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War On Iran: Bank Attacks – Mine Fakes – Price Manipulation – More THAAD To Destroy
Last night Israel and U.S. fighter jets destroyed Bank Sepah’s data center in Tehran. Bank Sepah does the salaries payment for Iran’s military personal.
Following the strike Iran announced that it would target U.S. and Israeli banks in the region. Citibank and HSBC instructed staff in Dubai and other Gulf countries to evacuate their offices.
This is another step in the retreat of the U.S. from the Middle East.
—While the Strait of Hormuz remains closed for most tankers, Iran’s export of crude oil, mainly to China, has increased:
Since the war began, around 15 ships have crossed the strait with most being dark-fleet vessels moving Iranian oil to China and India, according to Lloyds List Intelligence. Many are small Chinese tankers that make their presence and origin known to the Revolutionary Guard through loudspeakers and shortwave radio.
The U.S. has claimed, without evidence, that Iran has started to lay mines in the Strait of Hormuz. I do regard that as fake-news and unlikely to happen. Mines are a last resort as they do not discriminate between a ship’s nationality. They would also hit Iranian and Chinese tankers.
The U.S bombed some 16 random boats along the Iranian cost of Hormuz claiming that they were used to lay mines. But any boat with a $50 metal rack in rear, a mine technician and a map can be used to lay mines. (The mine technician and map are optional). Iran also has land based MLRS rocket launchers which can be used to remotely mine the Strait.
Mines can not be removed while a war is ongoing. Minesweepers are not armed and unprotected against attacks. In perfect timing the last four U.S. minesweepers stationed in the Gulf for the last 35 years and built for that purpose just arrived in Texas to be dismantled. They were replaced by three Little Crappy Ships (LCS) with mine sweeping equipment. LCS have never been tested in that role.
Iran has many other means beyond mines, like missiles or fast boats, to prevent ships it does not want to pass from using the Strait.
The U.S. Navy knows this. That is why it has rejected all requests to escort ships through the Strait.
—Cont. reading: War On Iran: Bank Attacks – Mine Fakes – Price Manipulation – More THAAD To Destroy
War On Iran – No. Taking Kharg Island Is Not An Option.
When serious export of Iranian oil started it was soon met by a problem. Iran’s coast is relatively shallow. Big tankers have a lot of draft. It was thus troublesome for Iran’s oil industry to deliver large loads of crude oil to big ships.
Luckily there was an island near to deep water some 15 miles off the Iranian coast. Pipes were laid from the oil producing mainland of Iran to the island and piers were built to be able to load very large crude oil carrying vessels. The name of the island is Kharg. Today its is with 90% of all product the main export terminal for oil produced in Iran.
biggerFor decades dimwit U.S. amateur politicians have dreamed of fetching Kharg to thereby get control over Iran’s oil production:
In an interview with a British newspaper back in 1988, an up-and-coming New York property mogul named Donald Trump was asked about his plans for the future. True to form, he had plenty to say, boasting that he might one day run for president and vowing to win back “respect” for America on the world stage. He also had stern words for Iran’s Islamic Republic, already a sworn enemy of America in the wake of the 1979 US hostage crisis.
“They’ve been beating us psychologically, making us look a bunch of fools,” Trump told The Guardian. “One bullet shot at one of our men or ships, and I’d do a number on Kharg Island. I’d go in and take it.”
Several figures of the current Trump administration have likewise opined that the taking of Kharg would give the U.S. a hold over all Iranian oil exports – now and in future:
“What we want to do is to get such massive oil reserves in Iran out of the hands of terrorists,” said Jarrod Agen, a White House adviser, in an interview over the weekend with Fox Business, which hinted that Kharg is a central part of the rationale for Epic Fury.
Kharg is a relatively flat island 4 miles long and 2 miles wide with little features. It is difficult to defend it.
The U.S recently canceled an Army exercise (archived) of the 82nd Airborne Division which could be the prime unit for a U.S. operation to take Kharg.
But there are two problems with this.
The first one is to take and hold an island very near to Iran:
Cont. reading: War On Iran – No. Taking Kharg Island Is Not An Option.
War On Iran – Oil Prices Lag Supply Deficit – Arab’s Won’t Fight Iran – Khamenei Son Succeeds Father
Iraq has shut down some oil wells. As have Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrain, the Emirates and Saudi Arabia.
