Israel’s Missile Shield Is Running On Fumes

Israel just told Washington it’s running critically low on ballistic missile interceptors, while officially denying to its own public that there’s any problem at all. The war with Iran already started with depleted stocks after last summer’s barrage, and Iran has upgraded to missiles with cluster munitions — great for saturating defenses, terrible for anyone under the sky.

“It’s something we expected and anticipated,”

a US official said — translation: they watched the ammo meter hit red and kept the tab open.
​
Washington insists its own interceptor supply is fine, totally fine, “not like Israel,” even as think tanks and leaks warn that a long war with Iran is exactly how you hollow out your missile defense on layaway. The US blew through over 150 high-end THAAD interceptors in a 12‑day Iran fight last June — roughly a quarter of the inventory — and is believed to have burned about 2.4 billion dollars’ worth of Patriot missiles in the first five days of this new round. Trump calls the stockpile “virtually unlimited,” while the Pentagon quietly signs emergency production deals and budget lines scream the opposite.

Israel’s foreign minister publicly denies they’re low on interceptors, but the same week the State Department rushes through an “emergency” sale of 12,000 BLU‑110 bomb bodies to Israel and waives congressional review, because apparently there’s always enough time to argue about pronouns but no time to vote on a thousand‑pound shipment. Missiles for defense are running out, but the pipeline for more offensive bombs is wide open — the arsenal might be shrinking, but the business model is booming.

The White House swears US stockpiles are “more than enough” for Trump’s goals “and beyond,” the Pentagon says it can execute any mission “at the time and place” of his choosing, and a defense secretary boasts that Iran’s ballistic missile production is “functionally defeated.” At the same time, Iran openly says there’s no room for diplomacy and that it’s ready for a long war, while Trump describes the whole thing as a “short-term excursion” that will last “as long as it’s necessary” because the enemy is “decimated” and “collapsing.” So either everyone’s winning or everyone’s lying — and the interceptors don’t care, they just run out.

If the shield is thinning, the political armor is still thick: US officials insist they have “all that we need to protect our bases,” Israel is “coming up with solutions,” and defense contractors are praised for being called upon to “quickly build US-made weapons.” The only real emergency, judging by who gets fast‑tracked, is making sure the factories never sleep — because in this version of “collective security,” the only thing that must not be intercepted is the cash flow.

#war #Israel #Iran #USA #Trump #missileDefense #IronDome #THAAD #Patriot #militaryindustrialcomplex #fakeDemocracy #geopolitics #MiddleEast #nuclearcrisis #weaponsDeal

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Druzhba™: Europe Wants Oil, Zelensky Wants Cash, Russia Wants the Drama

Brussels just discovered that its “values-based foreign policy” runs on Soviet-era steel pipes called Druzhba — “Friendship” — that don’t work, don’t belong to it, and don’t even pump its own oil.

Hungary and Slovakia are screaming that Ukraine is blocking Russian crude, Budapest is vetoing a 90‑billion‑euro EU loan to Kyiv, and the Commission is politely asking Zelensky to fix the pipeline that Moscow “repeatedly destroyed.” Friendship, but make it extortion.

According to Kyiv, the Druzhba section in Lviv was hammered by a Russian drone strike in January and is too dangerous to repair; according to Hungary and Slovakia, Ukraine is deliberately dragging its feet to weaponize the oil flow.

Zelensky calls the EU pressure “blackmail,” says sending technicians under Russian missiles is “too high a price,” and reminds everyone that Russian oil, which finances the war, “has no place” on the European market. Translation: you want cheap Russian crude, you fix the war first.

Brussels, stuck between Orbán’s veto and Zelensky’s war logic, suddenly wants inspectors on Ukrainian soil to check the damage — something the Commission has literally never done before. EU leaders hint at financial sweeteners to speed up repairs, while insisting Ukraine already has enough foreign cash to cover regular spending until April. In other words: here’s your credit line, now turn the faucet back on.

Hungary openly says it will block the 90‑billion‑euro loan to Ukraine until oil starts flowing again through Druzhba, all while tapping its strategic reserves and shouting that it is the victim of extortion.

