[This Iran war draft post was uploaded hours before normal launch time because scheduled obligations. I will update it when I return, so you can expect a completed version by 8:30 AM EDT at the latest]
Donald Trump is coming apart. He may have finally realized that he has no good options but is reverting to his bad habit of domination and attempting to create new options when he has none, thanks both to his epic miscalculation of Iran’s capabilities and his over-estimation of American military prowess.
First to the state of play. Trump issued two unhinged tweets1 in a short time succession:
Iran’s military command has responded to Trump’s threat, saying it will strike regional energy infrastructure and desalination plants if the U.S. targets Iranian power plants.
— OSINTtechnical (@Osinttechnical) March 22, 2026
As of the time of writing, Tasnim News’ latest article is Source Rejects Reports about Iran’s Evacuation Warning for Doha . There is no story yet on an IRCG statement at Press TV or tweet from an Iranian official source on Twitter. However, even if there is nothing yet in Iran’s English venues, there are enough reports of a strong Iran rejection of Trump’s demand to say it has occurred…..aside from the fact that it would be entirely in character.
Note that this threatened monster jump up the escalation ladder comes shortly after the US was trying to sell the idea that it was well on the way to prying open the Strait of Hormuz. This “degradation” claim was the lead headline in both the BBC and Bloomberg live feeds. From Bloomberg in US Says Iran Threat to Hormuz Degraded After Facility Destroyed:
The US said Iran’s ability to threaten marine traffic on the Strait of Hormuz has been “degraded” after it took out a facility along the Iranian coastline earlier this week.
The US military dropped several 5,000-pound bombs on an underground facility located along Iran’s coastline, according to Admiral Brad Cooper, the head of US Central Command. The facility was used to store equipment, including anti-ship cruise missiles and mobile missile launchers, he said.
“Iran’s ability to threaten freedom of navigation in and around the Strait of Hormuz is degraded as a result and we will not stop pursuing these targets,” Cooper said in a video posted on X. He said the military also destroyed Iranian intelligence support sites and missile radar relays used to monitor ship movements.`
A fine hot take on Trump’s visible derangement and its implications from Daniel Davis:
However, he calls for the use of the 25th Amendment, which is operationally not possible fast enough even if there were the political will, which seems vanishingly unlikely unless Trump’s Cabinet was already considering that move based and waiting for Trump to cross a further America-destroying red line.
The one thing that might arrest Trump is if, contrary to form, he does not act in advance of his self-declared deadline of 7:44 PM EDT on Monday. An epic market meltdown on Monday might check him. If investors are rational, they should run for exits. However, given that Iran has flatly rejected his demand and described their countermeaures, Trump may decide to move before markets open in the US.
A second possibility is that US business leaders will describe the considerable downside to Trump on Sunday, as the Gulf states seem certain to do as well. We said before that Trump could blame a climb-down on Middle East energy nations. Will he do so now?
Trump has an off-ramp to his threat to "obliterate" Iran's power plants. He can say that he's listened to the pleas of Gulf allies, whose energy and desalination infrastructure would be targeted if Trump follows through. I'm sure he'll also receive a briefing on all the damage…
— Aaron Maté (@aaronjmate) March 22, 2026
This lashing out is likely the result of military officials finally getting through to Trump that any of his hoped-for special forces jujitsus are almost certain to result in high-profile disasters, be it trying to take Kharg Island or some small islands near the Strait of Hormuz or attempting to remove Iran’s enriched uranium. And even if any of these stunt were miraculously to succeed, they would not produce what Trump needs most, the opening of the Strait of Hormuz.
However, the financial press is bizarrely playing down the Trump threat to set off events which are sure to end the world economy as we know it. Since the start of the Iran war, big banner headlines been the norm at Bloomberg. Have they been told not to further spook investors? The landing page at 7:45 AM EDT:
Even worse, the Wall Street Journal is affirmatively downplaying the possible massive escalation:2
Admittedly, the Financial Times and BBC have not changed their formatting during the war and both give the Trump escalation pride of place. For instance, at the BBC:
RT identified the Iranian power plants Trump threatened (hat tip The Rev Kev):
Iran’s largest power plant – the gas-powered Damavand plant – is located near Pakdasht, southeast of Tehran. Other major facilities include the Shahid Abbaspour, Karun-3, and Masjed Soleyman hydroelectric dams in Khuzestan province, as well as the Kerman thermal power plant in Kerman province.
Iran’s sole nuclear power plant is in Bushehr on the Persian Gulf coast. The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said earlier this week that a projectile struck a structure about 350 meters from the facility.
Also keep in mind that other kinetic war developments have put the belligerents even more on the back foot. A second, hugely escalatory strike on the Nantaz nuclear plant came up short. Even if this was meant as a warning as opposed to a serious attempt, it’s wildly reckless. From Al Mayadeen in Iran’s Natanz nuclear facility again attacked by US, ‘Israel’:
The Natanz enrichment complex in central Iran was targeted in a renewed US-Israeli attack on Saturday morning, according to Iranian authorities.
The Shahid Ahmadi Roshan nuclear facility at Natanz was struck earlier today, March 21, marking another dangerous attack on a nuclear site in the ongoing US-Israeli war on Iran.
The attack violates international law and obligations, including the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), as well as regulations related to nuclear safety and security.
Following the strike, the country’s National Nuclear Safety System Center carried out technical assessments to evaluate the possibility of radioactive contamination at the site.
Authorities confirmed that no radioactive materials were released, adding that existing safety measures, prior planning, and continuous monitoring systems ensured that no threat is posed to residents in the surrounding areas.
Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova slammed the attack on the Natanz uranium enrichment facility in Iran as a blatant violation of international law.
Iran retaliated promptly. From Middle East Eye:
Iranian state television says a missile strike on Dimona, home to a nuclear facility in southern Israel, was a “response” to an earlier attack on its Natanz nuclear site.
Iran’s atomic energy organisation said the “Natanz enrichment complex was targeted this morning”, adding there was “no leakage of radioactive materials reported”, according to local media.
The Israeli army confirmed “a direct impact of an Iranian missile” on a building in the city that houses a nuclear research facility, AFP reported.
Israeli media report that at least 39 people were injured, although officials have yet to provide a full breakdown of casualties.
Dimona sits near one of the most sensitive locations in Irael: the Shimon Peres Negev Nuclear Research Center, long linked to Israel’s undeclared nuclear weapons programme.
My spooky contact added: “Israel said it didn’t strike Natanz, US did. Iran dropped a half ton hypersonic missile on a shelter containing nuclear scientists from Dimona and they also hit the spent fuel store in Dimona.” This is consistent with an IRGC statement that it targeted “military facilities and security centers in Arad and Dimona”
Additional damage to Israel:
The Iranian Air Force destroyed the Israeli airbase BenAmiBase near BenGurionAirport this morning as part of its 71st attack wave on Israel (RussiaToday/IWN). That "thing" was worth 1.7 billion dollars and was also used for refueling Israeli fighter jets. Now it's also becoming… https://t.co/RPntTjzeKp
— Ignis Rex (@Ignis_Rex) March 21, 2026
Israel may have lost an F-16 over Iran:
IRGC: 3RD Israeli F-16 HIT over central Iran by 'new air defense systems'
IDF: Israeli fighter jet targeted, 'no damage was caused to the aircraft' pic.twitter.com/7pXeJdYU5C
— RT (@RT_com) March 21, 2026
This incident follows Iran damaging a supposedly stealthy F-35 and firing missiles that landed near Diego Garcia, showing its strike range is twice what was previously assumed. After the first version of this post went live, Irrational in comments flagged a report in Middle East Monitor, citing an interview on Aljazeera with a senior Iranian official, that Iran had denied that it shot that missile. Similarly, an informed contact opined:
I don’t believe Iran targeted Diago Garcia. There is no evidence and Iran said they never did it. I think it’s a psyop so European ‘leaders’ can convince their populations that they’re in danger and they’ll have to go to fight Iran.
However, even if the denial is accurate, it will still be hard to put that informational toothpaste back in the tube. My helper told me he had heard about the alleged Iranian shot at Diego Garcia on Thai TV.
Reader Ann pointed out Israel’s chest-thumping response:
Israel threatens a surge in attacks as Iran fires missiles farther than ever
Israel’s defense minister threatened a surge in attacks against Iran on Saturday and Britain condemned Iran for targeting a joint U.K.-U.S. base in the Indian Ocean as the war in the Middle East entered its fourth week.
This tweet provides additional detail on the kinetic state of play. I encourage you to click through and read it in full:
Any remaining perceived red lines are no more. Escalation is spiralling out of control 🚨
In the last 24hrs, nuclear facilities were targeted: #US & #Israel struck #Natanz. Later, the IRGC claimed it targeted “military facilities and security centers in Arad and Dimona”.…
— Martin Kelly (@_MartinKelly_) March 22, 2026
Key points not covered earlier:
According to Tasnim before Trump’s ultimatum, citing Iranian officials, Iran will threaten shipping in the BAM and Red Sea if Kharg’s #oil infrastructure is struck.
A new incident was reported by UKMTO involving an explosion in proximity to a vessel offshore #Sharjah this morning.
In the hours just before 8:00 AM EDT (see the three videos below), there have been more and more short update from various broadcasters, suggesting that the kinetic tempo is picking up.
The first one, from Aljazeera, includes an important discussion that Gulf states take issue with the Iran claim that their US bases are being used for attacks against Iran and thus should not be subject to assault. This may reflect a difference in view of what “used” means The oil barony may believe that only missile launches and bomber takeoffs should count; Iran may take a more expansive view, such as use for ISR, logistics, and housing personnel that probably are being tasked to offensive operations. The presenter made clear that the GCC states are incensed and may join the war in an offensive capacity…as if that would add materially to what is happening already.
WION describes a change in Iran’s missile strategy, to a focus on fewer but more powerful and faster weapons.
Hindustan Times reports more extensively on the damage to Israel from Iran’s latest attacks:
And from Al Mayadeen, Iran’s Aerospace Force declares total missile dominance over ‘Israel’:
Commander of the IRGC Aerospace Force, Brigadier General Majid Mousavi, announced Saturday evening that Iran now asserts missile dominance over the skies of the southern occupied territories.
He said the skies “will remain lit for hours tonight,” adding that new tactics and the launch systems planned for upcoming waves are designed to “strike fear into Israeli and American leaders.”…
Earlier in the day, the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps launched wave 72 of Operation True Promise 4, targeting the north and heart of the occupied Palestinian territories, along with the US Fifth Fleet, using “super-heavy, precision-guided Emad missiles,” and multi-warhead Ghadr missiles.
These operations followed the targeting of an Israeli Air Force squadron over central Iran, the statement noted.
Israel is trying to scapegoat a purported saboteur for its Iron Dome shortcomings:
Speaking of scapegoating, my spooky contact also reported:
US fired a missile at Al Aqsa Mosque
The missile was fired from a US base in Kuwait. It is currently being pummeled by Iran.
US has pulled out of Victoria base in Iraq. Erbil next.
He is not alone in taking that view of the strike near Al Aqsa:
🚨🇮🇱 BREAKING: Iron Dome failed missile “accidentally” lands 400 yards from the Western Wall and Al-Aqsa Mosque.
Do you want me to tell you what I think this is?
They are preparing the world for a big false flag. pic.twitter.com/uAcYYQrWGV
— Jvnior (@Jvnior) March 20, 2026
In a further, disgusting proof of Israeli-and-allies desperation:
Clearly, @ElonMusk and @X are allowing what appears to be a Zionist/Ukrainian group to put a bounty on me. It is even a "paid partnership."
Not a single Western media outlet has shown outrage that X is openly supporting terror to permanently silence me.https://t.co/AfTDxi20Bi https://t.co/JDIVhT3Qfr
— Seyed Mohammad Marandi (@s_m_marandi) March 21, 2026
Marandi is not deterred:
So far, over 20 countries have reached out to Iran to align with its new framework for managing the Strait of Hormuz. If, as previously reported, Iran moves to make the yuan the basis for its transactions, something important is unfolding – a new global equation is taking shape.
— Seyed Mohammad Marandi (@s_m_marandi) March 21, 2026
Independent of Trump now threatening to take action that would destroy what is left of the global economy, a report from Carlyle’s Jeff Currie, A Crude Awakening, may shake investors out of their comparative complacency. We have taken the liberty of embedding it below.3 Currie is extremely well positioned to make this call. Among other things, he was a strategist in Goldman’s storied commodities business.
Currie’s central point: ” We believe the world is more vulnerable to an oil shock today than it was in 1973, not less.” Key points from the summary:
THE PHYSICAL CLOSURE IS WITHOUT PRECEDENT. Polymarket puts the probability that the Strait of Hormuz is still closed on March 31st at 85%. Thirty-one days at net 18.5 million barrels per day (b/d) is 575 million barrels of stopped flows — 1.4 times the entire US Strategic Petroleum Reserve. But this is not just an oil crisis. The strait carries gas, fertilizers, and metals. The system simply cannot accommodate that kind of disruption. Either Polymarket is wrong, or financial markets are wildly optimistic. In our view, policy options are unlikely to break crude’s ascent while Hormuz remains blocked.
THE NEW JOULE ORDER DEMANDS SECURITY FIRST. WE ARE NOWHERE CLOSE. The hierarchy of energy needs is security, affordability, and sustainability — in that order…. rising energy insecurity does what it always does — it triggers hoarding, which exacerbates the inability to substitute.
OIL IS THE RARE EARTH OF THE MACRO SYSTEM . Fifty years of efficiency gains have made oil cheaper per unit of GDP — but more irreplaceable in function. The remaining barrels are the ones for which no substitute exists: petrochemical feedstocks, aviation fuel, grid balancing, fertilizers. Remove them and you do not get demand destruction — you get production shutdowns. We believe the world is more vulnerable to an oil shock today than it was in 1973, not less.
THE SECURITY PREMIUM IS THE HOARDING PREMIUM. In 1979, a 4–5% physical shortfall triggered precautionary hoarding that doubled the effective demand impact. The same dynamic is now operating at a far greater scale. China has suspended petroleum product exports. Every major importer is securing supply simultaneously. We estimate that precautionary demand could be 2-3 million b/d over
the next 3-6 months. The physical disruption is the trigger; the behavioral response is the multiplier.THE CREDIT CHANNEL HAS BEEN REVERSED In the 1970s, OPEC surpluses were recycled through Western banks, expanding global credit, in a process whose mechanics resembled quantitative easing. Today, the transmission runs in reverse. MENA invests domestically and de-dollarizes. Federal debt stands at 120% of GDP, versus 32% in 1974. Inflation-indexed transfer payments automatically widen the
deficit. Government borrowing displaces private sector credit creation far more aggressively than it did fifty years ago.
Due to the pressure of daily posting, we have not devoted pixels to the swoon in commodities ex oil. This video gives a recap:
While his description of the state of play, and the underlying deflationary pressure, is sound, I am less keen about his explanation. The triggers are likely more mundane. First, during the crisis commodities fell because traders were selling their least bad positions to meet margin calls and avoid forced liquidations at distressed prices. That was why gold in particular why gold would sometimes gap down with no apparent trigger. Gold bottomed at just below $670.
Here, despite the energy price shock, which looks inflation, the reality of soon-to-kick in shortages in key production inputs, such as sulphuric acid and helium, is deflationary. The selling of copper and silver, both essential in the real economy, particularly copper for electronics and electrical supplies, may result from the recognition of the impact of critical impact will do for electronics output. On top of that, large and sustained increases in energy costs will make data center buildouts politically and perhaps even economically untenable, dropping a hammer on AI uptake.
All for today! See you tomorrow!
____
1 Trump presumably knows that David Sanger is a spook whisperer.
2 Mind you, I was going to be flying to NYC via Dubai more or less now and had been monitoring the flight situation. I pushed back my trip, not out of concern over risk (I have disaster karma, as in I miss them or they miss me) but pretty bad inconvenience. But I had noticed that Emirates was making a point of flying no matter what and (at least as of when I last checked a few days back), Iran seemed to be lobbing stuff near the Dubai airport only roughly once a week.
