Last Friday, a YouTube content creator named Matt Morse started a fake news cascade when he reported that a new passage had been dredged in the Strait of Hormuz. In fact, the passage between the Fakk al Asad peninsula and the island of Bab Musandam has been charted for many centuries, and powered vessels use it all the time, including the present hostilities.

A typical loaded VLCC (very large crude carrier) has a draft somewhere between 20 and 22.7 m. The channel is 28.5 m deep, which is enough under-keel clearance to transit the route without any dredging. No spoil banks, cut benches, or new channel geometry appear in satellite images. If they did, we should expect to see the peninsula shrinking and appearing elsewhere as rubble. Sorry Roman Helmet Guy, it’s not the cool labor project you’re thinking of.

The idea is not inherently absurd, of course. If the Omanis did widen the channel, or even remove the island and put it somewhere else in the shape of a flower or a tree or something, it would hardly surprise me. That is exactly the sort of infrastructure solution the Arab princes are into, these days: pipelines, railroads, and even highways are expanding all around the Gulf. The story did have a measure of verisimilitude.

More problematic for navigation, even if the story was true, is that a 1,600-foot wide (.49 km) channel is still a bit chancy for VLCCs, which average 1,200 feet (330 m) in length. Going through at speed, at night, as CENTCOM has been doing, would increase the maritime hazards. This is hardly worth the trade-off of using the island to mask the ship’s movement from Iranian radar — which, to be fair, is something of a minor point for Morse.

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The milk run shuttle tanker traffic told the tale

What actually happened in the contest for the strait is a story of risk management. A total of not more than four dozen shuttle tankers, classed as LR2 (long range 2), assumed the risk of transiting the strait, then conducted ship-to-ship (STS) transfers with VLCCs parked in the Gulf of Oman.

The larger ships never transited the strait, so they never got attacked or mined. Everyone involved in these transfers operates with their AIS (automatic identification system) transponder switched off to make it harder for the IRGC to track them. Open source analysts see ships disappear, then reappear many days later, thousands of miles away.

Markets abhor restrictions. Rather than put up with Iranian demands, the market circumvented their restrictions. The IRGC ‘closed’ the strait as much as markets would allow. By late August, ships on the Iranian blacklist had conducted 284 shuttle runs, and more than half of the LR2 ships involved had done four or more trips.

London-based Navig8 and Abu Dhabi were first to use this method to circumvent Iran, followed by South Korean shipper Sinokor, then the rest of the Arab princely petrostates. Oil traders have referred to them as “Adnoc milk runs”, a name coined from the role of Abu Dhabi in facilitating them.

Iran has used this method to circumvent the US Navy before, but more recent imagery shows their shuttle tankers at anchor instead of lining up at Kharg Island. There are currently 52 laden tankers parked off the coast of Iran. No Iranian crude tanker has successfully left the Gulf of Oman and dodged U.S. enforcement since 12 July.

Meanwhile, open source news aggregators like Kpler, which just retroactively found almost a billion barrels of oil on the market, did not observe the trend until late in the game. It was off their radar, so to speak.

Indeed, the contest for the strait is defined by electronic battle more than big explosive boom-booms. Matt Morse at least got that much right by suggesting the island would mask ship movements for a little bit of the journey. Radar is subject to destruction, but it also reconstitutes with time, indeed radar coverage is restored much faster than missile production, or the component industry plants that were hit during the opening kinetic phase of the war.

Electronic targets must be identified and pruned back occasionally in the course of such a campaign (“mowing the lawn”). That is what we see happening today as I publish these words. During the last several hours, American strikes have targeted Iran’s air defense sites, radar systems, maritime assets and facilities, mine laying capabilities, and communication nodes.

No one had to dredge a new channel through the strait. The markets were more powerful than any navy. America already enjoyed full-spectrum supremacy. This combination of imbalances has created a no-win situation for Iran. As I publish these words, the regime is acting out once again and the United States Armed Forces are punishing them for it. Iran cannot win, but also does not know how to lose.

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On Tuesday of this week, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps fired two missiles towards the territory of the United Arab Emirates. Both missiles were aimed at marine traffic and fell into the sea without effect, one inside and one outside the boundaries of the Emirates. In retaliation, the UAE suspended all banking and commercial trading with Iran, essentially cutting off one-third of Iran’s foreign economic activity.

Esmaeil Baghaei of the Iranian Foreign Ministry rejected the report as both “baseless” and also a false-flag operation by the enemies of Iran, denying any missiles were launched at all. The civilian politicians of Iran still do not control the IRGC. For example, a strike by an unknown projectile this week on the Liberia-flagged bulk carrier Minoan Dignity killed the chief engineer. The ship was leaving Iranian waters after delivering a cargo of food. It was the second attack on the same commercial management company this month.

“The vessel is beneficially owned by Modion Maritime Management of Greece, with registered ownership under a Marshall Islands entity.” Reader, the Greek shippers and captains are the most courageous in the world. “The recurrence across two vessels from the same manager within two weeks, both following Bandar Imam Khomeini calls, is assessed as warranting examination of a possible commercial dispute dimension, though no confirming evidence is available.” The IRGC picks fights with Iran’s suppliers at sea, first.

Three Chinese vessels aborted Hormuz transits. “The treatment of Chinese-owned tankers is consistent with reporting that China’s two largest state tanker operators, COSCO Shipping Energy Transportation and China Merchants Energy Shipping, are keeping their fleets out of both Hormuz and Bab el-Mandeb on guidance from Beijing.” No one can trust the IRGC to do business, anymore, so Iran is not doing any business.

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Pride goeth before the fall of a regime

Abdolnaser Hemmati, governor of the Central Bank of the Islamic Republic of Iran, admitted this week that oil exports have “fallen to zero” or are “almost completely halted”.

Iran cannot access frozen foreign currency reserves blocked by the United States. “At present, Iranian oil exports have stopped. We are no longer exporting any oil at all. This is a reality we acknowledge. The other problem is that we are also unable to access our own financial resources.”

Or as the Pentagon reportedly insisted of enriched uranium in June, “No dust, no dollars.”

This is all happening because the 60-day ceasefire window that began 17 June expired without a deal. Power was too divided in Iran. The supreme leader is too hidden and the IRGC is too irresponsible.

Speaker of the Parliament Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, who is a former IRGC commander, wants to close a deal that ends the war. “No matter how much military power we have, if people are hungry and we don’t have financial circulation, economic growth and domestic production, we will not endure”, Ghalibaf said this week.

“The war must end at some point”, President Masoud Pezeshkian said. Critics of his administration “outside the ring” do not understand the limitations of Iranian hard power. Iran loses negotiating leverage every day, Pezeshkian warned. Permanent confrontation will be economically unsustainable.

These ‘pragmatists’ in Tehran have missed their window of opportunity, however. Pride prevented the pragmatists from shaking hands with the Great Satan. Harder-hardliners now argue that Donald Trump will impose even more onerous terms for peace, and they are right.

IRGC commander Ahmad Vahidi and Mohsen Rezaei, Secretary of the Supreme National Security Council, are both closer to the hidden supreme leader than Pezeshkian or Ghalibaf. What unites them all, pragmatic hardliners and harder-hardliners, is fear.

They all fear the humiliation of losing, so they choose to keep losing.

All wars are fundamentally macroeconomic affairs

During the first week of June, just before the memorandum of understanding (MOU) and the 60-day ceasefire, I saw three ways that Trump could go.

He could display strategic impatience, restart the war, risk the blowback, and take the domestic political hit.

He could accept a bad deal and take the domestic political hit.

Or he could just hold Iran’s economy by the throat until after the November midterm elections, letting economic pressure crush the Islamic Republic.

I noted at the time that this third option would require Trump to acknowledge that a deal is not simply days away, but weeks or months away, to signal that he is fine with a long delay. The IRGC must find this threat credible for it to work.

This option would require CENTCOM to sustain pressure, and Arab unity to continue. Trump would still take a domestic political hit. Will take the hit. To what degree is debatable. Unpopular as it might be, the conflict is not very high on the agendas of most voters.

The more interesting development, at least from my perspective, is that much more popular outlets than my own are now acknowledging the “ticking clock” works against Iran.

The longer Iranian resistance continues, the more long-term economic damage the Islamic Republic will endure, limiting the future ambitions of the IRGC. Wellhead pressure has been reduced to a trickle, only enough to feed domestic consumption, because no one abroad is buying Iran’s oil.

China does not want Iranian oil. India does not want Iranian oil. The US Navy is detaining or deterring any ship bound for Iranian ports. Meanwhile, CENTCOM reports a steady rise in overnight convoys. Hormuz is more or less constricted as the US Navy chooses, not as the IRGC chooses.

We must note that attempts to ‘fact check’ CENTCOM statements in this regard are made more difficult by the convoy tactic of turning off every ship’s automatic identification system (AIS) transponder during passage. Navy and Air Force tactics suppress IRGC radars, blinding any attack.

Thus missiles fall ineffectually into the sea, demonstrations of stubborn will to resist beyond all reason.

Oil markets reflect the truth of the strait. Iran has failed to create or sustain a global price shock. Markets loathe restrictions. Rather than capitulate to the demands of Tehran, the Arab states have announced or accelerated capital projects to circumvent the strait with pipelines, railroads, and highways.

Iran has made similar pronouncements, of course. But how will the regime pay for the new infrastructure without an economy?

War is merely the continuation of policy by other means

In his most famous work of the western military canon, Carl von Clausewitz wrote that “war is not merely an act of policy but a true political instrument, a continuation of political intercourse, carried on with other means. What remains peculiar to war is simply the peculiar nature of its means.”

Sniffing complaints about the politics of any war are misplaced, for “the political view is the object, War is the means, and the means must always include the object in our conception.” A war must serve political ends, which is to say it must be subordinated to a strategy of some kind, or it becomes “pointless and devoid of sense.”

Subordinating politics to military affairs is “absurd” because “politics has produced the war; it is the intelligence, war is merely the instrument and not the reverse.” This is true in both the US as well as Iran, though the policy contexts are very different.

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During the 19th century, French nationalism and widespread literacy developed a mass interest in medieval history and national heroes, with Joan of Arc foremost among the latter. Images of French history appeared regularly in popular publications and posters of the time. As one might expect, artists tended to romanticize their reconstructions of medieval sieges in a contemporary mode, though they turned to the historical texts for their material. Arsenals still held examples of obsolete weapons to serve as models. Here and there lay remains of medieval fortifications to inspect.

