Tag: perpetual war

America’s War on Iran Has Always Been a Bipartisan Effort

American bombs are now falling on Tehran, and while Donald Trump ultimately pulled the trigger, administrations before him—Republican and Democrat alike—constructed the gun, and even loaded it.

In 1995, US president Bill Clinton issued executive orders banning US investment tied to Iran’s petroleum sector and, soon after, most US trade with and investment in Iran. His administration justified the sanctions with an accusation that would later be used against Saddam Hussein’s Iraq not even a decade later: “Iran’s efforts to acquire weapons of mass destruction” and their alleged support for terrorism.

The International Atomic Energy Agency, which had visited Iran a few years prior to inspect their nuclear activity, reported no evidence of nuclear weapons.

In 1996, Congress followed up with the Iran and Libya Sanctions Act, which passed 415-0 in the House, and by unanimous consent in the Senate,targeting foreign and US companies investing more than $20 million a year in Iran’s energy sector.

Much like embargoes on Iraq, which were linked to catastrophic civilian deaths, over time, American sanctions on Iran decimated the economy and its people by devaluing currency, shrinking living standards, and limiting access to food and medicine.

In 2000, a report by a neoconservative think-tank called Project for the New American Century warned that even if Saddam Hussein were removed, “the need for a substantial American force presence” in the region would remain because “Iran may well prove as large a threat to US interests in the Gulf” as Iraq has.

Several prominent figures involved with the think-tank later joined the Bush administration, including Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, and John Bolton.

In 2001, shortly after 9/11, Iran offered counter-terrorism assistance to the US, but instead, President Bush lumped them in with Iraq and North Korea under an umbrella he termed the “Axis of Evil”. Clinton-era sanctions were kept in place, new ones were added, and covert measures began to undermine the Iranian establishment.

That same year, Congress passed the Authorization for Use of Military Force by a vote of 420-1 in the House and 98-0 in the Senate, granting the president sweeping authority to use military action against those connected to the 9/11 attacks. Although Iran had no connection to 9/11, the deliberately broad language of the bill created a permanent legal framework for military action across the Middle East without requiring new congressional approval.

Towards the end of Bush’s final term in office, a 2007 US National Intelligence Estimate (a comprehensive report involving all US intelligence agencies) concluded with “high confidence” that Iran was not currently building a nuclear weapon.

Still, Barack Obama’s policies continued beating the drums of war.

In 2010, he significantly expanded financial sanctions on Iran’s oil, gas, and banking sectors, measures that severely restricted access to essential medicines in Iran, which passed the House 408–8 and the Senate 99–0.

At the same time, his administration intensified Bush-era cyber operations against Iranian nuclear facilities. The Stuxnet computer worm, reportedly developed by the US and Israel, was credited with disabling hundreds of centrifuges and delaying enrichment efforts, even though the nuclear program continued to show no signs of weaponization.

In 2015, Obama concluded a nuclear deal that imposed strict limits on Iran’s nuclear program in exchange for sanctions relief. But its premise was a masterclass in propaganda that worked to build further consensus for war, first by painting Iran as an aggressor, and second by continuing to perpetuate a narrative that it was interested in pursuing nuclear weapons, despite continued evidence to the contrary.

Meanwhile, far more aggressive American allies in the region—namely Israel—were exempt from such scrutiny, with their own nuclear stockpile shrouded in secrecy and tucked away from international oversight of any kind.

After the nuclear deal lifted certain sanctions in 2016, Iran’s economy rebounded. And yet at the same time, US and Israeli hawks continued to fret, alternating their fearmongering and moving the goalpost away from Iran’s nonexistent nuclear weapons and instead towards their regional influence and ballistic missile program.

Republicans and Democrats joined together the following year to pass new sanctions on Iran’s missile program, along with entities tied to the Revolutionary Guard. These measures were approved with a vote of 419-3 in the House, 98-2 in the Senate.

