Israel’s War on Iran’s Grid: How the South Pars Strike Turned Energy into a Weapon
By Freddie Ponton – 21st Century Wire – March 19, 2026
In the early hours of March 18, Israeli drones tore into four gas‑treatment plants in Assaluyeh on Iran’s southern coast, where sour gas from phases 3, 4, 5 and 6 of the South Pars field is cleaned, separated and turned into the fuel that keeps the country’s lights on, homes heated and factories supplied. Iranian officials ordered the plants offline to contain the fires, and industry analysts immediately warned that production from the offshore platforms feeding those trains would have to be cut back. Within an hour of the strike being reported, European gas prices and Brent crude jumped, because traders understood what most headlines did not. This was not a symbolic hit on an abstract “gas field,” but a deliberate attack on a conversion node at the heart of Iran’s domestic energy system and a critical pillar of the wider Gulf energy order.
At the same time, Donald Trump was on social media threatening that if Iran retaliated again against Qatar’s LNG hub at Ras Laffan, he would “blow up the entirety” of South Pars – the largest gas field on the planet, and interestingly, a reservoir Iran shares with Qatar. The man who joined Israel in authorising the first strikes on Iranian production facilities is now openly dangling the prospect of destroying the shared gas reservoir that keeps tens of millions of people warm, powered and employed. That is not deterrence, only a head of state experimenting in public with the language of total economic annihilation.
Trump’s own Truth Social post about the strike reads like a rambling attempt to distance Washington from the attack while threatening to “blow up the entirety” of South Pars if Iran hits Qatar again. The post deserves closer attention later in this story.
ASSALUYEH: WHERE GAS BECOMES POWER
To see what was attacked in Assaluyeh is to understand that the language matches the target. South Pars itself is the Iranian half of a single, giant reservoir under the Gulf, known as the North Field in Qatar, which together contain around a tenth of the world’s proven gas reserves. Iranian officials say South Pars covers 24 phases and provides between 70–75% of Iran’s gas production, feeding power plants, industry, petrochemical complexes and gasoline production. The gas that makes that possible must pass through places like Assaluyeh, where onshore plants strip out condensate, liquefied petroleum gases and natural gas liquids before returning dry gas to the grid and sending liquids on to refineries and export jetties. Over two decades, the South Pars Special Economic Energy Zone has grown into a dense cluster of processing trains and downstream plants with total gas‑processing capacity on the order of a billion cubic metres per day and around twenty‑one petrochemical units producing close to forty million tonnes per year of urea, methanol, polyethene, and other basic chemicals.
Israel did not attack the offshore reservoir. It attacked the pipes, columns and separators that turn raw gas into power, plastics, fertiliser and fuel. The four targeted plants process sour gas from phases 3, 4, 5 and 6, which are mature, are heavily integrated blocks that feed directly into Iran’s domestic grid and petrochemical system. Shutting those trains, even temporarily, forces operators to throttle back production on the linked platforms and starves downstream complexes of both dry gas and feedstock. In concrete terms, that means less gas available for electricity generation on a grid already prone to summer blackouts, less feed for petrochemical plants that supply everything from fertiliser to plastics, and less condensate flowing through the storage and export facilities that sit alongside the gas plants on the Persian Gulf shore.
Iranian reports speak of powerful explosions at several Assaluyeh facilities, fires around storage tanks and gas units, and workers being evacuated as emergency crews tried to contain the damage. From a planner’s point of view, this is a high‑leverage target: a handful of processing units at the convergence of offshore production and onshore consumption whose disruption sends shockwaves up the supply chain and down into the civilian economy. From the point of view of the people whose houses, factories and hospitals depend on those flows, it looks like something else entirely – an attack on the infrastructure of daily life.
That is the first truth this strike reveals: Israel has shifted from fighting Iran’s armed forces to fighting the country’s energy system, the circulation of fuel that keeps the state conscious.
This is not a one‑off aberration. During the twelve‑day war of June 2025, an earlier Israeli strike hit the Phase 14 processing plant at Assaluyeh, forcing a shutdown and firefighting operation before Iranian engineers brought the plant back online within two weeks. The March 2026 strikes returned to the same nerve centre but widened the cut: instead of Phase 14 alone, the drones went after four plants tied to phases 3–6, which together represent a much larger share of South Pars throughput and a deeper incision into Iran’s ability to turn offshore gas into usable energy. What is being tested here is not just Iran’s repair capacity. It is how much of its gas‑conversion system can be burned down before the political cost becomes untenable.
