So the president stood in front of the country and delivered a deranged address about Chinese election interference, and then his own Secretary of State sat across from China’s foreign minister and never brought it up. Almost like Trump lied again.

Even MAGA Is Souring, and the Polling Reflects It

Fox News’ own generic ballot poll now shows Democrats up 53 to 46, the largest Democratic lead in Fox’s polling since 1996. Emerson College has it even wider, with Democrats up nearly 11 points nationally. Fox’s own polling shows voters now trust Democrats more on the economy, inflation, healthcare, and for the first time this entire cycle, immigration.

Even self-described three-time Trump voters are on camera now saying they never should have gotten into this war and that their families are disillusioned. And on Steve Bannon’s show, of all places, Eric Bolling is warning that inflation is here and getting worse, that mortgage rates are unaffordable, and that regime change wars are a losing proposition.

One Last Image Worth Sitting With

I’ll leave you with this. Iraq’s prime minister is currently in Tehran, receiving a full state welcome, honor guards, fountains, flags, the works. Compare that to the image Trump wants you to have of Iran: desperate, hiding, begging for a deal. That is not what these photos show. Meanwhile back in Washington, Trump is in the Oval Office fixating on how “handsome” foreign leaders are.

That’s where we stand today. Ron Filipkowski will be back with even more updates later, so stay tuned!