Seyed M. Marandi: Plans for a U.S. Land Invasion of Iran; Yemen & Iran Enters the War?
Glenn Diesen | July 16, 2026
Russia Continues to Pound Ukraine
By Larry C. Johnson | SONAR21 | July 19, 2026
While the Western media continues to hype Ukraine’s drone attacks on Russia as incredible military achievements that are sapping Russia’s will to fight, the reality is that Russia continues an unrelenting bombing and missile campaign that is destroying critical Ukrainian assets and infrastructure from Kyiv to Odessa.
On July 18–19, 2026 (primarily overnight into July 19), Russia conducted a major combined missile and drone attack, with Kyiv as the primary target. This was described as one of the largest ballistic missile assaults on the capital since the start of the war in February 2022. Reports indicate more than 40 ballistic missiles (including Iskander-M, S-400, and possibly Zircon hypersonic types), plus guided air-launched missiles (Kh-59/69) and others, destroyed targets across Kyiv. Multiple waves targeted Kyiv over roughly 30–60 minutes. In addition, Russia launched over 90–125 Shahed-type, Gerbera, Italmas, and decoy drones launched from various directions.
The previous day, July 17-18, Russia launched seven missiles and 90 drones on the Odesa Oblast. The missile mix was two Iskander-M ballistic missiles, two Onyx anti-ship missiles, and three Kh-59/69 air-to-surface missiles, alongside the 90 drones of various types. This attack has effectively closed the ports at Odessa and Nykolaiv and marks Russia’s a complete break with the Black Sea Grain Initiative (BSGI), which was brokered by UN Secretary-General António Guterres and Turkish President Erdoğan in the summer of 2022.
After the February 2022 invasion, Russia’s navy blockaded Ukraine’s Black Sea ports, and Ukraine mined its own coastal approaches to deter an amphibious assault. Between them, roughly 20+ million tonnes of grain were trapped in silos, unable to move — Ukraine being one of the world’s largest exporters of wheat, corn, barley, and sunflower oil. Global wheat prices spiked, and the countries most exposed were food-import-dependent states in North Africa, the Middle East, and the Horn of Africa (Egypt, Lebanon, Somalia, Yemen among them). The UN framed it explicitly as a hunger-crisis intervention, not a favor to Ukraine’s economy.
Alongside the BSGI, the UN signed a separate three-year Memorandum of Understanding with Russia, committing to help facilitate Russian food and fertilizer exports to world markets. This is the piece often forgotten… Russian food and fertilizer were never formally under Western sanctions, but Moscow argued that secondary effects — sanctions on banks (including SWIFT cutoffs), shipping insurance, and port access — were choking its own agricultural exports. This MoU was Russia’s price for allowing Ukrainian grain out and, despite Moscow’s persistent complaint that the UN failed to deliver on it, Russia did not enforce a blockade until now.
Although Russia finally withdrew from the BGSI on 17 July 2023, declaring the initiative dead and its Black Sea guarantees void, Russia did not move to impose a full blockade on Odessa nor did it routinely attack grain ships entering and leaving Odessa. The ports in Odessa and Nykolaiv were able to conduct normal trade activities, notwithstanding occasional Russian attack on the Odessa port and grain infrastructure.
Now the situation is completely different. Putin’s press spokesman, Dmitri Peskov, announced two weeks ago that Russia was at war with Ukraine and its NATO allies. This was a clear shift from describing the fight with Ukraine as a Special Military Operation. The intense and varied attacks by Russia since July 6 on Kyiv and other key cities still held by Ukraine, marks a decisive shift by Russia in how it will manage the war with Ukraine in the coming weeks and months.
Von der Leyen paints target signs on Europe with Ukraine drone pact
Strategic Culture Foundation | July 17, 2026
The European Union has officially joined the war effort against Russia. This week, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen signed a “historic pact” with Ukraine to integrate the production of combat drones to strike Russia.
According to Euronews reporting, the pact also envisages the joint production of ballistic missiles.
This scaled-up war effort will be funded by the €90 billion loan that the EU is releasing to Ukraine. A bill that will be paid for by generations of European taxpayers.
