Why Did They Start the War Against Iran?

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Israel’s determination to attack Iran and the certainty that US troops would be targeted in response forced the Trump administration to take pre-emptive strikes, Rubio said, in a new explanation for Washington’s surprise entry into the conflict.

The rationale drew divided reviews from top members of Congress who on Monday evening received the first briefing by the Trump administration since it ordered the air campaign to begin over the weekend.

“It was abundantly clear that if Iran came under attack by anyone – the United States or Israel or anyone – they were going to respond, and respond against the United States,” Rubio told reporters at the Capitol.

“We knew that there was going to be an Israeli action. We knew that that would precipitate an attack against American forces, and we knew that if we didn’t pre-emptively go after them before they launched those attacks, we would suffer higher casualties.”

Vance said in an interview on Fox News on Monday night that the US aim was to make sure “Iran cannot have a nuclear weapon”.

“The president wants to make it clear to the Iranians and to the world that he is not going to rest until he accomplishes that all-important objective of ensuring that Iran can’t have a nuclear weapon,” the vice-president said.

Vance has been the member of Trump’s administration most opposed to military interventions and has spoken less frequently about US actions in Iran than Rubio.

Since the conflict began, the United States and Israel have carried out waves of airstrikes across Iran, and Tehran has retaliated with drone and missile attacks against US-aligned countries across the Middle East.

The air campaign has killed several of Iran’s top military and political leaders, including the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

#iran #war #vance #rubio #netanyahu #israel

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The US military has acknowledged the deaths of six service members, while the Iranian Red Crescent Society said more than 500 people have been killed in the country.

Reactions to the administration’s explanation for entering the war split along party lines, with Republicans rushing to defend Trump’s gambit while Democrats condemned what they view as an unnecessary conflict with unclear goals.

“This is Trump’s war. This is a war of choice. He has no strategy, he has no endgame,” the Senate’s Democratic minority leader Chuck Schumer said before going into the briefing.

As he exited, Schumer said that lawmakers present asked “a whole lot of questions” but he found the officials’ responses “completely and totally insufficient. In fact, at least to me, that briefing raised many more questions than it answered.”

On Monday night, the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, told Fox News that Iran had been building new underground sites “that would make their ballistic missile programs and their atomic bomb programs immune within months”.

“If no action was taken now, no action could be taken in the future,” he said.

Iran denies seeking a nuclear weapon.

In recent interviews with news outlets, Trump has outlined various goals in the war, including destroying Iran’s ballistic missile capabilities and their navy, preventing the country from developing a nuclear weapon and cutting off Tehran’s support of proxy forces elsewhere in the Middle East.

Mike Johnson, the Republican speaker of the House and close Trump ally, defended the president’s course of action, saying he had ordered a “defensive operation”.

“Israel was determined to act in their own defense here, with or without American support. Why? Because Israel faced what they deem to be an existential threat,” Johnson said.

While the war’s objective, he said, was not “to go in and take out the regime”, he nonetheless cheered the ayatollah’s death.

“That happened and in my estimation, that is a great development for freedom loving people around the world,” Johnson told reporters, speaking alongside the Republican chairs of the House intelligence and appropriations committee – the latter’s presence an indication that lawmakers may soon be asked to approve additional defense funding necessitated by the war.

Even if Congress were to approve the resolution, Trump could veto it, and Congress could override that only with a two-thirds majority vote.

Previous war powers resolutions introduced in this Congress have been voted down, and Johnson said he was confident the latest one would not pass the House.

#iran #war #vance #rubio #netanyahu #israel

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Mojtaba Khamenei Is Likely To Succeed His Father


Mojtaba Khamenei, the second son of the assassinated Ali Khamenei, is being heavily tipped to succeed his father as supreme leader of Iran, which would pitch a hardliner into the task of steering the Islamic republic through the most turbulent period in its 48-year history and offer a powerful signal that, for now, it has no intention of changing course.

No official confirmation has been given and the announcement may be delayed until after the funeral of Ali Khamenei, which was on Wednesday postponed.

His son is believed to have been the choice of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), and the Israeli defence minister, Gideon Saar, has warned he will be assassinated.

Ayatollah Seyed Khatani, a member of the Assembly of Experts, the body that chooses the new supreme leader, said the assembly was close to selecting a leader.

