March, 1: day two

The hits continue

As I didn’t get much sleep, I’m having a big migraine, so I’ll keep this relatively short. It can be a little rough around the edges as I did not re-read it 20 times as usual. But you’ll get the basic highlights of day 2.

Yesterday, I said overnight would matter more than what happened on Saturday. I wasn’t wrong, but I underestimated the scope.

While most of us slept - or tried to - Iran launched what it called the opening phase of “True Promise 4”. Not a single salvo and wait. No, wave after wave after wave, throughout the night and into Sunday morning. By dawn in the Gulf, the IRGC had announced its strikes had entered “a new phase”. By Sunday afternoon they were on communiqué number eight. By evening, they’d deployed cluster warheads over Tel Aviv - a capability nobody had seen before.

The opening salvo

So what’s changed since then?

The kill list grew. Chief of staff Abdolrahim Mousavi, Defence Minister Aziz Nasirzadeh, IRGC Commander Mohammad Pakpour, and former president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad are all now confirmed or reported dead. CBS intelligence sources put the total at around 40 senior officials.

Satellite imagery from Airbus shows Khamenei’s compound levelled - seven missiles hit the residence, killing his daughter, son-in-law, and grandson alongside him.

Iran declared 40 days of national mourning and held his funeral at the University of Tehran on Sunday, formalising the martyrdom narrative and locking the country into a war footing that now has a theological aspect attached to it.

But why did Khamenei choose this? The IRGC commander-in-chief’s statement was striking - “Khamenei often expressed his eagerness for martyrdom, and achieved his wish at the hands of the most wretched”. I mean, the man was 86. He reportedly insisted on continuing his life normally without sheltering in bunkers. The retaliatory apparatus activated within hours, not days. The succession was seamless. The missiles were already loaded. Whether by design or providence, Khamenei may have served “the cause” more effectively in death than in the last decade of his life.

The regime-change thesis is collapsing in real time. The Council on Foreign Relations quietly noted: “Taking out Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei is not the same as regime change. The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps is the regime”. Reza Pahlavi - the exiled Shah’s son, living in Maryland for 45 years - went on Fox News to claim he was “leading the transition”, while footage from Tehran showed millions at the funeral.

The Minab school airstrike death toll has risen to 165, mostly girls aged seven to twelve. That atrocity is unifying the country more effectively than any propaganda the regime could manufacture.

And the command chain held. IRGC General Jabbari went on Iranian media Sunday and said they had fired their “old stockpile missiles” so far and would soon “unveil weapons the world has never seen before”. He claimed Iran’s stockpiles were full and the country was prepared to fight for two years. Bluster, maybe. But the operational continuity is not bluster - that part is verified by every wave of missiles that followed the decapitation, eight communiqués deep and climbing.

Now to what happened since yesterday.

The Beit Shemesh strike is the headline. An Iranian missile hit a residential area near a synagogue - nine confirmed dead, 23 hospitalised, 11 still missing as of Sunday evening. This is the deadliest single attack on Israeli soil since the operation began. Beit Shemesh is 19 miles west of Jerusalem. That is deep inside Israel, well past the coastal defences, past the Arrow batteries, past everything that was supposed to stop exactly this.

Thirty-five confirmed Iranian strikes on Israeli territory by Saturday evening. That number climbed through Sunday.

Tel Aviv took cluster warheads - a new capability, scattering multiple submunitions across the target area and rendering interception enormously harder.

At least 40 buildings damaged across the Gush Dan and Kiryat Ono areas. Haifa took direct hits causing what Israeli media called “enormous damage”.

Ben Gurion Airport remains closed to all traffic.

The US Embassy in Jerusalem told Americans to shelter in place, announced it was “not in a position at this time to evacuate or directly assist Americans in departing Israel”, and closed its doors for Monday.

Israel has called up 100,000 reservists - you don’t mobilise that many bodies for an air campaign. Either the defensive burden from sustained Iranian strikes is larger than expected, or they’re preparing for ground contingencies that nobody is talking about publicly.

