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The State Is Socializing the Cost Of the Iran War

By Alice Johnson | The Libertarian Institute | March 19, 2026

War is often sold to the public as an act of national will: decisive, necessary, and under control. The bill arrives later, in a quieter form. It shows up in insurance markets, shipping rates, emergency guarantees, higher fuel prices, and sudden policy reversals designed to keep the economic damage from spreading too far or too fast. That is what is now happening with the U.S.-Israeli war on Iran. The fighting is not only destroying lives and widening instability. It is also revealing something more familiar about the American state: when private actors no longer want to bear the risk of a war Washington helped ignite, Washington moves to spread that risk across everyone else.

The clearest example came when maritime war-risk premiums in the Gulf surged, in some cases by more than 1000%, as ships and cargoes moved through a combat zone centered on one of the world’s most important energy chokepoints. This is what markets do when governments create danger: they start pricing reality honestly. Insurance underwriters do not care about speeches about resolve or credibility. They care about missiles, mines, damaged hulls, and the odds that a vessel will not make it home intact. Once those odds change, the market does what it is supposed to do. It becomes expensive to move goods through a war.

But the American state does not like that kind of honesty, because honest prices expose the real cost of intervention. So instead of letting war become unaffordable to the people escalating it, Washington stepped in. The U.S. International Development Finance Corporation announced a maritime reinsurance facility covering losses up to roughly $20 billion on a rolling basis, and later named Chubb as the lead insurance partner. In plain English, the government decided that if the private market was no longer willing to carry the full risk of this war, the state would help carry it instead. That is not a side effect of interventionism. It is one of its operating principles. Risk is privatized on the way up, then socialized when the numbers stop working.

The same pattern is visible in energy policy. As the war tightened shipping and pushed oil prices above $100 a barrel, Washington issued a thirty-day waiver allowing purchases of stranded Russian oil at sea to stabilize markets. That move was not just an emergency adjustment. It was an admission. The administration was effectively saying that one war had already become costly enough to require loosening pressure in another theater. A foreign policy that presents itself as hard and disciplined suddenly becomes very flexible when gasoline, shipping, and inflation begin threatening domestic politics. The slogans remain moralistic. The mechanics turn transactional overnight.

This is what statism looks like in practice. It does not simply bomb another country and call it security. It also rearranges the economic landscape at home and abroad so that the political architects of the war do not face the full consequences of their decisions. The cost is pushed outward onto taxpayers who did not authorize the war, consumers who will pay more for energy and goods, and trading systems that now have to absorb new shocks because Washington and Israel chose escalation over restraint. The state does not merely fight. It conscripts logistics, insurance, credit, and public balance sheets into the campaign.

That is why it is misleading to describe this as only a military conflict. It is also an exercise in political risk transfer. The Strait of Hormuz handles around twenty million barrels per day of crude oil and oil products and roughly a quarter of the world’s seaborne oil trade. Any government that helps turn that corridor into a war zone is not just making a strategic decision abroad. It is imposing a hidden tax on ordinary life. It is raising the cost of transport, trade, fuel, insurance, and eventually everything built on those foundations. And when those costs start climbing too fast, the same government asks the public to cushion the blow in the name of stability.

There is a moral evasion built into this arrangement. The public is told to think about war in the language of necessity and strength, while the real economics are handled behind the scenes through emergency waivers, public guarantees, and market interventions. Washington bypasses the discipline that peace would impose. It subsidizes the consequences of its own escalation, then presents the cleanup operation as responsible governance. That is not prudence. It is the imperial version of sending someone else the invoice.

The libertarian objection to this war is not only that it is reckless, unjust, and likely to widen. It is also that the state is once again doing what it does best: converting elite foreign-policy choices into burdens to be carried by everybody else. When insurers retreat, the government steps in. When sanctions collide with energy reality, the rules bend. When war becomes too expensive, the price is redistributed rather than paid by the people who chose it. That is the deeper scandal here. The state is not just waging this war. It is socializing its cost.

March 19, 2026 Posted by | Economics, Militarism, Wars for Israel | , , | Comments Off on The State Is Socializing the Cost Of the Iran War

Seyed M. Marandi: U.S. Attacked World’s Largest Gas Field & Iran Declares Economic War

Glenn Diesen | March 18, 2026

Seyed Mohammad Marandi argues that Iran has declared economic war after the US and Israel attacked South Pars, the world’s largest gas field. Marandi is a professor at Tehran University and a former advisor to Iran’s Nuclear Negotiation Team.

