Something a little different than the usual Iran roundup: Two videos about Kharg Island, one an after-action report on a U.S. attack run, the other a description of what makes taking the island difficult.
The caveat for the after-action video, a recreation of an actual U.S. attack run, is that it’s done a breathless, overly-dramatic fashion, like something from Most Shocking. But the detailed, blow-by-blow account suggests it was taken from actual after-action reports.
Three B-1B Lancers carrying precision-guided bombs attempted the most surgically demanding strike of Operation Epic Fury — destroying Iranian military targets on Kharg Island without touching the crude oil infrastructure sitting meters away. Then the GPS jamming started, and the mission nearly came apart.
This video reconstructs the full tactical breakdown of the Kharg Island strike: how an Iranian GPS jammer degraded bomb accuracy toward the oil, how the F/A-18 Super Hornets sent to destroy it nearly got hit by friendly JDAMs when a deconfliction failure put them directly in the bomb fall line, and how one Mersad air defense commander’s final radio transmission turned inaccurate anti-aircraft fire into precision-guided shrapnel that bracketed B-1Bs mid-bombing run. We cover the AGM-158 JASSM cruise missile shot that eliminated the SAM battery, the burning missile propellant creeping toward thirty million barrels of crude oil, the IRGC patrol boat sprint toward the supertanker loading channel, and the F/A-18 pilots who descended into accurate anti-aircraft fire from guns they couldn’t suppress to stop a mining operation with laser-guided GBU-54 JDAMs.
The breathless nature of the narration makes me suspect that certain aspects have been embellished for dramatic effect.
Next up: Simon Whistler discusses how difficult it will be for the American military to take and hold Kharg Island. Consider it the pessimist case against the operation.
“The value of Kharg Island is obvious. Control the island, and you could throttle Iran’s oil dependent economy. Capture the island intact, and another nation could make Iran do anything to get it back. Destroy it outright and Iran would transform from a powerful rogue nation into an economic afterthought. And that’s if we’re being generous.”
“The export facilities on Kharg Island are the most important site in one of Iran’s most important regions, meaning that the region is especially important to the Iranian military. This is a region with a well-developed civilian infrastructure, a large presence from the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps or IRGC, and most likely the hidden weapons stockp match. Then there’s the island itself, a low-lying coral crop with an elevation of just 70m at its highest point. With a land area of roughly 20 square km, Kharg Island is basically flat, basically triangular in shape and surrounded by deep waters to enable the transit of oil tankers.”
Some pre-situated weapons and supply caches will likely survive any American bombardment.
“There’s no telling what the US will destroy and what it’ll fail to pick up on, but some of those mines and air defenses will survive, raising the possibility that they could claim the lives of US troops or shoot down vulnerable non-stalthy low-flying aircraft. That said, Kharg will not be an easy place to defend once US ground forces have established a foothold. Iranians on the island will either be left exposed or be forced to use refinery infrastructure as cover unless they allow themselves to be pushed into the island town where most residents live.”
“Iran’s objective is not victory in any conventional sense. Iran is able to accept the deaths of its political and military leaders and the destruction of its cities and mass casualties among its soldiers, paramilitaries, and civilian supporters. Iran’s focus is on regime survival, not the survival of the people who make up the regime, but the survival of the regime itself.” No, that’s the regime‘s goal. Most ordinary Iranians hate the regime’s guts.
He notes the difficulty of getting amphibious landing ships through the Strait of Hormuz. But America will likely have a screening force of destroyers and frigates in addition to overwhelming air superiority, and Iran probably has very little in the way of missiles that can reach across the strait, at night, without real air assets to spot and paint the target, in the face of American air and naval superiority. Given America and Israel’s attacks on their sensor and communication infrastructure, I also doubt the Iranian military is capable of efficient coordination and dissemination of any real-time information they may be receiving from Russian or Chinese satellites.
He’s still right that amphibious and aerial invasions are exceptionally difficult and fraught with peril.
But I believe there are multiple places where Whistler is unduly pessimistic about such an operation.
First and foremost, the military assets discussed in the media are not necessarily the assets such an operation would be limited to. Remember how the very public news of B-2s in route to Diego Garcia was a ruse to cover the fact that the real B-2 force was already headed to the target in the June strikes on Iran’s nuclear infrastructure. It’s entirely possible (even probable) that America already has assault assets in theater that media outlets don’t know about.
Some debatable assertions: “Iranian forces are nothing if not creative, and they are highly motivated to accept risk to their own lives in order to deliver damage to an adversary.” And “The first problem that the US would have to account for is the Iranian ground forces. Combination of roughly 350,000 soldiers in the Iranian army, about 150,000 soldiers across the ground forces of the Revolutionary Guard Corps, and another several hundred thousand paramilitary fighters of the Basij Resistance Force.” Whistler suggests virtues not necessarily in evidence for Iran’s forces. The IRCG has certainly shown itself highly motivated when it comes to launching terror rockets, supporting insurgencies, or slaughtering civilians, but not so much when it comes to an actual toe-to-toe fight against a real military, a domain in which they have zero experience or demonstrated competency. Likewise, there’s little evidence that Iranian military regulars are all that keen to die for the regime. They also did not notably distinguish themselves in the long, bloody slog of the Iran-Iraq War, a stalemate against an Iraqi military that the United States-led coalition would quickly and comprehensively dismantle in the Gulf War a few years later. And back then, Iran had some relatively modern air power. Likewise the Basij seem well equipped to beat defenseless women for immodesty, but I rather strongly suspect the overwhelming majority will cut and run when faced with trained soldiers who can fire back.
If America successfully takes Kharg Island, it will be impossible for Iranian forces to get ships across from the mainland to retake it in the teeth of overwhelming American air power, even if they try crossing at night.
Likewise, the difficulty in taking the island without damaging the critical oil infrastructure that makes it worth taking may cause Iran to avoid their usual inaccurate missile barrages. And Iranian forces will likely find it difficult to set up missile, artillery and drone systems on the coastline under withering American and Israeli attack.
“The American public is not willing to accept the loss of American troops, and it is not willing to accept long-term or severe economic pain just to see the Islamic Republic overthrown.” This assertion is not necessarily true. The American public can certainly be fickle, but thus far Astroturf protests against the war have modest and populated with the usual foreign-funded, elderly white lefty idiots. Americans over a certain age remember the Iranian Hostage Crisis, and may feel eliminating one of they key sources of jihad terror worldwide for good worth the cost. Also, unlike Iraq or Afghanistan, U.S. military and civilian leadership seems 100% dedicated to absolute victory.
Whistler seems to think that all of Iran’s military forces will fight with the same fanaticism of Imperial Japanese troops on Iwo Jima. Given how badly the regular armies of Muslim nations have fought against first world armies in standup fights, as opposed to fanatical insurgencies running year-long campaigns of attrition, I rather strongly suspect he’s mistaken.
A Texas man has pleaded guilty to his participation in an expansive child sexual abuse network, after being named in a federal indictment while already serving out a sentence for child rape.
Twenty-six-year-old Kaleb Christopher Merritt from Spring pleaded guilty to a count regarding his involvement from 2019 to 2022 in CVLT, pronounced “cult,” which operates digitally to seduce children into creating sexual content — specifically, child sexual abuse material (CSAM) and sadistic material.
The organization’s methods include exposing minors, particularly young girls, to ideologies such as “neo-Nazism, nihilism, pedophilia, and anarchy,” the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) alleged, then manipulating the children through various methods to produce CSAM.
Per an article published by Dr. Marc-Andre Argentino, Senior Research Advisor for Public Safety Canada’s Canada Centre for Community Engagement and Prevention of Violence, CVLT first began on the Kik Messenger platform and later expanded to Instagram, Discord, and Telegram. Merritt, known as “eTerror” or “o9a.evil” online, was described as having risen to the rank of an administrator.
The DOJ alleged that the “purpose of CVLT’s child exploitation” was to establish “an army of sadist followers.”
“CVLT espoused neo-Nazism, nihilism, and pedophilia as its core principles, among others, and exposed children to material depicting and promoting these principles.”
