Iran-talk
I don’t know what to make of the news of talks with Iran. How can anyone know? We don’t even know with whom these talks are happening, or whether they’re just some sort of delaying tactic for Trump in order to get other things in place (such as Marines, or arming dissidents, or some inventive Mossad operation). We don’t know if they’re designed to get the mullahs quarreling with each other, trying to find the betrayers. We don’t know what’s in Trump’s head, or what the instructions are to the negotiators.
I can say that the very notion of negotiations with the current Iranian regime makes me very nervous, because they clearly cannot be trusted except to lie strategically. But if I know that and you know that, surely Trump and his US negotiators know that, and more.
In the meantime, here’s an article from the NY Post, for what it’s worth:
The US has sent Iran a 15-point plan and cease-fire proposal to end the war in the Middle East — and President Trump claims the regime has already agreed to a critical part of the peace framework: No nuclear weapons.
I don’t think he actually said “the regime.” He said this. Who’s the “they”?:
The 15-point plan was reportedly delivered by Pakistan. If the list is correct, you can see there’s nothing about regime change. Enforcement would be through the IAEA, which would be granted access. Sounds like the agreement to which Saddam Hussein acquiesced after the Gulf War, and which he continually violated by not letting the inspectors do their jobs.
I have been assuming for quite some time that regime change will not happen as a result of our military campaign in Iran, but that – as has been said many times – it’s up to the Iranian people. I also assume a lot is already going on behind the scenes to foster that, much of it dependent on Israel.
As for the supposed current leaders of Iran, they had some choice words about all of this:
Iran emphatically fired back at President Trump’s 15-point peace plan Wednesday – as the clerical regime reportedly fears it’s just another trick by the commander in chief.
Top military spokesperson Lt. Col. Ebrahim Zolfaghari criticized any talk of a deal between Washington and Tehran, warning “Someone like us will never come to terms with someone like you,” according to a video shared by the state-run Fars News Agency.
Zolfaghari didn’t refer to the US by name, but essentially branded Operation Epic Fury a “defeat” and accused Washington of making empty promises. …
“Have your internal conflicts reached the point where you are negotiating with yourselves?”
“Our first and last word has been the same from day one, and it will stay that way: Someone like us will never come to terms with someone like you. Not now, not ever.”
Much more at the link. It would make a good movie, I think – except this is our reality, or at least the part of our reality we’re allowed to see and hear.
Meanwhile:
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt signaled that the US military operations against Iran will continue until Trump’s objectives are met. …
Iran has made a set of demands in return, which a US official branded “ridiculous and unrealistic,” the Wall Street Journal reported.
I can well believe it. In addition, recall that a series of talks preceded the US attack on Iran – nor has that attack ended.
In related news, some countries are agreeing to take part in keeping the Strait of Hormuz open. After all, it’s to their benefit:
Over the weekend, the United Arab Emirates and Australia became the latest to join a growing list of nations, now numbering 22, offering their help to open the Strait of Hormuz.
Six — United Kingdom, France, Germany, Italy, Netherlands and Japan — jointly declared their “readiness to contribute to appropriate efforts to ensure safe passage through the Strait” on Thursday; another 16 have signed on since. …
And NATO Secretary Mark Rutte says the alliance is working out a timeline for a joint response: “If Iran would have the nuclear capability, together with the missile capability, it would be a direct threat, an existential threat — to Israel, to the region, to Europe, to the stability in the world.”
It remains to be seen what they will actually do. But the Iranian attacks on Cyprus, and on the far-off Diego Garcia base, have alerted Europe to a danger to themselves which they should have recognized decades ago.
I think we have to accept that it’s no longer possible to learn anything from American media. It’s all laundered narratives at this point: legacy media getting theirs from anonymous axe-grinding apparatchiks and activists, podcasters getting their talking points from who the hell knows where but definitely some from factions within our government as well as Iranians and Russians, the monetized right-wing blogosphere spinning and tweaking what they read in legacy media but not able to collect any facts of their own, though occasionally fed some by someone wanting to market a narrative.
I think it’s hopeless to expect actual information, especially about war.
Following it anyway, in lieu of anything better, might actually be worse for us cognitively: learning so many things that aren’t so and then having to painfully unlearn them later when enough facts have dribbled out that the narratives collapse. Some, like the Epstein blackmail/pedophile ring narrative, just never get let go. There are lots of people now who are proclaiming every new appearance of Netanyahu to be AI-generated because they think he was killed week before last, and they focus on every tiny video glitch to back themselves up. This is not the only issue where this kind of reality-selection is happening.
Depending on your browsing habits, the algorithms will deliver to you the reality you respond to. This isn’t good for us, our civilization.
So:
– Trump launched a war against Iran without a realistic contingency for if/when Iran closed the Strait of Hormuz or attacked petroleum industry infrastructure.
– The Iranian regime survived enough of the initial onslaught to close Hormuz and begin attacking petroleum industry infrastructure.
– Trump is getting the jitters about the as the price of oil, so he’s now negotiating with the Iranians to find an offramp that will end the war without destroying the world economy and causing mass starvation due to fertilizer shortages.
A. Tell me how this characterization is wrong.
B. If you can’t, tell me how the US has more leverage now than it did before the war? How much more pain can we realistically inflict on Iran?
I fear the answer to my last question is they’ve already absorbed the best shot we’re able to realistically take at them, and they’re still in a position to inflict considerable pain on us.
@Bauxite:A. Tell me how this characterization is wrong.
1. It’s mind-reading on your part, that Trump didn’t have “realistic” contingencies, and you get it from wallowing in never-Trump commentary. You weren’t in the meetings, and neither was anyone you’re listening to. The military is not a bunch of killbots who stand around passively until Trump has some brainwave which they execute without thought or initiative. There have been decades of planning involving attacks on Iran, there are even plans for attacking Canada. That’s what those people do all the time, they plan.
2. It’s not realistic, to expect that someone who wasn’t Trump would have removed the Iranian regime after (checks calendar) less than four weeks of air war.
3. It’s not just Trump who worries about the price of oil. Literally everyone worries about that. But mass starvation due to fertilizer shortages is a fantasy you picked up from somewhere.
Trump is certainly in the Iranian thugs heads. As he is in Bauxite’s.
@Bauxite
I realize you are deep into the Orange Man Bad Brainrot, but this is getting absurd.
Not really, we’ve had contingencies in place for decades and those have been updated. It looks like they’ve largely worked because the natural threats to Hormuz have either been crippled or outright eliminated. During the protracted Tanker War of the Iran-Iraq War in the 1980s the most important threats to shipping were.