3 We normally do not do this sort of thing (publish investor research pieces) but the fact that Carlyle posted the article as opposed to circulating it privately (and made it a WordPress friendly upload size) suggests they want to get it before as many eyeballs as possilbe
00 https:www.carlyle.com:global-insights:white-paper:a-crude-awakening-pdf
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Crikey, if Carlyle are waking up everyone will be soon.
They were all in on the previous Middle East wars. They made billions out of those.
Looks like they are not so keen on this one.
When I see Carlyle, I wonder, “what are they up to, what is their agenda?”. It can’t be a simple as stranded assets?
Maybe reality that hey, life will as we have know it and ‘they’ have delivered will revert to the Mean–short and brutish for folks, even some of “us”?
That said, I will read and circulate it… eyeballs. “Our” way of life threatened? Harshing My Mellow. Not to mention the literally billions of the brown unwashed!
Pearl – strand futures!
*Sigh*
Top analysts have a lot of intellectual independence. They have a following and can easily quit and find a new home if they are pressed by their employer to follow what they perceive to be undue interference.
An extreme example: I one of only three non-partners who worked on Goldman’s acquisition of J. Aron, a commodities firm, in what proved to be a terrible deal financially (I worked on the deal book presented to the partners so I know what was paid) since Goldman bought in a panic at the peak of the early 1980 commodities boom in response to Salomon selling to Phibro (ironically, Salomon eventually came out on top when commodities prices plunged and the Salomon partners staged a coup).
It was quite the eye-opener for a wee young thing like me. It was clear that the management committee had decided to make the purchase and the meeting of the full partnership was a formality (I had the impression that they may not have had all the votes they needed in the management committee by itself but it was also clear to me they knew they could ram it through), I predicted the meeting would last 2 1/2 hours, because that was long enough to look like there had been a real discussion without there being any actual dissent. It did last 2 1/2 hours.
I was l told that the only partner who objected, and quite vociferously with a lot of sound arguments, was Leon Cooperman, the head of research. He was the only partner not on the management committee who felt secure enough to stand up to it.
FYI Currie has been making the rounds on financial TV sounding thres-alarm-fire level alerts. I saw a short clip of him on Bloomberg and he is very articulate and knowledgeable.
For more Currie on TV, a thirty minute talk with Amrit Sen from four days ago. I found especially notable his observation that Iran’s ultimate target is the $60 Trillion U.S. equity market where much of the world’s wealth resides, a both material and symbolic foretaste being their attack on the Kuwaiti pension fund building. I’m not sure just what this might portend for we little people but I’m sure some unpleasantness will be involved.
Indeed. That should be an eye opener.
In the before times, when presidents other than Trump were considered corrupt, people often brought up how much the Bush family and its associates stood to make off foreign wars due to their ties with the Carlyle Group. And now Shrub is happily swapping candies with the Obamas. Imagine that.
If Trump’s hubris brings Carlyle Group down a couple pegs, well it really couldn’t happen to a nicer bunch.
Currie gets into slightly more detail about the credit channel running in reverse in the main body of the report, and I think that is what has them spooked –
“In the 1970s, the oil shocks expanded global credit.
OPEC surpluses were recycled through Western banks,
essentially resulting in a form of quantitative easing [which also lends credence to my thesis that most of what passes for finance is equivalent to check kiting – LAB] as
oil prices rose. In turn, by easing credit conditions and
lowering interest rates, it created a negative feedback loop
that allowed for further increases in oil prices as the dollars
got recycled back into the system. Today the transmission
runs in reverse. As the world deglobalizes, de-dollarizes,
hoards physical stockpiles of commodities and pursues
energy independence, the flow of petrodollars into Western
credit markets is shrinking, not growing.
At the same time, the fiscal starting point is incomparably
worse. Federal debt stands at 120% of GDP versus 32%
in 1974. Transfer payments exceed 9% of GDP and are
indexed to inflation — every percentage point increase in
CPI automatically expands the deficit, forcing additional
Treasury issuance precisely when the market demands
higher yields. Government borrowing crowds out credit
creation in the private sector far more aggressively than
it did fifty years ago. The income shock may be smaller
than the 1970s. The credit shock is likely larger.”
And from the summary on the same topic – “MENA invests domestically and de-dollarizes.”
Translation – what is Uncle Sugar’s money doing in those damned foreigners’ banks? And how dare they use it to buy nice things for themselves?
Same as it ever was. The Greeks didn’t launch 1K ships to save a beautiful woman. It’s never about principles and always about the principal.
Clausewitz for f*ckwits. See —
Which Path To Persia from 2009
https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/06_iran_strategy.pdffrom the Brookings Insitution
Which contains such gems of strategic brilliance as ….
‘As noted above, Iran may attempt to shut down the Strait of Hormuz in response, but this seems unlikely. Doing so would threaten the international oil market and so lose Iran whatever international sympathy it might have gained for being the victim of an American attack. Of greater importance, American air and naval capabilities are so overwhelming that it would simply be a matter of time before the U.S. military could wipe out its Iranian counterparts and reopen the strait.’
See —
National Security Strategy of the United States of America, 2025
https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/2025-National-Security-Strategy.pdf
Page 14: re. Energy Dominance, argues that expanding US energy exports will “curtail the influence of adversaries,” which implies using energy as strategic leverage.
Page 21: re. Asia/China, lists among threats to be ended, “threats against our supply chains that risk U.S. access to critical resources, including minerals and rare earth elements.”
Page 28: re. the Middle East, insists the US has a core interest in ensuring “Gulf energy supplies do not fall into the hands of an outright enemy.”
See also The Strategy of Denial: American Defense in an Age of Great Power Conflict by Elbridge Colby
In other words, the problem is not Trump, as he’s being allowed — used — to do these things only because he’s a convenient madman and tool to implement the Moron Empire’s longstanding strategies.
Written before the advent of drone warfare, which gives “cards to play” to less well-armed players.
In other words, the problem is not Trump, as he’s being allowed — used — to do these things only because he’s a convenient madman and tool to implement the Moron Empire’s longstanding strategies.
Thank you Michaelmas. I have been saying that to anyone who will listen.
Trump hatred is very strong here, and quite right too, but he is not the problem.
I tell everyone that Kamala would be doing almost exactly the same thing in Iran and people look at me as if I am crazy. Then I point out how little opposition there is to the war in the US Congress and ask them why they think that might be.
Then it starts to dawn on them…..
“Clausewitz for f*ckwits”
I am totally stealing that.
Iran denies attack on Diego Garcia: https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20260321-iran-denies-responsibility-for-missile-attacks-on-diego-garcia/
I am increasingly of the view that the UK recognizes that it is absolutely screwed for fuel, weapons, and most other things that sustain a post WWII lifestyle and it thus feels that it must enter this war–whether it ants to join or not is irrelevant at this point (and whether it is even equipped to do so matters little anymore). I am guessing that the government is making up attacks on Diego Garcia as the first of many “unverifiable” events that the government will use to push the country to war.
In fact, I think that all of western Europe is more or less going to do the same thing.
Stripped away of all the rhetoric, the West will absolutely under no circumstances accept that Iran and Yemen will control and collect economic rents from the shipment of oil and other key resources. This is not even a discussion point–it is an absolute, clear no. Similarly, Iran will not accept the pre-Feb 28 situation where they are vulnerable to the whims of the western ruling class. Again, this is absolutely non-negotiable, and Iran will not even respond to any messages that hint to the contrary.
And so this war will grow in scope and intensity until one side gives ground, which will not happen until one side is forced to concede.
In other words, this is the first time that all the hyperbole of WWIII and nukes being launched (eventually–after a long escalatory spiral) are quite possibly going to turn out to be true.
Go long sticks and stones
the whole of the straits of hormuz, ie the western coast of iran adjoining the gulf, extends for 1,000 km. of sheer cliffs. any merchantman or warship trying to negotiate this waterway against iran’s wishes is like a duck in a shooting gallery. mines, truck mounted anti ship missiles, midget submarines, naval commandos and other assets, even field artillery, make it impassable. every day it remains closed brings economic catastrophe closer. and iran has no incentive whatsoever to comply with trump’s demands. europe is staring economic collapse in the face. it is unlikely the petty gulf sheikhdoms can survive, and few will mourn their loss. these sheikhs and emirs will have to go back to goat herding and selling dirty postcards. this can only escalate further, both in intensity and geographical scope. nobody is backing down, and trump increasingly resembles an impotent observer. there will be no early ceasefire or resolution to the conflict. it is likely to drag on for months at least. the economic dislocation we are seeing in asia is just a very small foretaste of what is to come. the stakes are enormous. the very survival of the iranian and zionist and us regimes, us hegemony, the eu, the world economy, these are all chips piling up on the table in a high stakes poker game. and nobody is backing down.
The evil mastermind is not Iran but a reborn Standard Oil octopus: the US is the one acquiring global energy dominance. The UK won’t win any favours by joining this war. It should either make peace with Russia, invade Norway (did it before, can probably still do it again…) or wear a hair shirt for ten years until we can get nuclear power, North Sea expansion and coal-to-oil up and running. We have the world’s largest stockpile of plutonium! Which we are proposing to put beyond use and throw down a mine. Doh!
We could also pursue fracking but the environmental cost is too high on such a densely populated island so I hope not.
The attack on the UK Cyprus base also was said to be not from Iran at the the time it happened. Similar as the Diego Garcia missle function perhaps.
IIRC it was Chas Freeman who said’ “Reality is what’s left after you stop believing everything else.” Unfortunately, I think Trump has a long way to go before he accepts reality.
Basically, one can say there are two wars. Trump and Netanyahu focus on their military power as if the war is being fought over contested territory. For Trump, victory means “unconditional surrender” much like the Japanese surrendered in 1945.
In contrast, Iran discovered America’s Achilles’ heel and planned accordingly. Iran’s goal is control and not military success. Along the way it’s in control of the Strait of Hormuz, oil and gas from the GCC states, and even control of US economic hegemony. It doesn’t need to destroy US factories that produce weapons or even the nearby US navy because it’s the corporation owned oil tankers and container ships that play a crucial role.
Thus, if Trump realizes he only has a political solution and not a military one, the situation will improve. But as that would permanently damage his manhood, I wouldn’t bet on it.
An important point to make is that the Israelis–who see themselves as clever manipulators–are as delusional as Trump. They are also not in any real sense an ally which is why FDR and his people sided with the Arabs.
There is some irony in Trump, the salesman and manipulator, being gulled into disaster by somebody else’s sales pitch. Unfortunately for the rest of us the disaster is not going to be confined to him or the source of the crisis.
You see in films how when a nuclear missile is about to be launched, that you need a second man to agree with this decision and give the go ahead. It’s called the two person rule-
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two-person_rule
Has anybody given thought that perhaps this should also happen with the President? That a general would have to agree to launch nukes? Otherwise one day you will have a situation where you have a President who is both mentally unstable and acting irrational deciding to launch a nuke based on a hunch or a feeling.
I believe there is an elaborate–if brief–procedure for the president to launch nukes in response to same attacking us. See The Sum of All Fears. He can’t just call over the guy with the nuclear suitcase and destroy the world.
Whether the current Pentagon would agree to their tactical use is an open question. This post that I just linked elsewhere
https://jonathancook.substack.com/p/how-the-us-and-israel-came-close
says that Bush/Cheney considered using tactical nukes against Iran’s 2006 nuclear program but the Pentagon objected.
When it comes to Iran the crazy has always been with us. Don’t forget Bush jr included them in the “axis of evil.”
But who now sits in the “I do not concur” seat at the Pentagon? After the retirements and purges are we down to some Armageddon-believer?
The point though is that somebody has to concur. He can’t just act on a whim as he does when writing tweets.
“Axis of Evil,” courtesy of David Frum.
The Bush jr regime was chock full of Israel firsters. Seems there was a belief that his dad lost his second term in part because his state department had objected to settlement expansion.
So Dubya took a different tack. Worth remembering that Trump criticized him for this at an opening rally here in SC in 2016. The local Repubs–big friends of the Bushes–were outraged.
One of the small comforts I have is that whoever turns the keys, when all accounts are settled, I highly doubt St. Peter will take “I was only following orders” as an excuse when being responsible for anthropocide.
Last time I checked, St. Peter was all in on extinction events to make way for new and different outcomes.
“…based on a hunch or a feeling.” Or Kompromat.
There were rumours during Trump’s first stint that the military might thwart his nuclear strike orders. A lot of military high-ups have since been replaced though.
The only way the holy rollers in the military get their way via the new testament prophecy is nukes, right?
Conventional weapons ain’t gonna get it done…
barristers spend a great deal of time arguing in court over whether a particular defendant is mad, or bad, or mad and bad. as with trump, in the end it’s a pretty pointless exercise. when worthless or deranged individuals come to exercise great power, we all suffer. history throws up these people with disturbing regularity. all anyone can do is get themselves round the nearest church, or other place of worship, and start praying hard. just hope the man upstairs is in a good mood.
Carolinian
It’s been said many times, including by a couple of my employers, that the easiest man to con is a con man.
There are too many goals for too many people.
Iran is the simplest: Ensure that Israel/USA can’t (not don’t) do this again after trying very hard to avoid this war.
Israel: BN stay out of jail, expand zionist empire
USA: DT needs to appear a winner, Epstein to be forgotten, deep state control more oil countries
EU: UvdL consolidate power, continue pretense that Ukraine will win, cause damage to Russia
Frankly, only Iran has any moral standing here.
“Epstein to be forgotten”
The true reason we are at war.
During the Paris Peace talks to end the war in Vietnam, Col. Harry G. Summers Jr. told a North Vietnamese colonel, “You know, you never defeated us on the battlefield.”
After pondering the remark, the colonel replied: “That may be so. But it is also irrelevant.”
What’s next for the US? Body counts as a measure of “success”? That would require “boots on the ground.”
I agree, the US won on the battlefield in Vietnam and it proved irrelevant. What’s next? I assume Qatar’s royal family has had second thoughts about giving Trump a $400 million 747.
On the serious side of the war, the Strait of Hormuz is unique because it comes with a ticking clock. There just isn’t much time to solve this problem before the ratatouille hits the fan. And Trump is delusional. Under extreme time pressure he might collapse.
Trump chest thumping is also irrelevant!
The past 22 days is same effect as the first 22 days bombing N Vietnam in 1966.
To effectively eliminate Iran requires millions of pounds TNT than so far expended.
US roamed the skies over Hanoi at will the whole time.
That might have been true in 1966 but by 1968 Hanoi had the most sophisticated and the most heavily defended anti-air system in the world-
https://www.airandspaceforces.com/article/1199pack/
At the time the MIC was selling F-4 and F-111. All the still shining new “century series” fighters were available for filling the Hanoi Hilton.
Back then U.S. could capitalize on POW agitprop.
Today, we can attrit F-16 and F-15, aa lot of F-35 and B-21 to buy at good profit.
I never owned nor wore a MIA bracelet.
I was 10 and somebody told me that if you wrote the POW/MIA group and requested stickers, buttons, etc., why they’d send them to you.
A week after my request, I got a rather large box with about 500 of everything to distribute to Grazide elementary school.
Everybody was cool with my doing that, by the way. No pushback whatsoever from teachers or administrators.
Assuming B21 ever gets made, right?
And my dad made 105 low level bombing missions over Hanoi (“Downtown”) post 1968. Sure, the attrition was circa 30% before tactics improved the score, but low and fast in F4 was hard to beat.
It was irrelevant because the North Vietnamese command realized that the Schwerpunkt of the conflict was the American public. In the subsequent half century the USA deep state has captured the media and other relevant means of communication with the public, enabling the censorship that now keeps the American people in the dark.
Ho and Giáp had a more accurate view of Saigon corruption and lack of standing in the Vills.
We were winning in 1970 just like Trump says.
Something similar has crossed my mind.
