The war on Iran continues to escalate.

Yesterday a U.S. Apache helicopter went down in the Strait of Hormuz near the coast of Oman. The pilots were saved. The U.S. at first did not claim any external influence for the incident. Only hours after it happened it claimed that an Iranian Shahid drone had hit the helicopter.

That claim is not plausible at all.

Shahid are point to point kamikaze drones. They get their target coordinates before they are launched. They are not radio controlled. They do not have the capability to maneuver against a moving target. They explode when they hit something.

Whatever happened to the downed helicopter it wasn’t a hit by a Shahid drone that took it down.

After the U.S. had suddenly claimed that Iran had caused the incident it announced to strike on Iran. Some 10 targets were bombed including radar, communication equipment and, in the port of Sirik, a desalination station.

Iran responded by firing some 20 missiles and drones against U.S. installations in Kuwait, Jordan and Bahrain.

Neither side has claimed casualties so far.

Today the U.S. hit an Indian vessel near the coast of Oman. One sailor was killed. India condemned the attack.

About an hour ago U.S. President Donald Trump announced more strikes against Iran.

In unconfirmed news Israel just mobilized some 280,000 reservists. Together with already mobilized forces that sums up to be near its full potential.

The situation is going to escalate. Tomorrow the region may well again be in a full fledged war.

by English Outsider 

lifted from a comment

Such a lot of nonsense being talked at the moment.  Sorry, Gentlemen, (the Ladies, fortunately, are immune) but there’s any amount of it I’ve been reading here too.

I’d guess that a good half here are Ritter acolytes.  Lay waste Europe.  Bomb them to hell.  Don’t let’s pussyfoot around any more.

On Martyanov’s site I saw the video of Ritter delivering that message in Russia.   At the St Petersburg conference.   Has Ritter  lost his mind?  I wrote in to reply to Larch on the subject.  Many of “b’s” commenters will know Larch because he’s a fund of information on the ins and outs of the Ukrainian war since 2014.  Great bloke.

Larch – Ritter’s way off in that video clip. Karaganov plus. They’ll be listening to him at SPIEF and thinking, is that sort of rabid nonsense all Ritter has to offer us? It’s Curtis LeMay thinking, make the rubble bounce, no use at all when working out how to defuse a confrontation the Russians aren’t looking to extend.

Ritter’s Intel and arms control background, plus his ability to marshal a whole lot of information he has at his fingertips and that most of us don’t, make him a valuable analyst – when he’s not going off the deep end which he does far too often. And for all his undoubted analytical ability he doesn’t seem to grasp the underlying reality.

That is, that the Americans, for all Trump’s increasingly lame PR, are still key players in the conflict in Ukraine. Those drone and missile attacks into Russia would not be possible but for American ISR and planning assistance to go with it. Same for the sabotage and assassination missions being run into Russia. Much of the supply of arms is also still down to the US. Indirectly, again in spite of Trump’s PR, financial support too. The logistics are still being run from Wiesbaden and we’re fools if we think that the Americans, whose expertise in logistics is far superior to the European’s, aren’t key in that too.

So the full scale attack Ritter is calling for would be an attack on American assets too. What’s Ritter up to, going to a big conference in St Petersburg and calling for that?

All Ritter’s doing is showing the Russians that the Americans, whether it’s hawks like Blumenthal and Lindsey Graham or dissidents like Ritter, are in an advanced state of hysteria all round and need to be handled very carefully if they’re not to harm themselves and others. But I think the Russians know that already.

I should add that there are plenty of good people in Europe who have the gravest reservations about EU foreign policy. Believe it or not, that goes for Britain too. Responsible voices in England are calling for our UK foreign policy to be changed. Ian Proud, Commodore Jermy, the late Lord Skidelsky, the invaluable Mercouris, Dr Rob Campbell, many others.

Far as I can see they’re not making much headway but they’re all in their various ways working at getting a more accurate and rational view of the Ukrainian conflict through to the public here and abroad. Ritter can do that when he’s not losing it but when he does lose it as he does in that video, he discredits all those attempts and his own too.

And I’m going to guess that many of the commenters on “b’s” site bellowing “nuke everything” are just shooting a line.  They’re just thoroughly fed up with the mess their various countries have got themselves into and are expressing that dissatisfaction through hyperbole.

—
b here:

I agree with the above. Ritter is talking nonsense (with Larry Johnson and Pepe Escobar not far behind).

The current ‘Ukraine is wining’ propaganda coming from all NATO channels seems to have influenced quite a few of these people. It is bullshit.

Professor Mearsheimer has studied at West Point and was an air-force officer for some ten years before becoming an academic expert in international relations. His assessments of military realities are sound and grounded in facts.

In his latest talk with Judge Napolitano just hours ago, he agrees with my view that the situation in Ukraine has not changed:

Cont. reading: No Need To Waste Europe – by English Outsider

President Trump and his partner in crime Netanyahoo have tried to draw Iran into a ceasefire trap.

It was hoped for that a bit by bit escalation, like Israeli bombing in Lebanon, would be left without a response by Iran.

Iran however did not fall for that scheme. It had been agreed that the ceasefire in the war on Iran  includes Lebanon and other fronts between the imperialist and resistance parties. It is either a ceasefire for all or a ceasefire for none.

