Crooked Bough News Round-up

— Strait of Hormuz is open, but economic pain is just beginning

 

at 4/17/26 8:40am

Ahead of expected talks with the U.S. in Pakistan this weekend, Iran announced that the Strait of Hormuz is “completely open for the remaining period of the ceasefire,” sending oil market prices tumbling. But, regardless of what happens in Islamabad, global policymakers are warning that the immense scale of destruction in the Persian Gulf could have lingering effects for a long time to come.At a Debate on the Global Economy held at the spring meetings of the International Monetary Fund Thursday, Saudi Finance Minister Mohammed al-Jadaan said, “markets were taking too optimistic a picture.” He pointed out that, even if the U.S. and Iran reached a durable peace, it could take months to reach even a semblance of normalcy. Production at oilfields and refineries that had shut down would need to be restarted, he noted, and shipowners and insurers would need to be comfortable that hostilities would not resume anytime soon. Other delays might result from the logistics of resupplying ships that have been trapped in the Gulf for more than a month. The minister suggested that, even in a best-case diplomatic scenario, a resumption of seaborne trade crossing the Strait of Hormuz at anything approaching prewar levels might not happen until the end of June. And the arrival of oil or petroleum products at their final destination would take even longer. There’s a reason the supertanker is a metaphor for something that moves and maneuvers slowly. It can take 20 days for cargoes from Hormuz to reach Singapore and, as IMF Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva pointed out at the same event, up to 40 days to reach the Pacific Islands. The bigger problem may be the physical damage that the war has wrought. One recent estimate puts the damage to energy infrastructure at $58 billion, with the brunt felt in Iran, where the damage has been extensive, and in Qatar, where it was more precisely targeted at the massive Ras Laffan Liquefied Natural Gas export facility. Some parts of that facility are expected to remain offline for years; it could take four years for specialized suppliers to deliver key components, like the massive gas turbines required for compression and liquefaction. Downstream of oil and gas production lie many materials essential to the modern world. Fertilizer is by far the most important, but others include helium, used for semiconductor production and ethylene glycol, used as an antifreeze for concrete. In other words, the war’s impact on industries from electronics to construction could still be felt for months or years to come.Further, the drawdown of stockpiles of petroleum means that, even once “normal” supplies resume, many countries may conclude not just that they will have to replenish the drawdowns, but also that they must build bigger and broader stockpiles. This activity will affect the cost of procuring supplies for the poorest countries of the Global South.All this serves as a reminder that, in an age of mercurial policymakers, instant communications, and fast-moving markets, an older economics based on the physical and temporal constraints of “stuff” and distance still matters enormously.

[Category: Strait-of-hormuz, Shipping, Trump, Iran, Iran-war]

— Hosting US-Iran talks, Pakistan angles to become the new Oslo

 

at 4/17/26 6:10am

Pakistan has found itself in the spotlight recently for less familiar reasons, with a palpable sense of euphoria across the country as it seeks what some have dubbed “an unlikely rebrand” from a nation gripped by terrorism and instability to a more statesmanly image as peacemaker. Its emergence as the venue for U.S.-Iran talks in the midst of an unprecedented regional war has spurred speculation that Islamabad is poised to become the “Oslo of the East,” a stage for high-stakes diplomacy. But behind the media images of officials walking into meeting rooms and holding closed-door talks, a more complicated reality lurks.Hosting negotiations is not the same as having influence on how they turn out. Islamabad may well serve as an effective ‘Oslo,’ providing space and access, but whether Pakistan emerges as the next Norway, a trusted and reliable mediator, is a more ambitious proposition.Pakistan’s selection for talks came about from a convergence of factors. Iran favoured Pakistan as a trusted interlocutor. It is a neighboring country and outside the immediate orbit of Western pressure. And Oman, which had previously hosted and mediated U.S.-Iran talks, was a party to the conflict, having been attacked at least five times by Iran. China’s endorsement of Pakistan was also critical because of the longstanding relations between Islamabad, Beijing and Tehran. On the American side, President Donald Trump’s strong relations with Field Marshal Asif Munir, whom he refers to as “his favorite field marshal,” made Islamabad an obvious choice for the negotiations. “Pakistan can maintain constructive relations with both Washington and Tehran simultaneously,” says Dr Mohamed Mohsen Abo El-Nour, Professor in Iranian Studies, Suez Canal University, Egypt. “There is a growing recognition within its leadership that its real strength lies not in choosing sides, but in balancing relationships, a rare skill in today’s polarized world.”It is worth recalling that this is not Pakistan’s first rodeo. It played a major role in diplomacy leading to the 1988 Geneva Accords, ending the Soviet-Afghan war, and helped facilitate secret channels between the United States and China in the early 1970s. Those efforts were even more significant than the present U.S.-Iran negotiations; they resulted in Henry Kissinger’s secret trip to China in 1971, which paved the way for President Nixon’s historic 1972 visit and the normalization of relations between the U.S. and China.Then, as now, Pakistan was not acting alone. Its role formed part of multi-track diplomatic efforts involving several players. The current initiative, too, is part of a broader diplomatic choreography seen in parallel meetings held in Islamabad among the foreign ministers of Turkey, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and other regional actors, all seeking input not only to the current regional war but also to establish “a political platform… which could succeed where the largely moribund Arab League has consistently fallen short,” as RS recently explained.In terms of intermediation, the success of Oslo was based on Norway’s long-term cultivation of neutrality, institutional maturity and sustained diplomatic capacity, with Nordic neutrality becoming a trademark identity that built trust over time. By contrast, Pakistan brings a different set of assets to the table. Its established military-to-military channels worldwide, regional familiarity and tactical flexibility are useful in facilitating sensitive dialogue. Like Norway, Pakistan also contributes troops to post-conflict zones through its longstanding participation in U.N. peacekeeping missions.Yet, as Amina Khan of the Institute of Strategic Studies in Islamabad notes, “Pakistan is not seeking to replicate Norway’s model of quiet, distant neutrality… It is shaping a more engaged, regionally anchored form of mediation that reflects its own geography and strategic realities.”Pakistan’s approach, she argues, is “fundamentally different,” being “less about detachment and more about active regional stability. In this sense, Pakistan is embedded within the very conflicts it seeks to help de-escalate, and this proximity, while often seen as a limitation, may also be its greatest strength.”Still, these strengths are tempered by structural constraints, including perceptions of political volatility and a limited institutional base for mediation. Hosting negotiations, however high-profile, does not equate to owning the actual peace process. Prematurely branding Pakistan as an “Oslo of the East” risks undermining the opportune conditions which have brought about the recent negotiations.Nevertheless, Islamabad’s newfound visibility opens a window for strategic positioning. Pakistan tends to view its foreign policy through the lens of its rivalry with India, so shifting U.S. engagement dynamics are seen as a potential source of diplomatic leverage.As retired Pakistani Maj. Gen. Tariq Rashid Khan explained, the U.S.-Pakistan relationship has been on the upswing in recent years. “During last year’s conflict with India, the performance of Pakistan’s military and the leadership demonstrated contributed to a perception of Pakistan as a more credible and dependable actor,” Khan said. “Now, by facilitating dialogue around U.S.-Iran tensions, it has enhanced its diplomatic credibility and leverage.”Domestically, the moment is politically useful, allowing the civilian leadership to project relevance amid internal turbulence, including the incarceration of former Prime Minister Imran Khan. The highly visible (and televised) coordination between civilian authorities and the military leadership, with Munir playing a prominent role, is carefully managed to signal internal cohesion and institutional alignment. In Pakistan’s political history, where the military has often acted as a guardian of state stability, these displays carry a performative quality. Despite Pakistan’s rising diplomatic profile, becoming a peacemaking hub would require far more than hosting a single round of talks. It depends on building institutional capacity, maintaining greater consistency in foreign policy and securing international buy-in beyond its close relationship with China. It would also mean navigating an increasingly crowded space, where Gulf Arab states, European intermediaries and smaller neutral countries are all jockeying to be seen as credible conveners of dialogue. There is “cautious optimism” about Pakistan’s growing role because of Islamabad’s practical approach to the issue, said retired Danish Lt. Col. Steen Kjaergaard of the Royal Danish Defence College. “That pragmatism, and its willingness to engage across divides, even in sensitive contexts, is noteworthy,” Kjaergaard noted. “But whether Pakistan can evolve into a future ‘Oslo’ remains uncertain, given limitations around leadership, global legitimacy and its proximity to India. Compared to mediators such as Qatar, it also lacks the same financial muscle, which is often key to sustaining long-term diplomatic efforts.”Pakistan’s ascendance as a global intermediary is undeniable. But, while it may prove to be an effective host, the distinction between intermediary and mediator is not just a matter of semantics. An intermediary provides space, logistics and discretion. A mediator, by contrast, shapes agendas, maintains processes over time and builds continuity across multiple conflicts. On this basis, Pakistan today appears to fall into the former category. Still, if the cards are played right, Islamabad and its crop of leaders could yet position Pakistan as a far more consequential diplomatic force than it has been for decades.

[Category: Pakistan, Diplomacy, China, Neutrality, Iran-war]

— After 3 years of fighting, Sudan's civil war is only getting worse

 

at 4/16/26 10:05pm

This month marks the third anniversary of the war in Sudan. Estimates of the death toll range from 150,000 to 400,000 or more; 2025 was, according to the United Nations’ internal estimates, a particularly deadly year for civilians. The humanitarian impacts are even broader: the U.N.’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs calculates that, as of April 2026, nearly two-thirds of Sudan’s 46.8 million people need humanitarian assistance. Doctors Without Borders, in a recent message, stated that the war has “dismantled the essential services people rely on – including health care, protection, food security, and basic safety.” A ministerial conference on April 15 in Berlin brought a renewed effort to halt the war. The event sparked some expressions of hope from prominent Sudanese civilians — but key factions rejected the initiative, underlining how distant a real peace appears. The war can be understood through two main lenses. For most international analysts and journalists, it is a “civil war” or a conflict between “warring generals.” That frame focuses on the two main armed factions: the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) led by General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) led by Mohamed Hamdan “Hemedti” Dagalo. In 2023, the SAF and the RSF clashed over an SAF proposal for the RSF to integrate into the Army; at stake was power, political and economic, especially given the vast business interests that the SAF and the RSF have in sectors ranging from gold to private security to telecommunications. For many Sudanese activists, however, the conflict is a “counterrevolutionary war.” The SAF and the RSF — even as they fight each other — have both trampled on the revolutionary and democratic aspirations of many Sudanese people. From 1989 to 2019, Sudan was ruled by General Omar al-Bashir, who oversaw the SAF but also built up the RSF as a counterweight and a form of “coup-proofing” his regime. When popular protests in 2018-2019 made al-Bashir’s continued rule untenable, his top lieutenants, including the SAF and RSF leadership, overthrew him. Demonstrators continued to call for structural change, but were met with serious repression, including an RSF-led but SAF-backed massacre of civilians at a sit-in protest in June 2019. The SAF and the RSF then shared power with each other, and with civilians, uneasily; the SAF and the RSF staged a coup against the country’s transitional civilian prime minister in 2021, and, by early 2022, meaningful civilian input in government had mostly ended. Amid the war, both the SAF and the RSF have inflicted substantial brutality on civilians – the RSF to a significantly greater degree. That brutality has rendered civilian activism even more difficult, and sometimes deadly. Meanwhile, the war itself has divided many would-be civilian leaders, who find themselves making difficult choices that sometimes cost them credibility with their own constituents. The past twelve months of the war have been marked by three broad, interlinked developments: First, the SAF has largely consolidated control over the capital Khartoum after two years of fighting there. Second, the RSF increasingly dominates the western region of Darfur, as demonstrated by its bloody conquest of the key town of El Fasher in October – a capture whose massacres and other crimes are still being investigated, with credible allegations surfacing that the RSF is committing genocide against the region’s non-Arab groups. Third, the war continues to encompass various fronts: in the Kordofan and Nuba Mountains regions, among others, and from the air, as both the SAF and the RSF make extensive use of drones.Arab states continue to meddle in the crisis, foremost among them the United Arab Emirates, which is widely accused of backing the RSF and thereby prolonging and intensifying the conflict. Alleged Emirati support, many analysts assess, reflects Emirati antipathy to the SAF’s ties to Islamists, Emirati economic interests in Sudan, and the wider matrix of alleged Emirati relationships with various strongmen and secessionist groups across northeast Africa and Yemen. Amid continuity in alleged Emirati support, supply lines are reportedly shifting. Chad, reportedly a key conduit for arms to the RSF, has started to distance itself from the group. Emirati-Somali relations, meanwhile, have become even frostier, as Ethiopia and other hubs emerge as alleged alternative supply corridors. Another element of change is the relationship between the UAE and Saudi Arabia. While Emirati President Mohamed bin Zayed (MBZ) was initially a key mentor to Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS) during the latter’s swift political ascent beginning in 2015, Emirati-Saudi relations grew tense in late 2025. Territorial conquests in Yemen by the Southern Transitional Council (STC), a separatist group that aims to revive South Yemen (which was an independent country until Yemeni unification in 1990), alarmed Riyadh and provoked Saudi efforts to curtail the STC’s power. The STC is one of various groups allegedly backed by the UAE, and Saudi moves to counter Emirati power are now generating a rebalancing in numerous zones, including Sudan, in ways that are yet to fully unfold – but that appear to be contributing to even stronger Saudi and Egyptian backing for the SAF.To complicate matters further, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, the UAE, and the United States make up the “Quartet,” a diplomatic structure aiming to achieve a ceasefire and a political settlement in Sudan. In 2025, as President Donald Trump pursued peace deals in countries such as the Democratic Republic of the Congo, there was also significant but ultimately fleeting energy spent on an American-brokered deal for Sudan. Amid the Iran War, Sudan has receded from the Trump administration’s list of priorities. Meanwhile, various factors have limited the Quartet’s ability to make peace: conflicting interests among the Quartet’s members, a lack of trust between the Sudanese factions as well as between each faction and various mediators (including Trump’s Senior Advisor Massad Boulos, whom the SAF has accused of a pro-Emirati bias), and the zero-sum demands and attitudes of the SAF and the RSF. Theoretically, the United States has the capacity to play a constructive diplomatic role in Sudan. There is a long history, in fact, of American efforts to steer and shape Sudan, a history with many failures and few clear successes. Neither disengagement, nor transactional diplomacy, nor high-level deals, have worked. Productive engagement would require a level of patience, commitment, and nuance that have not been evident recently; productive engagement would also require a willingness to grapple more forthrightly with the roles of external actors in Sudan’s war, a willingness displayed neither by the Trump administration nor by that of President Joe Biden. For Washington to help make peace in Sudan, it would need to adopt a new perspective — one less interested in foreign adventurism, and more interested in the hard work of building a better world.

