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Iran War: More Signs of a Long Conflict and Resulting Severe Economic Damage

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This Iran War update may be a bit thin. It is hard for me to keep up daily postings at the level readers expect and deserve, particularly since my schedule is not set up for daily original posts. And given that I am in Asia, I am doing a good deal of defensive preparation which impinges on my working hours. I very much appreciate the information provided by readers to inform the community such as by Ann, Ben Panga, Acacia, AG, and others like Kevin W, Micael T, guurst and Chuck L via e-mail, and sightings from those like raspberry jam who have direct intel. Please do not feel offended if you have provided links and tweets and I neglected to mention your name. It would take time I do not have to be systematic in creating a proper thank you list.

I must go out and I may not return before its scheduled launch time, so the version you see may be rough. I hope to have this post completed by 8:00 AM EDT.

New information keeps pointing to a protracted conflict and real economy crisis. as in not merely a two month further close to complete closure of the Strait of Hormuz, which would be a catastrophe, but easily four months plus, which will push many countries and economies into a depression and political upheaval.

One indicator of the ever-lengthening duration forecasts comes from the Washington Post (hat tip Larry Johnson). Mind you, this Administration has a very bad case of optimism bias:

The Pentagon is preparing for weeks of ground operations in Iran, U.S. officials said, as thousands of American soldiers and Marines arrive in the Middle East for what could become a dangerous new phase of the war should President Donald Trump choose to escalate.

If President Donald Trump approves the plans, such an effort would mark a new phase of the war that could be significantly more dangerous to U.S. troops than the first four weeks. . . .

Discussions within the administration over the past month have touched upon the possible seizure of Kharg Island, a key Iranian oil export hub in the Persian Gulf, and raids into other coastal areas near the Strait of Hormuz to find and destroy weapons that can target commercial and military shipping, officials said. One person said that the objectives under consideration would probably take “weeks, not months” to complete. Another put the potential timeline at “a couple of months.”

In his Marine Reserve Commander Asks His Marines… Are Your Family’s Affairs in Order? Johnson also provides an indicator that some expect a ground operation to produce a a lot of body bags:

We’ll return to the kinetic war, but now to real economy matters.

Some, one has to admit even yours truly, took cheer from non-hostile countries like India, Pakistan, Spain, and Thailand reaching agreement with Iran that their vessels could pass the Strait of Hormuz.

If you listen carefully to this new talk by Sal Mercogliano, if he has his facts right, that is not even remotely going to produce even a small amount of non-Iranian oil flow.

Mercogliano says that two Chinese super-tankers were not allowed to transit the Strait of Hormuz despite China having reached an understanding with Iran. Mercogliano says that Iran is tightening up its inspection of vessels and is not allowing cargoes that originated in hostile nations through. As we described yesterday and earlier, Gulf states (ex Oman, which is not a meaningful petrostate) are doubling down on their support for the US/Israel side. That means their energy will not transit the Strait of Hormuz. That translates into Iran’s largesse not producing any relief on the energy front. It is possible they will allow bulk products like urea as a gesture to alleviate a food crisis.

Second, Meracogliano identifies a tiny number of vessels allowed into the Persian Gulf, which is an important step in the right direction. But that is way way way short of normality.

Third, Mercogliano identifies another impediment: carriers that service US trade (and perhaps more) adhere to US sanctions against Iran. That means no sanctions-evading payments of tolls in yuan

Fourth, Mercogliano seems to put undue faith in the idea that the US will ever get a maritime reinsurance scheme up and running.

Nevertheless, there is some progress even if as of now the Gulf States’ oil (ex what Saudi Arabia sends via pipeline to the Red Sea) is under Iran’s lock and key. I am having trouble fathoming this Trump tweet:

I have not been able to ascertain much about these 20 vessels as of this hour.

Another fresh talk is openly alarmist, which does not make it wrong. Keep in mind that this discussion has a strong libertarian skew, as in it depicts Covid responses as unwarranted, as opposed to poorly conceived and executed. It also invokes the bogus petrodollar thesis.1 However, it makes important observation about how much food production depends on energy and thus certainty of big price increases separate and apart from the effect of reduced fertilizer supplies translating into lower crop yields. They also anticipate “energy lockdowns” and reduced personal mobility. Even though the language is heightened, they aren’t wrong.

Local playback is blocked but you can click below to view Energy Lockdowns are Here, Putin Says “Worse than Covid” on the Redacted channel.

With Glenn Diesen, David Gibbs looks at the consequences of the sure-to-be-less bad-by-comparison 1970s oil shock. He also has the amazing finding from recently released official archives that the Saudis offered the US price relief but the Nixon Administration turned it down. 1 Gibbs is very clear, by contrast, that this Administration did not want a huge energy cost spike (Trump’s earlier obsession with getting oil prices down confirms that).

Gibbs points to use of austerity and squeezes of worker wages as part of the response to the 1970s oil shock, and the greater fragility of the US now due to its economy being heavily financialized and loaded with lots of household debt.

Now to the kinetic discussion. The biggest news is being in “wait and see” mode, per the current BBC live blog headline:

It is astonishing to see Aljazeera experts concede that the US cannot prevail in this war even as Gulf state join the US in doubling down. It also features the cope trope, that Iran is not prevailing militarily but will succeed Vietnam-style, by losing on the battlefield but winning in the end by inflicting more punishment than the US could take.

Iran is winning on the ground. The US is still stuck in World War/Cold War tactics and weaponry, and even worse, heavy relianca on high-priced, fussy, and low volume weapons. They have not even remotely adapted to the tactics and weaponry priorities of a world of ISR, cheap drones, and powerful missiles. Iran in a mere month into the war has made US bases unusable and driven the US out of Iraq. How is that not winning?

More confirmation from Doggo in comments: Key E-3 AWACS Damaged in Iranian Attack on Saudi Air Base from Air and Space Forces. This is a severe loss. As former Royal Navy Commodore Stephen Jermy explained (IIRC, to Daniel Davis), when radars like the US THAADs are destroyed, AWACS are the backup. But they need to fly 24/7.

I came across this talk between Stanislav Krapivnik and Mark Sleboda after the initial launch of the post. Given the caliber of these two experts, I am adding this based on my prejudice in favor of both. I am listening as I clean up and decorate the initial draft. So far, it is an interesting discussion of how shambolically bad the US planning and operations have been.

More confirmation of US incompetence:

Most of what Wilkerson says will be thematically familiar. What I found most striking was his particularly world-weary mien, along with Diesen at points showing uncharacteristic anxiety. Wilkerson’s attire also looked to me like a medic’s scrubs. I doubt this was a costuming choice but it added to the appearance of stress

Nevertheless, Wilkerson does provide some updates, such as confirming a Hezbollah claim, doubted by some readers, that they have succeeded in killing >7 Merkava tanks. He also believes the IDF as exhausted, with one official in close to tears on TV. However, reader raspberry jam say based on conversations with contacts in Israel, that most Israels have not suffered all that much from the war, so the lack of many facing serious costs means support for the war remains high

Hindustan Times updates the apparent US ground operation plans, and perhaps more important, starting at 5:20, covers IRCG claims to have hit US six LCU (landing craft utility vessels), killing a large number of US servicemembers.

Another re-report of that claim:

Readers in comments discussed yesterday that Iran is threatening to target US university facilities in the Middle East after the belligerents bombed Tehran’s University of Science and Technology. Iran has now set a date of March 30 for a US apology and a promise that they will keep Israel from a repeat action. As most readers likely recall all too well, the Gaza genocide has included wiping out Palestinian culture by destroying their educational institutions.

Daniel Davis warns a false flag may be coming:

And another not-cheery update:

Stopping for today (save cleaning up the machine-generated transcript below). See you tomorrow!
_____

1 The oil trade was denominated in dollars before the oil shock and the then lower capital surpluses of the Saudis were heavily invested in dollar financial assets. The 1970s negotiations between the US and the oil sheiks were about “dollar recycling” as in how to make sure that the new huge weight of petrostate money that would be heavily invested in the US would not result in them getting additional political influence. The US use of dollar dominance has obviously evolved substantially, but the oil shock and the resulting understandings are widely misrepresented.

2 Amazing detail on how the Nixon Administration rejected Saudi overtures to lower oil prices during the 1970s oil shock (this is from a machine generated transcript; I do plan to clean it up but not by initial launch time):

The first phase was led by Saudi Arabia which on religious grounds objected to the whole idea of a Jewish state in the Middle East and the idea of Zionism and it was ideological in character. And then there was a second phase though after a few months until they quote unquote moderate Arab controversies. I should say so not Arab led by Iran close US ally realized that they could uh make a lot of money from oil price increases. Iran did not have any real interest in the Arab religious group and had business-like relations with Israel….

The Shah had ambitious plans of building up a vast military apparatus which he was rapidly doing and to pay for it through oil revenues. And so this was a very attractive idea to him. And so in his second phase, you had continued oil price increases. I believe was about 400%. Oil prices increased 400% to the United States. United States was had much oil production internally. Europe and Japan were hit even harder around the southern hemisphere or still. So, it was a global event.

What I do want to emphasize is that what has come out more recently out of the archives is not known before is the United States government led by Richard Nixon and Kissinger, encouraged this price increase. They did not oppose it. They encouraged it. They privately told the Shah of Iran, you can raise oil prices as much as you like. United States will not object to it. And we’ll get into the reasons why in a moment.

But again, this is really very surprising because the um oil shock devastated the US economy. As I said, there was extreme damage of the US economy and the US was deeply complicit in it. You might say it was apt to self-destruction by the Nixon administration. The question of course is why. But before I go into why, let me just note that after a few months there was a factional dispute within the Saudi elite. And there was, shall we say, another faction of the Saudi elite sort of seemed to come to the four and wanted to repair the damage they did with the United States and offered privately to work with the United States to lower oil prices.

Amazingly, the United States refused to do this. He did not want prices and he buffed the sovere to the astonishment of the sellers. You know we have letters from Ahmed Zakaya who was the Saudi minister of petroleum who expressed astonishment that the United States was not interested in his offering and um it underscores the fact the United States was committed to raising oil prices and damaging their own country which is what they did. And now the question is why…

Well there are a number of reasons. The I think one was that the United States had been building up the Shah was the guardian of American and western interests in the Gulf. The British had pulled out of the Gulf after 1967 and they uh 68 I believe. The United States was not able to basically assert military forces into the Gulf because of the Vietnam debacle and so we relied upon the Shah to do it for us and so building up his military was functional from that standpoint.

Nixon was very eager to increase American military sales for the benefit of the American military exports exporters. We’ve been hurt very severely by the Vietnam which have tainted American weapon sales. We just lost for so nobody wanted to buy our weapons but the Shaw wanted to buy our weapons and that was a good thing. Furthermore, the Shah had been carefully building up support to the US political and mil and and economic elite for decades.,,

…in addition to that, American companies benefited considerably. The major oil companies, five of which were American-owned, the seven sisters they were called, five of the seven sisters were American oil companies. They benefited from the greasive oil prices and increased their coffers. uh the very powerful Rockefeller family was historically very friendly socially with the Palavi dynasty and um you know there was a whole series of business interests that uh benefited considerably from the economic boom going on in Iran thanks to high oil prices and so I think these considerations both the strategic considerations as well as the you might say more grubby economic considerations uh was what swayed Nixon and Kissinger.

Kissinger by the way himself was very close to the Shah personaly but he was also a a bit of an acolyte of a Rockefeller historically. So I think all of these kinds of connections was what drove US policy even though by any reasonable standard this was a self-destructive policy was following but whatever the cause of the policy um what we now know is the United States encouraged this oil price increase and the results were quite devastating.

But if we draw a parallel to today, there there’s no real why anymore.

There’s no interest for the United States to drive this price up.

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371 comments

  1. Michaelmas

    Ted Postol’s presentation, linked to on NC the other day, pointed out that Iran possesses enough uranium at 80 percent enrichment to construct 10 to 12 gun-type A-bombs like Little Boy, which was dropped on Hiroshima.

    Iran’s potential possession of atomic bombs leads to a possible scenario that’s obvious once one considers it and relevant to US ground forces being introduced onto Iranian territory.

    Postol’s presentation of the effects of three such weapons potentially targeting Tel Aviv was instructive, and if one hasn’t viewed it, one should. As Postol points out, gun-type atomic bombs (as opposed to the implosion-type plutonium Fat Man device used on Nagasaki) require no testing. That’s how easy it is to detonate uranium by firing a hollow cylinder ( a ‘bullet’) of highly-enriched uranium into a solid cylinder (the ‘target’) of the same material.

    But Postol FAILED again to answer the basic question of HOW the Iranians could deliver such a weapon. Maybe there’ve been developments he knows about that I don’t. But if not, two problems exist with Postol’s scenario of Iran targeting Tel Aviv. One is relatively minor. But the other is NOT and the Iranians couldn’t deliver an A-bomb to Israel as Postol posits without solving this second problem, which is a problem—predetonation or pre-initiation—of real-world nuclear physics to which a solution would require testing, which as far as we know the Iranians haven’t done.

    First, the minor problem. Little Boy weighed 4.85 tonnes. Atomic bombs are heavy. And while 4.85 tonnes sits well inside the physical payload range for modern ballistic‑missile warheads, where Russia’s Sarmat is the upper bound at 10 tonnes, no known Iranian ballistic missiles can carry a payload weight above, at most, 2 tonnes, that missile being Iran’s Khorramshahr-4/Kheibar MRBM, which also has the range, at 1,240 miles, to reach Tel Aviv. Still, we don’t know what we don’t know. Possibly, Iran has a ballistic missile squirreled away with more than double the payload capability we’ve seen from them so far.

    Second, though, is the major problem and it’s a real-world physics problem. Gun-type atomic devices are highly unstable and subject to the risk of predetonation or pre-initiation, as I say.

    How unstable is highly unstable? This unstable: the critical mass for Little Boy was never fully assembled until the moment of detonation—the uranium projectile being fired down the barrel into the target mass—and Captain William Parsons, the Enola Gay’s ordnance officer, only finished arming Little Boy after takeoff because it was feared that just the plane’s take-off might be problematic. So the bomb that left the ground was not in its final armed state and Parsons completed that process at altitude, over the Pacific, before they reached Japan.

    The risk of predetonation (or pre initiation) derives from the possibility of spontaneous fission by neutrons from the target material (especially from U 238 impurities) during assembly, as well as by cosmic ray neutrons and neutrons from any trace U 234/U 236 atoms in the material.
    See forex–
    https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/651431/was-it-possible-for-little-boy-to-have-predetonated-and-fizzled
    https://www.nuclearweaponarchive.org/Nwfaq/Nfaq4-1.html

    If spontaneous-neutron fission triggered a chain reaction before the projectile and target mass were fully assembled, the result wouldn’t only be premature, but either a fizzle (very low yield), a partial detonation, or a dangerous but less powerful nuclear explosion—and again you’d have no control of where it happened.

    So, as the instability of gun-type atomic bombs is such that any mechanical solution to this problem might involve, say, a ballistic missile with a warhead that does mechanical/robotic assembly of the weapons material in flight—and, again, spontaneous‑fission neutrons might be a problem because that mechanism’s electronic components would sit very close to the fissile material (this was the problem with suitcase nukes)—I don’t see how the Iranians could put a gun-style bomb on top of a ballistic missile without testing it to see if this solution would actually work. And all the evidence is they haven’t tested it..

    BUT if the US is obliging enough to invade Iranian territory—say, Kharg Island—with ground forces, this is a scenario where the U.S. has obviated Iran’s difficulties in delivering atomic weapons because the US has been, instead, obliging enough to deliver US forces to Iran’s atomic bomb or bombs.

    If the Iranians are feeling sufficiently pacifist, they might announce ahead of a U.S. invasion that they’ve installed an atomic weapon or weapons on (say) Kharg Island, then submit film and evidence to the IAEA and invite that body’s inspectors to come in and certify that these are indeed atomic weapons.

    Conversely, if they detonate their atomic bomb when US force are directly on top of it, then: –
    [1] They’re not attacking another nation and they’ve exploded their bomb in a test on Iranian territory;
    [2] Those who died in the bomb blast were a military force of aggressors invading Iranian territory sent by the only nation that does have the dubious historic honor of using nuclear weapons against another country;
    [3] As for the Israelis, how can Tel Aviv know with certainty that if Iran possessed this atomic bomb or bombs, it hasn’t used the rest of that 80 percent enriched uranium to build several more bombs that Iran can deliver. Is Tel Aviv feeling lucky? Well, is it?

    1. Revenant

      I have wondered if Iran will boobytrap Kharg.

      I think not, though. Russian experience in the Ukraine shows the value of a good meat grinder rather than a disposable barbecue.

      Let the US feed troops into Kharg. Where do they go and what do they do there? Nowhere and nothing. So rain missiles on their heads. You attrite US amphibious landing forces and you avoid nuclear opprobrium.

      However, I don’t think the US is going to pursue an amphibious landing. Too exposed. Maybe an unconventional one, landing in rubber boats at night, but can that be scaled to 50k troops?

      If the US invades Iran at all, I think the US is going to parachute marines etc in, to try to take control of the littoral, and then pursue a landing. We should watch for a new moon first….

      Quite where, who knows? I still cannot see any achievable objectives. Maybe opposite Kharg because you can shut the oil transport to Kharg’s terminals off and advance on the oil fields themselves? Or, in the saddest timeline, simply to die, so that the US and Israel have an excuse to (tactical) nuke Iran.

      My money is still on the marines having some other purpose. For example, interdicting “shadow” oil that passes Hormuz and insisting it is delivered to the West etc. Or securing the Saudi oil fields from Shia uprising. Or defending the regime in Bahrain from uprising. Or they are there as Ukrainian-style blocking detachments in case any GCC vassals threaten to slip the leash (or Israel threatens to go nuclear!)

      Given the US benefits from the closure of Hormuz, intervention in the oil trade seems unlikely. Too much confrontation with China and US SE Asian allies. Propping up the sheikhdoms is plausible but coercing the sheikhdoms to stay the course, not divest US financial assets, seems the most likely.

      Also, on another topic, twitter is full of claims that Iran paid towards North Korea’s nuclear programme, observed testing and has full access to the results and production. The problems of delivery may not be of the warhead in use but in shipment from North Korea!

      1. Yves Smith Post author

        They don’t need to.

        Did you see the History Legends video we embedded yesterday?

        They can hunt them individually with FPV drones….with the added beenie of being able to record the kill.

        I would think that would be preferred.

        It is confirmed on the Sleboda/Krapivnik that all the islands discussed as landing sites are in FPV drone range. (50 km). They can be killed by operators on shore.

          1. Robert Gray

            > … Hezbollah success is in part from using fiber optic drones
            > [with] … [r]anges … up to 100 km.

            I have seen after-battle photographs from the Ukraine showing the impact of multiple fibre-optic drones. The landscape is draped with those lines (reminding me of the famous spaghetti-tree stunt). But how can they have a range of 100 km? At that distance surely the line would sag and tangle on something or break, no matter how light it is. What am I missing?

            1. ISL

              the fiber feed must be zero or negative tension – easy to do with an arduino by a high school student today.

          2. amfortas

            ive looked, since i 1st heard about fiber optic drons, but couldnt find anything. wouldnt that leave just a tangle of fiber optic threads all over everything?

            1. S Domain

              Correct. There are images out of Ukraine showing precisely that. If you picture spider webs and nests covered in dew, and then you scale things up until they encompass entire wooded areas, you are about right. Not sure if they are using a glass or plastic core cable – in either case, those fibres will be there for a very long time.

          3. Yves Smith Post author

            The fiber optics are a defense against signal jamming.

            There are other ways around that, like jumping transmission bands. Used in other settings, though.

          4. David

            Ranges are 5-20km. They are developing longer ranged ones up to 100km but they are not operational. And come with significant issues, such as reduced maneuverability, increased chances if cables getting snagged on obstacles and reduced payload.

            Those may be acceptable to reduce the risk to jamming. But they are downsides. Everything is a trade off after all.

            I suspect you’ll see a large increase in EMP weapons to counter these drones. Now that can be protected from to an extent by using hardened electronics. But that comes with another trade off, your cheap one shor drones become more expensive.

        2. Michaelmas

          Yves S: They can hunt them individually with FPV drones….with the added beenie of being able to record the kill….I would think that would be preferred.

          That’s certainly possible.

          And I considered that and that, yes, it might certainly be preferred by the IRGC — be relished by them, since going back to the Iran-Iraq war in which many men at all levels in the IRGC fought when young, they’ve personally experienced enormous sufferings inflicted on their country for which the US has been the ultimate author. To defeat US forces on the battlefield would be the IRGC’s ultimate and sweetest vindication.

          But that kind of conventional loss by the US could also have the potential effect of inciting Tel Aviv to go nuclear sooner when they see the presumed ‘greater military power on history’ — yes, help me, as you would say — has lost to Iran, and Israel itself is losing and about to be destroyed. Because Israel going nuclear is where this is going.

          So that might be an argument in Tehran for demonstrating that there are three, not two, nuclear armed regimes in this war.

          Although equally, of course, someone in Iran will have argued that Tel Aviv might just go even crazier when they see Iran has nuclear weapons and and just throw everything at Iran at that point.

          We don’t know. It’s an extraordinarily dangerous time for the human race.

          [1] The upper bound on people at risk of famine may be 2 billion as a result of this crisis. That’s the argument in the video with Steven Keen and Michael Hudson that commenter bwilli123 links to below.