A week ago, when Netanyahoo threatened to bomb the Dahiyeh suburb of Beirut Iran stopped all further peace negotiations and threatened to response in kind.

Trump then allegedly shouted and cursed Netanyahoo for his Beirut bombing plans. But such alleged divergences of views between Washington and Tel Aviv have long be proven to be scams.

Yesterday, on Sunday afternoon local time, Israel dropped at least 10 bombs on Dahiyeh.

Iran’s response followed shortly thereafter. Five waves of missiles were launched against air bases and other targets in northern Israel.

Trump, in an interview (archived) with the Financial Times and FOXnews, asked Israel to stay down. He claimed to “call the shots” on the issue:

“He won’t have any choice,” Trump told the FT in a telephone interview. “I call the shots. I call all the shots. He [Netanyahu] doesn’t call the shots.”

A bit later Israel aircraft bombed targets in Iran with stand of missiles. Among the targets were oil installations at the Karun petrochemical complex. Other targets were radar stations.

Iran responded by launching missiles against two additional air bases in central Israel while missiles from Lebanon hit at Israeli oil installations in Haifa.

Ansarullah in Yemen joined in. It announced that all Israel related shipping will be blocked from the Red Sea and fired some of its own missiles against Israel proper.

Both sides of the conflict then concluded the fight. The skirmish is, for now, over.

Trump has several times claimed to restrict Netanyahoo, to hold him back or to order him to stand down. Israel has bombe anyway and, at least in its attacks on Iran, continued to rely on U.S. controlled air defenses and U.S. flight refueling tankers.

Trump’s claims about ordering Israel to do this or that are obviously fake.

The strong cooperation between the U.S. and Israel continues and it is indeed Netanyahoo who is calling the shots while Trump is either agreeing with him or decided to stay silent whenever Israel ignores his ‘order’:

Cont. reading: War On Iran: – Iran Will Respond To Ceasefire Breaches Wherever Those Are

The colonial expansion of Israel is openly subsidized by the U.S. with currently $3.5 billion per year. Most of that money is bound to Israel’s purchase of U.S. made weapons. The stipend is controlled by Congress and must pass the yearly budget review.

The Israeli government is trying to change the stipend into a more lucrative racket.

It has suggested to replace the yearly subsidy by a ‘deeper military cooperation’ which is code for the guaranteed U.S. purchases of Israeli made weapons and continuous profits for Israel’s weapon manufacturers. To institute the new scheme Congress will pass a law that will integrate Israel’s military-industrial complex into U.S. procurement and production lines.

Following that there will be no more yearly reviews:

Buried in the House’s version of the 2027 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) released on Tuesday, is section 224, entitled “United States-Israel Defense Technology Cooperation Initiative.”
…
Section 224 lays the groundwork for bilateral research and development, co-production of weapons, joint ventures, licensing agreements, and seemingly every manner of U.S.-Israeli military-industrial complex cooperation.
…
It would fuse the U.S. and Israeli defense sectors in multiple areas vital to the battlefields of the future, like autonomous systems and cyber.

and:

If enacted, the provision could mark a major change in one of the world’s closest military relationships, shifting the two countries from a partnership centred largely on American military aid towards one in which their defence industries are more deeply intertwined.

Section 224 would require the US defence secretary to appoint an “executive agent”: a single official to coordinate military cooperation between the US and Israel.

That work would cover joint research and development, the shared production of weapons, and the linking of military systems and data.

In future the Pentagon will have to spend, by law, a part of its budget on purchases from Israel. Given the $1.5 trillion war budget proposed by Trump the profits from such an alliance for Israel will be a multiple of its current stipend.

Congress is currently in the process of passing the proposal.

The U.S. military is not happy about the prospect of having Israel involved its technology and data systems. A subtile hint of that can be seen in this current news item:

Pentagon raised threat of Israeli spying on U.S. to highest level, sources say – NBCnews
The counterintelligence threat level was raised by the Defense Intelligence Agency in recent weeks after growing concerns that Israeli espionage had become more aggressive than usual, sources say.

Cont. reading: Israel Asks For A Guaranteed Share Of U.S. Weapon Purchases

A typical U.S. tactic against a strategic target is to ‘boil the frog’ by slowly increasing the temperature of the water it is sitting it. The conflict in Ukraine is an good example for this. Hits against Russia, directed by the CIA, are escalated bit by bit while Russia is reluctant to more severe deterrence measures.

The current war on Iran is another example. The U.S. is insisting on a ceasefire while trying to erode Iran’s leverage with economic strangulation.

Iran’s major weapon, the blockade of the Strait of Hormuz, will need another month or two to fully unfold its intended effect on the U.S. and global economy. Meanwhile the U.S. is trying to tire Iran with fake diplomacy, economic measures (its blockade) and pinpoint strikes.

But Iran is well aware of this tactic. It has decided to avoid this ceasefire trap by continuous escalation:

The United States and Israel are using this [ceasefire] period to reshape realities on the ground, weaken Iran’s leverage, and arrive at a negotiating table where Tehran’s position has already been quietly eroded. This perception is strengthening those within the Islamic Republic who argue that diplomatic restraint, under current conditions, carries its own strategic costs.
…
The delay in finalizing the memorandum of understanding is increasingly interpreted as purposive rather than procedural and as a U.S. attempt to use the passage of time as a strategic instrument. The concern is that each week of ceasefire, with American military and economic pressure continuing unabated and Iranian restraint producing no reciprocal concessions, represents a net erosion of the position Tehran believes it secured during the forty days of active fighting.