1. The Iranian Air Force that won Air Superiority over Iraq. This is basically wiped out as far as anyone can tell, with basically zilch regime air power larger or heavier than shaheeds airborne, and the US confident enough we are now deploying heavy attack helos and A-10s deep into Iranian airspace, which we flatly would not do doctrinally if we believed that there was significant aerial threat from Iran.
2. The Iranian Navy. We’ve destroyed or captured basically all Iranian ships larger than minelaying speedboats, as the sinking of the Dena attests. And we’ve made good progress in destroying their mosquito fleet of speedboats, as the footage of 16 destroyed minelaying speedboats showed. This is a rate of loss that is absolutely unsustainable for the Mullahcracy.
3. Rocketry. This is the big one since it’s the area where the Mullahs have made the largest sets of advances in. From what reports we do have it seems like we have devastated many of their rockets, hence a massive decrease in the volume of fire and its efficiency, and Allied leadership has largely attributed that to destroyed platforms but we don’t know for sure.
4. Mines. Another big one and the one that Mullahs have the greatest proven capacity to do so far. It looks like we caught them out fast enough that they didn’t have time to set up the major minefields that defined the Gulf in the 1980s and their maritime capacity to lay more is going fast, but they clearly got some out that’s a very real threat, and the ability to drop some from Drones (more on that later) is the big question, as is clearance.
To that another thing has been added since the 1980s.
5. Drones. Which is the big issue. Iran became a center for quick and dirty drone production they’ve used on us and Israel and to help fuel the Kremlin’s war effort, and while we’ve apparently put a significant dent in it we are by no means close to destroying it..
So on the whole it looks like US contingencies against Iranian power in the Strait have been largely effective, and the main threats from Iran have been greatly hurt and in the case of their heavier than a drone air force essentially destroyed, but we’re a ways away from complete security.
However, it seems like the strait is not really “closed” and that the main cost from it comes not from Iran or Iranian proxies and a proven ability to inflict significant damage on allied or neutral shipping, but from commercial costs and insurance speculation. Which Trump has responded to by offering to backfill insurance costs to keep things affordable. As it stands it seems like the strait isn’t physically closed and while traffic has dropped off, ships can and still do run the gauntlet relatively easily by just turning off their transponders during the period of maximum danger, and Iranian hit percentages and the damages inflicted when hit are worrying enough to not be trivial but not decisive (I’ll have to check to see if they’ve even managed to destroy a single tanker since).
To those of us with a historical memory longer than five seconds, agendas beyond Orange Man Bad, and more analytical competence than claiming Romney’s Get Out The Vote was superior to Trump’s in spite of provably getting lower vote counts both in total and as a percentage of the population, we might recall things like the humiliating IRGC boardings of USN and Royal Navy ships that they claimed drifted into Iranian territorial waters and thus falsely justified their seizure and disarmament in propaganda spectacles, or to the Tanker War.
This is a major improvement and points to significant and careful planning. I don’t think for a second it all owes to Trump or Hesgeth either, given things like the comparable results at sea Reagan’s USN obtained with Praying Mantis.
Mostly inefficiently, and with the clerical leadership part of the regime claiming it was as a result of the Elder Khamenei’s Dead Man Switch. They might have been lying about that and in any case were forced to walk it back as a result of the IRGC declaring the intent to carry on, but that points to how they had a bunch of things scoped out. In any case the damage they inflicted from those hits was far outweighed by the fact that they alienated basically the rest of the Gulf and forced even Pakistan to take a step back from direct support of them.
Writer’s Barely Disguised Fetish detected.
Again, the “closed” Strait of Hormuz is so open that oil tankers – just about the most vulnerable kind of ship in world history this side of outright fire ships – are able to transit by the dozens by simply turning off transponders so they aren’t literally broadcasting their location to the entire planet (and I DO mean the entire freaking planet) live every single second. A few of them have been hit and suffered damage – sometimes severe damage – but the fact that we haven’t gotten confirmation a single one has been sunk speaks volumes.
While Trump’s getting jitters about the price of oil and has apparently been negotiating and giving mixed signals (including about an operation to take Kharg Island, which I note you haven’t mentioned, I wonder why?), but not enough to stop operations. Especially since said operations have been crucial to minimizing the risk to oil infrastructure and ships transiting.
Already did. Do I expect you to actually care or respond?
Lol no. But I think it’s worth saying for the record.
I’ve already told you how your characterization is wrong, which would mean I would be able to exempt myself from the trouble of spanking you on this. Nevertheless, I’m a glutton for punishment so I will anyway.
The US and Israel have shown the capacity to kill the senior Iranian regime leadership and most of their proxies almost at will, and to devastate entire branches of the Iranian system, especially its clerical leadership and branches of its armed forces or paramilitary. It will take many years for them to be able to recover their naval strength or the clergy lost. They flat out NEVER WILL be able to recover the aerial power they’ve lost.
They’ve also thoroughly antagonized most of the Sunni Gulf beyond what was the case before, and have even irked Qatar so much that Qatar fact checked the man formerly known as Tucker Qatarlson for trying to blame IRGC attacks on Qatar on Israel. And now the US is openly encouraging Iranian counter-revolution, including droning significant internal security forces.
So in other words, if the regime does not come to the table and make a deal suitable to Trump AND Netanyahu AND the Sunni States, they likely will face outright civil war they will be unlikely to win without external deployments from the likes of the PRC, Russia, and Pakistan that will probably not come.
Meanwhile the threat of closing the straits that the regime has held over the world for decades has been shown to be a paper tiger. So far the strait is “closed” more due to speculation among major insurer marketplaces than due to the once vaunted Iranian Navy and Air Force and IRGC naval assets or Shaheed Drone spam, which has resulted in the Mullahcracy being forced to backpedal from publicly talking about how the Strait is Closed in the Name of Jihad to offering deals, promising immunity for nations’ shipping through the strait if they evict US and Israeli diplomats, thus indicating they are desperately trying to limit the number of targets they have to go after and save face.
But even more importantly, *ABSOLUTELY NOBODY WHATSOEVER HAS TAKEN THEM UP ON THAT OFFER.* Nobody. Not even the Mullahcracy’s major allies and enemies, not even rogue states like Laos or North Korea. Meaning they quite literally cannot Bribe people enough to spite us even temporarily.
If that does not speak to a much greater US leverage over the situation than we had before, I do not even know what to type beyond the fact that I think it would be the capstone showing your colossal ignorance and dishonesty whenever the Orange Whale comes up.
