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Iran War: Iran Pushes Back Against Trump “Deal Is Nigh” as More Evidence of US Failure Emerges, Including Gulf State Mini-Revolt, Even More US Base Destruction, Jet Fuel Price Rise Damage, Conservative Opposition to Trump Climbdown

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[This Iran war post launched before complete because we had to run out. We expect to return after 7:00 AM EDT but should be able to fill in the missing part fairly quickly. It is a Twitterati taking credit for the $125 million-in-profits oil trade based on front-running an Axios story, including details on why it was perfectly legal. He is a fabulist, so please wait for details and my commentary. If there are no new developments in the interim, I expect to have the final version up by 8:00 AM EDT, otherwise 8:30 AM EDT]

As we have said, the latest Trump peace plot has succeeded in keeping Mr. Market onside, much to the great harm of the global economy (Mr. Market rebelling was and remains the force best positioned to check Team Trump continuing the war). But actually succeeding in its professed aims, not so much. The Iranians were quick to deny a settlement was imminent:

Iran’s chief negotiator was quick to dial down expectations:

There are many reports, including on CNN, that Iran’s reply is expected today. The US press has reported that if Iran accepts the US outline, it has 30 days to come to a detailed agreement. There is no way Iran will do that. But will the US treat wrangling over the shape of the table as agreeing to the US framework, and put the conflict on hold for 30 days as it dithers? One of the motives would be to preserve the summit with Xi, scheduled to start on May 13.

As far as I can tell, there is no further movement towards kinetic action. As we will recount, this comes against a backdrop of more US mainstream media accounts of more and more Trump failings with its Iran operations, from an open revolt among Gulf allies to a new analysis by the Washington post identifying even more destruction to US bases than reported before, to the Wall Street Journal in a reported story describing Administration alarm over jet fuel prices making a moon shot to its Editorial Board depicting that the sure-to-be-rejected napkin-doodle new Trump peace scheme as Not Acceptable.

On top of that, Twitter is all over a monster trade made just before Axios broke the story of the latest Trump peace ploy, which netted $125 million in profit. Remarkably, a Twitter account took credit and described in detail how the information was routed to investors in what it purports to be a totally legal manner. I am not sure whether this claim is bona fide or meant to be indicative, given a tweet put up by the same poster soon after (which claims he makes $19.40 an hour operating a forklift in Dayton, so he looks like a fabulist or at best a very creative writer). But his depiction of how this was or more likely, could have been done, is plausible. We’ll turn to that in due course. If nothing else, the specificity of the information on Twitter about the trades and the level of uproar makes it easy for the orthodox press to take this matter up. If none one does, that would be

The US’ Gulf allies were already up in arms about Trump launching Project Freedumb without conferring with them. From an NBC exclusive story:

President Donald Trump’s abrupt reversal on his plan to help ships go through the Strait of Hormuz came after a key Gulf ally suspended the U.S. military’s ability to use its bases and airspace to carry out the operation, according to two U.S. officials.

Trump surprised Gulf allies by announcing “Project Freedom” on social media Sunday afternoon, the officials said, angering leadership in Saudi Arabia. In response, the Kingdom informed the U.S. it would not allow the U.S. military to fly aircraft from Prince Sultan Airbase southeast of Riyadh or fly through Saudi airspace to support the effort, the officials said.

A call between Trump and Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman did not resolve the issue, the two U.S. officials said, forcing the president to pause Project Freedom in order to restore U.S. military access to the critical airspace.

Other close Gulf allies were also caught off guard; the president spoke with leaders in Qatar after the effort had already begun.

That may explain the sudden pause in the movement of men and materiel to the Middle East. It seems likely that if the Gulf State were mad about not being included in the decision to start Project Freedumb, they’d be even more unhappy (particularly the current chief attack dog, the UAE) about Trump launching a new peace deal over their heads.

We had expressed doubts about whether opposition from the US side would sink the Trump climbdown peace attempt.
Even before getting to Zionist billionaires and hawks throwing their weight against any resolution short of an Iran capitulation, the Gulf state backers have to be even more unhappy about this new effort to end the war, particularly since the latest set of terms do not require Iran to abandon its allies, as in Hezbollah, Hamas, and what will be a super sore point for the Saudis, the Houthis.

Confirmation of Saudi unhappiness comes via:

However, the Saudis acting worried about the Iran strikes on the UAE may be a deception. Keep in mind that there was a first set of attacks, which included a strike on the Fujariah port, which is key to the UAE bypassing the Strait of Hormuz to export oil, and then more the following day. We reported yesterday that Iran denied the first set while seeming pleased as punch that they had happened. That seemed at odds with Iran seeming to see it as important to be pretty credible in its depiction of war actions along with seriously damaging Fujariah not being in the interest of the US or Israel, the normal false flag suspects.

My spooky contact squared that circle:

I just heard that the drone strike on the UAE oil port was carried out by the Saudis following the UAE pulling out of OPEC. UAE blamed Iran in order to pretend that they’ve broken the ceasefire.

In the meantime, Iran is (finally) putting procedures in place for transits through the Strait of Hormuz:1

To more evidence of US operational failures: The Washington Post just launched a long, extensively documented, and non-paywalled of Iranian damage to US bases that shows it was even worse than shown in recent New York Times, NBC and CNN exposes. Strikingly, the Washington Post methodology was to use Iranian open source images (which are high resolution) and verify them against less granular Western images. The Washington Post found none of the Iran images had been doctored, but some of the Western pictures of the same sites were too muddy to validate the Iran shots.

Do read the entire account online. It is far too long to hoist extensively but these parts should whet your appetite. From Iran has hit far more U.S. military assets than reported, satellite images show:

Iranian airstrikes have damaged or destroyed at least 228 structures or pieces of equipment at U.S. military sites across the Middle East since the war began, hitting hangars, barracks, fuel depots, aircraft and key radar, communications and air defense equipment, according to a Washington Post analysis of satellite imagery. The amount of destruction is far larger than what has been publicly acknowledged by the U.S. government or previously reported.

The threat of air attacks rendered some of the U.S. bases in the region too dangerous to staff at normal levels, and commanders moved most of the personnel from these sites out of the range of Iranian fire at the start of the war, officials have said….

“The Iranian attacks were precise. There are no random craters indicating misses,” said Mark Cancian, a senior adviser with the Center for Strategic and International Studies and a retired Marine Corps colonel, who reviewed the Iranian images at The Post’s request….

But the review by The Post — based on images dating from the war’s start through April 14 — reveals that scores of additional targets were struck at the sites, which are predominantly used by the U.S. military but shared with the host nations’ military forces and allies.

In all, The Post found 217 structures and 11 pieces of equipment that were damaged or destroyed at 15 U.S. military sites in the region….

[in addition to accommodation facilities] The Post also found that the attacks hit a satellite communications site at al-Udeid Air Base in Qatar, Patriot missile defense equipment at Riffa and Isa air bases in Bahrain and Ali al-Salem Air Base in Kuwait, a satellite dish at the Naval Support Activity Bahrain — which serves as the headquarters of the U.S. 5th Fleet — a power plant at Camp Buehring in Kuwait and five fuel storage bladder sites across three bases.

Even this expanded reporting of damage to the US is not complete:

The Wall Street Journal reports that the Trump Administration has only just now woken up to a risk we flagged early on, that of jet fuel shortages and the great damage they would do via scarcity and rationing through price. Even though the US is seemingly less exposed since it does produce jet fuel, as an expert pointed out yesterday, the US runs on air travel. Restrictions, including via cost, will affect businesses generally, as well as those that benefit from tourism more directly. From the Journal’s exclusive account, Jet-Fuel Prices Are Spiking and Trump’s Advisers Are Worried:

Privately, President Trump’s advisers are increasingly worried that Republicans will pay a political price for the rising fuel costs, according to people familiar with the matter. Many of those advisers are eager to end the war in hopes that prices will begin moderating before November’s midterm elections….

Sixty-three percent of Americans said they put a great deal or a good amount of blame on Trump for the increase in gas prices, according to a new poll conducted by NPR, PBS and Marist. More than 8 in 10 Americans said struggles at the gas pump are putting strain on their finances.

Jet-fuel prices roughly doubled in a matter of weeks after the war began, and they have remained high….

In March, the price of a U.S. domestic round-trip economy ticket rose 21% from a year earlier to $570, according to Airlines Reporting Corp., which tracks travel-agency sales. So far, airlines have said the higher fares haven’t deterred bookings and they are hoping to recoup more of the fuel-cost increases as the year goes on.

If you read the account, it is anchored on the alarms by Former New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu, who is also the president of the industry group Airlines for America. One can infer he sold this story to the Journal. Even with an airline industry ally trying to get Administration attention, the article gives the strong impression that Team Trump is simply not that concerned about damage to consumers or the real economy.

The Journal’s Editorial Board (which keep in mind really does have some space between it and the reporting side; the editorial page is close to rabidly conservative) is throwing its weight against the latest Trump Iran peace initiative. Mind you, we have not paid much attention to rumors about its content2 since it is blindingly obvious no deal will be done any time soon if ever. The one part that does matter is process, as in how long this charade is kept in play, since that will extend the hugely-damaging-to-the-real-economy Strait of Hormuz freeze in place, and may convey information about what if anything the Trump Administration plans on the kinetic front.

Nevertheless, the Journal indicates that the Trump one-pager (the fact of a one-pager is an embarrassment) included nuclear enrichment demands. Iran has clearly said it has a right to enrichment and will not give that up. Iran has also proposed putting off any discussion of nuclear enrichment to a later phase, since it took years to work out the fine points of the JCPOA.

But this is still all too much for the uber-hawkish Journal. From The Deal With the Iranian Regime [erm, what deal?]:

Here’s what a good deal would look like:

1. Dismantlement. This is more important than any “moratorium” on enrichment…

The ruins of Fordow, Natanz and Isfahan are a start..

The U.S. also needs supervised dismantlement of all centrifuges, including components and manufacturing capabilities, along with facilities and materials for plutonium reprocessing…Producing or importing them should be banned.

2. Uranium. Iran would love to focus solely on its 440 kilograms of 60% enriched uranium. The regime’s 20% stockpile may sound less dangerous, but reaching that level is already 90% of the way to weapons-grade. It, too, has to go….The regime has thousands of kilograms of uranium enriched to 5% and lower, a solid basis to restart a nuclear program if left in Iran….