This isn’t about the Strait being “closed”, it’s about who controls the traffic.
It won’t be “open” to the usual traffic for many years – no matter which way the wind blows.
Although I would disagree with some of the political points in Carlyle’s Jeff Currie “A Crude Awakening”, nonetheless his analysis is regrettably spot on. Why aren’t the financial markets on top of this? Don’t know. Is it because they are filled with nepo babies and yes men/women? Again, don’t know. But the message is clear. Time to personally batten down the hatches. We are going to be in for a rough ride. Does Trump understand any of this? Maybe not. Before the war started, dissenters were deliberately excluded from his advisers. The same could still be true right now.
I’ve also been wondering what information and feedback Trump’s been getting regarding all of this. I don’t follow the inner workings of his admistration, but I remember that at least during his first term, he used to get a lot of information via Fox News. Is this still happening? If so, presumably the Murdoch family would be motivated to start reporting and highlighting what a mess this all is if their business interests are threatened? Very curious about better informed people’s opinions on this!
Murdoch Sr. was supposedly one of the major outside actors pushing for this. When I heard this, I was dubious because Rupert is supposedly gaga. Still, story is out there.
I was checking up on how old Rupert is – 95 years old as it turns out – and came across the following snippet-
‘During Saint Patrick’s Day celebrations in 2023, Murdoch, who is quarter Irish, proposed to his partner, Ann Lesley Smith. The engaged couple first met at an event in September 2022. In April 2023, two weeks after the couple were engaged, Murdoch suddenly called off the engagement. The split was said to be caused by Murdoch’s discomfort with Smith’s religious views and her infatuation with Fox News host Tucker Carlson, reportedly referring to him as “a messenger from God”. Carlson was fired from Fox News three weeks later.’
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rupert_Murdoch#Marriages
Is that the real reason Tucker Carlson was fired?
I have met Ann Lesley Smith, as she was married to my old boss Chester Smith. Chester was a minor country music star and friend of Merle Haggard. IIRC, Chester, worth several hundred million, left his wife of 50 years to be with Ann and help her with her singing career. I still have her CD somewhere, where she is wearing a very tight, custom made police chaplain uniform on the cover. While she was by no means young at the time, the age difference was striking.
I understand that she was married to a Huntington prior to Chester, as in Huntington Beach.
Make of it what you will.
The Wife of Bath
My guess on the markets is that enough market actors are acting in really short term and mostly on what they believe other market actors believe. So if the Trump administration tells enough lies and market actors think other market actors will believe it, then they act on the lie even if they don’t necessarily believe it themselves. And apparently they think the others are not particularly smart. The market can stay wrong longer than you can stay solvent, etc.
That said the markets are down, not through a crash but a down a step, up a step, down a bit pattern. The DOW is not “above fifty thousand!” anymore.
A couple of weeks ago I ran into a former student at a bar. His team manages one of the largest accounts in our region (WNY). Their strategy is fairly conservative, focused on consistent 6-8% returns over the long term. His view, I believe, is a prevalent one among investors: he/they believe(d) the conflict would be over quick and the benefits to markets fairly significant afterwards. It reminded me of seeing a clip of Lindsey Graham saying, “The US is going to make so much money from this!”
Bottom line: there will be a trigger point for investors like this, and it’s coming sooner than later. Let’s hope it’s tomorrow to push the TACO.
The institutional racism is at play. They accept the notion Iran has leaders capable of controlling 90 million. It’s already qn existential war, a real one too, not the Israeli one where they can live for 5 weeks without Xbox.
Since they were not directly affected by Iraq, they haven’t considered what blood and treasure was really spent.
A simple explanation of “why markets are not reacting” could be that passive flows far outweigh active flows into Wall Street
https://www.ftportfolios.com/Blogs/MarketBlog/2026/1/20/passive-vs.-active-fund-flows
https://pwlcapital.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/20250318-The-Passive-vs-Active-Fund-Monitor.pdf
It may be as simple as the very small number of beings with massive allocations fear a bank run. Remember, stocks are for the wealthy. The other side is 401k and the like which you can’t get your hands on quickly so there’s drag on action. but I don’t own anything to speak of so I’m just a spectator. Denial isn’t just a river in Egypt…
The dow went from 6,000 to 50,000 and for 90% of usians that meant higher costs, lower income. That 10% is/should be worried.
Well, that is one end of “the River to the River,” thingie–from Euphoria to Denial…
I did explain that:
https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2026/03/iran-war-even-as-breakdowns-and-lasting-damage-mounts-denial-normalcy-bias-and-arrogance-of-the-belligerents-will-produce-a-long-and-highly-destructive-war.html
Yves, you have likely done extensive research on finding this article. Perhaps this link to a publication with the title The coming of the new organization will lead to the article you mention. It’s 7 pages long and appeared in 1988 so may not be what you mean.
https://iadministrativa.escasto.ipn.mx/index.php/IA/article/view/496/1190
Hi Yves,
Thank you!
I have spent some time researching the Peter Drucker article you mentioned in a previous post and I think I have found it — just in case the exact citation is still of interest to you or any reader here.
Peter Drucker had the lead essay in a book of essays published in 1981 titled “The Crisis in Economic Theory” edited by Daniel Bell and Irving Kristol. His essay is titled “Toward the Next Economics” pp. 4-18.
From which, I quote:
‘The relationship between the “real” economy of goods, work, and services, and the “symbol” economy of money and credit had been a problem since earliest times.’
‘To classics, neoclassics, and Marxists, the Great Depression of the 1930’s originated in the “real economy,”…. To a Keynesian, however, the Great Depression was the result of the Stock Exchange crash of 1929, of “speculation,” or of a contraction in the money supply — that is, of events in the symbol economy.’
and
‘We may have to be content, however, with something analogous to the physicist’s “Uncertainty Principle,” in which the only meaningful statements in respect to certain events — for instance, productivity, capital formation, the allocation of resources, and so on — are statements in terms of the “real economy,” with events in the “symbol economy” no more than a restraint and a boundary. But other and equally “real” events can perhaps only be discussed, analyzed, and even described in terms of the “symbol economy,” with the “real economy” of things being a restraint on them. This would not be a particularly satisfactory outcome–but it may be the best we can achieve.’
Hope this is what we’ve been looking for. At least it’s the correct year and on topic.
P.S. It’s also the lead chapter in Drucker’s own book by the same title, published later that same year I think. It seemed — to me at least — that the first instance is more true to your description of your recollection of it as an article and probably the one you may have actually laid hands on and read first.
the markets are being distorted and manipulated (apart from trump’s bs about the war ending tomorrow and iran begging to surrender, etc.) oil is actually currently being sold for $154 and 170 a barrel.
Roll out the $200 barrel
We’ll need a barrel of funds
Roll out the $200 barrel
We’ve got inflation blues on the Hormuz run
Sting! Boom! Tararrel!
Ring out a song of good cheer
Now’s the time to roll out the $200 barrel
For the reckoning is here
Perhaps (US) regime change in November is being “priced in”.
I wonder what predication markets are saying about the price of oil on November 10th, 2026?
Here’s an anecdote from South Korea on the issue of pending plastic scarcity.
https://x.com/CRUDEOIL231/status/2035514058288586807?s=20
Plastic production consumes “only” 8% of global crude, but you can bet that your humble garbage bag is going to get bumped way down the priority list when it comes to keeping farm tractors running.
Just run that thought experiment out for industry, healthcare, packaging, shipping, consumer goods, etc. and plastic is going to be coming at us from all directions. If you try to replace it with other materials (paper, cardboard, wood, metal, textiles, etc.) it’s only going to ignite ever more touch points.
Maybe it’s time to consider dredging the North Pacific Gyre.
Funny you mention that. I just went out and stocked up on the government-issued trash bags yesterday (among other things). I’m at the very bitter end of the supply chain. Things may get pretty bad here.
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Your work is greatly appreciated.
Thanks. I think you forgot the list of power stations compiled by RT. You announce it but there’s nothing after the colon.
I had decided that pointing readers to the list was sufficient and they could go check themselves, but didn’t make the change to reflect that. I’ll put the quote in instead.
Thanks for your efforts with these posts. You’ve introduced some great new sources and outlets. I’ve been sharing them all over the place.
Whether he is bluffing or not with his ultimatum, it signals that Trump is a very sick person. A very sick person is in overall charge of the US.
Destroying much of the Middle East’s oil and gas production will hurt China the most (hooray!), further weaken Europe and make it more dependent on US gas supplies, and leave the US reigning supreme in a glorious fossil fuel powered future.
There are an awful lot of extremely dodgy assumptions in that, but could it be what Trump’s thinking?
Somebody is thinking something like this. Not Trump. Trump is the useful idiot. You can already see all the pieces moving into place for him to be scapegoated. Won’t we all be glad to see him removed with cooler heads taking the wheel, nevermind all the rather severe emergency powers and policies that will suddenly be necessary. How regrettable that all this happened, oh well, what can we do but act to stabilize the situation.
That’s a disturbing thought. But also not outside the MO of the Epstein class either. Though, as Yves frequently points out, they’re not a unified group, more a conflicting “blob” of competing interests who are only ever unified by their hatred of us “poors” of the great unwashed. It’ll be interesting to see if this plays out and how it unfolds if it does.
Hurts China the most?
I’m not so sure.
If Russia diverts oil to China, then India is hurt the most.
Karma?
Prime Minister Modi Humiliated India During His Visit [Feb 25] to Israel
I did say ‘an awful lot of extremely dodgy assumptions’, and that’s certainly one of them. My question was whether Trump might believe it, or something similar.
Actually no. China comes out far better than its adversaries if Trump turns the Gulf region into a wasteland. That’s becaue China has smart people that are capable of rational thought and long-term planning in charge of their government. Which we haven’t had in the US since the 1950’s.
*adversaries: US, UK/EU, Japan, Taiwan
DC neocons have been wargaming and threatening to choke off China’s maritime oil supply by closing the strait of Malacca for well over a decade now. China has been steadily building their capability to withstand such an event. First their strategic oil reserve is the largest in the world; 100 days is the number often cited in the western media, but in reality it’s at least double that. Second they have been investing heavily into their electric grid to add more spare capacity and redundancy. This is how they can support huge numbers of EVs (majority of cars being sold in China today are EV). And most importantly they have been building pipelines (jointly with Russia of course) and the arctic shipping route and the Caspian Sea transport route to buy more oil from Russia. This last one they can ramp up very quickly if or when needed. Of course it’s more expensive to ship your oil this way compared to just getting them from Persian Gulf VLCCs, but at least they do have alternative ways that they can rely on. Unlike their adversaries.
Some people are saying US is nearly self-sufficient in energy so we will be fine, only Europe and China are fucked. But actually, no. US as a society is not built to withstand shocks. There is no social cohesion. People do not trust their government (see recent polls) and there is a general hatred of the government. One good 1930’s style depression (which Trump might be causing inadvertantly) and it’s food riots and gas riots and a breakdown of order. China on the other hand has endured decades, centuries of European and American meddling and destabilization attempts. They have experience handling unrest. US does not, other than whacking protesters with their paramility police.
But does Trump accept any of that?
Trump has lost all touch with reality, so what goes on inside his head is unknowable and frankly, irrelevant. The only thing that matters is, will Trump turn the entire region into an unliveable wasteland? It seems like an almost certainty that he will if left to his own devices. Either he is stopped by other people, or he will keep escalating until the Persian Gulf region is reduced to ashes.
I don’t see anyone stepping up to stop him. Neither the Democrat nor the Republican deep state seem to have any spine. None of them can stand up to the little hat chosen people who control Trump.
What goes on between Trump’s ears is indeed relevant. If he can con himself into thinking that mass destruction in the Middle East will benefit the USA, he won’t worry about it.
yeah. i worry about what effect
‘just in time” and “warehouse on wheels” thinking will have on any shocks to the system.
even way out here, we have three delivery days, mom, wed and friday…thats groceries(incl for the bodegas/convenience), fuel, beer, and then the 2 restaurant-supply trucks tat come twice per week.
we do have propane in storage at the one propane place.
i get lotsa eye-rolling for always reminding that the week after hurricane rita went through east of houston…where the warehouses and distribution hubs are…by weeks end of no trucks at all, we were out of deisel and all but premium gas, grocery store was empty, literally, and we ran out of beer. on this latter, the convenience store people got together and pooled their money and sent a truck convoy up to brownwood…which is a hub in a different distribution system, apparently…to load up on beer…lest their be an uprising.
civilisation is a thin patina.
and ours had made this feature worse by greed and “efficiency”
Back when I was a youngster studying engineering at university, one of our required classes was “Product and Process Engineering.” This is where I first encountered “just in time” (mostly called just in time manufacturing then). Even in my twenties, I had questions like “what if something goes wrong?” or “what if your shipment was late, delayed?” or “what if an emergency halts production?” among other questions. Since then, we’ve expanded JIT through the entire economy and now, after 25 years, the questions my younger self asked are probably going to be answered. Which just makes me believe what even my twenty-something self believed back then even more relevant: stockpiles, redundancy in your systems, and having a backup plan (diversification?) are always the smart play, no mater how “inefficient” (aka unprofitable) it may be.
Not sure this is the lesson everyone else will learn though. Certainly not the DC & Epstein Elites.
The US is far from self-sufficient in energy, especially petroleum products: https://www.usimportdata.com/blogs/us-petroleum-imports-by-country-2025
energy is a global market. it is irrelevant if the us is self sufficient (it is not.) a few countries like russia may benefit. us oil companies may make fat profits. the vast majority of the people will be immeasurably worse off. otherwise we are in uncharted territory, and here be dragons.
What ever happened to Speak Softly and Carry a Big Stick?
Emperor’s new stick? scream loudly, pretend to carry a stick, and see if anyone notices.
Throw word spaghetti up against the ceiling, maybe some of it sticks?
Psychologist Erich Fromm who invented the term Malignant Narcissist described it as a “severe pathology, the quintessence of evil and the root of the most vicious destructiveness and inhumanity.”
Retaliation is the favorite sport of the narcissistic ego. They:
Think only of themselves
Do whatever promotes their own sense of superiority, benefit, or advancement
Feel compelled to be in control
Feel justified in acting aggressively or dishonestly to get their own way
Feel entitled to be honored by others without having to honor them in return
Can’t stand being bested or crossed in any way
Can’t receive feedback or criticism
Engage in projection without foundation: “You are the one with the big ego!”
Can’t say “I’m sorry” and don’t see any need to, no matter how they may have hurt others
Permanently hold grudges against someone who has offended them
Refuse to make amends to anyone
Believe that others owe them, but they owe no one
Can’t be called on any of the above
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/finding-the-way/202601/retaliation-and-the-narcissistic-ego/amp
That sure does sound like Trump. Almost an exact match.
This is a true story, but I can’t resist this opening. “Once upon a time”, on a summer’s day when I was in my teens a kitten scooted into the overflow pipe of an unused cistern under a large chicken house. There was a faint splash. A trap door access was in the building. My sister and I ran inside and opened the trap door. I dropped into the. cistern. There was an inch or so of water. The kitten was wet but unhurt. There was a large rat in a corner. I scooped up the kitten and handed it to my sister. My sister must have handed me a stick. I do not remember how I came to have it. The rat was cornered. I advanced on it my ill intent clear. The rat leaped at as I swung the stick. It escaped momentarily. Allegory is a useful way to make a point isn’t it?
As part of his Demystifying Iran series, Professor Marandi posted a video describing how Iran developed its missile program from scratch. Some key points:
* Resulted from combat experience in the Iraq war, where Iraq had western supplied missiles and Iran had no capability
* Decision was made at start that the missile capability must be completely indigenous, i.e. with zero reliance on foreign inputs
* Iran started by reverse engineering sample Scud missiles obtained from Libya, and then began making their own improvements
I think this philosophy of indigenous capability helps explain Iran’s reluctance to accept military assistance from Russia or China.