Kyiv counters that Budapest and Bratislava are effectively freezing Ukrainians in winter while demanding that the country repair a Russian-targeted pipeline under fire so EU refineries can keep processing Kremlin crude. Everybody accuses everybody of blackmail — and for once, everybody’s right.

So you get a perfect late‑imperial scene: the EU posing in blue‑and‑yellow outfits, pledging “unwavering support,” while quietly telling Kyiv to patch up the Russian oil artery; Hungary and Slovakia waving the 90‑billion loan like a baseball bat; and Ukraine trying to turn a broken pipeline into leverage in a war that’s literally funded by the product inside it.

The only principle that really holds this together is that no one wants to stop the war badly enough to stop the oil.

#Ukraine #EU #Druzhba #oil #Hungary #Slovakia #Zelensky #Orbán #Russia #energy #war #blackmail #geopolitics #fakeDemocracy #oligarchy

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Hormuz: High-Tech Drones, Stone-Age Problem

The West is selling a sci‑fi solution to a very old scam: Iran hints it’s mining the Strait of Hormuz, tanker traffic freezes, oil spikes — and suddenly everyone remembers that a 25‑mile-wide chokepoint owns the global economy. UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer talks up fancy Thales mine‑hunting drones, but the fine print is brutal: they’ve got limited batteries, need to beam data back to motherships sitting inside range of Iranian anti‑ship missiles, and can’t “prove” the one thing that matters — that nothing is left in the water.

“The number of mines you need for a minefield is actually zero,”

says retired US Navy officer Ben Cipperley.
​
Britain’s defense secretary John Healey says it’s getting “clearer and clearer” that Iran is laying explosives in Hormuz, while US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth shrugs that there’s “no clear evidence” yet — one NATO ally yelling “mines,” another pretending this is still a think‑tank panel. Trump brags that the US has “hit all their minelaying ships” and bombs Iranian navy vessels, then immediately admits Iran can just toss mines off other boats anyway and nobody really knows what’s on the seabed. This is what “freedom of navigation” looks like in 2026: everyone claims control of the sea, nobody controls the rumor that shuts it down.

Militaries do have mine warfare toys — crewed minesweepers with wooden hulls, littoral combat ships, helicopters towing sonars, uncrewed underwater vehicles, and now autonomous drone systems from companies like Thales — but they all share one handicap: they have to crawl, in predictable patterns, through waters that Iran can blanket with missiles, drones, and explosive boats. Clearing mines is up to a thousand times more expensive and slower than laying them, and the US doesn’t even keep dedicated Avenger‑class minesweepers in the Gulf anymore. So the “high‑tech” answer is basically to send robots first, then hope insurers and shipping CEOs are dumb or desperate enough to believe a PowerPoint that says “safe corridor.”

Iran, whose regular military has been hammered by US‑Israeli strikes, doesn’t need a blue‑water navy as long as it can threaten Hormuz with a couple of dhows, some midget subs, and a stockpile of cheap mines detonated by contact or a ship’s magnetic field. Just the suspicion of a few dozen mines makes the strait “too dangerous to transit” for tankers from any country — including Iran’s — turning a third‑rate regional power into the de facto moderator of world energy prices. The US and UK can talk all they want about “reopening” Hormuz, but as long as a rumor and a rusty sphere can shut it down, the only guaranteed safe passage belongs to defense contractors’ earnings calls.

#Hormuz #Iran #Trump #UK #Starmer #oil #shipping #mines #drones #StraitOfHormuz #war #energy #geopolitics #militaryindustrialcomplex #fakeSecurity

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Is Trump Close To Wring Promises Of a Nuclear Decrease in Iranian Program

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Britain’s national security adviser, Jonathan Powell, attended the final talks between the US and Iran and judged that the offer made by Tehran on its nuclear programme was significant enough to prevent a rush to war, the Guardian can reveal.

Powell thought progress had been made in Geneva and that the deal proposed by Iran was “surprising”, according to sources.

