The Iran war is one months old and the usual Negative Nellies in the Democrat Media Complex are whinging that the war’s not won yet, or suggesting that the Trump Administration is looking for an “off ramp.” Funny how it takes time to defeat a nation of 92 million, even one where the regime is hated by its citizens and whose prewar air force looked like a museum. Everything we hear from CENTCOM is that the air campaign is on schedule.
And the “off ramp” for the war is regime change in Tehran.
“The USS Tripoli and USS New Orleans arrived in the Middle East, carrying with them 2,200 Marines — with more on the way — hours after an Iranian strike left dozens of U.S. service members hurt at a Saudi air base. The Tripoli and New Orleans are two of several additional vessels and personnel the Pentagon has deployed to the region as the U.S.-Israeli war in Iran enters it’s second month. The Tripoli Amphibious Group brings with it F-35B Strike Fighters, as well as transport aircraft, amphibious assault vessels and other tactical assets.”
“Israel struck secret facility for production of Iran’s naval weapons and storage of boats and ships.”
“The facility located in the city of Yazd served as a key production center for advanced missiles and sea mines intended for Iran’s naval forces.”
“The site that was hit was reportedly involved in designing, assembling, and testing advanced missiles that could be launched from ships, submarines, and helicopters, targeting both moving and stationary vessels at sea.”
“The Israeli Defense Forces described the location as the central hub of Iran’s naval strike capabilities, noting that weapons produced there had been used in operations that posed a threat to navigation in the Strait of Hormuz.”
“Following the strike, the facility’s production infrastructure and stores of ready-to-use missiles were said to have been completely destroyed.”
“A reported Israeli airstrike on Tehran has killed Hassan Hassanzadeh, a senior commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ Mohammad Rasul‑Allah Corps, which oversees security in Greater Tehran and counter‑ unrest operations.” I’ve also seen his name rendered “Hassan Hassan Zadeh,” for those playing IRGC Dirtnap Bingo at home…
“Majid Zakriyai, commander of the Iranian Army’s Natural Resources Organization protection unit, was killed.”
President Trump promised some absolute scorched earth on Iran if they don’t fall in line, promising to blow up their electric grid, their oil wells and Kharg Island…but then deleted the tweet. 🤷
E-3 Sentry and KC-135 destroyed at Prince Sultan Air Base in Saudi Arabia.
The anti-air capabilities of Prince Sultan Air Base still leave much to be desired.
The Houthis had been unusually quiet during the open stages of the war. Well, that’s ended, and they’re now tossing missiles at Israeli. Not sure how many they have, given that Iran has been both broke and busy…
It’s always hard to tell what the state of the war in Lebanon is, but to my casual observation, it looks like the intensity of strike has lessened on both sides, but Hezbollah attacks seem to have fallen sharply. On the other hand, today’s status map show that Israeli forces are already at the Litani River in the eastern part of Lebanon:
“US military has been working on Iran ground raid plans for years.” One would hope.
Retired Gen. Frank McKenzie, the former commander of U.S. Central Command (Centcom), said Sunday that the U.S. military has been working on plans for a ground raid in Iran for years, as President Trump is reportedly considering sending troops into the war.
“Margaret, for many years we’ve considered options along the southern coast of Iran, seizing islands, seizing small bases. Typically raids. And a raid is an operation with a planned withdrawal. You’re not going to stay. But some of those islands you could seize and hold. That would have a couple effects,” McKenzie told CBS News’s Margaret Brennan on “Face the Nation.”
“First of all, it would be profoundly humiliating for Iran and would give us great weight in negotiations. The second, the example of Kharg Island, which everyone talks about, if you seize Kharg Island, you really can shut down the Iranian oil economy completely. And the beauty of seizing it is, you’re not destroying it,” he said.
Is China pushing Iran for a ceasefire?
“The risks to global trade through the Strait of Hormuz have surged and the dynamics of Iran’s relationships with Russia and China are constantly in the spotlight. Recently, both countries have pressured Iran, urging diplomatic solutions to the crisis. On March 24th, China’s foreign ministry reported that Foreign Minister Wang Yi held a phone call with Iran, calling for seizing the opportunity for peace and negotiating as soon as possible.” So did Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov.
“Analysts believe Russia has explicitly urged Iran to back down, signaling that Moscow views Iran as unable to continue fighting. Shortly afterward, China followed suit, aligning with Russia in terms of diplomatic timing. This indicates coordination between the two countries. Their shared goal is to maintain the stability of the Iranian regime, ensuring it continues to act as a strategic counterbalance to the United States.”
“From Beijing’s perspective, Iran is not only a major energy supplier, but also a key node in the Belt and Road Initiative. Chinese investments in the country amount to at least hundreds of billions of dollars, covering oil and gas field development, port construction, and transportation networks. If the Iranian regime were completely overthrown, it would directly threaten China’s energy and geopolitical interests. Therefore, Beijing must intervene diplomatically and urge Iran to turn to negotiations.” A lot of observers believe that Belt and Road is already moribund.
“A source close to China’s Foreign Minister, Wang Yi, revealed to the Epoch Times that Iran has refused any purely diplomatic arrangements and instead pressured Beijing with selective security, linking substantial aid to the safe passage of Chinese commercial ships through the Strait of Hormuz. This is soft extortion. Without military assistance, China cannot ensure the smooth passage of its trade routes. Beijing’s multiple secret negotiations have ended in failure and its efforts to profit from the geopolitical game are now facing the dual impact of diplomatic imbalance and economic stagnation.”
China also thought it could be a negotiating mediator between Washington and Tehran. Yeah, fat chance.
“This crisis is essentially the inevitable backlash of China’s ‘wolf warrior diplomacy” and camp confrontation mentality.”
“China’s leaders have fallen into a self-entangling dilemma. The forces they’ve supported are now cutting off their own economic lifelines. The disruption in the Straight of Hormuz is not only a rupture in global logistics, but also a microcosm of the complete collapse of China’s geopolitical strategy.”
“You’re starting to see the Iranian regime looking for an exit ramp.”
“USAF A-10s are arriving in the UK tonight as the U.S. surges more Warthogs to the Middle East.”
As usual, this is just the Iran news I felt significant enough to include in the roundup. If you think I’ve missed anything, feel free to share in the comments below.
The Iran war continues, with attacks on energy grids and refineries across the Persian Gulf, (maybe) another bunker buster strike, serious regime confusion, countries reporting impending shortages, and part of the 82nd Airborne moving into the theater.
ZeroHedge has piece up that starts with a nice state-of-play summary.
WSJ, Fox reporting 3,000 elite Army [82nd] Airborne soldiers to be ordered to Middle East. Axios says US awaits Iran response to proposed Thursday peace talks.
Backchannel diplomacy vs skepticism: Abbas Araghchi reportedly signaled openness to negotiations with the US via envoy Steve Witkoff, but Israel has appeared cool on deal prospects or offramp.
Heavy exchange of fire and testing red lines: Iran continues missile and drone waves targeting Israel and US bases, amid reports of overnight airstrikes on military and gas infrastructure near Isfahan.
Iran reshuffles its security leadership, appointing Mohammad Bagher Zolghadr: he’s a former IRGC commander and replaces the assassinated Ali Larijani.
Iran halts natural gas exports to Turkey: follows last week’s Israeli strike on the massive South Pars gas field; QatarEnergy declares force majeure on some LNG contracts due war.
“The Israeli Air Force recently struck an Iranian nuclear research and development site in Tehran, the military announces. According to the Israeli army, the “strategic” site at the Malek Ashtar University was used by Iran’s military industries to develop components for nuclear weapons. Malek Ashtar University, subordinate to Iran’s defense ministry, is under Western sanctions over its activities relating to Iran’s nuclear and ballistic missile programs.”
This falls into the “Big if true” category: “Three heavy bombers of the U.S. Air Force are currently conducting heavy strikes on the underground missile base of the IRGC Aerospace Force in Yazd, central Iran (Al-Qadir missile base). A total of six bunker-buster bombs have been dropped on the site by either B-1B heavy bombers flown from RAF Fairford in the United Kingdom or B-2A Spirit stealth bombers flown directly from Whiteman AFB in the United States.” I haven’t seen enough of Babak Taghvaee’s work to gauge the accuracy of this. (The few bits of his I’ve read have seemed accurate.) It seems like the sort target we would hit, but not knowing which bomber hit these targets suggests a source lacking firsthand knowledge. If anyone has a better bead on Taghvaee’s accuracy, feel free to share it in the comments below.
Not just over the Strait: The Warthog is also engaging Iranian back militias in Iraq.
USAF A-10 Warthogs spent most of the day strafing Iranian-backed militia positions around Mosul, Iraq. pic.twitter.com/5GLcm1XVnN
Victor Davis Hanson has spent fifty years studying how wars end. When he says the tide is turning, it’s worth listening to why.
His argument isn’t based on what the Pentagon is saying. It’s based on how everyone else is behaving.
𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗘𝘂𝗿𝗼𝗽𝗲𝗮𝗻𝘀. VDH’s rule: Europeans never agree to go anywhere near a conflict unless they think the winning side has already been determined. They didn’t help in the early days. Now they’re starting to move. That movement is not idealism. It’s a calculation. They’ve looked at the battlefield and decided which way this ends.
𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗚𝘂𝗹𝗳 𝗽𝗲𝘁𝗿𝗼-𝗻𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻𝘀. The Saudis, the Emiratis, the Qataris — these governments have survived for generations by reading the regional climate with precision. When they expel Iranian military attachés, when they intercept Iranian missiles over their own capitals and say nothing about American strikes, when the UAE reaffirms its $1.4 trillion investment commitment to the United States mid-war — they are not making ideological statements. They are placing bets. And they are betting on the United States.
𝗔𝗹 𝗝𝗮𝘇𝗲𝗲𝗿𝗮. This is the one that should stop you cold. Al Jazeera — the Qatari state media network, historically critical of American military action, the network Tucker Carlson and the anti-war right love to cite against Israel — is now calling the U.S. bombing campaign brilliant and effective, and saying it has been underestimated. When the media outlet of a nation that hosts both the largest American air base in the Middle East and a Hamas political office starts praising American military effectiveness, the message is unmistakable: 𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘺 𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘯𝘬 𝘸𝘦’𝘳𝘦 𝘨𝘰𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘵𝘰 𝘸𝘪𝘯.
𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗺𝗶𝗹𝗶𝘁𝗮𝗿𝘆 𝘀𝗶𝗴𝗻𝗮𝗹. A-10 Warthogs and Apache helicopter gunships are now flying strike missions in Iranian airspace at will. VDH’s point: you only deploy those aircraft when there is effectively no air defense left to threaten them. They are slow, low-flying, close-support platforms. Their presence confirms what the Pentagon has been claiming — Iran has no meaningful air defense remaining.
