Ian Welsh

The horizon is not so far as we can see, but as far as we can imagine

Month: March 2026 Page 2 of 5

Pro Iran War Propaganda Videos

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On March 25, 2026

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Of all the wars I’ve covered in my writing career, this one has been the hardest in the sense that figuring out what’s true and what isn’t is difficult. The baseline assumption is that nothing the US says about the war can be trusted. Most of what Iran says in concrete terms about what they fired and hit can be trusted. AI images and video have proliferated, so the old “show me picture” routine doesn’t work unless y0u’re a good image analyst and willing to spend hours. Trump, of course, lies about everything. Iranian official media exists, but it’s often censored by the West so reading their official statements is often difficult.

All that said, I think it’s time for something different: a collection of propaganda videos that are Pro-Iranian. Because of all the above, it’s unclear to me if these are official, but they’re interesting nonetheless.

The first appears to be official, was published by Russian “news” outfit RT, and makes the ethical case:


Iranian underwater drones:


This one made me laugh:

And the Korroamshahr-4 missile:

More serious posts next, though the third video is actually a pretty accurate summary of Iranian war efforts so far.

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Shockwaves From The Second Iranian American War

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On March 24, 2026

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Some of the issues from the Iranian war are obvious: everyone’s talking about oil and natural gas, for example. Many have mentioned fertilizer. But I think it’s worth going into in a bit more depth.

First is that in addition to gasoline, oil is used to make bunker fuel (98% of freighters and tankers), jet fuel, and diesel (heavy machinery, large trucks.) The prices for all three are rising faster than gasoline prices and there will be a worldwide shortage. Production of semiconductors, phones and so on will shut down some time after that, depending on how the small reserves available are shared out. Taiwan is particularly vulnerable and production can be expected shut down in a couple weeks.

The chart below is from six days ago:

Don’t take the above chart too seriously, I’ve heard different numbers from different sources, and the type of oil in reserve matters a LOT.

This will, of course, hit the AI Bros hard. They have significant stockpiles of some of what they need, but not everything. Worried about that data center coming to where you live? If you’re lucky, Iran has just saved you from an AI driven spike in your energy prices, but not an oil shortage spike!

Airlines are already reducing flights. Expect prices for travel to spike significantly. If you don’t already have tickets for a trip get them now. Even so, it wouldn’t surprise me if many already booked flights are cancelled without recourse, citingĀ forece majeur. Diesel and bunker oil shortages will mean supply line disruptions, and primary processing disruptions. Fertilizer shortages are already changing planting decisions, farmers in Australia are planning on planting much less wheat, for example.

Oil goes into a lot of things. Here are a couple of graphics showing some of them:

And,

To oversimplify, pretty much everything has some oil in it. For example I’m stocking up on NSAIDs and Tylenol 2s (legal in Canada.) I saw one person saying they went out and bought about a year’s supply of pretty much everything which can be stored. One side benefit may be that insane levels of plastic packaging might, at least, be reduced.

China’s bunkering up. No refined oil products are being allowed for export. Fortunately for China, they, unlike apparently almost every other nation in the world, are not run by retards, so they have massive petroleum reserves and they bought about 50% of the world’s grain production for the last four years and stored much of it. But this goes far beyond petrochem: they produce, for example, almost all of the world’s tungsten, and no more exports of that.

Stockpiles in the the West are essentially at zero, right now, and yes, most advanced weapons cannot be made without Tungsten.

There’s been a crash in silver prices recently. You may have read about it. But here’s the thing, there’s an actual physical shortage of it because it’s used in essentially all electronics, including semiconductors and even more importantly, solar panels. Everyone’s going to want solar panels now.

China, not being fools, are no longer allowing export of silver because they know it’s the physical shortage that matters, not the paper price on paper exchanges where delivery isn’t expected to happen.

I spent years railing that just-in-time logistics was sheer fucking insanity and should be outlawed. In addition every country who isn’t a net producer should have at least year’s stockpile of fuel and even net producers should have three years of food stored (because things like droughts and fertilizer shortages happen.) Medication and key medical goods should also be stockpiled. A lot of people are going to suffer and die when key drugs hit shortage and many cancer drugs, for example, are produced in India and on top of the factories not being able to operate without energy, many drugs use petrochemical derivatives directly.

