Trump bombs Iran, what could possibly go wrong?

[Rideback]

Trump outdoes himself, and that's not easy
"When oil prices go up we make a lot of money"
https://crooksandliars.com/2026/03/trum ... oil-prices

[Rideback]

Are we being asked to believe that Hegseth is sober?

""The only thing prohibiting transit in the Straits right now is Iran shooting at shipping. It is open for transit should Iran not do that."
-- Whiskey Pete, Secretary of WAWR! Verbatim.

[mister_coffee]

Just saying, but a lot of EV manufacturers are offering very generous discounts (often up to $10,000) on new EVs right now. Don't know how long that will last but this is probably a very good time to buy an EV.

[Rideback]

But there's no money for health care.

[mister_coffee]

I'm also reading that the only country currently able to export oil from the Gulf region is Iran. Oh, the irony!

[Rideback]

Crimes against humanity continue
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/3/1 ... lestinians

[Rideback]

'27 is optimistic based on if/when this gets turned around within CENTCOM's 100 day window.

Bruce Fanger:
"When a Missile Hits a School
White Rose
March 12, 2026
When the girls’ elementary school in Minab, Iran collapsed under a missile strike, the first explanation from Washington arrived quickly. President Donald Trump told reporters that “early indications suggest this was likely an Iranian munition that malfunctioned and fell on their own facility.” The implication was unmistakable. The deaths of the children were attributed to Iranian incompetence rather than to the forces conducting the strike campaign.
That explanation unraveled almost immediately.
Video from the blast site began circulating within hours. Weapons analysts examined the impact pattern and debris field. Open-source investigators compared the incoming missile captured in the footage with known weapons profiles. Their conclusion was consistent across multiple analyses. The strike matched the profile of a Tomahawk cruise missile.
The identification matters for a simple reason. Tomahawks are American weapons systems. Israel does not operate them. Iran does not accidentally fire them at its own schools.
The initial narrative therefore collapsed as soon as serious examination began.
A second explanation quickly appeared. Officials and unnamed sources began suggesting that the strike resulted from “outdated intelligence.” According to this account, the targeting database still listed the building as part of a military compound and the coordinates used for the strike had not been updated.
The phrase sounds technical. It also raises a deeper problem.
Modern U.S. military operations rely on one of the most elaborate surveillance and targeting architectures ever assembled. Satellite reconnaissance monitors urban areas continuously. Drone platforms provide real-time visual confirmation. Pattern-of-life analysis examines daily movement around suspected targets. Strike approval normally passes through multiple levels of command review before a weapon is launched.
These systems exist because modern warfare claims precision.
Precision weapons. Precision targeting. Precision strikes.
Opening strike packages are normally assembled months in advance and reviewed repeatedly because the first phase of a campaign is designed to hit known military infrastructure with high confidence. Those capabilities create a simple expectation. Protected civilian sites such as schools and hospitals should be among the easiest structures on earth to identify and avoid.
The explanation that the building was struck because of “outdated intelligence” therefore strains credibility, particularly in the opening phase of a war when target lists have already undergone extensive review. A structure functioning as a school generates unmistakable daily activity. Children arrive each morning. Teachers move through the building. Neighborhood traffic reflects the rhythm of civilian life.
Even publicly available satellite imagery makes such locations easy to identify. Anyone with a laptop can open Google Maps and locate schools in cities around the world within seconds.
The United States military operates surveillance systems far more sophisticated than those available to the public.
That reality leads to an uncomfortable conclusion. The location of the building itself was almost certainly known.
The question therefore shifts. The issue is no longer how investigators later discovered that the building was a school. The issue is how a known structure entered the strike sequence that destroyed it.
The school stood near an Iranian military facility reportedly targeted in the opening wave of attacks. That proximity raises difficult questions about how the strike envelope was defined and how targets were authorized. The answers to those questions have not yet been offered.
More than a hundred children died beneath the rubble of that school.
The first explanation given to the public blamed the victims’ own government.
Evidence emerging afterward now points toward a very different reality.
War has always produced tragedies. Civilian casualties have accompanied every conflict in human history. The promise of modern precision warfare rests on the claim that technology can reduce those tragedies through accurate identification and careful targeting.
That promise carries a responsibility.
When a missile destroys a school, the explanation cannot end with a single bureaucratic phrase. The public deserves a clear accounting of how a building visible from space and identifiable even through public satellite imagery became part of a strike sequence.
A missile destroyed a school in Minab.
The deeper question concerns how a system designed to see nearly everything on the modern battlefield managed to overlook the most obvious fact of all.
The building was a school."