3. Inspections. The IAEA needs access not merely to what Iran deems a “nuclear site.”… The IAEA needs to go anywhere it believes to be nuclear-related—immediately. A full-time inspection team based in Iran would be best.

4. Come clean. Iran can make a full declaration of its past nuclear work. Then the IAEA can verify the declaration…

5. Hormuz…..A final deal should proscribe all tolls, mines and forced routes, restoring unrestricted free passage.

6. Sanctions….Dismantlement on a short, specific timetable can remove nuclear sanctions. Terrorism and human-rights sanctions can remain until the regime ceases sponsoring terror and violating human rights.

Readers are invited to have fun with this but this is absolutely na ga happen. Just look at the IAEA demand. If the IAEA ever returns, it will be kept on a very short leash due to Iran’s credible belief that the IAEA facilitated Israel’s assassinations of Iran’s top nuclear scientists by providing information about their whereabouts. Letting the IAEA run wild would include letting them into Iran’s underground missile cities, an impossible ask.

Confirming that view:

And confirming the lack of US leverage over Iran (save killing more schoolkids and destroying hospitals and historical sites), fresh evidence of an earlier surmise, that the claim that Iran was running out of oil storage and therefore at risk of damage to oil fields, was a big fat canard:

To the uproar about the latest Trump pronouncement front-running, here of the last Axios exclusive on the napkin-doodle US offer to Iran supposedly just about to be agreed, yessiree bob. A sample of Twitter reports:

I am late with this peculiar sighting (see the footnote3 for the full tweet):

A later tweet the same evening:

It is utterly implausible that someone acting as an information intermediary is having to cut his food budget to be able to contribute to a 401(k).4 His LinkedIn shows him as a community college grad (which does make him more educated than mere high school grad Marcie Frost, the CEO of CalPERS).

It turns out he likes to run memes in the voice of senior or otherwise influential personages as a way to provide commentary. After his $125 million post, he tweeted:

If I were not so far behind schedule, I would bother picking apart his idea about how the $125 million front running might have worked. But perhaps readers can have fun with that. For starters, the label of a “geopolitical risk adviser” as a regulatory dodge does not wash. If it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it is a duck. The CTFC and SEC restriction on the maximum number of clients one can have before having to obtain a license.

But his tweet has merit as a conversation starter. However, I suspect the investors were all so close to Trump that they expect to get a pre-emptive Presidential pardon (but then again, that would not extend to civil liability, as in fines).

And some informational odds and ends:

In our experience (both personal and from women we know who have gotten around in our younger days), men that make an issue of their packets are nearly always size and/or performance deficient:

s-latest-project-freedom-boondoggle?” rel=”nofollow”>US’s Latest “Project Freedom” Boondoggle Sinks in Less Than a Day

____

1 The detail from the tweet:

Ships intending to pass through the Strait of Hormuz must email info@PGSA.ir.

The most important points considered in the transit mechanism:

1) Priority of payment in Iran’s national currency

2) Issuance of guarantees in Iranian banks

3) If a country caused damage to Iran in the recent war, it must first pay the damages before obtaining a passage permit. Countries that have sanctioned Iran or blocked Iran’s money are not allowed passage.

4) The correct title “Persian Gulf” must be written in all documents.

5) Non-compliance with the above will result in seizure and a fine of 20% of the cargo value.

2 Nevertheless, to appease the curious, a terms summary from the Journal’s Editorial Board, which is likely in a position to know. Mind you, if confirmed, this reads as if the US has entirely dropped its demand that Iran cut off Hezbollah, Hamas, and the Houthis. The trade looks to be “pretty much entirely abandon all nuclear enrichment and give up control of the Strait of Hormuz in return for sanctions relief and return of (some? all?) frozen assets. This is conceptually a simpler trade if still not feasible for the US side (no way will the Israel lobby tolerate the return of Iran’s frozen assets).

The U.S. says it needs Iran’s attestation that it doesn’t seek nuclear weapons; the dismantlement of the Fordow, Natanz and Isfahan facilities; a ban on underground nuclear work; and on-demand inspections with penalties for violations. The U.S. seeks a 20-year moratorium on Iranian nuclear enrichment and demands the handover of all enriched nuclear material.

Iran would have to reopen Hormuz—gradually, as the U.S. relaxes its blockade, and then fully with the final deal. Most U.S. sanctions relief would be tied to Iran’s performance of the deal, not merely its signing, though some assets could be unfrozen to begin.

Lordie. Iran is already a signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, which is a commitment not to develop nuclear weapons. The US is clearly desperate to apply as much porcine maquillage as it can to any deal or deal headfake.

3 The full text:

I am a geopolitical risk advisor. I made six people $125 million before sunrise on Tuesday, and I did not break a single law.

I have three phones. One for the client. One for the reporter. One for the app where the President types in all caps at 2 AM. The third one is the most reliable. It has a notification sound I chose specifically — a single chime, like a meditation bell. My wife thinks I’m doing breathwork.

At 3:15 AM Eastern, I sent a flash advisory to six clients. Four words: “Initiate short energy positions.” By 3:40, they had placed $920 million in crude oil shorts across three exchanges. At 4:50, Axios published the 14-point deal — the one Steve had been negotiating in Muscat since February, the one I helped structure the publication timeline for, the one whose existence I learned about in a Tuesday morning NSC prep meeting I attend as a volunteer. By 7:00 AM, oil had dropped 12%. My clients cleared $125 million. I billed $4.2 million in advisory fees. I was back in bed by 5:30. My 6 AM alarm woke me like any other morning.

This was the third time this quarter.

In March, someone — not me, I want to be clear, not me specifically — placed $500 million fifteen minutes before the President posted on Truth Social about delaying the Iran strike. Reuters reported it. Trading volume spiked nine times above average in the sixteen minutes before the post went live. In February, a similar architecture: positions opened from accounts domiciled in jurisdictions that define “reporting” as an annual sealed filing reviewed by no one. Seventy minutes. Fifteen minutes. The window is compressing because the system is learning its own rhythm. By the third time, you stop setting alarms. You develop a feel. Like barometric pressure before a storm. You just know when someone is about to type.

They call it “geopolitical risk advisory.” That’s the line on my LLC filing in Wilmington, Delaware — a state that hosts more corporate entities than human beings, which should tell you something about who it was built for. What it means: I attend National Security Council prep meetings on Tuesday mornings as a Special Government Employee — unpaid, technically a volunteer, no financial disclosure required — and by Tuesday evening I am on a call with a client in Dubai whose retainer agreement is filed in a jurisdiction that does not correspond to any of the forty-seven countries I hold clearance to discuss.

There are forty-three of us. Special Government Employees. Elon has them inside DOGE — also volunteers, also no disclosure requirements, also technically serving the public. Public Citizen filed a complaint. The complaint was reviewed by the office that processes SGE appointments. We attend the meetings. We see the draft communiques. We read the talking points before they become talking points. We have no financial disclosure requirements because technically we donate our time. The retainers come from the private side. The ethics waiver is one page. I signed mine at the same steakhouse where I signed my advisory contract — Rare Steaks on K Street, corner booth, same sommelier, different course. He doesn’t ask questions. That’s why we use him.

My daughter asked me what I do. I told her I help people make decisions. She said “like a teacher?” I said yes. Exactly like a teacher.

Senator Warren will hold a hearing. She’ll say “rigged.” She’ll be correct, but not in the way she means. A rigged system implies someone broke it. No one broke anything. The system is performing within design tolerances. The people who built the architecture — the SGE framework, the advisory exemptions, the cross-jurisdictional filing structures, the FARA carve-outs for “commercial activity” — they didn’t build it and then exploit it. They built it in order to exploit it. The blueprint IS the business plan. I would know. I helped draft the blueprint. We were paid $1.2 million for that engagement. The deliverable was a memorandum titled “Cross-Jurisdictional Advisory Exemption Framework.” Forty-seven pages. Every sentence technically true. Every paragraph a locked door.

I helped draft the blueprint. And I am telling you now. And nothing will change. That is also the design.

My client’s principal — the one who sent the negotiator — his fund holds $6.2 billion in assets under management. Affinity Partners. $2 billion of that came from the Saudi Public Investment Fund. The Saudis are party to the deal he negotiated. The Qataris invested another tranche. They are also party. The Emiratis contributed through a structure I helped design in 2021, when we were told the fund would focus on “infrastructure and growth equity in developing markets.” It focuses on whatever the next phone call requires it to focus on.

The man who brokered the 14-point framework is capitalized by both sides of the table he set. Wyden opened an investigation. Garcia co-signed. There was a FARA referral to DOJ. The DOJ referred it to a working group. The working group meets quarterly.

That is not a conflict of interest. That is the interest. The conflict is the product. You cannot sell risk advisory without risk. You cannot sell geopolitical positioning without position. The fund doesn’t have a conflict — it has a revenue model. Two percent of $6.2 billion. Every year. The management fee alone. Not paid despite the relationship. Paid because of it.

They didn’t send a diplomat to Muscat. They sent Steve. Real estate developer. Met the President in 1986, at a closing. He doesn’t speak Farsi. He doesn’t speak treaty law. He speaks term sheets. He was chosen because the deal isn’t a diplomatic framework — it’s a cap table with a flag on it. Fourteen points. A nuclear moratorium. Sanctions lifted. Hormuz opened. Iran launched something called the “Persian Gulf Strait Authority” two days later — email: info@PGSA.ir — and oil surged 8%. Half my clients re-entered long. I billed again.

Steve closes like he’s selling condos in Palm Beach — fast, loud, and with seventeen interested parties who all think they have an exclusive. The Iranians think they won. The Saudis think they preserved. The fund thinks it positioned. Everyone is correct. That’s how you know the structure is working.

I know what you’re thinking. Someone at the CFTC will investigate. Commissioner Selig said so on CNBC. He used the word “enforcement.” He said it the way a substitute teacher says “detention” — aware, on some level, that no one in the room is going to comply. His entire annual budget is $365 million. My clients moved $920 million in a single position on a single Tuesday. The cop’s annual salary is less than the crime’s Tuesday morning. That is not an oversight. That is the business model’s credit rating.