          [2] There are three nuclear weapons-armed states at war, for each of whom the result is to a greater or lesser extent existential. And that’s the main point I wanted to make by bringing up this scenario.

          One might say: the Jackpot is here, it’s just unevenly distributed, to paraphrase W. Gibson. But it may not remain that unevenly distributed for long.

          1. Ben Panga

            >So that might be an argument in Tehran for demonstrating that there are three, not two, nuclear armed regimes in this war.

            Wilkerson and Diesen discussed this yesterday. Wilkerson was pessimistic and asked the questions

            1. Would Iran having a nuke likely stop Trump nuking them ?

            2. Same for Bibi/Israel?

            And answered “no” to both because we are beyond rationality.

            —-

            Also to Yves comment in the post about Wilkerson’s outfit:

            It’s his usual jacket over a Barcelona football shirt. In an earlier video that day (w/Nima) he had the football shirt without the jacket. I’m guessing he decided the football shirt alone was too casual. Why he was in a Barcelona shirt in the first place remains a mystery :)

            1. AG

              I was wondering too, unless it was general satisfaction with Barca leading La Liga by 4 points, a close win against Vallecano last week and a huge victory (7:2) against Newcastle before that. But any US American into European Club Soccer is still extraordinary.
              Or he only has a Barca outfit but was looking forward to international test games the end of this week.
              (I wonder what he´d say about the upcoming World Cup and fans enterting the US and the surveillance state…)

              p.s. ICE vs. serious hooligans would be “interesting”. German STASI feared East Germans Nazis and East German hooligans btw…

      2. Curious

        At the end of the “what’s going on in shipping” video above he makes a case at the end that it would make sense to land troops on friendly Oman territory on the other side of the Strait. Not like it really fixes anything or gets closer to any objectives, but they can probably stay alive longer than if they were on Iranian soil

        1. Revenant

          The Oman will definitely NOT be up for that. They have no desire to take sides. The US can invade the UAE at Ras Al Kaimah and everybody can be happy.

      3. The Rev Kev

        I hope that those US troops are not sent to Kharg Island. Parliamentary speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf just came out with a statement saying ‘Our men are waiting for American soldiers to set them on fire.’ And the Iranians are inclined to keep their promises.

          1. Yves Smith Post author

            Yes, as Ritter has described repeatedly and graphically, the second Patriot sent to the girl’s school in Minab (a double tap) was deliberately fired with excess fuel so it would incinerate its targets. So the Iranian may indeed be planning a fiery end.

      4. Jon Cloke

        Let the marines and paras land, then stop them from leaving.

        Good hostages and great PR

    2. AG

      Perhaps someone on X could relay Michaelmas´s 2 questions above to Daniel Davis? Or Larry Wilkerson?

      I see no reason why the Iranians should not be using Plutonium core warheads.
      Which would be much smaller anyway.
      I don´t believe there are any warheads today relating to the insanely heavy Little Boy design from 80 years ago.
      Gun-type 1945 was only used because failure was almost ruled out entirely and the first use needed to work.
      And if I follow Wilkerson quoting Postol, the fact the world knows about Iran having a bomb would actually make sense for Iran. So no secret WMD necessary.
      Have you had time to check Starr?
      It´s a pity only a few experts are looking into this.
      Some Russians or Indians maybe who might have more Iranian inside info than Americans like Postol…?
      Postol has a dozen red flags attached to his persona. And hardly anyone in the US establishment would dare to touch him. That makes it difficult to get certain data.

      p.s. Unrelated but since I ran across it looking into the THE BULLETIN (argh), these people. Doing speculative BS instead of keeping their mouth shut and scrutinize properly.

      At the brink: How Moscow’s ‘dirty bomb’ disinformation campaign risked a NATO-Russia war in October 2022
      By Polina Sinovets
      March 12, 2026
      https://thebulletin.org/2026/03/revisionism-at-fordow-why-the-wsj-is-wrong-about-the-history-and-future-of-irans-nuclear-program/#post-heading

      1. hereweare

        I don’t see how your “Gun-type 1945 was only used because failure was almost ruled out entirely” squares with Michaelmas’s “Gun-type atomic devices are highly unstable and subject to the risk of predetonation or pre-initiation”. Can either of you clarify?

        1. Michaelmas

          ‘Failure was almost ruled out entirely” because once the device was armed — fully assembled — and then the enriched uranium ‘bullet’ fired into the target mass of the same material, nuclear fission was absolutely guaranteed.

          Thus, the Enola Gay’s ordnance officer only fully assembled the device, arming it, while it was in the air flying the 1,700 miles from Tinian Island to Hiroshima

        2. Revenant

          The basic principle of a fission weapon is to bring together enough of a fissile isotope (U235, Pu239 etc) that you have a critical mass, I.e. sufficient material in such a shape that each neutron emitted by natural decay is initially enough to split more than one other nucleus: the total neutron flux, by background decay and by fission, at each successive time T+1 is therefore greater than at the previous time T. The growth in fission and energy release as heat and radiation is exponential and very quickly (miliseconds) the whole assemblage goes BANG!

          Any fool can do this – various “prompt criticality” tragedies at Los Alamos happened in experiments with weapon cores (the “demon pit” killed people on two separate occasions). These released lethal radiation to those present without being in a configuration for nuclear detonation.

          The trick is holding the configuration together long enough that the energy release is maximised before catastrophic heating and radiation pressure blows the thing apart.

          The simplest shape is a sphere (maximum density) and you can store it as two subcritical masses kept apart, like an apple and its cylindrical core, and then drop one into the other at the last minute.

          This isn’t ideal – the cylinder tip will go critical before it reaches full depth in the bore of the apple and this may result in it flying apart early, not fully critical: a “fizzle”.

          The most elegant solution was to design a spherical shell, made as two hollow hemispheres, and then compress it using conventional explosives into the critical sphere. I imagine that with fancy maths, one can design the implosion to maximise the time spent in the critical mass by balancing implosion force against the subsequent radiation pressure in a dynamic equipoise, for enough milliseconds to maximise the fission energy release that then rips the world apart.

          (NB This implosion approach is particular important if the fission reaction is going to be used as the primary to ignite a fusion reaction of deuterium and tritium. The evolving fission “ball” has to be held in place long enough next to the deuterium and tritium fusion charge that a uniform spherical radiation pressure is created all around the fusion charge, by means of radiation mirrors behind on the far side of the fusion charge. So using the physical momentum of the imploding fission core to balance the radiation pressure of the fission reaction is a way to maximise the radiation pressure on the fusion charge).

          This requires fancy shaped charges and microsecond timing of their detonation to ensure an even compression into a critical sphere, rather than an asymmetric spurt of molten U or Pu and a dud or a fizzle. The implosion charge detonator electronics are based on high performance thyristors and their sale is controlled.

          Another part of the solution is to include an addition isotope as a source of “prompt neutrons”. This enables the criticality threshhold mass to be lowered because the neutron source assists in getting the chain reaction going but after a few milliseconds enough neutrons are present for it to become self-sustaining. The neutron source is like a booster rocket!!

          The very first bomb had to work first time so they simply separated the critical mass into two bits and explosively fired one on a rail into the other. I am sure a modern version of this could be made with the addition of a controlled neutron source to limit accidental detonation.

          However, I am also sure that a country that can develop hypersoenic manoeuvring multiple warhead ballistic missiles with CEP of ~5m is also capable of developing 1950’s thyristors and shaped charges.

          TLDR: Hiroshima was 80 years ago, the Iranians can do a lot better today by copying Pakistan, North Korea, China or Russia, who all trod the same path….

      2. Sibiriak

        AG posted:

        At the brink: How Moscow’s ‘dirty bomb’ disinformation campaign risked a NATO-Russia war in October 2022
        By Polina Sinovets
        March 12, 2026
        https://thebulletin.org/2026/03/revisionism-at-fordow-why-the-wsj-is-wrong-about-the-history-and-future-of-irans-nuclear-program/#post-heading

        * * * * * * * * * * * *
        The title and link do not match. The correct link for the Polina Sinovets article is:

        https://thebulletin.org/premium/2026-03/at-the-brink-how-moscows-dirty-bomb-disinformation-campaign-risked-a-nato-russia-war-in-october-2022/#post-heading

        The correct title for the posted link is:

        Revisionism at Fordow: Why the WSJ is wrong about the history—and future—of Iran’s nuclear program

    3. Aurelien

      Yes, this has always seemed to me to be the basic problem. Iran having fissile material and constructing a Hiroshima-type warhead is not the whole of the story by any means. There’s a tendency to overlook the more mundane things such as delivery. Little Boy was three metres long and 75cm wide, for example. Can you actually put that on top of an any existing missile? Is there any indication that missiles with 4,5 ton weights on have ever been flight-tested by Iran? Indeed, were there ever any cases of missiles being deployed with gun-based nuclear warheads?

      1. ISL

        Ted Postol told Col.Wilkerson (in above linked video) in an email, that Iran can build a deliverable weapon (or 6) using its existing missile platforms in a room the size of a lab in a few weeks. I presume its been done (Khamenei has given indicators of a fresh perspective from his father’s) and is just awaiting the fatwa or religious ruling to install and announce.

        1. Aurelien

          If it’s the Nima video of a few days ago, Postol just said they could do it, without citing sources. I’d really be interested to know if there’s any evidence that Iran has flight-tested a missile with a 4,5 ton dummy warhead and has found the kind of precision with it that Postol talks about.

          1. Polar Socialist

            No, there’s no evidence Iran has flight tested a missile with 4.5 ton dummy warhead.

            But there’s ample history available for anybody to check half a dozen US implementations since 1950’s, lightest of which weighted around 110 kg, so there’s no point really to assume that Iran is developing the crudest first form of gun-type fission weapon. The wikipedia page for the gun-type devices is in Farsi, too.

            It says that by early 50’s people had figured out that double-barrel configuration reduces the needed speed by half, and the device can be 8 times lighter. Depending on the enrichment level of the U-235 and the tampering material they were able to pack from 1 kt to 40 kt blast into a 240 lb device. That’s 70 years ago.

            Federation of American Scientist have calculated that even a non-state actors (a.k.a. terrorists) can build a 315 kg gun-type nuclear weapon with a 5 kt yield. That’s 40 kg of U-235, 200 kg of tampering material and 75 kg of steel tube.

      2. Michaelmas

        No.

        There has never been any gun-type atomic bombs on top of missiles. ICBMs only became a possibility with the development of thermonuclear and boosted fission weapons in the latter 1950s.

        I wanted only to follow the possibility that Postol points out and stress — before you and others did — that his Tel Aviv scenario has a big flaw as he presents it.

        And nevertheless that there is a very obvious scenario that obviates the delivery problem and thus the war in the Middle East is NOW already a war between three nuclear-armed regimes, each of which has different aims and for each of which this war is existential.

      3. Pat Morrison

        ‘Little Boy’ was the first ‘existence proof’ for (gun-type) atomic weaponry. Small gun-type warheads were built. For example, the [W9 warhead](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W9_(nuclear_warhead), fired from the [M-65 atomic cannon](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M65_atomic_cannon) was an 850 lb gun-type weapon built with 1950’s machining technology.

        I was reminded of the existence of the atomic cannon, and that it was featured in Eisenhower’s inaugural parade, while reading ‘The Most Awful Responsibility: Truman and the Secret Struggle for Control of the Atomic Age’, Alex Wellerstein.

    4. redleg

      The Iranians don’t have to solve this problem if they get the plans and specs (or an actual blank device) from someone who already has.

      1. JohnH

        Iran has worked with North Korea over the years to develop missile and nuclear technologies. We don’t know how far that help went. Reports typically state that Khamenei’s fatwa prohibited the development of a nuke. Question is whether it also prohibited the ownership of a nuke provided by a friend. And what do Iran’s current leaders think?

        Also, the question remains that, given that Dimona lies only 100 miles from central Israel, and, given that Dimona has exceeded its life expectancy by more than 50%, what would it take to create a significant nuclear release (Chernobyl)? I don’t recall Postol’s having addressed this.

      2. ambrit

        Hmmm… The dreaded ACME DIY Atomic Bomb Kit?
        “Amaze and terrify your friends! Remove unsightly landmarks, instantly! Comes with pre-built case and control components. Just add fissile materials! (Sold separately.)”
        Stay safe, (glow in the dark effects extra.)

    5. Polar Socialist

      Check out W33, nuclear artillery shell for M110 Howitzer. Mass 110 pounds, 2000 made and none ever self-ignited during their 35 years of service. Blast yield believed to be around 10 kilotons.

      Iran could easily put several on a missile, as we now know they have mastered the sub-munition delivery.

    6. AG

      Size of critical mass for various materials Wiki list:
      (see “values”)
      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Critical_mass

      some formerly classified physics from 1969
      (Much is still under wraps especially small size designs not to speak of the thermonuclear devices)
      REEVALUATED CRITICAL SPECIFICATIONS OF SOME LOS ALAMOS FAST-NEUTRON SYSTEMS.
      https://www.osti.gov/biblio/4765098

      p.s. As non-physicist I wonder what is so risky about the implosion design that it couldn´t be used without a test today either? It´s not exactly arcane knowledge any more.

      1. hereweare

        I think the implosion design fails if anything is even slightly off-centre or out of synch. It has to implode extremely concentrically, so to speak. The gun-type, on the other hand, basically requires a rod to be rammed into a hole at high speed – not nearly as technically demanding. BUT that’s from memory of an imperfect understanding in the first place: if someone else says otherwise, they could well be right!

        1. hereweare

          It looks like that is more or less correct, and while implosion design isn’t such arcane knowledge anymore, the gun type is still considerably simpler. See Revenant’s comment beginning “The basic principle of a fission weapon is to bring together enough of a fissile isotope”.

  2. Curious

    Thanks Yves — what you and team have built here is incredible and we are grateful for all the effort you put in day in and out (including the weekends)

    1. FlyoverBoy

      This, Yves. Your coverage and the perspective you bring to it are valuable and irreplaceable, just as they were in the early days of the pandemic. Many thanks.

    2. eg

      This. You are performing above and beyond, Yves! This is my first stop every morning and there is no source more timely, accurate and reliable than NC. I shudder to think what sort of polluted data-feed I would be stumbling blindly around in without you and the yeoman efforts of the commentariat. 😬

    3. Jonathan Holland Becnel

      WE WHO ARE ABOUT TO DIE* SALUTE YOU, YVES

      🫡 🇺🇸

      *sweet Gladiator 🎥 reference

  3. Ben Panga

    Anecdata from Da Nang:

    Suddenly the international community here is talking about the coming tsunami. People who aren’t news-followers are bringing it up in conversation. 3 or 4 times this weekend I heard the same “it feels like the early days of COVID before lockdowns; you know it’s coming but you’re not sure what it’ll be.”

    Flights back to Europe are getting cancelled by airlines. Most flights go via the middle east. Rebooking options mean flying to Korea or China then direct to Europe (at 2+ times the usual cost). Oddly, there are few Etihad flights available for immediate travel at very low prices but who wants to fly through a warzone?

    Gas remains available as normal if a bit more expensive. Government talks about fuel readiness but nothing in fertilizer, and other inputs.

    I bought some solar-powered power banks and fans; without aircon a many modern buildings here will be unlivable when it gets warmer in the next few months.

    1. PlutoniumKun

      My Vietnamese friend here in Ireland tells me her family in HCM are very concerned – not for themselves so much (they are pretty well off), but rural relations are already hitting issues with the price of cooking and transport fuel. In much of rural Asia, butane/propane are very important for cooking.

      I think the main issue will be transport, not electricity – Vietnam’s electricity is mostly from coal (domestic sources, Indonesia and Australia) along with renewables. Dispatchable electric load is gas supplied, but it’s mostly from domestic wells, not LNG (Vietnam has some significant off-shore reserves). So at worse there would be peak time disruption to electricity and possibly rising prices, but I doubt if it will suffer supply issues. The push for EV scooters in urban areas is now looking a wise policy.

      There are plans for huge LNG terminals in Vietnam, mostly due to Japanese support (Japan is the dominant player in the LNG infrastructure market in Asia). I suspect they will think twice or thrice about this now. This may turn into a blessing in disguise for Vietnam. Natural gas is very tempting for fast growth economies due to the relative low capital investment needed and relatively fast roll-out times (this is one reason for the ‘dash for gas’ in the 1990’s in the UK, which has proven to be a disaster long term). But this may result in a rethink. The negative though might be a renewed focus on possible gas reserves in disputed sea areas in the South China Sea. The Viets are not known for backing down easily when their country is at stake.

      1. Ben Panga

        Thanks PK. You know more about where I live than I do :)

        There were also a bunch of agreements signed when the Vietnamese PM visited Russia last week: LNG stuff, building a nuclear power station and other energy deals.

        I don’t need to travel much and will be buying a bicycle tomorrow!

    1. .Tom

      Thanks. I look at Institute of David Graeber YouTube channel infrequently so I would not have seen this in a timely manner without your comment.

    3. Curious

      What a great video. Thanks for sharing. It really highlights (and I can’t find any fault in the reasoning) that we are gearing up for a very rough ride.

    4. Curious

      From the closing statement:

      Nika: So inflation and deflation at the same time?

      Prof Hudson: what’s being inflated is energy prices, what’s being deflated is the rest of the economy that needs to use energy and has to go out of business because it can’t afford it.

      We can this in German business with the Russian cheap gas cut off and the increase in prices for them, no? Now we are just going to get a worldwide version of that.

      For example, the factory that makes cheap plastic dollar tree trinkets will shut down because it no longer makes sense to spend that much on inputs for them. Thus those workers are out of jobs. Rinse and repeat for 20% of oil inputs across the whole economy and you get a lot of people out of work and now longer able to spend money in the economy.

      1. .Tom

        We’ve just been playing it here at home on Sunday morning (I’m taking it easy owing to catching a cold) and I seem to have scared the pants off Ms. .Tom. She asked if there is any hope. I replied using understandings from NC that even if by magic Washington surrendered and Tel Aviv disappeared there’s no way to get the lost Gulf traffic back up and running in time to avoid the calamity. But that doesn’t matter because Washington and Tel Aviv will keep fighting as Alon Mizrahi explained and featured in Yves’ feature yesterday. So it may be years.

        Global depression and famine with all the attendant social upheaval.

    5. Ex-PFC Chuck

      Thanks for the link! Definitely a must-watch. Keen stresses the direct relationship between energy and the economy, which is totally ignored by neo-classical economists.

    6. Steve H.

      > (Apologies if already posted)

      This is an excellent interview of people with excellent priors.
      I have a tangential musing, adjacent to the AI discussions of late.
      There is a human urge, to be first with important news, which has been exploited by social media for money, and which shows up even here. With AI generating industrial levels of bs, it’s become a problem, in that debunking bs takes time and energy, and amounts to giving assignments.
      But we come to NC for timely and important news, and much is provided by the commentariat. One way of handling the veracity issue is through priors – as Yves says above, ‘I am adding this based on my prejudice in favor of both.’ Another is by journalistic standards of ‘extraordinary evidence’ being fulfilled by confirmation from another source, tho we’ve seen instances of much poisonous fruit from a single rotten tree.
      For myself, something reposted is not a problem, as events can change the context and provide a different perspective on a set of facts. Yves has, at times, noted when a link had been previously included; sometimes to offset an implicit claim of *new*, most particularly when included in the body of that post [‘2) Not reading the post: Evidently reacting only to the headline of a post, or not reading through to the end.’]
      All this to say, bwilli123, for myself, no apology necessary, and thank you. There are fine minds here, which may be better able to parse this problem. And a closing quote which has guided me at times but is not always true, from Ike:

      > What is important is seldom urgent and what is urgent is seldom important.

  5. Permanent Sceptic

    Yves says up front that “This Iran War update may be a bit thin.” While Yves might think it’s “thin”, it’s actually one of the meatiest summaries out there and I appreciate it greatly! And Yves has provided these terrific summaries of the state of play every day, which I find amazing and incredibly useful and informative.

    This is the first thing I read every day. I use these summaries as a tool to try to warn the people around me as to what is coming— so many are high on hopium. So many thanks to Yves for providing an incredible service to NC readers.

    1. Steve H.

      In particular, the international nature of both sources and commentariat enables us to live in a free state of information. In the US, the political system and surrounding media cloud have rendered a bound State.

      1. Randall Flagg

        Amen to that!!! Just wrote a check myself to support this site.
        Honestly, it’s Either that or get a pair of Lambert’s famous yellow waders and wade through the ocean of BS myself.
        Ummm, hell no.

    3. dougie

      “a bit thin” is a major understatement when compared with what I saw on NBC Nightly News on Thursday (I think it was..). The first half of the show was ENTIRELY focused on the 2 month old missing mother of Savannah Guthrie story. I FF’d through 15 minutes to get the Iran War and airport TSA woes coverage, which was given a total of 3 minutes.

  6. JohnnyGL

    https://www.youtube.com/shorts/eaJoFcuaCDM

    Here’s a nice example of the transparency from Trump that we value! He lets slip (probably classified info) that the USS Ford got peppered with waves of Iranian drones. It seems almost completely certain that it got hit by Iran and the ‘laundry fire’ story is being used as a cover.

    1. Revenant

      This has been debunked. A longer clip shows Trump speaking in character as the Venezuelans at the time of the carrier’s role in Maduro’s kidnap.

      1. ilsm

        Does anyone know why USS Ford is in Split Croatia, Why not Sicily or Naples where US Navy has a presence?