[Category: Civil-war, Chad, Boulos, Egypt, Sudan]

— These 100 former US lawmakers have become foreign lobbyists

 

at 4/16/26 10:05pm

As Pete Hegseth was fighting an uphill battle to be confirmed as the secretary of defense, an experienced politico came running to whip votes: Norm Coleman, a former Republican senator from Minnesota.After shepherding Hegseth around the Hill and lobbying his former colleagues, Coleman testified at Hegseth’s hearing, lauding the nominee and decrying the Biden administration’s failure to prevent Yemen’s Houthis from endangering shipping lanes. “Yes, Pete Hegseth is an out of the box nominee,” he said. “I say it's high time to get out of the box.” What Coleman didn’t mention in his testimony was that he is a paid lobbyist for the Saudi government. Working with the firm Hogan Lovells, which received $3,000,000 from the Saudi Embassy the prior year, Coleman played a central role in rehabilitating the Kingdom’s image after the murder of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi and the Saudi-led intervention in Yemen.This is the revolving door at its most acute: a former senator, paid by a foreign government with heavy defense interests, testifying at a confirmation hearing for the man who would soon have his hand on the levers of the most powerful military in the world.Coleman’s path from Congress to foreign agent is not unusual. Since 2000, exactly 100 members of Congress have worked for foreign governments after leaving public office, according to a new Quincy Institute analysis. And as the map below shows, the most common employers of these former lawmakers are authoritarian governments.window.addEventListener("message",function(a){if(void 0!==a.data["datawrapper-height"]){var e=document.querySelectorAll("iframe");for(var t in a.data["datawrapper-height"])for(var r,i=0;r=e[i];i++)if(r.contentWindow===a.source){var d=a.data["datawrapper-height"][t]+"px";r.style.height=d}}});The top destinations include Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Kazakhstan, Libya, Qatar, Russia, and China. Eighty-five percent of the members of Congress who have registered as foreign agents have worked for governments rated “not free” or “partially free” by Freedom House. Of the top ten foreign patrons, only South Korea and Taiwan are rated as free.Craig Holman, Government Affairs Lobbyist at Public Citizen, explained that authoritarian governments invest more in lobbying because they have a “greater tendency to be at odds with the interests of the United States.” The chart below traces notable clients of the most prolific lawmakers-turned-lobbyists. Many of these former members of Congress sat on committees that oversee national security, including retired Reps. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-Fla.) and Ed Royce (R-Calif.), who both chaired the House Foreign Affairs Committee.The top clients are heavily concentrated in the Middle East and East Asia. Many countries in these regions employ American lawmakers because they have unrivaled access to the U.S. government.These lobbyists have helped them seek favorable trade conditions, arms sales, and, in some extreme cases, military intervention.Take Royce, for example, a prolific foreign lobbyist who has worked for the foreign interests of 10 different countries. As head of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, Royce was open to Saudi lobbying efforts. In 2017, while arguing against ending support for the Saudi-led coalition in Yemen, Royce read talking points distributed by a firm working for the Saudi government — at times almost verbatim.Just weeks after leaving Congress in 2019, he became a policy director at Brownstein, a top lobbying firm that earned $1.8 million from Saudi Arabia that year. There, he was restricted to advising and consulting, as congressional rules prevented him from directly lobbying his former colleagues for a year. Once that “cooling-off period” expired, he registered as a lobbyist and began working for Saudi Arabia and its close ally, Bahrain.Ros-Lehtinen is a top lobbyist of another Gulf partner, the United Arab Emirates. In a filing to the Justice Department, Ros–Lehtinen admitted that when she entered Congress she was an outspoken “skeptic” of the UAE, explaining her about-face by declaring that she eventually “fully appreciated the importance of the UAE to U.S. interests in the region.” Ros-Lehtinen hosted a U.S.-UAE business reception in Miami in January, pitching her former constituents on the opportunity to meet UAE senior diplomats and trade officials. Michael Beckel, Director of the Money in Politics Reform program at Issue One, a D.C.-based political reform group, explained to Responsible Statecraft that members of Congress are highly sought after by lobbying firms for their “first-hand knowledge of the legislative process, strategic insights, and relationships with key power players in government.” Foreign governments understand this dynamic. “Foreign governments looking to ensure their perspectives are heard in Washington, D.C., know they'll likely get a high return on their investment when they hire former members of Congress to lobby and advocate on their behalf,” said Beckel.Former Rep. and Gov. Rod Blagojevich of Illinois is another prominent lawmaker now plying his trade as a foreign agent. President Donald Trump pardoned Blagojevich in 2020 after he was convicted of corruption charges. Now, Blagojevich is lobbying for the government of Republika Srpska, a Serb-controlled part of Bosnia and Herzogvina. Blagojevich published articles in the Washington Times and Daily Caller on behalf of Republika Srpska. Neither publication acknowledged that the author was a paid lobbyist. For some former members, this work extends to governments in exile. Just last month, former Sen. Robert Torricelli of New Jersey spoke before a conference celebrating the U.S.-Israeli war in Iran and laid out his vision for a government to succeed the Islamic Republic. He pointed to the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), an Iranian opposition group in Albania that used to be a designated foreign terrorist organization and its leader, Maryam Rajavi. “The provisional government established by NCRI and Mrs. Rajavi is the framework,” said Torricelli. Torricelli, who served on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, is the founder of Rosemont Associates, a small government affairs consulting firm that has received $2.7 million from the NCRI since 2013. While critics say the NCRI has little domestic legitimacy inside of Iran, the group punches well above their weight on Capitol Hill — assisted in part by the advocacy of Torricelli. Given the track record of former members of Congress bending U.S. foreign policy to the whims of foreign powers, critics are looking to limit the practice. Holman says it is anti-democratic for lawmakers to take advantage of their public service for private gain. “Former government officials should be prohibited from serving as lobbyists, at least for a sufficient time period that whittles away their inside connections,” said Holman.Some members of Congress are already looking to make that happen. In a remarkable case of odd bed-fellows, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), Sen. Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii), Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas) all agreed via a 2019 Twitter exchange to push for a lifetime ban of former members of Congress becoming lobbyists. While no such bill has passed, multiple measures have been introduced from both sides of the aisle, including Ocasio-Cortez’s’s Close the Revolving Door Act, Rep. Zachary Nunn’s (R-Iowa) Ban Members from Becoming Lobbyists Act, and bipartisan bills like The Fighting Foreign Influence Act, sponsored by Rep. Jared Golden (D-Maine) and Lance Gooden (R-Texas), amongst others. There is no shortage of bipartisan support for stopping former lawmakers from becoming lobbyists and cashing in on their public service. It’s now up to Congress to push one of these bills through and help ensure that America’s policies serve the people, not wealthy authoritarian regimes.

[Category: Congress, Saudi-arabia, Qatar, Uae, Revolving-door]

— Is the US prepping for a military operation in Cuba?

 

at 4/15/26 10:05pm

Even with its hands full in an unpopular, costly and deadly war in Iran, the Trump administration seems to be ramping up preparations for military action in Cuba following weeks of relative calm between the two countries. On Tuesday, news outlet Zeteo reported that “officials at the Pentagon and elsewhere in the US government were quietly given a new directive that came straight from the Trump White House (to)...ramp up preparations for possible military operations against Cuba.” Citing two sources familiar with the matter and another briefed on it, Zeteo reported that President Trump has grown increasingly frustrated with Cuban President Miguel Diaz-Canel’s open defiance of threatening remarks from U.S. officials amid a near-total oil blockade imposed by Washington. This has led Trump to consider abducting some members of the Cuban leadership in an operation akin to the one that ousted Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro in January.This, according to Zeteo, would be the presumed end result of the Justice Department’s broad-ranging inquiry into Cuban government leaders for “drug, immigration, economic and violent crimes, with a goal of bringing fast indictments,” the New York Times recently reported. The Zeteo scoop comes after Trump told reporters at the White House on Monday that “we may stop by Cuba after we’re finished with this,” in reference to the U.S. war with Iran. This, despite the denial by a top Pentagon official last month that the administration was “rehearsing for an invasion of Cuba or actively preparing to militarily take over the island.” Soon after the Zeteo report was published, Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.) told El Nuevo Día that he was planning to line up a War Powers Resolution vote in the Senate sometime next week to prevent the administration from taking military action against Cuba that is not explicitly authorized by Congress. Kaine, who said that “regime change in Cuba should not be a U.S. priority,” sent a letter signed by 51 other members of Congress to Trump earlier this month condemning the ongoing U.S. fuel blockade of Cuba. “By engineering an accelerated energy collapse,” the letter asserted, “your administration has shifted responsibility for Cuba’s suffering away from the Cuban government and squarely onto the United States.” Diaz-Canel, for his part, has recently gone on a U.S. media blitz, mostly reiterating his preference for dialogue and cooperation with Washington while also declaring that Cuba plans to fight if the U.S. launches a military attack. “If we need to die, we’ll die,” he told Kristen Welker on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”Meanwhile, the pretexts for continued U.S. escalation against the island seem to be mounting, with Axios reporting Tuesday that the Trump administration has informed Congress that it believes the Cuban government has been complicit in supplying Russia with up to 5,000 troops for its war in Ukraine, an accusation that the island’s authorities vehemently deny.“The public record does not prove Havana officially dispatched all Cuban fighters," the administration’s five-page unclassified report stated. “However, there are significant indicators that the regime knowingly tolerated, enabled, or selectively facilitated the flow."The narrative that Cubans — who amid an ongoing humanitarian crisis have sought economic opportunities abroad, including through visa-free travel to Russia — are fighting in the Ukraine war was wielded by U.S. diplomats last October to garner opposition to an annual U.N. resolution condemning the 66-year-old U.S. trade embargo. The report is expected to be brought up in a much-anticipated House Foreign Affairs Committee hearing on Thursday featuring the State Department’s top official for Latin America, Michael G. Kozak, sources tell RS.The alleged preparations for military operations in Cuba follow an apparent easing of bilateral tensions in late March, when the U.S. decided to allow a Russian oil tanker to dock at Cuba’s Matanzas port with 730,000 barrels of crude, providing the island with temporary relief from its energy crisis. Cuba subsequently released 2,010 prisoners in the largest mass amnesty in over a decade. After Cuba authorized U.S. embassy officials in Havana to import fuel for their own operations, another Russian oil tanker — the U.S.- and EU-sanctioned Universal, which belongs to the state-owned Sovcomflot — set sail for the Caribbean. The ship passed through the English Channel last week and is estimated to arrive in Cuba on April 29. On Wednesday, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov told reporters in China that his country is committed to continue sending oil to Cuba as humanitarian aid. That fuel is already being used to resume electricity generation through two Turkish powerships operating off Cuban coasts. They had left the island last year due to high operating costs and the lack of available fuel, according to operator Karadeniz Holdings.The agreement to permit Russian fuel shipments came on the heels of moves by the U.S. to authorize fuel sales to Cuba’s private sector and boost humanitarian aid to the country’s hurricane-stricken eastern region. Cuba, for its part, released political prisoners through Vatican mediation, loosened restrictions on private enterprise, and authorized Cuban Americans to own and invest in businesses on the island without residing there.At the same time, Cuban officials reiterated on multiple occasions that they invite the U.S. to be involved in Cuba’s economic transformation. Toward those ends, Cuba recently announced the liberalization of the state agricultural system, the decentralization of public administration, and increased access to hard currency through state-owned financial institutions, although further details on the implementation and scope of these decisions remain to be seen.Citing Trump administration officials, U.S. government media outlet Martí Noticias reported this week that the grandson and bodyguard of former Cuban president Raúl Castro, who met with State Department envoys in February, even tried to deliver a letter on official Cuban government letterhead to President Trump last weekend through a private-sector emissary who was allegedly returned to the island given his lack of official accreditation. The failed effort, which has not been reported in English-language media, reportedly sought direct access to Trump by circumventing Secretary of State Marco Rubio, a longtime proponent of regime change in Havana who has said that Cuba’s announced reforms are not sufficient, demanding instead wholesale political and economic transformation on the island.As diplomatic advances between the two countries seemingly stall, renewed threats of U.S. military action against a small island off U.S. coasts could become a useful distraction for an administration dealing with a quagmire of its own creation in the Middle East, which has resulted in the death of over a dozen U.S. servicemembers, soaring gas prices during an election year, and a downgraded economic growth forecast that could trigger a global recession. While Trump has reportedly not yet made up his mind on military action in Cuba — and it remains unclear what exactly the administration’s long-term strategy on the island might be — some members of Congress are not waiting until after a strike is launched.“If another nation were blocking U.S. access to oil, as the Trump administration is doing with Cuba, Americans would see it as an act of war,” Kaine said. “These wars, including any new attack against Cuba, are illegal without a vote in Congress.”