Fortunately for the many warmongers adorning both major political parties, the arrangement with Iran had been signed late into Obama’s second term, paving the way for a new president to conveniently overturn it.

In 2018, Donald Trump did exactly that. His administration unilaterally withdrew from the deal and reimposed sanctions. In April 2019, the US designated the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, Iran’s most powerful military and political force, as a foreign terrorist organization. The following year, Trump ordered a drone strike that killed Qassem Soleimani, head of the Guard Corps’ Quds Force, a dramatic escalation.

Taking office in January 2021, the administration of Joe Biden largely maintained Trump’s “maximum pressure” framework, leaving existing sanctions in place, along with Trump’s designation of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard.

And while Biden campaigned on rejoining the nuclear deal, once in office, he demanded Iranian compliance as a prelude to sanction relief, which effectively made it impossible given growing Iranian distrust for the US.

In late 2022, after being asked about the nuclear deal by a woman appearing to wear a hair ribbon in Iran’s flag colors, Biden reportedly responded that the deal was “dead”, adding, “I know they don’t represent you, but they will have a nuclear weapon.”

Two years later, an assessment from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence found that Iran “has undertaken activities that better position it to produce one, if it so chooses” but added that “the Intelligence Community continues to assess that Iran is not building a nuclear weapon.”

Even so, in October 2024, when asked who she thought America’s “greatest adversary” was, Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris replied: “I think there’s an obvious one in mind, which is Iran.”

Harris, like Trump, repeated the lie that Iran was in the business of pursuing nukes, saying the US “will not allow Iran to obtain a nuclear weapon. Period.” And like Trump, she maintained that “all options” remained on the table to keep them from obtaining nuclear weapons, including military force.

In 2025, a majority of Democrats voted with Republicans to hand the Trump administration $900 billion in military spending, which provided funding for Pentagon operations, weapons procurement, overseas deployments, and military readiness programs for the upcoming fiscal year.

At nearly every stage, Republicans and Democrats in Congress, along with presidents from both major parties, have laid the foundation for a war on Iran.

The Bush administration lied its way into an invasion of Iraq, but nobody was held accountable. The Obama administration expanded the Bush-era Authorization for Use of Military Force to include drone-bombings in at least seven different countries, along with the targeting of US citizens accused of terrorism, and again, nobody was held accountable. Trump built on these precedents during his first term not only by amping up Obama’s drone strikes, but also by assassinating an Iranian commander. Again, no accountability. The Biden administration funded Israel’s flattening of the Gaza Strip while also shielding it from repercussions at the United Nations and International Criminal Court, effectively demonstrating that the so-called rules of international law were never fair, but instead, selectively applied.

Over time, escalation itself became normalized.

Economic warfare became cyber sabotage. Cyber sabotage became targeted assassinations. What were once extraordinary war powers became permanent executive authorities. By the time Trump entered the White House for his second term, the framework for America’s long-awaited war on Iran was already in place.

All he had to do was pull the trigger.

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How Britain Tried To Rig the Trial of a Genocide Opponent – and Lost

The jury took just two hours. Tony Greenstein – Jewish socialist, anti-Zionist – had faced fourteen years under the Terrorism Act for three social media posts and a blog article opposing Israel’s genocide in Gaza. The Crown called it “inviting support for Hamas.” The jury called it something else.

Section 12 of the Terrorism Act makes it an offense to invite support for a proscribed organization. Greenstein’s reference to a “Gaza ghetto uprising”, it argued, amounted to support for Hamas. Three social media posts and a blog article. The bill the State was demanding for those words – fourteen years.

Judge Sarah Plaschkes repeatedly objected when Greenstein brought the wider historical-political context of Palestine/Israel into the courtroom – warning him against treating the proceedings as a political forum. When the closing speech came, Greenstein was by now so concerned about what might happen to his barrister that he decided to address the jury himself (no doubt considering what had happened to Barrister Rajiv Menon KC – more of whom later). For thirty minutes he examined the prosecution case and the context in which his posts had been written. The jury wasn’t asked to lay aside the offending words; instead, he guided the jurors in an articulate reading (see his address to the jury, here) in which the world in which they’d been written was made clear (full trial coverage at the Canary, here).