FROM MILITARY TARGETS TO CIVILIAN PUNISHMENT
The crucial point is that gas in Iran is not a luxury export commodity, but the country’s primary fuel for power generation, industrial heat and residential heating. Well over ninety per cent of the gas Iran produces is consumed domestically, not exported. It keeps homes warm in winter, feeds cement and steel plants, drives turbines in power stations and prevents rolling blackouts on a grid that is already fragile. When you hit Assaluyeh, you are not trimming a few cargoes of condensate to Asia. You are reaching into the core of a domestic energy system that supports nearly ninety million people – the apartment blocks in Tehran that already live with scheduled outages, the small factories in Isfahan that depend on steady voltage to keep lines moving, the provincial hospitals that cannot function when the generators sputter.
Even the outlets trying to normalise the strike cannot entirely avoid that reality. They call South Pars an “energy lifeline”, stress that it powers much of Iran’s electricity system and note that the onshore plants at Assaluyeh are central to separating condensate and LPG from the gas that then runs into Iranian networks. “Energy lifeline” is the language of necessity, not of optional revenue. To choose that target is to choose to tamper with the civilian infrastructure that stands between a functioning society and a rolling crisis of blackouts, shortages and industrial breakdown. “Collective punishment” is usually invoked in the context of bombs on apartment blocks or food embargoes. Here it is delivered through valves and turbines.
It is precisely at this point, when questions of necessity and legitimacy collide, that the recent behaviour of Washington’s own security establishment strips away the alibi that this was a war forced by urgent facts. In a few sentences at a Senate hearing, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard told lawmakers that only the president can decide what is an “imminent threat” from Iran, even as senior aides were warning her that there was no evidence Iran had restarted enrichment or posed an immediate nuclear danger. Two days earlier, Joe Kent, the director of the National Counterterrorism Center, resigned, saying in his letter that he could not “in good conscience support the ongoing war in Iran,” that Iran posed “no imminent threat,” and that Israel had pressured the United States into the conflict. Those two moments do not need pages of commentary. Together they are enough: the official charged with guarding the integrity of U.S. intelligence rewrites “threat” as a presidential mood, and the official charged with synthesising terrorist threats walks out saying the war is manufactured.
In other words, while Israeli pilots and U.S. operators are hitting the infrastructure that keeps Iranian civilians alive, the people at the top of the American system are quietly admitting that the supposed emergency justifying those strikes does not exist in the way the public was told. The last line of defence, a reality defined by evidence rather than by political need, has been crossed, and it has been crossed at the exact moment the war shifted from military targets to the machinery of everyday survival.
Trump’s Truth Social statement makes that shift even starker. It is not a clarification, and reads more like a hostage note. South Pars is being turned into collateral for Qatar’s LNG security, and Trump denies U.S. prior knowledge of Israel’s first strike while claiming the right to decide if and when the entire shared field is destroyed. In one message, he signals that the energy backbone of Iran and Qatar is now a bargaining chip Washington is prepared to sacrifice to enforce its war.
That is the second truth of this episode: the war on Iran’s civilian infrastructure is being waged under a definition of “threat” that collapses into whatever the president needs it to be.
Once a president starts talking about “blowing up the entirety” of the field that keeps both Iran and Qatar running, the fiction that this is a contained war collapses.
Exporting the Energy Shock
By treating Iran’s South Pars complex and linked Gulf energy infrastructure as disposable targets, Israel and the United States have not just escalated a regional war; they have shifted the economic pain onto societies that never signed up for this fight, from Turkish households to European workers and Indian farmers now absorbing the fallout.
Turkey: forced into a rigged market
In Turkey, the cost of turning South Pars into a battlefield is already measurable. Analysts note that Iran supplies gas to Turkey by pipeline, and that any prolonged disruption would force buyers to look for replacement cargoes on the LNG market. That “elsewhere” is the spot market, where Asian demand has already begun pulling cargoes away from Europe as importers scramble to replace lost Gulf supply. In practice, a strike pitched as pressure on Iran becomes a higher import bill for a NATO member and another inflationary squeeze on households and industry.
Europe: dragged back toward 2022
In Europe, the impact showed up first on trading screens. After disruption to Qatari LNG output, benchmark gas prices on the Dutch TTF hub jumped by as much as 45%, reaching around €46 per megawatt-hour. Reuters then reported that Asian buyers scrambling for LNG replacement cargoes were already pulling shipments toward Asia, reinforcing the risk of another continental price shock. Europe’s dependence on LNG after cutting Russian pipeline supply means that attacks on South Pars-linked infrastructure in the Gulf do not stay regional for long.
India: paying for a war it did not choose
In India, the blowback is more than theoretical. Government sources told CNBC-TV18 that LPG supplies were already “feeling some heat” as the West Asia conflict disrupted shipping routes and pushed gas prices higher. The same report said Asian LNG prices had risen from about $6–8 per MMBtu to around $15 per MMBtu, while rerouting cargoes from alternative suppliers such as the United States or Norway would take longer. A later report said Indian LPG consumption fell 17.7% in the first half of March because of war-related supply disruption. That is what energy warfare looks like in human terms: shortages, higher costs and forced adjustment by people who had no role in launching the conflict.