Qatar has also shut down is gas wells and the process ‘trains’ needed to liquefy natural gas.
All this because of the virtual closure of the Strait of Hormuz and because of potential missile and drone attacks on the fragile production installations.
While oil and LPG prices have increased the global markets have not yet recognized the length and severity of the supply crunch these shut downs will cause. Prices, currently in the high $90/bl, will need to get much higher ($150+/bl) to cause an equivalent demand destruction.
Even if the war on Iran would stop tomorrow and if the Strait would reopen immediately it would take many weeks until the supplies would be back to normal levels.
Oil wells, once shut down, often require rework to open them up again. The bore of an unused the well may close up, sediments may block the oil flow, valves start to fail. It means that drilling rigs will need to be setup at each of the wells with days of rework needed to re-establish its outflow. There are thousands of wells that have been shut down.
Qatar’s liquefaction of natural gas is a special problem as the process to create Liquefied Petroleum Gas is quite complex:
Cont. reading: War On Iran – Oil Prices Lag Supply Deficit – Arab’s Won’t Fight Iran – Khamenei Son Succeeds Father
Ukraine Open Thread 2026-053
News & views related to the war in Ukraine …
The MoA Week In Review – OT 2026-052
Last week’s posts on Moon of Alabama:
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Other issues:
Cont. reading: The MoA Week In Review – OT 2026-052
War On Iran: – No Missile Defense – AI Targeting – Local Retaliation
In this edition:
– Radars hit -> missile defense failure -> strategic defeat
– AI targeting -> dead children
– Attacks on civil infrastructure -> in-kind retaliation
During the first phase of the U.S. war on Iran a lot of ammunition was spent (archived) for dubious value:
The first 36 hours of the U.S.-Israeli campaign against Iran consumed more than 3,000 precision-guided munitions and interceptors, exposing a critical vulnerability in the supply chain. Much is unknown about the future of the war and its wider implications, but one thing is clear: the need to replenish munition stockpiles.
Iran responded to the assault by hitting at the most valuable and vulnerable U.S. targets:
Beyond the sheer volume of munitions, the loss of high-value assets introduces another layer of complexity. The destruction of two advanced U.S. radars, the AN/FPS-132 in Qatar and the AN/TPS-59 in Bahrain, highlights a problem where the total weight of the “mineral bill” is less of a concern than the extreme fragility of the supply chain and the extensive timelines for replacement.
Modern radars contain a lot of rare earth minerals which currently is only produced by China:
Per our analysis, for the AN/FPS-132, it will take five to eight years for Raytheon to build a new radar at a cost of $1.1 billion. Meanwhile, Lockheed Martin will require at least 12 to 24 months and an estimated $50 million to $75 million to replace the AN/TPS-59, based on the original Bahrain Foreign Military Sales contract adjusted for inflation. The biggest issue for the defense industrial base will be sourcing the 77.3 kilograms of gallium needed for both systems, a material for which China controls 98 percent of the global supply. This is not to mention the 30,610 kilograms of copper that will also be needed, a commodity facing surging demand from the technology sector.
The AN/FPS-132 is a big stationary early warning radar. The U.S. has five of those for homeland protection and Qatar was the only other country which bought one. The AN/TPS-59 is a huge truck mounted aerial surveillance radar.
But probably more painful that the losses of those radars is the destruction of at least four mobile missile defense radar AN/TPY-2 which each are the core of a THAAD anti-missile air defense battalion. THAAD systems are the only ones which can somewhat reliable defeat Iranian ballistic missile attacks. Without AN/TPY-2 radar guidance the 48 missile a THAAD battalion carriers are more or less useless.
There are in total only twelve operational AN/TPY-2 radar systems available globally. The price for each of those radars was estimated to be about a half billion dollar. New ones, if they can be build, will likely cost more than a billion.
Five to six of those systems were stationed in the Middle East. By now at least four of them are confirmed as having been killed:
Cont. reading: War On Iran: – No Missile Defense – AI Targeting – Local Retaliation
War On Iran – Trump Ups Demands
Things ain’t going great for the U.S. in its war on Iran.
A good time then to up the demand to the site that seems to be winning (by not losing).