[Category: Trump, Russia, Tim-kaine, Rubio, Oil, Cuba]

— Lebanon talks: A 'farce' disguising something much more sinister

 

at 4/15/26 10:05pm

Editor's note: On Thursday evening, Israel and Lebanon announced a 10-day ceasefire. The Lebanese government has reported several Israeli violations of the deal.On the surface, the launch of Israeli-Lebanese negotiations earlier this week seems like a big deal. In the first face-to-face talks between Lebanese and Israeli officials in more than 30 years, ambassadors from all three countries met under the auspices of Secretary of State Marco Rubio in Washington. But despite Trump hailing the talks as a “historic opportunity” for peace, the process is largely a farce. The relatively low-level ambassadorial meeting included no Israeli or Lebanese decision makers — and unsurprisingly produced little by way of progress.Moreover, the real “negotiations” are coming in the form of Israeli bombs and artillery fire. Despite the U.S.-Iran ceasefire deal concluded one week ago, Israel has continued to pummel Lebanon mercilessly, killing hundreds of civilians and displacing more than a million Lebanese — including at least 254 killed across Lebanon on the first day of the ceasefire. While Iran has been adamant that Lebanon be included in that ceasefire, Israel and the U.S. have refused any linkage. Thus, after years of insisting that Iran was the center of all the region’s problems, from Gaza to Lebanon to Iraq to Yemen, President Trump now says the Hezbollah-Israel dispute is a “separate skirmish”.This may be why many critics in the region primarily view these newly launched Israeli-Lebanese talks as a matter of optics, especially given Trump’s penchant for headlines over headway. But the optics of the talks themselves are highly fraught for the Lebanese, giving the appearance of normalization with Israel — if not “capitulation and surrender” — even as it continues to kill Lebanese and wipe out entire villages. In reality, the two sides are negotiating over very different things. Lebanon’s leadership is focused on achieving a ceasefire, after which other issues, including the future of Hezbollah, can be discussed. For Israel — and by extension the Trump administration — the talks are not about a ceasefire but about the terms of Hezbollah’s dismantlement. So far, Israel’s central (and perhaps only) demand is for the Lebanese government and armed forces to disarm Hezbollah and ensure it has no role in Lebanese politics. As Secretary Rubio put it, the talks are aimed at “bringing a permanent end to 20 or 30 years of Hezbollah’s influence in this part of the world.” In essence, what Israel and the U.S. seek is not a peace deal between Israel and Lebanon but an agreement to turn Lebanon’s government into something like the Palestinian Authority (PA) by enlisting it to be Israel’s security subcontractor in the north — which is simply not achievable. To be sure, Hezbollah’s role inside Lebanon as a sort of “state within a state” has been and remains highly problematic. Most Lebanese parties would like to see Hezbollah, which operates as both an armed militia and a major political party, restrained in some way. But while Lebanon’s government has officially called for disarming Hezbollah, it remains too weak to do so coercively without triggering internal strife and possibly even civil war. Together with its political allies, Hezbollah and affiliated factions control just under half of the seats in parliament and are represented in the cabinet by two ministers. For good or for ill, Hezbollah remains deeply rooted in Lebanese politics and society — a reality that even political decapitation and massive military setbacks at the hands of Israel in recent years could not change.What Israeli and American officials seem incapable of understanding is that Lebanon’s central government cannot carry out such a task without undercutting its own domestic legitimacy — a lesson Israel’s main security subcontractor in the West Bank understands all too well. But whereas Mahmoud Abbas’s PA has long been willing to trade away its domestic legitimacy in return for ensuring its survival, Lebanon’s central government is not in a position to do so — even if it wanted to. With a complicated confessional system of government and a population that is roughly one-third Christian, one-third Sunni and one-third Shiite, Lebanese politics involves a delicate political and demographic balance that is unlikely to withstand the zero-sum propositions demanded by Israel and its backers in Washington.Herein lies the fundamental contradiction in the Israeli-U.S. approach: only a strong central government that enjoys a modicum of popular legitimacy would be capable of disarming Hezbollah or otherwise neutralizing its influence; and yet everything Israel is doing is only deepening the Lebanese government’s weakness. Unable to protect its citizens, Lebanon’s government is increasingly seen by its citizens as impotent, reinforcing the view that the only solution lies with “the resistance.” This seems so painfully obvious that one wonders whether Israel’s strategy isn’t actually to keep Lebanon weak and divided in order to ensure a constant need to intervene militarily. Israelis, of all people, should understand the dangers of attempting to reengineer a country’s politics through the barrel of a gun, as its disastrous 1982 invasion of Lebanon — which among other things produced Hezbollah — not to mention the recent Israeli/US “excursion” in Iran, clearly demonstrates.While Israel may have little interest in a viable and functional Lebanese state, the United States, frankly, ought to know better. Even Israeli military officials, unlike its political leadership, understand that Hezbollah cannot simply be bombed out of existence. As problematic as it is, Hezbollah is a product of deeper political realities in Lebanon; addressing the problems posed by it will require an accommodation with those realities, which in turn requires fostering a sovereign and cohesive Lebanese state rather than treating it as a vassal state.

[Category: Diplomacy, Israel, Iran, Foreign-policy, Lebanon, Lebanon-war, Enewsletter]

— New DoD leader connected to firm that trained Khashoggi’s killers

 

at 4/15/26 10:05pm

The director of the Pentagon’s new “Economic Defense Unit” was a board member of Tier 1 Group, which trained four of the Saudi operatives involved in the 2018 murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi.Websites dating back to 2009 list George Kollitides in leadership roles at the private security company — indicating he was at Tier 1 Group when it trained the Saudi nationals later linked with Khashoggi’s killing. Under Saudi crown prince Mohammed bin Salman’s approval, the agents tricked Khashoggi into going to the Saudi Consulate in Turkey — where they ambushed and strangled him, and dismembered and disposed of his body. Tier 1 Group maintains the training it provided to those involved was for defensive purposes, unrelated to the murder, and for a contract with the State Department, which pre-approved the personnel.An industry source familiar with the matter told RS on the condition of anonymity that Kollitides resigned from Tier 1 Group “as of August 17, 2025.”A longtime financier, Kollitides was Head of Defense at Cerberus Capital Management, a prominent private equity firm that founded and funded Tier 1 Group, from 2003 to 2012. He is also Chief Investment Officer of Aegis Capital Advisors — an advisory firm which, until Monday, listed Tier 1 Group in its portfolio. A spokesperson from Cerberus told RS that Kollitides has “no involvement with the operations of Cerberus or any of its portfolio companies."Now at the Pentagon, Kollitides heads the recently established Economic Defense Unit, which is assembling a team of top-tier investors and bankers to invest $200 billion in U.S. companies it considers critical to U.S. national security, in order to compete with China. The unit has been operating for at least a month.Cerberus' Pentagon?Kollitides now joins other former Cerberus executives, at the forefront of Defense Department policy. Indeed, former Cerberus CEO Stephen Feinberg is now the DoD’s deputy secretary — its second-highest-ranking civilian. His high-level duties, including overseeing the defense budget, afford him extraordinary influence. Feinberg is also overhauling the Office of Strategic Capital (OSC), which attracts and scales private investments in military technologies; David Lorch left an executive post at Cerberus in late 2025 to lead it. Despite the new government roles, ties to Cerberus endure. Although he divested from his stake in Cerberus upon joining the DoD, Feinberg filed paperwork indicating he still contracts with the firm for tax compliance and accounting services, and for health care. Meanwhile, companies Cerberus invests in, such as Stratolaunch, NetCentrics Corp, Red River Technologies, M1, and North Wind, have acquired Pentagon contracts since Feinberg assumed the Pentagon role. Kollitides’ Economic Defense Unit seems poised to siphon in more insiders. A pitch deck for the unit promises financier recruits “unmatched access to top-level government officials and privileged information flow” and a chance to invest “more capital than most investors deploy in their entire careers" — essentially marketing the unit as an elite professional development opportunity. “Even if no laws are broken, this is exactly the sort of arrangement that invites insider dealing, political favoritism, and capital allocation based on connections rather than merit,” Tad DeHaven, a policy analyst at the Cato Institute, told RS.Zooming out, lawmakers have long scrutinized Cerberus execs’ ties to Tier 1 Group. In 2020, Trump nominated Cerberus executive and Tier 1 Group board member Louis Bremer to become assistant secretary of defense. But Bremer faced intense questioning over his role at Tier 1 Group at a hearing over his nomination, which was subsequently left to expire.Observers say the scrutiny should continue. "Congress should hold hearings on [Kollitides’] appointment and on the Economic Defense Unit itself,” Raed Jarrar, advocacy director at DAWN, which Khashoggi founded, told RS. “Congress should not allow a private equity network tied to the murder of Khashoggi to run hundreds of billions in Pentagon investment policy without any oversight."Kollitides, Aegis Capital Advisors, Tier 1 Group, and the Pentagon did not respond to requests for comment. Aegis Capital Advisors removed Tier 1 Group from its portfolio on its website after RS contacted the advisory firm.A spokesperson from Cerberus told RS in an email that Feinberg divested in his stake from Cerberus, and is “not involved with the operations of Cerberus or any of its portfolio companies in any way.” They said the services Cerberus provides to Feinberg are unrelated to its operations and investments, and that Lorch is not involved with Cerberus’ operations and affiliated companies.

[Category: Cerberus, Feinberg, Khashoggi, Jamal-khashoggi, Dod, Pentagon, Revolving-door]

— Senate again fails to block weapons to Israel

 

at 4/15/26 6:06pm

Another effort to limit U.S. arms shipments to Israel failed in the Senate on Wednesday as the body voted down a pair of measures that would block certain military sales to the country. The two joint resolutions of disapproval — one targeting a $150 million sale of 1,000-pound bombs and the other a $300 million sale of bulldozers — failed by votes of 36-63 and 40-59, respectively. The votes marked the fourth effort to restrict arms sales to Israel since the start of the war on Gaza in October 2023.The vote count marked a meaningful improvement — some are even calling it ‘historic' — over the most recent similar effort in July 2025. At that time, 27 Democrats voted to block the sales, which was considered progress. As in that vote, a larger number of senators opposed the transfer of military equipment more closely associated with use in the West Bank. (In July, three more Democrats voted to block the transfer of automatic rifles distributed to settlers than voted to block the sale of certain bombs.)“As Israeli forces again use US weapons to decimate civilian towns and villages, this time in Lebanon, and violations continue in Gaza and the West Bank, Senate Democrats are making clear that there is a new consensus forming in Washington: US arms sales must comply with US and international law, without exception,” John Ramming Chappell, an adviser at the Center for Civilians in Conflict, told Responsible Statecraft. Cavan Kharrazian, senior policy advisor at Demand Progress, called the vote “historic” adding that “[t]he Overton window is shifting, and Congress is finally starting to catch up with the majority of Americans who don’t think we should keep spending taxpayer dollars to ship more weapons to Israel.”Only seven Democrats voted against both resolutions: Sens. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), Chris Coons (D-Del.), Catherine Cortez-Masto (D-Nev.), Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.), Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), John Fetterman (D-Pa.), and Jacky Rosen (D-Nev.). The bulldozer vote — which aimed to restrict the possible sale of Caterpillar D9 bulldozers, sometimes used to destroy homes in the West Bank, Gaza, and Lebanon — was the first of its kind in the Senate. The Biden administration reportedly froze the sale of these bulldozers to Israel in November 2024, but the decision was overturned the following January. In the lead-up to the vote on Wednesday, Cindy Corrie, the mother of an American citizen killed in 2003 by a U.S-made bulldozer while trying to protect a Palestinian home from demolition, wrote a piece for The Nation urging the Senate to support the measure. “Caterpillar bulldozers are being used not to build but to destroy—to erase communities and deliberately make land uninhabitable,” Corrie wrote. “If Israel were serious about reconstruction, it would open the crossings and allow needed machinery in. Instead, it is importing American bulldozers to tear down what little remains.”Earlier in the day on Wednesday, the Senate voted for the fourth time this year to block a War Powers Resolution that would limit Trump’s ability to go to war with Iran. Once again, only Sens. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) and John Fetterman (D-Pa.) voted across party lines — Paul to vote for, Fetterman to vote against the resolution.Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), one of the co-sponsors of the joint resolutions of disapproval, tried to explicitly tie the vote against the war in Iran and legislation on arms sales together. “[F]or Netanyahu, Gaza was not enough. Iran was not enough,” Sanders wrote in an op-ed for the Guardian. “He is now waging a full-blown war of expansion against Lebanon. That war has not only killed more than 2,000 people, but has resulted in Israel occupying 14% of Lebanese territory.”Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) made a similar argument during the floor debate Wednesday. “Make no mistake: a vote to approve arms sales to Israel at this time would be seen as a message of approval for Trump and Netanyahu’s disastrous war against Iran. I will not send that message,” he said. Other Democrats, however, tried to make the case that the two votes are distinct, and that they could oppose the U.S-Israel war on Iran without voting to block the sale of bombs to Tel Aviv. Kharrazian said he is “baffled and incensed that some Democrats who just earlier today voted to block Trump and Netanyahu’s illegal, disastrous war then turned around and greenlit offensive weapons to the Israeli military” despite its ongoing war in Lebanon. “You cannot oppose a war in one vote and fuel it with bombs in the next,” he argued.The Wednesday vote was closely watched as midterms approach and the Democratic Party gears up for the 2028 presidential primary, in which policy toward Israel and the Middle East is likely to play a meaningful role. Advocates who supported the resolutions told RS that they were monitoring members rumored to be interested in running for president in 2028 who had not voted for all the prior attempts, including Sens. Ruben Gallego and Mark Kelly of Arizona, Sen. Jon Ossoff (D-Ga.), Sen. Elissa Slotkin (D-Mich.), and Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.). All five Senators voted in favor of both joint resolutions on Wednesday.

