Israel and, at least by association, the US, are now targeting Iran’s civilian infrastructure.
Dark grey, acrid smoke hung over the capital Sunday following Israeli strikes on nearby fuel depots, which the IDF excused by explaining that the installations are linked to the military.
Of course, you could say that about a lot of Iran’s infrastructure, which means if a military connection’s sufficient to justify an airstrike, virtually anything’s a legitimate target.
That’s the IDF’s modus operandi in Dahiya (the Beirut suburb which serves as Hezbollah’s political power base) and across the whole of Gaza.
It’s hardly surprising that the IDF’s moving further along the military-civilian continuum when it comes to targeting infrastructure. But the Trump administration needs to be cognizant of its own complicity. Became while it’s fuel depots today, it could be water sources tomorrow and hospitals next week.
In fact, Iran over the weekend accused the US of targeting a desalination plant on Qeshm Island, allegations which, if true, suggest the war has indeed taken a turn for the barbaric, as I suggested on Friday. (The US denied attacking the plant.) Iran retaliated, dispatching drones against a desalination facility in Bahrain.
To state the painfully obvious, blowing up desalination plants in the Mideast is tantamount to a war crime: It weaponizes thirst. Israel weaponized hunger in Gaza and if America’s willing to go that route, the US military could transform Iran’s already acute water scarcity problem into an overnight humanitarian crisis.
But the Gulf monarchies are extremely vulnerable too. Those desalination plants sustain the region’s gleaming, urban monuments to oil and gas riches which would become cesspools and graveyards in fairly short order in the absence of freshwater from five-dozen, poorly-protected facilities.
If those facilities were targeted successfully in a systematic way, the US would be obligated to wipe out the regime in Tehran posthaste, and by any means necessary. Because what would the alternative be? Mobilizing America’s entire fleet of C-5 Galaxys to deliver pallets of Deer Park?
In the wake of the Israeli strikes on the fuel depots, state television in Iran (which I’m shocked is still operational) quoted an IRGC spokesman who said if the US and Israel don’t stop targeting the country’s infrastructure, the regime will respond with “similar” attacks across the region. Earlier, Kuwait said a swarm of Iranian drones hit fuel storage tanks near the emirate’s airport.
Meanwhile, Donald Trump appeared to suggest the US could send the SEALs into Iran to secure the country’s enriched uranium. “That’d be a great thing,” he told reporters. “At some point maybe we will.”
As usual, Trump doesn’t seem sufficiently informed about the differences between commandos and super-spies, the most important distinction being that the former are real and the latter aren’t. James Bond is a fictional character.
Israel’s ambassador to the US, Michael Leiter, said Sunday that although the “whole objective” of the war is to prevent Iran from acquiring a nuke, and while that pretty much by definition entails finding and securing the missing uranium, the “preference” is for some manner of homegrown solution that doesn’t assume for American and Israeli special forces the operational wherewithal of Ethan Hunt and his “Impossible Mission Force.”
In Tehran, it was raining oil on Sunday. Quite literally. Precipitation coming from contaminated clouds was saturated with petroleum.
“Significant quantities of toxic hydrocarbon compounds” were released by the fuel depot strikes, the Iranian Red Crescent said, warning locals that “the resulting rain is extremely dangerous” and capable of burning human skin.
The New York Times described an “apocalyptic” atmospheric inversion, as the sky turned orange overnight from the depot fires and black at dawn from the oil smoke.
“With the fire it felt like night became day,” a 33-year-old city resident said. “And then with all the smoke, the day turned back into night.”
Someone in the Trump administration needs to track down Paul Brenner- the diplomat turned administrator of the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq under Bush in 2003.
Evidently, Brenner’s almost daily emails home to his wife, which disclose a more frank assessment of how poorly things were going (vs. his public statements at that time), were recently discovered in the archives at Yale University. A 23-year-old master’s student from Cambridge found the boxes while researching his dissertation on the Iraq war.
Paul Bremer ran Iraq for Bush. His emails show what really happened
https://www.thetimes.com/article/00b207fa-6673-44da-b8b8-57a1e6363f79?shareToken=b39bcdc9560fb731f4b2d243c32efd7e
Great title to this piece. Confession- I had to look it up! 🙂
I do what I can.
It would not surprise me if the Administration’s Dress Up War guys have been getting together for pizza and mocktails to binge the Apple show “Tehran” and do some brainstorming. If so, our fate could be in the hands of a 100 lb attractive female – Pete’s worst nightmare – stiorming in and running off with the shiny orb before it’s too late.
I’ve heard of worse concepts of a plan.
And they are repeatedly watching their favorite scene from “Apocolypse Now”.
Be sure to listen to Duval’s final words.
Problem is they want the war to end in The Rapture.
I can’t believe that there’s a war right now between three different varieties of religious nutjobs each trying to bring about their own end times fantasies.
Yeah, all this over oil and fairy tales.
Seriously. And the “prophecies” were probably hallucinations caused by methane leaks in the first place so it’s all circular (in more ways than one).
Iran could resemble Gaza when this is finally over. That republican guard is the Mafia times ten, plus a Mexican cartel. The people will continue to suffer under these overseers, maybe until the last man.
“It became necessary to destroy the town to save it”.
Check out the volatility index tonight. It is finally waking up to reality.
I’m looking forward to the commentaries from the “it’s a great buying opportunity” crowd tomorrow morning.
Once in a while Mr. Market drops by to remind us that investment “rules” are not immutable facts. Might this be one of them?
I keep thinking about a high school reunion last year, where one of my classmates, whose son had deployed to Afghanistan, informed me that “they” do not value human life the way “we” do. Also that Islam is not a religion of peace and that the only hope for stability in that region is if Israel “wins”.
Then they’ve become like the US unfortunately. We can’t even do healthcare for the most vulnerable. Everything in the US is valued as a dollar amount and a human life gets cheaper by the day.
Yes and no. The value of life may be less but the cost maintaining the last few months of it is way up.
Thanks for a fascinating read on Iraq and Bremer. He was up to his hips in mud from day one
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fhsViy0zQII valuable lessons when you make it rain black
As I said to some friends last year. 2026 is going to be a very tough year….
There is little constraint on trump, and he is doing his best to loot the US for his own benefit, damn the consequences for everyone else.