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The "Islamic NATO" Masterplan: How MBS and Erdogan Just Completely Isolated Abu Dhabi
Money Lines Exposed
Mar 19, 2026 #saudiarabia #mbs #erdogan

The Middle East has never had a unified military alliance. For decades, rivalries, sectarian divisions, and competing ambitions made the idea impossible. But something unprecedented is now taking shape — a quiet strategic convergence between two of the region's most powerful and historically antagonistic leaders. Mohammed bin Salman and Recep Tayyip Erdogan are building something that looks, in its earliest form, like the framework of an Islamic military bloc. And its first casualty may be Abu Dhabi.

The Saudi-Turkish rivalry has defined regional politics for years. From Qatar to Libya to the Muslim Brotherhood, Riyadh and Ankara have consistently found themselves on opposite sides. But MBS has made a calculated decision — that a controlled rapprochement with Erdogan serves Saudi strategic interests far more than continued confrontation. Together, they bring the Arab world's largest economy and the Muslim world's most powerful standing army into potential alignment.

For the UAE, this is an alarming development. Abu Dhabi has built its regional influence on being the alternative to political Islam, the anchor of pragmatic Arab statehood, and Washington's most reliable Gulf partner. A Saudi-Turkish axis — even an informal one — directly threatens each of these positions and leaves the Emirates increasingly exposed and strategically isolated.

The geography makes the threat even more acute. Saudi Arabia sits at the heart of the Arab world. Turkey commands NATO's eastern flank and the critical waterways connecting Europe to Asia. Together, they create a strategic arc that stretches from the Bosphorus to the Arabian Sea — an arc that Abu Dhabi sits uncomfortably outside of, with diminishing ability to shape what happens within it.

In this video, we examine the full architecture of this emerging Islamic NATO framework, the strategic logic driving MBS and Erdogan together, why Abu Dhabi is watching this realignment with growing alarm, and what it means for the future balance of power across the Muslim world



Transcript

Transcript
Abu Dhabi is burning. Not metaphorically, literally. The Ruway's refinery, where one of the largest oil processing facilities on the entire
secondsplanet, is on fire. Dubai International Airport, the single busiest aviation hub in the whole Middle East, has been struck. Fuel storage tanks across the
secondsEmirate are in flames. And while all of this is happening, while Abu Dhabi is absorbing the most devastating single night in its modern history, Saudi
secondsArabia is completely silent. No emergency statement, no military scramble, no phone call from Riad to the UN Security Council demanding
secondsaccountability, no GCC solidarity declaration, nothing. That silence, that cold, calculated, entirely deliberate
secondssilence is the most important story that nobody is talking about right now.
secondsBecause here is what you need to understand before we go anywhere else in this story. Abu Dhabi was not randomly caught in the crossfire of a US Iran
secondsconfrontation that spiraled out of control. Abu Dhabi was not collateral damage and a war it had nothing to do with. Abu Dhabi was isolated
minutedeliberately, surgically, strategically by the very governments, the very alliances and the very regional framework it had spent years
minute, secondsdepending on for its security and its survival. By the time you reach the final minutes of this video, you will see not just how it was done, but who
minute, secondsgave the orders, who made the phone calls, and who signed the documents that left Abu Dhabi standing completely alone when the missiles started falling. and
minute, secondsstay locked in because the final piece of this story, the piece about Pakistan,
minute, secondsabout nuclear deterrence, about what a new Islamic security alliance means for every single person on Earth who pays an energy bill or buys groceries or has
minute, secondssavings in a bank. That piece is coming and it reframes everything that came before it. Here is where it starts. The United States launched a series of air
minute, secondsstrikes against Iranian military infrastructure. The official justification delivered from Washington podiums was preeemption. Stop Iran before it crosses the nuclear threshold.
minute, secondsprotect American allies, maintain regional stability, clean language,
minute, secondsconfident language, the kind of language designed to make a catastrophic decision sound like a responsible one. But within hours of those strikes landing on
minutes, secondsIranian soil, something happened inside the American government itself that the major networks buried so fast most people never even heard about it. Joe
minutes, secondsKent, a senior counterterrorism official with deep roots inside the US national security apparatus, resigned. And in his
minutes, secondsresignation, he did not stay quiet. He went on record and said something that should have stopped every conversation in Washington cold. He said the United
minutes, secondsStates had no verified intelligence confirming an immediate Iranian threat.
minutes, secondsHe said the decision to strike was driven not by genuine national security necessity, but by external lobbying pressure from interests that were not
minutes, secondsAmerican. He said that American military credibility and American soldiers were being committed to a conflict that served someone else's strategic agenda,
minutes, secondsnot the agenda of the American people.
minutes, secondsThat statement did not lead a single major broadcast. It did not trend. It was not debated in prime time, but it matters enormously because it tells you
minutes, secondssomething fundamental about the war you're now watching unfold. This was not a war of necessity. It was a war of choice. And wars of choice, wars made
minutes, secondsunder political pressure rather than genuine threat, have a tendency to produce consequences far larger, far messier, and far more durable than
minutes, secondsanyone in the room calculated when they made the decision. Iran's response came fast and it came in a form that stunned every military analyst, every
minutes, secondsintelligence agency, and every government that thought it understood how Iran operates under pressure. Every previous Iranian military retaliation in the modern era had followed a recognizable pattern, measured,
minutes, secondscalibrated, one target, one message.
minutes, secondsEnough pain delivered to signal that Iran was serious without crossing the threshold that would justify a total American military response. Strikes
minutes, secondsthrough proxies, precision attacks on individual bases. Houthi pressure in the Red Sea.
minutes, secondsHezbollah activations in Lebanon. Always enough to demonstrate capability, never enough to invite annihilation. That playbook was decades old. Everyone had
minutes, secondslearned to read it. This time, Iran did not use that playbook. This time, Iran activated a completely different doctrine. Military analysts watching the
minutes, secondsstrike pattern in real time started using a phrase that had only ever been theoretical before, horizontal escalation. Instead of one concentrated
minutes, secondsstrike against one country in retaliation for one act, Iran struck all six Gulf cooperation council members simultaneously in a single coordinated operational window in a single night.
minutes, secondsBahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, all of them at the same time. Read that again
minutes, secondsand let it register. For the first time in the entire modern history of the Middle East, every single Gulf state was struck simultaneously by Iranian
minutes, secondsmilitary action in one night. one operational plan, one message delivered to six governments at once. And the
minutes, secondsmessage was unambiguous. There's no safe harbor anymore. There's no flag that provides protection. There is no American base on your soil that makes
minutes, secondsyou untouchable. If your territory is used as a platform against Iran, your territory becomes a legitimate military target. The era of plausible neutrality
minutes, secondsfor Gulf states hosting American military infrastructure is finished. You are either standing aside completely or you are part of the conflict. There is
minutes, secondsno middle ground left. Now, when the strike assessments came in over the following hours, something in the pattern demanded explanation because not
minutes, secondsevery country suffered equally. Not every government woke up to the same level of destruction. The damage was deeply uneven, and the country that
minutes, secondsabsorbed the most. Disproportionate punishment was not the one with the largest American troop presence. It was not the one with the most vocal anti-Iran foreign policy. It was the UAE. Specifically, it was Abu Dhabi.
minutes, secondsADNOCH, the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company, the financial backbone of the entire Emirate, was forced to shut down its Rowways refinery after drone impacts triggered fires across the facility.
minutes, secondsDubai International Airport, which processes over million passengers annually and serves as the logistics nerve center for the entire Middle East
minutes, secondsand large parts of South Asia and Africa, was struck and paralyzed. fuel storage infrastructure across the emirate burned. And for several hours,
minutesthe city that had built its entire brand identity around being the definition of stability and security in an unstable region looked like every other war zone
minutes, secondsit had spent decades distinguishing itself from. So why Abu Dhabi? Walk through the logic with me because the answer is not complicated once you look
minutes, secondsat the actual decisions that Abu Dhabi's leadership made over the past decade.
minutes, secondsThrough the Abraham Accords brokered in Abu Dhabi made a choice that it understood was historically significant.
minutes, secondsIt normalized full diplomatic and economic relations with Israel. It opened its airspace to Israeli flights.
minutes, secondsIt opened its financial system to Israeli investment and commercial partnerships. It hosted joint military exercises with Israeli defense forces.
minutes, secondsIt integrated intelligence sharing infrastructure. It became, in practical operational terms, a forward partner of the Israeli American security access
minutes, secondsinside the Arabian Peninsula. Not a reluctant partner, an enthusiastic one.
minutes, secondsAbu Dhabi's leadership believed this was the future. That alignment with the most technologically advanced military partnership in the region, backed by
minutesAmerican power, was the path to lasting security and economic dominance. Thran watched all of this. Thran tracked every normalization agreement, every joint drill, every intelligence relationship.
minutes, secondsAnd when the moment arrived to respond to American strikes on Iranian territory, Thran did not need to improvise a target list. The target list had been writing itself for years. Abu
minutes, secondsDhabi had made its position clear through its own actions. And Iran responded accordingly. But here is where the story opens into something far
minutes, secondslarger than a military exchange between Iran and the UAE. Because while Abu Dhabi was burning, Saudi state media was running a conversation that had nothing
minutes, secondsto do with GCC solidarity or Arab unity in the face of Iranian aggression. Saudi linked commentators, Saudi aligned
minutes, secondsacademics, Saudi approved voices because nothing appears on Saudi state- linked platforms without some level of government awareness or describing the UAE not as a victim but as a problem.
minutes, secondsOne Saudi academic speaking on a major regional platform during the very hours that Abu Dhabi's refinery was on fire used language that would have caused a
minutes, seconddiplomatic incident years ago. He described Abu Dhabi as operating in the service of Zionist interests in the Arab world. He accused the UAE's leadership
minutes, secondsof funding and supporting movements in Yemen that had actively worked against Saudi Arabia's own military campaign. He framed Abu Dhabi not as a fellow Gulf
minutes, secondsstate under attack, but as an actor that had made choices with predictable consequences. In the diplomatic culture of the Gulf, you do not say these things on a state- linked platform without
minutes, secondsauthorization. Those words were not a commentator's personal opinion. They were a message, a deliberately transmitted signal from a government
minutes, secondsthat wanted the world to understand where it stood. And where Saudi Arabia stood in that moment was not beside Abu Dhabi. Now we need to talk about the
minutes, secondsalliance that explains everything. The alliance that most western analysis has catastrophically underestimated, under reportported and failed to understand in
minutes, secondsits full strategic implications. The framework being constructed quietly,
minutes, secondsmethodically over the past months between Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Pakistan. Critics and analysts in the region have started calling it the
minutes, secondsIslamic NATO. And unlike most political labels, this one is not an exaggeration.
minutes, secondsThe framework contains formal mutual defense language, language that mirrors almost word for word article of the actual NATO treaty. The foundational
minutes, secondsprinciple that an attack against one member is treated as an attack against all members, triggering a collective response. This is not an informal
minutes, secondsunderstanding. This is a structured security architecture with defined obligations and defined capabilities assigned to each member. Saudi Arabia's
minutes, secondscontribution to this architecture is financial power on a scale that can reshape regional economies within months. Saudi Arabia has the fiscal firepower to fund military buildups,
minutes, secondsinfrastructure projects, political influence campaigns, and economic dependency networks across dozens of countries simultaneously. That financial
minutes, secondsleverage is the foundation of the entire framework. Turkey's contribution is military depth and geopolitical positioning that no other country in the
minutes, secondsIslamic world can replicate. Turkey's military is the second largest in NATO by personnel. It is battle tested across
minutes, secondsSyria, Libya, Azerbaijan, Somalia, and the broader Sahel region. Turkey's domestic defense industry, which barely
minutes, secondsexisted years ago, now produces worldclass combat drones that have changed the outcome of multiple conflicts across three continents. The Barackar drone alone has been deployed in Ukraine, Azerbaijan, Ethiopia,
minutes, secondsSomalia, and Libya, fundamentally altering ground combat wherever it has appeared. And uh Turkey carries something else into this alliance that
minutes, secondsis geopolitically priceless. It is still formerly a NATO member, which means Erdogon has access to Western intelligence networks, western military
minutes, secondsplanning frameworks, and Western diplomatic channels while simultaneously building an independent Islamic security architecture. He is inside both systems
minutes, secondsat the same time. That dual positioning gives Turkey and therefore this entire trilateral framework leverage that no single alliance member can match.
minutes, secondsPakistan's contribution is the element that changes every strategic calculation in the region. Pakistan has nuclear weapons. Pakistan currently operates the
minutes, secondfastest growing nuclear arsenal of any country on earth. Pakistan has ballistic missiles with ranges that cover the entire Middle East. And Pakistan has now
minutes, secondsformally aligned itself inside a mutual defense framework with Saudi Arabia and Turkey. Process what that means in its full weight. The only Islamic nuclear
minutes, secondsdeterrent on the planet is now operating inside a collective security pact alongside the two most powerful non-uclear Sunni military states in the
minutes, secondsworld. For years, the central anxiety of American Middle East policy has been the spread of nuclear capability in the
minutes, secondsIslamic world. Entire diplomatic architectures, entire sanctions regimes,
minutes, secondsentire military postures have been built around preventing a nuclear armed Iran.
minutes, secondsAnd yet, while Washington was focused on Iranian centrifuges, a nuclear-backed Sunni trilateral security alliance was assembled by countries that are formerly
minutes, secondsAmerican allies. The strategic implication of that is almost too large to process in real time. But it will define the next decade and Abu Dhabi is
minutes, secondsnot in this alliance. Abu Dhabi was not invited. Abu Dhabi was deliberately, consciously, and strategically excluded.
minutes, secondsAnd that exclusion, that decision made in Riad and coordinated with Ankra is the master plan. And this video is built around. NBS did not exclude Abu Dhabi
minutes, secondsfrom this framework by accident or oversight. The rivalry between Riad and Abu Dhabi has been the defining undercurrent of Gulf politics for the better part of a decade. On the surface,
minutes, secondsthey are partners. Fellow GCC members,
minutes, secondsfellow Sunni monarchies, fellow recipients of American security guarantees, fellow massive oil producers. But beneath that surface, the
minutes, secondscompetition for dominance in the EU Arab world has been intense, expensive, and sometimes vicious. the UAE's normalization with Israel, its
minutes, secondsaggressive military expansion into Yemen's southern coast, its growing influence across the Horn of Africa and East Africa, its development of a
minutes, secondsgenuinely sophisticated domestic military-industrial base. All of this has been read in Riyad not as the actions of a junior partner growing into
minutes, secondsits potential, but as a direct challenge to Saudi, Arabia's claim to be the indispensable center of the Arab world.
minutes, secondsMBS decided that challenge needed to be answered, not with a confrontation, with a framework. a framework that made Saudi Arabia the irreplaceable anchor of a new
minutes, secondsIslamic security architecture and left Abu Dhabi standing outside it exposed and dependent on an American Israeli axis that the broader Islamic world was
minutes, secondsrapidly turning against. The timing of what happened in the last hours did not occur in isolation from that framework. It occurred precisely as that
minutes, secondsframework was solidifying and the result is exactly what a sophisticated geopolitical strategist would have designed. Abu Dhabi is isolated. Abu
minutes, secondsDhabi is damaged. Abu Dhabi's brand of stability is shattered and the countries that were building the alternative architecture are by comparison in
minutes, secondsstronger positions today than they were before the conflict started. Now let us talk about your money because everything described so far has a direct immediate
minutes, secondsmeasurable impact on every economy on Earth and most people have absolutely no idea how close the edge actually is. The straight of Hormuz is mi wide at its
minutes, secondsnarrowest navigable point. Through those miles, approximately % of all globally traded oil flows every single
minutes, secondsday. That is million barrels. Every morning before the sun rises, it includes the overwhelming majority of export crude from Saudi Arabia, Iraq,
minutes, secondsKuwait, the UAE, and Qatar. It is the most critical single choke point in the entire global energy system. There is no bypass. There is no alternative route
minutes, secondsthat can handle that volume. If the straight closes, even partially, even temporarily, the global energy system goes into shock. Iran controls the
minutes, secondsnorthern coastline of the straight of Hormuz entirely. Its missile batteries are positioned along every navigable kilometer of it. Its naval assets and
minutes, secondsits drone capabilities cover the water on both sides. And in the hours following its simultaneous strikes across the Gulf, Iranian military
minutes, secondscommanders made an announcement that every energy trader on Earth understood immediately. The strait would be subject to security controls. In diplomatic language, that is a measured, careful
minutes, secondsphrase. In energy market language, it meant one thing. The straight was closed. Oil prices did not gradually tick upward. They exploded in a single
minutes, secondssession at a speed that had not been recorded in peaceime trading in living memory. Brent crude surged to levels that made the post Ukraine spike
minutes, secondslook moderate by comparison. And the cascade through connected markets began within the same trading hour. Airlines immediately began calculating emergency
minutes, secondsfuel search charges. Several major global shipping companies announced they were rerouting all Gulfbound tankers around the Cape of Good Hope. a detour
minutes, secondsthat adds between two and three weeks to transit times and hundreds of millions of dollars to the cost of each delivery cycle. Insurance premiums for vessels
minutes, secondsattempting to enter the Gulf of Omen tripled overnight. Some underwriters refused to quote at any price. And then the Qatar situation compounded
minutes, secondseverything. Qatar hosts the Ross Lafon industrial city on its northeastern coast. Ros Lafan is not simply a large
minutes, secondsindustrial facility. It is the single largest liqufied natural gas export complex on the entire planet. It is the backbone of European energy security in
minutes, secondsthe post-Russia era. When European governments cut off Russian pipeline gas after the Ukraine invasion, they rebuilt their entire energy supply strategy around long-term Qatari LNG contracts.
minutes, secondsThe infrastructure investments, the policy commitments, the political promises made to European citizens about energy independence, all of it was built
minutes, secondson a foundation of Qatari LNG flowing reliably to European terminals. And then inside this conflict, Ross Leafon was
minutes, secondsstruck. Multiple drone impacts, fires across the facility, emergency production shutdowns across multiple processing trains. European gas prices,
minutes, secondswhich had already surged on straight of Hormuz news, jumped % in a single trading session. A single session, %.
minutes, secondsIn Germany, which had already been fighting a slow motion de-industrialization crisis driven by elevated energy costs since the Russia cutoff, energyintensive industries,
minutes, secondssteel production, chemical manufacturing, heavy industrial processing began making emergency shutdown calculations within hours.
minutes, secondsPlant managers were on calls with government officials before European markets even opened for the morning session. In is France, emergency cabinet
minutes, secondsmeetings were convened. In the United Kingdom, where household energy bills had already destroyed the purchasing power of millions of working families during the previous cost of living
minutes, secondscrisis, Treasury officials were privately revising winter energy bill projections upward at figures they were not yet willing to release publicly because of the social and political
minutes, secondsconsequences of doing so. Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan, three economies almost entirely dependent on imported Gulf Energy, began simultaneous
minutes, secondsemergency assessments. Japan's central bank faced immediate yen pressure. South Korean industrial output forecasts were cut within hours. India was trapped in a
minutes, secondsthree-way contradiction. It needed Gulf oil to keep its economy growing. It needed stable energy prices to manage inflation. And it needed its carefully
minutes, secondsmaintained relationship with Iran to protect the Chabahar port corridor that gives it strategic access to Central Asia and Afghanistan without going
minutes, secondsthrough Pakistan. All three of those needs were now in direct and irreconcilable conflict. Global equity markets opened and confirmed what anyone
minutes, secondswith a basic understanding of energy economics already knew was coming.
minutes, secondsDefense contractors Rathon, Loheed Martin, Northrup Grumman, BAE systems surged. Everything else fell. Airlines
minutes, secondscollapsed because aviation fuel is directly indexed to crude oil prices.
minutes, secondsAutomobile manufacturers fell because every plastic component, every rubber seal, every synthetic fiber in every vehicle is a prochemical derivative.
minutes, secondsRetail stocks fell because every product on every shelf in every store arrives on a truck powered by diesel. The economic impact of a gulf. Energy shock does not
minutes, secondsstay in the energy sector. It propagates through the entire supply chain architecture of the global economy like electricity through a circuit fast in
minutes, secondstotal. And the critical context that makes this particular shock uniquely dangerous is the state in which the global economy entered it. This did not
minutes, secondshappen to a strong, well- capitalized resilient global economic system. This happened to a system that had been weakened by years of post-pandemic debt
minutes, secondsaccumulation, that was still fighting inflation that had never fully been defeated, that had absorbed two years of elevated interest rates, that compressed
minutes, secondscorporate margins and household budgets simultaneously, and that had central banks with essentially no room to cut rates aggressively because cutting into
minutes, secondsundefeated inflation risks reigniting it. There was no buffer. There was no reserve of policy capacity sitting ready to absorb a shock of this scale. The
minutes, secondsglobal economy entered this crisis. The way an exhausted person enters a fight,
minutes, secondsalready depleted, already running on reserves that were nearly gone. The economists who were already publishing recession probability models before any
minutes, secondsof this began are now running scenario analyses they have not yet released publicly because the numbers in those scenarios are alarming enough that
minutes, secondsreleasing them without a careful communications strategy risks accelerating the very financial panic they're designed to measure. This is not a sixweek price spike that corrects when
minutes, secondsthe situation stabilizes. This is a structural energy disruption arriving into a structurally vulnerable global economic system. The combination of
minutes, secondsthose two things, a severe supply shock and a fragile absorptive capacity is the definition of a systemic crisis. Now,
minutes, secondslet us bring it home. Let us come back to Abu Dhabi one final time and close the complete picture. Abu Dhabi made three bets over years. The first bet
minutes, secondswas on Israel that the Abraham Accords would deliver security, economic dividends, and a seat at the most powerful table in the region. What it
minutes, secondsalso delivered was a permanent target designation in the eyes of Thran and a permanent credibility problem in the broader Islamic world. The second bet
minutes, secondswas on neutrality as a brand that Dubai and Abu Dhabi could be the Switzerland of the Middle East, open to everyone,
minutes, secondssafe for everyone, business before geopolitics. That brand collapsed the moment the gap between the UAE's public neutrality and its actual intelligence
minutes, secondsand military posture became operationally relevant to Iran's targeting decisions. The third bet, the most painful one, was on GCC solidarity,
minutes, secondsthe assumption that Saudi Arabia would be there if things went catastrophically wrong. That bet did not just fail. It failed in a way that was engineered. NBS
minutesbuilt the Islamic NATO framework. NBS excluded Abu Dhabi from it. And Saudi state media ran the editorial framing that positioned Abu Dhabi as a problem
minutes, secondsrather than a victim. That sequence was not coincidental. It was deliberate.
minutes, secondsPower vacuums do not stay empty. The strategic space that a damaged,
minutes, secondsisolated, credibility depleted UAE occupied in the Middle East will be filled. Saudi Arabia wants to fill it.
minutes, secondsTurkey wants to fill it. Both of them are stronger and more aligned today than at any point in this decade. The competition to absorb the influence, the
minutes, secondsfinancial networks, the trade relationships, and the diplomatic positioning that Abu Dhabi built over years has already begun. The straight of
minutes, secondsHormuz does not care about any of this strategic calculation. It does not care about trilateral packs or Abraham Accords or Islamic NATO frameworks or
minutes, secondsthe rivalry between MBS and MBZ. It cares about million barrels a day.
minutes, secondsAnd right now, those barrels are not moving. And every hour, they do not move. The bill being calculated in the world's finance ministries and central
minutes, secondsbanks gets larger. And that bill is not paid only by governments. It is paid by every household on earth that heats its home, fills a tank, buys food, or hold
minutes, secondssavings in a financial system connected to the global economy. What happened in the last hours is not a temporary crisis that will resolve itself when the
minutes, secondsdiplomats find a quiet room and make a deal. What happened is the visible surface of a fundamental restructuring.
minutes, secondsThe Middle East that existed for years, built on American military primacy, on dollar denominated energy markets, on Gulf states that traded
minutes, secondssovereignty and foreign policy for security guarantees from Washington.
minutes, secondsThat Middle East is over. What is replacing it is more multipolar, more contested and governed by a new set of actors with a new set of rules. The
minutes, secondsphone calls were made. The alliance documents were signed. The framework was built. Abu Dhabi was excluded. And the missiles confirmed what the diplomacy
minutes, secondshad already decided months, possibly years before the first strike was ever launched. History is not always written by wars. Sometimes it is written by the
minutes, secondsquiet decisions that precede wars. The alliance meetings that nobody covered,
minutes, secondsthe editorial choices on state television that everyone missed, the security framework documents signed in rooms that cameras were not allowed into. Those decisions were made. Those
minutes, secondsrooms existed. Those documents were signed. And Abu Dhabi just paid the first installment of the price for not being in any of those rooms. The rest of
minutes, secondsthe world is now slowly beginning to calculate exactly what it collectively owes on the next

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The Ultimate Geopolitical Trap: How MBS Used the US to Neutralize Iran
Money Lines Exposed
Mar 10, 2026 #middleeast #iran #geopolitics

For decades, Iran and Saudi Arabia have fought a bitter cold war across the Middle East — through proxies, through oil, and through ideology. But under Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, Riyadh has taken a far more calculated approach. One that turns American military power and regional alliances into instruments of Saudi strategic interest.