Iran’s strategy now is rope-a-dope. Run out the clock. Wait for American public opinion to shift. Hope the midterms create political pressure on Trump to stop. It is the only play they have left.
VDH’s conclusion: if Trump sees it through — and he believes he will — the regime falls. Not in years. 𝗣𝗿𝗲𝘁𝘁𝘆 𝘀𝗼𝗼𝗻.
Since President Trump revealed contacts with the Islamic Republic, we’re seeing something very telling inside Iran: chaos at the top.
Regime officials are either turning on each other, pointing fingers, accusing one another of negotiating with the United States or in their own media and social platforms, they’re warning against character assassination of figures like Ghalibaf or Rouhani, because suspicion is spreading inside the regime itself.
Some are even calling for arrests or worse. Others are publicly shaming officials, accusing them of secret talks.
This is the atmosphere on the Islamic Republic’s side of social media. Total panic.
Jim Geraghty wonders “Why Are We Lifting Sanctions on Iranian Oil During a War with the Mullahs?” It’s a good question, though Trump seems to have a more intuitive grasp of alternating between carrots and sticks in negotiations than anyone I’ve ever seen. Also: “We have seen oil tankers carrying Russian oil divert from China to India in the aftermath of the Treasury Department’s lifting of sanctions on their cargo: ‘At least seven tankers carrying Russian oil have switched their destinations mid-voyage from China to India, according to Vortexa Ltd., with all of India’s major refiners now in the market for the country’s crude.'”
“Three explosions in Bushehr following attacks on the airbase and airport in Iran.” Bushehr is reasonably close to Kharg Island.
“Iran launches 10 million rial note.” Hyperinflation is rarely a sign of military strength. Also: The 5 million rial note was introduced “just weeks earlier.”
The Guardian (usual caveats apply) is saying that “Hundreds of petrol stations across Australia run out of fuel,” but Australian Energy Minister Chris Bowen states “Australia’s fuel supply remains strong and there are no immediate plans to ration fuel,” though the article admits “localized shortages.”
In Japan, gasoline prices have evidently hit record highs and the government is tapping national reserves, but tankers from UAE and Saudi Arabia bypassing the Strait of Hormuz are on the way.”
“Taiwan has about 11 days of liquefied natural gas reserves—a limited buffer that has become critical after Iran disrupted shipping through the Strait of Hormuz, cutting off key supplies from Qatar. Because Taiwan relies heavily on LNG to power its grid and semiconductor industry, any prolonged disruption could force energy rationing and threaten chip production.”
“Philippine president declares ‘national energy emergency‘, citing risks to fuel supply created by Middle East war.”
Some Iran War updates, Russo-Ukrainian War updates, Democrats, Trannies, and Tranny Democrat child sex offenders, a Democrat judge bonds out a would-be jihad mass murderer, Bible discussion turns a bus rider stabby, and gamers come out against AI “assistance.” Plus: Marlene Dietrich, show us your guns!
It’s the Friday LinkSwarm!
Still having the occasional 429 error, but if I wait an hour, they seem to clear.
President Trump weighs boots on the ground options in Iran. In addition to the Marines, the storied 82nd Airborne Division is an option.
IRGC “Brigadier General Ali Mohammad Naeini killed in overnight strike.” “Naeini had been the public face of Iran’s military communications throughout the conflict.” Not anymore…
When co-host David Friedberg asked Fetterman point-blank, “Who do you think leads the Democratic Party today?” the Pennsylvania senator didn’t flinch. “Oh, we don’t have one,” he said. “I think the TDS, that’s the leader right now. You know, right now our party is governed by the TDS.”
Fetterman then described what that governance actually looks like in practice – a kind of loyalty test that runs in reverse. Opposition to Trump has become the organizing principle, the ideological north star. Agree with anything the other side does and you face consequences. “It’s made it virtually impossible, without being punished, as a Democrat, to agree something’s good, or ‘I agree with the other side,'” he said.
He then cited Operation Epic Fury – the U.S. military campaign against Iran – as the latest illustration of the problem. Fetterman said he is “literally the only Democrat […] in Congress, that I’ve come across that’s saying, ‘I think it’s a great thing to break and destroy the Iranian regime.’ I think it’s entirely appropriate to hold them accountable.”
Fetterman correctly pointed out that this is not a fringe or even partisan position, historically. Every Democrat who ran for president in recent memory vowed Iran would never get a nuclear weapon. Now that it’s actually happening, the party’s response has been mostly blind criticism of President Trump for finally taking action.
Fetterman previously accused Democrats of refusing to put “country over party” over the Iran strikes.
“The last two professional candidates for the Democratic Party all agreed that we can never allow Iran to acquire nuclear bombs, and that’s made that possible now. I think we can say, ‘Hey, that’s a great thing. That makes the world more safe, more secure and holds Iran accountable,’” he told Fox News’s Sean Hannity earlier this month, after 53 House Democrats voted against a resolution declaring that Iran is a state sponsor of terrorism — something which isn’t remotely in doubt. “That’s almost 25% of Democrats in the House that can’t just call Iran the world’s biggest terrorism underwriter,” Fetterman added.
“Virtually every Democrat that I’m aware of says we can never allow Iran to acquire a nuclear bomb, and they were a significant risk to America,” Fetterman continued. “I know why they [Democrats] don’t say that now because I’m aware that it is very damaging as a Democrat to just happen to agree with the president on anything. But, for me, that’s easy — country over party.”
Deep State functionaries seem unclear on tricky concepts like “chain of command” and “democracy.” “”US intel hid Chinese 2020 election meddling from Trump because they opposed his policies.” “Dr. Barry A. Zulauf, a member of the Senior National Intelligence Service reported that others in the intelligence community said ‘I don’t want my intelligence going to the White House where it will be used by that vulgarian in the Oval Office to support policies against China with which I personally disagree.'”
Analysts inside the U.S. intelligence community sought to conceal evidence of Chinese influence efforts from President Donald Trump during the 2020 election, with analysts saying they didn’t want their intel used by “that vulgarian in the Oval Office” to pursue policies toward China they personally disagreed with.
The revelation is found within a January 2021 report written by — and never before reported upon comments by — analytic ombudsman Barry Zulauf, who conducted a review of the spy community’s handling of Russian versus Chinese meddling efforts during the 2020 election. Among his conclusions was that intelligence analysts downplayed China’s actions because they had disdain for the “vulgarian” Trump and did not want to support the policies and priorities of the Trump administration toward China with which they “personally disagree.”
Just the News reported this week that the U.S. intelligence community has known since early 2020 that Beijing also gained access to American voter registration data and used that information to conduct opinion analysis related to the presidential election between Trump and then-former Vice President Joe Biden.
This is not the only piece of evidence pointing to Chinese government election influence efforts in the 2020 election. Although much about China’s activities in 2020 remains classified, Just the News conducted a thorough review of publicly-available intelligence assessments, federal indictments, foreign government warnings, and cybersecurity firm analyses.
There is credible evidence that Chinese government-linked cyber hackers and Chinese social media troll farms took aim at the U.S. presidential election in 2020 and sought to undercut Trump during his run against now-former President Biden. There are also indicators that Chinese intelligence and law enforcement agencies — China’s Ministry of State Security (MSS) and its Ministry of Public Security (MPS) — also played a role in 2020.
Republicans love America. Democrats’ love for America is contingent on a Democrat in the White House.
A man who was shot and killed by police in Dallas was part of Texas Democratic Rep. Jasmine Crockett’s security detail, multiple sources reported on Friday.
According to CBS News, the individual in question was “known publicly as Mike King,” although he’d been using various aliases to gain employment.
He was also running a business that placed law enforcement officers in off-duty jobs — and was a figure present near Crockett at numerous campaign stops during her failed bid to gain the party’s Senate nomination, as photographic evidence showed.
King was fatally shot Wednesday after a standoff with a SWAT team in Dallas outside of Children’s Medical Center.
According to DFW Scanner, a site that chronicles crime reports from police scanners in and around the Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex, the suspect “barricaded himself in a vehicle at 1934 Medical District Drive.”
“Officers used tear gas in an effort to get the suspect out of the vehicle. He exited the vehicle armed with a gun, and pointed it at officers,” the report noted. “Officers opened fire and killed the suspect.”
Early reports indicated that he was a fugitive who was known to police and was under investigation for impersonation of a law enforcement officer.
Play stupid games, win stupid prizes. Democrats just have a gift for hiring they best, don’t they?
“Reddit’s biggest trans moderator was just unmasked as convicted child sex abuser.” Branden “Brynn” Dunleavy. “The whistleblower, who waved the red flag, said he thinks this Branden and his crimes were deliberately shielded” by other Reddit moderators. (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
Monsterous: “Transgender ‘youth advocate’ was just charged with raping a BABY GIRL.” William Kelso Flournoy IV even filmed himself doing it. Hell’s too good for him.
The accusations come from two of the alleged victims themselves, one who was 12 when she said the sexual abuse started. The other alleged victim quoted in the piece was 13 when she says Chavez sexually abused her:
Ana Murguia remembers the day the man she had regarded as a hero called her house and summoned her to see him. She walked along a dirt trail, entered the rundown building, passed his secretary and stepped into his office.
He locked the door, as he always did when he called her, and told her how lonely he had been. He brought her onto the yoga mat that he often used in his office for meditation, kissed her and pulled her pants down. “Don’t tell anyone,” he told her afterward. “They’d get jealous.”
The man, Cesar Chavez, one of the most revered figures in the Latino civil rights movement, was 45. She was 13. Ms. Murguia said she was summoned for sexual encounters with him dozens of times over the next four years.
[…]
Ms. Murguia and Ms. [Debra] Rojas, both of whom are now 66, were the daughters of longtime organizers who had marched in rallies alongside Mr. Chavez. He used the privacy of his California office to frequently molest Ms. Murguia, she said. He had known her since she was 8 years old. She became so traumatized that she attempted to end her life multiple times by the age of 15.
How is it so many Democrat “community organizers” and “activists” turn out to be sexual predators? Those movements seem to draw them like flies to an open sewer…
Fallout: “Abbott Blocks Annual Cesar Chavez Observation in Texas.”
Samuel James Hall, a green card holder from Great Britain, appeared in federal court on a misdemeanor charge of voting by an alien. According to his defense attorney, James Alston, Hall has lived in the Houston area for several years but is not a U.S. citizen. Federal prosecutors allege he cast a ballot in Harris County during the 2024 General Election, voting in races for president, vice president, U.S. Senate, and the House of Representatives. The charge carries a maximum penalty of one year in federal prison. Hall posted bond and is free while his case moves through court.