The child victims were allegedly exposed to “bondage, discipline, sadist, and masochistic (BDSM) and gore CSAM.”
Multiple other defendants, who were also in leadership roles within CVLT, have already pleaded guilty and remain in federal custody as they await their final sentencing.
“At least” five minors combined are believed to have been harmed by Merritt and other CVLT members.
Hell is too good for them.
Consider this a warning that there are some real sickos out there out and about in the real world, as well as online. Keep a close eye on your kids and what they do to keep them from falling into some sicko’s clutches.
Last week brought two developments in the EPIC City saga of attempts to build an “sharia city” west of Dallas. They were touched on in Friday’s LinkSwarm, but I’m going to recap them here as well, since they set the stage for today’s news.
Attorney General Ken Paxton has obtained a court order halting actions by an EPIC City-linked municipal utility district.
The case centers on allegations that the Double R Municipal Utility District No. 2A has been used to advance a controversial development project organized by the East Plano Islamic Center by skirting state oversight and standard MUD-creation procedures. The project, originally known as EPIC City, has been rebranded as the Meadow.
Judge Christine Nowak’s order blocks the district and its board from taking further steps to support the development while the litigation continues.
The state’s lawsuit focuses on a 2025 special meeting where the Double R MUD board allegedly resigned en masse, installed new directors at a remote roadside location identified only by GPS coordinates, and then quickly voted to annex more than 400 acres tied to the EPIC project.
We covered that bit of shady MUD shenanigans here.
State lawyers say that maneuver effectively transformed the MUD into a vehicle for EPIC City’s backers, allowing them to expand taxing authority and infrastructure support without going through the process of forming a new district.
After the annexation, regulators requested documents to confirm that the new board members met legal requirements to hold public office and levy taxes on residents inside the district.
According to the suit, records submitted by Double R MUD showed the individuals did not meet statutory qualifications—a finding the attorney general’s office said casts doubt on every action the board took, including the EPIC City annexation.
The state is asking the court to remove the disputed board members, unwind the 402.5-acre annexation tied to EPIC City, and restore what Paxton describes as lawful governance of the utility district.
Hunt County officials unanimously rejected plans for a controversial Muslim community originally known as EPIC City and rebranded as The Meadow, citing technical, regulatory, and legal deficiencies in the plat application.
Other than that, I’m sure it was fine…
During a meeting on Tuesday, Hunt County commissioners adopted a resolution “disapproving” the plat application submitted by developers of the subdivision, which was planned as an expansion of the East Plano Islamic Center (EPIC).
Plans include up to 1,000 residences plus a mosque, school, and other amenities catering to Muslim families, located on more than 400 acres in unincorporated areas of Hunt and Collin counties.
Residents in both counties—and across Texas—have objected to communities like the proposed EPIC development, which Gov. Greg Abbott and other elected officials have referred to as “sharia cities.”
In addition, Attorney General Ken Paxton sent letters urging Collin and Hunt officials to reject EPIC’s plat applications while he sues the developers and related entities over alleged fraudulent activities surrounding the project.
Now comes news that another court order has blocked the utility district hard:
A state court judge in Collin County has temporarily blocked further actions by a utility district slated to service the controversial planned community known as EPIC City or The Meadow.
The court previously issued a temporary restraining order against the Double R Municipal Utility District No. 2A of Hunt and Collin Counties, which the state says appointed ineligible directors who then annexed the proposed Islamic development into the MUD.
Annexation into an existing MUD allowed developers to skirt new state regulations surrounding the creation of new utility districts.
On Monday, Judge Christine Nowak of the 493rd District Court in Collin County granted the state’s request for a temporary injunction after all parties agreed that the MUD’s current directors are not eligible to serve.
The question now is who will make decisions on behalf of the utility district going forward, and how that will affect the EPIC development.
“The state is just asking for a pause until we can figure out what’s going on,” Wesley Williams with the Texas attorney general’s office told Judge Nowak. “There’s a lot of secrecy surrounding this board.”
Texas Water Code authorizes the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ) to oversee MUDs, which are special districts granted power to issue bonds and levy property taxes for the purpose of providing water, wastewater, and other services to subdivisions in unincorporated areas of the state.
Snip.
Preliminary development applications have been rejected by Collin and Hunt officials for being incomplete. In both cases, EPIC developers’ submissions included “will serve” letters from Double R.
Such letters are required commitments from service providers that ensure proposed developments will be successful, Collin County’s Director of Engineering Clarence Daugherty testified Monday.
It was Daugherty who notified TCEQ that newly appointed Double R MUD directors might not be eligible, after his office reviewed EPIC’s initial application submitted late last year.
He testified that subsequent filings have continued to include Double R MUD as a service provider.
Due to the acknowledged ineligibility of the MUD’s current directors, the validity of those service commitments is now in question, which may delay development approvals needed for the EPIC City project to proceed.
“Delay” or completely destroy.
Williams explained to the court that the state’s Water Code establishes eligibility requirements for MUD directors.
Five new Double R directors—Yaneli Molina, Hatim Mahmoud Yusuf, Nadeem Ashraf Khan, Asim Hussain Khan, and Faisal Abbas—were purportedly appointed during a September 12, 2025, meeting in which the previous board members resigned.
What do you think the odds are that particular slate wins an actual MUD election in exurban/rural Texas?
Molina’s attorney said Monday his client had resigned on March 19, and she signed an agreement in court to abide by the terms of the injunction.
Williams argued that none of the new directors met the eligibility requirements and concluded they thus had no authority to accept the resignations of the previous directors or to approve annexing the EPIC City property into the utility district.
I’m going to guess that none of those “directors” actually live within the boundaries of the MUD.
He asked the court to “freeze the status quo to just prior to the September 12 meeting.”
The order granting a temporary injunction states that “Double R MUD shall immediately cease all operations and activities until such time qualified directors are appointed by the TCEQ pursuant to Texas Water Code 49.105(c).”
TCEQ Districts Section Manager Justin Taack testified Monday that MUD board vacancies can be filled by the board or by his agency.
Defense attorney Jerry Hall with Mayer LLP said he agreed his three clients, Abbas and the Kahns, were not eligible to serve as Double R MUD directors.
Sounds like pretty much everything about that shady midnight MUD board switch was illegal, wasn’t it?
There are probably times and places you could probably have gotten away with pulling a fast one for a land development deal in Texas, especially if people weren’t paying attention and/or a powerful, well-connected figure wanted the deal to go through. H. Ross Perot Jr. sort of got away with pulling several fast ones in his late 80s-early 90s “Perotville” development north of Fort Worth. The arcana of plats, MUD boards and regulatory filings are very far indeed from the consciousness of most Texans.
But there’s a big difference between getting away with a little land deal hanky panky when you’ve got billions backing you and few people are paying attention, and trying to pull a fast one when the very highest levels of state government, including the Governor and Attorney General, have put your illegal “Sharia City” idea in their crosshairs. (And they had the bad luck of their deal coming to light after the Colony Ridge fiasco raised awareness of questionable land developments run by shady operatives.)
Trying to pull a fast one when every local and state regulatory agency already has you under a microscope is simply epic stupidity. If the people running the East Plano Islamic Center had simply cooled their heels and bided their time, dotted the Is and crossed the Ts on every part of their regulatory paperwork, and sworn up and down that, no sir, we’re not illegally limiting our highly speculative land development to Muslims, they might eventually have gotten the thing across the finish line.
Now they’ll be lucky if some of them don’t end up in prison.
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.
Last week, a jury found George guilty on felony counts of money laundering and tampering with his campaign finance reports, but his sentencing will not take place until June 16, leaving his status as the chief executive officer of Fort Bend County in limbo.
I’m reversing the first and second paragraphs here to better tell the story.
Following the felony conviction of Fort Bend County Judge KP George, the county commissioners court re-assigned the judge’s signing authority and voted to designate Commissioner Grady Prestage (D-Pct. 2) as the presiding officer should George be found ineligible to serve.
County officials convicted of a felony must be removed from office under Texas Law, but the charges are not final until sentencing.