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March 19, 2026 Posted by | Video, Wars for Israel | , , , , | Comments Off on Seyed M. Marandi: U.S. Attacked World’s Largest Gas Field & Iran Declares Economic War

Washington’s War on Cuba Is Older Than You Think

By Ted Snider | The Libertarian Institute | March 18, 2026

Not distracted by the war on Iran, on March 3, President Donald Trump, once again, warned that Cuba was in its “last moments.” The next day, he said, “It may be a friendly takeover. It may not be a friendly takeover. It wouldn’t matter because they are down to, as they say, fumes” before admitting that the United States has caused a humanitarian disaster in Cuba.

Trump’s rhetoric has continued to escalate. On March 17, Trump said,  “I do believe I will be having the honor of taking Cuba. Taking Cuba. I mean, whether I free it, take it. I think I can do anything I want with it. They’re a very weakened nation right now.” The Trump administration is reportedly pursuing a policy of removing  President Miguel Díaz-Canel from power while keeping in place his government. They have communicated to Cuba that no deal can be negotiated while he is leader.

The U.S. has cut Cuba off. The Secretary-General of the United Nations has said that he is “extremely concerned about the humanitarian situation in Cuba” and warned that it “will worsen, if not collapse,” if the U.S. does not ease its chokehold. But as the humanitarian catastrophe unfolds, while the world largely watches on, there are three enduring American myths about Cuba that need to be obliterated.

The Trump administration has cut Cuba off from its energy lifeline: “THERE WILL BE NO MORE OIL OR MONEY GOING TO CUBA – ZERO!,” Trump pronounced. “I strongly suggest they make a deal, BEFORE IT IS TOO LATE.” With that threat, Trump declared a “national emergency” and signed an executive order imposing tariffs on any country that sends oil to Cuba. “Now there is going to be a real blockade. Nothing is getting in. No more oil is coming,” the U.S. Charge d’Affairs in the U.S. Embassy in Havan told his staff.

And, with the exception of a trickle of aid from Mexico and the promise of a drop of aid from Canada, nothing is getting in. “There’s no oil, there’s no money, there’s no anything,” Trump boasted. There is no longer enough oil in Cuba to guarantee your car, generator or hot water will run. There is not enough electricity to keep the lights on. Classes have been cancelled at many schools, and many hospitals have cut services. Tourism, the economic lifeblood of Cuba, is drying up. Cuba has announced that international airlines can no longer refuel there due to fuel shortages. On Monday, a “complete disconnection” caused a blackout across all of Cuba.

The American embargo has gotten so successfully out of hand that, after the leaders of Cuba’s Caribbean neighbors expressed alarm over the suffering of Cubans, the U.S. has relented a little and now says it will loosen some restrictions and let some Venezuelan oil into Cuba.

Foundational to the American embargo on Cuba are three myths that need to be undermined. The hostility to Fidel Castro and Cuba has been going on longer than expressed in the official narrative. The hostility was not originally about communism. And the intent of the embargo has always been to starve the Cuban people.

The hostility toward Cuba stretches back two years and one administration further than told in the official narrative. Though the embargo, the Bay of Pigs and Operation Mongoose’s determination to assassinate Castro are all attributed to John F. Kennedy, they all need to be deposited in President Dwight D Eisenhower’s foreign policy account.

Though it would be Kennedy who would water the seed that locked Cuba down, the seed was planted two years earlier by Eisenhower who, on January 25, 1960, suggested the U.S. Navy “quarantine” Cuba. Eight months later, he  banned all U.S. exports to Cuba except food and medicine. It would be left to Kennedy to implement the full embargo, and Lyndon Johnson to include food and medicine. In the official narrative, the embargo is associated with Kennedy, but its origins are older, going back to the very beginning of the story. Castro overthrew the Batista dictatorship on January 1, 1959. He was sworn in as prime minister on February 16, 1959. Already by January of the next year, Eisenhower had proposed the embargo.

Like the embargo, Kennedy and the Bay of Pigs are forever linked in the official narrative. But that too stretches back to the Eisenhower years. Right from the start, in the earliest days after the revolution, the CIA had nominated its operative Jake Esterline, who had helped carry out the coup against Guatemala’s Jacobo Árbenz, to plan the Bay of Pigs invasion. The CIA plan to invade Cuba is dated December 6, 1960. Kennedy would not be inaugurated until forty-five days later.

Castro’s death sentence was also signed in Washington much earlier than recorded in the official narrative. It was October 1959, according to CIA expert John Prados, that Eisenhower “approved measures” that led to the “secret war,” included grooming opposition leaders in Cuba and encouraging raids by Cuban exiles on Cuba from the United States. Eisenhower had already ordered a covert action on Castro by March 17, 1960.

