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Category: War

‘Punish Iran’: Saudi Arabia and UAE inch closer to supporting U.S.-Israeli war

‘Punish Iran’: Saudi Arabia and UAE inch closer to supporting U.S.-Israeli war

Middle East Eye reports: Earlier this month, Elbridge Colby, a senior official in the US Department of War, held a call with Saudi Arabian Defence Minister Khalid bin Salman, who is also the brother and top adviser to Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. Iran’s attacks on US bases in the Gulf were heating up, and the US needed expanded access and overflight permissions. Saudi Arabia agreed to open King Fahd Air Base in Taif, in Western Saudi Arabia, to the…

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Trump reportedly sending Marines to attack Kharg Island – will it really happen?

Trump reportedly sending Marines to attack Kharg Island – will it really happen?

  Are US boots on the ground inevitable in a war with Iran? With reports that over 2,000 Marines are being deployed, questions are growing over Washington’s strategy and whether Donald Trump has a clear plan. Could the US attempt something as bold as seizing Kharg Island, Iran’s critical oil hub? On this episode of The Fourcast, Matt Frei is joined by Nate Swanson, former National Security Council Iran desk official, and investigative journalist Ronen Bergman to unpack the latest…

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Trump’s desire to ‘take’ Kharg Island dates back to 1988

Trump’s desire to ‘take’ Kharg Island dates back to 1988

In 1988, The Guardian’s Polly Toynbee interviewed Donald Trump, about whom she wrote, “[His g]litz, greed, glamour and an ambition so colossal that it will probably not rest until he rules the world – which one day he just might.” So what do you do when you’re only 41 and you have made more money than you could ever spend? He is lionised in a city of lions. People try to touch him in the street, as if some of…

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Political ideology shapes views on acceptable civilian casualties in war

Political ideology shapes views on acceptable civilian casualties in war

PsyPost reports: Across different types of military conflicts, people who hold conservative political views are more willing to accept unintended civilian deaths than people with liberal views. This ideological divide remains consistent whether the war features real adversaries, strategic partners, or entirely fictional nations. The findings were recently published in the European Journal of Social Psychology. Public opinion plays a major role in how governments wage war and handle international conflicts. Tolerance for civilian casualties can influence diplomacy, military strategy,…

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Iran war puts global energy markets on the brink of a worst-case scenario

Iran war puts global energy markets on the brink of a worst-case scenario

Wired reports: On Thursday, Israel launched a series of strikes on various oil and gas facilities in the region, most notably the South Pars gas field, the world’s biggest natural gas field, which is jointly controlled by Iran and Qatar. Iran retaliated with counterstrikes, including on the world’s largest oil export facility in Qatar. Oil prices temporarily shot up to nearly $120 a barrel. These strikes appear to have damaged infrastructure that’s crucial to the world’s fossil fuel supply. Qatar…

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Putin offers to stop sharing intel with Iran if U.S. cuts off Ukraine

Putin offers to stop sharing intel with Iran if U.S. cuts off Ukraine

Politico reports: Moscow proposed a quid pro quo to the U.S. under which the Kremlin would stop sharing intelligence information with Iran, such as the precise coordinates of U.S. military assets in the Middle East, if Washington ceased supplying Ukraine with intel about Russia. Two people familiar with the U.S.-Russia negotiations said that such a proposal was made by Russian envoy Kirill Dmitriev to Trump administration envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner during their meeting last week in Miami. The…

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Iran attacks wipe out 17% of Qatar’s LNG capacity for up to five years, QatarEnergy CEO says

Iran attacks wipe out 17% of Qatar’s LNG capacity for up to five years, QatarEnergy CEO says

Reuters reports: Iranian attacks ‌have knocked out 17% of Qatar’s liquefied natural gas (LNG) export capacity, causing an estimated $20 billion in lost annual revenue and threatening supplies to Europe and Asia, QatarEnergy’s CEO and state minister for energy affairs told Reuters on Thursday. Saad al-Kaabi said two of Qatar’s 14 LNG trains and one of its two gas-to-liquids (GTL) facilities were damaged in ​the unprecedented strikes. The repairs will sideline 12.8 million tons per year of LNG for three…

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West Point analysis warns that Strait of Hormuz blockade will strangle U.S. defense industry

West Point analysis warns that Strait of Hormuz blockade will strangle U.S. defense industry

The Guardian reports: The closure of the strait of Hormuz is causing a “paralyzing, real-time problem” for any prospective manufacturing surge in the US defense industrial base, and even for the repair of defense equipment damaged by Iranian attacks, according to analysis published by West Point’s Modern War Institute. In particular sulphur, a vital upstream input in the extraction of critical minerals including copper and cobalt, has seen a “near total” disruption of seaborne trade in the straits, which makes…