“A Lot. Quite a lot.”
How much exactly depends on many factors, such as how deep Trump or Netanyahu are willing to go, how deep the non-core Allies like the Sunni Arabs or the Euros and Japan are willing to, how Israel’s march to the Litani against Hezbollah goes and how Lebanon reacts, and how Iran’s public and the regime’s major allies react.
Unlike you Bauxite, I at least try to be honest, so I will have to admit I am not a prophet and cannot make any certain claims on what will happen. God only knows Trump has disappointed me before and might again.
But you didn’t ask how much pain we realistically WILL inflict on Iran, just how much pain we realistically CAN. And that is a truly staggering amount.
For once that’s a realistic fear, but I think you’re greatly exaggerating how we haven’t even deployed troops ashore in a limited capacity, and aren’t dropping major weapons to Iranian dissidents. While the regime has proven incapable of closing the straits more than sellers at Lloyds of London can, cannot get even the PRC or North Korea to turn out our diplomats and the Israelis for a day or so, and is unable to repulse a Peshmerga invasion in the Northwest.
We have plenty of good shots in us at them. They seem to be struggling to muster against us.
That’s not very convenient for your Trump Bad narrative, but it is the truth.
It astonishes me that even now there are those who believe DJT is a fool simply stumbling mindlessly from one self-induced crisis to another.
You can identify a lot of them in the media by simply taking note of who uses the words and phrases “moderate Iranian leaders”, quagmire, and “unforeseen consequences.”
“You weren’t in the meetings, and neither was anyone you’re listening to. ” Niketas Choniates to Bauxite
This is what I said to a person 7 months ago, when they said they knew “with absolute certainty” that our own government brought down the towers on 9/11. That person hasn’t spoken to me since because I pointed this out as utter hubris.
From a “personnel is policy” perspective, we are getting regime change in Iran, in that we keep killing the individuals leading that regime and they have to keep promoting new ones. Eventually Darwinian natural selection, if nothing else, should result in a more reasonable Iran regime. But we couldn’t expect natural selection to do its work in four weeks of air war, of course.
@Bauxite: A. Tell me how this characterization is wrong.
You tell us how it is right. I do weary of people, even Charlie Kirk, playing the “prove me wrong” card.
If you’ve got a point to make, prove it yourself. Moving the onus to the other side doesn’t prove anything, certainly not that you are right.
In this specific case, you just sound foolish to assume that the US military hasn’t wargamed Iran options to death for 47 years and that Trump hasn’t taken advantage of that work.
Which isn’t to say that things can’t go wrong. This is war. Even Eisenhower didn’t assume D-Day would work.
A family member said she had to tell me how much she hated the war. I told her hating war is a normal human attitude, so congratulations, but sometimes it must be endured to prevent even bigger ones. Ones that you would hate impossibly even more. She seemed to think this was preposterous, although I am unsure exactly why.
@huxley
Moreover, the ability of dozens of tankers to run through the strait proves Bauxite is wrong, as does the significant damage to the Iranian navies and their Air Force. The bigger threats on a military level come from the Iranian mine laying and rocket attacks, and even that is dwarfed by the threat of insurance premiums from Western markets that Trump and co have taken steps to mitigate.
The idea that the Strait is “closed” is mostly fantasy.
Touching, and so apropos, homage to Paul Ehrlich, actually…
He’d have appreciated it.
(Ah, finally…FINALLY!!!)
Turtler – Shipping traffic in the Strait of Hormuz is down between 90 and 95% this month. If Iran really lacked the ability to take out shipping on the strait, somebody would be calling their bluff and making a killing right now. That fact that only Iran-approved shipping is traversing the Strait right now is a pretty good indication that Iran is controlling the shipping there.
And to Sharon W and Dwaz, it really isn’t necessary for one to be “in the meetings” to judge. We get to look at the results. Even if you buy Turtler’s take that Hormuz shippers are simply the latest cases of TDS, the effective closure of the strait is very painful to the US and our allies. That, and there’s a real possibility that Iran has already taken the best punch that we are capable of delivering without ground troops.
I really hope that’s not the case. If it is, however, it’s difficult to avoid the conclusion that Trump is a fool who has stumbled into an easily-predictable, self-induced crisis.
Did he gamble that they would be able to take out the regime before it was able to close the Strait of Hormuz, or that he could take it out quickly enough that any closure would be short?
Bauxite, while the flow of oil globally is critical, the world hasn’t run out of oil. There was/still is enough excess oil floating around/underground storage to fuel the needs for another month or two. Yes, the commodities markets are reacting– but the fact that oil prices are still in the $100 range tells me the Trump administration has done a pretty good job managing the oil supply disruptions.
What were our stated goals?
Iran must never have nuclear weapons.
Iran must not have missiles that can target countries in the region.
Iran must give up supporting proxies in the region.
These are the targets we have spent the last three weeks degrading/destroying. Even with the size of the allies air campaign, Iran is a large country where they have spent decades hardening their capabilities. I would suggest we nearly missed the opportunity to attack Iran. Another year and their missile/drone stockpile would have made it impossible to eliminate without serious long-term damage to the Arab states oil facilities.
President Trump has issued a list of demands for the conflict to end, which were the original demands we made before the conflict started. It sounds like they’ve rejected those demands. In which case the conflict will continue for a while longer. I think a better characterization is President Trump is offering the Islamic regime an off ramp.
It’s very likely the regime will fall before these demands are agreed to.
we have a couple of issues left to resolve– if they can be resolved.
1. The asymmetry of modern war. This is something that we haven’t been able to resolve in our lifetimes. Modern conflicts end with a cease fires, not with the conflict completely resolved. Right now Hormuz is being held hostage by a terrorist regime using the threat of a few ballistic missiles, some overgrown model airplanes and the equivalent of ski boats.
2. Cutting off the economic pipeline of the IRGC. The shell companies/shadow banking/crypto network enables the IRGC to maintain a veneer of power. That needs to be cut off. It’s estimated they are now receiving over 50% of the oil revenues that is still flowing out of Iran.
CC™ pisses on our backs unabashedly:
We know it isn’t raining CC™ (Bauxite).
When it comes to your nemesis, President Trump, you lie unashameably and unconvincingly.
It’s almost four weeks now and—I tell ya’—it’s really starting to look like Vietnam…
@Bauxite
I’m not sure where you’re getting that, but it is simply not true.
It’s down by a lot, but it is usually not the “95%” usually claimed.