Iran has decided to respond to this ‘boiling-the-frog’ tactic by increasing the cost for even the slightest U.S. attack. It is no longer responding in kind. Each U.S. strike is answered by hitting back stronger and against more targets. As Rob Campbell provides of the skirmish of June 2:

Late at night, the Americans hit an Iranian oil tanker and the Iranians retaliated with an attack on an USraeli vessel. The Americans also targeted the control tower on Qeshm Island and the Iranians responded with attacks on US Kuwaiti bases at Ali Al- Salem and Arifjan and the Fifth Fleet base. Bahrain also came under attack and it airspace closed to all traffic. It is claimed that 136 Shahed drones were seen above Kuwait while heavy damage was inflicted on Kuwait’s only international airport which has been closed.
…
Satellite images indicate damage to a hanger which housed drones and aircraft at Ali al-Salem airbase in Kuwait

The Iranians also attacked the Kurdish Separatist group at their HG in Erbil (Iraqi Kurdistan).

Iran has warned the Americans that they will respond to future attacks with increased intensity. which they appear to be doing.

The increased intensity is designed to avoid the trap:

As economic pressure mounts, Israel continues its campaign against Hezbollah, and Washington works to reduce the strategic significance of Hormuz before any deal is concluded, more voices within the Islamic Republic are arriving at the conclusion that leverage must be actively defended before it can be usefully negotiated.

Iran wants an agreement with the U.S. but is also expecting and prepared for a new round of war. For political reason President Trump is, for now, trying to avoid both, an agreement with Iran and renewed fighting. He continues to ignore Iran’s escalation. But he will have to respond (archived) if it ends up killing U.S. soldiers:

Cont. reading: War On Iran: – Iran Needs Escalation To Avoid The Ceasefire Trap

by English Outsider 

lifted from a comment

“The fact that Russia has lasted this long is a miracle.  How much longer can it hold on is another story.”

Posted by: bored | May 31 2026 15:23 utc | 7

The main thing is that we’ve all got this far without going nuclear.  It was getting just a little edgy toward the end of the Biden Presidency.

Not that anyone would be fool enough to press the button deliberately.   But when tensions are running high, and in spite of what seem to be some comprehensive deconfliction arrangements, the chances of accident are just that little bit higher.  I’m guessing, though it can’t be an informed guess, that the chances of accidental Armageddon have receded since President Biden left office.

So the question now is not so much one of straight survival.  It’s whether the Russians can keep plodding along as they are,  which keeps costs fairly low for them, or whether they’re going to have allow the conflict to spill out into Europe.

That seems on the face of it to be a simple calculation.  What is the cost of the damage the West is currently doing?.  What is the cost of stopping them doing it?   Not just the cost of the missiles it’d take to prevent the Western powers shipping drones and missiles to Ukraine, but the diplomatic and political backlash long term if the Russians were to extend the war to the European theatre as a whole.  Remembering they’d have to strike American assets in Europe too because the Americans are still key players when it comes to supplying materiel and ISR assistance and helping plan the various attacks into Russia.

But it’s not that simple a calculation.  It’s not just a matter of balancing relative costs.  War has its own momentum.  Emotional response matters too.  I remember the Falklands war.  In terms of scale that’s a ridiculous comparison.  In terms of emotional response of the general public, not.

At that time the risk and cost of countering the Argentinian invasion looked to be greater than the loss incurred by just letting the Argentinians have the islands.  No question.  But the public mood was nothing to do with relative costs.  “We’re not having that!” was the public response in the UK.  The politicians of the time, though fully aware that the risk and cost of responding outweighed the benefits, would almost certainly have lost power had they not acted in accordance with that public mood.

So here.  Striking supply depots, logistics facilities and military HQ’s in Europe goes dead against the policy that the Russian administration has been pursuing for the last four years.  They want to put the Ukrainian conflict to bed without letting the conflict spill out into open war in Europe and they’ve been doing OK on that so far.  But then the public mood enters the equation.

If someone were sending missiles and mounting sabotage and assassination attacks into England we in the general public wouldn’t be doing cost benefit analyses.  We’d be jumping up and down and insisting our politicians did something about it.  Turn that obvious truth around.  We in the West are sending missiles and mounting sabotage and assassination attacks into Russia and we can be dead sure the Russian general public is jumping up and down about that right now.

So that’s the question they’ll be pondering in the Russian Security Council.   How much more rope can we give the West, they’ll be saying,  before the Russian public gets fed up with just passively taking the knocks.  You and I, “bored”,  have no way of guessing what they’ll decide on that.   And it’s not as if you and I were players ourselves.  We’ll just have to wait and see what their decision is.

This graphic explains why Trump is under stress and why Iran believes it is winning the conflict.

biggerThe Zionist lobby is vehemently against any peace deal with Iran. Israel will do its best to sabotage any resolution of the matter by continuing its war in Lebanon, Gaza and the West Bank. It wants the war on Iran to continue until that country is destroyed as a viable competitor.

So far the Zionists hold the upper hand. They can and do defy Trump at every corner. The Lobby has the upper hand. He does not yet dare to take it down.

Existing oil inventories, commercial ones as well as state owned strategic reserves, were used as a buffer to paper over the lack of some 15% of crude oil in the global markets. Gas prices at the pump have risen, but only moderately.

