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🇺🇸🇮🇶🇮🇷 The U.S. has blocked a $500 million cash delivery to Iraq to pressure Baghdad into dismantling Iran-backed militias.

• A cargo plane carrying nearly $500M in physical banknotes was blocked by the Treasury Department
• It's the second such shipment delayed since the Iran war began in February
• The money is Iraq's own oil revenue, held at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York since a 2003 decision by Paul Bremer
• Iraq literally cannot pay salaries, food and medicine without U.S. approval of these transfers
• U.S. facilities across Iraq, including the Baghdad embassy, came under drone and rocket attack during the war
• Washington is also unhappy with both candidates being considered for Iraq's new prime minister

The U.S. has held this lever over Iraq since 2003. They just decided to use it.
Source: WSJ
 
Great, now that asshole is going to erase the win in the Iraq war trying to win in Iran...inconceivable.
 


The blockade just went global.

US forces fast-roped onto M/T Majestic X overnight.

Indian Ocean, Southwest of Sri Lanka.

5,000 miles from Hormuz.

Iranian crude.
Sanctioned vessel.
Stateless flag.

Boarded, Secured, No injuries.

This is the 2nd Iran-linked tanker seized in days.

31 vessels ordered to turn back since April 13.

The Pentagon's message was explicit:
"International waters cannot be used as a shield."

There is no safe route for Iranian oil.
Anywhere.

The shadow fleet that was moving sanctioned crude to Asia?
It just became a target wherever it sails.
This is a global naval squeeze on Iranian oil revenues.
And the market still hasn't priced it in.

Do not miss my latest article, to get the latest update on the market👇 https://open.substack.com/pub/theme...m_campaign=post-expanded-share&utm_medium=web
 

Chinese satellites over Mideast battlefield put US on edge​

Since the U.S. and Israel launched attacks against Iran in late February, Chinese satellite imagery of the conflict zone has proliferated—potentially offering battlefield guidance to Tehran and other U.S. adversaries.

U.S. concerns about the use of such data in the Middle East grew after the Chinese artificial-intelligence company MizarVision claimed on social media to have tracked the movements of American aircraft carriers, F-22 stealth fighters and B-52 bombers by using AI to analyze satellite data.

A Pentagon assessment of China’s military power published in December said China-based commercial satellite firms have participated in business exchanges with Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. The Pentagon didn’t elaborate and it couldn’t be determined whether and how Iran might be using Chinese imagery to guide its military operations.

More:

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/worl...d-put-us-on-edge/ar-AA21Af9m?ocid=socialshare
 
searcher

Post in thread 'Military Subjects & War Stories (Incldg the Cold War)'

Concerning logistics & the military supply chain in Iran.

US Naval Logistics in the Indian Ocean During Operation Epic Fury | Sealift & the US Merchant Marine​

April 24, 2026
Depictions of food being provided to American sailors and marines in the Indian Ocean has raised concerned about the quality and quantity of the food. While the story has been dismissed by the U.S. Navy, the shift from the use of bases in the Persian Gulf and Gulf of Oman, to those in the Indian and Pacific Oceans, thousands vice hundreds of miles away, have forced the Navy to adopt methods that have not been...
 


🚨 IRAN REALIZED TRUMP ISN’T BACKING DOWN

Iran for DAYS has been publicly acting tough

Now, for the first time in decades, 3 AIRCRAFT carriers are operating at the same time in the region

15K sailors and 200 aircraft.

47 HAS TOTAL CONTROL! 🇺🇸
 
Goldhedge said:


🚨 IRAN REALIZED TRUMP ISN’T BACKING DOWN

Iran for DAYS has been publicly acting tough

Now, for the first time in decades, 3 AIRCRAFT carriers are operating at the same time in the region

15K sailors and 200 aircraft.

47 HAS TOTAL CONTROL! 🇺🇸
Click to expand...

Trump is a pussy, Iran says bring it on....Taco Don will piss his diaper.
 


🇺🇸🇮🇷 Trump just swapped out his negotiating team. Vance stays home. Witkoff and Kushner go to Islamabad.

Iran made its position explicit weeks ago: if talks are going to produce any outcome, Vance needs to be in the room. With Witkoff and Kushner, nothing will come out of it. They had seen that before.

So Trump's response to Iran saying "send Vance" is to send the two people Iran specifically said produce nothing.

Now here's where it gets interesting.

Trump is simultaneously posting that Iran wants to make a deal "very badly" and that talks are going well. Iran is simultaneously saying its FM won't show up. Both cannot be true at the same time.

Headcanon time: Trump isn't trying to get a deal this round. He's buying time.

Sending a delegation Iran won't negotiate with while simultaneously rearming and regrouping military assets in the region would be a move that sounds genuinely scary for Tehran.

If that's what's happening, Iran sits currently between a rock and a hard place: try and negotiate your way out of a war the other party surgically prepares for.

Both sides publicly want a deal. Both sides are privately preparing for the alternative. And the current negotiating team is one that Iran has already told the world it won't talk to.

If that's a bluff it needs to land in the next 48 hours. If it isn't, the ceasefire that nobody officially agreed to is running out of road.
 


🇺🇸🇨🇳🇮🇷 Trump admin just sanctioned a major Chinese oil refinery along with roughly 40 shipping companies and tankers tied to Iranian oil transportation.

This is a significant escalation. The U.S. has sanctioned Iranian networks before, but going after Chinese infrastructure directly is a different kind of pressure.

Beijing is now being told: route Iranian oil and pay the price.

It's a test of how far Trump is willing to push China on Iran policy, and the answer so far is pretty far.

Source: Associated Press
 


🇮🇷🇺🇸 Iran's biggest negotiating obstacle isn't the U.S. It's Iran.

The cracks inside Tehran's leadership are spilling into public view in ways that didn't happen during the war.

Hardliners in the IRGC and Iranian parliament are openly attacking Ghalibaf and Araghchi for engaging on the nuclear file in round one.

One ultraconservative lawmaker who was in the Pakistan delegation went on state-aligned media and called the talks "a strategic mistake," saying the negotiators handed Washington leverage by even discussing the nuclear program.

The dynamic now playing out is brutal.

Hardliners in the Revolutionary Guard, newly empowered after the war, want to walk back what the diplomats already conceded.

The diplomats want sanctions relief and economic recovery for a country bleeding badly after 38 days of bombing.

Both factions are publicly accusing the other of damaging Iran's position.

Mediators say the Iranian delegation went vague the moment the U.S. pushed for specifics on issues Iran had previously said it was willing to discuss.

Then there's the absence at the center of all of it.

Mojtaba Khamenei hasn't been seen publicly since taking over. U.S. and Israeli officials and mediators broadly agree he is secluded, possibly injured, and unable to communicate freely.

The man who would historically make the hard call to end a war can't, or won't, make it.

The Iranian leadership tried to project unity today with Ghalibaf, Araghchi, and Pezeshkian issuing nearly identical statements declaring "in Iran there are no extremists or moderates."

But unanimous denials of disunity usually confirm the disunity.

And Trump has been very public about citing these divisions as the reason talks aren't moving forward.

The painful irony: Iran emerged from the war stronger militarily than the U.S. is publicly admitting, with leverage over Hormuz and a regime intact.

But it can't translate that strength into a deal because nobody inside Tehran has the authority to spend the political capital required to actually close one.

Source: WSJ
 
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