War is Peace!
That's the new motto of the Trump administration as it lights Iran on fire by hitting nuclear sites and contemplates starting a new war in Africa because you just can't have too much peace!
There are a lot of powerful stories in the headlines today about things like Treasuries hitting a worrisome milestone, the huge migration of Americans out of the labor force, AI stocks with revenue beats sinking in a “bloodbath” because of expanded expenditures on AI, a rogue AI bot escaping its “sandbox” and attacking another AI on its own volition, not because asked to do so, a longterm bull market outlook for gold, and huge hits from the Iran War to inflame inflation. I’m going to save the inflationary stuff for analysis in my weekend Deeper Dive, including how the Fed is dumbing down its PCE inflation tracker even more in order to improve the inflation situation in the US by further under-reporting it. For now, I’ll focus just on the headlines about the rapid re-expansion of the war because there was a huge blowout on that front over the past 24 hours.
You may recall my writing the following just yesterday:
Today, we got more proof of how silly yesterday’s brief heart flutter in oil prices was. The mini plunge came as a response to some vain word about Iran and the US possibly thinking about having a short ceasefire to get together to discuss having a longer ceasefire to negotiate on things neither side is close to agreeing on. Those who think that even matters, fail to understand what Iran is doing here.
Today, oil prices got more realistic and rose and held above $91/bbl for Brent crude,
Which was a reference to this comment the day before:
Oil prices gave a little flicker of phony hope over the last few hours. As smoke from the Iran War 2.0 darkened over the weekend, oil prices climbed to almost $91/bbl for Brent crude. Then a single individual in Iran teased the idea that maybe a deal could still be struck with the US, so lunatic oil investors stomped the price down to around $86….
That obviously stupid move lasted a heartbeat because, sometime around that brief atrial flutter in the price of oil, Iran struck some more oil tankers running through the part of the strait that the US likes to pretend it is protecting for commercial traffic, turning the tankers into raging infernos. In response to that and devastation of its military bases by other Iranian attacks that cost the lives of US servicemen, the US attacked an Iranian nuclear plant that is still under construction, something Iran had said was an absolute red line. So, Brent oil prices shot back up to over $89.50/bbl mid-day.
Well, today those oil prices climbed another 4% higher, taking Brent crude up to $94.42. While I will save discussions of that inflation for the Deeper Dive, I wanted to note it in passing as I move on to talking about how much the war that is driving those prices has, itself, inflated into a much hotter inferno over the past twenty-four hours, making those who believed that tiny trace of a claim that the US and Iran might be turning back to meaningful negotiations all the more obviously purveyors of false hopes … and just plain stupid.
There has, in fact, been no move toward negotiations at all. Instead, what we have seen since that lame comment is a move to much more intense attacks all over Iran with Iran responding all over the Middle East and promising even greater and broader attacks against US allies in the region if the US continues to bomb its nuclear sites, which the US is continuing to do.
While Trump has not taken the step yet of using a tactical nuke to bust down into the heart of Pickaxe Mountain and seal off the bulk of Iran’s enriched uranium, which the White House has indicated is a strong possibility, he has punched big conventional holes in other nuclear facilities.
One video that presents some strong footage of the eleventh night of US attacks details damage to Iranian nuclear facilities.
Tonight the United States struck in the heart of Tehran. Also reports are out that US airstrikes targeted the Parchin nuclear site, which is east of Tehran. There’s heavy defense activity heard in the center of the Iranian capital right now.
The video shows footage of intense air-defense activity over Tehran, similar to the kind we saw during the shock-and-awe days of the US-Iraq War under George Bush—the kind of regime-change, oil war Trump was going to stop getting us into.
In all, about 21 strikes across the nation were made by the US in the eleventh round of attacks. After showing a number of strikes and playing audio of other heavy strikes, the video shows Donald Trump saying, “Iran hasn’t seen anything yet.”
“If we left today, it would take them decades to rebuild, and I don’t believe they can ever rebuild. Honestly, they haven’t seen anything yet. We’ve been nice!”