Two days after the talks ended, and after a date had been agreed for a further round of technical talks in Vienna, the US and Israel launched the attack on Iran.

Powell’s presence at the talks, and his close knowledge of how they were progressing, was confirmed by three sources.

One source said he was in the building at Oman’s ambassadorial residence in Cologny acting as an adviser, reflecting widespread concern about the US expertise on the talks represented by Donald Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff, Trump’s special envoy on several issues.

Kushner and Witkoff had invited Rafael Grossi, the director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), to the Geneva talks, to provide technical expertise, though Kushner would later claim that he and Witkoff had “a pretty deep understanding of the issues that matter in this”.

Nuclear experts would later say that Witkoff’s pronouncements on the Iran nuclear programme were riddled with basic errors.

Powell has long experience as a mediator, and one source said Powell brought an expert from the UK Cabinet Office with him. One western diplomat said:

“Jonathan thought there was a deal to be done, but Iran were not quite there yet, especially on the issue of UN inspections of its nuclear sites.”

A former official who was briefed on the Geneva talks by some of the participants said: “Witkoff and Kushner did not bring a US technical team with them. They used Grossi as their technical expert, but that is not his job. So Jonathan Powell took his own team.

“The UK team were surprised by what the Iranians put on the table,” the former official added. “It was not a complete deal, but it was progress and was unlikely to be the Iranians’ final offer. The British team expected the next round of negotiations to go ahead on the basis of the progress in Geneva.”

#trump #iran #witkoff #kushner #iran #nuclear

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That next round of talks was due to take place in Vienna on Monday 2 March, but never happened. The US and Israel had launched their all-out attack two days earlier.

Powell’s attendance at the Geneva talks, as well as a previous set of meetings earlier in the month in the Swiss city, helps in part to explain the UK government’s reluctance to back the US attack on Iran, a reluctance that has put the UK-US relationship under unprecedented strain.

The UK saw no compelling evidence of an imminent threat of a Iranian missile attack on Europe, or of Iran securing a nuclear weapon.

This is the first time it has become clear that Britain was so closely involved in the talks, and so had good reason to decide whether diplomatic options had been exhausted and a US attack was necessary.

Instead the UK regarded the attack as unlawful and premature since Powell believed the path remained open to a negotiated solution to the long-running issue of how Iran could reassure the US that it was not seeking a nuclear weapon.

Starmer has been repeatedly lambasted by Trump for not doing more to support the US attack, including by initially refusing to let America use British military bases, and only allowing them to be used later for defensive purposes after Iran started attacking UK Gulf allies.

Trump has warned it could be bad for Nato if its European member states do not answer his call to help open the strait of Hormuz, a demand that has been declined.

The indirect talks in Geneva between Iran and the US were being mediated by Oman’s foreign minister, Badr bin Hamad Al Busaidi.

Gulf diplomats did not specify on what basis Powell had been given access to the talks, but it may reflect the relationship he has managed to build with the US over the years, including previously as chief of staff to Tony Blair.

UK officials have subsequently explained they were impressed that Iran was prepared for the deal to be permanent and, unlike the 2015 nuclear agreement, would not have cut-off dates, or sunset clauses ending the restrictions on its programme.

Iran had also agreed to down-blend the 400kg stockpile of highly enriched uranium under the supervision of the IAEA inside Iran.

It agreed no stockpiles of highly enriched uranium would be built up in the future.

In the final session of the talks, Iran agreed to a three- to-five-year pause on domestic enrichment, but the US in the afternoon session, after consultations with Trump, demanded a 10-year pause. In practice, Iran had no means to enrich domestically because of the bombing of its enrichment plants in 2015.

Iran had also made an offer of what the mediators described as an economic bonanza, with the US being given the chance to participate in a future civil nuclear programme.

In return, nearly 80% of the economic sanctions on Iran would have been lifted, including assets frozen in Qatar, a demand Iran made in the 2025 talks.

The Oman mediator believed the offer of zero stockpiling of highly enriched uranium was a breakthrough that meant an agreement was within reach.