The desalination plants. Reports circulated that Sorek - Israel’s largest desalination facility, supplying roughly 20% of the country’s drinking water - was struck. This is not confirmed by Israeli officials, and Israeli military censorship laws make it nearly impossible to get independent verification of strategic infrastructure hits. But the report comes from multiple sources.

Why this matters beyond the immediate headlines is that Israel operates only five major desalination plants along the Mediterranean coast - Sorek, Sorek B, Ashkelon, Hadera, and Palmachim. Together they supply approximately 80% of Israel’s drinking water. They are, in a very real sense, the only reason Israel functions as a modern state in this semi-arid region. If Iran can reach one, it can reach all five. And that’s the message, whether Sorek was actually struck or not: the target list is existential, not tactical. A country that loses its water supply… It stops existing.

The nuclear question - both directions. In Iran, Bushehr province was struck, but the status of the nuclear power plant itself remains unclear. The IAEA said there was “no evidence of radiological impact” - which is either reassuring or premature, depending on how much you trust early assessments of a facility being bombed in an active war zone.

In the other direction, an Iranian parliamentary national security committee member publicly called for strikes on Israel’s Dimona nuclear reactor “with a two-ton warhead”. Reports from Al-Mayadeen during the 12-day war had already established that Iran was willing to fire hypersonic missiles at the Negev facility. No confirmed hit on Dimona this time. But this is how nuclear taboos erode - one escalation cycle at a time, until someone decides the other side’s reactor is a legitimate target because their reactor was struck first.

No air superiority. This is one I’m watching. Israel announced on Sunday it had dropped more than 1,200 munitions across 24 of Iran’s 31 provinces. The IDF says it’s now striking “deep inside” Tehran, targeting “the heart” of the capital. Israel’s own Channel 12 admitted the US and Israel have not achieved complete air dominance. And the open-source evidence supports that assessment.

What I’m not seeing however are manned aircraft over Iran. The strikes appear to be conducted almost entirely with standoff munitions - Tomahawks from ships, HIMARS, air-launched cruise missiles, ATACMS, and notably “low-cost one-way attack drones of Task Force Scorpion Strike” used in combat for the first time. B-2 bombers flew round trips from Whiteman Air Force Base in Missouri - and possibly from Diego Garcia - dropping 2,000-lb bombs on underground missile facilities. Israel claims its Air Force used 200 fighters to conduct “large-scale strikes to establish air superiority and pave the path to Tehran” - but those fighters appear to be launching from outside Iranian airspace, lobbing standoff weapons from safe distance.

If that reading is correct, Iranian air defences - degraded as they probably are - are doing enough to keep manned aircraft at arm’s length. That’s not “winning” in any traditional sense, but it means the heavy penetrating munitions that require aircraft to fly close to its targets - the kind needed to crack Fordow’s mountain or Bushehr’s reactor containment - have not yet been delivered effectively. Iran’s S-300s and Bavar-373s may be battered, but they’re forcing the most expensive military on earth to fight at range. And as Jabbari’s taunt implies, if everything fired so far has been the old inventory, the question isn’t whether Iranian air defence holds - it’s what comes out of storage when they decide to escalate.

Saudi Arabia’s exposure. This one is important and will have consequences long after the missiles stop. CENTCOM inadvertently confirmed - through satellite imagery showing E-11A BACN aircraft operations - that Prince Sultan Air Base in Saudi Arabia was being used to support strikes on Iran. Riyadh had publicly denied allowing its airspace or bases for the operation. The IRGC noticed. They named Prince Sultan specifically in a subsequent communiqué and struck it. Saudi Arabia then “strongly condemned” Iranian attacks on Gulf states - but the damage is done. The kingdom is now a confirmed participant in an attack on a fellow Muslim-majority nation, regardless of what its diplomats say. Iran will not forget this, and neither will the broader Shia world.