Gov. Greg Abbott’s office has notified the county auditor that 27 state grants — which include funds for a victim services program, law enforcement, and cybersecurity — have been paused since George’s authority to serve as the official signing agent for the county is uncertain.
“PSO has 27 active grant awards with Fort Bend County. Upon acceptance of those awards, Fort Bend County agreed to ‘immediately notify the Office of the Governor (OOG) in writing if a project or project personnel become involved in any litigation, whether civil or criminal,’ and ‘immediately forward a copy of any demand, notices, subpoenas, lawsuits, or indictments to OOG,’” wrote the governor’s office. “The OOG has identified Judge KP George as the current Authorized Official on all 27 active awards.”
The OOG also requested verification that none of the grant funds awarded to Fort Bend County were “involved in criminal acts.”
George did not attend the regular commissioners court meeting Thursday, but all four county commissioners voted to designate Prestage as authorized the county’s signing agent.
The court also voted unanimously to order the county’s auditor to conduct a financial review and “investigate, identify, research, and provide the Commissioner Court any exposures or risks that said events surrounding the county judge have exposed or potentially exposed the county.”
You never know what other hanky panky a crooked man might get up to, so a thorough audit is probably in order.
Both Commissioners Vincent Morales (R-Pct. 1) and Dexter McCoy (D-Pct. 4) have called for George to resign.
Snip. “If his conviction stands, George could face up to 20 years in prison.” The hate crime hoax charges are still pending.
Whenever Democrats get their hands on taxpayer money, they just can’t seem to keep themselves from handing out grants to hard left NGOs to launder the money into Democrat pockets. I wonder if George is the same, or if the presence of Republicans in county government thwarted his sticky fingers from penetrating more taxpayer pies…
As usual, open video tabs start to accumulate on things that aren’t quite worth a separate post, but a bit too interesting to throw into a LinkSwarm. So here’s a tab-clearing roundup.
Inside Apple’s push for domestic semiconductor production:
Includes a look at TSMC’s Arizona fab complex, an ASML EUV stepper (which we covered here), and a Foxconn assembly line.
The title of this Jordan Petersen lecture is “Why South Park Works,” but it’s actually about how human perception works.
As a bonus, here’s a version of the basketball-gorilla test he talks about.
Critical Drinker on Paramount winning Warner Brothers:
New boss David Ellison is a fan of male action heroes, and not a fan of “The Message.” “I think it’s fair to say this guy sees middle America for what it is, a potentially huge market that’s been badly neglected in recent years, mostly by people who absolutely hate them.”
“If ever there was a definitive signal that the age of identity politics and the message has come to an end in Hollywood, I think this just might be it. The great experiment that’s decimated pop culture for the past decade is well and truly over. Good fucking riddance.”
Testing Ukrainian anti-drone shotgun slugs:
Basically metal petals attached with string.
Why Teddy Roosevelt didn’t fight in World War I:
To grossly boil down: because Woodrow Wilson didn’t want a no-win situation of either an ex-president ending up dead in a trench or making Roosevelt so popular again that he could beat him in the 1920 presidential election.
More proof of widespread Biden Administration abuse and fraud uncovered, more news from the Iran war, the Trump Administration fights welfare fraud, LA displays both welfare and voting fraud, more lefty sorts stealing funds to feather their own nests, Muslim EPIC City development runs into more roadblocks, and some weird video game news.
It’s the Friday LinkSwarm!
Thanks for everyone who contributed to the Pay For Buddy’s Vet Bill Fund. He’s already doing so much better that you can’t tell he was hurt, though some of that is probably the pain pills.
Newly released records in the Senate investigation into the weaponization of government raise questions about whether the FBI went on a fishing expedition targeting Trump advisors who were never charged with crimes and whether Special Counsel Jack Smith’s prior testimony to Congress was truthful.
The documents were made public by Chairman Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, before a Senate Judiciary Committee subcommittee hearing into alleged abuses by the Biden-era FBI and Justice Department in their investigations into then ex-president Donald Trump before and during the 2024 presidential election during its probe code-named “Arctic Frost.” Just the News previously reported that Biden’s FBI paid anti-Trump ‘Sedition Hunters’ as informants in the Arctic Frost probes.
“If Watergate taught us anything, it is that even a single abuse of power carried out by a handful of individuals can shake the foundations of our Republic,” said Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Tex., Chairman of the Judiciary Committee’s Subcommittee on Federal Courts, Oversight, Agency Action, and Federal Rights.
“What we confront today, the Biden administration’s Arctic Frost scheme, is not a single act,” he continued in his opening remarks. “It is a modern Watergate trading a break-in at one office for a digital sweep into approximately 100,000 private communications, more than a dozen senators and 1000s of individuals lives.”
Cruz said that ultimately, “just like Watergate,” the judges, FBI and Justice Department officials involved should be “investigated, tried, impeached, and brought to justice.”
The scope of Smith’s probe, which centered on Trump’s challenge to the 2020 election results and the events of January 6, 2021, was truly expansive. Grassley previously released records showing that Smith’s office issued nearly 200 subpoenas in his sweeping Arctic Frost-linked case, secretly seeking records on more than 400 Republican personalities and groups. This included more than 160 Republicans–many closely connected to Trump.
The Arctic Frost was one of four separate probes that targeted Trump and his allies stretching from summer 2016 to January 2025. The other probes were code-named Crossfire Hurricane, Round River, and Plasmic Echo, Just the News reported earlier this month.
As FBI Director, Patel has personally led the effort to review those probes, uncovering evidence of a far-reaching dragnet that in some cases may have been predicated on false, misleading or uncorroborated justifications, officials previously told Just the News.
The newly-disclosed records show that the FBI ordered two sweeping subpoenas of FBI Director Kash Patel’s phone records, while he was a private citizen in Trump’s orbit. Each subpoena covered an approximately two-year time frame.
The FBI’s requests for information included demands for highly personal data of Patel’s, including Patel’s addresses (“mailing addresses, residential addresses, business addresses, and e-mail addresses”), a “call detail record” which lists inbound and outbound calls, text messages and voicemail messages, as well as sources of payment for the phone service, including credit card and bank account numbers. The FBI also demanded expansive internet session data including exact IP addresses, the document shows.
The FBI also sought–and was granted–non-disclosure orders (NDOs) from federal judges, shielding the existence of the subpoenas from Patel and his lawyers on the grounds that revealing them could result in his “flight from prosecution, destruction of or tampering with evidence, intimidation of potential witnesses and serious jeopardy to the investigation.”
Susie Wiles, Donald Trump’s then campaign manager and future chief of staff, was also targeted in the probe. The Biden-era FBI reportedly even went so far as to record a private phone call between Wiles and her lawyer in 2023 while she was actively managing the campaign of President Joe Biden’s chief political rival, according to Reuters.
U.S. intelligence intercepted Ukrainian government communications discussing a plot to route hundreds of millions of American tax dollars earmarked for clean energy in the war-torn country and move them to the United States to enrich then-President Joe Biden’s 2024 re-election campaign and the Democratic National Committee, according to a declassified intelligence report summarizing the intercepts that was obtained by Just the News….
‘The Ukrainian Government and unspecified U.S. Government personnel, through USAID in Kyiv, reportedly developed a plan that would provide hundreds of millions of US taxpayer dollars to fund an infrastructure project for Ukraine that would be used as a cover to send approximately 90% of funds allocated to the DNC to fund Joe Biden’s reelection campaign,’ the declassified summary of the intercepts stated.
Every American involved in the scheme should be prosecuted. Still doesn’t justify taking Russia’s side in their illegal war of territorial aggression.
Long overdue: “Trump Administration Launches Whole-of-Government Effort to Fight Welfare Fraud.”
Vice President JD Vance and Federal Trade Chairman Andrew Ferguson convened members of the administration’s newly created anti-fraud task force on Friday to lay out the administration’s hopes for rooting out fraud in public programs across the country.
Established by President Trump via executive order earlier this month, the task force includes newly confirmed fraud-focused Assistant Attorney General Colin McDonald and spans multiple government agencies tasked with implementing new fraud detection and reporting protocols, investigating Biden-era policies regarding fraud prevention, proposing new legislative and regulatory tools to combat fraud, and prosecuting illegal behavior when necessary to recover as much in improperly obtained funds as possible.