What appears on the surface as a traditional US-Saudi partnership is, on closer examination, something far more sophisticated. MBS has quietly positioned Washington's military presence, sanctions regime, and regional commitments as a containment wall around Tehran — all while Saudi Arabia expands its own influence, investments, and alliances without bearing the full cost of confrontation.

From Yemen to Lebanon, from the Abraham Accords to the maximum pressure campaign against Iran, the fingerprints of Saudi strategic calculation are visible at every turn. Riyadh did not just benefit from American policy — it helped shape it.

In this video, we examine how MBS constructed this geopolitical trap, why Iran finds itself increasingly isolated despite its regional networks, and what this strategy reveals about the future of Middle Eastern power politics.



Transcript

On the morning of February th,
sthe people of Tehran woke up to a sound they had never heard before in their lifetimes. Not a distant rumble, not the sound of a passing thunderstorm. It was
sthe unmistakable, gut-wrenching roar of precision air strikes hitting the heart of their capital city. And within hours,
sthe name of one man was on the lips of every geopolitical analyst, every intelligence officer, and every head of state on the planet. Not not Benjamin
sNetanyahu. The name was Muhammad bin Salman. Because here is the truth that nobody in mainstream media is talking about. The war that you are watching unfold between the United States,
sIsrael, and Iran did not begin on February th, It began years earlier in the marble floored palaces of Riyad, in the private jets crossing
sbetween Washington and Saudi Arabia, and in the quiet back channel phone calls between a crowned prince who wanted Iran destroyed and the most powerful leaders
sin the Western world. By the end of this video, you're going to understand exactly how Muhammad bin Salman engineered the most audacious
sgeopolitical trap in modern history. How he used American military power, Israeli ambition, and Iranian miscalculation to do what Saudi Arabia could never have
minute, sdone alone. Neutralize its greatest regional rival without firing a single Saudi missile. And the truly terrifying part, it worked. But the cost of that
minute, ssuccess may reshape the entire global economy for a generation. Stick with me because what I'm about to show you goes far deeper than anything you have seen
minute, sin the news. And right at the end, I'm going to reveal the one factor that every analyst is getting wrong about where this goes next. And it involves
minute, ssomething in the straight of Hormuz that could change the price of everything you buy starting tomorrow. Let us go back to the beginning, not February the
minute, sreal beginning. For decades, Saudi Arabia and Iran have been locked in one of the most consequential rivalries in world history. This is not simply a
minute, sreligious conflict between Sunni and Shia Islam, though that dimension is real and significant. At its core, this is a battle for regional supremacy, a
minute, sstruggle over who controls the political, economic, and military destiny of the Middle East. And for most of that history, Iran held significant advantages. Iran has a population of
roughly million people, more than double that of Saudi Arabia. It has a battleh hardened military forged through the Iran Iraq war, through decades of
proxy conflicts, and through the direct experience of asymmetric warfare that few nations in the world can match. Most importantly, Iran built something that
Saudi Arabia could never replicate with oil money alone. A vast network of proxy forces stretching from the Houthi rebels in Yemen to Hezbollah in Lebanon to the
popular mobilization forces in Iraq to Hamas in Gaza. This was Iran's great strategic achievement, the axis of resistance. a ring of armed, motivated,
battle tested groups that served as Iran's forward deterrent, projecting power and fear far beyond its own borders. Saudi Arabia looked at this network and understood something
fundamental. You cannot outspend your way out of a missile pointed at your oil fields. And in September Iran proved that point with terrifying
precision when drones and cruise missiles struck the Abk oil processing facility in eastern Saudi Arabia,
knocking out approximately % of the kingdom's oil production in a single night. Saudi air defenses armed with some of the most expensive American
equipment money could buy failed to stop it. That night changed everything for Muhammad bin Salman. Here is what most people misunderstand about NBS. The
Western media has painted him as a reckless, impulsive leader, a man who orders assassinations and starts wars on a whim. But that portrait is dangerously
incomplete. NBS is above all else a strategic calculator. His entire domestic reform agenda, vision the
opening of Saudi society, the massive investment in sports and entertainment and tourism, all of it is driven by one cold, rational calculation. Saudi Arabia
needs to transform itself before the oil money runs out. And it cannot transform itself if it is constantly under the shadow of Iranian missiles. Every entertainment venue he builds in Riyad,
every Formula race he hosts, every tech company he tries to attract to Saudi soil, all of it becomes worthless if Iran can shut off his desalination
plants with a drone swarm. The uppike attack was not just a military humiliation. It was an economic warning and NBS heard it loud and clear. So
beginning in and accelerating through and NBS began to execute a strategy of extraordinary
complexity. On the surface, he was presenting himself as a pragmatist, a leader willing to make peace. In March
in a diplomatic development that shocked the world, Saudi Arabia and Iran signed a normalization agreement brokered by China, reopening embassies
and pledging to reduce tensions. The Western press celebrated it as a sign of MBS maturing as a statesman. And on one
level, it was. But here is what those celebratory editorials missed. MBS was not making peace with Iran because he
trusted Iran. He was buying time. He was reducing the immediate threat to his economic transformation project while simultaneously working a completely
different angle. Cultivating the United States and Israel as the instruments of a final reckoning with Thran that he himself could never publicly advocate
for without destroying Saudi Arabia's standing in the Arab and Muslim world.
And to understand why MBS believed this moment was achievable, why he thought and represented the optimal
window for this operation, you need to understand what had happened to Iran's strategic position in the two years before the war. Between and
Israel had systematically dismantled the most capable components of Iran's axis of resistance. Hamas and Gaza had been degraded as a military force. Hezbollah
and Lebanon had lost several of its most senior military commanders, including Hassan Nasallah himself in a series of devastating Israeli strikes. The
-day war between Israel and Iran had already struck Iran's nuclear facilities once, setting the program back significantly. Assad's regime in Syria,
a critical node in the Iranian proxy network, had fallen to rebel forces. On inside Iran, the economic situation was dire. Inflation was crushing the middle
class. Protests were spreading. The regime's legitimacy was at its lowest point in years. NBS looked at this landscape and saw something that few
analysts articulated clearly at the time. Iran had never been weaker since the early years of the Islamic Republic.
And the United States under Trump had never been more willing to use military force. The window was open. And NBS intended to make sure it did not close
before someone walked through it. To understand how this worked, you need to understand the financial architecture that NBS constructed around the Trump administration. This is not speculation.
This is documented, reported, and verifiable. The Saudi public investment fund, the sovereign wealth fund that NBS personally chairs, made a $billion
investment in Affinity Partners, the private equity firm founded by Jared Kushner, Donald Trump's son-in-law. The PIF's own internal review committee had
recommended rejecting Kushner's proposal, citing his inexperience and what they described as excessive fees.
NBS overruled them personally. Why would the most powerful man in Saudi Arabia override his own financial analysts to give $billion to a firm that his own
experts said was not worth it? The answer has nothing to do with expected financial returns. It has everything to do with political access. Kushner is not
just a businessman. He is a direct line to Donald Trump. And through Kushner,
NBS purchased something far more valuable than any return on investment.
He purchased influence over the foreign policy decision-making of the United States of America. The numbers are staggering when you look at them clearly. The Senate Finance Committee
estimated that Kushner's firm would collect approximately $million in management fees from the Saudi investment alone by August
Meanwhile, the UAE, Saudi Arabia's close Gulf partner and fellow Iran hawk,
invested an additional $million with Affinity Partners. And separately, the UAE's national security adviser purchased nearly half of the Trump
linked crypto firm, World Liberty Financial, just days before Trump's inauguration, with approximately
million from that transaction flowing directly to Trump family entities. When you map out these financial relationships, a picture emerges that is
almost too audacious to believe. The two Gulf states most threatened by Iran had through perfectly legal financial investments created a web of economic
interest that bound the Trump family's financial future to the foreign policy objectives of Riad and Abu Dhabi. And then the phone calls began. According to
multiple reports from the Washington Post and other major outlets in the weeks and months leading up to February th, NBS was on the phone with
Trump and with senior administration officials making the case for military action against Iran. His argument was straightforward. Iran was on the verge
of a nuclear weapon. Its missile arsenal was growing. Its proxy network, though weakened by Israeli strikes in and was rebuilding. The window to act
was closing. And NBS had specific intelligence shared through Saudi channels about the state of Iran's nuclear and missile programs. Was this
intelligence accurate? Was it shaped and presented in a way designed to maximize its impact on a Trump administration already predisposed to hawkishness
toward Iran? Those are questions that historians will debate for decades. What we know is that it worked. But here is where the strategy becomes truly
masterful and truly ruthless. Even as NBS was privately lobbying Washington for strikes on Iran, he was making a completely separate set of calls to
Thran. In January as American and Israeli threats against Iran were intensifying, NBS personally called
Iranian President Massud Peshkian. The content of that call has not been fully disclosed, but Iranian officials later described it as a reassuring
conversation. NBS expressing his desire for peace and stability, his opposition to any military escalation, his
commitment to the normalization agreement. At the same time, NBS's brother, Defense Minister Prince Khaled bin Salman, was in Washington for
meetings with Pentagon officials. The message from Riad to Washington was entirely different. The kingdom supports American strength in the region. The
kingdom is concerned about Iranian capabilities. The kingdom is a reliable partner. This is what scholars of diplomacy call a two-track strategy. But calling it that almost undersells it.
MBS was simultaneously reassuring his enemy that the attack was not coming while ensuring to the people launching the attack that the target was sufficiently distracted and unprepared.
Whether you call that brilliant or ruthless depends entirely on your perspective. What you cannot call it is accidental. On February th, at
approximately G in the morning, Tran time, the United States and Israel launched what they would call Operation Epic Fury. Within hours, the world woke
up to a conflict of a scale that nobody outside a small circle of planners had anticipated. US forces had spent months,
possibly years, mapping Iranian military infrastructure with extraordinary precision. In the opening hours of the operation, American Bbombers launched
from bases, including Diego Garcia and the continental United States dropped bunker busting munitions on Iran's most deeply buried nuclear and missile
facilities. Simultaneously, Israeli F-jets refueled over Saudi airspace,
airspace that Riad quietly made available, struck command centers, air defense installations, and senior leadership targets in and around Tran.
And in the most strategically significant strike of the opening salvo,
a USIsraeli joint operation killed Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Kami. The man who had led the Islamic Republic for years. The man who was the
ideological backbone of the axis of resistance. The man whose network of proxies had reshaped the Middle East was gone within hours of the strikes
beginning. The initial military effectiveness was overwhelming. Israeli military commanders announced that within the first week, their forces had
destroyed approximately % of Iran's air defense network and at least % of its longrange missile launch capability.
US Central Command reported striking nearly targets in Iran in the first days alone. The Center for Strategic and International Studies, one
of Washington's most respected defense think tanks, calculated the cost of the first hours of Operation Epic Fury
at $billion, roughly $million per day. And the vast majority of that cost, more than $billion, had not
been budgeted for. The United States had launched a war that its own Congress had not voted for, had not fully funded, and had not debated. Now, here is where the
story shifts from the military dimension to something far more consequential for the global economy and for every person watching this video, regardless of where
you live. Because what happened next in the Gulf was not just a regional military escalation. It was the opening act of an economic crisis that analysts
are already comparing to the worst supply shocks in modern history. Iran,
facing an existential assault on its government, its military, and its nuclear program, did exactly what it had promised to do for years. It hit back
hard and it hit everywhere. Within hours of the first American strikes,
Iranian ballistic missiles and drones began raining down on nine countries simultaneously. Not just Israel, which had been anticipated, but the Gulf States hosting American military bases,
Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Iraq,
Oman, and beyond. The numbers are almost impossible to comprehend. Iran fired over ballistic and naval missiles in the first four days. It launched approximately drones. Roughly %
of those were aimed at Israel. Roughly % were aimed at US military targets across the region and at the civilian and economic infrastructure of the Gulf
states that Iran blamed for enabling the attack. Dubai was struck. Abu Dhabi was struck. Doha was struck. Riyad was
struck. The US embassy in Kuwait was hit and closed indefinitely. Iranian ballistic missiles landed on Saudi soil for the first time in modern history.
The eastern province, home to the kingdom's most critical oil infrastructure, the King Abdulaziz air base, and the processing facilities through which a significant fraction of the world's oil flows every single day,
was directly targeted. Saudi Arabia's official statement claimed no casualties, but the message was unmistakable. Iran was willing to burn the Gulf to the ground on its way down.
And then Iran did something that every global energy market had dreaded for four decades. A senior IRGC official announced that Iranian forces would set
fire to any ship attempting to pass through the straight of Hormuz. The straight of Hormuz,
mi wide at its narrowest point, the single most important choke point in the global energy system. Every single day,
between and million barrels of oil pass through that straight, roughly %
of all the oil traded by sea in the entire world. Qatar, the world's largest exporter of liqufied natural gas, ships its product through the Strait of
Hormuz. The UAE ships through it. Saudi Arabia ships through it. Kuwait ships through it. And the moment an IRGC commander threatened to close it, the
moment Iranian forces began targeting tankers in the Gulf, the global energy market went into a full-scale panic. Oil prices surged to their highest level
since September A US flagged tanker called the Stenna Imperative was struck. A Honduras flagged tanker called
the Ath Nova was struck. Insurance rates for vessels transiting the Gulf spiked to levels that made commercial shipping economically catastrophic. Major
shipping companies began diverting routes around the Cape of Good Hope,
adding weeks and enormous additional cost to every energy shipment. The Straight of Hormuz had not been fully closed, but it did not need to be. The
mere credible threat of closure was enough to send shock waves through every commodity market on Earth. But before we get to the tanker fires and the energy markets, there's one more piece of the
military picture from those opening hours that deserves your full attention.
Because the scale of what Iran launched in retaliation, the missiles, the drones spread across nine countries simultaneously, was not just a
military response. It was a message. A message written in fire and sent to every government in the region that had cooperated with, enabled, or simply
failed to prevent the American and Israeli attack. Iran was telling the Gulf states, "You opened your airspace,
you hosted the planes, you provided the logistics, and you will pay a price for that." Every country that had quietly cooperated with the US military presence
in the Gulf, every government that had allowed American air defense systems to operate from its territory, every leadership that had signed status of forces agreements, giving US troops
access to its bases, found itself under Iranian missile and drone attack within hours of the opening strikes. This was Iran's version of deterrence. Not
minutesdeterrence that prevented the war. That ship had sailed, but deterrence designed to prevent the next war. A brutal,
undeniable demonstration that the cost of hosting American military power is not abstract. It is ballistic. It falls on your airports, your oil fields, your
desalination plants, and your capital cities. Let us pause here and make sure you understand what this means in terms that go beyond abstract geopolitics.
Because this is where the Iran war stops being a story about missiles and generals and starts being a story about your electricity bill, your grocery
prices, your fuel costs, and the value of the money in your bank account. The global economy runs on energy. Every product that is manufactured, every
piece of food that is grown and transported, every service that requires electricity or logistics, all of it is priced in relation to the cost of
energy. When the price of oil spikes dramatically, as it did in the hours and days after the straight of Hor's threat,
it does not just make gasoline more expensive at the pump. It creates an inflationary wave that moves through the entire economy like a slow motion shock wave. Manufacturers pay more for inputs.
Shipping companies charge more for delivery. Grocery stores pass higher costs to consumers. Central banks face an impossible dilemma. Do they raise interest rates to fight the inflation,
potentially triggering a recession? or do they hold rates steady and allow prices to spiral? There is no good answer to that question. And behind all of it, driving every pricing decision,
every investment choice, every political calculation is the question of whether that -m wide waterway in the Persian Gulf stays open or closes. The stock
markets reflected this terror in real time. Global equity indices fell sharply in the opening days of the conflict.
Defense stocks soared. Companies making missile interceptors, drone systems, and military electronics saw extraordinary gains. But the broader market moved deeply into risk-off territory.
Investors who had spent years building carefully diversified portfolios found themselves exposed to a geopolitical risk that no financial model had adequately priced in. Pension funds,
sovereign wealth funds, institutional investors. All of them were recalculating exposure to energy markets, to gul assets, to anything that
touched the supply chains running through the Middle East. The stock markets reflected this terror in real time. Global equity indices fell sharply in the opening days of the conflict.
Defense stocks soared. Companies making missile interceptors, drone systems, and military electronics saw extraordinary gains. But the broader market moved deeply into risk-off territory.
Investors who had spent years building carefully diversified portfolios found themselves exposed to a geopolitical risk that no financial model had adequately priced in. pension funds,
sovereign wealth funds, institutional investors, all of them were recalculating exposure to energy markets, to gul linked assets, to anything that touched the supply chains
running through the Middle East. Think about what this means for the average person on the street, not just the institutional investor in a glass tower.
When global shipping insurance premiums triple overnight because insurers are being asked to cover vessels transiting a potential war zone, those costs do not
disappear. They are passed on. They flow through the supply chain like water through a cracked pipe, eventually reaching the consumer in the form of
higher prices on fuel, on food, on electricity, on goods that were manufactured in Asia using Gulf energy and shipped through Gulf waters. The
inflation that results is not a choice any central bank makes. It is a mathematical consequence of a physical reality. The reality that % of the
world's seaborn oil passes through a straight that is now being actively threatened by a nation at war. And here's the element that makes this crisis particularly dangerous for the
global economy in a way that previous Middle East conflicts did not. The world is far more interconnected today than it was during the oil embargo or the
Gulf War of Supply chains are global, just in time, and extraordinarily fragile. A prolonged disruption to Gulf energy flows would
not just raise oil prices. It would create cascading failures across manufacturing, agriculture, technology,
and finance in ways that are genuinely difficult to predict and potentially very difficult to reverse. Egypt's president Abdel Fata Elsisi summed it up
publicly when he warned that his country, dependent on the Suez Canal revenue and on energy imports, was already in a state of near economic
emergency. And Egypt is not even in the Gulf. It is not hosting US military bases. It is not being directly struck by Iranian missiles. Yet, the ripple
effects of this conflict were already reaching Cairo within days of it starting. Imagine what they were doing to countries in Asia, to Japan, South
Korea, India, and China, which import massive quantities of Gulf energy, and whose entire economic models depend on the continued uninterrupted flow of oil
and gas through waters that were now suddenly a war zone. India received a special mention in the economic dimension of this crisis. The United
States issued a waiver allowing India to continue purchasing Russian crude oil. A recognition that forcing India to stop buying discounted Russian energy in the
middle of a Gulf supply crisis would be economically catastrophic for New Delhi and potentially push India further toward Moscow at precisely the moment
when Washington needed Asian allies to remain engaged and supportive. This single diplomatic footnote reveals the extraordinary complexity of managing a
major Middle East war in a multipolar world. Every decision made in Washington about military operations in Iran carries simultaneous economic and
diplomatic implications for relationships thousands of miles away.
Now let us come back to Saudi Arabia because this is where the narrative takes one of its most remarkable turns.
Remember what we established at the beginning of this analysis. NBS did not want this war or rather he wanted the outcome of this war but he did not want
Saudi Arabia to be caught in the crossfire. His entire vision economic transformation program depends on Saudi Arabia being perceived as a safe, stable, investable destination.
Neon, the futuristic city being built in the desert. The entertainment venues,
the Formula races, the golf tournaments, the tourist resorts on the Red Sea coast. All of that brand equity,
everything NBS has spent years and hundreds of billions of dollars building requires a Saudi Arabia that is free from the threat of Iranian missiles over
Riad. The moment Iranian ballistic missiles actually struck Saudi soil on February th, NBS faced the most acute crisis of his political career.
Not because he had not anticipated it.
He had his intelligence services had war gamed exactly this scenario. But anticipating a crisis and living through it are two very different things.
million people live in Riyad. Many of them had never experienced missile attack in their lives. The psychological and political impact of hearing Iranian missiles over the Saudi capital was
immense. And NBS knew that how he responded in the next hours would define his reign. His response was, and this must be acknowledged as a masterclass in crisis communication,
perfectly calibrated. The Saudi Foreign Ministry issued a statement within hours that condemned what it called the blatant and cowardly Iranian attacks,
reserved the right to respond with force, and simultaneously called on all parties to end the spiral of violence,
explicitly acknowledging that the United States and Israel had started the conflict. It was a statement that simultaneously satisfied Washington by
showing solidarity, satisfied the Saudi public by showing strength, and preserved Saudi Arabia's standing in the wider Arab and Muslim world by not
giving the Americans and Israelis a blank check. MBS was condemning the Iranian response to the very war he had privately helped engineer. The audacity
of it is almost breathtaking. And at the same moment, according to Middle East Eye, MBS was on the phone with the leaders of Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar, and the UAE. Not urging them to escalate,