        Is Split a great “liberty port”?

        1. The Rev Kev

          I had to check to see where the port of Split even is. Croatia it turns out. Something is going on there as that port has been visited by a coupla of US aircraft carriers so perhaps the US Navy wants to eventually turn it into a place that they can set up a base.

            1. ambrit

              The way ‘things’ are going right now, not snark, but a “strategic redeployment.”
              Also, Split is up the Adriatic aways. Wouldn’t that present defense difficulties? All that potentially hostile coastline to the East etc. In a similar vein, is Split close enough to the Ukraine to allow US aircraft carrier planes to sortie from there to there?
              Perhaps I’m giving the US military too much credit for Machiavellian cunning.
              Stay safe.

          2. Ben Panga

            They saw the Iranian drones and said “We’re going to split now” and left at full speed.

        2. Clwydshire

          Everybody gets to tour Diocletian’s retirement palace? My entirely speculative assumption is that while Italy has fairly active journalists, and maybe has more locals who speak English, Croatia (while fully integrated into the EU and NATO) has perhaps a less active information environment. If something happened on that ship that you did not want to be reported immediately, but hoped to buffer and delay and spin in your own way, Split could be a better choice.

        3. itsaclasswar

          The U.S. Navy often uses a repair yard near Rijeka, further north. USS Ford might just be pretending to be chilling near Split while waiting for an urgent repair elsewhere.

          1. Pogo

            Although Split has shipyard, I highly doubt they can do any repair on such ship and AFAIK they never did. Rijeka (Kraljevica) is likely destination if repair is required. It looks more like welcome break for the crew, but it’s not clear where they are going after that.
            Local bars and restaurants are very happy with unexpected influx of customers willing to spend money, but the citizens have various opinions.
            Kiev is approx. 2,500km far from Split, Teheran around 4,000km, so no imminent danger.
            Sorry no Google translate for this, but even if it has, it’ written in local dialect, not standard Croatian:
            https://slobodnadalmacija.hr/split-i-zupanija/split/foto-split-pod-opsadom-nosaca-dolara-amerikanci-stigli-zeljni-svega-prvu-vecer-u-butigama-nestalo-kruva-i-alkohola-1546830?cx_linkref=sd_home_sd_nepropustite_najcitanije_items

          2. Lang

            Both Rijeka and Split have large traditional shipyards, but I doubt these would be used for repair work, since they have slipways, not dry docks, although I guess minor upper decks damage could be repaired in the fitting out piers of the shipyard. However so far nothing has been reported about anything like that and such a huge ship mooring at the fitting out piers would be impossible to hide. Rijeka also has a very good and pretty busy repair shipyard (Viktor Lenac), which does a lot of repair work for the US 5th Fleet, with a US Navy ship docked for repairs almost all the time. However, I don’t think it has large enough docks to fit a super carrier, although again, it could be possible to do some repairs on fitting out piers or on water (the shipyard has fitting out barges and floating cranes).
            Therefore, if any repairs were to be done, Rijeka would probably be a better choice, especially since the Viktor Lenac repair shipyard already has the necessary security protocols in place. Given that Split was chosen, which is bigger than Rijeka, and is close to a few other seaside cities with good touristic offerings, I will venture to guess it was chosen for R&R purpouses. The weather is nice this time of year on the Croatian coast, especially in Dalmatia.

  7. Curious

    I wanted to share a few things I’ve picked up from Oil industry analysts I have been deep diving on. All the analysts agree if the strait remains closed, it’s the worst oil crisis we will have ever seen:

    1. The average transit for ships out of the gulf is 45 days, so supply is still arriving at destinations and we now are building up an “air pocket behind it” they expect the paper market and the physical market prices will start converging when this air pocket makes land fall.

    2. The market as a whole was oversupplied going into the crisis and slight downward pressure on the price was expected 2026 before this happened. That has explained some of the complacency if this “wrapped up quickly”

    3. Because inventories were higher than average and we saw backwardation in the futures market (ie oil is high in the current month but lower coming months — 110 in May but 70 in July) industry players would and did welcome a brief spike as it allows them to sell a barrel of oil for 110 today and buy the same barrel back in the futures market in a month or two for a lot less (and make a profit now)

    4. Mid distillates (jet fuel, diesel, etc) prices are rising faster and higher in prices than Brent Cruse because the producers ramped down the refineries early on to lower levels (like 50%) so they can keep flows consistent even when crude is in short supply when the air pocket hits. This is another contributing factor to Asian jet fuels going to 200/barrel so quickly

    5. They said the spread between WTI (light sweet crude) and Brent (heavy crude) could grow from its current gap to $50-$100 a barrel. I haven’t heard the casual mechanism from the analysts but it support the “naphtha heart attack” reasoning we read about here.

    6. The demand loss at the peek of COVID (during all lockdowns and work from home time) was ~20 million globally. We now need to achieve that same level of demand depression using prices (and government caps if necessary). However, they wouldn’t be shocked to see 220+ prices in the month 4-6 months if the straight remains closed

    7. We are looking at a ~8 million barrel a day deficit in the absolute best case after rerouting supply through alt pipelines and assuming strategic reserves can flow at 3 million per day (which they haven’t) and it could be as high as 20 million per day loss.

    8. There have been 400 million from strategic reserves promised over the next 3 months. Out of a total of 1.2 billion. It will take roughly a year to burn through all of it (if they release more) at the pace they can disperse them.

    9. Expect the pain to be unevenly distributed in the sense that richer countries will get oil (and we’ll pay 10 per gallon for gas) and poorer nations will be in a catastrophic shortages as they won’t be able to bid at the prices seen.

    1. JohnnyGL

      That’s good detail. Makes a lot of sense.

      I think the Iranians (and the west, to a degree) understand that it takes time for this noose to really tighten and squeeze the life out of the world economy. Of course, it will take a correspondingly long time to LOOSEN that noose, as well.

      1. John Wright

        Also, an economically sanctioned country, such as Iran, might be better prepared for a worldwide economic downturn than their sanctioning opponents such as the USA.

        Iran is unlikely to be persuaded to benevolently hold their punches because global economic damage will result.

        Many of the citizens of the world will correctly blame the USA and Israel for their misery.

        And reality show star Trump can’t ask to do the scene over again.

    2. AndrewJ

      I’m really curious how the WTI-Brent spread could get so big. It’s a different oil, light sweet vs heavy sour, I know that much. Does anyone have any ideas how or why it would happen that way?

      1. hk

        My understanding is that Brent is no longer “real” oil for practical purposes, but just on paper (due to lack of production), while WTI is still “real.”

      2. Revenant

        Refineries need a blend of crude feedstock if they are going to refine oil into the whole spectrum of products demanded by modern economies. How their output is distributed across that spectrum is a function of the refinery design, within a broad range, and the blend of feedstock. They cannot run on purely light oil (they might be able to run on just heavy crude but it would require a specific set up to crack it into all the lighter products required and it would be much less efficient).

        If you remove one weight of crude from the market, either by price or absolutely (remaining supplies all locked into long-term contracts), its price dominates the prices of the other weights. All crude prices may rise because of the unmet demand for refined products but a gap will open up between the crude specification is short supply and the ones in unusable excess.

        Basically, light WTI in a world with inDeqyare heavier crude supply, you cannot give it away! If nobody is taking enough of it because they only need it in a ratio with heavier crudes, eventually the storage at Cushing will fill up and, like in the pandemic, they will pay you to take it away!

        1. Expat2uruguay

          Basically, light WTI in a world with inDeqyare heavier crude supply, you cannot give it away!

          I think the intended word is inadequate heavier crude supply

      3. Curious

        There are two reasons as I understand it:

        1. Either oil is the input to a refinery, and out the other end pops out let’s say 10 other things (jet fuel, diesel, gas, naphtha, etc…) in different ratios. All of these go into some story of storage/staging before being sold. If you use “light crude” you get more light stuff than if you use “heavy crude”. Diesel is an example of a heavy output, naphtha is a light one. So with the closure of the strait you lose 25% of oil. The thing is, it’s mostly heavy (Brent). So if you try to replace it with light stuff, you need run the risk of filling up all your storage trying to make the same amount of diesel. Which would shut your refinery down. So you can’t use WTI (light stuff) for some applications and thus the price of a barrel doesn’t get bid up as high as the heavy stuff that just disappeared overnight.

        2. WTI is in the US primarily. Analysts are explaining this crisis as a bomb whose shockwaves are spreading out from Hormuz. It will take time for that wave to hit WTI in the same way as it will to hit Brent which is geographically closer to where the bomb is going off.

      4. TiPs

        I believe a big part of it is the cost of physical arbitrage. Easy to buy financial contracts, but to take advantage of the spread, you need to buy the contracts and move the oil at expiration.

        Suppose one buys WTI at the lower price and sells Brent at the higher price for the same contract month. The delivery point for WTI is in OK; so, you’d take delivery there, but then you’d have to deliver it to the Shetlands where the Brent contract delivery point is.

      5. David

        Basically Brent was a mix of oil from several fields – Brents, Forties, Ekofisk, Troll, Osberg and I believe some smaller fields. It became a standard because it was high quality and from a stable region. Effectively what they do is the compare an oil composition to Brent and price it based on how similar it is.

        The Brent blend is still made, minus input from the decommissioned Brent fields. WTI is actually added to help grt it to the right mixture of oils.

  8. Henry Moon Pie

    How is “conventional wisdom” handling the big mess that the USA and ISR have handed the world? Not surprisingly, it’s saying that the only way of dealing with the mess is to double down. Washington Week, a once-proud PBS institution now run by The Atlantic, had a panel of the most conventional of “wisdom” dispensers: moderator Jeffrey Goldberg, arch-Neocon editor of The Atlantic, David Ignatius of the WaPo and CIA, the dynamic marital duo of the NYT’s Peter Baker and The New Yorker’s Susan Glasser, and some Atlantic flunkee spouting military nonsense.

    Watch as much as you can stand. It’s terrifying to think that most of DC would listen to this crap and nod their heads in approval.

    1. Carolinian

      I haven’t watched Washington Week in years. Thanks for the update.

      Of course Russiagate not to mention other landmarks along the road including Iraq and Bush v Gore brought many of us to the web that once saw the national press as an alternate force.

      To be sure our mid 20th perception of the MSM as respectable and honest was itself in many ways a delusion since the owners of the national newspapers were onboard with the Cold War and the many lies that supported it. Still, the level of discourse then was far above now.

      Many times here we’ve talked about the movie Network and the 70s perception that the fourth estate was about to be trivialized following the disaster of Vietnam. Nevertheless who could have predicted our current Bizarro World?

    2. david lamy

      Washington Week in Review has always been a purveyor of ‘conventional wisdom”. That means a heaping helping of convention, with very little wisdom.

    3. Curious

      I just listened to the whole thing. They condescend about Trump the way Schumer does. “He’s not doing it right”. The part that blew me away was they said, “we don’t need help from other countries, we can open the straight with our navy and the marines we’re sending. Of course we might miss a mine, but our littoral ships and destroyers with air support will get the job done”. Then it moves on without challenge. It’s delusional as far as I can tell.

  9. JohnnyGL

    The Nixon policy to let oil prices rip makes sense when you piece it together with the broader context, actually. American living standards, by some metrics, peaked in 1973 if you look at Real Median Hourly Wages.

    Matt Stoller has also written how deindustrialization was a deliberate policy to build up American allies on the periphery like Germany and Japan to act as a bulwark against the commies. It also provided for a great propaganda talking point, “Look at these successful capitalist countries! See, this is the way! No need for revolution, you peasants!”

    Oil price hikes are a great way to redistribute wealth upward into the hands of our favorite oligarchs, both domestic and foreign!

    As Michael Parenti said…the only real war is the class war!

    1. TiPs

      Based on some research I did 20 years ago, I’m familiar with this interview given by the Saudi oil minister back in 2001 in The Observer, where he said the following about the 1970s price hike:

      I am 100 per cent sure that the Americans were behind the increase in the price of oil. The oil companies were in real trouble at that time, they had borrowed a lot of money and they needed a high oil price to save them…King Faisal sent me to the Shah of Iran, who said: ‘Why are you against the increase in the price of oil? That is what they want. Ask Henry Kissinger—he is the one who wants a higher price.

      Unfortunately, I could only find this Larouche-linked piece that contains this passage among other tidbits.

      1. SDB1

        Returning to FrameTheGlobeNews (FTGN) and their estimate of tripling of North American LNG capacity 2024-29 as a result of terminal construction centred on US Gulf Coast: https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!NLqo!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https://substack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com/public/images/36864bd1-2c35-4cac-80ad-c1f25f0622a4_1870x1440.png

        LNG facility construction is proceeding apace in Louisiana, Texas, Mexico and British Columbia. Worth noting that Louisiana governor Jeff Landry and Texas governor Gregg Abbott both Republicans. So there’s a Gulf Coast red-state lobby emerging likely to displace political influence of blue-state West Coast lobby. Big change.

        Also worth noting that, by my rough calculation, stock prices of LNG facility investors Cheniere Energy, NextDecade Corp, Shell and Woodside Energy have spiked by average of about 25% since start of Iran War Feb 28. They’ve probably locked in long-term investors fearful of Persian Gulf oil market volatility.

        In other words, Trump/Vance cool with high oil prices late 2020s just like Nixon in early 1970s. If there’s collateral damage to US economy, then too bad.

      2. pjay

        This was actually pretty common knowledge back when I was in grad school in the 1980s, at least among leftists. But one of the best-known discussions of this was published in the journal Foreign Policy in 1976. I can’t find a clean link, but here is the JSTOR entry:

        https://www.jstor.org/stable/1148022

        It was listed as one of the top censored stories of 1976 by Project Censored:

        https://www.projectcensored.org/4-why-oil-prices-go-up/

        David Gibbs discusses this here:

        https://www.ineteconomics.org/perspectives/blog/oil-and-the-energy-crisis-of-the-1970s-a-reanalysis

        Gibbs discussion provides some useful historical background for today, in that it covers some of the reasons why our Middle East policy has been “complicated” over the years.

        1. ilsm

          Oil and gas producing sections of the U.S. benefited from high crude prices. This encouraged a real estate boom from Houston to Denver and spots in between. Sometime after Reagan took over something change, and by mid 1980s the relevant bust helped destroy a lot of S&Ls.

          Iran and Saudi went on a weapons buying spree.

          Saudi bought lots of radar and F-15. That FPS 117 blown up in Saudi was bought in the time of flush.. The Saudis bought E-3 AWACS too.

          Iran similar. They had a number of new C-130s parked at a Lockheed plant in Georgia I saw in 1984.

          Today when Trump says he is selling to the Saudis he is talking intent to buy not always Saudi money to spend.

          1. Cat Burglar

            I remember the Saudi AWACS deal was a big source of Boeing jobs in Seattle during the early 80s recession — it helped the local economy off the floor until Microsoft metastasized later in the decade.

          2. Sibiriak

            Cf. Nitzan and Bichler, “Capital as Power” 2009

            Google:

            Jonathan Nitzan and Shimshon Bichler argue that the 1970s oil embargo was not caused by a physical shortage but was a engineered crisis driven by a “Weapondollar – Petrodollar Coalition”.

            They contend that this coalition, consisting of major oil companies and military contractors, used Middle East conflicts to drive up oil prices and increase differential profits, linking energy instability to capital accumulation.

            Key aspects of Nitzan and Bichler’s analysis of the 1970s oil embargo include:

            • The “Weapondollar-Petrodollar Coalition”: This concept describes a convergence of interests between large oil companies (petrodollars) and military contractors (weapondollars), who benefited from rising oil prices and increased regional conflict.

            • “Stagflationary Re-distribution”: Nitzan and Bichler argue that the crises of the 1970s were instances of “stagflationary redistribution,” where high-profit, high-energy-cost regimes were established at the expense of general economic growth.

            • No Shortage: Their research emphasizes that the 1973-74 oil crisis was not a result of a physical shortage of oil, but rather a strategic maneuver to boost the profits of the Petro-Core (major oil companies) relative to the rest of the corporate sector.

            • Energy Conflict: They link the 1970s energy crises to a long-term strategy of using Middle Eastern conflicts to fuel the accumulation of “dominant capital”.

    2. fjallstrom

      According to Aaron Good’s American Exception the US not only allowed but engineered the oil price shock. I don’t have my copy at hand, but if I recall correctly he states that this is the dominant position of historians of that era. He also has some nice quotes about the Bilderberg conference in Stockholm before the shock, that just so happened to cover what to do in case of an oil price shock.

      Good’s view is that the purpose was to transfer money from the European and Japanese economies to the US economy through OPEC that in turn invested the money in US financial institutions. Furthermore he uses the sustained durability of the cover story – against the dominant view of historians of the era – to demonstrate the US propaganda apparatus.

      1. Curious

        I really respect Good and his work. Do you know remember if this was in his book or the podcast with the same name (or both)?

        1. A Little Bird

          I used to subscribe to that podcast, his connection with the GOAT Peter Dale Scott produced some really compelling episodes. I unsubscribed when he started boosting RFK. The MAHA guy, who I’m sure we all know well enough.

          1. pjay

            Boosting RFK Jr.? On what issues? And when?

            RFK Jr. used to make a lot of sense on a number of issues like Syria and Ukraine. I remember recommending him to some people myself on these issues. And his views on the assassinations of his father and uncle would likely converge with those of Good. But Kennedy has long since demonstrated his worthlessness. I can’t imagine Aaron supporting him these days, especially given his very strong views on Israel and Trump.

            I ask this because there are so few commentators that are good on so many issues. I’d hate for people to ignore him because they think he’s some sort of MAGA/MAHA booster – which he most definitely is not.

            1. NoCarrier

              It would’ve been in 2023-2024 when RFK started campaigning in earnest, and when I was still periodically on Twitter. I don’t remember the particulars anymore, but it was persistent and really quite embarrassing. If his account is still active, I’m sure you can dig through his tweet history to see it.

              IIRC someone on conspiracy twitter at the time chalked it up to his publisher being a major RFK backer-donor to the tune of a couple hundred thousand. I’m not entirely sure I buy that, but there was no question that he was very, very enthused about the candidacy, to the point that he became something of a laughingstock with that crowd. I was quite puzzled at it because if one takes seriously his arguments in the book, it ought to preclude excitement about any candidate, nevermind one as obviously compromised as RFKJ.

        2. fjallstrom

          It’s in the book. Unfortunately I am travelling and my copy is at home, so I’m referencing from memory.

          It was his podcast that made me get the book. The book is dense, but in a good way. Lots to digest.

    3. eg

      “Matt Stoller has also written how deindustrialization was a deliberate policy to build up American allies on the periphery like Germany and Japan to act as a bulwark against the commies. It also provided for a great propaganda talking point, “Look at these successful capitalist countries! See, this is the way! No need for revolution, you peasants!”

      Judith Stein explored precisely this dynamic in her Pivotal Decade: How the United States Traded Factories for Finance in the Seventies

      https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/7907138-pivotal-decade

    4. Skip Intro

      Gibbs points to use of austerity and squeezes of worker wages as part of the response to the 1970s oil shock

      It seems like austerity and squeezing wages are part of the response to almost any crisis.

  10. Yves Smith Post author

    All done! If you arrived before the time of this comment, please refresh this page and re-skim, since there are some consequential late additions

    1. Steve H.

      A time-saving cludge I use on videos is to open them in Youtube, pause the video, turn on captions, and then arrow-forward several times a second. I have studied speed-reading, where the small words are glossed over and meaning gathered from context, so the loss rate may not meet your needs. But you can play back the video if something catches your attention. (ie at 52:15 of Krapivnik/Sleboda on ‘the Biden policy of firing ballistic missiles into Russia and we might already have had nuclear armgageddon by now.’)

      1. Yves Smith Post author

        My approach is the opposite. For most videos, I can run them at 1.25 or 1.5x and multitask. Can’t read dense text or compose but can do a lotta other stuff at the same time.

        If I am in a hurry and think I need to digest the whole vid, I generate a transcript.

        1. Matthew

          Agree. Have never been able to do audiobooks bc something in me rebels at being caught up in someone else’s narrative for long stretches, have been very slow to admit podcasts to my news sources for the same reason. But speeding up videos works for discussion/reporting. 1.25 or 1.5x are just fine.

          You apologized for this report and it was one of your most considered and lucid, Yves. Thank you. Recommended you to a pile of people this week as likely the best daily news summary available anywhere.

  11. Rolf

    As Permanent Sceptic says above, Yves’ reports and links are the first and only thing I read during the day, having time for little else. I am forever grateful for her tireless efforts, as well as others at NC.

    Many of my coworkers are alarmed or outraged, but my sense is that, thanks to the failure of US mass media to be little more than Trump stenographers, most of the American public have no recognition of what is coming. Second bwilli123’s link to davidgraeber.institute’s hosting Michael Hudson and Steve Keen. As Dr. Hudson points out, the global ramifications of Trump’s war of choice make it WW3 by definition.

    1. NotTimothyGeithner

      Stenographers aside, I think this is closer to an existential crisis for much of the world due to decades of propaganda even from the peace minded.

      Corporate America should be going ballistic, but they aren’t because they know less than ever.

      1. ilsm

        Corporate board and elite management care about stock price, they will short before they go ballistic.

        Too early to panic, until Trump stops tweeting.

        Press is talking Pakistan involved in mediation, whether Iran is or is unknown.

        Will it cause a Monday pop?