But this court was rigged and thus determined to keep all context out of the courtroom. Nevertheless, despite Judge Plaschkes’ hostile interruptions, Greenstein’s speech laid bare the realities the prosecution had no interest in facing: his opposition to Hamas evident in dozens of articles he’d penned and published on his platform over the years; and Israel’s genocide in Gaza after October 2023. He spelled out the difference between supporting Hamas and defending the right of Palestinians to resist Israeli oppression, and the obvious point that the posts in contention clearly did not express support for Hamas.

Greenstein recounted to the jury how his grandparents fled Poland before the War, and most of those left behind perished in Treblinka. To him, Greenstein told the jury, the Holocaust was not history, but inheritance. He invoked the story of the 1943 Warsaw Ghetto uprising as a parallel of Gaza: young Jewish men and women rising up against the SS with smuggled pistols against tanks, knowing it was hopeless yet choosing resistance anyway. October 7th was Gaza’s uprising. The judge objected.

Once Greenstein had finished speaking (to a round of applause from the public gallery), Judge Plaschkes addressed the court to say that she had considered referring Greenstein for contempt of court. She then dismissed his address as a “rambling speech delivered by an old man”. An extraordinary turn of phrase in a criminal trial in which Greenstein was about to find out whether he was to be sentenced to 14 years in prison.

Home Secretary Yvette Cooper added Palestine Action to the UK’s list of proscribed organizations in July 2025, under section 3 of the Terrorism Act 2000. But proscription criminalizes more than membership. Up to fourteen years in prison can follow under section 12, which makes it an offence to “invite support for a proscribed organization” or to “express an opinion or belief that is supportive of a proscribed organization…” That was the provision the Crown used to prosecute Tony Greenstein, and it applies right now to public expressions of support for Palestine Action. Serious concerns over freedom of expression and peaceful assembly were raised by a group of five UN Special Rapporteurs over proscribing a group for property destruction.

On 6 August 2024 activists from Palestine Action staged a break-in at Elbit Systems, in Filton, near Bristol.  It’s an Israeli defense company with British operations supplying equipment to the IDF. They entered facilities, sabotaged machinery and hindered production they regarded as part of Israel’s war-making infrastructure. During the parliamentary debate on the proscription order, it was argued that Palestine Action had targeted only industrial facilities, and not civilians. The government went ahead with proscription anyway.

Rajiv Menon KC represented one of the six defendants in the February 2026 Filton Trial. All six were acquitted of aggravated burglary but the jury failed to agree on criminal damage. At the May retrial, four were convicted. Menon’s closing speech was a masterclass and invoked the 1670 Bushell case – a landmark ruling on jury independence from judicial interference, arguing that the judge could not direct a conviction. Judge Jeremy Johnson then referred Menon for contempt, a referral the Court of Appeal overturned on procedural grounds in May before Johnson referred to it correctly in June.

The Filton defendants were acquitted of the most serious charge – the barrister who defended them is now facing contempt proceedings for the way he did it.

So what lies behind all this courtroom drama is a routine machinery. Proscription – the government’s designation of an organization as terrorist – takes effect by order of the Home Secretary. It falls to the barrister to gauge how far a closing speech can go before crossing the line into contempt, while the judge cautions against political argument. Indeed, the evidence shows that judges are increasingly directing what juries are allowed to hear before threatening barristers with contempt. To an outside observer there is little sign of a conflict – yet behind these routine procedures is something damning: what the jury doesn’t get to hear – could mean years in prison.

And, of course, the elephant in the room is that Britain is directly implicated in Israel’s genocide in Gaza. In September 2024, as the government suspended thirty arms export licenses to Israel, Foreign Secretary David Lammy told Parliament that “there exists a clear risk that they might be used to commit or facilitate a serious violation of international humanitarian law”. Thirty licenses suspended out of three hundred and fifty. Britain would also continue to supply F-35 components through the global parts pool serving Israel, with the government arguing that withdrawal would undermine allied security. British weapons armed a state committing a genocide despite their supposed withdrawal.