But the decision to assassinate Castro goes back even earlier than that. “[K]ey officials in the Eisenhower administration reached… a clear determination to bring about Castro’s demise” by the summer of 1959, only months after Castro came to power, according to William LeoGrande and Peter Kornblum in their book, Back Channel to Cuba. Overthrowing Castro was the official secret policy of the United States by October. On November 5, according to LeoGrande and Kornblum, that plan was approved by Eisenhower. On December 11, 1959, according to CIA expert Tim Weiner, Allen Dulles, Eisenhower’s CIA director, gave the go-ahead for Castro’s “elimination.” Dulles changed “elimination” to “removal from Cuba.” Stephen Kinzer reports that on May 13, 1960, after being briefed by Dulles, Eisenhower ordered Castro “sawed off.”

All of this took place earlier than told in the official narrative and long before Kennedy authorized Operation Mongoose, which, headed by his brother, Attorney General Robert Kennedy, and run by the experienced and notorious CIA operative Edward Lansdale, made assassinating Castro “the top priority in the United States Government.” Robert Kennedy told Lansdale and the Operation Mongoose team that “all else is secondary—no time, money, effort, or manpower is to be spared.”

The second myth is that hostility toward Cuba was born out of the requirement to keep communism out of the hemisphere. But Washington was hostile to Castro before Castro was a communist. When the U.S. placed Castro in its crosshairs, he was neither aligned with the Soviet Union nor openly communist at all. At this time, Castro’s program of social reforms was neither radical nor communist. In America, América: A New History of the New World, Greg Grandin records that “[t]he CIA called Castro’s agenda ‘the common stock of Latin American reformist ideas’: land reform, housing, health care, education, control over natural resources, and national sovereignty.”

In the early years of the Cuban revolution, Castro sought friendly relations with the United States. What the U.S. opposed was not communism in its backyard, but an alternative political and economic model in its backyard that could prove attractive to other countries in the hemisphere.

To preserve its hemispheric hegemony, the U.S. has erased any attractive alternative that could encourage other countries in America’s backyard to copy what Noam Chomsky has called Cuba’s “successful defiance.” The alternative the U.S. has feared most are forms of nationalism in which the leader defiantly nationalizes land and resources so the wealth benefits, not a foreign power, but the people who live on that land. It was Castro’s nationalistic policies and agrarian reforms that put him in the United States’ sites.

Castro nationalized land, redistributing it from large farms—including American owned farms—to the Cubans. Grandin says that when the large American oil companies refused to process oil sent to Cuba by the Soviet Union, Castro nationalized their refineries too.

The problem with Castro wasn’t communism, it was a model of government that offered an attractive alternative to the American model and American hegemony. As internal State Department documents had said about Arbenz in Guatemala half a decade earlier, the concern was the contagious “example of independence of the US that Guatemala might offer to nationalists throughout Latin America,” and that that example “might spread through the example of nationalism and social reform.” That is why Eisenhower called his embargo a “quarantine.”

The U.S. had this concern about Castro from the first minutes. Observing Castro after the revolution but before he had even been sworn in as leader, Grandin records CIA operative Esterline, soon to be of the Bay of Pigs, warning that Castro was “something different, something more impressive.” He said a “chain reaction was occurring all over Latin America after Castro came to power” and described “a new and powerful force… at work in the hemisphere.”

Communist or not, the contagious alternative had to be erased. And as far back as it goes, the embargo that was meant to erase it always had as its deliberate intent the starvation of the Cuban people. That is the third truth.

When Eisenhower first proposed his quarantine of Cuba, he adopted the policy, he said, because “If they are hungry, they will throw Castro out.” Explaining how sanctions would work, Eisenhower’s assistant secretary of state for Latin America said, as Grandin reports, that the sanctions were intended to bring down “real wages, to bring about hunger, desperation and overthrow of government.” The embargo was a deliberate policy of bringing about regime change through hunger. And it still is. On February 16, Trump told reporters that Cuba “should absolutely make a deal, because it’s really a humanitarian threat.”

The official American narrative on its Cuba policy is a myth. To alter the narrative from mythology to history so policy decisions can responsibly be made, three truths need to be told. American hostility to Cuba has been going on longer than commonly believed. That hostility was not originally about communism. And the intent of the embargo has always been to bring about regime change by starving the Cuban people.

