Attention to the Unseen

The Wall Street Journal reports: Oil tankers, container ships and bulk carriers shimmer all over the horizon to the left of the windswept beach here at the entrance to the Strait of Hormuz. They have been bottled up in the Persian Gulf ever since the U.S. and Israel launched the war on Iran more than a month ago. To the right, with the Iranian coast only 40 miles away, the dark-blue sea is completely empty. Only a handful of vessels…

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The New York Times reports: Iranian operatives have been digging out underground missile bunkers and silos struck by American and Israeli bombs, returning them to operation hours after an attack, according to U.S. intelligence reports. Iran has also retained a significant amount of its missiles and mobile launchers, the reports say. The Pentagon and White House this week claimed to have made substantial progress against Iran. At a briefing this week, the Pentagon said it had struck 11,000 targets in…

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The Wall Street Journal reports: An Iranian drone attack last month on the U.S. Embassy in Saudi Arabia did more extensive damage than previously disclosed, current and former American officials said, showing Iran’s ability to hit Washington’s assets in the kingdom. The attack happened March 3, when an Iranian drone evaded the air defenses guarding Riyadh’s gated Diplomatic Quarter and slammed into the American compound. A minute later, a second drone flew into the hole made by the first one…

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The Washington Post reports: Two U.S. military aircraft were shot down in separate incidents Friday while conducting combat operations against Iran, setting off a frantic search-and-rescue effort that remains ongoing for one missing crew member, U.S. officials said. The F-15E fighter jet and the A-10 attack plane both were hit by incoming fire, U.S. officials said. One of two crew members aboard the F-15, which crashed inside Iran, was rescued, though their condition was not immediately clear, the officials said….

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Garrett Graff writes: Ahead of his book launch next month, I interviewed Jasper Craven last week for Long Lead’s newsletter, Depth Perception. Jasper has made a career out of what he describes, dryly, as “veterans’ issues in the age of forever wars,” but much of his beat turns out to provide insight into what I called “a sprawling crisis in masculinity that’s fueling an interconnected toxic stew of misogyny, internet culture, gambling, and violence.” His beat is where the Venn…

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Iran’s President Masoud Pezeshkian posted the following message on X: In the name of God, the Compassionate, the Merciful To the people of the United States of America, and to all those who, amid a flood of distortions and manufactured narratives, continue to seek the truth and aspire to a better life: Iran—by this very name, character, and identity—is one of the oldest continuous civilizations in human history. Despite its historical and geographical advantages at various times, Iran has never,…

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