Khamenei, One of Most Evil People in History, is Dead
POSTED BY: 6ixStringJack
UPDATED: Wednesday, September 2, 2026 05:42
VIEWED: 15626
PAGE 15 of 73
Quote:Trump administration underestimated Iran war’s impact on Strait of Hormuz
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
What the hell is a Middle East "expert"?
If somebody called themselves a "North American Expert", would you take them seriously?
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Be Evil. Be a dick.
By Zachary Cohen, Phil Mattingly, Kevin Liptak, Kylie Atwood
March 13, 2026
https://www.cnn.com/2026/03/12/politics/hormuz-trump-administration-un
derestimated-iran
The Pentagon and National Security Council significantly underestimated Iran’s willingness to close the Strait of Hormuz in response to US military strikes while planning the ongoing operation, according to multiple sources familiar with the matter.
President Donald Trump’s national security team failed to fully account for the potential consequences of what some officials have described as a worst-case scenario now facing the administration, the sources said.
While key officials from the Departments of Energy and Treasury were present for some of the official planning meetings about the operation before it started, sources said, the agency analysis and forecasts that would be integral elements of the decision-making process in past administrations were secondary considerations.
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Energy Secretary Chris Wright have been key players throughout the planning and execution stages of the conflict, the sources acknowledged. But Trump’s preference of leaning on a tight circle of close advisers in his national security decision making had the effect of sidelining interagency debate over the potential economic fallout if Iran were to respond to US-Israeli strikes by closing the strait.
And now it may be weeks before the administration’s efforts to alleviate the intensifying economic fallout take hold, officials said Thursday, including high-risk naval escorts of oil tankers through the strait that the Pentagon believes are currently too dangerous to conduct. The president, meanwhile, has continued to downplay the tumult in energy markets and the danger. He told Fox News that oil tanker crews should “show some guts” and go through the strait.
The reality in the strait has left diplomatic counterparts, former US economic and energy officials and industry executives who spoke with CNN in a state of confusion and disbelief.
“Planning around preventing this exact scenario — impossible as it has long seemed — has been a bedrock principle of US national security policy for decades,” a former US official who served in Republican and Democratic administrations said. “I’m dumbfounded.”
Shipping industry executives have made regular requests to the US Navy for military escorts, all of which have been rebuffed. In regular briefings for industry participants in the region, US military officials have repeatedly made clear they have not received orders to begin any escort operation and the risks to US assets remained extremely high, according to two executives with knowledge of the matter.
Bessent told Sky News’ Wilfred Frost on Thursday that those escorts would begin “as soon as it is militarily possible.”
“That was always in our planning, that there’s a chance that US Navy, or perhaps an international coalition, will be escorting oil tankers through,” he said.
But the path to this point, sources said, appears to mark the complex convergence of geopolitical assumptions, energy market forecasts and cross-cutting strategic priorities.
Lawmakers pressed top Trump administration officials during a recent classified briefing about the lack of an operational plan to re-open the strait as the conflict continued, according to multiple sources familiar with the closed-door session. An administration official disputed that there were no plans, noting that the US military has long planned and trained to address a major disruption to the critical thoroughfare for global commerce.
But there was no indication that there were any near-term solutions t
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American military bombed potential military locations on Kharg Island, Iran's oil export terminal, threatening Iran with its complete destruction unless Hormuz is opened.
Iran, in turn, threatened to destroy ALL oil facilities on the Persian Gulf cpast if Kharf Island is destroyed. The Gulf regimes should be learning by now that the USA can't defend them from Iran.
Iran also offered to open the Strait for ships whose nations kicked Israeli embassies out of their countries or, in the case the Gulf monarchies, kicked American bases off their territory. Doing that splits nations from each other, allowing Iran to deal with them individually instead of as a bloc.
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"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal."- Henry Kissinger
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Iran's bankruptcy is its best weapon against the wealthy Gulf states
By bne IntelliNews | March 13, 2026
https://www.intellinews.com/comment-iran-s-bankruptcy-is-its-best-weap
on-against-the-wealthy-gulf-states-431376/?source=bahrain
There is an old saying, attributed to the British Foreign Office in colonial days: "Keep the Persians hungry, and the Arabs fat." Washington appears to have taken that advice to heart. The trouble is, when the hungry finally have nothing left to lose, it is the fat who pay the price.
