Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov revealed on March 5th that Russia made compromises in the agreement concluded at Anchorage between Presidents Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump. However, he did not reveal the nature of those compromises nor the issues on which they were made. At a roundtable of ambassadors, Lavrov seemed to be responding to elite and or general public criticism of the Kremlin’s insufficiently hard line in relation to the talks and/or the claim made by some that the Abu Dhabi-Geneva peace talks or process is a cover for unidentified aggressive Western or Ukrainian designs. As I explained in a previous article, the U.S.-Israeli use of negotiations apparently as a cover to lull Iran into complacency and then attack the country and indeed to ‘decapitate’ its leadership, would encourage suspicions in Russia that the West was doing the same with the Russians to one or extent to another. In fact, I noted that the Russians had already had a fully similar experience when, during the peace discussions with the U.S., Ukraine attacked President Putin’s Valdai residence with drones likely using CIA intelligence and other data to do so:
In particular Lavrov said: “At the moment, we see no reason to suspect that these negotiations are also a “cover,” since we are in direct contact with our American colleagues. But our political scientists, analysts, politicians, and members of parliament, who are not involved in this, by definition, closed process, are beginning to draw parallels and ask how these negotiations can end. They say that because of the actions of the United States, the “spirit of Anchorage” has been destroyed.” The Russian foreign minister went on to say: “The main thing in Anchorage was a concrete understanding reached on the basis of proposals made by President Donald Trump and his negotiating team. President Vladimir Putin has repeatedly commented that we have accepted these proposals, including those aspects of these proposals that are already a serious compromise for us.” (https://mid.ru/ru/press_service/minister_speeches/2084269/).
In this way, Lavrov revealed that the Russians made compromises to agree to the Anchorage agreement proposed by the U.S. However, the nature or issues regarding the Russian compromises were left for us to guess. Over the months since Anchorage various media reports have reported that Moscow had dropped its demands for all the territory of Zaporozhe and Kherson oblasts in southern Ukraine and would settle with the withdrawal from and ceding of all of Donetsk Oblast. Luhansk is already under full Russian control. This revelation and the suspicions about Russian territorial compromises are unlikely to assuage those criticizing President Putin for: too soft an approach in his ‘special military operation’ (SMO); the careful tactics and resulting slow advancement of Russian troops; the unwillingness to destroy all the key decision-making centers in Kiev such as the Ukrainian military’s General Staff, the Defense Ministry, the SBU headquarters, the Office of the President building, the Verkhovna Rada parliament building; and the refusal to decapitate the Maidan regime that many Russian elites, including himself, regards as illegitimate and terrorist at least in its actions.
In a recent statement expressing his condolences to the Iranian people in the wake of U.S.-Israeli ‘decapitation’ of the Iranian regime by assassinating Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Putin characterized the attack as “a cynical violation of all the norms of human morality and international law” (http://kremlin.ru/events/president/news/79238). It is not unlikely that in composing this message he had in mind the criticism being leveled against him for refraining from issuing similarly heinous orders to his military and intelligence forces. Whatever the reason for Putin’s restraint in conducting the SMO – retention of the moral high ground or basic ‘human morality,’ a personal abhorrence of excessive violence and/or a desire to maintain the viability of international law either as a legal or political instrument for Russian foreign and security policy and practice – he is still unable to shake his reputation on the more hard line part of Russia’s political spectrum as being too soft when confronting sufficiently neofascist-infested Maidan Ukraine and dealing with a West that has repeatedly broken promises and agreements with Moscow since the end of the Cold War. Thus, the breaking of the ‘spirit of Anchorage’ is nothing new, but it does push Russian patience towards the breaking point. Given the numerous provocations from Kiev and its Western sponsors during the NATO-Russia Ukrainian War it is surprising that Putin has been able to remain so patient. Putin may have to toughen his line, but he is unlikely to toughen against the U.S. The Europeans are a far less dangerous target for a political or economic press that might assuage some of his critics.
There is also a cultural factor driving the political tectonics here. The historical legacy of the Great Patriotic War against Nazism and its deep imprint on Russian political and strategic culture makes the presently cautious warfighting under the SMO a culturally and thus politically risky gambit. Similarly, approach of accommodation of the West perceived as being adopted by him violates Russia’s security vigilance culture formed over many centuries of less than friendly Western (and others’) policies directed against Russia. On the other hand, the risks of a more aggressive war raise the prospect of public and elite opposition from the other end of the spectrum of calculus. A far greater number of ‘body bags’ returning home can provoke criticism for having begun the SMO in addition to that for the slow-attrit-then-advance tactics that some claim is prolonging the war and also increasing Russian casualties.
Some in the West assert, many hope that disgruntlement and grumbling in Moscow represents the threat of a coup should the NATO-Russia Ukrainian War drag out much longer. Economic collapse is said to be imminent, and some in Moscow would argue that requires an escalation to victory and an end to the SMO. One often astute observer recently ventured to say that if Putin receives Steven Witkoff in the Kremlin one more time ‘he will be out.’ I think matters are still quite a distance from crisis politics. The politics of war are always a hazardous affair, but Putin’s position in this respect remains relatively secure. There is no pre-coup situation in Moscow. This stands in sharp contrast to that of Putin’s main foe in the NATO-Russia Ukrainian War, Ukrainian leader Volodomyr Zelenskiy.
I tend to doubt – for both practical and moral reasons – that Putin will sharply escalate. Despite numerous escalations from the Ukrainian and Western side, he has resisted declaring war on Ukraine and undertaking an actual ‘full-scale invasion’ and the kinds of attacks that would be commensurate with one. For the rest of this year, Putin is unlikely to escalate or make any more compromises on Ukraine, assuming he made any at Anchorage. The agreement hatched there may be a dead letter. He will certainly continue talks with Washington on improving U.S.-Russian relations, despite the U.S.-Israeli attacks on Iran, which will also continue to receive weapons and intelligence support from Moscow.
Putin has always been a cautious balancer, finding the golden mean between the extremes—for example: soft rather than hard authoritarianism; controlled rather than no elections, free speech, freedom of association; mixed economy rather than a state economy; coercive diplomacy instead of solely coercion or diplomacy; and the SMO instead of outright war and a ‘full-scale invasion’ (https://gordonhahn.com/2017/06/14/putin-the-balancer-containing-and-balancing-russias-multifarious-forces-through-soft-authoritarianism/ and https://gordonhahn.com/2015/11/24/putin-the-risk-taker/). He will likely do the same now. However, if pushed, Putin will have no compunctions about acting firmly in the face of risks, and he will have major domestic support if and when he does so.
Russia’s specialoperation against NATO-backed Ukraine just entered its fifth year. The last three anniversaries were reflected upon here, here, and here, and keeping with tradition, the present piece will review what happened over the past year and forecast what might be come in the next one. Generally speaking, Russia now faces five geostrategic challenges that are expected to shape its approach towards the US-mediated peace talks with Ukraine and its grand strategy overall, namely:
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* NATO Influence Is Poised To Expand Along Russia’s Entire Southern Periphery
Last August’s “Trump Route for International Peace and Prosperity” (TRIPP) along Armenia’s southern Syunik Province has the dual function of a NATO military-logistics corridor through the South Caucasus to Central Asia. Spearheaded by member state Turkiye with allied Azerbaijan serving as the launchpad across the Caspian, TRIPP threatens to revolutionize Russia’s regional security situation for the worse if these threats aren’t contained, especially if it emboldensKazakhstan to follow in Ukraine’s footsteps.
* The US Supports The Revival Of Poland’s Long-Lost Great Power Status
* India Seems To Be Undergoing A US-Friendly Grand Strategic Recalibration
India began aligning with some of the US’ interests after their trade deal as explained here, which could eliminate tens of billions of dollars’ worth of Russian budgetary revenue if India does indeed reduce its import of Russian oil like the US claimed that it agreed to. The same goes for India possibly eschewing new big-ticket military-technical purposes from Russia too. This US-friendly grand strategic recalibration might also put more pressure on Russia’s top Chinese partner and therefore reshape Asian geopolitics.
* Poland Now Wants Nukes & Turkiye Might Soon Declare The Same Intent
The US’ decision to let the New START lapse risks a global nuclear arms race. Poland was emboldened to declare its nuclear intentions while RT published a detailed report about how Turkiye might go down this route too. Both are historical Russian rivals, and seeing as how Poland envisages carving out a sphere of influence in Central & Eastern Europe and Turkiye envisages one in Central Asia as was noted above, them obtaining nukes would pose a huge threat to Russia and raise the likelihood of its containment.
