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Iran War: Trump Faffs About, Extending Deadline for Strike Threat by 10 Days as US Military and Energy/Materials Shortfalls and Shortages Expected in Weeks; Iran Allows Transit of Trapped “Friendly” Ships

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[This Iran war post launched before complete because yet more real-world tasks. Please return at 8:00 AM EDT for the final version]

Trump’s well-established habit of deferring decisions and trying to whipsaw counterparties by radical shifts in position risks not just blowing up his Presidency but what remains of US dominance and the over-optimized, fragile global economy. And he’s surrounded himself with bootlickers who reinforce his fantasy that his serial failures are successes.1 One of the reasons for his insistence that the US is winning in the Iran war and Iran must capitulate is that his information diet about the conflict consists heavily of a daily two-minute video showing the US blowing things up.2 He refuses to read, so even short memos from the intelligence community are ignored.

So how long can Trump stay in his denial bubble, even as relentless timetables are working against him? Iran has successfully trapped the US in not even a long war. The military capabilities of the US and Israel are already fraying, with the situation set to become critical in a month at the outside. That is also the timeframe for real economy damage on multiple fronts to become undeniable. So what happens when they reach a crisis level? Or will Mr. Market awaken from his relative stupor to force some sort of state change on the belligerents’ side?

To Trump’s latest channeling of Nero:

The Guardian added:

Later Trump told Fox News: “I gave them a 10-day period, they asked for seven.”

He also continued to declare victory in the war, adding: “In a certain sense, we have already won.”…

Trump’s new threat was among a series of statements made by the US president in Washington and on social media on Thursday in which he again criticised Nato allies, described Iran as producing “great negotiators” but “lousy fighters”, and repeated his claim that the war he launched last month had already been won.

“They now have the chance, that is, to permanently abandon their nuclear ambitions and to join a new path forward,” Trump said during a cabinet meeting at the White House. “We’ll see if they want to do it. If they don’t, we’re their worst nightmare.”

We’ll turn later in the post to the latest speculation on what the US might do if it actually Does Something before April 6. A new article by Ken Klippenstein contends that the idea of a ground assault or raid is fakery, that some of the forces supposedly in or en route to the Middle East have not budged. Larry Johnson disagrees with this reading.

In the meantime, Iran is letting a few more ship of different nations traverse the Strait….far too few to have any economic impact. As of now, this is yet another marker that Iran controls the Strait of Hormuz, but also points to how they might operate a much higher volume passage and toll system.

To the increasingly visible damage the US is suffering: many sites have described how Iran has done colossal damage to US bases across the region; Richard Medhurst gave a detailed early account. A new article by Simplicius gives an update, keying off an astonishing article, both in substance and framing from the New York Times,Iran’s Attacks Force U.S. Troops to Work Remotely

Yes, sports fans, US servicemembers being forced off bases is “working remotely”. By that standard, an amputation is a”body trim”. Simplicius piles on in NYT Admits Iran Rendered Virtually All US Gulf Bases Uninhabitable. Key points (emphasis his):

NY Times admits that Iran’s strikes have driven US forces from most of their bases in the Middle East:

Iran has bombed U.S. bases across the Middle East in retaliation for the U.S.-Israeli war, forcing many American troops to relocate to hotels and office spaces throughout the region, according to military personnel and American officials.

So now much of the land-based military is, in essence, fighting the war while working remotely, with the exception of fighter pilots and crews operating and maintaining warplanes and conducting strikes….

As we have seen, the USS Gerald R Ford has flunked out of the Middle East, US bases are in ruins or deserted, and US strategic air defense radar installations have gone up in smoke. As others have noted, no adversary in history can be said to have achieved such an effect against the US—except maybe the Japanese at Pearl Harbor.

And the damage is ongoing, as weapons stock depletion is getting close to critical levels.

From the underlying article at the Royal United Services institute, Over 11,000 munitions in 16 Days of the Iran War: ‘Command of the Reload’ Governs Endurance:

While American and Israeli forces achieve some tactical success by striking thousands of targets, the wider coalition is also downing drones and intercepting missiles by expending multi-million-dollar missiles that cost a fraction of the price…

This asymmetry is rapidly depleting high-end stockpiles. As shown in Table 1, our Payne Institute proprietary ledger tool tracked Iran war munition expenditures, which shows coalition forces expending 11,294 munitions in the first 16 days of the conflict, at a cost of approximately $26 billion.

The article includes two essential tables that are too large to screenshot. The first is Munition Count for US, Israel, and Allies in the 2026 Iran War, which itemizes the weapons use. The second, and arguably more important, shows depletion rates. The key section of that tally:

From the commentary:

As Table 2 shows, over a dozen munition types have been expended by the coalition at a rate that appears to be unsustainable. Already, Rheinmetall CEO Armin Papperger noted on 19 March that global stockpiles are ‘empty or nearly empty’ and that if the war continues another month ‘we nearly have no missiles available’.

And the biggie, and again this is only the top section of the table due to its size:

The authors drily note:

As seen in Table 3, our analysis shows the magazine abyss for the coalition is coming soon.

What stands out most about Table 3 is that the US military is approximately a month, or less, away from running out of ATACMS/PrSM ground-attack missiles and THAAD interceptors. Israel is in an even more precarious spot, with its Arrow interceptor missiles likely to be completely expended by the end of March. While the war could proceed with other munitions, this implies accepting greater risk for aircraft and tolerating more missile and drone ‘leakers’ damaging forces and infrastructure. The precariousness of this ‘empty bins’ issue could possibly explain why President Trump is already suggesting the ‘winding down‘ of the Iran war; it could take years to replace what was expended in only 16 days.

While the defence industrial base is producing most of these munitions at present, they are incredibly complex and difficult to surge, meaning it will likely take at least 5 years to replenish the 500 plus Tomahawk missiles already fired in the war. Worse, sourcing critical defence minerals, rare earths, and materials to make the weapons and munitions is complicated by China. China controls most of the world’s gallium and germanium, and Beijing has imposed numerous mineral export controls since 2023, to prevent the US and its allies from acquiring these necessary inputs for the defence industrial base.

So the point is soon approaching where limited US and Israel effectiveness, save perhaps terrorism and nukes, will plunge dramatically.

From the start of this conflict, we have cited experts who have described the ever-intensifying real economy effects of the near-total halt of traffic through the Persian Gulf, not just energy supplies but urea for fertilizer, sulphur, helium, medications and plastic. The damage to Qatar’s Ras Laffan LNG facilities and other energy assets has made this bad situation only worse.

We had also warned that evidence that various essential inputs were under serious stress or even becoming critically low would become hard to deny starting at the end of March, which is also the time when key inventories, such as LNG and oil shipments in transit, are depleted.

And Israel’s supposedly superior military is also starting to crack. From Aljazeera’s live feed:

Israeli chief of staff warns military will ‘collapse in on itself’ due to soldier shortage

The chief of staff of the Israeli military has warned that it will “collapse in on itself” due to growing demand and a shortfall of manpower as it fights multiple fronts.

“I am raising 10 red flags before you,” Eyal Zamir told a security cabinet meeting on Wednesday, according to Israeli media reports. He said that it wouldn’t be long before the military was unable to perform routine missions.

He said the military needs a “conscription law, a reserve duty law, and a law to extend mandatory service”.

And most of the world is sleepwalking into a monster real economy crisis, which is sure to exact a huge toll on financial markets and national budgets. What sectors will get some support? Which ones will be gored?

Consider warnings that not only are shortages coming, but are imminent:

From the UK’s The Times yesterday:

The Telegraph’s Ambrose Evans-Pritchard (hat tip reader Ben Panga) describes the increasingly dire state of food supplies. From The longer Trump’s war drags on, the worse the coming global food crisis:

The war in the Gulf has hit the epicentre of global fertiliser production. It has shut off the supply of urea, ammonia and sulphur for 27 critical days in the agricultural calendar.

China, Russia and Turkey have now greatly compounded the shortage by imposing their own curbs on fertiliser exports in recent days. Close to 45pc of globally traded nitrogen is cut off, disrupted or at risk.

The crunch is happening just as the big farming belts of the northern hemisphere near the spring planting season and just as Australia approaches winter planting. It is the blackest of black swans.

Abdolreza Abbassian, the former head of commodities at the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization, said the markets did not yet seem to grasp the full gravity of what was already in the pipeline.

“It will be bad enough even if the Strait of Hormuz is reopened tomorrow but if the war goes on for another month or more, it is going to be a really horrifying crisis unlike anything any of us have ever seen before,” he said.

A second crisis is building up in parallel. The two risk colliding in 2027. Atmospheric scientists expect an El Niño pattern in the South Pacific this year and next, leading to hotter weather, longer droughts and lower crop yields.

A team at Columbia University has warned the world could hit 1.7 degrees above pre-modern levels in 2027, a “regime shift” that smashes through the heat thresholds of wheat and corn, and increases the risk of multiple breadbasket failures. Could it go non-linear? We will find out.

Jean-Marie Paugam, from the World Trade Organization, said the fertiliser shock is a greater immediate threat than the oil and gas shock….

China is the world’s biggest producer of fertilisers by far, accounting for 15pc of global urea exports and 30pc of phosphate fertilisers. It tightened export curbs on most of its output last week, hitting the market at the worst possible moment.

Russia is the second largest. It followed suit this week, imposing a one-month ban (for now) on shipments of ammonium nitrate in order to meet “the needs of the domestic market during the spring field work period”.

Turkey has joined the stampede, even blocking the transport of urea.

And a further cheery observation:

America is scarcely in better shape. It imports a fifth of its applied nitrogen. The Fertilizer Institute says the US does produce its own phosphates, but it needs sulphur from the Gulf to make it possible.

American farmers were in a structural depression before this crisis because of spiralling input costs. They now face a 70pc jump in diesel prices. The fuel tracks the global market regardless of Donald Trump’s “energy supremacy”.

A quarter of US farmers did not pre-buy their fertilisers. None will escape the long-tail consequences later this year.

We had warned early on about sulfuric acid as a key input where supply would come up short if the Iran war did not end pronto:

Note that even this seemingly urgent language minimizes what is set to happen. Shortages and sudden price hikes across a vast swathe of key inputs does not translate into a 1970 stagflationary shock. It means widespread business failures. That means job losses, plus knock-on damage to their customers, which will trigger further cutbacks and closures. And when those ventures die, it’s not as if new companies will suddenly spring up when the epic struggle over control of the Strait of Hormuz ends.

Even if Trump’s media skills, honed with 14 years on reality TV, are keeping oil price below where they ought to be, given the reality of continued Iran choking of traffic of the Strait of Hormuz, with no relief in sight, and a long normalization period can’t be held in abeyance for much longer, and I doubt to the end of his new deadline of April 6.

The landing page at Bloomberg signals only rising investor unease:

While the anxiety signals are stronger at the Financial Times:

The pink paper gives pride of place to Iran’s traffic management in the Strait of Hormuz. The article has an overtly Iran hostile tone (erm, who started this war?) and much of it will be old news to readers who have been following war development closely. It does underscore early on that Iran plans to discriminate among carriers based on the posture towards Iran of the nations contracting for the cargoes:

Tehran’s foreign ministry this week said “non-hostile” vessels would be allowed to pass through “in co-ordination with the competent Iranian authorities” — but that US, Israeli or any other “participants in the aggression” would not.

Foreign minister Abbas Araghchi said Iran would impose a new order in the strait after the war, insisting that the country exercises sovereignty over it “even if some might like to view it as international waters”.

As we said, possession is 9/10th of the law. From later in the article:

Prior to the conflict about 135 ships passed through the waterway each day. But since the first US-Israeli strikes on Iran, traffic has dropped to a trickle. Between March 1 and 25, there were just 116 transits, down 97 per cent compared with the same period in February, according to S&P Global.

Ships that have made the passage have been largely linked to Chinese, Indian or Gulf state owners. Several were dark fleet vessels sanctioned by western powers for trading Iranian oil.

The failure to mention other nations that have secured passage is noteworthy:

Towards the end, the article does make a backhanded acknowledgement of other nations’ carriers securing passage:

Two Pakistanis involved in back-channel contacts with Iran said some third-country vessels were reflagging as Pakistani to pass through the strait.

“Lots of shipping lines are changing flags to be sailing under Pakistan registration,” said one, a diplomat. The other said the arrangements were intended as “an olive branch to Trump”.

Iran’s embassy in Madrid said Tehran was “receptive” to any request for Spanish ships to travel through the strait, saying it considered Spain to be “a country committed to international law”.

And get a load of this:

Shipping companies needing to pay for passage would have to get around sanctions placed on the Iranian regime and its Revolutionary Guard, which have been designated as a terrorist organisation by the US, EU and other western countries.

But Claire McCleskey, former head of compliance at the US Office of Foreign Assets Control, said Iran had established clandestine payment networks.

Using Chinese payment systems is “clandestine”. Help me.

Due again to being tardy, we will be brief about what Team Trump might be up to, if anything, regarding a ground operation in Iran. Ken Klippenstein says it is fake news:

Military sources tell me that for weeks, the Pentagon has exaggerated the readiness and potency of the Marines, setting in motion a media frenzy that is part stupidity, part disinformation to spook Tehran, and part manipulation to please Donald Trump.

“We got two Marine expeditionary units sailing to this island [Kharg],” Sen. Lindsey Graham told Fox News Sunday. “We did Iwo Jima. We can do this.”

Sounds scary, right? Here’s the reality.

On March 13, headlines blared that the “three-ship” USS Tripoli Amphibious Ready Group, carrying the 31st Marine Expeditionary Unit, was ordered from Japan to the Middle East. Over the next week, news outlets across the globe literally tracked the supposed 2,200 Marines making their way moving west through the Strait of Malacca into the Indian Ocean.

In actuality, one of the three ships, the USS San Diego, never left Japan and is still there. And the other two ships, carrying just 1,500 fighters, are sitting at Diego Garcia, roughly 4,260 kilometers from Iran’s coastline.

And that second Marine Expeditionary Unit? Contrary to some reporting that said that the USS Boxer Group left Hawaii on March 19, it departed San Diego. It will have to cover approximately 22,200 kilometers to reach the region and wouldn’t be able to arrive until mid-April at the earliest. Navy sources in San Diego say it is still unclear to the unit itself whether it is headed for the Gulf or just moving to the Pacific to cover the departing Tripoli group.

Not exactly imminent!

I e-mailed Larry Johnson, who had not yet seen the article. I expect him to say more along these lines either in a new post and/or on YouTube appearances. His reply:

Everything is in place with the exception of the 11th MEU. They arrive next week. But, you don’t deploy the Special Ops units just to have them sitting around. The Marines are irrelevant. It was the massive movement of Special OPs forces. That is confirmed.

Reader ThirtyOne found this tidbit arguing that a Chabahar landing seemed the most likely measure if an assault was on:

More kinetic updates IRGC’s Wave #83: Iran Deploys Full Arsenal of Drones, Missiles in Assault on US, Israel Strongholds Hindustan Times

Iran is target Lockheed Martin engineers in Israel. Recall that they by contract provide maintenance on their systems. Note the second part of this video is Trump blathering3:

Stopping here for today. See you tomorrow!