Indeed, and also helps explain their resiliency. Impressive. That the US is caught unprepared for Iranian expertise bears the stench of a certain kind of institutional racism, the one which is high on its own supply.
iran’s reluctance is not particularly surprising. from an iranian point of view, russia has a consistent and not very attractive history of backstabbing and double dealing. russia was the main arms supplier to saddam hussein. result? half a million dead iranians. russia supported genocidal us sanctions against iran. result? iranian children died for lack of basic medicine. iran tried to buy s300 missiles from russia. result? russia refused to deliver the missiles – for eight, yes eight years, as a favour to the us and israel. iran contracted with iran to complete the bushehr complex. result? russia refused to complete the work, for years, as a favour to the us and israel. just a few examples of russian backstabbing over the years. without going back to the invasion of 1941. and much else besides.
Many Zionists are plutocrats, but most plutocrats are not Zionists. We shall soon see whose interests will be served. The sudden appearance of anti-war Trump defectors like Joe Kent suggests that the PTB are preparing for a scene change in the Washington political puppet theater.
Agreed, but who calls the shot? Those fond of Roman Empire analogies will find one here.
Based upon his past statements, I fail to believe that Kent is “anti-war”. I think that, like many of us here, he simply sees the writing on the wall, and is using the moment to make a short term sacrifice for a longer term gain. He is trying to leverage the moment to market himself as “anti-war” (which I believe to be fraudulent, hence the quotes) and along with the notoriety gained by his “defection” (maybe from Trump, but certainly not from the continuity of agenda) and use this to elevate his position.
My guess is that he will run for office, and become a Republican analog of AOC/Mamdani. Anyone believing he is truly anti-war or some kind of geopolitical genius are internalizing some dangerous misinformation, IMO.
I also see it as the rats jumping ship rather than ideological awakening
I’m not sure if he ever called himself “anti war,” just “anti this war.” I doubt anyone who is meaningfully “anti war” would ever make it to a high security position anyway (they may have varying degrees of patience wrt how far they are willing to go, though). Yes, he may run for office or something later, but that doesn’t mean that he doesn’t think this war is rotten to the core, though.
With that jawline and that hair, if he’s six feet-two or taller, his resignation letter is the beginning of his presidential campaign.
He has run for the US House twice against Marie Gluesenkamp Perez in WA 3, losing twice. However, his current stance will lead him, no doubt, to stand for a third time, though whether in WA 3 I can’t guess or not. It’s pretty small beer for someone with his current profile.
Kent carried the maga brand with distinction while running for WA State’s 3 rd congressional district’s House seat in 2022 & 2024, narrowly losing both times. Likely he playing the political long game.
I too remain unconvinced by forest grunt, his main accusation seems to be about procedure rather than policy.
Which is a very modern outlook.
I think all plutocrats are zionist. If there’s one that isn’t, it’s the exception that proves the rule. transhumanism seems to be about the only other thing that unites them.
We should not forget that Trump isn’t the (only) one driving this madness. And it’s not just Bibi and Lindsey, it isn’t even just the GOP & Democrats, where almost everyone is for this, there is also the liberal & conservative intelligentsia who support it, I lost the count of editorials from esteemed newspapers to either directly urging Trump to keep going, or at least affirming the whole logic of this war. (I don’t even want to mention the Eurovassals.)
Trump is just unfortunate enough to be at the center of this with the task of somehow enacting in practice all the contradictory, insane and divorced-from-reality demands. And so we get simultaneous sanctioning and unsanctioning of Iran, checkmating Iran by dropping 2000 marines on some random island, etc. There is no plan B because there can not be plan B, killing bunch of ayatollahs and hoping for revolution was the only “realistic” plan there ever was. And now Trump can’t easily TACO, because all these very intelligent and very sophisticated men and women, who in one way or other worked over decades to launch this war, would eat him alive, because they are able to admit error as easily as Trump can, they just can express themselves in longer sentences and without the caps.
Don’t you first have to have a plan A before you can modify it to formulate a plan B?
He did have a plan A: killing bunch of ayatollahs and hoping for revolution was the only “realistic” plan there ever was”, as NN Cassandra clearly stated.
I thought it was A) we assassinate some leaders. B) the underwear gnomes steal underwear. C) we win (= everyone (in my circle) gets rich). h/t Southpark. Magical thinking indeed.
Rumor mill saying that potentially “Israel” has activated drones in Azerbaijan. I think the two big uncertain elements are when (not if) Ansarallah will join the fray, and if (and when) hostilities between Iran and Azerbaijan will start. If both happen shortly, I think we can say good-bye to the world economy. Who thought peak oil would happen not because of a lack of resources, but simply because production facilities have been irreparably damaged? Maybe February 2026 will be seen as the apex of world industrial production.
Morning Telegram posts from Pars Today and IRNA.
1. IRGC claims it hit an American F-15 somewhere over the coastline near the Strait of Hormuz. The video is edited – you can see a skip between them tracking the aircraft, and then a few seconds in “zoomed out” mode where there is clearly a hit on “something”, but it’s too far to tell what that something was. Also, the IRGC states in its post that the Iranian military is “checking into the fate of the aircraft”, so it might not have gone down.
Nevertheless, they seem to at least want to communicate that they have some air defense assets left in the Strait area. Video in the linked post.
https://t.me/parstodayrussian/198601#
2. Iran UN representative, in a letter to the Secretary General, “raised the question” of reparations from the UAE. Quote.
Surely the other Gulf states are in for a similar treatment…
https://t.me/parstodayrussian/198594#
3. Speaker of Parliament Galibaf responded to the power plant threat on Twitter (in Farsi):
https://t.me/Irna_ru/32939#
The Russians are separately reporting that someone else in Iran had said that IT infrastructure is also fair game. Not sure whether this means just the data centers, or the actual underwater Internet cables (which is something the Russians had been focusing on as a possibility – apparently a bunch run into the Gulf under the Strait).
Funny to hear a Muslim remind alleged Jews and Christians what Moses did at Pharaoh’s court. What’s next? Locusts? Deaths of firstborns? Will the Red Sea swallow up Pharaoh’s army?
‘Seyed Mohammad Marandi
@s_m_marandi
Clearly, @ElonMusk and @X are allowing what appears to be a Zionist/Ukrainian group to put a bounty on me. It is even a “paid partnership.” Not a single Western media outlet has shown outrage that X is openly supporting terror to permanently silence me.’
This should come as no surprise. The Ukrainians maintain an online kill list – Myrotvorets – for all their enemies, both real and perceived. And there are a number of Americans that are on that list as well such as Tulsi Gabbard but the US does not see a problem with that nor does the US media. The best part? The servers hosting this site are apparently in Langley, Virginia.
Does anyone know if the anyone ever paid one of these bounties? How could a potential informer ever be certain?
I believe it was Larry Johnson who said that the three informants who made the capture of Maduro possible, hoping to get a $50 million bounty, were stiffed.
It was their own fault. They trusted Trump – who had a very long history of stiffing people working for him.
Yves, I think the Bloomberg banner is duplicated and WSJ is missing?
Aargh, will fix. Thanks for letting me know
Copy and paste really does not work well on this very recent vintage Mac.
trump blusters, ‘open Hormuz in 48 hours or we take out all infrastructure.’
iran doesn’t blink in response. ‘attack our infrastructure, you lose the rest of your bases and assets in the region: your info-technology centers, your desalination plants, all of your invasive corporate and military footholds.’
despite whatever westerners get in their mainstream-media feeds; iran’s response to american/israeli action has been measured and proportional to what they have received.
lavrov: “…the current situation is serious, and far from farce. For all the outward manifestations of farce (and they are present, I think many understand this), the consequences of what our American colleagues, in this case together with the Israelis, are doing are very serious. They will “reverberate” for a very long time.
In general, we see a stage in our history that spirals but brings us back to a world where there was nothing. No international law, no Versailles system, no Yalta system – nothing. Where “might is right,” power is truth. And in our country, as you know, according to the expression of the famous hero of a famous film, “God is not in power, but in truth.” Look at what is happening now. The United States officially stated that “no one orders them.” They only care about their own well-being. They are ready to defend this prosperity by any means – coups d’état, kidnappings or assassinations of the leaders of those countries that have the natural resources that the Americans need.
This is not an approach to international relations. This is an attempt to bring back the colonial era. It was said bluntly that the interests of the United States prevail over any international agreements.”
—
me: i know that these people, the americans and all who support them, though they lose frequently, do not know how to lose on a grand scale, and they are getting their asses handed to them now. the danger of their desperation of not being able to admit they are losing and being unable to comprehend that not everyone lives or wants to live like americans do, is wicked and insidious, and brings concern over further escalation. america has no moral compass, no genuine intelligence. look how they treat their own people.
the abject lowest classes, far and away the majority, are completely zombified with ill health, poverty, addiction, fear. by design, they can never be organized or made to understand, except in the most cosmetic and insubstantial of applications, any kind of resistance or rights, i.e. that life does not have to be that way.
the middle class hollowed out and zombified only slightly less. cowards who watched and felt the silver spoons they were born with melt in their mouths to poison, their wealth transferred to the very few.
i remember as a student in the US studying vietnam, and one fellow student, in reaction to the My Lai massacre, said such massacres were justified to kill women and children and civilians because they all would breed or grow up to be communists. ‘i’d kill anyone,’ he said, turned and looked at me, ‘i’d kill you.’ tho i was not a communist, just someone studying events, a fellow american.
‘he doesn’t mean that,’ the teacher, also hockey-coach, said, admirably trying to defuse the situation.
but the attitude of my classmate back then is now embodied by the US Secretary of War and the rest of the current administration. it’s become normalized and institutionalized. in Vietnam, the US tried as long as they could to cover up the atrocities of My Lai and countless other venues; even our warcrimes in Iraq and Afghanistan were attempted to be covered up or assessed as ‘a few bad apples; a mistake.’ now, we double-bomb a girl’s school in Iran on the first day of our most recent illegal bombing, kill 165 children, blame it in passing on ‘faulty old maps’, and carry on in murderous nazi bravado.
read between the lines; not hard, eh?:
In response to a reporter’s question on whether China provides military or dual-use materials to Iran, the Chinese spokeswoman, Mao Ning, stated:
“China opposes the illegal military strikes against Iran by Israel and the United States in violation of international law, supports Iran in safeguarding its sovereignty, security, territorial integrity, and national dignity, and supports Iran in protecting its legitimate rights and interests.”
it tripped my warning-trigger, for sure, locally, that the entire town has been without water for most of the last two days. northern armenia.
months ago i mentioned to the sanders people that if there were ever a resource-grab in the region, armenia’s only palpable ‘value’ is in its pure aquifiers. they are vulnerable and could be manipulated, rerouted to enemy aims. sanders’-folk seemed to apprehend the danger.
israel has struck one desalination plant in iran; trump threatens further strikes. iran responds, if you do that, we will cut off your drinking water too.
no doubt the azeris and all pay attention, and if water is on the menu of what’s necessary: it shall too be sequestered.
the other thing i’m aware of regarding armenian vulnerability is that all other powers feel, ‘ah, armenians, they always take it on the chin; having suffered for so long, they know no other way. we can do to them anything we want; they won’t blink an eye before it’s too late, and no one will care.’
hope it’s just old pipes being repaired.
—
gotta contrast that with coming out of sleep yesterday to hear a flock of morning-birds, armenians migrated north from their yerevan universities to explore the northern regions of their nation: the sound was absolute happiness, the vision of purity. you could marvel and be thankful that this should exist, beyond any dream that ever came true: you bow your head in thankful prayer and say bless those who raised these children and will accompany them throughout their lives; bless the families they will create.
That’s about as strong a statement from a Chinese spokesperson, who normally take enormous pains to be diplomatic and equivocal, as I’ve ever seen.
I agree with all you said. Now, we can wait for american christians, and evangelicals, especially, to fully, and honestly, examine their consciences and come to acknowledge their sins, and to repent before God. Just wait for it. Wait. No man knows the day or the hour, but they will repent of their sins, and amend their lives. Wait. There will be signs in the heavens. Wait.
The evangs aren’t really concerned with current events in terms of cause and effect as long as it jives with the new testament.
Only some parts. They don’t believe in 95% of the New Testament amyways.
I’d argue they don’t believe in anything at all
“Maximum lethality, not tepid legality,” as Hegseth put it.
I was listening to an interview with Stanislav Krapivnik a little while ago and he made a critical point. He said that Arabs are tribal in their society and I have read examples of that. It is part of your identity and where you stand in society. He went on to say that in the Iraq invasion that because of this, CIA operatives were able to buy up half the generals in Iraq so that their forces stood down and did not fight the US invasion. And that the assumption for Iran is that they could do the same after killing off their main leaders and that they would find generals and the like who would make a deal. One problem. Iranians are Persians and not Arabs and think in terms of their national identity. During the 12-day war the Israelis rang all the top Iranian generals and threatened them if they did not play ball but would be rewarded if they did. All those generals refused. That should have been a warning for this war but was ignored.
That’s an important lacuna in Huntington’s stuff about clash of civilizations: “civilizations” don’t command loyalty, “nations” do. Now, “civilization” may be part of what makes for a nation, but not always and, to be frank, what makes for a “nation” is iffy and fuzzy. Mistaking a “civilization” for a “nation” gets people to confuse the Arabs (a civilization, but not a nation) and Persians (both a civilization and a nation.)
All of those abstract categories are empty of real content. Huntington’s entire thesis is wankery.
There’s been a lot of cope “This is just Trump being Trump, more extreme but just Trump being Trump”
Trump has lost it, as Yves and others have pointed out Trump is deranged.
He is not “A little off” he is Bonkers, his dementia has taken hold and his insanity may well destroy the World Economy.
This is not something the World economy can recover from if Trump does what he has promised to do.
And if he is forced to back down I fully expect him to focus his rage on “Die Heimat”, the “Home Front”.
There have been no major protests domestically, Trump probably thinks he has cowed the populace.
I don’t, I think this is an example of “When the troops stop bitching, watch out”.
I think that there’s a ‘no kings’ event scheduled for this coming Saturday, the 28th. Regardless of how anyone might feel about this demonstration, sanctioned by the dems, it will be interesting to see just how many bodies turn out, especially now, at this time when trump is conducting an illegal, immoral war, benefiting the entire epstein class. Not only the quantity of demonstrators, but the quality. And whether some ice might be in order to cool down the crowds.
Another 30 cent rise at the philly pumps today. That’s the third one since this kicked off
I saw an announcement of a March 28 “No Kings” demonstration a local restaurant. This is the only announcement I’ve seen in my area. My impression from past news coverage is that the demonstrations are Democratic party adjacent if not organized and focused on Trump. My view is that Trump is the most recent product of 80 years of unchecked executive branch usurpation of power from the corrupt and feckless Congressional branch. I am frustrated by the lack of opportunities to express my opposition to what is happening and I plan to attend.
This should help to better inform our conversations– new info for some, a refresher for others:
How the US and Israel came close to launching a war on Iran 20 years ago
Twenty years on, most of the coverage of the current US-Israeli war on Iran tends to make two mistaken assumptions. First, that Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu was the main driver, from Israel’s side, of plans to attack Iran. In fact, as this chapter and the previous one on Iraq demonstrates, the idea was widely shared in Israel’s military and political establishments. And second, that Donald Trump was the first US president dumb enough to fall into the trap laid by Israel – or at least by Trump’s pro-Israel donors. Though there is some truth to this, it is also too simplistic.
…
I always feel that it is important to note who is and who will benefit from the actions undertaken, and while we can broadly generalize and point fingers at “defense, oil-interests, and banking,” it is much more helpful to name the names and to identify the specific persons and entities that are benefiting from this war.
I just linked this upthread. It says the talk then and now about the danger of Iran and nukes was a red herring and Israel’s real animosity toward Saddam, Iran, Hezbollah etc is their support for the Palestinians and the two state solution that our own hypocritical elites always claim to be for.
I believe Yves linked the Dayan statement that made this explicit. They have always been settler/colonial conquerors rather than beleaguered victims surrounded by “a jungle.”
