Comment: US media has long run interference for Israel. A sample of reporting over the years:

• What the media isn't telling you about Israel's attack on Gaza
• Media cover-up: The policy of shielding Israel
• Israeli lobby at work: Jodi Rudoren says Palestinians experience 'apartheid' - but not in NYT
• The world sees the IDF's atrocities in Gaza for what they are - despite the media

Comment: There's also Trump's decision to pull out of the Iran deal:

...the continued rise in oil prices due to OPEC's 2017 production cuts, rising U.S. exports and the situation with Iran are culprits. Oil may continue to move higher in the weeks ahead contingent on the fluid situation with Iran. One of the most important issues to watch: will U.S. allies heed President Trump's warning to curb Iran's oil exports by following U.S. sanctions? Effectively, such a move could cut off some flow of Iran's oil and tip the delicate balance of global supply and demand, leading oil higher.

Comment: Another write, Mike Head at the World Socialist Web Site, points out that the Ecuadorian government, led by Lenin Moreno, has fallen completely in line with US imperial policy:

Ecuador's government cut off Assange's communications just one day after it welcomed a delegation from the US Southern Command (Southcom), the Pentagon's arm in Latin America and the Caribbean, headed by General Joseph DiSalvo. Southcom said discussions were held to strengthen "security cooperation."

There is no doubt that the US intelligence apparatus and political establishment are driving the conspiracy against Assange. Last year, WikiLeaks began publishing more incriminating files about the CIA's global operations. US Attorney General Jeff Sessions said putting Assange on trial for espionage was a "priority." CIA director Mike Pompeo, now secretary of state, declared that WikiLeaks was a "non-state hostile intelligence service."

The article also tears apart the propaganda nonsense that the Ecuadorian government spent millions on a spy operation to support Assange:

The Guardian based its unverified accusations against Assange on "secret records" it had "seen," together with Focus Ecuador, a right-wing website. It charged that Ecuador's intelligence agency "bankrolled a multi-million-dollar spy operation" to "protect" Assange in the embassy. Over six years, this activity had cost $5 million.

A closer examination of the story, however, indicates that the surveillance was conducted primarily against Assange and WikiLeaks. A security firm watched Assange around the clock and installed CCTV cameras throughout the embassy.

"Operation Guest" logged every visitor that Assange had for six years, and spied on his every movement in the tiny embassy, monitoring his mood, habits and sleeping patterns, the Guardian reported. Agents recorded each visitor's purpose of visit, their passport information and arrival and departure times.

"Every month, the security company sent a confidential list of Assange's visitors to the Ecuadorian president," the newspaper stated. "Sometimes, the company included stills from secret video footage of interesting guests, plus profiles and analysis."

Clearly the Ecuadorian government arranged to have the Guardian publish this story in order to spread the nonsensical idea that Assange was a drain on the country's resources in the form of security protection. It should be clear to anyone with two firing neurons that if there was any spy operation, it existed solely to surveil Julian Assange and monitor his activities at all times.

The ex-president of Ecuador, Rafael Correa, has also mocked the story as "sensationalistic" in an exclusive interview with The Intercept, saying that the Embassy security procedures were "modest and routine" instead of the scandalous or unusual description the Guardian wishes to depict them as. Correa has also denounced the Ecuador's treatment of Assange and called the capitulation of the current Ecuador government to the US as no longer maintaining "normal sovereign relations with the American government - just submission."

Comment: Further reading: Germany spends €50,000 a year to look after single 'child' refugee