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The five geostrategic challenges confronting Russia in the fifth year of its special operation are formidable but not insurmountable. As it’s always done, Russia is expected to ensure its sovereignty, security, and thus its survival through the creative interplay between its political, military, intelligence, diplomatic, expert, and civil society communities. They might opt to cut a deal with the US over Ukraine so as to focus more on tackling these challenges, but not at any cost, ergo why that hasn’t yet happened.
The markets yesterday and today have been quite volatile. Markets ended with a positive reversal yesterday and a mixed finish today. “Mr. Market” seems to believe everything will be fine. The market reversal yesterday was quite dramatic with oil going up 31% only to reverse and come back down 31%. The headline in the Wall Street Journal tells the tale: The 24 Hours When Oil Markets Went Wild. The stock market also experienced a dramatic positive reversal. The Trump Administration used messaging to calm the market combining a press conference by President Trump where he announced the war was close to ending, with announcements from Lloyds of London on insuring oil tankers, with pledges to release oil reserves, with the removal of sanctions on Russian oil; all to engineer a market reversal. Today the Secretary of Defense maintained that the US/Israel is “winning” the war against the “barbarian” Iranians and that the US would not relent until the enemy is “totally and entirely defeated”. Meanwhile, Reuters announced that at least 150 US soldiers had been wounded. We do not know how badly.
Question: has the military and economic crisis that created all this uncertainty and volatility been resolved? It has not and we will see more market volatility unless this war is ended soon.
The kind of market action we have seen over the last few days is not unusual in a budding crisis. Similar market action unfolded at the onset of the Great Financial Crisis (GFC). In 2007 and 2008, the GFC went through three acute phases, spaced about six months apart, before the Lehman collapse finally triggered the crisis. Each time, the authorities pulled together some emergency facilities, convinced investors the crisis was contained, and the panic receded. The pattern continued until the failure of Lehman Brothers made containment impossible.
Here’s Yves Smith: “We sincerely doubt that it will take anywhere near as long as six months for investors to recognize that this situation is not like financial upheaval, where a Greenspan-Bernanke-Yellen-presumed Powell put to bail them out. This is an accelerating real economy crisis, with downsides far vaster and more comprehensive than even in the 2008 global crisis. That crisis merely threatened the critical payment system but would have left productive capacity intact. As we have explained previously, the exposure here is not merely an energy price shock, as bad as that is. Nor is the risk even just that of energy shortages. The closure of the Strait of Hormuz also risks food supplies, chemicals, apparel, chips, and other key sectors which depend not simply on affordable but also on petrochemicals as a key production input or the Strait for transit.”
So, the world is now “on the clock” can the war be ended, can the flow of energy through the Strait of Hormuz be restored, can the Gulf states resume oil and gas production and sales? If not, a serious crisis will become unavoidable.
This War is Censored–Accurate Information Difficult to Find
A level of censorship has been imposed on this war that can only be called draconian. This makes accurate information difficult to obtain. A great deal of the analysis and videos are fake, and misinformation and disinformation are being released on all sides. Some high-level people have been killed 2 or 3 times, including during the 12 Day War! Videos from all sorts of wars are recycled, along with AI generated fakes.
Censorship is necessary because Trump and Netanyahu began this war without public support. Surveys show that almost 80% of the American people are opposed to this war of choice. Contrast this with “Operation Iraqi Freedom” in 2003 which was, unfortunately, supported by 93% of the public. The coverage Iraqi Freedom was through “embedded reporters” but at least there was coverage. The current war on Iran is being conducted in a deliberate, intentionally imposed information vacuum. If the war is going badly, and many knowledgeable people are saying that it is, when the public finds that out, it will create a huge negative shock.
What Are Some of the Markers of Success
First are the Tipping points such as whether the Gulf States will have to close oil and gas production. Some states have already announced that they have closed production others that they will have to close production in the next few days unless inventory starts to move. If production closes and stays closed it could take billions and several years to return to the levels before February 28th.
Second is whether the Strait of Hormuz can be opened so that oil and gas can move out of the Gulf. Right now, the Strait of Hormuz is not closed but it is also not open. The issue initially was insurance, but now it’s safety. Iran could mine the Strait. Iran has underwater torpedo bombs, along with fast boats equipped with missiles, all of which could threaten traffic.
Then there’s the topography of the Strait. All along the north shore of the Strait, in Iranian territory, is a natural barrier—an extensive mountain range 160 kilometers long. Inside those mountains, Iranians have stationed missiles. Under these conditions, does anyone think a shipping company will risk trying to transit the Strait? What would it take to destroy the missile bases in this mountain chain? Tactical nukes? Is it really feasible to use nukes to open the Strait? This would make the entire Gulf uninhabitable. Conclusion: in all probability the Strait cannot be opened without Iran’s consent.
Third, how long can President Trump tolerate his poll numbers sinking. The Hill broke this story yesterday, Trump job approval sinks in new poll, showing a further 3 point fall to a net negative of ten points. The sample period was February 27 to March 3 and so would not capture the impact of energy price volatility on voter views.
Fourth, the future of the war is not only in the hands of Trump and Netanyahu, Iran also has a say. Iran claims they have the weapons they need and are prepared to fight for another 6 months. Six months!! If the Iranians hold out for another 3 weeks the political and economic consequences would be catastrophic.
Fifth, below are some of the markers of strategic victory, defeat, or the establishment of deterrence:
–if the Strait of Hormuz remains closed, this would constitute a strategic defeat for the US and Israel and a strategic victory for Iran.
— if Iran can survive and continue to attack the US and her allies, this would constitute a strategic defeat for the US and a strategic victory for Iran.
— if the US cannot suppress Iranian attacks on her own assets or those of her allies this would constitute a strategic defeat for the US and a strategic victory for Iran.
–if Iran can both continue attacks and keep Hormuz closed until the US offers a unilateral ceasefire, Iran would have succeeded in establishing deterrence.
Sixth, the above markers depend on two factors, how quickly the US runs out of interceptors and standoff weapons, and whether Iran can replace and repair her drones and missiles faster than the US and Israel can destroy and degrade them. A Substack constructed an arithmetic model and concluded that it would be difficult for the US to degrade Iranian strike capabilities fast enough. The implications are quite astonishing. Policy Tensor concludes: “If Iranian capabilities cannot be degraded for at least four months, the costs to the world economy and the United States would be intolerable. We will see a global inflation shock, global monetary tightening, a food crisis as the fertilizer shock cuts the next crop in half, and almost certainly a global recession. It will destroy the Trump presidency; it will destroy the GOP for a generation; and it would finally end the entrapment of the United States by its junior geopolitical ally.”
Seventh, Hezbollah has not been vanquished. Israel is apparently now involved in a two-front war with Iran and Hezbollah. According to Thomas Kieth, media in Israel reports that Hezbollah continues to launch weapons toward Tel Aviv and central regions, to strike strategic communications infrastructure, and has engaged in sustained bombardment of the Galilee. The same outlet now warns that any attempt to dismantle Hezbollah would require preparing the public for a long war that could last months or years and potentially involve the occupation of large areas of southern Lebanon, while admitting that even such a campaign offers no guarantee of eliminating the resistance.
According to Thomas Kieth: “Hezbollah has destroyed the SES satellite station in Beit Shemesh, sitting in the middle of Emek HaEla, is one of the oldest and most sensitive teleport hubs in the region, a 1970s-era backbone site built to push and pull international satellite traffic into the entity’s networks. Those huge parabolic dishes were the uplink and downlink arteries for space communications, broadcast routing, and high-capacity data transfer.”
Below is a picture of the destruction.
According to Phillip Plikington Israel is now panicking. There appear to be attempts to steer Israel into focusing on Hezbollah and letting the Iran War go. According to sources within Israel, the IDF is preparing for a long campaign against Hezbollah. “We are not looking for a long war with Iran.” Oh really–then why did Israel assassinate the Ayatollah and start the war on Iran?
Mark Wauck reports on daily interviews, including one with Chas Freeman who apparently believes the new Supreme Leader is unlikely to back down. Wauck also reports: “Hezbollah is coordinating some of its actions with Iran and is probably receiving intel via Iran as well. This is important, as it signals the difference a regime change can make. It’s another example of the Jewish Nationalist inability to understand the old maxim about being careful what you wish for.”
