Iran

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Please pound Israel into dust, please free America from the israeli yoke, please free Palestine....
 

Alastair Crooke: Trump’s Final Gamble: Iran Dares to Strike Back​

 
Just a little question to ponder.............

Could Epstein have gotten some super duper dirt on T, sent it to Israel and now Israel is using it against T to get him to do their bidding in the middle east?
 


1991 deployment was very large in terms of troops and was the last major victory of the US military.

In order to reduce troops to 150k, Rumsfeld forced "shock & awe" on the military in 2003.

This time, there are no troops (40k), no shock & awe (no rare earths), just some carriers and ships which will be damaged by drones & missiles & boats in no time. Maybe some submarines, but what will their fire? Same limitations...

US doesn't have a winning hand here.

General Schwarzkopf is turning around in his grave 😱
 

#1007 - Tom Luongo & LTC Steven Murray​

We discuss Iran, Mexico and Alberta Independence.

Tom Luongo is a former research chemist, amateur dairy goat farmer, libertarian, and economist whose work can be found on Zero Hedge and Newsmax Media. He hosts the Gold Goats ‘n Guns Podcast.

LTC Steven Murray is a retired U.S. Army Lieutenant Colonel who served as an Information Warfare Officer and Cyber Defense Battalion Commander. With extensive experience in cyber operations and intelligence, he commanded units supporting the United States Pacific Command, U.S. Army Pacific Forces, and the National Security Agency. He was deployed to Iraq during Operation Enduring Freedom, earning a Bronze Star, and has held roles such as Chief Information Security Officer for a large medical company.
 


The US just handed Iran a document that is not a negotiation. It is a capitulation order.

The Wall Street Journal obtained the American demands presented in Geneva today. Destroy Fordow. Destroy Natanz. Destroy Isfahan. Hand over every gram of enriched uranium to the United States. Zero enrichment permanently, no sunset clauses, no expiration dates. Behave for the rest of your lives. In exchange, minimal sanctions relief upfront with more only if you comply with everything forever.

Iran’s counterproposal, approved personally by Khamenei, arrived showing almost no change from the previous round. A 3-to-5 year enrichment suspension. Increased IAEA oversight. Willingness to dilute stockpiles. But zero flexibility on the one demand Washington says is non-negotiable: permanent zero enrichment on Iranian soil.

The gap between these two positions is not a negotiation gap. It is the distance between sovereignty and surrender. And no government in the history of nuclear diplomacy has voluntarily dismantled its own program, surrendered its own fissile material to its adversary, and accepted permanent restrictions with no expiration while that adversary had 500 aircraft parked on its doorstep.

The FDD’s Andrea Stricker called it a “suicide mission.” She is right, but not the way she means it. These demands are designed to be rejected. A proposal that requires a sovereign nation to physically destroy three of its own facilities and hand its enriched uranium to the country threatening to bomb it is not diplomacy. It is the paperwork you file before the paperwork becomes irrelevant.

Barak Ravid confirmed today’s talks were both indirect and direct, with a pause for consultations. That pause is the tell. When both sides need to consult after the first session, it means the positions presented were further apart than either side expected to encounter. Araghchi’s “good outlook” from yesterday has already collided with the reality of what Washington put on the table.
Now hold this against what is happening outside the room.

The demands say destroy Fordow. The F-22s at Ovda exist to destroy Fordow. The demands say dismantle Natanz. The B-2s at Whiteman carry the GBU-57s that reach Natanz. The demands say eliminate Isfahan. The Tomahawks on two carrier strike groups are programmed for Isfahan. Every demand in the document has a military equivalent already in theater. The negotiating position is a target list with diplomatic formatting.

Iran is being asked to do voluntarily what the United States is prepared to do by force. The document is not an alternative to the strike. The document is the strike translated into legalese, presented one last time before the translation becomes unnecessary.

Geneva is not where this gets resolved.

Geneva is where the historical record gets established. The United States offered terms. Iran rejected the core demand. The diplomatic predicate for military action was constructed in a hotel conference room while 500 aircraft waited outside.

The curtain went up today in Geneva. But the show was never in the building. The show is on the tarmacs at Ovda, on the flight decks of the Ford and Lincoln, in the bomb bays of B-2s sitting in Missouri, and on the coral runway at Diego Garcia where the refueling corridor begins.