Accounts differ on whether Kushner left the talks giving the impression Trump would welcome what had been agreed, or that the US negotiators knew it would take something massive to persuade Trump that war was not the best option. One diplomat with knowledge of the talks said:

“We regarded Witkoff and Kushner as Israeli assets that dragged a president into a war he wants to get out of.”

#trump #iran #witkoff #kushner #iran #nuclear

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📰 Israel Says Larijani Is Dead. Tehran Hasn’t Cashed the Receipt Yet.

Israel’s Defense Minister Israel Katz says Ali Larijani and Basij commander Gholamreza Soleimani were killed overnight, framing it as another step in the hunt for Iran’s leadership. Reuters reports the claim marks a major escalation, but also notes that Iran has not yet confirmed Larijani’s death. That matters. In this war, assassination claims are also information operations until the other side is forced to bury the body.

If true, this is not just another decapitation strike. Larijani is not a field commander or a disposable militia face. He has been one of the regime’s senior political-security brains — a man who lived at the intersection of nuclear doctrine, elite bargaining, and state continuity. The Basij chief is a different kind of scalp: not strategic theory, but domestic repression. Put together, the target set says Israel is not only trying to break Iran’s war machine. It is trying to thin out the people who keep the regime coherent at home and legible to itself.

Katz’s phrasing is revealing too. He did not present the strike as a military necessity alone. He presented it as part of a political extermination list — “the leadership of the terror and repression regime.” That is the language of a campaign moving beyond counterforce into regime attrition. Once you are openly hunting the top layer, the war is no longer about degrading capabilities. It is about making state succession itself unstable.

The only missing piece this morning is Tehran’s answer. If Iran confirms Larijani’s death, the regime will have to prove continuity under fire one more time. If it stays silent, that silence will still cost something, because uncertainty at the top is its own form of damage. Either way, Israel is sending the same message again: missiles hit infrastructure, but assassinations hit confidence.

#BabylonBurning #Iran #Larijani #Israel #FollowTheMoney

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Trump went to war with Iran and discovered his real enemy was the math.

According to AP, two weeks after the first US–Israeli strikes, he’s angrier at the media than at Tehran, still can’t explain why the war started or how it ends, and his approval numbers are sliding while oil and fear go up. Americans see dead service members, $100 oil, red stock screens — and hear a president ranting about “unfair coverage” instead of giving them a story that isn’t pure chaos.

Budget analysts now peg the war cost at roughly 1 billion dollars a day when you add operations, munitions, deployments, and replenishment — before interest on the debt and long-term care for the wounded. Iran’s regime is still standing, still controlling the streets, still firing back, while Trump manages to look weak at home and reckless abroad: the worst of both worlds for a guy who sells himself as “America First” and “a winner.”

So the political headline writes itself: every 24 hours, Washington burns another billion dollars on a war the president can’t explain and can’t win fast — and the only thing collapsing on schedule is his approval rating.

#IranWar #Trump #USA #elections #oil #markets #warCost #taxpayers #fakeLeadership #geopolitics

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Europe’s “Peace Plan”: Surrender for Cheap Gas

Belgium’s prime minister just said the quiet part out loud: Europe can’t scare Russia, can’t choke it economically without Washington, and should go cut a deal with Moscow anyway.

Bart De Wever openly argues the EU needs a formal mandate to negotiate over Ukraine because the current strategy — drip‑feeding weapons and sanctions while hoping Putin “collapses” — is fantasy marketing, not policy.

“Since we are not capable of threatening Putin by sending weapons to Ukraine, and we cannot suffocate him economically without US support, only one method remains: making a deal.”

— Bart De Wever.

Behind closed doors, De Wever says other European leaders agree with him, they just don’t dare say it on camera. In public, they repeat the script about “bringing Russia to its knees”; in private, they watch Trump flirt with Putin, count on cheap Russian oil and gas to keep their economies breathing, and fear being left out when Washington eventually forces Kyiv into a settlement. Europe, in his version, is not a co‑author of the endgame — it’s a nervous extra waiting in the corridor while the real deal gets done elsewhere.