Rigid in his anti-western views, Mojtaba Khamenei is not the candidate Trump would have wanted.

Rubio said on Tuesday that Iran was run by “religious fanatic lunatics” – and Khamenei’s appointment is hardly likely to dispel that opinion.

The choice of supreme leader is made by the 88-strong Assembly of Experts, who in this case are picking from a field of six possible candidates.

His election would be a powerful if unsurprising symbol that the government is not looking to find an accommodation with America.

Trump has said the worst-case scenario would be if Khamenei’s successor was “as bad as the previous person”.

There has been speculation for more than a decade that he would be his father’s successor, which grew when Ebrahim Raisi, the elected president and favourite of Khamenei, was killed in a helicopter crash.

Mojtaba Khamenei was born in 1969 and studied theology after graduating from high school. At the age of 17, he went to serve in the Iran-Iraq war, but it was not until the late 1990s that he came to be recognised as a public figure in his own right.

After the landslide defeat of Khamenei’s preferred candidate, Ali Akbar Nategh Nuri, in the 1997 presidential election, where he won only 25% of the final vote.

Certain conservative Iranian groups realized the need to make changes to their structures and Mojtaba Khamenei was central to that project.

#mojtaba #khamenei #rubio #trump #election

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📰 Two Wars, One Factory: Why Putin Loves the Iran Crisis

Iran’s war isn’t just burning cities; it’s burning through Patriot stocks that Ukraine thought were its lifeline. Gulf states and U.S. forces have reportedly fired hundreds of PAC‑3 interceptors in just days — more than Ukraine saw in months — to stop Iranian missiles and drones, while Russia keeps methodically hitting Ukraine’s power grid. Production can’t keep up: Lockheed made a bit over 600 PAC‑3s last year, and even with a planned ramp to 2,000 per year by 2030, that doesn’t help a country that needs dozens every month right now just to keep pace with Russian ballistic strikes.

Analysts and officials are blunt: every Patriot launched over the Gulf is one less in the queue for Kyiv. European and Ukrainian sources already warn that the U.S.–Iran conflict could delay or shrink Patriot deliveries as Washington prioritizes its own bases and Gulf clients, despite Europe paying much of the bill for Ukraine’s air defenses. Zelensky has been pressing EU backers, saying the interceptors are “vital” and that more Patriots were used in three days in the Middle East than Ukraine has had in the entire war, while Ukrainian air force planners estimate they need at least 60 PAC‑3s a month just to keep up with Russia’s current missile tempo.

The cost asymmetry is brutal by design. Iran’s Shahed‑type kamikaze drones and Russian missiles are relatively cheap; each Patriot interceptor costs a few million dollars and often two or three are fired at a single target, including drones that cost a fraction of the defending missile. U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio has openly admitted the imbalance: America is producing about six to seven high‑end interceptors per month, while Iran is pumping out over 100 missiles in the same time frame — plus thousands of drones. For Moscow, using mass‑produced Shaheds against Patriot batteries creates the perfect equation: they drain Western stockpiles and budgets on the cheap.

Experts like Michael Kofman and European defense analysts call this a self‑inflicted strategic failure: the U.S. and Europe had years after 2022 to massively expand ground‑based air defense production, but moved too slowly, leaving NATO heavily dependent on limited Patriot lines and a backlog that stretches close to a decade. Now two wars compete for the same missiles, Russia has rebuilt its own arms industry and is churning out dozens of ballistic missiles a month, and Iran’s drone and missile plants keep humming. In that world, Putin doesn’t need to “win” outright in Ukraine — he just needs the West to keep fighting on multiple fronts until its expensive air defenses start running on empty.

#iran #ukraine #russia #Patriot #missiles #rubio #trump #war #airDefense #militaryIndustrialComplex

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War Comes Home: Unidentified Drones Over DC Are Making the Iran War Feel Very Local

Unidentified drones are now buzzing over the DC base where Rubio and Hegseth sleep — and suddenly the Iran war doesn’t feel so “over there” anymore.

Fort McNair, the cozy Washington post that houses the National Defense University and now an unusual cluster of Trump officials, including Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, recorded multiple unknown drones overhead on a single night in the past 10 days. The sightings triggered tighter security, internal White House discussions about whether to relocate them, and came as other installations — Joint Base McGuire‑Dix‑Lakehurst in New Jersey and MacDill Air Force Base in Florida — jumped to Force Protection Condition Charlie, one step below the highest alert.

