Update on Iran's attack tempo:
Its attack tempo noticeably slowed down earlier this wk as it shifted to longer range & more powerful BM while reducing attacks on GCC countries, especially UAE.
But that look to have changed last 2 days as Saudis & Jordan are getting attention
A simple look at the US tanker fleet action would point to the importance of Saudi Arabia, Jordan & Iraq toward continually supporting Coalition strikes on Iran.
As such, Iran has dialed up attacks on US bases & radar/command sites in this line.
It had some successes as 5 tankers were hit in the Prince Sultan AFB earlier while a huge contingent of USAF aircraft (including KC135 & E3).
They are defended by Saudi's immense air defense system. As such, Iran is also attacking oil facility to expend precious interceptors.
At the same time, attacks on Jordan has really picked up as it gained importance in this conflict after the nearby military bases got shelled really hard.
The huge concentration of bases mean that hitting them probably gives a good missile to damage ratio for Iran.
Iran's proxy in Iraq has picked up attacks on US bases in Erbil but also Basra.
Given the huge Shiite presence in Iraq + proximity to Iran, it seems just a matter of time b4 resistance gets overcome here.
Iran conserved some fire this wk as its proxy is doing all the work here.
The attacks on UAE & Bahrain have slowed down but not stopped. It seems like US forces in those 2 countries have shifted out of the bases & attacking Iran w/ Himars from civilian areas.
Iran has shifted attacks to really go after those areas + infrastructure to hurt UAE/Bahrain
If we shift our attention back to Israel, it seems like attacks on the major military bases have picked up recently. They seemed to have concentrate on Tel Aviv & Haifa earlier, but some initial targets are likely destroyed.
So, target now is toward suppressing IAF operations.
It should be obvious by now that Iran is getting significant intel help from both Russia/China w/ both HUMINT & satellites.
It looks like China has a live view of the conflict & is really studying up on what's happening here.
So what do I think will happen next wk?
Well, GCC + Israel have clearly not run out of AD missiles yet. Iran's firing rate has slowed down & interceptors are still getting launched.
Until Iran can suppress IAF & push USAF out of Saudi Arabia, they will continue to get hammered.
The obvious implication of USAF leaving this many military aircraft in Prince Sultan Airbase is that more of them will get damaged as Iran really shifts its focus toward Saudi Arabia & Jordan.
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Impact of Sulfur supply interruption will hit Sulfuric Acid production, which is needed for phosphate (fertilizer & LFP battery), chemicals, metal processing (leaching for Cu, Ni, Co, U, Zn, Fe & Ag), refining & more.
Thread on Sulfur industry, China's role & Hormuz risks👇
Most common use is fertilizers.
Sulfur is needed to produce Sulfuric Acid.
Sulfuric Acid + Phosphate rock is need to produce phosphoric Acid.
Which is the main feedstock for several types of phosphate fertilizers.
Phosphate demand recently have jumped due to LFP batteries.
China is the world's largest sulfur producer, consumer & importer.
it imported 9.6 mt (45% of its demand) in 2025 while produced ~11.9 mt.
It has 18 mt capacity (8mt+ @ Sinopec), so could increase utilization to meet more demand.
In 2025, ~4mt imported from UAE, Saudi, Qatar & Kuwait, countries affected by Gulf of Hormuz closure
In 2025, China continued to import large qty of Rare Earth in order to produce RE alloys & magnets.
RE Oxide in 2025 is up 15% YoY, which has made up for decline of 56% on RE concentrate & 28% in RE compounds. Overall tonnage import remains flat while value increased by 12%, since Oxide are more processed & are higher valued.
China also imports small qty of magnets.
Big change in import this yr is caused by no longer getting Rare earth ore from US (for obvious reasons), but more RE Oxide from Myanmar & ore from Laos.
56% of import from Myanmar, 25% from Laos & 19% from US. I'd expect the US import to drop to ~0 in 2026.
See below for the 2024 to 2025 monthly imports of Rare Earth Oxide & Compound.
Again, we see increase toward Q4 in Oxide, but compound also dropped in Q4 YoY. China also imported less alloy vs 2024.
A thread on China's auto export for 2025:
7.08m passenger vehicles: 3.26m ICE, 2.21m BEV, 1.06 PHEV & 506k hybrids
1.065m trucks: 681k diesel, 220k gasoline, 85k BEV & 53k PHEV
106k coaches/buses: 64k gasoline, 24k diesel & 17k BEV
Overall, this was 30% growth vs 6.41m in 2024.
Overall, the goal of China's auto industry is to surpass Japan. Composition of China's oversea sales need to shift from export to local production.
See below where Japan Inc sold 24.62m overseas in 2018, but 19.8m (80.4%) was produced in oversea factories. Big shift from 1985 when just 15% was produced overseas.
The obvious move is that Chinese automakers needs to produce at least 70% of its oversea sales outside of its Chinese factories.
Its already started doing so & that's part of its approach to raise overseas sales from 9 to 20m. You can see CKD factories already & they will src more parts from local suppliers as time goes on.
In China, provinces make their own yearly dev plans. I was really impressed in Jan, when I read Inner Mongolia's 2026 plan & here is a look:
It wants to be China's main strategic energy base & produce 1.2B ton of coal, 3.1mt of crude & 31 BCM of NG every yr.
It wants to build 500kV grid along major centers w/ 15 projects.
For renewables, it plans to add 40GW to the grid for 170GW in cumulative installation & generate 300 TWh of electricity.
Plans to expand the major renewable bases along desert regions & deliver to other provinces.
Also build 0-carbon industrial parks, lithium industry & modernize coal-to-chemical plants to integrate green energy (like methanol).
Greatly build up the usage of RE magnet in NEVs & wind turbines.
With all that energy, it can support many future industry like AI Data centers. It wants to have provincial wide 400G/800G optical network to link up the DC clusters under construction by Alibaba & others. Goal of having 200 EFLOPS in computation built & 1.5m new servers.
China's wind industry had a banner yr in 2025 w/ 119GW of installation, which was up big time from 37GW in 2022 & 79GW in 2024. Cumulative installation thru 2025 is now up to 640GW.
1130 TWh electricity was generated from wind in 2025. This likely goes up quite a bit in 2026 as most installed capacity was toward end of the yr.
See below for wind installations in 2024 (yellow) & 2025 (green).
There was a bump in May due to reforms starting in June, but installation exploded in Dec w/ 36.8GW of installation just in that month.
Bid result would indicate 2026 installation should surpass this total.
Goldwind had 20% mkt share w/ 25.9GW installation followed by Windey 14.7%, Mingyang 14.2%, Envision 13.4% & Sany 11.2%. They are the big 5 players.
For offshore, Goldwind also led the way followed by Mingyang.
Having received electricity generation data from both CEC & NEA for 2025, I used Kimi 2.5 to analyze trend since 2015.
Coal portion has decreased to 51% whereas non-thermal increased to 43% as of 2024. The change has accelerated in past 2 yrs due to solar/wind expansion.
Structure of thermal power generation looks like the following. 82.5% of generators are coal, followed by NG, biomass & others (like waste-to-energy plant)
Other thermal generates ~6% of power.
NG capacity has grown the fastest here, but biomass also growing faster than coal.
Recent report from Ember is that China is changing coal's role to be more NG like so that they are more flexible, lower carbon intensive & generally using new supercritical tech.
China is likely doing this bc it is not self sufficient in NG while coal industry is so dominant.