China: tested, not insulated
China’s immediate exposure looks smaller on paper, but the same shock still hits Beijing’s energy calculus. Reuters reported that over 80% of Qatar’s LNG exports go to Asia, placing major buyers like China in the line of fire when Gulf supply is disrupted. Another report noted that China was among the key Asian markets exposed as the regional benchmark LNG price surged and traders sought replacement cargoes from farther afield. That leaves Beijing with more buffers than poorer importers, but not immunity from the price shock set off by attacks on Gulf gas infrastructure
WHEN A SHARED FIELD BECOMES A WAR ZONE
If the story stopped at Iran’s shoreline, it would already be devastating. But South Pars does not stop at Iran’s shoreline. The reservoir that feeds Assaluyeh stretches under the Gulf into Qatari waters, where it is known as the North Field and where it supplies Ras Laffan Industrial City, the most important LNG complex on Earth. Before the war, Ras Laffan’s trains exported around 77 million tonnes per year of liquefied natural gas, with plans underway to expand capacity towards 142 million tonnes by the end of the decade. Alongside LNG, Ras Laffan also produces Liquefied Petroleum Gas (LPG), ethane, condensate and sulphur, and hosts gas‑to‑liquids plants, power stations and desalination units. It is a central hinge in the global energy system, and on the day Iran’s missiles arrived, workers there were told to leave the plant that underwrites their families’ incomes because someone else had decided their shared field was expendable.
Qatar understood immediately what an attack on South Pars meant. Its foreign ministry condemned the strikes as “dangerous and irresponsible,” explicitly reminding the world that the field is geologically continuous with the North Field and warning that targeting infrastructure tied to that reservoir threatens global energy security. It has now gone further, calling Iran’s strike on Ras Laffan a “brutal targeting” of its gas hub, invoking Security Council resolutions and asserting its right to respond under Article 51 of the UN Charter. The United Arab Emirates, normally cautious about public criticism of Israel, issued its own statement that attacks on energy facilities linked to Pars risk catastrophic consequences. Those are not sentimental reactions. They are the reflex of states that suddenly realised the line between “hitting Iran” and “putting our own energy spine in the crosshairs” had effectively vanished.
Iran’s Revolutionary Guard then warned that key Gulf facilities had become “direct and legitimate targets” and urged workers to evacuate them before the strike. The list was specific: Ras Laffan; Mesaieed, Qatar’s original deep‑water export port and industrial hub, where gas and condensate are turned into NGLs, refined products, petrochemicals, aluminium and steel; Samref, a more‑than‑400,000‑barrels‑per‑day refinery in Yanbu on Saudi Arabia’s Red Sea coast with around 13 million barrels of storage; Jubail, the giant refinery‑petrochemical complex in eastern Saudi Arabia running at roughly 440,000 barrels per day and anchored by a 1.5‑million‑tonne‑per‑year ethylene cracker; and Al Hosn in the UAE, a sour‑gas project that processes about a billion cubic feet per day of raw gas, produces roughly half a billion cubic feet per day of sales gas for the Emirati grid and throws off tens of thousands of barrels of condensate and thousands of tonnes of sulphur every day.
In Kuwait, drones struck individual units at the Mina al‑Ahmadi refinery and Mina Abdullah refinery, triggering “limited” fires and forcing operators to temporarily halt parts of their output. Further east, Abu Dhabi’s Habshan gas facilities, already singled out in Iranian warnings, were shut down after debris from intercepted missiles fell on the site, underscoring that Tehran was willing to hit the very installations that underpin its rivals’ domestic energy security.
In other words, Tehran not only threatened but executed multiple strikes, and in the Ras Laffan’s case, it appears the Islamic Republic have struck the same class of conversion assets on Arab shores that Israel and the U.S. had just targeted at Assaluyeh, the plants where raw hydrocarbons become electricity, heating, industrial feedstock and exportable product.
It is crucial to understand that Ras Laffan’s LNG trains, Mesaieed’s NGL and refining complex, Samref’s crude units, Jubail’s crude‑to‑chemicals expansion and Al Hosn’s gas and sulphur trains are all parts of the same nervous system.
When one side authorises attacks on conversion nodes at South Pars, the other side’s answer is not to keep politely to its own coastline. It is to declare that the Gulf’s entire energy architecture is now part of the battlefield.
That is the third truth this strike exposes: by hitting a shared field, Israel and the U.S. have made their own allies’ energy spines part of the target set.