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How the rest of the world is struggling with the economic crisis that Trump and Netanyahu triggered

How the rest of the world is struggling with the economic crisis that Trump and Netanyahu triggered

The Washington Post reports: As the United States wages war with no clear endgame, large swaths of the globe are suffering worse than Americans from the economic fallout, weathering gasoline shortages, falling currencies and more severe energy shocks. Iran’s retaliatory attacks have largely blocked the Strait of Hormuz, turning the transit point for one-fifth of the world’s crude into a trial by fire for cargo ships and sending oil prices soaring. That is triggering hikes at the pump — on…

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Israel’s role in instigating war on Iran

Israel’s role in instigating war on Iran

Michelle Goldberg writes: Some Jewish leaders, alarmed by the backlash to the war, are trying to rule any discussion of Israel’s role in instigating it out of bounds. In a speech on Monday, Jonathan Greenblatt, the head of the Anti-Defamation League, denounced those who “pointed fingers at the Israelis who — they claimed — whispered a few too many times in President Trump’s ear.” Greenblatt’s heavy-handed attempt to police the discourse is bound to fail, because it’s asking people to…

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Major escalation: Israel strikes Iran natural gas facility in coordination with U.S.

Major escalation: Israel strikes Iran natural gas facility in coordination with U.S.

Axios reports: The Israeli Air Force struck a natural gas processing facility in southwestern Iran, two senior Israeli officials said. Why it matters: This is the first time Israel has struck natural gas facilities in Iran, which are key to Iran’s economy. The Israeli officials said the strike was coordinated with and approved by the Trump administration. A U.S. Defense official confirmed that. The semi-official Tasnim News Agency reported that several facilities in the South Pars gas field near Bushehr were targeted. According to the report, emergency teams…

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Germany’s foreign minister warns Iran war could plunge ‘entire world into major crisis’

Germany’s foreign minister warns Iran war could plunge ‘entire world into major crisis’

Politico reports: German Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul on Wednesday warned of a dangerous spiral of unintended consequences if the Middle East war escalates further. “There is a real risk of escalation, which could plunge not only this region but the entire world into a major crisis,” Wadephul said during a joint press conference with his French counterpart, Jean-Noël Barrot, in Berlin. The German government under Chancellor Friedrich Merz was initially far more supportive of the U.S. and Israeli attacks on…

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U.S. intelligence saw no change in Iran’s missile capabilities before war

U.S. intelligence saw no change in Iran’s missile capabilities before war

The New York Times reports: Two top intelligence officials directly contradicted one of the Trump administration’s justifications for going to war with Iran, repeating on Wednesday the intelligence community’s conclusion that Iran was years away from developing missiles capable of hitting the United States. Testifying before the Senate Intelligence Committee, Tulsi Gabbard, the director of national intelligence, and John Ratcliffe, the C.I.A. director, would not say whether the intelligence community had determined that Iran would be able to launch such…

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Avi Shlaim: ‘Trump is Netanyahu’s poodle, he plays him like a fiddle’

Avi Shlaim: ‘Trump is Netanyahu’s poodle, he plays him like a fiddle’

  One of Israel’s most highly regarded and world-renowned professors of history and international relations, Avi Shlaim, says that Donald Trump is “Netanyahu’s poodle”, adding that Netanyahu “plays him like a fiddle”. Prof. Shlaim says that Donald Trump is the only American President who is gullible enough to become part of Netanyahu’s plan for regime change in Iran. However, Prof. Shlaim believes that regime change is almost impossible to achieve from the air and what is far more likely is…

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How Silicon Valley became part of the military-industrial complex

How Silicon Valley became part of the military-industrial complex

The New York Times reports: As the war in the Middle East enters its third week, intelligence gathered by the Pentagon is being analyzed by technology from the artificial intelligence company Anthropic, on a system run by the data analytics firm Palantir. Drones created by defense tech start-up in Arizona have emerged as a key piece of the U.S. war arsenal. And anti-drone systems made by a California start-up have been deployed to protect U.S. forces in the region. Silicon…

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Duplicity: Israel publicly encourages Iranians to rise up but privately assesses they’ll be ‘slaughtered’

Duplicity: Israel publicly encourages Iranians to rise up but privately assesses they’ll be ‘slaughtered’

The Washington Post reports: Senior Israeli officials have told U.S. diplomats that Iranian protesters will “get slaughtered” if they take to the streets against their government even as Israel publicly calls for a popular uprising, according to a State Department cable reviewed by The Washington Post. The cable, circulated by the U.S. Embassy in Jerusalem on Friday, relayed an Israeli assessment that Iran’s regime is “not cracking” and is willing to “fight to the end” despite the Feb. 28 killing…

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