“Former MD Anderson Researcher Pleads Guilty To Stealing Cancer Research for China.” “Harris County court records show that Yunhai Li pleaded guilty on March 6 to a state jail felony charge of attempted theft of trade secrets. He was recently sentenced to 364 days in the Harris County jail and received credit for 196 days already served, indicating a remaining time in jail of 168 days. Court records indicate Li, 35, is expected to be deported upon release.” (Previously.)
After paying Bari Weiss $150 million for The Free Press and hiring her to run their newsroom, CBS News announced a fresh round of layoffs on Friday which will affect over 60 jobs, or 6% of the news division, according to the NY Times.
“Certain parts of this newsroom need to get smaller in order for us to make room for the things that we need to build to remain competitive in the future,” said Weiss, who entered the scene last October, during a Friday newsroom-wide conference call.
The move follows roughly 100 layoffs last year, while ratings have continued to plummet under Weiss.
Today’s round includes the entirety of CBS News Radio – a century-old division that “served as the foundation for everything we have built since 1927,” said network president Tom Cibrowski in a memo.
I’m going to go out on a limb and guess the average CBS Radio news listener age is around 85…
After decades of relying on Vietnam-era designs, the Army has approved the first offensive hand grenade to enter the service since 1968.
The new M111 Offensive Hand Grenade was approved for full material release this year, the Army announced Tuesday in a statement. The new grenade relies primarily on blast overpressure rather than fragmented inner pieces to incapacitate, making it better suited for close-quarters combat inside of buildings, bunkers and tunnels.
Full material release allows the Army to field the weapon across the force after testing has confirmed that it meets safety and performance requirements. The approval lets the Army move the grenade from development into production.
The Army’s standard M67 fragmentation grenade explodes shrapnel in all directions, making it risky for soldiers to use in tight spaces. Blast overpressure refers to the intense pressure wave created by an explosion.
“One of the key lessons learned from the door-to-door urban fighting in Iraq was the M67 grenade wasn’t always the right tool for the job. The risk of fratricide on the other side of the wall was too high,” said Col. Vince Morris, the Army’s project manager for Close Combat Systems, in the statement. But a weapon utilizing blast overpressure instead of fragmentation, he said, “can clear a room of enemy combatants quickly leaving nowhere to hide while ensuring the safety of friendly forces.”
The M111 is intended to replace the body and fuze of the Mk3A2 grenade series, which has an asbestos body that has restricted its use. Unlike the Mk3A2, the new weapon has a plastic casing that is consumed during detonation.
It also uses the same fuze system as the M67 grenade, allowing the service to streamline manufacturing.
With 310 meters in length and roughly 90 meters at the beam, the 80,000-tonne France Libre will dwarf its predecessor, the 42,000-tonne Charles de Gaulle, which has served as the Marine Nationale‘s sole carrier strike platform since 2001. Power will come from a pair of TechnicAtome K-22 pressurized water reactors, granting the vessel virtually unlimited range and endurance at speeds of up to 27 knots via three shaft lines. Crew complement (including air wing) is set to be about 2,000 sailors.
They’re targeting it to be ready for service in 2038.
Insane story out of Houston: “Armed Man Wearing Tactical Gear Arrested for Attempted Entry to Klein Elementary School.”
A 39-year-old man in tactical gear, armed with a handgun and taser, attempted entry to Zwink Elementary in Klein Independent School District (ISD) on March 10.
Kyle Chris lives four minutes away from the school and was arrested on the evening of March 11, more than 24 hours after the incident. He has a felony charge of unlawfully carrying a weapon in a prohibited place.
District officials say Chris was able to enter an initial set of front doors during a 15-second period after a parent entered and before the doors shut completely. Zwink Elementary’s double-door system kept Chris in the entrance and stopped him from entering the area of the school with access to students.
But the story gets even more insane: “Kyle Chris” turns out to be “Muhi Mohanad Najm” and Democrat Judge Lori Chambers Gray bonded him out for $75K.
Talking about the Bible on a bus in Austin? That’s a stabbing. Boy, Steve Adler’s decision to lure drug addicted transients to Austin, and Jose Garza’s determination to keep violent lunatics on the streets, just keep paying dividends.
Among the numerous things he predicted incorrectly:
In the 1970s and 1980s hundreds of millions of people will starve to death [from mass famine].
This was, of course, entirely false. It did not happen. It is hard to overstate how wrong this was. Indeed, after the communist-run Great Leap Forward famine in 1950s-1960s China, major famines have become a vanishing rarity on the global stage
Snip.
Elsewhere, in a comical essay that presented itself as being written from the future, Ehrlich claimed the U.S. population in 1999 would be around 22 million, the result of a famine-induced “Great Die-Off.”
There is a personality type that every institution eventually learns to fear. Not the whistleblower. Not the activist. Not the dissident. Those are legible threats. They want something. They have an agenda. They can be categorized, managed, countered, discredited.
The personality the institution cannot process is the person who corrects errors because they are errors.
Not because the correction serves their interests. Not because they are aligned against the people who made the error. Not because they are building a case or advancing a cause or positioning themselves for advantage. Because the error exists. Because it is wrong. Because someone published a number that is not the right number, and the wrong number is sitting there, propagating, being cited, being absorbed, being built upon, and nobody is fixing it.
This person will spend three hours writing a detailed correction of a statistical claim in a policy document that has nothing to do with their field, their career, their politics, or their life. They will do this for free. They will do it knowing that the correction will make them no friends and several enemies. They will do it on a Saturday. They will do it again the following Tuesday when they find another error in a different document.
If you ask them why, the answer is: because it’s wrong.
That answer is incomprehensible to most institutional actors. And the incomprehension is the beginning of the immune response.
It’s not our job to make sure nVidia’s fucking shit lands. It’s my job to identify when their shit has not landed and has, in fact, remained suspended in mid-air. It’s not a great metaphor. And I guess I say it’s not our job, but that’s not really true; they’re the entire economy. We all work for them, in a literal way. The rational play here is to suck as many dicks as possible, and to suck them on an industrial scale. We might suck a dick here, a dick there, but we need to be thinking about these firm rods like a Henry Ford or a Ray Croc. You better clap to keep this fucking fairy alive or your gramma is gonna have to live in a hedge like a witch.
I saw impressive environmental lighting for sure, but that’s not what punched people in the gut. All people did was respond viscerally to Grace Ashcroft. That’s not who she is. We had an uncanny valley, and now we have… I dunno. An “Eerie Mesa.” We don’t like that either. And when I say we don’t like it, I mean our bones don’t like it. There’s a Eurogamer article on nVidia’s response, which is to say that we don’t know everything and are thinking about it wrong, which is a great pitch. I talked to Gabe a couple years ago about how eventually nVidia would just… do it. Do it all, do the whole shebang. Expound mathemagically on base assets and shim the whole thing. I wish I’d said so at the time! I could link back to it, and simply deploy the Lemmy Face. In the meantime, it’s not clear to me that the developers I’m interested in are gonna feel like jacking this thing off until their game doesn’t look scary.
Speaking of people rejecting scary faces, Meta is closing down it’s virtual realty project after pouring $80 billion on it. Or saying they lost $80 billion so they can rake off the money somewhere else…
Mark Felton has a fun video up covering Marlene Dietrich’s guns she brought back after entertaining U.S. troops in Europe during World War II, including gifts from Omar Bradley and George S. Patton!
Dune Part 3 trailer drops. The difficulty here is that Parts 1 and 2 were made from Dune, which is a great novel, where this is made from Dune Messiah, which isn’t. Indeed, Dune Messiah takes place after Muad’Dib’s jihad has swept the galaxy, and it looks like there will be a lot more jihad in the movie than the book. I’m guessing this is the rare case where the movie may be better than the book.
Another Iran update: More Jihadis dirtnaped, Iran’s neighbors want the Islamic regime finished off, Mossad gives regime members person-to-person call warnings, Uncle Sam fast-tracks a lot of weapon sales to the Middle East, and the BRRRRRRRTTTTTTTT of Freedom rings out over the Strait of Hormuz.
Israel Defense Forces killed top Iranian intelligence official Esmaeil Khatib and Hamas commander Yahya Abu Labda in separate airstrikes in the Middle East overnight.
The IDF confirmed Khatib, Iran’s intelligence minister, was killed in the strike in Tehran on Wednesday morning.
“Khatib played a significant role during the recent protests throughout Iran, including the arrest & killing of protestors and led terrorist activities against Israelis & Americans around the world,” the IDF wrote in a post announcing Khatib’s death. “Similarly, he operated against Iranian citizens during the Mahsa Amini protests.”
The Hamas commander was reportedly killed during an IDF airstrike in the Gaza Strip on Tuesday, according to the Times of Israel.
The strikes come a day after Israel killed Ali Larijani, secretary of Iran’s National Security Council, in an airstrike.
Abu Labda was a prominent figure in the development of Hamas’s precision missile project, according to the Times of Israel.
The Israeli Air Force (IAF) for the first time hit Iranian naval targets in the Caspian Sea on Wednesday, striking infrastructure and ships at the port of Bandar Anzali in northern Iran, at a distance of some 1,300 kilometers (over 800 miles) from Israel.
In addition, the IAF continued striking targets belonging to the Iranian regime’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), the Basij militia, and the Air Force, among others.
The Israeli military confirmed on Thursday that the strikes in Bandar Anzali hit several ships, a repair facility, as well as a headquarters controlling naval operations in the Caspian Sea.
The US has deployed A-10 Warthogs attack jets, Ah-64 Apache helicopters, and 5,000-pound ground penetrator bombs to take out Iranian drones, boats, and mines to help secure the Strait of Hormuz, America’s top general said Thursday.
Gen. Dan Caine, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, vowed at a Pentagon news conference that the US would “hunt and kill” all of Tehran’s weapons facilities and assets being used against the strait, a critical trade route through which 20% of the world’s oil supply is transported.
“We continue to hunt and kill afloat assets, including more than 120 vessels and 44 minelayers,” Caine told reporters alongside War Secretary Pete Hegseth.
Simon Whistler has a meaty update on the war, including how all the Persian Gulf nations now agree that the Islamic Republic of Iran must go.
“Iran’s response to this war has managed to achieve something truly remarkable. [Ali Larijani]’s own neighbors, who had previously gone to bat for them, are now done dodging missiles and are reportedly pushing Washington to eliminate the Iranian threat for good, destroying the tools of repression.”
Skipping over the deaths of Ali Larijani and Gholam Reza Soleimani, previously reported here.
