Here’s the most surreal part of all of this: Iran didn’t even need to physically close the Strait of Hormuz. Iran has deployed selective drone and rocket attacks. That’s been enough for shipping companies and the insurers who underwrite them to balk at the risk of sending ships through the strait. The insurance companies said no. That was it. Fifteen hundred years of naval strategy, … Continue reading The Insurance Companies May Have Ended The #USIranWar

This war didn’t start on February 28. The strikes follow the failure of recent indirect talks between the US and Iran in early February 2026. The talks themselves followed the October 2025 triggering of the snapback sanctions against Iran under the 2015 nuclear deal by the UK, Germany and France. Together, sanctions, failed talks and airstrikes form a sequence. A chain. Every link was a … Continue reading The Sanctions Came First

Trump said regime change on day one. Then he walked it back. Then it came back. Trump’s goals for the war have shifted from regime change to stopping Iran from developing nuclear capabilities to crippling its navy and missile programs. In five days! The goal of the war changed three times in five days! It looks like man making it up as he goes with … Continue reading What Does Regime change Actually Mean?

The strikes follow the failure of recent indirect talks between the US and Iran on Iran’s nuclear programme in early February 2026. Early February, that’s three weeks before the bombs. Talks were happening and negotiations were underway. And then the bombs. On 25 February 2026, Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi stated that a “historic” agreement with the United States was possible. Three days before the … Continue reading Diplomacy?

Rep. Seth Moulton, who served with the Marines during the United States’ second war in Iraq, said: “The two basic problems with Bush’s War in Iraq were that it was based on a lie and there was no plan for what comes next.” He served. He was there. He knows what the inside of one of these disasters looks like. And he’s watching the same … Continue reading The Veterans Know How This Ends

One question in coming days and weeks will be whether Iran will look to Hezbollah to be a part of that escalatory response, including against U.S. targets and targets inside Israel. Hezbollah has already launched rockets at Haifa. They haven’t gone all in yet. They’re calculating. Watching. Waiting to see how badly Iran bleeds before deciding whether to fully commit. Meanwhile, Israeli air attacks on … Continue reading Hezbollah is Watching

The greatest beneficiaries of the United States’ grave violations of international law are the very actors whom Washington would normally seek to restrain: Moscow will be emboldened to continue its barbaric assault on Ukraine, while China will feel vindicated. Russia gets higher oil prices. Russia gets a distracted America. Russia gets a weakened international legal order that it can point to and say, see, everyone … Continue reading Russia Must He Loving Every Bit Of This As Putin Laughs All The Way To The Bank

The operation began with joint strikes by the US and Israel which included the assassination of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, whose compound was destroyed, as well as Ali Shamkhani and several other Iranian officials. Khamenei is dead. The head of state of a nation of 90 million people was killed by a foreign government without a declaration of war, without a trial, without any legal … Continue reading Khamenei is Dead. Now what?