[Category: Israel-gaza, Iran-war, Bernie-sanders, Arms-sales, Congress]

— Israel says Thunberg more influential ‘antisemite’ than Fuentes

 

at 4/15/26 8:13am

Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg is the world’s second most dangerous antisemite, several spots ahead of white nationalist Nick Fuentes, according to a new report from the Israeli government. The report contains an analysis of 10 “prominent influencers in the global anti-semitic and anti-Zionist arena in 2025, who were selected based on both the severity of their actions/statements and the scope of their influence.” While outside organizations have created similar rankings of antisemitic influencers, this appears to be the first one published by the Israeli government. As evidence of Thunberg’s antisemitism, the Israeli government pointed to her use of “terms such as ‘genocide,’ ‘siege’ and ‘mass starvation’ in reference to Israel’s actions in Gaza.”Many of these views are well within the American mainstream. A Quinnipac poll from August found that half of American voters believe that Israel is committing a genocide. Thirty-nine percent of Jewish Americans believe Israel is committing a genocide, according to an October Washington Post poll. Israel’s Ministry of Diaspora Affairs, which produced the report, deemed Thunberg a more dangerous threat than Fuentes, who has said Judaism is incompatible with Western civilization and called for a “total Aryan victory.”The Israeli government’s rating system is based on two categories. The first is the person’s level of influence, which includes metrics like social media follower count, appearances on news channels, and perceived influence on public opinion. Second, each person was given a “Risk Score” — a rating assigned based on the frequency of posts that are antisemitic/anti-Israeli, terms that are often used interchangeably throughout the report.The list also includes comedian Bassem Youssef, a frequent critic of Israel’s actions in Gaza, and conservative political commentator Tucker Carlson, who appears to score quite low on the Israeli government’s own risk score. Influencer Dan Bilzerian, who has said he wants to “kill Israelis,” tops the list. In a separate section about American influencers, the Israeli government report also singles out Ms. Rachel, a YouTuber with nearly 20 million subscribers who makes educational videos for toddlers, as one of the most influential supposed antisemites. Ms. Rachel’s misdeeds include publishing “content dealing with the humanitarian crisis in Gaza, highlighting alleged harm to civilians and children, and condemning Israeli military actions.” The report also says Ms. Rachel has “promoted fundraising campaigns for emergency aid for children in Gaza and other conflict zones.”Antisemitic incidents frequently spiked in relation to Israeli military action, according to the report. In Australia, the Bondi Beach shooting was the only “significant spike in anti-Semitic discourse observed during 2025 that is not related to Gaza.” In the United States, according to the report, there were significant spikes in antisemitic discourse on X after Israel breaking the ceasefire in Gaza in March, U.S.-Israeli military attacks in Iran in June, and Israeli airstrikes in Doha in September. The report also asserts that this “clear link between Israeli actions in Gaza, Lebanon and the wider region and levels of anti-semitism” is not because of Israel’s actions, but rather because of war imagery, humanitarian narratives, and political campaigns. Israel acknowledges it is in the midst of a public relations crisis, which Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu describes as the "eighth front.” The weapons of choice in Israel’s seven fronts in Gaza, the West Bank, Lebanon, Iran, Yemen, Syria, and Iraq include artillery, missiles, and armored vehicles. But the eighth front is different: during a meeting last year with social media influencers in Israel, Netanyahu said that “weapons change over time” and “the most important ones [today] are the social media.” To this end, the report takes aim at social media companies that have not fully adopted the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s definition anti-semitism, which critics argue is often invoked to label criticism of Israel as antisemitism and chill pro-Palestinian speech. YouTube, Reddit, and X have the lowest levels of compliance with the IHRA definition, the report says.Amichai Chikli, the head of the ministry that published the report, has forged relationships with far-right European parties with historical ties to Nazi sympathizers, leading a number of Jewish organizations and antisemitism experts to boycott a conference organized by Chikli last March.Tel Aviv University released a separate report about antisemitism this week, in honor of Holocaust Remembrance Day, that contained a sweeping criticism of the Israeli government’s approach to the topic. The Tel Aviv University report said that “Israeli politicians and media have, particularly in recent months, continuously expanded the scope of what qualifies as anti-semitism, at times in absurd or hasty ways.” Their report even called on the Ministry of Diaspora Affairs to be abolished for being, at times, an "embarrassment.”

[Category: Antisemitism, Nick-fuentes, Greta-thunberg, Israel]

— Is this the grand bargain that could end the Iran war?

 

at 4/14/26 10:05pm

Is a grand bargain in the air?One might not think so after Washington announced a naval blockade of Iranian ports on Monday, a move that immediately complicated any path to a durable settlement and sent oil markets surging past $115 a barrel. But two wars, a ceasefire, and now a blockade — and Iran still controls maritime traffic in the Strait of Hormuz. That is not the portrait of a defeated country. It is the portrait of a country that has converted military punishment into strategic leverage and is waiting to see whether Washington will negotiate or escalate further. There is a right way (ensuring regional stability) and a wrong way (continuing the cycle of violence) to go about this.Understanding how we got here requires an honest accounting of the strategic illusions that drove Washington and Tel Aviv to this point. Their Iran strategy has always relied on the belief that they were looking at a brittle state on the verge of collapse. They were wrong. Under maximum pressure from 2018 onward, Iran’s enriched uranium stockpile grew from roughly 300 kg to an estimated 3,000 kg by mid-2025. The policy designed to eliminate the nuclear threat measurably accelerated it. And the institutional knowledge to reconstitute the program endures in the minds of Iranian scientists; it cannot be destroyed from the air.The IRGC is not a conventional military that collapses when its chain of command is decapitated. It is a parallel state with its own economy, intelligence apparatus, and ideological foundation. Killing Ayatollah Khamenei did not hollow it out. It produced a more belligerent successor, Mojtaba Khamenei, with the Guard’s full backing, within days.Iran did not simply close the strait. It began administering it. Ships from Pakistan, India, China, and Russia were quietly allowed through after vetting by IRGC intermediaries and, in documented cases, payment of tolls in yuan. Iran was choosing who passes, who pays, and who waits. This is the behavior of a state establishing facts on the ground it intends to bring to a negotiating table. The ceasefire of April 8 reflects this dynamic: the U.S. and Israel achieved most of what they set out to achieve militarily, and yet the Trump administration is issuing ultimatums on the strait because Iran, from the rubble, was the entity with its hand on the valve.The blockade announced Monday adds a new layer of complexity. Washington may calculate that cutting off Iranian port revenues will accelerate Tehran’s willingness to negotiate. The risk is the opposite: a blockade gives Iranian hardliners a nationalist argument against any settlement and could push Tehran to tighten its grip on Hormuz rather than loosen it. Two parties now each claim leverage over the other’s economic lifeline. That is precisely the kind of symmetrical deadlock that historically resolves through negotiation, not further coercion.So what might a settlement look like? A bilateral Iran-Oman maritime transit authority, denominated in dollars, with transparent fee structures and robust verification mechanisms, would convert Iran’s coercive leverage into a legitimate economic stake in the system’s continuity. For such an arrangement to survive a U.S. blockade regime, it would need explicit American endorsement. Washington would have to agree to lift blockade measures in exchange for Iranian compliance with the transit framework. The Panama Canal treaty of 1977 is the relevant precedent: Washington ceded formal control, secured permanent transit rights, and brought decades of regional stability. Iran’s refineries, petrochemical plants, and port facilities sustained catastrophic damage across two wars. A dedicated reconstruction fund, capitalized through a portion of Hormuz transit revenues, would give Tehran a concrete economic stake in keeping the strait open and tie Iranian compliance to tangible financial benefit.The same fund would allocate a portion of proceeds toward repairing damage Iran inflicted on Gulf Arab energy infrastructure, ensuring Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Kuwait, and Bahrain have a direct stake in the arrangement’s success. The model need not be framed as reparations but as a joint infrastructure investment, with international auditing and disbursement tied to verifiable compliance benchmarks.On the nuclear side, what remains is the political architecture to prevent reconstitution: a permanent agreement with more intrusive inspection provisions than the JCPOA and no sunset clauses. For Israel, the ask is a formal Iranian commitment, binding under international law, not to support military action aimed at the destruction of the Jewish state. This stops short of recognition, which no Iranian government could accept and survive domestically, but it establishes a legal and political threshold that changes the strategic landscape. Iranian hardliners could accept this framing because it requires Tehran to refrain from actively funding Israel’s destruction, not to endorse its existence; a distinction that matters enormously inside the Islamic Republic’s domestic politics.In Lebanon, a parallel understanding is achievable: in exchange for a binding Israeli commitment to respect Lebanese sovereignty and forgo future military incursions, Iran would commit to supporting the integration of Hezbollah into the Lebanese Armed Forces, ending its function as an independent militia outside state command. A diplomatic framework that removes both incentives is worth more to Israel than any number of airstrikes.In exchange, Iran gets phased sanctions relief tied to verifiable benchmarks, a formal U.S. non-interference commitment, and the institutional role at Hormuz it has just demonstrated it can claim by force anyway. The deal does not give Iran what it could not otherwise obtain. It gives Iran a legitimate path to what it has already shown it can take through coercion which is why it is strategically rational to offer it.The Islamabad talks are the first real diplomatic opening since the Omani-mediated negotiations in February which collapsed after Trump said he was “not thrilled” with the terms, just days before the bombing started. Iran was willing to make nuclear concessions then. The war that followed has killed thousands, triggered the largest oil shock in history, and produced a ceasefire in which Iran controls maritime traffic in the Persian Gulf. Now a blockade threatens to deepen confrontation further. The cost of walking away from the February table is fully visible. The question is whether the same mistake gets made in Islamabad.A grand bargain is not a reward for Iranian aggression. It is a recognition of a strategic reality that two wars and a blockade have now made undeniable. Iran cannot be destroyed from the air, and its geography gives it leverage over the global energy system that military force can temporarily suppress but not permanently eliminate. The choice is not between a compliant Iran and a contained Iran. It is between a negotiated framework that converts Iranian leverage into a stake in regional stability, and a cycle of war, ceasefire, and escalation that will repeat itself at harrowing cost. The Islamabad talks offer an opportunity to turn the page on 47 years of bellicosity. Both sides have a vested interest in seeing it succeed.

[Category: Iran, Iran-strait-hormuz, Strait-of-hormuz, Israel, Persian-gulf, Iran-war]

— Oman walks tightrope with Iran across the Strait of Hormuz

 