_____

1 To list only a few: Ukraine, where he had an opportunity to cut losses and make the conflict look like a Biden failure but is now being forced to by events and has cemented Russian distrust of the US. Tariffs, where Trump’s love of the exercise of power has alienated allies like India and quietly Southeast Asia, and still showed China to be the dominant economic pawer merely by wielding a rare-earths-denial threat. And that was just one of many leverage points China has to exploit. The EU, where at the Munich Security Conference in 2025, US officials dressed down European leaders with the only plausible reason for this conduct to be for them to bear more of the costs of their defense…when even what is nominally their own kit is dependent on critical US parts and we can’t ramp up production to a meaningful degree.

2

3 From the Centre for International Governance Innovation in 2025:

The key issue for the F-35s is that the US manufacturer, Lockheed Martin, controls aircraft software updates, restricting even trained military personnel from making most repairs, which means that the military often must ship the equipment back to the manufacturer or authorized repair depots. In 2023, the US Government Accountability Office (GAO) criticized the US military’s heavy reliance on contractors for F-35 repair and maintenance, which has resulted in lengthy and costly delays, with repair times averaging 141 days. The GAO concluded that US military repairers often lacked the training and hands-on experience to repair the aircraft. This is largely because the primary manufacturer, Lockheed Martin, along with other military contractors, provides inadequate training materials, limits the repairs that military technicians can undertake and restricts access to the aircraft technical data, which the contractors regard as unique and valuable proprietary data.

The case of the F-35s highlights that even the US military does not have the right to repair its equipment, as manufacturers set restrictive warranty provisions that limit repair by military personnel.

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356 comments

  1. ISL

    I presume that “We had also warned that evidence that various essential inputs were under serious stress or even becoming critically low would become hard to deny starting at the of March, ”

    is meant to say the end of March, though it would be more poetic as the “Ides of March” on multiple levels.

    2. Alex

      Miss Lindsey says we “did Iwo Jima”. Maybe he never knew that the u.s. suffered more casualties on Iwo than the Japanese, albeit fewer deaths. The American public was outraged at the blood letting of marines and sailors on Iwo. I am a Viet nam vet, USMC, 68-69 and cannot express how angry I have become with our government.

      1. Sufferin Succotash

        Lindsayette also overlooks the fact it took three Marine divisions (c. 70,000 troops) to capture Iwo Jima. Going by the current news reports, the “buildup” for this caper consists of about three battalions of actual boots on the ground. Hmm.

      2. Tbob

        I think “Flags of Our Fathers” should be required reading for every federally-elected politician before taking office (although Ms Lindsey may get stalled by references to “hot-bunking” aboard troop ships). Also, although voluntary enlistment skyrocketed in WWII, draftees comprised a larger percentage of deaths in that conflict.
        Anyone with a son or grandson nearing age 18 should be aware Selective Service (current annual budget is $31.1 million) registration is still required within 30 days of that date. After December 18, 2026 all these potential young troopers will be automatically registered via AI from federal records. Don’t think all you old farts are off the hook, males up to 64 years of age were impressed into “essential” production jobs during the Big One.
        PS: Also a Vietnam vet (Chu Lai 1967-68)…seen the meat grinder up close.

      3. ChiGal

        yes he’s effeminate and a bachelor but that’s not the point is it? how do you suppose this mockery lands for esteemed members of the commentariat who happen to be gay?

        I am not the woke police and in fact object to the substitution of id pol for class analysis as the focus of social justice. But Yves has called out bad faith argumentation for so long that the ad hominem gave me pause. Such a small thing, such a slippery slope.

        1. ForFawkesSake

          Speaking as a gay man, I approve wholeheartedly how we discuss the effeminate warmonger from the Carolinas. This is more acceptable territory than Trump being Putin’s butt boy, which was incredibly offensive.

          Lindsay is baying for the blood of my countrymen, no matter what their preferred sexuality. That alone is abhorrent and subsequently, we don’t need to be polite. It is patriotic and required to start push back with every ounce of venom we have. Shame can break a person.

          1. Carolinian

            So Lindsey should be shamed by being called gay? (with no proof that he is despite the rumors). I’m with ChiGal on this one.

            Quisling might work since he clearly has greater devotion to the state of Israel than to his own country. In Israel they call him Uncle Lindsey.

            Graham to my knowledge has never said or done anything anti-gay and thereby making him a hypocritical closet case like those fundie preachers who get caught or J. Edgar Hoover with his scandal files.

            1. ForFawkesSake

              By all means, it’s your right to come to defense of poor little Lindsay while the world is on fire. Just don’t expect pearl clutching from the LGBT+ community when the Liberal left has been using homophobia to score political points for my entire lifetime. It’s so tiresome for straight people to set the level of discourse about what my community thinks about calling people names.

              A question was asked about mockery; I responded that I want more. My opinion is valid. As is yours.

              1. Carolinian

                As far as I can tell the people mocking Lindsey are all straight but I don’t get out much.

                What I am saying–and it’s not just about him–is that unless he has shown some overt hypocrisy on the matter then Graham’s sexuality–gay, straight or none–is the least relevant thing about him. I don’t see it has much to do with his warmongering which is what we are supposedly talking about around here.

                After Graham took over from Strom Thurmond Dick Harpootlian, SC’s macho then Dem party chairman, said Graham was “a little light in the loafers” to be taking over from the famously priapic Thurmond. Do gay people really want to join in on this sort of thing?

                Just asking.

                1. mrsyk

                  I agree, and I imagine the gay community might not be onboard with character assassination by sexuality. Just saying’.

                  1. ambrit

                    Alas, in politics, character assassination is standard operating procedure. Different “Mean Memes” for differing demos.
                    Graham seems to have dealt with it over a, so far, thirty-two year political career.
                    Practice safety all.

                2. Rip Van Winkle

                  Who are the types who keep on reelecting him? I’m not talking about gay or straight. Those whose stock portfolios are heavily weighted with DOD contractors?

          2. Jon Cloke

            Being gay is completely irrelevant – Ernst Röhm, leader of the fanatical SturmAbteilug, the SA, in Nazi Germany was as openly gay as it was possible to be in those days and spent a lot of time in the El Dorado club in Berlin in the 1930s.

            A number of senior SA commanders were also gay and even Goebbels claimed that the Berlin SA was being seen as “the Eldorado of the 175-ers”. Paragraph 175 was the legal banning of homosexuality in Germany and the Nazis hated homosexuality with a fury which was highly ironic, given Röhm’s proclivities (see the Röhm Scandal pages in wikipedia).

            Point being, evil ignores race, class, religion, sexuality or politics and Graham is an evil proxy-murderer, irrespective of being gay.

        2. MG

          I’ve been openly gay for 42 years and effeminate my whole life. Frankly the comment didn’t bother me in the least. I find Lindsay Graham despicable and I know for a fact gay men (closeted, often; but also out) can be very destructive, just like people in other oppressed groups.

          1. Carolinian

            Gore Vidal called W.F.Buckley a “closet queen” but he was mocking the man who threatened to “sock him in the jaw” during the disastrous (for Buckley) ’68 debate (Vidal smirking throughout the exchange). Vidal also didn’t like the term gay and thought sexuality was completely fluid.

            I guess you could claim Graham’s shtick is macho posturing. I pretty completely ignore him.

            1. MG

              Oh yes me too, I never listen to a word he says. I also dislike unintelligent people and he fits the ticket.

    3. protectourfreedumbs

      china should embargo all rare earth to trump. if the situation was reversed, does anyone imagine that they would not have embargoed china years ago? if they had done so, this war would not have taken place. there would have been nothing to attack iran with – and china would not be having to deal with the disruption/ economic fallout. stop trump without firing a shot. no more f35s, missiles.

  2. Howard L

    J.D. Vance warns that Iranian operatives wearing nuclear suicide vests will walk into USA supermarkets and kill tens of thousands. I’m not sure the Vice President is the smart realist of the Trump team.

    1. The Rev Kev

      Hey, hey, hey. That is President of the United States J.D. Vance in 2028 that you are talking about. Just don’t ask him about the nuclear hand grenades.

    4. Wukchumni

      Luckily he only has a half-life of about 3 years left, but authorities insist nobody enter the hard right radiated zone until the year 2525, if man is still alive.

    5. JMH

      Nuclear suicide vests? Sounds like a brand new scary word salad to keep the proles (deplorables) subservient. Also, I do not recall an instance of an Iranian suicide bomber. Consider this, Donnie assassinated General Soleimani in 2020 in the face of a long standing executive order outlawing assassination.The Israelis use assassination on an industrial scale. Iran does use assassination as a weapon as far as I know. Why not? I know my answer.

      1. Aurelien

        The Iranians don’t use suicide bombers because they have no need to. They have better means of delivery. As used by the Taliban or the Islamic State, suicide bombings are intended to be mass casualty attacks, either on symbolic targets associated with foreigners (hotels etc.) or part of attacks on military forces where the insurgents blow themselves up to avoid capture. Iranian attacks and assassinations abroad have been mostly against Iranian dissidents or political opponents, rather than mass casualty attacks, and often done through proxies such as Hezbollah. Obviously Vance is fantasising: the weight alone would preclude that.

          1. Aurelien

            They act as proxies, and don’t do anything major without approval from Tehran. Iran funds, arms and trains them and provides the money for their extensive social services. They see themselves as Lebanese patriots, and to an extent they are, but nobody in the region considers them as anything else but fundamentally proxies.

              1. Polar Socialist

                And why Amal, PSP and even FPM more or less support them. Almost as if you’re not Francophile, you are nobody and your opinion doesn’t matter.

        3. Jabura Basadai

          zionists invented terrorism – the militant right-wing Zionist underground organization Irgun bombed British administrative headquarters for Mandatory Palestine, in the King David Hotel in Jerusalem, in a terrorist attack on 22 July 1946 – or there was the Deir Yassin massacre in 1948 – and many more too numerous to list – there were the Haganah, Irgun, Palmach and the Stern Gang which acted as zionist terrorists from 1930 to 1948 – some became Prime ministers – David Ben-Gurion, Menachem Begin, Yitzhak Shamir – the great ‘founding fathers’ of Israel –

            1. eg

              “Terror” is older even than that: the use of explosives for the purpose emerging as I understand it in the 19th century — see Joseph Conrad’s The Secret Agent for a depiction of the anarchists of the day.

              1. Jabura Basadai

                thank you Revenant – and eg – let me spit out my shoe leather – and now that you mention it i do recall Conrad’s description in “The Secret Agent”, a book i’ve read – Conrad is a favorite – regardless of how back “terrorism” goes, a despicably and cowardly way to instill fear – perhaps a bit of irony that now there is a legal move in Ireland to not allow arms shipments to Israel because of Gaza – especially given the past of sharing tactics –

      2. jhallc

        I suspect we will soon see a daily terror alert warning flag being raised by Trump on the East lawn to keep us hiding in our basements.

    6. Louis Fyne

      >>>will walk into USA supermarkets and kill tens of thousands.

      WOW, and just about hit 50% of yearly American suicide levels. think of the children!

    7. Safety First

      Am I the only one who recalls that this is basically the plot of “The Peacemaker” (1997, George Clooney, Nicole Kidman)? Except there it wasn’t a vest, it was a…ye gods…Soviet nuclear warhead from a dismantled ballistic missile, somehow small and light enough to be carried by a 50+ year old music teacher in a school backpack, which said music teacher wished to physically walk up to the UN building in NYC so as to blow it up. In retaliation for his (Bosnian) family dying in Sarajevo due to Bosnian Serb shelling. Somehow. Hooray for Hollywood screenwriters.

      Now, the real question is – does Vance realize it, or is he really that dum-dum…

      2. Dwight

        Was Samantha Powers a consultant on that movie? Insane how transparently propagandistic that film was, 2 years before the Kosovo war. Shades of Pearl Harbor coming out the summer before 9/11.

    8. flora

      Well, see. this is why we gotta have more surveillance on everyone in the US all the time, don’t’cha know. / ;)
      J.D. is heavily invested in those surveillance tech companies. He’ll make a bundle off of “keeping you safe” ™, imo. And that’s what really counts. Surveillance capitalism: $ilicon Valley’s new frontier. / ;)
      / ;)

    12. Bailin

      An explosive device stuffed with radioactive material – i.e. “a dirty bomb” is very well within the capability of any nation with a nuclear power plant.

      You might also want to check the Wikipedia entry on “suitcase nuclear device”.

  3. Mr. Woo

    “many American troops to relocate to hotels and office spaces throughout the region”

    If hamas did that it would be called using human shields

    2. Tom_Doak

      Yes, and by recent doctrine it also gives the other side a loophole to strike “civilian targets” and say they are military targets.

      1. PapaPoe

        Iran did strike a hotel.

        Iran escalation dominance will result in Iran committing war crimes as well.

        An eye for and eye will make the world go blind.

        1. Randall Flagg

          I can’t find the link but that hotel Iran hit was housing soldiers. Thereby a legitimate target.
          My understanding is that combatants are supposed to refrain from going into areas that also endangers civilians.
          But I’m not going to dispute that wars crimes are committed by both sides.

          1. PapaPoe

            Yes, you can say it was a legitimate target because it was the housing US soldiers. I am pointing out that Iran will attack any target it says is legitimate which includes committing mass murder if the desalination plants are destroyed.

            But, Iran is using MAD with water and power. Iran has escalation dominance over Israel.

            Iran believes that the US is invested in the global economy but I think that they are wrong. The US is the least integrated Western economy. The US needs the petrodollar but at the same time there is no replacement. Yves has gone over this dozens of times. The Yuan can not become the reserve currency…China is an exporter. The Chinese and Russians (or BRICs – India) need to find an alternative currency.

              1. Revenant

                See my comment above, the Irgun were coached in terrorism by the IRA and then in occupation by the Black and Tans.

                The following speaker had little idea how true his words would be.

                “Even though the land could not yet absorb sixteen million, nor even eight, enough could return… to prove that the enterprise was one that blessed him that gave as well as him that took by forming for England a little loyal Jewish Ulster in a sea of potentially hostile Arabism.”

                Ronald Storrs, Military Governor of Jerusalem 1917-20, commenting in 1937 on the rationale of the 1917 Balfour Declaration

                1. Jabura Basadai

                  thanks again – the irony for me is the positive feeling for the Irish fight for sovereignty from the Brits and a negative one for the zionist actions – nothing ever black and white –

            2. protectourfreedumbs

              you don’t need a reserve currency. it just adds to the complexity and cost of international trade. use national currencies. or gold. or bitcoin. or whatever.

  4. ISL

    https://no01.substack.com/p/march-22-26-invisible-wounds

    has a nice plot of how dispersed the Iranian power grid is – its largest plant is 3% national power ( Israel’s largest is 20%). Also points out how dependent some of the Gulfies are on desalinated water, which Iran has promised (and has kept its promises to date) to hit if the US (enables Israel with logistics) to hit Iranian power plants.

    Well worth a read – many other nuggets.

    1. protectourfreedumbs

      the quisling gulf arab dictatorships will be the big losers from operation epstein fury. they will go back to desert. dubai will go back to what it was – a mud brick fort with a little fishing village attached. no energy income, no finance, no money laundering, no smuggling, no gaudy bling hotels, no expats living large, no slave workers from india and the philippines. the fake sheikhs can go back to goat herding and selling dirty postcards.