“Think back to the days when Israel bombed Iran’s embassy in Damascus and assassinated Hezbollah’s Nasrallah using the pretext of US negotiating with Nasrallah to geo-locate him. The then Supreme Leader of Iran, Ayatollah Khamenei, declined to respond militarily. He also failed to get involved militarily in support of Hezbollah when it was attacked by Israel or in support of Gaza or Yemen. Reports at the time suggested that many in the (Republican Guard) IRGC regarded these failures to act as betrayals of allies. Nevertheless, Israeli insisted on assassinating Khamenei in another sneak attack facilitated by Trump’s negotiation charade.”
Eighth, the Gulf states are not happy. Saudi Arabia, UAE, Kuwait, and Qatar are reviewing EVERY financial agreement with Washington. The GCC invested over $1 trillion in its defense by buying US military hardware only to learn that it benefits Israel This represents a historic and potentially seismic shift in the “Petrodollar” relationship that has anchored global finance for decades. Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Kuwait, and Qatar are indeed conducting an unprecedented internal review of their financial agreements with Washington. The Gulf states are navigating a “perfect storm” of fiscal and security challenges that make their current financial commitments to the U.S. difficult to sustain: This move is primarily a defensive response to the extreme economic pressures of the ongoing conflict between the U.S., Israel, and Iran.
The New Ayatollah lengthy piece appeared in the New York Times. “New Supreme Leader Inherits Sprawling, Secretive Office That Dominates Iran.” The conclusion; the new Ayatollah is deeply entwined with the Republican Guards especially since he served in the guards and has been involved in vetting the current leadership. This makes the history and structure of the Republican Guards important.
Since his appointment the new Ayatollah has not issued any statements, and he has not appeared in public. This has led to a great deal of speculation about what his silence could mean. Here’s Jeff Childers at Coffee and Covid: “In other words, Mojtaba Khamenei is Schrödinger’s Ayatollah. He’s the Persian cat in the lead box. He might be alive, he might be dead, he might be wounded— and nobody can know until somebody opens the lid. That’s no way to rally a nation around a new wartime leader. He’s a quantum enigma. Science.”
On the other hand, the new Ayatollah might be busy dealing with a war that is existential to the survival for his nation. His Father, Mother, Wife, Son, Brother-in-Law and niece just got wiped out by Israel, and Lindsey Graham has announced: We’re going to make a tonne of money’: US Senator Graham on US war on Iran. Without passing judgment on whether he’s a good or bad man, he will not be able to do his new job if he also gets assassinated. It may be a while before we get to know Schrödinger’s Ayatollah, if ever.
Insider Trading?
According to the Kobeissi Letter: By 2:10 PM ET on March 9th, the S&P 500, $SPY, $675 strike calls had fallen to a low of $0.02 per contract, effectively worthless. Then, at 3:20 PM ET, President Trump said the Iran war is “very complete.” This statement sent the S&P 500 soaring. By 3:30 PM ET, 10 minutes later, these same calls were trading at $4.95 per contract, up +24,650%. In other words, $1,000 invested in these calls at 2:10 PM ET was worth $247,500 just 80 minutes later.
This level of volatility is obviously historic, but it has happened repeatedly over the last year. The Trump Administration is filled with traders from Wall Street, hedge funds, and Private Equity. Scott Bessett worked for George Soros and was part of the “trade that broke the pound” in September of 1992. They have friends. We know that some of these traders made billions during the volatility associated with Trump’s tariff announcement. We could also be witnessing historic and shameless levels of insider trading. If someone knew what Trump was going to say, and they understood how markets work, shorting oil and going long on out of the money calls was a no brainer.
Conclusion
I hope these essays have been helpful. As you read them, please remember the words Yogi Berra “Predictions are very difficult, especially about the future”.
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Trump Might Want to End the War. Iran Won’t Do It on His Terms.
As the U.S.-Israeli war on Iran stretches into its second week, President Donald Trump has been floating the idea that he wants to declare Mission Accomplished. “We will. We’ve already won in many ways, but we haven’t won enough,” Trump declared on Monday afternoon in a speech before Republican lawmakers in Florida.
Iran, however, has shown no sign of ceasing its attacks. The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps is steadily launching missiles at cities across Israel and continues to strike U.S. military assets and outposts in the Persian Gulf. “The Armed Forces of the Islamic Republic of Iran are capable of continuing at least a six-month intense war at the current pace of operations,” IRGC spokesperson Ali Mohammad Naini said Sunday in video remarks broadcast on state media. “Iran will determine when the war ends.”
Iranian military officials have said that in the first days of the war, they overwhelmingly used missiles developed between 2010 and 2014, while holding some of Iran’s more sophisticated, modern missiles for future use as the war stretches on. “In the last ten years, what’s been produced, we haven’t used at all,” Naini said. The IRGC announced Monday that it was going to begin deploying more of its advanced 1,000 kg ballistic missiles and, in the first series of retaliatory strikes launched since the naming of a new Supreme Leader, fired dozens of missiles at Tel Aviv and at the U.S. Navy’s 5th Fleet infrastructure in Bahrain.
Iran’s latest round of strikes began as Trump was addressing a press conference in Florida, assuring reporters that Iran’s drone and missile capacity had been “utterly demolished.”
“Their missile capability is down to about 10 percent, maybe less. We’re also hitting where they make missiles and where they deliver missiles,” Trump said. “We’re knocking them out. We know where they all are. We’re knocking them out very quickly. We’re ahead of our initial timeline by a lot.”
Despite these claims, Iranian forces have continued to conduct counterstrikes across the region and inside Israel, and Iranian leaders have asserted they have the ability to continue the war. “Let them continue lingering in these illusions,” said Foreign Ministry spokesperson Esmail Baghaei at a press briefing Monday in Tehran. “They started this war and now realize they are caught in a quagmire.”
While U.S. and Israeli leaders have loudly proclaimed that the use of overwhelming force is evidence that they are winning the war, political and military analysts say this rhetoric obscures the reality that in asymmetrical warfare, the less powerful force does not need to militarily defeat an adversary, but rather force it to a point where it determines the costs of continuing the war is too high.
“Iran’s goal is to impose such a great cost that the war ends and their ‘win condition’ is the war has ended and they are still the guys you have to talk to,” said Amir Husain, author of “Hyperwar: Conflict and Competition in the AI Century,” in an interview with Drop Site. Iranian ballistic missile and drone attacks in the region are not aimed at causing random widespread damage or defeating the U.S. and Israel militarily, he said, but rather at inflicting economic damage that forces Trump to cease the war and deters future attacks. “The U.S. is the biggest military machine in the world. Nothing that the U.S. has lost is irreplaceable in time. The question is economic costs and that is really the big driver.”
Iranian officials told Drop Site that after being attacked on February 28 they moved swiftly to implement a series of planned retaliatory strikes that had been war-gamed extensively in the months following the 12-Day War in June 2025. Iran, they said, anticipated that the U.S. and Israel would conduct a systematic assassination campaign against the country’s leaders so Tehran’s military planners preemptively constructed a “mosaic” system where command authority was delegated further down the chain. This allowed commanders from the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps aerospace division to launch ballistic missile and drone attacks within hours of the war beginning and to strike at predetermined targets even if communications were disabled or senior leaders killed or incapacitated.
“This is the war that Iran has been preparing for for a generation. And the question was always when this existential war was going to take place. And it seems that they believe that that time is now,” said Jon Elmer, an analyst on weapons and military tactics of Palestinian and regional resistance groups for Electronic Intifada. “The Trump administration was treating Iran as if you just come back every few months and destroy and attempt to overthrow the country, overthrow the regime. Iran’s preparation for this war is generational and there’s strategic depth, both within their hardware capacity, but also within their human capacity.”
Smoke rises after Iran carried out a missile strike on the main headquarters of the U.S. Navy’s 5th Fleet in Manama, Bahrain in retaliation against U.S.-Israeli attacks, on February 28, 2026. Photo by Stringer/Anadolu via Getty Images.
Since the war began, Iran’s drone and ballistic missile attacks have hit major U.S. airbases, naval headquarters, logistics sites, and missile-defense radar systems across Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar, the UAE, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia. Iran also struck a CIA station in Saudi Arabia. Perhaps the most significant strikes have been Iran’s attacks on U.S. advanced warning radar systems, the nerve center for the military’s defensive missile apparatus.