De Wever isn’t even pretending this is about justice first; he talks openly about “normalising” relations and “regaining access to cheap energy” as common sense. He warns that without a mandate to negotiate in Moscow, the EU won’t even be at the table “where the Americans will push Ukraine to accept a deal,” and that whatever emerges will be “a bad agreement for us.” Translation: Europe wants out — but on its terms, with gas flowing and a moral alibi intact.

And that’s the joke: for two years, Brussels sold “no business as usual with Putin,” “victory for Ukraine,” and “strategic autonomy.” Now one prime minister says Europe can’t win the war, can’t pay the bill, can’t even fake unity without the US — so the only “strategy” left is to crawl back to the same Kremlin it swore to isolate, and call it peace.

#Ukraine #EU #Belgium #DeWever #Russia #Putin #energy #war #geopolitics #fakeAutonomy #cheapGas

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Israel just got “nudged” under the nuclear bus — by Washington’s own tech-whisperer.

Trump’s AI and crypto adviser David Sacks is openly warning that if the Israel–Iran war drags on for weeks or months, Israel could face “destruction or very large parts of it” and might then consider using nuclear weapons — the classic “doomsday” option everyone pretends doesn’t exist.

He calls such a move “truly catastrophic,” but the framing is neat: the scenario is laid out, the fear is injected, and the actor of last resort is not the United States, but Israel.

This isn’t some random pundit; it’s a presidential adviser floating, on a popular podcast, the idea that Israel under existential pressure could cross the nuclear line — while the U.S. still claims to be in control of escalation.

At the same time, Sacks says it’s “a good time to declare victory and get out,” warning of disastrous retaliation options on the Iranian side and a region that could become uninhabitable if things spiral. In other words: Washington knows it’s playing with matches in a dynamite warehouse, and is already rehearsing who will be blamed if the roof goes.

The signal to the world is brutal: the U.S. can’t guarantee a clean win, can’t rule out nuclear use in a war it helped start, and is pre‑narrating the story where Israel becomes the one that “went too far.”

If a “doomsday weapon” ever leaves the silo, the script is ready: America was worried, warned, wanted an off‑ramp — and its closest ally simply lost control.

#Israel #Iran #Trump #nuclear #doomsdayWeapon #USA #MiddleEast #war #geopolitics #fakeInnocence

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Iran’s Number 2 Confirmed Dead

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Iran’s supreme national security council has confirmed the death of its chief, Ali Larijani, after Israel said it had killed him in an airstrike.

“The pure souls of the martyrs embraced the purified soul of God’s righteous servant, Martyr Dr Ali Larijani,” the council said on Tuesday evening, adding that his son and his bodyguards had died with him.

“After a lifetime of struggle for the advancement of Iran and of the Islamic Revolution, he ultimately attained his long-held aspiration, answered the divine call, and honourably achieved the sweet grace of martyrdom in the trench of service,” it added.

Israel said earlier it had killed Larijani, a linchpin of Iranian politics, in overnight strikes. He is the most senior Iranian figure to die in the war since the supreme leader Ali Khamenei was killed on its first day.

His death removes a pivotal figure at the heart of the regime’s political and security establishment at a moment of acute crisis and represents a devastating blow.

Israel’s defence minister, Israel Katz, said a separate strike had killed the Basij paramilitary force commander, Gholamreza Soleimani, along with other senior Basij figures. Soleimani’s death was later confirmed by Iranian state media.

“Larijani and the Basij commander were eliminated overnight and joined the head of the annihilation programme, Khamenei, and all the eliminated members of the axis of evil, in the depths of hell,” Katz said on Tuesday.

Trump also hailed Larijani’s reported death, without actually naming him but referring to his supposed role in spearheading the recent crushing of mass protests. “Their leaders are gone,” Trump said of Iran’s clerical regime. “It’s an evil group. I mean, they’ve killed much more than 32,000 people. And the man who was responsible for that was also killed yesterday.”
The twin deaths show Israel still retains intelligence on the movements of Iran’s top leaders inside Tehran, and can use it and the US’s near complete control of Iranian airspace to strike at will.