“Since the war began, American and Israeli forces have been running what amounts to a parallel campaign alongside the more headline grabbing strikes on nuclear sites and missile infrastructure. This campaign has been aimed squarely at the regime’s domestic repression capabilities and infrastructure, and it’s been accelerating massively in recent days. These targets should tell you something about what this part of the campaign is actually designed to do. Destroying missile launchers and stockpiles might degrade Iran’s ability to hit back, but destroying a law enforcement station and the men who run it degrades Iran’s ability to keep the lid on a country that it only barely had a grasp on before all of this kicked off.”
Skipping lightly over news of Iranians celebrating the traditional Chaharshanbe Suri fire festival, and the regime cracking down on same (no Zoroastrian fire festivals allowed in Islamic Iran), because it’s hard to get a sense of scale there.
“Noras, or Persian New Year falls on March 20th this year. This holiday is historically one of the largest public gatherings in Iranian life and has often been a flash point for protests against the regime. Last year, they arrested dozens of people across multiple provinces during Nar and that was before any of this broke out. this year. Suffice it to say, the situation has uh changed a bit. We don’t want to rest too much on Naras as a make or break moment, though. But it nevertheless represents a significant test of the coalition’s core theory for ousting or at least seriously pressuring the regime. Degrade their tools of oppression enough and the population will be able to do the rest.”
“The Guards have never been a domestic military force, but instead an ideologically driven group of hardliners explicitly set up to defend the Islamic Republic’s continued existence, no matter what the cost. Whatever comes next on the streets of Tehran, it does not appear likely that these men will simply lay down their weapons and go quietly into that good night.”
“The IRGC’s hardliner stance did not just reveal the power dynamics going on in Tehran, though. It helped to reshape the entire region’s posture in ways that would have been difficult to imagine just a few weeks ago. Before the war started, the Gulf States were the closest thing that Iran has to a coalition against American military action. Despite hosting US bases, most of them had adamantly pushed the White House not to strike Iran and were actively working to try and find common ground between Washington and Iran so they can avoid conflict.”
“While this was partially out of self-preservation interests, they knew the conflict in the region is never good for their bottom line, at least in the short term. They were still some of the best friends that Tehran had left. The Emirates had spent years rebuilding its relationship with Iran, and Aman’s foreign minister was in Washington discussing the matter with Vice President JD. Vance the day before the strikes took place. None of them doubted that Iran posed a threat. They hosted US bases for a reason, after all. But they calculated that living with the Iranian threat would be preferable instead of being largely defenseless in a war.”
“Iran’s response to Operation Epic Fury settled that debate in about 72 hours. Since February the 28th, Iran has launched over 1,800 projectiles split between ballistic missiles and drones at the UAE alone.”
“Bahrain took it even further, branding Iran treacherous. Bahrain even took the lead in sponsoring a UN Security Council resolution condemning Iran for its targets in this conflict which passed with unusually lopsided support. While not everyone throughout the Gulf was quite as forceful as that, they’ve all been moving in the same direction.”
“Behind the public statements urging peace, the private messaging to Washington has been far more direct: ‘Finish the job.'”
“Gulf officials have been pushing the Trump administration for what amounts to a permanent end to Iran’s ability to threaten their infrastructure.”
“In the space of three weeks, Iran has managed to turn every Gulf state that was lobbying Washington on its behalf into a partner actively backing the campaign to destroy its military capabilities. It is by almost any measure one of the most self-defeating foreign policy decisions a country has made in the modern Middle East.”
“A recent Goldman Sachs stress test published on March 15th showed that if the strait remained effectively closed through April, Qatar and Kuwait could see their full-year GDP contract by 14%, the worst since the 1990 Gulf War. The UAE and Saudi Arabia wouldn’t be quite as hard hit, but they’d both take a 5 and 3-point hit, respectively.”
Whistler also offers up a nice roundup of the current state of Israel’s incursion into Lebanon: “By March 16th, at least three separate IDF divisions were operating simultaneously inside of southern Lebanon, pushing through Kiam, Bins Jabel, and Marion in the most significant ground operations since their 2006 intervention. Evacuation orders are now covering everything south of the Latani, which when combines with the evacuated areas in the Bekaa Valley and southern Beirut totals to roughly 14% of the entirety of Lebanon’s territory.”
“Israeli Defense Minister [Israel] Katz has said at least parts of the operation are modeled explicitly on Gaza, offered no timeline for withdrawal, and some ministers are already floating the idea of a semi-permanent security zone. For now, there are no signs of a push toward Beirut or anything beyond the Litani.”
“In the last 48 hours alone, [Lebanese President Joseph Aoun] publicly called Hezbollah’s decision to enter the war a trap and an almost overt ambush serving Iranian interests, warned that the country is on the path to become a second Gaza, and floated a four-point plan calling for an immediate ceasefire, international backing for the Lebanese armed forces to oversee disarmament, direct negotiations with Israel, and long-term border security agreements.”
“While all of this is unprecedented for a Lebanese president, Beirut is currently falling short of Israeli expectations for two reasons. First, Lebanon has a long history of promising to finally get tough on Hezbollah that, well, hasn’t exactly materialized. Second, and more pertinently, the LAF [Lebanese Armed Forces] are already struggling to implement the ban on Hezbollah’s military operations that we reported on just a week ago. Hezbollah’s attack was earth-shattering for Beirut, which appeared to have finally found a moment of cross sectarian agreement that Hezbollah simply had to go. And while there were initially promising signs that the LAF was taking this seriously, the army has largely stalled. LAF commander [Rodolphe Haykal] has essentially refused to enforce the government’s ban on Hezbollah military activities, and the United States has even suspended some coordination with the LAF over it. The country’s prime minister has considered firing him for the whole debacle.”
“Now look, in fairness to Haykal, this isn’t just some random act of indifference where he’d rather sit around and watch Warfronts than go out and disarm the group. Though we couldn’t blame him if that was the case, could we? Rather, his calculation is that 20 to 30% of the LA Shia and would possibly refuse to mobilize against Hezbollah entirely, risking a total fracture of the military. Keep in mind that in Lebanon, sectarian identity is front and center just about everything that happens, especially in politics, and the LAF is broadly considered to be the last cross-sector institution in the country.”
“All that said, the inaction here is seriously jeopardizing the country’s sovereignty. The lesson that Israel took away from the October 7th attacks, rightly or wrongly, was that they couldn’t afford to allow a hostile force to exist along its borders anymore. In the aftermath of the 2024 ceasefire with Lebanon, Israel made it clear that disarmament of the group was an absolute bare minimum condition. And the tragic thing is that the LAF largely delivered on this. Earlier this year, they completed phase one of the operation. And while it was slowgoing, potentially so slow that Hezbollah was actually rearming faster elsewhere in the country than it was being disarmed, the LAF nevertheless demonstrated that it could deliver.”
“And all of this isn’t helped by the fact that even today, right now, Hezbollah continues to launch on Israel. While their stockpile has been severely reduced and seems likely to be further reduced in their ongoing clashes with the IDF, they don’t appear to be anywhere close to surrender.”
One of the reasons Iran was caught off guard at the opening of this war is that its leadership did not take Yahya Sinwar or Hassan Nasrallah’s approach. The Iranian regime—a state built on terror—was acting like a state and forgot what happens to those who spread terror. What Hezbollah and Hamas understood, and what Iran forgot, is that when you attack Israel, you become prey.
After the regime’s decapitation on the first day, Larijani grasped that reality. As Iran’s most senior surviving security official, he never stayed in the same place twice, and maintained exceptionally high security awareness.
In the end, it took a combination of precise intelligence, special ground capabilities, and rapid decision-making at both the political level and the by chief of staff to complete the operation. The time between the intelligence alert and the order for the strike was less than an hour; that’s an incredibly tight kill chain. This wasn’t a Hamas or Hezbollah target; exploiting this opportunity meant scrambling aircraft all the way to Iran.
Snip.
According to The Wall Street Journal, Israel is chasing internal repression forces from their headquarters to secret muster points at sports stadiums, even to neighborhood police stations. All in an effort to demonstrate to the Iranians that the regime’s fangs have been removed.
Meanwhile, Israel is calling mid- and low-level commanders, threatening them and their families if they don’t stand aside in the event of an uprising.
One conversation is worth recounting.
“Can you hear me?” a Mossad agent can be heard, speaking in Farsi. “We know everything about you. You are on our blacklist, and we have all the information about you.”
“OK,” the commander said in the recording.
“I called to warn you in advance that you should stand with your people’s side,” the Mossad agent said. “And if you will not do that, your destiny will be as your leader. Do you hear me?”
“Brother, I swear on the Quran, I’m not your enemy,” the commander said. “I’m a dead man already. Just please come help us.”
Last night, a very senior Israeli source outlined to me Israel’s five objectives in this war:
To act jointly with the United States to reopen the Strait of Hormuz.
To permanently deny any future Iranian regime the ability to again close the strait — including through the development of alternative pipelines.
To dismantle Iran’s weapons industry, with an emphasis on ballistic missile capabilities — this time targeting not just equipment but the factories that produce it.
To complete the destruction of Iran’s nuclear program.
Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz has authorized the country’s military to kill Iranian and Hezbollah officials without explicit approval from higher-ups.
Katz announced the blanket order as he alerted Israeli residents that the military had taken out top Iranian intelligence official Esmaeil Khatib. Katz said he and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu authorized the directive overnight.
The purpose of the authorization is to thwart the possibility of delays in Israel’s Operation Roaring Lion against Iran, according to Israeli network Channel 12. Katz vowed that there were more “significant surprises” to come as part of the development.
In the past several days, targeted Israeli strikes have assassinated several top Tehran officials, dealing a devastating blow to the Iranian regime’s power structure as the war moves well into its third week.
Snip.
The assassinations come as Israel has ramped up its attacks targeting Basij checkpoints and infrastructure. The Guard’s Basij unit has notably been targeted in the war, as the paramilitary force has long been seen as the leading military unit behind the deadly crackdown on Iranian protesters over the winter and behind repression in general against regime dissidents.
The Israeli military is targeting Basij personnel and facilities as the country seeks to weaken the Islamic regime enough to encourage Iranian citizens to topple the power structure.
“We’re undermining this regime in the hope of giving the Iranian people a chance to oust it,” Netanyahu said in a statement on Tuesday.
Next regime figure to get droned announced. “Hossein Dehghan, who was sanctioned in 2019 for his alleged role in an attack that killed 241 American troops, has been named to replace the assassinated Ali Larijani. According to a report by Iran International, Iran appointed former Defense Minister Hossein Dehghan on Thursday as the new secretary of the Supreme National Security Council,”
The Trump administration announced plans to sell more than $16.5 billion worth of radar systems, air defense equipment, and fighter aircraft weaponry to the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait and Jordan Thursday, as Iranian missiles and drones continued to hit sensitive infrastructure across the Gulf region.
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio issued an emergency waiver to bypass the mandatory congressional review period for the sales, the Pentagon said in its press release.