From now on the situation can only, and will, get worse.

During June and July Prices will rise further. Distribution problems will lead to temporary closure of this or that gas station. Selected oil derived products will become rare.

By August western governments will start to introduce rationing measures. Smaller refineries will shut down. Political pressure will increase to a point where it can no longer be ignored. The voices of the (non-oil) industry, financial circles, and the public will become louder than the Lobby’s.

Only then will Trump be able to show Netanyahoo the finger. He will have to order Israel to stand down.

At some point Iran and the U.S. will come to an agreement. No one will trust that will hold. From there on it will still take many more months for sufficient oil supplies to come back to the market.

The Israeli government, pushed by its Zionazis and with the support of the White House, has announced that it will attack the Dahiyeh suburb of Beirut. Dahiyeh is normal civil neighborhood which is claimed to have a Shia majority with sympathies for Hizbullah.

Israel says it will renew strikes on Hezbollah in Beirut after lobbying for US green light – Times of Israel

Israel announced Monday morning that it would renew strikes on Hezbollah’s stronghold in southern Beirut, after significantly curtailing attacks on the Lebanese capital for weeks at the request of US President Donald Trump’s administration, …

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Israel Katz said in a joint statement that they had instructed the Israel Defense Forces to strike Hezbollah targets in Beirut’s southern suburbs.
…
Reports had earlier said Israel was lobbying the US to grant permission to resume massive strikes on the terror group’s stronghold, and that an American official had hinted that such a green light could be coming.

Lebanon is part of the crumbling ceasefire between the U.S. and Iran.

Iran’s foreign minister warned of the consequences of such a severe breach of the ceasefire:

Seyed Abbas Araghchi @araghchi – 11:04 UTC · Jun 1, 2026

For immediate attention:

The ceasefire between Iran and the US is unequivocally a ceasefire on all fronts, including in Lebanon.

Its violation on one front is a violation of the ceasefire on all fronts.

The US and Israel are responsible for the consequences of any violation.

In reaction to the Israeli announcement Iran has stopped all negotiations and threatened to respond in kind.

Hamidreza Azizi @HamidRezaAz – 13:28 UTC · Jun 1, 2026

Tasnim News Agency – affiliated with the IRGC – reports that #Iran’s negotiating team is suspending the exchange of texts and messages with the US through mediator Pakistan, citing ongoing Israeli military operations in #Lebanon.

Tehran’s stated ground is that Lebanon was a precondition for any ceasefire arrangement, and that arrangement has now been violated. Iranian negotiators say talks will not resume until Israeli operations Lebanon stop and Israeli forces withdraw from occupied Lebanese territory.

The announcement also carries a threat: full closure of the Strait of Hormuz – after some incremental ease of transit over the past couple of weeks – and “activation of the Bab al-Mandab front” as punitive measures against Israel and its allies.

Lebanon matters inside Iran. The Iranian leadership can not ignore what is happening there.

Currently some 15% of the regular global oil supplies are blocked in the Strait of Hormuz. Circumventing that blockade through its east-west pipeline Saudi Arabia is currently exporting some 4-5 million barrels per day through its Red Sea harbor Yanbu and Bab el-Mandab.

biggerI had earlier describe how the closure of Bab el Mandab would hurt shipping and oil supplies:Cont. reading: War On Iran: After Israel Threatened Beirut Iran Announced To Further Reduce Global Oil Supplies 

A typical U.S. tactic is to ratchet things up in a conflict. This is done by continuously introducing additional hostile measures. Red lines get passed over bit by bit with the hope that each step is too tiny for the other side to really hit back. The war in Ukraine continues to be run like that.

Two days ago the U.S. attacked two Iranian boats which it had claimed were laying mines near Bandar Abbas. (There is zero  evidence that Iran has laid ANY mines in the Strait.)

Iran did not allow for the ratchet to click. It immediately hit back.

Statement from CENTCOM on Recent Iranian Aggression – CENTCOM, May 28 2026

TAMPA, Fla. – At 10:17 p.m. ET on May 27, Iran launched a ballistic missile toward Kuwait that was successfully intercepted by Kuwaiti forces.

“Successfully intercepted …”

Americans Injured in Iranian Missile Strike on Kuwaiti Air Base – Bloomberg, May 30 2026

An Iranian ballistic missile strike on a Kuwaiti air base within the past 24 hours caused minor injuries to several Americans and seriously damaged two MQ-9 Reaper strike drones, …

That sounds like a spot on hit.

Kuwaiti air defenses intercepted the Fateh-110 missile, but falling debris struck the Ali Al Salem air base, according to a person with direct knowledge of the attack, who requested anonymity to describe details that aren’t public.

“Falling debris …”. Like in ‘The missile was falling, then there was debris.’

Interpretation:

أَبُو عِرْفَانِ پارسی @A_E_P_1979 – 11:20 UTC · May 30, 2026

It seems Iran’s recent attack on Kuwait inflicted casualties on the Americans. This is significant for two reasons.

1. Americans are still stationed in the Gulf and do not want to leave.

2. Iran showed the Americans that, unlike before, attacking Iran “under the threshold” will not grant them immunity, and Iran is willing to escalate massively even at the cost of war. Creating a credibility for its threats.

