The US-Iran War Has Begun

[Innula Zenovka]

Trump’s Iran Faceplant Ends at Obama’s Door

He wanted glory. Instead, he got the former president's shadow.

www.newsletter.samuel-warde.com

 

[Free]

Iran is going after the internet!

Iran demands Big Tech pay fees for undersea Internet cables in Strait of Hormuz

Iran's claim over subsea chokepoint pushes US tech companies to overland fiber.

arstechnica.com

Iran claims it will charge US tech companies fees for using undersea Internet cables that run beneath the contested Strait of Hormuz shipping lanes. The war has already halted multiple projects and led to the suspension of cable repairs in the region—and the latest Iranian threats may accelerate efforts by Big Tech and Gulf countries to find alternative routes for bypassing the Strait of Hormuz’s digital chokepoint.

The latest assertions of Iranian authority over the Strait of Hormuz were announced in a brief statement by Ebrahim Zolfaghari, a spokesperson for Iran’s military and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. “We will impose fees on internet cables” Zolfaghari wrote in a May 9 post. It was not immediately clear how Iran might implement such fees or impose its rules on cable projects, given that the majority of routes pass through Oman-controlled waters.

 

[Bartholomew Gallacher]

An early goal of America in the war was to put Mahmoud Ahmadinejad back in power as president. No kidding. Ahmadinejad, who often demanded the destruction of Israel.

To say that Mr. Ahmadinejad was an unusual choice would be a vast understatement. While he had increasingly clashed with the regime’s leaders and had been placed under close watch by the Iranian authorities, he was known during his term as president, from 2005 to 2013, for his calls to “wipe Israel off the map.” He was a strong supporter of Iran’s nuclear program, a fierce critic of the United States and known for violently cracking down on internal dissent.

How Mr. Ahmadinejad was recruited to take part remains unknown.

The existence of the effort, which has not been previously reported, was part of a multistage plan developed by Israel to topple Iran’s theocratic government. It underscores how Mr. Trump and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel went into the war not only misjudging how quickly they could achieve their objectives but also gambling to some degree on a risky plan for leadership change in Iran that even some of Mr. Trump’s aides found implausible. Some American officials were skeptical in particular about the viability of putting Mr. Ahmadinejad back into power.

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/05/19/us/politics/iran-israel-us-leader-ahmadinejad.html

 

[Innula Zenovka]

US Losses Fighting Iran: Signs Of Degradation

Aircraft Losses Are All Out Of Whack And Very Worrying

phillipspobrien.substack.com

 

[Innula Zenovka]

Trump’s Endgame Is Surrender

He seems to hope to slip away without Americans noticing the magnitude of this defeat.

www.theatlantic.com

 

[Innula Zenovka]

There Is Only One Remaining Question--How Badly Has The USA Lost This War?

Hi All,

phillipspobrien.substack.com

Evernote Link

 

[GoblinCampFollower]

There Is Only One Remaining Question--How Badly Has The USA Lost This War?

Hi All,

phillipspobrien.substack.com

Evernote Link

This is just so embarrassing.... I bet he'll strike a deal with Iran that puts us in a worse situation than we were in with Obama's old deal, AND it came at a great cost of blood and treasure. ....AND he'll try to present it as a victory. Same with the trade talks as I said before. We'll be in a worse position than before, but he'll claim victory.

We're basically worse off in every way than we were in 2016 except for the absurd bubble in the stock market if you count that.

 

[Innula Zenovka]

This is just so embarrassing.... I bet he'll strike a deal with Iran that puts us in a worse situation than we were in with Obama's old deal, AND it came at a great cost of blood and treasure. ....AND he'll try to present it as a victory. Same with the trade talks as I said before. We'll be in a worse position than before, but he'll claim victory.

We're basically worse off in every way than we were in 2016 except for the absurd bubble in the stock market if you count that.

More on the same theme

Midweek Update #12: We Are Witnessing US Decline In Real Time

The Military Strikes Do Not Hide The Fact That The US Has No Good Military Options Against Iran; China Backs Iran But Taiwan Is A "Chip"?

phillipspobrien.substack.com

 

[Free]

Geez, what did Oman do to get on Trump's bad side? Is their name too close to "Obama?"

 

[Bartholomew Gallacher]

Old and busted: America bombarding Iran.
Hot new stuff: America bombarding Oman - well, maybe soon.

The angry Orange threatened long time ally Oman to blow them up in case they want to control the strait of Hormuz together with Iran.

“Nobody is going to control it,” Trump said of the strait during a cabinet meeting in Washington. “It’s international waters, and Oman will behave just like everybody else, or we will have to blow them up.”

People first thought he confused Oman with Iran, but no. Trump meant what he said. Oman has been helping America to negotiate with Iran. It is one of the few options left in the region to enable that. So threatening this important ally is a dumb thing to do.

Why has Trump threatened to bomb Oman, amid Iran war escalation?

The US president has issued a stark warning to a US ally, in a sign of rising tensions over Strait of Hormuz.

www.aljazeera.com

 

[Free]

Vance says US, Iran still ‘going back and forth’ on ‘nuclear stuff’

Vice President Vance said on Thursday that the U.S. was “very close” to finalizing an agreement with Iran, but a few sticking points remained.