There is something darkly rational about Iran’s approach to this war. The Islamic Republic entered the conflict already ruined. Inflation was running above 48% in December 2025. The rial had crossed one million to the dollar in March 2025 and hit 1.75mn by December, making it the least valuable currency on earth. The IMF projected real GDP growth of just 0.3% for 2025, revised down from 3% only two years earlier. The government’s own budget commission put the deficit at 1,800 trillion toman. Seven million Iranians were going hungry. Meat had become a luxury. Half the country’s industry had stopped because of rolling blackouts.
You cannot bankrupt a country that is already bankrupt. That is the perverse advantage Tehran holds.
US sanctions had already severed Iran from the global financial system long before the first cruise missile hit. Oil exports, which the budget assumed at 1.85mn barrels per day at $67 a barrel, were running closer to 1.1mn bpd according to IMF estimates. Capital flight reached $14bn in the last nine months of 2024 alone, on top of $20bn the year before. The central bank reported a net capital account of negative $21.7bn for the last fiscal year – the worst on record. The IMF calculated that Iran would need oil at $163 a barrel just to balance its 2025 budget. That figure belongs in the realm of fantasy.
So when US-Israeli strikes hit on February 28, Iran’s economy was already in what the Clingendael Institute called a position approaching the precipice. The war made things worse, but not in the way wars normally do. Iran was not knocked off a ledge. It was already at the bottom. The country’s nominal GDP had dropped below $400bn. Sanctions, corruption, energy shortages and decades of mismanagement had already done the damage. Analysts at Eye for Iran noted that Tehran exited 2025 “battered yet still standing”, interpreting survival as grounds for taking greater risks in 2026.
The Persian Gulf Arab states, by contrast, entered this war from a position of apparent strength – and that is precisely their vulnerability.
Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund held $941bn in assets. The UAE’s sovereign wealth funds collectively managed over $1.5 trillion. Qatar had spent decades building itself into the world’s largest LNG exporter. Dubai International Airport handled 95.2mn passengers in 2025. These economies were wired into every artery of global finance: US Treasury bonds, Silicon Valley venture capital, London real estate, European football clubs. Gulf sovereign wealth funds collectively held over $2 trillion in US assets alone.
That connectivity is now their Achilles heel.
When Iran closed the Strait of Hormuz and launched retaliatory strikes across the Gulf, it did not just damage military targets. It severed the export routes on which these economies depend for their survival. Bahrain, Iraq, Kuwait and Qatar ship between 87% and 95% of their hydrocarbon exports through the strait. Fitch estimated that each week of closure reduces hydrocarbon export revenues for those four countries by 0.4% of GDP. JP Morgan cut its non-oil growth forecast across the entire GCC by 1.2 percentage points, with the UAE suffering the steepest revision at 2.3 points. Iraq has already cut production by 1.5mn bpd as storage fills. Saudi Arabia holds 66 days of supply, the UAE 22, Kuwait 18, and Iraq just six.
The damage extends well beyond oil. Over 21,300 flights were cancelled at seven major Gulf airports in the first four days. Emirates flights collapsed from 527 o
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I asked you a question, son. Don't quote reply me unless you're going to answer it.
Quote:
Originally posted by second:Quote:Here’s what a Princeton Middle East expert says is the likeliest outcome in Iran
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
I'm sure that dildo from Cambridge knows what he's talking about.
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Be Evil. Be a dick.
What the hell is a Middle East "expert"?
If somebody called themselves a "North American Expert", would you take them seriously?
--------------------------------------------------
Be Nice. Don't be a dick.
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Quote:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:Quote:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
In other words, the war ends when IRAN ends it
The war ends when we say it ends.
Khamenei will meet his father, wife and son in hell soon enough.
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Be Nice. Don't be a dick.
Why on earth would they televise a reading of his written word, voiced by somebody who was not him, as his first message to the Iranian people and the world?