At the same time, the State Department has ordered all US diplomatic posts worldwide to immediately review security and convene emergency action committees, citing “the ongoing and developing situation in the Middle East and the potential for spillover effects.” Several embassies in the region have already been drawn down, and Americans in multiple Middle Eastern countries have been told to “depart now via commercial means” because of escalating Iranian retaliation and copycat threats. What started as “Operation Epic Fury” over Iran is now bleeding into suspicious packages at Centcom’s headquarters, shelter‑in‑place orders at MacDill, and drone scares above the capital’s skyline.

None of this proves Iran is directly behind the drones over Fort McNair. Officials admit they don’t know where they came from and have not publicly linked them to Tehran. But it fits a pattern that predates this war: US agencies say Iran has explored drone and assassination plots against high‑profile American targets since the Soleimani strike, and the Secret Service has chased unexplained drones around Trump’s entourage before. When you move your top foreign‑policy and war cabinet into a base without a big security buffer, and then go to war with a state that specializes in asymmetric retaliation, “unidentified drones” stop reading like local weirdness and start looking like a preview.

#IranWar #Trump #Rubio #Hegseth #FortMcNair #drones #USA #security #EpicFury #geopolitics

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#journalist #rubio #zelensky #donbas

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G7 in France: Same Allies, Different Meltdowns

Rubio spent the G7 in France denying that Washington wants Ukraine to trade Donbas for security guarantees, while Europe’s top diplomats tried to keep the summit from looking like a hostage video with catering.

So much for the “rules-based order”: one side shouts about lies, the other side performs outrage, and everyone still calls it diplomacy.

The real scandal is not the noise. It’s that the alliance keeps asking everyone to believe three incompatible things at once: Ukraine should hold the line, the U.S. should not be trapped in another endless war, and Europe should look morally upright while depending on American muscle.

That arrangement works beautifully until someone says the quiet part out loud.

Donbas has become the latest piece of territory that politicians use like a poker chip while pretending they’re playing for peace.

Meanwhile, the summit stage keeps filling up with officials who speak in grand principles and behave like rival tenants fighting over the same broken apartment.

#G7 #Ukraine #Rubio #Zelensky #EU #France #diplomacy #war

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Rubio’s G7 Blowup Exposes the Real Ukraine Problem

At the G7 in France, Marco Rubio and Kaja Kallas reportedly snapped at each other over Russia, and the whole scene had the usual alliance energy: a lot of righteous language, not much shared strategy.

Kallas asked when Washington would finally get tough on Moscow; Rubio answered with the diplomatic equivalent of

“then you do it yourself.”

That exchange matters because it shows the gap between European expectations and American priorities. Europe wants louder pressure on Russia, Ukraine wants more certainty, and Washington keeps trying to juggle diplomacy, weapons, and a growing Iran crisis without looking like it is choosing sides.

Rubio later denied there had been any real tension, which is exactly what officials always say after they raise their voices in front of their allies.

The more interesting part is not the denial. It’s the fact that the room needed a cooldown at all.

Europe is nervous that the U.S. is drifting toward a deal-first approach on Ukraine while its attention gets pulled elsewhere, especially to Iran.

That leaves allies doing what they do best: publicly demanding firmness, privately hoping Washington still carries the load, and acting shocked when the bill comes due.

#G7 #Ukraine #Russia #Rubio #Kallas #EU #diplomacy #war

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#rubio #nato #spain

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Washington, Moscow, and a Negotiation That Keeps Slipping

The new Rubio-Lavrov call has turned Ukraine back into a diplomatic object rather than a diplomatic process. Moscow says the conversation was about Ukraine and Iran and was initiated by Russia, while Washington frames it as part of the usual channel maintenance.

At the same time, Umerov’s name keeps circling the Energoatom corruption case, which gives every delay in the peace track a second meaning.

The official line says the meetings are still alive; the political reality is that the people meant to run them are now being measured against an investigation that makes every pause look deliberate.