Representative Torres demanded answers. He will receive a letter in six to eight weeks explaining that the trades originated from accounts in three jurisdictions, none of which fall under CFTC authority, executed through intermediaries who are not registered persons, on behalf of entities whose beneficial ownership is disclosed to regulators in nations that define “disclosure” as a sealed filing reviewed annually by no one. The letter will be four pages. I know because my firm drafted the compliance architecture it describes.

Six hundred thousand retail traders opened energy positions that Tuesday morning. They thought they were trading the news. They were trading against the advisory. They are the liquidity. That is what retail is. That is what you are. The market needs someone on the other side of the trade. It needed six hundred thousand of you to be wrong so six of us could be right. You weren’t informed. That is the product working.

I made $4.2 million on Tuesday. Wednesday, I attended a Senate briefing on market integrity. Thursday, I filed my quarterly ethics certification. One page. One checkbox. “I have no conflicts to disclose.” Technically accurate. The form doesn’t ask about conflicts that were designed not to be conflicts. It doesn’t ask about structures that predate the form. It doesn’t ask about the steakhouse.

Seventy minutes. Fifteen minutes.

By July, it will be simultaneous. Not because anyone will leak faster. Because someone will finally figure out how to bill in real-time. I have a deck for that. It’s called “Predictive Geopolitical Synchronization.” Fourteen slides. The last one says “Questions?”

No one ever has any. Not my clients. Not the committee. Not the Senate.

4 Unless he is asset rich and cash poor, as in having money deposited in foreign bank accounts or having assets deeded to him or taking payment in crypto and being very disciplined about not converting it to dollars. His motivation for faux poverty, if this is what it is, could also be to hide assets from his wife.

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155 comments

  1. dearieme

    Wilson lied you into WWI, FDR into WWII. But at least you ended up on the winning side.

    In Korea you narrowly salvaged a score draw. Iraq I was perhaps your only success. But Vietnam, Iraq II, Afghanistan, Iran …

    It’s no use blaming Trump. The whole record is so dismal that something much deeper is wrong and has been wrong for generations.

    1. Christopher Mann

      “History repeats itself; first as tragedy then as farts.”

      The USA reminds me of the account of William the Conqueror’s funeral. William the Conqueror was very fat and at his burial his “swollen bowels burst, and an intolerable stench assailed the nostrils of the by-standers and the whole crowd”.

      The USA is putrid and swollen. How lucky we are to witness this historical event, the death of the Death Star. Unfortunately we are going to get splattered with the results of its rotten death spasms.

    2. Jaduong

      Harsh – you forgot to mention the glorious US military victory in Grenada…..

  2. Ignacio

    Today the following headline was published at El Pais: “Estados Unidos e Irán negocian una propuesta para terminar la guerra y concretar los asuntos clave en 30 días” Translated: “The United States and Iran Are Negotiating a Proposal to End The War and Resolve Key Issues Within 30 Days”. If, as most do, you basically read headlines, what a wrong impression you get! If you read the thing you start to see too many words in semicolons like “close” [to sign] or Iran is “evaluating” [the proposal]. The supposed liberal, and largely Zionist outlet, supports this fakery very much like the Markets and the whole Western establishment, and simultaneously let you know, if you wish, that they know this is BS. What gives? IMO they are preparing themselves to reverse-engineer the narrative when things go sour(er). The mullahs will be blamed for everything.

    1. The Rev Kev

      Didn’t the Iranians give Trump 30 days to resolve all these issues not a day or so ago? It would mean that Trump buckled to the Iranian demand.

      1. Ignacio

        I don’t know because pushing the can for 30 days doesn’t really solve anything and makes problems worse. Sounds like both parties saying time is on their side. USians “reviewed” the 14 points Iranian proposal and now Iranians are “reviewing” the one page US’s memo. As a result, they are as apart from each other as they have been been before the ceasefire. An exchange of wish lists is not a negotiation. The 30 days deadline means a lot of damage will already be done if the Straits keep closed by them.

  3. Acacia

    The IAEA needs access not merely to what Iran deems a “nuclear site.”… The IAEA needs to go anywhere it believes to be nuclear-related—immediately. A full-time inspection team based in Iran would be best.

    In their position, I would agree to a single IAEA delegation, and then post cops and military everywhere inside and outside the hotel. Tell them for a week that they can’t go out because their papers aren’t in order, while charging them triple in the bar and restaurant. If any IAEA droids put up a fight or tries to break out, handle it “stile americano” with taser and zip-ties, and let them chill in a storage room for a couple of days. Otherwise, act polite, but waste a week of their time before escorting them empty-handed back to the airport, send them home, and then never let another delegation visit.

    1. The Rev Kev

      The IAEA have been used as a Trojan horse in the past. So in Iraq they were charged with looking for signs of nuclear materials development. Fair enough. But then the IAEA would demand to inspect some top secret Iraqi military base as they had “intelligence” that there was something going on there. But after inspecting that base and finding zip they would go away – but not before reporting everything that they saw on that base to US intel. Given free reign in Iran, they would demand to look at every underground base that Iran had so that later they could be targeted by the US & Israel. The IAEA is as good as a front for the CIA and is never to be trusted.

      1. MILLER

        Yes, one is also reminded of the despicable and frankly dangerous “see no evil, hear no evil” stance of the IAEA and Mr. Grossi with respect to the years-long record of Ukrainian shelling and rocket attacks against the Zaporozh’e Nuclear Power Plant and the adjoining settlement of Energodar. Grossi is a tool of the worst sort. He wants to succeed the equally corrupted Antonio Guterres at UN General Secretary, or so I’ve heard.

    2. converger

      2. Uranium. Iran would love to focus solely on its 440 kilograms of 60% enriched uranium. The regime’s 20% stockpile may sound less dangerous, but reaching that level is already 90% of the way to weapons-grade. It, too, has to go….The regime has thousands of kilograms of uranium enriched to 5% and lower, a solid basis to restart a nuclear program if left in Iran….

      Ummmm…. ….about that.

      One of the problems with ideologically-fixated editorials (as opposed to actual investigative reporting) is that it’s hard to tell when core assertions which are demonstrably untrue are deliberately disingenuous, or simply clueless.

      Fuel enrichment to 3%-5% is an historic artifact of a fifty-year old first attempt at commercial nuclear power that has essentially failed. Pretty much all of the “new” modular reactor designs currently getting pimped by nuclear boosters (new only in the sense that people want to build them now, not because they are actually new: like the initial generation of light water reactors, the engineering for every design that’s currently being proposed had already been figured out by the early 1950s) require HALEU (High-Assay Low-Enriched Uranium) fuel that’s been enriched to ~20%, in order to increase reaction efficiency and reduce fuel replacement downtime. If allowing Iran to have any civilian nuclear power at all (a defining technological initiative that Iran has proudly maintained and advanced continuously since the Shah) is a plausible US proposal, a HALEU ban that bans Iran from ever building its own next-generation civilian reactors, using its own nuclear fuel that’s sourced from its own domestic uranium reserves, is already off the table.

      At the end of the day, Iran embodies the fundamental problem with the whole idea of civilian nuclear power. Unlike Israel and North Korea, Iran has its own, significant native uranium ore deposits. The idea that one country has an inherent right to arbitrarily prevent another country from digging up and processing its own natural resources, however it sees fit, is ludicrous.

      But uranium enrichment is uranium enrichment: the technology and equipment for enriching uranium to 0.5% for medical isotopes, or 3%, or 20% for energy production, or 90% for nuclear weapons, is identical. The equipment doesn’t care what you are doing with it. All that matters is how many times you choose to run the stuff through the centrifuges.

      Power relationships and dominant political agendas within the Iranian government ebb and flow, often in response to external events: they can be difficult to parse. I happen to believe that at least up to the moment of the most recent US/Israeli attempt to destroy Iran as a viable nation, Iranian leadership was serious when they said that they would never, ever develop a nuclear weapon. Not only has Iran been unambiguous about this issue since 1979, the idea that weapons of mass destruction and the deliberate murder of innocents are simply, unacceptably immoral is a core doctrine of Shia Islam: one of the few advantages of a consistently fundamentalist religious regime is that you tend to know where they stand.

      But it doesn’t matter what I or anyone else thinks about what Iran might intend to do with nuclear technology that it has every inherent right to pursue. The brutal reality is that because there is literally no difference between civilian and military nuclear materials processing and reprocessing technology, there is simply no way to ever really know what a given country’s intentions are, or if those intentions have changed.

      For me, at the end of the day, this last point is the dealbreaker that makes nuclear power a dangerous non-starter. The laughably optimistic assumption that the new generation of nuclear power will ever be cost-effective, the overwhelming task of building a new fuel production and transportation supply and logistics chain from scratch, the fact that we still, eighty years on, don’t have a good answer for disposing of nuclear waste, is eclipsed by the reality that uranium is a rare and non-renewable resource, and that a world dependent on nuclear power will inevitably be forced to breed new and reprocess used nuclear materials, now to enrichment levels one step below weapons-grade, to continue. That implies a vast increase in the amount of highly enriched uranium, in a vastly more dangerous world where you even don’t even need to be a viable nation to build an atomic weapon.

      1. Christopher Mann

        Thank you for those very interesting insights. The cheek of one country (or bloc) trying to impose its will unilaterally on another! Imagine if Iran banned the US from enriching uranium to some arbitary level!

        1. Peter VE

          Since the US only mines a pittance of the uranium we use, Iran could just ask their pals in Russia and Kazakhstan to suspend shipments, and we’d lose over a third of our supply. Tit for tat, and all that.

    3. TRM

      Naw. Way too complicated (but highly mischievous LOL).

      If I’m Iran my only position (non-negotiable) would be “We’ll agree to any and all nuclear inspections that Israel does”.

  4. SteveD

    “ What gives? IMO they are preparing themselves to reverse-engineer the narrative when things go sour(er). The mullahs will be blamed for everything.”
    …
    This is the only plan that I can see. There is no reality-based way out of the mess for the US that doesn’t look like humiliation, so they will claim the Iranians negotiated a bad-faith deal and reneged upon it, setting the stage for more aggression in the future.

  5. Samuel Conner

    In the Daily Beast podcast “Inside Trump’s Head”, Michael Wolff again and again objects to conventional analysis of DJT pronouncements that assume that there is a coherent policy that is reflected in them. MW argues that there is no policy, there is only what DJT is thinking, feeling, wanting, at the moment of the pronouncement. This aligns with Lambert’s interpretation of DJT-speak as being not even falsehood but rather unconnected to truth at all. DJT-speak is rhetorically useful to him, but (granting MW’s analysis) does not have strong connection to objective realities.