Von der Leyen was greeted in Kiev by Ukraine’s unelected martial-law president, Vladimir Zelensky. That makes two people who do not have a democratic mandate making decisions that are driving Europe to all-out war with Russia. Von der Leyen is a political appointee. She is not elected by popular ballot. Formerly, she was Germany’s Minister of Defense, and not a particularly bright one either. Dogged by corruption scandals and abuse of power over procuring Covid-19 vaccines from Big Pharma, von der Leyen is an exemplar of “failing upwards.”
On her 11th visit to Kiev since the conflict escalated in February 2022, von der Leyen declared that the “tide is turning” in the NATO proxy war against Russia. She was referring to the increase in long-range air strikes on Russian territory and the release of €90 bn to fund the war.
In a public speech, she brazenly announced that the European Union was explicitly allied with Ukraine as a participant in the war.
“In Europe, we already have huge technological and industrial capacity that can be deployed. And we have safe and secure production sites that can help to scale up,” von der Leyen said.
She added: “But we do not have that battle-tested knowledge and expertise that Ukraine has forged. So the point I am making is that we need to combine our strengths. Together, we can work on joint production.”
The innovation, which von der Leyen and her NATO planners presumably think is ever-so smart, is that European countries will produce munitions that are “safe” from Russian retaliatory strikes. The drones and missiles will be transported to Ukraine, from where they can be launched to hit deep into Russian territory to target the capital, Moscow, and take out oil industrial facilities all over the country. In recent months, NATO-backed Ukrainian drones have killed hundreds of Russian civilians. Von der Leyen’s pact with Ukraine is giving a green light to intensify this terror campaign.
But it’s von der Leyen’s arrogant sense of impunity that is astounding and should be viewed as deeply disturbing. She apparently assumes that European countries can serve as an arsenal of weapons for Ukraine to attack Russia. Yet, in her view, Russia is not permitted to take retaliatory action against the EU (and NATO) as a participant in the war. This is insanely reckless and stupid.
Of course, the European Union, NATO, and the United States have been participants in the proxy war against Russia since their coup in Kiev in 2014 to install and weaponize a NeoNazi regime. That background of weaponization and ideological programming culminated in war erupting in 2022. The Collective West has supplied an estimated $400 billion to prop up the regime since 2022, has supplied NATO mercenaries and advisors, as well as providing targeting logistics and operational expertise for long-range missiles.
Ukraine has also signed bilateral military pacts with individual EU countries, such as Germany, France, Denmark, the Netherlands, and Norway. Britain has signed a One Hundred Year Defense Pact. All of these arrangements provide weapons, warplanes, drones, and missiles.
However, the EU support that von der Leyen unveiled this week is a commitment from the entire 27-nation EU bloc to join the war on an industrial scale.
In April this year, the Russian Ministry of Defense published a list of European companies and their locations that it said were partners in Ukraine’s war effort. Russia said that these sites could henceforth be considered legitimate targets for retaliation. So far, Russia has refrained from directly striking any EU or NATO state. But how long this Russian restraint will last is a pressing question in the light of increasing provocation by the EU and NATO.
Von der Leyen has taken to describing the Ukrainian regime as a “net provider of security for Europe.” This is to supposedly justify European citizens enduring economic hardship as public monies are funnelled to the corrupt regime.
This week, on cue for the drone deal and fusing of the EU and Ukrainian economies, Zelensky reshuffled his Cabinet for the second time in only a matter of months in an attempt to give the impression that he was cleaning up notorious corruption. Prime Minister Yulia Syrvydenko was sacked because she was close to Zelensky’s former Chief of Staff Andriy Yermak, who was forced to quit owing to a massive corruption scandal involving military procurement. In his latest clean-up act, Zelensky made the mistake of sacking Defense Minister Myhailo Federov, sparking public protests in Kiev and other cities. Federov, who had only been in the job for six months, was seen as an earnest reformer. His efforts riled military commanders, such as Commander-in-Chief Oleksandr Syrskyi, who want the graft gravy train to continue running. No surprise that Zelensky backed the old guard to stay in place, especially as the €90 bn EU freight car is soon to arrive in Kiev.
Indeed, the tide is turning, but not in the way that delusional von der Leyen imagines. Russian forces on the ground are wearing down the last NATO-backed Ukrainian defenses while ramped-up Russian air strikes are destroying drone-making centers in Kiev and other cities.
That is why the EU and NATO are innovating a new tactic of removing drone production sites from Ukraine and seemingly out of Russia’s reach by stationing these sites in European nations. The implicit idea is that the EU can scale up the war effort safely without suffering any consequences.
