March, 14: Agent Orange
Who needs enemies anyway?
What came before:
The US bombed Kharg Island on Friday night. B-2 stealth bombers. Via Trump on Truth Social: “One of the most powerful bombing raids in Middle East history”. CENTCOM claimed 90 military targets destroyed while “preserving the oil infrastructure”.
Two Iranian tankers began loading 2.7 million barrels the same night.
Paid for in yuan.
I need you to sit with that for a second. The bombs are still warm. The tankers are loading. And they’re paying in Chinese money.
Iran is considering to offer safe passage through Hormuz for tankers paying in Chinese currency. Chinese-flagged vessels have been transiting freely since day one - the yuan condition formalises what was already happening and extends it to everyone willing to pay in the right currency.
I covered these structural shifts in “The Bretton Whoops” (link).
The stated casus belli was nuclear weapons.
Putin and Trump got on the phone this week. Putin offered exactly that: to relocate Iran’s remaining 450 kilograms of enriched uranium to Russia. End the justification for the war. Stop it.
Trump said no.
The solution was hand-delivered. Gift-wrapped, practically. With a bow. He sent it back.
Everyone paying attention knew that this was never about the uranium. Now it’s on the record.
Russia, freshly unsanctioned, raised its crude prices to India overnight. $50 → $95 per barrel. No more discounts. Three years of European deindustrialisation to isolate Moscow. Energy bills doubled. Sectors relocated. Entire economies restructured around the principle that Russian oil is bad oil. And now Washington needs the barrels, so the switch gets flipped.
Araghchi’s response was a thing of beauty: “The US spent months bullying India into ending Russian oil imports. After two weeks of war, the White House is now begging the world - including India - to buy Russian crude”.
Russia sent thirteen tons of medical aid to Iran the same day. First country to send direct assistance since the war began. Putin’s personal orders. Bombs from Washington, bandages from Moscow. The optics couldn’t be worse if someone staged them.
Then this appeared on Truth Social: “Hopefully China, France, Japan, South Korea, the UK, and others, that are affected by this artificial constraint, will send Ships to the area”.
Same post - and I promise I’m not making this up - same post, same paragraph: “We have already destroyed 100% of Iran’s Military capability”.
He asked China to send warships to Hormuz…
I read it three times. I thought it was a parody account.
China already has at least one warship there. The Liaowang-1 intelligence vessel, sailing near Oman, sharing real-time targeting data with Tehran.
China’s tankers already transit freely. Have been since day one. And the President of the United States invited China to come help patrol it?!
Trump is as big a gift to Iran as Zelensky is to Russia.
One hundred per cent destroyed. While Wave 49 was hitting Al Dhafra in the UAE. While ballistic missiles were landing near Tel Nof Air Base. While Hezbollah rockets were arriving every thirty to sixty minutes. While Eilat took cluster submunitions. One hundred per cent destroyed, and could China please send some boats because the strait won’t open.
The man who used to run what they now more accurately call the Department of War was asked on CNBC who has more endurance. “Frankly, I think the Iranians do”.
The man who actually held the job. On television.
Russia’s UN representative Nebenzya skipped the diplomatic phrasing entirely: “The blitzkrieg failed. The Iranian regime didn’t collapse. The people didn’t revolt. The US has no exit strategy”.
No exit strategy. From the man who represents the country that just got unsanctioned because the war made its oil necessary. Nebenzya is practically giddy. In the Russian sense.
The Wall Street Journal confirmed five KC-135 and KC-46 refuelling tankers struck on the ground at Prince Sultan Air Base. Iranian missile strike. Damaged, not destroyed. No casualties.
Nobody tweets about tanker planes. They’re not sexy. No one’s making fan edits of a KC-135. But every single strike mission over Iran requires mid-air refuelling. Every one. The F-35s can not reach their targets and come home without a tanker waiting at 30,000 feet. Kill the tankers and $100 billion of stealth technology gets beaten by a fuel gauge.
Yesterday a KC-135 went down over Iraq with six crew. Today five more on Saudi tarmac. Iran isn’t just killing the radar layer anymore - that was week one. It’s moved on to the enabling layer. The logistics chain that makes the air campaign physically possible. Systematic. Methodical. The kind of targeting that suggests someone sat in a room with a whiteboard and worked backwards from “how does an F-35 get home”?
And now 5,000 Marines are steaming toward the Gulf on the USS Tripoli (video). Satellite imagery caught the ship transiting the Luzon Strait at high speed. The 31st Marine Expeditionary Unit. F-35Bs. Heavy-lift helicopters. The works.
Destination: Kharg Island. First they have to pass through the Strait. Which is lined with every drone or missile Iran has been quietly stockpiling. Then reach an island twenty-five kilometres off the Iranian coast. Where they'll be in range of everything Iran didn't fire on the way in.
Flawless plan. No notes.