Cuba’s deputy foreign minister says its military is preparing for possible ‘military aggression’ from the U.S.
https://www.nbcnews.com/world/cuba/cuba-foreign-minister-military-aggression-us-oil-trump-rubio-rcna264568
Well, since Iran is handing us our ass at least we can push around Cuba.
A Bloomberg article from yesterday notes that Rupert Murdoch was among those that encouraged D Trump to attack Iran. The article notes Murdock and Trump had several conversations on the topic. Its nice to know that the tabloid press billionaire is grounded in his personal area of expertise, that being geopolitics and military strategy… I may not understand how to embed the link so the url is:https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-03-21/trump-s-iran-war-drive-exposes-limits-of-yes-sir-cabinet
FoxNews and all the Murdoch properties have nothing to lose from chaos. If you click over there, you’d think things are going fine in the war, President Trump is cracking down on the mullahs, as God intended, and that ICE is going to help those frisky college kids get back safely and smoothly from their Spring Break holiday. There are probably some country music stars speaking out for supporting troops and a commenter making fun of AOC for saying something about something (they are creepily attracted to her like the roid rage jock who wants to date goth girls). FoxNews prints money.
Long drive back from Vail and I too occasionally listen to Fox News on the radio to see what they’re up to, pushing fear being their forte-naturally.
As you described, everything is going swimmingly in the deep end of the war pool, nothing to see here except occasional glory on our side, rah rah.
Ten and a half hours till the markets open (in East Asia, I mean). If a market rout is the only thing that can stop Trump, that’s our time window. But as Yves has pointed out, he may pre-empt that, making the escalation a fait accompli even before trading starts, so that the rout is no longer an effective deterrent. If this is the way things are going, those ten and a half hours are the ticking clock for the actual attack.
It sucks to be Iran. They have to wait till the attack starts before retaliating, otherwise the escalation is blamed on them (even though Trump issued the ultimatum). During Millennium Challenge 2002, van Riper ordered Red to attack before the ultimatum deadline arrived, as he rightly saw it as a tactical advantage. Iran can’t do that.
In terms of game theory, if I were a GCC country leader, I’d declare war today… on Israel. And start neutralising US assets in my territory. Our sovereign fund money and assets, invested in North Atlantic banks and corporations, were already going to be frozen and confiscated down the line when I tried to use them for reconstruction, anyway. If USrael suffers a decisive defeat and I make good with Iran, I get to keep our desalination plants and what’s left of the energy infrastructure, and the risk of ending up hanging from a lamppost diminishes considerably.
Speaking of, I haven’t heard of Bahrain much these days, since the last report that their causeway to Saudi Arabia had been badly damaged, and that Jordanian troops had been sent in to protect the government and quell unrest, early on in the war. Wonder how their king is feeling right now. Out of all leaders’, his is the most precarious position.
Stressful day ahead… and then a stressful week, month, year, decade…
Iran can retaliate in advance, using the same asymmetric principles it is currently using. 1 hour before Asian markets open, it can announce new rules for the Strait that effect everyone in the world if they are attacked. Then if the US attacks, it will be doing so in the face of global resistance.
But as Yves has pointed out, he may pre-empt that, making the escalation a fait accompli even before trading starts, so that the rout is no longer an effective deterrent.
He does seem to have a history of setting deadlines and then not following through on them, doesn’t he?
The GCC Sheikdoms fear the most the spectre of a powerful and succesfull islamic republic that has a very, very modicum control on greed and oligarchic development. What if their own peeps get ideas. It is not Shia versus Suni. It is despotic autocracy vs populist republicansim at play across the Persian Gulf. So no, it is not going to happen, the Sheicks would rather see their world come down around them than to really make peace, never mind submit to Iran. Of course, they would rather have all Gaza and West Bank occupied by Israel and cleared of Plaestinians (no matter how) than to geopardize their positions.
Iranian commentators have said that Bahrain is fair game as a former province of Persia. Not an official policy though.
The Iran war like the Ukraine war, the US is the main instigator but feels little of the pain everyone else does, yes it will hit but not yet and yes time is running out for all sorts of products around the world.
Why is the GCC still siding with Trump after seeing the US can’t protect them?
Israel has bombed them? I have no idea.
Why is Europe still siding with Trump after 4 years and staggering economic losses? I don’t know.
As to the Iran war how long will Israel put up with being bombed, not much longer? Now that they have started bombing nuclear facilities with the real potential of releasing radioactive materials, is dropping nuclear bombs far behind? Would Trump do it too?
Would it end the war? What happens after I don’t know.
The desperation is rising and with 2 madmen running things, not good and no off ramp and no one who wants to let alone can do negotiations.
US insures GCC monarchs/oligarchs against an ‘Arab Spring’ not run by Mossad.
Their assets are in US $.
they will still need to find the jet fuel for the Lolita Express to fly them out of there
And yet, as far as I can tell, the American public is sleepwalking its way toward economic shock anarchy. I’ve only met one person in my outings (a checkout girl at the supermarket who understood the message being sent by the supplies I was purchasing) who would even acknowledge that a war is happening. Do we only wake up when the markets go boom?
The governments of the Gulf’s family dictatorships are just that.
As compradors their interest ends at their business interests and their families.
They already have their families out, so nothing to lose but business. So, the only possible preservation of those interests lie in USraeli success. Their societies despise them and they reciprocate.
Al Mayadeen published Iranian conditions for ending war
https://english.almayadeen.net/news/politics/senior-iranian-official-outlines-conditions-for-ending-war
Tehran has outlined six key conditions as part of what the official described as a new legal and strategic framework:
Guarantees to prevent the recurrence of war
Closure of US military bases in the region
Payment of compensation to the Islamic Republic
An end to wars across all regional fronts
Establishing a new legal framework for the Strait of Hormuz
Prosecution and extradition of media figures deemed hostile to Iran
The last one sounds a little off to me, maybe something lost in translation?
Maybe referring to Reza Pahlavi, the son of the Shah, who has been shilling for Iran regime change by US-Israel.
Trump Declares ‘The Death of Iran’ — Then Brands Democratic Party America’s ‘Greatest Enemy’ in Stunning Post
https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/trump-declares-death-iran-then-132804426.html
The Gulf countries may retaliate if Iran attacks continue, Turkey says
Turkish foreign minister says Gulf states warned they may be forced to take “countermeasures” if Iran’s attacks continue, raising fears of a wider regional war
https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/gulf-countries-may-retaliate-if-iran-attacks-continue-turkey-says
I have yet to understand what the Gulf States bring to the table that the US or Israel lacks in the way of combat capabilities. I have heard reports that the US doesn’t have real minesweepers, and the NATO ask was primarily about plugging holes in in US naval forces, but I haven’t heard anything that the Gulf States can do, except maybe divert some of the missile strikes that would otherwise fall on Israel.
Saudi and Pakistan have an alliance, and maybe direct Gulf involvement would serve to broaden the conflict to include Turkey and Pakistan, and that might be meaningful, but is also more likely to bring in the Russians and the Chinese in a bigger way.
Iran, by targeting jet fuel depots and refueling planes, is hitting a key node of US/Israel power projection – if there is no jet fuel, the US cannot fly missions, especially without standoff munitions. Note that military jet fuel is a specialized variant of commercial aviation fuel used only in an emergency. This is the first time where the US has no safe regional staging ground for logistics.
Trump is desperate to change the narrative, and it is clear that is not going to happen from the air. With Irbil nearly destroyed and about to be abandoned per the link in the article, this turns to Azerbaijan or Turkey. I cannot imagine Turkey agreeing, as it would empower the Kurds.
——-
Fascinating (and technical) exposition on the Majid air defense system, including how Iranian decoy radar stations convinced the West that Iran had no air defenses, while the Majid is a passive IR system (and the F35 must get close to the target because of faulty software). Apparently, F35 sales are being rethought.
https://www.presstv.ir/Detail/2026/03/21/765634/silence-of-stealth-how-iran-shatteredinvincibility-us-f35-fighter-jet
Jet fuel (and refueling aircraft) is the sine qua non of the offensive war against Iran. Nothing will happen without it.
We aren’t getting any real reporting on that for a reason. I keep watching for signs, like the stories about the B-1 bombers based in the UK striking Iran, or the apparent shift to attacks by carrier-based aircraft. Are the ground bases effectively taken out after hundred of missile strikes? Direct reports are almost non-existent.
Trump’s ultimatum sets up Israel’s use of Nukes
Rubio told us that Trump started the war with Israel because Iran would attack USA after Israel attacked Iran. Thus, Iran’s intention was an imminent threat that justified a pre-emptive strike – in coordination with Israel, the aggressor(!).
The twisted logic that started the war may now end it.
If Netanyahu determines that Iran’s promised destruction of vital infrastucture is a imminent threat to Israel’s existence, he may decide that a pre-emptive nuclear response is justified. Especially when they are low, or out of, interceptors and Iran could potentially continue the attacks on infrastructure for months.
Readers may say this is inconceivable. But so much about this war has been inconceivable.
=
Who is Trump?
Trump has made the inconceivable … conceivable by acting very differently than the person we were led to believe he was. Yet many are still mentally stuck on Trump as what he said he is (populist, peacemaker), despite his constant lies, evasions, and bad behavior.
To say he is a con man who is inclined to supremacist thinking invites cries of “TDS!” And, if that claimed supremacy is in any way Zionist, cries of “antisemitism”. It is abhorrent to think that he may be abhorrent.
Yet, here he is … doing the abhorrent things we are not allowed to think he might do. Including a coverup of the assassination of Charlie Kirk, his political ally and friend.
Now that Trump has blown his cover, the notion that Trump will be swayed by the markets seems quaint. Hopium from the helpless who blanket themselves in his narcissism. He thinks too much of himself – he won’t do what will make him HATED.
=
Realist Geopolitics vs Trump Geopolitics
Is a middle-east that is totally dominated by a country with a supremacist ideology preferred to a ME where the power of each regional player is checked by it’s nemesis?
Does USA intend to make Saudi Arabia the counter-balancing regional power? Does anyone really believe that Zionists will allow such a plan? LOL
Trump is not seeking off-ramps. He is seeking total victory. And in doing so, he is creating a monster. We should consider if he is doing so inadvertently, pursuing short-term interests, or explicitly because he is “compromised” or is himself a Zionist supremacist. Frankly, the latter seems more likely given his close relationship to Cohn, Epstein, Kutchner-Netanyahu, etc. Is that inconceivable? Why? Because the con man never told us he was a Zionist supremacist?
I tried floating the “Zion Don” moniker after he was elected.
If Trump delivers on his insane threats and THEY ARE INSANE, Iran will do what they have said they will do, retaliate in kind.
So… what happens in Israel if there is no potable water?
Or the UAE, Qatar, Saudi Arabia?
Water is life, for Millions of people no water means an ugly death.
It is that simple, water is life.
Then there is the nearly inevitable social upheaval prior to the ugly deaths.
“Water is life.” How true that is. This whole attack on Iran continually reminds me of a line from a Boz Scaggs song titled King of El Paso a number of years ago.
There’s a kind of hush
All over the world tonight
All over the world
You can hear the sounds of push meets shove
You know what I mean
Just the two of us
And nobody else in sight
There’s nobody else and I’m feeling good
Just holding the fight
So listen very carefully
Open up Hormuz now or you will see what I mean
It isn’t a dream
The only sound that you will hear
Is when I whisper on Truth Social
For ever and ever
There’s a kind of hush
All over the world tonight
All over the world
People just like us are causing push meets shove
So listen very carefully
Open up Hormuz now or will see what I mean
It isn’t a dream
The only sound that you will hear
Is when I whisper on Truth Social
For ever and ever
There’s a kind of hush
All over the world tonight
All over the world
You can hear the sounds of push meets shove
There’s a Kind of Hush, performed by the Carpenters
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8CX83EQA8dc&list=RD8CX83EQA8dc
Old yeller looks to be following the route of the Yom Kippur War in 1973, a retreat of around 10% as the war was going on, after having gone up in spot price prior to the conflict.
https://sdbullion.com/gold-prices-1973?srsltid=AfmBOoquIIqoohUC7dPCASxcYn6_4SB-CKAY6m49tYNAXcg_vZZmt1wa
‘The US military dropped several 5,000-pound bombs on an underground facility located along Iran’s coastline, according to Admiral Brad Cooper, the head of US Central Command.’
Isn’t there something like 100 miles of coastline loaded with secret bases facing Hormuz? And this admiral is making a big thing of hitting one base? Has he a plan for clearing out that entire coastline? Reminds me of a scene from the 1964 film “Zulu.” After the first attack was fended off, an officer exclaimed ‘Sixty! We must have gotten at least sixty.’ whereupon another officer muttered ‘That leaves only 3,940.’
With the ever-rising number of billionaires in the US, you would think one of them would give enough of a damn about the future of the US to literally pay a couple of handfuls of cowards in the Senate to end this nightmare. Maybe it’s really true that there are no good billionaires.
It’s an interesting question, here’s what I suspect:
1) vast majority of billionaires support this.
2) most of the rest are compromised, there might be blackmail on them (e.g. affairs), or they might be at risk of somehow losing everything.
3) Since the system works for them, they think the system is working great. For example, are any of them personally detrimentally affected by how badly this war is turning out? I doubt it.
Re: 3
I think it’s underestimated how much policy is the result of half remembered lines from a 101 class.
Even Newt Gingrich who I wouldn’t expect to be that stupid (though he is an Adelson puppet) is putting out a pipeline alternative to the Hormuz, ignoring the basic problem: everything is in range of missiles. Those infographics -let’s ignore the stupidity of nukes- are almost certainly from the era of SCUDs.. These stupid ideas are simply never challenged.
Then of course, there is the unspoken question at all levels, what good is the Gerald Ford? Lockheed Martin? public money for NFL stadiums?
To billionaires, casualties are formalities.
I read that to say that he hasn’t met his ‘own goals’, which if this was soccer and not war, would be catastrophic-giving them up to the other team.
Israeli settlers smash cars and set fires in attacks on Palestinians in the West Bank
https://apnews.com/article/israel-palestinians-west-bank-settlers-9ded87da79b032cff60ddd8797846f0e
Philippines, US hold maritime exercises
https://www.philstar.com/headlines/2026/03/22/2516013/philippines-us-hold-maritime-exercises
Details of comparative structure of grids in Iran and Israel:
https://x.com/The_Kremlinn/status/2035572424347930775
Iran to completely close Hormuz if Trump executes threats on Iranian energy, Revolutionary Guards say
https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/iran-completely-close-hormuz-if-trump-executes-threats-iranian-energy-2026-03-22/
why would Iran close off exports to China? That makes no sense. Snooping around Press TV, I could not find this very important statement. Since it is illogical, has no link or named spokesperson (i.e., a quote), its clearly propaganda along the lines that Iran is mining the Gulf (that would hit their ships sailing to China).
https://www.presstv.ir/Detail/2026/03/22/765717/Iran%E2%80%99s-armed-forces-affirm-unwavering-solidarity-with-Palestine
Reuters also told us it was Russia that bombed its own North Sea pipeline.
This is the reason I developed a MSM allergy – you end up less informed (and lower IQ) than if you stayed away. Why did I bother writing this? To contrast the MSM with naked capitalism that increases IQ and raises your soul closer to heaven.
Charlie Kirk, June 2025:
War with Iran is “pathologically insane”.
The whole video is worthwhile. Kirk believed that Trump was the populist MAGA peacemaker that he claimed to be. That Trump would resist ideological fervor and act with prudence and wisdom.
10 weeks later, Kirk was assassinated. His objects to war with Iran . . . silenced.
The Trump Admin then covered it up:
Kirk had also criticized Israel’s “ethnic cleansing” (his words) of Gaza.