    2. KLG

      “most of the American public have no recognition of what is coming”

      My professional colleagues do not talk about the War in West Asia. I think they believe that by ignoring it, it will go away. This is of a piece with their rationalization of why their savior of the day lost to Trump v2.0 – Americans are bigots who could not imagine her as president. When I ask if they ever actually listened to her, crickets. For all his blather, the current occupant made sense in his own way, however much he didn’t mean it or was just plain lying. His opponent was all word salad all the time.

      Locals outside of the institution (word choice intentional) are all-in on “We will and must win to prevent Iran from bombing New York.” I suppose this is the FOX News take. The abject Orientalism of their view of Iran is something to behold (regarding Orientalism, the Edward Said quibblers are mostly just that and the locals have never heard the term).

      1. Matthew

        The criticism was that Said failed to place orientalism in a material frame, replacing structural analysis with the cultural products of same. There’s something to that (Stuart Hall might split the difference, insisting that culture is a product and needs to be seen as not just capitalist off-gassing). The chapter on Said in Aijaz Ahmad’s Theory is fantastic. Definitely DOES go way deeper. Said is a super-useful referent, way in to such thinking, though, very accessible.

      2. Carolinian

        Seems that to a remarkable degree the NYT governs the elite American mind. Reality is news that’s not “fit to print.”

        Of course Cronkite used to say that he constructed his nightly newscast from the front page of the NYT but back then the Times was a real newspaper (when I lived in NY I loved it).

        1. Matthew

          The Reagan right-turn saw a real attempt to accommodate what the editors obviously saw as a changing tide. Suddenly conspicuous consumption was the common denominator, with a weekend marriages section, a metro section about NYC elites. . . NPR made a similar rightward turn at the time. Not sure the Times was ever terribly progressive, though, though from nine or ten I was reading it with my dad on the porch on Sundays. . . I remember him grumbling about their unfairness toward Lindsay. In college, I had a friend who used to pick it up and say, ¨Let’s see, what does the CIA want me to think this morning?” Some of the trial balloon pieces, as in the run-up to this war, still very much have such a character.

          1. thistlebreath

            On. The. Money. Former field NPR field producer here from the early ’80’s. We still edited 1/4″ open reel full coat tape w/razor blades, if that gives context. The ironic staff nickname for HQ became “National Petroleum Radio.”

            Although I did arts related productions, the vibe from DC just kept ratcheting right until folks like me moved on.

      3. Kouros

        When ‘America’ assassinated another great general, Soleimani, Iranian cleric Shahab Moradi said, in a famous response,

        [In the situation] that we take one of theirs now that they’ve got one of ours — who should we consider to take out in the context of America? Think about it. Are we supposed to take out Spider-Man and SpongeBob? They don’t have any heroes. We have a country in front of us with a large population and a large landmass, but it doesn’t have any heroes. All of their heroes are cartoon characters — they’re all fictional.

        https://indi.ca/americas-military-is-never-coming-back-from-this/

  12. GlassHammer

    I liked the run down of events, (extensive enough for me) and will, probably revisit it a bit later.

    I do wonder if there will be a framing change in which we treat the war the way we do a “natural disaster”. By that I mean the minutiae of the causes and fault lines matters less than your preparedness for living through it. And the content you want most becomes guides on how to collapse your previous standard of living without becoming miserable.

    1. Jeremy Grimm

      Eventually the amount of petroleum extracted and refined will begin to diminish as the energy costs paid in petroleum for extracting the petroleum start to match the energy value in the petroleum [ignoring other reasons for extracting petroleum from a particular source with certain mixes of cracking products or by-products]. By suddenly staunching the flow of a significant percentage of petroleum, Iran inadvertently created multiple experiments of sorts that might be studied to obtain lessons for the future.

      Though the shock’s onset was precipitous, I believe the ongoing outcomes clearly indicate that the world is completely unready for the coming declines in the amount of petroleum energy that will be available. The range of impacts to countries differently situated to deal with diminishing petroleum and petroleum products — different in their reserves, and mixture of sources — portray a time series of sorts showing the extent of impacts across the various levels of petroleum readiness. This is complicated by the many other products whose flows were also suddenly diminished, but broadens the ‘experiments’ to include the impacts of varying levels of food shortages, or suffer shortages, or helium shortages for example.

      Iran has given the world an opportunity to see just how difficult, painful, and complex “degrowth” will be unless our societies, our civilizations are greatly modified, and soon. The systems of trade are perhaps most exposed as tragically ill conceived.

    1. DJG, Reality Czar

      She is America’s Greatest Influencer. And she is a true leftist. Yet the Democrats would never throw her name around (and throw money at her). She is too independent-minded.

      15:20: Behold, the Fruits of Martin Luther

      16:20: Ted Cruz, Catholics as Parasites
      —with a good description of why the Catholics and the Orthodox don’t bother with this Israel stuff, theologically.
      —good Jesus joke.

      17:35: “Sand New Jersey”

      22:00: Her advice as Cassandra to J.D. Vance…

      All in all, well done. Also, she knows her production values, and she is a good film maker.

  14. ISL

    On the E3 AWACs, having trouble getting hard maintenance requirements on these very, very old frames, but readiness rated at 56%*, which sounds surprisingly high (exaggerated) for such ancient airframes and electronics. If we assume maintenance rates of around 16 hours per flight hour (such as for an F-16), you have an availability rate of about 3% – and the US only has (had) 16 E-3s. Fly them continuously, and these rates drop, and the question of spare parts (absent canibalization) arises as many of small supply network machine shops for these parts no longer exist.**

    Given the battlespace dimensions are 2000-3000 miles with access only around the perimeter, 8 hour flight limits, the loss of 3 is critical; however, even as they will be replaced, there are not enough to fill in for the lost ground radars leaving massive monitoring holes, which is (per politics) Israel-focused.

    Side note on lack of US preparedness – Russia learned to add drone protection to its radars due to US attacks. But the US learned nada.

    * https://www.armyrecognition.com/news/aerospace-news/2026/us-deploys-nearly-40-of-entire-e-3-sentry-awacs-fleet-to-middle-east-for-potential-war-against-iran

    ** I was looking at buying one of these machine shops a year ago (owner died), but could not convince the head machinist to remain – he took a job at Vanbenberg instead and the shop surplused – got a few nice pieces at a great discount. Its now a marijuana warehouse farm.

    1. The Rev Kev

      If I was a crewman abroad one of those AWACs or air refueling tankers, as soon as the plane landed I would be heading away from it fast. It is now obvious that the Iranians are actively hunting them down with Russian and Chinese help. In the air they likely have fighter protection and are out of range of Iranian aerial weaponry. But as soon as thy are on the ground and are being refueled and maintained, then it is open season. Not good news for the ground crews obviously and if I were them, I would have a truck on standby ready for a quick getaway.

      One other thing. Both types of aircraft as you say are being flown into the ground. You have to wonder if at the end of this war whether many of them will be condemned as no longer being flight worthy enough to make the trip back to the US and they won’t be just scrapped for spare parts in this theater.

      1. ISL

        Iran has been flooded with ManPads from Russia (which shot down the F18 recently), but also has loitering munitions that wait for a plane to fly by and then activate. No idea if they have played a role yet, but they are waiting (from Stanislav with Sleboda). In a few weeks when the US is out of standoff munitions, attrition of its airforce will accelerate rapidly (and that is when I expect the S400s will begin operating in flash mode) – note, the attrition is real due to the maintenance requirements and age of platforms and lack of spare parts.

    2. earthling

      You’re saying these very complex costly planes, which take years to plan and build under very tight specifications, are now dependent on mom n pop machine shops which not only have no oversight but are disappearing?? Good grief. With all the extra slush in military budgets, the spare parts business was not worth propping up?

      1. You're soaking in it?

        Just order what you need from China! There are too many easier ways for smrt Muricans to make munny than building real things that have tolerances.

      2. Samuel Conner

        It appears that much of supply chain of the MIC was neglected in the decades of trade liberalization and outsourcing.

        I suspect that after 1991, few among US strategic planners imagined that US would ever need to face off against a peer or near peer competitor, much less find itself confounded by a smaller power with asymmetric capabilities.

        Or, to echo the Commander in Chief, who could have known?

      3. redleg

        Remember the rules of neoliberalism?
        1. Because markets
        2. Go die.
        They apply to machine shops.

      5. VH

        Because these businesses were neglected and also that becoming a machinist has not been considered sexy for the last 30 or 40 years, who even knows how to do these jobs? Boomer folks who would need to be yanked out of retirement to do the work, if there is a shop still standing with the equipment and supporting raw materials. No college degree necessary but all the kids who could have acquired these skills were herded into college and many now have massive student loans and no jobs.

      6. rowlf

        In the mid 1990s there were several aerospace suppliers to the US military product manufacturers that shut down between contracts and sold their equipment. While the Department of Defense said the the equipment was dual-use and not to be sold out of the country, the Department of State overrode the DOD, and aerospace component machinery and tooling was shipped to China after sale. (Insert Shoe On Head type cheer.)

        (I am a long time reader of Aviation Week & Space Technology and other trade magazines, since the late 1960s.)

        Today with component manufacturers, if you really need a part for a older airplane you need to sign a contract and may get the part in six months at the earliest, if they can still make one. This leads to cannibalizing stored aircraft, and old parts can be, cranky, due to lack of recent use. MBA thinking is to grab a part and go since it went into storage performing ok, while best practice is to run the part through a test and repair shop.

      7. David

        This is a common mistake militaries make and not just America. It’s much more attractive for everyone involved to order 1000 of a new fighter aircraft than order say 500, plau a fully functional spares supply chain. Military after military has fallen into this trap. A major example is the Osvirt Union at the start of W2 with 20,000 tanks in their inventory. Except a massive number were not operational due to lack of spares (plus poor build quality). And large numbers were stripped of parts to keep others running.

        It will be interesting to see if china makes the same mistake or learns from it.

    3. Randall Flagg

      So happy to know we are getting our money’s worth with all these trillions spent over the years. f****ers…

    4. GC54

      These are man-hours not hours. A coworker serviced USAF F-111 nuclear bombers whose swing wings and twin after-burning engines run at low altitude for supersonic penetration exercises made them notorious hangar queens. A dozen enlisted techs crawled over it. i recall he saying 150+ man-hr/flight hr.

      1. rowlf

        Maybe to help with perspective, a large airline usually has about 16% of the fleet out of service for short term and scheduled maintenance each day for a mixed fleet of domestic and international aircraft. The closest comparison I can think of of civilian to military operations is scheduled air freight with service level agreements. That was like working in NASCAR or Formula 1 pits during a race, but with 747s.

        While military aircraft have many additional systems installed to deliver munitions, perform electronic/defense countermeasures, and signals intelligence, I was shocked when I got to interact with people running military maintenance programs and learn the number of non-operational aircraft they are dealing with in their fleets and their component supply problems.

    5. Henry Moon Pie

      ” I was looking at buying one of these machine shops a year ago (owner died), but could not convince the head machinist to remain – he took a job at Vanbenberg instead and the shop surplused – got a few nice pieces at a great discount. Its now a marijuana warehouse farm.”

      Thar’s pretty close to Joni Mitchell’s “Woodstock” vision:

      I dreamed I saw the bombers
      ridin’ shotgun in the sky,
      And they were turnin’ into butterflies
      above our nation.

    6. David

      The average maintenace hours can be a bit confusing. The below is the mainrenance details for a civlian 737, so obviously it under goes much less stress. But it goves an idea.

      A Boeing 737 requires intense, scheduled maintenance, including
      line maintenance every few days, A Checks every 8–10 weeks (6–24 hours), and heavy “C Checks” every 18–24 months. A major “D Check” occurs every 6–10 years, taking weeks and costing millions, while daily operations involve roughly 12 hours of weekly line maintenance.

      So that 16 hours will be spread out very unevenly. If an F-16 takes off for an operation right now that lasts 2 hours, it is not going to spend 32 hours in maintenace after.

      And if it is undergoing a big service I’m not sure if all the time it is unavailable for use is counted as maintenance time or only the physical time spent working on it. For comparison, is you drop your car off at the garage for the annual service, you might drop it off at 8am and pick it up at 4pm. They probably only worked on it for an hour or two but it’s out of use for 8 hours.

  15. Ben Panga

    > I am having trouble fathoming this Trump tweet [about Pakistan tankers being let though]

    1. It’s nothing special for Pakistan, seems like the same that Thailand, Malaysia, India etc have already agreed: tankers stuck in the Gulf can exit gradually?

    2. Trump reposting it to hype up the mythical Pakistan mediated peace negotiations? With added hope of oil markets being dumb enough to see it as a “Strait is opening” headline?

    As Yves said previously, these are all full tankers leaving the Gulf and I’ve yet to see any tankers entering. The crews are running out of food and water, and Iran is letting them leave gradually. It’s good realpolitik without actually changing the situation.

    Would be interested to know the Gulf port of origin.

    1. Yves Smith Post author

      No, I read this as Pakistan gets tankers both ways but only 2 a day. So one in, one out on average?

      In any event if they can’t carry the fuel of Gulf states, they are presumably foodstuffs and other bulk cargoes.

      Thailand was basically begging Iran for plastic pellets, so that might be what we take

      1. The Rev Kev

        If Iran was smart, they should negotiate to let in ships – after a close inspection – to supply those stranded ships with water, food and other necessities. The Red Crescent could even charter a few of these ships. And maybe when those ships go back out, they can take surplus crewmen with them as well.

      2. Ben Panga

        >No, I read this as Pakistan gets tankers both ways but only 2 a day. So one in, one out on average?

        I’d be interested to know why you read it that way (only if you have time obviously)? I didn’t, but I’m coming from a position of ignorance.

        I wonder how many Pakistani tankers are stuck in the Gulf? Presumably getting those out first would be the priority?

        Although it’s definitely unclear; there doesn’t seem to be any other information on this as MSM etc are just quoting Dar’s original tweet:

        “I am pleased to share a great news that the Government of Iran has agreed to allow 20 more ships under the Pakistani flag to pass through the Strait of Hormuz; two ships will cross the Strait daily”.

        —-

        >In any event if they can’t carry the fuel of Gulf states

        They seem to be letting Gulf-laden pre-existing stuck ships out:

        1. tanker trackers reports a Saudi-laden ship headed for Pakistan emerged from the Strait. Unclear if it took the toll-booth or main path.

        @TankerTrackers
        15h
        Today’s satellite imagery actually revealed a third southbound tanker we were able to identify on behalf of clients. She was laden with Saudi crude and her AIS was briefly offline at the time. Heading to Pakistan.

        2. Lloyds mentions that Pakistan bound tanker P.Aliki got through which seems to be Ras Tanura laden

        1. Yves Smith Post author

          Because:

          1. There would be no reason to agree on a daily level if Pakistan were merely allowed to get its vessels now stuck in the Gulf out. It would not be formulated this way.

          2. Even though the total # of ships stuck is large, it is hard to determine their status:

          3. I am surprised that they are letting a Saudi oil carrier out, but the ship is loaded and Pakistan regularly (along with Sri Lanka and India) shows up close to the top of the list of countries really suffering due to fuel shortages.

          4. As indicated, the benefit of merely letting ship in the Gulf leave is limited.

          5. The Iran parliament, IIRC next week, is getting draft legislation re the tolling procedures. Once that has passed, we should have a better idea of how Iran intends to handle the tolling and access procedures.

  16. Tom Stone

    If you want to know what the Trump regime will do, pick the flashiest and stupidest alternative.
    Flashy because Trump is a showman, stupidest because Trump does not give a shit and he is visibly declining both physically and mentally.
    It’s going to get real interesting on the Home front as his incompetence and rage continue to go unchecked.

    1. You're soaking in it?

      “Interesting” would be when he is at the “a horse, a horse” portion of the program. He set his life upon a cast of the die, let’s see how much he finds out about the ending.

      1. Cetzer

        As an experienced and successful businessman he would make the solicitation a bit more specific:
        A sturdy horse, a very sturdy horse for a casino licence¹!

        ¹Application pending

    2. curlydan

      Agree. Trump runs his presidency essentially by press release. As everyone who’s worked in corporate settings knows, press releases are hopium and BS rolled into one, the truth be damned. While Iran and Russia want treaties and long-standing commitments with details galore, Trump just needs a press release or PR moment to tout his win and then move on to the next odd subject floating in his mind. The Gaza ceasefire was a PR moment where only stage 1 was ever accomplished and the rest is just [bleep] to be swept under the rug.

  17. Samuel Conner

    I wonder to what extent it would be possible for “pressure from below” on Congress to have some effect in terms of restraining DJT. Perhaps such a pressure campaign would be ineffective, though if so that would be further illuminating in terms of the degree to which our Republic still has much in the way of a “representative” character to it.

    —

    I suppose that I should start saving egg cartons; it seems plausible that plastic growers’ supplies like starter trays and inserts may become pricey if not unavailable (I’m already re-using these to the point of destruction, but the people to whom I distribute tend to toss their empties after planting. I’m something of a hoarder — it has always seemed kind of terrible to me that we so casually discard low-entropy materials after their primary purpose is fulfilled. Airtight plastic containers, for example — what wonderful things for storing dry foods, and we throw them away by the billions.)

    1. earthling

      Congress is normally resistant to pressure from little people, to be sure. However, we do have a little knot of creatures in the Senate who are not getting named, scorned, and shamed for what they are doing now to let a crazy man run wild. Imagine if we had an actual free mass media; there would be features on ‘who are these people, what are their names, and why are they so cowardly’. Right now people don’t even realize who is standing between us and a sane government, they just receive a steady stream of ‘Trump says this, Trump does that’.

  18. Tom

    Re Lawrence Wilkerson’s attire: He’s wearing an FC Barcelona shirt. He was wearing the same shirt on another podcast without the blazer. Has to be intentional with Spain being one of the few (the only?) Euros to buck the US/Trump.

    2. redleg

      And Larry “The Shirt” Johnson* is travelling, so Wilkerson is making up for Johnson “dressing like a funeral director”.
      As serious as the subject matter is, the banter between the Larrys can be silly.

      *- Daniel Davis uses this caption for Johnson when he’s a guest.

    3. Bugs

      Funny because everyone in Madrid, the capital, hates Barça. They also don’t like being called Castellaños by the Catalonians, they consider themselves Spanish, punto.

      He should wear Real kit but perhaps not something Mr Wilkerson would think about.

    4. Ignacio

      The “natural” thing for any football/soccer aficionado would be to be a fan of Real Madrid. Not that there aren’t a lot of Barça followers over there. Damnit!
      Forgive my temporary third class hooliganism!

      1. Darthbobber

        Atletico, maybe. Real Madrid is the establishment club. Its people were also Franco supporters during the war and after, and Barca was republican. Their grounds were bombed.

  19. jefemt

    Kaptain Kaos — I smell nukes abroad, and no election at home. I need a smaller nose.

    I was cronying at our local No Kings yesterday, and met with looks of derision when I mentioned trying to lay by food-stuffs like beans, rice, flour, durables like high capacity/output water filters, etc. Covid redux.

    I was amazed more than a few see the tsunami, and seemed to be resolute in their abject equanimity:
    Que Sera, Sera. Will that calm hold when TSHTF, and we Jackpot?

    I live in a relatively isolated affluent ‘north’ area, with a terrible growing climate. A ten percent reduction in oil will hit us, but not at all like it will hit the turd* world. There will be a lot of suffering. As to the atmospheric radiation, I have no answers, other than it is a closed loop.

    Humans are fomenting a broad array of bible-like prophetic realities on the ground.
    For, is it written?
    Or, in the age of markets, ‘capitalism’, and the neocon Friedman/Austrians:
    Choices, and consequences?

    *paraphrasing DJT

    1. dougie

      “Will that calm hold when TSHTF, and we Jackpot?”

      That may well depend on the ability of those who Jackpot to be all Zen when someone sticks a gun in their face to relieve them of their bounty?

    1. hereweare

      I thought I’d heard that before, but wondered if there had been some development since. Note the date.

    2. junez

      And China apparently provided Iran with its replacement for GPS https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hfs22XrhdqM

      “How China’s BeiDou System Just Made Iran’s Missiles Unjammable — A Threat the Pentagon Can’t Counter Right now, Iran’s missile systems appear to be shifting away from U.S.-controlled GPS toward China’s BeiDou satellite network — a move that changes everything. Not gradually. Strategically. In this video, Money & Empires breaks down how BeiDou’s encrypted signals and multi-satellite architecture could make Iranian missiles far more resistant to jamming, why this undermines decades of U.S. electronic warfare dominance, and how this shift reflects a deeper realignment of global power — almost frame for frame.”

      1. David

        What it really does is bring us one step closer to war in space. I wonder how much yime militaries still spend on map reading skills. They may be needed.

    1. Ben Panga

      I went waaaaay down this rabbit hole at the time.

      Short version: I’m fairly sure it was an op tangential to the UFO hoax, the post 2017 version of which was itself an op by Palantir/Anduril types and counterparts within mil-gov to (possibly among other things) persuade the US military to take drones seriously and stop wasting money on expensive white elephants.

      The current situation of Iranian drones beating expensive exquisite US boats and planes suggests the lesson was not learnt fast enough.

      There were a series of these drone events over US bases, and later in the UK and Europe. Often (but not always) they appeared at geopolitically relevant times. The final big one was the New Jersey drone hullabaloo in the weeks between DJT2 election victory and anointment.

      The overall purpose was to illustrate: we have no way to stop these drones flying over and we should do something about it.