Larijani had been seen days earlier on the crowded streets of Tehran during the annual Quds day rally.

He was appointed secretary of the supreme national security council in August after the previous US-Israeli attacks on Iran in June 2025, and on Monday issued a statement to Muslims around the world appealing to them to support Iran in its struggle and challenging Gulf leaders to explain why they were still allowing US bases in their countries to be used to attack Iran.

Larijani had also played a key diplomatic role before the war alongside Iran’s foreign minister Araghchi, in trying to persuade the Gulf states to prevent an attack. He forcibly defended Tehran’s tactics in the war, but was seen as a possible transitional figure at the end of the conflict. Israel is sceptical about the concept of a transition from within the regime.

The Turkish foreign minister, Hakan Fidan, said: “The political assassinations perpetrated by Israel, including those of Iranian statesmen and politicians, constitute illegal acts contrary to the laws of war.”

The office of the Israeli prime minister said in a statement that Netanyahu had ordered “the elimination of senior officials of the Iranian regime”.

#larijani #dead #iran #trump #hormuz

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The US-Israeli war on Iran is in its third week, with at least 2,000 people killed and no end in sight. The strait of Hormuz remains largely closed off and US allies have rebuffed calls from the US president, Donald Trump, for them to help to reopen the vital waterway, through which about 20% of global oil and liquefied natural gas flows.

Probably more than any other Iranian politician, Larijani combined Iran’s military and political strategy. His death will confirm the prime role the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps plays in Iranian politics. On Monday, a former long-time IRGC commander, Mohsen Rezaee, was appointed military adviser to the new supreme leader.

Larijani had been seen as one of the more pragmatic faces of Iran’s establishment – who helped steer nuclear negotiations with the west – but that image later hardened. Hours after US and Israeli strikes killed Khamenei, Larijani delivered a defiant message, warning that Iran would make its enemies “regret” their actions and promising a forceful response.

An Israeli official said a strike on Larijani had originally been planned for the previous night but was postponed at the last minute.

Intelligence received on Monday afternoon indicated that Larijani was due to arrive at one of several apartments he used as a hideout, the official said. He was reportedly there with his son when the strike was carried out.

When news he had been targeted began to circulate early on Tuesday, with his fate remaining unclear, another senior Israeli official said “there was no chance he survived this attack”.

In a handwritten statement issued by Iran state TV, Larijani had praised the bravery of Iranian sailors who were killed when their ship was hit by missiles fired by a US submarine off the Sri Lankan coast.

He had written: “Their memory will always remain in the heart of the Iranian nation and these martyrdoms will strengthen the foundation of the Islamic Republic army for years within the structure of the armed forces.”

Born in Najaf, Iraq, in 1958 he studied in Tehran and after the Islamic revolution rose through the ranks of the state, serving as culture minister, head of state broadcasting and, for more than a decade, as speaker of parliament.

As chief nuclear negotiator, he played a key role in shaping Iran’s engagement with world powers, later backing the 2015 nuclear deal.

Though often regarded as a pragmatist within the system, his stance had hardened in recent months, as tensions with Israel and the US escalated and diplomatic efforts faltered.

The US had offered a reward of up to $10m for information on senior Iranian military and intelligence officials, including Larijani, as part of a list of 10 figures linked to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.

#larijani #dead #iran #trump #hormuz

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Epic Fury: Trump’s War Needs a Fake Ending

Trump’s Iran war has hit the episode where the writers are out of plot but the explosions keep getting more expensive. Two weeks in, the “short, decisive operation” has turned into a regional fire, 100‑dollar oil, spooked markets, dead Americans and zero sign that Tehran is collapsing on cue. The script keeps adding casualties and shocks, but there is still no believable finale.

The choice in Washington is now brutally simple, even if nobody wants to say it that way. Trump can keep pushing toward his original fantasy of crippling Iran, forcing political surrender and “reshaping the Middle East,” and in doing so own every extra casualty, every tanker risk and every new hit to the global economy.

Or he can improvise a “mission accomplished” exit, point at a few bombed bases and dead commanders, rebrand that as a “historic victory” and get out before voters directly connect this war bill to their rent, gas and retirement accounts.