The state that arms Israel prosecutes those who oppose it.

The Crown had brought three posts, a blog article and an accusation of terrorism before the jury. But Greenstein stood on that essential context – despite the hostile judge’s interjections. And a mere two hours after retiring – the jurors returned with a unanimous verdict of not guilty.

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You Can’t Make This Stuff Up – Ukraine Wants To Pay For Its Bombs With OnlyFans

Ukraine’s parliament is weighing a bill that would legalize pornography production so the state can tax OnlyFans creators and funnel the proceeds straight into the defense budget. The measure, co-authored by opposition lawmaker Yaroslav Zhelezniak, cleared its first reading in July and now sits awaiting a second vote. Fenix International, the parent company of OnlyFans, already handed Ukrainian tax authorities records showing 7,900 locals pulled in $131 million on the platform last year. Zhelezniak claims legalization could yield roughly $25 million annually, enough to buy about 30,000 drones.

That figure looks microscopic next to Ukraine’s stated annual defense requirement of $120 billion. The gap underscores how far the country has been reduced to scraping for loose change while the larger conflict grinds on. Current law still treats pornography as a criminal offense, with penalties reaching seven years in prison for production, distribution, or even possession. Tax officials, however, have been chasing the same creators for unpaid levies on their earnings. The result is a perfect trap: pay the taxes and risk prosecution for the underlying activity, or withhold the taxes and face charges for evasion, writes the Wall Street Journal.

One prominent creator, Svitlana Dvornikova, who claims over a million subscribers, has flown repeatedly to France and Spain to film content and says she has already remitted $900,000 in taxes. Police raided her home anyway, seizing electronics and $200,000 in cash she had set aside for further payments. She filed a petition to President Zelensky that gathered 25,000 signatures. Tax lawyer Lesia Mykhalenko, who has represented more than 100 OnlyFans models, notes that the existing statutes simply overload the courts at a moment when resources should be directed elsewhere. Separate reporting from Ukraine’s general prosecutor indicates police departments in three regions each collect over $20,000 a month in bribes tied to the adult industry.

Former waitress Iryna Mosiychuk now runs Beezone, a company registered as a consulting firm that actually operates webcam studios outside Lviv serving mostly American clients. Models there reportedly clear $2,000 to $7,000 a month. The arrangement illustrates the parallel economy that has taken root while official policy remains frozen in contradiction. As the Wall Street Journal documented, these arrangements persist precisely because the legal framework offers creators no safe path forward.

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Israeli Defense Minister Katz: 70% Of Gaza Is Desolate, 80% Of Gazans Want To Migrate, Israel Is Ready To Move Them Out

Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz delivered a wide-ranging assessment of Israel’s military campaign in Gaza, the West Bank, and Lebanon, making clear that the forced displacement of Gaza’s population remains central to Israel’s strategic vision — and that Israel is prepared to carry it out the moment political conditions allow.

Katz stated that between 60% and 70% of Gaza is now desolate. “About 70% of the area is desolate — without residents, without houses, without tunnels,” he said, while acknowledging that work remains to be completed.

On the question of Gaza’s population, Katz was direct: “There is no real solution for Gaza in the end without this migration.” He cited surveys showing that approximately 80% of Gaza’s population wants to emigrate, adding that Hamas is the primary obstacle preventing them from leaving. “Hamas doesn’t allow them, and there are no countries in the world that will take them,” he said.

Katz said Israel is fully prepared to facilitate the departure of Gaza’s population by sea, by air, or by any other available means. He noted that Egypt has refused to serve as a transit route. The sticking point, he explained, is that Arab countries willing to accept Gazan migrants are demanding U.S. backing before moving forward. “Every country that is willing wants American backing,” Katz said. “Currently, President Trump didn’t cancel this; he froze it. All the Arab countries came to him due to their pressure on this matter.”