      This is all conjecture and I have long since lost all the references but I am pretty confident of my conclusion.

      1. jsn

        I’ve been assuming the New Jersey drones a few years ago were beta testing public response to dial in how much they could expect to get away with in the Russian and Iranian smuggled drone attacks.

        1. danpaco

          Funny, I thought it was a test as well but for the Spiders Web drone attack on Russia from shipping containers. The attack took place shortly after the NJ mystery drone mania died down.

  22. johnnyme

    Israeli police bar Latin Patriarch from Jerusalem’s Holy Sepulchre on Palm Sunday

    Israeli police prevented the Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem, Cardinal Pierbattista Pizzaballa, from entering the Church of the Holy Sepulchre to celebrate Palm Sunday Mass.

    In a statement, the Latin Patriarchate of Jerusalem said Pizzaballa, along with the Custos of the Holy Land, Father Francesco Ielpo, was stopped while heading privately to the church and “was compelled to turn back.”

    The Patriarchate said the incident marked the first time in centuries that church leaders were prevented from celebrating Palm Sunday at the Holy Sepulchre, one of the holiest Christian sites.

    2. The Rev Kev

      People forget that the Israelis want the Christians out as well and have been harassing them for years. One Ultra-Orthodox had the bright idea of spitting on monks – probably not the only one – on their way to carrying out their religious duties until one day he spat on a monk that happened to be an American ex-gridiron football player….

      1. Tito B

        Obviously you’re not very familiar with the Catholic Church. Pizzaballa served as the Custos of the Holy Land for 12 years before becoming the Latin Patriarchate of Jerusalem in 2020. He was one of the favorites in the last papal election, but the fact that he was the candidate who would stand up most strongly against Israel doomed him in the end, alas.

      2. hk

        The last two Latin Patriarchs of Jerusalem were Arabs: a Palestinian, then a Jordanian. Putting an Italian, and one that was quite Israel-friendly at that, was a big retreat and concession by Pope Francis. Yet, today, we are looked upon with ever greater contempt by Israelis.

    4. Bugs

      Both Meloni and Macron have condemned the Israeli police forces for this action. Beyond the pale, but it’s Israel, so that’s their day-to-day.

      Won’t be surprised if all holy week activities in Jerusalem are barred.

      1. ambrit

        Silly thought, but could this be a set up for a false flag attack on the Holy Sepulcher and or the Al Aqsa mosque?

        1. hk

          If there were a false flag, it’d have been more convenient for a cardinal to be on the wrong end, I’d have figured.

          1. ambrit

            Hmmm… “They” have already bagged a Grand Ayatollah. Would they also be considering adding a Pope to their trophy wall? Not much that “they” tried would surprise me now.

  23. Ann

    Red flare for Trump: ‘No Kings’ rallies a show of political force

    The demonstration outside the Minnesota State Capitol for the marquee “No Kings” rally, with Bruce Springsteen and Jane Fonda on the bill, wasn’t the most notable development during the day of protests on March 28.

    More notable was the “No Kings” march in Staunton, Virginia. And Salisbury, Maryland. Rockford, Illinois. Beaver, Pennsylvania. Eugene, Oregon. Chillicothe, Ohio. Port Huron, Michigan. Flatwoods, West Virginia. And more than 3,000 other places across the country, plus a scattering around the world.

    https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2026/03/29/no-kings-rallies-a-red-flare-for-trump/89306058007/

    Trump’s ‘Rogue Judges’ Rhetoric Breaches His Oath

    https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2026-03-29/rogue-judges-comments-from-trump-invite-political-violence

    1. JustAnotherVolunteer

      Eugene resident here – our event this time was actually held in Springfield. This neighbor city skews much more working class (made famous by the Simpsons) and the move was an intentional effort at extending the local coalition to organizations in that community. Trying to reach past liberal UO.

      Well attended but with a lot of Eugene imports so work in progress.

      1. JG

        Ashland, south of you…a large turn out, with our Representative as well. Go figure, the blue huddle…Me, bike 16.6 miles round trip for provisions prior to the blessed rains returning. I lived in Springfield when attending nursing school later I purchased a home in Eugene proper…. Been missing the…rains and river…Be well❤️🐈‍⬛

    2. ambrit

      We had such a rally yesterday here in the Rancid Underbelly of the North American Deep South. I’d say that about one or two hundred showed up, many with home-made placards. No ‘out of town’ participation visible, unlike other such demonstrations over the years. (The so called “Woke” demonstrations of the Trump One and Biden years had significant cadres of bussed in marchers in attendance in years gone by.) Most of the attendees I saw were over forty years of age. Very few youngsters in sight at the rally and mini-march. It lasted a couple of hours and a lot of social networking was to be seen.
      I saw no “No Empires” signage.
      I witnessed no formal political organizing attempted.
      I saw no police presence.
      It felt like a picnic.
      Strange days before the real shocks begin.
      I’m tightening up on our preps this weekend. I sense a disturbance in the Force.
      Phyl teased me yesterday about my almost obsession with “current news.” “I hope you can deal with being the dog that finally catches that car.”
      Stay safe, plan ahead, this is going to be much worse than the Coronavirus pandemic was.

    3. Cat Burglar

      There was good turnout in the cow town of Madras Oregon, the third rally so far, at least a couple hundred people. We were right at the intersection of highways 26 and 97, so we were showing our signs mainly to drivers.

      There was a big positive response. The waves and cheers we got from Native and Hispanic drivers were notable and many. Truck drivers kept blasting their horns in approval, which surprised me from a group that is usually fairly conservative. Women were a big proportion of people cheering us. We were flipped off maybe once an hour, which seems unusually few times in a conservative town. It felt like the political tide has turned for the better, if you can get this kind of reaction in Madras.

      A big part of the protest group were retired Boomers, the rest sure looked like regular working people, and there were few visible PMC members. The signage was mainly about democracy, stopping ICE and immigration outrages, the corruption and stupidity of the President, and Epstein. There were only a few No War signs. Aside from a few antiwar chants by the activists, the war bearing down on us like an oncoming train did not seem to be a top concern, though a BRING OUR TROOPS HOME NOW sign met with approval.

      It is sad that the only political vessel we have for this energy is the Democratic Party, but things can change in a highly dynamic situation, like a war.

      1. JG

        Love me some Madras; lived in Tumalo for a long time. Turning, turning, turning The river, the rock…beauty surrounds you🐈‍⬛❤️ Be well!

  24. Tom Stone

    Keep in mind that Trump is bored with this War, if Hegseth or anyone else asks him what to do next he will probably say something like “Yeah, yeah, yeah, I’m working on my golf swing, just take care of it”.
    That way he doesn’t actually have to make a decision and when things don’t go according to plan he can blame someone else.

  25. AG

    Maybe others who understand this or can use AI-translate could summarize (despite the likelihood of total bias):
    RU YT video by Ruslan Suleymanov about his time in Iran.

    70 min.
    youtu.be/QKgGstM4WRc

    via TWITTER Alexander Baunov
    Mar 23
    https://nitter.poast.org/baunov/status/2036158496706535776#m

    What Iran looks like from the inside right now, and what people there are saying.
    Ruslan Suleymanov returned from Iran yesterday. IN RUSSIAN

    time stamps

    00:00 Beginning
    00:32 Ruslan Suleimanov returns from Iran
    01:30 Visa and border: how to enter Iran
    04:20 Why filming is prohibited
    05:30 How the Iranian dictatorship works
    07:50 IRGC, checks, and detention
    12:20 Basij and total control
    14:10 Life under wartime conditions
    17:00 Destruction and fear in the cities
    20:50 Pro-government rallies and propaganda
    27:30 Actions of the opposition
    36:40 Who comes after Khamenei
    41:40 Attitudes toward Russia and the world
    01:01:40 Internet, censorship, and isolation
    01:08:20 Leaving Iran and interrogations

    1. amfortas

      fog is thick, and all, but dmitri lascaris in in iran…wandering around talking to a whole buncha people, high and low.
      fremen vibes…desert power. these folks aint cowering in bunkers.

      1. Will

        Dune 3 is scheduled to be released late this year. From the trailer, it seems the movie will lean hard into the idea of not falling for messianic figures, as was Herbert’s intention with the first book. In our present context, Fremen = MAGA and Paul = Trump?

    2. Maxwell Johnston

      An interesting view from the ground in Iran, mostly talk (the RU journalist was warned not to take photos or engage in any journalistic activity) with only a few photos taken surreptitiously.

      Both the interviewer and interviewee are on the Kremlin’s foreign agent blacklist (interviewer is based at Carnegie center in Berlin). They both seemed surprised that having a RU passport turned out to be a plus when visiting Iran (to me it would seem obvious, but some of these people are so blinded by Putin derangement syndrome that it extends to all things RU).

      TL;DR so you don’t have to watch the whole 70 minutes:

      He didn’t visit Tehran (not allowed), but did visit three other big cities in the NW of Iran. Impressive linguist, spoke Farsi and Azerbaijani while he was there. He saw some damage, but not as much as he had expected. Lots of Tehran residents have fled to other cities or countryside, as Tehran is taking most of the hits so far.

      The pro-government demonstrations take place in the evenings and are genuine (i.e., people are not paid to attend); mostly women in attendance. The government is not pushing any religious propaganda angle but instead framing the war in patriotic nationalistic terms, which resonates broadly. Even the January protesters are keeping a low profile, partly for that reason (i.e., even if they don’t like the regime, they don’t like seeing their country’s civilian infrastructure destroyed from the air). The protesters feel that Trump let them down by not intervening back then when they were risking their lives in January, so now they don’t trust Trump (imagine that!). And despite their dislike of the regime, there are no credible replacements in sight (nobody takes prince Pahlavi seriously) and no coherent opposition (very much unlike the situation in 1979).

      There are difficulties with electricity and gasoline, although these were also present pre-war. Only local internet, cross-border is totally blocked (even VPNs don’t work) and Starlink too. Limited international phone calls. People get their news from TV, radio, newspapers, and word-of-mouth. He didn’t mention water.

      Nobody favors agreeing to Trump’s terms, as that would be perceived as surrender. Even the oppositionists just want the war to be over, but without any formal surrender.

      He was worried about being interrogated upon departing Iran (in the Israeli style), but the Iranian border guards didn’t bother him. Instead, he was grilled by the Turkish border guards after he crossed the border (!), which I found amusing.

      1. AG

        Thank you for taking the time!

        re: Carnegie – I knew something was off with Suleymanov. Although looking him up, former TASS´s man in Cairo. Being still formed by RU old-school educational system I guess, he no wonder speaks the languages. Something his new home´s system might not have provided for in this form…

      2. Pogo

        My barber is from Iran, his parents are still there. He say his parents can call him from land line, but he cannot reach them from Canada, so likely only outgoing calls are allowed.

  26. Acacia

    Satellite image of the destruction of an AWACS (E-3G) command and control aircraft at the US base in Al-Harj, Saudi Arabia.

    Registration number 0005-81, belonging to the 552nd Air Wing stationed at Tinker Air Force Base in Oklahoma, USA, was destroyed as a result of a missile-drone attack by Iran on Al-Harj air base in Saudi Arabia. The damage shows that the munition hit the most important part of the aircraft, namely the tail section, where sensitive systems are located, including the AN/APY-2 radar station.

    “A painful lesson for Americans on the runway”

    https://t.me/parstodayrussian/199781

    https://t.me/parstodayrussian/199784

    1. Henry Moon Pie

      Ironic. Lankford (R-OK) was making the rounds of the Sunday shows today, peddling the line repeated around the table the day before with Goldberg, Ignatius, Baker and Glasser:

      Trump may have screwed up, but we can’t leave things the way they are. We must “finish the job.”

      So basically, we’re learning that Powell was right about the Pottery Barn analysis. We broke it. We bought it.

      And Lankford was shying away from any Congressional authorization, even with ground troops. He claimed the opportunity for Congressional input came with the $200 billion supplemental. Of course, then it will be, “We can’t deny our troops what they need to defend themselves.”

      Same routine. Over and over again. I do think it’s rapidly losing its effectiveness. I am thankful we don’t have a big military pumped up by a draft. Their military options are very restricted because it would take a long time to build up any kind of credible force.

      1. hk

        There is a weird corollary to the Pottery Barn rule that too many US foreign policy types seem to adhere to: we’ll break it so we’ll own it. :/

  27. DGE

    I hate to sound a contrarian note, and I want USrael to lose this as much as anyone here, but I think the Iranian response to the attack on its universities and water distribution infrastructure (the latter was also reported yesterday) was the first sign of weakness in these weeks.

    A demand for an apology in 48 hours or else, instead of prompt retaliation, is what Trump does when he doesn’t have any options. Iran had been engaging in a quid pro quo, but now it decided to give the USraelis 48 hours to blow more stuff up while waiting for an apology that won’t come, and guarantees that aren’t worth the computer memory the corresponding tweets are stored in? What for?

    I can only conclude that Iran’s offensive capabilities have been degraded to the point they need to engage in bluffing and posturing. That’s not an entirely bad thing. They may be saving the remaining long-distance missiles for later use should things escalate even more. But if we combine this with the part in today’s post where raspberry jam is quoted as saying that ordinary Israelis haven’t been seriously inconvenienced yet, can we really say Iran gains anything by not blowing up the Technion and the Weizmann Institute immediately? Today was the first day in this war when we didn’t wake up with news of the latest missile wave against Israel, though Iran did hit important US assets in GCC countries.

    Well, maybe I’m jumping the gun and expecting a quick resolution that was never going to come. But I still cannot find convincing evidence that the US are going to be kicked out of the MIddle East, or that Israel will cease to function as a viable settler state. Things sure could bank that way, but we’re not at the point where this is self-evident. Then again, if we think of geopolitic changes in terms of phase shifts – when in one moment everything seems like it ever was, and then change comes abruptly – perhaps Israel will look fine till the very end, and then will be gone rather quickly. One can hope.

    I’d hate for Craig Murray to be right, but I have to consider the possibility until events allow me to dismiss it.

    1. Yves Smith Post author

      I disagree. Iran is trying to condition Trump to de-escalate, as in be able to admit error or retreat.

      It is a no-brainer that Iran could wipe out all those campuses immediately. They hit the Ras Laffan LNG infrastructure and other energy assets within hours of the attack on the North Pars gas field. They have NOTHING to prove in the potency front. That is a US issue.

      And a fast response would kill a lot of non-belligerents. The Shia have higher moral standards than we do.

      “Of all manifestations of power, restraint impresses men most.” Attributed to Thucydides.

      1. DGE

        Wait, what? Do you mean to say the Israeli campuses are active, as in not evacuated already? Like, classes haven’t even been suspended? That’s… some complacency alright.

        I also appreciate your take. I hadn’t thought of the Iranian strategy as how Pavlov would treat Trump. I suppose it’s fitting, no one is in more need of some good conditioning as he. I’m all for placing electrodes on him, as well.

        1. Yves Smith Post author

          I don’t think you understand what Iran is saying.

          US universities have what amount to extension schools all over the Middle East, such as NYU, Johns Hopkins,

          See from Politico in Iran threatens US campuses in Middle East:

          Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps warned it may retaliate against American university campuses in the Middle East, claiming that recent U.S. and Israeli strikes have damaged two Iranian universities.

          The group said U.S.-affiliated campuses in the region could become “legitimate targets” unless Washington formally condemns the attacks on Iranian schools by noon on Monday, according to a statement first reported by Fars news agency, which is closely associated with the Guard, and picked up by other media.

          The statement urged staff, faculty, students and nearby residents to keep at least one kilometer away from these campuses.

          Several American universities have branches in the Persian Gulf, including Texas A&M University in Qatar and New York University in the United Arab Emirates.

          https://www.politico.eu/article/iran-threatens-us-campuses-in-middle-east/

          1. Mikel

            The administration and certain tech-bro algorithm mavens already have shown a disregard for institutions of higher learning. Think of how they are currently dismantling, disrupting, or destroying institutions without bombs.

      2. lyman alpha blob

        RE: higher moral standards

        I think Iran has played this well. Giving a public warning before any retaliation really highlights who the bad guys are here, and also minimizes casualties. Iran wants the US out of the region, and they are doing it by destroying their stuff rather than deliberately murdering civilians.

        If this report from today’s links about 80% of Iran’s missiles getting through is accurate, the Zionist entity is in big trouble.

        If Iran wins this and comes out with the moral high ground, we’ll have had a real global paradigm shift. I’d expect to see more US bases around the globe overrun and abandoned.

        1. KD

          The group said U.S.-affiliated campuses in the region could become “legitimate targets” unless Washington formally condemns the attacks on Iranian schools by noon on Monday, according to a statement first reported by Fars news agency,

          Yes, these aren’t real military targets, so minimizing civilian deaths is good PR but also note it will transpire in the middle of the trading day. It probably hasn’t escaped Iran that Trump is intentionally timing escalation to manipulate the stock market. Its a game that two can play.

    2. KD

      I want USrael to lose this as much as anyone here

      Not speaking for anyone, but I do not want USreal to lose, I want Israel to find a way to live peacefully with its neighbors, instead of trying to kill them and steal their lands. I want Israel to grant equal rights to all persons within the boundaries of its national control. This would be a real victory for Israel.

      I don’t want the US to lose. I want the US to play a constructive role in the ME, working to provide conditions of stability and prosperity, instead of death and chaos. This would be a real victory for the US.

      Regardless of what I want, it appears highly probable that US/Israel will lose because they do not seem capable of responding to Iran’s asymmetric warfare tactics. They couldn’t stop the Houthis. But even assuming Iran loses, that won’t stop anything, America will retain its strategic weaknesses and its corrupt procurement system and still be unprepared to deal with the changes in warfare, and Israel will just be lobbying for war with Turkey. Nothing will change.

      1. DGE

        I respect your opinion, and I think that’s a perfectly reasonable stance to have.

        During many years, I supported the one-state solution. Israel as a state from the Jordan to the Mediterranean for all its citizens, without encroachments in other people’s lands and living in harmony with its region. I didn’t believe the two-state solution because the Bantustan-like fragmentation of the Palestinian-occupied territories was a non-starter, and there’s the issue of the huge refugee camps in Lebanon and the Sinai. I wasn’t as positive about this as the late Uri Avnery, who thought a one-state solution would mean the end of a state called Israel as Palestinians became a majority, the Knesset changed its name to Mahjlis and Jews started emigrating due to not being able to bear equality. He thought the two-state solution was viable till the end of his distinguished life as an activist on behalf of peace and the enfranchisement of Palestinians.

        But I don’t think this has been possible anymore since 2023. Israel was already a Herrenvolk pseudodemocracy, but while the Palestinians were just second-class citizens, an accommodation like happened in South Africa was possible. But Israel has since gone where the South African whites never fully went. The genocide seems to me to have erased all possibility of reconciliation. One could argue that genocided minorities all over the world have managed to find a way to live in the settler state that was once theirs (like native North Americans), but the problem is that the Palestinians are nowhere close to a minority, and I don’t want to contemplate what needs to happen for them to be.

        So to me the solution for the Israel impasse is not the South African one, it’s the Algerian one. Let the settlers resettle elsewhere. If a rooted fraction of them, the ones whose ancestors were already in the Middle East before the Balfour Declaration, decide to stay, and live like the Iranian Jews as a peaceful minority community in a muslim country, fine with me.

        As for a constructive role for the US, forgive me, but there has never been a case of a distant hegemon playing a constructive role anywhere. When you live across an ocean and don’t have to bother about the consequences of spreading mayhem in distant lands, you’ll never change your ways. There are simply no incentives. Heck, the US is throwing its closest allies except for Israel under the bus right now. That’s in agreement with past behaviour of hegemons. So it doesn’t make sense to me to expect improvements. At best, a more powerful country may treat adjacent, weaker countries with some benevolence because geographic contiguity means even a small country can cause a world of pain to you. So I believe Russia can play a constructive role in the post-Soviet space, and China on East Asia, and even that comes with lots of qualifications. But the US is bullying its only contiguous neighbours, Mexico and Canada, as we speak.

        2. frank

          The US needs to be defeated in this adventure.
          Imperial managers do not abide by peace treaties.
          Empire demands compliance with its demands by any means necessary.

              1. hk

                This is indeed a good question: IF US actually had a real and clearly defined aim, US defeat would have been provided by frustrating that aim, but we clearly didn’t, beyond beating some people up for evulz (is this too unfair as a characterization?). I’m not so sure if US would sctually be “defeated” until and unless our ability to “beat up people for evulz” has been seriously degraded, at least, (or, we wake up, realize that we are the baddies, and repent) which will take some time to accomplish.

                I think Israel’s aims are inherently linked to our ability to “beat up people for evulz.” I don’t necessarily buy into the idea that Israel “controls” US foreign policy–we always had factions that wanted to go around the looking for “monsters” to destroy. I suppose what Israel has been able to do is to direct predatory instincts of these factions towards those it sees as obstacles to its goal of regional dominance, especially those beyond its own power (eg Iran). So Israel loses when US loses the ability to “beat up people for evulz” or realizes the evils of our ways, repents, and start minding our own business. Or, in other words, the actual conditions for US and Israeli defeat, as I see it, are identical.

            2. Uwe Ohse

              I do think so, too.

              But this only means the imperialistic minded parts of the US “elite” will feel the need to double down, not only to save face but to avoid a total loss of influence in the wider gulf area.
              Which isn’t even unreasonable, just criminally shortsighted and stupid.

        3. Alan Sutton

          The genocide seems to me to have erased all possibility of reconciliation.

