The US strategic oil reserves have fallen below 300 million barrels, and the time for US Iran negotiations is being compressed The Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR) of the United States has been reduced to 298.7 million barrels, with a cumulative consumption of over 110 million barrels since the start of the war. In the past few months, the United States has blocked Iran's ports and oil exports while releasing SPR to buffer the supply gap caused by restricted transportation to Hormuz, essentially trading its strategic reserves for military and negotiation time. Now with the SPR alarm, this time is becoming increasingly expensive. If SPR continues to decline, the space for the United States to maintain its current state in the long term will become increasingly limited. Continuing to drag on requires continuous depletion of strategic reserves. Reducing the release will also increase domestic inflationary pressure. So the lower the SPR, the more urgent it is for the United States to resolve the issue of Hormuz as soon as possible. This will also lead to two possible directions for the United States in the future. One is to accelerate the agreement with Iran and accept more conditions proposed by Iran on issues such as port blockades, asset unfreezing, sanctions, and the management of Hormuz, in exchange for the resumption of most commercial shipping. Another issue is that negotiations continue to make no progress, and the United States is further increasing military pressure, hoping to force Iran to make concessions through stronger strikes. These two directions can actually exist simultaneously. The United States can increase its military threat while making more exchanges at the negotiating table, with the ultimate goal of restoring passage to Hormuz as soon as possible. For Iran, the lower the SPR, the more valuable the card of Hormuz will be in the short term. The more urgent the United States is to solve the problem, the more conditions Iran can strive for. But this card also carries risks. If Iran continues to raise its conditions, forcing the United States to believe that continuing negotiations will no longer solve the problem, the probability of military escalation will rapidly increase. So from my personal perspective, shorting oil is still a very correct choice (at least in my opinion), because facing Iran's lack of cooperation and the short-term strategic reserve of oil, coupled with US inflation and midterm elections, these factors represent that the United States cannot continue to delay and needs to end the stalemate with Iran as soon as possible, whether it is negotiations or military force. @Gate Crypto、 US stocks, Hong Kong stocks, South Korean stocks, gold CFD、 Predicting one-stop trading in the market