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(No direct link as Trump’s Truth Social no longer works with Mozilla)From no enrichment, to no missiles, to regime-change, to now UNCONDITIONAL SURRENDER – in caps.
Who or what might stop Trump from further digging the deep hole he is already in?
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Some relevant links:
Cont. reading: War On Iran – Trump Ups Demands
Ukraine Open Thread 2026-051
News & views related to the war in Ukraine …
Open (Not Ukraine) Thread 2026-050
News & views not related to the wars in Ukraine …
The U.S.-Iran War Of Attrition – A Global Depression To Counter Total Destruction
The U.S. and Israel are aiming for the total destruction of the Islamic Republic. Iran is countering by globalizing the consequences of a war in its energy rich region. It calculates that the global economy will attrit sufficiently for the U.S. to change course before Iran’s internal cohesion breaks down.
When Trump announced his attack on Iran he named several seemingly random aims that the war was supposed to achieve. It turned out that none of them was achievable.
Trump and his mouthpieces seemed to assume that the war would be short. They had hoped for some kind of Venezuelan scenario where a U.S. friendly government would take over as soon as the Supreme Leader of Iran was killed. Such a view could only be held by people who were totally ignorant of the history and social structure of the society of Iran.
Ignorance is probably the most explanatory variable in the chaos we have seen. Neither the purpose, nor the length nor the consequences of the war had been gamed out.
The National Security Council, which has the task to plan out policies, had been cut down. The State Department was hardly involved in the planning. Warnings by the Pentagon have been ignored.
Trump went by his pants, got into a huge mess, and has yet to find a way to get out (archived):
When he came to office, Mr. Trump reduced the size of the N.S.C. staff by at least two thirds, casting out some of its members because of vague suspicions about their loyalty. Mr. Trump has made clear that his N.S.C. is not there to generate options, but to execute his decisions.
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“Trump seems to think he doesn’t need options or contingency plans,” said Thomas Wright, a scholar at the Brookings Institution who worked on long-term strategic planning in the National Security Council during the Biden years. “He just wants a small team to execute his instincts. But when events go wrong, as they often do, a president without prepared choices will be gambling with a pair of twos.”
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“Never has so much risk or such sweeping military action of so much consequence been undertaken with so little apparent planning or weighing of potential consequences, both intended and unintended,” [David Rothkopf] said.
It is the military, he notes, that develops operational plans, which are then vetted at the N.S.C. “That process has atrophied to virtually nothing in this administration and what planning there has been is often ignored by a president who trusts his own instincts more than any advisers. That may work with actions that are narrow in scope, but it does not when waging war against a large, consequential country like Iran.”
The Armchair Warrior notes that the Trump administration has already failed with three of its plans and is currently trying a fourth one:
– Plan A: Kill Khamenei, new leaders surrender
– Plan B: Kill Khamenei, mass civil unrest, regime change
– Plan C: Ethnic insurgents mobilize, ???, profit
– Plan D: Actually get air dominance and bomb indefinitely until they surrender
Israel meanwhile is perusing Plan Z: the total destruction (archived) of everything that defines modern Iran:
Cont. reading: The U.S.-Iran War Of Attrition – A Global Depression To Counter Total Destruction
War On Iran – Hormuz Escorts, Kurds, Time-frame
A few of the many interesting current developments of the war on Iran that stand out.
Trump has announced that the U.S. will escort ships through the Strait of Hormuz:
US President Donald Trump said he intends to secure shipping traffic in the Strait of Hormuz, which is threatened by Iran, including with the US Navy.
“If necessary, the United States Navy will begin escorting tankers through the Strait of Hormuz, as soon as possible,” he posted on his platform Truth Social on Tuesday. “No matter what, the United States will ensure the FREE FLOW of ENERGY to the WORLD.”
Additionally, he has instructed the relevant United States International Development Finance Corporation (DFC) to offer risk insurance and guarantees for all maritime trade in the region. The measure is primarily aimed at energy transport but is available to all shipping companies.
Some 20% of the global supplies of oil, LPG and fertilizers have to pass through the Strait of Hormuz. Iran had long announced that the Strait would be closed if the country would come under attack. It has held to its promise. A few small ships have since tried to pass through the Strait but were stopped by Iranian strike impacts. Ship insurance companies have stopped to provide cover for any passage of the Strait.