This war should never have happened. Even if it ended now there would be serious shortages for about four to five months, and it would be three to four years before full production could be resumed, if it can be. (Shutting down oil and gas well production often damages the underlying fields.)

Oh, and which major nations will suffer the least? Russia and China. It is to laugh.

I know this is the second article on this subject in a few days, but the impacts of the war are important for you to understand.

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On the Necessity of Facing Nuclear Reality, Even When a Child

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On March 23, 2026

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~by Sean Paul Kelley

In 1983 the Bulletin of Atomic Scientistsā€™ Doomsday Clock clocked in at 3 minutes to midnight. America was in the middle of one of the most dangerous five year periods of the Cold War. Detente was dead. Able Archer exercises occurred that November. KAL-Flight 007 was shot down by the Soviets on September 1, 1983. And a newly assertive America under Reagan got busy stationing 103 Pershing II Intermediate Range Ballistic Missiles in West Germany to counter hitherto deployed Soviet SS-20 Saber IRBMs. Dialogue between the two superpowers came to an icy halt.

In the middle of this complex realpolitik the Nuclear Freeze Movement in the US gained steam, throwing their support behind Walter Mondale and Geraldine Ferraroā€™s nod to run against the Gipper in 1984 and the American millitary buildup continued at a frenetic pace.

Meanwhile, back on the farm, so to speak, something earth-shattering (at least to me) was fixing to be broadcast on November 20, 1983 on ABC: The Day After. An American media attempt to depict the aftermath of a full-on thermonuclear exchange between the USSR and the USA.

Jason Robards-who I always confused with George Peppard of A-Team fameā€”was the central character. A small town doctor out of his depth treating increasingly desperate radiation-sick patients from all over. I recall one scene, a kind of town meeting, where one woman, wearing a white dress, bled from between her legs, obviously from a critical lack of feminine hygeine producuts. And I recall someone needed to travel to the Bay Area, which once he arrived saw that it was totally obliterated.

I was horrified. My Mom was genuinely worried about me. That film represented my political baptism by fire. Henceforward, I watched the nightly national news like a child obsessed. I followed the course of the Cold War with interest and obvious worry that one Sunday morningā€”I donā€™t know why it was always a Sundayā€”Iā€™d be vaporized along with my little sister and Mom. As I grew older I matured. I viewed the nightly national news with a bit more sophistication. I began reading the national news rags. Remember Time and Newsweek? I devoured them. I recall vividly Cori Aquinoā€™s Revolution in the Philippines and Ortegaā€™s ouster by Violetta Chamorro in Nicararagua. But I never, ever forgot the lessons of The Day After:

Risk peaks when one feels absolutely certain and safe. This is when calamity strikes.

Risk feels at its greatest after calamity passes and one feels chastened.

~attributed to Jesse Livermore

Anyone have a clue where the minute hand of the Doomsday Clock rests today?

89 seconds to midnight. Arms control be damned. ā€˜Murican donā€™t give a shit.

The entire arms control regime brought into life by Reagan and Gorbachev, extended by Bush and Baker, followed by the sage, bipartisan Nunn-Lugar Act and Clintonā€™s negotiating of the START Treaty have all been cast aside. First, by George W. Bushā€™s hamfisted and stupid abrogation of the arms control regimeā€™s lynchpin: the 1972 ABM Treaty. Followed by Trump letting the INF lapse. And finally, this February, once again, irresponsibly letting the START Treaty lapse.

With the War in Iran not going well, China has taken to using proxies to warn Israel of the cost of using nuclear weapons against Iran:

“the moment Israel uses a nuclear warhead against any country, it will be considered the number one enemy of humanity, it will be the demise of Israel as a state, as a regime, as a country.ā€

Explicit but utilizing an indirect conduit, as one would expect of the Chinese.

Not to be deterred, American policy-makers lauched their own trial balloon in favor of an Israeli first-strike.

Yes, people, weā€™re that close.

But hereā€™s the absolute shit-kicker, as we say down here in South Texas: the depiction of the aftermath of global thermonuclear war in The Day After is weak compared to the UK film on the same subject, dated 1984, called Threads.

American movies require a happy ending. Always. And The Day After offers up a milquetoast version of positive.