Cyprus. UK Defence Secretary John Healey confirmed that two Iranian missiles were fired “in the direction of Cyprus” - which hosts RAF Akrotiri, a British Sovereign Base Area and key staging ground for regional operations. Healey’s careful phrasing: “We are pretty sure they weren’t targeted at our bases”. The Jerusalem Post reported the missiles were intended to reach Cyprus but fell short and landed in the Mediterranean. Nicosia denied being targeted.

So: Iran fired two intermediate-range ballistic missiles toward the eastern Mediterranean. Whether they were aimed at British bases, meant as a warning shot, or simply fell short of an Israeli-bound trajectory is an open question. What is not an open question is that this is the first time Iranian ballistic missiles have splashed near a NATO member’s territory. Healey also disclosed that 300 British troops in Bahrain had been within “several hundred yards” of Iranian missile impact sites. The UK says it played no part in the strikes. Iran appears unconvinced. The UK is reinforcing Akrotiri with additional fighter jets, and France is now repositioning the aircraft carrier Charles de Gaulle from the Baltic to the eastern Mediterranean. NATO is creeping toward this conflict one “defensive redeployment” at a time.

Oman. Two drones hit the Duqm commercial port on Sunday morning, injuring one foreign worker. Oman - the mediator. The country whose Foreign Minister was describing a diplomatic breakthrough less than 48 hours before the bombs fell. There are no US bases in Oman. The Omani FM’s response was blunt: “This is not your war”. But Duqm is a deepwater port that several countries, including the UK and US, have been developing for naval logistics. It sits south of the Strait of Hormuz, making it a potential bypass route. Hit Duqm, and you’re telling everyone that there is no “safe rear” in this conflict. Iran’s FM Araghchi offered another explanation: the strike came from “an isolated general” operating on “pre-written general directives” without real-time command contact — either a genuine command-and-control gap in a full-scale conflict, or perfect diplomatic cover for a strike they absolutely intended.

Now about those negotiations… This is the second time in less than a year that active US-Iran diplomacy was used as operational cover - the first was Operation Midnight Hammer in June 2025. Oman’s FM Albusaidi said he was “dismayed” and that “active and serious negotiations have yet again been undermined”. NBC reported Israel disrupted talks that were “close to success”. Iran’s FM Araghchi asked publicly: “Why does the US insist on starting negotiations and then attacking mid-talks”? Whatever your view of Iran’s regime, the answer to that question will determine whether any country trusts American diplomacy in this region for a generation.

An oil tanker - the Palau-flagged Skylight - was struck off Oman’s coast, with four of its 20 crew injured.

Two more tankers, the MKD Vyom and Hercules Star, were also hit. A fourth vessel was targeted near Dubai. Maersk has suspended all Hormuz transit. Marine traffic through the Strait is down 70%, with over 150 tankers at anchor waiting. Heavy GPS jamming is being reported across the waterway.

The IRGC vs. the USS Abraham Lincoln. In its seventh communiqué, the IRGC claimed it struck the USS Abraham Lincoln with four anti-ship ballistic missiles. CENTCOM responded within the hour: “LIE. The Lincoln was not hit. The missiles launched didn’t even come close”. They posted pictures of the Lincoln continuing to launch aircraft. Open-source trackers place the carrier strike group in the wider Arabian Sea, outside the narrow Persian Gulf - smart positioning and exactly what I noted yesterday about US warships pulling back. The claim was for domestic consumption. Whether those four missiles splashed harmlessly or were intercepted by Aegis destroyers is a detail CENTCOM is happy to leave ambiguous.

Trump claims nine Iranian naval vessels sunk. CENTCOM has confirmed a Jamaran-class corvette struck at Chabahar pier. Iran’s navy was never going to survive a direct confrontation with the US 5th Fleet. That was never the point. The point was always the missiles - and the missiles are still flying.

Three American soldiers killed. CENTCOM confirmed Sunday evening: three US service members killed in action, five seriously wounded. Ground-based forces in Kuwait. These are the first American casualties of Operation Epic Failure Fury. Ali Al Salem Air Base - satellite imagery confirmed by Sentinel-2 - took multiple direct hits. A building housing soldiers was struck. The political clock just started ticking louder.