          That’s right DGE.

          No two state solution now. That has been exposed for the duplicitous farce that some of the major actors of the last decades must have already know it was.

          Clinton, Blair, Bush, Reagan, The PLO (I know!).

          No possibility of that sort of corrupt accomodation anymore.

          It will be a one state solution now. Who will be in charge of it is the only undecided question.

          This is something Liberals around the West have had to grapple with. The two state solution was a fairly painless way of supporting Palestinians without appearing to be “anti Zionist” for a long time. Until even that forlorn idea came to be seen as “anti semitic”.

  28. Blue Duck

    I’m chiming in for the first time in a long time. It’s hard to really believe this is happening. I’ve been saying for weeks “surely cooler heads must prevail”. It’s hard to believe that the Joint Chiefs, or high ranking intel officials, or oligarchs, or the Chinese or the Russians – all the worlds powers that could possibly have any kind of leverage – it’s hard to believe they will allow the world to endure $200 oil. But it seems we’re just careening along without any breaks.

    I have a family with three kids and at this stage it’s hard to envisage things like driving my kids the 30 mins to and from summer camp in July. And I don’t raise that example as a way to say “oh woe is me” but more to ask – “how much shit is the American working class going to be asked to eat?”

    Like realistically, is the US elite looking at the game board and saying – the American people will just have to shut up and take $10/gallon at the pump? Surely not!

    1. lyman alpha blob

      To your last point, according to the footnote above on the Nixon administration, that is exactly what they did a half century ago, so why not now? We can’t have those poors sharing the wealth, so every so often the government comes in and mows the lawn so to speak.

      Also, be sure to laugh in the face of the next person who tells you there is a ‘free market’. That is the last thing US oligarchs want, so they use the government to make sure they can dominate, and competition is not really welcome. If there is any overarching strategy to this mess of a US foreign policy over the last decade plus, it’s to break up China’s Belt and Road Initiative.

  29. Ann

    India ships 38,000 MT of fuel to Sri Lanka amid West Asia crisis and local panic

    https://thefederal.com/category/news/india-ships-38000-mt-of-fuel-to-sri-lanka-amid-west-asia-crisis-and-local-panic-236689

    As war rages, Iranian politicians push for exit from nuclear weapons treaty

    While US-Israeli attacks hit key infrastructure, hardliners demand withdrawal from Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.

    https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/3/28/lawmakers-push-npt-exit-as-us-israel-hit-irans-nuclear-sites-steel-plants

    Finland reports suspected territorial violation by drones

    https://www.reuters.com/world/finland-reports-suspected-territorial-violation-by-drones-2026-03-29/

  30. Ann

    ‘People should be scared’: convictions in US ‘antifa’ trial set dangerous precedent

    https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/mar/29/texas-leftwing-antifa-activist-trial

    Iran warns US over ground attack as regional powers meet in Pakistan

    https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/yemens-houthis-enter-iran-war-with-attacks-israel-while-us-marines-arrive-region-2026-03-28/

    China used fake profiles to spy on NATO, EU: source

    China used fake LinkedIn profiles to harvest sensitive data from NATO and EU institutions by soliciting info

    https://www.taipeitimes.com/News/front/archives/2026/03/29/2003854647rmation from staff, a European security source said on Friday.

    1. Ben Panga

      >China used fake LinkedIn profiles to harvest sensitive data from NATO and EU institutions by soliciting info

      Could be rephrased as “NATO and EU have bad opsec”

  31. Carolinian

    Re the supposedly bearing up mood in Israel–latest Alastair Crooke has Hebrew press excerpts, no pay wall, that paint a different picture and one of a society falling apart.

    https://conflictsforum.substack.com/p/what-awaits-israel-in-the-next-round

    The IDF is failing and the settlers are rioting out of control. Netanyahu is alive and on the scene but travels around in a bunker on wheels. The revival and entry of Hezbollah has thrown Northern Israel into chaos.

    1. Yves Smith Post author

      Crooke is relying on Hebrew press, and he admits to that.

      This is what raspberry jam wrote yesterday:

      An update from my Israeli colleagues. The experience of the people I am interacting with in Israel right now is all over the place. I have many colleagues who live in houses in exurbs in Tel Aviv (so they have their own shelters within the home) and their experience seems mostly unaffected. I have a handful who live in the heavily urban area of central Israel around Tel Aviv and they are experiencing significant disruption but for the most part not enough now to prevent them from going to the office (in downtown Tel Aviv) multiple times a week. There are at least 2 who have been living in what amounts to a public community shelter for weeks now with ~60 others (they have shared their screen so we could see the conditions – looked like a school basement – not as bad as a parking garage but very unpleasant post-hurricane like conditions). There are also some up north, which is where most seem to agree is getting the heaviest attacks. They have their own shelters and while they seem to be getting more shelter alerts none have been driven from their homes.

      It is my opinion that Iran is in for the long haul and has planned their escalation strategy to coincide with this very slow increase in attacks on civilian infrastructure. Since the Dimona/Arad strike there are more reports in Israeli MSM about AD failures leading to civilian deaths.

      Finally, I’ll share something that isn’t exactly news but may be of interest. I like to watch videos of people walking or driving in various places on another screen while I work. I have been watching this channel to see what Israel looks like currently. There isn’t any commentary and there isn’t a date posted so take it with a grain of salt but there are some interesting bits in this video of a drive around Tel Aviv sometime this month. For a starter, the lack of traffic in Tel Aviv is incredible if you’ve ever been. There is a siren that goes off in the video during the drive and you can see the process of pulling over (but not the walk to the shelter or interior). When we follow the wars at a high level we see the holistic view and the big strikes but it is hard to imagine why the Israelis haven’t capitulated yet. If the civilian destruction is not so significant yet that only 5% of my sample set has been driven to emergency housing after a month – if one can walk in Haifa and get a coffee and sure it seems a little unlively and there are sirens but other than that a normal-ish spring day – maybe this begins to explain why 78% of polled Israelis say they support the ongoing catastrophe. It’s still not real at the ground level.

      1. anahuna

        Yves, I believe that the key lies in something Alastair quotes from the former IDF Ombudsman General Yitzhak Brik:

        “The Israeli public must understand: convenience is the enemy of preparedness. The illusion that we can continue to live in a Tel Aviv bubble or in shallow political discourse while the earth is shaking is the surest way to the destruction of the Third Temple.”

        This reads like an attempt to shake the relatively comfortable residents of Tel Aviv out of their complacency and would confirm the (highly prized) raspberry jam’s account.

        1. Carolinian

          In his talk with Chris Hedges Gideon Levy talks about how the Israeli govt. and almost all of the press go out of their way to brainwash their public and hide “inconvenient truths.” This is ironic given how much the Good Germans have been tarred in the Holocaust narrative.

        2. NotTimothyGeithner

          But the truth is … they’re furious at him because he just wrecked their alibi for the next screw-up.

          I think the problems are going to be much worse than Tel Aviv residents being complacent. The real question is what will happen when sectors start breaking in Israel.

          1. AG

            I am wondering how Iran war-gamed out their intended collapse of Israel without it blowing up everything around in the process.

            Interestingly that would concur with many serious analysts like Craig Mokhiber who demanded the dismantling of Israel as a state 3 weeks into the genocide in his famous letter of resignation.

            It is also interesting that geopolitical goals coveted by the left in the 70s and now too might eventually be achieved by completely different means implemented by a nominally theocratic government that once wiped out thousands of leftists in the 1980s.

      2. EY Oakland

        I’m thinking that the mass killing of civilians is something Iran wants to avoid. I think that Iran believes in international law. Those laws were intended to safeguard civility, were written to hold countries to a civilized standard of behavior. It’s possible that Iran will be forced to be more brutal, but that will be because of the US/Israel aggressors’ level of brutality. For both the US and Israel, might makes right and winning is all.

      3. Daniil Adamov

        “I have a handful who live in the heavily urban area of central Israel around Tel Aviv and they are experiencing significant disruption but for the most part not enough now to prevent them from going to the office (in downtown Tel Aviv) multiple times a week.”

        My Israeli relatives are in or near that area, depending on how one measures it. Can corroborate this much. From what they’ve mentioned, it seems somewhat disruptive, certainly more than what they’re used to or had during the Twelve Days War, but no real cause for alarm on their part. The disruption is mostly due to being herded into shelters when in public spaces (often enough but never for long) or trains stopping or moving slowly – this is annoying and disturbs schedules, but nothing more.

        Russian relatives (not me) asking them about whether their power stations have been knocked out yet are (justly) laughed off. I have yet to hear of any blackouts in Tel Aviv (as per a recent report in one of the links posts), but as with Russia-wide Internet outages, that would have been hard not to notice if it happened. The dissonance between exaggerations in dodgier sections of anti-Israeli online media and their everyday experience is obvious and, to the extent it reaches them, surely encourages complacency (as all easily debunked false reports do). This may very well change later, but so far the situation on the ground is not something that would seriously worry most people in that part of Israel.

    2. raspberry jam

      The link has a lot of interesting detail. Thanks for sharing. Specifically to your point I want to call out a quote:

      IDF Chief of Staff: “The IDF is going to implode; In a short time, the IDF will not be ready for its routine missions”

      Channel 13: IDF Chief of Staff told the security cabinet: “The IDF is going to implode. I am raising 10 red flags to you. The IDF now needs a conscription law, a reserve law, and a compulsory service extension law. In a short time, the IDF will not be ready for its routine missions — and the reserve system will not last.”

      Opposition leader Yair Lapid: “The Chief of Staff warns of the collapse of the IDF, the government is ignoring it. In the next disaster, the government will not be able to say ‘I didn’t know’. It bears responsibility … In the next government … we will mobilize everyone. The discrimination between blood and blood will stop.”

      Former PM Naftali Bennett: “Zamir is now shouting what I have been saying for two and a half years. A government that depends on Deri and Goldknopf is unable to provide security to the State of Israel and is unable to win.”

      Now please read this: The Rise and Fall of the (Non-)Conscription Law – Explainer

      A quote from that piece:

      Based on what can be assessed from the parliamentary calendar, it appears that completing the (non-)conscription law within the current Knesset term will not be possible, and the question of finalizing the law and its contents will be passed along to the next Knesset and government. First, as long as the war with Iran continues throughout March and the state budget passes at the end of the month with the support of all or some of the Haredi parties, the most powerful bargaining chip that the Haredim held — threatening to oppose the budget in order to incentivize progress on the draft exemption bill — is removed from the political system.

      Second, in April, shortly after the budget votes, the Knesset will go into Passover recess for 5 or 6 weeks. When the Knesset returns to work in May 2026, the country will begin gearing up for elections, which are scheduled for October (or, if brought forward, no earlier than September). In an election-season reality, and with no alternative leverage available to the Haredim, the government has no remaining incentive to advance the draft exemption bill. Only creative, effective pressure from the Haredi side, which would need to outweigh the opposing pressure from coalition voters who oppose the law, could bring the bill back to the table.

      Another quote from your link (the remainder of the quote is worth reading as well):

      White Nights in the Knesset as the Government exploits the war; looting & passing controversial issues under cover of alarms and missiles’ (Ben Caspit, Ma’ariv, 24 March):

      [A] white night has just ended in the Israeli Knesset … the horrific government that took over the State of Israel is taking advantage of the terrible war … in order to continue the looting, continue the coup, continue to pass under the cover of alarms and missiles all the controversial issues that are tearing Israeli society apart and leading us to the brink of the abyss. The coalition of interests, minorities and post-Zionists is doing these things … because it is shameless, uninhibited [and] because it can. [And], because we can no longer protest. We are tired after a long war, we do not like to demonstrate and protest during war, we are in the reserves, our businesses are collapsing, our nights are white and our elected officials are being robbed …

      Now to your comment. In every major situation there is at least a high level view and a personal/ground level view. We here have the benefit of observing from a high level with perspectives from outside of Israel that are not subject to in-country military censorship. The experience of my colleagues is not going to mirror the high level view at a mass level unless Israel is driven to personal-level ruin as a result of this war. But it does appear that Iran wishes to align with international law and they benefit by dragging the kinetic phase out as slow as possible to drain US/IL intercept and engagement capabilities.

      I shared the quotes above because if we have to have a regime change before, after, or in lieu of a market crash to end this conflict, we have a clear timeline for Israel and the US:

      – Israel elections are no later than October 2026
      – US midterms are November 3 2026

      Both election campaigns begin by July. Both governments are highly fractured with the ruling party in place by thin margins.

      In the US, Iran has already said they’ll only make a deal with JD Vance. In US media this was spun as Vance would be the negotiator.

      In Israel, the IDF is saying the current government’s priorities towards the eschatological Kahanist faction has led them to the brink of military defeat. The Israeli opposition is saying they will back the IDF at the expense of the religious/settler faction.

    1. Samuel Conner

      Recruitment has to suffer while an unpopular war is underway. And the pool of eligible recruits may be shrinking.

      The youth population is likely to be sicker than in the past due to repeated CV infection. The virus spreads in the schools with little interference from the authorities.

      The adult population is likely to be sicker than in the past due to repeated CV infection. The virus spreads in the workplace and at places of assembly (weekly church gatherings, for example) with little interference from anyone.

      Population health ought to be regarded to be a matter of national security.

      I wonder whether there is concern in the Armed Forces command structure.

  33. Paradox of Unrealized Power

    I am not at all wedded to my current view, but unless Turkey or Azerbaijan enter on behalf of the US side, I am extremely skeptical that a four month military conflict is even possible. Does the US even have enough equipment to last for four months plus? Does it have the troops to do so (and a place to house them)? If not, does it have enough standoff munitions to keep going (maybe, I guess, if it completely strips all of its stockpiles from the Asian theatre??) Does it have the public support to endure such a conflict? Already Israel looks unlikely to be able to sustain four months, so what exactly will the US be attempting to accomplish over this time?

    As for the economic crisis: yep–that is completely unavoidable. And since the west’s finances cannot sustain a four month economic crisis, this is going to end up running far longer than four months, I think.

    This has got to be the stupidest possible way to lose an empire imaginable.

    1. Yves Smith Post author

      The US and Israel can keep up terrorism for quite a while.

      And Iran won’t let go of the Strait. Or if it does a deal for joint control, it might be with the Gulf States if they kick out the US, with say Russia and Pakistan as guarantors.

      1. John k

        I would think future terrorism would get missile attacks. I can’t see a treaty of any kind as the west would consider it toilet paper. The war might end with slow decrease of attacks… us can’t stay in theater indefinitely, israel would have to behave to survive. I do wonder what effort iran would make to help the Sunni Arabs in Gaza.

  34. lampoon

    New public (no paywall) post on Rbt Pape’s Escalation Trap Substack. Compares Iran War to Vietnam War escalation stages in detail.
    https://escalationtrap.substack.com/p/vietnam-shows-exactly-when-air-wars

    He summarizes the “you are here” X-marks-the-spot-on-the-map moment as follows:
    Forward positions are under threat; Airpower is active but not decisive; [Ground] forces are being positioned; The logistics question is now central – Not whether forces can deploy — but whether they can stay.
    This is the threshold moment of the Stage 3 escalation trap. “A small ground force is not stable. It creates a binary choice: reinforce it — or lose it”
    He states that the next 10 days will show whether the logistics support system is being built at scale.

    1. flora

      an aside: Ed Dowd mentions in passing – and only as an aside as one possibility, or maybe only a coincidence – that just as C19 arriving at the same time the stock market was starting to wobble gave the US govt a reason to pump billions of dollars in C19 relief into the economy which also steadied the stock market, now as then, the stock market is wobbling and a new war gives the US govt a reason to pump more billions of dollars into the economy to the MIC and AI which is also steadying the market, at least temporarily.

      Even Dowd says he doesn’t really want to believe that’s what’s going on and is likely a too cynical take on things. However, he wonders why this war, this spending, just now. Given what looks like recent market manipulation with insider trading, it’s an interesting question, imo.

      1. hk

        Is that even feasible? Money may be infinitely available, but physical resources are not just finite, its supply just got cut by a big percentage. All that money pumping would fo to spark massive inflation.

    2. redleg

      I’m going to pay more attention to the DOD (it’s still called “Defense” on Sam.gov) engineering contracting opportunities to see where they are located. The military has contracted nearly all of that out since (of course) Clinton.

    3. Cat Burglar

      People of influence are probably reading Pape now the same way the same types read Street Without Joy during the Vietnam War — to deny in public that he is right, or that they have read it. Ain’t gonna be no Din Bin Phoo in this Administration.

    4. Cat Burglar

      The Pape article is a must read.

      It is a very clear account of the policy decisions that are going to be made, and soon, maybe last week.

      The US may be about to change from covering up casualties, to showing them, in order to pump up Support The Troops propaganda for more dying and killing. That’s what McGeorge Bundy meant, when he said, “Pleikus are like streetcars.”

      I wonder how well Pape’s template will apply to the Israeli War?

      Pleiku and Da Nang attacks were done by infantry and commandos; Iran hit US bases and Israel remotely. Force protection of the bases and Israel wouldn’t be done by troops, as it was in Vietnam — troops would be for attack on Iran’s territory. So escalation from base defense to territorial conquest would be almost instantaneous; in fact, the troops and logistics dumps might not even be where the bases are, because they would be exposed to missiles. As a political excuse, at least, force protection does not sit straight on this military situation.

      Right now the few Marines are reportedly on Diego Garcia — what other secure location can enough of them be assembled in? Any heavy logistics can’t come through the Gulf, and even Fujairah, in the UAE, seems pretty close to Iran. Would they land people and stuff at Yanbu, and truck it across Saudi, if they can get the boats past the Houthis? Pape is likely describing how the Administration is thinking, but their view is likely to be so distorted that disaster will rapidly result. Since reading articles about the incompetently exposed supply lines during the occupation of Iraq, I have been wondering when the US would suffer a huge military humiliation, and it looks like there might not be much longer to wait.

      Vietnam Syndrome is not a malady of public opinion tired of war, it is a condition of an American elite that can’t stop propagating war.

    5. John k

      At scale would mean like the 2nd gulf war, not possible now. But even that wouldn’t scale to larger/more pop Iran.

  35. Ann

    Iranian attacks across Gulf continue as major industrial sites hit

    https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cp86yrq5jy7o

    The ripple effect of the Iran war on struggling U.S. farmers: “It couldn’t have come at a worst time”

    https://www.cbsnews.com/news/ripple-effect-iran-war-struggling-u-s-farmers/

    Damaged Ust‑Luga terminal may force Russian refineries to cut runs, sources say

    https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/damaged-ustluga-terminal-may-force-russian-refineries-cut-runs-sources-say-2026-03-26/

  36. Paradox of Unrealized Power

    Incidentally, this thought isn’t at all original, but how much longer are the Intel fab plant and design center and Nvidia’s Israel-1 AI supercomputer going to last (Apple has large R&D teams as well)? I can’t imagine them remaining intact if the war runs another few moths, and I can’t imagine either company just shrugging off the losses.

    1. hk

      Precursor to Russia leaving EU high and dry? I have trouble imagining that the damages were big, but I do think it gives the Russians perfect legal justification (and the Russians are legalistic to the end) to cut off Europeans ahead of whenever existing arrangements expire.

  38. Ann

    ‘It’s biblical’: Maga anxiety over Iran war on display at CPAC as Trump skips event

    https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/mar/29/cpac-maga-anxiety-iran-war

    Anger at Iran war is growing among ‘more-right wing White House staffers,’ insider claims

    ‘They’re very frustrated,’ an insider said. ‘They didn’t love the war to start with’

    https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/trump-iran-war-white-house-maga-republicans-b2947877.html

    Fox News Host Asks Trump if Iranians Are Starving. He Responds by Calling Her Attractive and Reminiscing on a Lunch They Shared

    https://people.com/trump-ignores-question-about-iranians-starving-to-call-fox-news-host-attractive-11936644

  39. Ben Joseph

    another faction of the Saudi elite sort of seemed to come to the four and wanted to repair the damage they did with the United States and offered privately to work with the United States to lower oil prices.

    Amazingly, the United States refused to do this. He did not want prices and he buffed the sovere to the astonishment of the sellers.

    Ladies and gentlemen, behold the wonders of AI!

  40. Samuel Conner

    I wonder whether sky-high hydrocarbon prices might breathe life into the thermal depolymerization concept.

    Perhaps discarded plastic will start to be regarded as a resource, too.

    1. chris

      Nope, too many NIMBYs around for that tech to become popular. Thermolization, pyrolysis, all those things, no one wants a facility close to them that does it. The calculus might change when enough well off people are confronted with a plastics and oil shortage. I’m sure acceptable locations far away from land with property values will be found. But until then, no dice. Too many people would protest against any facility seeking a license to do this process on their site.

    2. amfortas

      waiting for coffee super early this am, i used that it was incredible foresight for china to rap up solar panel and ev production so high in the last few years…i expect everybody except usa and israel will be doing a hard transition to renewables after this.

      and me? i just wanna slap my momma for not getting in on cheap chinese solar installation before biden cut it off.
      she shot it down, mostly because it was my idea, of course.
      i look forward to carrying water all over in buckets(got all the parts and pipe and such for a hand pump that i have the wherewithal to install myself, if need-be….next attempted acquisition to shore up my ruins against mom’s hardhead: “leathers” for the ancient aermotor windmill–112 years old, still works, but not hooked up to any water system, so just sits there, and leathers dry rot. i turn it on every so often to prevent rusting and seizing up.)