March 18, 2026 Posted by | Book Review, Timeless or most popular | , , | Comments Off on Washington’s War on Cuba Is Older Than You Think

Daniel Davis: U.S. Military Options & War Narrative Collapse

Glenn Diesen | March 18, 2026

Lt. Col. Daniel Davis argues why opening the Strait of Hormuz, putting boots on the ground, or seizing Kharg Island are not feasible options. The US could invade Yemen to control the key strait to the Red Sea—Bab el-Mandeb. The resignation of Joe Kent indicates that the military options and war narratives are collapsing fast. Lt. Col. Davis is a 4x combat veteran, the recipient of the Ridenhour Prize for Truth-Telling, and is the host of the Daniel Davis Deep Dive YouTube channel.

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March 18, 2026 Posted by | Militarism, Video, Wars for Israel | , , , , | Comments Off on Daniel Davis: U.S. Military Options & War Narrative Collapse

Protesters call on Brussels university to cut partnership with Israeli defense-linked firm

Students of Free University of Brussels attend a sit-in protest demanding the severing of all academic ties with Israel on May 13, 2024. [Dursun Aydemir/Anadolu via Getty Images]
MEMO | March 18, 2026

Pro-Palestine activists protested on Wednesday at the Free University of Brussels’ (VUB) Etterbeek campus, demanding that the university administration end its collaboration with an Israeli defense-linked company, Anadolu reports.

Demonstrators hung a large banner reading “VUB helps kill Palestinians” and placed portraits of Palestinian figures across the campus, accusing the university of complicity through its research partnerships, Flemish-language daily Het Nieuwsblad reported.

The protest condemned VUB’s collaboration with OIP Sensor Systems, which is owned by Elbit Systems, Israel’s largest private arms manufacturer.

Protesters demand that the partnership, which is being conducted through the university’s research center, be terminated immediately.

They claimed that technologies developed in such collaborations could have dual-use applications, including military surveillance and drone systems.

“While Palestinians are being killed using drones and precision equipment developed by OIP-Elbit, VUB continues to allow the company to benefit from research partnerships, including projects related to space missions,” one of the protestors, Julie Janssens, said.

Another protester, Jana De Blok, warned that space-related research often has inherent dual-use potential.

“This research will therefore likely contribute to the development of more surveillance technology and warfare in Palestine, Iran, and Lebanon, and in our own streets,” she added.

Since the start of the Gaza war, attacks by the Israeli army and illegal settlers in the West Bank have killed 1,133 Palestinians and injured about 11,700 others, in addition to the arrest of around 22,000 people, according to official Palestinian figures.

March 18, 2026 Posted by | Solidarity and Activism | , , , | Comments Off on Protesters call on Brussels university to cut partnership with Israeli defense-linked firm

Weapons makers cash in on Trump’s Iran war

Big Pentagon contractors like Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman saw billions added to their market value

By Ben Freeman and Janet Abou-Elias | Responsible Statecraft | March 3, 2026

The economic costs of the U.S. and Israel’s decision to start a war with Iran have already reverberated throughout the international economy. Oil prices rose, the stock market fell, and U.S. mortgage rates jumped sharply, raising the cost to buy a home for Americans. Unsurprisingly, public opinion polls have found that Americans are resoundingly opposed to Trump’s Iran war.

Yet, one sector has profited massively from the devastating conflict: Pentagon contractors. Arms supplier stocks as a whole rose 1.5% on Monday, but the largest Pentagon contractors and the contractors with the greatest stake in the conflict saw their share prices rise even more.

Lockheed Martin — the largest Pentagon contractor, which regularly receives more taxpayer dollars than the entire State Department — saw its stock price rise 3.4% Monday. Since the beginning of 2026, Lockheed’s stock price has increased nearly 40%, as tensions between the U.S. and Iran grew. Lockheed makes the THAAD system which has been used to intercept Iranian missiles. In January, Lockheed Martin signed a deal with the Pentagon to quadruple production of the THAAD interceptors — which each cost $12.77 million — from 96 to 400 per year.

RTX (previously Raytheon) stock rose 4.7% in the first day of trading since the Iran war began. RTX makes the Patriot radar and ground systems (Lockheed makes the $4 million Patriot missiles the system fires) that have been widely used in the conflict, which cost as little as $250,000. Multiple Patriot missiles are sometimes used to intercept every Iranian missile. In one case, for example, 11 Patriot missiles were reportedly used to intercept just one Iranian missile.

Of all the major Pentagon contractors, Boeing saw its share price rise the least on Monday, inching up just 1%. This relatively limited, though still sizable, gain is at least partially explained by the firm being the only major Pentagon contractor that does not derive a majority of its revenue from the Defense Department. The firm does, however, make the F-15 EX fighter jet, three of which crashed after being accidentally attacked by Kuwait’s air defense system. The cost of those three jets alone was around $300 million.