Not so Threads. And for that fact alone, Threads, horrifying in the extremeā€”mind you, I watched it as an adultā€”is the more realistic film, and its depiction of the civilization ending effects of thermonuclear warfare will leave you chilled to the bone. Threads is a much more effective admonitory tale of the very real risks weā€™re shopping off as I type.

America’s Economic Future: Imminent Pain and Dislocation Not Seen Since the ’30s

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On March 23, 2026

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~by Sean Paul Kelley

The end of this credit cycle is going to include the following macro events: a credit crisis, a housing crisis, an energy shock, with the potential for massive failed deliveries necessary to third world nations creating famine on a biblical scale, at least one Too Big To Fail failing, as Lehman Bros and AIG did in 2008, and the AI bubble bust. All of these will happen. Locked in. Fixed. No way out.

In a previous post I outlined the order in which the financial catastrophe barreling down on us like oncoming freight will occur. Iā€™ve simply included one new variable: the energy shock.

Hereā€™s how itā€™ll go down.

First, there is an expansion. Stocks rise. At some point the rise becomes divorced from realistic earnings expectations. This is when intense speculation drives equities into bubble territory. After all, Nvidiaā€™s market cap is just shy of ($4.2trillion) the annual GDP of India ($4.4trillion) as of Monday March 23, 2026. Simultaneously, US Treasury buyers, ā€˜prudentā€™ investors, qualified investors (people with more than $5 million in net worth), pension funds, insurance and re-insurance companies and good old orphans and widows, as they always do, got a bit jealous and so reached for yield. They wanted safety with high returns. But in this world you can have safe or you can have high returns. Youā€™re a fool to think you can get both at the same time; alas we have a superabundance of fools these days.

So just like in 2007-08, the shadow banking system, ie. the issuers of supposedly safe and high yielding assets, called subprime loans, experienced serious losses, that lead to the unwinding phase of the financial crisis. The 2008 fin crisis started on a lovely summer day in NYC, June 22 2007ā€”I think the Yankees won that dayā€”when two Bear Stearns subprime hedge funs went belly up. This was 2008ā€™s canary in the coal mine.

This time around it isnā€™t subprime that has precipitated the unwind but the dominance of private equity/private credit shadow banks, such as Blue Owl, Blackstone, Blackrock, and others.

As previously noted, the current crisisā€™ canary in the coal mine was Blue Owl. Their very rude wake up call arrived in the form of $1.4 bn in redemption demands, which forced Blue Owl to sell assets to meet redemption needs. It was a catastrophe for Blue Owl, in every way a fire sale in which every Wall Street trader exacted his pound of flesh. It also led to a very ugly unravelling of contracts with Oracle. Oracleā€™ stock plummeted.

Many others have followed in the weeks since Blue Owl burped up a massive fur ball. The specifics can be found in this post and are beyond the scope of this discussion. They are pertinent, but listing them would make this a Tolstoyian endeavor. The upshot is this: normally, an enormous amount of credit destruction (read, debt) has to happen until we get to phase three of the credit cycle. One counterintuitive effect: a stronger dollar. Weā€™re already seeing this versus the other major fiat currencies.

Moving on to one of the other developments I outlined in the first paragraph: a housing crisis. Home building has long been the foundation of the American economy. Itā€™s in serious stress right now. As I mentioned before, last month saw a full -17.6% collapse in the purchase of new homes. In the Northeast it was an epic cow patty catastrophe: -44%. In my hometown, sellers outstrip buyers buy a full 114%. This in the heart of the ā€˜Texas miracle.ā€™ I honestly donā€™t know how a collapse in homebuilding will effect this economy coupled with the headwinds itā€™s facing. I know it wonā€™t be salutary and will exacerbate already dangerous liquidity and solvency issues caused by the private credit/private debt unwind. What else? ā€œCannot say. Saying, I would know. Do not know, so cannot say.ā€ Five bucks to whoever gets that reference.

Will the Fed be able to contain both? FuckifIknow?

Adding to fierce headwinds, Trumpā€™s war against Iran has had a similar effect on the global economy as Odysseus ill-timed opening of Aeolusā€™s wind bag: itā€™s blown us on a completely fucktarded vector, beyond any rational goal, that will take five years-at a minimum-to recover from if we stop now. Plenty of us predicted this but weā€™re just dipshits sitting in the basement wearing our jammies. If the Israeliā€™s continue their wanton destruction of everything, there is no telling how Iran will respond. And Iā€™m not even pondering nukes here.

