Browsed by
Category: War

Five takeaways from the ‘No Kings’ rallies as the Midterms heat up

Five takeaways from the ‘No Kings’ rallies as the Midterms heat up

The New York Times reports: Thousands of demonstrations against the Trump administration unfolded across the country on Saturday, the third round in a nationwide series of loosely coordinated “No Kings” rallies. The day of protest, the first since October, came as the midterm election season takes shape, and as Democrats work to capitalize politically on the unpopular war with Iran. Exactly a month earlier, President Trump ordered the first U.S. strikes against Iran, setting off a conflict that has sent…

Read More Read More

Pope opens Holy Week condemning war waged in Jesus’s name

Pope opens Holy Week condemning war waged in Jesus’s name

Crux reports: Pope Leo XIV opened his first Holy Week as pontiff with a rebuke of those who pray for war, offering his condemnation mere days after U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth prayed for “overwhelming violence of action against those who deserve no mercy.” Hegseth – who prefers to be called the “Secretary of War” – made his prayer during a recent Christian worship service at the Pentagon, attended by military and civilian workers. Speaking during his March 29 Mass…

Read More Read More

Why the U.S. and Israel are losing the war against Iran

Why the U.S. and Israel are losing the war against Iran

Patrick Wintour writes: The price of oil is the key metric for Iran’s success, along with its remaining supply of missile launchers. As a result, 95% of traffic through the strait of Hormuz remains blocked, depriving the markets of 10-13m barrels of oil each day. Such is Iran’s stranglehold even Trump describes Iran allowing ships through as a “present” to the US. Trump admits he is surprised the price of oil is not higher. Jason Bordoff, the founding director at…

Read More Read More

Trump getting ‘bored with Iran’

Trump getting ‘bored with Iran’

MS NOW reports: Nearly one month after the U.S. began strikes on Iran, President Donald Trump is sending thousands of troops to the Middle East to potentially fight in a war he said he has “already won.” That contradiction has frustrated some senior White House aides and outside allies, three of whom spoke to MS NOW about the president’s public messaging. They described it as confusing, internally inconsistent and increasingly detached from battlefield reality. Trump calling the war already won…

Read More Read More

Trump faces new oil shock threat as Iran eyes Red Sea

Trump faces new oil shock threat as Iran eyes Red Sea

Politico reports: It’s not just Hormuz. There’s a second strait in the Middle East vital to global energy markets that Iran is threatening to close if President Donald Trump fails to wind down the Iran war. The world is already experiencing the worst disruption to global energy markets in history following U.S. and Israeli attacks on Iran. But if Iranian proxies close the Bab el-Mandeb strait — a busy Red Sea choke point — it would compound global financial woes…

Read More Read More

Iran-linked hackers breach FBI director’s personal email, publish photos and documents

Iran-linked hackers breach FBI director’s personal email, publish photos and documents

Reuters reports: Iran-linked hackers have broken into ​FBI Director Kash Patel’s personal email inbox, publishing photographs of the director and other documents to the internet, the hackers and the ‌bureau said on Friday. On their website, the hacker group Handala Hack Team said Patel “will now find his name among the list of successfully hacked victims.” The hackers published a series of personal photographs of Patel sniffing and smoking cigars, riding in an antique convertible, and making a face while…

Read More Read More

A pliant autocracy in Iran won’t solve America’s problems in the Middle East

A pliant autocracy in Iran won’t solve America’s problems in the Middle East

Fawaz A. Gerges writes: Over the past few weeks, U.S. President Donald Trump and his team have voiced contradictory objectives for the war they, together with Israel, launched against Iran. But it is clear that after Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei was killed, Trump hoped to deal with a transactional authoritarian figure. He called “what we did in Venezuela”—forcing the replacement of one autocrat, President Nicolás Maduro, with another, Delcy Rodríguez—a “perfect scenario” for Iran and insisted on being “involved with…

Read More Read More

Gulf states may soon have to ‘repatriate tens of billions of dollars in investments’ from the U.S.

Gulf states may soon have to ‘repatriate tens of billions of dollars in investments’ from the U.S.

Politico reports: President Donald Trump is counting on money from the Gulf Arab States to power his economic golden age. But as the war with Iran nears its fifth week and the regional economy enters a free fall, hundreds of billions of dollars that Middle Eastern governments have pledged for U.S. projects are under threat. That has the Trump administration concerned that Gulf leaders may not be able to fulfill promises to invest heavily in the U.S., according to three…

Read More Read More

Robert Pape describes the ‘escalation trap’ that the U.S. is falling into in the war against Iran

Robert Pape describes the ‘escalation trap’ that the U.S. is falling into in the war against Iran

  Is America’s war in Iran headed toward an escalation trap? Robert Pape, professor of political science at the University of Chicago and an expert on global security, argues that the decapitation of Iran’s leadership failed to break the regime, while upping the pressure for more force — including raising the specter of a ground war. Pape joins Hari Sreenivasan to discuss the difference between initial tactical success and long-term strategic success.