Satellite imagery has shown that Iranian attacks have damaged or destroyed advanced AN/TPY-2 and PAC-3 missile defense radars for the THAAD and Patriot systems as well as other radar domes at U.S. bases in the Gulf. In addition to reducing ballistic missile defense effectiveness for the entire region, the disabling of defensive facilities at airbases may force operations to be carried out farther from Iran, further reducing the number of sorties that the U.S. can carry out on a daily basis. On March 9 the satellite imagery provider Planet Labs announced that it would restrict access to its commercial imagery over the region for security reasons.
On Tuesday, the Washington Post reported that the U.S. had begun relocating components from its THAAD missile defense system in South Korea to the Middle East, as well as more Patriot interceptors that had been deployed to East Asia. South Korean President Lee Jae-myung said that Seoul had “expressed opposition,” to the decision, which would increase its own exposure to the threat of war. “The reality is that we cannot fully push through our position” and block the transfers, he added.
In addition to ballistic missile strikes, U.S. officials on Tuesday confirmed the downing of at least 11 MQ-9 Reaper drones over Iran, with another reportedly shot down on Wednesday. Iran claims to have shot down over 80 drones, and the officially confirmed U.S. losses come in addition to significant numbers of downed Israeli drones verified by OSINT researchers and independent monitors. The loss of drones over Iran further degrades the ability to stop Iran from firing by adding a limitation to the intelligence the U.S. can gather on ballistic missile launches.
Prior to the war, concerns over missile interceptor stockpiles, which are costly and time-consuming to replenish, were a major factor in arguments against launching the war. Figures on U.S. stockpiles are classified, but a significant number of interceptors are believed to have been employed in response to Iranian missile bombardments targeting Israel and the Gulf Arab states.
The continued firing of missiles nearly two weeks into the fighting will soon push against logistical limits for the forces deployed, Elmer told Drop Site. “There’s only so many missile interceptors on the [U.S.] destroyers. Once they expend those missiles, they have to go back down to Diego Garcia and reload the missiles. And reloading the missiles looks like offloading a ship. It involves a significant amount of labor. It’s not something that’s simple to do. It’s a multi-day process,” said Elmer. Iran is “using a defense that puts weight on the fact that there’s a distribution over the territory to different autonomous units that can continue the battle if one particular territory runs short or is depleted or is attacked.”
Economic shock waves
The war has sent economic shock waves through the region and the global economy. In an interview with Princeton Alumni Weekly on March 6, Sheikh Nawaf Al‑Sabah, the chief executive officer of Kuwait Petroleum Corporation (KPC)—the national oil company of the State of Kuwait and one of the largest oil companies in the world—discussed the impact of the war on oil flows through the Strait of Hormuz. He explained that the company immediately activated a “contingency plan” once strikes on Kuwait began. “What I didn’t expect is, one, that Kuwait would be so consistently targeted, and two, that Iran would be effective in essentially closing down the Strait of Hormuz. Physically it’s not closed, but there’s nothing going through because they’ve threatened every ship that might go through,” Al-Sabah said. He added that while KPC has a strategic tanker fleet prepared to move through the Gulf, the company is still waiting for “some level of assurance on safe passage from the U.S. Navy, but that’s not there yet.”
Al-Sabah explained that KPC had prepared for such a disruption by storing oil outside the Gulf near Japan and Korea, and by loading its tanker fleet before the strikes and sending them out of the Gulf to provide cover for a limited period. However, he emphasized that these steps were only temporary. “There has been oil traffic through the Strait of Hormuz for over 80 years, and not a single day of those 80 years has it ever been closed to traffic. After eight decades, we have now entered a new era of geopolitics in the region, where we now have five or six days of practically zero traffic through the Strait of Hormuz, which is where you get 20% of the world’s oil supply.”
Major Persian Gulf oil producers have begun sharply reducing output as traffic through the Strait of Hormuz has largely ground to a halt, with petroleum storage facilities filling up with unsold crude.
Anusar Farooqi, a geopolitical and defense analyst who authors the Policy Tensor newsletter, said that the sustained ability of the Iranian military to hold closed the strategically vital Strait of Hormuz has been the most revelatory development of the war to date, adding that a failure to coerce the strait open would mean a strategic defeat for the U.S. whose relationship with the Gulf oil monarchies has been built on protection of the waterway as well as their own security.
“There is a specific strategic problem that must be solved: unless the Strait of Hormuz can be reopened, the war cannot be brought to an end. If Hormuz remains closed, the vectors through which Iran can deliver economic pain are effectively unlimited,” Farooqi said. “The economic consequences of a three-month closure of the Strait of Hormuz have been modeled many times, and the results are catastrophic. Unless flows can be restored—even at reduced levels—the situation becomes extremely severe.”
The ability of Iran to hold the strait closed has been built largely on its deployment of large numbers of cheap and effective Shahed drones—a one-way attack UAV used to strike ships in the region as well as targets in the Gulf Arab states. The Shahed, which can be produced for tens of thousands of dollars a piece and deployed from low-cost mobile launch platforms, has transformed the security environment in the Gulf by allowing Iran to strike targets on a level that has effectively shut down the economically vital region.
“The big shock of this war is that Iran has adopted a highly effective defense strategy mixing both counterforce and countervalue targeting,” Farooqi said, referencing attacks that strike both military and infrastructure targets. “The original U.S. strategy for defending the region was based on the assumption that it could deny Iran the option of closing the strait. But the economics of modern warfare—cheap drones, missile proliferation, and technological diffusion—have changed that equation. The old strategy was not simply responsive enough to the spread of precision-strike capabilities to countries like Iran.”
Iranian missile and drone strikes have declined over the past two days. The U.S. has attributed this to the massive bombing and the decimation of its munitions and launch systems. Iranian officials say that the decrease is a result of the initial damage done to U.S. and Israeli defense systems and that they do not need to launch as many missiles or drones.
Husain said that Iran recognizes the asymmetry of the conflict and has engaged in a strategic series of attacks aimed at maximizing the economic damage. Iran’s opening days of attacks degraded the defensive military infrastructure of Gulf states to a degree that Iran is able to more successfully strike. “Initially [Iran] expended 2,000 plus [missiles and drones] because they needed the ability to launch a few and have them get through. They needed to increase their penetration factor, they needed to take out early warning, they needed to take out counter batteries, and they needed to expend their opponents’ interceptors,” he said. “Once that’s done, the strategy shifts into economic cost maximization mode. Their goal is not to flatten a place. Their goal is to impose such a great cost that the war ends and their win condition is the war has ended and they are still the guys you have to talk to.”
Iran utilizes both mobile and fixed missile launch sites and has spent significant resources embedding many inside mountains, making them difficult for the U.S. to destroy. Within these sites are tunnels and other infrastructure with subterranean missile silos—what are known as “missile cities.” “There are reports that there might be between 70 and 100 Iranian underground launch facilities for ballistic missiles,” Husain said. “Many of these facilities have rail mounted ballistic missiles. We’ve seen video in the past of a rail infrastructure underground carrying multiple Iranian missiles that are almost like an automated magazine. A missile moves into position and then it can fire, then the next one moves into position and so on.” Some of these underground sites house bulldozers and other equipment that can clear debris at entrances that are struck by U.S. or Israeli missiles.
Husain also cited videos of Iranian missiles being launched from a fixed silo with a concealed exit. “It’s underground and suddenly the ground bursts open and this missile is launched,” he said. The U.S. and Israel would “need to launch extremely devastating repeat strikes with some of the largest bombs in the arsenal and maybe—maybe—then you can penetrate and that’s over 100 sites,” he added. “I haven’t really seen any devastating strikes on Iranian missile cities. It seems to me like a lot of that is being held in reserve. So, I haven’t seen anywhere near the evidence that would convince me that all of this is gone.”
Iran is now using long range drones that Husain, a specialist in artificial intelligence, said appear to utilize AI to guide their paths once they extend beyond the range of control and they employ antennas that are more challenging to jam. The Karrar drone also includes air-to-air infrared missiles, a technology that both Russia and Ukraine have used against the other’s drones.
“The drones are extremely precise. They’re able to pick off the particular installations inside the bases, the radar domes in particular. That has been something that they have hit at these bases all across the region. And when you do that, you knock out this multi-layered missile defense system,” said Elmer. “So the strategic outlook for Iran is the longer this battle goes on, the more it tilts in their favor because of the disruption that it causes in the Gulf countries even though the U.S. bases are the targets.”
The launch systems for Iran’s drones are highly mobile and easy to produce, making it much more difficult for the U.S. to target launch sites as it did in the 1991 Gulf War against Iraq’s Scud missile launchers. “There are no complex launchers that are necessary,” said Husain. “In the Iraq war there were these complex transporter erector launchers that you could take out and then Iraq didn’t have the ability to launch a Scud. It’s not like that with Iranian drones.”