This is particularly worth noting and why I ask where you’re getting that from because the main way ships are transiting the strait is precisely BY turning off the Transponders during the crossing. Tracking transponders is the main way that most of the “Track how many ships are doing Y” sites or sources count such traffic.
The general pattern has been while you have a few ships transiting the strait with transponders on, but most turn them off and slip through, usually in clumps when they are gambling there are enough of them transiting that the Mullahs can’t hit or even detect all or most of them, or when there are friendly ships involved.
It’s also worth noting that Naval transit – whether by neutral navies like the Indian Navy or the outright USN – remain.
So the actual drop off is generally around 70%, which is explainable NOT due to Iranian interception being so capable but due to the aforementioned delays in ships grouping up, and above all in ships trying to get insurance as most of them are legally required to.
So it turns out that the Mullahs have not been able to close the strait by any realistic definition of the term, even in comparison to their prior achievements in the tanker war. Instead that’s more down to insurance costs.
Unfortunately for you but fortunately for the wider world, people have been and are.
https://gulfnews.com/world/mena/shipping-billionaire-sails-into-war-meet-george-prokopiou-how-his-ships-brave-the-hormuz-1.500483223
https://legalinsurrection.com/2026/03/it-appears-ships-are-sailing-once-again-through-the-strait-of-hormuz/
https://www.lloydslist.com/LL1156676/Greek-bulker-makes-first-traceable-westbound-transit-through-Strait-of-Hormuz-in-over-two-weeks
https://www.independentsentinel.com/a-greek-tanker-has-the-guts-to-pass-through-the-strait-of-hormuz/
And the fact that you did not know this should be more dirt draped over the coffin of whatever credibility you had on this issue.
As an aside to the good people watching this, note how much like Huxley observed with their statement Bauxite should “tell us how it is right”, Bauxite’s trying to shift the burden of proof and conduct an argument from absence. Rather than point to a list of ships the Iranians have sunk or seriously damaged or to ships refusing to transit, they instead tried to make me prove that people are making a killing calling Iran’s bluff.
This is in spite of the fact that what we’re discussing is not whether or not people are making a killing, it is on the basics of whether or not Iran can stop shipments in the Strait militarily. Which it provably cannot.
Unfortunately for Bauxite, it’s also easy enough to stomp on because I can in fact point to ships like the Pola doing exactly that in defiance of the Iranian regime.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/tanker-makes-secret-trip-strait-162713583.html
And how the Mullahs have since degraded their stated claims from blocking all oil like they claimed they would in the bad old days to offering their “Evict US and Israeli diplomats and we let you through” (which nobody, NOBODY took even for a moment) to now their recent claim they will let “non-hostile” traffic through, in essence a massive climbdown from their pretenses and from their actual doctrine for most of their history to try and block all non-allied traffic through the strait like in the bad old days of the 1980s.
All of these are concrete, all of these are provably observable, all of these are irrefutable, all of these point to a collapse of Iranian capability to block actual transit through the strait or even to significantly damage or destroy shipping in it. All of these are a lot easier to prove than the “Prove people are making a killing calling Iran’s bluff.”
Which I can still do anyway.
Not a fact, and indeed is very confirmably not a fact. It is just an indication you are staggeringly ignorant and misinformed.
Iranian pretenses that they have allowed “only Iran-approved shipping” through is more of a Marksman’s Fallacy by a regime in crisis that has been unable to intercept and sink or even significantly damage ANY tanker in the Strait, and in effect is moving the goal posts to try and claim that the ships that are getting through the strait both with transponders on and off are those they “let in” (“SEE! WE’RE NOT LOSING THE WAR! WE LET THEM GET THROUGH!”).
I’m sure you can sympathize given your long and ignominious history of moving the goal posts.
The problem with this narrative is that it’s still provably not true. We know ships that are not approved by Iran are still getting through the strait, mostly with disabled transponders.
Now stop wasting our time, stop spreading misinformation and stop being a useful idiot while missing out on the chance to make bank.
Correct, but it helps.
It also helps to have an accurate grasp on events.
Which you provably do not.
It’s why I can point to and name ships transiting the strait without Iranian approval. You cannot point to any they have sunk for not doing so. While risky and nobody wants to be the first tanker crew killed when their ship sinks, the risks are manageable and people are making bank calling the Mullah’s bluff.
Which is why the Mullahs have steadily been downgrading their bluff.
From “If the Great and Little Satan oppose us we will close the Straits of Tiran to all shipping not of our choosing!”
to
“Ok, we will graciously permit any nation that turns out US and Israeli diplomats to pass with our permission!”
to
“Ok UN, we will graciously permit all non-hostile shipping to pass the strait.”
Which I am. You on the other hand are provably not.
Again: Did famously Trump Supportive Yahoo News hallucinate the Pola going through the strait? Or that the Shenlong?
No.
It’s not my take. It’s also not an effective closure, unless you want to claim that Iran steadily abandoning its claims to be able to keep most of the world’s shipping from transiting the gulf is “effective closure.” Which would fit given your track record but is not a standard anybody else needs to abide by.
https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/iran-says-non-hostile-ships-can-transit-strait-hormuz-ft-reports-2026-03-24/
Clausewitz argued that war is the extension of politics by other means, and that the object of war was to bend the enemy to your will. Iran publicly abandoning its decades old doctrine of stopping non-allied shipping in the Strait is objective proof that the US and Israel have succeeded in bending Iran’s dictatorship most of the way towards their will as far as maritime transit through the gulf goes, and doing so publicly and officially.
Unofficially to Iran, shipping continues to go through the gulf.
Which is why while the troubles in the straits ARE painful to our Allies and others, they are nowhere near as painful as the regime or its cheerleaders like you claimed they would.
Assuming you believe that mass protests or rebellions aren’t there.
Says the fool who cannot bother looking up objectively provable, officially declared statements such as non-approved-by-Iran transits of the Strait and Iran’s public declaration to the UN allowing “non-hostile” traffic in direct violation of its previously held doctrine.
Probably that we could like in the 1980s keep transit going with acceptable levels of human, material, and financial losses. And that so far has proven to be true.
But I’m sure that people like George Prokopiou the shipping magnate don’t know nothing compared to the singular genius that is Bauxite.