THE ENERGY WAR NOBODY CAN HONESTLY CALL ‘DEFENSE’
Seen from this angle, the Assaluyeh strikes were not a self‑contained tactical move. They were the opening of a new kind of war, a war on conversion infrastructure, that punishes civilians first and drags allies and markets along for the ride. Israel hit the plant that turns Iran’s gas wealth into heat, light and wages; Iran responded in kind by putting the plants that turn Qatar’s, Saudi Arabia’s and the UAE’s hydrocarbons into LNG, petrol and plastics in its sights. Trump then raised the stakes by threatening to “entirely blow up” the shared reservoir that makes all of this possible, as if the energy backbone of two states and a sizeable slice of Europe and Asia’s gas supply were a pawn to be removed from the board to prove a point.
At that stage, the legal and moral mask slips. A campaign that begins as “precision strikes” against military and command targets turns, almost in slow motion, into an assault on the infrastructure that keeps tens of millions of people from freezing, blacking out or losing their jobs, and into a form of extortion against the wider Gulf. In other words, people of Iran are being asked to accept that Iran’s energy lifeline can be bombed with impunity, or watch their own refineries and LNG terminals burn.
Iranian analysts now call this openly what it is, “economic warfare” centered on energy, and warn that destroyed or degraded capacity will worsen electricity shortages and deepen domestic hardship. When the same government waging that campaign has senior officials on record saying the “imminent threat” used to sell the war does not exist as advertised, it becomes very hard to sustain the fiction that this is self‑defense in any meaningful sense.
A war waged under those conditions cannot be sold as “precision.” It can barely, if at all, be sold as self‑defense. What they are doing, in the cold light of Assaluyeh’s burning stacks and Ras Laffan’s flares, looks like a campaign of collective punishment enforced through the energy system of an entire region, and once you see it that way, it becomes very hard to unsee.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Top US Counterterrorism Official Resigns in Protest of Operation Against Iran
Sputnik – 17.03.2026
WASHINGTON – Joseph Kent on Tuesday announced his decision to step down as director of the US National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC) because of his disapproval of the US military operation against Iran.
“After much reflection, I have decided to resign from my position as Director of the National Counterterrorism Center, effective today. I cannot in good conscience support the ongoing war in Iran. Iran posed no imminent threat to our nation, and it is clear that we started this war due to pressure from Israel and its powerful American lobby,” Kent wrote in his letter to US President Donald Trump published on X.
He said that until June of 2025, Trump understood that wars in the Middle East were a “trap” that robbed the country of lives and depleted the nation’s wealth and prosperity.
However, during Trump’s second term, high-ranking Israeli officials and US media deployed a misinformation campaign that dragged the US into a war with Iran by making the president believe in a lie that aggression could lead to a swift victory – a tactic used by Israel to start the war in Iraq, Kent said.
“I pray that you will reflect upon what we are doing in Iran, and who we are doing it for. The time for bold action is now. You can reverse course and chart a new path for our nation, or you can allow us to slip further toward decline and chaos. You hold the cards,” he concluded.
On February 28, the United States and Israel launched strikes on targets in Iran, including in Tehran, causing damage and civilian casualties. Iran responded by striking Israeli territory and US military facilities in the Middle East.
IRGC orders ‘defeated’ US to evacuate industrial facilities in region
Al Mayadeen | March 16, 2026
The Islamic Revolution Guard Corps (IRGC) has issued a warning to the “defeated US regime,” demanding the evacuation of all American industrial facilities in the region.
The IRGC also called on residents living near US-linked factories to leave the area for their safety, emphasizing that these industrial sites are expected to come under attack in the coming hours.
IRGC’s 56th wave targets strategic Israeli stockpiles, Al-Udeid base
Earlier today, the IRGC announced the launch of the 56th wave of its Operation True Promise 4, targeting key Israeli military infrastructure and a US military installation in the region.
In a statement issued by its Public Relations office, the IRGC said the latest wave of operations was dedicated to martyr Qassem Soleimani, the former commander of the IRGC’s Quds Force, who was assassinated in a US drone strike in January 2020, as well as fighters martyred during battles in defense of the nation’s sanctities.
Stockpiles, airbase hit with precision
According to the statement, the operation targeted several strategic locations in the Israeli-occupied territories, including the Southern Region Support Command and a strategic missile storage facility belonging to Rafael Advanced Defense Systems in the northern occupied territories.
The IRGC said the strikes were carried out using heavy and precision-guided ballistic missiles, including Khorramshahr-4, Emad, and Ghadr missiles, stressing that the designated targets were hit with precision.
The statement also said the attacks extended to the US military presence in the region, noting that the US-operated al-Udeid Airbase was struck during the operation.
Iran War Exposes Limits of US Military Power – Journalist
Sputnik – 16.03.2026
The United States does have great firepower, but it is still far from the strongest country in the world, veteran war correspondent Elijah J. Magnier tells Sputnik.