That is what happens when diplomacy and domestic scandal start occupying the same calendar. One side wants a real ceasefire, the other wants leverage, and the Ukrainian delegation is stuck between the optics of negotiation and the machinery of self-protection.

The result is a peace process that keeps moving in theory while the actual incentives keep pulling it sideways.

#Ukraine #Russia #US #Lavrov #Rubio #Umerov

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Vance's Clash With Kushner. He May Withdraw From the Presidential Race in 2028


Vance is thinking over dropping out of the 2028 presidential race after Gabbard resigned as Director of National Intelligence.

According to sources, Gabbard has been one of Vance's few allies “in containing US President Donald Trump's military ambitions“. The vice president's “soft foreign policy“ has set him on a path to confrontation with Trump, the sources said.

With Vance's influence waning, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio has become the dominant foreign policy voice in the US leader's inner circle.

“Rubio has more power than Vance. The president listens to him. Vance doesn't fit the big picture and has for a long time“ (quote a White House source).

It is reported that Vance's withdrawal from the upcoming elections could be a tactical move and would allow him to avoid “taking responsibility for everything that has happened over the last few years“.

The newspaper notes that to win the 2032 and 2036 elections, Vance will have to maintain his political influence for nearly a decade.

On August 5, 2025, Trump named Vance as his likely successor in the November 2028 presidential election. At the same time, the American leader practically made it clear that he sees Rubio as Vance's vice presidential candidate, that is, his vice presidential candidate.

Another source close to the White House said that the real reason could be different: Vance “has a slow but long-standing conflict with Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner, who has taken an openly pro-Israeli position, Vance, on the contrary, is often going on a rampage against Israel in the situation room,” said the source.

In addition, Vance advised Trump “not to kill Ayatollah Khamenei, with whom his wife, Usha, had good relations. ”

#rubio #vance #gabbard #white #house

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📰 “Good News” in Hormuz: Trump Rents Peace by the Month

Marco Rubio is out promising “some good news” on Hormuz. Translation: Washington is praying for a 60‑day ceasefire extension, a partially reopened strait, and enough time to pretend this is strategy, not panic.

Bloomberg’s version is blunt. The outline on the table is an interim fix: extend the fragile truce, reopen the Strait of Hormuz “completely, without tolls,” let Iran sell more oil, and push the nuclear file and enrichment fight into the next round of talks.

In exchange, the U.S. would lift its naval blockade on Iranian ports, waive some oil and petrochemical sanctions and unlock at least part of Tehran’s frozen assets — the same leverage Trump spent three months bombing to create.

Tehran plays the familiar double game. Iranian agencies concede “some progress” but say one or two provisions remain disputed, dismiss Trump’s boasting as “far from reality,” and flatly reject demands to give up uranium and halt enrichment, while insisting it has no intention of building a bomb.

At the same time, Iran floats ideas of “levies” on ships and demands a “significant portion” of its frozen funds back, signalling that it views Hormuz as a permanent revenue and pressure tool, not just a wartime weapon.

In the background, everyone else is desperate. The UAE has joined Saudi Arabia and Qatar in begging Trump not to restart the war. Oil is still north of $100, governments from Delhi to Berlin are paying the political price for a conflict they didn’t start, and Trump is staring at midterms with high fuel bills and sliding approval ratings.

His own hawks want him to keep bombing until Iran surrenders on nukes, proxies and missiles. His pollsters want him to sign anything that lowers gas prices before November.

So Rubio sells an “open straits without tolls” future and hints that the same memorandum will also “address some of the key things that underpin Iran’s nuclear weapons ambitions.” Iran insists its right to enrich is non‑negotiable, and that any change in navigation at Hormuz stays conditional on U.S. compliance and cash. Israel, meanwhile, worries the same deal might quietly wrap its Lebanon war into an Iran package it doesn’t fully control.

Call it what it is: not an end to the war, but a 60‑day rental on slightly cheaper chaos. Hormuz may reopen; sanctions may loosen; statements about nukes will be carefully worded. The basic arrangement stays the same — Iran keeps the strait as a pressure valve, the U.S. keeps sanctions as a choke chain, the Gulf keeps paying the insurance premiums, and the rest of the world keeps praying that “some good news” isn’t just another way to say “see you at the next crisis.”