at 4/14/26 10:05pm

It’s been three days since the talks in Pakistan concluded with nothing and the U.S. began its blockade of Iranian ports shortly thereafter. Hopes for a negotiated end to the six-week-long war in Iran have started to wane. For Iran’s Arab neighbors in the Persian Gulf, the risks of a return to full-fledged hostilities between the U.S.-Israeli alliance and Iran are enormous.Iran’s retaliation for Operation Epic Fury has already entailed swift attacks on U.S.-allied Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) states, which slowed down but did not entirely stop after the Pakistani-mediated ceasefire went into effect. The Iranian attacks quickly ended the fragile détente between Tehran and several Gulf monarchies. Yet the intensity of Tehran’s attacks has varied from one GCC member to the other, suggesting that the future trajectory of Gulf states’ policies toward Iran are unlikely to be uniform. Within the GCC, Oman has consistently maintained a normal if not special relationship with Tehran. Several indicators suggest that this unique position will persist.Since the war began, Iran has reportedly launched drones at the Omani port cities of Duqm, Salalah, and Sohar. Yet despite taking responsibility for strikes on all other GCC states, it has refused in the case of Oman. Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei denied Tehran’s involvement and attributed the attacks to Israel instead. Unlike its counterparts in the rest of the Gulf, Oman’s foreign ministry refrained from naming Iran in its official statements in response to the drone attacks.In both property damage and human cost, Oman has suffered far less from recent Iranian attacks than its Gulf neighbors, particularly the United Arab Emirates (UAE). No missiles have hit Omani territory, and Muscat remains the only GCC capital spared from Tehran’s attacks throughout the conflict.Oman was also the only GCC state to express “deep regrets” in response to Washington and Tel Aviv’s decision to launch a war against Iran on February 28, which Muscat called a “violation of international law.” Furthermore, Oman’s chief diplomat penned an article in The Economist in which he condemned Iran’s attacks on GCC states as “unacceptable,” while also stating that this response was “probably the only rational option available to the Iranian leadership” given that Tehran was “faced with what both Israel and America described as a war designed to terminate the Islamic Republic.”Additionally, Oman was the only GCC state untouched by Iranian military operations following the Pakistani-mediated “ceasefire” which took effect on April 7-8.Oman is uniquely positioned to remain the GCC’s most Iran-friendly member. Though other Gulf Arab monarchies such as the UAE may find Oman’s relationship with Iran suspicious, Muscat will work to preserve its “friends to all, enemies to none” foreign policy doctrine.“As it has done before, Oman will have to coordinate and balance its relations with Iran with those of the other GCC states. Oman’s penchant for independent foreign policy is well known within the GCC, if not always liked,” Mehran Kamrava, a professor of government at Georgetown University in Qatar, told RS.A bridging roleFar from a passive bystander, Oman has long pursued a policy of “active neutrality,” using its close partnership with the United States and its friendly, neighborly relationship with Iran to act as a credible and effective diplomatic bridge.Oman’s facilitation of secret talks at the end of President Barack Obama’s first term was critical to the eventual negotiation of the historic 2015 nuclear deal, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action. Beyond U.S.-Iran relations, Oman has also worked to ease regional tensions. Muscat played a key role, for example, in helping to bring about Saudi-Iranian renormalization in 2023.“Omani officials prided themselves for uber pragmatism” in their foreign policy decisions, Joseph Kechichian, a senior fellow at the King Faisal Centre in Riyadh and author of Oman and the World: The Emergence of an Independent Foreign Policy, told RS. He believes that Muscat will likely retain and even deepen its ties with Tehran while continuing to “play a critical role to reconcile various positions among belligerents.”However, Kechichian expects some possible changes in the dynamics surrounding Muscat’s bridging role. “The fact that Pakistan is now acting as a go-between further highlights that [Omani leader] Sultan Haitham may have decided to maintain a certain distance. At least for now,” he added.Share stewardship of the straitOman and Iran are the two countries whose territory sits on either side of the Strait of Hormuz. The narrow waterway separates the Persian Gulf and the Gulf of Oman, through which 20% of the world’s oil and gas traverses during normal times. Shared interests in maintaining security through this critical chokepoint have long given Muscat and Tehran extra incentives to maintain cooperative relations.Their geographic interdependence was one of many factors that led to Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi and Sultan Qaboos bin Said working closely together on regional security issues well before the establishment of the Islamic Republic in 1979. For many decades, Oman and Iran have maintained cooperative mechanisms to ensure naval coordination, maritime safety, including in search-and-rescue operations, and discreet communication, even amid periods of heightened regional tensions.Mehran Haghirian, the Director of Regional Initiatives at the Bourse & Bazaar Foundation, warns against assuming that this cooperation “could evolve into some form of joint arrangement over passage,” which would jeopardize the Sultanate’s relationships with other Arab states and much of the international community. “Its engagement with Iran should not be mistaken for endorsement of its actions,” he told RS.Oman has long worried about the consequences of a possible war between the U.S.-Israeli alliance and Iran over control of the strait because this scenario would likely produce dangerous spillover effects into the Musandam Peninsula, which lies on the southern side of the strait.In practice, neither Iran nor Oman can secure the strait by itself, making ongoing bilateral coordination and cooperation essential. This means that Omani-Iranian cooperation in the strait is “likely to remain intact and even deepen quietly,” according to Salem Ben Nasser Al-Ismaily, a former Omani foreign ministry advisor.The idea of Tehran maintaining de facto control of the artery raises sensitive questions regarding Oman’s national security.“Greater Iranian assertiveness could invite more Western/Gulf naval presence, which will raise the risk of miscalculation near Omani waters,” Ismaily said. Ultimately, Iranian control of the strait will not benefit Oman. Instead “predictable, shared stewardship of the strait” will, explained Ismaily.Iran’s current “control” over the strait requires careful contextualization, Haghirian said. Threats to vessels and talk of a new toll system are transient measures tied to the ongoing conflict. They do not reflect a sustainable, peacetime arrangement.“If Iran moves from signaling to enforcement by targeting ‘non-compliant’ vessels, laying more mines, or imposing a $2 million toll backed by force, that is not something Oman will accept, and it is not something the region or the international community will tolerate without escalation,” Haghirian told RS.Oman’s short-term goal will thus be to minimize disruption to the strait and engage in dialogue with Iran aimed at finding a long-term solution, he noted. “Anything else risks turning this into a much larger confrontation.”In the end, Omani-Iranian cooperation over the strait is likely to continue, albeit discreetly. Muscat will emphasize shared responsibility rather than Iranian dominance, framing its role as a stabilizing force. For Omani officials, the greatest threat to their interests in the strait is a wider escalation between Iran and its adversaries, which could disrupt Oman’s careful balancing act.

[Category: Iran, Strait-of-hormuz, Oman, Muscat, Uae, Saudi-arabia, Gcc, Persian-gulf, Gulf-states, Iran-war]

— 6 weeks of war have pushed millions of Iranians into poverty

 

at 4/14/26 10:05pm

For ordinary Iranians, the tenuous ceasefire that began last week has offered a desperately needed reprieve from death and displacement. For analysts, it has provided an opportunity to evaluate the damage that this war has wrought.The conclusion is clear: In six weeks of fighting, the U.S. and Israel have dealt a devastating blow to Iran’s economy, placing 50% of Iranian jobs at risk and pushing an additional 5% of the population into poverty.President Donald Trump marketed the war at the outset as a campaign to support the Iranian people. “America is with you. I made a promise to you, and I fulfilled that promise,” Trump said at the outset. But that rhetoric soon hardened into menace. Trump later described Iranians as “a nation of terror and hate” and threatened to strike civilian infrastructure, including bridges and power plants, warning that a “whole civilization” could die, “never to be brought back again.”In practice, the war has destroyed the lives and livelihoods of ordinary citizens with little influence over the Islamic Republic’s policies. Those supposedly meant to benefit from the war ended up bearing its heaviest human and economic costs. The latest Iranian official estimates put the death toll at 3,370.The pattern of Israeli and U.S. attacks suggests that they have intentionally targeted the core pillars of Iranian livelihoods, as well as the state’s ability to deliver services. More than 125,000 residential and civilian buildings have reportedly been damaged, roughly comparable to the number of buildings damaged during the eight-year Iran-Iraq War.Among the damaged facilities were 339 health facilities, 32 universities, 857 schools, tens of police and fire stations, 20 Red Crescent centers, and 120 museums and historical monuments. If a citizen in Tehran needs emergency medical assistance, wants to report a car accident or house fire, or simply needs to renew documents, they may be unable to reach the police or emergency services because stations and offices have been bombed or evacuated to avoid casualties.More than 23,000 factories and firms have been directly hit, with many neighboring businesses also forced to shut down. Critical infrastructure — including ports, aviation, and transportation networks, which are essential for moving food, medicine, raw materials, and workers — has also been heavily affected. Iranian officials have estimated the cost of reconstruction at approximately $300 billion in damages to civilian infrastructure, excluding military sites and broader economic losses from unemployment, business closures, supply disruptions, inflation, and lost investments.This trail of destruction represents a deliberate strike at the core of Iran’s labor market. By hitting steel, petrochemicals, pharmaceuticals, and transportation, the war disrupted supply chains that sustain millions of jobs. Many dairy factories, for example, have suspended operations because of shortages of essential packaging materials. Long market shutdowns, liquidity constraints, weak demand, and deep uncertainty have also reduced private consumption and damaged wholesale and retail activity. By my estimate, 10 to 12 million jobs, the primary source of income for nearly half of Iran’s workforce, are now at risk. The burden falls most heavily on informal workers and on low- and middle-skilled workers in the formal sector, who have the least protection and the least political influence. Public sector employees and highly skilled workers in the formal sector, by contrast, remain relatively better insulated.Iran’s economy, according to the World Bank estimates, contracted by 2.7% during the fiscal year that ended on March 20. Among the factors driving this stagflation before the latest escalation were last year’s 12-day war, a suspicious explosion at the economically important Rajai Port last April, U.S. sanctions, and a severe drought. Between March 2025 and March 2026, the national currency lost almost half its value, more than 750,000 jobs were eliminated, and inflation reached a 70-year high. Last month, Iran's inflation rate and the cost of its staple food basket reached record highs of 72% and 134%, respectively, compared with March 2025. The rial’s collapse has intensified inflationary pressure, while lost income, layoffs, and business shutdowns are pushing more households into poverty.The war has turned these already dire conditions into something far worse. According to a new estimate from the United Nations Development Programme, the war could contract Iran’s economy by 8.8 to 10.4% relative to a no-war baseline in the Iranian year 1405 (ending 20 March 2027). Even if the 40-day war has ended, according to the UNDP, 3.5 to 4.1 million Iranians have already been dragged below the poverty line. In that context, an expected 3-4 million layoffs with a three-digit inflation rate will drive millions of already vulnerable Iranians deeper into poverty.The Islamic Republic's war plan includes supplying essential goods, providing subsidized loans, offering tax incentives and exemptions for damaged factories and firms, providing unemployment benefits, and subsidizing food staples. However, absorbing and covering the costs of war is beyond the government's capacity. Providing food staples and unemployment benefits for one year would require nearly 5 quadrillion rials, or 45 to 50% of Iran's public budget, which has already faced a high deficit.However, the Islamic Republic’s decision to enter into negotiations was not a simple response to the war’s economic costs, nor was it necessarily a sign of weakness or strategic defeat. Iran’s leadership is now seeking to contain an increasingly dangerous escalation, reassert control over the tempo of the conflict, and test who truly holds the final say in whether this war continues or stops. In a war where Trump has publicly described ending the conflict as a “mutual” decision with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Tehran is explicitly testing whether the United States is the actual decision‑maker and whether pre‑war calculations in Washington have changed, with short-term pain for the U.S. and the global economy yielding long-term gains. If Washington reads the pause as proof that economic pressure alone can force Iran into submission, it will misunderstand both the regime and the society living under it. The war has already devastated ordinary Iranians far more than it has weakened the state’s determination to preserve control over escalation. Another round of fighting will not clarify the conflict or produce a cleaner strategic outcome. It will deepen the destruction, widen the humanitarian disaster, and increase the chances of another miscalculation that neither side may be able to control. That is why this fragile ceasefire must hold, and why it must not be mistaken for either peace or surrender.

[Category: Sanctions, Economics, Iran-war]

— US strikes on alleged drug boats have killed more than 160 people

 

at 4/14/26 12:25pm

As global attention remains fixed on the war in Iran, U.S. military operations elsewhere are continuing with little public scrutiny, including the ongoing campaign of strikes targeting suspected drug trafficking vessels in the eastern Pacific and the Caribbean.The Pentagon said this week it carried out another round of strikes against alleged “narco-trafficking” boats in the region, bringing the campaign’s total death toll to at least 168 people.“Intelligence confirmed the vessel was transiting along known narco-trafficking routes in the Eastern Pacific and was engaged in narco-trafficking operations,” the U.S. Southern Command said in a Monday press release. “Two male narco-terrorists were killed during this action. No U.S. military forces were harmed.” This followed a near identical statement that announced the killing of five men in two separate strikes on April 11. One person reportedly survived those attacks. These represented the fourth and fifth such rounds of strikes since the U.S. and Israel launched their war in Iran in late February.In total, the Trump administration has carried out 48 deadly strikes since September 2025, according to the civilian harm watchdog group Airways. As with previous operations, the military provided little evidence that the boats were carrying drugs. U.S. Southern Command’s X account shared a short video that shows a small boat being blown up and the vessel engulfed in smoke.“This campaign of murder at sea has fallen out of the headlines, but the consequences are being felt in communities across the region,” said John Ramming Chappel, an adviser at the Center for Civilians in Conflict. “Families wait for their loved ones to return and may never know what happened to them for certain. They have no access to recourse.”Critics say the operations, which have not been approved by the U.S. Congress, raises serious legal and humanitarian concerns.“The fact remains that we are not at war with the people on these boats,,” Heather Brandon-Smith, the legislative director of foreign policy at the Friends Committee on National Legislation, told RS in an email. “They are not combatants. They are civilians suspected of committing crimes, and to kill them without any due process is an unlawful extrajudicial killing.”References to the strikes have also begun to surface in rhetoric surrounding the conflict in the Middle East. After negotiations with Iran collapsed over the weekend, President Donald Trump ordered a naval blockade of the Strait of Hormuz and suggested similar tactics could be applied there."Any of these [Iranian navy ships] come anywhere close to our BLOCKADE, they will be immediately ELIMINATED, using the same system of kill that we use against the drug dealers on boats at sea,” he wrote on Truth Social on Monday. “It is quick and brutal.”

[Category: War-powers, Caribbean, Eastern-pacific, U-s-military, War-on-drugs]

— Think the Iran war is a disaster? Blame these DC think tanks first.

 