According to a task force memo authored by Vance and Ferguson and shared with National Review, the White House will focus primarily on high-spend, low-verification programs that “pay out large sums of money with low confidence or limited information about the ultimate recipients and uses of those funds.” Key programs that fall into this category include benefits administered through Medicare, Medicaid, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, and Small Business Administration loans.
The task force divides fraud into four main categories, according to the memo. The first category is so-called “ghost” billing where there is no real beneficiary and no real service provided, a prime example being a fake business that applied for Paycheck Protection Program relief during the Covid-19 pandemic. The second category are low-quality services provided to real beneficiaries, such as substandard medical care provided to elderly patients at nursing homes or memory-care facilities.
The third category is “upcoding” or “overbilling,” where fraudsters hand patients manipulated bills. “When hospitals commit fraud, for example, there are often real patients receiving necessary hospitalizations but with exaggerated diagnoses purporting to justify more expensive services than the patient actually needed or received,” the memo reads.
And the final category outlined by the task force is “necessity” fraud, where a real service is provided to an unqualified beneficiary. “Medicare fraud, for example, often involves real doctors giving real people treatments they don’t need, such as a person who can walk getting a wheelchair or a patient getting a lab test they don’t need,” the memo adds.
During a brief news conference on Friday, the vice president spotlighted egregious practices by autism daycare programs in Minnesota, where earlier this month one defendant, a Somali man named Abdinajib Yussuf, pleaded guilty to one count of wire fraud in a $6 million Medicaid reimbursement scheme.
“The first tragedy is that you have people who pay into the federal government, who pay into the IRS, who pay their taxes, expecting that those taxes will go to help their fellow citizens, and it’s not going to. It’s going to help fraudsters,” Vance said in remarks to the press before leading a closed-door strategy meeting with cabinet members and other senior administration officials working on the effort.
And the more important tragedy is that you have families who need these services who are unable to get them because people are getting rich off of fraud schemes, instead of making sure that autistic children and their families get access to these resources,” he added.
The task force has already cracked down on blue states and cities like Los Angeles, where the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid recently suspended 70 home-health providers and hospice centers identified as high-risk fraudulent medical programs.
Another target is also Minnesota, where federally funded nutrition-assistance fraud and state-agency-related mismanagement ran rampant during Democratic Governor Tim Walz’s tenure while somehow failing to disqualify him from Vice President Kamala Harris’s running-mate shortlist. The White House paused $259 million in federal Medicaid payments to Minnesota earlier this month as part of the administration’s response to the state’s baffling degree of fraud.
Over the coming months, task force members are also looking to highlight lax verification protocols at the state level that amplify this problem, particularly in states run by Democrats.
“I think that most citizens probably assume that there’s some verification process that takes place for the receipt of most federal benefits,” said White House Deputy Chief of Staff for Policy Stephen Miller. “The reality is that there is not. This is particularly true in blue states — willfully true in blue states in which all of these programs are operating entirely on the honor system, no verification takes place before individuals are enrolled in or receive these benefits.”
“Vance’s Anti-Fraud Task Force Suspends 70 Hospices in Los Angeles. The Senate also confirmed federal prosecutor Colin McDonald to lead the DOJ’s anti-fraud division.”
Yesterday the Telegraph told us about a “sinister new power” pulling the strings in Iran: “Ahmad Vahidi is the key cog in the regime’s chain of command.”
Unlike [Mohammad Bagher] Ghalibaf, Vahidi has remained in the shadows since the war. This is not without reason: our analysis suggests he is likely to be operating as the key cog in the regime’s chain of command and his survival is essential to its continuity. Long before the war, Ali Khamenei had entrusted Vahidi to draw up plans to further militarise the regime. If he outlasts this conflict and the regime survives, he will finally be able to implement this vision – a design that will produce a far more radical and extremist Islamic Republic.
Vahidi has unmatched experience and influence across the regime’s military, intelligence, and bureaucracy. His career began in the 1980s in the IRGC’s Intelligence Bureau, made up of the regime’s most ideologically loyal operatives. As the IRGC’s deputy for intelligence, he was hand-picked to join a secretive cohort to accompany Khamenei to visit North Korea – a trip designed to acquire missile and nuclear technology.
During the Iran-Iraq War (1980-1988), Vahidi was also one of the original members of the Ramadan Headquarters, a unit within the IRGC created to form Islamist terrorist groups globally and overseen by Khamenei.
Upon assuming the supreme leadership in 1989, Khamenei created the notorious Quds Force – the IRGC’s extraterritorial terror branch – and appointed Vahidi as its first commander. It was a testament to his loyalty. Vahidi demonstrated in that role that his vision to export terrorism was far more global than his notorious successor Qasem Soleimani.
Under Vahidi’s command, the IRGC orchestrated the bombing of a Jewish cultural centre in Argentina in 1994, the 1996 Khobar Towers attack in Saudi Arabia, and secretly dispatched operatives to Europe to train Islamist Mujahideen – including members of al-Qaeda – during the Bosnian war. This résumé would earn him a spot on Interpol’s wanted list in 2007.
Today:
🚨🇮🇷BREAKING: General Ahmad Vahidi who was appointed as commander-in-chief of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) on March 1, 2026, reporadaly has been ELIMINATED in U. S. & Israel strikes. pic.twitter.com/7wuxWVRV6X
US signals to allies no ground invasion coming, with thousands of troops still en route: Iran denies requesting Donald Trump’s 10-day halt; Israel attacks steel & industrial sites. Also, Khondab Heavy Water Research Reactor, part of the Arak Nuclear Complex, targeted. Yellow Cake factory in Yazd province hit.
Escalation on all fronts: IRGC HQ targeted by US-Israsel; Iran signals expansion by naming UAE targets, hitting Kuwait ports and sending drones on Riyadh. Iran newly warning it will hit Gulf industry.
Rubio tells G7 foreign ministers war will continue for another 2-4 weeks.
Israel doubles down amid reports of manpower strain: IDF chief warns of manpower pressure even as Defense Minister Katz vows to “intensify and expand” strikes.
Risk rises that Iran is holding back more advanced missiles for a prolonged war: WSJ writes “The US and Israel are pounding Iran’s missile-launching sites… But Tehran’s missiles keep flying.”
The last seems tinged with ZeroHedge’s usual Iran war pessimism. Ever fewer missiles have been flying as time goes on, and the places they’re manufactured have been hammered.
“Iranian Atomic Energy Organization: US and Israeli airstrikes target uranium processing plant.” Good. Bomb every nuclear-related facility twice-over, then make the rubble bounce.
A special House Ethics Committee found Representative Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick guilty of 25 total ethics violations, after a three-year investigation into allegations that the Florida Democrat stole millions in federal relief funds.
Following a seven-hour televised trial, members deliberated through the night before voting, finding Cherfilus-McCormick guilty of almost all the charges against her — 25 of the 27.
“I’m as pure as the driven snow!” denials snipped.
In November, a federal grand jury indicted Cherfilus-McCormick, alleging she stole $5 million from the Federal Emergency Management Agency. Cherfilus-McCormick’s family operates a health care company, Trinity Healthcare Services, and received FEMA funds for a Covid vaccination contract.
According to the DOJ, the $5 million payment was an overpayment, and the congresswoman and her brother never paid back the funds to the government. Rather, the pair funneled the funds through various accounts and used the money to back Cherfilus-McCormick’s 2022 special election campaign, which she ultimately won.
Snip.
Cherfilus-McCormick and her siblings “funneled more than $500,000 originating from Trinity into various outside organizations that made expenditures on behalf of the campaign,” Sydney Bellwoar, the committee’s lawyer, said.
Further, Bellwoar said “the most egregious example” was when Cherfilus-McCormick received $2 million directly from Trinity Health into her campaign in July 2021, to forge the appearance of a robust campaign infrastructure.
Seize everything she owns to pay back and sentence her to extended prison time.