      1. Henry Moon Pie

        But, but what about F1 races and LIV golf? There may be a few extra “sand traps” on the sheiks’ golf courses made by Iranian bombardments.

  5. ciroc

    Yes, sports fans, US servicemembers being forced off bases is “working remotely”.

    This brings to mind an anecdote from the final stages of World War II. In an attempt to hide their repeated defeats from the public, Japanese generals started calling troop withdrawals “redeployments.”

    1. danpaco

      Its as good as the “strategic retreat” (surrender) from Mariupol of Ukrainian troops.

    2. Safety First

      Can we just go straight to the “There are no Americans in Baghdad!” stage of propaganda? The war’d be over pretty soon then…

  6. Windall

    The Payne Institute’s recent disclosure regarding the first 16 days of ‘Operation Epic Fury’ confirms that the conflict evolved into a terminal industrial trial that the Western coalition is fundamentally incapable of winning.

    This tweet has been embedded two times. Maybe you meant to embed something else the second time?

    2. protectourfreedumbs

      remember that this assessment is now 13 days out of date, so the current situation must be really dire. this is day 29 of epstein fury. what is the real situation on us and zio casualties? does anyone believe this hogwash on “laundry room fires”? i have heard that oil is currently being traded at $154 and 170 a barrel, actual prices paid. we are in not-so-slow motion train wreck territory.

  7. JohnA

    Trump told Fox News: “I gave them a 10-day period, they asked for seven.”

    I guess Iran was happy to wait to resume till Good Friday, but Trump prefers Easter Monday. Religion getting in the way again.

  9. Tom Stone

    The weapons being used to murder schoolgirls in Iran are not replaceable.

    I expect the weapons remaining will be used at home when Trump’s rage at being thwarted overseas becomes incendiary.
    He is not sane and he is surrounded by bootlickers and ideologues some of whom want to turn the World into a radioactive cinder because that will bring about the second coming of Christ.
    And the “Opposition” consists of firebrands like Mayo Pete and Antoinette of Color while waiting in the wings we have JD Vance.
    Hoo boy.

    2. protectourfreedumbs

      ah, but you have to realise that trumpy has been anointed by jesus to carry out god’s plan and bring on the battle of armageddon. his spiritual advisor says so (when she’s not speaking in tongues.) greasy pete says so (when he’s not beating up his wife or getting more crusader tattoos.) so it must be true.

  10. Dean

    I’m struggling with these questions: Does the Trump regime have an overarching strategy driving its actions here in Iran (and up until this point? Is alienating our allies and crippling the world’s economies the actual objective here? Or is the incompetence so bad it wasn’t conceived as the likely outcome here?

    1. Yves Smith Post author

      No.

      We have long said Trump is all tactics, no strategy…which per a saying attributed to Sun Tsu, is the noise before the defeat.

    2. The Rev Kev

      Heard today that the Trump regime is modelling a world with oil at $200 a barrel. But that means that they never did this before the war when you would think that they would have gamed out the different consequences of military action. They never had a Plan B in other words.

        1. Randall Flagg

          I’m still chuckling at the commenter who a while ago said we went into this war like “Leroy Jenkins”…

        2. jrkrideau

          US Strategic Planning : Blow something Up —> Miracle Happens —> US lives happily ever after. 

    3. vidimi

      I also wonder if maybe he does have something up his sleeve. Many were saying how he had no chance of success in Venezuela, that they have so many guns per capita and want to fight, then he took out Maduro. When Delcy Rodrigues took over, many thought he was bs-ing, myself included, when he said they got what they wanted and that they would now control Venezuela’s oil, yet he was telling the truth.

      1. jrkrideau

        If you notice the same socialist/Chàvezism government is in power in Venezuela. It is making concessions to the USA in the face of some pretty nasty US treats but basically much the same concessions Maduro was considering. It has not been invaded or experienced real regime change.

        If the USA shows signs of weakness I wonder just how compliant Venevuela will be.

        1. jp

          It is making concessions to the USA in the face of some pretty nasty US treats

          You mean like Donettes or Twinkies?

      2. Revenant

        I share Richard Medhurst’s view, that the war is not really about Iran.

        The war is the fulcrum of the US pivot to Asia, in the sense that the US intends to have vassal Europe at its rear, meat shields against Russia, and China in front and to control all of the energy and critical minerals in the Western hemisphere and Atlantic.

        The Persian Gulf being shut is bad for Mr Market but, in relative terms, good for USA Inc. because it dislocates the global energy market, bisecting it into US controlled crude and refined products and the BRICS equivalent. Through sanctions, the West will have to pay high prices for commodities and intermediates manufactured by US companies with access to cheaper US energy. US economic dominance of a (shrunken) West is assured.

        Essentially the USA will use sanctions and cheap proprietary energy to loot Europe and Japan etc. to maintain its Imperial standard of living. China has to find alternative sources of energy and raw materials.

        The US calculus is:
        If Iran capitulates, a win because all your oil belong to us!
        If Iran holds out and keeps the strait closed, also a long-term win because we suffer less than the rest!

        Trump’s problem is democracy. Popular anger at shortages may kill his mid-term elections. But a long war on Iran will continue if US deep state wants it.

        And I have an idea what the marines and special forces must be for, if they are not going to become a spectacular expeditionary sacrifice and then be “rescued” with tactical nukes: they are for the boarding and interdiction of tankers leaving the Persian Gulf. If the USA cannot have the oil, Iran and its clients shall not have it either. The US will insist those cargoes dock with US allies to honour GCC contracts, regardless of source of gas and oil.

        I wonder if the Chinese tankers turned back because China has wind of such a plan? China is not ready to fight a blue water fight in the Arabian Sea (or is not ready for the escalation into WW3 and/or wants to focus on Taiwan). So it will protest but, as long as it gets enough oil and gets paid for any diverted and Russia can fill any gaps, it may go along with this. As may Russia.

        1. Kouros

          But what is the US industrial base to provide, with the advantage of local energy inputs for all the key elements removed from the board by the Gulf closure? They cannot ramp up production in weapons, why are we to think they will be able to do it in other sectors? Is anyone investing?

          And GCC also has a vote here. They might decide to actually expell the Americans and renounce the Abraham Accords, etc. They might even undergo some revolutions. Things can become very fluid right now and the more Iran resists, the more its agenda gets ahead of that of the Usrael.

    4. .Tom

      The incompetence is indeed that bad.

      Watch the video of General Mattis above. Just one readily available example.

      At this point today Trump’s brain is 78.8% mashed potato and he is surrounded by yesmen so he is actually impervious to reality. This is true even in the military and intelligence where telling the boss what he wants to hear instead of the truth makes you worse than useless.

    5. Jason Boxman

      Trump has big balls and Iran needs to understand that and surrender. That’s it. That’s the plan.

    6. Lefty Godot

      Trump has no strategy, but the real question is do the gray people behind the curtain that are pulling Trump’s strings have a strategy. Is it still the old guard Deep State types, or have enough of the reality TV people gotten their hands on the levers of power that we’re seeing a discontinuity of the agenda? Because, so far, there has been remarkable continuity of the agenda from Clinton to Dubya to Obama to Trump 1 to Biden. And war on Iran was always part of that agenda. But maybe the new kids on the bloc have rushed things without thinking them through to satisfy the needs of the internet propaganda machine? It would be the FOMO War in that case.

    7. bertl

      I can’t help feeling that God sent Trump to free the world from the United States. Trump’s lack of strategy is God’s strategy.

      2. flora

        Provocative assertion. Free the world from the US or free the Western world from neoliberal ideology?

  11. KLG

    The “15,000” targets obliterated reminds me of the weekly casualty counts on the CBS Evening News with Walter Cronkite during the War in Vietnam:

    Americans: 50-250 killed
    North Vietnamese: 1000-2000 killed

    I was 10-16 years old during the worst of that war. And I think those numbers are what developed my bullshit detector at such a young age. Teachers did not appreciate it at times, while my parents rolled their eyes.

    The first real book I read as a college freshman was The Best and the Brightest. Downhill ever since and I occasionally look at my Draft Card as a reminder.

    1. flora

      Ah, the nightly news ‘body count’, which came to be known as The Five O’Clock Follies.

        1. mrsyk


          I remember Vietnam
          and images on TV
          They talked of good guys and bad guys
          and killing VC
          There were flag-draped coffins
          and the Taps melody
          No longer allowed for the public to see

          Who’s winning the war?

          Son Volt, Anacostia

          1. anahuna

            Thank you, mrsyk. I’d never heard that one.

            Sometimes we forget the virtue of a simple lament.

    2. JMH

      Great book. Fire in the Lake is another. And another A bright and Shining Lie: John Paul Vann and America in Viet Nam. I fell in the cracks, too young for Korea and too old (and married and a father) for Viet Nam.

    3. Safety First

      I have a more modern memory. When the US (“NATO”, uh-huh, sure) was bombing Serbia in 1999, there’d be daily briefings on the telly, first from the NATO spokesman, the utterly loathsome Jamie Shea, and then an hour or two later from the Pentagon. Both would enthusiastically report on various numbers of Serbian targets destroyed, including Serbian tanks-guns-automobiles deployed in Kosovo. And the CNN types in the room would keep some sort of a running tally, which reached into the multiple-multiple thousands.

      And then the Serbs capitulated (not due to the bombing, but that’s another story), and CNN sent their idiots with cameras into Kosovo to document their military units’ withdrawal. And I still remember the utter shock of the CNN flunkey reporting while filming the trains filled with Serb equipment pulling out, when it turns out that most of the US “body count” turned out to be made up, that the US had hit maybe 200 vehicles rather than 2000+, and most of the Serb armored units that had been in Kosovo were still in full battle readiness…

      …and then beginning a few months later the Pentagon exerted mighty, mighty propaganda efforts to make everyone pretend that didn’t happen, and the air war “worked”, but that’s a whole other story.

      1. Aurelien

        Why do you put “NATO” in scare quotes? The operation was agreed by the NAC and planned and commanded from Brussels and Mons, and involved air and maritime forces from various nations. Every NATO nation wanted to get involved, to the point where ships firing missiles in the Aegean had to deconflict with each other. The British under Tony Blair (who began the trend of daily press conferences, subsequently initiated by the US and NATO) were especially enthusiastic and pushed hard for a military operation. It failed miserably in its own terms of course, but it was a NATO operation.

        1. The Rev Kev

          Except for the bombing of the Chinese Embassy. That was a CIA op that using the military’s resources.

    4. Judith

      I started protesting the Vietnam war in high school as well. My parents did not notice. My HS history teacher recommended that I read The Nation magazine.

    5. hereweare

      Americans: 50-250 killed
      North Vietnamese: 1000-2000 killed

      The ratios aren’t too far off for total Vietnamese killed vs total US killed

    6. Cat Burglar

      Vietnam was a great political education for a kid, and I never forgot it:

      1) US leaders are motivated by desire for power, no matter what else they say.
      2) They have no respect for human lives and will kill and use the deaths — US or other people’s — without remorse.
      3) Until some great political change, US policy is imperialist.

      It was amazing, years after the Vietnam War, to watch the US public swallow all the lies about terror defense and democracy building during the Terror Wars. So transparent. And still unchanged.

  12. Curious

    What could a TACO even look like if Trump wanted to (I don’t think he does, but as a thought exercise). Let’s assume that neither side is going to publicly comment and say “we lost, they won” and this just drags on. I wonder if Iran would be fine to keep the toll in the straight going, further establishing the precedent and if the GCC countries could find a way to capitulate without saying “we lost”. It all seems implausible but I’m trying to see if there is anyway Iran just doesn’t keep the status quo and win everything outright.

    1. Wukchumni

      We’re dealing with a bad alchemy of messianic meets messy, and neither can take it on the chin and move on.

    2. JohnnyGL

      If they offered Trump 10% of the revenues from the tolls, that might seal the deal.

      Let the Russians escrow the funds as a neutral 3rd party. Then, the Russians get to confiscate the money to compensate for the EU stealing from the Russians.

      More seriously, no one’s really been able to articulate an acceptable solution. The Israelis and US Neocons want regime destruction, and nothing less.

      Iran won’t feel secure until they’ve forced a complete US withdrawal from the region.

      1. Tito B

        The Israelis and US Neocons want destruction and anarchy, to knock Iran out as a functioning country for the foreseeable future. Regime change per se would be an added bonus, but is not the essential point of their thinking, in my opinion.

    1. Wukchumni

      My neighbor was a Marine machine gunner in a Patton tank, newly arrived in Vietnam a week before the Tet Offensive, and situated in Hue, where the deal went down.

      In his first few days of action, there were 6 villagers and 6 water buffalo walking single file about 100 yards away when the tank commander tells him to waste them… they had no weapons on them and he related that to the tank commander who wore a necklace with 17 human ears, who curtly asked who was the tank commander, waste ’em!

      rat-a-tat-a-tat-a-tat-a-tat-a-tat

      Been my neighbor for over 20 years and slowly the horrors of his war have leaked out.

      1. Ben Joseph

        The horrors of human behavior seem to be linked to a high from feeling powerful, mixed with a lack of empathy.

    2. The Rev Kev

      A joke at the time was that if an 89 year-old peasant woman and two 5 year-old kids were wasted, you would add up their ages and that would give you a kill count of about 100 Viet Cong.

      True story here – at the time if your unit got a really good kill count, they would send them to watch the Bob Hope USO Show in person.

      1. Steven A

        I happened to be in Vietnam when the news of the My Lai Massacre broke. Most of the 300+ (500+ if you count similar atrocity the same day at a nearby hamlet) civilian casualties were included in that day’s body count.

        You are right about “if your unit got a really good kill count . . . .” With no discernible front lines to measure territorial gains and losses, the body count was the metric of choice. So it was naturally inflated and manipulated to create the illusion of success.

        I can’t imagine what the current regime is using as a metric in the Iran war. Perhaps the number of explosions?

  14. ddt

    Hegseth says in the 1st Hindustan Times vid that warthog A10s and Apache helicopters are flying over the strait. Video evidence anyone?

    3. Cardiac

      Certainly possible; why would the Iranians reveal firing positions to take out a handful of helicopters? Let them fly all up and down the strait – they can even blast ‘flight of the valkyries’ for tomorrow’s recap clip. Unless an Apache can lift a tanker ship I don’t see how it means anything, strategically.

    4. Howard L

      Warthog is Hegseth’s nickname for the White House bartender and he likes his whisky strait, no chaser.

  15. Samuel Conner

    > “I am raising 10 red flags before you,” Eyal Zamir told a security cabinet meeting on Wednesday, according to Israeli media reports. He said that it wouldn’t be long before the military was unable to perform routine missions.

    He said the military needs a “conscription law, a reserve duty law, and a law to extend mandatory service”.

    Friendly reminder, he worked as Secretary of Defense in the 1st Trump administration lol https://t.co/81hwhkWhil

    ====

    The start of this section is about an Israeli official, but the end is about General (Ret) Mattis. It’s not clear what the transition is intended to be; presumably some remarks by Mattis are missing.