For the UAE, the State Department approved $2.1 billion worth of 10 FS-LIDS counter-drone interception systems, along with 240 Coyote backpack-carried drone interceptor systems, along with related sensors and munitions.
Another planned sale to the UAE includes a THAAD long-range discrimination radar, as well as Sentinel A-4 uplinkers and THAAD tactical operations and launch and control systems. A third sale set for Abu Dhabi includes $644 million worth of F-16 munitions and upgrades, including GBU-39/B small diameter bombs and Joint Direct Attack Munitions guidance systems (JDAMs), along with 400 AIM-120C AMRAAM air-to-air missiles and eight guidance sections, the Pentagon said.
Kuwait is set to receive $8 billion in Lower-Tier Air and Missile Defense Sensor (LTAMDS) radars, the administration further announced Thursday, along with a slew of accompanying electronic equipment. Jordan, meanwhile, is slated to receive $70.5 million worth of maintenance, logistics, and munitions support for its F-16s, C-130s and F-5 aircraft.
The planned sales come as Iran has targeted sensitive early warning and missile defense radar sensors in several US-aligned countries in the Gulf. Iran has also repeatedly struck civilian centers and, increasingly over the last 48 hours, oil and gas infrastructure with drones and missiles.
US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth on Thursday praised Gulf states for their support for Washington’s war effort, saying Iran’s “reckless” pattern of counterattacks has brought some of those countries “squarely into our orbit.” He specifically named the UAE, Qatar, Bahrain, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia.
Speaking alongside Hegseth at the Pentagon, the US’ top-ranking general, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Dan Caine, said the US military will continue to work with Gulf states “to help them to improve any defensive capabilities that they need.”
Missile plant hit: “Karaj Surface-to-Surface Missile Plant” destroyed by U.S. strikes. This was March 1, but CENTCOM only released the images today.
Iran evidently managed to damage an F-35:
“Likely hit by a Qaem-118 short range SAM.” The pilot returned to base safely and made an emergency landing.
Once again, this was just what I was able to gather from various sources. If you think I’ve missed something, feel free to share it in the comments below.
Days 1 and 2 of Operation Epic Fury/Roaring Lion were filled with so much dramatic news and high value targets that it was hard to keep up. Day 3 is a bit less dramatic, just more U.S. and Israel strike packets hitting targets in the country with essential impunity. And some of those targets (like border posts and police stations) seem to be tertiary targets.
So here’s another round up news. I think all the tweets are from the Suchomimus Discord.
In what has to be the greatest hack since the beeper attack, the ingenious Israelis have had their cyber guys at work again and busted into the regime’s version of The Hallow app for Islamic Religious Fundamentalists.
Why is this important?
It’s state-sponsored, and everyone gets it.
So now, instead of saying ‘Allahu ackbar,’ the prayer app is telling Iranians across the country, ‘Hang in there – WE ARE COMING..’
Years before the air strike that killed Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Israeli intelligence had been quietly mapping the daily rhythms of Tehran.
According to reporting by the Financial Times, nearly all of the Iranian capital’s traffic cameras had been hacked years earlier, their footage encrypted and transmitted to Israeli servers. One camera angle near Pasteur Street, close to Khamenei’s compound, allowed analysts to observe the routines of bodyguards and drivers: where they parked, when they arrived and whom they escorted.
That data was fed into complex algorithms that built what intelligence officials call a “pattern of life,” detailed profiles including addresses, work schedules and, crucially, which senior officials were being protected and transported. The surveillance stream was one of hundreds feeding Israel’s intelligence system, which combines signals interception from Unit 8200, human assets recruited by the Mossad and large-scale data analysis by military intelligence.
The result was Ali Khamenei and company getting express tickets to the afterlife.
— Babak Taghvaee – The Crisis Watch (@BabakTaghvaee1) March 2, 2026
Border post strikes:
NEW: Israeli jets have begun striking border guard positions along the Iraq-Iran frontier in what appears to be an effort to weaken Iranian control over the region and potentially clear a path for armed Iranian Kurdish opposition groups based in Iraq to move back into Iran. pic.twitter.com/srj7CWrGWr
#BREAKING: All detainees held at the Central Prison of (Kurdish town of) Marivan (Mariwan) were released shortly after Israeli and U.S. fighter jets bombed military and intelligence facilities in the city, according to information received by Hengaw. The development occurred on… pic.twitter.com/nPKpTKWoRa
— Wladimir van Wilgenburg (@vvanwilgenburg) March 2, 2026
The American military says it struck Iranian naval drone carrier IRIS Shahid Bagheri during the opening strikes on Iran on Saturday.
“The Iranian regime’s false messaging machine continues to falsely claim that it has sunk a US aircraft carrier. The only carrier that has been hit is the Shahid Bagheri, an Iranian drone carrier,” the US Central Command says.
“US forces struck the ship within hours of launching Operation Epic Fury,” CENTCOM adds.
If it wasn’t clear from yesterday’s roundup, it appears that a whole lot of Islamic Republic of Iran leaders were physically meeting at Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s bunker in Tehran when the successful decapitation strike was carried out as part of Operation Epic Fury/Roaring Lion. The operations are still ongoing, and here are some news updates.
“‘All’ of [Ali Khamenei’s] likely successors are ‘probably dead’ following US-Israeli strikes.”
Mick Mulvaney, former Trump OMB head and Chief of Staff: “A high risk, high reward type of operation.”
A “once in a lifetime opportunity” to both end the nuclear program and effect regime change. “All the [Iranian] senior leadership gathered together at one place at one time.”
The daylight attack must have meant we had really solid intel on the regime meeting. Most of our Middle East strikes happen at night during a new moon. “An opportunity they simply couldn’t pass up.”
“All of [Ali Khamenei’s] likely successors are probably dead as well.”
“The chances of getting a pro-Western, pro-American regime in Iran were as high as it ever was going to be.”
John Bolton was lamenting that these actions weren’t taken six or seven years ago, but the situation on the ground now is very different. “Everything has to come together at the same time for this to work.”
“This can’t be a forever war.”
Taking out the mullahs is “a step toward peace.”
New Guy steps into the leadership crosshairs. “Iranian Vice President Mohammad Reza Aref informed officials of plans to have him take charge of the nation during wartime, according to a report from the Iranian Students’ News Agency (ISNA) published on social media late Saturday night. There was no explicit note of President Masoud Pezeshkian’s ability to carry out presidential duties.”
Simon Whistler covers the strikes:
Much of this covers information included here yesterday, but here are a few new tidbits.
Whistler states Iran is claiming they hit Riyadh in Saudi Arabia. LiveUAMap shows a strike against Prince Sultan Air Base, which is over a 100 miles from Riyadh. I mean, they’re both in central Saudi Arabia, but, eh.
In Yemen, Houthis threaten retaliation. Nothing yet.
The gulf states are plenty pissed at Iran tossing drones and missiles at them.
Russia issued a single proforma condemnation of U.S. attacks. China, on the other hand, hasn’t even done that.
A lot of Chinese MilTech deals were supposedly in the works when things kicked off, but it looks like very little (if any) actually made it to Iran.
Suchomimus video the first:
“It is quite telling that [Khamenei]’s death is being celebrated on the streets.”
Khamenei was likely killed in the opening strike. “A few sources are now saying it was Israel that hit this.”
“Iran isn’t showing any signs of giving up. Well, these could just be the last temper tantrum of the finished regime. The generals and remaining politicians lashing out knowing their time is over and that a surrender is inevitable and just trying to inflict damage.”
Suchomimus sees regime change as unlikely without “boots on the ground.”
Suchomimus video the second, which is all damage assessment:
One Iranian frigate hit, but two more showing no signs of damage.
Bandar Abbas radar site hit. Bandar Abbas is the port city directly north of the Strait of Hormuz.
Four MiG-29 fighters destroyed out of 30 in service.
Israel took out a Basij installation in northern Tehran, they being the hated Iranian religious police. The video shows four large buildings all exploding in a matter of seconds. “Iran’s air defense is completely ineffective here.”
Iran’s counterstrikes have had some limited success. In Kuwait “Ali al-Salim air base was hit.” The image shows smoke rising up from three different points, one evidently from a fuel storage strike. “One of Iran’s most successful strikes to date.” Plus a car park and a support facility.
Iran also hit Erbil air base in Iraq, where a large fire was seen burning. No information yet on what was hit.
Iran also hit Al-Udeid air base in Qatar. “This is the largest American base in the Middle East.” Videos show Patriot intercepting Iranian vehicles, but also one miss and one Patriot interceptor wandering off course and hitting the ground.
I see Tomahawks, F-18s and F-35s, and a lot of Iranian targets going boom. And other American assets are poised to join the action:
B-2s will likely show up tonight, making direct attacks on key targets in a way no other platform can. Yes this could include MOPs, but also lots of JDAMs against less fortified targets. They can achieve massive effects in a single sortie. One B-2 can carry 80 500lb JDAMs. Entire… pic.twitter.com/d0ztfmHYVN
TAMPA, Fla. – As of 9:30 am ET, March 1, three U.S. service members have been killed in action and five are seriously wounded as part of Operation Epic Fury.
Several others sustained minor shrapnel injuries and concussions — and are in the process of being…
🚫Iran’s IRGC claims to have struck USS Abraham Lincoln with ballistic missiles. LIE. ✅The Lincoln was not hit. The missiles launched didn’t even come close. The Lincoln continues to launch aircraft in support of CENTCOM’s relentless campaign to defend the American people by… pic.twitter.com/AjaeHMemtA
Plus President Trump was stating that Iranian retaliation was less than expected.
Also this: “Imagery circulating points to Iranian attacks in the vicinity of France’s naval base in Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates.” In other news, there’s a French naval base in Abu Dhabi…
Beware of Astroturf protesters. “CCP-Linked NGO Network Prepares “Emergency Protests” In US After Trump’s Iran Strikes Jeopardize Oil Flows To China.”
Planned demonstrations branded “Hands Off Iran” or “Stop The War On Iran” are scheduled to take place this afternoon in major cities across the U.S. From New York to Los Angeles, left-wing organizers have circulated digital flyers, coordinated social media blasts, and activated email lists urging supporters to mobilize within hours of the announcement. This activation alert for the protest-industrial complex occurred shortly after the Department of War’s “Operation Epic Furry” began in Iran.
To the average person, this afternoon’s protests may look like a groundswell of outrage over the U.S. strikes on Iran, especially given that the Trump administration campaigned on no new foreign wars. But the speed, uniform messaging, and coordinated national footprint suggest something highly more organized – and familiar for readers, as we’ve diligently followed the activities of the protest-industrial complex.
This is the same mobilization network that has repeatedly demonstrated its ability to move tens of thousands of social justice warriors into the streets in under 12 hours.