Iran has already made its move: it is refusing to quit, widening the battlefield, threatening the Strait of Hormuz, bleeding regional infrastructure and betting that American patience and political capital will run out long before its own.

The longer this drags on, the less it looks like strength and the more it looks like Trump allowed himself to be pulled into an unwinnable subscription war with US taxpayers paying per episode while allies quietly back away.

In the end, the real question is not victory or defeat in any classic sense, but whether the president can stage a convincing ending to his own narrative. He needs to declare that “the mission” is complete, blame everyone else for the chaos and step off the stage before a third week of war hardens into a third year’s problem.

The main battlefield is no longer the Middle East; it is the moment he has to face the public and explain why this war started, why it spiraled and why, after so much damage, anyone should still believe it was worth it.

#IranWar #Trump #EpicFury #USA #MiddleEast #oil #warCost #geopolitics #fakeVictory

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“Not Our War”: Europe Tests Trump’s Loyalty Test

Trump spent years trashing NATO, and now he’s shocked that the same allies won’t line up to die for his Iran adventure in the Strait of Hormuz. Germany’s defense minister Boris Pistorius put it in one clean sentence:

“This is not our war; we did not start it.”

From Berlin to London and Rome, leaders are politely, and not so politely, saying no to sending warships to ram open a shipping lane for a conflict Washington and Jerusalem launched without asking them first.
​
European officials aren’t even hiding the logic. EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas says the bloc has “no appetite” to expand its naval mission to Hormuz and calls it “not Europe’s war,” even while admitting European interests and energy security are directly on the line.

Britain’s Keir Starmer talks about mine-hunting drones and “not being drawn into a wider war,” France and Spain stall, Italy backs away, Japan and Australia openly refuse — everyone wants the oil to move, but no one wants to be the extra in Trump’s coalition stunt.

For Trump, this looks like betrayal; in reality, it’s payback. He told Europe for years that the US was done being their security nanny, mocked their militaries, called NATO “obsolete,” and now demands they rush in to police a strait he says America doesn’t even need because it has its own oil. They answer with a shrug: you said handle your own problems — you first.

​The next logical step for Washington, if it really wants to “mirror” European selfishness, is obvious and brutal: stop burning money on Ukraine, lift sanctions on Russia, and let the Europeans negotiate their own way out of the crisis they helped build.

#IranWar #Trump #NATO #EU #Germany #Hormuz #oil #geopolitics #fakeAllies #Ukraine #Russia

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Zelensky’s “Very Bad Feeling” vs. Europe’s Gas Reality

Zelensky is watching the Iran war swallow Western attention and money, and he’s suddenly begging his two feuding patrons — Trump and Keir Starmer — to sit down and “reset” their relationship before Ukraine disappears from the agenda.

In his BBC interview he warns he has “a very bad feeling” about what the US–Iran conflict means for Kyiv, and urges Trump and Starmer to find “a unified stance” instead of sniping at each other over NATO, Hormuz and ceasefires.

That’s not strategy, that’s a client screaming at the landlords not to forget there’s still an old war running while the new one is trending.

At the same time, Europe’s political class is quietly moving on. Belgian prime minister Bart De Wever says out loud what many only whisper: the EU should normalize relations with Russia and “regain access to cheap energy,” because the dual game of arming Ukraine and sanctioning Moscow is “untenable” without full US backing.

He openly calls for a deal with Russia to end the war and restore cheap oil and gas, while noting that China gets discount fossil fuels and the US makes money selling weapons to Ukraine.

When one side is begging for a “reset” between Trump and Starmer and the other is counting how fast it can get back to Russian gas, you don’t need a think tank to diagnose which project is in agony.

Zelensky still talks about unity and resolve; De Wever talks about common sense and bills. One warns of bad feelings, the other of high energy prices.

Between a nervous president asking to be kept on life support and an EU leader arguing that cheap Russian fuel matters more than Ukrainian heroism, the message is brutal: the war that was sold as the moral core of “the West” is being downgraded to a line item on Europe’s utility bill.