  42. XXYY

    [The US and Israel have] not even remotely adapted to the tactics and weaponry priorities of a world of ISR, cheap drones, and powerful missiles. Iran in a mere month into the war has made US bases unusable and driven the US out of Iraq. How is that not winning?

    It’s also worth pointing out that the thus far limited scope of the war (the immediate region of the Persian Gulf) is likely a deliberate choice by Iran. It seems clear that they could spread destruction much more widely than they have, and much more seriously than it has, if Iran had decided to do it.

    My point here is that the US and Israeli militaries are not forcing Iran to limit their actions, but rather just putting up with (and reacting to) what Iran is deciding to do to them.

    The US is definitely on the back foot.

  44. XXYY

    Amazing detail on how the Nixon Administration rejected Saudi overtures to lower oil prices during the 1970s oil shock

    My first thought / guess after reading this opening was that the Nixon administration was happy to have the overall cost of living raised substantially since in the aftermath of World War II the US middle class had become substantially more well off. From the standpoint of wealthy elites, it’s obviously better to have your population struggling to survive and focused on acquiring the basics, rather than looking beyond their immediate situation and trying to fix the things that are broken in the society at large.

    I assume this is the common viewpoint held by people that run most western societies, and explains why, even in countries that have tremendous per capita wealth, so many people are struggling financially and otherwise. I’m certain that keeping the population poor is the analog of “keeping your wife barefoot and in the kitchen.” If you want to run something without opposition, you have to make your opponents weak and desperate, not well off and possessed of a lot of leisure time to make trouble for rulers.

    I like to think this kind of retrograde zero-sum thinking is slowly dying out, whether in individual households or in society at large. Hopefully (and deservedly) so.

    1. tegnost

      My first thought / guess after reading this opening was that the Nixon administration was happy to have the overall cost of living raised substantially since in the aftermath of World War II the US middle class had become substantially more well off. From the standpoint of wealthy elites, it’s obviously better to have your population struggling to survive and focused on acquiring the basics, rather than looking beyond their immediate situation and trying to fix the things that are broken in the society at large.

      The more things change, the more they stay the same. Blowing nordstream was imo a direct hit on european unions and safety net, both of which in usa have been destroyed. Successful programs must be starved and the elite won’t miss a meal. The problem for usians is that 90% of us have been wiped out while 10% got bailed out. But the elites now are after the 90 to 99’s and they’re likely to get it.
      “first they came for the gypsies…”
      Added bonus if they can somehow knock off 5 or 6 billion people, it’s practically be the garden of eden…

    2. Carolinian

      New Ben Norton/Michael Hudson talks about that long ago agreement. Hudson:

      Under the rules of Kissinger — and all this was explained to me by the Treasury and the State Department, in 1974 and 1975 — the US military told Saudi Arabia and other OPEC countries, “You can charge whatever you want for oil, but you have to use the surplus have to invest in the United States. We’re not going to let you buy control of any major American firms. You can’t buy American companies; only we can buy control of foreign economies. You’ll buy bonds. You can finance American industry and American companies. You can buy stocks in the companies. You can make money by just depositing your money in banks”.

      https://geopoliticaleconomy.com/2026/03/29/war-iran-change-economy-michael-hudson/

      Hudson says the plan–if one cares to believe Trump even has a plan–was for USA to gain control of Iran’s oil in a quick coup and then present this new leverage to China in upcoming summit. In other words it’s the same plan USA has been following since at least the 70s. He also says, though, that the petrodollar gambit is no longer what it once was. Much more at the above link.

    3. amfortas

      hell, the bidness elite and their press have been saying that out loud and shamelessly for as long as i can remember…”disciplining the workforce” and other transparent euphemisms. but the workforce apparently doesnt pay attention to the bidness elite and their press…or at least have convinced themselves that its too complicated and thus do not understand the euphemisms. but once one sees it, one cannot unsee the disdain “our betters”(or ‘bettors’?) have for all the rest of us. that old gailbraithe(pere) saw about how we’re all just temporarily embarrassed millionaires still stands.

    4. Mikel

      Another example of times when those in power have a different set of goalposts for counting a score or a “win”. It’s beyond having a fair game with a set of rules and sometimes more like various sides aren’t playing on the same field.

    5. Darthbobber

      We already saw our European and Japanese allies by then as equal parts allies and competitors. Administration thinking was that while this was inconvenient for American consumers and manufacturers it was a much more severe handicap for Europe and Japan and would eat into their developing advantages.

  45. MRLost

    There continues to be considerable chatter regarding use of nuclear weapons in the war against Iran. Question to the commentariat: Would the presence of American boots on the ground in Iran prevent the Israelis from using a nuclear weapon in Iran? Admittedly, Iran is a big country and Tehran is a long ways from Chabahar but the very idea of American grunts or jar heads being threatened by one or more (likely many more) Israeli nukes might give some pause. Or would (will) the Israelis just claim they are trying to help out and the Americans got in the way? So sorry.

  46. JohnH

    Hezbollah attacking from the north, Houthis from the south. It looks like Iran is for the time being concentrated on mopping up some in the Gulf, attacking US and Ukrainian soldiers, and letting others create problems for Israel.

  47. Ann

    European country vows to give homeowners ‘free electricity’ instead of switching off wind turbines

    https://www.euronews.com/2026/03/27/european-country-vows-to-give-homeowners-free-electricity-instead-of-switching-off-wind-tu

    Starmer reaffirms UK will not join Iran war despite US pressure

    https://en.yenisafak.com/world/starmer-reaffirms-uk-will-not-join-iran-war-despite-us-pressure-3716382

    Netanyahu orders expansion of security buffer zone in southern Lebanon

    https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/netanyahu-orders-expansion-security-buffer-zone-southern-lebanon-2026-03-29/

  48. Ann

    ‘Massive operation’: Canadian driller, shipper enlisted to help tap Greenland oil

    Canadian companies are playing key roles in the effort to tap what Price said could be one of the world’s largest oil basins. The drilling rig is courtesy of Stampede Drilling Inc., a Calgary-based outfit normally active across Alberta and Saskatchewan. Quebec City-based shipping firm Desgagnés is handling transport.

    The prize could be enormous, to the tune of 13 billion barrels of gross oil, according to an independent estimate from energy consultancy firm Sproule ERCE. Price likens the potential to the Prudhoe Bay field in Alaska discovered some six decades ago and forming the state’s economic backbone since.

    Price said that samples taken from Jameson Land show the oil is akin to the crude long produced further east, off the shores of the United Kingdom and Norway. North Sea oil is light, sweet and easy to refine. Its price benchmark, called Brent, has been trading well over US$100 per barrel recently, at a premium to West Texas Intermediate produced in the U.S.

    https://www.ctvnews.ca/calgary/article/massive-operation-canadian-driller-shipper-enlisted-to-help-tap-greenland-oil/

    I don’t think the planet can handle another oil boom like the West Texas oil boom.

    1. Irrational

      Interesting.. is the current war a way to make oil sufficiently expensive for the Greenland play to be irresistible? It feels crazy even to be typing it, but see Nordstream.

  49. Ann

    Muhoozi Kainerugaba Says Uganda Could Capture Tehran in 14 Days

    https://voennoedelo.com/en/posts/id14480-uganda-general-claims-army-could-take-tehran-in-2-weeks

    Rift deepens between Iran’s president and Guards chief over war, economy

    https://www.iranintl.com/en/202603288722

    Don’t strike a deal with Iran’s current leaders, opposition figure Pahlavi warns

    https://www.reuters.com/business/media-telecom/dont-strike-deal-with-irans-current-leaders-opposition-figure-pahlavi-warns-2026-03-28/

    1. ISL

      More AI propaganda slop – there is no rift between the president and the Guard. The Guard is in charge. Full stop. They have already repeatedly overruled the civilian leadership.

      1. hk

        Right. Wiki says Iran Int’l is a London based outfit funded by Saudis. Not exactly an “unbiased” source of info, at least.

        2. Ben Panga

          >Iran Int’l is a London based outfit funded by Saudis

          Indeed. It’s the main English-language anti-“regime” propaganda outfit. Has connections to UK & US spooks also.

  50. Ann

    Iran Sends US Warning Over Troops on Ground
    A senior Iranian official has warned Tehran will set U.S. troops “on fire” and attack American allies in the Middle East if the White House puts ground troops onto Iranian soil.

    https://www.newsweek.com/iran-sends-us-warning-over-troops-on-ground-11753281

    The War with Iran may be ushering in a new nuclear age

    https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-03-29/trump-s-war-in-iran-may-usher-in-new-age-of-nuclear-weapons-proliferation?leadSource=reddit_wall

    The Iran war has a new front in Yemen. Here’s how it could escalate

    https://www.cnn.com/2026/03/29/world/yemen-houthis-iran-war-intl

    1. rowlf

      Krapivnik and Martyanov both like to get their rants on. I do agree that Russians, Chinese, and Iranians are better at math than other people in the Golden Billion.

      Sometimes good to listen to, but sometimes they beat the point or subject too much. Still, listening to them while commuting beats listening to the news radio.

  52. GregOregano

    just dropping a note of gratitude to Yves. these posts are essential reading for any semblance of understanding this current moment. thank you for all your time and work posting these every day

        1. JG

          Yes, absolutely. Finally done with daily chores! Here I am…the place to get the goods, the one and only. I am a VERY modest contributor durning fundraising; I must come, daily, or I have…”issues”… you know, sorting and stacking, properly…that kind of “stuff:. Thanks all.🌅

  54. ISL

    In a number of recent interviews, Professor Marandi (this morning with Danny Haiphong), has indicated he expects Yemen to move into Saudi Arabia and Iraq into Kuwait before this war is over. So far he has been more prescient about the course of the war than the Pentagon.

    I also expect Hezbollah to recapture N Israel. In the discussion between Stas and Mark S. they review how in the SMO, advances are by artillery, drone, and small infiltration groups – and Hezbollah is way better at this than Israel – due to the all-pervasive presence of drone and satellite ISR

  55. ThirtyOne

    NEW: Israel plans to propose to the United States the establishment of military bases on its territory, aiming both to relocate existing bases from elsewhere in the Middle East and to build new facilities amid the war with Iran, according to Israeli Channel 12.
    (italics mine)
    https://t.me/rnintel/57775#

    1. hk

      This seems huge: Israel has been generally averse to having an “official” alliance with US, notwithstanding the actual relationship: very few overt US military presence in Israel, no official alliance until fairly recently (and even today, do we have an official treaty? my sense is that we just declared Israel a “major non NATO ally,” without all the details and technicalities thst go into an alliance treaty.) If true, we are talking about having serious bases housing thousands of troops, which make actual basing agreements, with SOFAs and such, essential.

      1. Revenant

        Bibi sees Zelensky as the other woman and wants to put a ring on it!

        But when a man marries his mistress, he creates a vacancy….

        1. jsn

          And like any of these parties could actually build anything in Israel in the current circumstances.

          Deck chairs on the Titanic stuff.

  56. ThirtyOne

    The IRGC has confirmed the successful shoot-down of a U.S. RQ-21 Blackjack tactical drone in the eastern Strait of Hormuz. This engagement removes a persistent surveillance asset designed specifically for low-altitude maritime and coastal monitoring.
    https://nitter.poast.org/iwasnevrhere_/status/2038310973774123036#m

    The RQ-21A Blackjack is designed to support the U.S. Marine Corps by providing forward reconnaissance. A Blackjack system is composed of five air vehicles and two ground control systems.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_Insitu_RQ-21_Blackjack#Design

  57. Ann

    So, Avi Lewis was elected head of the NDP in Canada yesterday. He is against any further development of fossil fuels in Canada. I voted for him.

    Mark Carney congratulated him and said he looks forward to working with him.

    The heads of the NDP in Alberta and Saskatchewan (both oil-rich provinces) publicly denounced Avi Lewis and said they would not work with him because he would harm the oil industry and hurt oil workers.

    1. Ben Panga

      Adding: this port is outside the Gulf (i.e. not affected by the Hormuz closure).

      The Omani statement in response didn’t finger Iran and said they were investigating it further.

      The Foreign Ministry affirms that the treacherous and cowardly attacks that recently targeted the Sultanate of Oman have not been claimed by any party, and the competent authorities are still investigating their true source and motives.

      While Oman condemns and denounces the ongoing war and all acts of violence and military targeting against all countries in the region, it remains committed to its firm principles based on pursuing a policy of positive neutrality. This approach calls for the establishment of peace, the achievement of security and stability for all countries in the region, an end to the ongoing war and a return to dialogue and diplomacy to address the root causes of the current conflict, in order to preserve the region’s foundations, prosperity and the safety of its peoples.

  59. Gulag

    Also see Richard A. Werner “The End of the Petrodollar–the True story,” (June 29, 2024) on his substack:
    https://rwerner.substack.com/p/the-end-of-the-petrodollar-the-true

    “It was actually the USA which triggered the oil embargo and oil price rises in late 1973 and early 1974…the U.S. would “protect” Saudi Arabia militarily, including the stability of autocratic rule by the Saud family, in exchange for the agreement by the biggest oil producer, Saudi Arabia, to sell its oil only in US dollars and invest 80% of its resulting oil revenues in US Treasury securities…This agreement had been kept secret and even the statistics on the main buyers and holders of US Treasuries were kept hidden for many decades.”

  60. observerator

    Postol if he bothered to look would know that Iran had already mastered the essential parts of 2 point implosion design: EBW detonators, shock wave formers way back in 2003. They had plans for a levitated pit weapon and the Pakistan weapons plans, so why would they now choose build a gun type device which is very dangerous to machine and make? (gun is a low efficiency design that would not be missile deliverable because of the immense weight of the needed tamper)
    there is no need to full yield test any nuclear weapon if the implosion and initiator is already understood using sub critical and non fissile testing. This is basically 80 year old technology

    Iran was much closer to nuclear weapons than most people realise back in the early 2000s, They would easily be a nuclear power now if they had wanted to be but they chose not to, maybe better to ask why they chose the German and Japanese path (unrealised nuclear weapons capability)rather than the North Korean path. Nuclear weapons would not prevent the US or Israel from attacking Iran and the Iranians figured this out a long time ago. Say hypothetically Iran was nuclear and used one or maybe 10 weapons (on what target)? surely the US would then use weapons on Iran in response. Iran loses.

    2. Michaelmas

      Iran was much closer to nuclear weapons than most people realise back in the early 2000s, They would easily be a nuclear power now if they had wanted to be but they chose not to

      That was also my conclusion when I was asked to take a look at it back in 2007-8. They had — and have –nuclear physicists who understood laser isotope separation.

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atomic_vapor_laser_isotope_separation
      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Separation_of_isotopes_by_laser_excitation

      The Iranian nuclear physicists who the Israelis were assassinating in that period were LIS experts. My conclusion was that if their scientists were that good, if they wanted to have thermonuclear weapons they would have had them.

  61. MH

    If Iran did hit US landing craft with troops on board how long could the US government keep the news of dozens if not hundreds of deaths from getting out?

    1. Samuel Conner

      I’m wondering about the “troops on board” part. The reports strike me as kind of sketchy, but if accurate the landing craft were attacked in a port in Kuwait; presumably they were already in the Gulf before the start of the conflict. For them to have been loaded with ground troops would imply an imminent departure for an operation; I’m not sure how reasonable that is to believe.

      If there were casualties, perhaps it was among the crews of the vessels. Per wikipedia, current LCU craft in service have 10-15 crew, though if the vessels were idle in port, there might not be a full complement of crew with them at all times.

      I’m filing this one in my “worrisome but not confirmed” folder.

      1. MH

        Maybe it’s a case of Iran doing a pre-emptive strike on craft the US already had in the region? I just don’t see how any sort of large scale invasion of Iran is even feasible. There is nowhere the US could muster troops and equipment for a ground invasion that wouldn’t be open to attack from Iranian drones and missiles. An amphibious invasion seems just as daunting, there is a reason the US Navy is staying out of range of Iran’s missiles and drones, any landing craft seem likely to be sunk well before they got anywhere near the Iranian coastline or any Iranian controlled islands. Any attempts to use airborne or air assault troops would run into the problem of being shot down well before reaching Iran not to mention the logistical nightmare of supplying the troops if by some miracle they did manage to jump into Iran proper.

        1. Samuel Conner

          Perhaps a pre-emptive strike on amphibious transport could function as a warning against escalating to invasion.

          In this older History Legends podcast, there is a discussion of revised mission and doctrine for the Marines, for the purpose of interfering with Chinese naval operations around Taiwan.

          It involves occupying small islands and setting up anti-ship missile launch equipment, but with frequent movement, including among different islands, to avoid enemy strikes.

          In a notional seizure of Iranian territory, whatever the insertion method, it might be similarly necessary to not build fixed positions and “settle in”, but to keep moving in order to not provide stationary targets.

          But I’m not sure that even this can work if the Iranians have the kind of drone surveillance and strike capabilities that are employed in the Ukraine conflict. I get the impression that the surveillance is so pervasive that the only way that infantry in the contested zone can avoid becoming targeted is to hide from view.

      2. The Rev Kev

        Back in WW2 during the Battle of Britain, the Germans were collecting landing barges opposite the British coastline – until the RAF hit them. Then they had to scatter those landing barges up and down the coastlines of Europe. Those US landing barges looked like they were bunched together.

  62. hoki_haya

    i recall with a laugh that one voice was shocked that hezbollah worked with armenian christians in southern lebanon. ‘who else defended our churches and ensured we had bread?’ shia to orthodoxy is not a vast leap, and all here know that. zionism is galaxies away in their comprehension of earth and people.

    thinking of the context of the US/Israeli destruction of the Iranian University of Science and Technology yesterday. thinking of the US’ wanton destruction; thinking of those few officials i can voice my disgust to back in the states, and the tones they speak in which indicate the lack of intelligence behind them, compared to the tones and intelligences spoken here.

    it’s a Civilizational War, and it’s well past time the US and Israel and anyone who aligns with them gets their asses handed to them.

    there are a few in DC who also see this, but they are far and away the minority, sidelined.

    SONNET 79
    Whilst I alone did call upon thy aid,
    My verse alone had all thy gentle grace,
    But now my gracious numbers are decay’d
    And my sick Muse doth give another place.
    I grant, sweet love, thy lovely argument
    Deserves the travail of a worthier pen,
    Yet what of thee thy poet doth invent
    He robs thee of and pays it thee again.
    He lends thee virtue and he stole that word
    From thy behavior; beauty doth he give
    And found it in thy cheek; he can afford
    No praise to thee but what in thee doth live.
    Then thank him not for that which he doth say,
    Since what he owes thee thou thyself dost pay.

    in iran there is no desire to destroy shakespeare. how could you; it’s a human speech, document.
    in america, there is only the desire to destroy all children, intelligence, poetry from cultures other than your own.

    and in america, who the fuck teaches or reads shakespeare? they destroy themselves.

    1. Alan Sutton

      Hoki_haya, thank you.

      Shakespeare could easily cure this madness if anyone read him.

      Perhaps that is why they don’t?

  63. Samuel Conner

    The few reports I have seen are sketchy; the impression I had was that the craft were attacked while docked. The craft were at a port facility in Kuwait (and presumably were already in the Gulf prior to the beginning of the conflict; they may not be directly related to the mobilization of amphibious forces to the region that began after the start of the conflict). I saw no indication in the sketchy reports that they were loaded or being loaded in preparation for an operation. Casualties might be limited to crew and personnel who happened to be nearby at the time of the attack.

    I think that if this were a mass casualty event and the Iranians had any way of knowing that, we would have heard about it from them.

  64. Ann

    Electricity cut in parts of Tehran after attacks on infrastructure, energy ministry says

    https://today.lorientlejour.com/article/1501390/electricity-cut-in-parts-of-tehran-after-attacks-on-infrastructure-energy-ministry-says.html

    Zelenskyy says 10 Ukrainian interceptor drone factories have been built “behind the state’s back”

    President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has stated that Ukrainian companies have built around 10 interceptor drone production plants “behind the state’s back” in various parts of the world, to the detriment of Ukraine’s domestic production.

    https://www.pravda.com.ua/eng/news/2026/03/28/8027604/

    With the Strait of Hormuz choked by war, the Panama Canal reaps the benefits

    https://www.cnn.com/2026/03/12/americas/panama-canal-strait-hormuz-oil-iran-war-intl-latam

    Iranian ambassador refuses to leave Lebanon after being declared persona non grata – report
    “The ambassador will not leave Lebanon, in accordance with the wishes of the speaker of parliament Nabih Berri and of Hezbollah,” AFP reported, citing an anonymous source.

    https://www.jpost.com/middle-east/article-891552

  66. Ann

    US-Israeli plan for Kurdish invasion of Iran reportedly collapsed amid leaks, distrust
    Mossad hoped ground campaign could ignite wider rebellion, but after plan was leaked, Iran bolstered defenses and regional US allies lobbied Trump to call it off, report says

    https://www.timesofisrael.com/us-israeli-plan-for-kurdish-invasion-of-iran-reportedly-collapsed-amid-leaks-distrust/

    Türkiye signals military action if Kurdish groups join attacks on Iran
    29 March 2026 15:55

    Turkish authorities in Ankara have reportedly issued a warning to the United States, the Iraqi government, and Kurdish formations, stating that Türkiye may take military action if Kurdish groups participate in operations against Iran.

    https://caliber.az/en/post/turkiye-signals-military-action-if-kurdish-groups-join-attacks-on-iran

  68. JG

    Thanks, all. My daily go to. I was bumped out of my “old persons” warehouse living arrangements; still at the North 40; all will unfold moving forward, upright or horizontal, unknown. May Palm Sunday, be… whatever you choose it to be, or not. What a spin, the big blue spins, spins, spins… Be well🌎

  69. dmr

    Those invaluable and immensely informative articles in Hebrew culled from the Israeli press and featured in Conflicts Forum are presumably translated into English by Alistair Crooke himself. Does anybody here know how he has come by a knowledge of the language adequate to so formidable a task? The latter calls for a very great high degree of proficiency in the contemporary vernacular. I know that Crooke was posted to the British Embassy in Tel Aviv for a short while but that aurely does not suffice to explain how he acquired such admirable linguistic expertise. That is something requiring years of intense study and exposure to the spoken and written idiom, unless of course you happen to have a prior acquaintance with Hebrew from traditional Jewish sources, which Crooke, it seems safe to suppose, never had.