Sen Rand Paul offers up a simple, elegant solution that Democrats will fight tooth and claw against:
DataRepublican says that John Thune is trying to pull a sneaky maneuver to kill the SAVE Act.
Hello Senator Thune,
Let’s expose what you’re really doing with “reconciliation.”
You announced it yesterday, eleven months after the House passed the SAVE America Act. You’re not trying to pass this bill. You’re trying to kill it in a way you can blame on process.
Here’s how we know:
Reconciliation requires the Senate parliamentarian to rule that provisions are “budgetary.” Citizenship verification is not budgetary. Photo ID mandates are not budgetary. The parliamentarian will gut the bill. Then you’ll shrug and say “we tried.” We see through you.
Meanwhile, you WON’T use the tools that actually work:
Rule XIX limits each senator to two speeches per legislative day. Keep the Senate in continuous session, file cloture daily, and the filibuster exhausts in ~12-20 days. You dismissed it as “complicated.” Because if you tried and succeeded, you’d have to actually pass the bill.
Harry Reid nuked the filibuster in 2013 when he wanted results.
Mitch McConnell changed Senate rules THREE times and canceled the August recess.
Chuck Schumer used reconciliation within months on a 50-50 Senate.
You have 53 seats. You’ve changed nothing, canceled nothing, and waited eleven months.
Now let’s talk donors:
• Goldman Sachs: $150K to you – top H-1B user
• Google: $75K – lobbies against E-Verify
• Meta: $72.5K – Zuckerberg’s FWD[.]us pushes mass immigration
• Wells Fargo: $90K – banks undocumented immigrants
Same corporations sponsor Punchbowl News, where you sit for “Fly Out Days” which nobody watches except Congress staffers and K Street lobbyists who pays premium bucks for legislative intelligence. Their reporter then telegraphs to the audience the SAVE Act “will ultimately fail.”
Corporate money flows to you AND to the outlet that frames your inaction as inevitable.
We see the loop.
You called grassroots anger a “paid influencer ecosystem.” YOU are the paid influencer. You take the wrong side of a 80% issue because you are indistinguishable from a K Street mouthpiece, and an ineffective one to boot who won’t bend the rules to get anything passed.
What we want:
1. Force a real talking filibuster.
2. Stop hiding behind process.
3. Pass the SAVE America Act.
YOU will become the reason that we will have our butts kicked in midterms. Not Candace Owens, not Nick Fuentes, not anyone else. You and you alone, and all because you want to make the 200 or so viewers of Punchbowl Fly Out Days happy. You’re living in a K Street information bubble, addicted to the comforts and praises of lobbyists masquerading as journalists. You mistake the steak and martini dinners you get invited to as your own constituents.
You are not “moderate.” The SAVE America Act has 98% support among Republicans. Name one other thing that has 98% support. You are an extreme minority who prides himself on being a calm leader, when in reality you are well in the running for the most ineffective Majority leader of all time.
Prove me wrong. Do the bare modicum of effort. Not symbolic. Actual effort. Cancel the recess. Get SAVE America Act passed.
Paid activists in Los Angeles, California, have been caught on hidden camera paying homeless people on skid row to forge signatures of registered voters on ballot initiatives.
O’Keefe Media Group (OMG) released part Two of its undercover investigation into the Democrats’ blatant election fraud operation in L.A. on Tuesday.
California’s Republican gubernatorial frontrunner Steve Hilton commented on X: “They paid homeless people cash and drugs on Skid Row to forge your signature. Your name. Your vote. Stolen by a crackhead with a clipboard — while Gavin Newsom looked the other way.”
Hilton added: “This isn’t a conspiracy theory. It’s on tape. And not one Democrat is outraged. That’s because THEY DID IT ON PURPOSE.”
Part One showed petitioners offering cash to homeless people and drug addicts for their signatures. The shocking new video shows the activists, armed with printed lists of voter names and addresses, taking the scheme to another level.
“Fraudulent petitioners on Skid Row are now paying the homeless people to forge names, forge addresses and forge signatures of registered voters,” O’Keefe says at the beginning of Part Two.
Rather than registering the Skid Row denizens to vote, activists gave them $2–$3 in cash to commit forgery and election fraud in what OMG called “a coordinated system.”
O’Keefe stated that the operation was observed on nearly every street corner in downtown Los Angeles.
“The scheme appeared to be present in whatever direction we walked,” he noted.
The goal of the operation, according to OMG, is to “ensure the information matches official records so he signature passes verification.”
The workers handed out post-it notes with the names of a single voter written on them to each of the homeless dupes.
Lots of “activists” need to go to prison.
“‘Not a done deal‘: Democrats start to sweat over Virginia’s redistricting referendum. The unique nature of the April special election and the state’s recent redistricting history have presented challenges for Democrats, even as they hold a financial edge in the race.” “Some supporters of the Virginia referendum acknowledge the challenge of convincing voters to back a gerrymandered map when Democrats, who several years ago backed the formation of the state’s bipartisan redistricting commission, have criticized Republicans for similar moves.” Ya think? (Hat tip: Sarah Hoyt at Instapundit.)
Democrats have been hyping their wins in very specialized races. And the Left has been declaring that it’s going to finish devouring and digesting the Democrats.
On paper, it should be looking good. The public is dissatisfied. The Left’s program of socialism disguised as economic populism and antisemitism disguised as anti-Zionism should be selling. Except the Illinois wipeout suggests it’s not.
Again, on paper Obamaville, where the dead vote and the unions run everything, should have been a good choice. Plenty of leftists have been elected here. And the Democrat primaries in many urban areas are virtually owned by the Left.
But 6 potential Squaddies, including two Muslim candidates, lost Democrat congressional primary races.
The media and the Left (but I repeat myself) are blaming AIPAC and the newly combative pro-Israel lobby, which sees itself being NRA’d out of the Democrats, is happy to take credit, but its results were mostly mixed.
So what does explain the Left taking a beating in primaries it should have been able to dominate?
Despite all the anti-ICE hysteria, radicalism fatigue may be setting in. Enough Democrat primary voters showed no interest in voting for the ‘podcast class’, the Bernie Brats, Hamas fan girls and the rest of the radicals.
The Left was hoping that Mamdani’s victory was a bellwether, but just like Obama’s win what it really showed was that a smooth radical isn’t supposed to sound like one. Democrats didn’t want. The Bernie people, the Justice Dems and that ilk lost badly in Illinois because maybe radicalism isn’t what the Democrat voter wants right now.
They also hit the Ust-Luga oil terminal in the same general area, and it was still burning 24 hours later. They also hit two oil tankers in the same strike.
But that’s not all! They hit the same Ust-Luga oil terminal again less than a day later. “Russia has lost 40% of its oil export capacity.”
One of Russia’s newest warships, a Project 23550 icebreaker, is now damaged and listing heavily after drone strike.
“U. North Texas Cutting up to 70 Programs in Effort to Trim Deficit” including “women’s and gender studies, LGBTQ studies, Mexican American studies, Africana studies, Asian studies as well as dance, geology and special education.” Most of those sound like they should be killed, and the rest are unnecessary luxuries if no one is taking them.
Attorney General Ken Paxton has obtained a court order halting actions by an EPIC City-linked municipal utility district.
The case centers on allegations that the Double R Municipal Utility District No. 2A has been used to advance a controversial development project organized by the East Plano Islamic Center by skirting state oversight and standard MUD-creation procedures. The project, originally known as EPIC City, has been rebranded as the Meadow.
Judge Christine Nowak’s order blocks the district and its board from taking further steps to support the development while the litigation continues.
The state’s lawsuit focuses on a 2025 special meeting where the Double R MUD board allegedly resigned en masse, installed new directors at a remote roadside location identified only by GPS coordinates, and then quickly voted to annex more than 400 acres tied to the EPIC project.
State lawyers say that maneuver effectively transformed the MUD into a vehicle for EPIC City’s backers, allowing them to expand taxing authority and infrastructure support without going through the process of forming a new district.
After the annexation, regulators requested documents to confirm that the new board members met legal requirements to hold public office and levy taxes on residents inside the district.