The Russophobic EU leadership is driving Europe to war against Russia, as Professor Richard Sakwa commented this week in an interview with Glenn Diesen. The decisions are being made autocratically without any democratic mandate. Effectively, the EU has become a dictatorship for war. Another manifestation of this was seen at the Bastille Day parade in Paris on July 14, when NATO troops joined French and Ukrainian regiments in a unified show of belligerence towards Russia.
And brain-dead bureaucrats like Ursula von der Leyen on her €400,ooo a-year salary are happily painting target signs across European nations.
This is not sleepwalking into war. The European elites’ eyes are wide open and crazed.
Pakistan, Kuwait hold early talks on defense-for-energy partnership
The Cradle | July 17, 2026
Pakistan and Kuwait have entered early-stage negotiations to expand defense cooperation, with Islamabad seeking deeper energy ties and greater investment from the Gulf monarchy in return, Reuters reported on 17 July.
“Kuwait’s wish list includes everything,” said a Pakistani security official familiar with the negotiations. “But let me be clear about one thing: We are not and we cannot consider a deployment of combat troops at this stage.”
One source confirmed the talks have covered defense procurement, but noted it was “not clear this will amount to a defense pact per se.”
In exchange for any deal, Islamabad wants expanded cooperation on energy security as it builds up its strategic oil and fuel reserves as part of a wider initiative led by Pakistan’s Energy Ministry.
Over the past year, Pakistan and the Gulf monarchies have moved toward new regional defense arrangements.
The realignment was accelerated by the US’s war on Iran, which saw Gulf countries absorb the brunt of the retaliatory impact, and called into question the reliability of the US as a defense partner.
Meanwhile, Islamabad commands one of the region’s largest armies and manufactures its own fighter jets, credentials that have positioned it as a potential supplement, or even alternative, to US protection.
For Kuwait, Pakistan represents a dependable partner, according to a source in the region familiar with Kuwaiti security planning.
“They are already in with the Saudis, they have a long history of defense development, they are Muslim Sunni, they have a good relationship with the Americans, so it’s not as sensitive as some other options,” the source said.
Turkiye, Pakistan, and Saudi Arabia have been preparing a draft agreement for a three-way mutual defense pact, distinct from the existing accord between Islamabad and Riyadh.
Bahrain is pursuing a similar arrangement, one source said, while Jordan has signaled interest in a weapons and training deal.
Last year, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan signed a Strategic Mutual Defense Agreement committing each to treat an attack on one as an attack on both – a pact widely understood to place Riyadh under a de facto Pakistani nuclear umbrella, after Pakistan’s defense minister said all the country’s capabilities “will be made available under this agreement.”
Iran’s New Onslaught on US Gulf Bases Exposes Devastating Success of Spring Counterstrikes
Sputnik – 17.07.2026
Iran’s March drone and missile attacks disabled numerous critical US radars and forced it to “expend a significant portion of their air and missile defense stockpiles,” military expert and CAST security think tank senior research fellow Yuri Lyamin told Sputnik.
Lyamin pointed out, for example, that “the AN/TPY-2 radar in Jordan destroyed by Iranian strikes in March, was part of the American THAAD missile defense system battery providing cover for American bases in Jordan against medium-range ballistic missiles. The destruction of the radar effectively rendered the THAAD battery inoperable, as it’s used to detect and track targets and guides interceptor missiles to them.”
Fast forward the present, and Iran is freely targeting US barracks, logistics bases and Air Force facilities in Kuwait and Bahrain using Arash heavy drones.
Lack of effective resistance on the US’ part signals that whatever efforts the Pentagon took to restore regional capabilities (like transferring THAAD from South Korea) proved insufficient, Lyamin says.
“Iran is currently primarily targeting various US bases in Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar and Jordan. The combination varies daily, as the US operates multiple bases [in these countries]. The selection of specific targets depends both on the pre-defined target list at these bases, and on operational intelligence,” Lyamin says.
“Relentless Iranian attacks on US-operated bases in the region generally complicate US operations against Iran that rely on them, and force the US to expend significant forces and resources to protect them. I’d even say that some of the bases nearest to Iran are now causing more problems for the US than they’re worth. For example, Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar was the largest US airbase in the region, but now the US has been forced to evacuate most of its aircraft because it’s too dangerous to keep them there.”