    Just curious.

    3. amfortas

      he’s either the main dude or among the main people at conflicts forum, and thus likely has a stable of such experts…including in the myriad languages in the region.(circassian is, apparently, still a thing). ive been reading him for a long, long time, and he’s usually rather on the money for the entire middle east….and if it seems not, just give it time.

    4. anahuna

      I can’t provide deep background on Alastair Crooke’s wife, but I have heard it said that she is the one who speaks Hebrew and does the translations.

    6. hk

      I think Crooke speaks Arabic and Farsi, but not Hebrew. His wife speaks fluent Hebrew (it was her major at the university, I believe)–this came up in several podcasts.

      Lets not forget also that Crooke was not just a diplomat, but a high ranking MI6 official, with the portfolio mainly in the Middle East for decades.

    7. ambrit

      I gathered the impression from various comments from the man over a year or so that his wife is probably the Hebrew expert. He has had dealings with the Israelis over years as a negotiator between various factions in the region.
      As I have learned over the years, some people are just talented when it comes to languages. Learning other tongues early seems to be a basic requirement.
      Crooke Wiki, an interesting fellow: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alastair_Crooke

    8. brook trout

      I have heard him mention numerous times that it is his wife who reads the Hebrew press and translates it for him

  70. johnnyme

    Egypt begins energy-saving measures amid surging oil prices

    Egypt has enforced a package of energy-saving measures for a one-month period amid a global rise in oil prices in the wake of the US-Israeli offensive on Iran.

    The measures include the closure of shops, restaurants, shopping centers, cinemas, theaters, and wedding halls at 9.00 pm local time (1900 GMT), except for Thursdays and Fridays when closing time will be 10.00 pm (2000 GMT), Prime Minister Mostafa Madbouly’s office said in a statement.

    The measures also include reducing street lighting and cutting street advertisement lighting by 50%, as well as reducing fuel allocations for government vehicles by 30%.

    Authorities also decided to close the government district in the New Administrative Capital at 6.00 pm (1600 GMT) and slowing down major national projects that consume large amounts of diesel for two months, the statement said.

    Egypt’s energy import bill increased from $1.2 billion in January to $2.5 billion in March

  71. Rob

    It seems to me that Iran can easily take out the amphibious landing craft before they even reach the shore. That would result in a great many U.S. soldiers getting killed. No doubt there will be air cover for the landing attempt, but it remains to be seen how effective that will be. Talk about escalation, a mass American casualty event could trigger much worse.

  72. JohnH

    Shia Muslims from Iraq might well attack Kuwait and Houthis Saudi Arabia, but my bet is on an uprising in Bahrain, which is majority Sunni and UAE, where Shia vastly outnumber Sunni Muslims. Even Saudi eastern oil provinces’ population is 33% Shia, though I don’t know the percent of the Muslim population or of the non-guest worker population.

    Iran security source to Al Mayadeen: We have placed encrypted gateways at the disposal of citizens of neighboring countries to provide Iran with any confirmed information about enemy elements and forces. That would be very useful in an uprising…

    1. amfortas

      yeah. bahrain and kuwait are on my bingo card for uprisings first. then uae, then eventually the house of saud.
      all of them ‘keep the peace’ with their subjects(!!) with oppression and bribes…the latter of which seem to be in question right about now, if not in peril.

      i also note…the whole baby eating pedophile elite thing seems to have been forgotten…as has greenland, cuba, venezuela, the threats against mexico and its cartels, panama, annexing canada, as well as the russia/ukraine thing…and aside from nonsense that this iran adventure is really all about chine…i see very little from our amurkin ptb about tiawan.
      its been a long year and 3 months, i guess….and what about all the deport them all stuff?
      and tariff war on the whole world?
      i’m tired,lol.
      which is prolly the point.
      “flood the zone with bullshit”, and all

    2. JohnH

      The eastern oil provinces’ Sunni population is probably 25%. The rest are guest workers.

      Shia are an underclass in most if not all countries ruled by Sunni. While the schism between Sunni and Shia dates back almost 1400 years, the current enmity between the Sunni monarchs (US stooges) and Iran stems mostly from the fact that Iran’s overthrow of the Shah set a bad example and offered a subversive inspiration for those Shia ruled by Sunni oppressors. Oppressed Shia could provide invaluable humint for Iran and potentially much more, as already seen in Iraq 20 years ago.

  73. AG

    Podcast: Doug Henwood and Mouin Rabbani on Iran War
    first 25 minutes
    https://shout.lbo-talk.org/lbo/RadioArchive/2026/26_03_26.mp3

    -He makes the important point that it is unclear whether those in Pentagon etc. who pushed for the war did or did not anticipate that a quick victory was very unlikely.

    His personal view is that they very well knew (“nobody can be that stupid”) but they chose to mislead Trump, knowing that he would not have greenlit had they told him the truth.

    -Rabbani confirms what I think Chas Freeman and Crooke stated, that GCC countries did not push for this war and that claim was propaganda. Since those governments knew very well what war with Iran would mean for them. They could not want that.

    -He doubts IDF capabilities against Hezbollah, they couldn´t even handle Hamas. Notwithstanding Israel will call Litani River as a new security line, expand their territory and later turn that into a de facto border. As they always do it.

  75. AG

    re: alleged number of TOMAHAKWS used in conflicts

    source: CSIS

    The 850 Tomahawks Launched in Operation Epic Fury Is the Most Fired in a Single Campaign

    Tomahawks used in past campaigns

    Epic Fury
    2026
    850
    Iraqi Freedom
    2003
    802
    Desert Fox
    1998
    325
    Desert Storm
    1991
    288
    Noble Anvil
    1999
    218
    Odyssey Dawn / Libya
    2011
    199
    Poseidon Archer
    2024–⁠25
    135
    Enduring Freedom
    2001
    90
    Infinite Reach
    1998
    79

    https://www.csis.org/analysis/850-tomahawks-launched-operation-epic-fury-most-fired-single-campaign

  76. Ann

    Oil prices jump after Yemeni Houthis attack Israel, widening Iran conflict

    https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/oil-prices-jump-after-yemeni-houthis-attack-israel-widening-iran-conflict-2026-03-29/

    How Iran is making a mint from Donald Trump’s war
    China is helping the Revolutionary Guards profit from Iranian crude

    https://www.economist.com/finance-and-economics/2026/03/29/how-iran-is-making-a-mint-from-donald-trumps-war

    The Manosphere Turns on Trump
    How many times can a coalition crack before it shatters?

    https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/2026/03/iran-war-trump-maga/686571/?gift=zYCTBrO_7y7KHmiTPdBdg_EF_uu09J1ld5VzXfgcuT4

    Pakistan prepares to host peace talks as Iran accuses US of ground assault plans

    https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/yemens-houthis-enter-iran-war-with-attacks-israel-while-us-marines-arrive-region-2026-03-28/

    1. Lee

      “The Manosphere Turns on Trump”

      But a lot has changed since November 2024. Schulz and many of his fellow manosphere commentators seem to feel—by varying degrees—duped by the president they helped elect.

      I, and probably some number of our fellow NCers came to feel similarly betrayed by Obama. Funny how that keeps happening.

  77. Ann

    Israeli military suspends battalion involved in assaulting, detaining CNN crew in West Bank

    https://www.cnn.com/2026/03/29/middleeast/idf-suspends-battalion-assaulting-cnn-crew-in-west-bank-intl

    Israeli former PM calls on ICC to halt West Bank ‘Jewish terrorists’ after prosecutions stop

    https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/mar/25/no-israel-prosecutions-for-killing-palestinian-civilians-in-occupied-west-bank-since-start-of-decade

    Iran is right: Trump has already lost this war
    Tehran TACO: Trump’s bad idea has gone wrong, to literally no one’s surprise. Will Putin bail him out?

    https://www.salon.com/2026/03/29/iran-is-right-trump-has-already-lost-this-war/

  79. ChrisFromGA

    Big, if true:

    https://asiatimes.com/2026/03/sophisticated-drones-attacked-louisianas-barksdale-bomber-base

    Barksdale Air Force Base in Louisiana, in Bossier Parish not far from Shreveport, was attacked by drone swarms during the week of March 9. The attack disrupted B-52H aircraft launches in support of Operation Epic Fury against Iran. It is the first time a US airbase was temporarily put out of operation in wartime, something that never happened even in World War II.

    I am thinking this might correlate in time with the day when Bessent was hastily pulled out of an interview with the press and summoned to the WH situation room, with a look on his face like he’d seen a ghost. Maybe other readers can chime in.

    Edit: this piece from the Hill dates Bessents’ pants-pooping incident to March 13, which would be during the week of March 9.

    2. alrhundi

      If this is true does this not represent a massive deal? Assuming they aren’t domestic, is this not the first attack I’m the US since 9/11?

  81. Ann

    President Donald Trump said Sunday that Iran has agreed to “most of” the 15-point list of demands that the US conveyed, via Pakistan, to end the war.

    Asked if Iran responded to those points, the president told reporters aboard Air Force One, “They gave us most of the points. Why wouldn’t they?”

    They’re agreeing with us on the plan. We asked for 15 things, and for the most part, we’re going to be asking for a couple of other things,” Trump continued.

    The president also said Iran have given the US oil that will be shipped tomorrow to “prove they’re serious.”

    “And just to prove that they’re serious, they gave us all these boats. When I talked about four days ago a present, I said they gave me a present, but I didn’t think I was at liberty to say what it was. What it was was eight plus two. It’s 10 massive boatloads of oil. And today they gave us another present. They gave us 20 boatloads of oil that starts being shipped tomorrow,” he said.

    “We’re having very good meetings, both directly and indirectly, and I think we’re getting a lot of very important points,” Trump continued.

    https://www.cnn.com/2026/03/29/world/live-news/iran-war-us-israel-trump

    Is this just the usual Sunday effort to goose the market for tomorrow?

    1. johnnyme

      I believe you are correct:

      Oil Climbs on Fears of Multi-Front Supply Shock

      Oil prices had another volatile start to the week before breaking out due to a combination of military escalation and diplomatic breakdown.

      At the time of writing, after climbing to $116 and then flash crashing to $114, Brent Crude was trading at $116.69, up 3.66%. Meanwhile, West Texas Intermediate had risen 3.18% to $102.80.

    2. urdsama

      Considering the amount of time it takes to hammer out such agreements, let alone the fact that as of yesterday the Iranians were not talking to anyone in the US, I’m going for another stock market manipulation.

      The elites of the West are family blogging morons.

    3. DD

      Just teasing out some meaning from the entrails, I would assume this means the 20 Pakistani ships being allowed to transit the Strait.

      Further consulting the crystal ball, could the few insiders who want to end the war be telling President White Matter, “they are sending eight, now ten, now twenty ships filled with oil as tribute and surrender to you, oh great one, in hopes that you will spare them. They are scared and saying ‘please sir, the strait is open and the liquid gold is returned!’ ”

      Must be hard to be a Mandarin for a mental midget monarch.

    4. Alrhundi

      It’s so laughably fake at this point, the amount of opposing information that there is no truth in that statement at all

    5. hoki_haya

      there is no iranian dialogue with the west. as they said a week ago, ‘you are negotiating with yourselves.’

      pakistan can pass a message and take tankers from the strait. if that’s what the white house wants to call a victory, so be it.

  82. Ben Panga

    Interview with FT, sounding delusional to me.

    Donald Trump says US could ‘take the oil in Iran’ (FT, archived)

    Donald Trump has said he wants to “take the oil in Iran” and could seize the export hub of Kharg Island, as the US sends thousands of troops to the Middle East.
    The US president told the FT in an interview on Sunday that his “preference would be to take the oil”, comparing the potential move to Venezuela where the US intends to control the oil industry “indefinitely” following its capture of strongman leader Nicolás Maduro in January.
    The president’s comments come as the US-Israeli war against Iran has thrust the Middle East into crisis and sent the price of oil surging by more than 50 per cent in a month. Brent crude rose above $116 a barrel on Monday morning in Asia, near its highest level since the conflict began.
    Trump said: “To be honest with you, my favourite thing is to take the oil in Iran but some stupid people back in the US say: ‘why are you doing that?’ But they’re stupid people.”
    Such a move would involve seizing Kharg Island through which most of Iran’s oil is exported.
    Trump has been beefing up US forces in the region, with the Pentagon ordering the deployment of 10,000 troops trained to seize and hold land. About 3,500 troops arrived in the region on Friday, including roughly 2,200 Marines. Another 2,200 Marines are en route, while thousands of troops from the 82nd Airborne Division have also been ordered to the region.
    But an assault on the export hub would be risky, raising the chances of more US casualties and extending the cost and duration of the war.
    “Maybe we take Kharg Island, maybe we don’t. We have a lot of options,” Trump told the FT. “It would also mean we had to be there [in Kharg Island] for a while.”
    Asked about the state of Iranian defence on Kharg Island he said: “I don’t think they have any defence. We could take it very easily.”
    The conflict has broadened in recent days, with an attack on an air base in Saudi Arabia on Friday wounding 12 American troops and damaging a $270mn US E-3 Sentry surveillance aircraft. Houthi rebels in Yemen also fired a ballistic missile at Israel, threatening a new phase of escalation that analysts said could worsen the global energy crisis.
    However, despite his threats to seize Iranian oil production, Trump stressed that indirect talks between the US and Iran via Pakistani “emissaries” were progressing well. Trump has set a deadline of April 6 for Iran to accept a deal ending the war or face US strikes on its energy sector.
    When asked whether a ceasefire deal could be reached in the coming days that would reopen the Strait of Hormuz, the waterway through which a fifth of the world’s oil usually flows, Trump declined to offer specific details.
    “We’ve got about 3,000 targets left — we’ve bombed 13,000 targets — and another couple of thousand targets to go,” he said. “A deal could be made fairly quickly.”
    Last week, he said that Iran had permitted 10 Pakistan-flagged oil tankers through the Strait of Hormuz as a “present” to the White House. The number of tankers had now been doubled to 20, he told the FT, which was not possible to immediately verify.
    “They gave us 10,” he said. “Now they’re giving 20 and the 20 have already started and they’re going right up the middle of the Strait.”
    Trump added that Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, Iran’s parliamentary speaker and one of the country’s top wartime leaders, had authorised the additional tankers.
    “He’s the one who authorised the ships to me,” Trump said. “Remember I said they’re giving me a present? And everyone said: ‘What’s the present? Bullshit.’ When they heard about that they kept their mouth shut and the negotiations are going very well.”
    Trump also claimed that Iran had already had “regime change” after Iran’s longtime supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and many other senior officials were killed at the start of the war and in strikes that followed.
    “The people we’re dealing with are a totally different group of people . . . [They] are very professional,” Trump said.
    Trump also reiterated his claims that Mojtaba Khameini, Khamenei’s son and Iran’s new supreme leader, could be either dead or severely injured.
    “The son is either dead or in extremely bad shape,” Trump said. “We’ve not heard from him at all. He’s gone.”
    Tehran has insisted the head of state is safe and well after his absence from the public eye fuelled speculation he had been badly injured.

    1. Ben Panga

      I think a lot of the Trump quotes from last few hours are from the press gaggle in Air Force One

      Full video and (machine-gen) transcript here

      The segues between war and ballroom are breathtaking.

  85. Ben Panga

    Insanity, cntd.

    Trump Weighs Military Operation to Extract Iran’s Uranium (WSJ, archived)

    [Extracts]:

    The president and at least some of his allies have said privately it would be possible to seize the material in a targeted operation that wouldn’t significantly extend the timeline of the war and still enable the U.S. to be done with the conflict by mid-April, according to the person familiar with the discussions….

    …Teams of U.S. forces would need to fly to the sites, likely under fire from Iranian surface-to-air missiles and drones. Once on site, combat troops would need to secure perimeters so that engineers with excavating equipment could search through debris and check for mines and booby traps.
    The extraction of the material would likely need to be conducted by an elite special operations team specially trained to remove radioactive material from a conflict zone. The highly enriched uranium is likely contained in 40 to 50 special cylinders that resemble scuba tanks. They would need to be put into transportation casks to protect against accidents. That could fill several trucks, said Richard Nephew, a senior research scholar at Columbia University and a former nuclear negotiator with Iran.
    Unless an airfield was available, a makeshift one would need to be set up to bring equipment in and take the nuclear material out. The entire operation would take days or even a week to complete, experts said. …

    You’ve evacuated all your bases in the region, your personnel are hiding in hotels, you’re getting run out of Iraq completely, your Aircraft Carrier is hiding in Croatia, but you think you can set up a week long complex engineering mission inside Iran and build a family-blogging airstrip????

  86. Procopius

    ran is winning on the ground. The US is still stuck in World War/Cold War tactics and weaponry, and even worse, heavy relianca on high-priced, fussy, and low volume weapons. They have not even remotely adapted to the tactics and weaponry priorities of a world of ISR, cheap drones, and powerful missiles. Iran in a mere month into the war has made US bases unusable and driven the US out of Iraq. How is that not winning?

    Exactly right … except … How is it that, if Iran has made US bases unusable, both US and Israel are still pounding Tehrahn every day? I haven’t seen anyone discuss what bases the airplanes are originating from, but I get the impression that they are still flying from Al Udeid and Jordan. Iran has delivered severe bombing on their base in Sinai (sorry, I can never remember the name of the base), but apparently it’s been restored to use. Am I wrong? Please include some news about the status of the US bases

    1. Yves Smith Post author

      They are flying planes in from Diego Garcia with refuelers. And they must be able to use the Saudi airbase to some degree. Refuelers hit there.

  87. hereweare

    AfD demands US troops leave Germany
    ‘[Party co-leader] Mr Chrupalla’s comments put him at odds with the Trump administration, particularly over whether America should be able to use German bases for its military activities in the future.

    He has previously claimed that Nato serves US interests too much. On Saturday, he also stressed that Germany should not be drawn into foreign wars.

    Praising Spain’s decision to block its bases from being used by the US to attack Iran, Mr Chrupalla said: “That’s exactly the right thing to do. Spain is not interfering in this war.”’

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2026/03/29/afd-demands-usa-troops-germany-tino-chrupalla-trump-iran/

  88. James Lawrie

    While I rail at the USA I don’t actually have anything against US soldiers (or indeed Americans), it is the empire that has earned our animus in my mind.

    This is why I’m getting steadily concerned about the sounds of USMC and Special Operations forces being moved near Iran. This sounds frightening like The Dieppe Raid.

    During The Second World War in 1942 Mountbatten had been sitting on his arse doing little and it looked like people were wondering why he was there, really his only qualification was he was related to the king. So he came up with this great idea: stage a raid to look like he was doing something and claim a victory. His target? Dieppe. A small town on the fortified French coast. The troops chosen: Canadians (ie: colonial shock troops) and commandos. The goal: ‘capture the town, hold it a while and withdraw’.
    Regardless of what you read this was of no military importance but rather it was a political move to claim a win as it were.

    The mission was a farce and a lot of people got killed. 5,983 killed, wounded or captured, a destroyer and 33 landing craft sunk, 100 aircraft shot down. All for a political stunt.
    As usual it was the grunts who paid.

    The moving of ground forces to Iran reeks of this. Normally ground forces train for an assault in a war of aggression for months in advance because they have the luxury of knowing this was coming. They are placed in-theatre to be ready at a moment’s notice. None of this seems to have been ready and it reeks of desperation.

    It looks like the grunts are going to pay for the political mistakes.

  89. Tom Stone

    Thank you Ann, that is good news for Cuba and the World.
    These days being opposed to War Crimes, Genocide and murdering schoolgirls by the hundreds is considered Un American.
    I miss the days when there was a pretense of Civilization among Western Elites.

  90. dunkey2830

    Re the 1973 oil shock.
    I remember reading this interesting article from a few years back ‘Consigliere’ by Dr George Venturini.
    Extract: “…In 1973 Kissinger secretly manipulated Middle East diplomacy to trigger an Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries oil embargo.The ‘Arab’ Oil Shock of [Oct] 1973-74 was orchestrated by a secretive organisation that David Rockefeller had suggested in the 1950s and became known as Bilderberg Group. In May 1973 David Rockefeller and the heads of the major American and British oil companies met in Saltsjoebaden, Sweden at the annual Bilderberg Meeting to plan the oil shock. It would be blamed on “greedy Arab oil sheikhs.” It saved the falling U.S. dollar, and made Wall Street banks, including David Rockefeller’s Chase Manhattan, into the world’s largest banks. (F. William Engdahl, A Century of War: Anglo-American Oil Politics and the New World, Pluto, London-Ann Arbor, MI 1992)..”

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