at 4/13/26 10:05pm

If the U.S.-Israeli war against Iran is ultimately assessed as a defeat, some measure of blame could be cast on five pro-Israel “think tanks” that consistently promoted military action against the Islamic Republic in the eight months before it began, according to analyses by four different widely used AI programs.The Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD), the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), the Hudson Institute, and the Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP) ranked among the top six think tanks identified by the AI models as the “most prominent in promoting military action against Tehran” during the period between the “Twelve-Day War” in June 2025 and the current war’s launch on February 28.A fifth think tank, the more traditionally right-wing Heritage Foundation, was also included by three of the apps as among the top six think tanks promoting military actions against Iran. Unsurprisingly, four platforms – Gemini, ChatGPT, Claude, and Grok – identified the same five Washington-based institutions as also having played leading roles in promoting the U.S. invasion of Iraq 23 years ago.Of the five, FDD, AEI, Hudson, and WINEP fall squarely into the neoconservative camp of U.S. foreign policy hawks in that support for Israel is a central principle of their world views and work. Indeed, the organization that claimed the top spot for prominence in promoting war against Iran in all four AI apps was FDD, whose original submission to the IRS in 2001 described its mission as “provid(ing) education to enhance Israel’s image in North America and the public’s understanding of issues affecting Israeli-Arab relations.” The Heritage Foundation — which identifies itself as pursuing an “America First” foreign policy — has long promoted close ties with Israel. A “Special Report” published by Heritage in March 20025 called for transforming U.S.-Israeli relations from a mere “special relationship” to a “strategic partnership.”“Experts” from all five organizations repeatedly propounded some or all of the same themes — that Iran’s nuclear program and missile arsenal posed an unacceptable threat to Israel and eventually to the U.S. homeland, that the regime was still “the world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism,” and that it was at the weakest point since the 1979 Revolution.They pressed these points in congressional testimony, on the op-ed and news pages of major print and online publications, in broadcast television and radio interviews, and on social media, notably X, in what were clearly efforts to persuade elites and the public to accept the necessity of military action against the Islamic Republic. These arguments echoed the same themes as those propagated by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, as well as well-known pro-Israel hawks in the U.S. Congress, such as Sen. Lindsey Graham, in their appearances on U.S. broadcast media.As can be seen in the table below, three of the AI apps identified several additional neoconservative-led think tanks among the six most prominent promoters of military action, including the Jewish Institute for National Security of America (JINSA), the Center for Security Policy (CSP), and the Institute for the Study of War (ISW), which was founded by neoconservative military analyst Kimberly Kagan in 2007. “While ISW positions itself as analytical rather than explicitly advocacy-oriented, its framing of Iranian threats consistently supported the case for military actions,” according to Claude. Over the past quarter century, the foreign policy orientation of FDD, AEI, Hudson, JINSA, and CSP has been hardline neoconservative; their positions, particularly with respect to the Middle East, have generally reflected the views of Netanyahu’s Likud Party. WINEP, which was created in 1985 as a spin-off of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, hosts fellows with a more diverse range of views, especially regarding Israeli-Palestinian relations.ChatGPT also included the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) and the Atlantic Council (AC), which it described as “mainstream security think tanks,” among the six most prominent war promoters. Regarding CSIS, ChatGPT noted that its position was “often framed as ‘strategic analysis,’ but many publications discuss feasibility and strategic benefits of military strikes.” As for the Atlantic Council, ChatGPT said, “Mixed views internally, but several fellows have supported military action as a deterrent.”All four apps were asked to “identify the ten U.S. think tanks that were most prominent in U.S. print media, broadcast media, online media, and social media in promoting a U.S. attack on Iran between July 1, 2025, and February 27, 2026, in order of prominence.”Each defined “prominence” in its own way. ChatGPT, for example, defined it as “the institutions most consistently visible” in the various media, while Grok ranked only those “whose experts dominated congressional testimony on Iran, produced supportive op-eds/policy papers, appeared on broadcast panels justifying or advancing strikes/escalation, and drove online/social-media content framing the actions as necessary for regime weakening or surrender.” Unlike the other apps that ranked ten think tanks, Grok identified only six, noting that the “top tier (was) clear but that the prominence of others in the media that could be characterized as “pure ‘promotion’” drops sharply after #6…”These were the results: The four apps were then asked, “What is the overlap between these think tanks and those that promoted the military invasion of Iraq in the eight months prior to March 19, 2003?” As noted by Gemini, “The overlap between the think tank environments of 2003 and 2026 is significant, as several institutions that provided the intellectual architecture for the Iraq War remained the primary drivers of the narrative favoring military action against Iran.”While Grok cited FDD at the top, it bears noting that the group was only two years old in 2003 and worked very much in the shadow of more established neoconservative think tanks, of which AEI was clearly dominant due in large part to its “Prince of Darkness,” Richard Perle. Perle, who had served on the advisory or executive boards of FDD, WINEP, Hudson, CSP, and JINSA, and was a charter signatory in 1997 of the Project for the New American Century (PNAC) along with the most determined champions of invading Iraq inside the future George W. Bush administration, including Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, and Elliott Abrams, all of whom Perle had worked with going back to the 1970s. Given these well-established connections and as Rumsfeld’s Defense Policy Board in the run-up to the invasion, Perle and his neoconservative collaborators played a unique role, from both within and outside the administration, in building and enhancing an echo chamber whose coordinated messaging resonated much more effectively with the mass media and the public at large than was the case in the run-up to U.S.-Israeli war against Iran.Compared to the most prominent Iran hawks, “the Iraq promoters were a tighter neoconservative core (AEI, Heritage, Hudson, CSP, PNAC, FDD) focused on regime change, WMD fears, and post-9/11 opportunity,” according to Grok. Those themes helped prepare the ground and effectively amplified the messaging coming out of the Bush White House and the Pentagon, particularly between Cheney’s American Legion speech in August 2002, in which he stressed the (non-existent) nuclear threat posed by Saddam Hussein, and the March 2003 invasion.By 2005, it had become abundantly clear that the invasion had turned into a quagmire, and the neoconservative hawks within the administration, including Wolfowitz and his undersecretary of defense for policy and Perle protege Douglas Feith were effectively purged, joining Cheney’s national security adviser, Scooter Libby, on the outside. (Both Feith and Libby retreated to Hudson.) PNAC dissolved itself early in 2006, while Rumsfeld was gone by the end of that year. In May 2007, FDD hosted an all-expenses paid weekend workshop at the Our Lacaya Resort in Freeport, Bahamas, attended by more than two dozen mainly neoconservative luminaries from various think tanks and media entitled “Confronting the Iranian Threat: The Way Forward.” Soon after, two Perle proteges, Reuel Marc Gerecht and the late Michael Ledeen – both fixtures at AEI’s standing-room-only “black coffee briefings,” in the run-up to the Iraq invasion – moved to FDD, which, according to Claude, has become “effectively the successor-vehicle for the Iraq War neoconservative network, rebranded and refocused on Iran.” Grok noted, however, that FDD “has since scrubbed some pre-[Iraq] war content, but archives confirm its role in the echo chamber.” The torch had passed.But “(t)he personnel and ideological continuity (revolving doors to government, threat inflation, media amplification) is striking,” according to Grok. “(T)he same networks drove both campaigns two decades apart.”

[Category: Think-tanks, Fdd, Aei, Iran-war, Institute-for-the-study-of-war, Enewsletter]

— Lacing up LBJ's shoes, Trump is walking willingly into a trap

 

at 4/13/26 10:05pm

The velocity at which President Trump’s war on Iran has spiraled out of control is unsurprising. History neither repeats nor rhymes, but patterns flash like neon signs in the recent U.S. experience in the Greater Middle East. The combination of underestimating the enemy, overestimating one’s own power, and altogether ignoring the need for a clear definition of victory leads to escalation with no end in sight. The president raced to the top of the escalatory ladder, threatening to destroy Iranian civilization on April 7. Mercifully, he backed down and offered a ceasefire, leading to a single day of peace talks in Pakistan. Already, however, Trump is ordering the U.S. Navy to blockade of the Strait of Hormuz and is reportedly weighing the resumption of limited air strikes. The United States was supposed to have learned these painful lessons after the long nightmare in Vietnam. Despite serious doubts in his own mind and among his chief advisers that victory was attainable, President Lyndon B. Johnson sank his legacy in the jungles of Southeast Asia. To better understand the parallels between past and present, Responsible Statecraft spoke to the preeminent scholar of the Vietnam era, Fredrik Logevall, who teaches history at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard.Logevall is the author of Choosing War, which chronicles the 18 months between Kennedy’s assassination and LBJ’s decision to send the Marines into Da Nang in March 1965. He also authored Embers of War, covering the French catastrophe in Vietnam, which won the Pulitzer Prize. Our conversation has been edited for length and clarity.Responsible Statecraft: How do you define the logic of escalation or what is often called the escalation trap?Logevall: It’s a concept often associated with Herman Kahn, although others have written about it, too. It's a conceptual framework with a self-reinforcing, step-by-step mechanism where one side misreads its early tactical successes. You expect to continue to achieve those successes, but when they don't materialize, you get frustrated, so you feel compelled to escalate further. What you often end up with, and this is what Kahn was really interested in, is the disconnect between the military effort and whatever political result you're seeking. RS: The historian John Dower wrote in his book Cultures of War that “language and rhetoric themselves become a prison and the machinery of destruction has its own momentum.” There's more to any war than language and rhetoric. But I think we can already see that the Trump administration is being trapped by its own rhetoric.Logevall: I couldn't agree more, and I think Dower is onto something hugely important. We also see this with respect to [the U.S. wars in] both Iraq and Afghanistan. We certainly see it with respect to Vietnam. U.S. leaders became, as Dower puts it, locked in a prison partly because of the language they've used, the vows that they've made, and the assertions they've made about the importance of the struggle. RS: To call something a trap implies that there’s no way out. But we know from the Vietnam War, specifically about what you describe as the “long 1964” from Kennedy's assassination to Johnson's decision to send in the Marines to Da Nang in March 1965, that there were alternative choices. Policymakers and President Johnson himself weighed these choices.Logevall: If it's a trap, it's one that you willingly enter. As the ‘long 1964’ comes to a close, Johnson believes himself to be in this trap. He may have believed it from the beginning, meaning soon after Kennedy's assassination in the early months of 1964. Johnson basically says to his wife Lady Bird, “I'm trapped on Vietnam. Whichever way I go, I'm going to be crucified.”A key finding in my own research, including in Choosing War and also in some subsequent work, is that options existed and were articulated by people at the time. There were people in high places arguing with Johnson, ‘Don't do this. Don't escalate this war.’ Including the vice president of the United States, Hubert Humphrey, in a remarkable memorandum in mid-February 1965. He basically pleads with Johnson not to escalate the war. Johnson himself had severe doubts about whether the war was winnable even with escalation, even with ground troops, even with air power. More disturbingly, Johnson even doubted that the conflict was worth waging. Already in May 1964, he says in a phone conversation with McGeorge Bundy, “I donʼt think itʼs worth fighting for and I donʼt think we can get out.”RS: He said to McGeorge Bundy, “I don't think we can fight them 10,000 miles away from home and ever get anywhere in that area.” So, there are some important parallels to today's disaster as well as important differences. But when I was reviewing your book from 25 years ago, Choosing War, I was surprised at how many parallels jumped off the page. Here’s one: As in 1965, there was very little public enthusiasm for escalating the war or initiating a new war with Iran. Yet here we are.Logevall: We tend to exaggerate in hindsight the degree to which the American public was enthusiastic about the war in Vietnam in 1964 and ‘65. The difference is that, when Johnson Americanized the conflict, majorities said, "Yes, this is the right thing to do." Not with a great deal of enthusiasm. I think you're absolutely right about that. But I do think Johnson could legitimately claim to have popular backing for preventing South Vietnam from falling to the communists. With Iran, however, it seems pretty clear that most Americans do not back the war. Donald Trump is in a more tenuous position than we've seen perhaps with respect to any war that I can think of. RS: You're right that most Americans believed in supporting South Vietnam, but short of sending in ground troops. When Johnson makes the decision in March 1965 to send in a small contingent of Marines, does he or anyone else expect it'll turn into 500,000 combat troops within three years? The warning here is obvious, as Americans today fear the potential for ground troops in the Persian Gulf.Logevall: The American people were highly skeptical up through, let's say, March 1965. And then an interesting thing happens: the rally around the flag effect takes hold. So support for the war rises significantly and stays well above 50% for a considerable period of time. If Donald Trump committed major ground forces to Iran, could we see something similar happen, that a sizable part of the American population decides, well, now that the troops are committed, we have to support this thing? I'm not sure. This is a fundamentally different scenario.The other point to make in response to your astute observation, few really anticipated a long, drawn out struggle. But again, we should bear in mind Hubert Humphrey, who was long ago forgotten on this point. Humphrey did anticipate it. He did say in his memo, ‘Mr. President, if you escalate this war, you're going to divide the American people. You're going to be in there for a long time.’ You're going to worsen your chances for re-election in 1968. And, moreover, the Joint Chiefs of Staff said to Johnson as he was weighing the decision, [it would require] five years and 500,000 troops. RS: That's what makes today's situation so maddening. We can see that if Trump and his Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth deploy even a small number of troops to the Strait of Hormuz or somewhere else in the Persian Gulf, they’ll be climbing the escalatory ladder. It'll be a matter of time before they have to send more troops to defend the ones initially deployed.Logevall: That's my fear, and that's what my reading of the relatively recent and somewhat more distant past would say. We historians are loath to make predictions, but the scenario that you've just laid out is more likely than not.RS: Johnson argued U.S. credibility was on the line in Vietnam. Allies responded by questioning our judgment, even our sanity. You can see the same thing happening today. Logevall: Credibility has to be viewed in three dimensions. I call it credibility cubed. So it's credibility internationally vis-à-vis adversaries and allies. There's domestic political credibility. Would Johnson have credibility on Capitol Hill with Democrats and Republicans depending on which course he took? And then there's personal credibility, careerist credibility, if you will. All of these dimensions matter. And I suspect they matter now. Trump is thinking about the markets. He's thinking about his domestic position. I think people around him, to the extent that he even gets or takes advice, are also thinking of credibility in these different dimensions.RS: Another aspect of the current war that is maddening, and here we can find more parallels to Vietnam, is that it’s fairly apparent that the desired political outcomes are not going to be achieved no matter the military dominance. Logevall: The early signs indicate that problem far sooner than was the case in Vietnam. There were serious doubts from the start about the political objectives, however you define them. It was a little more straightforward in the Vietnam case, unlike in Trump’s case where he can say different things depending on the minute or the hour. In Vietnam it was pretty clear that the U.S. wanted to preserve a non-communist independent South Vietnam for the indefinite future. But could that political objective be achieved even if we committed ground forces, even with our dominance in terms of air power? There were skeptics from the beginning.RS: I appreciate your point about how Trump keeps changing his rationales. Regime change was there at the start. The parallel to South Vietnam is not perfect, but it's clear, based on all the reporting out there, that Donald Trump believed he'd have a more favorable regime in Tehran by now. He underestimated the enemy, just as Johnson did in Vietnam.Logevall: We’re seeing graphic evidence of this… We're talking about a country with 93 million people, one-sixth the physical size of the United States. Its regime has been in power for a very long time, and has formidable assets that it can use in asymmetrical warfare. RS: Only fools try to predict the future, but as of today, do you expect to see ground troops in the Persian Gulf again? I really don't know what to make of the president's thinking anymore.Logevall: I don't either. If you put me on the spot, there could be a ground force commitment, as has been discussed, to take some of the islands in the Persian Gulf. It's arguably a relatively straightforward proposition to take them, but what happens after that could get tricky. But the other point I'll make in terms of prediction is [that] it’s almost impossible, based on recent history, to win a war just by obliterating, to use Trump's own word, the enemy's military. The regime has survivors who have choices of their own. The enemy gets a say. Ultimately, what you get in most modern wars is a political settlement.