So while the above illustration, Remparts d’Orléans pendant le siège (Ramparts of Orléans during the siege) is not contemporaneous to the famous Siege of Orléans in 1428–1429, it is an excellent secondary source based entirely on primary sources, even if it is somewhat of an abstraction in its depiction. We do not have a specific point in the defenses of the city, or a particular moment in the siege, as it actually happened. Instead, we have a menagerie of real things that were going on during the seven-month siege.

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The English commander, Thomas Montagu, 4th Earl of Salisbury, was mortally wounded on 24 October 1428. He was standing at a window to see into the city from the captured stronghold of the Tourelles when a cannonball, reportedly fired from the Tour de Notre-Dame inside the city, struck the window frame, spalling iron and stone into his face. Salisbury died of his injuries a few days later. However, the siege continued, becoming a daily attritional grind.

A more famous episode prompted the end of the siege. Joan of Arc arrived at Orléans on 29 April 1429 with a relief convoy and fresh troops. Her presence dramatically raised French morale. French forces then systematically attacked English positions, with Joan being wounded by an arrow as she led the attack en escalade (up a ladder) against the English bastilles, or field fortifications. Joan fell back but continued to rally her troops. The next day, the English withdrew. The maiden of Arc had saved the city.

Our anonymous 19th century illustration of the Siege of Orléans depicts casualties on the ground or being carried away. Arrows, crossbow bolts, and stone artillery ammunition arrive on random ballistic trajectories to inflict injuries and deaths. Defenders meanwhile keep up a steady rate of fire against the English besieging them this way. Within this dramatic scene, we can see some finer details of the early 15th century artillery park. Perhaps the most striking is the counterweight trebuchet operating alongside early gunpowder cannons.

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Islam did not experience a straightforward or unified progress. The Abbasid caliphate and its capital Baghdad had existed for over a century, surviving defeats and challenges, when the Zanj rebelled in what is today southern Iraq and southwestern Iran, devastating the imperial plantation economy.

According to al-Tabari, Ali b. Muhammad b. ‘Abd al-Rahim, “the abominable one” who led the great slave rebellion, claimed preternatural powers that rivalled the prophet. “I received surahs of the Qur’an, which I had not learned by heart, and yet I was able to recite them in a flash”, his Ali, “the enemy of God”, declares.1

Angels lent Ali b. Muhammad support. A voice from a thunderclap told Ali to advance on Basra. He had psychic insights into the minds of his companions, saw signs in dogs barking, found divine aid in barges overturning. Perhaps it was an act for an audience. He was a messianic figure to the Zanj, East Africans who were victims of a brutal slave economy in a mosquito-infested region.

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The rebels and their leader

The name ‘Zanj’ appears to derive from Persian and Indian words referring to the ‘Country of the Black Man’, namely Zanzibar, the famous slave-trading island on the eastern coast of Africa. Zanzibar had been a slave trading nexus since time immemorial, with the first Arab trading missions arriving soon after the rise of Islam.

As seen in the above illustration of a market-place, black slavery was normal in the early Arab world. By 869, tens of thousands of Zanj toiled in the nitrate-rich alluvial soils of the region that became the site of rebellion. They were organized into work crews under overseers (wakil) who worked them to death. Ali b. Muhammad first mobilized a few work crews, who killed their overseers, and then set free larger camps of thousands of men at a time.

Al-Tabari writes that the people of the northwestern Persian Gulf region “regarded him as a prophet, so much so indeed that, according to report, taxes were collected in his name. He exercised judicial authority over them, and on his behalf they fought against the supporters of the central authorities.” Dissenters however “were afraid and, becoming embittered against him, caused him to withdraw into the desert.”

Now Ali b. Muhammad had an army, and he would use it to carve out a prophetic kingdom. It would last 14 years, easily defeating the ad hoc caliphal armies sent to destroy it. When the Abbasid Empire solved their other emergencies, and finally sent a competently-led force sufficient to suppress the Zanj rebellion, it ended with mass desertions by former slaves who no longer saw Ali b. Muhammad as a divinely inspired figure.

Alexandre Popovic writes that Ali b. Muhammad was “an ambitious, totally unprincipled man” and “a typical revolutionary: a person of humble descent, an educated man, and one versed in the occult sciences. Having had contact with the greats of his time, he embraced different doctrines and attempted several uprisings before kindling the great Zanj revolt.”2

Military weakness in the Caliphate

The Zanj rebellion was the largest slave rebellion in history. Claiming casualties in the tens or hundreds of thousands, it was also one of the bloodiest. A military analysis of the conflict begins with an understanding of why it took so long for the caliphate to respond effectively.

Historian Hugh Kennedy writes that “we are comparatively well-informed about both organization and personnel” in the last armies of the caliphate, which “represent the culmination of that trend towards professionalization of the military and its separation from the rest of Muslim society” that began with the Umayyads.3 In this context, however, “professional” does not imply free.

A turning point came in 870, the second year of the Zanj rebellion, when Ahmed b. al-Mutawakkil was made the Caliph. His 22-year reign “brought to an end the period of violent unrest” that preceded him, and “there is no record of mutiny or riots over pay. Instead, a moderately effective army was built up and some political credibility was restored to the Caliphate.”

Credit however belongs to his brother Abu Ahmed, known as al-Muwaffaq, and the new military elite in the caliphate, the Turks. All the previous factions within the caliphal armies disappear from the records during this period, replaced by the new dominant group. We know they were first-generation arrivals from Central Asia because they mostly have single names in the records.

The arrangement replaced payment with political power, which may go “some way to explaining how the revenues which had proved so inadequate for the military” under the previous two Caliphs “seem to have been sufficient under al-Muwaffaq.” The empire was broke and unable to afford men who demanded pay.

A second trend was the increased use of ghilman (ind. ghulam), or slave soldiers, from the Arabic word for “youths” or “servants” that is equivalent to the European concept of a knight’s page. Led by the prince al-Muwaffaq himself, the ghilman of Mu’tadad “were the élite force which bore the brunt of the fighting” when the Zanj rebellion was put down. The empire of the Abbasids could not put down a slave army until they raised their own slave army, which took time.

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It all feels so familiar because it is familiar, by now. The president calls a timeout for negotiations at the behest of the Saudis, Qataris, and Pakistanis with planes in the air. Then Iran denies any negotiations are happening with the great orange Satan. Ships in the Strait of Hormuz report projectile strikes. Like clockwork, lone salvoes of IRGC missiles and drones lash out at Iran’s neighbors and American bases in the region. Rumors and speculations fill the cognitive gap of information.

Among the least-informed takes are the ones that say Iran closed the strait. The truth is that Trump decided to stop keeping the strait open. The US Navy has only so many ships in the region, and they have been needed for strike instead of suppression. Trump has no interest in keeping the strait open without a deal, at American expense, forever. The United States is a net oil, gas, and petrochemical exporter. Gulf refineries are having a banner year in 2026, just in the Gulf of Mexico instead of the Persian Gulf. Why waste a good crisis?

All wars are fundamentally macroeconomic affairs. The potential costs of war with Iran, which includes the contest for the strait, were growing over time. Moreover, taken seriously at their own word, the IRGC could be expected to fight the longest possible campaign, dragging out the process of diplomacy to forestall defeat. The regime simply cannot survive a military defeat. They also cannot win a military conflict against the Department of War and the IDF, together.

Obstinacy competes with reality, inside Iran. Rumor has it that Mojtaba Khamenei, the cardboard cutout supreme leader, has endorsed IRGC Commander Ahmad Vahidi, a hardliner. Everyone uses the word ‘hardliner’ to describe men like Vahidi who adopt revolutionary resistance as an ideology. It is more correct to call him a terrorist and a fanatic. Vahidi founded the Quds force, led the crackdown on women in the streets in 2022, remains wanted by Interpol for the 1994 Jewish community center bombing in Buenos Aires, Argentina, which killed 85 people.

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On Friday night, though, it appeared the end was nigh for any regime figure Mossad could find. American tankers and allied aircraft formed a visible guillotine around Iran on flight tracker websites. On Saturday, the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia persuaded Trump to give Tehran one last chance to reach a diplomatic solution. To repeat: the Israelis were ready to join the American attack at Trump’s request, not the other way around, while it was Trump’s biggest Arab partner who intervened at the last minute.

Regular readers already know the punchline, here. Arabs, not Israelis, have applied decisive economic pressure on Iran since March. All of them are accelerating new road and pipeline projects, including a potential Saudi line that will go through Israel. They are circumventing the strait, and they would prefer to buy time for this project rather than have a regional war right away. Iran wants a regional war very badly, and they want it right now, because economic misery loves company.

The result, in macroeconomic terms, is a reduced hostage value to the strait over time. Markets have already priced the closure without shocking the American economy. Countries that are dependent on the one-fifth of the world’s oil supply that passes through the strait have absorbed the shock instead. Countries like China, for example. Chinese refineries cut their processing rates and China cut oil imports drastically throughout the Hormuz crisis, using national stockpiles in a display of strategic resilience.

Trump is an ironic beneficiary of this cushion on the global economy. He was, by all reports, ready to cripple the economy of Iran and the IRGC so badly that the regime would spend years just getting back on their feet. The last-minute reprieve was received in some Arab capitals, such as Abu Dhabi, with a measure of exasperation. Arabs are not united, even though they are cooperative in their strait-circumvention projects. Some want Trump to finish the job, others want him to spare the gulf region from greater destruction.

The cycle of IRGC ‘resistance’ works against Iran’s negotiating position by clarifying for Arabs that Iran cannot be trusted with any deal under current conditions inside Iran. Whereas Trump was content with ambiguity in the MOU negotiations, he is making his demands very clear, now. We can also discern a shift taking place in the White House policy team in charge of the negotiations: personnel is policy.

Whereas Vice President J.D. Vance was the front man in MOU negotiations, his time as the primary negotiator has ended. Secretary of State and National Security Adviser Marco Rubio has emerged in the last few weeks as a key figure in Trump’s relationships with the UAE, Kuwait, and Bahrain. Trump’s policy has increasingly reflected Rubio’s hawkish approach instead of Vance’s conciliatory diplomatic idealism.