Despite Iran being forced to endure “47 years of maximum pressure and sanctions,” Magnier points out, the US still cannot best it and is forced to ask other countries to help open the Strait of Hormuz.
“We see the strongest country in the world and the strongest army in the Middle East – that is Israel- fighting Iran and not managing to achieve their objectives and calling for help and support from the Europeans and from NATO,” he observes.
The United States’ military presence in the Middle East has also been put into question as the US can neither protect its military bases in the region nor defend the countries that host these facilities.
“I think the image of the United States has received severe damage much more than the damage inflicted on Iran,” Magnier adds.
To add insult to injury, the US and Israel found themselves unable to achieve any of their stated objectives – be it the destruction of Iran’s missile program or the dismantling of the Iranian nuclear program.
Meanwhile, Trump’s claims that the US wiped out Iran’s entire missile capability don’t hold water either, as Iran regularly provides ample evidence to the contrary in the form of multiple missile launches.
Even The Neo-Cons Admit The Iran War Is Failing
The Dissident – March 16, 2026
The current U.S./Israeli war on Iran is, in many ways, a product of the policies long advocated by U.S. neoconservatives, most importantly the clean break strategy drafted by the Project for a New American Century (PNAC), which advocated taking out “Iraq, and then Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, and, finishing off, Iran” on behalf of Israel.
But many of the original Neo-cons who first drafted this plan, including John Bolton and even Robert Kagan and Bill Kristol, the founders of the Project for a New American Century, are now jumping ship and admitting that the U.S./Israeli war on Iran is failing.
In an interview with NPR, longtime Neo-con John Bolton, despite saying he has “been a supporter of efforts at regime change in Iran for a long time” was forced to admit that the regime change plan has failed and that the U.S. underestimated Iran’s response.
Bolton was forced to admit that Trump underestimated Iran’s ability to effectively close the Strait of Hormuz and disrupt oil shipping in response to the U.S/Israeli bombing, saying:
… it was questionable whether he was cooperating effectively with and assisting the opposition inside Iran. That’s what I said, I think, in our last conversation. Since then, I’m very worried that there are now signs that they haven’t thought about a lot of other things. For example, there’s reporting that the White House was surprised at how quickly oil prices went up.
And all I can say to that is I’m surprised that they’re surprised. If they weren’t planning for that both economically, politically and militarily, then that’s a huge hole in the planning. I am worried that they apparently didn’t take as seriously as they should have the potential to mine the Strait of Hormuz. Trump said several days ago that the Iranian navy had been completely destroyed. And despite years of listening to that kind of thing, I should have known better. I actually sort of believed in for a while. But now we learned that it was only yesterday that we got around to destroying 16 mine-laying vessels. Of course, they’ve got the capability to mine via drones going over the strait and dropping mines in it.
Even more shocking than Bolton’s admission was a podcast released by the founders of PNAC, Robert Kagan and Bill Kristol, where they essentially admitted that the U.S. war on Iran was destroying the U.S. empire.
Robert Kagan, in the podcast, admitted that the Iran war was debilitating America’s ability to wage a new Cold War on Russia and China, and isolating the U.S. empire globally.
The “undoubted effect of the Iran war has been to drive a deeper wedge between the United States and pretty much all of its allies or at least all of its traditional allies, both in Europe and in Asia, and I would say potentially even in the Middle East” Kagan Said.
Kagan lamented that the Iran war was crippling the U.S.’s ability to continue the proxy war in Ukraine saying, “the skyrocketing oil prices … are even before Trump took the action of lifting sanctions against Russia was going to increase Russian income” and “American forces are … burning through major stocks of weaponry and particularly Patriot and other forms of interceptors on which Ukraine depends heavily because those are the interceptors that defend their major cities from constant Russian attacks.”
Kagan also lamented that the war was taking away the U.S. empire’s ability to wage a new Cold War on China, saying, “very few countries in the world are more dependent on Middle East oil, including the oil that comes directly through the Strait of Hormuz, than Japan. Japan I think, depends on something like 95% of its oil supplies come from the Middle East and 70% of that runs through the Strait of Hormuz. So once again the Japanese were not consulted”, adding, that the prime minister of Japan is “very upset” and “ talked about how this crisis has severely impacted Japanese interests”.
He also added “the Japanese will notice that the United States has sent significant forces that are dedicated both to the defense of Japan and are sort of critical to any response to a Chinese attack on Taiwan. Those forces are now being sent or some of them are already there, and some are being sent to the Middle East.”
Kagan also admitted that the war in Iran is isolating the Gulf States from the U.S. and potentially moving them towards China.