Another deep dive:
This might help to understand what might, and/or might not, be happening…
(Or it might not…)
“Doomsday scenarios miss mark: Inside Trump’s strategy to stabilize oil prices”—
https://www.jns.org/analysis/doomsday-scenarios-miss-mark-inside-trumps-strategy-to-stabilize-oil-prices
(As Tom Lehrer sang so presciently in “That Iran Rag”:
“…Bow your head you big ingrate. And speculate, speculate, speculate…”)
yes many of the press lazily throw out the 90% figure, but a map of the cargo traffic doesn’t bare it out, yes some boats have been hit, some refineries notably in bahrain and doha, well one of their major pipelines has been damaged, but that concerns natural gas, they should not have humored the scorpion, in the first place,
you would think this has been akin to the u boat campaign to stifle allied shipping before the war and in the immediate aftermath, the mef and associated units will be off the objective, in four days if needs be,
much of the press, the international press is some of the worst, see the telegraph, has taken the worst case scenario as the default,
Another indication, in case you needed one, that Barack Obama is a narcissistic empty suit.
==
https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2026/03/obama-on-the-spot.php
Hudson Institute colloquium, “Operation Epic Fury: Strategies, State of Play, Theories of Victory” (4:48:45) — https://www.youtube.com/live/qXaL2IgxLgY
Roundly informative, recommended.
an illustration of taranto’s maxim
https://legalinsurrection.com/2026/03/cbs-vs-cbs-public-sees-iran-war-going-badly-yet-oppose-leaving-regime-in-power/
A new headline at oil price.com sets an optimistic tone by reporting “BREAKING NEWS: China’s Top Shipper Resumes Middle East Trips Amid Iran Ceasefire Talks”.
Speaking of “lying strategically”; Trump being Trump, maybe he is going to give the Iranians an opportunity to do so in front of everybody, as before. But not pass it off as not worth worrying about and maybe shipping them some more cash.
LOOK HOW THEY LIED! More bombs away and justified by their public perfidy. As in really, really public, MSM notwithstanding.
Props to Turtler’s relentless reading and think-through posts today. Thank you!
Niketas AT THE TOP says at 1:09 pm said:
“I think we have to accept that it’s no longer possible to learn anything from American media. It’s all laundered narratives at this point: legacy media getting theirs from anonymous axe-grinding apparatchiks and activists.” Indeed
The pattern of propaganda and disinformation laundering was set under Brib’em’s time with the risible Propaganda Media coverage of Putin’s War in Ukraine.
I have seen several sources on YT telling us that the frontline loss of lives by Russia are simply staggering. Survivability approaching zero there. Instapundit posts on it mid-day today.
It may be true that the last trench of money ($180 billion) in the BB-bill is actually getting spent effectively? Instead of to grubby private hands? Many around Zelensky have been fired or prosecuted, it seems, in the last 6 months.
But back to Trump derangement and pro-Iranian wishcasting in the media. Yesterday, YouTuber Vince Dao covered this concisely as the Media’s Humiliation Ritual, ie, walking back their parade of gullible lies conveyed as “news.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mqYevHF6x4g
Niketa closes by fearing what these maniacs are doing harm our civilization. Me, too.
I see it all the time on YT, where the pig ignorant and young just spew at the reader like a Bull poorly mated to a Cow wastes its bodily essence.
It is scary. Because without the respect for fact-finding and the shared pursuit of Truth, the open society ends. It cannot function to solve collective problems.
Subjective ejaculation is the result. And it infects the “opinionated” young.
For example:
Trump is lying.
Trump is stealing for his rich friends.
Trump is stupid.
…it gets mind numbing in their piggedly mud soaked celebrations. Civilization is lost, if these sorts win.
And again, thank you Turtler, for your brave and deep pursuit of the Truth, today.
Derp. That last mention of “Straits of Tiran” should have been Straits of Hormuz. Mea Culpa, Mea Maxima Culpa. Let it not be said I do not make efforts to be correct and to fix myself when I make a mistake. That is one thing that helps prevent me from being a Bunge or a Bauxite.
@Turtler:That last mention of “Straits of Tiran” should have been Straits of Hormuz.
…bonus dormitat Homerus. You’re way ahead, don’t worry.
Someone remembers the “Bunge!”
“Enforcement would be through the IAEA, which would be granted access.”
Which would be a case of toothless ‘enforcement’.
“Our first and last word has been the same from day one, and it will stay that way: Someone like us will never come to terms with someone like you. Not now, not ever.” Top military spokesperson Lt. Col. Ebrahim Zolfaghari
It is always to be welcomed when all doubt is removed that as far as your mortal enemy is concerned… its kill or be killed.
TJ:
It seems that Russian tactics of attack are highly dependent on the “How Not to Be Seen” factors such as fog. Drones see and then start a kill chain that destroys or immobilizes vehicles and then goes after individual soldiers.
It appears that the usual ratio of killed to wounded is now mostly killed.
Vlad is a bloody bastard for keeping his war going.
@Geoffrey Britain:Top military spokesperson Lt. Col. Ebrahim Zolfaghari
(checks watch) Might be a different spokes”person” in a day or so.
”Tell me how this characterization is wrong.”
OK.
”Trump launched a war against Iran…”
Trump didn’t launch the war. The Iranian government did. It declared war against us 47 years ago and has waged war against us ever since. Its agents and proxies have killed hundreds if not thousands of Americans and destroyed billions of dollars of our property in a near-continuous series of attacks.
It has stated repeatedly that it intends to develop nuclear weapons and that when it does so it will use them against us. It has developed ballistic missiles that can hit anywhere in the world. Just a month ago it told us directly that it had about 1,000 lbs of enriched uranium, enough to make 11 weapons.
The war long pre-dated the Trump administrations.
”…without a realistic contingency for if/when Iran closed the Strait of Hormuz or attacked petroleum industry infrastructure.”
The plan seems to have been, at a minimum, to destroy Iran’s air force, navy, ballistic missile launchers, cruise missile stockpiles, and drone factories before Iran could mount an overwhelming attack against our assets and allies in the region. Our air campaign has been quite successful at destroying much of the hardware the mullahs use to make trouble in the region, but it hasn’t been perfect. War operations seldom are. That doesn’t mean there was no plan.
The only legitimate criticism of the war planning was that the Trump administration didn’t take the drone threat seriously. This isn’t new. Trent Telenko and others have been complaining for years that the Pentagon brass and its civilian overseers aren’t taking the drone threat seriously. Hopefully we’ve taken enough damage from them to be a kick in the pants for that brass without it being a crippling attack at the start of a larger war.
”…tell me how the US has more leverage now than it did before the war?”
We and our allies have complete air dominance over Iran and can attack any target with impunity. We’ve destroyed almost their entire navy, air force, and air defense system, most of their ballistic missile launchers, and much of their nuclear weapons program. We have killed much of their government’s leadership and continue to do so to the replacements.
