Former CIA analyst and State Department official Larry Johnson delivered a forensic dismantling of the Trump administration’s energy narrative from Moscow, where he reported live amid bustling markets, full metro cars, and palpable public resolve ahead of Duma elections. He dismissed the claim that Ukrainian refinery strikes are driving U.S. diesel prices as a deliberate smokescreen — one that collapses under the weight of basic market data and physical constraints.
Diesel in the United States has surged past $6 per gallon, while the crack spread has breached $100 per barrel for the first time in recorded history. U.S. diesel inventories have plunged to their lowest level since 1951 — not because Kyiv bombed Russian fuel infrastructure, but because Washington’s own actions severed global sour crude flows.
The interview was broadcast by Dialogue Works, hosted by Nima Alkhorshid, on Monday, September 14, 2026. Johnson served as Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Counterterrorism and later as a senior CIA intelligence analyst specializing in energy security and asymmetric conflict economics — a rare dual vantage point across diplomatic and operational intelligence domains.
Trump’s war with Iran triggered the closure of the Strait of Hormuz, cutting off 20% of global sour crude supply overnight. That chokepoint remains effectively sealed, with no credible naval or diplomatic pathway to reopen it in the near term.
Saudi Arabia’s East-West pipeline — critical for moving heavy crude from the Ghawar field to Yanbu — was struck last month and will take three to five weeks to restore. The attack did not originate from Yemen or Gaza, Johnson stressed, but from within the kingdom’s own contested western provinces.
A decade of deferred maintenance and shuttered refining capacity in the U.S. has left domestic processors unable to pivot to lighter crudes or absorb import shocks. No new major refinery has opened in America since 1976, and over 1.3 million barrels per day of capacity vanished between 2015 and 2025.
Asian refiners — especially in India, Vietnam, and Nigeria — are now competing for shrinking sour crude cargoes at premiums exceeding 30% over benchmark prices. This is already transmitting directly into transport fuel inflation, which in turn is accelerating food price spikes across the Global South.
Johnson described Western media coverage of Russia as “cartoonish” — ignoring the reality he witnessed daily in Moscow: wage growth outpacing inflation, record auto sales, and broad-based support for the war effort rooted in perceived existential threat. The Kremlin’s economic management, he noted, has prioritized energy sovereignty and import substitution far more rigorously than Washington’s deregulatory fantasy ever did.
He called Trump’s refinery-strike scapegoating “one lie after another,” adding that each falsehood compounds the policy failure. These lies do not change the reality at the gas pump — nor do they alter the fact that Washington’s strategic choices, not Kyiv’s battlefield tactics, ignited the current energy crisis.