[Category: Iran, Vietnam, Lyndon-johnson, Donald-trump, Vietnam-war, Iran-war]

— Trump risks war backlash from the heartland: American farmers

 

at 4/13/26 10:05pm

The already fragile two-week ceasefire between the United States and Iran appeared to give way over the weekend, after talks in Islamabad collapsed and President Donald Trump ordered a U.S. naval blockade of the Strait of Hormuz, a critical node for global energy and commodity flows. Trump said in a Saturday Truth Social post that he was “watching fertilizer prices CLOSELY during our FIGHT FOR FREEDOM in Iran.”“The United States will not accept PRICE GOUGING from the fertilizer monopoly! American Farmers, we have your back,” he added. For the global fertilizer market, uncertainty is already baked in. Even if an agreement is eventually reached and shipping resumes, industry analysts and market participants see little hope for a complete reversal of the sharp price increases and supply disruptions triggered by the war.The six-week-long closure of the Strait of Hormuz has had widespread effects across the global economy, contributing to an energy crunch that pushed up oil and gas prices and disrupted supply chains. Among the industries most directly affected is fertilizer, which depends heavily on both energy inputs and steady global shipping flows.The disruption is acute for nitrogen fertilizers such as urea. Nearly half of global urea exports originate in countries west of the Strait of Hormuz and depend on the route to reach global markets.Fertilizers like these make up somewhere between 33% and 45% of operating expenses for major American corn and wheat crops, according to nonprofit Farm Action.“The price of [dry urea] in January to February was $560 per ton,” Ben Vig, a farmer and former state representative in North Dakota, told Responsible Statecraft. “At the end of March it was $770 per ton.” According to Vig, that amounts to costs of $140 per acre to fertilize wheat and $135 per acre to fertilize corn, an increase of nearly $40 per acre. Even though about three-quarters of the fertilizer used in the United States is produced inside the country, domestic costs are nonetheless dependent on the international market. The United States relies on imports of ingredients (potash, phosphate, nitrogen) used in fertilizers made here, as well as fertilizers themselves, such as ammonia and urea, whose production depends heavily on natural gas. Disruptions to gas supplies and rising energy costs in the gulf are pushing prices even higher for American farmers. "Our biggest struggles are our inputs, be it fertilizer, seed, chemical, parts," one farmer in Nebraska recently told PBS. "There has been so much drastic markup in all of these. And I just kind of feel like the farmer's kind of painted in the corner."The Gulf is not just a transit route but a major production hub for fertilizer tied to the region’s natural gas supplies. During the height of the conflict, key producers were effectively cut off from global markets, while some facilities were forced to slow or halt operations as gas shipments stalled. A group of Democratic lawmakers warned the secretary of agriculture late last month that “the supply side pressure will push prices up even further as nations that are dependent on supply from the Gulf seek alternate sources.” A reopening of the strait would not immediately restore production because facilities may take weeks to restart and ramp up. Because both fertilizer imports and the inputs used to produce it are being disrupted, farmers are facing a tight squeeze, leading to both higher prices and uncertainty over supply. At the same time, even if the conflict pauses in the near future, uncertainty is likely to keep shipping costs elevated, as insurers and vessel operators wait for clearer signs that the region has stabilized.“Prices could ease further into Q2 to Q3 if the ceasefire is extended, though they are likely to remain above 2025 averages due to lost volumes and higher financing and insurance costs,” Deepika Thapliyal, a global fertilizer analyst with the Independent Commodity Intelligence Services, told Farm Progress. “Any breakdown in talks would quickly tighten the urea, ammonia and sulfur supply and lead to more spikes.”The timeline for recovery may not align with the realities of the agricultural season. Even if shipments begin to move again, the structure of the fertilizer supply chain and the timing of the disruption mean relief may not come quickly.“To get product from around the world, we have to put the order in, and once we put the order in, it takes four weeks for a cargo ship to go from one side of the planet to another, and then it all goes to [an import hub in] New Orleans, and it takes three to four weeks from a cargo ship to a barge, and then the barge up the river,” Vig told RS. “So, we’re looking at maybe a seven-week period.”With the Midwest planting season in April and May, some farmers did place their spring orders before the current spike, but many others either locked in fertilizer at elevated prices or cut back orders. Roughly one-quarter of farmers had not placed their orders by early April, according to the Department of Agriculture, and will now be left scrambling to secure supply if shipments resume.As fertilizer prices surge at a critical moment for planting, some lawmakers are becoming increasingly concerned that the disruption could lead to a crisis.“In addition to the needless loss of life in the Middle East, fertilizer and diesel costs are skyrocketing at the beginning of growing season, adding to the struggles farmers have faced since the beginning of President Trump’s second term,” Sen. Peter Welch (D-Vt.), who sits on the Senate Committee on Agriculture, told RS in a statement. “At a time when global food insecurity was already on the rise due to this administration’s aid cuts and climate change, this war threatens to turn global hunger into a full-blown crisis.”Without a sustained de-escalation that restores both production capacity and confidence in global shipping routes, the fertilizer market is likely to remain tight, with the risk that today’s disruption leads to lower crop yields and higher food prices in the months ahead.

[Category: Persian-gulf, Iran-war, Strait-of-hormuz, Iran, Agriculture, Global-markets, Enewsletter]

— Why Trump’s Hormuz blockade is headed for a bust

 

at 4/13/26 8:41am

As soon as the negotiations between the U.S. and Iran ended without an agreement, President Donald Trump fired a volley of angry tweets venting his frustration. As a concrete step to force Iranian concessions, he announced a blockade of Iranian ports along the Persian Gulf. Cut off Tehran’s oil exports, the logic goes, and the regime will have no choice but to bend to Trump’s will.This thought process is being echoed and amplified by influential Washington voices who should know better. Take Dennis Ross, a former Middle East peace negotiator, who argued that “the blockade always made more sense than seizing Kharg Island. It stops Iran’s exports, its revenues, is a counterpoint to their closing the Straits.” He also thinks that the measure will “put pressure on China to pressure Iran.”Meanwhile, Richard Haass, the former president of the Council on Foreign Relations, praised the announcement and suggested the U.S. should “also propose a new governance authority for the Strait in which Iran participates but doesn't control.”This is wishcasting disguised as strategy. A blockade is not a clever alternative to military strikes. It is, in fact, an act of war — and one that carries serious risks.The very idea of an American blockade ignores the legal reality: under international law, Article 3(c) of the U.N. General Assembly’s Definition of Aggression (1974) considers a naval blockade of a sovereign state’s coasts an act of armed aggression. That entitles Iran to use all necessary means to defend itself.You cannot propose a “governance authority” while your warships are blockading a nation’s lifeline. Haass’s suggestion of a structure where Iran “participates but doesn't control” is therefore a non-starter. Tehran will never surrender control of its sovereign waters to an arrangement designed by the same power that just declared a blockade.In practical terms, Trump has made it clear he would not permit any vessel that had coordinated with Tehran to pass. This sweeps aside the new, fragile status-quo where some traffic continued under Iranian acquiescence.Iran’s own blockade of Hormuz — in response to Trump’s war — has already put the global economy in peril: around 20% of the world’s oil and liquefied natural gas usually passes through the strait. Trump’s blockade would further strengthen this chokehold, with severe consequences for global fuel, fertilizer, and commodity markets. The U.N. warns that millions of people could face hunger as a result. Ross claims a blockade merely “puts greater pressure on Iran.” In reality, it would hammer every economy reliant on Gulf energy, from Asia to Europe. And the blame would fall squarely on Washington.Yet the deeper problem is whether the U.S. Navy can actually enforce such a blockade. Since the war began, only two U.S. vessels briefly entered — and left — the Gulf without coordination with Iran. A credible blockade would require a large, permanent naval presence — stationed directly inside the range of Iran’s shore-based missiles and drone swarms. Ross suggests Iran “may attack Gulf oil facilities,” but that, bad as it is, understates the threat. Iran could and almost certainly would attack U.S. warships.That is a recipe for continued escalation. And for the Trump administration, a resumption of a shooting war with Iran would be far less popular and far more costly than Ross or Haass seem to acknowledge.But there is an even more dangerous scenario that no supporter of the blockade addresses. Major buyers of Iranian oil — most notably China — could decide to escort tankers with their own naval vessels. Beijing has a strong economic incentive to call Washington’s bluff. Ross claims a blockade “puts great pressure on China to pressure Iran,” but what if China pressures the U.S. instead? What would the U.S. Navy do then? Fire on Chinese warships? Let the convoys pass, effectively ending the blockade? Risk a direct confrontation with a nuclear-armed power over oil lanes in Hormuz? The stakes could not be higher as Trump prepares to embark on a visit to China for a summit with Chinese leader Xi Jinping. Trump has already postponed the meeting once because of the war with Iran. Postponing it for the second time, or going to Beijing with, using Trump’s own language, weak cards, would be an embarrassing blow to American standing.So is Trump’s blockade threat a serious policy or bluster? That remains unclear. But one thing is certain: the mere threat of a U.S. blockade is enough to drive oil prices higher and inject dangerous volatility into global markets. On Monday, when the blockade is expected to enter into force, the oil price bounced back to over $100 per barrel. The view that a blockade is a clean, low-risk pressure tool is a dangerous illusion.The administration should think carefully about the implications of its policies. Once the U.S. Navy blocks that strait, Iran won’t be the only one under pressure. The entire world will feel the squeeze, and other countries could see a need to respond.Trump would do well to abandon this threat and use the remaining truce time — until April 20 — to recalibrate his whole Iran strategy. That means pursuing serious negotiations with an Iranian delegation that is clearly representative and fully mandated to strike a deal. For starters, Trump should match the seriousness of the Iranian counterparts with his own by replacing inexperienced political appointees like Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner with real experts. That team should be prepared to engage in multiple rounds of negotiations, covering all matters of concern — the nuclear issue, ballistic missiles, sanctions, Iranian assets, Hormuz, and regional proxies. This is how serious diplomacy is done. Unfortunately, nothing in this administration’s track record suggests that it is ready to embark on such a path.

[Category: Trump, Iran, Blockade, Iran-war, Strait-of-hormuz, Enewsletter]

— What Viktor Orban's crushing defeat in Hungary really means

 

at 4/13/26 4:07am

After holding power for 16 years, Hungary’s Prime Minister Viktor Orbán and his Fidesz party suffered a crushing defeat in Sunday’s parliamentary election.The Tisza party is on course for a two-thirds super-majority in the incoming parliament, with its leader Peter Magyar as the new prime minister. With more than 80% of the votes counted, Tisza has won 137 of the 199 seats in a voter turnout of more than 77% — a record for post-communist Hungary. This result vindicates the polls that consistently showed Tisza with a strong lead among voters. The margin of victory clearly swept away the pro-incumbent electoral reforms that Fidesz had enacted to make such a resounding defeat improbable and to potentially keep Orbán in office. A setback for Europe's populist nationalistsAs dean and standard bearer of the populist right in Europe, Viktor Orbán’s defeat sets back prospects for coming contests in France, Poland, and elsewhere between populist right and mainstream parties.It is also arguably a rebuke of President Donald Trump and a reflection of his waning prestige, even among conservative nationalist constituencies in Europe. The visit by Vice President JD Vance last week in support of Orbán seems to have had no impact on the clear dissatisfaction of much of the electorate and the anti-incumbent landslide.Moreover, populist nationalist leaders such as France’s Marine Le Pen and Germany’s Alice Weidel have opposed the U.S. war against Iran, a clear indication that their former close alignment with the Trump Administration has become a potential liability.Bread and butter triumphsOrbán’s early concession was unexpected and could point to some relaxation in the polarized atmosphere of the bitterly contested campaign. Orban said “the responsibility and opportunity to govern “were not given to us,” but pledged to his voters “never to give up.”Orbán staked his campaign on foreign and security policy, attempting to portray Magyar as a creature of the allegedly hostile EU leadership, above all Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, and as someone risking Hungary’s security by pandering to Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelensky. Magyar was accused of having conspired with Ukraine in closing off Hungary’s supply of Russian oil.Magyar’s strategy was to avoid confrontation directly on these issues, and instead to focus his critique of Orbán on the popular themes of corruption, cronyism, and a weak economy. This has proven to be even more effective than the opinion polls had predicted in producing a decisive rebuke of Orbán’s leadership.Magyar promised better relations with the EU, and it is likely that the EU will quickly unblock some, if not all, of the several billion euros withheld from Hungary because of failure to comply with EU standards on human rights, press freedoms and democratic governance.However, Magyar did not promise to reverse Orbán’s opposition to arming or funding Ukraine. He did agree to gradually reduce Hungary’s reliance on Russian oil delivered by the Druzhba pipeline and Russian gas delivered by pipeline through Turkey. While Magyar can be expected quickly to reverse Orbán’s opposition to the disbursement of the €90 billion EU loan to Ukraine, it is not clear whether Magyar will acquiesce in the permanent elimination of Hungary’s oil supply through the Druzhba pipeline.Magyar has also given no indication that he will support Ukraine’s early accession to the EU.Even so, his campaign apparently struck a sympathetic chord among voters who deplored Orbán’s friendly stance toward Russia. This may be the sole clear advantage of Magyar’s campaign against Orbán in the strategic or diplomatic field.What happens next?A former senior diplomat and official of Fidesz, Magyar was able to attract votes from Hungary’s liberal, urban, and younger voters without differing very markedly from Orbán on many issues of substance. He made the election about Orbán’s probity and competence and not about Orbán’s conservative nationalist worldview.In fact, Magyar was a member of Fidesz until 2024 when he left to build Tisza, which is part of the center-right European People’s Party grouping in the European Parliament, occupying the place formerly held by Fidesz.After a deeply acrimonious campaign, the fact that Orbán conceded his defeat earlier than expected means that risks to social peace and security are not as great as might have been feared in the case of a closer race. However, in claiming to have “liberated” the country from Orbán’s rule, Magyar hints at prosecutions of Fidesz officials, possibly to include Orbán himself.With a commanding majority in the parliament, Magyar plans to launch a major overhaul of the institutions, laws, and norms that have supported Orbán’s rule. The challenges from Fidesz loyalists entrenched in positions outside of parliament may place obstacles in his way. It is far from clear that Orbán will fade into retirement or obscurity, since he has pledged to make the most of Fidesz’s new role as principal parliamentary opposition to Magyar and Tisza.