This attack is very significant, in my opinion, because it will directly affect the negotiations and erase any delusions the Americans might have.

Well, hopefully.

I still expect another massive U.S. attack on Iran combined with an unrealistic attempt to gain (fire-)control over the Strait of Hormuz.

by English Outsider 

lifted from a comment

Ma Laoshi – grateful to you for finding that Scott Ritter piece.

Terror and Mental War

First things first.  Ritter’s no fool and, as you’d expect, identifies the trigger that set off the SMO:

“… a rejuvenated Ukrainian military, specifically trained and equipped by NATO, positioned itself to resolve the Donbas question through military force. This in turn triggered the Russian intervention in the form of the Special Military Operation.”

It’s not trivial that Ritter does that.  Any discussion of this war is bedeviled by the fact that most of those opposed to Western policy in Ukraine get the reasons for the Russian invasion of Ukraine wrong.  They think the SMO resulted from a decision in the Kremlin to finally put a stop to NATO encroachment, not, primarily,  from a decision to pre-empt a Kiev incursion into the Donbass.

That may seem a simple point but you’ve no idea how disabling this error is.  The influential opponents of the war with Russia in the US, Germany, UK, have a gaping hole at the very centre of their argument.  We see this, as one example, with Diesen.  One of the finest and most level-headed opponents of the war that we have in Europe – but all over the place when it comes to explaining why the Russians are fighting us!

Professor Diesen joins Professors Roberts and Mearsheimer and a host of other authoritative sources who get that Russian invasion of Ukraine wrong.  Seriously wrong, as most of the big names do.  According to Diesen, that Russian invasion was a “war of aggression with unpredictable consequences”, an “egregious violation of state sovereignty”.    The fact that the last thing Putin wanted to do was send his tanks across the border, went to considerable lengths to avoid doing that, and in the end was given no option but to act fast to prevent the Kiev forces running amok in the Donbass, has passed unnoticed by many of the big names and I suspect always will.

That’s a hole a mile wide, therefore, dead in the centre of the argument against current Western policy in the Ukraine.  “The Russians were in the wrong starting the SMO but are in the right at the same time because NATO.”  No wonder the authoritative dissident figures in the West get so little traction with the general public.  On the one hand they state that the Russians were 100% in the wrong starting a “war of aggression”.  On the other they argue that the Russian cause is just.   That’s a real mess of an argument that you might expect to get away with with an audience already sympathetically inclined.  Joe Public can  smell a rat a mile off and is having none of it.

Ritter’s got more sense.  He doesn’t twist himself into knots arguing that black is white.  He’s a direct and forceful man and if he thought that the Russians were in the wrong starting their SMO he’d be saying so load and clear, not trying to pretend they were in the wrong and at the same time in the right.   But he knows the reason for the SMO – one that so many of  the others fail to grasp – and is therefore able to put forward a coherent argument condemning Western policy in the Ukraine. …

—
b here:

The above is a very important point. Russia did not want to invade Ukraine. It did its best to prevent an escalation of the smoldering conflict in the Donbas. But by mid February 2022 the Ukrainian troops, prepped and fired up by NATO, were only days and hours away from invading the Donbas republics.

At that time this blog pointed to the rapidly increasing artillery fire on the ‘rebel’ republics in the Donbas. The observers of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) at the zero-line reported way more Ukrainian artillery impacts on the Donbas rebels than vice versa. Anyone with a tiny bit of military training could predict the next step that would come after such an artillery preparation – a full fledged armor attack on the Donetsk and other rebel held areas.

The Russian intervention was launched to prevent that.

by English Outsider 

lifted from a comment

Russia will just overwhelm Ukraine and then install a puppet government to ensure it remains as a neutral buffer between Russia and Europe/NATO. This could go on for some more years, or maybe Russia will speed things up, surprise everyone, and make it happen sooner.

Posted by: aelfwed | May 28 2026 0:24 utc | 52

Yes, the end state of remnant Ukraine will be along those lines, though precisely how it’ll be done is unclear and is still maybe unclear to the Russians themselves.  Friendly state  (unlikely), neutral state, puppet state or occupied territory.  The last decidedly the worst case for the Russians and they’ll avoid it if they can.  Also, of course, the worst case for remnant Ukraine.

The position has changed, however, since the early Istanbul negotiations.  Paramount now is the Russian need to prevent remnant Ukraine being used by the West for attacks into Russia.  These have increased greatly in scale and intensity over the last few years and there is no indication that these attacks will cease unless remnant Ukraine is neutralised in one of the ways set out above.

This is not some rarefied “geostrategic theory” for the analysts to mull over. It is an urgent practical necessity for the Putin administration.  How long would any American administration last if the American President had to say to his voters “We’re getting sabotage and assassination missions run in against us from Mexico.  Drones and missiles are still coming over.  There’s not a lot we can do to close these attacks down entirely so we’re going to have to put up with them for the indefinite future.”   Impossibly to imagine an American President saying that and similarly impossible for any Russian President.  So the Russians do have to aim for an end state to this conflict that precludes, permanently and entirely, any such threat on their Western border emanating from remnant Ukraine.

This imperative takes precedence over any other Russian goals.  Maybe they’ll get their “new European Security Architecture”, maybe they won’t.  Maybe they’ll come to some accommodation with the US, maybe they won’t.  But if they don’t solve the problem posed to them by the Western use of remnant Ukraine as a convenient base for mounting attacks into Russia, their entire Special Military Operation will have gone for nothing.  They’ll be ending up precisely where they started from in February 2022.  They will have been defeated.