Earlier this year, that same protest infrastructure powered nationwide pro-Maduro demonstrations almost immediately after developments in Venezuela made national headlines. In the months prior, overlapping coalitions were instrumental in organizing the anti-Israel encampments at Columbia University and other campuses, as well as anti-ICE demonstrations in Los Angeles and other sanctuary cities. The causes shift. The slogans change. The logistical infrastructure – or the machine that makes this spark – remains the same.
What we are witnessing is not a loose collection of anti-war activists or 1970s-style hippies responding independently to global events. It is a coordinated ecosystem of dark-money funded nonprofits, advocacy groups, campus organizations, and ideological networks that can rapidly repurpose whatever geopolitical flashpoint dominates the news cycle. From the George Floyd riots to pro-Palestine protests to anti-Tesla protests to anti-Trump protests and anti-Elon Musk protests to anti-DOGE protests to anti-ICE protests/riots, these movements are not dedicated to a single issue. They are part of omni-cause mobilizers, sowing chaos deep within the nation’s core.
Whether the banner reads “Free Palestine,” “Hands Off Venezuela,” “Abolish ICE,” or now “Hands Off Iran,” the same names frequently appear on sponsorship lists. The same fiscal sponsors provide infrastructure. The same activist pipelines appear.
This brings us to far-left billionaire Neville Roy Singham, whom The New York Times recently described as “known as a socialist benefactor of far-left causes” and as someone who “works closely with the Chinese government media machine and is financing its propaganda worldwide.”
Singham’s network, shortly after Operation Epic Furry began, announced on X “New York City Emergency Protest” to “Stop The war On Iran.”
“The U.S. and Israel are carrying out an unprovoked, illegal bombing campaign on Iran. This war serves no one but a tiny elite and oil executives and is a continuation of more than two years of genocide in Palestine and US-Israeli aggressions throught the region,” the People’s Forum, a Manhattan far-left non-profit also linked to Singham, wrote on X.
Other left-wing groups on the flyer tied to Singham’s network include the ANSWER Coalition and CODEPINK. Also on the list are the Democratic Socialists of America, American Muslims for Palestine, the National Iranian American Council, the Palestinian Youth Movement, Black Alliance for Peace, and 50501.
November 4, 1979 — almost 47 years ago — Iran seized the American embassy in Tehran and held its staff hostage. Ever since then, American presidents have struggled with what to do.
Jimmy Carter temporized for many months, even as ABC’s newly created Nightline — a nighttime news show created specially to cover the hostage crisis — opened every night with “America held hostage, day XXX.” His wife, First Lady Rosalynn Carter, finally prodded him to do something. The “something” turned out to be a shambolic rescue mission that ended in disaster.
President Reagan intimidated the mullahs a bit, but never seriously retaliated for the Beirut barracks bombing that killed over 200 Marines along with over a score of other service personnel. George H.W. Bush invaded Iraq but left the mullahs largely alone. Bill Clinton did nothing of substance. George W. Bush had a chance to bring the Iranians to heel after the conquest of Iraq, but inexplicably failed to press his advantage. Barack Obama was, basically, complicit in their nuclear program, to the point of famously sending them pallets of cash totaling over a billion dollars.
President Trump, on the other hand, killed General Soleimani and told other Iranian leaders that they could be next. And now they are next.
So what have we learned, and what’s likely to happen in the future?
Well, first, with the capture of Maduro and now this, we’ve learned that our military can do things no one else can. We seized a leader of a hostile nation from his largest military base and brought him to custody without losing a single American life. Now we’ve killed the single biggest threat to American interests in the Mideast, along with much of his senior leadership, again without losing a single American life.
Why didn’t we do this before? And why could we do it now? The reason we can do it now is mostly leadership. Secretary of War Pete Hegseth quickly prioritized precision and lethality in the military; President Trump was willing to use the military in ways prior presidents were not.
Why didn’t we do this before? Part of that is because the foreign policy establishment, like the domestic policy establishment, doesn’t exist to solve problems. It exists to manage those problems in ways that keep its members cushily employed. To, in Myres McDougal’s words, “maintain tensions at a level short of unacceptable violence.”
Trump, on the other hand, wants to solve things, even if it involves inflicting unacceptable violence on the enemy. Also, he regards our enemies as actual enemies, not as “foreign colleagues” or “partners in peace.” To quote author Keith Laumer, “there’s nothing as peaceful as a dead troublemaker.” Khamenei is now peaceful.
In fact, Trump’s approach across the board, which has brought him success after success in his first 13 months back in office, is to solve problems the way the guys in the bar say they would do it. Too much illegal immigration? Close the border and deport the illegals. Problems with Iran? Kill their leaders and encourage a revolution. Venezuela shipping drugs and gangs to the U.S.? Capture their leader and encourage his successor to cooperate or share his fate. You can just do things.
The thing is, though, that there’s a subtlety in this approach. Just doing things turns out to work. But if you take a step back from these actions of Trump’s, the big picture shows a pretty coherent strategy. Trump wants to weaken China without going to war with China. He has now cut off two major suppliers of oil to the PRC, which produces hardly any oil of its own. (It’s worse than that, because China wasn’t paying for that oil with dollars, and now it will need dollars to buy oil elsewhere.) That applies a squeeze to an already squeezed CCP, and will make Xi’s position, domestically and internationally, weaker. Also the military excellence recently displayed has to inspire second, third, and fourth thoughts about invading Taiwan.
Trump’s tactics typically have two characteristics: He goes after his opponents’ source of sustenance (usually that means money, but not always) and he accomplishes more than one thing at a time. In neutralizing Iran, Trump accomplishes a lot of things. First, of course, he neutralizes a major hostile regional threat.
But second, he cuts the ground out from under what’s left of Hamas and Hezbollah. He also shuts off the pipeline of cash that was being used to bribe politicians and journalists in Europe (the Iranians have basically admitted that they do that) and support various NGOs and the like that serve anti-American and anti-Israeli ends. Iran has been a major sponsor of terrorism around the world; that will end.
With Iran gone (and India, thanks to tariffs, eager to be on our team) the threat of the BRICS has been sharply reduced. Brazil under Lula isn’t friendly, but isn’t a power house. Russia and China don’t like us but China needs oil and Russia is broke and mired in an endless and ruinous war of its own devising.
With Iranians free to say what they think of the mullahs’ regime, he also delegitimizes the left’s narrative that fundamentalist Islam somehow has some sort of anti-colonial virtue. In fact, the mullahs ran Iran as a Persian colony of an Arab ideology. The Iranian public is well aware of this, and will be saying that a lot.
And if he’s able to see a new pro-American government in Iran (distinctly likely) we’ll have a regional ally that will encourage the Arab states, currently friendly to us and Israel out of fear of Iran, to remain friendly to us and Israel out of a different sort of fear of Iran.
Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian claims he’s alive and in charge:
Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian is alive, stating this morning on state-run television that the Interim Leadership Council is now operational and has assumed constitutional control of the Islamic Republic of Iran. Pezeshkian adds that, “We will continue the path of the Leader… pic.twitter.com/QIhDTeRxub
Power struggle between him and Mohammad Reza Aref, or just confusion?
Iranian foreign minister is suggesting that no one is actually in charge, that the chain of command has broken down and the military is just sort of acting on general vibes:
Iranian Foreign Minister Araghchi:
What happened in Oman was not our choice.
We have already told our Armed Forces to be careful about the targets they choose.
Our military units are now, in fact, independent and somewhat isolated, and they are acting based on general… pic.twitter.com/g0l9Te2HNa
Which is not what you want to hear less than 48 hours into a shooting war…
Mojtaba Khamenei, Ayatollah heir apparent, is apparently dead as well.
Iranian media: Khamenei’s son, Mojtaba Khamenei, who has long been discussed as one of the potential successors, has been eliminated. pic.twitter.com/6Fy8mkHe47
That four building complex previously described as Basij headquarters is here described as “Sarallah Headquarters” or “security crisis management command center of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) in Tehran”:
Israeli Air Force strikes that hit Tehran this morning targeted a complex the IDF described as the “headquarters of the terror regime.”
Now technically, the Basij is a subset of the IRGC, so that may be where the confusion comes in. Or the complex could be both. Google Maps isn’t helping me out here…
More of Iran’s classic aircraft destroyed:
Video published this morning by the Israeli Air Force showing the targeting and destruction of a two awaiting to takeoff F-4 Phantom IIs and an F-5 Tiger II with the Iranian Air Force, during strikes on Tabriz Air Base in the East Azerbaijan Province on Northwestern Iran. pic.twitter.com/n8NkNhGjle
Despite claims of not being involved, UK fighters are reportedly flying CAP over the Persian Gulf:
British Royal Air Force Typhoons officially started flying combat air patrols over the Persian Gulf today, have already shot down multiple Iranian drones headed towards Qatar. pic.twitter.com/hQ7WOiZYjr
"Iran’s chief of army staff and defense minister were killed in an airstrike targeting a meeting of the country’s defense council, Iranian state television reported Sunday.
Gen. Abdol Rahim Mousavi and Defense Minister Gen. Aziz Nasirzadeh were…
“Gen. Abdol Rahim Mousavi and Defense Minister Gen. Aziz Nasirzadeh were killed at the meeting alongside the head of Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard and security adviser Ali Shamkhani.”
❗️Iranian state media confirmed the killing of seven senior Armed Forces commanders in the US-Israeli strikes. Those killed include Supreme Leader's office chief Mohammad Shirazi, his deputy Akbar Ebrahimzadeh, Armed Forces intelligence deputy Saleh Asadi, logistics deputy Mohsen… pic.twitter.com/6ptzq6r06Q
“Iranian state media confirmed the killing of seven senior Armed Forces commanders in the US-Israeli strikes. Those killed include Supreme Leader’s office chief Mohammad Shirazi, his deputy Akbar Ebrahimzadeh, Armed Forces intelligence deputy Saleh Asadi, logistics deputy Mohsen Darreh Baghi, police intelligence chief Gholamreza Rezaeian, Armed Forces operations planning chief Bahram Hosseini Motlaq, and Armed Forces logistics chief Hasanali Tajik.”
More regime buildings go boom:
Iran's Ministry of Intelligence (VAJA/Vezarat-e Ettela'at Jomhuri-ye Eslami-ye Iran) has been struck in central Tehran. #Iranpic.twitter.com/aQjeTwoed4
U.S. President Donald Trump announced Sunday that nine Iranian naval ships have been sunk as part of combat operations against Iran.
“I have just been informed that we have destroyed and sunk 9 Iranian Naval Ships, some of them relatively large and important,” Trump wrote in a post on X, adding that Iran’s naval headquarters has been “largely destroyed” in a different attack.