He said, “I just wonder whether the Gulf States in particular are wondering whether they’ve joined the right team here because they have, by the way, been very on background, very vocal in saying that they were against the war. … They did not favor it. They thought they had a pretty good deal going with the Iranians, that kind of an agreement that they would get to, they would leave each other alone for the most part,” adding, “it turns out the United States can’t really protect them. I mean they have suffered the worst in some respects because it’s not only that they’ve been targets and that they’re shipping you know they’ve lost money on oil, but you know they with the tremendous cooperation of the Trump and I would say in this case the Trump family and social circle have been very deeply involved in the United States making investments in AI and other things but particularly AI they’re hosting data centers for all kinds of companies and in general, they’ve been trying to make themselves an attractive place for investment and also tourism.”
Citing the example of Dubai, Kagan said, “You watch the UAE is basically arresting people for taking pictures of damage that may have been done by Iranian drone strikes and other things on things in Dubai. For instance, I think they’ve arrested foreigners who took pictures of these things. Why? Because they don’t want people to see that it’s risky to be in Dubai, because then people won’t invest and they won’t come, and so it’s kind of a disaster for them,” adding, “the bottom line for the Gulf States is that the United States undertook this war and then was not able actually to protect them”.
He added, “I don’t think it’s hard to persuade certain Gulf states like the UAE and others that maybe China is also a pretty good partner or at least as much of a reliable partner as the United States has turned out to be.”
In other words, Kagan and his host Bill Kristol are essentially admitting that the Iran war is destroying and isolating U.S. empire and destroying the U.S.’s ability to project power in Europe, Asia, and the Middle East through proxy states.
This is why Kagan- as journalist Max Blumenthal described it – essentially “describes Israel as a strategic liability leading the US into a quagmire” saying, “I find it a little bit it’s kind of a syllogism when people talk about what a great ally Israel is. It it is a great ally in defense of Israel” adding, “at the end of the day, Iran is a much greater threat to Israel than it is to the United States.”
Kagan also admitted that Iran, “were deliberately not closing the straits for all these years precisely because we did not confront them with the prospect of complete annihilation” adding, “it was only when both the Israelis and the United States made it clear that their goal was the annihilation of regime, assassinated the entire leadership with a bombing strike that they then did this. So we are now solving a problem that we clearly provoked.”
Make no mistake about it, John Bolton, Robert Kagan, Bill Kristol, and their fellow Neo-cons set the stage for this war with Iran, but the fact that even they are now jumping ship shows that war is not at all going as planned for the U.S.
Where in the World Is Benjamin Netanyahu? On the Move or Out of Sight?
By Jonas E. Alexis • Unz Review • March 16, 2026
No, this is not another conspiracy theory. Several hypotheses have emerged suggesting that Netanyahu may be dead, missing, or facing some other serious circumstance. The reality, however, is that his current whereabouts remain unknown. Nevertheless, there are several points that can still be articulated.
Do you recall the period during which Israeli forces were heavily bombarding the population of Gaza? During that time, Netanyahu frequently appeared on the political stage, presenting a series of perfidious claims intended to justify why the largely defenseless population in Gaza purportedly deserved such devastating treatment. Over the past decade, Netanyahu has adopted a similar posture with respect to Syria, Libya, and other regions that Israel has sought to undermine or destabilize.
The narrative has shifted considerably. Netanyahu is obviously absent from public appearances; he is neither addressing the nation from podiums nor proclaiming victory. He may be sheltering in a secure location, receiving heightened protection, strategically awaiting a particular moment to emerge, or perhaps entirely removed from public view. What is evident, however, is that he is not asserting triumph—a clear indication that Israel may not be achieving its objectives, or that the Israeli regime almost certainly miscalculated the Iranian defenses. Furthermore, Iran has not appealed to the United States or Israel to terminate hostilities or request a ceasefire. In other words, the current conflict differs markedly from prior engagements and does not appear to favor Zionist Israel or the United States.
Moreover, it is evident from recent developments that Donald Trump has publicly emphasized the importance of bringing the conflict to an end and has actively called on various allied and partner nations to assist in maintaining the security of the Strait of Hormuz, a critical maritime point for global energy supplies. However, these appeals have not yet resulted in significant commitments from other states, and Iran has so far resisted overtures to negotiate a cessation of hostilities. These dynamics just indicate that the current war differs substantively from previous Israeli debacles in the Middle East.
In other words, regardless of interpretation, Iran has already delivered a powerful strategic pushback against U.S. and Israeli actions, which can be viewed as a critical counterbalance to the policies and interventions of these powers. Obviously, a conflict of this magnitude exacts a heavy toll on both sides in terms of human and material costs. Nevertheless, Iran appears to have shifted the dynamics of the confrontation, signaling two central messages: first, that it will no longer tolerate continued aggression without any serious confrontation, and second, that the Israelis and the Zionist regime can bleed–politically, strategically, ideologically, and economically.