Since the Russians can’t be forced to accept what would be to them an entirely unsatisfactory outcome, they won’t.  They can’t be forced by economic or diplomatic means, certainly not by military means, to accept defeat.  So the end state for remnant Ukraine will inevitably be as set out.  Friendly state, neutral state, puppet state or Russian-occupied.  Any one of those results will preclude the hostile use of remnant Ukraine by the West and one of those results will be what we see at the end of this war.

…………………………

Cont. reading: The Ukraine Conflict End State? – by English Outsider

AlArabia has published what it claims is the:

Final draft of [the] preliminary US-Iran memorandum of understanding.

I am pretty sure it is not a draft Iran has seen or even in parts committed to.

It is a U.S. wishlist with lots of points that have no tangible outcome, process or date attached to them. It points to undefined “agreed upon arrangements” and “interim understandings”. Without those being written down and followed by the letter the whole thing is useless.

Excerpts:

• Reopening of the Strait of Hormuz to international navigation, guaranteeing the free passage of commercial vessels and oil tankers without additional transit fees, with the Iranian side committing to take the necessary technical and security measures to ensure the safety of navigation, including the removal of mines and maritime obstacles according to agreed-upon arrangements
• Enabling the Islamic Republic of Iran to resume the sale and export of oil within the framework of the interim understandings agreed upon by the two parties
• …
• Consideration will be given to suspending or easing some sanctions related to the Iranian oil sector in phases, in accordance with the implementation of mutual understandings and commitments
• The necessity of ending military operations and de-escalation on all regional fronts, including the Lebanese arena, will be emphasized, along with working towards establishing a comprehensive regional de-escalation

If that is the real state of the negotiations the whole thing will go nowhere.

Being in week twelve of his two week war on Iran there is no way left for Trump to escape the damage he has caused to the global economy and his own standing.

The best way out for him is for Congress to vote against the continuation of the war. It would give Trump the necessary excuse to recall the troops from the Middle East and to draw the attention elsewhere.

The short version of what happened over the weekend with regards to a deal with Iran:

Trump: “WE HAVE A DEAL”
Netanyahu: “Nope”
Trump: “Deal’s off”

The longer variant:

Trump’s attempt over Friday and Saturday to come to some deal with Iran has failed.

A few hours after Trump had announced a preliminary resolution of the conflict, his boss, one Benjamin Netanyahoo, called and inserted clauses designed to prevent a deal:

President Trump and I agreed that any final agreement with Iran must eliminate the nuclear danger. That means dismantling Iran’s nuclear enrichment sites and removing its enriched nuclear material from its territory.

President Trump also reaffirmed Israel’s right to defend itself against threats on every front, including Lebanon.

Iran’s supreme leader had rejected to move any enriched Uranian from Iran’s territory. Enrichment to Iran is a non negotiable right. The inclusion of a real ceasefire in Lebanon is also a prime condition for Iran to conclude any deal.

After the call Trump immediately changed course. The deal he had been eager to conclude hours earlier was suddenly no longer urgent.

Trump soon diverted attention by resorting to a new, mafia-like, scheme.

He threatened to (again) bomb Iran. Iran, he claims, would then retaliate against Arab U.S. proxies in the Gulf. To prevent that, Trump says, those proxy states should immediately sign a peace deal with Israel:

“Negotiations with the Islamic Republic of Iran are proceeding nicely! It will only be a Great Deal for all or, no Deal at all — Back to the Battlefront and shooting, but bigger and stronger than ever before — And nobody wants that!

During my discussions on Saturday with President Mohammed bin Salman Al Saud, of Saudi Arabia, Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, of The United Arab Emirates, Emir Tamim bin Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani, Prime Minister Mohammed bin Abdulrahman bin Jassim bin Jaber Al Thani, and Minister Ali al-Thawadi, of Qatar, Field Marshal Syed Asim Munir Ahmed Shah, of Pakistan, President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, of Türkiye, President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi, of Egypt, King Abdullah II, of Jordan, and King Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa, of Bahrain, I stated that, after all the work done by the United States to try and pull this very complex puzzle together, it should be mandatory that all of these Countries, at a minimum, simultaneously, sign onto the Abraham Accords.
…
If they don’t, they should not be part of this Deal in that it shows bad intention.
…
Therefore, I am mandatorily requesting that all Countries immediately sign the Abraham Accords …

Of course none of those countries even replied to that nonsense.

A deal with Iran is (again) off the table. Meanwhile the severe damage of the conflict to the global and U.S. economy is accumulating  by the day.

Time is not on Trump’s side. He urgently needs a deal. But to get there he needs to get Netanyahoo off his back. How to do that is the really difficult question.

There is news, or maybe just learned rumors, about a prolongation of the ceasefire between USrael and Iran.

US and Iran close to extend ceasefire by 60 days, reports Financial Times – Gulf Today

The United States and Iran are close to agreeing on a memorandum of understanding aimed at ending the war, two regional officials and a diplomat said on Saturday.

Iran signaled “narrowing differences” in negotiations with the US after Pakistan’s army chief held more talks in Tehran, and US Secretary of State Marco Rubio told journalists in India that “there’s been some progress made” and “there may be news later today.”