“We are going after the rest — They will soon be floating at the bottom of the sea, also!” Trump wrote.
U.S. Central Command officials said earlier Sunday that an Iranian Jamaran-class corvette was struck by U.S. forces at the beginning of Operation Epic Fury.
“The ship is currently sinking to the bottom of the Gulf of Oman at a Chah Bahar pier,” the statement reads. “As the president said, members of Iran’s armed forces, IRGC and police ‘must lay down your weapons.’ Abandon ship.”
❗️A suspected strike has hit the British RAF Akrotiri base in Limassol, Cyprus, with a loud explosion heard in the area, alarms sounding at the base, and aircraft scrambled, Israeli Channel 14 journalist Hallel Bitton Rosen reported. #Iranpic.twitter.com/xB6mvhrbFt
Result: Craven jihad apologist Keir Starmer grows something vaguely resembling a spine and gives the U.S. permission to use Cyprus base for “defensive purposes.” With so many Middle East bases to chose from, I’m not sure the US actually has any assets they can usefully deploy there, but still.
Clarification: Here Starmer makes clear that “defensive purposes” includes letting American assets use British bases, including those in the Persian Gulf, to hunt Iranian missile launch sites and storage facilities:
Since the Islamic Republic of Iran refuses to give up its nuclear weapons program or free its own people, the liberation of Iran has begun.
The United States and Israel launched long-awaited strikes on Iran early Saturday morning, as President Trump vowed to destroy their missile capabilities, “annihilate” their navy, and ensure the nation never obtains a nuclear weapon.
Trump, in a video message released overnight that made clear the goal is regime change, urged the Iranian people to “take over your government” when the operation is finished.
“The hour of your freedom is at hand,” Trump said. “This will be, probably, your only chance for generations. . . . This is the moment for action. Do not let it pass.”
America and Israel reportedly plan to carry out several days of attacks, and Trump cautioned that while the administration is taking every step to minimize risks to American personnel, “we may have casualties.”
He added, “We’re doing this for the future, and it is a noble mission.” He urged Iranian security forces to lay down their weapons in exchange for immunity, or face “certain death.”
Snip.
During his State of the Union address, Trump began to make a broader case for military action against Iran, citing, as he did in his video remarks released overnight, the regime’s attacks over the past half-century against U.S. personnel in the region.
You can only tug on Superman’s cape for so long.
The United States is calling it Operation Epic Fury, while Israel is going with Lion’s Roar.
Suchomimus has compiled footage of the strikes.
Some highlights:
A strike against “Supreme Leader” Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s house. The Iranian woman recording the aftermath of the strike sounds “absolutely delighted.” It was hit in broad daylight, indicating how little American and Israeli fear Iran’s degraded, Russian-sourced air defense systems.
A salvo of at least 30 tomahawk cruise missiles launched from the Mediterranean flying over Iraq en-route to targets in Iran.
Iran is (naturally) launching retaliatory rockets at Israel.
One of the U.S./Israeli strike targets is Iranian Defense Minister Amir Hatami, who has been reported killed.
Second Suchomimus video:
Highlights:
U.S. naval base in Bahrain hit by retaliatory Iranian missiles. “This seems like it may have been a waste of missiles because reports are saying that this base was largely cleared out prior to this. So America evacuated much of the imported equipment and troops and ships from here to a safer place. So there was nothing of importance here.” And geolocation shows that Iran might actually have hit a nearby mosque.
A possible successful strike in Dubai.
Also Iranian missiles being successfully intercepted over Abu Dhabi. Likely target was Al Dhafra Air Base, but nothing seems to have been hit there.
But a possible successful strike on Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar, though its not clear what, if anything, was hit.
“Two places hit by the US are Iranian naval bases Asaluyeh and Chabahar…Asaluyeh is a major target. This is known to be an underground storage complex for the Iranian Navy in which speedboats and coastal defense missiles are stored here.”
“Also confirmed hit was the headquarters of the IRGC, Iran’s Revolutionary Guard, who are a major branch of the Iranian armed forces.” This is near Damavand, an underground complex that was reportedly hit with bunker buster bombs.
Israel reportedly hit Gholam-Hossein Mohseni-Eje’i, head of Iran’s judiciary courts.
A quick LiveUAMap snapshot of in-theater action:
President Trump’s announcement of the strikes:
“A short time ago, the United States military began major combat operations in Iran.”
“Our objective is to defend the American people by eliminating eminent threats from the Iranian regime, a vicious group of very hard, terrible people.”
“Its menacing activities directly endanger the United States, our troops, our bases overseas, and our allies throughout the world. For 47 years, the Iranian regime has chanted death to America and waged an unending campaign of bloodshed and mass murder, targeting the United States, our troops, and the innocent people in many, many countries.”
He covers the regime’s role in the Iranian Hostage Crisis, the 1983 Beirut barracks bombing, and the 2000 attack on the USS Cole.
“Iranian forces killed and maimed hundreds of American service members in Iraq. The regime’s proxies have continued to launch countless attacks against American forces stationed in the Middle East in recent years, as well as US naval and commercial vessels in international shipping lands. It’s been mass terror and we’re not going to put up with it any longer.”
“it was Iran’s proxy Hamas that launched the monstrous October 7th attacks on Israel, slaughtering more than 1,000 innocent people, including 46 Americans, while taking 12 of our citizens hostage. It was brutal, something like the world has never seen before.”
“Iran is the world’s number one state sponsor of terror, and just recently killed tens of thousands of its own citizens on the street as they protested.”
“It has always been the policy of the United States, in particular my administration, that this terrorist regime can never have a nuclear weapon. I’ll say it again. They can never have a nuclear weapon.”
“They’ve rejected every opportunity to renounce their nuclear ambitions, and we can’t take it anymore.”
“Just imagine how emboldened this regime would be if they ever had and actually were armed with nuclear weapons as a means to deliver their message.”
“For these reasons, the United States military is undertaking a massive and ongoing operation to prevent this very wicked, radical dictatorship from threatening America and our core national security interests.”
“We are going to destroy their missiles and raze their missile industry to the ground. It will be totally again obliterated.”
“We are going to annihilate their navy.”
“We are going to ensure that the region’s terrorist proxies can no longer destabilize the region or the world and attack our forces and no longer use their IEDs, or roadside bombs as they are sometimes called, to so gravely wound and kill thousands and thousands of people including many Americans.”
“And we will ensure that Iran does not obtain a nuclear weapon. It’s a very simple message. They will never have a nuclear weapon.”
“This regime will soon learn that no one should challenge the strength and might of the United States armed forces.”
“My administration has taken every possible step to minimize the risk to US personnel in the region. Even so, and I do not make this statement lightly, the Iranian regime seeks to kill. The lives of courageous American heroes may be lost and we may have casualties. That often happens in war.”
“But we’re doing this not for now. We’re doing this for the future. And it is a noble mission. We pray for every service member as they selflessly risk their lives to ensure that Americans and our children will never be threatened by a nuclear armed Iran.”
“We ask God to protect all of our heroes in harm’s way. And we trust that, with his help, the men and women of the armed forces will prevail. We have the greatest in the world, and they will prevail.”
“To the members of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard, the armed forces, and all of the police, I say tonight that you must lay down your weapons and have complete immunity, or in the alternative, face certain death. So, lay down your arms, you will be treated fairly with total immunity, or you will face certain death.”
“Finally, to the great, proud people of Iran, I say tonight that the hour of your freedom is at hand. Stay sheltered. Don’t leave your home. It’s very dangerous outside. Bombs will be dropping everywhere.”
“When we are finished, take over your government. It will be yours to take. This will be probably your only chance for generations. For many years, you have asked for America’s help, but you never got it. No president was willing to do what I am willing to do tonight. Now you have a president who is giving you what you want. So let’s see how you respond.”
“America is backing you with overwhelming strength and devastating force. Now is the time to seize control of your destiny and to unleash the prosperous and glorious future that is close within your reach. This is the moment for action. Do not let it pass.”
“May God bless the brave men and women of America’s armed forces. May God bless the United States of America. May God bless you all. Thank you.”
Update 2: The Taliban call on Muslims worldwide…not to support Iran.
🚨 🇦🇫 🇮🇷 🇮🇱 – 𝗧𝗔𝗟𝗜𝗕𝗔𝗡 𝗧𝗛𝗥𝗘𝗔𝗧𝗘𝗡𝗦 𝗜𝗥𝗔𝗡𝗜𝗔𝗡 𝗥𝗘𝗚𝗜𝗠𝗘
Taliban leader Abdul Hamid Khorasani says that "Israel and Iran are one coin" and called upon Muslims worldwide to stay vigilant and not support the "infidel regime of Iran" pic.twitter.com/ndiFIJLFk9
I don’t think many people had that on their bingo card…
Update 3: Peter Zeihan weighs in, and we didn’t even have to wait a week:
He says all the Iranian drone and missile facilities were hit, and that the Israelis were ones hitting Iranian leadership. But no sign they’ve hit the Shahed production facilities…yet. And no sign of attack on Iran’s energy infrastructure.
His military sources are generally better than his political sources, but several grains of salt are usually in order anyway.
Update 4: Power plant on Kharg Island, the terminal for the vast majority of Iran’s oil exports, hit:
Kharg Island is Iran’s jugular.
80-90% of Iran’s crude exports flow through this supertanker terminal in the Persian Gulf. No Kharg, no oil revenue. No oil revenue, no regime. Every war plan, every sanctions package, every naval deployment in the Gulf orbits this one fact. https://t.co/E0mVmlC9eapic.twitter.com/mRuT3gTY1s
Update 5: We’re hitting Iran with clones of their own Shahed drones:
CENTCOM's Task Force Scorpion Strike – for the first time in history – is using one-way attack drones in combat during Operation Epic Fury. These low-cost drones, modeled after Iran's Shahed drones, are now delivering American-made retribution. 🇺🇸 pic.twitter.com/VYdjiECKDT
Despite some initial debate, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was killed during the airstrikes Saturday morning, Israeli officials report.
“Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was assassinated in an Israeli strike on Tehran, with his body found under the rubble caused by an Israeli airstrike, senior Israeli officials were informed on Saturday evening,” the Jerusalem Post reports. “Documentation of Khamenei’s body was reportedly shown to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.”
Update 7: Suchomimus has footage of Khamenei’s flattened compound.
Probably more on this video later. It’s Saturday and I’ve got Other Stuff that needs doing…
Update 8: Via Stephen Green at Instapundit, some Strategery:
Venezuela, Iran, Cuba, Greenland, Panama…it’s all interconnected and it all points to China.