The US Embassy in Baghdad lost its CRAM radar to a drone strike. CRAM - Counter Rocket, Artillery, and Mortar - is the close-in system that shoots down incoming rockets in the final seconds. The thing between the ambassador and a very bad day. Without the radar, it’s modern art.
Jordan took strikes again. Sirens and explosions at King Abdullah Air Base or Muwaffaq Salti - both key US facilities. Wave 49 targeted Patriot radars at Al Dhafra, helicopter hangars at ISA Air Base in Bahrain, Al Udeid in Qatar. The UAE engaged nine ballistic missiles and thirty-three drones on Friday alone. Thirty-three. On a Friday. I don’t even get thirty-three emails on a Friday.
Run the list. Ali Al Salem - rubble. Camp Arifjan - satellite comms gone. Al Dhafra - THAAD dead, hit again today. Prince Sultan - CIA station inoperable, tanker planes smouldering. Al Udeid - CENTCOM relocating to a Marriott. Erbil - continuous attack, a French soldier dead. Baghdad Embassy - defenceless.
Every single base hosting American forces is damaged, evacuated, or both.
Three decades of infrastructure. Hundreds of billions in construction and maintenance. Gone in 2 weeks. Along with the trust in American “protection”.
Saudi Arabia has reportedly started working on a plan to end US Air Force presence at its bases. 69.5% of Italians want to follow Spain and deny US bases. Kuwait moved its own aircraft away from American jets rather than share a parking lot with a target. Qatar told seven million people to shelter indoors because of what’s parked next door.
Ghalibaf, Iran’s Parliament Speaker: “American bases in our region do not protect anyone. They are a threat. America sacrifices everyone for Israel”.
I noted the Houthis’ radio silence before. Yesterday they were still quiet. I said: “something is afoot”. I was right. I wish I wasn’t.
Mohammed al-Bukhaiti announced that Yemen “has decided to stand militarily with Iran” and will declare “Zero Hour” at an appropriate time.
If Bab el-Mandeb closes alongside Hormuz, both maritime chokepoints shut simultaneously. Twenty per cent of global oil through one, seven per cent of all seaborne trade through the other. Iran controls the eastern door. Yemen controls the southern one. The same people hold both keys. Trump’s plan for Hormuz is to ask China for ships. I’m sure he has an equally robust plan for Bab el-Mandeb. Maybe he’ll ask the Houthis real nice.
Fujairah is burning. Not the refinery complex from earlier - the oil terminal itself. Fujairah sits outside the Strait of Hormuz. It was supposed to be the bypass. The workaround. The clever bit.
The bypass is on fire.
Iran-Iraq cross-border trade? Three hundred and fifty trucks a day through the Shalamcheh crossing. Loaded with goods. Running on schedule. The country that’s been “totally decapitated” is running logistics that make CENTCOM look like it’s using carrier pigeons.
Netanyahu still hasn’t appeared.
The PMO statement from Thursday - “UNCONFIRMED... efforts underway to establish contact” - stands. Not updated. Not clarified. Not withdrawn.
A Hebrew-language post with over 5 million views stated Friday that he “has left his position permanently”. His son Yair, who posts obsessively - 113,000 tweets, something every single day - has been silent for five days.
An AI-generated video surfaced from official channels showing Netanyahu with six fingers on his right hand.
Six fingers. That’s what we’re working with. Schrödinger’s Prime Minister, now with bonus digits.
David Sacks, White House tech czar, went further than any US official has. If the war continues, he said, Israel could be destroyed.
“Then you have to worry about Israel escalating the war by contemplating using a nuclear weapon” (3:20).
The Samson Option. On camera. From a White House adviser. That this is being discussed on American television tells you more about where things stand than any CENTCOM briefing ever will.
Israel is presumably planning a massive ground invasion south of the Litani River. The IDF that couldn’t break through Khiam. The intelligence unit that detonated Hezbollah’s pagers dropped leaflets over central Beirut asking Lebanese civilians to disarm Hezbollah themselves. Paper, not bombs. From the people who put bombs inside pagers. I’d check the paper carefully!
Hezbollah’s response: rockets every thirty to sixty minutes. Not to destroy. To attrit. Keep the sirens running. Keep the Iron Sieve burning interceptors it cannot replace. The strategy is exhaustion and it’s working.
Hamas issued a statement calling on “our brothers in Iran not to target neighbouring countries”. First fracture inside the Axis of Resistance? The organisation Iran armed, funded, and deployed is asking its patron to dial it back. Worth noting: the statement came from Qatar, not Gaza. The Hamas that’s sheltering in Doha has different priorities than the Hamas under rubble.
North Korea fired ballistic missiles into the Sea of Japan. Same day Japan announced a partnership on Trump’s “Golden Dome” missile defence system. Same day Trump said he wants to meet Kim.
I’m sure South Koreans feel so much safer with their THAAD gone now…
Iran threatened Ukraine. The entire territory declared a “legitimate target” for providing drone interception support to Israel. Iran supplies drones to Russia to kill Ukrainians. Ukraine helps Israel shoot down those same drones. Iran threatens Ukraine for it. The geopolitical equivalent of an Escher staircase. Everyone walking upward. Nobody’s getting higher.