The effects the closure of the Straits of Hormuz are and will continue to have on the global economy, rather the effects faced by the Rules Based Order the West imposed on much of the globe will be make the European energy crisis look like a night out with Sidney Sweeney.

One effect: potential famine in those third world countries-on a biblical scale-unable to import desperately needed fertilizer from the Persian Gulf at reasonable prices.

Second, no helium. Helium is a gas essential to modern industrial life, everywhere.

Third, my best friend in Denmark joked, ā€œhell, we might soon be back on bikes eating only porridge for dinner.ā€ He also rued the demise of Nordstream and said, unequivocally that Danish renewables wonā€™t be enough. This from the one European nation with the largest sector of renewables. Imagine the second order effects cascading out across the globe?

And what about the cost of transport? Not just everywhere, but especially here in the US? Anyone given any thought to just how super human stupid just in time delivery looks now? Iā€™ve always warned about this. You know: chickens, roosting; shit like that.

Fuck it. Iā€™ve got more than ten years of Wall Street experience so what the hell do I know?

Well, I know this as I know the sun rises in the East and sets in the West: the exogenous shock waves rippling towards the US economy are bad. Vewwy, vewwy bad. And there is no double-slilt experiement available to cancel out the oncoming waves.

What next?

Oh yeah: Too Big To Fail. Nope. Stress test? Are you Dave Chapelle?

Just ask Lehman Bros or AIG. This time around one of the Too Big To Fail institutions will fail. Maybe more than one. If I had my choice it would be Goldman, but if I am being realistic Iā€™d put odds on Wells Fargo and/or Citigroup. Why? Well, Wells Fargo has a history of laundering tons of cartel cash, so no real culture of compliance/risk management. Citigroup has brazenly challenged the SEC to regulate them on multiple occasions. Those would be my two choices.

Finally, Iā€™ll recap phase three of the credit cycle: the Ponzi unwind. As I wrote here,

ā€œCrypto will be the first big Ponzi unwind. And it will take a lot of suckers with it. Plus, a damn lot of fools who worked for investment, commercial banks and private credit/equity shops. Crypto is bullshit, wrapped in dead fish skin thatā€™s been perfumed by Chanel. No matter how good it smells, itā€™s rotten to the core. Crypto is to this financial crisis as CDOs and synthetic CDOs were to 2008.ā€

Moroever,

ā€œThe AI-hyperscalers will suffer as well, during the Ponzi unwind. Why? They are in essence engaging in a similar sort of vendor financing like CISCO and Juniper Networks did in the dot-com bubble. Nvidia is giving chips to AI-hyperscalers as collateral for loans. Never mind the chips will depreciate long before the earnings are solid enough for the AI-hyperscalers to payback the ā€œloans.ā€

Itā€™s accounting legerdemain in extremis.

So, to be clear: multiple endogenous-domestic-headwinds coupled with very ugly exogenous-international-shocks, real and potential, increase the odds, hourly, that weā€™re nearing financial armageddon.

To recount what to expect: a housing crisis, a credit crisis, an energy-shock, fertilizer shortages leading to potential famine, one or two Too Big To Fail, failing and the AI bubble bursting. All at the same time. Same time. Boom. Boom. Boom.

This ainā€™t gonna resemble your daddyā€™s financial crisis. In the words of Grungeā€™s greatest lyricist, Chris Cornell, ā€œIā€™m feeling California, but looking Minnesota.ā€

Week-end Wrap ā€“ Political Economy ā€“ March 22, 2026

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On March 22, 2026

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Week-end Wrap ā€“ Political Economy ā€“ March 22, 2026

by Tony Wikrent

War

Beijing to Tel-Aviv and Washington: ā€œIsrael will cease to exist the moment it uses a nuclear weapon!ā€

Dimitris Konstantakopoulos,Ā 20/03/2026 [defenddemocracy.press]

In the following paper, we will present the reasons why a nuclear war in the Middle East is now quite possible, the deterrent intervention of China which interrupted a period of dangerous tolerance of Israel by the great powers, and the relationship between what is happening in West Asia and what is happening around Ukraine and the American continent, particularly in Cubaā€¦.