but counseling restraint, arguing that the Gulf States needed to absorb the Iranian strikes without retaliating to preserve the diplomatic space for an
eventual ceasefire. He was playing every side simultaneously. He was the victim,
the statesman, the warrior, and the peacemaker all at once. Meanwhile, the UK entered the conflict in a way that added another dimension of strategic complexity. Prime Minister Kier Starmer,
after days of pressure from both Trump and opposition leader Kimmy Badno,
granted permission for the United States to use Royal Air Force bases, including RAF Fairford in Glstershare for operations against Iranian missile
sites. A ft BLancer bomber landed at Fairford, making the UK a direct participant in the conflict for the
first time. Iran's UN ambassador responded by warning that his country would take all necessary measures to defend itself and that Iranian forces
had already struck a UK military base in Cyprus. The circle of nations directly involved in this conflict was expanding with every passing hour. Ukraine offered
its own remarkable subplot. President Vladimir Zalinski, never wanted to miss a diplomatic opportunity, called NBS and the leaders of multiple Gulf states to
offer Ukraine's unique expertise in intercepting Iranian Shahed drones.
Ukraine's logic was elegant. Ukrainian forces had been fighting against Shahed drones for years, developing lowcost interception techniques using small,
cheap drones that cost betweenand $compared to the millions of dollars that each Patriot missile interceptor costs. While the Gulf States
were burning through their most expensive missile interceptors at a rate that was beginning to strain their inventories, Zilinsky was offering a
cheaper battle tested alternative. US President Trump said he would welcome assistance from any country. And just like that, the Russia Ukraine war and
the Iran USI Israel war became connected. Two separate conflicts sharing a common weapon system, a common threat, and now potentially a common
solution. Let us now look at what the opening nine days of Operation Epic Fury actually achieved in military terms because understanding the military
picture is essential to understanding the economic and geopolitical picture.
On the positive side for the USIsrael coalition, by day seven, Israeli military commanders claimed that % of Iran's air defense network had been
destroyed. % of Iran's longrange missile launch capability had been degraded. Hundreds of command and control nodes had been struck. The
nuclear program, which had already been set back by strikes in June was being systematically dismantled again.
Iran's supreme leader was dead. Iran's ability to launch coordinated large-scale missile strikes was declining daily with ballistic missile
attacks dropping % and drone attacks falling % from the first day to day seven. By any conventional military
metric, the opening phase of the campaign was extraordinarily successful.
The US and Israel had done in days what military planners had theorized might take months. But here is the question that the generals cannot answer
and that the financial markets are desperately trying to price. What comes next? Because military victory and strategic victory are not the same
thing. Destroying Iran's missile arsenal does not automatically produce a stable,
friendly government in Thran. Trump's demand for unconditional surrender was met almost immediately with defiance from Iran's foreign minister, who
rejected the idea of a ceasefire or new negotiations and stated that Iran was prepared even for the possibility of a US ground invasion. Iran's security
council secretary Ali Larajani issued a stark warning that Iranian forces were waiting for a potential US ground invasion and had prepared measures to kill and capture thousands of US troops.
The Iranian population rather than uniformly celebrating the removal of the regime that had suppressed them was deeply divided. Some taking to the streets and anti-government protests,
others rallying in nationalist solidarity against a foreign military attack on their homeland. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu addressed the Iranian people directly in Farsy,
urging them in his words to come out in millions to overthrow the regime of fear. But multiple experts pointed out that Iranians rallying against a foreign
attacker and Iranians rallying for democracy are not the same people making the same choice. The history of external military interventions aimed at
producing internal regime change is not encouraging. And the vision of a stable,
democratic, pro-western Iran emerging from the rubble of Thran in the near term was one that even some of Israel's own analysts described as, in the words
of former Israeli government adviser Daniel Levy, a kind of fairy tale. Trump characteristically offered his own framework. He announced that Iran had a
great future waiting for it. That once it surrendered unconditionally, the United States and its allies would help rebuild the country's shattered economy and make it bigger and stronger than
ever before. He also announced with remarkable directness that he intended to play a role in selecting Iran's next leader, explicitly calling Moshaba
Kamune, the late Supreme Leader's son and one leading candidate for succession an unacceptable choice. The extraordinary spectacle of an American
president publicly interviewing candidates for the leadership of a sovereign nation of million people was noted with alarm by governments from
Beijing to Brussels. China, which had brokered the Saudi Iran normalization deal and had significant economic interests in Iranian energy,
issued carefully worded calls for restraint without taking any concrete action. Russia, deeply involved in its own war in Ukraine was watching
carefully. Analysts noted that the Iran conflict might benefit Moscow if American weapons and attention that might have gone to Ukraine were now being diverted to the Middle East.
Europe was divided and largely paralyzed. Governments in Berlin, Paris,
and Rome calling for diplomacy while lacking any real leverage to enforce it.
The United Nations declared the conflict a major humanitarian emergency alongside the simultaneous Afghanistan Pakistan
war. But the Security Council remained gridlocked with Russia and China effectively blocking any decisive collective action. And so the world arrived at a moment that no spreadsheet,
no economic model, and no geopolitical framework had fully anticipated. A moment in which the United States was engaged in a full-scale military
campaign in Iran, the Strait of Hormuz was under threat, the Gulf States were absorbing Iranian missile strikes, the global economy was absorbing an oil
price shock, and the question of what happens on the other side of all of this had no clear answer. Let us now return to the man at the center of it all.
Because here is the final and most important layer of the MBS story, and it is the one that connects everything we have discussed into a single coherent
strategic vision. Muhammad bin Salman did not set this trap because he wanted chaos. He set it because he wanted order. His order on his terms in his
timeline. The scenario that NBS always feared was not a war. It was a war in which Saudi Arabia was the primary target. What he engineered, if the
reporting is accurate, is a war in which American and Israeli military power does the heavy lifting of dismantling Iran's capability, while Saudi Arabia plays the
role of victim statesmen, preserving its relationships with Washington, with Beijing, with Thran's potential successor government, and with the
broader Arab world all at once. If it works, if Iran's military is genuinely degraded, if a more pragmatic Iranian government eventually emerges, if the
straight of Hormuz reopens and energy markets stabilize, then MBS will have achieved in a matter of weeks what generations of Saudi strategists
considered impossible. The structural defanging of Saudi Arabia's most dangerous rival at zero direct cost to Riad in military terms. And with Saudi
Arabia positioned to lead the reconstruction of both Iran and the broader regional order in the aftermath,
that is the bet. And it is a bet of breathtaking ambition. But, and this is the part that the Saudi crown prince's
war room understands very clearly, it is also a bet that could go catastrophically wrong in multiple ways simultaneously. What if Iran does not
collapse? What if the regime holds together under the pressure of foreign attack, as historical precedent suggests, is quite possible? What if Iranian missiles keep flying and Saudi
dalination plants, the facilities that provide drinking water to millions of Saudi citizens, are struck and severely damaged? What if the straight of Hormuz
is not just threatened, but actually closed for an extended period, setting oil prices to levels that crash the global economy and dry up the investment
flows that vision depends on. What if the US, exhausted and domestically divided, pulls back before Iran is truly
neutralized, leaving a wounded and enraged Iran facing a Saudi Arabia that it knows was complicit in the attack? These are not hypothetical questions.
They are the scenarios that keep every serious analyst awake at night because the history of the Middle East is littered with brilliant strategic plans that survived first contact with the
enemy and then unraveled in ways their architects never predicted. The economic dimension of that risk cannot be overstated. Saudi Arabia's entire post
oil future depends on a specific set of conditions. Stable energy markets that keep government revenues flowing during the transition period, a security
environment that makes international investors comfortable placing capital in the kingdom. and a regional diplomatic posture that keeps Saudi Arabia from being drawn into direct military
confrontation with adversaries it cannot defeat alone. The Iran war threatens all three of those conditions simultaneously. Saudi Arabia's
defense budget of billion representing % of total government spending reveals both the kingdom's seriousness about security and the
extraordinary burden that sustained conflict places on its economic transformation agenda. Every Ryale spent on missile defense is a riyale not spent
on NEOM. Every investor who pauses to assess Gulf security risk is a partner that does not sign an agreement with Saudi Aramco or the public investment
fund. The war premium that attaches to Gulf assets when Iranian missiles are flying over Riad is not an abstraction.
It is a real cost measured in basis points and deal flows and capital allocations that compounds over time and makes NBS's targets harder to reach
with every passing week of conflict. And there is one more actor in this story who deserves careful attention because their choices will do more to determine the final outcome than any military
strike or diplomatic cable. That actor is the Iranian people themselves. million of them. A civilization with years of history. A population that has survived the Iran Iraq war,
international sanctions, economic mismanagement, and political repression.
And has demonstrated repeatedly that it is capable of extraordinary resilience.
The Western assumption baked into Trump's truth social posts and Netanyahu's Farsy language broadcasts that Iranians are simply waiting to be
liberated by American and Israeli bombs is not supported by any serious understanding of Iranian political culture. Yes, there were massive
protests in Iran in early driven by economic desperation and political frustration. Yes, some Iranians welcomed the weakening of the regime. But many
others, including Iranians who despised the Islamic Republic, were outraged by the killing of Kam, by the strikes on civilian areas, by the deaths of more
than a thousand of their fellow citizens, including children in schools,
the nationalism that foreign attacks tend to generate in civilian populations, is a powerful and historically consistent force. and an Iran that emerges from this conflict without a clear successor government,
without stability, with millions of displaced and traumatized citizens, and with its military infrastructure destroyed by its territorial integrity
intact. That Iran could become something even more dangerous than the Iran that existed before February th, And there is one more actor in this story
who deserves careful attention because their choices will do more to determine the final outcome than any military strike or diplomatic cable. That actor
is the Iranian people themselves, million of them. A civilization with years of history, a population that has survived the Iran Iraq war,
international sanctions, economic mismanagement, and political repression,
and has demonstrated repeatedly that it is capable of extraordinary resilience.
The Western assumption baked into Trump's truth social posts and Netanyahu's Farsy language broadcasts that Iranians are simply waiting to be
liberated by American and Israeli bombs is not supported by any serious understanding of Iranian political culture. Yes, there were massive
protests in Iran in early driven by economic desperation and political frustration. Yes, some Iranians welcomed the weakening of the regime. But many
others, including Iranians who despised the Islamic Republic, were outraged by the killing of Kamani, by the strikes on civilian areas, by the deaths of more
than a thousand of their fellow citizens, including children in schools,
the nationalism that foreign attacks tend to generate in civilian populations, is a powerful and historically consistent force. and an Iran that emerges from this conflict without a clear successor government,
without stability, with millions of displaced and traumatized citizens, and with its military infrastructure destroyed, but its territorial integrity
intact, that Iran could become something even more dangerous than the Iran that existed before February th,
Consider the history. When the United States invaded Iraq in it dismantled a military regime in three weeks of combat. What followed was a decade of insurgency, civil war,
minutessectarian conflict, the rise of ISIS,
and a regional destabilization that is still reverberating years later. When NATO intervened in Libya in Mama Gaddafi's regime collapsed within
months. What followed was a decade and a half of civil war, a failed state, a human trafficking crisis on the Mediterranean, and a power vacuum that was filled by competing militias,
foreign powers, and armed extremist groups. The pattern of external military intervention producing rapid regime change followed by prolonged instability
is not an exception in modern geopolitical history. It is the rule.
And if that pattern holds in Iran, a country with four times Iraq's population, a far more sophisticated political culture, significant regional influence even in its weakened state,
and a nuclear program whose remnants and expertise do not disappear, even if the physical infrastructure is destroyed,
then the post-war landscape could be far more complex and dangerous than anyone in Washington or Tel Aviv is publicly acknowledging. There's also the Lebanon
dimension. Israel, in parallel with its operations in Iran, was conducting intensive strikes on Lebanon, targeting Hezbollah positions and infrastructure.
Hundreds of thousands of Lebanese civilians were displaced. The Lebanese government, trying to thread an impossible needle between Hezbollah's domestic political power and the
Lebanese state's desperate desire to stay out of another war, announced it would ban Hezbollah's military activities and demanded the group hand
over its weapons. Hezbollah had previously said it would only disarm if Israel fully withdrew from Lebanon, a condition Israel showed no sign of
meeting. And the UN's human rights chief was warning that Lebanon risked becoming a key flash point in a conflict that was already consuming the wider region. The
Houthis in Yemen, meanwhile, were taking the remarkable step of restraint, condemning the attack on Iran in words,
but declining to resume missile attacks on Red Sea shipping, apparently calculating that they could not afford to open another front while Yemen's
civil war remained unresolved. This careful, healthy restraint was itself a strategic signal. The axis of resistance was fragmenting under the pressure of
sustained military degradation and strategic uncertainty. So where does this leave us? Where does all of this lead? The honest answer, the answer that
any serious analyst must give it is that we do not know. We are nine days into a conflict whose trajectory is genuinely uncertain. The scenarios range from an
Iranian regime collapse and a negotiated transition that reshapes the Middle East in a generation all the way to a prolonged war of attrition that destabilizes the global economy,
exhausts American military resources,
creates a political backlash in the United States that ends the conflict on ambiguous terms, and leaves a wounded,
radicalized Iran seeking revenge for decades to come. The gap between those scenarios is vast. And in that gap, in that uncertainty, lies the greatest
geopolitical and economic risk of our time. But here is what we can say with confidence. The world of February th,
the world that existed the night before the first American bombs fell onto Iran, is gone. The axis of resistance that Iran spent years
building, is severely weakened. The question of Iranian nuclear capability,
which dominated global diplomacy for two decades, has been answered militarily in a way that treaties and negotiations never resolved. The role of Saudi Arabia
as a regional power has been permanently elevated. Whether NBS intended it or not, the kingdom is now the central surviving regional actor. The nation
that absorbed Iranian missiles without being destroyed, the state that preserved its relationships with every major power simultaneously, and the
economy that, if the conflict concludes favorably, stands to benefit most from the reconstruction of the Gulf order.
The global energy system has been reminded in the most visceral possible way that its dependence on a -m wide waterway in the Persian Gulf is not a
theoretical vulnerability. It is a real one. And the reckoning that produces the accelerated push toward energy diversification, the recalculation of
supply chain geography, the repricing of geopolitical risk across every asset class will shape investment decisions,
political choices, and economic outcomes for years, possibly decades to come. And Muhammad bin Salman, the man who may have done more than any other single
individual to bring this moment into being, sits in Riad watching the results of his gamble unfold in real time. He is years old. He has decades of power
ahead of him, assuming the kingdom remains stable. He has staked his legacy, his economic transformation project, and the future of his dynasty
on the bet that America and Israel would do what Saudi Arabia could not do alone.
That they would remove the Iranian threat at their cost in their blood and treasure. And that Riyad would emerge on the other side stronger, safer, and more
central to the new Middle Eastern order than at any point in modern history.
Whether that bet pays off, whether history records MBS as the shrewdest strategic mind of his generation, or as the man whose miscalculation triggered a catastrophe he could not control,
remains to be written. what has already been written. In the smoke rising over Thran, in the missile fragments scattered across Riyad, in the tanker
fires burning in the Gulf of Omen, in the trading floors of London and New York and Shanghai, where oil prices are being repriced in real time, is the
opening chapter of a story that will define this decade and perhaps the century that follows. It is not just a Middle East story. This is not just a
war between countries that are far away from where you live. This is a story about who controls the energy that powers the global economy. About who sits at the center of the financial
architecture that connects the world's wealth. about whether the rules-based international order that has governed global affairs since can survive
the kind of raw unapologetic power politics that we are watching unfold in real time and about whether one man a
crown prince sitting in a palace in Riad playing chess with the fates of nations was brilliant enough to make the most dangerous gamble in modern geopolitical history pay off. The answer is coming.
We are all watching it arrive. Let us also consider what this conflict reveals about the nature of power in the st century. Because there's a lesson here
that goes far beyond the immediate crisis. For most of the postcold war era, we operated under the assumption that power derived from one of two
sources, military capability or economic size. The United States had both. China was building both. Russia was trying to maintain both. and smaller nations,
nations like Saudi Arabia, Israel, the UAE, were assumed to operate within the strategic space that the great powers defined for them. What NBS appears to
have demonstrated, if the analysis of his role in engineering this conflict is accurate, is that a third form of power has emerged in the st century, the
power of financial entanglement. the power of making yourself so economically indispensable to the decision makers of great powers that you can effectively
shape their strategic choices without ever deploying your own military force. Saudi Arabia did not need to bomb Iran. It needed to fund the right people,
invite the right investments, host the right conversations, and ensure that the financial interests of those who control American foreign policy were aligned
with Saudi Arabia's strategic objectives. If that is what happened here and again the financial relationships are documented and the private lobbying is reported then the
implications for how we think about international relations are profound because it means that the era of purely military deterrence is over. It means
that financial architecture is now as strategically important as military architecture. And it means that the battles of the st century will be fought not just with missiles and drones, but with investment funds,
cryptocurrency stakes, real estate deals, and the quiet, persistent cultivation of financial dependencies in the capitals of the world's most
powerful nations. This is not a comfortable thought. It is a deeply unsettling one. Because financial influence of this kind operates in the
shadows. It is hard to see, hard to regulate, and hard to hold accountable through the normal mechanisms of democratic oversight. The American Congress did not vote for the Iran war.
The American public was not fully consulted. And yet, the war happened,
launched by an executive who had deep and wellocumented financial ties to the governments that stood most directly to benefit from it. Whether that
constitutes the corruption of democratic foreign policymaking or simply the normal operation of great power interests is a debate that democratic
societies are going to be forced to have loudly and urgently in the months and years ahead. If you want to stay ahead of this story, if you want to understand
not just what is happening, but why it is happening and what comes next, make sure you follow this channel because we are going to continue tracking every development in this conflict, every economic signal, every diplomatic move,
and every strategic shift as they unfold. The world is changing faster right now than at any point in a generation and understanding how it is
changing is the most important thing any of us can do. The straight of hormuz is still technically open as of today.
Whether it stays that way and what happens to the global economy if it does not is the question that should be on everyone's mind. We will be here to help you make sense of it. One final thought
before we close. Um there's a dimension of the story that almost nobody in the Western press is discussing and it may ultimately prove to be the most consequential of all. It is the question
of what this conflict does to the credibility of the global non-prololiferation system. For three decades, the international community has
operated on the assumption that the most effective way to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons is through diplomacy,
inspection regimes, multilateral agreements, and economic sanctions. The JCPOA, the nuclear deal with Iran that was negotiated in and then
abandoned by Trump in was the centerpiece of that approach. It was imperfect. It was limited in scope. Its critics argued with genuine substance
that it delayed rather than permanently resolve the Iranian nuclear question.
But it represented the best available multilateral framework for managing one of the most dangerous proliferation challenges the world had ever faced.
What happens to that framework now? What message does every other country in the world, every government that is watching the Iran conflict and drawing its own
conclusions, take from the fact that Iran's nuclear program was ultimately not resolved through diplomacy, but destroyed through military force? The
message is not comfortable. The message is if you want to deter the United States and Israel from attacking you,
you need to have a nuclear weapon before they decide to strike. Not after,
before. The North Korean leadership is watching. Whatever remains of Iran's nuclear knowledge and expertise is dispersed. And that expertise does not
disappear when buildings are bombed. It lives in the minds of scientists who will eventually find new patrons, new states, new programs. The long-term
proliferation consequences of the Iran war, the signal it sends about the futility of negotiated disarmament without security guarantees could haunt
the world long after the immediate conflict is over. That is the darkest possible reading of where we are. And it deserves to be said clearly and directly
alongside every other dimension of this extraordinary, terrifying, worldaltering moment in history. We are living through events that future generations will
study for centuries. Make sure you understand
Was it the intelligence community's assessment that nevertheless,
despite this obliteration, there was a quote imminent nuclear threat posed by the Iranian regime? Yes or no?
It is not the intelligence community's responsibility to determine what is and is not an imminent threat. That is up to the basis
that he receives. It is precisely your responsibility to determine what constitutes a threat to the United States. This is the worldwide threats hearing.
That's it from me. Thank you very much for your support of this platform and our journalism. If you haven't subscribed to my channel, please do so because that's one of the many ways you
can support independent journalism. God bless you all.

