Strait and narrowing: the Iran deal crumbles

0:00For investors at the highest level of sophistication, those with strong advisory support, the natural outcome is two distinct portfolios, one public, one private. Each plays a different role in the overall strategy. Uncover new investment opportunities for you at creativeplanning.com slash new. This intelligence podcast is sponsored by Back Market, the leading global marketplace for refurbished tech. When the kids need phones, laptops, or tablets for school, buying refurbished tech makes sense for families trying to save money without sacrificing quality. At Backmarket, tech costs up to 50 % less compared to new.

0:35All devices have been professionally refurbished and come with a one-year warranty and 30-day return policy. Start saving money. Visit Backmarket.com or the Backmarket app to shop now.

0:57Hello and welcome to The Intelligence from The Economist. I'm Jason Palmer.

1:06Today on the show, why India's government can't build a decent website, and summer camps, but for grown-ups.

1:21First up, though.

1:36Here we are again. Missiles are flying over and out of Iran. That long-awaited deal of a month ago to end the war is now in tatters. You know, this deal. We reached an agreement with Iran that achieves everything we set out to accomplish. everything and much more. Strong mission accomplished vibes, right? But again, the Strait of Hormuz is all but pinched off. And the fiery rhetoric? It's back too. And they're a bunch of scum. You want to know that they're scum? And so we don't like them. I don't like them. And they're evil people. For a hot minute there, Mr. Trump said he'd start charging a toll in the strait, but soon after walked it back.

2:22I don't think anybody should be able to charge a fee for the strait. That's just one hint of how constrained his options really are.

2:30Jason Palmer:We've now had six nights of tit-for-tat strikes. Iran started the fighting by attacking three ships in the Strait of Hormuz. Greg Karlstrom is a Middle East correspondent for The Economist. This is something less than the all-out war that we saw back in March, But nonetheless, it looks, at least for now, like the memorandum of understanding between the two countries is dead. And Donald Trump is back to using the same sort of inflammatory language he used earlier in the war. We're going to hit them very hard tomorrow night. We're going to hit them very hard the night after. And then next week it gets really bad for them because next week comes the power plants.

3:11Next week comes the bridges. We're going to knock out all that power.

3:14Jason Palmer:Donald Trump wants the Strait of Hormuz to reopen, but he has no good way to do it. So what about that memorandum of understanding, the deal to make a lasting deal? What happened? It was a very vaguely worded memorandum, which turns out not to be a good way to draft a diplomatic agreement. And the dispute here is around the fifth paragraph in particular, which states that Iran will make arrangements for the safe passage of commercial vessels through the strait. Now, the Americans read that to mean Iran will remove the mines that they have scattered through the Strait of Hormuz, and they will unlock it and allow ships to travel through, and that's it.

3:54Jason Palmer:But the Iranians read something more into that language. They think that also confers a right to administer traffic through the strait, so to decide which vessels can move and when. And obviously, the Americans disagree with that. So for weeks, they have been helping to escort tankers through the southern route of Hormuz, which goes through Oman's territorial waters, doesn't cross Iranian waters, and therefore the Iranians have no say over what happens there. Iran quite unhappy with that because it thinks it erodes what it believes to be its right to control traffic. So once again, sort of not clear whether the strait is open or not.

4:33Jason Palmer:It depends on who you ask, right? The Iranians say that it is now shut altogether. They made that announcement a few days ago. Donald Trump continues to insist that actually the strait is open. But what's relevant here is not what the Iranians or the Americans say, it's what ship owners and insurers think. Do they believe that it's actually safe to transit through Hormuz? And after a string of Iranian attacks over the past eight or nine days, it's very clear that most ship owners do not consider the strait safe. So we've seen a significant drop in traffic. If you go back to about 10 days ago, you had 30, 40, even 50 ships transiting on some days, whereas on July 12th, just 11 vessels transited the strait and traffic has remained at that very low level ever since.