If Trump decides he wants to end the war, which he has begun referring to as a “short term excursion,” there is no indication Iran would accept a temporary ceasefire similar to the “12-Day War” in June 2025. Iran’s senior leaders have said they do not trust the U.S. and point out that Trump has twice claimed to be negotiating with Tehran only to launch massive attacks. Iran’s strategic position, as articulated by its leadership, is that the war must end on terms that make clear the costs of future attacks on their country. “We are absolutely not seeking a ceasefire,” said Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, Speaker of Iran’s Parliament, on Monday. “We believe the aggressor must be struck in the mouth so it learns a lesson and never again thinks of attacking our beloved Iran.”
There is speculation that Trump has begun speaking of wrapping up the war because of the response of global financial markets and increased pressure from U.S. allies, who fear even greater economic and security consequences. Iranian leaders have been clear they believe Trump underestimated the damage Iran could inflict and overestimated the ability of the U.S. and Israel to swiftly impose a state of collapse on the Iranian state. “They thought that, in a matter of two or three days, they can go for a regime change, they can go for a rapid, clean victory, but they failed. So I believe that the option plan A was a failure, and now they are trying other plans, but all of them have failed as well,” Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said on Monday. “I don’t think they have any realistic endgame in their mind,” he added. “I think they are aimless.”
Jawa Ahmad, Drop Site News’s Middle East Research Fellow, contributed to this report.
“I got him before he got me,” an ebullient President Donald Trump remarked to a reporter when asked about his motives for authorizing the killing of Iran’s Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, on February 28, 2026.
With his off-the-cuff remark, Trump revealed that anxiety about his own assassination at the hands of Iranian agents influenced his decision to initiate a US-Israeli regime change war that has already resulted in American casualties, the bombings of schools and hospitals inside Iran, devastating Iranian retaliatory strikes on US military bases and embassies, and a spiraling global economic crisis.
Trump’s generalized fears of assassination were well-founded. He was nearly killed in Butler, Pennsylvania on July 13, 2024 by a 20-year-old engineering student named Thomas Crooks who managed to fire eight rounds at the former president from a rooftop, slicing his ear and missing his head by a hair’s breadth. Two months later, a drifter named Ryan Routh was arrested after hiding for hours in the shrubbery outside the former president’s Mar-a-Lago estate in West Palm Beach, Florida. Routh had been spotted after pointing an assault rifle toward a Secret Service agent as Trump played golf 400 yards away.
Officials have yet to produce any evidence that Iran played a role in either of these attempts on Trump’s life. Yet since those fateful events, Israel-aligned Trump advisors, Israeli intelligence, and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu himself have gone to extreme lengths in order to tie Tehran to the plots. More shocking still is the fact that the FBI has manufactured a series of assassination plots, successfully convincing Trump that Iran was hunting him on US soil with highly sophisticated teams of hit men.
The man accused of leading the most significant of these operations, Asif Merchant, is currently on trial in a Brooklyn, NY federal court. After the US granted him a visa despite his presence on a terror watchlist, Merchant was in the constant company of an FBI confidential informant who ultimately steered the contrived plot to its conclusion. He never stood a chance of realizing his plans, and did not appear serious about doing so.
Independent journalist Ken Silva puts it succinctly in his forthcoming investigative book, “The Trump Assassination Plots”: “A closer look at the Merchant case reveals that at the very least…it was a highly controlled FBI sting operation that never posed a threat to Trump. More nefariously, records and whistleblower disclosures indicate that Merchant may have been the patsy in a case totally fabricated by the undercover agents.”
Authorities arrested Merchant on July 12, 2024 – just one day before Crooks attempted to kill Trump in Butler. Hours after the failed Butler assassination, FBI agents interrogated Merchant about whether it was in fact Iran that had Crooks under its control.
At that point, Trump was still campaigning to be a “President of Peace. On the campaign stump, he warned that his opponent, Kamala Harris, “would get us into World War III guaranteed.” Trump vowed to resolve the war between Ukraine and Russia in one day, and distanced himself from pro-war Republicans who sought regime change in Iran.
Pro-war elements in Trump’s coterie exercised multiple points of leverage to reverse the president’s anti-interventionist instincts. Ultra-Zionist billionaires supplied vital and well-documented influence over Trump’s policies by keeping his campaign war chest flush. But Trump remained an erratic personality whose petty grievances kept his aides in a perpetual state of uncertainty.
It was only by exploiting Trump’s deepest psychological vulnerability – his fear of an assassin’s bullet – that Israel and its cutouts in his administration were able to secure their influence over the president, keeping him on the warpath against Iran.
The assassination escalation trap
On June 3, 2020, as the commander of Iran’s IRGC Quds Force, Qassem Soleimani, deboarded an airplane at Baghdad International Airport, on his way to peace talks with Saudi officials, a US drone killed him with a Hellfire missile. The strike had been ordered by Trump following a sustained campaign of military escalation against Iranian allies orchestrated by his National Security Council Director John Bolton and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.
As journalist Gareth Porter reported for The Grayzone, by the time Trump authorized Soleimani’s assassination, Netanyahu was planning unilateral strikes on Iran aimed at drawing the US into direct conflict. Trump issued orders to kill the general under sustained pressure by Pompeo and Bolton, two pro-Israel hardliners. Both former Trump officials have lobbied for the Israeli and Saudi-funded Mojahedin El-Khalk (MEK), a cult-like exiled militia that has carried out numerous assassinations of Iranian officials at the behest of Israel’s intelligence services.
By killing Soleimani, Trump set the US on a collision course for all-out war with Iran – just as Netanyahu had hoped. What’s more, the president invited the prospect of violent retaliation against himself and his national security advisors.
So long as Trump feared the specter of IRGC agents lurking behind every corner, it stood to reason that he was more likely to authorize a regime change war on Iran. And so the FBI went to work, concocting a series of plots that helped forge Trump’s belligerent attitude toward Tehran.
Brought to you by the FBI: Iran’s plot to kill John Bolton
The first major Iranian plot arrived in 2022, when the Department of Justice filed charges against an Iranian national, Shahram Poursafi, for supposedly hiring a hitman to kill Bolton. However, the hitman turned out to be an FBI informant, and the plot was largely contrived by the Bureau. Poursafi, for his part, could not be arrested because he lived in Iran.
As journalist Ken Silva reported, the FBI officer who oversaw the manufactured plot to kill Bolton, Steven D’Antuono, was the same official who ran the Detroit field office that relied on paid informants to concoct the 2020 plot by right-wing militia members to kidnap Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer. In a 2025 federal appeal court ruling, the judge acknowledged that defendants in that case “are correct that the government encouraged them to settle on a plan” to kidnap Whitmer. The FBI’s D’Antuono also oversaw the probe into the suspicious planting of pipe bombs at Republican and Democratic Party headquarters in Washington on January 6, 2021. In the course of his failed investigation, he misled Congress about having received “corrupted” evidence.
Though Bolton was never in danger from Iran, the FBI-contrived plot began to fuel paranoia among Trump administration veterans. Pompeo now believed that he too was being targeted by Iranian assassination teams. In his 2023 campaign memoir, “Never Give an Inch,” the former CIA director claimed Poursafi had also paid $1 million to a hitman to kill him.
However, Pompeo provided no additional details on the plot, which was never mentioned in DOJ documents charging Poursafi for attempting to kill Bolton. According to those affidavits, Poursafi sent just $100 to the FBI’s confidential human source before the DOJ concluded its investigation.
Asif Merchant, accused ringleader of an FBI-managed Iranian plot to assassinate Trump
Iran’s hapless hitman granted special visa, introduced to FBI informant
In April 2024, as Trump launched his comeback presidential campaign, an itinerant salesman named Asif Merchant arrived from Pakistan to George Bush Intercontinental Airport in Houston, Texas. He was quickly flagged as a “Qualified Person of Interest” who’d been placed on a Department of Homeland Security watchlist. Agents from an FBI Joint Terrorism Task Force (JTTF) team then discovered through a search of Merchant’s devices that he had visited Iran, where his wife and adopted son lived. Whether they’d received a tip from Israel, which furnishes reams of intelligence to the FBI on foreign Muslim visitors to the US, remains an open question.
