Godspeed, Jared. We need to move your father-in-law’s “strong,” “constructive” peace talks along.
Iran and Israel exchanged more missiles on Tuesday and The World Economic Forum postponed an event in Saudi Arabia, underscoring the challenge for a Trump administration angling to put the proverbial toothpaste back in the tube on four weeks of war.
Video from the scene of a strike in Tel Aviv showed emergency crews milling around crumpled cars parked on the street beside a half-collapsed residential building. A spokesperson from the IDF said the IRGC targeted the city with a missile carrying a 220-pound warhead. “We have not yet encountered that,” the person remarked.
In remarks to Western media outlets, unnamed Iranian officials confirmed that the regime’s passing messages with Trump through backchannels to avert a scenario where attacks on Iran’s electricity grid and natural gas fields compel IRGC strikes on critical infrastructure in the Sunni states, including energy hubs and desalination plants.
Separate reporting indicated Trump’s royal friends in the region asked him not to bomb Iran’s power plants given the distinct possibility that cutting the lights off could start tipping dominos towards a failed state scenario. Nobody, save perhaps the Israelis, wants that. A happy side effect for Trump was a stock rally and a pullback in oil prices, both of which looked poised to wane.
Late Monday, Trump claimed his threat to knock out the power in Iran brought the regime to the table. Maybe that’s true maybe it isn’t, but it sounds like sundry princes and emirs were more concerned than the IRGC. In addition to the attacks on Israel Tuesday, Iran dispatched drones and missiles against the Gulf states, including the Kingdom, which had to shoot down another Shahed swarm.
In Tehran, officials looked further down a woefully depleted bench to fill Ali Larijani’s vacant role as security council chief. They went with Mohammad Bagher Zolghadr.
A 30-year IRGC veteran and former secretary of the 48-member council that advises the Supreme Leader, Zolghadr was a middle-ranking bureaucrat in the Mahmoud Ahmadinejad administration. In addition, he held a kinda, sorta senior role on the panel with oversight responsibility for military affairs. In that capacity, he helped supervise the Basij.
Before the Revolution, Zolghadr was an Islamist guerrilla. He has a bachelor’s degree in economics too. So if you ever find yourself at dinner with him and the conversation dries up, you can ask Zolghadr about the Phillips curve.
I’d call Zolghadr a dead man walking but I don’t know if he’s important enough for Israel to waste a missile on. His new role suggests he is, but… well, again, Iran’s reaching really far down the bench now.
The IDF gave no indication on Tuesday it’s prepared to let up. Attacks on Iran are continuing at “full intensity,” Israel Katz said.
Meanwhile, in Lebanon, Israel’s hard at work setting up a “security zone” south of the Litani River. The military set about destroying bridges over the waterway late last week. Any bridges that remain will be policed by the IDF, Katz said, adding that the “hundreds of thousands of residents of southern Lebanon who evacuated to the north will not return south of the river” unless and until Israel can be sure the safety of its citizens across the border is “guaranteed.”
Separately, Pakistan indicated it’s ready and willing to host mediation talks between Bagher Ghalibaf, Iran’s de facto leader, and Kushner.
After spending Monday accusing Trump of market manipulation in connection with direct negotiations Iran says aren’t yet underway, Ghalibaf was back at it Tuesday.
“Iran is fighting for humanity,” he declared, captioning an unverified report of the IDF torturing a Palestinian child in Gaza. “The world is either against this colonial terror regime, or it stands with the Epstein class and child torturers,” he added.
Someone said, “if this war gets any worse, he’ll have to release the rest of the Epstein files as a distraction.”
The Taliban fought on for years and finally got their country back. Surely the iran guards saw that happen. They aren’t watching some 2 year election cycle, and they are willing to lose a lot of their people, so this may drag on a while.
The Taliban comparison doesn’t work I don’t think. The IRGC’s too big and too synonymous with… well, with damn near everything, frankly, to just disappear into the mountains for 20 years. It’s a conventional fighting force that doubles as the seat of Iranian corruption. I don’t know how you go from being a corrupt mafia to a rag-tag insurgency. The latter kinda requires a perverse version of “principles,” and also a willingness to suffer a lot of hardship. With so many of the Iran-Iraq war veterans and principled IRGC commanders dead, I wonder about the discipline level among the middle- and lower-ranks, where the demographics are different. Anyway, just a thought.
IRGC rank and file have probably missed a pay cycle by now, and are mustering under bridges and in woods with their commanders sleeping in cars.
It seems like the only way the US can apply pressure to influence/shift the way in which the IRGC functions (i.e.- among other bad habits, give up nuclear and stop laying mines in the strait*)- is to first: cut off the money flow and then give it back to them, but with very tight and well defined controls. If the leaders of the IRGC can’t pay their soldiers/members, the IRGC leadership has a problem.
not 100% sure, but I think the US navy has the means to identify/clear these mines robotically.
https://interestingengineering.com/military/us-navys-mine-killing-underwater-robot
Hegseth retired 2 minesweepers at the beginning of Operation Epic Fury, another self-own. https://www.navytimes.com/news/your-navy/2026/03/12/the-us-navy-decommissioned-middle-east-minesweepers-last-year-heres-what-they-did/
“Unlike the minesweepers, which have a long history of being battle-tested, the LCS with the MCM package has never been deployed in combat.
If the LCS is used during Operation Epic Fury to address Iranian mines, it will be a first.”
As you said, the IRGC are endemically corrupt. They have a well-functioning refreshment delivery service. Basically you can make a call to a number at any time of the day and your selection will be delivered to your door within 2 hours (just like Doordash, but with booze)
The romantic version is that the products are carried over the mountains on the backs of donkeys, but the reality is that there are not enough donkeys in the whole of Arabia to transport those kinds of volumes.
As far as I know, Jared Kushner holds no official post in the Trump regime so what is he doing negotiating on our behalf? I do know that unlike Trump, Kushner is seemingly literate, perhaps in multiple languages. However, he is a best a proxy for Sir Don and in the process of turning himself into a billionaire at our expense.
He’s not negotiating on our behalf, he’s negotiating on his and his father-in-law’s behalf. It’s made them both incredibly rich. Until the 30% cult voters figure this out, it’s going to be the status quo.
Trump seems to be finding it harder to get out of this Iranian war , than the Vietnamese one.
Well I’m pretty sure Biden started it.