Arash drones have a range up to 2k km, variable warhead weight (up to 260 kg), and versions with advanced optoelectrical and other homing heads “for high-precision target engagement.” They are the Iranian Army’s long-range strike tool – distinct from the IRGC’s Shahed series of UAVs.
John Mearsheimer: All-Out War in the Middle East & Trump’s War on Russia
Glenn Diesen | July 16, 2026
Prof. John Mearsheimer discusses how to make sense of the U.S. going back to war against Iran, and Trump’s decision to deepen the U.S. involvement in the war against Russia. Prof. Mearsheimer is the R. Wendell Harrison Distinguished Service Professor in the Political Science Department at the University of Chicago
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Can Dems harness Iran war anger to sink Trump’s military budget?
Senate blocked defense bill Monday amid frustration with administration’s return to war and lack of transparency
By Blaise Malley | Responsible Statecraft | July 15, 2026
Congress returned to Washington DC this week after its July 4 recess. With President Donald Trump having recently declared the memorandum of understanding with Iran “over” and with the two countries exchanging attacks, the war has predictably taken center stage.
Congressional Democrats have been mostly unified against the war, but this week has presented opportunities for members to use new vehicles to express their opposition via the power of the purse. On Tuesday, every present Democratic Senator voted to block debate over the 2027 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), which authorizes the appropriation of Pentagon funds. The bill, which needed 60 votes to advance, failed by a 50-46 tally.
The NDAA typically proceeds in a relatively bipartisan manner, but the warning signs were apparent in June when nine Democrats voted against advancing the bill out of the Senate Armed Services Committee (SASC). Several Democrats framed their opposition as, in part, a rejection of the war in Iran.
In advance of the vote, Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.), said the bill would “effectively green light Trump’s illegal Iran war.” Sen. Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii), who noted that he typically votes in favor of the NDAA, said he would oppose it given that the legislature had not “even had an up or down vote to authorize this war in the first place.” Republicans charged Democrats with playing politics over the national security bill, with SASC chairman Roger Wicker (R-Miss. ) calling it a “new low.”
There were other considerations at play as well, including the Trump administration’s ask for a $1.5 trillion defense budget and the lack of transparency surrounding the cost of the war with Iran. On Tuesday, Jules Hurst, testifying to become the Pentagon comptroller, told SASC members that he did not have an update on the $29 billion price tag for the war, since he had not been performing the role since May 20, when his term as acting comptroller came to an end.
Sources said that Republicans’ approach to funding bills has created conditions in which Democrats may stall or even stop defense appropriations legislation.
With Democrats seemingly dug in on blocking the NDAA until the questions surrounding an Iran war authorization are settled, the must-pass bill’s future appears murky. “The Trump administration has not meaningfully consulted Congress on the Iran conflict or engaged Democrats on broader budget strategy, leaving its budget plans and legislative priorities stalled,” a senior congressional aide told RS. “Republicans now face the possibility of flat funding for the Department of Defense under a continuing resolution, or potentially an extended shutdown.”
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In addition, a group of Senators, led by Van Hollen and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), raised concerns about an amendment to the NDAA that would more deeply integrate U.S. and Israeli intelligence. They sent a letter to their colleagues last week urging them to block the legislation until they could hold further discussion regarding those measures.
But congressional sources said that the timing of the vote — shortly after Trump’s announcement that the agreement with Iran was dead — contributed to Democrats voting unanimously against the NDAA. Supporters of ending the war with Iran interpreted the vote as a signal that the war was increasingly unpopular and that Congress should keep up political pressure on the president.
“The war with Iran is incredibly unpopular with the American people and Democrats were right to pick up on that and use this opportunity to vote accordingly,” one senior Democratic Senate staffer told RS. In order to keep up pressure on the administration, the staffer argued, Democrats “should announce publicly that they won’t support any measure to advance the NDAA until Trump resumes negotiations with Iran and gets a deal done.”
National Iranian American Council president Jamal Abdi wrote a statement that urged members to not advance any “other major national legislation (…) as long as this unauthorized war continues without an explicit prohibition on funding it.”
That major legislation may include the administration’s roughly $88 billion DoD supplemental funding request, much of which is intended to fund the Iran war. The administration made the request late last month, though its future on the floor remains unclear as Republican members remain frustrated by a lack of information from the Pentagon regarding the request’s details. As the Stimson Center’s Julia Gledhill told RS in June, “the supplemental doesn’t even detail what weapons the Pentagon wants to buy.”