The political press is framing this as a story of two potential Republican nominees for the presidency in 2028, and polls have shown Rubio rising in the esteem of Republican primary voters as the MOU collapsed. Domestic politics aside, the more interesting development is that Rubio now makes the on-the-record comments about the state of “progress” in Hormuz talks. Vance is still involved, but less verbal. Rather than an electoral rivalry, the story here is Trump changing tools.

Rubio is much better suited to holding a hard line than Vance. Vance is a grinder, whereas Rubio is a diplomatic closer. He is happy to extract maximum costs from the regime in Tehran, and from the IRGC, in closing any deal. Iran can either change their relationship with the United States or pay a price that gets higher, deeper, and longer-lasting every week. It will be measured in wellhead pressures that have no outlet, forcing permanent shutdowns, because the infrastructure that receives the oil is not working, anymore, when it isn’t on fire.

Under the rumored terms of the deal that Iran acknowledges negotiating with Oman, ship traffic would pass through Omani waters when leaving the Persian Gulf, and use the Iranian channel to enter it. Oman and Qatar reportedly sought official confirmation of the deal from the IRGC, which has not been forthcoming at the time I am writing.

No matter the negotiating partner, the regime is unable or unwilling to respect any deal it makes. The ‘hardliners’ are in charge, which is to say the fantasy of victory is still alive in Iran. Even these hardliners are realistic enough however to appreciate that their enemies are capable of extracting material costs they might not live long enough to overcome, even if they survive it.

The closer is coming. Either Marco Rubio approves of a deal, or the US and IDF impose a deal. The hardliners hanging on to power in Iran can go the way of Delcy Rodríguez, and survive through a new relationship with the United States, or they can choose to die — whether by bombardment, or economic strangulation, does not matter. Indeed, it will be some of both, if the supreme leadership pushes things that far. Time, costs, and a hard American negotiating line (‘American hardliners’) are raising the costs of IRGC ‘resistance’ faster than the regime can offset them.

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“[T]here was in the town a [siege engine] built by a carpenter and dragged with its platform from St. Sernin”, writes the anonymous author of Chanson de la Croisade Albigeoise, or Song of the Cathar Wars.1 “This was worked by noblewomen, by little girls and men’s wives, and now a stone arrived just where it was needed and struck Count Simon on his steel helmet, shattering his eyes, brains, back teeth, forehead and jaw. Bleeding and black, the count dropped dead on the ground.”

The stone arrived just as the brother of the unfortunate Count, Sir Guy, “was speaking and beginning to shout and yell” because of the danger to the “cat”, a siege tower so large that Simon de Montfort intended it to house 400 horsemen and 150 archers. The career of the cat had already been cartoonish.

During the first attempted assault with the siege engine, a stone from a trebuchet inside Toulouse struck the upper part of the tower and knocked the protective hide armor loose. Now vulnerable to attack with fire, the siege engine had to be wheeled away again in ignominious retreat — and was struck again in the back by a second stone, destroying part of the machinery and killing several men inside it.

All the men outside the cat who were helping to push it ran away, ignoring Montfort, who shouted for them to return. The episode had symbolized the decline of his command during the ill-advised siege. Unable to ever actually invest the city, for he never had enough troops to fully surround it, Montfort had turned to an engineering solution that became a liability.

It was during the second attempt with the cat, now improved with reinforced hide shielding and wicker shields (cledis) to protect the men outside it, that Simon de Montfort fell. Once again, trebuchet stones damaged the cat as it approached. ‘‘By God, Dame Traitress Cat, you will never catch rats!” the Toulousains joked, according to Anonymous. They had increased the defensive obstacles in front of their walls, hindering the advance of the crusaders and their cat.

Montfort’s knights endured a barrage of stones and crossbow bolts from within the walls. The horse of Guy de Montfort, the brother of Simon, reared up when it was struck in the head by a bolt, whereupon a second crossbow bolt struck his groin. Guy was struggling to rally support from the dwindling knights as they continued to take hits. Montfort received multiple crossbow wounds before the great stone smashed his head, ending his misery.

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The death of Count Simon de Montfort on 25 June 1218 is certain. All the sources agree he was killed by a stone from a pre-gunpowder siege artillery weapon. Everything else is a contested detail. Peter of les Vaux-de-Cernay, who wrote the Historia Albigensis from his perspective as a Cistercian monk closely aligned with the crusaders and an admirer of Montfort, presents the death in hagiographic terms: it is a scene of martyrdom.

“Suddenly a stone from an enemy mangonel struck Christ’s knight on the head. The blow was lethal. Twice beating his breast he commended his soul to God and the Blessed Virgin”, Peter writes.2 The detail seems dubious, as death from a crushed skull would be instant.

Peter emphasizes five prior wounds from crossbows and compares Montfort to St. Stephen, the first martyr of Christianity, who was stoned to death. Peter also uses the Latin word mangonellus for the machine that threw the killing stone. He does not mention women operating the mangonel.

Anonymous tells us the death of Montfort was instantaneous. The Chronicle of William of Puylaurens, who wrote a history of the siege decades later, says Montfort “died at once” from being struck by the stone.3 He says that Montfort was actually inside the cat when he was struck, and that a mangonel threw the stone.

William also reports that the Count had begun “to pray to God to give him peace by the remedy of death” during the siege, for he “was worn out by his labours, despondent and weakened and exhausted by the drain on his resources; nor did he easily bear the prick of constant accusations by the legate that he was unthinking and remiss.”

Pope Innocent III had declared the Albigensian Crusade, but then failed to finance it. His legate had pressed Montfort to continue the siege against the advice of the Count’s military advisers, then turned on Montfort when the first attempt with the cat had failed so badly. Pressures of leadership under the failing conditions of the crusader army likely did contribute to Montfort’s fate. He took one too many risks, and lost his life.

For modern military historiography, the more interesting divergence in the primary sources is the identification of the machine that killed Montfort as well as the composition of the crew that operated it. Writing in Occitan rather than French, Anonymous uses the word peireira, from the Latin word petraria, which is a more general term than mangonel. Literally translated, it means ‘stone-thrower’. This is not an esoteric engineering point, either. The distinction actually does make a difference.

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Ukraine has surpassed Russia in the scale of their long-range strike capabilities. Successive, overlapping campaigns have created gas lines in Russia, swept the Sea of Azov clear of Russian ships, hammered logistics, and in recent days has expanded to Wildberries warehouses.

Wildberries is frequently compared to Amazon as a business, but this does not quite explain what is happening, here. Imagine American soldiers ordering their body armor, radios, combat gear, fiber-optic spools, and sundry needs for battle from Amazon.

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy calls the Wildberries locations “major logistics facilities” that are/were “involved in supplying the Russian military with drone components, navigation equipment, and other gear”. Order fulfilment centers and warehouses are therefore considered ‘dual use’ locations, subject to attack.

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Russia has of course condemned these attacks on poor, innocent civilian businesses. For once, this is almost not hyperbole. Wildberries is the rare example of a successful non-silovik business in Russia. Founder and CEO Tatyana Kim is Russia’s richest self-made woman billionaire.

However, a bitter divorce and corporate power struggle between Kim and her estranged husband Vladislav Bakalchuk erupted in gunfire during 2024. Talk about your bad breakups.

Bakalchuk showed up at the company’s offices near the Kremlin. He brought armed men in a brazen attempt to seize the premises. Two Wildberries security guards were killed and several police were reportedly wounded. Bakalchuk’s Chechen mob muscle was later convicted. It is dangerous to do honest business in Russia, even on a good day.

Strikes on Wildberries locations in the Moscow and St. Petersburg regions have secondary, cascading effects on the most important economic centers in Russia. Small businesses that depend on the online retailer for stock are already teetering on the edge from lack of demand. Between absent supply and absent demand is zero trade.

Wildberries had also been one important way for residents of the urban core of St. Petersburg and Moscow to alleviate the gas crisis by driving less. Now Russian consumers are forced to go somewhere themselves if they want anything, compounding the gasoline crisis. Business and consumer are both being squeezed.

The Wildberries option communicates the price of continued war to Russians in the metropolitan center of the country, the regions that have so far avoided the worst impacts of the war.

This does not guarantee the end of the war will come anytime soon. On the contrary, Russians face a bleak winter of limited heating oil supplies and Christmas without Wildberries delivery because Putin never responds to price signals.

I keep comparing him to a gambling addict because he predictably doubles-down on every high-stakes geopolitical bet. Putin treats armies and treasuries like inexhaustible credit lines at the casino of war.

It is compulsive behavior by a man who is unable to walk away from the table. However, even the world’s richest man has material limits. The Wildberries option aims to strike Russia against hard, material limits, imposing long-term costs for long-term war.

Fewer businesses, paying less tax, is less revenue for war against Ukraine. Treating a Wildberries just like any other Russian military logistics hub has broad effects on Russia’s wartime economy. The stated rationale is peace. The material effect is a more expensive war for every Russian, however long it lasts.

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Early on the morning of 3 January 2026, at least 32 Cuban guards around Nicolás Maduro were reportedly incapacitated by a weapon that American forces were using for the very first time.

According to an alleged surviving Venezuelan security guard, there was an “intense sound wave” or energy pulse that cause an internal head-exploding sensation, nosebleeds, vomiting of blood, disorientation, and collapse, leaving the guards unable to resist the Americans.

In interviews, President Trump called it “the discombobulator” and a “sonic weapon”. “I’m not allowed to talk about it”, he said, though he added that it was critical to mission success. “Nobody else has it. We have weapons no one knows about... we have some incredible weapons.”

The account of the alleged security guard originated on TikTok and was promoted on X by White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt. Venezuela’s defense minister accused the US of using Venezuela as a “weapons laboratory” for advanced AI-linked technology.

In fact, the “discombobulator” is decades old. So is the debate over it. American electronic warfare firms have produced a new generation of these weapons, yes, but the technology has Cold War roots.

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One historical lens of understanding the capture of Maduru, and the ensuing dominance of American refineries in processing Venezuelan crude oil, is typical military imperialism of the capitalist variety (yawn).

Another, far more interesting lens is the secret history of microwave weapons, their effects on the human body, and their use by Russians against Americans. It is a contentious history, always denied in whole by some who say the discombobulator does not exist, or else its effects are imaginary. Those people are very, very wrong.