”How much more pain can we realistically inflict on Iran?”
We can all but wipe Iran off the face of the earth. We won’t because we don’t want to, but we could.
”…they clearly cannot be trusted except to lie strategically. But if I know that and you know that, surely Trump and his US negotiators know that…”
Probably true on the whole, but Steve Witkoff just might be dumb enough to take the mullahs at their word.
Over at The Spectator (US), Roger Kimball may have the latest word on Trump and Hormuz and oil.
If what he writes is true, then markets are going to bust up as the cost of oil falls. (Instapundit posted an excerpt up around 10PM Eastern; the original is PAYWALLED.)
After covering Cuba, Kimball writes:
“Meanwhile, in and around the Persian Gulf, the endgame is nigh. The US Navy is just about to be crushed by the Islamic Republic of Iran. Just kidding. That’s the headline that CNN and similar organs of anti-Trump animus have inscribed on their wish list. So far, my favorite chunk of surreality was the charge that neither Trump nor his military advisors anticipated that Iran would threaten to close the Strait of Hormuz, through which some 20 percent of the world’s black gold passes each day.
“Secretary of War Pete Hegseth was right to call CNN’s story on the subject ‘patently ridiculous.’ Iran has been periodically threatening to close the strait since 1979, when that malevolent lunatic Ruhollah Khomeini took over Iran and plunged it into its current grotesque misogynistic dystopia.
“Iran says the strait is closed. Scratch that. It is open to all ships except those from Israel and the United States. Since only about a dozen US-flagged ships pass through the strait annually, that is not much of a burden. But then Saudi Arabia said (I translate freely from the Arabic): ‘Screw this. Bypass the Strait of Hormuz altogether. Sail up the Red Sea and we’ll load your oil at the port of Yanbu.’ ‘Oh, wait,’ quoth whatever Iranian authorities are still ambulatory, ‘we didn’t mean it. Come back!’”
India is allegedly taking them up on the offer. The Straits of Hormuz are international waters, so no ‘permission’ from Iran is needed. But just in case, India is sending 7 war ships to ensure safe passage for their ships. CHECK IT OUT! https://instapundit.com/785350/#disqus_thread
Perhaps Kimball is being snarky, back at the conventional wisdom? Perhaps this optimistic picture is not seriously intended. At least not quite yet.
Maybe, this picture is about Kimball’s expectations for days to come? I checked the open markets. And Asia is definitely down— for now.
But clarity will move the markets, if it comes.
Turtler = Baghdad Bob
https://lmalloyds.com/safety-concerns-not-insurance-availability-driving-reduced-vessel-traffic-in-the-strait-of-hormuz/
https://www.argusmedia.com/en/news-and-insights/latest-market-news/2805185-trump-s-shift-in-tone-fails-to-revive-hormuz-traffic
Oil is up, but not as much as it would have been 20 or 30 years ago due to increased US production. Fertilizer is up. Other petroleum products are up. Prices at the pump are up sharply.
Of course its possible that shipping in the Strait of Hormuz is not really down because all the ships are turning off their transponders and that markets are chasing ghosts. But the single most plausible interpretation of the facts we have is that (i) shipping traffic in the strait is down significantly; and (ii) that is driving prices.
The real question here is whether Trump has the stomach to go into the mid-terms with prices up the potential resulting recession.
At this point, he had better because negotiating an “off ramp” now to re-open Hormuz would leave the US in a worse position than it was before Trump started the war.
@Bauxite
Quit while you’re behind before you get banned for malevolent trolling, gaslighting, and dishonesty. God knows you certainly deserve to be, and the mercy of Neo alone keeps you here.
Which of us is peddling objectively false, demonstrably untrue propaganda from a hostile totalitarian regime Bauxite? Oh right. You are, not me.
As I’m going to prove.
This amounts to essentially a Cover Your Ass press release from Lloyds of London after they got (justified) fire for messages to their major lenders on the matter and they’re trying to justify their actions. Not particularly important beyond demonstrating Bauxite’s dishonesty and lack of source analysis.
I could fisk them by comparing things like rates during the Tanker War or various other major conflicts, but that’d be an inefficient use of my time and focus.
Instead I’m going to use them to fisk Bauxite and his propagandistic claims. Did you even read what you linked?
Now, let’s compare/contrast what Bauxite claimed – without evidence beyond panic pornography from the MSM – to what Lloyds is saying now..
Bauxite:
Lloyds of London:
Did you even read your goddamn source, Bauxite? Apparently not, or else you would have realized how linking this was a colossal blunder of yours.
Both because
A: It substantially validates MY claims and assessment of the situation, not yours.
B: It provably torpedoes several of your claims.
And this is the intentionally grim but substantially no-citations-provided press release put out by Lloyds to try and justify their actions. Hence the reference to an unlinked survey that may or may not have happened as well as “it is believed….”
And yet it still establishes that at a maximum “over 60%” or less than 70% has “an Iran nexus or has negotiated consent from Iran.” This is in sharp contrast to your previous claim that it was a “fact that only Iran-approved shipping is traversing the Strait right now.”
but even this doesn’t capture the depths of your dishonesty, folly, and failure to parse your own sources. Because for one, it ignores the fact that Iran has steadily lowered the bar for what “consent to transit” from them amounts to, as I detailed before, going from claims to an absolute block of all non-allied transit through the straits as they claimed for decades….
….to offering a deal where any nation’s shipping would be permitted through the straits if they evicted US and Israeli diplomats.
https://www.ibtimes.co.uk/iran-offers-any-country-free-pass-through-strait-hormuz-one-terrifying-condition-1784287
And when *absolutely nobody, not even North Korea, Venezuela, or Laos took the offer*, to declaring to the UN “ok ok, all non-hostile ships can pass through.”
https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/iran-says-non-hostile-ships-can-transit-strait-hormuz-ft-reports-2026-03-24/
In the business this is what we call moving the goal posts, something you are almost as familiar with as you are with gaslighting and intellectual dishonesty Bauxite. So in addition to the major flaws and fairly weak broth that this link actually provides (and how it still upends your apple cart far more than it has ever done mine), we now have to account for the fact that Iran has hastily declared that the vast majority of all shipping on Earth has “consent to transit” by default.
There are two explanations for this.
Firstly: That the Mullahcracy that helped mastermind October 7th and which routinely rapes and murders dozens of thousands of its own people is so moved by humanitarian concern and a desire for stability that it has decided to grant blanket approval to passage to any ship not flying a US or Israeli flag.