The biggest winner on Wall Street yesterday was Northrop Grumman, whose share price rose a remarkable 6%, increasing the company’s market value by billions of dollars in just one day of trading. Northrop’s B-2 Stealth Bombers were used in the recent Iran strikes, as well as in the strikes on Iran six months ago. The B-2s cost taxpayers around $2 billion to buy and more than $150,000 per hour to fly.

For investors and stock analysts, this was all to be expected. After all, the ticker for the global defense sector ETF is literally “War”.

As Jonathan Siegmann, a market analyst at the firm Stifel, succinctly explained to clients Monday, “Defense spending was already set to surge in 2026 and a protracted war with Iran will make the spending more urgent and less controversial.” As Marketwatch summed up the financial markets’ zeal for firms that will profit from the Iran war: “war can be good for business.”

The greatest threat to investors in these firms? Peace. When peace talks begin during prolonged conflicts, investors in defense firms tend to sell, as they did late last year when Russia, Ukraine, and the U.S. were in peace talks. But investment analysts are confident there’s no imminent threat of peace breaking out soon in the current Iran conflict. “Given the U.S. has assembled the largest set of military assets since the 2003 invasion of Iraq, we anticipate this conflict will be unfortunately more extended and violent than we have seen in recent years,” Siegmann said Monday.

In short, while more than 100 children were murdered in a strike on an Iranian school and the number of U.S. service members killed in the conflict continues to climb, war profiteering has a bright future ahead.

Ben Freeman is Director of the Democratizing Foreign Policy program at the Quincy Institute and the author of “The Trillion Dollar War Machine: How Runaway Military Spending Drives America into Foreign Wars and Bankrupts Us at Home” (2025).

March 18, 2026 Posted by | Economics, Militarism | , , , , , , | Comments Off on Weapons makers cash in on Trump’s Iran war

Why Trump’s anti-Iran naval coalition in Strait of Hormuz is doomed to fail

By Wesam Bahrani | Press TV | March 18, 2026

US President Donald Trump believes that involving many countries in a naval coalition would force Iran to surrender under international pressure, or at least agree to a ceasefire and enter negotiations with those countries without preconditions.

The last thing Trump expected was for what he thought would be a short, hours-long confrontation to stretch into days and weeks, and then turn into a full-fledged war of attrition.

This is a scenario he neither anticipated nor has the personal capacity to bear, given its potentially disastrous consequences for his country and the world.

It has become clear that Iran had long prepared for this all-out confrontation and that its leadership was certain it would happen at some point. Turning it into a prolonged war of attrition, both geographically and over time, appears to be a central pillar of the Iranian strategy to exhaust the US, the Zionist regime, and their regional and international allies.

Very quickly, by the end of the first week of the illegal and unprovoked war on Iran, Trump’s vision began to turn into a nightmare. His plan to overthrow the Islamic Republic (in other words, “regime change”) with a first strike failed, as did his far-fetched ambition to gain control over a quarter of global oil production and influence its routes and prices.

He now faces the urgent need to manage the global economic fallout of this failure. Iran has effectively gained control over a maritime route through which roughly a quarter of the world’s oil supply passes. By the third week of the war, oil prices had risen above $100 per barrel.

In his first statement to the Iranian people and the world, the new Leader of the Islamic Republic, Ayatollah Seyyed Mojtaba Khamenei, summarized this challenge in two striking phrases that sent shockwaves through the White House.

“The will of the people is to continue effective and deterrent defense,” and “the option of closing the Strait of Hormuz must remain on the table,” he declared.

This clearly signals a willingness to pursue a prolonged war of attrition that threatens the global economy, especially that of the United States and its allies.

Faced with this difficult situation, rising war costs, and growing tensions not only between the US and the Zionist regime but also within the Trump administration, as reported in American and Hebrew media, Trump has turned to his allies for help.

He initially claimed that several countries would send warships to cooperate with the United States in keeping the Strait of Hormuz open and secure.

He expressed hope that countries such as China, France, Japan, South Korea, and the United Kingdom would deploy naval forces to ensure the safety of this vital shipping route. He also called on countries that benefit from West Asian oil to contribute forces to secure maritime navigation.

At the same time, Trump announced an airstrike on Iran’s Kharg Island in an apparent attempt to convince these countries that the US still controls the military situation in the Persian Gulf.

Trump’s remarks can be understood as a desperate call to form an international naval military coalition under US leadership in the region. The implications, motivations, and objectives behind this call can be summarized as follows:

First, the United States appears to have lost the ability to control and manage the war on its own, especially after failing to claim victory. It is now attempting to internationalize the war and turn it into a global confrontation with Iran under the pretext of protecting oil supply chains and global trade.