These statements, and most likely the information it possesses, provoked an unofficial but very harsh statement from Beijing. This is the first time a major power has interrupted the unprecedented tolerance enjoyed by Israel and its lobbies, a tolerance that has now led humanity to the brink of the abyss.

…Specifically, Victor Gao, vice-president of the Chinese Institute for China and Globalization, when asked what the two nuclear powers, Russia and China, would do if Israel used nuclear weapons, he stated to the AmericanĀ TheĀ Cradle, that ā€œthe moment Israel uses a nuclear warhead against any country, it will be considered the number one enemy of humanity, it will be the demise of Israel as a state, as a regime, as a country.ā€ He simultaneously warned Prime Minister Netanyahu, the government of Israel, and its armed forces that they will be considered enemies of humanity and responsible for whatever happens, in an indirect but clear reference to theĀ Nuremberg trialsĀ that judged the Nazi leaders. Mr. Gao made it clear that what he says does not concern condemnatory statements but an advance notice of actions. He congratulated Mr. Trump on his statement that Israel will not use nuclear weapons and expressed the wish that he acts effectively in this direction.

Mr. Gao adds that any use of nuclear weapons by Israel will lead to an explosive proliferation of nuclear weapons in the Middle East and their use would result inĀ hundreds of millions of deaths and the transformation of the entire region into an uninhabitable zone.

Mr. Gao makes also a reference to the Epstein archives.

The Chinese warning has been phrased in aā€¦ Chinese way. Mr. Gao is the head of a small party allied with the Communist Party and holds no government position, so the responsibility for his statement cannot be directly attributed to the Chinese leadership or the CCP. Nevertheless, there is no doubt that it constitutes an unofficial but authoritative expression of the Chinese position on the matter. And to leave us in no doubt on the issue, the Chinese Academy distributed this specific excerpt of Gaoā€™s statements under the characteristic titleĀ ā€œWhat would China do if Israel dropped a nuclear weapon?ā€ā€¦.

IDF threatens ā€˜eliminationā€™ for Russian leaders who ā€˜wish Israel illā€™

Wyatt Reed,Ā Mar 19, 2026Ā [defenddemocracy.press]

Israelā€™s veiled threat to Moscow came just after Russian media warned traffic cameras in Moscow were vulnerable to the same exploits that Israel reportedly used to monitor Ayatollah Khameneiā€™s residence before assassinating him.

Breaking the Nuclear Taboo

Peter Kuznick and Ivana Nikolić Hughes,Ā March 13, 2026 [defenddemocracy.press]

…It would be the ultimate expression of Trumpā€™s unbounded power for him to break the one remaining international taboo ā€“ which, despite far too many close calls, has persisted for more than 80 years ā€“ detonating a nuclear weapon. There are many indications that, despite the U.S. and Israelā€™s ability to bomb Iran at will, this war may not be going well for them. But that need not be the pretext for using a nuclear weapon. In Trumpā€™s mind, the more unprovoked, outrageous, and unnecessary something is, the better. Given his fragile ego and rapidly deteriorating mental powers ā€“ going off on bizarre rants about poisonous snakes in Peru or the White House drapes ā€“ the more unhinged he is, the more he thinks it demonstrates his dominance.

Since the end of the Cold War, many people who pay attention have worried about an accidental or a miscalculated stumble into nuclear war. But with Trump breaking every taboo domestically and internationally, demonstrating that he is above the law and can do as he pleases at every turn, the ultimate taboo waiting to be broken is the nuclear oneā€¦.

[TW: I wonder if there will be a mass resignation of military officers as Trump stumbles aver closer to using nuclear weapons. But they would lose their pensions. So, probably secret approaches to some (anti)Republican Senators and Congressmen begging for Congress to do something?Ā And if Trump does issueĀ orders to use nuclear weapons, would military officers refuse? Might they even demand Trump be arrested? Trump and Hegseth have pissed all over the Code of Conduct numerous times ā€”Ā Hegseth this past week, by declaring ā€œno quarterā€ toward Iran,Ā explicitly violatedĀ violated the Hague and Geneva Conventions, the U.S. War Crimes Act of 1996, and the Pentagonā€™s own Law of War Manual. The commander in chief and the top civilian official at the Department of Defense should also be subject to the Code.]