The two sides have reached a tentative deal that would extend the already-fragile ceasefire for 60 days, reopen the Strait of Hormuz and launch further talks on the future of Tehran’s nuclear program, according to U.S. sources.

The proposed memorandum of understanding (MOU) is still awaiting approval from President Trump and Iranian leaders, with Vance saying on Thursday that negotiators were “going back and forth” on a few terms, including what to do about Iran’s nuclear capabilities.

I feel all warm plush bunnies about this.

 

[Ellie]

The New York Times reports that in recent years, there were strong suspicions inside Iran that Israel, Britain and the US were cultivating ties with Ahmadinejad and those around him - suspicions that now seem to be confirmed by Israel’s apparent regime-change plan. The newspaper further reports that Ahmadinejad had recently travelled to both Guatemala and Hungary, countries with very close ties to Israel.

Does any of this make sense? And yet for western media, the fact that Netanyahu was championing Ahmadinejad as Iran’s saviour, and that the US administration wholeheartedly bought into this idea, is little more than “surprising”. In truth, it wrecks Israel’s entire narrative about Iran. It is a telling reminder of the yawning gap between what we have been told about Iran for decades, and what has actually been going on.

Image and reality bear almost no resemblance to each other. This has all been smoke and mirrors.

Many of the claims promoted 20 years ago by Israel about Ahmadinejad’s genocidal intent stemmed from a mistranslation of a speech in which the Iranian leader had quoted the late Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, who led the 1979 Islamic Revolution.

According to western politicians and media, Ahmadinejad had called for Israel to be “wiped off the map” - widely portrayed as an ambition to launch a nuclear strike on Israel. In fact, Ahmadinejad had been repeating Khomeini’s observation that Israel could not survive indefinitely in the form of an illegitimate Jewish supremacist state oppressing another people. He was pointing out that Israel’s days as a racist state were numbered, just as apartheid South Africa’s had been.

The sentiment behind Khomeini’s statement should be much clearer in the present circumstances, when it is Israel, not Iran, that has been busy wiping people off the map - in Gaza and southern Lebanon.

https://www.middleeasteye.net/opinion/israeli-claims-about-iran-threat-were-always-lie-now-we-have-proof

 

[Cristiano]

Unsurprisingly and right on fucking cue, Israel fucked things up yet again. They do not want the US to stop doing their dirty work so they blow up things, literally and figuratively, mostly kids for sport.

Iran suspends talks with US over Israel’s strikes on Lebanon, state media reports

 

[Cristiano]

“I spoke to President Trump on the phone last hour about the end of negotiations with the Iranians. He told me: “I don’t care if they’re over, honestly. I really don’t care. I couldn’t care less. If they’re over, they’re over. If they’re not, you know, I think they took too much time. Frankly, I thought they started to get very boring.””

 

[Free]

He's bored with the war, and with most of the "presidenting" he's forced to do every day. He wants to go back to playing with his ballroom.

 

[Innula Zenovka]

With its latest missiles, Iran unveils new regional order

A catastrophic defeat for the U.S. and Israel

amerex.substack.com

 

[Free]

How many times has Trump claimed an Iran deal is around the corner?

tl;dr: Too many.

 

[Innula Zenovka]

Midweek Update #14: How Low Can The US Go?

Another Worrying Sign For The US Military

phillipspobrien.substack.com

Overall, what we are seeing is a strategic mess of the highest order and an undeniable statement of US weakness. In summary, since Israel and Iran both thumbed their noses at Trump this weekend the following has happened.

1. Trump said everything was going well and a deal with Iran could be reached very soon, maybe a day or two.
2. It seems possible/probable that the US had to pay Iran off to the tune of $3 billion to stop its attacks on Israel
3. Iranian forces shot down a US Apache helicopter anyway.
4. Trump tried to pretend it was no big deal
5. Trump in the end did authorized a very limited response which he called “proportional”.
6. Iran responds to the US retaliation by attacking Bahrain, Kuwait and Jordan—all US partners.
7. JD Vance admits a deal is much further off than Trump is saying.
8. Israel is saying they might continue the war regardless of whether Trump agrees to a deal with Iran.

This is a rather shocking two days. It leaves us with the question with which I started this out: “How Low Can The US Go?”. We probably have not reached bottom yet.

 

[Bartholomew Gallacher]

Using AI to create a caricature.

First Gemini (which refuses to draw Trump):

Then Grok:

 

[Free]

The attacks are not quite on the countries in the headline.

Iran attacks Bahrain, Kuwait, Jordan in retaliation for US strikes

Strikes come after US attacked Iranian ports and islands in the Strait of Hormuz over the downing of a helicopter.

www.aljazeera.com

President Donald Trump says Iran will “pay the price” for taking “too long to negotiate a deal”, after Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) claimed responsibility for attacks on American military bases in Bahrain, Kuwait and Jordan in retaliation for US strikes on Iranian ports and islands in the Strait of Hormuz.

In a statement carried by state media on Wednesday, the IRGC said it launched drone attacks on the US Fifth Fleet in Bahrain and the Ali Al Salem airbase in Kuwait, as well as a long-range missile strike on an airbase in Azraq, Jordan.