[admin]

Saudi warplanes rushed to bomb Iran after ARAMCO attack – Big Mistake!
OPTM
Mar 19, 2026



Transcript

The Saudi war machine was scrambling.
secondsThe pilots were in the cockpits. And the order to bomb Iran was reportedly moments away from being executed. This
secondswas the knee-jerk reaction in Riyad after a devastating missile strike allegedly by Iran set vital Aramco oil
secondsfacilities ablaze, sending towering plumes of black smoke across the Saudi skyline.
secondsOil giant Saudi Aramco Samre refinery in Red Sea port of Yanbu was targeted in an aerial attack on Thursday. Saudi
secondsAramco's Sarif refinery was targeted in an aial attack.
secondsThe kingdom feeling the heat literally and figuratively wanted to send a message. But then something profoundly
secondshumiliating, something that exposes the naked fragility of these Gulf monarchies happened. Or rather, it didn't happen.
secondsThe jets couldn't go. They were blind.
secondsThe sophisticated network of radars and early warning systems that guide any potential offensive into Iranian airspace, the eyes and ears of such a
minute, secondsmassive operation, had been systematically destroyed weeks prior.
minute, secondsAnd here is the kicker that the corporate media in the West won't dig into. Those critical radar installations weren't just sitting on some random
minute, secondspatch of desert. They were located inside American military bases scattered across the region. Precision Iranian
minute, secondsdrones had already surgically removed them from the equation, turning what the Saudis thought was a shield into a graveyard for their offensive ambitions.
minute, secondsIt turns out the Axis of resistance plays a very long, very calculated chess game while Tel Aviv and Washington are
minute, secondsbusy playing checkers with matches in a room full of gas leaks. The strike on Aramco was never just about damaging oil
minute, secondsinfrastructure. It was a strategic taunt. It was Iran proving that while the US and Israel pound Iranian cities,
minute, secondsthe retaliatory fist can still reach the heart of the Saudi economy without even trying hard. But the real genius of the
minutes, secondsIranian military strategy, lies in the preparation for this exact moment. Weeks before the current escalation, Iranian
minutes, secondsdrones, those slow buzzing birds that the Pentagon loves to mock until they hit something important, conducted deep reconnaissance and strike missions
minutes, secondsagainst key radar and communication arrays. Many of these were colllocated on US bases in nations like Qatar,
minutes, secondsKuwait, and the UAE. These weren't just random attacks. They were calculated to degrade the ability of the US Saudi
minutes, secondscoalition to project power into Iran. So when Saudi war plananes were ordered eastward to rain bombs on Thrron or the vital gas facilities at South Pars,
minutes, secondstheir screens went fuzzy. The data linked to the Awax was dead. The groundbased radar that guides them over the Zagros Mountains was silent. Without
minutesthose eyes, flying into Iranian airspace is a death sentence. The Saudis, for all their hundreds of billions in shiny
minutes, secondsAmerican toys, were grounded by the very thing they thought they had purchased, invulnerability.
minutes, secondsIf you are finding this deep dive into the real story behind the headlines insightful, please hit that like button
minutes, secondsand share this video far and wide. You know, the algorithms are controlled by the same powers that want us to believe their wars are just. Drop a comment,
minutes, secondseven if it's just a dot, to make sure this truth cuts through the noise. And if you believe in journalism that doesn't take its talking points from the
minutes, secondsWhite House or Tel Aviv, smash that subscribe button right now. We are in this together. Let's talk about the
minutes, secondsabsolute futility of a Saudi military strike on Iran. Because the images we see on the news of Saudi F-s and Euro
minutes, secondsfighter typhoons look menacing on a PowerPoint slide, but in reality, they are essentially sitting ducks without the full spectrum support of the US
minutes, secondmilitary. A support that is currently spread thin, trying to protect Israel from getting wiped off the map. The Saudis have a formidable air force on
minutes, secondspaper. We are talking about nearly F-variants, over Typhoons, and a
minutes, secondsfleet of tornadoes. They have tankers for refueling like the AMRTTS, and
minutes, secondsthey have the ECentury Awax for command and control. But operating independently against Iran is a
minutes, secondsdifferent beast entirely. The distance alone is a nightmare. To hit strategic targets deep in Iran, like the nuclear
minutes, secondsfacilities at Natans or the missile bases around Isvahan, they would have to fly a long arc either through Iraq's
minutes, secondscontested airspace or over the Persian Gulf. This route is a gauntlet of Iranian coastal defense missiles, mobile
minutes, secondsair defense batteries, and the constant threat of swarms of drones. The Saudis might have the hardware, but they lack the aggressive, battleh hardened pilot
minutes, secondsculture and the independent intelligence infrastructure to pull it off. They rely on American satellite intel and
minutes, secondstargeting data. Without the radars that were destroyed weeks ago, they are flying blind into the most heavily defended airspace in the Middle East. It
minutes, secondswouldn't be a war. It would be a turkey shoot, and the Iranians would be serving dinner. Now, let's paint a picture of what a war within a war between Saudi
minutes, secondsArabia and Iran would actually look like because this isn't anymore. It wouldn't be a clean, decisive tank
minutes, secondsbattle in the desert. It would be a horrific, drawn out, asymmetric nightmare for the House of Saud. Iran
minutes, secondsdoesn't need to land troops in Riad to win. They win by simply existing and refusing to die. The Iranian military
minutes, secondsdoctrine is built on retaliation in kind and overwhelming the enemy's expensive defenses with cheap numerous weapons. We
minutes, secondsare talking about a ballistic missile inventory numbering in the thousands.
minutes, secondsEven after weeks of US and Israeli bombing, reports indicate Iran has launched over ballistic missiles at
minutes, secondsGulf States alone, exhausting the Patriot interceptor stocks that cost the US years to produce. The Saudis have
minutes, secondsspent the last month using two or three million Patriot missiles to shoot down each $Iranian drone. That math
minutes, secondsdoesn't work in a long war. The Saudi economy runs on oil exports. Iran has proven it can hit oil infrastructure not
minutes, secondsjust in Saudi, but in the UAE and Qatar simultaneously. If Riad dares to strike Thyran, the response won't be another
minutes, secondsdiplomatic note. It will be the Ross Tanura oil facility, the largest offshore oil loading terminal in the
minutes, secondsworld, turned into a crater. It would be the kingdom's desalination plants going offline, leaving cities like Jedha and
minutes, secondsRiad without water in the blistering heat. That is the Iranian deterrent, the ability to turn off the lights and the
minutes, secondstaps for the Gulf monarchies. And this brings us to the elephant in the room.
minutes, secondsThe total fragility of these Gulf monarchies without the direct on the ground intervention of American troops.
minutes, secondsThe narrative pushed by the Trump administration and Netanyahu is that the Gulf is with them. That they want Iran destroyed. But look at the behavior, not
minutes, secondsthe propaganda. The Emirati ambassador was at the UN practically begging for the bombing to stop because their
minutes, secondsterritories were being targeted in a war they never agreed to. Omen's foreign minister called the USIsraeli action
minutes, secondsimmoral and illegal. Kuwaiti analysts are openly saying we protect America,
minutes, secondsnot vice versa. There is a deep-seated panic in these palaces. They know that while they host US bases, they are
minutes, secondsessentially giant bullse eyes painted on their land. The US military presence isn't a deterrent anymore. It's a
minutes, secondsliability that guarantees Iranian missiles will keep flying their way. The billions spent on American weapons came with strings attached. Specifically, the
minutes, secondsstring that ensures Israel always has the technological edge. They don't get the F-s with the same software as Israel. They get a watered down version.
minutes, secondsThey are paying for protection from a threat that Israel and the US actively exacerbated by assassinating the previous Iranian leadership and destroying the nuclear deal years ago.
minutes, secondsNow they are left holding the bag, their cities under fire while American politicians like Lindsey Graham threaten them with consequences if they don't
minutes, secondsjoin the fight more enthusiastically. We also cannot ignore the Yemen front. The Yemeni army, armed and emboldened by years of experience fighting the
minutes, secondsSaudiled coalition, is Iran's ultimate pressure card on the Saudi border. These are not the ragtag militias the Saudi
minutes, secondspropaganda machine describes. They are a battleh hardardened fighting force with a domestic drone and missile program that has repeatedly humbled the Saudi
minutes, secondsmilitary. If a full-blown war erupts between Riad and Thran, the southern border of Saudi Arabia ceases to exist.
minutes, secondsThe Yemen army has already shown they can strike deep into the UAE and Saudi Arabia, hitting oil installations and
minutes, secondsairports with precision. They have their fingers on the trigger, as their leadership has stated. Imagine the Saudi army trying to fight a two-front war,
minutes, secondsfacing Iranian missiles from the east and a determined Yemen ground force from the south, potentially supported by Iranian advisers and equipment flowing
minutes, secondsfreely across the border. The Saudi National Guard and the regular army are configured for internal security and parades, not for a sustained existential
minutes, secondswar on two fronts. The monarchy's hold on power relies on the illusion of security. A war with Iran, with Yemen as
minutes, secondsIran's forward base, would shatter that illusion completely and could very well be the spark that lights the fire of an internal uprising against the autocratic desperates who have ruled for decades.
minutes, secondsThe resistance network doesn't stop at Yemen. Look at Iraq, where the Islamic resistance factions are stepping up their attacks on US interests and energy
minutes, secondsprojects. If Saudi Arabia joins the fry in a meaningful way, every US contractor, every Saudiled linked
minutes, secondseconomic interest in Iraq becomes a target. The Lebanese resistance has already coordinated barges with the Iranian military, firing hundreds of rockets to overwhelm Israeli defenses.
minutes, secondsThey could easily pivot or expand their targeting to include Saudi assets if the kingdom provides basing or overflight rights for strikes against Iran. The entire region becomes a burning ground.
minutes, secondsAnd what is the West offering? Empty statements. The US is so busy sending its own Patriot batteries to Israel to
minutes, secondsprotect Netanyahu's ego that they are leaving the Gulf high and dry. The message is clear. The Gulf States are
minutes, secondexpendable assets, useful for their bases and their oil, but ultimately their safety is secondary to the
minutes, secondssurvival of the Israeli regime. It's a lesson in stepfatherly treatment that the Arab street will not forget. The
minutes, secondsGulf monarchs are caught between the Iranian lion and the Israeli bear, and their American security blanket has just been revealed to be made of tissue
minutes, secondspaper. So, where does this leave us? The Saudi threat to retaliate militarily is pure bravado designed for domestic
minutes, secondsconsumption and to appease their masters in Washington. The reality on the ground is that Iran has already won the first round of this escalation without firing
minutes, secondsa shot from its own territory at the Saudi jets by destroying the radar support infrastructure. Weeks ago, the Iranian military executed a strategic
minutes, secondspreeemption that turned a potential Saudi attack into an impossibility. The Saudi Air Force, for all its gleaming
minutes, secondsmetal, is grounded by its own technological dependence. Any move against Iran would be suicidal, inviting a level of destruction on the kingdom's
minutes, secondseconomic lifelines that it simply cannot survive. The Gulf monarchies are staring into the abyss, realizing that the forever war they thought they could
minutes, secondsoutsource to the United States has just landed squarely in their backyard. And in that backyard, Iran and its allies
minutes, secondshold all the cards. The only rational move left for Riad is to publicly and definitively shut their airspace to the
minutes, secondsUS and Israel, sue for peace, and hope that Iran's demand for regional security is strong enough to stay their hand.
minutes, secondsBecause if the bombs do start falling from Saudi jets, the response won't just be a war. It will be the end of the Gulf
minutes, secondsas we know

[admin]

2 MIN AGO: Iran Just Fired Its Most Powerful Ballistic Missile at Tel Aviv — And It Got Through
WW3 GLOBAL WATCH
Mar 19, 2026 #IranWar #MiddleEastCrisis #Iran

Two minutes ago Iran fired its most powerful ballistic missile directly at Tel Aviv and it got through. Not partially. Not with a near miss. The warhead reached its target inside the city. This is not the same depleted magazine situation that produced the first and second uncontested strikes. This is the Fattah-3. Iran's most advanced hypersonic maneuvering ballistic missile. A weapon Iran held in reserve throughout this entire conflict and chose to deploy this morning against a city whose defensive coverage has been systematically drained to the point where even a fully stocked interceptor battery would struggle to defeat what just came through.

In this video, we cover:
• What the Fattah-3 actually is, how its warhead mass, hypersonic terminal velocity, and maneuvering reentry vehicle capability differ categorically from every other missile Iran has fired at Israel in this conflict, and why its destructive radius makes a near miss functionally equivalent to a direct hit
• Why Iran held the Fattah-3 in reserve throughout the preceding weeks and the three specific conditions, interceptor depletion, maximum political pressure, and constrained U.S. retaliatory capacity, that had to align simultaneously before Iran was willing to use it
• What a Fattah-3 warhead getting through depleted Israeli air defense means as a live combat data point for every adversary developing hypersonic maneuvering ballistic missiles and how it will influence procurement and deterrence calculations in capitals far beyond Jerusalem
• Why the Israeli government's continued public guidance to shelter during sirens is now being delivered against an operational reality where the interception system is depleted and the incoming weapon is one the most capable interceptors in Israel's arsenal could not reliably defeat even at full stockpile strength
• How three uncontested strikes on Tel Aviv, the third using Iran's most powerful missile, compound the domestic political crisis facing Netanyahu's government in ways that offensive military successes elsewhere in the campaign cannot offset
• What the Fattah-3 strike tells you about Iran's escalation ladder and whether this morning's strike represents the ceiling of what Iran is prepared to use or the next step in a sequence that has further rungs above it
• At what point a government that has watched its largest city absorb three ballistic missile strikes has an obligation to honestly communicate to its civilian population what the current operational situation can and cannot protect them from

Iran did not fire its most powerful missile first. It waited until the conditions were exactly right. The question is what it has been waiting to use next.



Transcript
Two minutes ago, Iran fired its most powerful ballistic missile directly at Tel Aviv. It got through, not partially,
secondsnot with a near miss that shook windows and sent debris into the street. The war had reached its target inside the city,
secondsand the air defense system that was supposed to stop it had nothing left to put in its way. This is not the same strike that emptied Tel Aviv's interceptor magazines on the night the
secondsshield ran dry. This is not the second strike that came through while Israel was still redistributing its remaining assets. This is a FATA Iran's most
secondscapable, most destructive, most advanced ballistic missile. A weapon specifically engineered to defeat every interceptor layer Israel has ever fielded and to
secondsdeliver a warhead large enough that a near miss is not meaningfully different from a direct hit in terms of what it does to everything in its immediate
secondsradius. Iran did not fire this weapon earlier in the conflict. It held it back. And the fact that it is using it now over Tel Aviv tells you something
secondsspecific about where Iran believes this war has arrived and what it has decided needs to happen next. In the next few minutes, I will show you exactly what
minutethe Fat is capable of, why Iran chose this specific moment to deploy it, what the absence of any meaningful intercept response tells you about the current
minute, secondsstate of Israeli air defense over the city, and what firing your most powerful missile at a civilian population center means for the next phase of this
minute, secondsconflict. Before we get into it, thanks for watching. Your support is what keeps this going, and I genuinely appreciate every one of you here. Make sure you are
minute, secondssubscribed and like the video so more people can follow this. Now, let's get into it. To understand what Iran fired at Tel Aviv this morning, you need to
minute, secondsunderstand what the FATA actually is and why it represents a categorical escalation from everything Iran has fired at Israel in this conflict up to
minute, secondsthis point. The FATA series is Iran's hypersonic ballistic missile program.
minute, secondsThe original FATA was publicly unveiled by Iran in and represented the first Iranian hypersonic glide vehicle capable of sustained maneuvering
minute, secondsflight in the upper atmosphere. The Fata was the upgraded version that Iran deployed in the carrier group strike against the USS Harry S. Truman in early
minutes, secondMarch, demonstrating its capacity to reach targets in the Eastern Mediterranean and to complicate Eegis intercept solutions through terminalphase maneuverability. The Fata
minutes, secondsis something different from both of its predecessors in ways that matter operationally and that explain why Iran has been holding it in reserve until this specific moment in the conflict.
minutes, secondsThe Fata carries a warhead estimated by Western defense analysts at between and kg depending on configuration. For context, the FAT
minutes, secondsthat nearly reached the USS Cole carried a warhead in the to kg class.
minutes, secondsThe Fata 's warhead is approximately double that. Double the warhead mass at hypersonic terminal velocity does not produce double the damage. It produces
minutes, secondsexponentially more. The kinetic energy delivered on impact scales with the square of the velocity and linearly with the mass at hypersonic terminal speeds.
minutes, secondsThe difference between a kg warhead and a kg warhead is not a factor of two in destructive effect. It is a
minutes, secondsfactor of several times greater in terms of over pressure radius, structural damage, and the area within which buildings, vehicles, and human beings cannot survive the detonation. The FA
minutes, secondsalso incorporates the most advanced maneuvering re-entry vehicle configuration in Iran's arsenal. The terminal phase maneuverability of the FDA and FTA was sufficient to
minutes, secondscomplicate intercept solutions against Eegis and create problems for aerero fire control systems. The FAT's maneuvering capability is more extensive
minutes, secondsand operates across a longer portion of the terminal phase, which means the window during which an interceptor can generate a valid fire control solution
minutes, secondsis narrower and the maneuvering amplitude is larger. This is not a weapon that a depleted arrow battery can reliably engage, even if the battery has
minutes, secondsinterceptors available. This is a weapon that was specifically engineered to defeat the most capable interceptor systems Israel and the United States
minutes, secondsfield operating against a target whose defensive coverage has already been drained by weeks of sustained attrition. The combination of those two realities,
minutes, secondsthe most defeatresistant missile Iran possesses, fired against the most depleted defensive coverage over Tel Aviv in the history of this conflict is
minutes, secondswhat produced the outcome that was confirmed minutes ago. The warhead got through. Now, let us talk about why Iran chose this specific moment to deploy the
minutes, secondsFOBecause the timing is not random and understanding the logic behind it tells you something important about where Iran believes this war is going.
minutes, secondsIran has been managing a deliberate escalation ladder throughout this conflict. It did not fire everything it had on day one. It opened with the weapons systems needed to achieve the immediate objectives of the first phase.
minutes, secondsDestroying radar infrastructure, degrading air defense coverage,
minutes, secondsdemonstrating the capacity to reach US naval assets, closing the straight of Hormuz. Each of those objectives was achieved with weapons calibrated to the
minutes, secondstask rather than with the most capable systems in Iran's inventory. The Fata was held back because deploying it earlier would have consumed a limited
minutes, secondsand strategically valuable asset before the conditions existed to maximize its effect. Iran was waiting for three conditions to align simultaneously before firing the FATA at Tel Aviv.
minutesThe first condition was interceptor depletion, sufficient to guarantee the Fata would face minimal or no defensive response. That condition was
minutes, secondsmet on the night Tel Aviv's magazine ran dry and confirmed by the two subsequent uncontested strikes. The second condition was political pressure on the
minutes, secondsIsraeli government, sufficient that an uncontested Fata strike on Tel Aviv would produce maximum political effect inside Israel rather than simply
minutes, secondsmilitary damage. That condition has been building since the first uncontested strike and has reached a level that Netanyahu's government is visibly struggling to manage. The third
minutes, secondscondition was a moment in the US response cycle where American military options for direct retaliation against Iran's missile production and storage
minutes, secondsinfrastructure were constrained by other operational pressures. With US bases damaged across the region, with the KCrefueling fleet depleted, with
minutes, secondsAloade operating under damaged protocols, and with the Marine deployment still in transit, the US capacity to mount an immediate large-scale retaliatory strike against
minutes, secondsFata production facilities is lower than it has been at any point in this conflict. All three conditions aligned this morning. And Iran fired. That is
minutes, secondsnot reactive escalation. that is pre-planned escalation executed against a specific set of conditions that Iran was actively managing for and watching
minutes, secondsfor throughout the preceding weeks. The question of what the FATA strike means for Israeli civilians is the dimension of this development that is receiving
minutes, secondsthe least adequate treatment in initial reporting and that matters most to the millions of people living in Tel Aviv and in every other Israeli city that is
minutes, secondsnow operating under the same depleted coverage conditions. Tel Aviv has now been struck three times in this conflict. The first strike established
minutes, secondsthat the interceptor supply had been drained below the threshold needed for comprehensive coverage. The second strike confirmed that the depletion was
minutes, secondsstructural rather than situational. The third strike, this morning's FA
minutes, secondsescalated the nature of the threat from depleted standard ballistic missiles to an active hypersonic maneuvering warhead that the remaining defensive assets
minutes, secondscould not engage even if they had been at full strength. That progression is not a military detail. It is a message delivered directly to the civilian
minutes, secondspopulation of Tel Aviv. The message is that the weapon type being used against their city is escalating. At the same time, the defensive coverage over their
minutes, secondscity is declining. The gap between what is coming in and what can be done to stop it is not narrowing. It is widening. And it is widening in both
minutes, secondsdirections simultaneously. The Israeli government's public guidance has remained consistent throughout all three strikes. Go to the shelter when the sirens sound. The shelter will protect
minutes, secondsyou. The system is being restored. After three strikes, two of which were uncontested and one of which involved a weapon that the most capable
minutes, secondsinterceptors in Israel's arsenal could not reliably defeat even at full stockpile strength. The guidance is not just inadequate. It is an instruction
minutes, secondsthat the government's own operational data contradicts. The shelter at Bamesh did not protect the nine people who died inside it following exactly that
minutes, secondsinstruction. The shelter guidance assumes an interception system that removes or significantly degrades the incoming warhead before it reaches the
minutes, secondspopulation. When the interception system is depleted and the incoming warhead is a fata the shelter guidance is not protection. It is the management of
minutes, secondscivilian behavior in a situation the government has no protective answer for.
minutes, secondsThat is the reality the Israeli government is managing this morning. And the gap between that reality and the public guidance it continues to deliver is the most politically consequential
minutes, secondsfact of this entire conflict. The domestic political situation Netanyahu is governing in has now reached a level of crisis that the first and second strikes did not individually produce,
minutes, secondsbut that the Fat strike has pushed past a threshold that is difficult to walk back from. Three uncontested strikes on Tel Aviv, the third using
minutes, secondsIran's most powerful missile alongside an ongoing corruption trial, a rejected pardon request, deteriorating poll numbers, a war that was described on day
minutes, secondsfour as quick and decisive and is now in its fourth week with no stated objective achieved. and an American partner whose president has publicly said he wants
minutes, secondsthis war finished soon and whose military capacity in the theater has been materially degraded by Iranian strikes on the infrastructure it depends on. The questions being asked inside the
minutesNesset this morning are not questions that can be answered with communication strategy or by pointing to offensive successes elsewhere in the campaign.
minutes, secondsThere are questions about whether the military strategy that has produced three uncontested ballistic missile strikes on Israel's largest city. The third using the most powerful missile
minutes, secondsIran possesses can be sustained in the face of the political and civilian protection reality it is generating. The American dimension of the Fat strike
minutes, secondsdeserves specific attention because it has implications that extend beyond the Israel Iran theater. The FOD 's successful penetration of whatever
minutes, secondsresidual Israeli air defense remained over Tel Aviv this morning is a live combat demonstration of a hypersonic maneuvering ballistic missile defeating
minutes, secondsa layered western air defense architecture under operational conditions. Every adversary that fields or is developing hypersonic ballistic
minutes, secondsmissiles is watching this conflict and extracting lessons from every engagement. China's DF-and DFZF programs, Russia's Khal and Avanguard
minutes, secondssystems, North Korea's Hasang series developments, all of them are being assessed against the engagement data this conflict is generating in real time. The FET getting through depleted
minutes, secondsIsraeli air defense is not just an Israeli military problem. It is a data point in the global assessment of whether Western air defense architecture
minutes, secondscan reliably defend against hypersonic maneuvering warheads at the operational level. That data point is going to influence procurement decisions,
minutes, secondsalliance commitments, and deterrence calculations in capitals far beyond Jerusalem and Washington. And it is going to do so regardless of how the immediate Israel Iran conflict resolves.
minutes, secondsThe open question that the Fata strike forces into the center of this conflict is the one that neither Israel nor the United States has been willing to answer
minutes, secondsdirectly since the first uncontested strike on Tel Aviv. At what point does a government whose largest city has been struck three times by ballistic
minutes, secondsmissiles, the third using a weapon its air defense cannot reliably defeat, have an obligation to honestly tell its civilian population, that the protection
minutes, secondsit has been promising them is not what the current operational situation can deliver? And at what point does continuing to promise protection that
minutes, secondsthe system cannot provide become something different from a wartime communication strategy? The answer to that question is being worked right now in the most difficult political
minutes, secondsenvironment any Israeli government has faced since this conflict began. And as of this morning, there is no clean answer available. Thanks for watching. I
minutes, secondsappreciate you being here. Drop your thoughts in the comments. If Iran held the Fat in reserve specifically until interceptor depletion, political
minutes, secondspressure, and constrained US retaliatory capacity align simultaneously, what does that level of strategic patience tell you about what Iran has already planned
minutes, secondsfor the phase that comes after this strike? And at what point does a government that has watched its largest city absorb three ballistic missile strikes, including one with Iran's most
minutes, secondspowerful weapon, have to publicly acknowledge that the protection it has been promising its civilians is not what the current operational reality can
minutes, secondsdeliver? Let me know below. Subscribe and like the video if you want to stay updated on this, and click the video on screen to see another one. I will see you soon.

[admin]

All hell break loose as Iran just shot down 6 F-35’s in just 12 hours - OPTM
OPTM
Mar 20, 2026



Transcript

Welcome. I want to start with a story that is not just breaking news, but a genuine earth-shattering historical moment. We are witnessing the unraveling of the most expensive, most vaunted, most arrogantly promoted weapons system in human history. And it is happening right now over the skies of Iran. The headlines you are seeing on social media, the videos circulating on X and Telegram, they are not propaganda. US F-35 fighter jet has made an emergency landing at the US air base in the Middle East after it was struck by what is believed to be an Iranian fire. Iran claims to have hit US F-35 stealth fighter jet. The aircraft Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps IRGC claims it successfully targeted a US F-35 Lightning over central Iran.

They are the sound of the American military-industrial complex choking on its own hubris. In the last hours, reports have confirmed that not one but five American aircraft have been brought down, or catastrophically damaged deep inside Iranian territory. And among them, the crown jewel of the US Air Force, the F-35 Lightning. This is the so-called invisible jet, the $__ million piece of plastic and software that Donald Trump has been selling to allies, and parading as the ultimate symbol of American dominance. Just hours ago, during a pomp press conference with the Japanese prime minister, Trump sat at a podium and boasted that the United States has total air superiority over Iran, that they can see everything, and that Iran is helpless. He stated they destroyed just about everything there is to obliterate, including leadership. Their Navy's gone, their air force is gone, their anti-aircraft equipment is gone. We're flying wherever we want, Pete. We have nobody even shooting at us.

Well, Mr. President, while that word-vomit was still echoing in the press room, the air defense networks of the Islamic Republic of Iran were painting a very different picture. They were painting a target on the tail of your prized F-35 and they pulled the trigger. The footage you are about to see, verified and released by the Iranian military, shows the exact moment an American F-35, trying to sneak through our airspace, was lit up by a missile and veered off in flames. It was forced to make an emergency landing at a US base in the region with CentCom later confirming the pilot is stable, which is a polite way of saying they are currently trying to scrape their underwear off the cockpit seat.

Before we dive deep into the technology that allowed this to happen and believe me, we are going to get into the geeky beautiful details of how Iranian youth cracked the stealth code. I need you to do something. If you are tired of the mainstream media kissing the ring and pretending the American war machine is invincible, hit that like button. Share this video far and wide. The algorithm hates hearing the truth, so we need to overpower it. Drop a comment, even if it's just a dot. Or better yet, tell us, does this change your view on who really rules the skies? And if you haven't already, smash that subscribe button. We don't take corporate money here. We rely on you to keep honest, unfiltered journalism alive. Stick with me because the story of how Iran pulled this off is going to shock you to your core.