According to JTTF documents obtained by pro-Trump reporter John Solomon, Merchant was “released without incident” and designated as “free to travel to desired destination.” In fact, the FBI had granted him a “Special Public Benefit Parole,” which, as Solomon explained, “would allow agents to try to flip Merchant as a cooperator or try to determine why he was coming to the United States and who he might be working with.”
The FBI whistleblower who provided Solomon with the documents on Merchant’s airport interview compared the “Special Public Benefit Parole” to the scandalous “Fast and Furious” program, in which President Barack Obama’s Department of Justice facilitated the delivery of automatic weapons from US gun dealers to Mexican cartels in order to supposedly surveil the gangs’ criminal activities.
Almost as soon as Merchant entered the US, the FBI introduced him to a confidential informant posing as a potential business partner and operating under the alias, Nadeem Ali. The informant had served as translator for the US military during its occupation of Afghanistan.
Though Merchant did not propose any crimes, the FBI wiretapped a meeting between him and the informant, Ali, in a hotel room on June 3, 2024. There, Merchant was taped making a supposed “finger gun” motion while mentioning an unspecified “opportunity.” This grainy minute-long hidden camera recording is presented as the linchpin of the DOJ’s indictment of Merchant.
According to the FBI, Merchant had outlined a highly complex plot which required the hiring of two hitmen, “twenty five people who could perform a protest after the distraction occurred, and a woman to do ‘reconnaissance.”
For the elaborate flash mob-style assassination extravaganza, Merchant was asked by the informant to fork over a mere $5000. The Pakistani visitor had no means of scrounging up the fee, however, raising further questions about the seriousness of the plot. “I did not think I was going to be successful,” Merchant would later state in court.
Virtually penniless, Merchant was forced to gather the cash from an anonymous “associate,” according to the DOJ indictment. Next, the FBI informant took him on a winding journey from Boston to New York City, where he allegedly handed the money to two other FBI informants posing as hit men. The DOJ claims Merchant made plans to fly to Pakistan on June 12, but was arrested in his residence that day.
Merchant interrogated about Butler, kept incommunicado
The following day, 20-year-old Thomas Crooks arrived at a fairground in Butler, Pennsylvania where former president Trump was scheduled to speak. He flew a drone in the air for 15 minutes, surveying the area as he finalized plans to assassinate the candidate. In an odd coincidence, the Secret Service’s anti-drone system was offline all morning and into the afternoon — until roughly 15 minutes after Crooks flew his drone. When Trump took the stage, Crooks climbed atop a slanted rooftop 130 yards away and fired eight shots at the president, missing his head by an inch, until a local police officer fired back. He was killed by a Secret Service sniper who had inexplicably hesitated to fire for a full 15 seconds.
Thirty hours later, FBI agents flew to Houston to interrogate Merchant in his jail cell about a possible Iranian connection to the assassination attempt in Butler. An FBI source told the Washington Post the Bureau “took the extraordinary step of interviewing him without his lawyer to determine whether he knew Crooks.”
The grilling continued even after Merchant was transferred to the maximum security Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn – the same prison where Luigi Mangione, the accused killer of United Healthcare’s CEO, is currently being held. There, he was held under harsh conditions in solitary confinement, unable to interact with anyone but the guards who brought him food and his lawyers because, as then-Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco argued, he might use code words to initiate further assassination plots. “It appeared they thought I was some kind of super spy,” Merchant later reflected.
Not only was Merchant prevented from calling his family in Pakistan, he was blocked from reviewing recordings of conversations he held with undercover FBI informants, as the DOJ had marked them “Sensitive.” In March 2025, his lawyer protested that US Marshals repeatedly refused to allow him to meet with this counsel and review discovery at the courthouse. This, too, was justified on the basis of specious national security grounds.
However, as the journalist Ken Silva discovered, an internal memo by the Bureau Of Prisons Director Colette Peters confirmed that Merchant had no contact with any Iranian intelligence assets in the US. “Law enforcement has not identified any IRGC associates of Merchant operating in the United States who could continue to orchestrate violent acts,” Peters wrote.
Indeed, the only Iranian assassins with whom Merchant appeared to have interacted inside the US were undercover informants working for the FBI.
Merchant “had never been close to realizing” Trump assassination
During his trial this March 4, Merchant’s lawyer, Avraham Moskowitz, took the highly unusual step of allowing his client to take the stand. Merchant proceeded to present a version of events that contrasted sharply with the account he provided in his initial FBI proffer. For example, the defendant claimed he had been coerced into the plot by an IRGC agent, and went forward with a plan “to maybe have someone murdered” only because he feared for his wife and adopted son back in Iran.
After his arrest by the FBI, Merchant said he engaged in discussions with federal authorities about becoming an informant himself, but they ultimately broke down for unknown reasons.
“I was not wanting to do this so willingly,” he insisted in Urdu, adding, “I did not think I was going to be successful.”
In its coverage of the trial, the New York Times concluded Merchant “had never been close to realizing the vision of his Iranian handler.”
But back in 2024, as word spread of Merchant’s arrest, Israel-adjacent figures in Trump’s inner circle exploited the case to exacerbate the candidate’s anxiety about the Ayatollah’s wrath.
Israel-aligned forces blur Butler with Iran
Just three days after Trump’s campaign was nearly ended by a lone American assassin’s bullet in Butler, officials burrowed within the architecture of the national security state took measures to shift the focus to Iran.
“The Biden administration obtained intelligence in recent weeks about an Iranian assassination plot against former President Donald Trump, and the information led the Secret Service to ramp up security around the former president, according to three U.S. officials with knowledge of the matter,” reported NBC’s Ken Dilanian on July 16, 2024. (Dilanian had been fired from his previous gig at the LA Times after he was exposed for allowing the CIA to review his reports before publication).
The unnamed officials were clearly referring to the plot which the FBI manufactured for Merchant. The revelation not only seemed like a cynical attempt to obscure the reality of the near-assassination in Butler, which was conducted by a friendless American man who had never left the country. It also suggested the FBI had been so focused on concocting Iranian plots on American soil that it ignored the years-long trail of YouTube comments left by the would-be assassin bluntly declaring his intention to kill US politicians and police officers, and his hopes to instigate a civil war.
Though FBI leadership misled the public about the nature of the Butler plot, falsely claiming, for instance, that Crooks was not communicating with others online, they were never able to connect it to Iran. This clearly frustrated Rep. Mike Waltz, a close Trump ally seated on the House committee to investigate the Butler plot.
“These plots from Iran are ongoing. And when Biden says nothing, Harris says nothing, the DOJ tries to bury it, what message does Iran get? They get that we can keep trying to take Trump out and have no consequences,” Waltz fulminated on Fox News in August 2024.
Referencing the FBI-manufactured Merchant operation, Waltz thundered, “You have multiple assassination plots from the Iranians. This Pakistani national was recruiting females as spotters. He had recruited hit men and had made a down payment. He was even recruiting protesters as a distraction.”
By this point, Waltz was on his way to a short stint as Trump’s National Security Council Director, where he would help direct a failed war on Iran’s allies among the Ansurallah movement in Yemen. (Waltz was demoted to US ambassador to the UN after he accidentally included the Atlantic Magazine editor-in-chief and former Israeli prison guard Jeffrey Goldberg in a private administration Signal chat where classified information about US attack plans on Yemen was shared).
Throughout his career, the Israel lobby and Netanyahu’s allies had quietly propelled his rise. As AIPAC CEO Elliot Brandt remarked in private comments exclusively revealed by The Grayzone, Waltz was one of Israel’s “lifelines” inside the Trump administration, as he had been groomed by the Israel lobby since he first ran for Congress.
For Waltz and other Israel-aligned figures close to Trump, connecting the Butler incident to Iran appeared to offer a direct path to conflict with Iran. As an unnamed high-level US official told the Washington Post, if Tehran had been found responsible for Crooks’ attempt to kill Trump, “it would mean war.”
Certain foreign actors were also working to steer the US toward blaming Iran for Butler. In the late summer of 2024, the Justice Department received an urgent alert from abroad which connected Crooks directly to IRGC plots to kill Trump. According to the Washington Post, the tip arrived through a “confidential human source overseas” – almost certainly Israeli intelligence.
After a thorough investigation, DOJ officials decided the tip was not credible. “Nothing credibly connected him to Iranian plots,” one official told the Post.
But in the wake of the shooting in Butler, the constant chatter about looming Iranian threats had indelibly altered Trump’s outlook. Reporters who followed Trump on the campaign trail described a palpable sense of panic from the candidate and his inner circle about IRGC-directed hitmen stalking them at every stop.