Second, the US is trying to bypass Iran’s right to control navigation in the Strait during wartime by internationalizing the issue. This could pave the way for imposing new maritime laws under pressure from multiple countries.

Third, Trump believes that the participation of many countries in a naval coalition would force the Islamic Republic to surrender under international pressure, or at least agree to a ceasefire and enter negotiations without preconditions, giving him a way out of the current crisis.

Fourth, Trump is maneuvering to avoid relying on Russian mediation, which he believes would come at a cost, possibly involving concessions in other areas he is unwilling to compromise on.

Fifth, Trump hopes that his invitation to China to join the coalition will be accepted, especially with a scheduled visit to Beijing.

Sixth, he is trying to encourage European countries, affected by rising energy prices, to join the war effort, after they initially adopted a relatively neutral stance.

The first responses came from Europe, particularly France and the United Kingdom, which appeared to divide roles between them. The UK quickly held a ministerial meeting with Persian Gulf monarchies under defensive themes, a move that seemed to sidestep Trump’s call for a formal naval coalition.

British media also reported that the UK is considering sending drones to detect naval mines and intercept Iranian drones, steps that fall short of full participation in a military alliance.

France, meanwhile, took a different approach. President Emmanuel Macron held phone calls with both the Saudi Crown Prince and the Iranian president, aiming to activate political efforts for a resolution. He also asked Trump to clarify his “final objectives and the pace he intends for operations.” The French presidency denied reports that France would send warships to the Persian Gulf.

Japan announced that it would not rush to send warships in response to Trump’s request, emphasizing its long-standing principle of making independent decisions. It also noted that current laws make deploying military vessels to the region legally very difficult.

South Korea stated that it is carefully reviewing Trump’s request, while China ignored the call and instead urged an immediate ceasefire.

Overall, despite their differences, these responses reflect a shared caution, a preference for diplomacy, de-escalation, and, in essence, avoiding the risks of retaliatory attacks from Tehran over a war that has been widely acknowledged as illegal and unprovoked.

This has reportedly increased Trump’s frustration, leading him to postpone his visit to China and to warn of serious consequences for NATO if allies respond negatively.

Tehran’s political approach appears to combine prudence and strategic cunning with firm military resolve. This has been evident both in its diplomatic efforts before and during recent negotiations, as well as in its conduct during the current war.

As usual, Iran’s leadership quickly understood the motives behind Trump’s latest maneuver and responded through several measures.

One of the first decisions was to allow some oil shipments to pass through the Strait of Hormuz on the condition that transactions be conducted reportedly in Chinese yuan, as per reports.

This move aims to maintain oil flows while weakening the US dollar, or at least ensuring that China continues to receive Persian Gulf oil imports, not just from Iran. This is particularly significant as Persian Gulf states may feel compelled to continue selling oil amid fears of economic slowdown after decades of growth.

Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi shifted responsibility back onto the United States by stating that Iran has not closed the Strait of Hormuz and that the real reason ships are not sailing is the insecurity caused by American aggression.

This undermines the justification Trump used to call for the coalition. Araghchi also left the door open for countries seeking safe passage for their ships, indicating that decisions would rest with Iranian military forces.

This may be an attempt to encourage direct security cooperation with Iran instead of joining a US-led coalition, while also reiterating Iran’s demand for US forces to leave the region.

Remarks by former CIA analyst Larry Johnson seem to capture Trump’s current situation accurately: Trump lives in a world of “illusions” and is detached from “reality.”

In reality, he is sliding toward madness.

Wesam Bahrani is an Iraqi journalist and commentator.

March 18, 2026 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Militarism, Wars for Israel | , , , , , | Comments Off on Why Trump’s anti-Iran naval coalition in Strait of Hormuz is doomed to fail

IRGC says regional energy sites linked to US will be reduced to ashes

Press TV – March 18, 2026

The Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) says regional energy production facilities linked to the United States will be reduced to ashes as the elite force prepares to respond to attacks on Iran’s natural gas production sites.

Spokesman of the IRGC’s Khatam al-Anbiya Central Headquarters Lieutenant Colonel Ebrahim Zolfaqari said on Wednesday that Iran’s attacks will target countries whose territories were used to launch airstrikes on Iran’s gas facilities earlier in the day.

“Fuel, energy and natural gas infrastructure of the source of the invasion will be set ablaze and reduced to ashes at the earliest opportunity,” the spokesman said in a televised statement.