Up until this point, Democratic opposition has primarily been registered through a string of votes on war powers resolutions. Both the House and the Senate passed concurrent resolutions in June to push Trump to wind down the war absent authorization from the legislature. Congressional Democrats are reportedly considering taking the issue to the courts to compel the administration to comply. Sen. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) has said that he will introduce a new War Powers Resolution this week.
The administration, for its part, informed Congress of the restarting of the war on July 10, which it says should also restart the 60-day war powers clock, though legal experts widely say that this is an incorrect interpretation.
Blaise Malley is a reporter for Responsible Statecraft. His writing has appeared in The Nation, The New Republic, The American Prospect, The American Conservative, and elsewhere.
IRAN WAR REPERCUSSIONS, THE US WILL BE BLAMED /The Duran’s Alexander Mercouris
Daniel Davis / Deep Dive – July 14, 2026
Bulgaria pulls out of coalition of Ukraine backers
RT | July 14, 2026
Bulgaria has no place in the coalition of Western nations pushing for continued military aid to Ukraine, Prime Minister Rumen Radev has told Bulgarian broadcaster bTV.
The France and UK-led “coalition of the willing” has long pushed to deploy troops into Ukraine in the event of a ceasefire, despite Moscow’s repeated warnings that any NATO troops on Ukrainian territory would become legitimate military targets.
“We’re not part of a coalition pushing for continued financial and military aid to Ukraine,” Radev told bTV during a press conference in France on Tuesday.
“We don’t provide aid of that kind, because I believe the way to resolve this conflict is through a strong diplomatic effort to end the escalation rather than by prolonging it by military means,” he added.
Last week, Radev, a Euroskeptic elected after the previous pro-EU government collapsed last year following massive anti-corruption protests, announced that Bulgaria has exhausted its capacity to support Kiev militarily.
“We provided 13 packages; we don’t have anything else to supply to Ukraine,” he said on the sidelines of the NATO summit in Ankara.
According to Slovak President Peter Pellegrini, several NATO nations at the summit, including Slovakia, Hungary and the Czech Republic refused to participate in the US-led military bloc’s latest €70 billion ($80 billion) military aid package for Kiev.
Moscow has long condemned arms supplies to Ukraine, warning that they only prolong the war and cause more deaths, without altering the course of the conflict – which Russia views as a Western proxy war.
EU nations are losing what remains of their “rationality and drifting into a high-risk zone” in an effort to turn Ukraine in to a “testing ground” for their emerging military technologies, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said in late June.
Europe’s Missile Bloc Just Trojan Horse to Bypass NATO Vetoes & ‘Sneak’ Ukraine Into ‘Club’
Sputnik – 14.07.2026
The anti-ballistic coalition cobbled together by Europe and Ukraine may not be a formal alliance, but in reality, it is conceived as such, Swedish air defense expert Mikael Valtersson tells Sputnik.
Hence, if one country is attacked with ballistic missiles, “the combined ABM capacity will be utilized to defend member states,” the pundit notes.
In his opinion, this initiative is a blatant attempt by pro-Ukraine hawks to “sneak” new members into a united European defense structure, and “thereby bypass possible vetoes against Ukraine joining NATO.”
The project also seeks to:
- push EU closer to a centralized European superstate
- funnel billions to Europe’s defense giants
European leaders talk big on local ballistic missile defense when they rely on US Patriots and Israeli Arrow 3s for their shield, and homegrown high-end interceptors are at least a decade away, notes the analyst.
As for Ukraine’s so-called “battlefield experience,” so hyped by Europe, it’s the result of Kiev’s “calculated information warfare” peddling misleading bravado about allegedly downing Russia’s ballistic missiles when their own Western interceptor stocks have run dry, argues the expert.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov has called the “coalition of the willing” a coalition of warmongers, adding that it was a group of countries that did not want peace.
“This is a coalition of warmongers, this is the group of countries that does not want peace, wants to continue the war,” Peskov told reporters.
Trump painted US into a tinderbox
By Trita Parsi | Responsible Statecraft | July 13, 2026
For all practical purposes, the U.S.-Iran Memorandum of (Mis)Understanding is over. The dispute over how to manage the Strait of Hormuz in the interim has pushed the two sides back into open war. But to what end?
