'March, 9: The Digital Age"
"Everything’s connected. Nothing’s working. Yesterday we got to know that a new Supreme Leader was named. Today, we know who: Mojtaba Khamenei. The son of. Fifty-six years old. Never held elected office. Never given a public speech. They bombed the father. They bombed the council while it was mid-vote. So this time: Zoom. Adapt or die – sometimes literally.
His family tree got pruned on day 1. Father, mother, wife, son, sister, brother-in-law… The people picking Iran’s next leader looked at the candidates, looked at the crater where the last one lived, and chose the man with the most personal reason on earth to never stop fighting. THAT is a statement! The IRGC pledged allegiance within hours. Putin congratulated him before the news was twelve hours old. “Reliable partner”.
Russia’s ambassador to the UK had already dropped any pretense: “We are not neutral. We are supportive to Iran”. Not “we urge restraint”. We support Iran. On the record. In London.
Iran’s parliament speaker went on state TV the same evening. “We are neither Venezuela nor Syria. Don’t confuse us with your previous projects”.
A hereditary succession in the one country whose entire identity was built on rejecting hereditary succession. The IRGC got its preferred candidate. The hardliners got their martyr’s son. And Trump got a negotiating partner whose entire family he personally ordered killed. Good luck with that phone call.
Footage surfaced yesterday of the Minab school strike. I want to be precise about what it shows, because precision matters when 168 children are dead and the President of the United States is lying about it on camera.
A cruise missile. Terminal diving mode. Tracked by a civilian as it adjusts its trajectory downward, finds the building it was given coordinates for, and hits it. Bellingcat geolocated the impact. Identified the weapon as a Tomahawk. Diving mode is not a malfunction. It is the final phase of terminal guidance, when the onboard seeker confirms it has acquired the designated target and commits to the strike. The missile did exactly what it was programmed to do. Forty minutes later, a second impact. Same site. When the parents and first responders were pulling the seven-year-olds out of the rubble. Double tap.
NBC confirmed in a classified congressional briefing that the school was on the Pentagon strike map. Trump, asked about it: “Based on what I’ve seen, that was done by Iran”. Hegseth: “We’re still investigating”. Strike package coordinates are logged in real time. Platform, munition, authorising officer, time on target. Support ticket status: unassigned. Priority: critical. No ETA.
Yesterday, Israel bombed over thirty oil depots across Tehran without telling Washington the scale of what was coming. A senior US official – quoted directly by Axios – “We don’t think it was a good idea”. Graham – Graham! – told Israel to “please be cautious about what targets you select”. The man who told cameras he was going to “make a ton of money” from this war suddenly discovered restraint when the oil he planned to profit from started burning. The US Energy Secretary went on Fox News the same day and announced the US has “no plans to strike Iran’s energy sector”. The energy sector was already on fire. Israel lit it. No review. Straight to production.
The disagreement isn’t about morality. Nobody in this coalition has lost any sleep over dead Iranians. It’s about the oil price. Israel wants to break Iran’s economy. The US wants Iran’s crude to keep flowing so Brent doesn’t hit $200. Both goals are incompatible. A Zoom call might have helped.
Meanwhile Bandar Abbas was struck again. Iranian vessels burning in port. The US Energy Secretary – the same one who just said “no plans to strike Iran’s energy sector” – told cameras that “China is about to lose its second of three gas station suppliers”. That’s not a war aim against Iran. That’s an economic strike on Beijing, laundered through Tehran’s port infrastructure.
A Patriot interceptor malfunctioned over Bahrain and crashed into a residential neighbourhood in Sitra. Multi-angle video. At least ten civilians injured by the missile that was supposed to save them. In the same country where the Shia majority was cheering Iranian strikes on day four, the American air defence is now landing on Bahraini rooftops. Then this morning three drones hit BAPCO again. Bahrain’s sole refinery, already struck on day six, now fully engulfed. Force majeure declared. 267,000 barrels a day. Ninety years of continuous operation, ended by something that costs less than a mid-range sedan.
Missiles kept arriving in Israel. Cluster submunitions scattered across Tel Aviv – Bat Yam hit, Bnei Brak residents sheltering in train stations, Rishon LeZion lost power from a direct impact. Multiple ballistic launches tracked every one to three hours. Warning times on some compressed to four minutes. Should be fifteen. The sensor holes aren’t getting smaller.
Qadr missiles are now carrying ten to twenty warheads per unit. One launch, twenty intercept problems. The cost-per-engagement maths that were already unsustainable just got multiplied by an order of magnitude. The blackout around all of this is enormous. When there’s no video, there’s no damage…
The IRGC struck an electronic warfare installation in Shandrawi, northern Iraq, using long-range drones with FPV guidance. That’s a new capability – precision at distance, hitting intelligence infrastructure rather than just bases.
Israel destroyed the ground control for Iran’s Khayyam satellite, a Russian-built platform providing one-metre resolution imagery from orbit. But a Chinese AI startup called MizarVision is already publishing labelled, geolocated satellite imagery of every asset in the theatre. War as a SaaS product. Near-real-time. Open source. All your base are belong to China. Hezbollah targeted the SES satellite ground station near Beit Shemesh. This was likely a symmetric response to the above.