5:25Jason Palmer:So very few ships willing to use Hormuz and consequently, we've seen oil prices start to climb from about$71 a barrel once the MOU was signed to the mid 80s. Now there's been almost a 20 % increase in oil prices over the past 10 days. I regret how much this conversation is very much like conversations we've had earlier in the year. But once again, nobody wins here. No, this all feels very familiar. I mean, listening to Donald Trump now make threats to attack power plants and bridges, listening to him briefly revive the idea that America might start charging tolls on ships traveling through Hormuz.

6:06Jason Palmer:And you're right to say that no one wins. Clearly, the Americans don't because no oil and gas is getting through Hormuz now. But for Iran, too, this is problematic. The main reason they signed the MOU in the first place was to secure economic benefits. By their own estimates, the war has caused$270 billion worth of damage. And of course, their economy was already reeling from years of sanctions and mismanagement. So they really needed to unlock sanctions relief that would allow them to start dealing with this economic crisis. And the MOU did that. America lifted its sanctions on Iranian oil sales.

6:42Jason Palmer:It lifted its blockade of the Strait of Hormuz. But now, because Iran is attacking ships, because it is insisting on maintaining this control, it has lost those benefits. And so it's hard to see what Iran gains from any of this. You have hardliners who think it's important for some ideological or principled reason to maintain their grip on the strait. But I think in reality, Hormuz only matters to Iran in terms of what it can get in trade for reopening the strait. And at the moment, it's not getting anything for holding the strait. So if it's not willing to release Hormuz in return for sanctions relief, then I think this is a short-term tactical victory.

7:23Jason Palmer:But longer term, it's strategically questionable for the Iranians. So it seems that Iran is using its one piece of leverage in the strait. What about America? What options does it have here? Is it just back to bombing and strikes? It has a few options, but none of them are good. The first one is what we're seeing now, which is these limited strikes on military targets in southern Iran. The problem here is we've had now six nights of those airstrikes on more than 300 targets, and they haven't changed Iran's behavior. And there's no reason to think that a seventh or an eighth or a tenth will be the one that makes a difference.

7:57Jason Palmer:The regime has already been through six weeks of very intense American and Israeli bombing earlier in the war. And it's not clear that some occasional bombing now is going to seriously degrade their capabilities or convince them to change their behavior. So that's on the basis of what America has been doing over the past six nights. But you said we're not back in full-on war and I suppose America could get closer to full-on war escalate essentially. It could. It could go back to the sort of large-scale bombing that we saw in March and early April but there's no guarantee that will succeed either.

8:31Jason Palmer:America could carry out strikes on infrastructure in Iran as Trump threatened to do yesterday. That would invite reciprocal attacks though on Gulf states. It might also be a war crime. It could try to deploy ground troops to sees islands in the Strait of Hormuz or to the Iranian coast, the mainland. But doing that, I think, is a political non-starter in Washington. There would be a lot of opposition to it, and there's no guarantee it actually works. Iran can just keep attacking ships from further inland because it has missiles and drones with relatively long ranges. Reinstating the blockade of Hormuz, which Trump has done, may be less fraught than ground troops or larger bombing.

9:13Jason Palmer:It brings us back to this economic staring contest to see which side blinks first. But there's no guarantee Iran accepts it this time. Iran might decide to escalate and start attacking Gulf states, and that puts Trump then in a bit of a bind. So his military options, there's no guarantee that they're going to succeed. In fact, they probably won't. And there's nowhere else he can look for help. No one is that enthusiastic about contributing to a multilateral mission. So again, it's a menu of mostly bad options here for the Americans. So given where we are and that the rhetoric is dialed back up to 11, how do you think things might get back to the negotiating table where at least some progress was being made?

9:52Jason Palmer:I think first we should remember, as always, that this is Donald Trump. And so it's entirely possible that one week he calls the Iranians scum and the next week he calls them very wonderful people. And he's very happy to negotiate a deal with them. Nothing is permanent in Trump world. And I think speaking to people in the region over the past week, there is a sense that, yes, the MOU looks dead for now, but it may not be dead forever. There's a chance that both sides will get back to talking and broadly observing the terms of the agreement. Iran is going to need to make a choice here. Is it worth pushing the country deeper and deeper into crisis to maintain their control over the Strait of Hormuz?