Secondly: That the US and Israel were pounding the Mullahcracy’s military power such that their ability to harass or block the Straits was rapidly collapsing and that continuing to try and enforce blanket closure for non-allied ships was doing more harm than good and would no longer be tenable anyway. So they decided to try and get ahead of it and put as brave a face on it as possible.
As we’ll see, the answer is the second.
Now let’s talk the casualties that Lloyds cites to justify this PR and why skippers are so hesitant.
Now, is this a tragedy and justifiable cause for hiking it? Absolutely.
But this is also Lloyds and Bauxite hoping that you don’t have any kind of independent or greater perspective on the matter. It also confirms my dare to Bauxite where I challenged them to name a single Tanker destroyed or significantly damaged by the Mullahs while I pointed out how many had crossed the Strait in defiance of Iranian claims to closing it:
“(I’ll have to check to see if they’ve even managed to destroy a single tanker since)”
It looks like Lloyds even in an intentionally depressive, CYA press release concluded that the answer to that question is a resounding No.
This is in sharp contrast to shipping losses near the Horn of Africa and Straits of Malacca, or historically such as during the Tanker War of the 1980s. If you think Lloyds or insurers had to highlight the loss of a tugboat and 11 lives to justify hiking insurance for those, you have no idea what you’re talking about.
So even by Lloyds’ account, losses at the time that PR release was drafted amounted to 11 lives lost. In contrast, the USN and USAF destroyed 16 IRN/IRGC minelaying speedboats and provided receipts in the form of kill footage.
https://www.armyrecognition.com/news/navy-news/2026/u-s-destroys-16-iranian-mine-laying-boats-as-iran-begins-mining-strait-of-hormuz
Meaning that for once the Iranian Mullahcracy is in the rare position of enjoying a NEGATIVE CASUALTY RATIO as the commerce raider to the Merchant Marines it is trying to raid. Suffice it to say, this was very much not the case for most of the Tanker War, or even “Islamic Republican” history up to this point in time. How much do you think the crews of the Battles of the Atlantic or the Tanker War of the 1980s would’ve given to have this result?
So the risk is real, but it is also not severe, and definitely not compared to existing hotspots like the Horn of Africa and the Straits of Malacca.
It is consistent with what I said, not Baghdad Bauxite.
And the fact that Bauxite handed this source to me so that I could bean them over the head without apparently reading it or realizing what a fool it made them look like speaks volumes to why they are unworthy of trust, unworthy of the benefit of the doubt, and unworthy of being taken seriously.
So to summarize this and pull together a couple paragraphs from the Lloyds article together:
So to distill this:
Lloyds estimated that “over 60%” of ships they can trace either had “an Iran Nexus or had negotiated”. That means that by their intentionally dour assessment they still admit over 30% flipped the Mullahs the bird, did so openly, and transited.
The Joint Maritime Information Center lists 23 “maritime attacks involving commercial vessels and offshore infrastructure reported across the Arabian Gulf, Strait of Hormuz and Gulf of Oman.”‘ This resulted in “at least 11 fatalities” and a tug boat being destroyed. As far as sortie productivity that is a dismal result, especially by the standards of Iran’s stated doctrine.
Lloyds admits that there have been more than 111 transits by vessels of 10k dwt or more with their transponders on in an active warzone where until very recently one side was claiming “SILENCE, I SEEENK YOU” to any neutral or enemy shipping. They *ALSO* admit this does not account for the fact that “there may have been more who transited with their satellite tracking switched off.”
Narrator Voice: There were indeed more, we know because a bunch of them came forward and said so and could provide the cargoes to prove it and got payouts.
And again, this happened presumably around the time or just before Iran finally acknowledged nobody was going to accept their “Kick Big Satan and Little Satan Diplomats out and we give you passage through the Strait most of you have already proven you can pass through anyway!” and essentially “gave consent” by default to the vast majority of shipping on Earth as declared to the UN, marking a collapse of longstanding IRoIran doctrine.
So now the big question is *why the absolute DEVIL* Bauxite thought this would help his cause considering that even at face value it explicitly blows up several of his claims such as that only shipping Iran allows through is going through, and when you bother parsing worth a damn and comparing it gets even worse.
It’s not quite Baghdad Bob speechifying in front of an Abrams bad, but it’s still a self-inflicted rake stomp that shows how fundamentally unserious and utterly dishonest Bauxite is on this.
So moving on to the second link.
Annnnd it’s basically utterly worthless overheated trash based on sensationalism.
Now let’s go to MaritimeTraffic to see how they calculate their data.
https://www.kpler.com/product/maritime/data-services#ships
So in short, MaritimeTraffic is dependent on AIS transmissions.
Now for the benefit of the person with TDS induced brain damage in the audience, let’s go over what the heck AIS actually is:
https://www.navcen.uscg.gov/automatic-identification-system-overview
And to those of you who are not suffering Trump Derangement Syndrome and Turtler Derangement Syndrome so severe you are rendered incapable of source analysis, this means that MaritimeTraffic is entirely dependent on ships transmitting their AIS to the world in order to assess how many ships have crossed the Strait to get that data. >/b>
Meaning that if ships cross with their AIS and Transponders turned off, the MaritimeTraffic data will be skewed. AS EVEN LLOYDS OF LONDON ADMITTED IN THE PREVIOUS LINK BAGHDAD BAUXITE POSTED, AND I QUOTE:
Now, do we have evidence of significant numbers of ships switching their satellite tracking off to transit the straits? Yes, yes we do. As even the famously pro-Trump BBC (which only has been proven to have doctored his speeches multiple times) mentioned:
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c4geg0eeyjeo
And we can point to specific hulls of this as well.
https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/tanker-heads-uae-port-via-strait-hormuz-load-oil-sources-say-2026-03-04/
This should not be surprising. While it’s bad faith and often illegal to turn AIS off in most cases, in a war zone where a totalitarian terror state claimed the right to sink even neutral shipping and that it will use the info provided by AIS to try and do so (even if up to this point it has had minimal success), it is permissible under maritime law to turn it off.
Meaning the Argus News “findings” are based on fundamentally junk data since they are only counting the traffic crossing tracked by MaritimeTraffic, but MaritimeTraffic can only count ships with AIS transmitting and we have proof of widespread turning off of AIS during the crossings.
This should not be hard. Indeed, it is not hard. But Bushehr Bauxite is not merely stupid, ignorant, and incompetent to analyze these articles properly, they are remorselessly dishonest and happy to spout enemy propaganda and clickbait junk that does not prove what he thinks it does in an attempt to attack others.