The effect of the intensified conflict is that zero ships crossed the strait of Hormuz, even the US government keeps repeating the lie that the strait is still open to shipping. Sure, it is, if you don’t mind getting blown up.
The capper of the past 24 hours is that the Houthis have now established a successful blockade of all Arabian oil in and out of the southern strait into the Red Sea. There is still the Suez Canal to the north, but estimates are that an additional 7% has been taken out of global oil shipping by the Houthi’s full closure to Saudi traffic through the Bab el-Mandab strait. At least, eight Saudi tankers, as of the time of the video, had to turn around and not exit the Red Sea.
Iran hit more oil infrastructure in the Middle East in response, and it threatens worse attacks to come. Iran has stated,
If Trump attacks Iran’s nuclear sites or other sensitive centers, the Islamic Republic of Iran will immediately destroy the assets and critical infrastructure of his regime and his proxies across the nation.
Iran gave no specifics about what that means.
Despite the U.S. president and military continuing to urge vessels to use a southern route through the strait, in defiance of Iran’s threats, few shippers seem willing to risk it.
The Joint Maritime Information Center in Bahrain, a military partnership that includes the U.S., said commercial traffic in the Strait of Hormuz fell to a three-week low on Tuesday amid ongoing Iranian attacks. CBS News tracked just three commercial ships — two cargo vessels and the Chinese-owned tanker Hsin Ocean — transiting the strait on Tuesday.
And today that number dropped supposedly to zero. So, strait closed is the strait truth.
Trump meanwhile has told Iran that he will now bomb one Iranian bridge or electrical power plant in an eye-for-an-eye response over each ship that Iran tries to attack; but, with about 21 major strikes in the past night’s warfare, that is more like a-head-for-an-eye retaliation by the US. Hal Turner reported the following list of strikes in Iran during the night:
Behbahan
Mahshahr (multiple explosions reported, including 6 additional blasts)
Bandar Abbas
Chabahar
Bushehr
West of Tabriz (8 explosions)
Urmia
Tehran seems to be under attack in Parchin, east of Tehran.
Over 9 explosions reported in Parchin, Tehran, local says “our whole house is shaking”
The new war of peace
Now we have a new night that is just passing in Iran where we’ll get new reports of the Twelfth Night of attacks, but one can never have enough wars if they are an imperial president, so President Trump threatened to open up an entirely new war n the West African nation of Mali to rid it of al Qaeda. That should be fun as we know how these al Qaeda ambitions go.
If approved, [the plan] would add an eighth nation to the list of countries where President Donald Trump has ordered strikes since the start of his second term - a chapter of his presidency that he initially said would be dedicated to ending global strife and redirecting U.S. resources to Americans.
If approved, that will mean his list of nations where he has started wars is equal to the size of the list he claimed a few months ago for wars he stopped, though I could never figure out what war he actually stopped. Fighting still continues in spurts in Gaza. Fighting still continues in spurts in Lebanon, and Iran is worse than ever. So, we also have a humor video in the headline section talking sarcastically about how “war is peace” as justification for Trump’s claim that he is “the peace president.”
The White House’s response to questions about the new war being contemplated in Mali was …
“We urge regional partners and NATO allies to support the Alliance of Sahel States in their war against JNIM and ISIS,” the official added, referring also to the Islamic State, which rose to prominence in the Middle East before establishing affiliates throughout Africa.
The Alliance of Sahel States consists of Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger - all West African nations where military leaders have in recent years ousted democratically elected governments in coups, largely cut ties with the West and turned to Russia for security help.
We have seen throughout the Trump-Israel-Iran War, which now Trump seems to be fighting on behalf of Israel without even getting Israel’s help, how NATO allies are ready and willing to pitch in to support Trump’s new wars as he excoriates them on a weekly basis for being useless balls of laundry fuzz. So, if the Mali war does begin, it will likely be one more war where the US goes it alone in order to help protect the shady, anti-democratic governments of minor African banana-repubic-style nations from the likes of al-Qaeda as a way of putting America first and starting no new unnecessary wars! As the humor video below says regarding the new motto that War is Peace, “That’s why Donald Trump is the peace president.”
