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Category: War

Iran is ready for a long war with the U.S. Only economic pain will end it, senior official says

Iran is ready for a long war with the U.S. Only economic pain will end it, senior official says

CNN reports: A top Iranian official has warned that the government is prepared for a long war with the US and signaled that it is willing to continue attacking Gulf countries in an effort to persuade them to convince President Donald Trump to step back from the conflict. The warning came in an exclusive CNN interview in Tehran with Kamal Kharazi, foreign policy adviser to the office of the Supreme Leader, who ruled out diplomacy for now and said the…

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Trump says Iran war — ‘a little excursion’ — is ‘very complete, pretty much’ as economic toll rises

Trump says Iran war — ‘a little excursion’ — is ‘very complete, pretty much’ as economic toll rises

The Guardian reports: Donald Trump has said that the war in Iran is “very complete, pretty much”, as the economic toll of the joint US-Israeli operation has risen, disrupting global oil trade and threatening to engulf the Middle East in a regional war. Trump made the comments before a speech and press conference in Florida where he sought to emphasise that the US military campaign would be ending soon amid concerns from Republican allies that the US was being dragged…

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U.S. Tomahawk cruise missile hit naval base beside Iranian elementary school, video reveals

U.S. Tomahawk cruise missile hit naval base beside Iranian elementary school, video reveals

The New York Times reports: A newly released video adds to the evidence that an American missile likely hit an Iranian elementary school where 175 people, many of them children, were reported killed. The video, uploaded on Sunday by Iran’s semiofficial Mehr News Agency and verified by The New York Times, shows a Tomahawk cruise missile striking a naval base beside the school in the town of Minab on Feb. 28. The U.S. military is the only force involved in…

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The most severe shock to energy markets since the 1970s is now cascading through the world economy

The most severe shock to energy markets since the 1970s is now cascading through the world economy

The Wall Street Journal reports: The chairman of oil producer DNO was flying from New York to Oslo early on Feb. 28 when he told staff to turn off the company’s oil wells in Iraq. America and Israel had just attacked neighboring Iran. Bijan Mossavar-Rahmani wasn’t taking any chances, having weathered a drone strike on the company’s oil fields in Iraqi Kurdistan last summer. By the time he landed, the pumps had stopped—the first oil shutdown of the war. To…

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Iran’s successful targeting of critical missile defense radars highlights global vulnerabilities

Iran’s successful targeting of critical missile defense radars highlights global vulnerabilities

TWZ reports: As expected, Iran has repeatedly targeted prized missile defense radars across the Middle East in retaliation for the joint U.S.-Israeli air campaign that is ongoing. Iran’s attacks on high-value radars that enable the region’s missile defense capabilities appear to have succeeded on multiple occasions. The irony that lower-end long-range kamikaze drones are perhaps the biggest threat to extremely advanced radars capable of providing telemetry for intercepting targets traveling at hypersonic speeds, sometimes in space, is glaring. The losses…

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Oil built the Persian Gulf but desalination keeps it alive. War could threaten both

Oil built the Persian Gulf but desalination keeps it alive. War could threaten both

The Associated Press reports: As missiles and drones curtail energy production across the Persian Gulf, analysts warn that water, not oil, may be the resource most at risk in the energy-rich but arid region. On Sunday, Bahrain accused Iran of damaging one of its desalination plants. Earlier, Iran said a U.S. airstrike had damaged an Iranian plant. Hundreds of desalination plants sit along the Persian Gulf coast, putting individual systems that supply water to millions within range of Iranian missile…

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Intel report warns large-scale war ‘unlikely’ to oust Iran’s regime

Intel report warns large-scale war ‘unlikely’ to oust Iran’s regime

The Washington Post reports: A classified report by the National Intelligence Council found that even a large-scale assault on Iran launched by the United States would be unlikely to oust the Islamic republic’s entrenched military and clerical establishment, a sobering assessment as the Trump administration raises the specter of an extended military campaign that officials say has “only just begun.” The findings, confirmed to The Washington Post by three people familiar with the report’s contents, raise doubts about President Donald…

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Iran rejects Trump’s demand for ‘unconditional surrender’ as a ‘dream’

Iran rejects Trump’s demand for ‘unconditional surrender’ as a ‘dream’

The Guardian reports: The president of Iran has rejected Donald Trump’s call for the country’s unconditional surrender as a “dream”, while issuing a rare apology for Iranian attacks that hit neighbouring states, even as missiles and drones continued to strike Gulf countries. In a prerecorded address broadcast on state television on Saturday, Iran’s president, Masoud Pezeshkian, said the country would never capitulate, responding to remarks by the US president, who said on Friday that only Iran’s total submission could bring…