The global ripple. Iraq’s Islamic Resistance claimed 23 separate operations with dozens of kamikaze drones against bases across the region on Sunday alone. Nine killed at a US consulate storming attempt in Karachi. The Houthis are back in the Red Sea. Kataib Hezbollah threatening to escalate. Jordan intercepted 49 incoming objects. Kuwait: one dead, 32 wounded. The UAE absorbed 165 ballistic missiles, 2 cruise missiles, and 541 drones according to its own Defence Ministry - three foreign workers killed, 58 injured. The Crowne Plaza hotel in Manama took a hit. The alleged CIA station in Dubai was reportedly struck and burned. The Burj Al Arab was damaged. Schools and universities shut across the UAE through Wednesday. Dubai International Airport suspended operations indefinitely - kilometre-long queues of cars trying to flee, 14,000 flights cancelled, Italy’s Defence Minister trapped in the emirate. Syria - post-Assad Syria - condemned Iran and aligned with the Gulf states, a regional realignment that would have been unthinkable a year ago. France’s Camp de la Paix base in Abu Dhabi was struck and burning.

Every country that hosts a US facility got hit. Every one.

The markets.

Gold closed February at $5,278 - its highest monthly close in history. JP Morgan has formally called this a “structural repricing phase” with long-term targets at $6,000. But Chinese spot gold was priced post-attack in a “dark market” at ¥1,226 per gram - ~$5,560/oz. ~$280 premium over the COMEX close.

The physical gold supply chain has also been severed at a critical node. Dubai - the world’s major refining and redistribution hub feeding Switzerland, Hong Kong, and India - is shut. Flights cancelled, airport closed, port damaged. Reuters confirmed the disruption. Physical gold that was supposed to flow through the Emirates this week is going nowhere.

Silver closed Friday at $93.76 - also an all-time monthly close. Some weekend proxy markets briefly printed north of $115 before pulling back to around $104. The gold-silver ratio has compressed to ~57:1, a level that historically signals silver entering a leadership phase. COMEX was already under severe stress going into Friday. What happens Monday morning when the full weight of a Hormuz closure, a hot war, and a Chinese rare earth embargo hits the trading floor is not a question anyone can answer with confidence. But direction? That’s not in doubt.

Oil: weekend OTC pricing had Brent around $120. The Strait remains closed. Over 150 tankers sitting at anchor. The Gulf oil infrastructure that everyone quietly assumed was off-limits is now demonstrably not. Analysts are talking $150 if this extends beyond a week.

The domestic politics. Reuters/Ipsos polling shows only one in four Americans support the strikes on Iran. That’s a country that doesn’t want this war. Congress is voting on war powers resolutions this week, though they’ll be largely symbolic since they lack the two-thirds majority needed to override a veto. But the optics matter. Senator Tim Kaine: “No direct threat from Iran, no justification”. Senator Ted Cruz - not exactly a dove - noted there was “no indication Iran was close to nuclear weapons”. Congressman Thomas Massie: “Bombing Iran won’t make the Epstein documents disappear”. When you’ve lost Ted Cruz on a military operation, the political foundation is sand.

And Trump’s timeline? He told CNBC operations are “ahead of schedule”. He told CBS’s Robert Costa that a diplomatic resolution was “much easier now than it was a day ago, obviously, because they are getting beat up badly”. He said he knows “exactly who” is calling the shots in Iran now, “but I can’t tell you”. He warned Iran of “force never seen before”. He said the military campaign could extend for four weeks. He’s also reportedly already asked Iran for a ceasefire through back channels - on day one. Iran rejected it as they seem to believe that agreeing to the June 2025 ceasefire was a strategic error that gave the US and Israel eighteen months to restock interceptors and plan this operation, and they are not repeating that mistake.

Ali Larijani’s response: “Yesterday Iran fired missiles. Today we will hit with a force never experienced”.

Trump wanted a four-day war to force negotiations. He’s getting a two-year war footing from a country that just turned its dead supreme leader into a martyr.

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Still devolving…