Katz indicated that the moment for resumed military and territorial action will come when it becomes clear that Hamas is not meeting its commitments. “Then we will get a green light to move forward militarily, territorially, and in other areas, and this thing will gain momentum,” he said.

On the West Bank, Katz rejected the characterization of settler violence as “Jewish terror,” stating he has canceled that term. “Terror is whoever acts to commit terror against the State of Israel,” he said. He confirmed that the IDF has conquered refugee camps in the West Bank, evacuated 40,000 residents who have not returned, destroyed infrastructure, killed terrorists, and remains inside those areas.

Katz also summarized the broader scope of Israeli military action: “We destroyed 70% of Gaza. We destroyed areas in southern Lebanon; we ruined dozens of villages that served as Hezbollah strongholds. We evacuated 200,000 residents.”

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Iran Vows ‘Faster, More Painful’ Response To US Attacks After Weekend Sea Battle

Iran’s Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf on Sunday announced a heightened military posture in the war with the US, saying that new attacks on the country will “meet a faster, heavier and more painful response.“

“If they haven’t understood by now, they should understand before it’s too late that the rules of the game have changed and that from now on, any violation of Iran’s interests and security will receive a ‘faster, heavier, and more painful’ response,” Ghalibaf said in a post on Telegram. He has warned that Iranian retaliation will no longer be “proportionate”.

Ghalibaf also conceded that Iran faces severe economic pressures amid US-led sweeping sanctions and the campaign of ‘strangulation’ and isolation efforts.

“Severe fluctuations in the exchange rate, inflation, unemployment, and market management are fundamental challenges that have put serious pressure on people’s livelihoods,” Ghalibaf said.

He also laid out that the Islamic Republic must aim to bolster domestic production and use technology to “devise short-term and permanent solutions.” Iran’s military has all along touted that it never stopped manufacturing missiles and drones, even as US-Israeli bombs decimated many industrial sites.

Ghalibaf’s words come a day after the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) said it attacked three American military ships and three oil tankers using an “unauthorized” route in the Strait of Hormuz. Also, in the latest:

Iran said Sunday it struck an unmanned U.S. vessel trying to enter the Strait of Hormuz, a claim that the U.S. military dismissed as a “total lie.”

The US military earlier on Saturday had struck three Iranian oil tankers, M/T Downy, M/T Stark 1, and M/T Kylo – in a major first of the conflict (that is, a US attack on civilian vessels).

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Jihad Near and Far: The Order of Priorities in Establishing a Modern Islamic Caliphate

For the past year, an al-Qaeda affiliate has been strangling the capital of a West African nation by burning fuel trucks, blockading roads, and imposing sharia law on captured towns, without striking a Western or Israeli target. Since September 2025, Jama’at Nusrat al-Islam wal-Muslimin (JNIM), al-Qaeda’s Sahelian affiliate, has waged an economic siege of Bamako, Mali’s capital.

In April 2026, JNIM and an allied Tuareg separatist group launched an offensive that killed Mali’s defense minister and seized or contested several cities, including Kidal, Gao, Mopti, and Sévaré, bringing fighters within reach of Bamako, the country’s capital.

In towns it controls, such as Farabougou, JNIM has imposed sharia law, banned secular music, and required women to cover their heads. Its strategy mirrors the approach used by the Taliban in Afghanistan and Hayat Tahrir al-Sham in Syria before each group toppled the government and seized power.

If JNIM or its ISIS-affiliated rival, the Islamic State Sahel Province, captured Bamako, it would be the first time a group with current, direct ties to al-Qaeda controlled a national capital.

This makes Mali the clearest test of near-enemy jihadist strategy in the world today. JNIM’s campaign is aimed at toppling Mali’s military government, the definitional near enemy in jihadist doctrine, rather than attacking the United States, Europe, or Israel.