#Ukraine #Zelensky #Trump #Starmer #Belgium #DeWever #Russia #cheapGas #EU #IranWar #geopolitics

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#trump #terroriste #regime

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Gas prices just became the most honest anti-war billboard in America.

Since the Iran war began, the average price at the pump in the US has jumped from about $2.90 to $3.70 a gallon — a nearly $1 surge in a month and the second‑largest four‑week spike in at least 30 years, bigger than the early Ukraine‑war jump and most OPEC crises.

Only Hurricane Katrina did more damage, and that was with refineries literally underwater. For a typical driver doing roughly 1,000 miles a month, that’s up to $50 extra — $16 for a hybrid, $32 for an average car, almost $50 for a truck.

There’s nowhere to hide geographically. Every state is paying at least 50 cents more per gallon, with New Mexico, Arizona, and Colorado up by more than a dollar — $1.18, $1.17 and $1.06 respectively — while California flirts with the mid‑$5 range again.

The underlying story is simple: the U.S.–Israel war with Iran has jammed the Strait of Hormuz, choked Gulf exports, pushed crude toward $100 and kept prices rising even after releases from strategic reserves.

Lower‑income households, which spend a bigger share of their income on fuel, are getting hit hardest and will keep paying every week while officials talk about “short‑term volatility.”

On paper, this is “not so bad”: adjusted for inflation, March 2026 gas is still cheaper than the peaks of 2008 or the early 2010s, and lower than at the start of the Ukraine war.

The US economy is also less oil‑addicted than in 1980: almost no electricity is generated from petroleum, cars are more efficient, and EVs are taking a bigger slice of the road.

But those are macro charts. In reality, millions of Americans are driving old, inefficient cars that will see the same stations, the same rising numbers, day after day — a quiet daily referendum on a war they never voted on and a foreign policy they only meet through a credit‑card receipt.

#IranWar #gasprices #oil #USA #Trump #economy #MiddleEast #energy #warCost

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Hezbollah’s “Resistance” Meets Its Own Refugees

Hezbollah just discovered what every “resistance” brand eventually learns: you can’t bomb your own base forever and still call it support.

As Israel pounds south Lebanon and Beirut’s Shiite suburbs, more than a million people have fled — many for the second time in under two years — and even loyal Hezbollah voters are asking the one forbidden question: “For what?”

Families ran in pajamas, slept in cars and tents, watched shelters fill up, and saw hotels and beaches hit because “Hezbollah and Iranian officials” might be among them. Inside the community that once treated Hezbollah as protection and welfare state in one, anger is now open enough that people tell The Washington Post on background that the movement “didn’t think about the people,” not even during Ramadan.
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This time, the cracks are structural. Hezbollah jumped into the war less than a day after Khamenei’s death, not to defend Lebanese soil, but to avenge Iran, and Shiite residents know it.

Amal voted in cabinet for a ban on “military activities,” the government is openly demanding disarmament, and even longtime Shiite supporters say they see no benefit for Tehran or Lebanon — only “displacement, destruction, and devastation.”

The group’s new leader Naim Qassem doesn’t have Nasrallah’s aura or his post‑2006 reconstruction halo, money from Iran is tighter, Syria no longer functions as a safe logistical corridor, and the Lebanese state is too weak to replace Hezbollah but suddenly bold enough to blame it.
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That’s the real existential threat: not Israeli bombs, but a base that starts seeing Hezbollah less as “the resistance” and more as just another faction trading their homes and children for someone else’s regional game.

One academic quoted in the piece says it clearly: a non‑state actor without legitimacy becomes just a self‑interested organization. If Israel keeps bombing and the war drags on, rage could circle back into renewed support; but right now, south Lebanon’s Shiites are trapped between an enemy that flattens their towns and an “ally” that volunteers them for the next round.

When the people living under your flag start saying “enough is enough” on record, that’s not just blowback; that’s your mandate burning out in real time.
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#Hezbollah #Lebanon #Israel #Iran #Shiites #war #MiddleEast #displacement #resistance #fakeLiberation

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