There is little reason to believe another round of fighting can alter the fundamentals enough to change the reality from which the two sides must ultimately negotiate. If they are fortunate, the MOU’s collapse may yield another round of talks in which the allure of reshaping facts on the ground through force has finally faded.
As I have written elsewhere, the dispute over the Strait turns, at least on the surface, on Paragraph 5 of the MOU: whether Iran is responsible for safe passage throughout the Strait for the duration of the agreement, or only for the waterway’s northern corridor.
Beneath the surface, however, lies a more fundamental strategic disagreement. Even before the MOU was signed, Tehran believed Washington’s objective was to establish a southern shipping corridor through Omani waters that would gradually erode Iran’s control over the Strait. Such a corridor would require Oman’s cooperation, which may explain why Trump at one point threatened to bomb Oman unless it abandoned its proposal for joint management of the Strait, with administrative fees collected by Muscat and Tehran.
The corridor would remain operational even if war resumed and Iran sought once again to close the Strait. From Tehran’s perspective, Washington used the MOU to strengthen this alternative route, and the U.S. military’s escort of commercial shipping without coordinating with Iran marked a significant step in that direction. If successful, the strategy would deprive Iran of its most important source of leverage — which is precisely why it appeals to Washington.
This is why Tehran has insisted that all ships transiting the Strait — regardless of the corridor they use — coordinate with Iran, consistent with its reading of Paragraph 5 of the MOU. Washington, by contrast, argues that the MOU merely assigns Iran responsibility for ensuring the safe passage of commercial vessels, without granting it operational control over all maritime traffic.
Before the funeral of former Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei, the two sides explored a compromise under which ships would coordinate their transit with both Iran and a designated Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) state. As I wrote in my Substack, “Under such an arrangement, ships would notify Tehran while also reporting to a GCC maritime authority, balancing Iran’s demand for oversight with Washington’s desire to avoid granting Tehran exclusive control.” But no agreement was reached before diplomacy was suspended for the duration of the funeral.
Accounts of what transpired in Muscat over the weekend naturally differ, but three proposals emerged. Iran advanced a variation of the earlier compromise: a dual-notification system for all vessels transiting the Strait. Qatar proposed three channels—an Iranian corridor in the north, an Omani corridor in the south, and a neutral corridor in the middle. For Tehran, this was a nonstarter, as it would effectively restore the Strait to its pre-February status.
According to Tehran, the United States and Oman favored separate management of the Iranian and Omani corridors: Iran could require coordination for vessels using its corridor, while Oman’s would remain unrestricted.
Tehran saw this as an attempt to formalize what it had long suspected was Washington’s strategy: creating a southern corridor through the Strait beyond Iran’s influence, leaving Tehran no means of challenging it short of war with Oman. Iran also contends that Muscat advanced the proposal only under intense U.S. pressure, noting that Oman had previously supported a joint management system.
Washington disputes this account. U.S. officials maintain they were open to several arrangements, provided commercial vessels could transit the Strait safely. According to the American version, the talks unraveled only after Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi consulted Tehran regarding a joint Iranian-Omani statement declaring the Strait open. From Washington’s perspective, negotiations had been progressing until Araghchi was overruled by hardliners in the IRGC, who chose confrontation over compromise.
Whether such a fracture proved decisive in this instance is unclear. What is clear is that the outlook of Iranian strategists has hardened markedly in recent weeks as they have become increasingly convinced that Trump intends to restart the war. Several developments have reinforced that belief. First, Trump’s rhetoric shifted dramatically: he called the Iranians “scum,” declared the ceasefire over, and said he might resume bombing to “finish the job.”
Second, as I argued here, Tehran believes Washington brokered the Lebanese-Israeli agreement — which contradicts the U.S.-Iran MOU by conditioning Israel’s withdrawal from Lebanon on Hezbollah’s disarmament — to enable Israel to retain key positions that would weaken Hezbollah’s ability to support Iran in the next war.
Third, White House officials leaked the U.S. demand that Tehran declare the Strait open and, at least implicitly, accept responsibility for attacks on shipping. Rather than seeing the leak as political posturing to make Trump appear tough, Tehran increasingly viewed it as a deliberate attempt to derail the talks and steer the crisis back toward military confrontation.