…a reprise
And here’s to you, Tyler Robinson
Bibi loves you more than you will know
Whoa, whoa, whoa
God bless you, please, Tyler Robinson
Zionism holds a place for those who prey
Hey, hey, hey
Hey, hey, hey
We’d like to know a little bit about you for our files
We’d like to help you learn to help yourself
Look around you, all you see are sympathetic eyes
Stroll around your cell until you feel at home
And here’s to you, Tyler Robinson
Bibi loves you more than you will know
Whoa, whoa, whoa
God bless you, please, Tyler Robinson
Zionism holds a place for those who prey
Hey, hey, hey
Hey, hey, hey
Hide it in a hiding place where no one ever goes
Leave engraved bullets with a Mauser
Put it in a wooded area off-campus
It’s a little secret, just Tyler Robinson’s affair
Most of all, you’ve got to hide it from the Feds
Coo, coo, ca-choo, Tyler Robinson
Bibi loves you more than you will know
Whoa, whoa, whoa
God bless you, please, Tyler Robinson
Zionism holds a place for those who prey
Hey, hey, hey
Hey, hey, hey
Sitting on a roof on a Wednesday afternoon
Going to the campus debate
Laugh about it, shout about it
When you’ve got to choose
Every way you look at this, you lose
Where have you gone, William Shatner?
Our nation turns its lonely eyes to you
Woo, woo, woo
What’s that you say, Tyler Robinson?
Kirk has left and gone away
Hey, hey, hey
Hey, hey, hey
Mrs. Robinson, by Simon & Garfunkel
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9C1BCAgu2I8&list=RD9C1BCAgu2I8
Every time I look at you I don’t understand
Why you let the things you did get so out of hand.
You’d have managed better if you’d had it planned.
Why’d you choose such a heated time in such a twisted land?
Since you died today, you have reached a whole nation.
Israel said 3 times it had no participation.
Don’t you get me wrong.
I only want to know.
Charlie Kirk, Charlie Kirk,
What have you become since you bit the dirt?
Charlie Kirk Superstar,
Do you think you’re what they say you are?
Tell me what you think about your friends at the top.
Who’d you think besides yourself is the pick of the crop?
Donald, was he where it’s at? Is he where you are?
Could Bibi move the US, or was that just PR?
Did you mean to die like that? Was that a mistake, or
Did you know your messy death would be a record breaker?
Don’t you get me wrong.
I only want to know.
Charlie Kirk, Charlie Kirk,
What have you become since you bit the dirt?
Charlie Kirk Superstar,
Do you think you’re what they say you are?
Superstar
(content warning: big hair, halter tops and gyrating hips)
https://youtu.be/IvVr2uks0C8
Excellent!
The original lyrics didn’t need a lot of reworking…
Iran says shot down ‘enemy’ F-15 jet near Hormuz Island, shares video as ‘proof’
https://www.hindustantimes.com/world-news/iran-says-shot-down-enemy-f-15-jet-near-hormuz-island-shares-video-as-proof-101774174720592.html
Iran says it will ‘irreversibly destroy’ Middle East infrastructure if US attacks energy sites
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/mar/22/iran-says-destroy-middle-east-infrastructure-us-energy-sites
In Portugal, the price of diesel at the pump has gone up from around 1,60€/Lt a month ago to around 2,10€/Lt from tomorrow, 30% increase. I used to spend 300€ a month driving to work, will now spend 400€. I will, of course, try to cut on my driving and will have to consider alternatives, like public transportation (takes 2 hours instead of 1) and driving at below 90 km/hour at all times.
I just wanted to give an example of how this is affecting people.
Similar in Luxembourg, although less about 10 cts off of Portugal prices, i.e. from EUR 1.46 per liter to EUR 2.00 per liter, which – fun fact – equals $8.63 per gallon.
Likely to go up further tomorrow based on Friday’s price action.
Started my skiing road trip by filling up @ $4.59 a gallon, and a fortnight later paid $4.59 in Pavlovegas yesterday, which is typically a buck cheaper than Cali.
A $7.77 national average price per gallon would constitute a ‘Jackpot’ of sorts, in the gas slot machines.
The average price per gallon of regular grade gasoline in California one month ago was $4.617. Yesterday it was $5.70, and today it is $5.76. https://gasprices.aaa.com/?state=CA
California gasoline prices are always considerably higher than the national average.
All prices are now above 5 bucks here, and my Chevron is at 6.09, here in S Cal (not a ritsy area). Sadly, my commute has no mass transit options – will try and carshare (and work from home more) if prices get above 10.00.
Monterey CA area reporting!
Shell station in Marina:
Regular (87 octane) $6.259/gallon
Plus (89 octane) 6.499
Premium (91 octane) 6.759
These charts aren’t updated on a daily basis (I believe they are updated weekly) but you can see the percentage change in fuel prices since the start of the war for most (if not all) countries:
Fuel prices changes after the start of the Iran war
Seeing some investment accounts I follow on X saying that tomorrow looks to be a Black Monday. We will see soon enough, starting with the opening of markets in Asia tonight.
Also, on Friday Jim Cramer opined that the market was greatly oversold and presented a buying opportunity. Some will take that as a signal that it’s time to go long in bottled water and ammunition.
Please, please let it be so. I said from the outset that Mr. Market was the best hope for checking Trump.
Maybe the release of that “A Crude Awakening” report is intended to get a mini panic going with its hard dose of reality.
IRGC details list of targets if Iranian power plants are hit (https://t.me/parstodayrussian/198639#) – there is actually quite a bit of nuance here:
It seems there is some room for maneuver here. Certainly viz. the Gulf States. And even viz. Israel – “widely struck” is not the same as “completely destroyed”. Maybe that’s sort of the core of the threat, for every Iranian power station knocked down, we’ll down an Israeli one…
…I am somewhat puzzled, however, by the threat to close the Strait completely, i.e. even to Chinese/Indian/whatever traffic. After all the efforts of last week to show that “friendly” nations can still pass, subject to certain conditions…
Maybe the threat to close the Strait completely is a message to China and India? “Time to get involved.”
Meanwhile, two tankers containing Russian diesel and crude approach Cuba. Is Putin now looking for a “good reason”? This shit is going off the rails.
Well they probably meant, if Israel/US destroy their oil and gas infrastructure (for instance on Kharg island), then they wouldn’t be able to send their oil through the Strait to China anyways. So close it all down.
Regime collapse in Iran expected months after war, official say
An Israeli official said regime collapse was never expected during war; US is intensifying strikes, and Israel assesses Trump is moving to seize Iran’s Kharg island, a step he said would economically strangle the regime and trigger its fall
https://www.ynetnews.com/article/bk3sgwa5wg
I highly doubt Trump will sign off on Iwo Jima 2.0. If he tries, it will be a debacle for the history books.
My SWAG is those amphibious forces are to try and retrieve trapped personnel in the US embassy and base in Iraq.
Though it is possible the generals are willing to let Trump take responsibility for slaughterhouse Kharg Island. It would provide a perfect reason for a soft (or not so soft) coup.
If a person is willing to put themselves into the mind of an ultranationalist Zionist, assuming Trump and Iran make good on strikes on electrical and probably desalinization plants, given the settler movement, the IDF, and full press censorship, in the ensuing chaos, it would be the perfect cover to engage in mass extermination/ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians. They could shut off all food and water and send out settler squads to just massacre indiscriminately. If they took the Philadelphia corridor, they could drive out the Gazans into Sinai, push out the Palestinians on the West Bank into the surrounding countries. Given the censorship, nothing would get out, and what got out would be claimed to be AI, and charges of antisemitism leveled against any spreading “conspiracy theories.” It would probably coincide or launch with the destruction of the Al-Aqsa Mosque.
I make no claim that this is anyone’s plan, or that it will even happen, but if one considers the history of genocides, we have the perfect conditions forming for a mass extermination/ethnic cleansing operation, and the perfect conditions for concealing it.
Egypt knows that Palestinians to the Sjnai eventually means the zionist colony in the Sinai and will resist.
Agreed, except for the Philadelphia corridor. Egypt has significantly increased military presence in Sinai, presumably to prevent a tsunami of Palestinians. Direct slaughter of Palestinians more likely in Gaza and West Bank. Perhaps even slaughter of Israeli Arab citizens. After Gaza genocide, I see no limit on Israeli blood lust.
I already commented on Egypt sending military reinforcements to the Sinai.
This has been taking place during the past 12 months or so, first with 40’000 additional soldiers sent to the Sinai. The arguments vary from:
1) To fight al Qaeda and Daesh. It is plausible: Egypt has had plenty of trouble with islamist guerrillas in the Sinai for years.
2) To prevent the smuggling of weapons to Gaza. It is also plausible: Egypt has been doing a lot to hamstring Hamas (which is Muslim Brotherhood — the enemy that the junta led by el-Sisi overthrew in 2013).
3) To prevent Israel from mass expelling Palestinians to the Sinai. It is plausible too: Israelis have been putting forth plans for doing just that in order to “solve” the Gaza “problem”.
Then, in Autumn 2025, Egypt moved HQ-9B anti-aircraft weapons (more or less the Chinese equivalent of the Russian S-300) to the Sinai.
And that indicates that Egypt has strategic considerations that go beyond the havoc that Palestinians or islamist guerrillas could wreak in the Sinai. For which regional player is intent on expanding the territory it controls, has been doing so unabashedly for the past couple of years, and relies heavily upon its advanced air force for that purpose?
I strongly suspect that Egypt has concluded that it is next on the menu of the Zionists (after Palestine, Syria, and Lebanon), and is taking appropriate measures.
By the way: in the current war (and during the 12-days war, and during the conflict USA+Israel against Yemen), Egypt has been standing back and acting very inconspicuously. I cannot remember Egypt having been involved in downing Iranian missiles or drones — or Yemenis ones for that matter.
Interesting thing: Egypt maintains a mix of US, European, and Russian/Chinese equipment for their military. The Russian and Chinese share of their inventory is fairly small, eg about 40 MiG 29s vs 200+ F16s vs about 40-50 Rafales, but they would still be able to field a somewhat decent sized force even if their US/West sourced gear get “turned off.”
The Night of St. Bartholomew, eh?!
Or the very reverse, an unprecedented, large scale Intifada.
If it is true that an Iranian missile hit a spent reactor fuel storage building in Dimona, that is in effect a dirty bomb strike. Really big if true, but I am not seeing confirmation in other reports.
Donald Trump is coming apart. He may have finally realized that he has no good options but is reverting to his bad habit of domination and attempting to create new options when he has none, thanks both to his epic miscalculation of Iran’s capabilities and his over-estimation of American military prowess.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Hair Furor really reminds me of Adolf, and the latter allowed Germans to be annihilated when all was lost, never accepting defeat by offing himself.
If Benedict Donald ever admitted he was wrong about something, i’m pretty sure he’d self-combust.
Your comment supports the nagging doubt that I’m having about a market rout correcting our course.
Stylistically, our mad king child is the Dictator of Double Down.
He’s a performer. It’s likely someone else (multiple someones) are making the decisions for him and letting him sell them. Now they might have to do it in such a way that he thinks the decided upon course of action was his idea, instead of words being whispered in his ear. But he’s a crooked real estate nepo-baby used to having lawyers and investment bankers take care of all the messy details, so it’s unlikely he’s miraculously become a military mastermind in the last decade. The Deep State is controlling things and he’s a Deep State creature.
Trump = American Zelensky, in a way, then? In an odd way, the shoe fits.
As far as I have ever been able to tell–yes, I realize that, just like everything else, it’s not monolithic–the financial press functions primarily as a carnival barker for *the dumb money*. Our most recent war is no exception.
I suggest you look at what a Bloomberg terminal costs. That is what pays for the newsroom. Bloomberg does not have to cater to finance tout advertisers
I wasn’t suggesting that ad revenue is a driver, or even that there is any kind of explicit editorial line. I could speculate about groupthink and social acceptability, but I chose the term *function* to bracket questions of intent and purpose. I agree with your recent assessment that Western media complacency reflects a blithe assumption of superiority that is, at its core, racist, but the financial press in particular has a reassuring complacency all its own (as with the refusal to consider, until recently, that AI might be a bubble, well-documented here).
Re ME jet travel
https://indi.ca/a-retreat-turning-to-a-rout-ramadan-war-21/
Wukchumni:
You’re song lyrics today are fantastic.
Thanks for the kudos gras~
Since the Zionists have made talking about or protesting anything vaguely Jewish anti-Semitic in our country, do secular American Jews bear the brunt of the whiplash when the deal goes down and the almighty buck is worth bupkis?
They’re a lot handier of a target than the perps in the Holy Land.
As an American Jewish atheist, I worry that Israel’s evil and the conflation of being anti-Israeli policy with antisemitism will make American Jews targets, yes
And I keep hoping that Iran realizes New York City Jews have protested against the genocide and this war too
As a 4th Generation American of Swiss immigrants, my last name was nonetheless German. Growing up I was well aware that Germans, and anyone vaguely German, was somehow responsible for Hitler— good Germans.
The same could happen to Jews, even though many today have opposed Netayahu’s policies for decades.
Wuk, I don’t think anyone can beat Tom Lehrer’s “National Brotherhood Week”.
The Zionist Entity has waged a decades long PR campaign that conflates Judaism and Zionism.
In other words the Godly Zionists are painting targets on the back of every Jew in the World with their Genocide of fellow Semites in Gaza and Lebanon.
And antisemitism has nearly as long a history in the USA as Racism.
Because Human Nature.
Except for possibly “So Long, Mom”.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yrbv40ENU_o
@Wukchumni at 1:20 pm
Professor Seyed Marandi has made the point a few times that Iranians recognise that many US Jews do not support Israeli/US actions in Gaza and Iran. He also notes that Iran has a flourishing Jewish community.
Professor Mirandhi has now been targeted for death by Zionist nutters.
And now this:
Video shows an explosion and fire breaking out at a Jewish organization’s building and nearby cars in Golders Green, London, reportedly carried out by unknown individuals.
https://nitter.poast.org/iwasnevrhere_/status/2035914268382482483#m
This kind of stuff turns societies inside out.
Meanwhile, these attacks continue to cause havoc:
https://www.egyptindependent.com/israel-orders-expanded-strikes-in-southern-lebanon-targeting-homes-and-bridges-over-strategic-river/
“Israel’s Defense Minister Israel Katz said he and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu have ordered the military to speed up the demolition of homes along the southern Lebanese border and to destroy all bridges over the Litani River, which links southern Lebanon with the rest of the country…
…It comes as the Israeli military confirmed the destruction of two major bridges over the Litani River this week, effectively isolating civilians south of the river who were unable to evacuate before the strikes, while also cutting off food and medical supply routes…”
Lebanese President (not only a Maronite, but an Aoun) was sounding pretty agitated about Israeli aggression (based on al Mayadeen’s report.) Notwithstanding Hizb’ullah having been forced onto the back foot in Lebanese politics after losing its political leadership, I don’t see Israel’s actions making them popular among all but the most deranged types in Lebanon now. I expect that, today, Hizb’ullah is hitting Israel (back) with most of Lebanon behind them. Israel squandered its gains in Lebanon pretty fast…but if their goal is gobbling up good chunk of Lebanon and its resources, especially water, this was going to happen sooner or later anyways, I figure.
Tasnim News article appears to be blocked in the United States. Country of origin is .ir, which must be Iran, so not a surprise. Perhaps there are some snippets that are worth sharing by someone else.
It may be under attack
I can get to it proxying through Egypt. It’s fairly slow, but then it would be with that round trip. I can’t get to it through Czechia, France, UK, Germany, US.
I can access it, but I am using Firefox as opposed to a Chrome-based browser and I also have the Adnauseum extension that blocks a lot of third-party malfeasance.
It could also be up again for the time being.
I was able to open it in California on a Safari browser. Though I’m not sure if it’s because of Apple’s “Private Relay” (which functions as a sort of “light” VPN) or if it’s my ISP.
Down for everyone.
https://www.isitdownrightnow.com/tasnimnews.ir.html
Back online as of now.
Huh. Maybe Yves was right and it was an attack.
That was a big claim by the source – and it would have resulted in the release of radioactive particles, which would not be at all easy to hide – so the credibility of that source rests on that imo.