    This has been going on for a decade, and media still seem to take these statements seriously. Surely Wolff’s analysis (which I think is probably valid) has penetrated the awareness of many media actors. Are they playing along because they need something to write about? One would know as much about USG policy if one ignored DJT pronouncements altogether and simply observed what the USG does.

    1. Carolinian

      When Trump goes the biopic can be titled Death of a Salesman (2). Or maybe Glengarry Glen Ross 2 since that one is about real estate. Trump is always closing and won’t settle for steak knives. Whatever works is the art of the deal as long as the suckers buy his patter.

      One might say he is a prototypical American since several of our founders such as Washington were also in the real estate biz. Fortunately for us they were a lot smarter than the spelling challenged tweeter in chief.

      2. redleg

        As long as the soundtrack for that event includes “Ding Dong The Witch Is Dead” from The Wizard of Oz and Kool and the Gang’s “Celebration”, any visual will do.

    2. nycTerrierist

      “This aligns with Lambert’s interpretation of DJT-speak as being not even falsehood but rather unconnected to truth at all. DJT-speak is rhetorically useful to him, but (granting MW’s analysis) does not have strong connection to objective realities.”

      Re: this rhetorical style, see Harry Frankfurt, On Bullshit

      1. Steve H.

        * We have created our myth. The myth is a faith, a passion. It is not necessary for it to be a reality. *
        Benito, quoted in ‘How Fascism Works’. {Hat tip Joe}

    3. Lefty Godot

      The media and Trump are all the entertainment aspect of the oligarchy. Policy continuity is maintained by the second level unexciting people that you never hear about, and they work around whatever individual kinks the public front man may display to keep the general plan of action being implemented.

      1. John Wright

        Perhaps well illustrated by the Deputy Secretary of War, Steve Feinberg.

        https://www.war.gov/About/Deputy-Secretary-of-War/

        Hegseth is the visible (and quite disposable) front man, but day to day operations are run by billionaire Feinberg.

        An arrangement similar to Bush Jr and Haliburton Dick Cheney.

        Bush did the speeches and photo ops, Cheney did the operational work.

      2. JohnH

        Truly amazing that Congress critters, particularly Democrats, can’t fathom what’s “Inside Trump’s Head.” Of course, they never could fathom what was missing from Biden’s brain either.

        It reminds me of Gabriel Garcia Marquez’ novel “The Autumn of the Patriarch,” a solitary tyrant whose main skill was an uncanny ability to sense disloyalty. In one scene he offered a lavish banquet to his general staff. The main course consisted of a top disloyal advisor, who was delivered to the table, fully cooked with a sprig of parsley in his mouth. Opposition failed to materialize. Life just went on outside the palace.

        1. motorslug

          Trump is more like Albert Spica in Greenaway’s The Cook, The Thief, His Wife and Her Lover.
          A crude and violent gangster with pretensions of being a gourmand. He rants and raves and screams about his absolute power and how he will avenge his wife’s affair.
          “I’ll find them and I’ll kill him! I’ll kill him and then I’ll eat him!” Only to be abhorred, afraid and gagging when he is forced to do what he threatened.

    4. Permanent Sceptic

      I highly recommend the BBC podcast series “Everything is Fake (And Nobody Cares)” for a fun and interesting discussion on how we got to Trumpian politics via Mort Downey, Jr and shock jocks, wrestling, Oprah, sports cheating scandals, and Silicon Valley fraud.

      https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p0n4hzg7

  6. Tom Stone

    “Operation Trust me, Bro”
    I’m glad I didn’t have a mouthful if tea when I read that.

    1. The Rev Kev

      I think that it should have been called “Operation Jump in. The water is fine.”

    2. pjay

      I liked “Operation Fauxios” even better. So far it seems to be the more successful operation, at least for Trump’s family and friends.

  7. ChrisFromGA

    Thanks for the update. Incredible that the US media persists in swallowing the lies, to the point of being complicit.

    The only thing more missing in action than the press as a watchdog and guardian of the truth is any mention of “regime change.” Funny how that got dropped like a hot potato … has anyone done a wellness check on Lindsay Graham?

      1. Wukchumni

        We seem to be at the point where throwing spaghetti against the ceiling and seeing what sticks, is really a viable option.

        1. ChrisFromGA

          One thing the press could certainly do better is call out falsifiable hypotheses.

          For example. This morning’s lie that “within hours there will be a deal” used to juice markets.

          Well, where is the deal? I’ll have a plate of spaghetti with my hot cup-o-lies!

          1. ISL

            I wonder if the editors are also playing the market (they know the story they will run before it runs), and where their own interests lie? Otherwise, it’s hard to explain not just the complicity, but the willing loss of trust, which is what they are selling for eyeballs and ads.

            Another reason the MSM is heading for a deserved death of irrelevancy.

            1. ChrisFromGA

              That’s a pretty strong theory. If I’m some media bigwig and I get wind of the Axios swill right before I have to report it, I’d be tempted to hit my brokerage account first and front run the news.

              The Bezzle tends to suck in everything and everyone in.

        2. NYT_Memes

          So since spaghetti thrown on the wall isn’t working, let’s try throwing it on the ceiling. Obviously a better approach since gravity doesn’t matter.

          This completely lines up with the IQ of the sorcerers stirring the magical strategies for winning.

      2. JohnH

        “flood Iran with weapons so that the people could fight the government. He calls it the “Second Amendment solution”-

        It didn’t work here, despite best efforts of NRA…

    2. pjay

      Yes. Though Naked Capitalism does a great job of documenting the worthlessness of the msm, I do my own unreality check by watching the nightly news (usually NBC) and checking a few other mainstream sources daily. I have also been amazed (though I don’t know why I should be any more) at the degree to which Trump’s ridiculous noises have been reported straight up as if they were factual. But as Yves and others have noted, there seems to be a bit of reality leaking into recent coverage. That is always a sign that there is debate going on within the Establishment about whether it is time to cut bait. Reality might be imposing itself on the administration and generating push-back against the most bloodthirsty neocons, as it has before.

      That said, I worry about two things. First, Neocons never die; like the vampires they are, they simply retreat into their academic or think-tank coffins until time to rise again. But even more worrisome, I think there is a sense that if they are to complete their “Project for a New Middle East” then it is now or never. So they may fight harder to push their agenda and sabotage any attempted pull-back. As for the media, the neocons have proven extremely resourceful in getting its propaganda out into the public. So we’ll see.

      1. ChrisFromGA

        Sadly, on the day after Ted Turner died, CNN is no longer interested in reporting the truth. Or challenging a President who has clearly gone mad.

        Of course, they were sold multiple times to various huge corporate entities, with a different mission.

        1. Carolinian

          Speaking as a former Atlantan Turner was hardly some liberal icon even if once married to Jane Fonda. One might even say he was an earlier, better version of Trump.

          But in his cheesey way he did aspire to be part of an earlier TV world that took public affairs seriously. That’s why he wanted to buy CBS and, failing that, created his own news network. When others eventually bought into his company they couldn’t shove him aside fast enough. They were the cheesey ones but more in tune with the Northern, big city MSM. Ted’s favorite movie was Gone With the Wind and, he said, the reason he bought MGM’s library. For a long time he kept it continuously projected at an Omni movie theater.

          1. Yalt

            Trump would agree with you, except for the “better”…

            Ted Turner, one of the Greats of All Time, just died. He founded CNN, sold it, and was personally devastated by the Deal because the new ownership took CNN, his “baby,” and destroyed it. It became woke, and everything that he is not all about. Maybe the new buyers, wonderful people, will be able to bring it back to its former credibility and glory. Regardless, however, one of the Greats of Broadcast History, and a friend of mine. Whenever I needed him, he was there, always willing to fight for a good cause! President DONALD J. TRUMP

            1. Carolinian

              I don’t think America’s Cup winner Ted had that much in common with widebutt president bone spurs. However both are/were nepo baby loudmouths.

              Turner personally warred with Murdoch and his Fox News imitation of CNN. He had become more liberal–perhaps under Jane’s influence. An insider friend said their relationship, via rumor mill, was “all about the sex.”

              The same friend said he spotted Jane raking leaves while driving through an Atlanta neighborhood. Her daughter via Vadim also lived in Atl at the time.

            2. pjay

              “… Maybe the new buyers, wonderful people, will be able to bring it back to its former credibility and glory.”

              LOL! Yes, they’ve done wonders for the credibility of CBS News already!

              There was a time when I thought Turner was an arrogant asshole. But for the reasons others have mentioned in this link, I’d take him in a minute over the oligarchs buying up our media today.

          2. Pearl Rangefinder

            Giving a quick perusal on his Wiki page, I can say they certainly don’t make Oligarchs like they used to! Ted Turner

            On September 19, 2006, in a Reuters Newsmaker conference, Turner said of Iran’s nuclear position: “They’re a sovereign state. We have 28,000. Why can’t they have 10? We don’t say anything about Israel‍—‌they’ve got 100 of them approximately‍—‌or India or Pakistan or Russia.”[94]
            …..
            Turner once called observers of Ash Wednesday “Jesus freaks”, though he apologized, and dubbed opponents of abortion “bozos”.[105] In 1999, Turner made a joke about Polish mine detectors when asked about Pope John Paul II. After a harsh response from the Polish deputy foreign minister Radek Sikorski, Turner apologized.[106]
            …..
            In 2002, Turner accused Israel of terror: “The Palestinians are fighting with human suicide bombers, that’s all they have. The Israelis … they’ve got one of the most powerful military machines in the world. The Palestinians have nothing. So who are the terrorists? I would make a case that both sides are involved in terrorism.” He apologized, but also defended himself: “Look, I’m a very good thinker, but I sometimes grab the wrong word … I mean, I don’t type my speeches, then sit up there and read them off the teleprompter, you know. I wing it.”[107]
            …..
            Also in 2008, Turner asserted on PBS’s Charlie Rose that if steps are not taken to address global warming, most people would die and “the rest of us will be cannibals”. Turner also said in the interview that he advocated Americans having no more than two children. In 2010, he stated that the People’s Republic of China’s one-child policy should be implemented.[94]

            1. Bill Carson

              The fact that he ever apologized for anything he ever said or did puts him in a separate class from Trump.