Mali, a landlocked nation of nearly 25 million, has in recent years been plagued by violence by Islamist militant groups - and by Mali’s own junta government and the Russian mercenaries whom it hired to get the situation under control.
The militant groups, particularly JNIM, have grown increasingly powerful, turning Mali and its neighbors in the Sahel into the world’s center for terrorism.
Sounds like a delightful little quagmire for us to get ourselves involved in.
Last year, militants with the al-Qaeda affiliate mounted a fuel blockade that paralyzed much of the country.
Hey, a fuel blockade? That’s right up our alley. We definitely need to get a piece of that peace action. Plus there are Russians involved! Always a good situation for us to get in a tangle.
To combat the violence, Mali’s junta government hired Russian mercenaries, first with the Wagner Group [Love that group and its Putin-assassinated founder!] and now with Africa Corps, which is more closely linked with Russia’s defense ministry. The Russians have been accused of a string of atrocities, according to rights groups and The Washington Post’s previous reporting.
How are we not in there already, fighting shoulder to shoulder with the Russians?
Héni Nsaibia, West Africa senior analyst for the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data project, said that Mali’s military and its Russian backers were responsible for killing hundreds more civilians than JNIM and IS Sahel combined. Last year, the Malian military and its Russian partners were responsible for 925 civilian deaths, according to ACLED, compared with 232 by Islamist militants.
Perfect! We can use our AI targeting systems to target some girls’ schools and hospitals. We have knack for that sort of thing, which will fit right in with the apparent game plan there! That way we can be on the same side with the Russians this time and maybe patch things up with Pootey, as President Bush used to call him. We will, of course, need to pass testosterone tests first, to make sure the warriors we send their way are our best cannon fodder.
“It is extremely problematic that a government like the U.S. or any Western partner would provide support to these regimes whose legitimacy remains contested, and which are incredibly fragile and repressive,” he said, referring to Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger.
Nah! The repressive ones are just the kind we like! They are perfect fits to our new motto that “War is Peace.” Tolstoy had it all wrong. It’s not “War AND Peace.” It’s “War IS Peace.” And there is no place where it is easier for a guy like Trump to become top banana than in a banana republic! So, it’s perfect for his peace legacy, too. The US has always preferred everlasting wars in those tin-pot dictatorships. This time we are looking at fighting in support of the unelected dictator, so maybe that will go better than the times when it was the other way around. If they don’t have any girls’ schools we can hit, maybe they have some Epstain recruitment centers since trafficking of sex slaves is often one of the primary exports from such nations. Now that there is no island for the girls to go to, we can just erase them like we did in Iran! (OK, the humor is getting a little dark, albeit true to what we have done without apology in Iran, and Trump does seem to have an affinity for programs that attack girls, but I’ll stop there just like he stopped there with pursuing the truth in the Epstein Files.)
When asked if Secretary of State Marco Rubio supports military action in Mali, the State Department sidestepped the question, saying the U.S. “unequivocally condemns the terrorist activity in Mali.”
The department said the Trump administration is “committed to promoting regional ownership and cooperation against terrorist threats, and monitoring indicators and warnings of threats to our homeland.”
Sounds like they’ve already scheduled the flights to get the next US war started, and maybe promoting regional ownership, means regional ownership in some new hotels like one named “Mali Lago.”
U.S. military action against JNIM would add Mali to the list of countries where Trump has ordered strikes: Yemen, Somalia, Syria, Iran, Iraq, Nigeria and Venezuela. The administration also has waged a controversial military campaign against alleged drug runners in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific that has resulted in scores of deaths.
That’s us! Defender of the nations! Even if they are oppressive little dictatorships. War is Peace!