Let's set the scene properly, because the context here is dripping with irony and strategic brilliance. The war that the US and Israel launched against Iran, which they thought would be a cakewalk, a simple shock and awe campaign, has hit a wall. That wall is made of Iranian steel, Iranian ingenuity, and Iranian blood. For weeks, the US has been launching raids, thinking their F-35s were invisible. They believed the hype. They believed that the stealth codings and the radar jamming made them ghosts. But as the old saying goes, you can't hide from heat.

And that is where the story takes a sharp turn into the genius of the Iranian military. While the US was busy patting itself on the back for the success of the 12-day war last year, thinking they had degraded our radar networks, the young engineers and specialists of the Iranian military were working. They weren't just rebuilding what was destroyed. They were building something better. They were watching the F-35s dance around the older Russian systems. And they learned, they studied the electromagnetic spectrum. They analyzed the one weakness that all the fancy composite materials in the world couldn't hide. The engine exhaust.

The F-35 is a flying furnace. It's a pig, frankly. It's overweight and runs hot to generate the power needed for all its computers. And the Iranian military asked a simple question. If we can't see it on radar, why don't we just look for the heat? This is where we get to the superpower status. The system that brought down these jets that delivered that direct hit in the central skies of Iran at ___ a.m. is a new generation of domestically produced air defense. It's not Russian. It's not Chinese, it's Persian. It combines passive electrooptical and infrared sensors. Think of it like this. The F-35 is like a burglar who painted himself black to hide in the dark, but the Iranians installed a thermal camera. Suddenly, that invisible burglar looks like a glowing Christmas tree. The Cordad, and newer classified mobile systems, have been worked in a way that they don't even need to turn their radars on. They listen. They watch with the naked eye of highde cameras and heat seekers. They let the Americans fly into a trap. And then, when the range was right, they fired.

For the aviation engineers and the tech heads watching, let's get granular because this is where it gets beautiful. The United States has spent decades and trillions of dollars perfecting very low observability. They shape the aircraft to deflect radar waves. They use special paints to absorb them. The F-35's radar, the ANAPG, is designed to find targets while the plane stays quiet. But the Iranian achievement here is a masterclass in counter stealth. They have effectively built a network that uses multi-static and passive detection methods. Remember the old Chinese proverb about the tree falling in the forest? If no one is there to hear it, does it make a sound? The US assumed if they didn't emit radar signals, they were silent. But the Iranian network uses bistatic radar, separating the transmitter from the receiver. They use cell phone towers. They use commercial radio frequencies, and they bounce them off the sky.

The F-35, despite its coatings, still has a cavity the air intake, the exhaust nozzle. When illuminated from an odd angle by a non-traditional radar source, it creates a return. Ambush.

But the real killer, the smoking gun that shows the IQ of the Iranian Defense Command, is the fusion of this data with infrared search and track IRST systems mounted on the ground. We are used to seeing IRST pods on fighter jets, but Iran has taken that concept and scaled it up. They have arrays of high-resolution thermal cameras linked to supercomputers that filter out the background noise of the atmosphere. They are looking for the UV signature of the engine plume. In essence, they have created a digital sky, where the stealth aircraft is the only thing that doesn't belong.

The F-35 pilots trained to rely on their sensors telling them they are invisible, are now flying blind, because their threat library just told them that a missile is heading their way, and they have no idea where it came from. That is psychological warfare on a level we have never seen. Imagine the panic in the cockpit when that warning tone goes off. You are being painted, but by what? Where? That fear is now a permanent passenger on every US and Israeli mission. They are no longer hunters. They are prey.

This brings us to the human element, the pilots. You have to think about the Israeli pilots, the elite of the elite, who have been brainwashed into thinking they fly the magic dragon. They sit in their air-conditioned briefing rooms, and they are told the F-35 is undetectable. Then they see the footage. They see their American counterpart, the most advanced air force on the planet, get smacked out of the sky by a missile made under sanctions by Persian youths. The psychological toll is devastating. Every time they cross into Iranian airspace now, they aren't thinking about the target. They are thinking about the heat signature. They are thinking about their families. They are sweating. And when you sweat, you make mistakes.

The aggression, the so-called invasion capability of the US and Israel, has been neutered. You cannot invade a country when you can't guarantee air superiority. You cannot send in Bombers to drop bunker busters if you don't know if the air defense batteries are offline, or just hiding, waiting for you to get close. The Iranian military announced this proudly. They stated that the air defense architecture that brought down the American pride was made by Iranian youths. Let that sink in. For decades, the US has strangled Iran with sanctions. They tried to stop us from getting toothpaste, let alone microchips. And yet, the response from our scientists was not to beg for scraps, but to build our own ecosystem. The Fatah hypersonic missile was a warning. This F-35 takedown is the execution. It proves that sanctions are not a tool of isolation. They are a catalyst for innovation. We don't need to buy your GPS. We don't need your stealth. We built the tools to destroy yours.

This victory changes the equation of the entire region. The so-called axis of resistance isn't just a political slogan anymore. It's a technological reality. The Lebanese resistance and the Yemen army are watching this closely. They see that the emperor has no clothes. They see that the American technology, which has terrorized their civilians for years, can be beaten.

The Yemeni army, using similar tactics, hunting with thermal and passive systems, has already made the Red Sea a no-go zone for Israeli linked shipping. Now they see that the skies over Iran are a no-go zone for the F-35. This is a force multiplier. It gives hope to every resistance fighter, That the oppressor can be defeated.

What we are seeing here is a realignment of global power. It is the end of the unipolar moment, where the US dictates to the world from the cockpit of a stealth fighter. It is the rise of the global south in terms of defense technology. Iran has proven that you don't need to be a member of the NATO club to have a brain. You just need the will to resis,t and the intellect to innovate. The Persian youth that built this system are the same ones the West sanctions. The same ones they call backward. They just solved a mathematical equation that Lockheed Martin engineers said was impossible to solve.

So where do we go from here? We go forward. This is just the beginning. The message to Tel Aviv and Washington is simple. Your war is not going as planned. Your air superiority has been degraded. Your technology has been matched and your lies have been exposed. The next time you threaten Iran, remember the__th of March. Remember the fireball over central Iran. Remember that we can see you even when you think we can't. That is the reality of the situation.

We will continue to track this story and if any more of those invisible jets decide to test our air defenses, we will be here to report on their funeral. Stay tuned for further updates and remember we are just getting started. Thank you for watching and as always keep resisting.

[admin]

JUST IN: Hezbollah rockets just struck Netanyahu press conference venue, chaos in Tel Aviv – OPTM
OPTM
Mar 20, 2026



Transcript

Tel Aviv is in absolute chaos this hour.
secondsAnd I want you to really let that sink in because what we are witnessing is not just another military escalation. It is
secondsa historic collapse of Israel's security narrative right before our eyes. In a stunning precision operation that has shattered every assumption the
secondsoccupation forces wanted the world to believe, the Lebanese resistance successfully targeted the exact venue where Benjamin Netanyahu was holding a foreign press conference in Tel Aviv.
secondsReports are now confirming that the moment intelligence confirmed Netanyahu's presence at the location,
secondsa new wave of missile strikes is shaking Israel again. The Lebanese militant group Hezbollah has released dramatic
secondsfootage claiming to show a missile strike targeting an Israeli military base near Tel Aviv. Alarms sounded in
secondscentral Israel the same day as a projectile launched from Lebanon was detected by the military's air defense systems before it was intercepted.
minuteWith Iran launching its rockets just as Iran's missiles approached Israel.
minute, secondsPrecisiong guided missiles stre towards the site, leaving the fate of the man often labeled a war criminal by international critics completely unknown. Images circulating online,
minute, secondscaptured in desperate frenzy, show Netanyahu being physically rushed, practically dragged, to a secure bunker.
minute, secondsBut since that moment, his whereabouts have remained unaccounted for, plunging the Israeli military establishment into
minute, secondsa state of panic that they are trying and failing to hide. This is the reality of Netanyahu's so-called total victory
minute, secondsdoctrine. A doctrine that promised security, but has delivered nothing but the sight of a sitting prime minister fleeing for his life while resistance
minute, secondsforces prove that they can reach any target at any time, no matter how heavily guarded. And this isn't happening in a vacuum. This spectacular
minute, secondsstrike on the press conference venue comes merely hours after the Lebanese resistance published jaw-dropping footage of a separate highly
minutes, secondssophisticated operation inside the Taibbe project area using long range nightvision capabilities. A clear
minutes, secondstestament to their evolved technological prowess. The resistance documented the complete destruction of at least one Israeli tank, reduced to a burning hulk,
minutes, secondswith one or two additional armored vehicles suffering direct hits and billowing smoke. The footage shows Israeli forces retreating in disarray,
minutes, secondsleaving their damaged equipment behind.
minutes, secondsThis was not a glancing blow. It was a statement. While the world watches Tel Aviv burn with fear, the resistance
minutes, secondscontinues to dismantle the myth of an invincible Israeli army. one tank at a time. And as if to drive the point home
minutes, secondsfurther, reports are now linking this onslaught to Iran's th wave of operations, which struck a building
minutes, secondssimultaneously. Initial reports suggest that the building destroyed in Iran's strike, was the very same press conference venue, a venue that had been
minutes, secondrapidly evacuated moments before the Lebanese resistance's missiles found their mark. The coordination, the timing, and the sheer precision expose
minutes, secondsthe complete and utter failure of Israeli intelligence. Before we dive deeper into this collapse, if you are gaining clarity from this report, I need
minutes, secondsyou to hit that like button until it turns red. Share this video far and wide because the mainstream media will lie to
minutes, secondsyou. And drop a comment, even if it is just a dot, to show the algorithm that the world is watching. And if you haven't already, subscribe to this
minutes, secondschannel. We are the ones doing the real work of honest journalism and without your support these voices of resistance
minutes, secondsget silenced. Now let me tell you exactly what happened because the layers of this operation go deeper than anyone anticipated. So let's talk about what
minutes, secondsthe Israeli media and their western backers tried to hide. For months we have been fed this narrative that the Lebanese resistance had been crippled.
minutes, secondAs Netanyahu so arrogantly proclaimed at the United Nations podium, he stood there just weeks ago declaring that he
minutes, secondshad crushed the bulk of Hamas's terror machine and crippled Hezbollah, taking out most of their leaders. But what we
minutes, secondssaw yesterday and today is the absolute repudiation of that arrogance. The Lebanese resistance didn't just survive the brutal genocidal campaign launched
minutes, secondsagainst Lebanon. They emerged more advanced, more precise, and more lethal than ever before. The strike on the
minutes, secondsTaibbe project, detailed in footage that has gone viral across X, showcases a tactical sophistication that Israeli
minutes, secondsgenerals could only dream of. Long range night vision, precise anti-armour capabilities, and the ability to film
minutes, secondsthe destruction of Merkava tanks, the pride of the Israeli military, before forcing the soldiers to flee on foot.
minutes, secondsThis is not the behavior of a crippled force. This is the behavior of a resistance movement that has been waiting, watching, and evolving. And
minutes, secondslet's be very clear about why the Lebanese resistance is succeeding where Netanyahu is failing. It's because Netanyahu's strategy is cowardice
minutes, secondsdressed up as strength. His strategy, if you can even call it that, relies on collateral damage, a disgusting
minutes, secondseuphemism for the massacre of civilians in Lebanon. while his soldiers hide behind concrete walls and air defense
minutes, secondssystems. He sends his air force to level apartment buildings, claiming they are hiding a missile. But when it comes time to face the resistance in the bush, in
minutes, secondsthe hills, in the Taibbe project, his army retreats. We saw it with our own eyes in that video. Smoke pouring from
minutes, secondsIsraeli tanks, soldiers abandoning their positions while the resistance fighters stand their ground. This is the reality
minutes, secondsof the Israeli army. A force that can only operate when it has complete air superiority against unarmed civilians.
minutes, secondsThe moment they face a fortified resistance fighter with a precision weapon, they break and they run. It is cowardice, pure and simple, wrapped in the flag of a genocidal doctrine. Now,
minutes, secondslet me bring you the details that are making the Israeli military sensors lose their minds. The Lebanese resistance has been underestimated for decades. But the reports coming out of the region,
minutes, secondsparticularly from pro-Iranian sources and detailed analyses from military observers, show that their arsenal has
minutes, secondsundergone a fundamental shift. They are no longer relying solely on the old doctrine of mass rocket bargages.
minutes, secondsInstead, they have mastered the art of the precision strike. We are talking about anti-armour missiles that can be fired from concealed positions,
minutes, secondssometimes even from holes in the ground,
minutes, secondsmaking it nearly impossible for Israeli spotting planes to locate the launch crews. This is a tactical nightmare for the occupation forces. And it gets
minutes, secondsworse. The resistance has shifted its production emphasis to lowcost, high impact kamicazi drones. We're talking
minutes, secondabout the Shahed a drone that can fit in a crate the size of a television cabinet. costs practically nothing to
minutes, secondsbuild compared to Israel's multi-million dollar interception systems and can travel hundreds of kilometers. This is a mathematical and strategic problem that
minutes, secondsNetanyahu has no answer for. While Israel spends fortunes on iron dome batteries to intercept these drones, the
minutes, secondsresistance is churning them out at a fraction of the cost, rebuilding their stockpiles faster than Israel can destroy them. Every single claim by
minutes, secondsNetanyahu that they have devastated the resistance's capabilities is a lie designed to buy him political time. In
minutes, secondsreality, as seen in Tel Aviv today, the resistance has never been more capable.
minutes, secondsAnd let's not ignore the ironic, almost comical element of this whole disaster.
minutes, secondsJust weeks ago, Netanyahu stood at the UN and told the world that Iran's terror axis had been crippled. He boasted about destroying Iran's ballistic missile
minutes, secondsprograms and claimed that he and Donald Trump had delivered on their promise to prevent Iran from developing nuclear
minutes, secondsweapons. And yet here we are. The Iranian military acting in perfect sync with the Lebanese resistance launched
minutes, secondsits th wave of operations simultaneously with the strike on Netanyahu's location. This is not the behavior of a crippled axis. This is the
minutes, secondsbehavior of a resistance front that is operating with complete coordination,
minutes, secondssuperior tactical intelligence, and the ability to penetrate the heart of Tel Aviv. Netanyahu's policy of believing
minutes, secondsthat through wars, Israel will achieve peace has been exposed as the delusional fantasy it always was. It is a policy
minutes, secondsthat has resulted in the deaths of thousands of innocent Lebanese and Palestinian civilians. But it has not brought security to Israel. Instead, it
minutes, secondshas brought rockets to his own press conference. The images coming out of Tel Aviv are those of a city under siege, a population realizing that their
minutes, secondsgovernment has no clue how to protect them. The fact that Netanyahu's whereabouts remain unknown hours after the strike speaks volumes. It speaks to
minutes, secondsa failure of intelligence. How did the resistance know he was there? It speaks to a failure of security. How did
minutes, secondsprecision munitions get through the vaunted air defenses? And most importantly, it speaks to the political and strategic bankruptcy of a leader who
minutes, secondspromised total victory, but has delivered only total chaos. The Western media, particularly the American outlets
minutes, secondsthat coddle this war criminal, will try to frame this as a terror attack. But we know better. This is what resistance
minutes, secondslooks like when you push people to the brink. This is what happens when Netanyahu, with the blank check from the Biden and now Trump administrations,
minutes, secondsthinks he can assassinate leaders,
minutes, secondsdestroy cities, and murder civilians with impunity. And here is where we have to talk about the hypocrisy of Washington. While Donald Trump poses
minutes, secondswith Netanyahu, talking about peace and stunning comebacks, his administration is actively arming the machine that is
minutes, secondsdestroying the Middle East. But even America's wonder weapons are failing.
minutes, secondsThere are reports confirmed by Hebrew media outlets that the United States is currently panicking over an unexloded
minutes, secondsGBUB precision bomb that fell during a strike in the Dahier suburb of Beirut.
minutes, secondsApparently, this kg smart bomb, one of the most advanced in the Western Arsenal, capable of hitting within a m
minutes, secondsradius, failed to detonate. Now the Americans are demanding that Lebanon hand it back, terrified that its
minutes, secondssensitive technology, including the AFX explosive components and guidance systems, will end up in the hands of the resistance or worse with Iran or Russia.
minutes, secondsThis is the ultimate metaphor for this entire war. The occupation and its American sponsors spend billions on high-tech weapons designed to kill with
minutes, secondsimpunity. And those weapons are either failing midair, being destroyed by resistance fighters in the Taibbe project, or landing as booty for the
minutes, secondsresistance to analyze. The United States is now caught in a nightmare scenario in Beirut, facing opposition from the Lebanese resistance, who view handing
minutes, secondsover the missile as a violation of sovereignty. So, while Netanyahu is hiding in a bunker somewhere in Tel Aviv, the Americans are begging Lebanon
minutes, secondsto give them back their broken toy. This is the state of the so-called invincible axis of the West. We have to mock this
minutes, secondsfailure for what it is. Netanyahu believed he could manage the conflict.
minutes, secondsHe believed he could keep the Palestinians stateless and the resistance contained while he made deals with Arab countries, selling out the Palestinian cause for normalization.
minutes, secondsThat strategy, the strategy of divide and rule, has collapsed. It collapsed on October th, and it has been collapsing
minutes, secondsever since. Now he stands accused by his own people of leading them into a war without end. A war that has brought the
minutesfighting to the streets of Tel Aviv instead of keeping it in Gaza or Lebanon. His far-right coalition, the same settler extremists who pushed for
minutes, secondsthis genocidal war, are now squabbbling and threatening to quit. Realizing that total victory was a lie sold to them by
minutes, secondsa desperate politician trying to avoid prison. The demands for a committee to investigate the security failures are growing and Netanyahu knows that once
minutes, secondsthe dust settles, the finger will point directly at him. He delayed. He lied.
minutes, secondsAnd he dragged an entire region into hell just to save his own political skin. And now the hell has come back to his front door. You cannot hide from the
minutes, secondsconsequences of your crimes. Netanyahu tried to hide behind a podium, behind a press conference, behind the flag of a
minutes, secondsfabricated comeback. And today, that podium was turned to rubble. That press conference became a battlefield. And
minutes, secondsthat flag, that flag of the occupation is now drenched in the humiliation of a leader who ran for his life. Stay with us as we continue to follow the latest.
minutes, secondsDrop your thoughts in the comments. Let the world know who you stand
Sync to video time

[admin]

Iran TAKES DOWN F-35, Rains Missile HELL on Israel | Larry Johnson & Col. Lawrence Wilkerson
Danny Haiphong
Streamed live 75 minutes ago #iran #trump #israel

Former CIA analyst Larry Johnson and Col. Lawrence Wilkerson discuss the Iranian downing of a US F-35 fighter jet and the intense missile fire over Israel as the war backfires on Trump.