              For my part, I miss the old CNN Headline News, which was essentially the 30-minute national evening news repeated 48 times every 24 hours.

          3. motorslug

            I remember when he bought WCW, called up that douchebag Vince McMahon saying he’s now in the ‘rasslin business.
            McMahon replied – congratulations, I’m in the entertainment business.

      2. lyman alpha blob

        Interesting, isn’t it, that for years the corporate media felt the need to remind us that every word out of Trump’s mouth was a “lie”, as if the populace were too stupid to notice on their own when he was bull**itting.

        When it comes to starting wars for fun and profit, somehow he is suddenly taken oh so seriously.

        1. gregory mckee

          I spent some time with Ted many years ago at his place in SC. He did much good for conservation in that state. I found him to be a decent concerned guy and a fun guy to be around. He definitely had some ideas before their time and shared them whether you wanted to hear them or not. He had a Lab he named Charlie, claimed he named him after the owner of the Oakland A’s for reasons that I found humorous. I have nothing but fond memories of the guy.

    3. Doggo

      bro I hate to break it to you, but US media have been the world’s greatest peddler of lies and govt propaganda for many years now. Decades actually.

      I thought in 2022 for sure that US media has reached peak bullshit. Not even Orwell’s 1984 fictional world can top the amount of bullshit that CNN FoxNews WaPo NYT and every other one of their ilk were spewing. Surely it would be impossible to shovel out any more bullshit because they have maxed out. This was in Feb-March of 2022.

      Boy was I wrong. Ths year in 2026 I found out, yes they can go even higher. United States is truly the empire of lies, and the amount of bullshit it can spew through its govt-controll news media outlets (which is all of them) is beyond comprehension. Trump and his minions have taken the US propaganda machine to multiverse infinity.

    4. ThirtyOne

      Lindsay Graham is still tirelessly flogging his Project for a New Iranian State.

  8. Wukchumni

    The powers that be knew all about the extensive damage to our bases in the GCC, but decided to wait 66.6 days before deciding it was ok to tell us.

    Omission Accomplished

    1. ilsm

      I am waiting for the Trump to pin a medal on the F-15 WSO US lost 2 MC 130’s getting out of Iran…..

      Also would like to hear how grateful two ships captains are for Trump getting them out of the Gulf this past Monday! Live on GMA.

      The whole show from DC is crcackers!

      1. Wukchumni

        I’m holding a non-verbal séance online for the wayward F-15 pilot later this afternoon, we hope to conjure up details.

  9. Yves Smith Post author

    Sorry to be so late to get done. The bit about the Twitter fabulist was of interest to me as someone who spends too much time on social media + is interested in the regulatory issues regarding the Axios front running, but this may not be as entertaining for most readers.

    Please refresh your page and re-skim if you arrived before the time of this comment. The only new part relates to the made-up account on Twitter of being in the middle of the $125 million-in-profits trades.

    1. .Tom

      Well, now I gotta take the car to service. Will ask about lubricant availability and prices and will read this while waiting.

      1. The Rev Kev

        You might want to give your mechanics a heads-up about the looming lubricant shortage while they still have a chance to stock up. They may have not heard about it.

        2. Randall Flagg

          The average American and the poor has had to bend over and take it without lubricants from the ruling classes, our useless politicians and Wall Street financiers for decades now.

        3. Bill Carson

          A lubricant shortage on top of the oil filter shortage! What’s a weekend wrench-turner to do? And if people go longer between oils changes, then that mechanic might see a significant increase in business.

        4. Peter VE

          While you’re at it, remind your local professional woman about the looming condom shortage.

    2. jsn

      While he may be a fabulist, who knows at this point, it is an excellent description of The Market State at work: making money from money as policy of the State at the highest level and thus immune from political reconning (within the confines of The Market State, guillotines are a different matter).

      Separately, and of interest but beyond my bandwidth, simultaneous with Operation Freedumb getting Freedumber and turning tail were reports of 2 C-135 Milch Cows sending distress signals over the Persian Gulf, followed by a side comment in one of Larry Johnson’s interviews yesterday that the hit on the UAE pipeline head was an errant missile from those panicked Freedumbers obliterating fishing boats. Explanations for Iran’s smirking denial and the abrupt halt to kinetic prep.

      I’ll dig deeper when I have more time.

    3. mrsyk

      Thanks again! I had a hearty chuckle learning the Saudis bombed the UAE who turned and blamed Iran.

      There’s an unfinished sentence at the end of your opening summary, “If none one does, that would be”

      1. Lefty Godot

        The Saudis and Qatar should swallow their pride and make a deal with Iran and Oman. Long-term they will make out better than trying to stay tugging at the skirts of the US and Israel.

        1. Glen

          Well you’ve stated the obvious, now we get to see which region has better leadership.

          The EU should have done a deal with Russia about Ukraine a LONG time ago, but that option is gone.

          The GCC should do a deal with Iran. All they need to do for incentive is look at Ukraine.

          Taiwan! Pay attention.

        2. hk

          It sort of looks likd they are doing exactly that, if the reports about Saudis and Gulfies sans UAE sinking Operation Freedumb are to be believed.

    4. pjay

      Thanks for wading into this. The guy may be full of it, but if it helps increase attention to this activity then it will have accomplished something.

      One part of his long tweet especially captured my attention:

      “Senator Warren will hold a hearing. She’ll say “rigged.” She’ll be correct, but not in the way she means. A rigged system implies someone broke it. No one broke anything. The system is performing within design tolerances. The people who built the architecture … they didn’t build it and then exploit it. They built it in order to exploit it.”

      I immediately thought of Dave Chappelle’s brilliant monologue on why Trump was so popular. He was an “honest liar” who admitted the “system was rigged,” openly flaunted it, and dared hypocrites like Hillary Clinton to change it if they didn’t like it. I tried to find it on Youtube. I think they might actually have removed the SNL monologue itself, though you can find numerous Youtube “shorts” with the key elements. Trump isn’t doing anything that others haven’t done, but he is doing it more extensively and more openly, almost daring anyone to stop him.

      1. Yves Smith Post author

        It used to be that becoming a reporter was a great way for literate people from blue collar backgrounds to get into the middle class. With the Internet having killed newsrooms all over the US and Ivy Leage grads taking a shine to populating the few posts that remain, that upward mobility track is pretty much gone. So this fellow may be working to create a social media analogue.

        1. JohnH

          Journalism students often go into public relations for Corporate America. It’s widely known in journalism schools. Their PR products often get placed in the media as news.

        2. Alan Heffez

          Peter Girnus is a creative writer. A very competent creative writer, pulling together tightly constructed narratives teasing out the ‘banal’ activities and moral hair-splitting of bureaucrats and middle managers working the financial-technology-media network. Fictionalized oral histories a la Studs Terkel.

          His honed writing skills get his targeted audience to sit up and take notice; sometimes even soliciting responses from network gatekeepers.

          April 22, this year, he posted an excellent tweet describing himself as “a Senior Surveillance Analyst at a commodities exchange. I have held this position for nineteen years. My job is to monitor trading activity for suspicious patterns and generate compliance reports. I am employee of the quarter. I have a mug….I have three monitors on my desk. The left one shows the order book. The middle one shows Truth Social. The right one shows the investigation queue.” Using these monitors he claims to track and report on highly probable insider trading activities related to White House connected personnel. [I believe that tweet got a response from the White House HR / Security Staff.]

          Earlier still he described himself as the guy who “rolled out Microsoft Copilot to 4,000 employees….” etc. A fine bit of middle management self-promotion reveal.

          I look forward to browsing through his collected works.

          AH

      2. EY Oakland

        Would agree ‘this guy’ is a terrific writer. Wd love to have an insider’s perspective on the plausibility of his tale. Wall Street is foreign territory for most of us.

      3. motorslug

        I’m wondering how he finds time to do the warehouse stuff in Dayton. What with the SpiritAir restructuring, global risk advising, surveillance analyzing and such. Three separate monitors/phones, he says.
        Better question is how the hell does he keep all that stuff balanced in front of the controls of the forklift?

        1. MHE

          Warehouse in Dayton is just another persona, in case your comment wasn’t /sarc

          If you didn’t read the full tweet, it’s pretty funny.

      4. Copeland

        >Trump isn’t doing anything that others haven’t done

        Well, to call out one of many thoroughly unique Trump actions: He has his own personal gestapo, and they are murdering citizens on the street (and these murders are ruled legit by his personal judiciary).

        I may have missed something, but have “others” before him done this?

    5. Cliff

      I thought the Peter Girnus Twitter account name looked familiar — same account was used for a tale of being on the House Ethics Committee and regarding congressional insider trading, was posted in links on 4/25. Definitely an entertaining writer, especially when viewed across his multiple posts.

    6. NN Cassandra

      The writing style of the post seems to be cropping up everywhere recently. Speaking like a guy in the knowing who talks to average joe, trying to simultaneously flex his superiority and also appear to be another average joe. Short sentences, often just two or three words. The incessant repetition of the “it’s not/it didn’t X, it’s/it did Y” combo.

      I don’t know if it’s AI or just that algos like this style of content so human writers optimize for it, but it’s quite irritating.

      1. boshko

        THANK YOU for flagging this. it’s been driving me nuts.

        have the substackers realized this writing style is optimized for SEO or going viral or something? it’s soooooo irritating.

        shanaka’s writing style is exactly the same….”the world won’t shut down from a nuclear missile strike. it will be a P&I insurer’s PDF….”

        i’d call it, the-bug-is-the-feature-speak.

        1. Yves Smith Post author

          You need to cut this out. He has a pronounced style. You don’t like it. Fine. Many others do.

          I am NOT TOLERATING readers censoring content based on the author’s presentation choices, as opposed to his content. You don’t get upset about the not-terribly-well-written OilPrice or the too-often hyperbolic Common Dreams but you get overwrought about a skilled poster who has chosen and refined a particular shtick for lambasting Corporate America? The reason his style may seem irritating is he is successfully emulating corporate speak!

          And you make clear you do not know what the hell you are talking about re SEO. Twitter is its own site. You can’t SEO optimize within it. That applies ONLY to independent sites.