I must be frank: it is an actual crime against my intelligence to deny the existence of microwave weapons. High-power microwave (HPM) weapons are already a billion-dollar trade on the global counter-drone market and anti-personnel versions have existed in the open for decades.

Before leaving the office of Director of National Intelligence to care for a cancer-stricken husband, Tulsi Gabbard criticized two Biden administration reports on so-called anomalous health incidents (AHS) linked to a ‘sonic’ microwave weapon. She also promised a full review of ‘Havana Syndrome’. Pending a declassified history, here is a brief on the secret history of the discombobulator.

Its use against the Cuban guards can be seen as American revenge on Russia for decades of deniable attacks on Americans. The secret history of payback for decades of passive-aggressive violence against Americans, by Russians, deserves to be fully told, one day.

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The Chabahar maritime watchtower was 78 meters tall. It was constructed during the 2010s upgrades to the Shahid Beheshti terminal of Chabahar Port. Chabahar is the only deep water seaport Iran has on the Indian Ocean and it has become a regional trading hub. It allows the regime to bypass the Strait of Hormuz.

Overlooking the mouth of the strait, the maritime traffic control tower was also the cornerstone to Iran’s efforts to control navigation, safety, and coordination for commercial shipping in the region. Now, after a series of strikes over five days, it is a pile of rubble — along with Teheran’s ambition to control the strait.

This week, Trump got people excited by proclaiming US control of the strait and a 20 percent tariff on traffic, then changing his mind the next day, citing “investments” by Gulf Arab countries. Some see this as madness. I see it as Trump trolling his enemies in Iran who keep claiming control of the strait. As the week ends, CENTCOM is contrarily closing the strait to Iran. Tehran has no control.

Tankers are still moving through the ‘Omani route’ despite threats from the IRGC, if at a reduced rate. It is not always visible, since many captains now turn off their AIS transponders while transiting the strait. The leverage is simply gone. Markets have already priced the conflict. Iran isn’t going to spike oil prices like they wish, and now the blockade of their own oil is back in place.

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Trump has been given three policy choices to put further military pressure on the regime, according to The Wall Street Journal. He can put ‘boots on the ground’ to seize coastal real estate, such as the oil terminal on Kharg Island. Or he can expand airstrikes beyond the bridges, piers, railroads, electric utilities, and other infrastructure now getting pounded every day.

Or he can do something about Pickaxe Mountain, “a heavily fortified underground site consisting of tunnels built into granite some 300 feet to 475 feet beneath the surface of a mountain peak—far deeper than Iran’s nuclear enrichment sites at Natanz and Fordow, which the U.S. and Israel bombed last summer.”

Construction at the site appears to be incomplete. Analysts say there are two shafts, 100 meters and 145 meters deep, that might have 53,000 square feet (5,000 square meters) of floor space. Activity at the site in the last year suggests the regime has plans to restart their nuclear program at Pickaxe Mountain.

“The depth of the Pickaxe tunnels means they may not be vulnerable to direct hits from the Massive Ordnance Penetrators — 30,000-pound ‘bunker buster’ bombs — dropped on Natanz and Fordow”, Laurence Norman reports. “Iranian officials have said the site is designed to make it less vulnerable to that sort of attack.”

“We have eyes on it and Pickaxe Mountain is a possible target for a nice big fat shot,” Trump said in an appearance with conservative broadcaster Hugh Hewitt this week. “Tell the Iranians to be ready.” Take him seriously, if not literally. This is telegraphing. Trump seems to like the idea of taking out Pickaxe Mountain. He cannot do that with bunker busters in the current US inventory.

That leaves boots on the ground as the only option. American troops will have to enter Iran, take control of the site, and use demolitions to destroy it while defending themselves from a siege by Iranian forces, and then extract safely. In military terms, this would be a coup de main, an audacious operation with a simple goal and rapid execution. A raid, not a conquest.

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On July 13, 2026, Ukraine’s 123rd Separate Territorial Defense Brigade conducted what it described as the world’s first known combat operation combining an unmanned surface vehicle (USV) to land an armed unmanned ground vehicle (UGV) and engage targets on the Russian-occupied shore of the Kinburn Spit.

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Here is what I wrote in September of 2025, less than one year ago, forecasting this exact scenario: an all-drone assault on a contested shoreline, sparing Ukrainian lives. I specifically mentioned the Kinburn spit because it is a narrow, exposed shoreline, the perfect terrain for a technological testbed.

In 2026, Ukraine will be fighting Drone War 3.0 with a combination of s-UAVs and armed UGVs. Conceptually, the amphibious invasion of Crimea becomes tenable when the beaches are to be stormed by robots: some shooting at anything that moves, others laying mines on roadways, all disembarking from sea drones in place of men, some of them driving inland to launch waves of tiny, buzzing drones for close air support in place of fighter jets. We are more likely to see Ukraine try that out on the Kinburn Spit instead of Crimea, first, but we will eventually see it, at this rate.

Here is a 57-second video released by the 123rd. After the usual music and graphics with the B-roll of the Ukrainian operator, we get about 20 seconds of actual video showing the drone land and fight. The Roboneers vehicle was equipped with a 7.62mm PKT machine gun — more or less equivalent to the US M-60 — to shoot at what appears to be a rectangular defensive structure, likely a concrete shelter. The spit is said to be riddled with them.

When Ukraine is able to do this at scale, landing many UGVs while also covering the beach with aerial drones (FPVs, fiber optic, Vampire bombers, etc), the Kinburn Spit will be nigh indefensible by humans alone. Russian defenders have minimal logistics, while the Crimean peninsula is increasingly untenable under constant Ukrainian drone attack. The spit is one of the decisive strategic terrain features of the war, so a robotic offensive could very well develop into an historic offensive.

When might this happen? I don’t know. A year, or two years. My scenario became a real experiment in 10 months. Drone warfare changes in the Ukraine theater every six months and no technological edge seems to last more than 18 months. Ukraine has built up a development lead in UGVs and USVs, however, and given the state of the Russian war machinery, it seems unlikely to me that they will catch up. This is a broad divergence between the combatants that may shape the end of the war.

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The lids on large petroleum tanks like this one are not fixed into place. They float on the surface of the oil, sealed to the wall of the tank, so that pressure changes do not damage the structure. This one was reportedly struck by a Russian surface-to-air missile that failed to intercept a Ukrainian drone that reached Moscow. Iconic now, the images of this explosion have become a visual shorthand for Ukraine’s long-range campaign against Russian economic and military targets and the ineptitude of Russian responses.

Monday’s strike on the Omsk Oil Refinery, Gazprom Neft-ONPZ, using FP-1 drones to reach more than 1,550 miles (2,500 km) into Russia, resulted in fire damage to a crude and distillation unit (DCU) and the shutdown of a second unit. The facility stopped producing gasoline and diesel on the St. Petersburg exchange and local fuel shortages were reported.

Ukrainians hailed the strike as a new achievement, the “deepest long-range strike on enemy territory during the entire full-scale invasion” and the first hit on this previously “unreachable giant.” Ukraine has now hit every Russian facility that produces gasoline. In some parts of the country, Russians already spend days in line waiting for gas, camping out in the summer weather. Their vacation season is spent in the gas line rather than Crimea.

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The logic of targeting logistics

It is worth noting that Ukraine sends hundreds of drones into Russia almost every other night. There is something to be said for the virtue of scale, here.

Ukrainian drones have swarmed the Sea of Azov for the fourth night in a row this week, damaging or destroying dozens of Russian shadow fleet tankers, dry cargo ships, tugs, and a ferry. All these vessels were responding to the logistical emergency that Ukrainian ‘middle strike’ tactics have created on the Crimean peninsula. I noted this Ukrainian strategy to make Crimea unsustainable through long-range fires very early.

Since then, a package of technologies and tactics has extended the range of small UAVs over the peninsula as well as the ‘land bridge’ on the north bank of the Azov. Whether or not Ukraine has the means to retake Crimea, they now have the means to make the decisive terrain of the war untenable for Russia by imposing intolerable costs for continued military occupation.

The tankers destroyed or damaged this week are relatively small, for they are designed to operate on the Russian river network, which makes them uncommon on the global market and difficult to replace. Their normal function is to distribute fuel for the Russian harvest season, which is about to begin. The tugs, cargo barges, and other ‘brown water’ vessels being destroyed in the Sea of Azov would ordinarily support a small, but critical part of Russian industrial and agricultural production that uses bulk transport over water.

Economic risks are meanwhile growing exponentially in Russia. Business investment is nonexistent. All the banks are giving forced loans to military contractors who often fail to pay them back. While the war has produced GDP, it has not produced wealth in Russia. Political demand for a strong ruble has reduced revenues from oil and gas exports that are denominated in dollars. The result is a Potemkin economy in which government costs have soared while real growth has halted under high interest rates.

One part of the Ukrainian middle strike campaign has focused on trains, fuel trucks, and other Russian vehicles in occupied Ukraine. This is already showing results in reduced Russian operations. While this does not herald the end of the war, this shift in momentum is happening right as Vladimir Putin’s Russia achieves a new level of unsustainability. From high finance to the physical logistics of the economy, the damage is everywhere, and it is deep.

Almost one in five airliners is out of service because western-made parts are unavailable due to sanctions. Moscow airports experience near-weekly shutdowns from drone attacks on the Russian capital. Passenger delays, flight diversions, and flight cancelations have a vital economic impact in a country that stretches across 11 time zones without a connecting highway system.

Only the railroads connect most of Russia on the ground. The state monopoly, RZD, is unable to replenish their locomotive stocks due to international sanctions. Rails and rolling stocks deteriorate while the lack of international connections hurts their export trade. Locomotives, oil cars, bridges, and key railroad infrastructure are predominant targets. By land, sea, or air, the logistical apparatus of the Russian economy is being degraded and delayed as it deteriorates.

Raising risks and cost ratios

This all has the effect of making the war more costly for Russia to fight. Making matters worse, Russian strategic culture only knows one answer to adaptation challenges. Inefficiencies have become policies under the ‘command-push’ model of military authority, further re-Sovietizing the war effort.

The Commander of the Unmanned Systems Forces (Войска беспилотных систем), Yuri Vaganov, is a vital case in point. He came to the drone warfare industry through his success as a plumbing oligarch. Known as “Yura the Toilet” to Russian military bloggers, he is despised for his “restrictive procurement system”.