It is interesting that Iran is undertaking actions that many Western policymakers have failed to address effectively for decades. Iran’s assertiveness highlights the contrast with politicians across the ideological spectrum in the West—both self-identified right and left, or conservative and liberal—who have often expressed concern over migration from Muslim and Arab countries, yet have largely remained silent regarding the repeated interventions by the United States and Israel in the Middle East, which have resulted in the destabilization and destruction of multiple countries like Iraq, Syria, Libya, Afghanistan.
This clearly shows a contradiction. Some people keep saying that Muslims and migrants are destroying Europe, but they stay silent about, or support, endless wars in the Middle East and Africa. This is simply lunacy. You cannot destroy countries like Syria and Iraq for the sake of Israel and then expect “peaceful harmony” in Europe and America. You cannot keep supporting one empire after another around the world and expect your own region to stay safe. You also cannot support leaders like Trump invading countries such as Venezuela and then suddenly start talking about “white identity” in Europe. If these people cannot see this basic contradiction and abandon it, there is nothing we can do to help them.
Michael Jones has argued that Trump may, inadvertently, be signaling the end of the American Empire, and this perspective warrants consideration. Certainly, neither Trump nor the Israeli government set out with such an outcome in mind. However, given their sustained engagement in diabolical policies across the Middle East, their objectives are being viewed increasingly as unattainable. Trump’s tenure, in this respect, illustrates a critical lesson: the pursuit of an “America First” agenda is fundamentally incompatible with unwavering support for the Israeli regime and the Zionist ideology. These positions represent inherently contradictory political ideologies; for an “America First” policy to maintain coherence and credibility, the United States and much of the West would need to reconsider the uncritical alignment with Israeli interests.
There is no way around this principle. Even during Trump’s first term, he was saying things like “America First” and “enough is enough with endless wars in the Middle East.” At the same time, he was becoming closer to the Israeli government and powerful elites in the United States who support those wars. Because of this, it seemed clear to me that Trump was misleading the American people.
Now that Netanyahu is no longer boasting about winning a war against Iran, Trump has to ask the Iranians to stop the conflict. Otherwise, the American economy could suffer serious damage. As writer Ilana Mercer has argued, the Iranians should make Israel pay a price for its actions. Only then will Israel learn some basic lessons.
CIA Assessment: The Resistance Cannot Be Crushed
By Kit Klarenberg | Global Delinquents | March 15, 2026
The Judaeo-American war on Iran was intended to be a lightning strike routing, fought exclusively from the air, lasting only a few days. Instead, Washington and its Zionist proxy have blundered into a major multi-front conflict, which could well threaten the Empire’s very existence. The initial US aerial bombardment’s centrepiece was Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei’s February 28th murder. Initially hailed by Western media as “the assassination of the century,” the vile act has resulted in catastrophe for the perpetrators.
The Islamic Republic’s relentless battering of Zionist entity civilian centres and military and intelligence infrastructure, and US bases throughout West Asia, hasn’t been deterred one iota. Vast crowds took to the streets of Tehran in vengeful mourning. Their righteous anger has pullulated throughout the Arab and Muslim world. Ever since, incensed Shiites have violently clashed with security forces in multiple major Pakistani cities. Meanwhile, Bahrain teeters on the brink of all-out revolution. Now, Mojtaba Khamenei, the slain Supreme Leader’s son, has taken his place.
Iranian citizens of every ethnic and religious extraction braved US-Israeli airstrikes to celebrate his ascension. Commonly perceived as a hardliner with strong ties to the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps, the expectation that the new Supreme Leader will adopt a considerably less conciliatory, patient approach than his father is widespread. Western sources forecast Mojtaba may decide the Islamic Republic “must move quickly to obtain nuclear weapons in order to forestall future US and Israeli attacks,” overturning Ali Khamenei’s longstanding fatwa against their development by Tehran.
US President Donald Trump has declared he is “not happy” with Mojtaba taking power, and Israeli apparatchiks are likewise perturbed by the development. Nonetheless, this was an inevitable upshot of assassinating the former Supreme Leader. There was also no reason to believe doing so would precipitate the Islamic Republic’s collapse, or lead to Tehran’s military submission. It begs the obvious question of why Washington and Tel Aviv electively helped install a ruler more committed than ever to expelling the Empire from West Asia.
Similarly, Hezbollah’s extraordinary broadsides of the Zionist entity since Khameinei’s assassination should dispel any notion – as perpetuated by Israeli political and military chiefs – the group was obliterated by Tel Aviv’s criminal October 2024 invasion of Lebanon. That incursion was prefaced by an operation in which thousands of pagers used by senior Hezbollah operatives were detonated simultaneously, having been wired with explosives by Mossad pre-purchase, killing and injuring many. A week-and-a-half later, the group’s Secretary General Hassan Nasrallah was lethally targeted in a Zionist entity airstrike.