      2. Yves Smith Post author

        I am getting sick of these unfounded accusations about AI use. This is like Joe McCarthy seeing Commies under every bed. And it has the same result, an attempt at censorship, here of what we choose to feature

        Interfering in our editorial choices is a fast track to blacklisting. You have had your privileges restricted for earlier offenses. You need to stand down.

        Bloomberg and the Economist have a strong house style as a result of human editing. So does the McKinsey Quarterly. A good writer choosing to adopt a particular voice for his writing is NOT AI.

        1. raspberry jam

          Thanks for your vigilance on this, Yves.

          One of the reasons I rarely weigh in on the “is it AI or not” threads when they arise here is that if one chooses to see AI in everything then it acts as a sort of cognitive kill switch about the overarching topic – if it’s “not real” (because AI) it can be dismissed without thought. This is why your insistence on readers here engaging with the source argument instead of presentation or prejudice is so important.

          With AI image/video, it’s even more critical that people learn now not to immediately react, because as McLuhan made clear, all new media utterly transform the audience; now we live in a world where you can no longer trust you are actually seeing what you see, and the reaction/response time to the image is what is driving the media regardless of the media provenance. Paradoxically in our high tech era we now have to learn to slow down response times, not speed up.

        2. NN Cassandra

          Personally, I’m lenient toward AI, if the content is good, why ignore it just because of its origins.

          However since questions about the author’s background were raised, I’m noting the strange style of writing, which actually isn’t unique, but seems to be spreading lately. As for the AI accusation specifically, the it’s not, it’s construction is why I brought up the possibility.

          1. ChrisFromGA

            I’m going to quote something that another commenter wrote last year, in response to one of my polemics against AI:

            Using AI for everything means there is no immersion in your subject. Using AI to slop out essays and code denies you the transcendence of truly learning—the change in YOU that comes from wholly absorbing what you study, and making it your own.
            All AI can give you is the ability to assume a persona of and educated human, but you have no feeling for it, no seat of the pants ability to fly from problem to solution inside your specialty

            Full attribution and credit goes to Antifa for this. It really helped me.

            Now what I would say in response to “why ignore it because of its origins”, in addition to the quote from Antifa, is that the use of AI in writing is contributing to an already low-trust environment that we as human beings are living in.

            Lots of folks are noticing these patterns, where blog posts or LinkedIn content seem eerily similar, with the same template, tempo, cadence, etc.

            Perhaps it was written by a human, then “tuned up” with AI. I myself use Grammarly to catch my incredibly bad grammar. But how do you know it was written by a human?

            Right now, someone can register a substack, and start using AI to write the blog posts. Maybe they go a step further and have an AI agent crank out robo-slop on a schedule, with a few prompts to give it direction. Slap on a “buy me a coffee” button, and voila – you’ve got an income stream!

            I found a recommended author in my Substack feed, who wrote a piece that caught my attention. I really liked her content. Then I started noticing that every other post she made had the same cadence. Short sentences. The lack of any imperfection. I tend to use run-on sentences. I misspell or confuse “you’re” with “your” if I’m not being careful. But at least that’s me. It’s not some AI slop cranking out content to suck in some income.

            Maybe it’s not pure robo-slop. Maybe she writes the stuff herself, then uses AI to make it “cleaner.” However, even that step cheapens the human experience. I’d rather see the imperfections. I’d rather read Yves write “because reasons” even though that’s not grammatically correct. It is a term of recognition that I have learned to embrace and understand.

            The point is, now I can’t trust anything on Substack that I don’t feel is human. What is human? As with the famous Supreme Court quote on adult content, I can’t define it, but I can recognize it.

  10. Pearl Rangefinder

    We’ll have to update Marandi’s ‘family dictatorships’ model to ‘mobster dictatorships’ after:

    I just heard that the drone strike on the UAE oil port was carried out by the Saudis following the UAE pulling out of OPEC. UAE blamed Iran in order to pretend that they’ve broken the ceasefire.

    OPEC+ sends its regards…

    1. hereweare

      Dropsite reports that KSA and Kuwait have cut US base access:
      Saudi Arabia and Kuwait cut U.S. base access in retaliation over Strait of Hormuz plan: Saudi Arabia and Kuwait both suspended American basing and overflight access after President Donald Trump announced Project Freedom without coordinating with Gulf allies

  11. Victor Sciamarelli

    To paraphrase Kissinger, ”It may be dangerous to be Israel’s enemy, but to be Israel’s friend is fatal” Moreover, this is about politics and power and Trump is incapable of realizing that Netanyahu’s performance of playing defense as the victim, is his means of pursuing Israel’s national interest above all else.
    We can talk about Trump all we want but it’s worth repeating the simple fact is that Israel is also at war with Iran, in fact, according to Marco Rubio, Israel started this war. Furthermore, Netanyahu is dead set against a negotiated settlement. Netanyahu wants nothing less than the destruction of Iran as a functioning state. And together with Israel’s Zionist supporters in the US and the Israel lobby they will continue to put maximum pressure on Trump to continue this war regardless of the economic consequences.
    Any deal which supports Iran’s economic recovery: sanctions relief, SoH tolls, reparations, investment, etc., Israel views as an existential threat. Trump/we are screwed.

  12. Jonhoops

    The Twitter guy seems to be someone doing satire. It reads a bit like posts from comedian Andy Borowitz.

  14. Ann

    Last night we had a large group of thunderstorms roll through here, starting four wildfires in the area. All are small at the moment, but three are out of control and one is being held. We are scheduled to take the RV in to be prepared for the summer today and we’ll need to get it back and pack it. Then we’ll need to go into town and rent a storage unit and fill it up with valuables and things we don’t want to lose.

    This is to say that I may not be able to post links today.

    2. The Rev Kev

      If it comes down to it, be prepared to bug out at an instance notice. And that means packing your most valuable stuff like legal papers, jewelry, photos first in case you do. Good luck and best wishes.

    5. Pat

      Be safe above all else. Sending good thoughts to you, your family and your neighbors.

  15. The Rev Kev

    ‘Alex Shams
    @alexshams_
    The scandal currently rocking Iranian twitter:
    Reza Pahlavi appears to be registered as a voter in the United States.
    Which would mean he’s a US citizen.
    Which by law means he renounced any claims to a foreign throne.
    Which renders moot his campaign to be Iran’s next Shah’

    Apparently he is not the sharpest knife in the drawer and sucks at speaking if he does not have a speech to read. Why, for the love of god, would he be stupid enough to register as a voter when he didn’t have to? To please people like Lindsey Graham? I tell you, if this guy lands at Tehran airport, he won’t live long enough to collect his baggage. He would be a dead man walking in Iran.

    1. John k

      I was surprised the original ayatollah wasn’t killed when he landed in Tehran. Yhe military must have known they would be in serious trouble if he took power. As I recall the shah was dying in dc, the son was very young, but the generals held power until they let him leave the airport, after which the crowds protected him. His life on the line, Ayatollah threw the dice, won the pot.
      And where was the cia? There were thousands of us military in Iran, musta been huge cia presence… maybe confusion/no agreement in dc?
      Iran slipped thru us fingers and might soon kick the us out and run the gulf.

  17. The Rev Kev

    Jet Fuel prices

    So I take it that the FIFA World Cup being held in North America is going to be a bust then. If you cannot afford an airliner over to the US, then you are not going to have people lining up to pay $10,000 for a game ticket. No doubt Trump is going to blame FIFA for this fiasco because he won’t blame himself. Maybe FIFA will ask Trump to return their peace prize to him back again.

    1. leaf

      The only good thing I have seen coming up for this world cup is that ticket reselling by scalpers has been hobbled in Ontario. Probably the only useful thing this provincial government under Ford has done.

      https://www.cp24.com/news/canada/2026/05/05/new-ontario-law-capping-resale-prices-frustrates-season-ticket-holders/

      Some amazing quotes “I wasn’t trying to make money. I just wanted to break even on the ones that I can’t go to.” “It’s a little frustrating because the ease of off-loading tickets is gone.” (seems like it was definitely about the money?)

      It’s been a long time since I’ve gotten tickets to a live game of anything in Toronto but I don’t think these people were ‘only breaking even’ if I remember right about the prices you used to see.

      Also Bosnia qualifying over Italy probably reduced a lot of the potential ticket buyers. Not sure how popular these matches are going to be here even without the likely greatly increased travel costs

    2. Clueless Joe

      I was thinking about that yesterday. With the current administration, ICE and TSA shenanigans, the new insane “let us peak at all your social media, ever” rules to enter the country, and the racketeering going on with ticket and hotel costs, there was already a limited crop of foreign football fans ready to attend.
      It’s not just that flights will be very expensive, it’s that some flights will be downright cancelled to boot. And with Trump hoping the World Cup will be another HUGE success to boost his ego, this will be another fine mess on his record, with mostly empty stadiums. Trump 2.0 will really leave a great legacy and is a perfect show of US soft power.

      2. redleg

        The high school my spouse works at just had their European exchange partners back out for ICE, TSA, privacy concerns stated as reasons.

  18. tegnost

    Even with an airline industry ally trying to get Administration attention, the article gives the strong impression that Team Trump is simply not that concerned about damage to consumers or the real economy.

    this does seem to be the case…peak disruption… and “they” figure they will end up on top.
    High prices mean more profit in their opinion…it works until it doesnt

    1. ChrisFromGA

      Bankruptcy lawyers are some of the best paid. Much better than criminal defense, personal injury, or commercial litigation … with a few extreme exceptions .. think OJ’s Dream Team.

      They’ll make a killing feasting on the carcass of Spirit.

      Hate the game not the playah!

    2. chuck roast

      This guy is a genius. I want him to write screenplays for the soon to be announced Naked Capitalism Channel.

  20. Jason Boxman

    From Iran has hit far more U.S. military assets than reported, satellite images show

    The reporter is good friends with the Stimson Center I guess? No introduction

    Chief among them, experts said, is that Iranian forces have been more resilient than the Trump administration may have anticipated. Kelly Grieco, a senior fellow at the Stimson Center, a think tank, said plans to destroy Iran’s missile and drone forces fast enough to prevent them from inflicting serious damage underestimated “the depth of Iran’s pre-positioned targeting intelligence on fixed U.S. infrastructure.”

    but a few paras later

    Justin Bronk, senior research fellow for airpower and technology at the Royal United Services Institute based in London, said U.S. and allied air defenses had done an impressive job intercepting attacks, but “at an enormous cost in terms of surface-to-air missile interceptors and air-to-air missiles.”