The mechanism for these procurements allegedly requires all prospective drone models to undergo testing by operators at the “Rubikon” center for unmanned technologies. Following these field tests, operators are tasked with issuing a formal resolution regarding whether the equipment meets the declared technical specifications.

Yura the Toilet personally oversees the allocation of drones to the front, creating “hunger” in some units to the advantage of others. This top-down approach can pour drones and operators into one area, for example, but the priorities at the top are not necessarily in the best interest of the Russian forces on the receiving end of Ukrainian counterattacks.

Russian centralization of these resources is also problematic. Ukraine targets the Rubikon training sites and production points. Ukrainian ballistic and/or cruise missiles recently visited the Voronezh Semiconductor Devices Plant-Assembly (VZPP-S / Sborka), doing significant damage to production facilities and killing or injuring 5 workers.

VZPP-S produces the transistors, microchips, diode and transistor assemblies, and other electronic components for Kh-101 cruise missiles, Iskander-K systems, Pantsir-S1 air defense, and other Russian weapons systems that rely on semiconductors.

Last week, the Kremniy EL Group microelectronics plant in Bryansk, another of Russia’s leading producers of integrated circuits, power semiconductors, and electronic components for command/control systems, EW, communications, and weapons platforms, got a similar visit. Nearby, the Bryansky Chemical Plant, which makes propellants and explosives, was also set ablaze by Ukrainian long-range fires.

These strikes do not stop Russia from building new missiles to target apartment blocks in Ukrainian cities. Instead, these strikes make it much more expensive for Russia to launch high-value missiles at low-value revenge targets.

Fire Point weapons are developing quickly. FP-5 has a much-improved accuracy and enough explosive power to do serious damage to a building. In a June 26 strike on the Titan-Barrikady plant in Volgograd, a key facility for missile and artillery components including Iskander launchers, 3 out of 5 FP-5s succeeded in striking the target. Repeated strikes recently on the VNIIR-Progress plant in Cheboksary, which produces anti-jamming antennas for Russian drones and missiles, used FP-5. The weapon has likely done as much or more material damage to the Russian war economy now as it cost to develop.

Smaller attack drones have become the daily workhorse for long-range strikes. Fire Point reported at Eurosatory 2026, a defense conference in Paris, that FP-1 and FP-2 drones are used in strikes inside Russia on a near-daily basis, with 5–20 launches per day across the systems. Together, FP-1 and 2 account for about 60 percent of Ukraine’s deep strikes.

The more salient point is that the production of these weapons is distributed across hundreds of sites in Ukraine: concealed workshops, duplicated facilities, redundant sites that can be used if any one site is damaged or destroyed. Engines and some other complex parts are produced overseas. Ukrainian manufacturers can access a global market of microchips and electronics. There is no central node or point of failure for Russia to attack.

International partners are key to the success of Ukraine’s ability to scale up production. The allocation of resources has largely followed a points system on the battlefield. Destroyed Russian air defense systems are worth more points to a Ukrainian drone unit than a Russian tank or soldier. Resources flow towards success rather than access.

Ukraine’s single most important partner has been the United States. Not only has American intelligence continued to aid Ukraine in targeting and avoiding Russian air defense, American manufacturing has helped scale up the Ukrainian drone war machine, with positive results at every level of military operations for Ukraine: from the ‘drone wall’ that holds the frontal ‘gray zone’, through the depth of occupied territory, across European Russia, all the way to Siberia, now. In fact, the security relationship between Kyiv and Washington has never been so close.

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The United States Treasury Department revoked its waiver of sanctions on Iranian oil yesterday. CENTCOM reported strikes on “Iranian air defense systems, command and control networks, coastal radar sites, anti-ship missile capabilities, and more than 60 Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps small boats in and near the strait to degrade Iran’s ability to continue attacking international commerce flowing through the international trade corridor.” Altogether, more than 80 targets were hit.

Iran was only just getting new interest in their oil when the IRGC renewed attacks on neutral shipping in the Strait of Hormuz. A Qatari LNG tanker was struck by a missile while using the ‘Omani route’. Traffic has nevertheless continued to transit the strait through Omani waters, often in pulses, with many ships turning off their AIS transponders during the transit.

As I have advised readers for weeks now, Iran lacks the military means to actually close down the strait. The IRGC do not have it in them to stop the US Navy and Air Force from doing whatever President Trump wants to do them. America can respond to provocations with disproportionate force. This dynamic is not changing.

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The regime held a funeral for their supreme leader over the weekend. On Monday, Hamas dissolved their governing authority in Gaza, transferring their powers to something called the National Committee for the Administration of Gaza (NCAG), also known as the Technocrats Committee.

Hamas has not disarmed, nor should we confuse this with peacemaking. It is however a political capitulation in the war that Hamas began on 7 October 2023. Iran’s proxy is unable to govern the Gaza Strip and giving up on the project of administration altogether. Hamas is trading its political aims to better focus on being terrorists, which is what they do best.

For the IRGC, the diminution of one proxy is a calamity. Israel and Lebanon seem to have a tenuous agreement on disarming and demilitarizing Hezbollah, reducing a second IRGC proxy: catastrophe. Hamas would not have made this move without the blessings of the IRGC, however, so we can see this as a managed decline.

Understood as a rational actor, Iran’s leadership are steadily losing the ability to project power across the Middle East, making choices in the process, using the very public mourning event of Ayatollah Khamenei’s funeral procession as cover for a humiliating strategic retreat. The shooting last night is likewise a symptom of the regime’s inability to lose with grace.

To admit defeat is to admit that Allah is not on their side, which is impossible. From the outside, this can seem like a cultural strength that makes Iran impossible to defeat without a ground invasion on a historic scale. As evidenced by the political infighting over peacemaking authority in Iran, however, the impossibility of shaking hands with the Great Satan actually splits the regime into factionalism. Restricted resources under American blockade only increase internal tensions.

Time is not on the side of Iran’s resistance fantasy hardliners. They also cannot agree to a humiliating peace. They thought the MOU was their escape, but it turned out to be a trap. Americans have held hard lines, refusing to give over anything without performance from the Iranian side.

Put simply, the IRGC is not getting what they wanted, nor is the civilian triumvirate government getting what they promised their hardline opposition. Instead, the IRGC has lost power to close the strait, lost regional proxy power, lost leverage as negotiations continue.

They are losing, and they are mad about it.

When the protests flared up at the end of 2025, I suggested that the regime had reached a tipping point. Of ~90 million Iranians, perhaps 20 million are regime supporters. A water crisis, an inflation crisis, and a crisis of authority were all happening at once. The protests had a character that reminded me of 1979, and I said so.

After the first few days, I noted that the protests were centered in the bazaar, the ancient urban indoor malls of the country. This retail business community accounts for maybe 10 percent of the total national economy, but it has been on the winning side of every political upheaval in the history of Iran. At this point, I suggested the regime would be cooked unless it started slaughtering Iranians.

That is exactly what the regime did, of course. Sources vary, but tens of thousands of Iranians were reportedly killed in the gruesome violence that suppressed the street protests. In the meantime, I noted the emerging strategy of maritime dominance that had begun in Venezuela and would spread to Iran.

Donald Trump differs from recent past presidents in his unwillingness to endure frozen conflicts. Six days before the first Tomahawk strikes, it was obvious that he was on a warpath.

From the very first decapitation strikes to the deep penetrating bomb strikes on underground facilities, Iran’s air defense was immediately and entirely broken. They could not defend any point in the country throughout the kinetic phases of the conflict.

During Operation Epic Fury, the US and Israel had total air supremacy over Iran. This allowed the systematic destruction of key economic and military targets that had taken the regime many years, and many billions of dollars, to build. Damage to US real estate was limited to regional military bases that Trump was not keen to maintain forever, anyway.

As the supreme leadership went underground, rumors began to circulate about efforts to arm the Iranian Kurds. While the White House apparently nixed this idea, a series of attacks on the IRGC (and very convenient ‘accidents’) within Iran suggests that a low-key war has also been happening inside the country.

As OP Epic Fury began to affect payroll services for Iran’s regime, the Assembly of Experts dragged out a cardboard Mojtaba Khamenei and made it their supreme leader. Regime credibility hung by a thread. That situation has not improved.

By the middle of March, regime personnel were being targeted by individual strikes in the streets of the cities. Basij were observed hiding under overpasses. This ‘retail’ air campaign forced the regime to pursue a ceasefire. Operation Economic Fury began thereafter.

Mohammad-Bagher Ghalibaf, the speaker of the majlis, and his Foreign Minister, Abbas Araghchi, began negotiating with the Trump administration under this intense military pressure. Each side pursued an omnibus arrangement with opposing policy goals. This was to be a contest of wills in which time and pressure were against Iran.

Something definitely broke the will to fight of Trump’s negotiating partners in Iran. I suspect it was the Easter weekend battle to rescue an American pilot. A legion of ‘experts’ on frozen conflicts was very upset at Trump for unfreezing this one. Their credibility has suffered most in the wake of events since the ceasefire.

The United States still enjoys total military supremacy over the strait. Iran is talking tough today, writing verbal checks the IRGC is unable to cash. This keeps happening because it would be humiliating to admit their military capabilities have been greatly reduced.

The Europeans were of course buzzing mad the whole time. While the US Navy crushed Iran’s economy under a blockade, however, the naval weakness of European powers was on full display. American hegemony was not being diminished, it was being demonstrated.

As the blockade continued, the situation at the wellhead continued to deteriorate. Iran was running out of storage space for oil, and wellhead pressures were already being reduced, threatening decades-old wells with potentially permanent shutdown. Long-term economic damage to the regime was looming larger all the time.

Of course, there were still complaints about a lack of prior planning, as if the Pentagon can script a war in advance. All wars are extemporaneous. Good plans anticipate friction and leave room for adaptation to changed circumstances, for battle is chaos. A hyper-professional American force handed the chaos very well.

After Trump visited China in May, the writing was on the wall in Tehran. No help or intervention was coming from Beijing or Moscow. This is also when Trump began indicating the Iranian side had become serious about a settlement. Disbelief gave way to acceptance when it turned out he was right. During this period, Arab economic pressure on the regime proved decisive.

Then began a new phase in which Iran lashed out in frustration on a weekly basis while simultaneously negotiating the Memorandum of Understanding. This frenetic behavior derives from the factional nature of the regime in Iran. The IRGC does not want to admit defeat or surrender anything, but they lack the hard power to impose their will on anyone but random defenseless merchant ships.