According to the suit, records submitted by Double R MUD showed the individuals did not meet statutory qualifications—a finding the attorney general’s office said casts doubt on every action the board took, including the EPIC City annexation.
The state is asking the court to remove the disputed board members, unwind the 402.5-acre annexation tied to EPIC City, and restore what Paxton describes as lawful governance of the utility district.
More: “Hunt County Rejects Plans for Controversial EPIC City. Commissioners disapproved the Islamic development based on deficiencies in the plat application.”
“Monica Cannon-Grant, a Black Lives Matter activist who was named ‘Bostonian of the Year’ by the Boston Globe, was ordered to pay back every dime she stole from her nonprofit, unemployment benefits, and other fraudulent practices, amounting to almost $225,000. U.S. District Court Judge Angel Kelley sentenced Cannon-Grant to four years’ probation, six months of home detention, and 100 hours of community service. Federal prosecutors, however, recommended 18 months in prison. Although Cannon-Grant dodged time behind bars, she must return all of the money she managed to bilk from her nonprofit.” Kelley was appointed by Biden, and I bet if Cannon-Grant hadn’t been a leftwing political activist, she would have received prison time.
Important tip: “Ultra-pure copper” bought from China shouldn’t stick to a magnet. Plus, make sure the Chinese companies you’re buying materials from actually exists…
Just hours after Irish rappers Kneecap blasted the amps and turned a Havana concert into a rave for Code Pink activists chanting anti-blockade slogans, reports claim local hospital went dark and ventilator patients died.
Meanwhile, members of the communist flotilla stayed in 5-star hotels with the lights blazing and AC running.
No one cashes in on capitalism faster than the clowns preaching communism.
The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York has charged associates of an unidentified U.S. server maker with illegally diverting billions of dollars in Nvidia-powered servers to China.
The U.S. government has been trying to figure out how high-powered chips have reached China without authorization, as American artificial intelligence companies such as Anthropic and OpenAI face challenges from DeepSeek and other Chinese rivals.
In an indictment unsealed Thursday, the U.S. government alleged that Yih-Shyan “Wally” Liaw, Ruei-Tsan “Steven” Chang and Ting-Wei “Willy” Sun worked together to violate the Export Control Reform Act.
The server company’s products containing Nvidia chips “are subject to strict U.S. export controls barring their sale to China without a license,” the plaintiff said in the indictment. “Those controls are in place to protect U.S. national security and foreign policy interests, among other things.”
Artificial intelligence may well be the most important technological development of the coming decade-and that is exactly why the current capital surge around it warrants skepticism. History is littered with transformative innovations that were nonetheless disastrously overbuilt and mispriced in their early phases. Austrian Business Cycle Theory was never a children’s story in which every boom ends with clowns, ashes, and worthless machinery; its real claim is subtler and nastier. When the price of time is falsified-when interest rates are pushed below their natural rate-often proxied, however imperfectly, by modern estimates of the neutral rate-entrepreneurs are encouraged to undertake projects that are more roundabout, more capital-intensive, and more time-sensitive than underlying saving and final demand can actually support. The neutral rate is a policy construct; the natural rate is an economic reality. Some of those projects may still embody genuine innovation.
The problem is not that AI must be fake; it is that a very real technological advance can be financed, priced, and physically built in ways that are wildly uneconomic.
That distinction matters because AI is about as roundabout as modern capitalism gets. This is not a boom in apps and slogans alone; it is a boom in data centers, power, cooling, transformers, specialized semiconductors, fiber, land, and the commodities and construction needed to house and feed all of it. Reuters reports that Alphabet, Amazon, Meta, and Microsoft are expected to spend more than $630 billion combined on AI-related infrastructure in 2026, up sharply from 2025, while separate Reuters reporting says Amazon alone projects roughly $200 billion of 2026 capex. Analysts also expect the hyperscalers’ debt issuance to keep climbing, with BofA lifting its 2026 forecast to $175 billion after Amazon’s jumbo deal and Reuters noting that these firms issued $121 billion in bonds in 2025 versus a 2020–2024 annual average of just $28 billion. In Austrian terms, this is not consumption drunkenness; it is higher-order production marching deep into the structure of capital with a flamethrower and an Excel model.
Snip.
The most charitable case is that AI is a genuine general-purpose technology whose economics are merely messy in the early innings. OpenAI says ChatGPT had more than 900 million weekly users as of late February, and Bloomberg reports OpenAI’s annualized revenue topped $20 billion in 2025 while Anthropic is tracking near that level as well. There are also signs of real productivity gains in narrow use cases, especially coding and selected support tasks. But the bill is arriving much faster than the profits: Bain estimated the industry would need roughly $2 trillion in annual revenue by 2030 to support projected compute demand, yet expected a gap of about $800 billion. That is not a business model; that is a promissory note written in GPU ink.
The more worrying Austrian angle is not simply overvaluation in public equities, but miscoordination in the capital structure. If chips depreciate economically faster than accountants admit, if grid interconnections lag by years, if open models compress pricing power, and if customers love AI demos more than they love paying enterprise invoices, then the industry has a classic ABCT problem: complementary capital arrives in the wrong proportions and at the wrong times. And though not easily captured in formal models, technological history is clear: infrastructure-heavy systems rarely stay that way for long, and early capital often pays the price. The New York Fed warns that r-star is an estimate, not an oracle, but the larger point survives that caveat: if market rates were held too low relative to the economy’s true intertemporal balance, then the resulting investment pattern will look profitable only until bottlenecks, replacement cycles, and cost of capital reassert themselves. Bloomberg reports OpenAI has discussed infrastructure commitments above $1.4 trillion, while Anthropic has announced a $50 billion U.S. data-center push; meanwhile, the IEA has warned of grid-connection queues, transformer shortages, and permitting delays for the power build-out data centers require. A boom can survive many indignities, but not all of them at once.
So: does AI constitute malinvestment? The best answer is that AI almost certainly contains both real innovation and a large malinvestment component.
Barksdale Air Force Base (BAFB), a major U.S. strategic bomber installation in northwest Louisiana, has just experienced an unusually serious series of unauthorized drone incursions over its most sensitive areas.
More than a dozen unsanctioned drones repeatedly swarmed a US Air Force base that is home to a nuclear bomber fleet — and were able to resist efforts to bring them down via jamming technology, according to military officials.
The restricted airspace of Barksdale Air Force Base in Bossier City, Louisiana, was infiltrated by “multiple unauthorized drones” between March 9 and March 15, a base spokesperson told The Post.
The 22-acre installation located east of Shreveport, hosts a fleet of B-52 bombers which can carry out nuclear strikes with “worldwide precision,” according to the Air Force.
As an Air Force Global Strike Command base, Barksdale also plays a crucial role in the Air Force’s nuclear defense capabilities…
Military officials report that more than 12 to 15 unauthorized drones swarmed the base, which hosts the U.S. nuclear B-52 bomber fleet.
The drones resisted jamming efforts, with multiple waves detected.
Snip.
The briefing includes a determination that the drones were different than what the typical consumer could purchase off the shelf. They appeared to be custom built and required “advanced knowledge” of signal operations.
The analysts said “with high confidence” they expected unauthorized drones to continue to operate in and around Barksdale Air Force Base in the immediate future.
“The drone incursions at BAFB pose a significant threat to public safety and national security since they require the flight line to be shut down while also putting manned aircrafts already inflight in the area at risk,” the document said.
Maybe his hatred for the police will finally be his undoing. “Resignation Demands Mount for Travis County DA Garza over Prosecutorial Misconduct Allegations.”
Travis County District Attorney Jose Garza is facing calls for his resignation over accusations that he withheld evidence in prosecuting a police officer for actions taken during a 2020 Black Lives Matter protest in Austin.
“Jose Garza’s habitual misconduct and his lack of prosecutorial experience puts our entire community at risk,” said Austin Police Retired Officers Association (APROA) President Dennis Farris in a statement.
“Felony cases, when properly handled, present opportunities for the innocent to be absolved of serious allegations, for the guilty to be held accountable and for the residents of Travis County to have confidence in the judicial system. In order for these principles to be upheld, Travis County needs a new district attorney.”