Trump still does not understand the geographic facts of the Hormuz.
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Its open water width. over a length of some 100+ kilometer, is only about 40 kilometer. Its shipping lanes for large vessels are narrow and just 20 kilometer off the coast of Iran.
The usual way for a navy to secure such a passage would be to launch a severe bombing campaign to eliminate all radar and missile positions along the coastline. Only after such a campaign would attempts be made to pass the strait.
But the Iranian landscape along the coast is largely mountainous. There are many shelters to hide anti-ship missiles or drones. Ships passing the Strait can be seen by the naked eye (or through infrared devices during night time.) A swarm of medium range drones would overwhelm the air-defenses of any Navy escort trying to help tankers to pass through the strait. And that is before Iran decides to drop mines into the strait’s waters.
Hoping for escorts to help one to pass the Strait is like hiring body guards when your enemy is known to be a long range snipers. A hopeless endeavor.
I am sure that the Navy will find ways to let Trump know how futile the escorts would be.
Iran has known for a long time that its biggest advantage in a war is the economic damage it can cause. Two of the global long range air carriers, the Emirates and Qatar airlines, can no longer fly to their main hubs in the Gulf states. Sea freight will also soon be down to a trickle:Cont. reading: War On Iran – Hormuz Escorts, Kurds, Time-frame
War On Iran – Regional Participation – U.S. Blames Israel
As the war on Iran continues it is getting even more difficult to assess the operational losses and the damage caused by either side. All parties, Iran, Israel, the U.S. and various Gulf countries, practice information warfare and censorship. They exaggerate their successes and do not admit their losses.
It makes little sense then to make any statements about the progress of the war as it unfolds on the ground. We will have to wait and look for irrefutable evidence before guessing the outcome.
A month ago the Supreme Leader of Iran Ali Khamenei had warned that any attack on Iran would develop into a regional war. He could have added that it would have global consequences.
Khamenei’s prediction has -to some extend- come true. Iran has attacked various U.S. bases in western Gulf countries. The U.S. Embassy in Riyadh was hit. Hizbullah in Lebanon has launched drones against a U.S./British base in Cyprus. Israel is invading Lebanon and the West Bank. Iraqi militia have launched attacks on U.S. bases in Iraq and Iraqi Kurdistan. Locals have attacked U.S. consulates in Pakistan.
But the Gulf countries themselves have not yet entered the war. They have spent their air defense after defending against missile and drone attacks on U.S. bases. They are now low on ammunition and the U.S. is in no position to back their needs.
Several small hits have been reported against oil infrastructure in Saudi Arabia and the UAE. Iran has denied to have attacked those sites. It is possible that Israel or the U.S. is launching these strikes to incite the Gulf states to more actively join their attack on Iran. I doubt that they are stupid enough to do so.
The Strait of Hormuz is closed. Qatar has stopped its production of Liquefied Petroleum Gas. Iraq is throttling its oil production as its storage capacity in Basra is full as no tankers arrive to load its products. All together some 20% of the daily global oil and gas production has been cut off or is endangered. Global oil and gas prices have already increased dramatically and are likely to rise further. Gas stocks in Europe are low as are oil reserves in India. A long war may well threaten the economic and social well being in those regions.
In its usual amateurish ways the Trump administration is trying to blame Israel (vid) for the start of the war:
Rubio: There was absolutely an imminent threat and it was that we knew that if Iran was attacked and we believe that they would be attacked, that they would immediately come after us and we were not going to sit there and absorb a blow
So the U.S. had to ‘pre-emptivly’ attack Iran because Israel was going to attack Iran?
Cont. reading: War On Iran – Regional Participation – U.S. Blames Israel
U.S.-China And The Four Week Time-frame For The War On Iran
The war on Iran is waging on – and will continue do to so for a while. Tehran gets bombed to smithereens, the hydrocarbon infrastructure in the Gulf is shutting down or gets damaged, the economic pressure on the global economy is starting to show.
Neither effect answers the question of why the U.S. did decide to attack Iran. U.S. President Trump has give about a dozen different reasons none of which holds up to scrutiny. Iran wasn’t making nukes, didn’t build intercontinental missiles and had no intend to attack anyone. Its internal situation was and is stable.