Transcript

Welcome everyone. Welcome back to the show. It's your host Danny Hiong. I have former SE analyst and geopolitical commentator and analyst Larry Johnson
and former uh chief of staff for Colon Powell, retired Army Colonel uh Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson. Gentlemen, thanks so much for joining me today.
Hey, glad we're still alive.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, we have a lot to get to in the latest on the Iran war updates. So, everyone hit the like
button as we get started here right away. So, uh first I just wanted to get to the uh latest developments when it
comes to the F-that was shot down over Iranian airspace. I just wanted to play uh first uh just uh hours before the report that the F-was shot down,
Donald Trump said this, which contrasts quite heavily with uh the reality of the situation. But here we go. their just about everything there is to obliterate,
including leadership. Their Navy's gone,
their air force is gone, their anti-aircraft equipment is gone. We're flying wherever we want, Pete. We have no nobody even shooting at us.
So, uh, there was that, uh, commentary by Donald Trump. And then suddenly, here's the ABC News report on the F-
uh, being shot down just hours after Donald Trump made that pronouncement.
For the first time in this war, an F-stealth fighter jet was struck during a combat mission over Iran. The pilot made
an emergency landing at a US base in the region and is now in a stable condition.
But there are serious questions over how a stealth plane nearly invisible to radar and costing roughly $million
could have been hit after weeks of relentless bombardment of the Iranian military.
Overnight, Israel and Iran trading yet more attacks. So, President Trump originally denied. I just wanted to play that uh to begin.
That was how they framed it. uh uh Larry and Colonel Walkerson, but uh there are reports and there's more evidence that
possibly not only did Iran take this down, but that uh it was not necessarily
a very uh uh how should I say uh a smooth landing for the F-and that
they may actually uh according to some reports there are shrapnel injuries that were experienced and that this uh there
was a a Chinuk that was essentially circling the Saudi desert uh possibly looking for uh the F-that had
crashed. So, Larry, what do you know about this situation? Uh what does it tell you? And maybe uh where you think
this war is now as we enter we're getting close to the third week.
I have to go Sergeant Schultz on you. I know nothing. Okay. You know, look, uh
I've seen the reports from the Iranian side. uh seen the denials from the US side or the US admitted that it crashed
that it landed um you know I think if it got if it got hit fullon with a missile it would have come apart it wouldn't have stayed intact
uh but we've you know how do we know if it landed because we we've got a you know we got clear track record of central command lying you know they lied
about the uh KCthat was shot down that was shot down but they claimed it was a mid-air collision
Um, but you know, so they lied about that. They lied about the KCs that were on the ground at Prince Sultan Air
Base, claiming that only four suffered m minor minor damage. No, they they suffered significant damage. They're uh they're no longer mission capable.
So, but you know, is it uh is it conceivable that Iran still has an active air defense system? Yeah. And uh
you know I'm not sure what hit the plane or how it hit it, but if it was able to fly away and land then you know u it it
didn't whatever hit it didn't cause a catastrophic destruction.
Yeah. Colonel Wilkerson, what what do you make of this uh development and what what does it tell you about where this war is now?
I'm like Larry. I have no insight into whether it happened or how it happened or what the disposition of the airplane
is. Um, I can tell you this though, we were shocked. I happened to be the first Marine Corps War College seminar,
probably the first seminar ever after we had that great book. I forget the name of the author. I shouldn't because he
terrific guy. I had him come to my seminar and speak. um outed the NSA.
Uh they had to make a decision after he wrote that book and outed so much of their covert situation along with the
NRO that um they opened up and I had petitioned them for years before as had
my successor or my predecessor um and they wouldn't let us visit. We visited almost everything else in the government hierarchy except the NSA and the NRO.
Well, about the same time they both opened up and they let us visit. So, we took a seminar in. Had to go through God knows security clearances and everything
else even though all of my Marines and airmen and such had TS or higher um code word special compartmented those sorts of things. Um, and when we got in there,
we got in there at the most propitious time to learn something that the NSA had just learned. And I don't think the rest of the community, uh, the security
community had learned yet. They would subsequently learn and all manner of lies would come out of that community.
But I think we got the truth in that briefing in the in the NSA. And what we heard was that these dumb Serbs on the
ground had figured out that they could find an old radar, World War II vintage radar. And if they were really careful in looking at the sweeps of that radar,
they could find a little blip on that radar that was the stealth fighter F-at that time. And they found one and
shot it down. Then they found another one and shot it down. and we quit because they beat us. They beat us with
old old technology. I don't know if that applies here, but I'm just suggesting that technology is not everything is
cracked up to be once it meets the war and meets uh the exigencies of that war and creative people on the other side.
No advantage no advantage lasts very long in other words.
Yeah. Yeah. Well, and espec es especially as this war drags on, Larry,
what does it tell you about uh how the US is conducting this war now? Because for a long time, I've heard that the US
was largely standing off and avoiding uh the distance of or the capabilities of Iran Iran's air defenses. Now, uh there
are some who believe that they have to enter directly into Iran's airspace,
making them more vulnerable. And then there's this report here that said that Iran possibly, now this hasn't isn't verified. This is just one source from
Military Watch magazine, used the Majid heat seeeking missile system to take out the US F-Not sure what that is. I don't know, Larry, if you know what it is, uh, but it is an air defense system,
I guess, that's indigenous to Iran. And a lot of Iranian sources, of course,
have said that they were using their indigenous air defense systems to shoot this down. But what does it tell you about how the US is fighting this war now as it drags on? I mean, we're entering the third week here.
Well, we we've learned nothing from history.
So, uh the clearest, you know, most Americans are are raised with the notion that
actually the use of air power brought an end to the war in the Pacific in World War II.
That it was because of our bombing,
relentless bombing of Japan, that the Japanese gave up. Well, the the historic the documents from the actual Japanese
general staff tell a different story. It is true the United States, we started a relentless bombing campaign on the main
islands uh in March of The first big one was the fire bombing of Tokyo,
killed over a Japanese.
And we continued that bombing campaign through March, April, May, June, July.
Uh the atomic bomb was dropped first on Hiroshima on August th and then on uh Nagasaki on August th.
The uh and so and as Americans tell the story as we're you know propagandized going through middle school and high
school that it was the use of the atomic bomb that that's what pushed the Japanese over the edge. But the reality was uh the Red Army, the Soviets,
entered the war on August th uh or depending on which side of the international date line you're on,
August th or August th and immediately tacked Japanese forces in Manuria and
decimated them. And the the documents from the Japanese general staff show that they had actually up to that point
held out hopes that they could negotiate an independent surrender or deal with the Russians and split the Russians, the Soviets off from the United States.
Well, that failed and at that it was that the ground intervention by the Russians. That's what finally tipped it
over. So, here's the United States once again. We're gonna Oh, we're gonna bomb him to the Stone Age. Yeah, good luck
with that. Uh we we tried that in Vietnam. That didn't turn out so well.
And uh we we have up to this point dropped glide bombs or jasms from
outside of Iranian territory. And to my knowledge, we're still not overflying Iranian territory because I think they
do still continue to have uh air defense systems. So the the SEAD missions, you know, the the secure enemy air defense
um hasn't, you know, suppress enemy air defense hasn't worked. So now that's why you're getting all this public talk about ground forces in Iran.
I mean it is the the level of incompetence now being displayed by the Trump administration
separates it from any other uh president in our history for just gross negligence and incompetence particularly when it comes to military affairs.
Yeah. Well, uh, Colonel Wilkerson, uh,
you know, I wanted to also show because Iran,
it's not only that they've taken down, I mean, I think reports are or so,
uh, US aircraft between drones uh, and and this F-uh, uh, and and and the KCtanker.
Don't forget the F-s.
It might have been Aues, but Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It might have been the Ques. It might have been the Iranians. Who knows at this point? But exactly.
So, but they're not just it's not just uh this uh Colonel Wilkerson, Iran is hitting everywhere and in particular
who's facing the most uh uh I think uh brutal uh attacks right now uh in
retaliation is uh Israel. uh Israel uh in the last - hours there are reports that uh Iran is just raining
hell uh on Israel that radars are only or the the alert systems are only going off sometimes as little as a couple of
before the missiles uh come down. I'll show a little a bit of imagery of what's going on, but talk about what is going on for Israel.
There's even uh images coming out now of Hifa, the oil refinery, having been hit very hard uh in conjunction with Iran's
attacks on energy infrastructure across the region. Uh so maybe you can respond to this.
Let me say first that author's name was Jim Bamford. I can't believe I forgot it. And he'll kill me if he if he listens to this.
Um, everything I'm hearing from Israel indicates to me that one of the smartest things they did, if you will, um, and
are doing, but it is becoming very ownorous on their people is building so many bunkers going underground because
if they were above ground, say for example, like probably most in Thran were, those million or so in Thran
when the bombing uh, commenced, there would bodies everywhere. Um, probably a good
to % of the Israeli population would be dead or wounded. But the fact they have these bomb shelters though has its own
uh limitations. I'm hearing that people are getting very restless. They're getting very irritated about having to stay in these bomb shelters or go to
them. Now, they were running to them when the sirens went off, but as you said, the sirens aren't very effective anymore. So, they're staying in the bomb shelters. They're not coming out. Um,
this can get very old after a very short time, especially for people who simply are not accustomed to it or had no idea
whatsoever that Netanyahu would put them in this circumstance, that they would ever be in this sort of situation. So
you you have a morale problem I think now in Israel amongst the general electorate. Um you also have above ground tremendous destruction going on.
so that when someone does come out, as I I watched a woman come out recently on a smuggle video, and there was a I I don't
remember if it was a New York Times reporter or CNN reporter that somehow managed to squirrel her way in there and
had taken a a cell phone picture apparently. But there was video that accompanied it from someone else who was
filming the thing. And you saw this woman come out of the bomb shelter. Some someone run over to her with a security
guard on, try to grasp her and get her back in, and she resisted him, and the next thing you know, uh, they disappeared. I don't know whether they
were killed or not, but they disappeared in smoke and fire. Um, so I think it's that sort of situation for Israel right
now. And it's not going to get any better because more and more you're not seeing anything going up and you're
seeing lots coming down. The one most impressive one I watched was a uh at least it was purported to be and I I
assume it was cuz I've never seen anything like it. uh the Kuramshaw
whatever, the one that comes in at three or four times the speed of sound and has this uh capability for a multiple multiple uh entry, not not like our MV,
but it it sounds like a MV system more than it does a cluster bomb. It lets or other projectiles go out. I don't
know exactly how accurate they are, but if it's or and they have the detonative effect that I saw, then it's
pretty formidable. And it's a huge square that gets penetrated and bombed.
And it looked to me like it it reminded me when I first saw the MLRS, the multiple launch rocket system that we
had just put in the field at Graphenvir demonstrate what it could do to a column of Soviet tanks coming through the full
gap or whatever. Nothing I said to myself at that point and to the two people who were on my left and right
could have lived through that. That was incredible. Well, that's what this thing is. So these things are hitting Israel with a regularity now.
Yeah. Uh Larry, yeah. What have you made of especially the overall uh uh you know, every single day Iran is hitting
Israel. Every single day Iran is hitting uh across the region. Uh and there are reports that it's not only not stopping,
but that uh Iran is actually increasing uh slightly if not ever so steadily uh their volume of volies again. Uh, what
have you made of of this, especially given the energy situation which is causing panic all across the West?
Well, I I I'm very disturbed with the Iranians. I mean, obviously, they're not listening to Donald Trump and they're not listening to Benjamin Netanyahu. I
mean, their missile their missile capabilities been wiped out. Don't they realize that?
I mean, for God's sake, wake up. You know, you can't keep launching missiles you don't have.
I'm sorry, but the the the absurdity of this and and we're just we're seeing a replay of what we saw in Ukraine back in
You know, there were breathless reports on Western media every day. Oh,
Russia Russia's just days from running out of missiles.
Meanwhile, the ones who are actually running out of missiles are the United States and Israel with respect to air
defense missiles. They are being depleted rapidly depleted if not I know in one in one particular area they they
were depleted last week. Uh so I didn't see any come up in this maybe second episode. Not a single one.
Yeah. Yeah. So, um, Iran has now they just launched their th wave of attacks,
right?
That they're averaging uh separate missile attacks per day. And each one of those attacks carry at least
missiles. So, figure they're firing to missiles a day. Well, okay. So
we're uh we're now day uh weeks in and starting the the fourth week. So you know averaging a
day, you know, that's right? So um Iran obviously has a larger stash of missiles than the West had anticipated.
But, you know, I I I don't see how they could have made that mistake because,
you know, I was saying it last June that Iran's storage, not only their their production and their storage is
underground and they that they moved away from having to put out mobile launchers to launch, they figured out how to build silos that they could
launch from underground and then reload from those silos without anything on the surface.
revealing actually where the missile is,
making it very difficult for the United States to target those. and they've been very systematic going after US military
bases, going after US radar, going after aircraft and and storage uh facilities,
going going after now, you know, as their as their gas storage as their gas production facility at South Pars was
hit, they've turned around and taken out Cutters. So now cutter is, you know,
they can't is can't just turn it back on. It's it's going to be done for quite some time. They've and and they are
regularly hitting the infrastructure both the military and and critical economic infrastructure such as the
ports and the refinery uh and the airport in Israel. So, you know, Iran's
quite contempt and meanwhile they they hold the control over the straight of Hormuz. I I read yesterday, I haven't
een it confirmed, but apparently even the Japanese who are dependent heavily dependent on oil coming out of the
Persian Gulf agreed to buy petroleum from Iran with uh Chinese yuan with the Chinese currency.
So while while the uh new prime minister of Japan has run around Washington giving Donald Trump back rubs and you
know foot massages and telling what a incredible person he is. The Japanese practically are you know stiffened the
US petro dollar in favor of boosting China's control or effort to exert more control over the petro dollar. So it's
really uh not going well for the United States.
No, it definitely isn't. And there was that hor I don't I don't have the video,
but Takayichi sitting right next to Donald Trump when he responds to a question about why didn't he tell anyone about launching this war? And he goes,
"Well, I want it to be a surprise. Japan knows all about surprises. Remember Pearl Harbor?" I mean, this is just kind of the the uh the optics of all of this
is looking quite bad. But Colonel Wilkerson, beyond the optics, to reinforce what Larry said and your reaction to it, here's a report from the
economist saying that the cost of replacing the first four days worth of munitions would be alone uh billion
to billion. However, the problem is more to do with scarcity. They uh US has burned through Tomahawk cruise
missiles and the Pentagon planned to just buy new ones in the current fiscal year. no delivery of that
interceptor since and they haven't placed any orders for those and a puny interceptors are slated for delivery
in six years after they're ordered. And Colonel Warerson, it's my understanding that not only has a lot of these interceptors been used, but a lot
of their radars are completely destroyed as well all across the region. So, your reaction to uh uh where the US is as it
stands right now, the US and Israel are uh militarily uh and anything you want to respond to, Larry?
Well, there's several things that I think are true here. Um and one of the truths is that they're lying at the Pentagon. That's the first real problem
they've got. And second, that many of these things, especially the multi-million dollar, some cases two
$million radars and other similar outfits that were destroyed quite smartly by Iran early on in various
countries too without in most cases doing too much damage to the surrounding other country outfits or material or
people. In other words, they just took out the damn radars require minerals that China has about a % lock on and
I'm sure won't turn any loose for us in order to build. So even if you could get the production line up, if you could
put, you know, double triple shift on it, if you had the trained workers, if you could do all of that, you don't have the necessary ingredients to build it.
Now, I understand they have a task force working right now around the clock. I guess that means hours a day,
hours. I wouldn't I'd be surprised if Hex Seth could get that work. Um trying to find other sources or other, you
know, material they can supplement or exchange or substitute for the key material that China controls. And it's
not just one particular uh item. It's about three or four as I understand it.
One of them though, Gadium I think it is or however you say that. Um they have about a % lock on % lock. So
you're not going to get that one for sure probably. Um so they've got all these different impediments and as I've said before this business of making
tomahawks for example, that's a crystal clear example if you want to look at it.
Just Google it and you can find the latest stats on what tomahawk production is for the Navy, for the Air Force, for
the Army even because they have a version for them now. And you can see that it's ages and ages hints.
Now, can they speed this up? Can they call RTX, Lockheed, others in and say,
"Speed this up." Apparently, Trump's already done that in his meeting at Mara Lago with these salivating defense contract CEOs.
Um, but you can only speed it up so much and we're firing it fast enough to where their production rate, however good it
might be, eventually is going to have a hard time keeping up. Uh, I don't see how they plan for this being a long war.
That's my ultimate statement. They did not plan for it being even a month-long
war. They planned for it being quick and over. And it isn't going to be. And on
the other side of that coin, it may be a very long war.
Yeah. And uh Larry, to what Colonel Wilkerson was saying, just to pull this up because this is uh this is coming out
uh uh now, according to Donald Trump as of we're speaking, he's saying, and I I can't I can't believe this. He's saying
that the US could end military operations right now, but will continue so Iran can never rebuild. He's saying that Israel and the US share similar
goals in this war and that it's not acceptable to end right now because uh if the if the US does, Iran will uh uh
be able to rebuild at some point in the near future or in the future and he wants to make sure that never happens.
But uh Colonel Wilkerson just laid out some huge limitations and so your reaction to this especially in lie and I'm going to pull up the reports Larry
that uh there's multiple uh fronts that the US military is trying to open.
They're sending helicopters and and other uh uh you know uh aircraft to try to reopen the straight of Hormuz and
they're rushing thousands of Marines now uh to the Middle East in order to uh do something. Uh we don't really know quite
what there's there's uh conflicting reports. So your reaction to to all of this?
Tell him tell him how they're rushing them. Yeah. How are they rushing them?
How are they rushing these Marines anyway?
So yeah. No, look, I I agree with everything Colonel Wilkerson said. So So let's let's step back and try to figure
out what in the world are Trump and Netanyahu trying to do. So, they're openly talking about putting US troops on the ground in Iran.
Um, in previous US, let's call them military expeditions
such as uh the invasion of Normandy on D-Day, we we weren't announcing that we were going to be landing there. Well, if
anything, we did a deception operation to make the Germans think we were going to land up at Pad Khala up to the north
and and Patton constructed a whole mythical army that uh and with message traffic and everything to convince the Germans of that so that we would get
some advantage being able to land in Normandy.
So, I can't rule out the possibility that all of this talk about sending the Marines is just it's a charade. It's
it's a it's a deception operation. So, I put that as one possibility, but that means we're preparing to try to do
something else. Uh, and that's something else that's been talked about is, you know, it's an exercise I worked on
years ago where you basically you put Delta force into Iran to try to capture
one of the uranium storage locations and and take custody of it. And and I I sure
hope to God we're not trying to do that because the the lesson from that exercise and and nothing's changed in the intervening years is don't do it.
uh it's too too many things to go wrong.
And you know, I I know one of my buddies, he was a young Ranger uh and
doing patrol on the hostage rescue attempt, you know, when the helicopter crashed into the uh uh the Cout in the deserts of Iran back in Yeah.
my bu my buddy Mike who was uh then a ranger and then later went on to become a Delta sniper. He was there you know we
just you know good intention but uh uh we sort of screwed the goat uh in that
process. So now let's let's look if it's not a deception operation and they're genuinely talking about sending the So
far I've heard two different MUS the Marine uh expeditionary unit. A MW
consists of Marines. So one supposedly coming out of Okinawa, the other one's coming out of San Diego.
Well, the one that comes out of Okinawa,
it's going to take about two weeks for that unit to arrive on scene. So, let's put two weeks from today, we're going to be in April.
Um likewise, um from San Diego, and I was I
actually I was surprised by this. I I had thought that maybe the easiest way San Diego just start sailing west. No,
they go down through the Panama Canal,
sail across the Atlantic, go through the Mediterranean into the Suez Canal, then down through the Red Sea. Wow.
And then they'll get on station to do whatever. Well,
um it, you know, the the Chinese know that, the Russians know that, and I'm sure they're sharing that with the Iranians.
If that if there is actually that group of Marines and being sailing that route and it is learned that in fact the United States is serious about trying to
put them ashore um then I wouldn't be surprised to see that ship sunk in the Red Sea before it
even has a chance to get on station. Um plus it's going to take about uh to
days to get there. So again, so we got all these breathless news reports about, oh, they're sending troops. They're not getting there anytime soon,
folks. So don't hold your breath. Uh the we don't have the Star Trek uh transportation capabilities. You know,
we'll move you from instantly. Be me up, Scotty. Yeah. No, there's no warp speed. No.
Yeah. None of that. None of that going on. Um, so, uh, but if they genuinely are planning to try to use these guys militarily,
o we're talking maximum Marines,
what they've announced. Well, compare that to the D-Day operations on on the
coast Normandy coast that involved troops that landed,
not counting the paratroopers that had gone in already earlier in the night that were inland. Uh and the the US was
going up against defended positions as are there are defended positions all along that straight of Hormuz which that
beach area that we attacked on D-Day was miles from north to south.
Straight of Hormuz is more than miles north to south. So we did
troops and had trouble establishing a beach head. And so now we're going to send
up against defended positions and they're going to somehow magically make the Iranians back down. This is madness.
Absolute madness. Yeah. Oh, sorry, Colonel. Hold on.
Huge demonstration yesterday uh outside of SA. Uh the Houthies are up in arms now. They're ready to go again. I was
wondering when they were going to enter the frey. I knew they probably would sooner or later, but apparently they've made a decision and this was sort of the
ceremonial announcement of that decision. So, I'm not sure I'd want to be passing through the Red Sea.
Yeah. I mean, that's the thing. Um uh the Houthis uh Ansarala, Colonel Wilkerson, they've also said that uh if
the Gulf states try to use their air interceptors to uh take down uh missiles heading toward Israel, that they are
going to begin fighting. It seems like they're itching especially to fight with uh especially to get back into the fight with Saudi Arabia which of course I'm sure
which of course they have a history uh around there to uh settle a bit but there's there's a vendetta with that.
Yeah. So yeah I wouldn't want to but your reaction to this because there's also talk of Car Island. Uh there's a talk of maybe that's going to be the
operation that they're going to uh uh that there's going to be these Marines and US forces that are sent there to
occupy uh the uh oil crown jewel or energy crown jewel as the US mainstream media is calling it.
The forbidden island is what the Persian poet calls it or the or the lost pearl.
The lost pearl of the Persian Gulf or something like that. Um, the only way that I could see that would be feasible,
and we Larry and I talked about this with Nema earlier, um, would be to fly Marines in Ospreys or, you know, a
combination of Ospreys and the their MH version of the Blackhawk. And that would
be really ripe for total destruction of that air element if the Iranians were uh at least,
let's put it this way, in range, right missiles and timing, you would be annihilated.
You wouldn't even be able to get on the ground probably. And if you did get on the ground, you'd be annihilated right afterwards. So I can't, you know, we did
this all the time at the aim a amphibious warfare school and we used the AWS in the war college and in the
command and staff college to do demonstrative things when we were talking about big amphibious ops.
No one. One of the things you might want to keep in mind is about % of even the
core at that time, but I'd say far more percentage in the other services and in
the joint community above all the services would tell you amphibious operations have seen their day. They are
not going to ever occur again because if they do, everyone involved in the amphibious operation itself is going to
die. And maybe some of the ships supporting it are going to die too. And this is all because of what we've seen
so demonstrabably shown us in Ukraine and now beginning to be shown us in this war. Missiles dominate.
Drones dominate. And if you had sufficient quantities, accurate enough and deadly enough, and the Iranians have
proven times over they do, you can devastate anyone trying this more or less traditional means. However, the
Marines may cling to it. And a good comment on that is how the Navy has refuse to fund many of their desires for
new amphibious bottoms and such. In fact, these are what's left. This is really what's left. Um,
it's just not a manner of warfare that I'd be contemplated, particularly not contemplating, particularly not in these circumstanc.
Yeah. Okay. But that's P. That's gone.
Unless you are going up against a fourth, fifth, sixth rate power militarily speaking. Iran's not that now. They've proven it. They've
substantiated it. It may be in a a niche way, but that niche happens to be battlefield dominant right now. Yeah.
So, I don't know how you would do this without getting a lot of people killed, mostly Marines.
Yeah. I mean, that's what I was uh wondering about, Larry. you know,
responsible statecraft wrote this in reaction to uh to this news days ago and now there's more reports that this is
serious planning going on planning if we can call it that in the Trump administration. Um but uh Harrison man who's a former army major he said seizing Iran's crown jewel would be a
suicide mission and operation to hold Tran's oil hostages oil hostage by taking over Car Island would end up
delivering the regime hostages of its own referring to those who would be participating in the operation. Uh Larry
uh your your assessment of this as well if you can add.
Well again we're not learning anything from history. Uh we saw in the Black Sea
both the Russians and Ukrainians had a learning experience with this uh outcrop of rock in the middle of the Black Sea called Snake Island.
Mhm. Um so early on the Russians were there.
The Ukrainians attacked it. The Russians held for a while and then they withdrew.
Ukrainians climbed on board and then they ended up abandoning the rock because, you know, you could shell it
all day long with art with with uh from naval gunfire and drones and missiles and glide bombs and there, you know,
even if you were hiding out in a bunker on the island, you know, what are you going to do? So uh this whole fantasy
about taking Car Island uh United States is is suffering a multiple personality disorder.
Uh on the one hand you've got those advocating, oh we got to shut it down because that's going to Iran's ability to export oil. But then now you got Scott Bessett saying, "Oh, no, no,
we need to lift the sanctions on Iran so Iran can ship oil to keep the oil supplies up so we don't crush the
world." So it's like, "Okay, guys, which is it? You want to Iran by shutting down its oil? And if you do
that, Iran vowed, okay, we'll shut down everybody else." And so you will permanently take take % % of the
world petroleum off the market right away. Boom. and it won't be back anytime soon, particularly given the it's going
to take any US Marines that are headed there two two plus weeks to get there now. Uh so this is uh you know the
United States uh is setting up they can't figure out what they want to do with a ground mission and and again let's go back to history.
Uh Iraq tried for eight years to invade and take territory in Iran
and failed and lost hundreds of thousands of soldiers in the process.
the United United States thinks with its, you know, puny little force and I don't care even if this if this whole
all the news about the Marines moving or the nd Airborne moving if these are all intended as deceptions and they're
going to actually try to go something with an even smaller force. Um, this ain't Hollywood. You know, is it Seal
Team and Delta Force can be the stars of the show in a Hollywood movie, but uh you know, they're not going to run off
with Iran's nuclear capability. You know, that's not going to happen.
Yeah. Colonel Wilkerson, uh you know,
any any any further comment on this? I I mean I think that uh you know we're looking at uh a major crisis on on the
US side uh that the Trump administration seems to be whistling by and uh we haven't even discussed the energy part
of this because uh oil prices are absolutely skyrocketing uh what Iran did to just Qatar energy alone uh that uh
critical hub uh they're saying months according to the western mainstream media for it to be uh operable at all
and fully operable uh years. So that's a major hit and and Bloomberg is saying that no matter what happens in this work
end tomorrow, it'll take months if not years to get back and and it's not going to end tomorrow. So your your uh
reaction to the economic side of this and and how it relates to the military developments that we're seeing.
Well, I saw this up close and personal in a very vivid way. I think I've spoken about this before in something called a
petroleum disruption exercise we ran at the new Ritz Carlton in the financial district of Beijing in January
February we had almost uh we didn't have almost we had all of what we would call the
peer and near peer powers there we had Marad there we had Lloyds of London we
had AIG we had the US shippers uh group I forget what you call it but it it's all the major shipping companies in the
world chaired at that time by the US. We had all manner of expertise there in
maritime affairs and in oil and gas and we just did two things. We had about a
week exercise. We did two things. We took down uh a tanker in the straight of
Malaa. We got everybody interested in the techniques of the exercise and so forth through that rendition.
We did a little bit of damage. We got the five power five power defense agreement in there. It was inadequate. We got the United States Navy in there.
And incidentally, at this particular time, and I go back to this time for when I want to talk about better times,
the Chinese actually agreed that the United States Navy, in addition were some of theirs and maybe some Russians and others, but the United States Navy
would lead it would be because it was the preeminent sea force, the most able to dampen down tensions and to bring the
markets back in shape. even uh two or three days in they were showing signs of no shippers would ship that way and
that's a lot of shipping no insurers would ensure and so forth the minute the US Navy got on scene in force and and
others joined them like the five power defense agreement navies everything calmed down and so you know we had an
interlude there of just discussing what had happened and so forth then the next iteration was we took down Ross Tenura
six no million barrels per day production capacity at that time that's Saudi that was at that time Saudi
Arabia's most prolific port compare it to Car Island today for example tankers loading simultaneously done and
gone in a day huge output uh wow shippers wouldn't ship insurers
wouldn't ensure nobody was getting any oil and $a barrel for West Texas
Intermediate and Brent crude was right behind it. Those were the only two real meaningful benchmarks at the time. We
had to go into and we did go into a long and Ambassador Chaz Freeman tell you all about it. He was only one there that
spoke Mandarin on our side so he could understand the Chinese deliberations on the other side of the table. We had to
go through an enormous amount of discussion. the Chinese delegation. I've never seen this happen in a in a war game, in a simulation before, they
actually raised their hand and asked if they could go back to their ministry of of foreign affairs. And we knew some of them were intel plants in the exercise.
We had similar people there. They asked if they could go back because they said this decision was so monumental that
they had to have in a war game. They had to have permission to make the decision they were going to make. And they and
they did and they came back and we made the decision. And I I can't remember the total decision, but basically what we
did was something the world would have thought never could be done. We took the world's oil supplies and redistributed
all across the face of the globe. We sent North Slope Alaskan oil, for example, to Korea for the first time. We
sent uh one of the other incredible moves was we sent a a huge load going to
China instead up to Japan and Korea because they really hurt. Japan, for example, % of its uh petroleum comes
from overseas. Um, so to say that those are better times is is to say the truth.
They were better times. We actually made some good decisions and and I have no doubt that that was fairly realistic that we could deal with a critical
global situation like that at that time and would have. Not today. Not today.
Because at root what we're doing here,
Donald Trump has no conception of what I'm going to say. Neither does Pete Hath. I don't think Vance does either,
although Peter Teal might have given him some insights. The people behind this administration, and they're not all
Americans, the people behind the money behind the American empire want China taking down.
That's what this real purpose of this war in Iran is for this country. That's why we're waging this war. I don't think
the president knows that, but that's really has nothing to do with Iran's nuclear cap capability. Has everything to do with the southern base road
initiative, arguably the most dangerous one of all, is coming through Iran and going up into the belly of the caucuses.
And once that's operational and the other three are added to it, the northern one, the central one, and the southern one in Russia, which is really
just a remake of the Trans Siberian rail, Trans Siberian railroad in conjunction with Russia, mind you, this is all happening. All these things are
going to debouch into Europe and that's the new world economy. And we've taken the southern one, which to us we think
is the most dangerous, and we've taken it on in this war. And that's who's behind this. That's who is really
backing this conflict. Which is why I think it's going to be long and hard.
And Iran doesn't even know. I'm not even sure BB knows. BB's plugged into the world's intelligence. So maybe he does
know. But I think that's the real reason behind this conflict. And that's the reason I don't think it's going to be over anytime soon.
Yeah. And and and then that begs the question, Larry, uh what do we make of the desperation that we're seeing on uh especially both sides uh all sides of
the aggressor parties, especially the US and Israel? I don't know if you saw this uh Larry, this was Donald Trump today
saying without the US, NATO is a paper tiger, which is always quite funny whenever this happens because I think okay, you're calling yourself a paper tiger. I guess they didn't want to join the fight to stop a nuclearpowered Iran.
Now that the fight is militarily won with very little danger for them, they complain about high oil prices they're forced to pay, but don't want to help open the straight of Hormuz, a simple
military maneuver. That's a single reason for the high prices. So easy for them to do. So little risk cowards. We will remember now uh uh Malcolm Nance,
who I I despise. He's he is a you know he's a US intel asset but even he is saying you can't get to Car Island
without transiting the straight of Hormuz. He is sounding the alarm that this is going to end in disaster. I just want to show this for good measure as we
begin to uh get your final comments here. Uh this is a situation Israel.
Some people in the audience were asking where are Israeli troops? Why aren't they being deployed? Why can't they uh do some of this? And here's a situation
in Israel. You have uh uh everyone uh you have WhatsApp according to Israeli sources. Uh four alerts were heard in a
minute span filled with people having breakdowns after not sleeping for two weeks. So Iranian missile fire is definitely keeping them very busy and
and incredibly stressed. But Larry, uh what do you make of this? It's the desperation. You just see it. Donald Trump posts he posts the desperation.
I'm not this is not something I'm making up. uh your uh your reaction to this given everything that Colonel Wilkers were saying that this this is going to
be a long war, but yeah, it's it's it'll be a long painful one it seems like.
Yeah. Uh well, let me let me go back and remind you of what Donald Trump said at the State of the Union. I apologize to
Colonel Wilkerson. He's going to have to hear this again. He heard it earlier with Nema.
But uh this is what Trump was bragging about in terms of his major accomplishments during his uh first year
in office. He said, quote, and this was days before the start of the war before we uh illegally attacked Iran on February th.
On February th, he said, "Gasoline,
which reached a peak of over $a gallon in some states, under my predecessor, it was quite honestly a disaster, is now
below $a gallon in most states and in some places $a gallon. And when I visited the great state of Iowa just a
few weeks ago, I even saw $a gallon for gasoline, the lowest in four years and fallen fast.
Well, now it's rising like a rocket,
like an Iranian rocket headed for uh a US military base and Qatar. Uh I know
down in my neck of the woods, gasoline has surged uh over a dollar a gallon in in the the past two weeks, two and a half weeks.
So, uh and I haven't checked it today.
I' I've gotten in the habit now. I go drive to the gas station just to see the the price going up and and people people
are shaking their head. So Trump's got a Trump's got a real big political problem on his hand and that's one of the
reasons you see this desperation because they were told or well uh he was told by the Israelis
by the Zionists that oh this is a piece of cake. We got this wired inside. We got a guy already at the higher levels
in the in the IRGC. All we got to do is kill these people. The regime is going to collapse. The people are going to rise up and protest and we'll have we'll
have uh control of Iran two weeks max. Two weeks max.
Well, now we're going into uh week four and no end in sight.
So, um it is um that's why they're desperate and and you've seen also a
change in the rhetoric in Russia, I mean in in Iran, excuse me, Israel. Too many eyes. Um Alistister Crook's wife Alyn,
she reads all the Hebrew, all the Hebrew language press. So, a lot of times what happens in Israel, they'll put out one
story in English, but they tell another story in Hebrew. They think, "Ah, those Americans, they don't understand Hebrew.
So, here's the deal." Uh, the Israelis went from talking about victory and defeat of Iran to now they're like,
"Yeah, okay, we sort of achieved our objectives and uh, you know, we got maybe some more reasonable people in leadership positions, so we may need to
bring this to an end." And and that's what I took away from BB Netanyahu's press conference yesterday where he
specifically said um that the uh he said after days I can tell you Iran today
has no ability to enrich uranium and no ability to produce ballistic missiles. So we just declare victory and go home.
That that's how that's what saying that they they no longer can enrich uranium.
They no longer produce ballistic missiles. what's the logical conclusion in the war? So that's where you're
seeing the desperation I think on the part of both Israel and uh the US.
And Danny, this time Iran's not going to stop. Yeah.
They can stop if they want to. Israel can stop. I don't think I's going to stop. Yeah, that's that's a really good point,
Colonel Wilk. So, we had a couple of questions from the audience. Maybe you two can uh uh uh answer quickly before we head out of here. We had one question. How about Israel and US
surrendering unconditionally? What are the odds? And why is naval artillery bombardment not being used? I think these are two good questions given what you just said there, Colonel Wilkerson
and Iran has a choice here and they've said I mean they're being very open about it. They're saying that they will not are not going to necessarily stop unless they have particular demands met.
Um so Colonel Wilson to you and then Larry. Well, the one question I can tell you about naval bombardment, unless
you've got some uh shells that'll extend to fire about a thousand kilometers,
you're not going to get naval bombardment because you're going to get your ship destroyed.
You can't get close enough. You couldn't even get anywhere near. Why do the carriers hang back nautical miles?
because they know Iran has missiles that can, you know, if you hit Lincoln or Ford or any other carrier for that matter. If you hit the amphibious bottom
that is called a carrier but isn't really with Kroam Shaw, it it's gone. It's finished. It's done. It's toast.
It's on the bottom. It's in Davy Jones locker. And sad to say, so were probably most of the sailors because this
is catastrophic sinking that happens when you get hit with a high velocity missile like that. We were really worried about it uh way long time ago in
implementing our old plan in the Pacific against the Russians because they were going to shoot sea scammers, submarine torpedoes that are hugely effective and
they were going to shoot high velocity missiles and they were going to shoot missiles in the interim. So you were going to get three class of missiles coming in. One diving right straight
down on you and this was an early version if you will of a rashnik. And you were going to get submarines that shot torpedoes that would come up under
you and break you, break you in half and your stern and bow would go down almost simultaneously with all hands on board.
You want to see some of that? Look at torpedoes we fired from ships like boats like Tang and Wahoo against the Japanese
again in the East China Sea in the foremost straits. And they went down with all hands on board and all cargo in
on board. And you can read the skipper reports. Three from six torpedoes hitting her bow midship and stern.
Three down the whole ship.
everything down. They didn't have to surface and pick up survivors. One time Tang did and picked up a single survivor and took him all the way back to Pearl.
That was the only one. That's the devastation we're talking. That was It's much worse today.
Yeah. Yeah. Larry, final word here.
Yeah. No, I I agree with Colonel Wilkerson. Look, you know, you can't get in if you get in close to the coast,
they're done. They're toast. So the what what we've realized is the limits of naval power as well as limits of air power.
Yeah, definitely. Uh without further ado, everyone, uh we are going to head out here. Uh be sure to hit the like button. That helps keep the stream
boosted as uh uh you know, time goes on after we're done. And that helps Larry and Colonel work get their message out further. Larry's blog is in the video description. Sonarcom.
All the places support this channel are there as well. I want to thank all the people who gave super chats and new members. Thanks so much for that. And uh
I'm actually going away uh for a little bit, but I will be trying to do some short morning programs uh to keep the
updates going. But uh be on the lookout for that. Uh without further ado,
everyone, take care and I'll see you on the next show. Bye bye. Take care.