Earlier on Wednesday, the IRGC issued a warning note to people living near five major energy production facilities in Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Qatar, to immediately evacuate to protect their lives from Iran’s reprisal attacks.

The warning came right after Iran’s Oil Ministry said four refining facilities in Asaluyeh, a Persian Gulf coastal town home to Iran’s gas processing installations, had suffered damage as a result of US-Israeli airstrikes.

Meanwhile, commander of the IRGC Navy Rear Admiral Alireza Tangsiri said in a post on his X account that the force had updated its bank of targets to include “oil installations related to the US.”

Tangsiri said the IRGC will open fire on those installations forcefully and with full strength.

“We warn citizens and workers to keep away from these installations,” said his post.

Iran has been carrying out reprisal attacks against US military bases and other assets in regional countries since the start of the US-Israeli aggression on February 28.

However, oil and gas infrastructure was spared to prevent major disruption to regional and international energy supplies.

Iranian authorities had warned that those facilities would also come under attack if corresponding sites in Iran were hit.

The Wednesday attacks and Iran’s planned response are expected to cause a major surge in international energy prices, with analysts warning that they could well exceed $150 a barrel, up nearly three times compared to before the aggression on Iran.

March 18, 2026 Posted by | Economics, Wars for Israel | , , , , , | Comments Off on IRGC says regional energy sites linked to US will be reduced to ashes

Qatar condemns ‘dangerous’ Israeli attack on gas field

RT – March 18, 2026

The Qatari Foreign Ministry has condemned Israel’s attack on Iran’s South Pars gas field, which is jointly operated by Iran and Qatar. The ministry said that strikes on Pars constitute “a threat to global energy security.”

Gas processing facilities on the Iranian side of the field were damaged in strikes on Wednesday. While Israel has not taken responsibility for the strikes, Axios reported that they were carried out by Israeli forces in coordination with the US.

In a post on X, Qatari Foreign Ministry spokesman Majed al-Ansari blamed the destruction on Israel.

“The Israeli targeting of facilities linked to Iran’s South Pars field, an extension of Qatar’s North Field, is a dangerous and irresponsible step amid the current military escalation in the region,” he wrote. “Targeting energy infrastructure constitutes a threat to global energy security, as well as to the peoples of the region and its environment.”

Al-Ansari called on all parties involved in the conflict to “exercise restraint” and avoid “the targeting of vital facilities.”

South Pars/North Field is the world’s largest natural gas field. Holding an estimated 1,800 trillion cubic feet of natural gas, its recoverable reserves are believed to be almost as large those of every other gas field on earth combined. Qatar depends on oil and gas for 80% of its revenues, with almost all of its gas extracted from this field.

Iran has threatened to retaliate to the attack in kind. “As previously warned, if the fuel, energy, gas, and economic infrastructures of our country is attacked by the American-Zionist enemy, in addition to a powerful counterattack against the enemy, we will severely strike the origin of that aggression as well,” the country’s military said in a statement to Iranian media.

“We consider targeting the fuel, energy, and gas infrastructures of the countries of origin legitimate and will retaliate strongly at the earliest opportunity,” the statement continued.

In the hours after the attack on South Pars, loud explosions were heard in the Saudi capital of Riyadh, while QatarEnergy announced that missiles had hit the Ras Laffan LNG hub, causing “significant damage.” Qatar’s civil defense agency blamed the attack on Iran.

March 18, 2026 Posted by | Economics, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Wars for Israel | , , , , | Comments Off on Qatar condemns ‘dangerous’ Israeli attack on gas field

Iran made ‘unexpectedly substantial’ offer during Geneva talks, US envoys ‘dragged’ Trump into war: Report

The Cradle | March 18, 2026

UK National Security Advisor Jonathan Powell attended the final US–Iran talks in Geneva last month and concluded that a deal was in reach, The Guardian reported on 17 March, citing sources as saying that Washington’s leading envoys were acting as “Israeli assets” who “dragged” the US into war.

According to the report, Powell thought what Iran was proposing was “surprising.”

“The UK team were surprised by what the Iranians put on the table. 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,” the sources explained.

“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.”

The report went on to say that US President Donald Trump’s envoy Steve Witkoff and his son-in-law and unofficial advisor Jared Kushner invited Rafael Grossi, head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), to the talks.

A former official told The Guardian that “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 former official added.

“Witkoff’s pronouncements on the Iran nuclear program were riddled with basic errors,” despite the envoys claiming they had “a pretty deep understanding of the issues that matter in this.”

The next round of talks was planned for 2 March. On 28 February, the US and Israel launched the attack.