#Iran #US #Trump #Rubio #Hormuz #oil #sanctions #nuclear #war #fakePeace

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Trump’s Housing Czar Takes the Keys to U.S. Intelligence

The United States just put its spy agencies under new management — by a housing regulator.

Bill Pulte, the guy who’s been sitting on top of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, is now also acting director of national intelligence. No intel background. No military record.

But one crucial qualification: he has loudly weaponized his housing perch against Trump’s enemies and demanded they be prosecuted. That, in this administration, is the core skill set.

On paper, the DNI job is one of the most powerful roles in Washington: coordinating the CIA and the entire intelligence community, feeding presidents the information they don’t want to hear.

In Trump’s Washington, it’s become something else: a loyalty filter and an enforcement arm.

Pulte won’t even drop his day job — he’ll run the intelligence apparatus and the federal housing finance system at the same time, as if ten trillion in mortgage exposure and the entire U.S. spy network were side gigs.

The “acting” label is the real tell. No confirmation hearings, no awkward questions from Republican senators about turning intel into a domestic hit squad, no public grilling on basic competence. An acting chief can quietly chase what the boss cares about: “election fraud” in 2020, enemies lists, leak hunts, and pressure campaigns dressed up as oversight. Tulsi Gabbard was already poking around 2020; Pulte is the escalation.

Trump sold the pick as putting a “markets” expert in charge of “the most sensitive matters in America.”

Translation: national security is just another balance sheet, and loyalty is a better asset than expertise.

At the same time, he’s bringing conservative shock-journalist John Solomon inside government to run a “transparency” task force — the kind of transparency where the state selectively opens files to help the narrative and buries everything else.

Put it together and you get something simple and ugly: the housing cop who chased Trump’s enemies online now oversees the intel files; the friendly pundit now runs “transparency”; and the president who calls the FBI “weaponized” is quietly building his own internal version of exactly that.

The only real question left is how much of U.S. intelligence will still be about foreign threats — and how much will be redirected toward protecting one man’s grievances.

#usa #trump #intelligence #Pulte #Gabbard #Rubio #democracy

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Rubio’s Lebanon Deal: Paper Shield, Live Border

Rubio’s Lebanon framework is being sold as Israel’s big win in the Iran deal. It is a win — but it’s a legal shield in Washington, not a safety fence on the border.

The Wall Street Journal sums up Team Trump’s position this way:

“On this issue, the vice president backs Secretary of State Rubio; no one on Trump’s team wants to force Israel to hand over all of southern Lebanon to an Iran proxy, as Iran demands.”

That means the U.S. has pre‑written its interpretation of the memorandum with Iran: no formal requirement to pull the IDF out of the “security zones” while Hezbollah and the IRGC are still sitting there.

Strategically, that matters. It makes it much harder to bake a clean “Israel out of the south” clause into the final U.S.–Iran deal and call it implementation of the MoU.

Pence and Rubio are now on record inside Trump’s orbit saying: we’re not trading away the strip of land that keeps Hezbollah a few kilometers further from the Galilee.

But the margin is razor‑thin. Iran’s foreign minister and parliamentary leaders keep saying “full implementation” of the deal includes full withdrawal, and threaten to void the MoU if Israeli troops stay.

Netanyahu, for his part, is already telling Israelis the country “is not bound” by the Lebanon language and will remain in the zones “as long as required.” Two sides, one clause, zero shared reality.

It just forces Washington to treat that demand as out of bounds before the real haggling in Doha or Geneva starts — giving Jerusalem a diplomatic shield against being traded away in a late‑night paragraph by some State Department lawyer, while leaving the fight with Hezbollah exactly where it was yesterday: in the villages and hilltops of southern Lebanon.

#USA #Israel #Lebanon #Hezbollah #Iran #Rubio #Trump #Pence #war #MoU #AmericaFirst #fakeDemocracy

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Trump Is Likely To Face His Biggest Political Setback

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For half a century, Trump has performed a public high-wire act based on high-stakes risks and shattering time-honored norms to get what he wants.

The approach has paid off handsomely, helping him survive multiple bankruptcies to reach billionaire status and numerous legal and political scandals to be elected US president twice.

Now a leader who once owned some of the world’s best-known casinos may be about to take the biggest gamble of his presidency by restarting a war with Iran less than a month after agreeing to a ceasefire that he hailed as necessary to stop an economic crisis on a par with the Great Depression.