Farris was responding to recent revelations about Garza’s prosecution of Austin police officer Chance Bretches.
In 2022, Garza charged Bretches with Aggravated Assault, two years after an anti-police demonstration spurred by the death of George Floyd. During the protest, Bretches fired a “less lethal” bean bag round, resulting in severe injury to a woman who said she was a volunteer providing medical assistance to protestors.
In 2024, Garza brought additional charges against Bretches for Aggravated Assault by a Public Servant, Deadly Conduct, and Assault.
Although prosecutors are required to provide the defense with exculpatory evidence in accordance with a U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Brady v. Maryland and Texas’ Michael Morton Act, Garza did not disclose alleged “secret” meetings in 2023 with city officials to discuss the possibility of charging the City of Austin.
Last week, attorney Doug O’Connell asked Travis County District Court Judge Karen Sage to dismiss the case on the grounds that Garza violated Bretches’ constitutional due process rights and violated the law by not disclosing the meetings or related communications. O’Connell also argued that Garza’s actions are part of a pattern of misconduct.
“This goes to the issue of why dismissing the case is the only solution, because how will the judge ever know whether they turned over all the evidence,” O’Connell told The Texan.
Courts previously sanctioned Garza for withholding evidence in the manslaughter prosecution of two Williamson County Sheriff’s deputies, and an investigator also accused the DA of hiding evidence in the trial of Daniel Perry.
Perry was convicted in 2023 of murdering Air Force veteran and Black Lives Matter protester Garrett Foster. Gov. Greg Abbott pardoned Perry in 2024.
In addition to APROA, the Combined Law Enforcement Associations of Texas (CLEAT) has also called for Garza’s resignation, and the incoming president of the nonprofit Central Texas Public Safety Commission, Jennifer Stevens, told CBS Austin that Garza’s prosecution of police officers instead of criminal defendants is contributing to division between the Travis County District Attorney’s Office (TCDAO) and law enforcement.
“There can be no worse violation of the oath taken by a district attorney than to intentionally deny a defendant a fair trial. It is a direct violation of their constitutional rights,” said CLEAT Executive Director Robert Leonard in a statement.
In December, a Texas appeals court overturned the conviction of Austin police officer Christopher Taylor, who had been prosecuted by Garza over the 2019 shooting death of Mauris DeSilva.
Abbott responded to the new allegations against Garza in a social media post.
“All of this will be taken into consideration when I have the final say on the fate of the police officer. This DA’s failure to prosecute murderers & repeatedly letting dangerous criminals go free, while prioritizing prosecuting police, will have consequences,” wrote Abbott.
The sooner Garza is gone, the sooner citizens can stop dying because he let criminal scumbags back on the street.
“Dallas and Williamson County GOPs to Return to Countywide Voting After Primary Election Day Confusion. At least 13,000 Dallas residents reportedly showed up to the wrong polling place on March 3.”
America’s most prolific serial killers now burns in hell. Kermit Gosnell dies in prison at 85.
A Philadelphia grand jury, in its investigation of Gosnell’s Women’s Medical Society abortion center, labeled it a ‘house of horrors’ and initially sought charges for hundreds of murders of babies born alive and then killed.
Charges were ultimately limited to seven murder counts ‘after pressure from senior political and law enforcement officials,’ according to accounts from those covering the case.
The facility functioned as a ‘pill mill by day and an ‘abortion mill’ by night,’ federal authorities noted….
Witnesses described shocking details: Baby A was large enough that employees took photos after the killing, with Gosnell joking the baby was ‘big enough to walk around with me or walk me to the bus stop.’
Other infants showed signs of life, including breathing and movement, before being killed.
Gosnell was also convicted of involuntary manslaughter in the 2009 death of 41-year-old patient Karnamaya Mongar, a Bhutanese refugee who died from an overdose of anesthesia during a botched abortion.
He faced more than 200 additional counts and was found guilty on most, including 21 felony counts of performing illegal abortions beyond Pennsylvania’s 24-week limit and violations of the state’s 24-hour informed-consent law.
Finally. “International Olympic Committee Bans Male Athletes from Women’s Sports.” Pretty soon the only place radical transsexism will still hold sway is among 2028 Democratic Presidential candidates…
The House Select Committee on Governmental Oversight will have over a dozen members, with state Rep. Cody Vasut (R-Angleton) serving as the chair and state Rep. Armando Walle (D-Houston) as co-chair.
The other representatives on it will be state Reps. Richard Hayes (R-Denton), Brooks Landgraf (R-Odessa), Mitch Little (R-Lewisville), AJ Louderback (R-Victoria), Christian Manuel (D-Beaumont), Eddie Morales (D-Eagle Pass), Richard Raymond (D-Laredo), Shelby Slawson (R-Stephenville), Carl Tepper (R-Lubbock), Ellen Troxclair (R-Lakeway, and Erin Zwiener (D-Driftwood).
“Meta to Pay $375 Million Penalty After Jury Finds Company Endangered Children in Landmark Case.”
A jury in New Mexico determined on Tuesday that Meta misled consumers about the safety of its platforms and put children in harm’s way by failing to protect them from sexual predators.
The jury ordered meta to pay a $375 million penalty, significantly lower than the $2.2 billion that New Mexico sought, based on the total number of violations and a $5,000 fine per violation. Meta was found to have violated New Mexico’s unfair-practices act
Adam Savage reorganizes his storage drawers. I’m not saying everyone should watch all 40 minutes of this, but if you have a workshop full of tiny components you have trouble organizing, you might find his method useful.
Tom Scott returns to YouTube after a two year absence. I’m not necessarily super excited for the particular shows he’s returning with (a tour through all of England’s counties, with something interesting in each), but I’ll probably dip into it because I liked his previous work, where he traveled around the world and explained interesting things.
Not one but two Iranian naval commanders get dirtnapped, more than 10,000 Iranian targets have been hit, Iran getting 12 year olds to join the fight, and claims it’s reinforced Kharg Island.
The latest CENTCOM update from Admiral Brad Cooper:
Highlights:
Over 10,000 Iranian targets hit. More counting Israeli strikes.
“We’ve destroyed 92% of the Iranian Navy’s largest vessels.”
“Iran’s drone and missile launch rates are down over 90%.”
“Today, we have damaged or destroyed over two-thirds of Iran’s missile, drone, and naval production facilities and shipyards, and we’re not done yet.”
“Now, in their eighth decade of flight, our B-52 bombers are executing strikes into Iran with up to 70,000 pounds of munitions on each mission.”
Also from Admiral Cooper: “Israel has eliminated the commander of the Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps-Navy, Admiral Alireza Tangsiri.” He was supposedly the guy overseeing blocking the Strait of Hormuz.
Israel also hit two “key naval cruise missile production sites in Tehran. IAF fighter jets targeted facilities used by the Iranian regime to develop and manufacture long-range naval cruise missiles capable of destroying targets at sea and on land.”
Israeli fighter jets, on Tuesday, struck Iran’s main weapons production site. The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) described the fortified underground site in the central Iranian city of Isfahan as the regime’s “most central explosives production facility.”
The “Israeli Air Force, acting on IDF intelligence, completed a wide-scale wave of strikes, targeting the Iranian regime’s military-industrial production facilities in Isfahan,” the Israeli military announced Tuesday evening. “The IDF confirms that it struck the most central production site for explosive materials in Iran, where the Iranian regime developed and produced explosive materials for various of weapons.”
Israel had hit the facility extensively last year, but they were trying to rebuild it.
“Israel hit a naval facility in Iran’s Caspian Sea port of Bandar Anzali and has targeted a military supply route used by Moscow and Tehran to transfer weapons….The Israeli military said the strike hit dozens of targets, including warships, a command centre and a shipyard used to maintain vessels. Verified images showed damage to Iran’s naval headquarters and destroyed vessels.”
Iran is winning so hard they have to recruit 12-year olds. “Iran has said that children as young as 12 can join the war, country’s state media quoted Iran’s Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) official as saying that the minimum age for participation in war-related support roles has been lowered.” Much like they used 12 to 17 year olds to clear minefields in the Iran-Iraq war.