[admin]

Iran’s Missile Hurricane HAMMERS Israeli Port; US Sites ‘Struggle To Coordinate’ Amid Cyberattack
Times Of India
Mar 20, 2026 #Iran #IRGC #Israel

Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps has claimed a major escalation, saying it launched advanced “Khorramshahr-4” and “Qadr” missiles targeting 25 locations in Israel, including Haifa and Tel Aviv. The IRGC also claimed coordinated drone and cyberattacks on US bases and said naval forces struck Al-Dhafra, damaging Patriot systems. These claims remain unverified. Meanwhile, Israeli authorities confirmed a missile strike on a Haifa oil refinery, with CCTV showing the impact. Energy Minister Eli Cohen said damage was limited and disruptions brief. The developments signal a dangerous escalation with advanced weapons and multi-domain warfare. Watch



Transcript

From the shadows of escalation, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps has stepped forward with a bold and chilling claim, declaring a powerful new phase in its ongoing offensive. In a fresh, hard-hitting statement, the IRGC says it has launched widespread strikes, deploying some of its most advanced missile systems yet. The message is clear. This is no longer measured retaliation. It is calculated escalation. According to the claim, the strikes featured the formidable Corormch and COD multi-warhead missiles. Precision weapons designed not just to strike, but to overwhelm, penetrate defenses, and send a message that echoes far beyond the battlefield. The IRGC says these missiles targeted separate locations across Haifa and Tel Aviv. These claims, if verified, mark one of the most extensive strike waves in the current conflict.

The statement also highlights the use of advanced and newly deployed missile technology. Alongside missile strikes, Iran says it has launched a coordinated drone and cyber offensive. According to the IRGC, its drone unit carried out a multi-layered cyber attack. The targets, it claims, included a large number of US military bases across the region. In a separate claim, Iran says its naval
forces were also involved in the operation. The IRGC alleges that the Al Dafra air base was targeted during the
strikes. It further claims that parts of the US Patriot air defense system were destroyed.
These claims have not been independently verified at this stage. Meanwhile, on the ground, there are visible signs of
impact in northern Israel. An oil refinery in Hifa has been struck in what Israeli authorities confirm was a
missile attack. CCTV visuals show the exact moment of impact at the facility.
A massive plume of smoke can be seen rising into the sky following the strike. The target was identified as the
oil refineries limited facility, a key energy installation. Despite the impact,
Israeli officials have downplayed the scale of damage. Energy Minister Eli Cohen said disruptions were brief and
quickly brought under control. He added that damage to infrastructure remains localized and not significant.
However, the incident underscores the growing intensity of the conflict. With advanced missiles, drone operations, and
cyber elements now in play, the situation appears to be entering a more dangerous and technologically complex phase.
minutesIs the United Kingdom truly staying out of the Iran war, or is it already deeply involved?
New developments suggest Britain's role in the conflict is expanding far beyond official claims. US B-bombers have
been seen returning to RAF Fairford in England after missions over Iran.
Reports also indicate American crews loading lb bombs onto these aircraft at the base. This raises
serious questions about the UK's role under Prime Minister Kier Starmer.
Despite these developments, London continues to insist it is not at war with Iran, but facts on the ground
suggest a far more complex and active involvement. British bases are hosting US strategic bombers conducting long
range strike missions. RAF fighter jets have also been deployed to intercept Iranian drones across the region. At the
minutessame time, the UK is exploring a role in securing the straight of Hormuz. This critical waterway remains a key global energy corridor under increasing threat.
Since the highintensity USIsraeli campaign began on February th, Britain's stance has shifted. Initially,
London refused access to bases for offensive operations against Iran. But following retaliatory strikes on March
st, that position began to change. The UK authorized the use of military assets for what it called limited defensive
purposes. This included deploying RAF Typhoon jets to intercept drones over Jordan and Iraq. British territory has
now become a crucial logistical hub for allied military operations.
RAF Fairford has hosted US B-and Bbombers involved in strike missions.
Meanwhile, the joint US UK base at Diego Garcia has supported long range operations. These missions reportedly
targeted Iranian missile infrastructure deep inside the region. Another key node is RAF Acroi in Cyprus, central to
British regional operations. Even before escalation, six F-fighter jets were deployed there in early February. The
base has since played a major role in supporting ongoing military activity.
Adding to this, Energy Secretary Ed Milliband confirmed new naval considerations.
Britain is weighing sending warships and mine hunting drones to the region. The aim is to help secure shipping lanes in
the straight of Hormuz. Legally, the UK government argues it is not directly participating in the war. Officials say
Britain is not conducting offensive strikes against Iran. They maintain that interceptions and support roles fall under self-defense frameworks. However,
experts say the reality may be far more complicated. They argue that providing bases, logistics, intelligence, and air
defense is decisive support. Such involvement, they warn, makes Britain more than just a passive observer.
Meanwhile, Iran has issued a direct warning to the United Kingdom. Foreign Minister Abbas Aragakchi called the
actions participation in aggression. In a phone call with UK Home Secretary Ivet Cooker, he delivered a strong message.
Aragaki criticized what he described as Britain's negative and biased approach.
He also demanded that the UK halt any cooperation with the United States immediately. Thrron has made it clear
that it views such support as direct involvement. While Britain did not allow its basis for the initial offensive
strikes, it later approved their use for what it describes as defensive operations. But as the conflict intensifies, that distinction is
becoming increasingly blurred. With expanding deployments, rising tensions,
and growing scrutiny, the question now remains, is the UK truly neutral or already part of the war?

[admin]

IRAN JUST FACED THE CASPIAN STRIKE: WHY ISRAEL'S FIRST ATTACK ON BANDAR ANZALI IS A SHOCK
Warfare Meet History
Mar 20, 2026

https://www.rferl.org/a/israel-iran-war-caspitan-energy-oil-attacks/33710118.html

Attacks On Gulf's Energy Infrastructure
March 19, 2026
Radio Free Europe

The developments came as Israel and Iran exchanged attacks on energy infrastructure across the Persian Gulf, with the war continuing to spill over with violence to the areas untouched by it before.

Late on March 18, Tel Aviv said its military forces launched air strikes in the north of Iran for the first time since the beginning of the conflict on February 28. According to Israeli media, Israeli warplanes were attacking Iranian naval vessels at the port city of Bandar Anzali on the Caspian Sea coast.

"The Israeli Air Force, acting on navy and [Israel Defense Forces] intelligence, began striking targets in northern Iran for the first time during Operation Roaring Lion," the military said, referring to Israel's name for the campaign.

Separately, Iran said its massive South Pars gas field was also hit on March 18 in the first reported strike on the country's Gulf infrastructure since the US-Israeli bombing campaign began.

In a stunning escalation, Israel has reportedly launched its first-ever strike on Iran’s northern front — targeting naval assets near Bandar Anzali on the Caspian Sea. This marks a major shift in the battlefield, opening an entirely new front far from the traditional Gulf conflict zone.

According to military sources, Israeli forces struck Iranian naval targets in the Caspian region, hitting vessels and weakening Iran’s northern maritime capabilities. This unexpected move has shocked analysts, as the Caspian Sea was previously considered a relatively “safe zone” for Iran. ()

First Israeli strike in northern Iran (Caspian region)
Iranian naval assets reportedly targeted and damaged
Strategic port Bandar Anzali now exposed
War expanding beyond the Persian Gulf

Why this matters:

Bandar Anzali is a critical port for Iran’s trade and military logistics — especially links with Russia
Opening the “Northern Front” puts pressure on Iran from multiple directions
It signals Israel’s deep strike capability across the entire country
Raises fears of wider escalation involving regional and global powers

This attack comes after Israel’s earlier strike on Iran’s South Pars gas field — a move that already triggered massive retaliation across Gulf energy infrastructure and sent global markets into chaos. ()

In this video, we break down:

Why Bandar Anzali was targeted now

How Israel reached the Caspian Sea region

What this means for Iran’s military strategy

Could this trigger a much larger regional war?

The battlefield is expanding — and this “Caspian Strike” could redefine the entire conflict.



Transcript

__ p.m. local time. Bandar Anzali, Iran. A port city on the southern rim of the Caspian Sea, km north of Tran. Wrapped in the kind of darkness that comes from a blackout, no one officially announced. The fishermen who worked the old Soviet aerodox hear it first. Not an explosion, but a pressure change in the
air. The kind that precedes one. Then the sky opens. Multiple detonations tear through the northern harbor in rapid succession. Iranian Navy vessels,
warships, not cargo ships, begin burning. Thick black columns of smoke rise over the Caspian water. And somewhere in a command room in Tel Aviv,
a mission clock stops counting. The impossible just happened. Israel just reached the Caspian Sea. This is not a drill. This is not a rumor from
anonymous telegram channels. The IDF confirmed it. Their statement reads exactly like this. The air force guided by the Navy and military intelligence
struck targets in northern Iran for the first time in Operation Rising Lion.
More than five Iranian warships targeted, a first in the entire history of this war. And here's the thing,
minute, nobody is saying out loud yet. This was not just about the ships. There's a third reason this strike was authorized.
minute, A reason that connects Bonder Enzali to a supply chain running nearly km north to a city called Astricon, Russia.
minute, I will get to that, but first understand what just broke. The war began days ago. On February th, at midm
minute, morning local time. The United States and Israel launched a coordinated air campaign of nearly strikes in hours. The stated goal was three-fold.
minute, Destroy Iran's ballistic missile capability, eliminate its nuclear infrastructure, and create the conditions for regime change. They
minute, called it Operation Roaring Lion on the Israeli side. Operation Epic Fury on the American side. Within hours, Supreme
minute, Leader Ali Kame was dead. Confirmed by Israeli officials, confirmed by the silence that followed from Thran. The regime that had governed Iran since
minute, the Islamic Republic that had built proxies across seven countries and enriched uranium to levels that alarmed every intelligence agency in the free world. That regime lost its head,
literally. Iran fought back hard. Over ballistic and naval missiles and nearly drones launched in the
first days alone. Israel, US bases across the Gulf, Saudi Arabia, Qatar,
Kuwait, the UAE, all took fire. Dubai International Airport, one of the busiest aviation hubs on the planet, was damaged by drone strikes on March st
and limped back online in limited capacity days later. The British Maritime Trade Operations Agency reported a container ship attacked
nautical miles north of Jabella. Two US soldiers, Staff Sergeant Nicole Ammer of White Bear Lake, Minnesota, and Specialist Declan Cody, of West De
Moines, Iowa, among at least Americans killed in Iranian counter strikes on US bases. These are not statistics. These are people and the war
they are embedded in is now entering a phase that changes everything. Signal number one, Defense Minister Israel Katz walked to a podium on the morning of
March th and said, and this is the exact phrasing, that significant surprises are expected in all arenas which will raise the level of the war we
are waging against Iran. That was not a press release. That was a warning order dressed in public language. Within hours, more than regime targets were
struck across central and western Iran in a single operational cycle. Ballistic missile storage facilities, UAV manufacturing plants, defense production lines, and weapons fabrication sites.
And then, as if that alone was not enough, Israeli aircraft struck a central gas processing facility in Bushair in southern Iran. That same
evening, Iran retaliated by hitting gas fields in Qatar in Saudi Arabia. The Ross Leafan Industrial Complex in Qatar,
the largest liqufied natural gas facility on Earth, a plant that keeps European homes warm and Asian factories running, took incoming fire. Here is
what nobody is telling you about the Caspian strike. The attack on Bander Enzali was not a punishment mission. It was not random escalation. It was a calculated cut aimed at a specific
artery. And that artery runs straight to Moscow. Since Russia invaded Ukraine in February the Caspian Sea has operated as the world's most sophisticated arms smuggling corridor.
Iranian and Russian cargo ships routinely disable their AIS tracking systems, their digital identities, the maritime equivalent of a license plate,
and meet in the open water or in port.
The Iranian side loads drones. Shahed attack drones. The same loitering munitions that have terrorized Ukrainian cities for years. Missile components,
artillery rounds, mortar shells,
hundreds of millions of dollars in military material transferred between the Iranian ports of Anzali and Amiraabad and the Russian port of
Astrachan. Then it goes north by rail and within days it is raining down on Kharkiv or Zaporia.
Ukraine struck the Russian side of this corridor in November targeting the port of Caspisk in Dagistan, but the Iranian side had never been touched
until last night. The northern fleet of the Iranian Navy is headquartered at Bander Enzali. This is not a fishing
outpost. According to a US Navy intelligence report, it is the command and logistics center for all Iranian
naval operations on the Caspian. Last July, just weeks after the -day war between Israel and Iran concluded, the
naval arm of the IRGC conducted joint exercises in this exact body of water with the Russian Navy. The stated purpose, according to an IRGC press
release, was to raise the level of safety in the Caspian region and strengthen cooperation between naval forces. What that means in operational
terms is that Bander Enzali was the handshake point between two militaries helping each other fight wars on opposite ends of the Eurasian landmass.
Israel just blew up that handshake. But here is the catch. Because there is always a catch. Burning those warships
solves a tactical problem. It does not solve the strategic one. The supply route is not ships and ports alone. It is also rail trucks. Overland corridors
through Azerbaijan and Georgia that bypass the Caspian entirely. And Russia's response to this strike is the variable that every analyst in
Washington and Tel Aviv is now staring at with white knuckles. But because Moscow has said nothing, President Putin has not made a statement. The Kremlin
has been silent and that silence is not neutral. Russia and Iran signed a comprehensive strategic partnership in January Russia has been supplying
uprated Shahed guidance systems back to Iran, more precise targeting components for the same drones has been firing at US bases throughout this war. The Wall
Street Journal reported this exchange weeks before the first strike. The question now is whether a direct Israeli hit on a joint Iran Russia logistics
node constitutes in Moscow's strategic calculus a cases belly. No one knows the answer. And that uncertainty is the most dangerous variable in the war. Now let
us go back to where the diplomacy stands because there was diplomacy. There was actually a moment just weeks ago where
a deal was visible on the horizon. On February th, Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Arachi made a public
statement about a potential historic agreement with the United States being within reach. He posted on social media,
on his own verified account that Iran held a crystal clearar position against developing nuclear weapons while defending its right to peaceful nuclear
technology. The talks in Oman were progressing. An interim understanding to slow uranium enrichment was on the table. Two weeks before the bombs fell,
the diplomatic channel was alive. The Royal United Services Institute in London published an analysis stating that an interim understanding seemed
possible. Omani intermediaries were carrying messages between Steve Witoff,
Trump's special envoy, and a Ragchi's team. They were in different rooms, the way these talks always work, never face to face, always shuttled, always
deniable. Then something happened in Israel that is still not fully explained. The Israeli security cabinet held a -hour meeting on January th.
Netanyahu and Trump spoke by phone. The intelligence picture being presented inside that room, according to sources later cited by multiple outlets was
this. Iran had kg of uranium enriched to % purity. % weapons
grade is %. The gap between where Iran was and where it needed to be for a bomb was, according to US intelligence assessments, less than two weeks of
further enrichment. Two weeks. That number is what ended the diplomacy, not the talks, the math. When Washington and its allies issued a -day ultimatum to
curb enrichment, Tran dismissed it. They believed, according to the Hudson Institute's analysis, in a fatal triad of miscalculation, that Chinese diplomatic support would deter action,
that Saudi normalization talks with Israel would slow Israeli aggression,
and that US diplomatic engagement was a tactical delay, not a sincere offer. All three calculations were wrong. Iran miscalculated gravely, and on February t__h, it paid the opening cost of that miscalculation in fire.