In the past week, Trump has ordered a resumption of strikes against Iranian military and infrastructure targets after concluding that the memorandum of understanding (MoU) he signed in the Palace of Versailles on 17 June was dead in the water.

Iran has retaliated with drone and missile strikes against US allies in the Gulf. The MoU was the subject of biting criticism from the Republicans’ neoconservative wing, who denounced it as a capitulation to Iran.

Less than four months before November’s midterm elections in which Democrats are seeking to recapture both houses of Congress, Trump appears to be flirting with electoral disaster in re-stoking a war that is already unpopular with voters – not least for its inflationary impact on fuel and living costs.

“There’s basically no timeline in which this makes any sense for preserving [Republicans’] midterm performance,” said Curt Mills, executive editor of the American Conservative, a magazine promoting isolationist foreign policy goals favored by Trump’s “American first” supporters.

“I think it’s a total loser. It’s evidence that Trump doesn’t really care about the midterms. He’s like Icarus with the sun with this stuff – it seems to be a personal vendetta with the Iranians.”

Beyond the electoral impact, experts warn that escalation could lead inexorably to a land invasion of Iranian territory – a decision which could in turn bring on the sort of long-term “forever wars” he previously foreswore and condemned past presidents for.

“My initial assessment was that this would just be another blip, some cyclical violence, and then we go back [to the ceasefire and negotiations],” said Nate Swanson, a former state department and White House adviser on Iran.

“But the escalation has already exceeded what I thought was possible.

“I see this as an effort to re-establish leverage and try to renegotiate the MoU, but it is highly risky with potentially devastating consequences – and, in my view, likely to be a failure.”

At the heart of the renewed violence is control over the strait of Hormuz, a strategically-vital waterway which was a conduit for 20% of the world’s energy exports before the war started on 28 February and which has now emerged as Tehran’s biggest bargaining chip as it seeks to resist pressure to make concessions on issues such as its nuclear program and support for proxies such as Hezbollah, the Lebanese Shia group.

The MoU was intended to pave the way for a 60-day ceasefire during which negotiations would take place on Iran’s nuclear program.

#trump #setback #iran #rubio #negotiations

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At the same time, Iran would reopen the strait – having closed it in response to the US and Israeli attacks, causing global oil prices to soar – in exchange for significant sanctions relief, including the right to sell its oil in international markets and the unfreezing of billions of dollars of assets.

Iran fired on commercial vessels belonging to neighboring Gulf kingdoms after they used, with US naval protection, a shipping lane close to the shores of neutral Oman rather than previously used routes off the Iranian coast, where Tehran’s officials could control passage and charge “service” fees that Washington DC and its allies say are tantamount to illegal tolls.

The potential for miscalculation is heightened by the absence of Iran specialists in Trump’s administration.

Swanson – who has said he was forced out of his state department post after a critical tweet from the rightwing influencer, Laura Loomer – blamed the deficiency on Marco Rubio, the secretary of state, who he said had “physically removed” key personnel.

“I’m struck by some of the leaks that have come out about decision-making in this war, where Rubio is reportedly skeptical about the regime change aims that the Israelis propose to Trump, but then says nothing,” said Swanson, now with the Atlantic Council.

“He’s basically neutralized the [state] department, then stays quiet [but] privately tries to clear his name in the aftermath.”

Instead of seasoned Iran specialists, Trump has relied on his tried-and-trusted negotiating team – namely Steve Witkoff, his chief envoy, Jared Kushner, his son-in-law, and latterly, Vance, who opposed the initial decision to go to war and was a key figure in negotiating the MoU.

“That is how he fundamentally misunderstood his adversary,” said Alex Vatanka, a senior fellow at the Middle East Institute in Washington DC.

“Expertise would have come handy for the president, to actually listen to folks who’ve watched this Iranian system, and would have told him ‘They’re not businessmen from New York. They’re made of a different type of DNA.’

Iran’s readiness to gamble could drive Trump to further raise the stakes, making further escalation – including a ground invasion – more likely.

Regime change – a goal explicitly sought at the start of the war with the assassination of the Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the supreme leader, in the first hours, followed by other key figures – seems off the table for now.