  16. Curious

    I read reporting that there are ~20,000 sailors trapped on the roughly 3200 ships on the wrong side of the Strait. I wonder what the timeline on their rations is before that becomes its own problem that has to be solved.

    Also, I haven’t seen but I would expect shipping rates to start skyrocketing as that supply remains trapped and the price of oil stays high. I know during the crunch in COVID and Chinas 0 COVID lockdown, container ships to the us went from 5k to 50k

    1. DD GE

      There are so many moving parts, it’s hard to keep track of everything. However some days ago already, there were reports that the water rations on some ships had run out, and the port authorities in the gulf weren’t exactly helpful, more like refusing to let them dock…
      This is probably becoming its own problem as we type, yes.

      1. leaf

        You know Pezeshkian once said those words more or less, “Many things are happening, so many things are happening at once that sometimes I have no idea what’s going on.”
        The late Raisi seemed to have a much better of idea of what was going on

    2. Acacia

      I’ve read that many of those trapped ships are running out of supplies, but when they radio to port requesting a place, they are refused, because all the other ships are in the same pickle and there aren’t enough berths for all of them.

  17. The Rev Kev

    ‘and still showed China to be the dominant economic power merely by wielding a rare-earths-denial threat.’

    Alexander Mercouris was saying on The Duran that though the Chinese have said nothing publically, that they have restricted even further deliveries of refined rare earths and other materials to the US. They can see that Trump is drowning in a quagmire of his own making so they are tossing him an anvil.

    1. Yves Smith Post author

      They have already greatly choked them. They have imposed an onerous licensing process to make sure the rare earths are used only in civilian applications.

      This can easily be made into the sort of bureaucratic deep freeze at which the Japanese are expert, of feigning being cooperative while doing the least important 40% of what needs to be done slowly.

      And no Western firm would dare complain if the Chinese were being, erm, fastidious about their new rules.

      So I suspect the reality is worse than what the press is saying.

      1. Oregon Lawhobbit

        They have imposed an onerous licensing process to make sure the rare earths are used only in civilian applications.

        Maybe the US can steal the Russian technology and know-how needed to harvest chips and whatnot (e.g. “civilian use only rare earths” from China) from washing machines in order to build more Patriot missiles….

    2. The Rev Kev

      In that video Alexander was also saying that countries will have to sell their US treasuries as they will be needing the money. And then there was the question of where all that Gulf money would be heading to as they seek safety for their funds. And then he said this-

      ‘Hong Kong used to get between two and four billion dollars of capital inflow from the Gulf each month before this crisis began. They’re now getting capital inflow from the Gulf at the rate of $40 billion a week.’

      The times they are a changin’.

  18. hemeantwell

    A Chabahar landing will not necessarily translate into Iran suspending its missile offensive or opening up the Strait. Analysts who propose it will offer Trump a fantasy victory have trapped themselves in his fantasy world. They demonstrate that a real resolution of the conflict has become unthinkable because it involves either a delusional restoration of the credibility of the US and Israel as negotiators, requiring near psychotic levels of denial on Iran’s part (a repeat of their June war blunder), or the destruction of the offensive potential of the US and Israel and a drastic change in their strategic goals. I don’t see such a change happening, and I don’t see how we can get out of this dilemma.

    1. Yves Smith Post author

      I did not have a chance, due to time pressures, to discuss this topic myself.

      The tweet does not make that claim. It says merely that a Chabahar landing would most fit the type of operation that Trump like and the resources being assembled, and not that it would achieve any strategic outcome.

      1. hemeantwell

        I’m trying to highlight that any reference to Trump concocting a victory ignores how the baked in features of this crisis, unfolding over months, will make it impossible to close off attention to it with a victory claim. The article linked by ISL above, which impressively distills what you and others have already said, suggests a kind of foreclosure of foreclosure options, there’s no moving on because the disaster is impossible not to see. To put it perhaps too strongly, all the speculations about Marine and Special forces landings are irrelevant because they don’t address Iran’s core strategic strength, its missile force and the lack of strategic alternatives that Iran has to its destructive deployment.

        In a way, this is a version of what you’ve discussed recently as a perception bias. We can fill out that narrow cognitive emphasis by regarding at as part of an obsessive-compulsive syndrome, in which anxiety is mastered by ritualized attention to details, to solutions that are not relevant to the problem the obsessive-compulsive is trying to manage. From this angle we’re looking at a breakdown of that defensive system.

      2. Polar Socialist

        While not being any kind of an analyst or expert, I’d propose, if we must assume a Marine landing, Gwatar Bay slightly to the east from Chabahar.

        The surroundings are mostly flat beyond artillery range and the eastern shore is Pakistan. It’s the only place in Iran where US could retain most of the advantages (IRS, firepower, air force).

        It’s sparsely populated, barren landscape, but the Marines could set up anti-ship missile batteries and stop Iranian tankers from exiting the Gulf of Oman. Just what the new Marines are supposed to excel at, I believe. And if manure strikes the punkah, Pakistan (and safety) is just 10 miles away.

        1. NN Cassandra

          The question is what is supposed to happen even in the case the operation is successful and US occupies some part of Iran. The assumption seems to be that Iran will be eager for some sort of a deal, like opening the strait and giving up the uranium in exchange for the occupied land. But what if Iran instead simply continues to fire missiles and counterattacks on the land? Sort of like what happened in Ukraine with their Kursk operation, where Putin was expected to panic and trade Donbas & Crimea for Sudzha. Then such win quickly turns into death trap, where you are required to constantly feed it with resources just to keep it occupied, because retreating to original position will be loss in its own right.

        2. JohnH

          Chahbahar is also 400 miles from Bandar Abbas on the Persian Gulf and 900 miles from Isfahan…not exactly the ideal spot to start a ground invasion.

          1. redleg

            Especially not ideal when the sum of the 2 MEUs, Rangers, and the brigade of 82nd Airborne is roughly an understrength light infantry division who hasn’t trained together.
            When they advance towards the Gulf, their entire force would be consumed with securing the supply corridor. Or they would be clumped together into a tight, fat, soft target.

            The comparisons of this possible invasion with Gallipoli might be tempting, but I think that Dieppe is a more fitting example. It’s the right size, experience level, opponent skill level, and the outcome will probably be similar.
            Gallipoli landed something like 4 divisions. Most landings in WW2 and Korea involved multiple divisions and included rehearsals and training specific to the missions. The US doesn’t have multiple divisions to deploy. Where is the training? Where is the logistical train for the troops and fleet? The training and logistical situation is not conducive to success.

        3. elkern

          Gwadar Bay is entirely in Pakistan. There is another bay, bisected by the border, called Jiwani Bay (at least on the Pakistani side).

          Sure, taking the Iranian side of that Bay might be easier than taking Chabahar, but the only “strategic” target there is an Iranian Coast Guard base at Pasabandar (only Iranian town on that Bay).

          Chabahar is a real port city, so taking it would mean (1) depriving Iran of an important port and (2) we could (theoretically) keep supplies flowing to our troops there through the existing docks. That second part is iffy, though; Iran might blow the docks, mine the port, etc, and missiles and drones from up in the hills (the rest of Iran…) would still target the logistics tail.

          OTOH, your Jiwani Bay “plan” would fit the Trump Doctrine perfectly: more Kayfabe Warfare, where we do something which looks impressively painful (like “obliterating” the entire Iranian Nuclear Program last July with a few B-2s) before declaring “victory” and going home.

          Hmm, if we go that route, who will play the part of the grizzled old leatherneck Jarhead when they make the new version of “Heartbreak Ridge”? Clint Eastwood is too old, and Chuck Norris has moved on to that Cage Match in the Sky; I’ll bet you a six-pack of PBR that they go with Mark Wahlberg…

          1. jrkrideau

            Chabahar is also an important port for India. It gives it direct maritime access to Afghanistan and Central Asia without passing through Pakistan.

            I am not sure of its status at the moment but the US seizing and likely destroying it is not going to make India happy.

        4. Es s Ce Tera

          These oh so inviting bays along the coastline which Iran has apparently forgotten, left undefended, with nary any military presence at all. Why, it’s an invasion planner’s dream!

    2. ilsm

      US wants a cease fire (same as with Russian Federation), mainly to get its war of choice (for greater Israel) off the headlines before the mid terms.

      What Trump wants is Iran to stop shooting until he does another 28 Feb surprise decapitation/assassinate strike after close of markets on Friday 6 Nov 2026. US elections being 3 Nov.

      Netanyahu wants Tehran!

    3. YuShan

      Yes, if they want to invade something, then Chabahar appears to be the most viable option. But then what? Iran can still block everything coming out of the Gulf. While at the same time bombing the American troops and resupply with missiles and drones continuously, inflicting a continuous stream casualties. Chabahar seems to me a long way from anything that matters. Iran can just box them in and keep doing what it is doing now. At least so it appears to me.

      1. Will

        Boots on the ground would likely be a disaster. Doing so to stop Iranian exports contradicts American goal of maintaining some supply to keep prices from exploding. But consider the optics. The general public might wake up to the reality of physical shortages in a week or two just about when the U.S. launches this moronic ground invasion to completely close Hormuz. Would be very funny if the Americans get all the blame for the shortages.

  19. flora

    T was promised a short war. (By whom? By Bibi?)
    T wants an off ramp.

    Bibi wants a long war with US involvement. Dreams of ‘Greater Isr’.
    Iran wants a long war. Hopes of smashing the Western economies and the petrodollar to stop the recurring Western backed coups and invasions on Iran.

    T and his advisors have blundered into quicksand. Get ready for higher prices and supply chain disruptions. / imo.

    1. Wukchumni

      I’m calling it the Zeus Crisis mainly because it’s Suez backwards, and almost fits into the Fourth Turning, but its only 70 years ago that the English and French had to acquiesce to a higher power and forfeit future forays afield.

      Zeus was the main Greek God, and we went to war over the main God in the Golden Billion, a neo-Fourth Crusade.

      Seems to be a given that we’ll lose hegemon status as the world reels from our actions, can you imagine the distress foreigners would feel seeing Trump’s nom doubloon that resembles a 7.6 earthquake on the Richter scale, on our Federal Reserve Notes?

      1. flora

        Ya know, when I saw the model of the new dime I thought the front image didn’t look like Washington’s image at all. However, it does look a lot like T in a powered wig. / ;)

        Adding T’s signature to the dollar bill is explained in this Politico article.
        ( A good sense of the humorous absurd when reading this is recommended.)

        ““The President’s mark on history as the architect of America’s Golden Age economic revival is undeniable. Printing his signature on the American currency is not only appropriate, but also well deserved,” Treasurer Brandon Beach said in a statement.

        The Treasury Department did not respond to a request for comment on the duration of the change or where on bills the signature will appear, though the official announcement did note that the signature would appear on “future” U.S. paper currency “along with” the Treasury secretary’s signature, which is on the bottom right of the face of bills.

        “There is no more powerful way to recognize the historic achievements of our great country and President Donald J. Trump than U.S. dollar bills bearing his name, and it is only appropriate that this historic currency be issued at the Semiquincentennial,” Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said in a statement.

        https://www.politico.com/news/2026/03/26/trump-signature-us-paper-currency-00847546

        1. Samuel Conner

          Perhaps it’s part of a “plan” to reshore manufacturing by driving down the value of the USD.

          1. jsn

            TickTock and Instagram are certainly preparing the workforce, or maybe Elons couple dozen anthropomorphic robots (without rare earths) will do it all!

          2. Steven A

            And the next administration can follow the examples of Canada and the UK, who retired their one dollar and one pound notes respectively and replaced them with coins. Presumably, the USD coins would have a portrait of someone not T.

      2. Karen

        I plan on redacting Dump’s signature with my Sharpie on every bill that passes through my hands. Maybe I should also buy some Sharpie stock. Sharpies should be in high demand.

          1. Ben Joseph

            Throughout the gulf south, signed or decorated bills hang on many a saloon ceiling. Perhaps a small post-confederate rebellion, but no known prosecutions.

        2. Glen

          I’m keeping one in my wallet so when I’m at the gas pump or at the grocery store checkout line if somebody wonders why everything is so expensive (which is becoming a very common complaint any time people are paying) I can whip it out and show how he’s signed his handy work.

          Nice of him to do that!

      3. RA

        Trump’s nom doubloon that resembles a 7.6 earthquake

        A seismograph of a really big one was my first thought when I first saw his signature and the jagged sharpie swing as he recorded it.

        Most of his signatures seem to mark seismic events, so I guess its appropriate.

        Nice to see Wuk thought that too.

  20. ISL

    Stanislav with Glenn Diesen paints a rather grim picture of the fertilizer crisis and argues for mass class-based starvation this fall and winter – he has reported that in Italy, a professor friend of his, many Italians do not have enough money come week 4, now! And ERs in UK have been reporting treating people for severe malnutrition, now! Perhaps a let them eat cake moment is coming for Europe?

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qirByIpJTMM

    – around minute 30, he reports how significant the Russian military contributions have been that provided to Iran. money quote “Iran’s survival is existential to Russia.”

    1. jrkrideau

      I was much impressed by his description of what it may take to restore oil and gas production in the GCC states. Depending on the level of damage ee is talking years in some cases. If he is correct, predictions of things returning to normal in 6 months when shipping routes and so on get sorted out are pipe dreams.

      For those unacquainted Stanisav Krapinski, he was born in Russia or Donbass, career US Army officer, and several years experience as a director of supply chain management in various parts of the world for Halliburton plus director of supply chain management on at least two large Russian plant expansions.

  21. Jack

    The WAPO had an article today about the number of Tomahawk missiles fired. Over 850. https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2026/03/27/iran-war-tomahawk-missiles/
    It goes to disclose the alarm in the DOD (or is that DOW) about the draw down. “One official characterized the number of Tomahawks left in the Middle East as “alarmingly low,” while another said that without intervention, the Pentagon is closing in on “Winchester” — military slang meaning out of ammunition — for its supply of Tomahawk missiles in the Middle East.”

  22. Carolinian

    Thank you for our daily dose of reality. While I don’t follow the MSM very closely the complacency–judged by scanning the headlines–is amazing.

    And it should be contrasted with the five alarm fire coverage of Russsiagate and the early days of Trump One. Clearly the notion that he might be leading some sort of popular revolt was what really gets them into a panic. Perhaps a true market crash will finally wake them up. Too late?

    1. JohnnyGL

      It’s actually pretty amazing how mild the market response has been, thus far. We haven’t even broken 1yr lows on the S&P 500.

      Even Brent crude is bouncing around levels from early 2022. The disconnect from reality is really something to behold.

      In another month or two, I suspect we’ll be getting surprise Fed rate cuts in the middle of the day to damp down the chaos. But, from what I hear, the Fed can’t print barrels of oil.

      1. jp

        All major US indices are down 1.5-2% on the day so far. BTC is down 3.75% and most of the big tech stocks are down 2.5-5%, with Meta down most, of course. I guess it will be very interesting when the Asian markets open…

        Deutsche has also consed up something they call the TACO index.