    So we know why Bronk does or doesn’t matter. Who’s Grieco? A senior fellow? In vacuum cleaner technology? Pressure washing sales?

    “The Iranian attacks were precise. There are no random craters indicating misses,” said Mark Cancian, a senior adviser with the Center for Strategic and International Studies and a retired Marine Corps colonel, who reviewed the Iranian images at The Post’s request. The Post previously revealed how Russia provided Iran with intelligence to target U.S. forces.

    Some of the damage may have occurred after U.S. troops already left the bases, making protection of the structures less vital. Cancian and other experts said they do not believe the attacks have significantly limited the U.S. military’s ability to conduct its bombing campaign in Iran.

    (bold mine)

    Why do we have any bases in the middle east, then? Duh.

    The strikes on U.S. bases in the region have left military planners considering new trade-offs, said Maximilian Bremer, a nonresident fellow at the Stimson Center and a retired Air Force officer: Pull troops back to safer locations and limit their ability to fight or maintain the bases as they were and accept the potential of future casualties.

    So someone from Stimson did merit introduction.

  21. Jason Boxman

    Trump is trapped by his own strategy as he grapples for an exit in Iran (CNN; archive.ph)

    If words won wars, Donald Trump’s Iran conflict would have ended long ago.
    But the president still can’t find a way out of a war meant to last no more than a month and a half that is now grinding into its 10th week.

    Trump is ensnared by two traps of his own making — one geopolitical and the other domestic. Iran’s leverage over the Strait of Hormuz and refusal to fold mean he can’t definitively end the war at an acceptable military price.

    And as the conflict drags on, its political impact at home further narrows his options. With an approval rating in the 30s, gas prices averaging over $4.50 a gallon and public opposition to the war rising, he’s got no political space to continue waging it.

    So Trump is stuck — a reality that helps explain his incessantly upbeat claims of progress in peace talks and tendency to announce or change military strategies with no warning.

    A seemingly frank discussion how just how badly Trump’s lost.

    conclusion

    For the sake of US service personnel in harm’s way, Iran’s defenseless civilians, Americans vexed by high gas prices and people around the world hurt economically by Trump’s war, a swift resolution is vital.

    But the president’s imprecision; his apparent wish-casting about staggering diplomatic breakthroughs; and the idea that a one-page memo could hold the key to peace raise new doubts about the administration’s seriousness and capacity.

    1. Dr. John Carpenter

      How is anyone who is paying attention having “new” doubts about this administration’s seriousness and competence? Are they also the remorseful Trump voters who thought he was going to do all these wonderful things there was no evidence of him even wanting to do, let alone being capable to do? Is anyone really still holding out hope for anything or is it just that no one can admit they got taken for a sucker?

      1. erstwhile

        To start with your last sentence, I always go back to recalling Frank Serpico’s answer as to what went through his mind, as he was realizing that he’d been set up by the nypd and was being shot in a doorway, possibly being murdered, by members of that same police department he’d served with, and testified against in court for their corruption: that it was all a lie. It is all a lie. Understanding that is, I think, the very real opening of the american mind.

    2. pjay

      I’m sure such “biased” reporting will be alleviated once the Paramount merger kicks in. Of course it still has to clear all the potential regulatory obstacles from Trump’s DOJ … ha ha, just kidding.

      As per the Trump tweet noted above, above, the same “wonderful people” who bought CBS are coming for CNN. Hold on Don, help is on the way!

  22. Wukchumni

    I’m proud to announce the launch of Sinko de Mayo Coin, with minting limited to the actual length of Operation Freedom, unlike any other crypto coin on the market. Each SdM comes with a numbered certificate of authenticity, adding to the allure.

    Order on TACO Tuesday and get 2 SdM’s for the price of 1!

    1. ChrisFromGA

      Does it come with a liability waiver you must sign, promising not to sue Taco or his family for fraud?

  23. Anthony Martin

    When one considers Iran’s strategic objectives as outlined in their 10 or 14 points, then one has to consider when will they consider that they have obtained security (freedom from attacks ) , i.e. if they last long enough to achieve that. Their operational strategy seems to be directed at neutralising the Arabian Peninsula, neutralising Israel, and neutralising the Trump regime. Note: The Persian Gulf is the pivot point and if regime change in DC, then Israel’s strength is potentially diminished. if If one assumes that Trump will not be the one to solve the problem of another forever war, then the question becomes who will rise to that task.Here is will it it get interesting, Trump has no apparent successor/heir and those wanna-be’s face the same dilemma that Harris encountered – how to act independently of the superior whom they might wish to replace. Rubio? Vance? Or will it be some Democrat on a stallion, etc? Otherwise, buckle up, turbulence up ahead.

  24. XXYY

    If the IAEA ever returns, it will be kept on a very short leash due to Iran’s credible belief that the IAEA facilitated Israel’s assassinations of Iran’s top nuclear scientists by providing information about their whereabouts.

    Thanks for bringing this up, Yves. Iran should also be bringing it up every single time that IAEA is mentioned or discussed. These kind of corrupt agencies should be exposed and brought down. They do tremendous harm not only in practice, but also by discrediting the idea that international law can even be a thing.

    One of the urgent programs of the next few decades should be to restore the credibility of vital institutions that have made themselves into a joke in the last few decades. If nobody trusts anybody, civilization can’t really go on.

    1. chuck roast

      Let us recall that the IAEA were standing around the Zaporihzhia nuclear power plant with the Russian occupiers a few years ago and could not figure out who the heck was lobbing artillery shells at them. Twas, and remains to this day a mystery!

  25. flora

    re: “To more evidence of US operational failures: The Washington Post just launched a long, extensively documented, and non-paywalled of Iranian damage to US bases that shows it was even worse than shown in recent New York Times, NBC and CNN exposes”

    WaPo is the CIA’s mouthpiece on fp issues, imo. I think this article means the CIA has concluded it’s time to wrap up this adventure before it gets any worse for the US military, US finances, and US standing in the world’s opinion.

  27. XXYY

    Many of the demands of the US to Iran in exchange for ending the current war revolve around the idea of Iran giving up all its uranium, presumably by exporting it from the country to somewhere else, eg, the US.

    This seems like a comically impractical demand. Iran’s supply of uranium, in various levels of enrichment, would probably fit inside a single shipping container. Iran is a huge, mountainous country penetrated by a webwork of underground structures. If Iran wanted to make its uranium inventory secure from discovery by the US, the IAEA, or Santa Claus, it would be trivial to do. All it would really take would be someone on the Iranian negotiating team with a good poker face.

    Why do people continue to talk about this as if it were a real thing? Are our leaders really that lame?

    Don’t bother to answer that.

    1. Safety First

      First, I am given to understand at least some of Iran’s uranium is in gaseous form, and so a single shipping container just might not do it. Perhaps two, maybe even three or four.

      But I think the genesis of the demand that Iran gives up its uranium (and its missile program, and its strait, and its oil, and…say, do they have any gold coins left, because we’ll take those too) stems from two wildly different directions. On the one hand, “our leaders” really are that “lame”, because I remember hearing the talking point even back during the JCPOA days (as in, Obama was weak because he let Iran keep its uranium, or something like that).

      On the other hand, remember that the Russians, who have multiple vested interests here – the nuke in Bushehr, the North-South corridor, etc. – have previously offered to both the US and Iran that, if the US is so worried about Iranian uranium, we, the Russians, will take custody of it and make sure no hanky-panky occurs. I may be misremembering, but I think at one point Iran was actually amenable to this, provided they got something meaningful from the US in return. Probably not now, though. But, I’m sure that this idea, when heard in Washington, poured further gasoline on the fire of the original US demands.

      Parenthetically, this entire conflict has, to some extent, been a case of misleading conversations about things that do not matter. Like the “mines” in the Strait of Hormuz. Are the mines completely unimportant? Well, no, they are not. Are the mines central or even incidental to how Iran is controlling access to the Strait? Not in the slightest, because anti-ship missiles and drones are actually a thing. Washington remembers, vaguely, that back in the 1980s’ Tanker War Iran did use mines dumped from small boats, because they did not have very many good alternatives at the time, and so in a very Bidenesque move we’re back to discussing, endlessly and with grave countenances, things that haven’t really been relevant for 40 years.

      So it is with the whole nuclear issue now. This isn’t 2015, and we’re not negotiating the JCPOA, and no-one in Tehran is hoping for the benevolent American masters to maybe-possibly-perhaps unfreeze a couple of billion in funds in return for strict IAEA inspections. Somehow, however, it seems a whole lot of people and organizations have not received this particular memo…

      1. Samuel Conner

        In today’s Mercouris commentary, in context of his discussion of Russian interpretation of the Russian Federation/US relationship, he argues that not only is US “agreement-incapable”, it may also be “negotiations incapable”.

        Given that DJT does not appear to actually have a policy (aside from “the other side caves under sufficient pressure, providing me with a ‘win’ “) and, assuming plausibly that his instructions to his negotiators are not a lot more stable and consistent than his public pronouncements, it’s hard to see how a negotiation process, requiring long-term effort to produce a detailed agreement, could actually happen.

        It might be that the only stable outcome is that one or the other party will cave under sufficient pressure.

        1. ChrisFromGA

          Given that negotiations are viewed solely as an opportunity for misrepresentation of material facts that the opposing party relies on, as a pretext for inflicting damages, I’d say that the US is only capable of fraud in the inducement.

    2. Glenda

      This one pager should be sent to Nyetiyahoo and Isreal. After all they are so into sending pagers to people.

  28. Wukchumni

    We had this meth house on the main fork of the river here, which got nicknamed ‘Pirates of the Kaweahbean’ and they’d rearrange junk in the yard @ 3 in the morning-its what meth-heads do, kind of similar to Trump’s Truth Social rants in the wee hours.

    1. JonnyJames

      Exactly. As you said awhile back, he’s jacked up on on Perv’itin and Adderal, the “respectable”: form of crystal meth. The emperor is a pervert-tweaker.

  30. JonnyJames

    And even many on the so-called left in the US (Democracy Now, Chris Hedges and others) refer to Iran as a “regime” with serious human rights abuses. They execute peaceful protesters and all that.