The officials and diplomat expressed hope that a final decision on the Pakistan-prepared draft could come within 48 hours as both sides review it.
…
Iran state TV quoted Foreign Ministry spokesperson Esmail Baghaei as describing the draft as a “framework agreement” and adding: “We want this to include the main issues required for ending the imposed war and other issues of essential importance to us. Then, over a reasonable time span, between 30 to 60 days, details are discussed and ultimately a final agreement is reached.”

Conditions of a preliminary deal were published yesterday by former CNN journo Alex Marquart:

In the agreement, which would be signed in Islamabad, the terms the US has offered Iran to include:

• Immediate end to military operations including Lebanon and no more threats of force against each other.
• The MOU leads to negotiations on a “final deal” to officially end the war. Axios reported earlier that would be 30 days of talks, I heard it’s now longer and could be extended.
• Discussions of nuclear enrichment, removal of enriched material discussed later in the final deal. Iran commits in the MOU to never develop a nuclear weapon.
• A large economic reconstruction plan for Iran, to be developed by the US and its allies in the region. How it works exactly is part of the final deal.
• The US will unfreeze Iranian funds as talks progress.
• All US and UN sanctions – including secondary – to be lifted after a final deal which will lay out a schedule.
• Before a final deal and the lifting of sanctions, the US will issue waivers for Iranian oil exports, banking and other products/areas.
• US removes naval blockade and starts to redeploy forces after MOU is agreed to. Pre-war maritime traffic restored within 30 days. US forces removed from near Iran within a month of a final deal.
• The UN Security Council will eventually bless a final deal.

All of that seems too vague to me to ever come to a real agreement.

The most crucial points, some of which are extremely difficult to agree on, are all pushed down the road. There are way too few detailed commitments for either side:

Cont. reading: War On Iran: – Pushing The Can Down The Road (Again)?

Hmm …

Is this an additional sign that a new round of USraeli strikes on Iran are imminent?

Gabbard resigns as Trump’s top US intelligence official – Reuters

WASHINGTON, May 22 (Reuters) – Tulsi Gabbard said on Friday she is resigning from her job as President Donald ​Trump’s director of national intelligence, saying her husband had been ‌diagnosed with a rare form of bone cancer and that she was stepping away from her role to help him.
Gabbard advised Trump of her intention to ​step down during an Oval Office meeting on Friday, ​Fox News Digital reported earlier. The resignation is effective June ⁠30, it said.
…
A source familiar with the matter said that ​Gabbard had been forced out by the White House.

News & views not related to the wars in Ukraine and Iran …

June 10 2025

Trump told Netanyahu he still wants to defuse Iran crisis with talks, not bombs – Barak Ravid / Axios

bigger

President Trump stressed after a three-hour meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Wednesday that he wants to keep pursuing a deal with Iran rather than moving to military action at this time.

June 13 2025

In Twist, U.S. Diplomacy Served as Cover for Israeli Surprise Attack (archived) – WSJ

U.S. negotiations with Iran aimed at curbing Tehran’s nuclear program were widely seen as an important way to preserve regional peace. They ended up being the perfect cover for a surprise Israeli attack.

—February 11 2026

Trump to Netanyahu: U.S. prefers deal with Iran to war, for now – Barak Ravid / Axios

bigger

President Trump told Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in their Monday phone call that he believes there’s a chance of reaching a nuclear deal with Iran and he therefore opposes military action at this time, an Israeli official and a U.S. official tell Axios.

February 28 2026

Yet another mid-talks attack suggests Trump was never serious about peace – Guardian

The attack mounted jointly by Israel and the US on Iran had been planned for months, but the timing, in the midst of negotiations between Iran and the US, will again raise questions about whether Washington was ever serious about striking a deal with Tehran.

—May 20 2026

New Iran peace proposal triggers tense Trump-Netanyahu call – Barak Ravid / Axios

bigger

Trump continues to say he thinks a deal can be reached but that he’s ready to resume the war if it isn’t.

May 22-26 2026

Planning trades? Here’s the Memorial Day stock market blackout – Palm Beach Post
U.S. bond market will close early on Friday

The New York Stock Exchange will be closed on Monday, May 25, and will reopen for trading at normal hours, 9:30 a.m. ET to 4 p.m., on Tuesday, May 26.
…
The U.S. bond market will close early, at 2 p.m. EDT, on Friday, May 22, according to the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association, and remain closed on Monday. The bond market will reopen at normal hours on Tuesday.

h/t Hamidreza Azizi

Was an USsraeli agent positioned and expected to take over Iran?

That question is coming up when reading a new New York Times story that is making the rounds.

Early War Goal Was to Install Hard Line Former President as Iran’s Leader (archived) – NY Times, May 20 2026
An Israeli strike designed to free Mahmoud Ahmadinejad from house arrest in Tehran, U.S. officials said, was part of an effort to bring about regime change and put him in power.

The gist of the story:

It turns out that the United States and Israel went into the conflict with a particular and very surprising someone in mind: Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the former Iranian president known for his hard-line, anti-Israel and anti-American views.

But the audacious plan, developed by the Israelis and which Mr. Ahmadinejad had been consulted about, quickly went awry, according to the U.S. officials who were briefed on it.