A Russian-made Geran-2 drone was recovered from a strike site in the UAE. Cyrillic markings. Kupol plant serial number dated 2024. The reverse Shahed pipeline - Iran’s design, Russian-improved through two years of Ukraine, fed back to Iran - now confirmed with physical evidence in the Gulf itself. The circle of life, but with warheads.
Anti-war posters appeared in Washington with the faces of fallen American soldiers.
China’s Foreign Ministry said the Minab school strike “crosses the line of human morality”. China… China is lecturing Washington about the ethics of bombing children.
I couldn’t write this if I tried.
Iran’s internet is still dark after sixteen days. No foreign propaganda in. No cyber attacks. No coordination of foreign agents.
The markets are doing market things, but one genuinely interesting point is the physical crude in Dubai: $138 a barrel. WTI on your screen: $100. I’ve seen this movie before. So have you, if you’ve been following silver.
Doug Burgum confirmed the administration is “discussing” entering the oil futures market directly. The CME’s CEO already called that a “biblical disaster”. With Paula White in attendance, maybe biblical is the business plan.
Brent above $100 for the second straight day. JPMorgan: shut-ins at 6.5 million barrels now, rising to 12 million next week. The strategic petroleum reserve draining to 1980s lows.
Gold dipped to $5,000 on the Kharg announcement. Margin call mechanics. Same tape, different day.
Silver at $79-80 on COMEX. Vault drain continues: 2.6 million ounces gone. Run rate approximately 89 days. Sprott trust discounts widening - PSLV at minus 5.3%, CEF at minus 8%. Paper selling. Metal not returning.
VIX posted consecutive weekly closes above 27 for only the second time in three and a half years.
401(k) hardship withdrawals hit a record. Americans raiding retirement savings while the President raids the strategic reserves.
Both barrels scraping the bottom at roughly the same speed.
I want to try something. Humour me.
Imagine you’re an Iranian intelligence officer. It’s 2020. You’re tasked with placing an asset in the US administration. Not to spy. But to act. Your mission - should you choose to accept it: dismantle American hegemony. Destroy the dollar. Wreck the bases around your home country. Rack up so much debt that the stock markets would collapse under their own weight. Exhaust the interceptor supply while you’re at it, and then burn the tanker fleet for good measure. Alienate every ally, one by one. Drain whatever little is left in the strategic petroleum reserve after Biden. Cozy up to Russia to pretty please sell their oil to the world. Refuse every off-ramp, de-escalation or detente. Make Israel extend itself so far that it openly starts to consider the Samson Option. And then - the masterpiece - kill the army by sending it on a near-certain suicide mission to claim an inconsequential island.
Should any member of your team be caught or killed, the Supreme Leader will disavow any and all knowledge of your actions.
Too ambitious? No single asset could achieve all of that, right? Not in a career. Certainly not in two weeks.
And yet…
If I were running Iran’s intelligence service, I’d be filling out the paperwork to claim this asset as mine. Retroactively. Right now. Before someone else takes the credit.
Still devolving...
some thoughts:
1) re: petrol payments in yuan. so it begins.
2) given how much the american economy resembles a gambling den, it was a foolish move to elect as president someone known for bankrupting casinos.
3) china and russia publicly aiding iran is a very strong signal of how the war is going. i think they were waiting to see if the iranians were going to be able to keep their word. giddy is the right word for the russians. the euphoria comes through even in the diplomatic speak. the chinese sound more measured, but only just.
4) the iranians seem to have gamed this conflict out to the smallest details. i'm speculating here, but they might have even prepared to win the war after a nuclear strike hit tehran. on the other hand, i don't think trump knew that kharg island existed before this week.
5) i really can't fathom what the israelis are thinking. opening a front in lebanon guarantees that they have an enemy at the gates as soon as the iranians finish dismantling the air defense systems. were they looking for an easy win to save face? (to be fair though, hezbollah probably would've entered the conflict anyways. the current opportunity is just to good for their purposes.)
6) hormuz and bab el mandeb closed. the markets have been underreacting so far. i know very little about trading but couldn't the market reaction be due to algorithmic trading? algorithms have to work based on either previous market performance or react to current market movements. this would induce a very strong normalcy bias. algos don't have a way of reacting to geopolitical risk until the investors themselves start reacting and moving prices manually (someone correct me if i'm wrong on this point, i've taken a couple of programming classes but i'm definitely not a quant).
thank you for posting No1. this is one of the best sources of information on the conflict on the internet. keep up the good work! (and maybe take a nap, keeping up with the pace of events must be exhausting)
Surely, some of the sycophants around Trump can see where this is going and will rein him in to save their own political skins, right?, right???, RIGHT???
BTW, I love the way you weave the event narrative with commentary. *chef's kiss*