Mali illustrates a decades-old debate that shapes jihadist strategy across theaters and organizations: which enemy should be fought first, the government ruling over Muslims or the outside powers backing it. The distinction between the “near enemy” (al-‘adaw al-qarib) and the “far enemy” (al-‘adaw al-ba’id) predates every group that uses it today. Understanding this hierarchy explains why movements calling for a global caliphate spend most of their resources fighting other Muslims and Muslim governments rather than the West or Israel.

At its territorial peak in early 2015, the Islamic State controlled roughly 41,000 square miles across Iraq and Syria, an area comparable to Portugal, and ruled as many as eight million people.

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Democrats Invite Women To Freeze Their Eggs So They Can Go Fight Wars

The military has announced plans to cover costs for sperm and egg freezing for service members, expanding a negligent “reproductive” effort to the detriment of military personnel and their families.

The pilot program, launching Sept. 14 under the Veteran Families Health Services Act of 2025, will run for three years and reimburse costs of sperm freezing up to $500 and egg cryopreservation up to $10,000 for service members who meet deployment or separation requirements.

The program fulfills a longtime Democrat-backed effort to disassociate military women from maternal family roles; increases dissonance in already strained military families, further divorces procreation from spousal stability, and ensures mothers can be separated from their children.

The Sexes Are Not Equal in Combat
Women have supported the armed forces in non-combat roles since the development of the Army Nurse Corps in 1901, with increased but limited access to positions until 2013. At that time, then-President Barack Obama supported a lifting of the ban by former Defense Secretary Leon Panetta. By 2016, gender specific roles in the military were effectively eliminated.

The exclusion of women from serving in combat roles has been justified. Combat poses the direct and imminent risk of injury and death, as well as placing soldiers in tactical locations that cannot adequately accommodate gender separation. Forward operating bases and outposts offer little to no separate housing or privacy barriers between the sexes. Experiential hardships can extend well beyond privacy, encompassing lack of food and sleep that disproportionately harm women.

A small-scale study of Army rangers claiming that women are less physiologically affected by rigorous training than men, does not match up with any large-scale studies of women exposed to extreme physical hardship. The study presents an insufficient apples-to-oranges comparison and should not be utilized as an argument to place excessive physical strain on women in the military.

The Biological Clock
Soon after the military opened doors to place women in hazardous duty stations, Democrat-led efforts for IVF-related services began. Building on that effort, in 2018 Rep. Rick Larsen, D-Wash., called IVF the “most effective form of assisted reproductive technology” for service members whose fertility was affected by their service. Rather than improving health and safety for women, the costly, unethical, and dangerous technology was promoted.

Ten years after so-called integration, women who entered combat in their peak fertility years are now aging out of childbearing, or at least edging closer to the end of their fertile years. The possibility of deployment has likely affected the many military women choosing to begin families after age 35, further decreasing their likelihood of conceiving naturally.

As infertility continues to disproportionately plague women in service, IVF serves as an expensive, politically driven distraction.

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Palestinian Journalist Calls Hakeem Jeffries a ‘Monkey’ and ‘Errand Boy’

A Palestinian journalist blew right through the forbidden red line of African American racist terms by referring to black House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) as a “monkey” and a “boy.”

Now, former MSNBC commentator Rula Jebreal is trying to explain, but black lawmakers are having none of it.

Specifically, Jebreal took fire from the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC) Friday after she called Jeffries an “AIPAC monkey” — the acronym a reference to the pro-Israel lobby group American Israeli Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) — and then an “errand boy,” a description dangerously close to the definition of a slave.

Jebreal used the epithets during an appearance on Wajahat Ali’s The Left Hook podcast where she criticized the black Democrat’s support for Israel and accused him of doing the bidding of AIPAC.

“His name is Hakeem. ‘Hakeem’ is an Arabic name which means ‘healer.’ He’s not a healer, he’s a divider,” Jebreal said, the New York Post reported.