Geneva is the intermission. The next act does not require a negotiating table.

open.substack.com

The Arithmetic of Collapse: Iran’s Seven-Crisis Doom Loop and the Most Mispriced Risk Premium in Global Markets

Your Brent Model Prices a War. It Should Price a State Decomposing From Seven Irreversible Crises the Smart Money Already Sees.
open.substack.com open.substack.com
 


China just published annotated satellite imagery of every F-22 Raptor at Israel’s Ovda Air Base. Each aircraft individually tagged in Chinese characters on Weibo. Eleven stealth fighters that cost $67 billion to develop for the sole purpose of being invisible, cataloged and distributed on social media like a restaurant menu.

The same week, China sold Iran CM-302 supersonic anti-ship missiles. The same week, China photographed every warship leaving Bahrain. And today, as Geneva talks began, Politico dropped the real bombshell buried beneath the diplomacy: senior Trump advisers prefer Israel to strike Iran first because “the politics are a lot better.”

Read that sentence until it burns.

Washington does not want to throw the first punch. Washington wants Israel to throw it, absorb Iran’s retaliation, and then use that retaliation as political justification for the full American response. The 500 aircraft, the two carriers, the F-22s, the C-17s, the munitions, all of it positioned not to lead but to follow. Israel pulls the trigger. Iran retaliates. America enters as the defender, not the aggressor. The politics are a lot better.

This is not a military strategy. This is a liability structure. And Israel knows it, which is why JPost reports Israeli officials believe the US should lead, not follow. Both allies want the other to go first. That hesitation is the most dangerous variable in the entire crisis.

Meanwhile in Geneva today, Araghchi arrived saying a deal has a “good outlook.” The talks are ongoing. No outcome. No breakthrough. No collapse. Just process, buying hours while the architecture outside the negotiating room grows by the day.

Now here is the dimension that explains everything China is doing.

Every missile the United States fires at Iran is a missile it cannot fire at China. Fox News reported in December that the US could burn through key munitions in one week of conflict over Taiwan. The Pentagon’s own war games show critical shortfalls in long-range anti-ship missiles, precision-guided munitions, and interceptors. An Iran campaign consuming hundreds of Tomahawks and thousands of JDAMs directly degrades the stockpile earmarked for the Taiwan contingency.

China is not just arming Iran. China is not just photographing American bases. China is measuring whether the United States will commit irreplaceable munitions to a Middle Eastern conflict while the Taiwan Strait remains unwatched. Every JDAM dropped on Fordow is a JDAM absent from a Taiwan scenario. Every Tomahawk spent on Isfahan is a destroyer magazine that will not be full when it matters most.

Beijing is running a strategic stress test in real time. Arm the adversary. Map the force disposition. Publish it to degrade operational security. Then watch whether Washington depletes itself against a regional power while the peer competitor conserves everything.

Iran is the bait. Taiwan is the prize. And every satellite image China publishes is a page in the manual they are writing for what comes after. https://open.substack.com/pub/shana...tic-of-collapse-irans?r=6p7b5o&utm_medium=ios
 
China going to help make this bloody, good....tired of American government being Israel's bitch.
 
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US advises embassy staff in Israel to leave now if they want, as risk of war hangs over Middle East​

TEL AVIV, Israel (AP) — The U.S. Embassy in Israel on Friday told its staff that it could leave the country and urged anyone considering departure to do so immediately, as the threat of an American strike on Iran looms.

U.S. Ambassador Mike Huckabee told embassy employees in an email that discussions with officials in Washington had led to a decision authorizing departures for those who wished to leave.

The email was recounted to The Associated Press by someone involved with the U.S. mission who wasn't authorized to share details. Sent before 10:30 a.m., it urged staff considering departure to do so quickly, advising them to to focus initially on getting any flight out of Israel and to then make their way to Washington.

More:

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/worl...over-middle-east/ar-AA1XbZtR?ocid=socialshare
 
We're going in. Chins and Canadians are evacuating Iran now.

Looking for regime change now is my best guess. Watch PMs make new highs for bad reasons.
 
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