Unless the hit didn’t disperse any fuel, i.e. the storage devices didn’t receive enough damage to leak.
There’s also the chance that the hit may have caused a slow leak, meaning that the increase will not be measured as a spike but rather as a curve.
Well, you know…extraordinary claims requiring extraordinary evidence…
If we don’t see some kind of evidence of it in e.g. a month or two – to be generous – it harms the sources credibility imo.
Video on Rumble of Vance saying this:
BREAKING: In a stunning moment, JD Vance just admitted that he and Donald Trump are “taking the social safety net.” Every American needs to know how the Trump Administration is destroying Social Security, Medicare and more.
https://rumble.com/v77gsi2-jd-vance-just-admitted-that-he-and-donald-trump-are-taking-down-social-secu.html
A consideration of the context shows that this is Vance and Oz promising to prevent usage of the social safety net by people who shouldn’t have access to it – illegal aliens- or those ostensibly legally here but who are defrauding the system. My understanding is that the fraud is overstated and the method being used by the feds against the “blue states” is very abusive – but Vance presents self as “defending the social safety net” for the real Americans.
A consideration of history shows that Vance et al will use the cover of “defending the social safety net” against fraud to make it even more difficult for Americans to make use of that threadbare safety. In effect, and by intention, taking it away.
aye. ive got 5 1/2 years to go, and i have never expected it to be there, for me.
especially after the last year.
Whatever the speculators think gas prices here are still going up….3.79 today at the top part of the spread.
Tasnim News reporting that Iran has concluded that US destroyers are running out of munitions. Posted ca. 20 minutes ago. The site is occasionally 502ing for me, even through Egypt.
Added in edit: that page is now 404. The site is in pretty bad shape right now :-(
I just got to it … thx for the link!
It’s back up now, and responding well even from a US proxy.
iranians have been, bar none, the most intelligent people i’ve worked with, across every field.
and extremely kind, forgiving and allowing.
i’m 18 smoking bongs with my typewriter and the iranian grad-student leaves a pamphlet under my door, “if you are smoking, please place a towel underneath; i get high on contact!” with about a hundred smily-faces. he took time to print that at the lab. we never had any problem; his preferred meal was beans out of the can.
i’m 28 and my music becomes popular, even in iran. i take it as an opportunity to engage dialogue as i would anything else, any other country.
we knew this was coming even back then. she did escape to vancouver, fine for whatever escape that is, but ran her own furniture store in tehran for years before that.
living in armenia, we have many cross-cultural academic forums. no, i can’t even begin to say how valuable the iranian female professors in the fields of philology and others, were to our forums.
no doubt somebody set me across from her at lake sevan for the lunch. i asked, deeply, ‘how bad is the problem? is there a problem?’
she: ‘inflation, you know, we hate it; but it does not make us hate who we are.’
nuf said. tuck in. let’s have some fish and throw the bones into the sea for luck.
need more examples?
By Dimitris Konstantakopoulos
https://www.defenddemocracy.press/beijing-to-tel-aviv-and-washington-israel-will-cease-to-exist-the-moment-it-uses-a-nuclear-weapon/
In the following paper, we will present the reasons why a nuclear war in the Middle East is now quite possible, the deterrent intervention of China which interrupted a period of dangerous tolerance of Israel by the great powers, and the relationship between what is happening in West Asia and what is happening around Ukraine and the American continent, particularly in Cuba….
These statements, and most likely the information it possesses, provoked an unofficial but very harsh statement from Beijing. This is the first time a major power has interrupted the unprecedented tolerance enjoyed by Israel and its lobbies, a tolerance that has now led humanity to the brink of the abyss.
…Specifically, Victor Gao, vice-president of the Chinese Institute for China and Globalization, when asked what the two nuclear powers, Russia and China, would do if Israel used nuclear weapons, he stated to the American The Cradle, that “the moment Israel uses a nuclear warhead against any country, it will be considered the number one enemy of humanity, it will be the demise of Israel as a state, as a regime, as a country.” He simultaneously warned Prime Minister Netanyahu, the government of Israel, and its armed forces that they will be considered enemies of humanity and responsible for whatever happens, in an indirect but clear reference to the Nuremberg trials that judged the Nazi leaders. Mr. Gao made it clear that what he says does not concern condemnatory statements but an advance notice of actions. He congratulated Mr. Trump on his statement that Israel will not use nuclear weapons and expressed the wish that he acts effectively in this direction.
Mr. Gao adds that any use of nuclear weapons by Israel will lead to an explosive proliferation of nuclear weapons in the Middle East and their use would result in hundreds of millions of deaths and the transformation of the entire region into an uninhabitable zone.
This is what Larry Johnson says too–that Russia and China which are countries with serious leadership (unlike our own)–will not allow it.
Reprise on Irrational’s post:
Iran denies attack on Diego Garcia: https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20260321-iran-denies-responsibility-for-missile-attacks-on-diego-garcia/
Iran’s responses have been evidently retaliatory in the main, and if they’ve done stuff they seem to admit to it.
I really don’t buy this story of Iran firing missiles at Diego Garcia. Yet. Altho’ The Cradle seems to (!).
It’s been all over UK media Sunday and a key talking point to establish Iran as a threat to the UK.
How convenient: To take Joe public away from any discussion that this is a perfidious illegal war on Iran and the UK is already complicit in war crimes as facilitating the main belligerents. Instead . . lets get Joe Public behind the use of UK military & facilities to attack the dastardly Iran instead.
Me thinks, I smell ‘manufacturing consent’.
Comunque, all sources I’ve been able chase down seem to, ultimately, emanate from UK.
Have also checked the Yemen News Agency, that I’ve found pretty good at alerts. Here fro reference:
https://www.saba.ye/en/category15.htm
Thoughts / info’ anyone?
Incidentally, another shout out to Richard Medhurst’s post [Starts at 38min in]
He’s a bit manic so I’d recommend turning the replay speed down to 0.95 or 0.9 for clarity.
A key point is that the US is capturing the the global LPG market as a trade-off but I think the -ve “trade-off’ has been way over that expected by US. Anyway 25 mins should be enough to get his ‘big picture’ point.
https://www.youtube.com/live/QiYU92vCrCU
Incidentally, much further in he gives a fantastic extensive report on Hezbollah’s fight back against Israel.
Not least Israel’s signals intelligence capabilities are being systematically de-fanged.
NC enables ‘the knowing’ versus the pap from MSM. Thanks so, so much Yves
Agree. The Iranians would know that hitting such a distant target would be tricky, imprecise and likely not cause so much damage if it did. So why waste expensive missiles? It does not survive scrutiny.
Uh oh:
Nobody there to provide him with a big, noisy and painful slap in the face?
Of course not.
History will look back in despair that absolutely nothing could stop him from his appointed rounds as he drove the country into a ditch, while claiming he won the Indy 500.
And here I thought we would have to wait another 15 years for our industrial civilisation to degrade a meaningful amount. There goes that surplus energy that we have all heard about that has been keeping all those unsustainable old industries going.
I think that Iran is coming around to thinking that they too would be better off without an oil industry in the area. I just hope that the severing of the undersea internet cables is extended to the US littoral, that should be within their capacity.
I think that apart from the toll that Iran is also thinking of old historical grievances about some of its provinces and reparations will be partly in territory. They often mention these in the preamble before one of their attack waves.
Is this quote from Trump confirmed?
Parsi is reliable and gives a source.
I see Reza Pahlavi, previously all-in on the US-Israel war, is now having second thoughts. The ‘total destruction of Iran’ (including civilian infrastructure) is apparently not what he thought he’d signed up for.
There were a number of protests here in early March by the Iranian diaspora (some of them describing the attack as a ‘necessary intervention’ on behalf of normal Iranians). I haven’t seen any for a little while now. I can’t imagine they’re too happy with the latest developments either, even though the general direction was predictable given how US wars in the Middle East typically go.
An hour ago, US embassy in Israel said that starting tomorrow, the fasten options to depart ISR are to travel over land to Egypt or Jordan.
HuffPost writes about the growing collapse of US military morale. “Do Not Want to Die For Israel.”
I just saw via Twitter. Quite the piece.
Morale is going to be for shit for several reasons, among them the fact that Trust in their superiors was just pissed away.
No Declaration of War.
No AUMF.
No consultation with Congress.
Officers in the US Military services are bound by the Uniform Military Code of Justice, they are explicitly required to disobey illegal orders.
Every senior Military officer involved knew that the orders from Trump to start this War for the benefit of Israel were illegal.
When they obeyed those orders they betrayed the Country they are sworn to serve.
My thought for a suitable punishment is simple, have them visit the graveyard of the 168 schoolgirls murdered on the first day of the War by the Good old USA.
I want the families to be there, with pictures of the slaughtered children.
I want those generals, one at time, to listen to each of the parents of these murdered children as they talk about the things their child loved.
And then life in Prison, no parole.
Murder is the deliberate unlawful killing of one Human Being by another, every death in this war is a murder.
It’s already much more interesting than I care for and it’s it is likely to get MUCH more interesting.
May there be peace in your heart, if nowhere else.
Today is my birthday and the wise words of your last line may be the best gift anyone could have given me today. (Peace in one’s heart does not mean a complacency or unwillingness to act.) Thank you.
And thank you so much to Yves and this commentariat for being such a place of information, civil discussion and sometimes even humor through all that is happing in our oh so bittersweet world.
Stevie Wonder: Love’s In Need Of Love Today
Oh goodness, Songs In the Key of Life. How apropos. I am of that time. Thanks for the reminder.
amen. hadn’t heard that in quite a long time. spiritual powerhouse of an album.
thank you.
I had the chance to speak to a naval officer yesterday. Morale is definitely not high. He said something to the effect that it’s not fun having your friends shot at, and that it’s been going on for two years now. Not sure what he meant by that last part or where they were getting shot at – he personally has not been in a war zone.
I did try to find out if low morale might have had something to do with the issues facing the USS Gerald Ford but he just gave a very short non-answer. Despite the low morale, he apparently takes the ‘loose lips’ mantra to heart.
I am a lot less worried about armageddon-ish outcomes if this is really what the US is going to do.
The Iranians just need to slaughter the Americans and use this as an excuse to pound Israel some more.
Although they now say the Gulf states are targets by virtue of buying Treasuries…..
I’ve been thinking that the best way Iran could respond to US troops taking Kharg Island might be to just shoot down their logistics tail, rather than directly attacking the troops. Hungry troops would be a bigger problem for the US than dead troops.
Presumably, they’d be resupplied by air from Iraq or Kuwait; both are at least 70 miles away, across open water. There’s no such thing as a “stealth cargo plane” (though maybe the Skunkworks is working on that?). Mine the runway, use drones & missiles to make fresh potholes daily, and US would have to use choppers & Ospreys, which would be even slower & more vulnerable.
How many gallons of jet fuel does it take to move one pound of Spam from Austin, MN, to Kharg Island?
Armchair Warlord, some time ago, mused that US military forgot the lessons of the Pacific War and and was busy cosplaying the Imperial Japanese military (certainly did it in a big way lately, twice, but he was writing before the first of these.) The specific reference was towards shocking disregard for logistics. Keeping troops supplied under fire would be tough enough even with good logistics, but today’s US military isn’t cery good at it.
I think the Pentagon has outsourced a lot of logistics to contractors who recycle the $$$ into campaign donations?
According to Sal Mercogliano (YT “What’s Going on with Shipping?” channel), the US Navy only has a few Supply ships these days (and those are old and often down for Maint), so they rent from (or contract out to) Shipping Companies.
In the first days of this damn war, Iran hit one of those in the Gulf of Oman (or where?), put it out of action but didn’t sink it (?). Interestingly, they haven’t seriously attacked any of our warships (yet….); I suspect that this is evidence of smart target choices, not “weakness”.
But, really, they lie about everything else, why not this? And come through Azerbaijan instead? Craig Murray seems to think the US will just bomb bomb bomb Iran for months until the whole country is a ruin. With apparently no care for the oil production of the other regional powers being destroyed, because that’s not oil we import, we’ve got Venezuela locked up, too bad about Europe and Asia, etc. It’s hard to tell when the leadership is so evil what new atrocity they will foist on the world. Russia and China are apparently going all in on keeping their powder dry, following the example of the Democrats here. Poor Iran.
Someone on Twitter pointed out that i24 was also the outlet that announced definitely that the Kurds had invaded Iran back on March 4th.
Source for the treasuries bit is Ghalibaf (the Speaker of the Iranian parliament):
https://x.com/mb_ghalibaf/status/2035776169656676675
Alongside military bases, those financial entities that finance the US military budget are legitimate targets. US treasury bonds are soaked in Iranians’ blood. Purchase them, and you purchase a strike on your HQ and assets.
We monitor your portfolios. This is your final notice.
China owns a hefty chunk of US Treasuries.
IF I am reading the Iranian statement correctly they are threatening to destroy the power plants and the desalination plants.
Losing power plants is annoying. Losing the desalination plants means the death of the Gulf Cooperation Council countries, with the exception of Oman.
Kuwait depends on desalination for 90% of its potable water. Saudi Arabia only gets 70% of its water from desalination, however Riyadh, as Chas Freeman notes, gets 90% or more of its water from one plant near Al Jubail. Under normal circumstances they may be able to reroute water from other plants if there is a problem. If all the plants are destroyed then Riyadh has no water.
If that happens then Saudi Arabia has probably 4 to 5 days to evacuate a city of a bit more than 7 million people and I don’t know where one could send the evacuees .
Luckily it is March and temperatures are mild. I do not know what summer temperatures are in Riyadh but along the coast in Bahrain or Dammam, Saudi Arabia daytime temperatures routinely reach 45-48℃ and water consumption skyrockets for anyone outside.
The same thing is going to apply up and down the coast of the Arabian Gulf. It looks like Qatar and Bahrain get around 60% of their water from desalination.
I have seen conflicting reports that Israel gets somewhere between 50 and 70% of its water from desalination.
Since the Iranians are not genocidal maniacs I assume that they will not destroy all of the desalination plants in the GCC but if they do we are looking at mass evacuation and a horrible number of deaths. If they only take out some plants in each country we are likely looking at a lot of emergency evacuations, any industries the countries have closing but no deaths.
I wish Iran would destroy the desalination plants just in Israel to deliver the message to the Gulf states.
#moiAussi
Yes. That would be the wiser move.
We can hope.
Reverse osmosis desalination plants use a lot of power. Lose the power plants and you lose most of the desalination.
It’s hard to overstate how important (and large) these desalination plants are.
Asianometry (YouTube) did a nice overview a year ago about such facilities – worth a watch if you can spare the time.
Thanks for this link, eye opening, especially the last minutes.❤️🐴🔥
“Imagine annihilating half of a country’s water supply with five quick drone strikes.”
Yeah, eye-opening, especially for a video produced a year ago!
Very true but I would hope that one could restore a power plant relatively quickly and those desalination plants should have emergency power. Even if one could only run at 50% capacity there would be a lot fewer deaths.
Take out a desalination plant for only a few days and it’s a disaster. I don’t know what water storage a city like Riyadh might have but I doubt it is huge.
From AI: “Imam Husayn was martyred on the day of Ashura during the Battle of Karbala, where he and his companions were denied access to water for three days, leading to their suffering and eventual deaths. This event symbolizes the struggle against tyranny and injustice in Shia Islam.”
Apparently the Shia regard deprivation of water to be inhumane and not an option. I don’t know about cutting off electricity…
“Better to ask for forgiveness than to ask for permission” transcends culture, particularly when the survival of your nation is at stake. Further, I suspect a lot of the military decision-making has shifted from the Clerics to the IRGC since the bombing started.