[mister_coffee]

Apparently datacenters in the Gulf were already targeted and hit. Which apparently is messing up local government operations in the area. Kind of a perfect target choice if you think about it. Difficult to effectively defend, you aren't likely to risk a lot of civilian casualties, and has an obnoxious impact.

I'm reading that the mines the Iranians are supposedly deploying are Russian surplus that Russia sells for about $500. So there probably are a lot of them. Meanwhile, the only US minesweepers left in the world are in Japan and will take quite a bit of time to get there. I think we have four left. And oh, we scrapped the five that were deployed in Bahrain in late 2025. Ooops.

It seems reasonable to assume that Iran has deployed hundreds of those mines. Maybe even thousands of them. And there is no way we can escort convoys through the Strait while it is mined. So the oil will not flow for quite some time. Right now IEA is predicting that oil and gas prices will remain elevated through at least mid-2027.

It is obvious that this will crush our economy like a bug.

[Rideback]

Lest we forget

[Rideback]

Article on the threats
https://www.euronews.com/next/2026/03/1 ... s-in-middl

[Rideback]

Iran issues threats against Google, Microsoft, Palantir, Nvidia...
https://www.facebook.com/share/v/18S5RZ9Tj3/

[mister_coffee]

Also, a KC-135 just "went down" (e.g. crashed) in Iraq. The KC-135 is a US aerial tanker aircraft derived from the old Boeing 707.

[mister_coffee]

The International Energy Agency is now describing our current mess as "the largest oil supply chain disruption in history."

Some people voted for this for some reason. I will point and laugh at all of the Trump voters in F150s and RAM 3000s while I drive by in an electric car. But I still do not own a blue Tesla. Or any other kind of Tesla.

[Rideback]

Trump's response to higher prices of oil and gas at the pump.

[Rideback]

I suspect that the FBI warning to Calif that was unsubstantiated, of a drone attack was more likely a distraction. The threat alone is a good psyop move. With all the Chinese and Iranian hackers out there, not to mention the Russians (all of whom are allies) it's a no brainer that there will be some cyber attacks and if they follow the premise of asymmetrical tactics they will be grid, communication, economic disruption rather than any killing. There's also the same vulnerability of ME countries that would demonstrate that the US cannot protect its allies.

[mister_coffee]

My question is how "many sleeper cells and what will they target?"

One is to hit highly visible "spectacular" targets that are mainly political in nature. So the White House &c. I'd suspect that using a nerve agent delivered by drone against the Capitol or White House would have a pretty huge impact. I'd also bet that a decapitation attack against the chain of command and civilian succession would be very effective and feasible.

The other is to go after critical infrastructure that is more obscure but is very hard to defend. I'm thinking of critical parts of the power grid and oil and natural gas pipeline networks, as well as telecommunications systems. You can figure out the critical parts of those systems that are hard to replace quickly and are undefended from OSI.

[Rideback]

Iranian military leadership has been planning for this event for a very long time. They know the power of an asymmetrical war and are prepared to implement it.
Good insights.
https://thesoufancenter.org/intelbrief-2026-march-9a/

[Rideback]

In depth
https://www.dropsitenews.com/p/iran-war ... cebook.com

[PAL]

It's an "excursion", as Trump himself said. Not a war.