“The United States has deployed uncrewed drone speedboats for patrols as part of its operations against Iran, the Pentagon said, the first time Washington has confirmed using such vessels in an active conflict.”
The MSM may be against the war, but the Iranian people are for it. (Hat tip: Instapundit.)
Don Lemon finds out that an American of Persian descent is 100% behind the war:
WATCH: Don Lemon: “How do you feel about the war?”
Young Man: “I'm Persian. I support Donald Trump 100%. The Islamic regime kills woman. They killed 50,000 people in two days. A lot of them believe in death [to] all Americans. I 100% support Trump.”
Elon Musk on Saturday announced that his rocket making company SpaceX and electric vehicle major Tesla will jointly run a new chip manufacturing facility in Austin, Texas, AFP reported.
The chips will be for use in artificial intelligence projects, robotics and data centres for space, with aim to produce 1 terawatt of computing power per year, it added, citing Musk. (1 terawatt = ¬1 trillion watts).
Why is Elon Musk starting his own chip manufacturing facility?
The world’s richest man said the so-called “Terafab” was necessary because Tesla and SpaceX’s demand for computing power is expected to far exceed that of global chip suppliers. While he did not disclose how much initial investment is being made, reports pegged the initial infusion between $20-25 billion, it added.
“We’re very grateful to our existing supply chain, to Samsung, TSMC, Micron, and others… but there’s a maximum rate at which they’re comfortable expanding. That rate is much less than we would like… and we need the chips, so we’re going to build the Terafab. The advanced technology fab in Austin will have the facilities to design, manufacture, test and improve each chip,” Musk said.
Other articles have made clear the the initial pilot line will be in Austin on Tesla’s Gigafab land, but that the eventual full-scale production fab may be located somewhere else.
The project aims to make chips to support 100 to 200 GW of computing power on Earth, and 1 TW in space.
Musk did not share a timeline for the production or output. The AFP report noted that the billionaire has many times in the past announced timelines that his companies failed to meet, i.e. robotaxis, SDF, etc.
According to Musk, the Terafab would ultimately help humanity become a “galactic civilization” capable of harnessing the resources of other planets and stars.
A Bloomberg report added that Musk has said previously that the facility would produce 2 nanometer chips.
It added that the Austin facility is expected to make two types of chips, one of which will be optimized for edge and inference, primarily for his vehicle, robotaxi and Optimus humanoid robots.
The other will be a high-power chip, designed for space that could be used by SpaceX and xAI. Musk said he expects xAI to use the vast majority of the chips, it added.
Musk also unveiled a speculative rendering of a future “mini” AI data center satellite with 100 kW power. This is part of a larger installation he wants SpaceX to build to do complex computing in space.
In January, SpaceX requested a license from the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to launch one million data center satellites into orbit around Earth. “We expect future satellites to probably go to the megawatt range,” Musk added.
Let’s skip over addressing the feasibility (or desirability) of the space half of this grand vision. Never mind that Musk has evidently been freebasing back issues of The L5 News and G. Harry Stine’s Analog columns circa 1979 to conceive his solar-powered orbital cathedrals of vast, cool machine intellects.
No, I want to focus on the task of getting a purely ground-based, cutting edge, 2nm semiconductor fab up and running. There’s nothing impossible about that part, and $25 billion is right around the current price to build a state-of-the-art fab. Other reports say:
Production targets are specific. The facility is designed to produce between 100 and 200 billion custom AI and memory chips per year, targeting an initial output of 100,000 wafer starts per month with a stated ambition to scale toward one million — roughly 70% of TSMC’s current total output, in a single US facility.
Tesla is targeting 2 nanometre process technology, the most advanced node currently in commercial production. Tesla’s fifth-generation AI chip, AI5, is among the first products Terafab is designed to produce, with small-batch production expected in 2026 and volume production projected for 2027.
And here’s where my deep skepticism kicks in, over both the output and timeline.
Having more cutting-edge fabs here in the continental United States is a great idea, and there’s nothing wrong with vertical integration for companies to combine design, fabrication and test under one roof. Indeed, Musk has merely reinvented Integrated Device Manufacturing, which used to be the norm until the foundry model took hold, and that’s still the norm with companies like Intel (though not necessarily all under one roof). And Intel, Samsung and TSMC already have their own mask manufacturing facilities in-house. So based on the little information available now, Musk’s radical new approach isn’t.
But that timeline of initial production in 2026 and volume production in 2027? Unless Musk has already placed orders for the critical semiconductor manufacturing equipment (especially however many ASML TWINSCAN EXE:5000 or TWINSCAN EXE:5200B EUV lithography systems the fab will need) long before now, that’s simply not happening. The lead time for the most critical machines are a year or more. And that’s just one machine.
There are five essential semiconductor equipment manufacturers:
Applied Materials
ASML
KLA
LAM Research
Tokyo Electron
If you’re building a modern, 2nm fab, chances are pretty good you need all five. You need the ASML litho machines mentioned above. You need KLA inspection tools to raise and maintain yields, and you need, at the very least, one of AMAT, LAM or TEL to provide the rest. Take away all three and you can’t equip a fab, period.
And that’s after you’ve poured the agonizingly precise, ridiculously level concrete slab for the equipment to rest on, installed huge networks of high voltage power systems (ASML machine alone now run at 1,000 watts), ultra-high purity air handling equipment and ultra-high purity de-ionized water handling systems. All that needs to be installed, up and running before you even start installing the tools. And then all the tools need to be brought up and qualified for production. And that all needs to be done before tape-out, mask production and the first wafer is run.
But the timeline isn’t the only thing that’s delusional about Musk’s announcement.
Terafab is designed for an initial output of 100,000 wafer starts per month, with ambitions to scale to 1 million wafer starts per month at full capacity. For context, that full-scale target would represent roughly 70% of TSMC’s entire current global output — from a single facility operated by companies that have never fabricated a chip.
Musk said the facility would produce between 100 and 200 billion custom AI and memory chips per year, powering Tesla’s “Full Self-Driving” software, the Cybercab robotaxi program, and the Optimus humanoid robot line. He also said millions of Optimus robots would help build and operate the facility.
Put aside the swarms of robots for now. A lot of what can be automated for a fab already has been with automated FOUP-handling equipment. What hasn’t been automated is routine maintenance, troubleshooting, etc. I’m guessing it will be quite a while before Frankie Fabbot is ready to take on any of those tasks.
100,000 wafer starts a month is around what TSMC’s cutting edge fabs produce a month. Samsung has a huge fab supposedly capable of 450,000 wafer starts a month. A million starts a month in one extremely big fab is possible, but it’s going to take multiple lines, lots of money, and throughput will still be gated by the lowest capacity machines on the line (again, I’m guessing the ASML litho machine). Modern fabs have already maxed out production speeds for modern high-yield plants. You can’t simple pull a lever to make the line go faster.
Then there are his plans to build memory chips and space-hardened versions of the xAI chips in the same megafab. Neither of those goals is impossible, but it’s going to require more equipment than his $25 billion estimate to essentially run three production lines in the same building. And preparing chips to operate in space generally involves completely different “rad-hard” processes, involving different types of wafer chemistry, that are nowhere near the 2nm process node.
Musk is a smart guy. I bet he can eek a few performance gains out of how his fabs are organized, AI line optimization, etc. But unless he’s smarter than Einstein, Thomas Edison, Tony Stark and Reed Richards combined, I’m hard-pressed to see how he can optimize more than, say, 15% over existing cutting edge fabs.
Nothing Musk has proposed for the earth-bound side of Terafab is impossible, but it is all-but-impossible to implement in the time-frames he’s alleging, for the money he’s claiming. One million wafer starts a month in a single fab? Doable, but not by 2027, and not for $25 billion. Having such a fab up and running full tilt in 2029-2030, for $100 billion, seems at least at the edge of feasibility. Whether the AI boom will still be a “thing” by then is unknown, but a fab actually capable of one million wafer starts a month (robots or no robots) is still a license to print money…
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.”