By early June, when forecasts of permanent damage were supposed to be realized, the regime was clearly looking for a diplomatic alternative to the war it could not hope to win. Their potential leverage, including Hormuz, was declining all the time while the American blockade remained in effect.

The MoU did not end the controversy, of course. Its loose language fooled many people into expecting the Trump administration would capitulate, unfreeze assets, and restore capital flows without cooperation in return. The opposite has happened. Kinetic action has resumed without Iran getting any real benefits from the pause.

As I explained right after the MoU became public, any misunderstandings between the two sides would end up decided by hard power. The American side has the power to withhold assets until the Iranian side performs. The American side has the power to coerce the Iranian side with military force, whereas Tehran is struggling to make random Greek ship captains do what they want.

As I keep stressing, there are sure to be more episodes of violence. Iran will make announcements, strike civilian shipping, and put their ‘resistance’ on global display, if necessary through absurd propaganda devices, throughout their intermittent rounds of diplomacy. They do it this way because surrender is not an option, even when it is the only option.

Iran responded to the airstrikes with attacks on Bahrain and Kuwait. “For me? The ceasefire is over” Trump declared at the NATO Summit in Ankara last night. “I don’t want to deal with them anymore. They’re scum. They’re sick people. They’re led by sick people. And they’re vicious, violent people.”

“It’s just a waste of time dealing with them. They’re liars”, Trump said, comparing the regime in Tehran to cancer. “And you know what you do with cancer? You cut this cancer out early.” The Pentagon says the blockade will now be restored, and made even tighter than before, with daily airstrikes just to drive the point home that Iran will never win. Continued resistance is just a different way to lose.

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Iran is still in crisis. The economy remains devastated. Millions are unemployed. Oil prices have collapsed below pre-war levels, creating a market glut, and nobody is lining up to buy their oil. Because who wants to trade with a lunatic pirate kingdom that attacks commercial shipping in the modern world?

Iran formally buried the Ayatollah Khamenei today. His son Mojtaba, putatively the new Supreme Leader of the Islamic Republic, did not attend the funeral processions. The regime says they were afraid for his life, but the absence has fed speculation that Mojtaba is not in fact alive at all. Is the hidden imam just a front? The question is more than academic, because the supreme leader is the source of authority in Iran’s constitutional system.

Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, the speaker of the majlis, has authority to negotiate (he says) because the velayat-e-faqih has supposedly blessed the proceedings. As I observed at the beginning of the week, this claim is increasingly contested inside Iranian regime politics.

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As I also observed, Iran’s ability to close the Strait of Hormuz keeps deteriorating under the Memorandum of Understanding (MoU). The IRGC simply lacks the means to close the strait, whatever they announce otherwise.

As the next round of talks is set to begin in Qatar, the US Navy has two aircraft carrier battle groups keeping the Omani route through the strait open. The USS Boxer, an amphibious assault ship, has entered the theater this week carrying Marines. American military hard power leverage increases even as IRGC weakness is exposed.

Israel telegraphed plans to strike Iran this week, with Ghalibaf and the foreign minister on the reported target list. It is rare to see the IDF announce their intentions in advance like that. Israelis emphasize they are independent of Donald Trump here, and in fact the whole story smells like a pressure campaign on the regime.

Trump says they can have 60 days. Of course, his timelines are always flexible, but Benjamin Netanyahu’s patience is limited. By exquisite coincidence, a car overturned on Monday, killing Mohammad Akbarzadeh, the Political Deputy of the Office of the Supreme Leader’s Representative in the IRGC Navy. What a happy accident to remind the hardline resistance to the MoU that it is in fact the moderate outcome.

The American side keeps offering Iran economic relief — after cooperation. Iran cannot cooperate with the Great Satan. Tehran resists normalcy among nations. Trump has briefs on his hard power options, just like Netanyahu. He is giving Iran an opportunity to make a deal. The regime of the hidden imam keeps resisting that deal.

The Saudis too have offered normalization to Tehran this week. This is being cast by some as suspicious. Saudi Arabia has to live in the same neighborhood as Iran, shares the same sea as Iran, and has Arab neighbors with restive Shia populations. For a variety of understandable reasons, they would like to see a diplomatic outcome rather than a military one. Moreover, their economic pressure on Iran — measured in wellhead oil pressure — is proving decisive in the dispute.

Trump has been content to play the heel and let the Arabs put economic pressure on Iran. Tanker flows through the strait are still not back to prewar levels, but dozens of tankers are going through the strait every day, now, and Americans drive into the July 4th weekend with gasoline prices plummeting. Iran has lost their economic political leverage in the strait altogether, and they are not getting it back.

President Trump has all the leverage in the strait and it keeps growing. So far, J.D. Vance has not surrendered an inch, or a dollar, to the regime in advance of performance. Foreign Minister Abbas Aragchi can talk about an “inalienable right” to uranium enrichment all he wants, but the American side holds all the power to withhold frozen assets until IAEA inspectors are allowed to access nuclear sites in Iran.

Iran’s hard power capabilities are greatly diminished. A tentative deal is developing between Israel and Lebanon precisely because Iran cannot summon a hard power response to their implementation. It has become possible for the Lebanese Armed Forces to take control of Lebanon again and disarm Hezbollah because Iran’s missile and drone salvoes cannot overwhelm Israeli defenses, anymore.

Likewise, this week the Iraqi government arrested dozens of high-profile officials, lawmakers, and former government figures with alleged Iran ties. Senior officials in the Oil Ministry were arrested in the Green Zone. Iran has been documented blending or disguising its oil with Iraqi crude oil to circumvent the market discounts of US and international sanctions. IRGC proxies are being reduced while negotiations continue.

The ‘bull market’ in oil is gone. The strait is opening. The imam is hidden. The proxies are shrinking. Ghalibaf and Aragchi have a choice: be normal, or be over. So far, they have lost their diplomatic contest of will with the Americans — because the Americans have all the hard power, as well as the larger economic alliance.

For the regime, this is of course not the end. Resistance and defiance can never end. They want to drag out the inevitable forever. Trump and Netanyahu are not giving them forever. Trump, Vance, and the Arabs are offering Iran a normal place in the world if they just act normally. But they do not have forever.

I cannot say how this will end. I can only say that it is not what I was told would happen. I was repeatedly told that the war with Iran would never lead anywhere, least of all here. With every phase — the bombing, then the blockade, then the negotiations — there was anguish and despair about the outcome. The optimist case has yet to pan out, but the pessimists have been wrong, so far.

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The dictator of the proletariat puffed at his pipe. Stalin was ready to take questions.

Gen. Georgi Konstantinivich Zhukov sat before the Politburo. His victory over Japan at Khalkhin Gol in 1939 had allowed Stalin to enter the war on Soviet terms. The Red Army had entered Poland the day after the ceasefire with Tokyo.

Now it was May 1940. When the current negotiations for a nonaggression pact were concluded, the Soviet Union would have no eastern flank to defend. Stalin would be free to intervene in the European war.

Gen. Georgi Zhukov was blunt, even if his phrasing was careful. “How should one understand the extremely passive nature of the war in the West, and what turn might one expect the further events to take?” Zhukov asked, according to his memoir.1

Stalin chuckled, and said:

“The French Government headed by Daladier and the Chamberlain Government in Britain have no intention of getting seriously involved in the war with Hitler. They still hope to be able to persuade Hitler to start a war against the Soviet Union. They refused to form an anti-Hitler bloc with us in 1939, because they did not want to hamper Hitler in his aggression against the Soviet Union. But nothing will come of it. They will have to pay a high price for their short-sighted policy.”

The next day, Zhukov was elected to the Central Committee, an elevation to elite status in the Soviet system. He received a house near the Kremlin and lived in it for the next 20 years.

In the first essay of this series, I told the story of Gen. Zhukov’s victory against the Japanese on the Mongolian frontier in 1939 and explained how he became the most consequential general of the 20th century. This is the story of Zhukov’s actions during the defense of Moscow in 1941, the problems he encountered in organizing offensives in 1942, and how he became Stalin’s most trusted general.

This is also the story of how two styles of command, Russian and German, clashed along with their armies. These two doctrinal modes of command still shape our 21st century understanding of operational art, combined arms, and ‘deep battle’. Zhukov remains consequential. This essay series is EXCLUSIVELY for premium subscribers.

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Monmouth was not a particularly large battle. In his dispatches to Congress, Gen. George Washington reported 69 dead, 161 wounded, and 140 missing from his army, most of the latter from heat exhaustion. He also reported that 249 enemy officers and men lay dead on the field. Sir Henry Clinton, the British commander, reported just 65 killed, but the loyalist New York Gazette later published a list of 110 British troops either killed in action or by heat stroke.

While the continentals held the field after their fight with the British rearguard, it had not been a decisive encounter. “If ever a battle was a drawn struggle, Monmouth was it”, the late historian Willard Wallace said. British Brig. Gen. Sir William Erskine, on the other hand, called it “a handsome flogging” by the rebels.1 Monmouth became the battle of legend on purpose, in both the immediate aftermath as well as the early decades of America’s history of nationhood. The events at Monmouth Courthouse were magnified into importance by time, politics, and patriotism.

Washington intended as much when he began the pursuit of Clinton’s force during their withdrawal from Philadelphia to New York. He was looking for a short, sharp fight that would cement his position as commander in chief against his enemies in both the Continental Army and the Continental Congress. Washington had labored to rebuild his army into a competent force capable of just such a battle, and he got the very battle he had wanted, with the men he wanted.

The biggest loser

There were exceptions, of course. Maj. Gen. Charles Lee thought that Washington was not “fit to command a sergeant’s guard.” He first turned down the command of Washington’s vanguard at Monmouth when it was offered, only to plead for the command again when he learned that its size had grown enough to merit his magnificent presence. Washington met Lee in the early afternoon with the battle underway, the vanguard in retreat to more defensible terrain amid the muddy, morass-filled topography of Monmouth Courthouse.

“When I arrived first in [Washington’s] presence, conscious of having done nothing that could draw on the least censure, but rather flattering myself with his congratulation and applause, I confess I was disconcerted, astonished and confounded by the words and manner in which his Excellency accosted me”, Lee wrote later. “The terms, I think, were these—’I desire to know, sir, what is the reason—whence arises this disorder and confusion?’”

Lee did not understand at the time that two of his unit commanders had repositioned their units without communicating their intentions. The Continental Army lacked signal flags and troops, requiring staff officers to ride with orders. During the morning, Lee had run out of capable aides to carry orders and return with reports. Washington surely knew the miserable state of his army’s communications, since he had arrived to the battlefield uninformed of events.

Moreover, the “disorder and confusion” Washington found as he arrived with the main body of the army was not unusual or hard to understand. Temperatures had soared to over 100 degrees Fahrenheit (38C), causing many men to drop out of the march from heat exhaustion. Both armies wore stifling wool uniforms.

Washington’s words did not bother Lee. It was his tone that rankled. “The manner in which he expressed them was much stronger and more severe than the expressions themselves”, he wrote.

When I recovered myself sufficiently, I answered, that I saw or knew of no confusion but what naturally arose from disobedience of orders, contradictory intelligence, and the impertinence and presumption of individuals, who were vested with no authority, intruding themselves in matters above them and out of their sphere. That the retreat… was contrary to my intentions, contrary to my orders, and contrary to my wishes … . To which he replied, “All may be very true, sir, but you ought not to have undertaken it unless you intended to go through with it.”

According to Lee’s aide, Capt. John Mercer, Washington then “passed him by” and continued on his way to victory. Accounts of this encounter between generals on horseback were embellished later with very un-Washington behavior: he supposedly swore “until the leaves shook on trees” and denounced Lee as a “damned poltroon”, according to the Marquis de Lafayette and Gen. Charles Scott. Neither man was present at the encounter. They were creating the legend of Washington and Lee at Monmouth.

In Fatal Sunday, the definitive modern history of the Monmouth Campaign, Mark Lender and Garry Stone write that “careful scholarship has conclusively demonstrated that Washington was angry but not profane at Monmouth, and he never ordered Lee off of the field.”2

Emanuel Leutze, the painter who gave us the famous scene of Washington crossing the Delaware, also painted the encounter at Monmouth. His Lee is a dejected failure, bent-backed, his sword lowered in symbolic shame. Even the wine bottle holder seems flaccid. No such emasculation took place at Monmouth Courthouse.

In fact, Washington put Lee back in charge of his exhausted troops until they were able to withdraw and rest. Only days later, after the battle, did Lee make his fatal mistake of writing his grievances down and sending them to Washington. Lee “solicited” a court martial in hopes of clearing his name, so Washington brought “him to tryal at his own request”, as he later put it.

Meanwhile, in the painting, Washington is absurdly galloping with his saber out. As Lee recalls, Washington did not pause to rally the troops when they ran into one another. Washington did in fact take risks to be seen by his troops during the battle, causing his officers to cringe at times, but he wasted no further time on Lee after this exchange, nor did he hang about to crush the ego of a rival for command.

The legend of their encounter at Monmouth was constructed later, through the public relations work of his men. Alexander Hamilton, John Laurens, and Marquis de Lafayette wanted Monmouth Courthouse remembered as Washington’s finest hour. They needed a big win, something that could erase the recent hard times and end the questions about the army’s leadership, so Monmouth became a greater victory in retrospect than it was in the moment. Heroes and villains emerged from this creative patriotism, but they were projections on the past.

The real George Washington had about fifteen minutes to sort out the mess before the British struck first. There was no time for scenes.

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An army in adaptation

Washington had been unable to prevent the capture of Philadelphia by a superior British force on 26 September 1777. Seizing the capital of the nascent nation did not end revolutionary resistance. The Continental Congress simply moved to York, while Washington conducted a “forage war” against the British garrison in Philadelphia.

The captured city had become a logistical trap for the British. Small detachments of patriots harassed British and Hessian troops as they scouted for food and supplies in the countryside around the city. Withdrawing to the city meant relying on overseas shipments of everything the force ate or used, raising the costs of occupation to unacceptable levels. Indeed, there were not enough ships to withdraw by sea. Clinton decided to march overland to New York instead, risking a battle with Washington, who would doubtless hear about the evacuation.

Washington did not know the exact route Clinton would take. Nevertheless, he decided to “proceed towards Jersey & govern ourselves according to circumstances” in a bid to catch the British rearguard. It was the confidence of a man waging war on friendly terrain, for Washington still lacked a cavalry corps to conduct reconnaissance or screen his movements. New Jersey was held by well-organized patriots who had the local loyalists under their heels.

Washington’s army had been transformed. During 1777, enlistments were extended to three years to enlarge the Continental Army. While it would never reach its unrealistic goal of 75,000 men under arms, the policy shift from short-term enlistments did create a larger, standing army for a longer conflict.

Recruitment improved in 1778. “In March the main army at Valley Forge counted fewer than 7,500 men of all arms fit for duty”, according to Fatal Sunday, but “by May this figure had climbed to slightly over 15,000. In June (after the Battle of Monmouth), the roster of the main army showed 15,336 men actually on duty.”

Another important change had arrived at Valley Forge in late February 1778. Friedrich Wilhelm Ludolf Gerhard Augustin von Steuben was not a real Prussian nobleman, but he had served on the staff of Frederick the Great. Ron Chernow writes that “Benjamin Franklin probably was responsible for inflating Steuben’s European record — which included a story that he had been a Prussian lieutenant general — in order to smooth his way with Congress.”3 Despite the embellishments of his CV, Steuben proved to be a very capable inspector general.

Steuben did not introduce a new drill system wholesale. He adapted the drill systems that were already in use by the Continental Army into a single, simplified system. He later complied his notes on these drills and procedures into his famous ‘Blue Book’, which remained the standard reference text until the War of 1812. At Valley Forge, he picked 100 men to learn the new drill, then had them teach the system to their home units. “He left matters of a permanent post and rank for later discussion with the understanding that if he proved himself, appropriate emoluments would follow”, Chernow writes.

Steuben’s most important reforms however lay in castrametation, the science of laying out a military camp. “Orderly streets and drill fields were established, trash and debris were removed, and the latrines were placed far from the tents, away from both the men and their water supply”, write the authors of Fatal Sunday. “This had an almost immediate effect on the health of the army.” Quartermaster services improved under Maj. Gen. Nathaniel Greene, so that men no longer wore rags or went hungry.

The guns of Monmouth

If morale had improved across the board, then “esprit among the artillerists was among the highest in the army.” Brig. Gen. Henry Knox had learned the science of cannons from reading books and then earned his technical competence the hard way, leading the exhausting relocation of artillery from Fort Ticonderoga to Boston. This maneuver had forced the British out of that city. Knox had not been idle, establishing a technically competent artillery arm with armories and repair shops and trained gunners.

It all paid off when the Americans won a counter-battery duel and then overwhelmed the British cavalry and infantry at Monmouth, forcing them to withdraw and ending the battle. The big guns carried the day. Leutze painted the limbered guns advancing in the background, behind Washington’s sword, a marginal element of the scene. On the day of the battle, however, they were the center of everyone’s attention.

When the rebels encountered the British, the Royal Artillery claimed the most casualties, about a dozen. At the moment Washington had his contretemps with Lee, the battle was still largely bloodless, with both sides maneuvering to take advantage of the terrain.

At around 3:45 PM, the tempo of the guns increased as the Royal Artillery and the Continental artillery engaged in a two-hour duel. It was “the brisket Cannonade on both sides that I Ever heard,” wrote Lieutenant Colonel Henry Dearborn. “If any thing Can be Call.d Musical where their is so much Danger, I think that was the finest musick, I Ever heard.” Yet “the agreeableness of the musick was very often Lessen.d,” he observed, “by the balls Coming too near.”4

The British rearguard made one last effort. A colleague of de Lafayette, Lt. Col. Thomas Antoine, chevalier de Mauduit du Plessis, organized a battery of four guns on Combs Hill that enfiladed the advancing British lines with grapeshot. “With excellent crews, they could fire two or three aimed rounds per minute”, Fatal Sunday observes. “A 4-pounder case round using 1.5-ounce iron shot contained about forty-four shots; a canister of lead musket balls would contain many more. With all four guns firing at a rate of three rounds per minute, at any given minute over 500 pieces of hot metal were hurtling downrange.”

It was simply too much for the advancing 1st Grenadier Battalion and 33rd Regiment of Foot, which turned and ran to find cover on the reverse side of a hedgerow. Lieutenant Walter Finney of the Fourth Pennsylvania noted that “by a few well directed shot on the Head of thire Collom they ware broke in Disorder.”

“With the exception of the sieges at Yorktown, Charleston, and Fort Mifflin, it would be the largest single day’s artillery action of the war, and although it attracted thousands of witnesses, we know surprisingly little about key aspects of it”, write the authors of Fatal Sunday. Monmouth saw the largest artillery duel of the war, the longest cannonade of the war, and the longest single day of battle in the entire war.

Lieutenant Colonel The Honorable Henry Monckton, the highest-ranking British officer to die at Monmouth, was killed by grapeshot. The patriot artillerymen paid a proportional price for the victory. “Of the total dead and wounded, 29 (or about 10 percent) were in the artillery, which also lost six horses killed and two wounded”, according to Fatal Sunday. Indeed, the action was so hot and bloody that legend says a woman stepped up to take her husband’s place at his gun.

The myths of Monmouth

According to the legend, Mary Hays McCauley, the wife of an American gunner in the 4th Continental Artillery, took up his ramrod and continued the battle when he fell. Joseph Plumb Martin, a witness to the battle, recalled a woman who “attended … the piece the whole time.” In his telling, which seems apocryphal, a British cannon shot had passed right through her petticoat, between her legs.

Yet the case for McCauley is “built on a deck of cards,” historian David Martin writes in the single most complete volume on the topic of ‘Molly Pitcher’.5 “Each piece of evidence … has a weakness or loophole, and there is no clear-cut ‘smoking gun’ to confirm her case.” The primary sources left to us “are particularly weak.” Martin concludes that Molly Pitcher is likely a composite character created from real women of the American Revolution.

In 1848, Elizabeth Schuyler Hamilton, the widow of Alexander Hamilton, who was at the Battle of Monmouth, recalled meeting “Captain Molly” a total of three or four times. In her telling, Washington made the “stout, red-haired, freckle-faced young Irish woman named Mary” a sergeant, Martin writes.

However, Mrs. Hamilton had in fact confused the purported Molly at Monmouth with “Captain” Molly Corbin, a woman who actually fought at the Battle of Fort Washington in New York during 1776 and who did accompany Washington’s headquarters for much of the war. When her husband John was mortally wounded, Corbin took his place until she was seriously wounded herself by grapeshot.

Indeed, it seems that Washington devotees invented the myth of Molly Pitcher long after his death, probably by building on this misremembered connection. “The confusion is not surprising, since both women were known as ‘Captain Molly’ and both were noted female combatants who served in the artillery”, Martin explains.

The legend of Washington’s meeting with Lee also grew over the decades. In reality, Lee was a disruptive character, vain and opinionated, who opposed the reforms of Steuben and had his own ideas about how the army should be organized. His disgrace was the elimination of Washington’s last critic within the officer corps. Afterwards, he had no rivals for power.

“The incident became part of the folklore of the Revolution, with various witnesses (or would-be witnesses) taking increasing dramatic license with their stories over the years”, Fatal Sunday says. “Thus if Monmouth revealed a newly ‘respectable’ American army, it also confirmed the advent of Washington as the unchallengeable ‘indispensable man.’”

One factor probably enhanced the mythic value of the battle more than any other: it was to be one of the last battles of Washington’s war. “Washington’s role at Monmouth stands out with special vividness because it was the last such major battle in the North during the war”, Chernow writes. Henceforth, the British would stay out of the heartland of rebellion and try operating in the south, where loyalist sentiment was higher.

“Britain never again sought a military solution to the war in the northern colonies”, Fatal Sunday says, and Washington did not get another chance to fight the British, after Monmouth. “Not until Yorktown, more than three years later, would he again be directly exposed to the hurly-burly of a full-scale battle.”

By then, his army would make more improvements, despite the many challenges Washington faced. One of these was staff communications. At Yorktown, “the army had corps moving separately but effectively over considerable distances. At Monmouth, however, the staff capabilities necessary for such results were not yet in place”, producing the “disorder and confusion” that had embarrassed Lee.

Ten days after the Battle of Monmouth, a French fleet led by Count Jean-Baptiste-Charles-Henri-Hector d’Estaing dropped anchor in Delaware Bay. France had entered the war. Spain would also declare war against Britain in 1779, the Dutch in 1780. With more wars on their hands, the British government could not prioritize North America, where most of the empire’s armies were tied down. The American Revolution succeeded when the cost of continued war became too much for London.

With relatively little fighting to do for the rest of the conflict, George Washington’s men were already looking forward to postwar nation-building and the necessity of a father figure who could unite the newly independent states. They had time and motivation to erect myths about what took place at Monmouth, New Jersey, so that he became larger than life.

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“What has taken shape in the Pakistan negotiations is fundamentally different from what was supposed to happen and from what constituted the condition for the legitimacy of the negotiations.” With those words, Iranian lawmaker Seyed Mahmoud Nabavian, an influential MP in the camp that opposes negotiations with the Great Satan, accused the government of treason against the Supreme Leader last weekend.

Reacting to the memorandum of understanding (MOU) with the United States, Nabavian called it a “total loss”. Then on Friday, Nabavian told a state TV channel that Mojataba Khamenei had made repeated objections to the conditions of the MOU while it was under negotiation. “The Supreme Leader explicitly expresses his dissatisfaction,” Nabavian claimed. “He says, ‘Why did you not observe the conditions?’”

Nabavian belongs to the Paydari Front of Saeed Jalili, which has been critical of the MOU. The broadcaster stopped the interview and vowed legal action after Nabavian claimed to be reading messages from Khamenei. According to Nabavian, Khamenei wrote that Iran was “neither in a hurry nor under any compulsion to negotiate or reach an agreement”. Furthermore, the nuclear program was not up for discussion, while “ending the war and securing compensation” were to be paramount goals.

I have no way of accounting for the veracity of these alleged messages, but they do speak to the concerns of the resistance to the MOU within Iran, and they might explain why the Iranian side wanted the MOU text embargoed for three days, as well as the ambiguity of the language on the Iranian side. When Iran denies that any sort of deal regarding uranium is taking place at all, that is because the subject remains extremely sensitive within Iran.

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Nabavian clearly wants to undermine the government. He says that when Khamenei wrote his alleged messages in March, the supreme leader was keen to maintain the Strait of Hormuz as a point of leverage. He wanted complete control rather than a shared arrangement with Oman or any other country, and even came up with a detailed toll scheme.

“If the Americans want pressure taken off their throat, they must first implement preconditions, foremost among them the payment of compensation and debts”, Nabavian read, complaining that “none of these things” was in the MOU. However, these items have turned up again and again in the public negotiating position of Iran, likely to appease reactionary elements.

The problem for everyone in Tehran is that their leverage keeps evaporating.

Hormuz risk premium deflation

Over the weekend, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) announced that the strait was once again closed. This ostensible closure was officially supposed to be a response to what Tehran called MOU violations by Israel; this was a “first step” against IDF “aggression” in Lebanon.

On Saturday, Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, in a directive seen by Iran International, instructed media outlets not to portray the renewed closure of the Strait of Hormuz and Iran’s simultaneous participation in talks as a split between the “field” and diplomacy.

The directive said Iran was pursuing a single strategy combining military pressure and diplomacy, and urged media outlets to frame action in Hormuz not as an alternative to negotiations but as support for them.

This two-track approach played out on Thursday as a cargo ship, the Ever Lovely, was reportedly struck by a “projectile” on the starboard side of her bridge while transiting the ‘Omani route’. At least one VLCC (very large crude carrier) turned around before continuing through the strait later. Traffic continues to move through the strait at this hour. At least 70 vessels transited the strait on Thursday, a new post-February high.

Indeed, ships have continued moving through the strait via the Omani route ever since Iran declared it closed. Approximately 55 vessels made it through the strait on Saturday alone, before the negotiations in Switzerland began. At the time of this writing on Thursday, 25 June, the market price for a barrel of oil has returned to its pre-28 February level. Shipping insurance rates in the strait have declined by almost half from their peak, though they remain above pre-crisis levels.

The “projectile” that struck Ever Lovely turned out to be a drone. It must have been small, as it caused no major damage or casualties. The IRGC is clearly frustrated by the overall decline in risk, so they created more risk. But they barely made a hiccup in the flow of shipping traffic.

Criticism of the MOU inside the United States has emphasized the risk of Iran learning to close the strait in order to extract concessions. In fact Iran has always known they could try to close the strait, and according to Mahmoud Nabavian this was very much what they wanted to do with the MOU.

President Trump seems to understand the struggle for control because he keeps signaling his intentions to keep the strait open. He told reporter Trey Yingst on Sunday that the Iranians “won’t have a country” and “won’t even make it back to your f**king country” if they closed the strait. The Iranian delegation walked out and demanded an apology. None was forthcoming. Discussions continued though Qatari intermediaries.

By my count, this is at least the fifth time since April that the IRGC has declared the strait to be closed. But they cannot close the strait. By contrast, President Trump speculates out loud about “tak[ing] over the strait if we have to” and collecting tolls if Iran fails to make a deal, and Trump has actual power to reimpose the blockade any time he wants, though he says it is “highly unlikely” he will have to do so. The IRGC wishes that they had the same hard power.

This puts Oman in the middle. Oman lets ships pass for free, while Iran wants to charge for passage. The market is choosing Omani waters and the IRGC is mad about it. Iran needs the fear to come back a little bit, but they also fear Uncle Sam will punish them if they go too far.

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Kurd Qaburstan in Iraq has been identified as the ancient city of Qabara depicted in the Victory Stele of Dadusha. A new magnetometer survey of 180 acres by a team from the University of Central Florida has found a massive curtain wall with bastions surrounding the site, matching the fortifications portrayed on the stele.

Found in the temple of th…

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On the internet, ‘cope’ refers to excuses, rationalizations, and comforting lies to deal with an undesirable situation, especially a grievous loss. Ira…

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We are supposed to get peace in the Middle East this Friday. Actually, we are supposed to get 60 days of peace while the United States and Iran reach a deal on neutralizing the enriched uranium stockpile, so that there can be permanent peace. The Strait of Hormuz is supposed to reopen for business this week. Actually, it will take a month. At the time o…

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The Trump administration is no longer involved in ceasefire negotiations or peace talks between Russia and Ukraine. “We were the only ones both Russians and Ukrainians were willing to talk to”, Secretary of State and National Security Adviser Marco Rubio has explained. “So we got involved. Unfortunately, it didn’t yield results. That’s the point.” Pointless peace talks are pointless. Rubio stood before a NATO backdrop at the Foreign Ministers Summit when he said this. The optics are intentional.

The new Trump policy is the boldest American stance on Ukraine yet: they are allowed to win. World War III is canceled. Nobody is afraid of Oreshnik missiles and rattling nuclear sabers. Russia will not exert leverage on Kyiv through Washington or Europe. Volodymyr Zelenskyy is free to unleash his weapons on Russia wherever and however he wants. Ukrainians are allowed to win as much as they want. This is a very new attitude from the Americans.

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Ukraine has in fact started winning. In the south of Zaporizhzhia Oblast, where the Ukrainian ‘middle strike’ campaign has made a total wreck of Russian logistics, the ‘land corridor’ to Crimea is increasingly threatened by Ukrainian advances. The pace is not fast, at least not yet, but the local counterattacks in this sector seem to be growing in intensity.

‘Middle strike’, the doctrinal shift that brought on this new state of the battlefield, is a package of tactics and technological solutions, primarily Starlink. This package has extended the campaign against Russian logistics from 12 miles (20km), the so-called ‘drone wall’, out to more than 60 miles (100 km) from the zone of contact. Every military Telegram channel is warning readers about the growing effectiveness of this campaign, especially in the southern direction. Their alarms get more substantial every week as the effects of the ‘middle strike’ campaign tell at the front.

Ukraine has made or bought millions of drones. European and American manufacturing has allowed Ukraine to scale up this ‘middle strike’ capability faster than Russia. Production increases all the time in a competitive environment where cycles of failure and redesign are fast, and have to be cheap. Now the Ukrainian drones are forming up at operational levels, in depth, replacing close air support and artillery and missiles in that attritional role at a tiny fraction of the unit cost. But at what human cost?

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