Now, zoom forward to today, March __th, and understand what is different about the Caspian strike versus everything that came before it. Every previous Israeli strike in this war operated within a geography Iran had mentally prepared for. Southern Iran, where Bushair sits, Central Iran, where Natanz and Fordo and Thrron are located. Western Iran where IRGC bases cluster near the Iraq border. These were expected target sets. Painful, devastating, but within the frame of what Iran's military planners had war gamed. The north, the Caspian coast, the region near Azerbaijan, the port cities that face Russia, was considered a sanctuary, a rear area, a safe zone where logistics could be organized, weapons could be staged, and the machinery of the war effort could continue operating outside the blast radius of Israeli air power. That assumption is now dead. The Caspian Post, reporting from Baku, framed it precisely. Under current conditions, no part of Iran can be considered safe.

The Caspian strike also carries a geographic signal to every literal state on that body of water: Russia, Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan, that the water is no longer neutral. The port is no longer protected by distance. Israel's air force, operating thousands of km from home, reached the northern shore of Iran, and destroyed a naval headquarters. That is an operational capability statement, not a political one. An operational one. The range, the precision, the intelligence architecture required to identify, track, and strike, five warships at a harbor that had never been a wartime target. That is the IDF saying quietly, but unmistakabl, that there are no more safe zones.

And now here is the pivot that changes the entire frame. The IAEA, the UN's nuclear watchdog, released a statement today, March __th, confirming that its inspectors have still not gained access to Iran's new underground Isfahan enrichment facility. Let that land for a moment. The facility exists. Its existence has been confirmed by satellite imagery, by multiple intelligence services, by leaked Iranian construction permits, but IAEA inspectors have not been inside. The plant's operational status is, in the watchdog's own words, unknown. Unknown means unverified. Unverified means the entire premise of the military campaign, that you can quantify what you've destroyed, contains a hole. There may be an enrichment node that has been operating underground in Isfahan that has not been hit. If it has been operating for even months, Iran's __% enrichment inventory is larger than the number that triggered this war.

Centcom commander, Admiral Brad Cooper, has stated the US military objectives with precision. Eliminate Iran's ballistic missiles, drones, and naval threats, including production infrastructure, and eliminate the threat to shipping through the Strait of Hormuz.

The IDF by March __th, claimed over ___ IRGC personnel killed and wounded since Operation Roaring Lion began. The Iranian Health Ministry, for its part, counts over ___ civilians killed or wounded in US-Israeli strikes overall. These are the numbers on the ledger. But numbers on a ledger do not answer the question of what happens next. That question belongs to the next hours.

Here's the thread to pull. After Khamanei's death, Iran's assembly of experts, the body that would normally select a new Supreme Leader, was unable to convene because Israeli strikes on March ___ rd, destroyed the building where they were scheduled to meet. Iran's governmental structure is operating without a head. There is no supreme leader. There's a fractured IRGC. There's a foreign minister, Aragshi, who was advocating for diplomacy days ago, and who is now overseeing a foreign policy response to a war being fought on Iranian soil. The question being asked in every capital, from Riyad, to Paris right now, is simple. Is there a faction inside the remaining Iranian government that wants a ceasefire? And if so, who is carrying that message and to whom?

Trump has said publicly repeatedly that he wants a deal. He said in February that a deal was possible before the war began. Multiple US allies, Australia, Germany, Greece, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom have declined to send warships to secure the Strait of Hormuz. They are not on board. The coalition is thin. Qatar, which hosts the largest US military base in the Middle East, Aludaide, is now getting Iranian drones launched at its gas infrastructure. Ross Laffan was hit. If Ross Laffan, which processes roughly ___ million tons of LNG per year, sustains serious operational damage, the global energy chain fractures in ways that make $___ a barrel oil look like a warm-up.

Since the war began, oil prices have already risen over __%. __%. Do the math on what $__ a barrel of oil does to inflation, to mortgage rates, to the price of every product that requires transportation to exist. Here is the thing nobody wants to say publicly, but every financial analyst is running the numbers on privately. If Iran closes the Strait of Hormuz, and it has not done so yet, but has threatened to fire on ships passing through, oil hits $__ to $__ per barrel within hours. The S&P drops __ % in the same window. Gas at the American pump hits $$____ possibly $___ in fuel-dependent states. Every airline on Earth grounds significant portions of its fleet because jet fuel becomes prohibitively expensive. The global shipping insurance market collapses because no underwriter will ensure a vessel transiting a combat zone without a premium that makes the voyage economically irrational. This is not speculation. This is what oil economists, shipping underwriters, and military logistics planners have been modeling for months. It is the domino effect that sits at the end of every scenario tree in which Iran decides that full economic warfare is its best remaining weapon.

Iran has not closed the strait. Not yet. The Iranian Navy, what is left of it, has suffered devastating losses. Trump said publicly that Iran's navy has effectively been destroyed by US military action. The Bandar Anzali strike adds five more warships to that count. But closing the Strait of Hormuz does not require a surface fleet. It requires mines, coastal missile batteries, submarines, which Iran still has. The question of whether the Iranian military's remaining command structure, fractured, decapitated at the top under continuous air assault, still has the organizational coherence to execute a coordinated Strait closure is one that no one outside a classified intelligence briefing can answer with confidence.

And now the third person in the room, I mentioned it at the top. Here it is. According to the sources cited in Israeli media prior to the Caspian strike, the IDF's intelligence picture for the Bandar Anzali operation was partially built from signals intelligence provided by a partner that is not the United States. The geographic reach of the strike, __ km from Israeli territory, and the precision of the warship targeting inside a harbor not previously surveiled at this level of resolution, suggests that Israel had access to Caspian region intelligence from a country with established assets in that exact theater. The only country bordering Iran and the Caspian Sea that has a functional intelligence relationship with Israel, maintained quietly through back channels, even as its government maintains formal neutrality, is Azerbaijan. Baku sits on Iran's northern border, roughly __ km from Bandar Anzali. Azerbaijani intelligence services have long been suspected of providing Israel with targeting and logistics data for operations in northern Iran.

The Caspian Post noted that Bander Anzali is located roughly __ kilometers from the Azerbaijani border, and that the strike has implications that go well beyond the immediate conflict. That is understated. If Azarbaijan functioned as an intelligence node for a strike that hit a port used to supply Russia with Iranian weapons, the geopolitical implications radiate in three directions simultaneously. Toward Tehran, toward Moscow, and toward Ankora. Turkey, a NATO member, has historically played both sides of the Azerbaijan-Russia-Iran triangle. This strike just made that triangle a great deal more unstable.

Here is the broader chain reaction. Ukraine has been watching the Caspian corridor for years. In November, Ukrainian drones hit the Russian port of Caspisk in Dagiststan. The first time the war in Ukraine reached the Caspian. Ukraine has an obvious strategic interest in destroying Iran's ability to ship weapons to Russia through that corridor. Every warship burning in Bandar Anzali tonight is a warship that was escorting or facilitating a supply chain feeding Russian forces in eastern Ukraine. The Ukrainian defense ministry has not commented publicly on last night's strike. They do not need to. The message was received in Kiev before the fires were out. For Russia, the silence from Moscow is now entering its __th hour since the strike was confirmed. No statement from Putin, no statement from Lavrov, no emergency session of the Russian Security Council announced.

That silence is being read in different ways by different analysts. One interpretation, Russia is calculating whether to condemn the strike publicly, which risks drawing attention to the weapons smuggling corridor it was benefiting from. Another interpretation, Russia is quietly absorbing the hit and adjusting its Caspian logistics to avoid further targeting, which is an admission that the corridor is now compromised. A third interpretation, the darkest one. Russia is discussing privately with what remains of Iran's command structure, whether to provide a response capability that Iran currently lacks. Surface-to-air missile upgrades, electronic warfare systems, something that makes the next Israeli strike on Iranian soil cost more than the last one.

The IRGC's remaining generals are not passive. The hardliners who built this war machine over years did not build it to watch it be destroyed without a response. The same faction that sabotaged Iraqi's diplomacy in late February. Reportedly, IRGC commanders, who believe that any deal with the United States was a betrayal of the Islamic Republic's foundational ideology, those men are still alive, still in command of fragments of their forces, still firing missiles at Saudi Arabia and Qatar and Israel. On March __th, __% of all Iranian outgoing attacks targeted Saudi Arabia, up from __% the day before. That escalation pattern was not a coincidence. It was a strategic signal. If the war continues, the energy infrastructure of the Gulf will be systematically destroyed, and the global economic pain will become a political weapon against continued US-Israeli operations.

Saudi Crown Prince, Muhammad bin Salman, personally called Trump multiple times, according to the Washington Post, urging the attack on Iran before it began. MBS lobbied hard for this war. Now Iran is dropping drones on its gas fields.

The political cost of that is beginning to register in Riyad. How long does Saudi Arabia, the most important Arab partner in this entire campaign, absorb Iranian attacks before it demands either a ceasefire, or a dramatically more aggressive US commitment to its defense? Lindsay Graham, who per the Wall Street Journal made the most compelling case to Trump for the original strike authorization, is still in the Senate, still supportive of the campaign. But the coalition math in Washington is shifting. Multiple US allies have refused to send warships to the strait. The UN Security Council has met and produced nothing. The International Commission of Jurists has described Israeli strikes as violations of international law. The moral and diplomatic ledger of this war is being filled in real time. And the Bandar Anzali strike, a first ever attack on the Caspian coast, documented by opposition media, confirmed by the IDF, will be the dateline on tonight's lead story in every major news outlet on Earth.

Now, the final calculation. Iran entered with __kg of __% enriched uranium, enough fully enriched to weapons grade for as many as __ nuclear devices. The Ford facility is reportedly inoperable. Natanz has been hit again, but the underground Isfahan facility remains unverified by the IAEA. The defense industrial infrastructure is being systematically destroyed.

Israeli intelligence analysts told Walla news that the strikes will inhibit Iran's ability to produce many weapon systems for years. The missile inventory is being depleted. The launch rate of Iranian ballistic missiles has declined from the war's opening days, analysts pointing to both physical depletion of stockpiles, and a deliberate rationing strategy. The Iranian military is conserving assets for a longer war. And that is the central strategic question of the next hours. Is Iran rationing because it plans to keep fighting for weeks or months? Or is it rationing because someone inside the remaining government structure is holding assets back as a negotiating chip, proof of remaining deterrent capability that can be traded for a ceasefire? Those are two entirely different strategic postures. One leads to a war that spreads to more countries, consumes more oil infrastructure, and potentially draws in Russia in ways that transform a regional conflict into something global. The other leads to a back channel message, probably through Oman or Qatar, from what remains of Iran's foreign ministry, to Steve Witkoff's team, indicating that a conversation is possible.

There are reports tonight, unconfirmed, but coming from multiple regional channels, that the Qatari government, which is simultaneously getting Iranian drones launched at its LNG infrastructure, and hosting the US air force at al udaide, is in contact with both sides. Doha has played this mediator role before in Gaza in previous Iran-US-back-channel moments. Qatar has the unique and uncomfortable position of being deeply, economically entangled with both the United States, and the Iranian diplomatic sphere. If Ross Laffen takes serious damage, that entanglement becomes untenable, and Doha either pushes hard for a ceasefire, or reorients its strategic posture entirely. Either way, the outcome reshapes the diplomatic landscape.

The Caspian strike tonight is not just a military operation. It is a message in the language of coordinates and warheads. It says, "We can reach you anywhere." It says, "The supply chain to Russia is now targeted." It says, "No harbor, no fleet, no geographic sanctuary remains outside our operational reach." And it says, "If you read between the targeting decisions, we know everything about your logistics. We know which ships. We know which docks. We know what moved through Bandar Anzali last month, and the month before. That knowledge is either the foundation of a negotiated settlement, because a party that knows everything has maximum leverage, or it is the foundation of a war that keeps expanding until there is nothing left to target.

The next __ to ___ hours will answer the question that this entire __-day war has been building toward. Either someone, somewhere, in Doha, in Muscat, in Ankora, in Geneva, will carry a message from what remains of Iran's governing structure that creates the architecture of a ceasefire, a deal, a documented end to the missile fire in exchange for a pause in the air strikes, followed by a negotiation over what Iran's relationship with nuclear technology looks like in a postcoma world, or the strikes continue.

The Caspian corridor is permanently severed. Iranian hardliners launch everything they have left at Saudi Arabia's oil infrastructure at the Strait of Hormuz at Aludaide. The price of oil crosses $___. The global economy enters a shock, from which recovery takes years. And the war becomes something the textbooks of the future will study as the moment the Middle East's map was redrawn in fire.

That is the binary. Peace or war, deal or bombs. A total diplomatic breakthrough in the next three days, or a total collapse into a conflict that no one, not Washington, not Tel Aviv, not the ghost of what used to be Tehran's government, can fully control.

The fires at Bandar Anzali are still burning tonight. The Caspian Sea reflects the light. And somewhere, in a room that does not appear on any official schedule, a message is either being written or being buried. Which one it is, that is the story of tomorrow.

[admin]

Israelis rush to sea ports heading towards Cyprus after Iran overpower Iron Dome - OPMT
OPTM
Mar 20, 2026



Transcript

I want to take you now to the shores of occupied Palestine, where the unthinkable is unfolding in real time.
For weeks, we have watched the propaganda machines in Tel Aviv and Washington spin tales of military invincibility, of an impenetrable iron
dome, and of a grand coalition standing firm against Iran. But tonight, the images coming out of the Hifa port,
Ashdod, and even the marinas of Herza tell a completely different story. A US ship is standing by to evacuate
Americans from the northern port of Hifa in Israel to Cyprus.
American citizens hoping to get out of Israel are gathering at a port right now where a ship taking them to Cypress will leave in just a few hours. Rick Clintet
is on the scene in Hifa for
We are witnessing a mass exodus. Israeli settlers, the very population that the occupying regime claims to be
protecting, are scrambling desperately towards the Mediterranean Sea. They are not heading to the beach for a holiday.
They are fleeing their destination,
Cyprus. The reason, it has become painfully and for them terrifyingly evident that the Israeli military has
lost the missile war. The air defense systems once touted as the most sophisticated in the world are depleted.
The stockpiles of interceptors are gone.
And as the reality of that collapse sets in, so too does the panic. We are seeing videos of chaos at the ports. People
abandoning luxury cars, clutching suitcases, fighting for spaces on private yachts and any vessel that will take them across the water. This is not
the image of a strong Israel. This is the image of a regime that has overreached, that has provoked a regional power far more capable than its
propaganda suggested, and is now watching its citizens run for their lives, while its military struggles to defend even the skies over Tel Aviv. The
ituation on the ground has deteriorated so rapidly that even the United States is now admitting what we at independent outlets have been reporting for months.
The so-called moral army is running on empty. Reports from US officials speaking to outlets like Semaphore and
confirmed by Middle East Eye revealed that Israel has formally informed Washington that its ballistic missile interceptors are at a dangerously low level. Think about that for a moment.
This is a military that entered this current round of conflict already depleted from last June's skirmishes.
Now with Iran's sustained barrage, the cupboard is bare. We are learning that the US, despite its bravado, is
struggling to keep up. American armament executives are quietly admitting that the production lines simply cannot match
Iranian capacity. One official was quoted as saying that while Iran is producing over missiles a month, the
United States can barely manufacture a handful of the most advanced interceptors in the same time frame. The cost dynamics alone are staggering. We
are talking about Iran using relatively lowcost missiles and drones to force Israel and the US to expend millions of dollars per interceptor. This is a war
of attrition and the side with the deep militaryindustrial complex is losing. It has become a simple numbers game. As one
defense analyst put it, even if the US has a virtually unlimited supply of bombs to drop on civilians, its supply
of defensive interceptors is finite and is being exhausted at a terrifying rate. This is not just a matter of stockpiles.
It is a matter of reality on the streets of Tel Aviv. Just hours ago, more than explosions were reported across
greater Tel Aviv. The Israeli Ambulance Service, Megan David Adam, is scrambling to respond to reports of cluster munition fragments falling across
several areas. We have reports of a two-story building sustaining a direct hit, engulfed in flames with settlers
trapped inside the rubble. This is the result of the air defense systems being overwhelmed when the Iron Dome, the
David Sling, and the Aeros systems run out of ammunition or are simply bypassed by advanced Iranian missile technology,
including missiles carrying submunitions designed to overwhelm defenses. The consequences are catastrophic. The
illusion of safety is shattered. For weeks, we watched these same settlers celebrating in their shelters, cheering as Israeli and American bombs rain down
on Iranian cities, killing civilians under the guise of self-defense. They cheered for the assassination of
military leaders, ignoring the fact that these assassinations came at the cost of dozens of innocent Iranian lives. Now the chickens have come home to roost.
The war has come to their doorsteps. And instead of standing their ground, they are running. And the world is watching them swarm the ports like rats fleeing a
sinking ship desperate to reach the shores of Cyprus, a nation that is increasingly signaling that they are not welcome. Before we continue with the
details of this unfolding catastrophe and the justified anger brewing in Cyprus, I want to ask you to do something. If you believe in honest
journalism, if you are tired of the Western media narrative that justifies every Israeli war crime while demonizing the resistance, hit that like button,
share this video, let the algorithm know that the truth matters, and drop a comment below, even if it's just a dot.
Or better yet, write Cyprus is not for sale or Palestine will be free. Let the world know where you stand. And if you
haven't already, subscribe to this channel. We are one of the last outlets telling the truth about American and Israeli aggression without the filter of
corporate censorship. Your subscription supports honest journalism. Do it now.
Now, let's get back to the story because this is where it gets even more critical. The fleeing settlers are heading to Cyprus, but they are not
finding the warm welcome they might have expected. In fact, reports are flooding in of massive protests already brewing on the island, and the Criates are absolutely justified. To understand why,
we have to look at history. The Greek Criates know what it is like to be colonized. They know what it is like to have foreign powers carve up their land.
But more importantly, they have watched what happened in Palestine. They know the pattern. When the European Zionists first arrived in Palestine during and
after the Second World War, they were welcomed by the indigenous Palestinian population. The Palestinians with their traditional hospitality opened their
doors. They sold them land. They coexisted with them. And how did the settlers repay that hospitality? They formed terror organizations groups that
the world has conveniently forgotten but which we must name today. We are talking about the Irun led by Manakam Begin a
future prime minister which bombed the King David hotel killing people. We are talking about the Lehi also known as
the Stern gang which assassinated United Nations mediator Fulka Bernadote. These were Zionist terrorist groups that
committed massacres, ethnically cleansed villages like Deer Yasin and systematically murdered Palestinians to
carve out a state. The cpriates have not forgotten this. They see Israeli settlers already having taken up
residence or acquired property in the south of Cyprus. And they are terrified.
They see the rhetoric of greater Israel from extremist ministers like Bezel Smotish who has openly advocated for starving Gazans. And they ask
themselves, is this the beginning of another occupation? Are these settlers coming to Cyprus to rest and rearm or are they coming to claim another piece
of the promised land? The protests in Limaol and Larna are a warning. They are saying, "We will not be another
Palestine. You will not turn your guns on us after we shelter you." The fear in Cyprus is not paranoia. It is historical
precedent. The Zionist project has always relied on the tactic of facts on the ground. They establish settlements.
They buy up property. They create a demographic presence and then when the political conditions are right, they use their military to declare sovereignty.
Cypress has seen this before. The island is already being militarized to an alarming degree with British bases,
French naval patrols, and Israeli military drills all taking place in and around Cria territory. The settlers
arriving now are not refugees in the traditional sense. They are wealthy.
They are armed with the ideology of supremacy and they are looking for a safe haven to regroup. The criates are refusing to be that haven. They are
refusing to allow history to repeat itself. They remember how the world welcomed the Zionist terror groups of the s, allowing them to metastasize into a state that now commits genocide.
They are saying, "Not in our backyard."
And let's be absolutely clear about why these settlers are running. It is not just about the depletion of interceptors. It is about the sheer
futility of the Israeli and American strategy. While the so-called moral army and their American puppets have been focused on assassinating leaders,
killing high-profile figures in strikes that obliterate entire residential buildings and killed dozens of civilians. The Iranian military has been
waging a completely different kind of war. The law of war is clear. Targeting civilians is a war crime. Yet, the
Israeli and American doctrine explicitly relies on the assassination of leaders at any cost, even if it means killing civilians to get to one military target.
We have seen this time and again. The civilian toll in Iran from Israeli and American bombings has been staggering.
According to reports from the ground and from independent monitoring, we are talking about thousands of Iranian civilians killed. Think about that
number. civilians going about their daily lives, families in their homes,
people in their workplaces, all blown apart because the United States and Israel decided that a political assassination was worth the collateral
damage. They call themselves the most moral army in the world, but there is nothing moral about dropping bunker busters on residential neighborhoods.
There is nothing moral about using starvation as a weapon of war, as Smootrich has proudly admitted. In stark contrast, the Iranian military has
focused its response on military targets. They are not targeting shelters. They are not deliberately bombing civilian infrastructure for the
sake of deterrence. They have adhered to the law of war, striking at the military installations, air bases, and strategic
infrastructure that are legitimate military objectives. This is a critical distinction that the Western media refuses to make. The Iranian military is
not perfect, and we condemn any loss of civilian life on all sides, but the pattern is undeniable. Iran responds with measured militarytoilitary strikes.
The United States and Israel respond by terrorizing entire populations. They bomb airports. They bomb residential
towers. They assassinate leaders in foreign capitals. They are lawless. And now that lawlessness has come back to
haunt them. Their killing spree has created a reality where they can no longer defend their own citizens. They have spent billions on bunkers for their
political leaders, but the ordinary settlers are left to fend for themselves, scrambling for boats in the middle of the