Taken together, these developments convinced Tehran that Washington was preparing to resume the war. From that perspective, Iran’s best option was to close the Strait immediately. Rather than an attempt to extract additional concessions or an instance of overplaying its hand, Tehran’s decision appears to have been driven by the fear of losing its most important source of leverage before the next round of fighting.
In the view of Iranian decision-makers, closing the Strait would not trigger war because war was already coming. (If their assessment was incorrect, however, Tehran’s own actions have likely created a self-fulfilling prophecy by taking actions that made a military response from Washington next to inevitable).
Still, much indicates that another round of war will not fundamentally change realities on the ground or the balance between the US and Iran. Trump, in particular, does not have time on his side when taking into account both economic and political realities, and even some military factors.
By almost every meaningful measure, the global oil inventory position is materially weaker today than it was before the February war. Since the end of February, observed global oil inventories have fallen by roughly 360–370 million barrels, with only about 21 million barrels rebuilt after the U.S.–Iran MOU — recovering just 5% of the wartime draw.
More importantly, the apparent recovery reflects oil in transit rather than replenished storage: oil on water increased by 117 million barrels, while onshore inventories fell by 96 million barrels. OECD inventories declined by another 62 million barrels in June alone, including roughly 44 million barrels released from government emergency stocks.
The United States also enters any renewed conflict with a substantially smaller strategic cushion. It has fallen from about 415 million barrels before the war to roughly 337 million barrels, while commercial crude, gasoline and distillate inventories all remain below their five-year seasonal averages. Consequently, Washington has significantly less capacity than in February to absorb another major disruption to global oil flows.
In addition, the United States is now only four months away from the midterm elections, dramatically shortening Trump’s economic and political pain threshold. In February, the administration could plausibly argue that the oil shock was temporary and that prices would normalize before voters went to the polls. A renewed conflict today would push its most visible economic consequences directly into the campaign: higher gasoline prices, inflation, interest rates, and rising food, airline, freight, and utility costs.
As a Pentagon source told me last year, Iran builds missiles faster than the United States produces missile interceptors. And while Washington must divide its attention and resources among multiple theaters — from Ukraine to Taiwan — Iran has only one.
Thus, although the United States could, given enough time, degrade Iran’s ability to threaten shipping in the Persian Gulf, there is little reason to believe it could do so before the economic and political costs became prohibitive for Trump. It is essentially the same strategic reality he confronted in February. The difference is that he lacked the benefit of hindsight then. Now he has it — though it does not appear to have mattered.
Trita Parsi is the co-founder and Executive Vice president of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft.
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Tribute to John Lauritsen, Author of ‘Poison by Prescription: The AZT Story’
By Celia Farber | The Defender | April 26, 2022
… The New York Native also was the first to publish Larry Kramer’s historic 1983 tirade, 1,112 and Counting, at the same time as Lauritsen published his first warnings to the gay community about the potentially lethal toxicities of amyl nitrites, or “poppers.”
Lauritsen compellingly documented the key role poppers played in the etiology of Kaposi sarcoma and immune collapse among gay men, and the nefarious role Fauci played in downplaying this association.
The principal manufacturer of poppers was AZT distributor Burroughs Wellcome, the company that, with Fauci’s help, became a primary beneficiary of the AIDS crisis. … Read full article
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- Fear Of Debate: Alarmist German Climate Scientist Calls On Mainstream Media To Discredit Skeptic Voices
- End-Of-August Arctic Sea Ice Extent Hasn’t Fallen In 20 Years, Official Data Show!
- News-Making Nepal Region Has Had As-Warm Or Warmer Periods Than The 2000s In The 1600s, 1700s, 1800s
- 2025 Study: ‘There Exists No Unequivocal Experimental Evidence For The CO2 Greenhouse Effect’
- 2026 Atlantic Cyclone Energy Index Running At 85% Below Normal!
- New Research Shows Soil Respiration And Temperature Drive CO2 Change, Not Humans
- Comparison Of Two German Weather Forecasts: From 25 Years Ago And From Today
- Veteran Swiss Meteorologist On Germany’s Recent Heat Wave: “You’re A Really Crazy Country”
- New Research Documents The Lack Of Any Net Decline In GBR Coral Cover Since The 1980s
- New Study Details Massive Recent Sea Ice Expansion And Cooling In The Greenland Sea
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