    Hedges should know better, he is a big fan of Edward Said’s work, but still shows implicit Orientalist bias in regards to Iran (same with Varoufakis)

    Meanwhile, our good friends in KSA and other GCC countries are beacons of human rights, women’s rights and democracy.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capital_punishment_in_Saudi_Arabia

    1. Peter Steckel

      That’s what Daniel Johnson has been reporting. He stated a contact in a military on the ground and Kuwait was told by a Kuwaiti official / officer that the go plan was coming late this week, IIRC.

    2. urdsama

      Right before Trump’s visit to China?

      I won’t put anything past Trump, but this seems like a perfect way to make China throw up its hands and walk away from the US until Trump leaves office. Not that they would say so outwardly, but via delay, delay, delay.

      What an absolute mess. Here we come depression!

  32. ChrisFromGA

    As a follow on to “Cinco de Mayo” I propose a new holiday in honor of Kushner & Witkoff:

    Grift-o de Mar-a-lago

    It can be celebrated on any day of of the year, and rather than gathering at Mexican restaurants and drinking Tequila, participants celebrate by stealing all the silverware from the premises.

  33. Timmy

    The Trump/Xi summit is now in the event window, starting next Thursday. This has to be a horrible set up for Trump. I’d assume that China has comprehensive sources of intelligence and knows the truth about the conflict in the Gulf – the failed special forces mission, the downed aircraft, the battering that US bases and Israel have taken, the actual effectiveness of the US maritime operations, etc. Would Trump actually try to manage a hot conflict while traveling and meeting with Xi? A US military failure in this window would be catastrophic for this meeting. I’ve seen the forecasts that the US will renew attacks soon but I can’t square this with some reasonable/plausible basis for Trump to assemble at least a cosmetic sense of leverage with Xi. Maybe he thinks he can start something this weekend and then call a unilateral ceasefire to go to China. Hence I really thought we were going to be in a stalemate for the next ten days, at least in Hormouz.

    1. Samuel Conner

      This is a bizarre hypothesis, but under present conditions, perhaps any interpretation is conceivable — perhaps DJT wants to be perceived to be unafraid to meet with Xi, but in fact is afraid to meet with Xi. Under such conditions, reasons to postpone the meeting would need to created, again and again.

  34. Alena Shahadat

    “Readers are invited to have fun with this”

    Here’s what a good deal would look like:

    1. Dismantlement. This is more important than any “moratorium” on enrichment…

    The [World] also needs supervised dismantlement of all centrifuges, including components and manufacturing capabilities, along with facilities and materials for plutonium reprocessing…Producing or importing them should be banned.

    2. Uranium. [Isrl hereafter “The Terrorist regime”] would love to focus solely on its [hundreds] kilograms of 60% enriched uranium. The regime’s 20% stockpile may sound less dangerous, but reaching that level is already 90% of the way to weapons-grade. It, too, has to go….The regime has thousands of kilograms of uranium enriched to 5% and lower, a solid basis to restart a nuclear program if left in [The territoires under The Terrorist regime’s control]….

    3. Inspections. The IAEA needs access not merely to what [The Terroriste regime] deems a “nuclear site.”… The IAEA needs to go anywhere it believes to be nuclear-related—immediately. A full-time inspection team based in [Is] would be best.

    4. Come clean. [The terroriste regime] can make a full declaration of its past nuclear work. Then the IAEA can verify the declaration…

    5. Hormuz…..A final deal should contain clear regulations restoring passage under Iranian control.

    6. Sanctions….Dismantlement on a short, specific timetable can remove nuclear sanctions. Terrorism and human-rights sanctions can remain until the regime ceases sponsoring terror and violating human rights.

    1. hereweare

      Meanwhile the only country that’s ever used nuclear weapons in a war gets to keep its arsenal and programme?

    2. Nusper

      Yes indeed, a lot of these points sound quite reasonable.

      Unfortunately there is zero chance that Satanyahu will agree on any of them.

      Oh wait, you DON’T mean Israel by terrorist regime?

      1. Jason Boxman

        If Twitter is to be believed, the kinetics have returned. I guess we’ll see what shakes out. Things might be getting real.

  37. Clwydshire

    I greatly miss Ann’s high quality links today.

    Larry Johnson has noted the sudden cessation of activity US military aircraft in the Persian Gulf area in this article: “Ball of Confusion… Trump’s Mixed Signals on Iran”, he says in part “American military aircraft airborne across the region have collapsed — from over 27 yesterday to just 7 right now. All logistics and tankers: C-17 Globemasters, a C-5M Super Galaxy, and KC-135 Stratotankers shuttling between Ramstein, Spangdahlem, Tel Aviv, Abu Dhabi, and Al Udeid. No combat birds. No surge.” He attributes this to an “unverified” report … of an “implicit ultimatum” from Bejing “around the upcoming Trump / Xi trip, threatening to cancel or downgrade the visit if there is any further escalation by the US against Iran”

    Indian Punchline seems to confirm this in this article: “Can China curb Trump’s gambit in Hormuz?” where M.K. Bhadrakumar takes note of “China’s shock warning to the US President Donald Trump that his road to Beijing goes through the Strait of Hormuz…”

  38. raspberry jam

    US struck Iranian coastal city and an island in Strait of Hormuz, US official tells Fox

    The US military carried out strikes on Iran’s coastal city of Bandar Abbas and the island of Qeshm in the Strait of Hormuz, an American official tells Fox News, after Iranian media reported the sounds of explosions in both locales.

    The official says the strikes don’t mark a resumption of the war.

    many other blog entries last 20 min on Times of Israel noting other strikes and AD activated in Tehran

      1. EY Oakland

        I would add the words “murderous” and “vile” to your list. No serious person can believe anything the regime in Washington DC says. Understand: some people/corporations are making a lot of money on this illegal war – possibly even, and very cynically, measured over some unknown period of time. Can guarantee, no harm to the 1%.

      2. The Rev Kev

        Did they do this to see if they can get away with it and so soon keep on doing it? This is straight out of the Israeli playbook. And it gets better. Trump said in an interview with CBS that it was “just a love tap.”

    2. Paradox of Unrealized Power

      The absolutely bizarre thing is that this may be true.

      The US ships have left, likely under duress. They clearly did *not* enter the area just to leave, so it was clearly a retreat of sorts.

      I think the part about the strikes not marking a resumption of war is the US signaling to/begging Iran to pretty please not escalate.

      I could be way off on this, though–it is a very strange story, which usually means that the US is winging the spin off the cuff, which means that this was likely unplanned (when they spin ahead of time, it is normally laughable and contradictory, but it “makes sense” in a simplistic way).

  39. ChrisPacific

    To the point that Yves made a day or two ago, the fact that the entry point to Iran’s approval process for the Strait is an email address highlights that it is not a credible, robust or scalable attempt at a process.

    The entire world knows that email address now. Even a nonentity could expect to get inundated with junk traffic after that. A high profile country that’s been painted as an evil enemy by the majority of the Western world? Forget about it. Every malicious actor with a grievance against Iran will be attacking that account. And somebody is expected to sift the legitimate requests out of all of that and process them to the tune of 100 a day? (Even assuming the account stays online and available, which is a big if). All you have for sender authentication in an email is a return address, which is easily spoofed, or IP tracing. ‘Needle in a haystack’ doesn’t do it justice.

    A serious process would begin with some kind of authentication and identity verification, to secure the system and limit it to the big shippers with a legitimate interest. Maybe then it would be possible to get something done. Protecting that from malicious actors and impersonators would still be non-trivial, but vastly easier than protecting an open email inbox.

    This seems like theatre, possibly to wind Trump up, make Iran look reasonable to the rest of the world, or both.

    1. Acacia

      Technically, that is correct, but what about this…

      All Iran has to do is send an auto-reply from that email that includes a fee, a unique transaction ID, and a crypto wallet address. This can be easily generated by an app.

      You want to get your ship through the strait? Send your fee to that crypto wallet address, add the ID as the “memo” attached to the transfer, and then send an email reply with the name of your vessel and your transaction ID.

      The Iranians then look for payments to the wallet, and capture the ID from the memo on each payment.

      Payment received is in effect authentication.

      As you note, there will be tons of spam, but incoming emails get filtered for those containing the IDs of payments actually received. This eliminates the spam. At that point, a confirmation email is sent: “you can pass, thanks for your business, please come again.”

      Of course, hackers could try to disrupt the mail server, but SMTP over SSL/TLS is more robust than HTTPS. For this reason, it’s probably a better solution than a web site. And, if US/Israel tries to block DNS for Iran, they can still fall back to an IP address and SMTP would still work.

      1. ChrisPacific

        That could work, I guess, if they scale it out enough.

        This is all heading more into extralegal territory than I’m familiar with, but I’m not sure I agree that SMTP servers are more robust. In my experience, they are more heavily scrutinized and prone to blocking because of their use by spammers, botnets etc. If you are an organisation who sends email in bulk, it’s often easiest to outsource the task to a third party who can provide sender authentication and apply a basic level of email hygiene, and hopefully be less likely to cop a block or ban from ISPs or mail providers.

        In this case, anybody who wanted to email might have to find a non-Western mail provider to do it from, since Western ones could be required by governments to block SMTP reply traffic from the relevant Iranian server.

  40. Acacia

    Oil Crunch Prompts Plastics Crisis in Asia
    https://oilprice.com/Latest-Energy-News/World-News/Oil-Crunch-Prompts-Plastics-Crisis-in-Asia.html

    Japan said earlier this month it has secured sufficient volumes of naphtha until the end of the year but other Asian countries have not been so lucky.

    This is the official line from the Takaichi administration, but there has been a lot of debate in Japan over naphtha, with the mainstream media finally admitting there is a crisis situation and “Tokyo, we have a problem”, e.g.:

    Naphtha crisis: “No supplies available,” cries from those on the ground; government response is “haphazard.”
    https://mainichi.jp/articles/20260430/k00/00m/040/242000c

    In a nutshell, PM Takaichi shares the belief with many Western leaders, that she can simply change reality with words and “unfavorable” views need to be suppressed. That can work — until it doesn’t.

    There is also a building materials crisis in Japan such that many construction projects are now simply on hold.

  41. Tom Stone

    I think Xi should text Trump something like “Donny, we’ll have to reschedule, I’ll be washing my hair that night “

Comments are closed.