[Category: Viktor-orban, Enewsletter, European-union, Eu, Peter-magyar, Populists, Ukraine, Fidesz, Tisza, Hungary]

— Russia's 'shadow fleet' makes mockery of UK naval power

 

at 4/12/26 10:05pm

Few things provoke British politicians into fits of rage more than mention of Russia’s "shadow fleet." Yet last week’s impotent tracking of Russian tankers in the English Channel illustrates that Britain doesn’t have the means to do much about it.On 9 April, two Russian "shadow" oil tankers were escorted through the channel by a Russian navy frigate armed with all manner of weapons, including anti-ship missiles. In response, the Royal Navy could only muster an auxiliary fuel tanker to follow it helplessly. The Daily Telegraph reported on this heroic operation from the deck of a 40-foot fishing boat following in the tanker’s wake. A regular pattern is forming in which the Royal Navy deploys vessels that are overmatched by better armed Russian naval escorts. The inability of the Royal Navy to challenge Russian tankers has drawn howls of protest from opposition politicians, including former Prime Minister Boris Johnson. The United Kingdom’s attorney general has now ruled that U.K. forces cannot likely board Russian vessels to seize them anyway, as this may be contrary to international law. Yet the policy message is clear. Even if Britain sent troops to board escorted Russian tankers, they might be fired upon with no effective military means to push back the Russian navy. The Royal Navy has been rendered unable to project force, even close to British shores.A British frigate and helicopter seeing off Russian submarines apparently lingering over undersea cables provided much-needed relief to the embattled Defense Secretary John Healey, who took to the 10 Downing Street press room to brief the media on the operation. But that won’t be enough to quell the growing sense of national embarrassment and anger at the parlous state of the British armed forces. An already much delayed Defence Investment Plan is quite obviously being held back until after the upcoming May local elections, because it will likely list more projects that Britain can’t afford or should shelve, rather than anything genuinely new and revolutionary; when published, I predict, it will be politically humiliating for the Labour government, which is suffering disastrous polling numbers, with just one fifth of the population inclined to vote for them, a historic low for a governing party.The case of HMS Dragon has become illustrative of UK naval decay; the single air defense destroyer that Britain rushed out of maintenance and belatedly deployed to the Mediterranean to support defensive operations against Iran, was bedeviled by technical difficulties and has been forced to dock again for repairs. Russia, meanwhile, has been emboldened. Having significantly increased the size of its fleet in recent years, Moscow is now increasingly able to dominate the high seas off Europe and hold British and European vessels at risk. In May of 2025, a Russian jet warned off an Estonian vessel looking to interdict a Russian tanker. Following the seizure by U.S. forces of a Russian tanker bound for Cuba in January and the boarding by the French of a shadow tanker on March 20, they have clearly decided “enough is enough” and are sending heavily armed Russian naval vessels to escort oil tankers. Since the start of the war in Ukraine, western allies have sought to bear down on Russia’s war economy by limiting the revenue it gains from oil and gas sales, which make up around two thirds of its exports. With some estimates suggesting 80% of Russian oil exported is transported on ships, attacking the network of so-called "shadow tankers’'— aging Russian tankers that sail under murky insurance and flag arrangements — might appear on the surface a sensible approach, or at least it did in 2022. But four years on, the endeavor has proved utterly meaningless. Now it appears self-defeating. Let’s be clear: the export of Russian oil has never been sanctioned in absolute terms. Rather, in December 2022, G7 countries imposed a price cap of $60 per barrel of oil sold to minimize the revenue Russia generates from its exports. In July 2025, Europe further lowered the cap to $47.60, though the U.S. stuck at $60.Despite their protestations, Europe has nevertheless continued to import billions of euros worth of Russian oil throughout the war in Ukraine. Russia’s biggest customers, China and India, have bought at discounted rates below the level of the G7 price cap. Russia’s third largest customer, Turkey, has seen its imports of oil practically unchanged, walking a narrow tightrope on price restrictions.The bottom line is that Russia’s export revenue hasn’t obviously suffered since 2022. In the first year of the Ukraine war, Russia pulled in its biggest ever current account surplus of $238 billion. Exports have remained above their historical average since that time. The Iran war has now rendered the G7 price cap irrelevant. Global customers, faced with fuel rationing, will pay any price to get hold of oil. It is therefore clear that Russia will gain another windfall from oil exports in 2026. Indeed, preliminary analysis suggests Russia will see its tax revenue from oil sales double in April.Since the war in Iran started, Russia has upped the ante by refusing to sell oil to countries that back the G7 price cap. That policy guarantees that developing countries will get preferred status and won’t want to enforce any price cap at a time of supply constraints. It also puts pressure on supplies to Europe and Japan in particular, who are struggling under the weight of soaring prices and tightened supply. At a time when the U.S. has temporarily lifted sanctions on Russian oil shipments, this is a further sign of the untethering of American and European policy towards Russia. The festering and as yet unresolved stand-off between Ukraine and Hungary about the supply of oil via the damaged Druzhba pipeline might excite those Eurocrats who stridently believe we should continue to resist Russian energy supplies at all costs. The British hullabaloo about our inability to stop Russian tankers in the English Channel further proves our politicians have lost sight of our strategic objectives towards Russia, and whether our policies hurt Putin more than they hurt us.Right now, it is crystal clear that our economies are suffering under the weight of energy shortages, as the coffers in the Kremlin are ringing, and Russia’s navy is ruling Britannia’s waves.

[Category: Uk, Shadow-fleet, Eu, Royal-navy, Oil, Russia]

— Trump: US to block Hormuz,  shooting ourselves & allies in foot

 

at 4/12/26 8:49am

Update 4/13 : The U.S. military said it will conduct a naval blockade of Iranian ports beginning at 10 a.m. ET on Monday. After Vice President JD Vance left Pakistan empty handed at the end of a long day of talks on Saturday, Trump lashed out on his Truth Social platform Sunday morning, saying the United States Navy will now block the Strait of Hormuz, an exclamation that will likely send world markets into another dangerous tailspin at the start of the week.So, there you have it, the meeting went well, most points were agreed to, but the only point that really mattered, NUCLEAR, was not. Effective immediately, the United States Navy, the Finest in the World, will begin the process of BLOCKADING any and all Ships trying to enter, or leave, the Strait of Hormuz. At some point, we will reach an “ALL BEING ALLOWED TO GO IN, ALL BEING ALLOWED TO GO OUT” basis, but Iran has not allowed that to happen by merely saying, “There may be a mine out there somewhere,” that nobody knows about but them. THIS IS WORLD EXTORTION, and Leaders of Countries, especially the United States of America, will never be extorted. I have also instructed our Navy to seek and interdict every vessel in International Waters that has paid a toll to Iran. No one who pays an illegal toll will have safe passage on the high seas. We will also begin destroying the mines the Iranians laid in the Straits. Any Iranian who fires at us, or at peaceful vessels, will be BLOWN TO HELL! Experts note how counterproductive if not destructive this move would be. "This is another step toward a might-makes-right world. Illegalities are being heaped on top of illegalities. The attack on Iran that started this war was compounded by Tehran's seizure of the Strait of Hormuz. Washington's blockade of the strait has further upped the ante," charged Sarang Shidore, director of the Quincy Institute's Global South program. The ships that have been allowed to pass the strait in the wake of U.S.-Israeli attack last month include vessels from China, Russia, India, Pakistan, Iraq, Bangladesh, Thailand, the Philippines, and Malaysia, according to reports. It is not clear what kind of tolls they are paying if any, though Iran suggested this week that it wanted to institute a system of tolls to be paid in its own Rial-based currency.Iran has not allowed U.S.-Israeli partners and allies pass through the strait since Feb. 28; but now the U.S. would be blocking major allies too. The Philippines is a treaty ally and gets 98% of its energy resources through the strait. A Japanese vessel carrying liquified natural gas reportedly passed through the strait two weeks ago. Pakistan is hosting the talks. "There were small amounts of oil and Liquid Petroleum Gas especially that were getting through. This puts a stop to that," noted Karthik Sankaran, senior fellow in geoeconomics at the Quincy Institute.China accounts for the vast majority of Iran's oil exports — some 90%. Some Chinese vessels have reportedly gotten through under Iranian's blockage. So thwarting any of it now, along with other shipping linked to China, would likely put a bit of an awkward strain on Trump's upcoming trip to Beijing in May."The vicious U.S/Israel-Iran rivalry that is at the root of this war is slowly turning into a U.S-China proxy conflict," said Shidore. "(This) gives China the perverse incentive of digging in and further aiding Iran in terms of security. That is not good for the United States."World markets have plunged since Iran first blocked the strait, as one-fifth of oil and LNG deliveries passes through under regular circumstances, plus major imports of fertilizer and industrial components in global supply chains. Gas prices are up at least a dollar already in the U.S. and American farmers are already concerned about the fate of planting season. "A (full) blockade will have a big impact not just on the supply of oil but that of fertilizer, sulfur, helium and other key products. Uncertainty about the course of war and diplomacy is likely to make things worse," said Sankaran.According to experts even the components that the U.S. relies on for its own weapons systems would be caught up in the blockage of shipping. In other words, this was already an international crisis, what Trump is talking about would blow it up even further."The burden of this blockade will fall most heavily on Asia in terms of a supply crunch of energy and other key economic goods. But everyone, including the United States, will bear greater economic pain," added Shidore. "No one will come out a winner in this deadly race to the bottom."Trita Parsi, Executive VP of the Quincy Institute, said a blockade, if it does go forward (which isn't guaranteed) might spur the Houthis to start their own attacks on shipping in the Red Sea, which "would take another 12% of global oil flow off the market. We would now be looking at oil around $200 per barrel.""It wouldn't be surprising if these threats are walked back soon (perhaps before markets open on Monday) and a new round is announced," he posted on X. However, if the nuclear issue is really at the heart of this, then don't expect a breakthrough. While it denounced nuclear weapons even before the last February talks blew up, Iran is dug in on the ability to enrich and hold uranium for its own nuclear power program, Parsi added."Still, I don't think that necessarily will lead to a return to war," he added. "A more likely scenario is a new non-negotiated status quo in which Tehran retains control over the Straits but doesn't get any sanctions relief, while the U.S. pulls out of the war, and the question becomes whether Israel will continue the war on its own."Story will be updated as story develops

[Category: Iran, Israel, Donald-trump, Strait-of-hormuz, Pakistan, Iran-war]

— Could US-Iran talks in Islamabad bring gas prices back down?

 

at 4/10/26 8:19am

Vice President JD Vance is on his way to Pakistan for talks with Iranian officials in Islamabad on Saturday. Amid a shaky ceasefire, Vance is hoping to make progress toward ending a war that has sent global oil prices skyrocketing over the last month.But those hoping these negotiations will bring quick relief to consumers may want to temper their expectations. Despite the pause in hostilities, most analysts expect that gas prices will stay high for some time to come, driving up costs at the pump and across the economy.The problem starts with the scale of the disruption to oil flows over the last month. Even if the talks lead to a durable peace deal and the full reopening of the Strait of Hormuz, it will take months or even years for global oil supplies to return to their pre-war levels. And, even if supplies return to normal, there tends to be a lag between drops in oil prices and gas prices. While sharp spikes in oil costs can push up gas prices within days, it usually takes a couple of weeks to feel drops in oil prices at the pump, as Pavel Molchanov of Raymond James told the New York Times. This helps explain why Americans are still paying more than $4 per gallon even as Brent crude prices have dropped by roughly 10% amid hopes for a lasting ceasefire.Attempts to route oil flows around the Strait of Hormuz have also hit significant hurdles. Iranian attacks on Saudi Arabia’s East-West Pipeline, which pumps oil from the country’s east coast to ports on the Red Sea, have cut its capacity by 10%. “This is a logistics shock layered on top of a production shock,” Shohruh Zukhritdinov, a Dubai-based oil trader, told Reuters. “The market has lost its main workaround for the Strait of Hormuz.”The strait, meanwhile, remains all but closed to traffic despite Tuesday’s ceasefire. Prior to the pause, a handful of tankers were still going through the Strait of Hormuz each day. But only six tankers passed through the waterway on Thursday, and none made the journey on Wednesday, according to data from Kpler, a maritime intelligence company. For shipping companies, the proposition of sending a ship through the strait remains fraught. Iranian officials say that there are still mines in the narrow waterway, and that tankers should coordinate with Iran in order to ensure safe passage. It remains unclear whether this coordination (and the possibility of paying a “toll” to pass through the strait) would violate strict U.S. sanctions on Iran, including a ban on providing any “material support” to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.There is no surefire way to guess how this tumult will affect gas prices, but some analysts have used data from oil futures markets to estimate the likely impact on consumers’ pocketbooks. Earlier this week, RS published a handy calculator that harnesses this data to predict how much more Americans can expect to pay at the pump over the next year.

[Category: Oil, Gas-prices, Vance, Pakistan, Iran, Iran-war]

As of 4/19/26 3:28am. Last new 4/17/26 9:23am.