10:32Jason Palmer:Or is it worth trading this for the sorts of economic benefits that the Americans are willing to give them. Thanks very much for joining us, Greg. Thank you, Jason.

11:01Before you listen to the rest of this podcast, I suggest to you pause. Go get a glass of water and at least a thousand milligrams of paracetamol. Leo Marani writes Ashoka, our column on India. Now walk over to your laptop and make yourselves comfortable. The smartphone in your pocket or your hand is not up to this task. And see if you can figure out how to apply for an Indian visa online.

11:30For those of you who have valiantly tried this task, welcome back. And apologies. It's not you, I promise. It's the website. In fact, it's the government of India. Right, for those listeners who did not valiantly undertake this task, tell me what they would have found. Do you remember GeoCities? Yeah. They would have found something resembling a GeoCities website from 1999. Let me describe it to you. Hang on. So, we have scrolling text in red. We have several little bits that look like they've been made with clip out. We have various boxes and my eyes don't know where to look. And I'm really struggling to figure out how I should apply for an Indian visa when I look at this website, which is weird because it's called indianvisaonline.gov.in.

12:21And this is, to your mind, representative of the Indian governmental IT experience. Look, I live in India. I use a lot of Indian government websites. I pay my taxes in India, both income tax as well as local tax. I deal with the train ticketing website. And because I'm a journalist, I go to a lot of government websites to find information and data and this sort of stuff. And in summary, they all suck. Yes, this is not representative. Most of them are worse. Why are they bad? I think the real question is even slightly better than that. This is a country that's famous for tech, right? And we have quite a lot of good consumer tech, actually.

13:03You know, I have a whole bunch of great Indian apps that I use, which are fantastic. But our government websites suck. So why are they so bad? The first reason is that the Indian government does not think about what is known as UX or user experience. It's a bit of jargon. It was coined in 1993. It entered official government guidelines for Indian websites in 2023. The second reason is that for the longest time, the Indian government has not sort of thought to itself, how do I use this wonderful new technology called the Internet? You may have heard of it, Jason, to do things. Instead, it's like, how do I replicate paper processes on this weird new technology?

13:41The third reason is that a lot of these government websites are built by an in-house body called the National Informatics Center, which is reasonably competent, but does not have the power to push back against its political and bureaucratic masters, who when they say I want scrolling text and I want big portraits of myself, well, what are you going to do? You have to provide the client is the boss. But as you say, this is a country that is renowned for its IT expertise. Why don't they outsource it? They do, in fact, outsource it. So for the really complicated stuff, they tend to use the same companies that have made India famous for its IT skills.

14:15So the problem is how this process works, because these companies obviously are competent and able to do things. So what tends to happen is for a complicated project, they put a mid-level bureaucrat in charge. Now this guy may or may not, and I say guy because it's usually a guy, may or may not know very much, right, about the technical aspect of it. So they will get a big four consultancy to help them design the requirements and all of that. Then they will get one of these brand name IT services firm to do the work. And this all sounds great because they've outsourced to the very best people there are.

14:49The problem is that when you don't know what you're requesting and what you're building and what you're buying, then you don't really know what to do with it or whether it's any good or not. So the government ends up with these products that it is paying a lot of money for but doesn't really understand. So will it always be thus? Is this just the way that Indian government websites have always been made and how they will continue to be made? Yes and no. So I expect web design to improve because now they've stumbled upon the idea of UX. But the real problem here is not web design. It's institutional design, right?

15:24It's the incentives baked into the bureaucracy and all of this. And the problem with bureaucracy, not just in India, but anywhere in the world, is that it runs on risk aversion. You want to do your job to not necessarily the best of your abilities, but the least of your inabilities, let us say. And so if you're a bureaucrat and you do a terrific job, but that involves taking risks, you're not going to get any reward for that. But you check all the right boxes and you do a terrible job, you're not going to get in trouble for that. For example, recently, there was a big scandal in India, because there was this very important school leaving exam whose online processes were less than ideal and not super secure.