Mr. Ahmadinejad was injured on the war’s first day by an Israeli strike at his home in Tehran that had been designed to free him from house arrest, the American officials and an associate of Mr. Ahmadinejad said. He survived the strike, they said, but after the near miss he became disillusioned with the regime change plan.

There are many questions which let one doubt the veracity of the story.

Ahmadinejad, who has been president of Iran from 2005 to 2013, is a bygone politician. He has no institutional following and is openly despised by many people in Iran. There is no chance that he could again be holding a leading position in Iran. Neither the state institutions nor the law would allow that.

Even if that has been a plan why would the Trump administration leak it now? Why would Amadinejad, an USraeli asset if the story is right, be outed as a traitor?

Why was his house bombed? Ahmadinejad was under house arrest and had to be freed by bombing him?

But the NY Times also mentions that he has traveled a lot:
Cont. reading: War On Iran: – Was This Really The Crazy Plan For Regime Change In Iran?

Next to all the AI slop appearing every minute there are still the classic disinformation items channeled through the main stream press.

Today’s Financial Times presented this ‘scoop’:

Xi Jinping told Donald Trump that Putin might ‘regret’ invasion of Ukraine (archived)

Xi Jinping told Donald Trump during their talks last week that Russian President Vladimir Putin might end up regretting his invasion of Ukraine.

According to several people familiar with the US assessment of last week’s summit in Beijing, the Chinese president made the comments during wide-ranging talks that touched on Ukraine …

My first thought when reading those lines was ‘nonsense’. Why would Xi make a negative remark about the leader of China’s most important ally to the leader of its most ferocious enemy?

The first incongruity which catches the eye is the difference between the headline – “Putin might ‘regret’” – and the actual text – “Putin might end up regretting”. Those are quite different statements. The first one asserting a possible present state while the second describing a potential future one.

Then comes the sourcing. Someone in the U.S. wrote an assessment on last week’s Trump-Xi summit. Would an assessment include a quote on something that was, if at all, a side item in the meeting?

Some people claim to be ‘familiar’ with the assessment. What does that mean? They did read its executive summery? And why are several of those people talking to the Financial Times?

The claim does not make sense. The sourcing is extremely weak. Moreover the ‘leak’ is obviously timed to disturb today’s arrival of President Putin of Russia in China for his meeting with President Xi.

To sow distrust between ‘hostile’ allies through fake stories is a well known tool of a U.S. divide and conquer strategy.

China by the way vehemently denied the claim:

Cont. reading: U.S. And China Dismiss British Disinformation

At Naked Capitalism Yves Smith has held for a while that only ‘the markets’ can prevent U.S. President Donald Trump from further attacks on Iran.

‘The markets’ here are for one the bond market where any slump would mean lower treasuries, higher interest rates and problems for the U.S. to finance its debt. It is here where inflation hits Trump the most. Any interest increase is a political burden for Trump who has argued for the Federal Reserve to lower its benchmark interest rate.

But ‘the markets’ are also the stock market where Trump is privately engaged. A recent filing to the US Office of Government Ethics revealed that more than 3,600(!) transactions were made between January and the end of March on Trump’s personal account, which is (allegedly) handled by his sons through a brokerage:

The cumulative value of the trades ranged from at least $220 million (€188mn) to as much as $750 million (€641mn) as federal ethics disclosures only require broad valuation bands rather than precise figures.
…
Individual purchases of Nvidia, Microsoft, Broadcom, Amazon, Apple and others ranged from $1 million (€856,000) to $5 million (€4.27mn) in disclosed value while buy orders of AMD, Intel, Goldman Sachs, Alphabet, Airbnb, DoorDash, Micron, Bloom Energy and others ranged from $500,000 (€427,500) to $1 million (€856,000) in disclosed value.

US President Donald Trump also reported hundreds of stock sales ranging from $15,000 (€12,825) to up to $25 million (€21.37mn).

According to the report, and assuming the holdings have remained relatively the same since the end of March, Trump is 20% or more in profit on almost all of the names indicated here and others.

Trump is heavily invested in those companies which deliver the hardware for the Artificial Intelligence bubble:

The account established new $1 million to $5 million positions in Broadcom (AVGO), Synopsys (SNPS), Cadence Design Systems (CDNS), and Texas Instruments (TXN), according to investing.com.

Notice the pattern. The account’s new multi-million-dollar positions are concentrated in the AI supply chain, not in the hyperscalers that dominate headlines.

These are the companies that sell into the AI buildout, the picks-and-shovels names that benefit regardless of which cloud or model wins.

Trump is personal hyping stocks he had bought:

The most attention-grabbing trade in the filing is Dell Technologies (DELL).

The account bought DELL on February 10 in the $1 million to $5 million band, then added smaller positions throughout March, per Fortune. It never sold a share.

On May 8, at a Mother’s Day event at the White House, Trump told the audience to “go out and buy a Dell.” The stock surged as much as 14.6% intraday and closed up roughly 12%, hitting an all-time high of $263.99.

Dell is now up about 107% year-to-date, …

One may call this corruption and insider trading which should be banned.

But it has also a positive side.

As long as Trump is politically (through the bond market) and personally (through stocks) bound to rising markets he will likely avoid anything that might lead to a large tumble of bond and stock values or even a crash.

Another big attack on Iran, and Iran’s inevitable retaliation, would likely lead to a market crash and sever personal losses for Trump.

That may well be the one and only thing that is holding him back.