Remember the Titan: The Fragility of Trumpā€™s Golden Egg

Jim Stewartson, Mar 18, 2026 [MindWar]

GRAPH: Trumpā€™s Pathologies

…While I hesitate to bring up the dreaded notion of bipartisanship, the best way to try to prevent the explosive scenario, to try and contain the criticality when it happens, is for the political system to present a combined show of force that draws a red lineĀ before it happens.

If heā€™s not given a sandbox to play in, Trump will take the entire playground.

For example, if the Democrats and 20 GOP Senators could find a way to agree publicly that if Trump engages in a preemptive nuclear strike for any reason without consulting Congress, he will be impeached and removed immediately. Even if he was not considering such a strike, just the statement would make clear to him that he is not, in fact, omnipotentā€¦.

The South Pars Pulse: Why the ā€˜Energy Warā€™ is Actually a Thermodynamic SingularityĀ 

[The Ultimate Avatar of Balance, via Naked Capitalism 03-19-2025]

…By treating the destruction of the worldā€™s largest natural gas reservoir merely as a ā€˜supply chain disruptionā€™, the geopolitical establishment is exhibiting a fatal, terminal blindness. We are no longer dealing with economics; we are dealing with physics.

The strike on South Pars is not an ā€˜energy warā€™. It is an unmodelledĀ Thermodynamic PulseĀ that threatens to liquidate the biological carrying capacity of the entire Persian Gulf.

The Methane Blind Spot

South Pars/North Dome holds an estimated 1,800 trillion cubic feet of natural gas. When upstream infrastructure of this magnitude is ruptured, the result is not just fire and smoke (particulate matter), which the environmental NGOs are currently monitoring. The far greater threat is uncontained venting of raw methane (CH4).

Methane possesses a Global Warming Potential (GWP) roughly 80 times that of CO2Ā over a 20-year horizon. However, in the immediate aftermath of a massive, concentrated release, the ā€˜horizonā€™ is not 20 years. It is measured in weeksā€¦.

Trump says heā€™s ā€˜not afraidā€™ of Vietnam-style ground combat in IranĀ 

[Daily Mail, via Naked Capitalism 03-18-2025]

…Speaking from the Oval Office alongside Ireland’s Taoiseach, Micheal Martin, the President fielded many questions about the Iran war.

‘Are you afraid that if you put boots on the ground in Iran, it could be another Vietnam?’ one reporter asked.

‘No,’ Trump shot back, adding, ‘I’m not afraid of anything.’

The Geopolitical Consequences of Defeat

[Policy Tensor, via Naked Capitalism 03-16-2025]

…The only way in which the United States can evade outright defeat is by suppressing and degrading Iranā€™s ability to hold gulf assets at high levels of risk and keep Hormuz closed.1Ā If the US cannot, through either the direct application of force or indirectly through military coercion, accomplish this strategic objective, the outcome will be indistinguishable from strategic defeat, even if the war ends in a ceasefire, for then Iran wouldā€™ve demonstrated for all to see that the United States does not, in fact, have the military means to impose its will on the gulf.

This means that the dynamics of the interdiction campaign are decisive.

If the interdiction campaign rapidly degrades Iranā€™s ability to attack gulf assets, that would still not guarantee victory, however. For victory requires the further success of countermining operations if the Iranians mine the gulf, as they have reportedly started doing. Countermining operations areĀ not a solved military problem either. At the very least, they will also take many months. What is clear is that, a successful prosecution of the interdiction campaign to conclusion is a necessary condition for effective countermining operationsā€¦.

Burning the Lifeboats to Keep the Lights OnĀ 

[The Ultimate Avatar of Balance, via Naked Capitalism 03-16-2025]

…Ā something important needs saying: the USā€™s totally aimless campaign of wanton and indiscriminate destruction in Iran is definitionally tantamount toĀ terrorism. An operation requires a stated strategic objective to qualify as a ā€œwarā€ or military action of some sort, legitimate or not. Trumpā€™s clumsy bomb-festā€”during which he proudly boasts he can ā€œbombā€ certain Iranian targets ā€œfor funā€ā€”does not fit that description, and as such definitionally qualifies as a campaign of terrorism against a sovereign state and its civilian population. Letā€™s not even mention what the US is currently doing to Cuba, with the blockade having collapsed the nationā€™s entire electric grid as of yesterday.