“He is a bought and paid by AIPAC monkey,” she continued. “With all due respect — and I don’t mean it in a racist way.”

“He is just basically an errand boy, and we’re done and tired,” Jebreal said.

After Jabreal’s rant, Ali tried to bail her out of linguistic trouble, interjecting that using the term “monkey” has “terrible racial connotations… but I think you caught yourself and said you didn’t mean it with any racial animosity.”

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Iran: Several Ballistic Missiles Fired At US Aircraft Carrier, Navy Destroyer

Iran Unleashes Large Drone Swarm Attacks on Several Ships

Iran state media is releasing footage of its own Saturday action against US assets in the Strait of Hormuz on Saturday, as part of the fresh weekend tit-for-tat fighting with the United States. Per state PressTV and IRIB, it seems Tehran is saying it has targeted six vessels:

  • The IRGC targets three US-related vessels and three oil tankers in the Hormuz Strait, warning all vessels against choosing unauthorized routes to transit Hormuz.
  • In response to US attacks on three Iranian tankers, Iran has targeted three vessels in the unauthorized route of the Strait of Hormuz, along with three American ships.

Al Jazeera Breaking:

BREAKING: Iran says several ballistic missiles fired at US aircraft carrier, Navy destroyer

The IRGC Navy is claiming a “response” to US aggression: “This morning, the terrorist and aggressor US military, in a brutal act born of desperation from the closure of the Strait of Hormuz, attacked three oil tankers belonging to the Islamic Republic, causing damage,” the force said in a statement on Saturday. In response, it continues: “the fighters of the IRGC Navy targeted three oil tankers traveling along an unauthorized route through the Strait of Hormuz, as well as three vessels affiliated with the child-killing United States, in other areas.”

IRAN SHOWS NEVER-BEFORE-SEEN STRIKES on ‘VIOLATING’ vessels in Hormuz — Tasnim

The overnight into early Sunday hours are going to be interesting, awaiting more possible Pentagon action, even as the Department of War says this is not a “war”.

CENTCOM Confirms Strikes 

US Central Command confirmed on X that US forces struck three Iranian oil tankers after the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps launched ballistic missiles toward two US Navy warships. 

CENTCOM provided details:

Following Iran’s failed attacks, CENTCOM permanently disabled the IRGC crude oil carriers M/T Downy off the coast of Kharg Island and M/T Stark 1 near Jask. American forces also completely destroyed the unladen crude oil carrier M/T Kylo (also known as the “Noxen”) in the Gulf of Oman, striking the vessel in multiple critical locations to render it inoperable after the crew was directed to abandon ship.

The three Iranian crude oil tankers are part of a multibillion-dollar shadow network that funds the IRGC and its regional proxies. Iran has no means by which to defend them.

CENTCOM commander Adm. Brad Cooper stated:

Let the message to the IRGC be clear: If you shoot at two of our ships, we will impose an even higher economic cost —taking out three of yours. 

We will not hesitate to defend American forces, and if necessary, destroy Iran’s limited and exposed oil fleet. 

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The Soft Antichrist Of The AI Age: What Everyone Is Missing About The US-China Arms Race

I. The word

Peter Thiel spent the back half of last year giving private lectures on the Antichrist, and the word has been loose in the discourse ever since. His political reading is the old one. The Antichrist is not a cartoon devil. He is the figure who arrives offering peace and safety, and who uses the fear of catastrophe to install one universal order. In Thiel’s telling that figure is a regulator. He stops technology in the name of survival. The price of the peace is stagnation.

I want the frame. I do not want his conclusion.

The more probable figure is not the one who promises safety. It is the one who promises growth. Most of the world does not lie awake about existential risk from machine intelligence. It lies awake about electricity, logistics, credit, tax collection, and a median citizen who is twenty four and needs work. To that world the universal offer is not a moratorium. It is a stack. Cheap. Financed. Hosted. Present. Already attached to the handsets, the ports, and the power.

That is the soft Antichrist. It does not arrive with a speech about ending history. It arrives as the only AI that can grow your GDP.