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Drone strikes targeting Amazon datacenters raise doubts over Gulf as AI superpower

Drone strikes targeting Amazon datacenters raise doubts over Gulf as AI superpower

The Guardian reports: It is believed to be a first: the deliberate targeting of a commercial datacentre by the armed forces of a country at war. At 4.30am on Sunday morning, an Iranian Shahed 136 drone struck an Amazon Web Services datacentre in the United Arab Emirates, setting off a devastating fire and forcing a shutdown of the power supply. Further damage was inflicted as attempts were made to suppress the flames with water. Soon after, a second data centre…

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Iraqi Kurds insist on neutrality while ‘there is no clarity for us on what the U.S. policy is’ on Iran

Iraqi Kurds insist on neutrality while ‘there is no clarity for us on what the U.S. policy is’ on Iran

Axios reports: Iraq’s Kurds are caught in a three-way vise as the Iran war spills across their border: They’re uncertain, based on President Trump’s messaging, whether the U.S. actually wants regime change next door. They’re under pressure to open the border from Iranian Kurds who want to fight the regime. And they’re facing a public threat — backed by a private warning — that Iran will retaliate if those militants attack from Iraqi Kurdish soil. Why it matters: The Kurds of northern Iraq…

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‘Operation Epstein Distraction’: Trump’s bloody Iran ‘hype videos’ seem to target rightwing Gen Z males

‘Operation Epstein Distraction’: Trump’s bloody Iran ‘hype videos’ seem to target rightwing Gen Z males

The Guardian reports: Rap and EDM. Clips from action movies. Heads-up displays from video games. As the war with Iran approaches its second week, the White House has leaned into an online propaganda campaign that seems less about intimidating Iran or projecting US strength abroad than it is about reaching a rather niche domestic audience: young rightwing American men who spend a lot of time online. Over the past couple of days, the White House and officials affiliated with the…

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White House blocks intelligence report warning of rising homeland terror threat linked to Iran war

White House blocks intelligence report warning of rising homeland terror threat linked to Iran war

The Daily Mail reports: Donald Trump’s White House is blocking top US intelligence agencies from warning law enforcement across the country about rising threats to the homeland tied to his war with Iran, the Daily Mail can reveal. The FBI, Homeland Security, and the National Counterterrorism Center were preparing to put out a joint intelligence statement on Friday to state and local authorities alerting them of a heightened threat due to the ongoing war in Iran, a senior DHS official…

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Trita Parsi: Iran’s regime won’t fall. It was built for this

Trita Parsi: Iran’s regime won’t fall. It was built for this

  Iran’s strategy isn’t to defeat the US militarily. Trita Parsi argues that it’s to make the cost high enough, fast enough, to collapse domestic support before Iran loses. With MAGA turning against the war, oil markets destabilizing, and both parties alarmed by talk of ground troops, Trump urgently needs a face-saving exit. Plus, Parsi believes that Iran’s revolutionary system was built to withstand exactly this kind of pressure.

Russia is providing Iran intelligence to target U.S. forces, officials say

Russia is providing Iran intelligence to target U.S. forces, officials say

The Washington Post reports: Russia is providing Iran with targeting information to attack American forces in the Middle East, the first indication that another major U.S. adversary is participating — even indirectly — in the war, according to three officials familiar with the intelligence. The assistance, which has not been previously reported, signals that the rapidly expanding conflict now features one of America’s chief nuclear-armed competitors with exquisite intelligence capabilities. Since the war began Saturday, Russia has passed Iran the…

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Qatar energy minister warns war will force Gulf to halt energy exports within weeks, report

Qatar energy minister warns war will force Gulf to halt energy exports within weeks, report

Reuters reports: Qatar expects all Gulf energy producers to shut down exports within weeks if the Iran conflict continues and drives oil to $150 a barrel, ​the country’s Energy Minister Saad al-Kaabi told the Financial Times in an interview ‌published on Friday. Qatar halted its production of liquefied natural gas on Monday, as Iran continued to strike Gulf countries in retaliation for Israeli and U.S. attacks. The country’s LNG production is equivalent to ​about 20% of global supply and plays…

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The U.S. could lose the Gulf

The U.S. could lose the Gulf

Marc Lynch writes: Iran’s bombardment of its Gulf neighbors has inexorably dragged them into a war that they had desperately hoped to avoid. The potential entry of the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia into direct war alongside Israel and the United States represents the first full-scale manifestation of America’s ambitions for the Middle Eastern order it has overseen for decades. Washington has always dreamed of Arab-Israeli cooperation against Iran without resolving the Palestinian issue. Here it is. It…

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