The closest the US has come toĀ statedĀ goals in this debacle in fact alignĀ withĀ definitional terrorism: the US wants to create economic hardship and infrastructural pain in the country which would spur the populace into overthrowing ā€œthe regimeā€ā€¦.

 

Things Go Haywire as Israeli Escalation Throws Iran Conflict into Dangerous New PhaseĀ 

[Simplicius, via Naked Capitalism 03-19-2025]

Things really hit the fan earlier today after Iranā€™s largest natural gas field, the South Pars, was struck by Israel. This field reportedly accounts for 75% of Iranā€™s natural gas production and 80-85% of its electric gridā€¦.

 

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Open Thread

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On March 21, 2026

26 Comments

Use to discuss topics unrelated to recent posts.

This Is The End Of The American Empire. Period.

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On March 20, 2026

31 Comments

My friends, this is it. America isn’t going to win this war, unless they use nukes, but even if I’m wrong and they squeeze out their .01% chance of success, it is over. The army is exhausted and can’t be re-armed in less than a decade, with Chinese help. The Middle East will be in ruins. The AI bubble will crash out without money and resources from the Gulf. Everyone’s going to turn hard from hydrocarbons to renewables, especially solar, and that means China is going to make absolute bank.

This is the second stupidest war decision I’ve seen in my entire life. (The first was Ukraine refusing a very generous peace deal and, as a result, losing the majority of its fighting and breeding age male population.)

The war is lost. It was lost the moment Iran proved it could keep fighting and wouldn’t accept a peace without achieving its aims. The Americans, with, it appears, help from NATO nations, are going to try and open the Strait militarily. They will fail and it will be a military clusterfuck of epic proportions. There is approximately zero chance of opening the Strait, and if they are stupid enough to try and land marines, those marines are DEAD.

I have never seen such military insanity in my life. If I were a colonel in the US army I’d be organizing a coup and I am not kidding. There are suicide missions and then there’s trying to land troops in the Strait while Iran has missile and drone dominance, thousands of speed boats and has mined the Strait. The US does not have air superiority, even, we just saw the Iranians hit an f-35, they’ve shot down at least eight aerial refueling planes, forced the US to keep its aircraft carriers far away, made it impossible to use most of the local bases and taken out almost all US radars in the area.

This is a loss. The smart thing for the US to do would be to just declare the war is over and evacuate the region. If Israel wants to fight on its own, let it.

But the Israelis almost certainly have video of Trump raping kids, and Americans can’t admit they’re losing, so the war will go on.

The oil field damage is severe enough already that it will take years to repair. Iran will probably retain control over the Strait permanently, deciding who gets to transit. Nations they like go thru free. Nations they hate have no access. Everyone else pays: after all Iran’s going to have a lot of rebuilding to do.

Meanwhile France, still under the delusion that it’s a great power, seized another Russian oil tanker. The Russians have said they’re considering military escorts in the future. This could go south in very bad ways, and France’s missile defense systems and interceptor stockpiles are not in any shape to fight a war with Russia. The EU has decided not to ease Russian oil sanctions and Putin, in any case, has said he doesn’t want to sell to Europeans any more because they’re unreliable.

Europe’s industrial base is evaporating. They’re so far behind in tech that they don’t even show up on lists of the top five tech leaders, even when you lump all of the EU together. (Top 4 are China/US/Japan/South Korea.) Trump just massively cut science and tech spending and scientists and academics are fleeing the US, often for China. Russia, by itself, produces more missiles, drones and artillery shells than all of NATO, which should tell you meaningless GDP is as a measure of state capacity.

The US is about to become a regional power. And I don’t think it will sustain even that. Iran has just taught everyone how to make tangling with even a medium sized nation unbelievably painful. The process of turning into porcupines should take five to ten years, at which point the US navy loses 90% of its power projection ability.

Further the loss of dollar hegemony will lead to a good 30% drop in the American standard of living. But America’s cost structure (if you need an MRI fly to China, stay in a five star hotel for a week and pay cash for your MRI. It’ll cost less than getting it in America) means that high nominal wages mean very little. Americans are going to strangle slowly to death. Meanwhile one-third of the world’s fertilizer supplies are about to evaporate, helium (used to make chips among other things) is about to become rare and expensive and China has put export controls on key elements like silver and all petroleum products. As the supply chain shocks multiply (who thought just in time was smart? Oh, all the usual morons) multiple countries will stop exporting key goods up to and including food.