Evidently, the Resistance cannot be crushed via high-level assassinations. In fact, such actions actively strengthen its members. This inconvenient reality has been well-known to the CIA since at least 2009. In July that year, the Agency produced a top secret assessment laying out the pros and cons of liquidating “high value targets” (HVTs). It was prepared in advance of Barack Obama’s CIA chief Leon Panetta shifting US “counter-terror” operations from capturing and torturing high-level suspects, to outright executing them.
The assessment concluded HVT operations “can play a useful role when they are part of a broader counterinsurgency strategy,” and sought to “assist policymakers and military officers involved in authorizing or planning” such strikes. However, it listed many “potential negative effects” of “high value” assassinations. Israel’s past killing of Hamas and Hezbollah leaders were specifically cited as examples of how the strategy can spectacularly backfire. We have witnessed the CIA’s unheeded cautions play out in real-time since February 28th.
Foremost among prospective blowback from HVT operations is that the risk high-level assassinations can increase an “insurgent” group’s support. This occurs when killing a target “[strengthens] an armed group’s bond with the population, radicalizing an insurgent group’s remaining leaders, creating a vacuum into which more radical groups can enter, and escalating or deescalating a conflict in ways that favor the insurgents.” Such actions can also “[erode] the ‘rules of the game’ between the government and insurgents,” thus exacerbating “the level of violence in a conflict”:
“HVT strikes, however, may increase support for the insurgents, particularly if these strikes enhance insurgent leaders’ lore, if noncombatants are killed in the attacks, if legitimate or semi-legitimate politicians aligned with the insurgents are targeted… An insurgent group’s unifying cause, deep ties to its constituency, or a broad support base can lessen the impact of leadership losses by ensuring a steady flow of replacement recruits.”
The CIA assessment noted several historical instances of supposed HVT successes. When high-level targets have “prominent public profiles”, assassinations can in specific instances shatter a target group. However, this was not the case with Hamas or Hezbollah. The pair “carry out state-like functions, such as providing healthcare services,” so group leaders are well-known to citizens of Gaza and Lebanon. Yet, their “highly disciplined nature, social service network, and reserve of respected leaders” mean they can easily “reorganize” in the wake of assassinations.
The Zionist entity had by this point been engaged in “targeted-killings” against Hamas, Hezbollah, and other Resistance groups since the mid-1990s. However, their “decentralized command structures, compartmented leadership, strong succession planning, and deep ties to their communities” made them “highly resilient to leadership losses.” Undeterred, Tel Aviv’s high-level assassinations continued apace. In the early 2000s, Hamas founder Sheikh Yassin and the group’s leader in Gaza Abdel Aziz al-Rantisi were murdered. However, the killings “strengthened solidarity” between Resistance factions, while “[bolstering] support for hardline militant leaders.”
The obvious lessons of this wanton bloodletting remained unlearned by the Zionist entity, once the Gaza Holocaust erupted. In June 2024, elite imperial journal Foreign Affairs published a report unequivocally headlined Hamas Is Winning. It boldly concluded “Israel’s failing strategy makes its enemy stronger.” The outlet also recorded how “according to the measures that matter,” Hamas was considerably bigger and more powerful than on October 7th 2023. Israel had thus stumbled into a deeply ruinous attritional war, with a “tenacious and deadly guerrilla force.”
Hamas’ surging popularity with Palestinians throughout the Gaza genocide was found to have significantly enhanced the group’s “ability to recruit… [and] attract new generations of fighters and operatives.” This granted Hamas the ability to launch “lethal operations” in areas previously “cleared” by the IOF “easily”. Foreign Affairs charged the Zionist entity, to its “great detriment”, failed to comprehend how “the carnage and devastation it has unleashed in Gaza has only made its enemy stronger.”
It is not merely Hamas that has been galvanised by the Gaza genocide. Israel’s “carnage and devastation” has greatly expanded the ranks and resolve of the entire Resistance, while its constituent members have won hearts and minds globally in ever-mounting numbers. Tel Aviv and its Anglo-American puppet[master]s have no good choices left to make, in a criminal war of choice waged against an indefatigable adversary committed to total victory, the likes of which they have never faced off against before.
The calamitous outcomes of Judaeo-American conflict with Iran were amply spelled out in a June 2025 report by the Israel-based Institute for National Security Studies. Among other things, it cautioned against assassinating Ali Khamenei, as the Islamic Republic “would likely have little difficulty selecting a successor, who could prove to be more extreme or more capable,” while uniting the Iranian public and government more than ever behind all-out victory. The consequences of disregarding this prophetic curse will reverberate throughout West Asia for centuries.