[Rideback]

Hegseth is living pretty high on the taxpayers' dole.
https://www.mediaite.com/politics/pete- ... yuwicnby5n

[Rideback]

From NYT:
"<Updated
March 10, 2026, 6:41 p.m. ET6 minutes ago
Iran Live Updates: Trump Officials Offer Conflicting Messaging on War
Lebanese leaders and aid groups warned of a growing humanitarian crisis as Israel targeted Hezbollah. The Pentagon said 140 American service members had been wounded, eight severely, in the war.
Here’s the latest.
Trump administration officials sent mixed messages on Tuesday about the goals, timeline and tactics of the war against Iran, the latest in a string of muddled statements throughout the fighting, which has so far killed more than 1,800 people and disrupted global energy markets.
The confusion was typified by Chris Wright, the U.S. energy secretary, saying on social media that a Navy warship had “successfully escorted” an oil tanker through the Strait of Hormuz, where the war has slowed ship traffic. Shortly afterward, a military official said that had not happened, and the social media post was deleted.
The day before, President Trump threatened to strike Iran “TWENTY TIMES HARDER” if it moved to stop the flow of oil through the strait, even though Tehran had already begun doing so days earlier.
And in a news briefing at the White House, the press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, said that President Trump, and not the leaders of Iran, would be the one to declare that Iran had unconditionally surrendered — one of the conditions he has laid out for ending the war.
“When President Trump says that Iran is in a place of unconditional surrender, he’s not claiming the Iranian regime is going to come out and say that themselves,” she said.
Early in the day. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth told reporters that Tuesday would be marked by a significant increase in American and Israeli strikes on Iran. As midnight passed in the Middle East that had not appeared to take shape, though Israel did begin a wave of attacks early Wednesday local time.
As Washington again struggled to come up with a consistent narrative for the war, a humanitarian crisis loomed in Lebanon, where nearly 700,000 people have been driven from their homes, the United Nations said Tuesday. Israel’s mass evacuation orders and bombing campaign have transformed the country into a major new front in the expanding Middle East war. Airstrikes there continued on Tuesday.
In Beirut and its densely packed surrounding area, tens of thousands of people fleeing Israel’s attacks on the Iranian-backed armed group Hezbollah were living in schools and government buildings. Others slept in cars and on sidewalks along the city’s seaside promenade.
More than 667,000 people have registered on the Lebanese government’s online displacement platform, the U.N. migration agency said on Tuesday, citing government figures. That included more than 100,000 in the past 24 hours, it said.... >>

[mister_coffee]

Just because of the supply chain disruptions I'd expect to see $6/gallon gas here in the next couple of months. Diesel will be even more expensive. California will probably have it worse too. If you compare it to historic oil price shocks (like from the 1979 Iranian Revolution or the 2022 Ukraine War) this one is disrupting more than five times the supply than those historical events did.

My recent purchase of an EV is making me insufferable at the moment.

[Rideback]

"Gaulab Chakrabarti, the CEO of a Texas-based sustainable chemistry company, Solugen, said this rather important thing on X a couple days ago:
The Strait of Hormuz has been closed for 8 days. Everyone thinks this is about oil. This is about what oil becomes. 92% of the world's sulfur comes from refining oil and gas. Close the Strait of Hormuz and you don't just lose 20 million barrels of crude per day. You lose the feedstock for sulfuric acid, the single most produced chemical on Earth. Sulfuric acid is how we extract copper. It's how we extract cobalt. Without it, you can't make transformers, EV batteries, or the substrates inside every data center on the planet. One chemical, made from one feedstock, shipped through one chokepoint. The cascade goes further: Qatar ships 30% of Taiwan's liquefied natural gas through Hormuz. Taiwan has 11 days of reserves left. TSMC, the company that makes 90% of the world's advanced chips, draws 8.9% of Taiwan's total electricity. No gas, no power, no chips. Then food. 33% of the world's nitrogen fertilizer feedstock moves through the Strait. Half of all humans alive today exist because of synthetic nitrogen. Sulfur, semiconductors, food. That makes three supply chains, one 21-nautical-mile chokepoint, and zero domestic alternatives at scale."

[Rideback]

Oil rises to $115 a barrel, Dow futures down 1,000+
Chicago Arch Bishop is not impressed with the way the US and Israel are handling this war

https://www.archchicago.org/en/statemen ... conscience

[Rideback]

Dow futures down over 900 pts for Monday.
Price for oil is closing in on $110 a barrel https://www.google.com/search?q=price+o ... e&ie=UTF-8