I am not writing theology. I am writing underwriting.

II. The comforting story

The market is telling itself a story. The AI race is a contest of models. America builds the best systems. China copies. Europe regulates. Capital therefore clusters around closed labs, chipmakers, and hyperscale cloud. The scoreboard is a benchmark table.

That story is not false. It is incomplete in a way that misprices power. It treats the richest customers as the only customers that matter. It treats evaluations as destiny. It treats national power as a software demo.

I disagree.

The race will be decided by who becomes the default operating system for the economies that still have the most growth left. Those economies will not adopt AI as a lifestyle product. They will adopt it as a growth tool. They will take the stack that is cheap, present, financed, and attached to what they already run. If that stack is Chinese, Beijing does not need to conquer anyone. It only needs to become expensive to leave.

III. Where the mass actually is

When Sargasso maps AI adoption across emerging GDP rather than across model releases, the picture is not the one the market is priced for.

Start with the denominator. On purchasing power terms, IMF projections for 2026 put China at about $44.3 trillion against $32.4 trillion for the United States. India is near $18.9 trillion. Indonesia clears $5.4 trillion and Brazil $5.2 trillion. Turkey is at $4.0 trillion, Mexico $3.6 trillion, Saudi Arabia $2.9 trillion, Egypt $2.6 trillion, Nigeria $2.4 trillion. Nominal dollars still flatter America, and by a wide margin. China’s nominal print is about $20.9 trillion against the same $32.4 trillion for the United States. Both numbers are true. They answer different questions. Nominal tells you who can buy foreign assets. PPP tells you how much physical and administrative activity there is to automate. For an adoption thesis, the second number is the one that matters.

Ray Dalio has been describing the political consequence in plain terms. He calls it a tribute system. A hierarchical order in which leaders travel to Beijing to acknowledge relative power in exchange for access and stability. He ties it to a growing view abroad that American security guarantees will not be honored under stress. I take the framing seriously. I do not treat it as scripture. Ports and rail were the first set of rails. Models will be the next set.

IV. The evidence is already in the download data

This part of the argument is no longer speculative.

Over roughly four years, the American share of model downloads on Hugging Face fell from about sixty percent to the mid teens by late 2025, according to reporting in The Wire China. Hugging Face’s own one year review of the DeepSeek moment is blunt on the composition shift. DeepSeek R1 became the most liked model on the platform in its history. The top of that list is no longer majority American. Baidu went from zero public Hugging Face releases in 2024 to more than one hundred in 2025. ByteDance and Tencent raised their release counts eight to nine fold. Of newly created models under a year old, downloads for Chinese models surpassed any other country, including the United States. Western startups and researchers now routinely fine tune Chinese base models because those are the largest open weights available.

The Wire China’s Southeast Asia reporting puts the commercial logic in local language. A Jakarta lab head said developers will always pick the cheapest one. A Malaysian founder said he wants the biggest model and there is no Western open source offering at that size. Chinese cloud providers were running thirty seven availability zones across six Southeast Asian regions against thirty across four for the Western field.

None of this shows up cleanly in a frontier benchmark table. All of it shows up in switching costs three years from now.

V. The institutional layer

Beijing is not leaving the volume layer to price alone. In July 2026 it stood up the World Artificial Intelligence Cooperation Organization in Shanghai, with twenty nine founding members. Public reporting names Russia, Kazakhstan, Pakistan, Indonesia, Brazil, and a broader set spanning Africa and Latin America among the signatories. The five year commitments attached to the body, as reported by Caixin and The Diplomat, are unglamorous and therefore serious. Training placements. Joint application centers with regional blocs. A weather early warning system deployed into dozens of countries.

Read that list as an underwriter. Training placements create the administrators who will write the next procurement. Application centers create the reference deployments. Weather systems create dependency inside a ministry that cannot afford an outage. Standards get set that way. Not with a better model. With a bureaucracy that has already learned one.

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