I’ve been saying for well over a year that Bauxite is a gaslighting liar. I hope this should prove beyond doubt why I say this.
Now having done Bauxite’s job by analyzing the sources they linked, le’ts address their pithy comebacks.
Which is unsurprising for a host of reasons. War in the Middle East along a major oil route, Iranian attempts to asphyxiate it by mostly-ineffectual attacks on tanker shipping and infrastructure, and plus US, Ukrainian, and other efforts to asphyxiate the Shadow Fleet by things like blockading Venezuela and seizing or sinking shadow fleet ships does that. That doesn’t mean what you say though.
As well as the fact that 20 or 30 years ago the Mullahcracy would have averaged much better rates for attacks, and Russia and Venezuela would not be as widely sanctioned as they are.
See above.
Good people, see the hedge? See the cowardly, dishonest backpedal while still shooting at me claiming I am equivalent to Baghdad Bob, in spite of how I am not the one peddling provable propaganda lies from a totalitarian dictatorship and enemy of the US?
The market is chasing ghosts, as I was able to prove by parsing your own goddamn sources, Bushehr Bauxite. Did you even read what your own sources said? No apparently not.
That’s not to say shipping in the Strait is “not actually down.” It is. And those 11 lives lost are still dead and might not be the only ones. But it’s nowhere near as down as your propagandistic hot take claims. Unlike you and “Rhys van Dinther”, your average ship skipper is NOT THAT STUPID and knows to turn off AIS when running the gauntlet to minimize the risk of being hit. And they have had significant success in doing so.
We know this from the results they have had on the market as well as reports from them, as well as on the Iranian Regime’s response. The regime that once claimed the ability to block the Strait absolutely for non-allied traffic has steadily eroded its claimed aims and has now issues blanket “consent to transit” for most ships on Earth and notified the UN as such.
This is not the actions of a regime capable of inflicting 1980s Tanker War style losses and risk on transiting ships. This is not the action of a regime able to block the strait. This is not the action of a regime that can determine who crosses and who does not.
Again, note the Weasel Words. Note the dishonesty. Note Bauxite being a dishonest goon.
Before:
After:
So in essence, Bauxite started by claiming that Drumpf and Hesgeth and everyone else for decades on end since Reagan had failed to account for how to keep the Strait of Hormuz open and failed to plan, and that now Iran had control of the straits and was able to let “only Iran-approved shipping” traverse, something literally no honest or remotely competent source ever claimed and indeed that even most Mullahcracy propaganda didn’t.
Now they have backpedaled almost altogether because it is no longer tenable to claim that, and they have cautiously admitted that ships are transiting the strait in defiance of the Mullahcracy’s edict, mostly by turning off AIS and their transponders during the actual crossing. But that shipping in the strait is down significantly and it is affecting prices…. exactly like I claimed and which was not controversial (indeed I pegged to a 70% drop in daily shipments, and that might even be too high a drop based on the info we now have).
And yet Bushehr Bauxite accuses me of being the equivalent of Baghdad Bob. In spite of being the person to actually broach these factors correctly and introduce them to the discussion, in spite of Bauxite having absolutely no way to address them and having engaged in a limited modified hangout to try and smooth over their particularly insidious and disgusting form of gaslighting and character attacks on those that gainsay their nonsense – not just myself but others – and those standing against this terrorist interdiction (not just Trump, Hesgeth, and the administration now and the servicepeople and merchant sailors dealing with this, literally everyone whose planning over the past half century helped contribute to the Mullahs losing more sailors trying to set mines than the rest of the world has lost sailors trying to cross it).
It’s despicable. It’s disgusting. It’s disgraceful. It’s egregiously stupid. If Bauxite had any shame, now might be the time for them to apologize. To me of course, but also to the other people in this thread they sought to mislead with their conning nonsense, to Neo for their pattern of malevolent trolling including regurgitating enemy propaganda on this site, and to the people preventing their nightmare/fantasy from coming true. Yes, including Bad Orange Man.
But I won’t hold my breath. Because if Bushehr Bauxite was the kind of person to do that, then they probably wouldn’t have done this.
No, the real question here is why Neo tolerates your particular flavor of incompetent and malevolent concern trolling here, since it distracts the adults and people actually interested in dealing with topics like that honestly.
Because again, Bauxite is ignoring the fact that the Mullahs have literally lost more speedboats trying to interdict shipping in the Strait than the rest of the world has lost sailors. Bauxite is quite literally ignoring the Mullahs declaring the strait open to “non-hostile” traffic. Bauxite has literally paid no attention to the evidence I posted and linked, which I suppose is fitting considering they paid no attention to *their own goddamn sources.*
Now, why on Earth do you deserve to continue bothering us here?
Well, it’s Neo’s blog so I leave it to her judgement. But I imagine I’m not the only one that doesn’t see what value you bring to this blog when you engage in disgusting conduct like this.
Trump is holding a Cabinet meeting. CNBC reports that the gifts to the US (as Trump mentioned a couple days ago — as I expected) were 10 oil tankers, all with Pakistani flags.
These ships have transited the Straits of Hormuz, but their current location is unknown.
Tertiary issue I forgot to mention re Bushehr Bauxite because it really wasn’t as important compared to their abject failure to understand what AIS, what their own sources were and weren’t saying, and why concern trolling and ad hominem fallacies are a poor substitute for actually having an independent frame of reference. But they wrote this:
Perhaps some readers with some experience of the past 20 to 30 years might just consider that part of the reason for such increased production owes something to the Great Orange Whale. Not all of course, and perhaps not even most. But that Baghdad Bauxite would prefer to spend more of their focus and effort misreading their own sources and regurgitating MSM narratives and now even flat out Iranian Regime Propaganda (though notably not even Iranian regime propaganda like the declaration the Strait is open to non-hostile shipping now) and what President Cheeto may possibly have failed in or have to off ramp to than what he has done.
To be driven by spite and bile is a bad way to go. And to think I had been about to respond to Bauxite in a way where I would have contradicted om’s “raining” mention to argue that while I did find Bauxite to be patently dishonest and acting in bad faith I did think they were sincere in their “I hope I am wrong” and rebounded to say that their bias was interfering in their ability to gauge the situation.
But then Bushehr Bauxite reminded me why giving too much credit or benefit of the doubt to them is frankly a waste of time and effort.
And to cap off, some more good news for us and bad news for the Mother Of All Strait Closure Battles:
https://nypost.com/2026/03/26/world-news/irans-elite-navy-chief-alireza-tangsiri-responsible-for-closing-strait-of-hormuz-killed-in-airstrike-reports/