“Ghost flights” for Trump triggered by imaginary Iran missile threats
With the Trump campaign already consumed with anxiety, the FBI delivered an alert that sent them spiraling into the depths of paranoia.
According to the Bureau, Iran had placed operatives inside the country with access to surface-to-air missiles. This dubious warning prompted Trump’s already militarized security team to take an extraordinary step. Fearing that Iran would down the famous “Trump Force One” airliner at any moment, Trump was placed on a “ghost flight” owned by his golf buddy, real estate tycoon Steve Witkoff, while the rest of his campaign traveled on the main jet.
Joining Trump on the secret decoy plane was his campaign manager, Suzie Wiles, who would go on to become White House chief of staff, controlling access and the flow of information to the president. Unbeknownst to the public, Wiles had served as a paid advisor to Israel’s Netanyahu during his 2020 re-election campaign, consolidating her role as a key point of contact between Tel Aviv and Trump.
Journalist Ken Silva has revealed that the FBI alert which prompted Trump’s use of a “ghost plane” was based on a cynical deception. As Silva explains in his forthcoming book on the assassination plots surrounding Trump, federal investigators had discovered that Routh, the would-be assassin at Mar-a Lago, had attempted to purchase a rocket launcher, and may have been in contact with Iranian nationals during his time in Ukraine. The Bureau likely massaged that information into the bogus report it provided the Trump campaign, conjuring up imaginary Manpad-toting IRGC operatives to exacerbate the candidate’s fears.
Once he entered the Oval Office, Trump was encircled by Israel-aligned advisors and staunchly committed to the belief that Iran had attempted to eliminate him on the campaign trail. As commander-in-chief of the US military, he was hellbent on revenge.
Netanyahu nudges Trump with Butler plot
On June 15, 2025, days after launching an unprovoked war on Iran, Netanyahu took to Fox News to manipulate Trump into joining the assault. The Israeli leader appeared to know exactly which psychological vulnerabilities to exploit.
“These people who chant death to America, tried to assassinate President Trump twice,” Netanyahu declared, asserting without a shred of evidence that Iran was behind both the Butler assassination attempt and the one at Mar a-Lago.
“Do you have intel that the assassination attempts on President Trump were directly from Iran?” a visibly startled Fox News host Bret Baier asked.
“Through proxies, yes. Through their intel, yes. They want to kill him,” stated Netanyahu with a cocksure gaze.
One week later, Trump authorized a series of US strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities in support of Israel’s military assault. Though Trump arranged a ceasefire soon after the attack, Israel’s influence over his administration – and over his psyche – guaranteed that another, much more violent round of conflict was just over the horizon.
In a graphic promoted by the White House’s official Twitter/X account on July 21, 2025, Trump implied that he had begun to turn the tables on his would-be Iranian assassins: “I was the hunted, and now I’m the hunter,” he declared.
Israel claims to eliminate would-be Trump assassin in Iran
By March 2026, Trump was back to war with Iran. Within four days, the US-Israeli joint assault had predictably expanded into an open-ended regional war following the failure of an opening series of decapitation strikes to induce regime change.
On the afternoon of March 4, the glowering US “Secretary of War” and former Fox News personality Pete Hegseth appeared before a lectern at the Pentagon and vowed to unleash “death and destruction from the sky all day long” over the people of Iran.
As his cartoonishly violent screed built to a crescendo, Hegseth issued a dramatic announcement: “The leader of the unit who attempted to assassinate President Trump has been hunted down and killed. Iran tried to kill President Trump, and President Trump got the last laugh.”
Though Hegseth did not name the figure, an Israeli journalist who functions as one of Netanyahu’s favorite stenographers, Amit Segal, revealed that Israel had assassinated an IRGC official named Rahman Mokadam who was supposedly responsible for directing a plot to kill Trump. But once again, the details of the plot revealed layers of FBI chicanery, confidential informants masked as “co-conspirators,” and a compromised witness.
In fact, the supposed assassination plan which Mokadam was accused of directing did not initially focus on Trump. Instead, the target was said to be Masih Alinejad, an Iranian expat and regime change activist on the US government payroll. The only evidence that Trump was a possible target at all came from the claims of a convicted drug dealer and con man named Farhad Shakeri, who had also been a defendant. Shakeri spoke to the FBI by telephone from Iran, providing dubious information in exchange for a reduced prison sentence for an unnamed associate in the US.
It was during these remote interviews that Shakeri seemingly claimed he had an IRGC handler who had directed him to kill Trump. But according to the FBI’s criminal complaint against him, that handler’s name was “Majid Soleimani,” not Mokadam.
The FBI agent who interviewed Shakeri clearly recognized his penchant for fabulism, writing that “certain of Shakeri’s statements appear to be true and others appear to be false.” Shakeri had indeed lied throughout his interviews, yet the agent still concluded that “it appears” he was planning to kill Trump. He did not explain why he considered the confession credible, and the allegation about a plot to kill Trump was notably absent from the grand jury indictment filed a month later.
After killing Mokadam on March 4, the Israelis went straight to the president to boast of their supposed achievement – and reignite his anxiety about Iranian assassins.
As Amit Segal noted, “Trump was informed of this in the past few hours by Israel.” In doing so, the Israelis reinforced Trump’s sense that he had been hunted by Iran – and that by fighting their war, he was saving his own skin.
As it had in the past, the White House posted a video on its official Twitter/X account proclaiming Trump’s triumph over Iranian assassins: “I WAS THE HUNTED, AND NOW I’M THE HUNTER.”
Thomas Crooks may have narrowly missed Trump’s cranium in Butler, Pennsylvania, but Israel had found a way into the president’s head.
Warwick Powell is an Adjunct Professor at Queensland University of Professor working at the intersection of China, digital technologies, supply chains, financial flows and global political economy & governance.
Preface: as we near the fourth anniversary of the formal initiation of Russia’s Special Military Operation in Ukraine, I reflect on the state of the war, its trajectory and likely cadence through a quantitative lens. It’s something I have been doing on-and-off for a few years now, which led me to conclude a while ago that the collective west has already experienced a debilitating strategic defeat, even as the fighting continued. Wars are system-on-system propositions, and the west’s fragilities in terms of repair, replenishment and replacement capabilities has been fully exposed. My core evaluation remains, and this essay explains some of the reasoning for this focusing on the raw ledger of the situation as it presents itself in Ukraine. I won’t be the least surprised to see the war transition to what some call a ‘dirty war’ with increased frequency of assassinations, sabotage and general terror replacing formal battlefield engagement. Meanwhile, representatives of the protagonists arrive in Geneva to continue talks.
Introduction
Attritional warfare, where victory emerges not from decisive manoeuvres but from the sustained erosion of an opponent’s capacity to fight, lends itself to mathematical modelling. In the Russian-Ukrainian War, now entering its fifth year as of February 2026, the dynamics have shifted decisively toward this mode since mid-2022. The conflict’s outcome hinges on the relative rates at which each side can replenish losses in personnel, equipment, and munitions compared to the damage inflicted by the adversary.
This essay synthesises key analytical findings from open-source data, outlines the methodology used to derive estimates of collapse timelines, and presents the raw data ranges underpinning these projections. The goal is not to forecast an exact endpoint – warfare defies such precision – but to demonstrate how known parameters allow us to sketch reasonable trajectories and cadences. By aggregating disparate estimates into a coherent framework, we can discern patterns: gradual depletion accelerating into non-linear collapse, with a plausible window of 6-9 months from now before Ukraine’s defensive sustainability falters irretrievably.
This approach draws on historical precedents, such as the World War I models of Frederick Lanchester, adapted to modern data. It reveals a ledger tilted against Ukraine, driven by Russia’s superior replenishment and fire dominance, exacerbated by recent Western aid constraints. Yet, the analysis underscores some degree of uncertainty: data biases, doctrinal adaptations and external variables like aid surges could alter the cadence. What follows is a dispassionate examination, grounded in numbers, to illustrate how such estimations emerge.
Key Analytical Findings
The core insight from quantifying the war’s attritional phase is that Ukraine’s effective combat power – a composite of manpower, machinery and munitions – is depleting at a net rate that outpaces its replenishment, while Russia’s holds steady or grows marginally. This imbalance, compounded by recent reductions in Western support, points to a tipping point where Ukrainian force density thins below viability, triggering rapid territorial losses and operational collapse.