How Iran’s calibrated disruption of shipping threatens global energy

How Iran’s calibrated disruption of shipping threatens global energy

Soran Mansournia writes: The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) does not need aircraft carriers, command of the sea or even a total blockade to threaten the global energy supply. In the Strait of Hormuz, it relies on something older, cheaper and, in some ways, more effective: the weaponization of geography. The corps does not need to destroy fleets or physically block every vessel to produce systemic disruption. It only needs to raise the risk of transit high enough that normal…

Read More Read More

Is Mohammad-Bagher Ghalibaf the kind of Iranian leader Trump might work with?

Is Mohammad-Bagher Ghalibaf the kind of Iranian leader Trump might work with?

The Wall Street Journal reports: Iran’s combative Parliament speaker, Mohammad-Bagher Ghalibaf, is emerging as an unlikely figure in Washington’s search for a deal to halt a widening Middle East war. Ghalibaf, a former Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps air-force commander and Tehran mayor, has denied any talks with the U.S. are under way. He has taunted President Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and called the U.S.-Israeli air war with Iran a quagmire. He served in the Revolutionary Guard during Iran’s…

Read More Read More

Trita Parsi: Iranians increasingly expect this to be a long war

Trita Parsi: Iranians increasingly expect this to be a long war

  Trita Parsi of the Quincy Institute joins Ryan Grim and Murtaza Hussein to analyze the growing risks of a “lose-lose” war between the U.S. and Iran. As oil prices, sanctions dynamics, and regional tensions shift, the conflict may be creating more problems than it solves for both sides. Axios reports: Iranian officials have told the countries trying to mediate peace talks with the U.S. that they have now been tricked twice by President Trump and “we don’t want to be fooled…

Read More Read More

Trump’s ‘absurdly incoherent’ Iran pleas leave allies befuddled

Trump’s ‘absurdly incoherent’ Iran pleas leave allies befuddled

Politico reports: Donald Trump’s messaging on what he wants from American allies in his war against Iran is so confusing that any effort to help in reopening the Strait of Hormuz remains deadlocked, according to four European government officials. Washington has not made any formal requests for equipment, said the officials, who were granted anonymity to speak freely on the sensitive talks, while allies are also reluctant to send military assets to the region over fears they would be attacked…

Read More Read More

Trump’s war in Iran exposes America’s shift from a global guardian to an arbiter of chaos

Trump’s war in Iran exposes America’s shift from a global guardian to an arbiter of chaos

Eduardo Porter writes: To shield ordinary Indians from the war in Iran, the government in Delhi redirected supplies of liquefied gas to Indian families, for which it is the main cooking fuel, limiting supplies to the plastics industry. The Nepalese government rationed gas and the Philippines trimmed the government workweek to four days. Bangladesh closed universities and rationed fuel. They have been hardest hit by Iran’s closure of the strait of Hormuz. Economies in Asia import over a third of…

Read More Read More

Oil industry confronted with its ‘worst nightmare.’ Trump’s former defense secretary sees few options

Oil industry confronted with its ‘worst nightmare.’ Trump’s former defense secretary sees few options

Politico reports: Global energy leaders have been jolted by the enormity of what the U.S.-Israel war with Iran means for their business — and they’re not liking what they’re seeing. It’s the second time in four years that top White House officials have taken the stage at the CERAWeek by S&P Global conference to plead with producers to ramp up their drilling to cover supply disruptions from war-driven oil and natural gas price shocks. But unlike the coordinated international response…

Read More Read More

Prince Mohammed bin Salman is said to push Trump to continue Iran war in recent calls

Prince Mohammed bin Salman is said to push Trump to continue Iran war in recent calls

The New York Times reports: Saudi Arabia’s de facto leader, Prince Mohammed bin Salman, has been pushing President Trump to continue the war against Iran, arguing that the U.S.-Israeli military campaign presents a “historic opportunity” to remake the Middle East, according to people briefed by American officials on the conversations. In a series of conversations over the last week, Prince Mohammed has conveyed to Mr. Trump that he must press toward the destruction of Iran’s hard-line government, the people familiar…

Read More Read More