        1. S Domain

          Indeed. The amount of hopium / copium / Trumpium (the densest of all known elements) in the markets beggars belief. I have placed a wager with a work colleague that the S&P 500 will halve by the end of the year, with the winner buying lunch. This is not a bet I actually wish to win however, as I think by that point we will all be dining on hardtack and regret. With the exception of Ann of course.

  23. atlantafox

    Ted Postol recently talked about Iran using three strategically dropped small nuclear bombs on Tel Aviv to counter Israel/US use of tactical nuclear weapons.

    As best we know, Iran does not have that capability at present. However, is it possible for them to use their 400 plus kilograms of 60% enriched material to make a dirty bomb, accomplishing a similar result, making Tel Aviv uninhabitable?

    1. Safety First

      Well, first, that 400 kg is not all in solid form. Some big fraction (I do not know what exactly, and the Iranians won’t tell me for some reason) is gaseous, for example. It’s the same problem with a potential US raid to “remove” the stuff, you can’t just pick it up and carry it around easily.

      But even if all 400 were solid…I doubt that would be enough to spread over the 68 square miles of Tel Aviv urban area (per Wikipedia). Especially since you’d need to pair the radioactive material with explosives in each warhead to effectuate the actual spread. That’s the thing with any dirty bomb, unless you do a Chernobyl-type 225 tons of TNT explosion dispersing tons and tons and tons of radioactive material, you’re not going to get a very big bang for your buck.

      Much easier to just make an actual nuke. Or, even better, conventional-missile every power and water plant in Israel, plus drop a dozen or so tons of explosives on the Dimona reactor.

      1. JohnH

        Speaking of Chernobyl, Tel Aviv is less than 100 miles north of Dimona. It looks like winds will be blowing from the south tomorrow, Saturday, March 28…

    2. hereweare

      It must have loads of depleted uranium, which is highly incendiary, and would leave a nasty toxic mess even if warheads were intercepted.

    3. mrsyk

      I believe the consensus opinion (correct me if I’m wrong here) is that Iran can do the job, that is effectively reduce ISR to operational rubble with “conventional” weapons.
      Imo, the real question here should be “Can Iran deter team z from using nukes?”.

    4. ISL

      Ted Postol in an interview with Nima or maybe Daniel Davis a while back, said 3 weeks and a room the size of a typical college classroom and Iran would have their 10 bombs worth of materials ready. My SWAG is that they have already done the purification, and are waiting for the religious decision, which follows some (I have no idea what) timeline. They absolutely have the delivery systems.

  24. Tom Stone

    If the speculation by the House of Saud the the US War plan was devised by Clod or chat GPT is correct it makes a lot of sense.
    Anyone who tries to tell Trump something he doesn’t want to hear gets fired and one of the things he does want to hear is that AI is AGI.
    My bet is that Pete Hegseth looked at the past Wargames which all showed Iran winning a War of this type and said to himself “I really like my new office”, then gave an LLM repeated prompts until it showed TRUMP TRIUMPHANT! within 48 hours.
    Pete has ordered the Dept of War to go all in on AI and I suspect this was supposed to be proof of its potency.
    Now I’m waiting to find out who “Stabbed America in the Back”.

    1. Wukchumni

      The time has come for AI videos of Pete doing one-fingered push-ups while quoting bible verses.

      1. DD GE

        We know it can be done! Some weeks ago Links featured a video of a shaolin master doing push-ups on 4 fingers (both indexes and middles), and his feet weren’t even touching the ground…

        Throw in the Bible verses and you’re (Heg)set(h).

  25. Wukchumni

    Don has a feeling
    A beautiful war ceiling
    The smell of grasp
    Just makes you pass
    Into a whet dream

    You’re here today
    No future fears
    Jesus’s Realm will last
    A thousand years
    If you want it to

    You look around you
    Things they astound you
    So breathe in deep
    You’re not asleep
    Open your mind

    You’re here today
    No future fears
    Heaven will last
    A thousand years
    If you want it to

    Do you understand
    That all over every land
    There’s a feeling
    In minds far and near
    Things are becoming clear
    With a meaning

    Now that they’re all knowing
    Pressure sure starts growing
    It’s true life flies
    Faster than your lies
    Could ever see

    You’re here today
    No future fears
    Your stay with Jesus will last
    A thousand years
    If you want it to

    Dawn is a Feeling, by the Moody Blues

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rVSh568-82k&list=RDqe7m1VzD2Fk&index=7

  26. JohnnyGL

    https://foreignpolicy.com/2026/03/26/trump-iran-putin-netanyahu-hormuz-oil-gas-cease-fire/

    Has anyone seen this warmed-over proposal from Trita Parsi and George Beebe? Looks like a sensible idea that should have been implemented BEFORE 2/28/2026. But, the Israelis and US Neocons wouldn’t countenance anything of the sort.

    It seems like the Quincy Institute (it spite of the sympathetic hearing they get from the Indy media community, because they try to use diplomacy) suffers from the same insularity that the entirety of the western foreign policy establishment has. They spend their time thinking and talking with one another and pay no mind to what the facts on the ground are and what the other side is saying. This has been happening right along with the fake Ukraine-Russia peace talks, too. It’s become a consistent pattern.

    The Iranians have listed their demands, go read them! They have a clear plan to implement their demands by force if the demands aren’t met, too, and they’re visibly succeeding!

    1. frank

      It’s almost like they are empire apologists.
      They recommend that the victim must find a way to make a peace treaty with the current imperial manager.
      The next imperial manager will return with violence to extract something.

  27. Donald

    So Hamas should have built a base to be destroyed by Israel on the first day and then when they fought within urban areas, they could say they were working remotely.

    1. The Rev Kev

      Good point that. I saw a video today of a Hezbollah FPV drone skimming over a region before going after a Merkava tank. And it was only after reading your comment that I remembered that it did not have any cages surrounding it at all. Maybe too much hubris at work.

      1. Polar Socialist

        Palestine Chronicles says Hezbollah claims to have destroyed over 100 Merkava tanks since the Israeli operation began.

        Apparently the Hezbollah is not using it’s file and rank fighters, but it’s special operation Ridwan Forces. While they engage the IDF on the ground, they also strike with rockets and missiles on IDF command posts, artillery positions and Iron Dome platforms.

        It seems that Israeli casualties are high also because Hezbollah fighters don’t retreat after the initial ambush, but re-engage when the IDF sends columns or helicopters to evacuate the wounded.

        1. The Rev Kev

          You have to wonder if the Russians or the Chinese are helping Hezbollah with real-time satellite imagery. That would tell Hezbollah everything that they would know about what to hit and where to deploy their forces. Certainly the Russians have good cause to give the Israelis a bit of pay back.

        2. hemeantwell

          That’s interesting about waiting to reengage. Does that reflect what I’ve seen elsewhere about the IDF having so taxed its air capabilities that it can’t provide as much close support as it has in the past? In any case, I’m impressed by Hezbollah’s elan, they’re fired up and have plenty of reasons to be.

        3. vao

          All this is true, but missing from the picture is that Israeli forces are (very) slowly progressing and occupying more Lebanese territory, reducing everything to rubble once they have secured a position (i.e. the Gaza treatment) to make it untenable should Hezbollah recapture it.

          Israel is apparently now starting an offensive against Hezbollah from the Syrian high ground it controls, and there are speculations that the government wants to redirect the air force from striking Iran to supporting ground troops against Hezbollah instead, since the army offensive is such a tough slog.

          I wonder how long Israel and Hezbollah will sustain that asymetric attrition — Hezbollah losing the territory it vowed to safeguard, Israel losing the men and equipment it vowed to send to victory.

          1. jsn

            Trends that can’t go on forever, won’t.

            As Yves says, testing to breaking along multiple axis.

          2. ISL

            Hezbollah has lost ground to Israel before and fought them back to the border. And rubble-izing is a long-term Israeli tradition/strategy (along with genocide – the Nakbah). Look at Gaza! Israel goes in, captures territory, dies, and retreats, declaring victory to bomb from afar. And they never learn to not stick their heads out windows. Hubris?

            1. frank

              Last time it took Hezbollah eight years to evict Zionisists from Lebanon. I don’t believe they will give up this time.
              It was said that they were defeated by a pager attack

    2. NotTimothyGeithner

      Colonialism is at the core of the Israeli identity. The war between “sub-whites” isn’t a teaching moment. Much like the shock and outrage at the Iranians shooting back, they simply can’t conceive of what is happening.

      1. vao

        You might have seen the videos of mayors of settler communities lashing at the Israeli government — it does not protect them, why has the army not subdued Hezbollah, they have been lied to, they cannot live under those unbearable conditions, etc.

        This situation corresponds to the initial stages of what happened in a few other failed colonial endeavours:

        1) Settlers are oblivious to the on-going war and the excesses of the military, since everything takes place in some remote corner of the colonial realm. The bled in Algeria, the mato in Mozambique, Gaza or Lebanon in Palestine. Far away, Indian country, nothing to lose a thought about.

        2) When the natives, well organized and armed to the teeth, finally strike back, the settlers are dismayed to see their houses being levelled, their properties burnt down, their families slaughtered. It is their turn to bear the brunt of the colonial war, and they cannot fathom it, because this never happened, and was never supposed to happen.

        3) The shock is genuine: the government told them the pacification was progressing well, that their powerful military was eliminating insurgents, and that order would soon prevail — it lied to them! Terrorists are now rampaging around, this is an untenable situation — what is the military doing? Why is it not protecting them?

        4) This leads to a rift between settlers and the government. As a reminder: in Mozambique, colonists organized lock-downs, protests (with stone throwing at the Portuguese soldiers), accused the military of benefiting financially from the war instead of carrying out its duties, and even started plotting the assassination of the chief of the general staff (who was on an inspection tour), deemed a traitor. In Algeria, the colonists set up the paramilitary OAS, because they thought the government was not doing enough; that organization ended up battling against the French army.

        5) When distrust has reached that level, this marks the point at which the colonial endeavour is doomed. The military typically loses the will to continue fighting for those ungrateful settlers, while the settlers resent the “cowardly” military that is incapable, or worse unwilling, to protect them properly.

        Time will tell whether in Israel the move to stage (3) will be widespread, and if it will evolve beyond that.

  30. KD

    Yves Smith noted yesterday:

    I am concerned that these excellent and other analysts may be underestimating what the US and Israel could do. The US has reportedly been bombing what it thinks are the entrance areas of underground missile cities, with the intent of rendering them inaccessible and therefore useless.

    Israel could launch tactical nuclear weapons at those entrances, at least in northern Iran where I believe I have read that the fallout would not reach Israel. That could be executed shortly before the US ground attack with the hope of overwhelming Iranian responses.

    Trying to think this critique through (with obviously only open source information). Right now, Iran is alleged to be conducting about 33 missile strikes a day, which runs to about 1000 per month. Professor Marandi and others have claimed Iran can continue these strikes for a year, so if true, suggests Iran has upwards of 12,000+ ballistic missiles. Presumably, these missiles are widely dispersed consistent with Iran’s mosaic defense strategy. In addition, you have to assume that Iran has multiple missile cities, and only some have been engaged.

    Now in terms of strikes, no only could tactical nukes be deployed but the coverage of the assassination of Nasrallah was that something like 8-10 rounds of bunker busters were used to make the kill, so the US and Israel very likely have the conventional ability to knock out these missile cities, if they know the location.

    My guess, the US strikes and destroys active missile locations, an extremely successful operation is at best going to score 20-30% of missile capacity. That leaves 9,000 and Iran has to expose new missile cities to ISR capabilities to launch new strikes. It would still take a number of months of whack-a-mole it seems to make this a success. Also, just look at the way Russia has been pounding Ukraine for four years, yet Ukraine retains an ability to launch strikes on Russia (yes, Ukraine has been getting kit from NATO, but nothing prevents Russia/North Korea/China from supporting Iran as well).

    The other issue is the coming ground war. . . and not Trump’s marine strike. Hezbollah and Israel are at it, reporting is that Israel is calling up 400,000 reservists (what everyone does before a cease fire) and efforts are at work to ratchet up conscription. Reports suggests that Israel isn’t doing so well with tanks.

    Also, I saw an unverified Substack claiming the Houthi’s have spent the last 6 months conscripting and training a ground army, and they are well situated to strike at Saudi, along with closing the Suez and taking another 4 million barrels a day off line of Saudi crude. Iraqi militias may attack Kuwait and Eastern Syria, and thereby pin a portion of Julani’s soldiers in the East away from Lebanon and the West Bank. Iran is threatening ground invasion of Bahrain and UAE, and its not clear what kind of assets they may or may not have already covertly on the ground in those countries. If only a fraction of these developments transpire, the US and Israel are going to have a lot on their hands to be worrying about Iran’s missiles or the Straights of Hormuz.

    Last, if we remember the Arab Spring, it was preceded by high food prices resulting from high oil prices. All the factors which lit off the Arab Spring should be in place as fertilizer shortages begin to manifest in lower crop yields and hikes in food prices. We don’t what, if anything, will remain of regional oil/gas infrastructure (as well as electricity and desalination) by the time the crisis reaches maximal escalation.

    1. mrsyk

      Regarding Iranian underground missile cities, this morning I saw a IRGC claim to the tune of, “if we showed you one a week it would take over two years to see them all”, (parsing a bit).
      That’s a claim of over one hundred.

    2. Jason Boxman

      Now in terms of strikes, no only could tactical nukes be deployed but the coverage of the assassination of Nasrallah was that something like 8-10 rounds of bunker busters were used to make the kill, so the US and Israel very likely have the conventional ability to knock out these missile cities, if they know the location.

      Patricia on the Twitter has noted that the Iranians have these buried in granite mountains and use a particular kind of concrete that is especially strong, more so than whatever we use in the West. And that the damage to these installations is therefore minimal.

      Launches are still made by people; I guess there’s too much ventilation built into these structures to successfully bury the Iranians inside alive or prevent shipments of food. They’re probably supplied for months at a time with consumables.

    3. Pearl Rangefinder

      Now in terms of strikes, no only could tactical nukes be deployed but the coverage of the assassination of Nasrallah was that something like 8-10 rounds of bunker busters were used to make the kill, so the US and Israel very likely have the conventional ability to knock out these missile cities, if they know the location.

      It’s actually quite questionable if USreal has that capability, to physically take out a missile city (at least if what we are told about them is true?). The reported bunker-buster bombs used on Beirut to kill Nasrallah was the BLU-109/B, which is a 2000 lb free-fall bomb. The wiki page says the US “sold” 100 such bombs to the Israeli’s in 2023, and that the strike on Nasrallah took “at least 15” bombs – that’s what it took to take out a hardened underground structure in the middle of a city, but the Iranian “missile cities” are an entirely different problem altogether, being that they are built literally underneath mountains protected by who knows how many 100s of metres and billions of KG of solid rock. The Israeli’s could unload their entire inventory of BLU-109s onto a single mountain and barely make a dent. It’s a whole different scale compared with bombing known man-made bunker locations, where the goal is to penetrate maybe 10m-20m of concrete.

      The GBU-57 is the most powerful bunker buster in US inventory, and you’ll note that the production volume of these things is pretty tiny, with “at least 20” built, and supposedly 14 of that number burned up over Fordow last year. The only plane that can carry it is the B2 bomber, of which only 19 are operational – which means there might be more bombers available than bombs. Ha!