“The UK saw no compelling evidence of an imminent threat of an Iranian missile attack on Europe, or of Iran securing a nuclear weapon …  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,” the report said.

A diplomat with knowledge of the negotiations said, “We regarded Witkoff and Kushner as Israeli assets that dragged a president into a war he wants to get out of.”

Before the war, Trump claimed not only that Iran was seeking a nuclear bomb, but also that it wanted to build missiles capable of reaching the US. Intelligence assessments have refuted this.

According to a report by Responsible Statecraft, Kushner and Witkoff “offered misleading advice that helped push the US toward conflict.”

People present at the US–Iran talks told MS Now earlier this month that Witkoff falsely claimed that the Iranians had “bragged” that they had enough enriched uranium for 11 nuclear bombs.

The report by The Guardian comes as the brutal US-Israeli war on Iran has entered its third week.

Tehran has launched a massive and unprecedented campaign of retaliatory strikes on Israel as well as US military bases and energy infrastructure across the region. The global price of oil has now shot up past $100 and is expected to continue rising.

Joe Kent, head of the US ​National Counterterrorism ​Center, officially resigned over his opposition to the war on 17 March.

March 18, 2026 Posted by | Deception, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Wars for Israel | , , , | Comments Off on Iran made ‘unexpectedly substantial’ offer during Geneva talks, US envoys ‘dragged’ Trump into war: Report

Russia condemns Israel’s attack near Bushehr plant, files complaint

Press TV – March 18, 2026

Russia has officially filed a complaint against Israel for attacking areas near Iran’s Bushehr Nuclear Power Plant and endangering the lives of its Russian personnel.

Hebrew news outlet reported on Wednesday that Russia has voiced strong condemnation against Israel for attacking the Bushehr airport and other areas in the southern Iranian province, which are close to the nuclear power plant.

The attacks endanger the lives of Russian personnel working in and around the Bushehr Nuclear Power Plant, Russia said.

The Russian embassy in the Israeli-occupied territories gave the country’s complaint and official demands to Israeli authorities.

According to reports, Israeli attacks against Bushehr targeted the living quarters of one of Russia’s nuclear experts in the region.

March 18, 2026 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, War Crimes | , , , | Comments Off on Russia condemns Israel’s attack near Bushehr plant, files complaint

Russia Strongly Condemns Actions Aimed at Harming Health of Iranian Leadership – Kremlin

Sputnik – 18.03.2026

MOSCOW – Russia strongly condemns any actions aimed at harming the health or murder of representatives of the Iranian leadership, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Wednesday.

“Actions aimed at harming health or even killing and eliminating representatives of the leadership of sovereign Iran, sovereign and independent Iran, as well as other countries. We condemn such actions,” Peskov told reporters.

On Tuesday, the office of the Secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council said that Ali Larijani died.

Moscow has not received any signals from the Europeans that they want to engage in dialogue within the framework of energy cooperation, Peskov said.
“There have been no signals from the Europeans that they want to at least have a dialogue,” Peskov told reporters.

Putin is always open to discussing most pressing issues, the official said, adding that it is not too late for Europeans to signal their readiness for energy cooperation.

“As for the president’s instruction to consider the possibility of early withdrawal from European gas markets, this topic is under consideration. A fairly in-depth analysis is required,” Peskov said.

The energy market is experiencing an upheaval due to the conflict over Iran, which makes it difficult to predict the development of the market, the spokesman added.

Earlier this month, Russian President Vladimir Putin said he would instruct the government, together with Russian companies, to work out the issue of natural gas supplies from Russia to promising markets. Putin said that it might be more profitable for Russia to stop supplies to the European market now, before EU restrictions take effect, and to enter new markets and gain a foothold there.

Russia does not consider it appropriate for European countries to participate in the negotiation process on Ukraine, Peskov said.

“You know that there have been signals from the Europeans that they want to take their place at the negotiating table on the Ukrainian settlement, which we do not consider necessary and expedient,” Peskov told reporters.

US representatives said that they had no information about Russia’s support for Iran, Dmitry Peskov said.

“There were comments on this issue from representatives, official representatives of the United States, who themselves said that they had no information on this matter,” Peskov told reporters.

The vast majority of media reports related to the Iranian conflict are not true, Peskov added.

Earlier in March, media reported, citing US officials and a former Russian intelligence officer, that Russia allegedly shares with Iran satellite images of US facilities in the Middle East and UAV production technologies.

March 18, 2026 Posted by | Economics, War Crimes | , , , | Comments Off on Russia Strongly Condemns Actions Aimed at Harming Health of Iranian Leadership – Kremlin

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