That literally goes against everything we've been told by the Legacy Media about how strong the Iranian leadership are. Even if he were in hiding, which I wouldn't blame him for, we all have 4k recording devices called smart phones in 2026, and we couldn't even get some grainy ass Bigfoot footage or even a cheap attempt at an AI voiceover?
I'm 99.9% sure Mojtaba Khamenei is already dead, and has been for days if not weeks already.
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Be Nice. Don't be a dick.
BBC: Iranians react to new supreme leader's first address
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/czj1z0enk70o
Quote:
"I don't even think it was his message," an Iranian woman in her 40s told the BBC after her country's new Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei gave his first official address in the form of a statement read out on state TV.
Having not seen him since he was named leader, some are now casting doubts on who is running the country.
"I feel like control of the country is in the hands of the IRGC [Islamic Revolution Guard Corps]," the woman, from Tehran, said.
Khamenei, through the conduit of a TV presenter, vowed in his statement on Thursday that Iran would keep the Strait of Hormuz closed to international shipping - choking the supply of a fifth of the world's oil.
He also said that his government would "not forgo avenging the blood" of citizens killed since the war with the US and Israel began, saying retaliation so far represented only "a limited portion" of what was to come. He said he had been made aware of his appointment as supreme leader via state TV.
But Khamenei has yet to be seen in-person - nor filmed or photographed - since being named as his father's successor.
US Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth said, without providing evidence, that Khamenei had been "wounded and likely disfigured" in one of the first air strikes on Tehran that killed Ayatollah Ali Khamenei along with his wife and other son.
His lack of visibility was brought up by some of those who spoke to BBC Persian following the broadcast.
"It was surprising that he did not issue even a voice memo and raised doubts about his condition," one Tehran resident, in his 30s, said.
"To me this message raised more doubts than bringing any clarity about his condition," he added.
Another man from Tehran, in his 20s, said: "I still haven't seen him to have an opinion about him. To be honest, we don't know much about him."
A third man remarked that he was "not even convinced that he [Mojtaba Khamenei] has written the message himself".
Meanwhile, a woman in her 20s from Rasht, in northern Iran, observed acerbically: "Wow, very heartwarming that he didn't even appear on state TV to issue the message."
It is still very difficult to contact people inside Iran due to a government-imposed internet blackout, but some are able to connect briefly to the outside world through satellite uplinks.
Many of those who do tend to be anti-regime. We have anonymised their comments for their safety.
Despite dissent towards the Islamic regime that has run Iran since 1979 being writ large in mass demonstrations that engulfed the country earlier this year, it still has its fervent supporters.
Crowds took to the streets of central Tehran on Friday for pro-establishment rallies to mNOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
Ain't it funny how nobody works on the weekends?
I mean, it's 3:15 AM right now in Tehran, so lucky for our journalists in the Legacy Media that most people over there are probably sleeping and they could take the afternoon off on a Saturday, but nobody over there works the night shift? Nobody in our military works the night shift?
I just find it amusing that this big, huge, MAJOR WAR that some are hyperbolically referring to as WWIII takes the same weekends off that the regular news cycle does every weekend.
We'll get about 3 hours of stories tomorrow morning and they'll be done reporting by noon.
It's just silly...
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Be Nice. Don't be a dick.
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Quote:Ain't it funny how nobody learns from history?
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
Ain't it funny how nobody works on the weekends?
It's just silly...
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Be Evil. Be a dick.
We don’t learn from history; we don’t even learn from current affairs
The West’s actions against Iran are repeating recent historical events that have only caused more chaos in the Middle East, says Clive Stafford Smith
Sunday 15 March 2026 17:35 GMT
https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/history-iran-trump-war-middle-eas
t-b2938895.html
The only thing we learn from history is that we don’t learn from history. You’ve probably heard that before, and it’s a phrase I overuse. It must be modified for the situation in the Middle East: we don’t even learn from recent affairs.
I have spent a lot of time in Afghanistan recently, where the “war on terror” led to the longest ever American war. Estimates of the money spent on 21 years of Afghan carnage range up to $6 trillion (£4.5 trillion), and it caused tens of thousands of deaths. The result? Nothing achieved. The Taliban are back in power, running a state increasingly premised on gender apartheid, alienated from the Western world.