After Ali Al-Salem was destroyed, the US moved its command-and-control operations into Kuwait’s Social Insurance building. A civilian structure. China shared the location. Iran, ever the innovator, offers same-day drone delivery. Jeff Bezos is taking notes.
Fifteen IDF helicopters flew into the Bekaa Valley from Syrian airspace. Second attempt at the same objective – reportedly to “recover the remains of Ron Arad, a pilot shot down in 1986”. The first insertion sent four helicopters. This time fifteen, and Hezbollah shot one down near Nabi Chit.
A Hermes 450 drone was also shot down over southern Lebanon.
Israel flattened the Russian Cultural Center in Nabatieh. No1 reads books anymore anyway.
Another Iranian ballistic missile was intercepted by NATO air defenses over the eastern Mediterranean. Debris fell in Gaziantep – second time in four days.
Turkey put six F-16s on Northern Cyprus to “bolster the Cypriot defense against Iran”
Explosions at Akrotiri on Cyprus. The US is evacuating consulate staff from Adana in southeastern Turkey. The Mediterranean front that didn’t exist ten days ago now has its own logistics chain.
Iran’s Foreign Ministry: “Iran did NOT strike Azerbaijan, Cyprus, or Turkey. We have always warned about false flag operations”. I’ve been tracking this since the Cyprus drone on day two. I repeat: cui bono?
MenchOsint tracked a seventh soldier’s body returned to Dover on a C-17 from King Feisal Air Base, Jordan. The NYPD announced the death. Not CENTCOM. Somewhere in Erbil, the IRGC claims eleven more soldiers are dead and CENTCOM hasn’t said a word.
Witkoff and Kushner cancelled their scheduled trip to Israel. Meeting with Netanyahu, no explanation. Probably the conference room was double-booked.
Leavitt told reporters that conscription is “on the table”. Her words: “The president wisely keeps his options on the table”. Conscientious objector groups say the hold music is patriotic.
Iran’s Prosecutor General announced the confiscation of assets belonging to diaspora citizens who publicly supported the strikes. The exiles who cheered from the safety of Maryland while their former neighbours burned. Posting their Ws while the capital was flattened. They got the L.
The markets finally stopped pretending. WTI crude opened Sunday at $99, gapping up from Friday’s $89. Then it kept going all the way to $112. Up twenty per cent on the day. Brent blew through $113. Largest daily gain since records began in 1982. Then it crashed. $113 to $93 in hours.
The catalyst? G7 finance ministers were reportedly discussing a joint emergency release of 300~400 million barrels from strategic petroleum reserves. Japan preparing its first-ever SPR tap since 1978. Schumer demanding Trump release the SPR that Biden already drained. A single well-placed leak killed the move in crude oil. At the exact peak. I’ve seen this play before. This well-placed phone call to the FT nuked the rally before the margin cascade could take the entire financial system with it.
Same as in silver, nothing fundamentally changed. The Hormuz disruption has already reduced global inventories by an estimated 450 million barrels. The proposed SPR release doesn’t even cover the shortfall. The US Energy Secretary claims traffic is “resuming”. A Greek tanker turned on invis mode. Transponder off. The only ships sailing openly are Chinese-flagged and Iranian-flagged. Everyone else is at anchor, waiting for insurance that won’t come. Gulf states are cutting oil production. Production: online, export: offline. Storage: full. Kuwait already declared force majeure. The oil that can’t leave is piling up, and some of it is burning.
$5 a gallon at the pump? “A very small price to pay” according to Trump.
KOSPI crashed 8% and triggered a circuit breaker – the worst single-day decline in South Korean history. Last week it dropped 17%, bounced 15% the next day on leveraged retail buying, and now it’s cratering again. The Nikkei fell 6%, one of the bigger single-day drops on record. Taiwan down 5.1%. Australia 4%. $1.3 trillion in Asian equity value gone in a single session. German ten-year note futures at their lowest since 2011. Goldman’s top trader said that everything you knew about the market flipped this week.
South Korea imposed a fuel price cap. First time since 1997. Taiwan did the same. Price controls. In 2026.
Gold fell. Not because the crisis eased – because traders needed to sell it to meet margin calls on oil (link). COMEX silver at $86, Shanghai at $98.
Sumitomo Chemical Asia declared force majeure on deliveries – first major Asian manufacturer to break. Yesterday BlackRock and BlackStone. Goldman called it a 10-sigma week. The credit cockroaches are scattering.
Sometime before the war started, Trump’s son Eric invested in Powerus, a drone manufacturer. Trump signed an executive order to ban Chinese drone components, clearing the field for domestic suppliers. Then the war started. Now Powerus is vying for a Pentagon contract. War profiteering used to be at least opaque.
Von der Leyen on camera: “There should be no tears shed for the Iranian regime”. The emotional intelligence of a spreadsheet."
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