      That gets to the other problem with bunker-busters over Iran, which is all of these weapons need to be flown in and dropped almost directly over their targets, as they are all free-fall gravity bombs (or at best, 10km-20km away). Given they have already lost one F-35 over Iran, that is clearly going to be a difficult operation to do without taking some potentially serious losses in aircraft. That’s not even getting into bombing these things in central or eastern Iran, which would necessitate flying unmolested over 100’s of KM of Iranian airspace. That just doesn’t seem feasable unless you plan on flying B52’s over central Iran, which sounds great if you’re a fan of suicide missions.

      1. Ben Panga

        >they are built literally underneath mountains protected by who knows how many 100s of metres and billions of KG of solid rock.

        Per Alastair Crooke, 500 meters (and 1+ in each province)

  31. Ann

    Iran images appear to show land mines scattered by U.S. forces, a first in years

    The land mines were photographed outside Shiraz, a city located about three miles from one of several nearby Iranian ballistic missile sites.

    https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/2026/03/27/iran-us-land-mines/

    Exclusive: U.S. can only confirm about a third of Iran’s missile arsenal destroyed, sources say

    https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/us-can-only-confirm-about-third-irans-missile-arsenal-destroyed-sources-say-2026-03-27/

    1. The Rev Kev

      ‘land mines scattered by U.S. forces’

      Looks like they are copying the Ukrainians with their deployment of “butterfly” mines over civilian areas. Yes, it is illegal but who is going to tell Hegseth that.

      1. KD

        The US is not a signatory to the Ottawa Convention. Ukraine was prior to June 29, 2025 (when it is alleged to have used banned anti-personnel mines). So right or wrong its legal for the US to do so.

    2. JohnnyGL

      1/3 of the missiles destroyed, huh?

      Reminds me of that time I got into a fight and blocked 1/3 of the punches with my face! :)

    4. ACF

      How did we scatter land mines in Iran? Don’t you need troops on the ground to do that? (I can’t get past the WaPo paywall, so don’t know if it explains.)

      2. Darthbobber

        During the Shock and Awe phase of the invasion of Iraq, we scattered a lot of delayed action cluster bomblets in residential neighborhoods of Baghdad and other lucky cities.

        In the waning days of the Korean War, we used bombers to drop mines throughout the soon to be Demilitarized Zone. A Korean art exhibition here included a visual animated piece by a fellow who was a “gatekeeper” on the SK side, who mentioned that decades later these remained a known hazard for the small sk and nk patrols routinely sent in to nose around in the DMZ (with elaborate unofficial protocols for avoiding one another)

        2. Ben Joseph

          I’ve stopped using ‘we’ and started trying to say ‘the US government’. Any land mines or other war crimes are not of my doing.

      3. Karen

        IDK. Aren’t mines supposed to be hidden/buried to be effective against their targets? If you anticipate an enemy running down some road at night this might be effective. Otherwise they are just booby traps designed to ensnare unaware civilians. Terrorism, plain and simple.

        Typical USrael behavior.

  33. The Rev Kev

    Re that RUSI report – “Over 11,000 munitions in 16 Days of the Iran War: ‘Command of the Reload’ Governs Endurance”. I found it odd that they did not mention Russia and how they are able to sustain their interceptor program. Then compare and contrast the two systems. Then again, if they had, then likely that report would ever have been published by the RUSI.

    1. True Disbeliever

      RUSI might’ve rushed that report before completing the editing process:

      …the wider coalition is also downing drones and intercepting missiles by expending multi-million-dollar missiles that cost a fraction of the price….

      For consistency with their theme, they probably mean multiple of the price, or something like this:

      …the wider coalition is expending multi-million-dollar interceptors to down drones and missiles that cost a fraction of the price….

  35. AG

    German ANTI-SPIEGEL argues in a short piece that with Quatar dropping out US has achieved LNG market dominance if one adds Australia as an allied supplier and on that level this war so far has been a success for Trump. (leverage over EU + hurting China)

    I don´t know in how far this makes sense weighed against the rising costs all over and the true complexities.

    use Yandex to translate (Google here won´t do it since the site´s operator Thomas Röper is sanctioned):

    https://translate.yandex.com/en/translate

    Trump has reached the goal that the United States dominate the global LNG market

    The Iran war the United States is not good, but Trump has reached an important a goal. After the elimination of important LNG in Qatar, the United States will dominate in the coming years, the global LNG market and an unprecedented level of pressure and influence on the economies of other countries are able to exercise.
    https://anti-spiegel.ru/2026/trump-hat-das-ziel-erreicht-dass-die-usa-den-weltweiten-lng-markt-dominieren/

  36. Ann

    Saudi Arabia urging US to ramp up Iran attacks, intelligence source confirms

    Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman is said to view US-Israeli war as ‘historic opportunity’ to remake Middle East

    https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/mar/27/saudi-arabia-us-iran-attacks-mohammed-bin-salman

    Thai ship hit in Hormuz runs aground off Iran’s Qeshm Island, Iran’s Tasnim says

    https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/thai-ship-hit-hormuz-runs-aground-off-irans-qeshm-island-irans-tasnim-says-2026-03-26/

    The war in Iran sparks a global fertilizer shortage and threatens food prices

    https://apnews.com/article/iran-war-fertilizer-exports-farming-3b7c92d58dba0817c3aa8f1db47464b7

    Gulf states tell US ending the war is not enough, Iran’s capabilities must be degraded

    https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/gulf-states-tell-us-ending-war-is-not-enough-irans-capabilities-must-be-degraded-2026-03-27/

    India clears military purchases worth $25 billion to buy aircraft, Russian S-400 missile systems

    https://www.reuters.com/world/china/india-clears-military-purchase-proposals-worth-25-billion-2026-03-27/

  37. Ann

    ‘Unusual’: Two Chinese vessels abort bid to pass Strait of Hormuz despite Iran’s assurances of safe passage

    https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/world/middle-east/unusual-two-chinese-vessels-abort-bid-to-pass-strait-of-hormuz-despite-irans-assurances-of-safe-passage/amp_articleshow/129850190.cms

    G7 foreign ministers demand an end to attacks on civilians in Iran war

    https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/g7-foreign-ministers-demand-an-end-attacks-civilians-iran-war-2026-03-27/

  39. XXYY

    The Resistance has proved that a technologically bloated military becomes uniquely fragile when its operational survival depends on complex systems it can neither afford nor replace under the pressure of a sustained, high-intensity defense. X thread by Thomas Keith.

    Though we all rightly hate war, wars do teach us certain valuable and fundamental truths: the value of life, the importance of humane societal goals, the astonishing ruthlessness of societal leaders, and also (weirdly) many engineering realities that tend to be forgotten every generation or so.

    One thing we are (re)learning in spades in the Ukraine and Persian Gulf wars is the importance of simplicity. Simplicity in technical design, and simplicity in how a society is arranged and organized. A simple system pays rich dividends as it results in something that is understandable, predictable, easy to maintain, and easy to fix.

    Western societies have unfortunately come to embrace the opposite of this doctrine, with the results we have been seeing in the last eight decades or so.

    1. hereweare

      I don’t find the ruthlessness of societal leaders at all astonishing. I’ve often witnessed leaders of minor organisations skirting and skimping health and safety, ‘restructuring’, providing defective goods or services, and so on in order to keep things going. And whereas they usually live in the communities affected (or potentially affected), albeit sometimes in a bigger house or more expensive part of town, societal leaders typically live well apart from those they lead.

    2. boshko

      but if they didn’t endlessly restructure and reorganize into endlessly more complex, convoluted, useless and fragile schemes, how would the PMC possibly justify their huge rewards??

  40. XXYY

    Israeli chief of staff warns military will ‘collapse in on itself’ due to soldier shortage. The chief of staff of the Israeli military has warned that it will “collapse in on itself” due to growing demand and a shortfall of manpower as it fights multiple fronts. Aljazeera.

    It’s hysterical to me that the notorious and insatiable land grabber Israel, which seems to want nothing more than to take over all the territory in the Middle East, doesn’t even have the people or military resources to hold on to the microscopic state it has now.

    The Israeli chief of staff is warning that the settler colony’s military needs a “conscription law, a reserve duty law, and a law to extend mandatory service”.

    When you are in a hole, stop digging.

    1. NotTimothyGeithner

      Just for fun:

      -Israel has a Jewish population of about 7.5 million.
      -60% of Jewish women and 70% of Jewish men are ultimately conscripted.
      -before more recent violence projections put Israel/Palestine populations as becoming more non-Jewish than Jewish by approximately 2035.
      -even though Israel has a large youth population, that young population isn’t necessarily Jewish and the Jewish population is heavily represented by Ultra Orthodox types, not the people you need to work a missile defense system.
      -Israeli emergency services number approximately 40k which includes a sizeable volunteer contingent. How long can they go?
      -the Israeli “navy” employes another 30k
      -the defense industry already employs a significant portion (estimated 20-25%) of Israeli manufacturing workforce

      Then you start getting into the population needed to keep Gaza under control. Playing around with what I can find easily, half the population is under 40, but half that population is 14 and under. How does the IDF really organize conscripts versus the regular forces is another issue. Do the conscripts have the training they need for a country now under fire?

      1. alrhundi

        Not to mention how many people have left the country, reducing possible conscriptions. If the country is already barely holding it together economically, how will a massive conscription campaign help that?

        1. ISL

          Col Wilkserson has reported a million left Israel before the Iran war. These would be the young and skilled, mostly (and those with a conscience – even genociders, the quintessential definition of evil – have a soul – its just a sucking darkness).

        2. GF

          Not to mention how many people have left the country…

          The USA can assist Israel by sending back all dual passport holders in order to bolster the military conscription pool. I believe most are of military draft age.

    1. johnnyme

      U.S. and Israel Strike Uranium Concentrate Production Plant in Iran

      The United States and Israel have attacked a uranium concentrate production facility in Iran, the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran reported.

      “The ‘yellowcake’ (uranium concentrate) production plant in Ardakan, Yazd Province, was targeted in an enemy attack. According to preliminary data, the incident did not result in any release of radioactive materials beyond the site,” the agency stated, as quoted by Pars Today.

  42. Pookah Harvey

    It has been pointed out that it would be difficult for a net exporting country’s currency (i.e. Yuan) to become the world trade currency due to lack of availability. If Iran succeeds in forcing 20% of the world’s energy trade to be done in Yuan how would importing countries get the amount of Yuan required?
    I am certainly not an expert in this field but this would seem to push the value of the Yuan up. Would this hurt China’s position in exports? Is this something China would want?

    1. bob

      All good questions. China actively manages their currency lower, to improve exports.

      The $ is bad, except for all the other options….

    2. Samuel Conner

      Iranian annual oil exports is a small fraction of total global trade. I think it would not be difficult to develop mechanisms for yuan payment of Iranian oil purchases, and the existence of this payment channel, not controlled by US, would be very useful to Iran and to other nations under pressure of sanctions.

      1. Yves Smith Post author

        The US already removed the sanctions on Iranian oil.

        The issue is that Iran wants to use the yuan to collect tolls on Strait of Hormuz traffic.

    3. OnceWere

      If the Chinese don’t offer something equivalent to Treasury Bills to foreigners, allowing them to earn interest on RMB that they hold for the long-term, then they’re hardly an appealing asset to hold in reserve which would limit the demand for Chinese currency. Oil purchasers would be buying RMB and making the trade in that currency simply to avoid dealing with the American banking system. As long as a certain amount of Chinese currency liquidity is provided and it recirculates without anyone able to hoard (i.e. accumulate reserves) then I don’t see any reason that a system couldn’t be developed that finances the trade without at the same time sending the value of the yuan to the moon.

  43. Ben Panga

    Alastair Crooke is in really fine form w/Danny Davis right now.

    He is always good, but this may be the best I’ve ever heard him.

    So much detail and I’m only halfway through.

    Nuggets:

    Iraq is massing to join on the Iranian side and potentially invade Kuwait.

    A bunch of history I didn’t know about the genesis of the Syria war.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VzfqtjAIkJA

    1. lampoon

      To me, the most worrying thing he said (among many others) was how Israel is threatening the nuclear option against Iran to put pressure on Trump to put “boots on the ground” to effect regime change/collapse. The nuclear option includes both direct attacks on Iran’s nuclear power plants (Russia just evacuated all its personnel from the nuclear power plant it co-manages with Iran) and use of tactical nuclear weapons. Israel is so desperate for regime collapse in Iran that it will stop at nothing to achieve it.

    2. Carolinian

      Although I think I now know every detail of his dining room.

      I watch for the insider detail although sometimes he just repeats talking points from oh say here. In this war it’s very hard to find out what’s going on. The other day Davis showed a pic of the Gerald Ford with a missile hole in the stern. True?

    3. KD

      Wouldn’t it be a fitting end to this era to see the US pushed out of Iraq and an Iraq (allied with Iran) take Kuwait? Forty-six years of ME wars for absolutely nothing. (I suppose the US did replace Assad with a good old-fashioned head-chopper.)

      1. vidimi

        I can’t imagine there would be any serious discussions about those by email. maybe something about charlie kirk? like an acknowledgement that Tyler Robinson coudn’t have done it

        1. Late Introvert

          I do think it’s interesting how the FBI continues to get ridiculed by association. Couldn’t happen to a nicer group. Didn’t they have rogue members at one time? Where are they now? /s

  45. Jason Boxman

    Been kinda pondering how much stuff I would even stock up on; if it gets really bad, someone’s gonna just kill me for my stuff. It’s nice to have some extra because “stuff happens”, but if this becomes a particularly long term global depression, I can’t stock that much stuff and someone’s gonna take it from me anyway. If we’re having Soviet level empty shelves, how long until the violence starts?

    I mean at that point, might as well make sure you’re stocked upon first aid stuff, too, batteries, working bicycle if that’s viable in your area, potable water filtration tablets or system, whatever. I’m not really familiar with all the survival gear things.

    This timeline is pretty lit.

    1. Louis Fyne

      >>> how much stuff I would even stock up on;

      this is unique to each person and their circumstances. one shouldn’t just buy double of everything, that’s dumb.

      1. things you will need irrespective and will eventually use if peace breaks out tomorrow; 2. the widget stores long-term or indefinitely; 3. it’s value-dense (for you/your family/your business/job).

      For me, for the same $30, I’d rather buy a jug of my favorite engine oil than a pile of dried beans.

  46. caeruleus

    Local anecdata re: fuel prices in the northeast US.
    Heating oil has popped over a dollar a gallon since the war started.
    The same thing happened in 2022 when Russia invaded Ukraine.
    Even in my naivete about the local energy market, it was obvious the suppliers up the chain were seizing an opportunity (excuse) to gouge.
    In the wake of that, we got a new enviro friendly and efficient wood stove. Got a bio energy tax credit on it.
    Even after buying firewood, we’re still saving hundreds annually on heat by using less fuel oil.
    Granted we’re going into summer now so the effects are muted, but it makes one wonder what those prices will be come fall, when folks need to fill their tanks more often.

    1. ChrisFromGA

      Lots of cold nights in the NE until late May. And the weather pattern is cooler than normal.

      Hopefully the tanks are full enough to make it to May.