Marandi recommends everyone evacuate the Gulf, and that Iran will target all infrastructure including desalination plants at ~18:32-21:00:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zLNYidorCos
Cuba is ready for any potential attack from US amid oil blockade, envoy says
https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/cuba-is-ready-any-potential-attack-us-amid-oil-blockade-envoy-says-2026-03-22/
Patriot missile involved in Bahrain blast likely US-operated, analysis finds
Middlebury Institute of International Studies researchers concluded with moderate-to-high confidence that the suspect missile was likely launched from a U.S. Patriot battery located about 4 miles (7 km) to the southwest of the impacted neighborhood.
https://www.reuters.com/investigations/patriot-missile-involved-bahrain-blast-likely-us-operated-analysis-finds-2026-03-22/
Saudi Arabia orders five Iranian diplomats to leave within 24 hours
Iran’s military attaché, his deputy, and three embassy staff members have been ordered to leave the country
https://www.i24news.tv/en/news/middle-east/the-gulf/artc-saudi-arabia-orders-five-iranian-diplomats-to-leave-within-24-hours
NagasakIran
That damned Fourth Turning thing again~
Israel Thought It Could Spur Rebellion Inside Iran. That Hasn’t Happened.
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/22/us/politics/iran-israel-trump-netanyahu-mossad.html?unlocked_article_code=1.VFA.bse8.TbZ69lvzmfLz
Ehud Barak has an epic rant on tv.
Here is a nitter link to a T Keith post which has the video embedded.
From the folks who brought you this:
https://nitter.poast.org/Terror_Alarm/status/2034561157780947046#m
New assessments indicate heightened risk in major financial centers. Our sources point to credible chatter about potential targeting of high-profile economic infrastructure in Los Angeles, specifically the Citibank Center in Los Angeles.
https://t.me/terroralarm/28389#
Asia Turns Back to Coal as War Chokes Off Natural Gas
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/18/business/iran-war-lng-asia-japan.html
Nato chief ‘absolutely convinced’ alliance will reopen Strait of Hormuz (Telegraph, quoting a Fox interview)
Nato chief ‘absolutely convinced’ alliance will reopen Strait of Hormuz
Mark Rutte said he was “absolutely convinced” that Nato would be able to reopen the Strait of Hormuz.
The secretary general of the alliance argued that the secret nature of the military operation required its members to take time to plan their responses.
He told Fox News: “European allies and partners all over the world have used the last couple of weeks to make sure that we come together. They start planning to see what we can do collectively as allies, as partners of the United States.”
Nato has come under fire from Donald Trump for its failure to act quickly and help reopen the waterway.
Despite this, Rutte said the US operation was “crucial” as a result of the “existential threat” from Iran.
—–
Together with the manufacturing consent story about missiles at Diego Garcia, it’s feeling like America may have military allies very soon. Could also just be Rutte wish-casting I guess.
Yeah. This is Mark “NATO will not pause support for Ukraine” Rutte.
I think we have a candidate for someone actually crazier than Trump.
Sigh…
Donald J. Trump
@realDonaldTrump Mar 22, 2026, 10:56 AM
The IRGC just stated that if we bomb Iran’s power plants, they’ll bomb delisalination plants in the Gulf States. DO NOT DO IT! IT WOULD BE A HUGE MISTAKE! Majority of the people in the Gulf States rely on these desalination plants for their daily drinking water. The level of death and suffering caused would be comparable to that of WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION. If the terrorist regime of Iran did it, we may have to respond with such WEAPONS OF OUR OWN. I pray I NEVER have to do it, but if the lives of MILLIONS are at stake, I WILL NOT HESITATE! Thank you for you attention to this matter! – President DJT
If you don’t want them to bomb the desalination plants, don’t bomb their power plants to begin with. Or what, should Iran take the bombing and do nothing? And I gather from this that bombing the Israeli ones is okay?
And he issues another WMD threat.
Trump’s response to every off-ramp is to stomp down on the accelerator pedal.
Some petulant child is running the executive branch.
Was this deleted? I can’t find it
Ugh… it might have been a fake. My mother sent it to me as a screenshot and it had the correct TruthSocial format, but that’s easy to forge. I’ve just googled the text and nothing turned up. I didn’t check myself because I don’t touch TruthSocial with a ten-metre-pole. I should’ve been more suspicious of the time stamp, but I just assumed it had been captured by someone in a very distant time zone. Sorry about that.
The disturbing thing is that it’s so in-character we can’t tell it’s a fake.
No problem, I’m actually glad it’s fake!
>”The disturbing thing is that it’s so in-character we can’t tell it’s a fake”
It’s basic information hygiene to check it though. It takes ten seconds.
You don’t have to fully enter the Truth Social cess pool or join. You can just check quickly on Trump’s posts.
https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrump
Light Crude Futures on NYMEX – CL1!
https://www.tradingview.com/chart/UCZDQyf6/?symbol=NYMEX%3ACL1%21
Looks like there was a one-candle spike when oil markets opened Sunday at 18:00 EST, but the price is holding at 98. I.e., basically no movement. I wonder if this means traders are shrugging off DJT’s 48-hour “ultimatum” w.r.t. Hormuz, or if the ‘real’ trading will happen during business hours on Monday.
P.S. As Keynes said: “markets can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent.”
Also, regarding Yves’ recent note on Drucker’s “symbol economy”, e.g.:
Evidently, we are in a peculiar situation in which we both believe that “financial time moves faster than political or military time” (i.e., the symbol economy dominates), and yet we see clearly that very ominous “real” events are happening without markets appreciably reacting. We can easily extrapolate that real events will impact many different supply chains, ergo we keep checking the symbol economy for a response that hasn’t yet taken place. This conflicts with our appreciation of financial time as a leading indicator.
America used to be able to do things.
The Making of the Atomic Bomb. Richard Rhodes.
A couple news items from Japanese X (translated):
Are Japan’s oil reserve days really “long”?
https://media.rakuten-sec.net/articles/-/51849
The U.S. Ambassador insists that “the Prime Minister of Japan promises support from the Self-Defense Forces” to ensure safe navigation in the Strait of Hormuz
https://newsdig.tbs.co.jp/articles/-/2546380
“Hoarders” taking note of an incoming energy crisis:
Foreign Minister Araguchi explicitly states, “We are prepared to allow passage of Japanese ships.”
This is the order in which Tokyo will go hungry.
Regarding hoarding in Tokyo, I can report from direct experience that following the 3/11 disaster, which struck at 14:46 JST, within just a few hours all the supermarkets in my area had already been affected by flash hoarding. By 17:30, the entire aisle of instant noodles was stripped clean, and by 19:00 it was nearly impossible to find bottled water at a dozen different markets and large chain shops in the area.
P.S. Shopping at the local “su-pa” is a little strange now, as I find myself scanning and checking out the other customers, trying to discern who, if anybody, has started to hoard, and what they are buying. Shelves have all been “fronted” by the staff, and there are no obvious signs of panic buying.
Mostly, then, it feels like business as usual, though there were an unusual number of people milling around in front of the shelves with 5 kg bags of rice, and a number of shoppers seemed to be clutching their items a little tighter, packages of foodstuffs not in a basket but held close to the chest, etc.
Interesting analysis from History Legends.
Basically, the argument is that, if US does send ground forces, it would be into Baluchistan, via seizing a couple of ports in the south. I found this quite convincing: the area has good infrastructure (ports and an airport) in a small area surrounded by underdeveloped badlands, with mostly minority population with issues with Tehran, and easy access to the open sea. Seemingly very little operational downside, but with political downsides–I don’t think this works without at least tacit Pakistani collaboration, for example. Now, given the convoluted politics in the region, there is no good reason to expect Pakistan would not stab Iran in the back. But that only opens up a Pandora’s box whose contents I can hardly imagine–but I imagine that’d be exactly why they’d want to jump into this.
How do they move the ground troops into Iran? It would take millions of troops. A couple thousand troops won’t make a dent. They’d have to gather in Pakistan and move across the border. Pretty sure Iran would see that coming.
Here’s my prediction:
48 hours to the minute from the 48 hour ultimatum, there will be a time-on-target attack of the specified infrastructure.
This is based on my experience as an Army field artillery officer plus 2 hunches: 1. The 2003 “shock and awe” opening to the war in Iraq, which was a time-on-target attack, and 2. the US doesn’t seem to have a whole lot of innovation when it comes to tactics. Lather, rinse, repeat.
I predicted the same thing in 2003 and even accurately guessed the time: high noon (EDT), just like a bad western movie showdown or such nonsense. I went home from work “sick” and watched it happen live, a few minutes after getting home.
Like then, i don’t want to be right but we’ll find out tomorrow.
>In addition, for Southeast Asian countries, even after adjustment, the number of reserve days is shorter than Japan, and Vietnam, which is especially short, has been asking Japan and South Korea for support in securing crude oil
Still no signs of gas station closures or anything in my area. I seem to be the only person that’s laying any attention to the tsunami that’s coming.
Our Prime Minister is currently on a visit to Russia and I imagine oil will be fairly urgently discussed. There are still strong relations with Russia. I wonder if there’ll be a quid pro quo on moving away from America.
We are having diesel shortages. The big Thai new year comes in April and locals usually travel for holiday or to see family. Many are self-rationing, see:
Lotta whistling past the graveyard here: https://www.bangkokpost.com/business/general/3222304/fuel-panic-spreads-as-pumps-run-dry
For different but untyped reasons, I have doubts in both country’s government’s management ability.
Here, information is very censored. Viet friends don’t seem to care, although in HCM people seem more worried.
There are some stories about non-oil price rises and changes in consumer behaviour
e.g. https://vietnamnews.vn/economy/1777856/consumers-wary-as-rising-costs-drive-prices-of-essentials-up.html
And reports of government meetings where functionaries are instructed to do things.
e.g. https://news.tuoitre.vn/vietnam-pm-backs-plan-to-use-state-budget-for-fuel-price-stabilization-fund-103260321104911987.htm
Little else though. No hints that it may be a lot more serious.
On the (potential?) positive side, the party is so involved in everything here they have the power to pull levers and direct the economy to an extent.
None of which really helps if there are no inputs!
Famine occurred here within living memory of the oldest people, and many grandparents lived through the food shortages caused by the war with America. I’d imagine that sharpens government minds.
This afternoon here in Berkeley I saw the first sign at a small gas station “We have Diesel”. Does this mean other stations Don’t have any?
Marandi – Diesen evening of Febr. 22
As unwavering as the government.
Seyed M. Marandi: Total War – Attacking Nuclear Plants, Desalination & Infrastructure
50 min.
https://glenndiesen.substack.com/p/seyed-m-marandi-total-war-attacking
Marandi calling Azerbaijan an enemy to Russia – by now according to Martyanov Azerbaijan has averted its too confrontative course towards Russia. So their attitude is inconsistent at best.
I would still argue that much of Trump´s statements (not his actions!) contributing to the monstrous Trump image and general public view of him is intended in a way it triggered the TDS domestically. Now TDS is being expanded to foreign policy too. But the idea behind it may be the same as it was for election campaign purposes. Of course fallout is larger by several magnitudes but it´s still part of, hm, the performance…? (in the mind of his team at least. If doing this is his mission for whatever sinister reasons, how do you handle the world public? What is your specific role and how do you interpret it?)
It is interesting that even USEFUL IDIOTS was judging the invasion of Iraq under Bush Jr. more favourably than this. Simply because they were going through the UN. But that too was a demonic play with a preconceived outcome. They gave shit about the UN. I am well aware of what is at stake here and now. But since I have very vivid memories of the catastrophe 25 years ago (starting with Afghanistan) and the sheer size of death and destruction caused I try to step back and take a cold look at the events.
The only reason this thing now is more volatile is that Iran actually is a peer adversary and that Russia and China are more powerful and pushing their own agenda. The actions as such were horrible under Bush II. Already in the first months of the invasion. Of course the 6M dead of direct and indirect causes from the “War on Terror” (symbolized by Abu Ghraib, the murders of Iraqi civilians by US Marines, Assange´s REUTERS leak, the advent of ISIS, and the killing of bin Laden) have accumulated over 20 years. But it is troubling to witness how this is being overwritten by current events.
What if this war were a war conducted by a Democratic Administration with their different approach of committing war crimes – how would the media – at least in the West – react differently?
Anti-war protests happening all over Japan, 03/25:
https://x.com/kuruminoisu/status/2035904269896011991
This article… sheesh. A summary of what Israelis have been briefing to WaPo.
Trump threats, U.S. troop build-up raise specter of battle for Hormuz (Washington Post, archived)
Reopening the strait — a critical conduit for global energy supplies — has emerged as perhaps the paramount objective of a war that security officials now believe is unlikely to achieve goals that briefly seemed possible at the outset of the U.S.-Israeli military operation, including overthrowing Iran’s theocratic regime and putting a nuclear weapon permanently out of Tehran’s reach.
Remind me why the family-blogging Strait is closed?
Was it closed a month ago?
The outcome in Hormuz, however, has additional strategic implications for Israel, where security officials increasingly expect that the need to conduct follow-on strikes against Iran will persist beyond any declared end to the current conflict.
Israeli officials said they could regard such measures as necessary if the U.S. or Israel detected efforts by Iran to reconstitute its ballistic missile program, degraded by hundreds of strikes in recent weeks, or seek to recover its buried uranium in a rush to develop a nuclear weapon.
Israel would have few constraints on its ability to conduct such strikes if Iran is no longer able to target ships in Hormuz or rain missiles on its Gulf neighbors, officials said.
“But if Iran can block Hormuz, they have a deterrence tool” that the regime could wield in retaliation and mobilize global opposition, said Amos Yadlin, former head of the IDF’s Military Intelligence Directorate.
Note: they DNGAF that billions around the world will suffer. They want the Strait opened purely so they can attack Iran again.
That is spectacular. Quite the view from the other side.
I joined a “predictions market” today. I put two grand on stupid.
This is important. USrael are in destructive mode and that’s it. Their objective is the destruction of Iran. Iranians know it and this is existential for them. They have to keep the strait closed until enemy defeat. How the Iranian ballistic missile program is running is hidden in the fog of war.
Something else to watch for in the next days: In his latest conversation with Nima Stanislav Krapivnik mentions that US troops are trapped and under fire by both Iraqi militias and Iranian missiles in three places in Iraq, including the Green Zone. Do they have food, water, ammunition? There are videos of the destruction of perimeter towers and antimissile systems. He says that if the militias overrun the Green Zone, Trump’s Presidency ends right there. Start at around the 36 minute mark for this discussion (the video is bad here, but worth watching).
Krapivnik says he discussed this with Scott Ritter about three days into the war, and Ritter thought then that some sort of armed convoy would be arranged to remove US diplomats and soldiers, but nothing has been done. Maybe you have heard commentators like Mercouris, Mearsheimer, and Col. MacGregor complain that little Marco Rubio is not doing his job either as Secretary of State or as the President’s National Security Advisor? It would have been Rubio’s job to evacuate the Green Zone.
It’s also worth noting that Krapivnik worked for Halliburton, and at the very end of this interview, when Nima is trying to sign off, Krapivnik describes engineering problems that could make it take years to restart oil wells now wrecked by the halt to extraction.
Iran retracts threat to desalination plants (?)
Same quote on various MSM blogs, but I don’t see an original source yet. Would like to see it in original context.
The statement seemingly retracted earlier threats to desalination plants in the region, which are crucial for providing drinking water in Gulf countries.
“The lying … US President has claimed that the Revolutionary Guards intends to attack the water desalination plants and cause hardship to the people of the countries in the region.
“We are determined to respond to any threat at the same level as it creates in terms of deterrence … If you hit electricity, we hit electricity,” said the statement shared on state media.
Marandi repeated it on George Galloway. Marandi is close to an official spokesperson.
“Iran launches a missile in remembrance and in honor of Aaron Bushnell. Yesterday they did the same in revenge for Rachel Corrie. Iran is the only government to honor these American heroes, whose deaths have been ignored by US political and media Epstein class.”
https://x.com/susanabulhawa/status/2035869963760574521
IEA Signals Readiness for Another Emergency Oil Release
https://oilprice.com/Latest-Energy-News/World-News/IEA-Signals-Readiness-for-Another-Emergency-Oil-Release.html