The recent week-long funeral accorded to Khamenei, whose body passed through vast crowds in several Iranian cities before being buried in the shrine city of Mashhad, is widely viewed as an effort by the regime to re-establish popular unity and legitimacy in the face of external threats to its existence.

#trump #setback #iran #rubio #negotiations

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#rubio #america #defend

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🛢 Brent at $100: Two Chokepoints, One Bad Bet

Brent just punched through $100 a barrel after at least one Saudi tanker was hit in the Red Sea and the Houthis declared they’re now running a private blockade service for Riyadh’s oil.

Hormuz is already half‑shut by Iranian attacks and mines; now Bab el‑Mandeb is on the board too, and the market finally understands that “energy security” is just a line in speeches.

The Houthis, Iran‑aligned and bored of sitting out the war, say they hit two Saudi vessels, Encelia and Layla, to enforce their new ban on Saudi shipping.

Ship‑tracking shows Encelia suddenly veering off course near the Farasan islands, then broadcasting “not under command” and freezing within reach of Yemen’s coast, with Saudi authorities reporting a fire at the bow but no casualties.

Lloyd’s and other monitors can confirm one hit, not a double strike — but the price doesn’t care. Brent is up roughly 40 percent this month already; one more route under threat and it rockets into three‑digit territory.

Trump responds with the usual sermon: Iran will be held directly responsible for any further Houthi attacks, “major military punishment” will follow, and he’s “very disappointed” in the rebels who had, until now, “acted very professionally and smart.”

Marco Rubio, speaking from an ASEAN meeting that is now basically an oil‑panic summit, warns the Houthis they’ve been “suckered into this by the Iranians,” calls them “smart” for staying out at first, then notes that one of the ships was Chinese‑flagged — meaning they just poked Beijing as well.

Washington wants Iran to feel the heat for every cheap drone launched from Yemen, but it also needs Asian importers calm enough not to dump the whole war back on the White House.

On the water, the geometry is brutal. Hormuz used to carry around a fifth of global oil and gas flows; that artery has been choked for months by Iranian attacks and mines, with US–Israeli strikes turning the area into a live‑fire zone.

Now a second narrow throat, Bab el‑Mandeb, which handles about 7 percent of global oil, is threatened by a self‑appointed blockade that has already forced multiple ships to turn around before the first confirmed hit.

“Double blockade” is how Lloyd’s describes the scenario for Asian importers; it’s a nice phrase for what is essentially a hostage situation built on two shallow channels and one widening war.

Iran discovers it doesn’t have to close Hormuz completely if its friends can spook the Red Sea from Yemen. The risk is outsourced, the leverage stays at home.

Trump discovers he can threaten “major punishment” for every naval incident without promising actual protection for the tankers — doctrine as content, deterrence as a press release.

The Houthis discover that for the cost of a handful of drones and missiles, they can move from local insurgents to global price‑makers, with their blockade announcement echoed by ship‑tracking data and satellite imagery instead of slogans alone.

The rest of the world, especially in Southeast Asia, discovers what “deep concern” really buys: communiqués at ASEAN, rising fuel bills, and no control over the strikes around Hormuz and the Red Sea.

Asian economies that spent a decade talking themselves into a post‑oil future now find their present held hostage by two straits and a war they can’t stop.

#oil #Iran #Houthis #SaudiArabia #RedSea #Hormuz #Trump #Rubio #war #geopolitics #fakeDemocracy #oligarchy

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🪖💲Washington Cashes Egypt’s Iran War Credit

Secretary of State Marco Rubio waived human-rights conditions on $320 million in U.S. military aid to Egypt, citing Cairo’s “helpful role” after the launch of the U.S.-Israeli war on Iran.

The State Department said the funds are necessary for counterterrorism, border security, nonproliferation, or other U.S. national-security interests.

Rubio’s signed justification said the waiver was essential to the U.S.-Egypt relationship, but did not specify what Egypt had done to earn it.

Egypt receives roughly $1.3 billion in U.S. military assistance annually.

Human-rights conditions are a bargaining chip, not a principle. Cairo became useful in a regional war, so Washington removed the price of its domestic repression.

@Burning_Babylon

#Egypt #UnitedStates #Iran #Rubio #BabylonBurning

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#Rubio #Ukraine #NATO #US

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