      1. chris

        Yep… with fuel oil being a minimum of 5.50$/gallon. No sign of it becoming cheaper when we exit the heating season either.

  47. elkern

    Some here (Polar Sci? Ben Panga?) have suggested that US Marines/SOF could be used to take Abu Musa and other islands just inside the Straits, and that seems plausible to me.

    Such a plan would be consistent with yesterday’s statement(s?) from the UAE, where it sounds like they’re trying to talk themselves into actively joining the fight. UAE has historical claims on those islands, and presumably would love to grab them (back?) from Iran. They can’t do it on their own, but Uncle Sugar can…

    Those islands are inside the straits, so we’d have to take them by air (I don’t think the USN will risk floating a whole MEU through the Straits). Maintaining an effective air cap over those islands would be a lot easier than for Kharg Island; Abu Musa is about 25 miles from UAE, whereas Kharg is nearly 100 miles from Kuwait. Conversely, Kharg is economically important to Iran, where Abu Musa and the Tunb’s are minor strategic outposts, and probably minor economic drains (some fishing, mostly barracks). Their major economic value can only be the *possibility* of finding new offshore oil/gas fields nearby.

    So, Iran might not waste too many men, drones, etc to keep Abu Musa & the Tunb’s – though they’d probably use a lot of drones against the logistics tail that any US occupying force would require.

    Note: there’s another Iranian island – Sirri Island – about 20 miles west of Abu Musa which could be a target. It has active gas/oil infrastructure, so Iran might work harder to defend it. It’s equidistant from mainland Iran and UAE, so it’s a more plausible target than Kharg, though a little riskier than Abu Musa. Seems a nice bauble for Trump to crow about (“we’ve got their oil”).

    Bonus: if the US takes – and holds – any of those islands, they would make great bargaining chips for whatever “deal” eventually ends this mess.

    1. JonnyJames

      From what I recall, Alastair Crooke, Stas Krapivnik, Col. MacGregor, Scott Ritter have all said that the US taking any islands in the region would result in heavy casualties. Once any of these islands are taken, how could US forces maintain the occupation? How long would these islands be occupied?

      Rubio just said that no ground troops would be used. Of course, the incoherent, contradictory and irrational statements of the US regime cannot be believed.

    2. JohnH

      How does taking a few islands help open the Strait, most of which is within artillery range of the Iranian mainland?

      Some bargaining chip…more of a publicity stunt.

      1. elkern

        Taking any of those islands wouldn’t really help open the Strait (and I wasn’t implying any such thing).

        And yes, the ‘bargaining chip’ options would mostly be PR (again, giving Trump a bauble to brag about).

    1. Pat

      NC has no rice bowls to protect. Meanwhile the NY Times has spent most of the last two decades deep in denial of how badly our military is being run, how costly our foreign interventionism for corporate profits is, and the sweeping disaster of modern American business practice, aka neoliberalism. Not to mention ignoring or outright cheerleading Israeli terrorism. Of course they are going to deny what should have been obvious regarding this epically disastrous folly. The only surprise is that they got there before it was a flashing neon sign, they are still managing to deny our other epic failure – that Ukraine is in pieces and not only will there be no regime change in Russia, the country is stronger and more stable than we are at the moment.

  49. Troy

    Regarding the Simplicus article:

    > As we have seen, the USS Gerald R Ford has flunked out of the Middle East, US bases are in ruins or deserted, and US strategic air defense radar installations have gone up in smoke. As others have noted, no adversary in history can be said to have achieved such an effect against the US—except maybe the Japanese at Pearl Harbor.

    Maȟpíya Lúta (or Red Cloud) and the Lakȟóta also drove the US Army out of their bases back before settlers eventually overwhelmed Lakȟóta lands a couple generations later. And it was much the same strategy then as now: destroy the bases and supply lines.

    The Lakȟóta had two major strategies: draw the army out of their fortifications through raids and hit-and-run tactics and lead overaggressive groups of soldiers into ambush. The Lakȟóta would also fire a few bullets at the bases at night, which caused the panicking soldiers to waste ammunition, allowing for Lakȟóta to attack the bases without the threat of being shot the next day.

    1. JohnH

      I was thinking of the stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance.

      They don’t necessarily appear in linear order, and it seems that Trump vacillates between denial and bargaining.

      With the S&P 500 fewer than 100 points from a correction, we may see more anger and depression.

      What concerns me is that Christian Zionists may see Easter as a great time for the Rapture. Who knows what they’re whispering in Trump’s ear (Bomb, bomb, bomb Iran?) If that were to happen, the rest of us could have the earth to ourselves and have a freer hand to deal with the remaining Zionists as we pick up the pieces.

    2. hk

      NB: the ref is to the Zionist slogan, from the Nile to the Euphrates, as where the Greater Israel ought to be.

  51. Socal Rhino

    Iran’s foreign minister today noted USISR has hit two steel factories, a power plant, a nuclear plant and other civilian infrastructure. He said this contradicts Trump’s extended deadline and that Iran will exact a HEAVY (emphasis his) price for ISR crimes.

    1. Jason Boxman

      BREAKING: Coordinated strikes have hit all three of Iran’s largest steel plants simultaneously – Mobarakeh, Esfahan, and Khuzestan – the backbone of the country’s non-oil economy.

      Together they produce roughly 70% of Iran’s steel output. Iron and steel is Iran’s second-largest export category at $6.48 billion, its primary hard-currency lifeline outside of oil.

      Mobarakeh makes the flat steel used in cars and pipelines. Esfahan produces structural beams and railway rails. Khuzestan supplies the raw slabs that feed factories nationwide.

      Steel became Iran’s top non-oil export precisely as a sanction hedge as it is cheap to produce using local ore and natural gas, and a critical source of foreign currency when oil revenues were blocked.

      Hitting all three at once targets critical industrial capacity and the economic architecture Iran spent decades building to survive Western pressure.

      Drop Site on Twitter

      If true, you can only imagine the Iranian response to this.

  52. jrkrideau

    I don’t think the USN will risk floating a whole MEU through the Straits

    No I don’t think so either. The entire MEU would be destroyed. The navel (ship) part probably in much less than an hour. The Strait is a deathtrap for enemy vessels.

  54. Sunlight Disinfects

    Presumably, the Anglo-Zionist Empire will go to great lengths to avoid a strategic defeat.

    If Syria, Libya, Ukraine, and Gaza are guides, faith that Trump will heed “Mr. Market” is likely to be misplaced.

    It has been argued that:

    ● nukes wouldn’t be effective and Russia has warned against their use;

    ● a direct invasion is very risky.

    So what are the realistic options (as the clock ticks down on munitions and global recession)?

    ● invasion from third countries?

    ● starving the population?

    ● biological weapons?

    1. KD

      Realistic option is something like this:

      1.) Israel legally acknowledges its boundaries based on the 1947 UN resolution.
      2.) Palestine gets independent state.
      3.) Israel ends occupation.
      4.) US out of ME.
      5.) Iran gets reparations/Hormuz and end of sanctions.
      6.) Credible security guarantees to Iran and Israel.
      7.) Bibi & Co. get expense paid vacation to the Hague.
      8.) Return to JCPOA framework on Iran nukes.

      1. Sunlight Disinfects

        Your list seems to be that Iran gets everything it wants.

        USA will fight to ensure that:

        ● Iran cannot have sole control of the Strait;
        ● USA is not completely thrown out of the Gulf;
        ● Israel keeps all illegal gains: Gaza; WB settlements; Golan Heights; Lebanese territory;
        ● Bibi never sees the inside of any jail cell;

        If there is to be a peace agreement, I think it would be more like this:

        ● UN controls the Strait;
        ● Iran gets a toll from tanker traffic (collected by UN) for xx years to pay reparations;
        ● US exits bases in Kuwait, Bahraine, and Qatar.
        ● Iran returns to JCPOA.

        Otherwise, they fight it out. And, if they fight it out, the possibility that USA-Israel resort to WMD is very real, I think.

        1. Yves Smith Post author

          Do you not look out the window!?!?! The US cannot even ensure the safety of its bases in the Middle East. It cannot ensure the safety of Israel. It had been thrown out of Iraq. Its can’t man the bases.

          As as the post showed, the US is within weeks of having critical categories of weapons at catastrophically low level.

          The UN can’t control anything. To paraphrase Stalin, how many divisions do they have?

          The end game is either a complete defeat of the US or a nuclear war. You need to wrap your mind around that.

          1. Sunlight Disinfects

            Once again, I agree with you.

            I think we are close to the end game and I’m very worried because I don’t expect an Empire will accept a loss to a country that they don’t perceive as a peer. That means nukes or some other WMD.

            The example terms I gave are tentative and sketchy. Each side would have to give something if escalation is to be avoided. I don’t actually see much possibility for that.

      2. Another Bad Poster

        OK, I hate to be the one to say it, but 1947 borders will absolutely, never, ever, ever be accepted by Israel. It would literally be an existential risk, with Israel not being a single contiguous entity and basically being defenseless under fire from high ground more or less everywhere in the country. On top of that, it would have no reliable access to oil and gas, and its desalination plants could basically be hit at will.

        You may like Israel, you may hate Israel, you may be indifferent to Israel, and you may think that such a situation would be divine (or even mundane) justice, but this is simply a no-go under all circumstances. Israel would literally rather fight itself to outright destruction than to settle upon such a scenario.

          1. Another Bad Poster

            Maybe–let’s see what Iran demands in this respect and how strongly the rest of the world hypocritically argues against its own UN resolutions.

            Just for what it is worth, though, the truth is that even the 1967 borders would likely produce the same result (Israel = kaput), just not as quickly or as obviously.

      3. hk

        6) would probably require some security guarantee for Saudi Arabia and Oman, plus a settlement over the status of Iraq, UAE, Qatar, Bahrain, Lebanon, and Syria, at minimum, and possibly Azerbaijan and Armenia also. In other words, it’ll be hugely complicated. The diplomacy alone will take years to sort out, even if people were serious, and half the people involved are clowns or worse.

  55. Jason Boxman

    Did my first phase grocery run, finally started panic buying doubles of everything. Cleaned up cabinets for more storage space. It’s 79 degrees upstairs already at the end of March. This seems unlikely to be a good year. I hope it doesn’t top last year in horror.

    1. thistlebreath

      Bought a year’s worth of engine oil and filters today. 5 gal jugs of 15-40 still on discount. Honest. Go figure.

      We are doubling our garden footprint. Thanks to horses and chickens, don’t use much ammonium nitrate.

      1. Late Introvert

        We more than doubled our garden space this year. We paid our neighbor half the cost of cutting down a junk tree that blocked our southern exposure. Also bigger garden plot at the city gardens.

        Good idea on the motor oil, but what about next year?

  56. Ann

    Musk joined Trump and Modi call on Iran, says New York Times

    https://www.reuters.com/world/musk-joined-trump-modi-call-iran-says-new-york-times-2026-03-27/

    wait, what? Musk?

    APT Iran hackers steal over 375TB of data from Lockheed Martin

    https://www.cybersecurity-insiders.com/apt-iran-hackers-steal-over-375tb-of-data-from-lockheed-martine/

    US expects Iran operation to end in ‘weeks, not months’, says Marco Rubio

    https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/mar/27/us-expects-iran-operation-to-end-in-weeks-not-months-says-marco-rubio

    1. The Rev Kev

      Musk has no business being in on that call. Obviously it should have been one of the Ellisons. :)

      1. Jabura Basadai

        got whiplash on that one RK – feint with a left than an overhand right –
        thankyou –

  58. nyleta

    The US has not been run out of Iraq, the High Cooperation council was out today toeing the US line, the Green Zone is still running things although Iraqi resistance groups are running wild at the moment. Iran is still holding back the Houthi to keep Saudi Arabia in line, but Kuwait and Bahrain are all in on the war, US marines were attacked in Kuwait today after trying something.

    There is still denial about the full effects from what has already happened never mind what still could happen. Many in the Global South will be going back to the Sixties, a lot of modernity has already been lost.
    There is a post by Veron Wickramasinghe on Twitter about the size of the world wide effort it took in good times to build the Qatar LNG plants and how under these conditions rebuilding will be near impossible.

    Art Berman is another warning of the size of the economic dislocation already baked in. This weekend will probably be used to make large attacks despite Mr Trump saying not. The response from Iran will take us further down the road of no return. This is not something your friendly central bank will be able to paper over.

  59. HH

    I think U.S. troops are going to be introduced to prevent the fragile gulf state kingdoms from falling. Not even Hegseth is crazy enough to try a foray against islands in the gulf. With Iran having missile superiority, it will be hard to insert and supply U.S. forces. This looks like another lost war for the U.S.

    1. alrhundi

      Land invasion could be a bluff for buildup to protect Kuwait. Some comments here have pointed out invasion of Kuwait by Iran and Iraq is a possibility

      1. KD

        I think you are radically underestimating how stupid, reckless, and thoughtless the highest level of decision-making is on the part of the Americans. The Americans conceive that they are the only party that acts, thus the shock that Iran would close the Straights. If Iraq invades Kuwait, that will be a total shock as well. Its actually pretty terrifying: Lindsey Graham represents the highest level of American intellect and strategy in the upper reaches of the Government, and he says taking Kharg Island will bring Iran to their knees.

    1. Another Bad Poster

      1. Iran can rebuild its steel plants
      2. Israel cannot rebuilt its Intel fab plant should Iran choose to retaliate in this way.

      Not sure what it says about Israel being smart enough to control the US and yet stupid enough to demolish itself.

  61. Ann

    Activist quits UN positions, says it’s ready for ‘nuclear weapon use’ scenario, claims ‘lobby protecting’ US, Israel

    https://www.hindustantimes.com/world-news/activist-quits-un-positions-says-it-is-ready-for-nuclear-weapon-use-scenario-claims-lobby-protecting-us-israel-101774611564522.html

    UN moves to create mechanism to safeguard Hormuz trade in face of Iran war

    https://www.reuters.com/world/un-moves-create-mechanism-safeguard-hormuz-trade-face-iran-war-2026-03-27/

    1. Tom Stone

      Hegseth is openly racist and misogynistic, the kind of man that gives assholes a bad name.

  64. hamstak

    [Tasnim] Iran Announces Targeting Tactical Vessels, Killing Large Number of American Terrorists

    …on Friday that “In the continuation of the 84th wave of Operation True Promise 4, the IRGC Navy carried out precise multiple attacks against the Zionist-American terrorists in the port of Al-Shuwaikh and also the beaches and port of Dubai…using ballistic missiles and Qadr 380 cruise missiles, 6 American landing craft utility (LCU) were hit in the port of Al-Shuwaikh,” the statement said, adding that based on the field reports, 3 of these combat ships sank after being hit and the rest are burning.

      1. Ex-PFC Chuck

        Yes, since 19631948. Fixed it for ya.

        Report by the Policy Planning Staff – February 24, 1948.

        ” . . we have about 50% of the world’s wealth but only 6.3% of its population. This disparity is particularly great as between ourselves and the peoples of Asia. In this situation, we cannot fail to be the object of envy and resentment. Our real task in the coming period is to devise a pattern of relationships which will permit us to maintain this position of disparity without positive detriment to our national security. To do so, we will have to dispense with all sentimentality and day-dreaming; and our attention will have to be concentrated everywhere on our immediate national objectives. We need not deceive ourselves that we can afford today the luxury of altruism and world-benefaction.”