US bases have been proven not to protect your country but to make it a target. Every American ally is noticing this and the Phillipines and South Korea in particular are taking note. Japan is still talking tough, but they’re being morons. They either get nukes and destroy their economy when China sanctions them, or they cut a deal.

The scale of this clusterfuck is mind boggling. America is destroying its ability to coerce other nations, destroying its economy and making having an alliance with it not just worthless but actively a detriment, while devastating all of its allies’ economies: Europe, Japan and South Korea are all going to take HUGE hits from this.

Meanwhile China’s oil stockpiles are at record highs, they spent the last 4 years buying 50% of the world’s grain supply and piling it up, and their hard move into renewables has proved to be 100% correct. As for Russia, another big winner, since their oil and gas, minus some minor damage from the Ukraine war is just fine, thanks.

While Ukraine’s decision to fight the Russians as a cat’s paw for the US was arguably worse it lacks the awe-inspring scale of this bout of epic stupidity.

As Mencken wrote,

ā€œthe office of president represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart’s desire at last and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.ā€

And here we are. Americans elected the stupidest President in history, a known rapist, a pedophile being blackmailed by a foreign power, a con man, who is also suffering from dementia and all of this was known before he was elected to anyone paying attention.

America’s empire was doomed by Reagan and Clinton. Trump’s just bringing it to a messy end. But the decline could have taken another twenty years and been much, much less painful. Trump has decided to end it in the most spectacular and stupid manner unimaginable to anyone with the intelligence of a door-mouse. Meanwhile, Europe’s pygmy leaders are feeding Europe’s economy into a woodchipper, foot first and greasing the gears, “why is this machine so slow!? What can we do to speed it up?”

Welcome to the end of Western hegemony. It’s stupider, more venal and more darkly funny than I could ever have imagined.

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Israel, Nukes and Armageddon For Real

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On March 20, 2026

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~by Sean Paul Kelley

I planned on writing a post about how the Russians were the ultimate winners of the Iran War, what with all that petroleum and natural gas they have. Truly, the Russian’s have got God by the balls (ŠšŠ°Šŗ Š±Š¾Š³Š° Š·Š° яŠ¹Ń†Š° ŠæŠ¾Š¹Š¼Š°Š»).Windfall after windfall is accreting in an economy that is supposed to be in the doldrums. The reverse is true: Trump’s witless pursuit of war against Iran is effecting the collapse of the entire global economic order, except those nations trading with, well, you guessed it: Russia. I can’t fathom right now. How does one convey the stupendous amount of boomerangishness happening? It’s like karma grew a pair of balls and teabagged the entire Western order.

That said, I failed to write the post. Instead I got profoundly distracted by Col. Larry Wilkerson’s disturbing prediction that Israel will more than likely use up to 15 nukes on Iran to settle the conflict. Watch the video yourself. It’s a mercifully brief 7:03 minutes of terror. It’s the stuff of nightmares. I ain’t kidding. I’m dumbfounded. Dismayed because he makes a plausible case for Israel’s use of nukes.

If Israel opts for nukes the entire calculus of war changes. Nukes virtually guarantee the inclusion of other great powers in the war. I’ve taken to joking lately that we’re watching Armageddon. I didn’t mean literally, but now? I’m really at a lack for words.

We’re all going to die.

Afterthought : Before we all perish in flames, some more shitty news: sales of newly built houses fell a full 17.6% nationwide. In the Northeast it was a rout: down 44%. Adding insult to injury, McDonald’s, Pepsi and Dollar Tree are all racing to the bottom by reducing prices. Not goody, vewwy baddy.

Afterthought : The spread between home-sellers and home-buyers in San Antonio, my town, has widened to an astonishing 114%. That’s absolute brutality to home-builders. So, the end of this credit cycle is going to include the following macro events: housing crash, credit crisis, energy shock and at least one Too Big To Fail will fail, just as Lehman Bros and AIG did in 2008. Oh, and the AI bubble will unravel. Wow, that’s almost a perfect storm.

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