16:00And some 19-year-old figured out how to hack them. And the guy who was in charge of that, what happened to him? He was transferred to the agriculture ministry. Where presumably he's going to make different messes. I got to say, though, Leo, you are really down on this. There's got to be some example of a triumph of governmental IT. There are, in fact, several examples. I cannot tell you how easy it is to pay for stuff in India. That's one example. It's called UPI and it has changed my life. But the canonical example, the foundational example is something called Adhar, which is a national biometric ID system.

16:32And you're right, I am too down in India. I should acknowledge that's some great stuff, right? So Adhar, the biometric ID, that was done within government. But the way it was done was they got a guy who knew stuff. But the guy that they got who knew stuff, they also gave him on his demand the rank of cabinet minister. So now you have a guy who has both technical competence as well as authority. And this combination is important, right? And he worked within all of the systems that already exist within the Indian government, within the Indian bureaucracy, within systems. And he produced this thing, him and his very big team.

17:09I mean, it's not like he did it alone, obviously. They produced this national ID that every Indian now has. And that is the foundation for a number of other technologies that we use in India that have made a lot of things very simple. So the model is there. But India has somehow failed to look at that example and say, how can we apply this to everything else? It's been applied here and there a little bit. But by and large, they use the silly version where you end up with stuff like the Indian visa website. So yes, there is some good stuff. There could be a lot more good stuff. And that's the reason I write about this.

17:40It's not because I'm generally just down on everything, grumpy as I look and sound most of the time. You said it, not me. Leo, thanks for grumping. Always a pleasure. It's what they pay me for.

18:08A couple of weeks ago, I headed to the Polkadot Mountains of Pennsylvania to report at a summer camp. Rachel Naiman is a senior audience editor at The Economist. Early on a Saturday morning, the dining hall was abuzz. Campers were chatting excitedly about what the weekend had in store, making friendship bracelets, tie-dying t-shirts, hiking, kayaking. They're dressed for adventure, wearing trainers, shorts, t-shirts. But these aren't your usual summer campers. I mean, I'm 63. Oh my God, that dog is adorable. Anyway, sorry. And so I just wanted an opportunity to meet other women and just like connect, you know, and just like talk about like...

18:58Camp Social is one of a growing number of sleepaway camps for adults. I spoke to people of all ages, women in their 20s, 60s, 70s, even in their 80s. Some of these camps are in women, Others cater to LGBT plus people. There are camps that have more festival vibes, more wellness retreat. These types of getaways have exploded in popularity in recent years. In 2025, Yelp reported a roughly 350 % increase in searches for these weekend breaks. And the trend is not unique to America. Similar concepts have popped up across Europe.

19:48down by the lake women were sunbathing on the sand hanging out by the water and i really wanted to work out why these camps were so popular something lots of people said they wanted to get away from the stress and anxiety of today's world yeah booked it months ago yeah on my calendar

20:18I caught up with Liv Schreiber, Camp Social's founder, on a picnic table outside the main hall.

20:29She reckons a pre-planned schedule offers a break from the constant decision-making of adulthood. Like you're just kind of reconnecting to you when you're all covering. Yeah. Well, there's three people in our bunk that are named Carol, for starters. Like everyone that came in said, hi, I'm Carol. We're like, Carol. So we decided that's why I'll call ourselves a Carol. Something else the campers pointed to is nostalgia. Being on camp offers a way to revisit the pleasures of childhood. Gen Z and millennials spend their money and free time kid-ulting, for example, by spending lots of money on soft toys.

21:06And what could be more evocative of carefree bygone summers than marshmallows, bunk beds, and sliding down huge water slides?

21:23Finally, adults are yearning for real-world social connections. In America, there are fears of a friendship recession, as many report having fewer close mates than they once did. Camp Social's website even declares that 99 % arrive solo and 100 % leave as friends. No one is like on their phones. No, and that's the first time I said like, it's nice to see. Lots of the guests have said they're putting away their phones, swapping mindless scrolling for real conversations.