Since the mid 1980s the Zionists have tried to push the U.S. into war with Iran. All the time the U.S. did not submit to their pressure for good reasons. To suggest that this pressure is now at the root of the conflict is too perfunctory. As are suggestions that the current Russiagate scandal, aka the Epstein files, has anything to do with it.
The empire is not a joke. It acts for strategic reasons.
One has to zoom out from those narrow views to make sense. Andrew Korybko is onto something when he claims that this campaign is Part Of Trump’s Grand Strategy Against China:
The goal is to obtain proxy control over Iran’s enormous oil and gas reserves so that they can be weaponized as leverage against China for coercing it into a lopsided trade deal that would derail its superpower rise and therefore restore US-led unipolarity.
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That’s the brainchild of Under Secretary of War for Policy Elbridge Colby, and it was expanded on in this analysis here from early January. As was written, “US influence over Venezuela’s and possibly soon Iran’s and Nigeria’s energy exports and trade ties with China could be weaponized via threats of curtailment or cut-offs in parallel with pressure upon its Gulf allies to do the same in pursuit of this goal”, which is to coerce China into indefinite junior partnership status vis-à-vis the US through a lopsided trade deal.
China is well aware of that the U.S. strategy is aimed against it. It is one reason why it is giving technical and military support to Iran, mostly in the form of intelligence, while avoiding to get directly involved in the conflict:
Cont. reading: U.S.-China And The Four Week Time-frame For The War On Iran
Ukraine Open Thread 2026-049
News & views related to the war in Ukraine …
The MoA Week In Review – OT 2026-048
Last week’s posts on Moon of Alabama:
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Other issues:
Cont. reading: The MoA Week In Review – OT 2026-048
RIP Ali Khamenei
“Sometimes, I imagine myself dying from an accident. Or maybe a fever. And my heart becomes so full of sadness: that the chance for competing for paradise [i.e., martyrdom] will be taken away from me that way.”
Ajatollah Ali Khamenei – (source)
The Supreme Leader of the Islamic Republic of Iran was martyred on Saturday morning, together with other officials, by an Israeli airstrike on his home in Tehran. May he rest in peace.
bigger – Source: Carlos Latuff‘Western’ observers make the mistake of seeing highly reverted Shia leaders as mere clerics. They are way more than that.
First and foremost they are jurists and judges with a deep philosophical knowledge of the law. The title Ajatollah signifies a high academic ranking of an Shia-Islam scholar. Ajatollahs are examples for those living around them. They are extraordinary people who should be emulated and who’s advices are to be followed.
The system of the Islamic Republic was build with redundancies (archived) to be able to survive external and internal shocks:
For those who led the 1979 revolution, problems with leadership change were not just ideas—they were real warnings from history. Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini did not eliminate the supreme authority; instead, he made it part of the system. The intense debates of 1979 about how to avoid past patterns of collapse led to new answers in Iran’s constitution: Each major body was created to solve a specific risk exposed by history.
The Guardian Council was formed to guard against political drift and to keep laws in line with Islamic principles. The Assembly of Experts took on the task of selecting and supervising the supreme leader, to prevent a concentration of power without oversight. The Expediency Council was established to resolve institutional deadlock, ensuring the system could continue to function even when high-level disagreements arose. The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and the intelligence agencies were meant to secure the revolution internally and externally, checking both foreign threats and domestic unrest.
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Iran is frequently portrayed as a political order bound tightly to individuals. Yet the architecture that emerged after 1979 was formed by a different logic, one founded in the revolutionary experience itself. Khomeini captured this hierarchy in a remark often cited within Iran’s political elite: “Preserving the Islamic Republic is more important than preserving any individual, even if that individual were the Imam of the Age”—a reference to Shiism’s 12th Imam, Muhammad al-Mahdi.
It is still unclear whether the system will always follow this principle. But one should expect a change in leadership in Tehran to be treated less as an ending and more as a chance for the country’s institutions to show they can survive.
I am confident that the Islamic Republic will survive this test. ‘Regime change’ in Tehran, which Trump seems to dream of (archived), is unlikely to happen.
Meanwhile the Strait of Hormuz is closed and the war of attrition continues …
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