  68. ISL

    I can read for 10 seconds before it wants money, but it says that the US MICC has 4-5 weeks of supply of rare earths. Given how few munitions the US can make per month, that implies that not only is the cupboard bare, but the farm is dried out – there is NO replenishment for perhaps years. If anyone else can get access and confirm this interpretation, this is very important.

    https://www.scmp.com/news/china/diplomacy/article/3346123/could-chinas-rare-earth-supplies-dictate-how-long-us-strikes-iran-go

    1. nyleta

      No real news about gun cotton but the main ingredients are specialised cellulose, sulphuric acid and nitric acid. Cant see nitric acid being exported if ammonium nitrates are halted.

      Pretty impossible for anyone except the US, Russia and China to have a multi year ground war with mega artillery action.

      1. The Rev Kev

        Sulphur is being blocked coming through the Gulf so sulphuric acid is going to be in short supply as well.

  69. Ann

    Supposedly from al Jazeera, but I can’t find a link:

    BREAKING: Qatar withdraws from the war. ​”Iran has been here for thousands of years. No one is going anywhere. Total destruction is not an option.” ​”We will live side by side. We will be neighbors and find ways to coexist.”

    Qatar just canceled LNG contracts, withdrew from the war, and Brent crude is at $114. Every oil crisis since 1973 has followed the same pattern.

    2. Ben Panga

      Hi Ann,

      This is slop unfortunately; the headline is made up.

      At the bottom of the tweet (from your comment just below) you’ll notice “from ClashReport” who was the original poster. Click on that for the original tweet.

      Clash Report is a legitimate source that posts clips from media. (Worth a follow!)

      Original tweet dated 25th March. https://x.com/clashreport/status/2036819686617165882

      Listening to the video, we see that the recycled tweet contains made up shit. The headline is false but the quoted words are correct.

      For example, there’s nothing at all about “Qatar withdrawing from the war”. . This is just shit made up for engagement by the re-poster.

      The rest is just standard stuff the Qataris keep saying in the hope that the war stops.

      (I’ll add that Qatar “withdrawing from the war” is kinda nonsensical as it isn’t a direct party anyway)

      You’ll also notice the original Clash Report tweet has nothing about Qatar withdrawing from the war.

      So this is an example of one way that slop works: take an innocuous quote from days ago, add a super dramatic headline that doesn’t stand up, add sirens and “breaking” at the top and hit post. Then others repost it on social media without actually listening to the audio. It’s so dramatic, ppl just repost it

      —-

      I didn’t bother to search for the original Al Jazeera on this as I trust ClashReport.

      —

      Thanks for all your contributions here btw, there’s always stuff you post that’s new to me :)

      1. Ann

        Thanks, Ben

        I also went to Al Jazeera but couldn’t find anything there. That should have been my clue.

        I see how that happened, now. Sorry, I’ll be more careful from now on.

      2. Antagonist

        I’m surprised I haven’t been rickrolled[1] yet, considering all the AI slop and attention seeking clickbait in regards to the current war.

        Here is an example. Hi-resolution footage of Iranian hypersonic missiles strike Dimona, smuggled out of Israeli censors! I rickrolled myself to write this comment, and somehow in the year 2026, I finally noticed the two attractive female dancers in the music video. But I certainly don’t know anything. A stunningly attractive woman could stand naked right in front of me and say, “Antagonist, I want you to [family blog] me,” and I would think, “is that sarcasm in her voice?”

        [1]: Holy cow! Rickroll is in the dictionary.

  72. Tom Stone

    Does anyone think Trump will visit the wounded American troops?
    He surrounds himself with pretty people and I think a glimpse of reality would be more than he could handle.
    I grew up visiting relatives and later neighbors in VA hospitals, the first time I went my Mother said “You must not flinch”.
    I didn’t, but it wasn’t easy.

  74. Ann

    Rubio: Iran May Own The Strait Now, And That’s a Huge Bummer

    Secretary of State Marco Rubio today made some extraordinary comments after briefing G7 leaders about the progress — albeit difficult to call it that — in the U.S.’s Iran War. He seemed to say that the U.S. won’t be able to reestablish freedom of transit through the Strait of Hormuz even as a final war objective, let along doing so in the short term by force or threat. He said he told the G7ers that one of the post-war challenges will be Iran setting up a tolling system for passage through the Strait. In other words, Iran will be so empowered after the war that it will be able to assert or seriously contest sovereignty over the Strait.

    https://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/rubio-iran-own-the-strait-now-and-thats-a-huge-bummer

    1. Another Bad Poster

      If true, this is actually fantastic news.

      It means that the US, recognizing its limitations, may be smart enough to back down in abject humiliation instead of being stupid enough to only back down after outright destruction.

    2. Sibiriak

      Thanks Ann! This could be very important.

      The Hill:

      Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Friday warned European allies that Iran could set up a “tolling system” in the Strait of Hormuz after the U.S.-Israeli conflict with Iran ends.

      Rubio raised this possibility to reporters after he met with foreign ministers of the Group of Seven nations during his trip to Cernay-la-Ville, France.

      “I did describe to our allies, however, that immediately after this thing ends, and we’re done with our objectives, the immediate challenge we’re going to face is an Iran that may decide that they want to set up a tolling system in the Strait of Hormuz ,” he said. “Not only is this illegal, it’s unacceptable, it’s dangerous for the world. And it’s important that the world have a plan to confront it.”

      He added that the U.S. “is prepared to be a part of that plan” but not lead it, and that allies had a lot of “buy-in to that concept” if Iran carries out such a plan.

      “But these countries have a lot at stake, not just the G7 countries, but countries in Asia and all over the world have a lot at stake and should contribute greatly to that effort,” he continued,” to ensure that neither the Strait of Hormuz or, frankly, any international waterways should ever be something that’s controlled or tolled by a nation-state or by a terroristic government like the one that exists in Iran today and that clerical, radical clerical regime.”

      Rubio said the conflict with Iran will not be “prolonged” and called the U.S.’s objectives of destroying Iran’s missile capacity, navy and air force along with any nuclear capability “without any ground troops. ” [emphasis added]

  75. Ann

    Markets plunge and U.S. oil hits $100 as Trump’s ability to reassure Wall Street hits its limit
    If this new reality sets in, it would stand in contrast to President Donald Trump’s ability to move markets throughout his first term and into his second.

    https://www.nbcnews.com/business/markets/markets-plunge-oil-iran-war-trump-rcna265454

    House Democrat says Trump ‘begging’ China to help with Iran: ‘We are losing’

    https://thehill.com/homenews/house/5802656-moulton-trump-iran-conflict/

  77. Ben Panga

    Some (delusional) Israeli inside baseball stuff:

    Iran’s Dangerous Perception of Victory (Nadav Eyal Substack)

    [There’s more about possible outcomes & how Israeli citizens are under pressure, but this part stands out, highlighting the Israeli push to escalate]

    Security officials in Israel say the main problem lies in Iran’s sense of victory. Iran is issuing international statements dripping with arrogance — demanding the removal of all American bases from the region, and the collection of tolls by Iran in the Strait of Hormuz from every oil tanker (this would be an extraordinary strategic shift, one that would make Iran an official regional power).

    This is not posturing, I am told — the Iranians truly believe they are winning. “With this mindset,” a senior source told me,

    “It will be impossible to hold real negotiations. Because at the first crisis, they will get up and leave the room. Right now, it’s hard to see how negotiations will succeed — with an emphasis on ‘right now.’ It may be necessary to go through another military escalation.”

    One security source put it this way: part of the problem with Iran’s leadership right now is that it is so detached from reality — hiding and fearing for its survival — that it does not fully grasp the extent of the damage inside Iran. As a result, it is neither sufficiently incentivized to move toward a meaningful agreement.

    What fuels Iran’s sense of victory is the energy market and the blockage of Hormuz. In the global shipping world, it is reported that the Revolutionary Guards are collecting about $2 million in protection money for every tanker crossing the strait (that is not from Europe, the U.S., or linked to Israel). I was told by energy experts that the money is transferred in cryptocurrency.

    Even Iran’s “gesture” to the U.S. — apparently allowing some tankers to pass — is seen by the Iranians as recognition of their new status running the strait. It is not a kind gesture in their eyes, but a dominant one — proof of superiority.

    “Their feeling is that the strategy of setting the Middle East on fire has worked well. One must recognize that this is their perception, and do something more significant in the war — even at a heavy cost. There is no choice. Otherwise Iran will retain nuclear capabilities, and the war will have been pointless,” an Israeli official told me.

    Needless to say, these are striking quotes, and they come from highly placed officials. They convey a sense of frustration – but not by the actual results of the military campaign.

    Doing “something more significant,” is meant to “call Iran’s bluff,” as one senior official put it, “and have a go at energy. Either way — if [the Americans] try to seize Kharg or the strait — the Iranians will attack energy facilities in the region.”

    The Iranians “100% need to understand that everything is on the table, including the destruction of their energy sector. Right now they think they’ve cracked the system, but they must understand they have more to lose. Otherwise they will not come to negotiations ready for compromise.”

    ——

    1. Acacia

      Pretty strange to hear Israelis talk about “negotiations”, though I guess this sort of talk is suitable pabulum for the MSM.

  78. Ben Panga

    A war of regression: how Trump bombed the US into a worse position with Iran (Guardian)

    Scathing summary from G’s main foreign affairs writer. Nothing new to NC readers, but good to see it in the MSM.

    Sample quote:

    Mairav Zonszein, a senior analyst on Israel at the International Crisis Group, says: “It is becoming painfully clear that not only the United States and Israel are losing this war, but that this is one of the biggest strategic failures of the west, with the most significant consequences for regional geopolitics and the global economy since world war two.” She said the US was nowhere near meeting its original strategic goals and had only created new problems.

  79. Ben Panga

    After the statement yesterday that their “fingers were on the trigger“, it seems the Houthis have entered the war. Only source I see so far is Israeli.

    Joining war, Yemen’s Houthis launch ballistic missile attack on southern Israel (Times of Israel)

    Sirens sound in Beersheba and surrounding towns in southern Israel due to a ballistic missile attack from Yemen.

    It marks the first attack by the Iran-backed Houthis on Israel in the current war.

    The military says it identified a missile launch from Yemen and is working to intercept the threat.

  80. Ben Panga

    Neocon brain is melting. This man has the really strong hopium.

    Trump’s Iran Strategy Is Chaotic (WSJ editorial board dude, archived)

    Perhaps this would be a good time to remember that the real endgame lies with the Iranian people.

    The particular war Donald Trump and the Israelis launched, in the particular way they launched it, is hardly the only answer. The goal: to prevent a nuclear Iran lording it over the Middle East and the world’s oil supply.
    The current approach also seems, from the U.S. side, overly conditioned by Mr. Trump’s business-rationalist calculation that an Iranian leader might be found, as in Venezuela, who would recognize the lure of an offer he can’t refuse.
    Mr. Trump and other presidents have needed to do something about Iran. They have used varying means of kicking the can down the road to what everyone knows is the only real solution, the natural death of an Iranian regime hated by its own people even more than it’s hated by its neighbors.
    Mr. Trump’s path today isn’t the only path; it’s not even an actual path given Mr. Trump’s changeableness and improvisational flexibility. It’s more like throwing the game board up in the air to see how it might come down. (For the record, I’m also hoping the U.S. gets lucky.) Meanwhile, Iran’s neighbors are rich with oil. They share a common interest with Israel, which in turn is supplied with stealth capabilities from the U.S. that have allowed Iran, in an insufficiently noticed aspect of the current war, to be completely denuded of air defenses.
    Even if Iran restores its defenses somewhat, its neighbors can reach into their small-change pockets and stock up with Ukrainian-built drones and cruise missiles to put Iran’s oil industry at risk. The Israelis and Americans can be relied on for cameo appearances at least, kinetic or otherwise, to curtail Iran’s nuclear ambitions.
    Deterrence not only is possible, it’s likely to be a temporary posture, given the Iranian regime’s terminal unpopularity with its own people.
    This column supported Mr. Trump’s June strikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities and only lamented the same couldn’t be visited on North Korea. The problem with the current campaign, which I’ve already pointed out and some have now turned into a rigid axiom: Mr. Trump prompted a response that under other circumstances wouldn’t have served Iran’s interests, namely blocking the Strait of Hormuz.
    The U.S. military surely has the means to correct the situation but it would be a misallocation of resources, not to mention more escalation than Mr. Trump is likely game for. Also more escalation than his domestic political leash might allow: Republican congressmen like their jobs. When saving their jobs means abandoning Mr. Trump, they will.
    Those who had high hopes for the war now discover the likelihood of a negotiated ending in which Iran retains implicit veto over the strait. This is perhaps not the end of the world [BP:lololol] . Neighboring countries now treated as nonplayer characters can, in fact, act in countless ways to disarm this threat. Their options include military countermeasures as well as building pipelines to bypass the gulf. A million substitutions will also be set in motion in the larger global economy in response to the rising risk premium on Persian Gulf oil.
    Then comes the real complication afforded by Mr. Trump’s likely gray-zone ending to the war: What happens when the regime we just struck cease-fire terms with returns to massacring its own people in the weeks or months ahead?
    Experts say the ayatollahs learned from China’s Tiananmen crackdown: Be unstinting in your violence against dissenters. If so, they didn’t learn well enough. China was already a decade into an opening and liberalization that greatly benefited its people, which allowed more space for brutal repression. The Tiananmen uprising itself was of the rising-expectations sort. A burgeoning class wanted to experience political freedom along with economic and cultural freedom. The direction of change was positive. China’s government was capable of solving problems as well as creating them. The Iranian regime only impoverishes its people with its incompetence. Its capital city Tehran is in the process of dying because of a grotesquely mismanaged water supply.
    The opportunities for deterrence by Iran’s neighbors, with the U.S. acting as helper, remain wide and promising. Iran is not North Korea. Look at the region, look at the terrain, look at the travel patterns and information consumption of the Iranian people. While I normally avoid categorical statements, the Islamic regime is surely doomed. The question is whether U.S. and Israeli actions will end up extending or shortening its lease on life.

  82. Ben Panga

    Per Times of Israel

    Thailand has reached an agreement with Iran to allow Thai oil vessels safe passage through the Strait of Hormuz, the Southeast Asian nation’s Prime Minister says.

    “An agreement has been reached to allow Thai oil tankers to transit safely through the Strait of Hormuz,” Thai Prime Minister Anutin Charnvirakul says at a press conference, adding the development would alleviate concerns over fuel imports.

  84. Acacia

    Unwelcome development

    A tropical cyclone disrupted operations at three major Australian LNG plants, which account for approximately 8.4% of global supply. This is another blow to the LNG market.

    In the Australian town of Carnarvon, the sky turned a deep red due to the tropical cyclone. Strong winds kicked up large amounts of dust.

    https://x.com/vick55top/status/2037758972199915901

    And FWIW, Japan gets 38% to 40% of its total LNG imports from Australia.

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