Based on integrated projections from November 2025 to February 2026 data, the estimated window for this tipping point is 3-6 months from now (May-August 2026), followed by a 3-4 month cascade to functional exhaustion. Overall, this yields a 6-9 month horizon to “floodgates opening,” where advances accelerate from the current 0.3-1 km/day to 5-10 km/day, as seen in historical breakthroughs like the 2022 Kherson retreat. The cadence is non-linear: initial depletion appears stalemated, with monthly losses of 10,000-20,000 lethal units (a term normalising soldiers at 1 unit, tanks at 10, etc.), but once below 73% of peak strength (around 400,000 units), losses surge 2-3 times due to exposed flanks and reduced fire support.
Trajectories vary by data optimism / pessimism. Using Western-leaning estimates (lower Ukrainian losses, higher aid inflows), the threshold arrives in July 2026, with collapse by October. Russian-sourced figures (higher inflicted damage) accelerate this to April-May, with endpoint by August. Recent developments sharpen the grim end: US missile stockpiles, depleted to 25% of Pentagon requirements, have prompted prioritisation of domestic needs under the Trump administration, reducing deliveries. Germany’s February 2026 announcement of exhausted stockpiles further cuts munitions inflows by 20-30%, equivalent to an additional 100-200 daily unit losses for Ukraine.
These findings highlight sustainability as the decisive factor. Russia’s net daily gain of 700-900 units sustains its force at 680,000-700,000, enabling methodical pressure without overextension. Russia also has a reserve army of similar scale not yet mobilised. Ukraine, starting February at 450,000-500,000 units (down from 550,000 in November), nets -100 to -900 units/day, a trajectory that compounds subtly until critical. Aid like the Prioritised Ukraine Requirements List (PURL, ~$15 billion in 2026 from Europe) might add 50-100 units/day temporarily, extending the window by 1-2 months, but production lags (e.g., 60 Patriot missiles/month globally) cannot offset Russia’s 10:1 fire advantage.
The broader implication: the war’s cadence follows a predictable arc in attritional models: slow grind to threshold followed by exponential decay. This allows estimating not just endpoints but inflection points, such as when air defence failures (current stocks cover dozens of salvos against 450 monthly threats) amplify Russian strikes by 10-20%. Absent major escalations, like full NATO intervention, the math suggests Ukraine crosses the ledger’s wrong side by late 2026, with territorial concessions becoming inevitable to preserve residual forces.
This will open the pathway for Russia to successfully push towards, and claim Odessa and perhaps even being in a position to hasten a change of regime in Kiev. My own estimation is that the war will only come to a formal end when these two conditions are met, which will enable formal negotiations to proceed to not just surrender terms but more significantly from Russia’s point of view, a number of critical treaties that go to regional security architecture re-engineering. (See my essay from this time last year, explaining these.)
Methodology and Caveats
The methodology employs a modified Lanchester model, a framework from early 20th-century operations research, to simulate combat dynamics. At its heart, it tracks two variables: each side’s effective force level over time, influenced by replenishment rates and the opponent’s inflicted losses. Forces are aggregated into “lethal units” for comparability – personnel count as 1 unit each, armoured vehicles as 10 (reflecting firepower), and munitions as 0.01 per shell (approximating strike equivalence). This normalisation allows modelling the war as a system of differential equations, where Ukraine’s force U(t) changes as: net replenishment minus losses proportional to Russia’s force R(t), and vice versa.
For transparency, the base model assumes linear attrition until a threshold, then introduces non-linearity. Replenishment (r) includes recruitment, repairs and aid inflows minus decay (e.g., equipment wear). Effectiveness coefficients (α for Ukraine’s impact on Russia, β vice versa) embed doctrinal factors: Russia’s mass artillery yields higher β (0.0012-0.0025 losses per Russian unit-day), while Ukraine’s precision strikes give α around 0.0018-0.0020. Initial conditions are set from theater estimates (U_0 ≈ 550,000 in November 2025, adjusted downward by observed attrition).
Numerical integration – discretising time in daily steps – projects forward: U_{t+1} = U_t + r_U – β R_t, iterated until U hits θ U_0 (θ ≈ 0.73, based on historical density for coherent defence). Post-threshold, a multiplier γ (2.5) amplifies losses, simulating breakthroughs. This yields time to tipping (t*) and full collapse (to 50% force, proxy for operational failure).
Data inputs draw from diverse sources: Western (ISW, CSIS, Oryx) for optimistic ranges, Russian (MoD briefings, mil-blogs) for pessimistic, balanced per stakeholder representation. Recent updates incorporate February 2026 reports on US/German aid constraints, adjusting r_U downward.
Caveats abound, underscoring that this is estimation, not prediction. Data biases: Western sources may underreport Ukrainian losses (500-700/day) to sustain support, while Russian claims (1,200-1,800) inflate for propaganda; truth likely middles. Unmodelled variables include morale (potentially accelerating collapse), weather (winter slows cadences), or black swans like drone surges or some successful third party mediation. Aid is volatile: PURL could ramp, adding months; full cutoff subtracts them. The model assumes constant parameters, but adaptations (e.g., Ukrainian drones flipping local α) could localise deviations. Threshold θ is empirical, drawn from past phases (e.g., Pokrovsk encirclements at ~70% density), but varies by terrain. Finally, aggregation into lethal units simplifies: a tank’s value isn’t fixed at 10, and munitions efficacy depends on targeting.
These limitations mean trajectories are probabilistic ranges, not fixed paths. The value lies in sensitivity: tweaking r_U by +100 units/day (e.g., via Japanese Patriot backfill) delays t* by 30-60 days, showing how data parameters inform cadence adjustments. This framework thus enables reasoned estimation, revealing the war’s underlying arithmetic without claiming omniscience.
Raw Data Ranges
The projections rest on raw data compiled from open sources as of February 2026. Ranges reflect divergences: Western estimates (e.g., Ukrainian General Staff, CSIS, Kiel Institute) tend lower on losses/higher on aid; Russian (MoD, Rybar mil-blogs) higher on inflicted damage. Aggregates focus on theatre (frontline) capacities; global stocks are larger but delivery-constrained.
Recruitment: Ukraine 5,000-10,000/month (net ~0 due to losses); Russia 25,000-30,000/month (net +700-900/day).
Machinery (Operational Tanks/AFV/Artillery):
Ukraine: 2,000-2,500 (losses ~10,000 cumulative; aid ~2,000 delivered). Refurbishment: 50-100/month (net negative from attrition).
Russia: 7,000-8,500 (losses ~30,000-35,000 cumulative, but ~1,000/month refurbished from stocks).
Daily equipment losses: Ukraine 20-50 (Western lower); Russia 30-60.
Munitions (Artillery Shells, Missiles):
Ukraine: Stock 500,000-1,000,000 (low; daily use 2,000-3,000). Production/Delivery: 20,000-40,000/month (US/EU ramp to 100,000 delayed; PURL adds ~50,000/year but queued). Air defence: Patriot stocks ~200-300 interceptors (covers 20-30 salvos vs. 450 threats/month); production diversion via PURL delays replenishment.
Russia: Stock 4M-6M; production 4M-5M/year (~12,000-15,000/day). Fire ratio: 5:1-10:1 advantage.
Recent constraints: US inventories at 25% (1,000-1,500 Patriots total; production 740/year, 75% to Ukraine via Europe). Germany: €20B+ exhausted, no more direct transfers; contingent ~35 PAC-3 (~1 week’s defence).
Net Replenishment and Effectiveness:
Ukraine r_U: -100 to +100 units/day (pre-February; now -100 to 0 from aid cuts). β (Russian effectiveness): 0.0012-0.0025 (up 10% from air gaps).
Russia r_R: +700-900/day. α (Ukrainian effectiveness): 0.0018-0.0020.
Threshold: ~400,000 units (73% of Nov 2025 peak). Post-threshold multiplier: 2-3x losses.
These ranges, when integrated, produce the 6-9 month window: base depletion 900-1,500/day to threshold in 50-170 days, then 50-90 days to halving. Cadences emerge from sensitivities – e.g., +50 units/day from PURL extends by 30 days – showing how parameters bound trajectories without dictating them.
Conclusion
This quantitative lens illuminates the Russia-Ukrainian War’s attritional logic: a slow, compounding imbalance leading to abrupt shifts. Key findings sketch a 6-9 month collapse window; the methodology provides the tools for such estimates, and raw data ranges highlight the evidential foundation. By focusing on flows over events, we gain insight into cadences – gradual until non-linear – enabling informed trajectories amid uncertainty. The math doesn’t predict; it frames possibilities, reminding us that wars end when ledgers demand it.
