Last week, President Donald Trump did a funny two-step on Iran. He began by threatening to “obliterate” Iranian power plants unless the Strait of Hormuz was safely opened back up. He gave a 48-hour deadline. Then, right before that deadline hit, Trump pulled back on his ultimatum. But, a few minutes before he did that, the oil markets saw a massive spike in activity. A spike so huge that it seems clear that somebody knew something.

It sure looked like closely guarded national security information was being used to make a quick buck. As Nobel Prize–winning economist Paul Krugman reasons, if a spy were giving our adversaries this kind of info, we’d certainly call it treason. So why not use the same language now?

This is also not the first time White House moves have been tied to suspicious trading patterns. When the president rolled out and then clawed back “Liberation Day” tariffs a year ago, some wondered whether Trump was putting the country on a financial roller coaster so that his pals could buy the dips. In other words, everything here is happening out in the open.

On a recent episode of What Next, host Mary Harris spoke to Krugman about how people are making a killing off the war in Iran. This transcript has been edited and condensed for clarity.

Mary Harris: I want to focus on what happened with the Iran situation and the oil futures. How does someone make money on a trade like this? We see a lot of activity right before an announcement is made. What happens then that results in me getting a bunch of cash, theoretically? 

Paul Krugman: You could sell a bunch of oil futures at 6:30 in the morning at let’s say $98 a barrel, and actually you could even sell oil futures you don’t have. You could basically just borrow them and then buy them back at 7:07, after Trump has made his announcement, for $90 a barrel. So you’re ahead. You’ve sold stuff at $98 and you bought it back at $90. The actual amount of money you make is not the entire volume of the trade. But it’s a lot of money. You’re basically arbitraging between the price just before and the price just after.

Do we have a sense of........

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