As U.S. energy ramps up, and China is deprived of subsidized oil, subsidized shipping channels, freedom of navigation through sovereign waters and allies that can cause the U.S.… https://t.co/K5cmCg8xcj
Venezuela, Iran, Cuba, Greenland, Panama…it’s all interconnected and it all points to China.
As U.S. energy ramps up, and China is deprived of subsidized oil, subsidized shipping channels, freedom of navigation through sovereign waters and allies that can cause the U.S. problems…their global position diminishes substantially and their costs of doing business skyrocket.
Venezuela and Iran account for something like 20% of China’s oil imports and they’re getting an insane deal on it. China has a huge problem if that oil goes away.
You’d be forgiven for thinking Trump’s foreign policy seems random and chaotic, but it’s actually one of the most focused and (thus far) well executed foreign policies in at least 2 generations.
An eye-opening and massive number of C-17 Globemaster military transport and cargo planes have been observed heading to Europe and the Middle East, in what some monitors have forewarned looks like the build-up to major war in Iran.
One regional watcher and pundit commented in response: “112 C-17s are in or on their way to the Middle East. Guys, that’s a lot. Like Desert Storm a lot. Stay tuned.”
This as on Friday the prominent open source account Armchair Admiral and others used public flight tracking data to tally that the huge armada of US Air Force C-17s and counting are en route – a trend since mid-January.
“A total of 112 U.S. Air Force C-17’s have now either arrived or are en route to the Middle East with a further 17-18 in-progress flights, a number of Royal Air Force logistics flights from RAF Marham to RAF Akrotiri in Cyprus, and movement on U.S. Air Force CORONETs,” the source said.
C-17s are massive, and can deliver huge amounts of equipment or large numbers of troops in a single go. The US military lists some of the following key capabilities:
Payload capacity of over 170,000 pounds
Ability to operate on short, austere runways as small as 3,500 feet
Intercontinental range, with in-flight refueling extending reach even further
Rapid load/unload design to keep missions moving under pressure
Iran and the US just concluded an initial round of indirect talks mediated by Oman, but despite some hopeful statements issued by either side, it is very clear Iran is not willing to negotiate its ballistic missile program – a sticking point being demanded by Washington. A second round is expected in the coming days, unless military action ensues first.
Iran’s foreign minister has newly questioned whether Washington is taking these talks seriously, or if they are merely a pretext for more time to allow for a US force build-up in the region.
#USAF United States Air Force / #RAF Royal Air Force – Middle East Activity 7 February 2026 – 1700z
A total of 112 U.S. Air Force C-17's have now either arrived or are en route to the Middle East with a further 17-18 in-progress flights, a number of Royal Air Force logistics… https://t.co/7Twe8eyoP2pic.twitter.com/7Elg9P7etE
So airbases in Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Qatar, Kuwait. Trump’s critics have underestimated how well he’s unified the Sunni kingdoms against Iran. Go back to, say, 1989, and tell all the Middle East experts that one day an American Republican President would be able to build a coalition of Muslim countries that are more hostile to Iran than Israel and they’d look at you like you’d just grown a second head.
What other assets is the U.S. flying in theater? F-22s.
Two F-22 Raptor stealth jets originally slated for Super Bowl LX flyover have been removed due to “operational assignments,” the Air Force announced Friday.
Katie Spencer, who helps organize the Department of the Air Force’s sports outreach programs and coordinated the flyover formation, said the F-22s were part of the original concept but were reassigned as operational demands increased.
“We wanted fifth-generation aircraft from the Air Force and fifth-generation aircraft from the Navy,” Spencer said in a Friday interview with The Military Times. “But as things happen in our military, operational tempo has increased, and so the F-22s got pulled for some operational assignments.”
Spencer declined to detail the specific missions that required the aircraft’s reassignment, but F-22s have recently been involved in several high-profile operations. In June, the fighters played a key role in Operation Midnight Hammer, a B-2 Spirit bomber-led strike campaign targeting Iranian nuclear facilities.
Uncle Sam is notoriously possessive of the fifth generation air superiority fighter. So let’s break out the Bad Boys II meme again.
The USS Abraham Lincoln carrier strike group and the USS Michael Murphy, a guided-missile destroyer.
Other U.S. naval assets, including the USS Bulkeley, USS Roosevelt, USS Delbert D. Black, USS McFaul, USS Mitscher, USS Spruance and USS Frank E. Petersen Jr., are positioned across key waterways surrounding Iran, from the eastern Mediterranean and Red Sea to the Persian Gulf, Gulf of Oman and Arabian Sea.
Lincoln and Roosevelt are both* is a Nimitz-class supercarrier (and that’s Theodore Roosevelt, so they carrier’s nickname is literally “Big Stick”). USS Roosevelt [addded – LP], Michael Murphy, Bulkeley, Delbert D. Black, McFaul, Mitscher, Spruance and Frank E. Petersen Jr. are all Arleigh Burke-class Aegis guided missile destroyers.
If Iran is indeed treating its nuclear weapon program as non-negotiable, as its been claiming in talks, then regime change is inevitable. As Operation Midnight Hammer showed, both President Trump and Israeli President Benjamin Netanyahu regard Iran’s nuclear program as an existential threat, and the popular uprising against the mullahs over the collapse of Iran’s economy have finally created conditions ripe for consigning the Islamic Republic of Iran to the dust-heap of history.
Chances of that regime lasting out the year would appear to be slim and none.
We’ve already talked about the Battle of 73 Easting, so let’s talk about the battle that followed close on it’s heels, the Battle of Medina Ridge, the 32nd anniversary of which just passed, and which some regard as the largest tank battle of Desert Storm.
Following 73 Easting and the Battle of Norfolk, The Adnan Republican Guard division of motorized infantry launched an artillery spoiling attack against the U.S. First Armored to slow their advance, only to be slaughtered by MLRS cluster bombs, Apaches and A-10s.
This is simultaneous with the destruction of loot-laden Iraqi vehicles on the Highway of Death and the burning of Kuwaiti oil fields.
Despite the Iraqis believing that the rugged terrain south of the Euphrates valley is too difficult for an armored division to negotiate, the 24th Infantry Division reached their objective, securing Highway 8 east of where the 101st had done so a couple of days earlier. They blockade the highway, destroying over 100 vehicles retreating westwards with tank and TOE fire. Bedouin nomads watching from atop a nearby ridgeline politely applaud as tank rounds hit their targets.
The Medina Division of the Iraqi Republican Guard is the last organized combat force standing against the U.S. and its allies.
While the Iraqis have entrenched behind a small hill the Americans must crest, they’ve made the mistake of being just out of range of their T-72s.
“For the next 40 minutes, the engaged elements of the First Armored Division simply sit there picking off Iraqi tanks and armored vehicles with impunity. The Iraqis desperately call in artillery support, but the rounds fall behind the front line of Abrams tanks.”
“The 1st and 25th Field Artillery Regiments respond. Using artillery acquisition radars, the U.S. artillery is able to detect the firing of an Iraqi artillery piece, pinpoint its exact position, and return counter artillery fire on it before the Iraqi round has even landed. Within just a few minutes, two entire artillery battalions of the Medina division have been wiped out.”
“40 minutes after the battle began, the Medina’s right flank has been completely destroyed, and the right flank of the American force is just beginning to smash into the Medina’s left. In this sector, many Iraqi tanks are pointing southwest. The nearest tanks are destroyed before they can even rotate their turrets towards the Americans. Those that do fire back find that they are again outranged.”
Apaches and A-10s join in here as well.
“The battle would become known as The Battle of Medina Ridge. It lasts just two hours during which 186 Iraqi tanks and 172 armored vehicles are destroyed. Four American Abrams tanks are lost.”
I’m skipping over some secondary action and friendly fire incidents, but the Iraqis were complete routed and Americans took minimal casualties.
If more modern American and NATO tanks using combined arms operations took on even more antiquated Soviet tanks in Ukraine, the result is likely to be similar.
(1) If he wins, Biden will almost certainly sign off on ending the filibuster to pack the courts and add two new states for a permanent Democrat majority that will leave the Constitution behind.
(2) Trump may have announced that he’s about to reveal that the Democrats, from Obama on down, engaged in a coup against an American president.
France has accused Turkey of sending Syrian jihadists there to fight for Muslim Azerbaijan. Remember that Turkey killed over 1.5 million Armenians during the rise of the Young Turks as part of the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire, so the bad blood there goes back a long ways.
Quick conclusion: Relative to the number of infections fewer people have died in the US than in Australia. So for all the talk about not letting us have a US style health system, it has performed relatively better than ours did. True, Australian base levels of health are higher than US levels. Relatively fewer people got infected here than in the US. (We can argue about why that happened in the comments – probably policy errors in themselves at the State level in the US). Once infected, however, it looks like the chances of survival was higher in the US.
“Clare Bronfman Becomes First NXIVM Sex-Slave Trafficker to Get Jail Time.” Namely six years and nine months. You know it’s a crazy year when you don’t have time to pay attention rich, powerful weirdos being tried for running a sex cult…
Coinbase SJW babies: We have to be woke! Coinbase CEO: There’s the door.
The Texas House District 148 battle features a fight between a Hispanic Republican against a Democratic candidate with even more ties than usual to communism. “During a July 2018 presentation, “The Art and Science of Building the Communist Party,” Chairman of the Houston chapter of the Communist Party USA (CPUSA) Bernard Sampson boasted that his club had placed four communist party members on the Texas ballot, including Morales-Shaw who he specifically identified as a member of his group.”
I think the explanation for plummeting viewership is fairly obvious, even if Strauss would rather not talk about it. Conservative America is disgusted with the NBA, and therefore is tuning it out. We’re disgusted with the way the league kowtows to China and even more disgusted with the embrace of the radical BLM movement by the league and its players.
I didn’t watch a minute of the playoffs this year and rarely even checked the scores. Not because of what many of the players think about the police and about America, in general, as slanderous as those views are. And not even because players made pro-BLM gestures before the games began.
My problem was what was allowed, indeed encouraged, during the games. I will not watch any sports event during which the preaching of politics or ideology occurs.
I guess I’m not alone.
Conservative America’s divorce from the NBA is a sign, I think, of things to come. Unless corporate America steps back from its embrace of woke leftism, we are going to have to divorce ourselves from large swathes of it. To the extent feasible, we may have to divorce ourselves from many of America’s public schools. And so forth.
New South Korean mini nuclear reactor that can’t melt down approved for use in the United States. First plant is scheduled to come online in Utah, but not until 2029. Faster, please.
And here’s the post I was tempted to write: “Fuck You WordPress, Yet Again (Block Editor).”
Ireland’s Supreme Court rules that Subway bread isn’t. You would think that if it used that much sugar it would taste better. Then again, I’m not sure I’ve bought a Subway sandwich since the heyday of the $5 Footlong era…