Our interventions in the region since the new millennium reflect a clear pattern: the US, the UK and their allies decrying evil governments, firing their Hellfire missiles from their Predator drones, and creating even greater chaos. We eventually leave, and bemoan the failure of each country in turn to metamorphosise into a democratic nirvana.
Always we had our excuses for dropping our bombs: in Afghanistan, it was September 11, though there was precious little evidence that Afghans had anything to do with it. In Syria, it was Isis. Apparently, we were on the verge of global destruction because of Iran. But these excuses – generally vastly overplayed – do not mask the theme that runs consistently through every one of these dreadful conflicts: in the words of singer Michael Franti, “You can bomb the world to pieces, but you can’t bomb it into peace.”
Sadly, but not totally surprisingly, catastrophe lingers over Iran. The only certainty there is that many people will suffer from the Trump-Netanyahu war.
Where are the plans? Nobody in the Trump administration mentions who might take over from the current regime in an imagined uprising. (Would anyone resort to the Shah’s son? If so, would he resuscitate SAVAK, the notorious security police?)
For now, assassinated supreme leader Ali Khamenei has been replaced by his son, Mojtaba Khamenei. Surprisingly, Iran did not seek Trump’s advice in selecting a new leader.
Trump’s defence secretary, Pete Hegseth, does not have much of a plan for his “Operation Epic Fury” either, beyond bombs and more bombs that will apparently ensure Iran cannot make nuclear weapons. “We will not relent until the enemy is totally and decisively defeated,” he warned.
Worryingly, his back-up plan seems to be for his team to encourage American soldiers that their labour may usher in the “End of Days” and the Second Coming of Jesus Christ (part of a strange Christian nationalist theory that I have often heard voiced in the US).
Some may hold out little hope for Trump, who believes that most rules do not apply to him. But here in the UK, Keir Starmer is proving to be a much greater disappointment. It is one thing to make a U-turn on the winter fuel allowance or the farmers’ inheritance tax, but surely he should be a little more careful on war.
He began (reasonably enough) by refusing to support this deranged conflict, but then rapidly rowed back once Trump said he was “not Winston Churchill”. Well, he didn’t need to be. Hitler was not at the Channel waiting to invade.
Starmer was once a human rights lawyer. He needs a plan and he needs to remember his principles, keeping his head when some across the parliamentary benches are losing theirs.
He needs to remember that there is not a Nobel War Prize. History can remind
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Tucker Carlson on Trump's Iran War: "I Can't Believe He Did This To Us"
Tucker Carlson argued that many of the nontraditional voters who helped elect Donald Trump feel deeply betrayed by the war.
https://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2026/03/13/tucker_carlson_on_t
rumps_iran_war_i_cant_believe_he_did_this_to_us.html
TUCKER CARLSON: The only people who support this war are those born between 1946 and 1964 who watch a lot of Fox News. That's it. I'm not attacking them, by the way. They're Americans. They're my equals as Americans. I love a lot of them. But their perspective on the US and the world is very different from everyone else's very, very different. And so they're not the ones who got Donald Trump elected.
Actually, the people who got Donald Trump elected are the people who hadn't voted for Republicans before or even voted at all before. And they're like Joe Rogan listeners or people who use nicotine pouches. They're not. They're Hispanic voters.
They're young black men. They're non-traditional Republican voters who voted for Trump because he promised not to keep doing the same thing. And one of the things he promised not to do again was to hand operational authority over to Benjamin Netanyahu, as other presidents have. We don't want any more of that. Why would we? And we're not going to like make Mark Levin or Ben Shapiro, who have almost no organic support in the media world, like no one really watches them.
We're not going to hand control of our foreign policy over to people like that who don't know anything and who don't have America's interests at heart or even in mind. So breaking faith with those people, those voters, the ones who actually got Trump elected and whose coalition promised a new day in American politics. That's a big deal.
It's a betrayal on the level that I don't think people who aren't in those groups can understand. Like this is this is heartbreaking. And by the way, a lot of people really like Trump. They like his style. They think he's hilarious. He's brave. You know, he's just like they like him. And to see this is oh, it's so wounding. It just it hurts. I you know, I talked to I've got a bunch who work for me. I'm related to some, you know, they're all Trump voters. And I talked to them in the last 24 hours.
Boy, they're upset. They're not just mad like I hate Israel. That's not that's not the impulse. They're definitely starting to hate Israel. Why wouldn't they? Our relationship with Israel is hurting us gravely. It's getting Americans killed. So they're mad, but it's more than mad. I can't believe he did this to us. You know, I feel just so depressed about it.
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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Grow up.
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WSJ: Trump’s Energy Triumph
He prepared the U.S. and its allies for the current troubles in the Persian Gulf.
https://www.wsj.com/opinion/trumps-energy-triumph-82e4b953?st=MyHbWz
Quote:
The Democratic-media complex seems determined to get everything wrong about Iran, though few efforts compare with this week’s work to tag the Trump administration with a global energy crisis. Not only is this uninformed and overdone, the sudden concern over energy security comes about three years late.
The undermine-America crowd describes Iran’s blockade of the Strait of Hormuz as an “oil shock” that is “spiraling,” “chaotic” and the “worst in history.” It seems to have evaded this crew that Iran’s bombardment of peaceful trading vessels is yet more justification of U.S. strikes. Iran’s been using energy threats to manipulate geopolitics for decades and won’t stop until it is fully defanged.
They are blaming the administration, in particular Energy Secretary Chris Wright and Interior Secretary Doug Burgum, whom Politico described as the “vaunted” team “in danger of fumbling the biggest energy crisis” of Donald Trump’s second term. The go-to quote comes from Democratic Sen. Chris Murphy, who ranted that “on the Strait of Hormuz, they had NO PLAN. . . . Which is unforgiveable, because this part of the disaster was 100% foreseeable.”
Let’s talk about plans. That the U.S. was finally in a position to disarm Iran is largely thanks to a plan Mr. Trump initiated in his first term—to gain energy independence, which his team is now turning into energy dominance. Trump policies turbocharged a shale revolution that made the U.S. a net exporter of petroleum products and the world’s largest exporter of natural gas. Alongside was Mr. Trump’s plan to foster economic and security ties in the region against shared threats like Iran via deals like the Abraham Accords.
We are no longer hostage to Middle East fossil-fuel threats, which gives us room to weather temporary Hormuz disruptions. Domestic gasoline prices have spiked but are still notably below their highs during Joe Biden’s term. Thanks to growing U.S. exports, our allies are better positioned against fallout. And Gulf actors are working alongside the U.S. to mitigate Iran’s blockade. Some of us remember “OPEC embargo” days. No more.
The biggest threat to this plan was always the Biden administration, which halted liquefied natural-gas exports, shuttered Alaskan and Gulf drilling, snubbed Middle East partners, pressed investors to abandon fossil-fuel projects, and dispatched John Kerry to kill energy deals. All in the name of climate change. These would also be the folks who sold off the Strategic Petroleum Reserve to win an election. Want to send real fear through energy markets? Two words: Jennifer Granholm, the energy secretary who dedicated four years to ensuring your washing machine used fewer BTUs.
Speaking of secretaries, it might surprise the press to discover that the heads of Energy and Interior aren’t tasked with countering Iranian mines. That’s the Pentagon’s job. Their job is to mitigate fallout from temporary supply disruptions—which, yes, were expected. Thanks to the energy-dominance policy, and a year of building real relationships with real energy players, they have more levers to pull.
Mr. Wright has been on the phone daily with Middle East energy ministers, ties possible thanks to early travel to the region, including five days he spent with Saudi energy chief Abdulaziz bin Salman (with whom he struck a landmark civil nuclear-energy deal). That allowed the U.S. to position regional players for a possible conflict. That beats an awkward Biden fist bump.
The International Energy Agency announced it is releasing the largest volume of emergency oil reserves in history—400 million barrels—after Mr. Wright rallied member nations to the need. Mr. Wright has been pressing the IEA for a year to drop its climate obsessions and get serious about its fossil-fuel mandate. That work is paying off.
The U.S. has been refilling the SPR with money earmarked in laNOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME