Tag: Strait of Hormuz

Aerial view of oil tankers gridlocked in the Strait of Hormuz at dusk, black smoke rising from a distant refinery against an orange sky.

Persian Stalemate

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Thirty days in, Operation Epic Fury has achieved something genuinely historic: it has made the world less safe, energy more expensive, American alliances more threadbare, Iran more unified, and the US military more fractured — all simultaneously. Pete Hegseth is praying for Armageddon. His troops are filing conscientious objector applications. And in the Strait of Hormuz, the tankers stay put. Urban Wronski on the stalemate that no ground invasion can break and no prayer can win.

A darkly lit war room with an empty gold chair at its centre, a looping explosion reel playing on screen, and an amphibious assault ship visible through the window.

Operation Epic Flurry

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Trump’s April 6 deadline is not diplomacy. It is a ten-day window. The Marines are not sailing toward the Persian Gulf for a holiday.
TAGS: Operation Epic Fury, Iran war, Trump, Pete Hegseth, Rupert Murdoch, Strait of Hormuz, ground invasion, Kharg Island, US Marines, 82nd Airborne, Michael Wolff, Netanyahu, doublespeak, Australian complicity

Russian nesting dolls representing layers of the US-Iran war: money, military force, great power rivalry, and Australia

The Stench of Desperation: Trump’s War on Iran and the Babushka of Greed, Ego, and Catastrophe

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To make sense of Trump’s war on Iran, imagine a Russian
babushka doll. The outer layer is the story the Pentagon feeds
us. Inside it: petrodollar entanglements, Kharg Island
war-gaming, the strategic patience of Moscow and Beijing,
Netanyahu’s fantasy of the purifying blow. At the very centre,
smaller than it should be, is Australia. Urban Wronski opens
all six layers and does not like what he finds.

US amphibious assault ship at sea with Kharg Island visible on the horizon, Persian Gulf

Iwo Jima, They Said: Marines Move on Iran as Tel Aviv Burns and the Alliance Dissolves

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Lindsey Graham is evoking Iwo Jima. Iran is mining Kharg Island’s shoreline. Seven thousand five hundred US Marines are days away from the Persian Gulf. The war is 26 days old, has cost $18 billion, and the White House’s official position is that they need about a month to “get Iran by the balls.” Australia is calling for de-escalation. The crease in the trousers remains arrow-straight.

Satirical editorial cartoon showing a dancing monkey in a gold tie on a Middle East map, flanked by two organ grinder figures – one in a Western suit, one in Gulf robes holding a bone-saw. A burning oil tanker sits on dark water behind them. A dragon watches from above. A small applauding figure stands in the corner. Illustration in the style of George Grosz and Gerald Scarfe.

Don’t blame the organ-grinder; the monkey had a choice.

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Trump didn’t stumble into the Iran disaster alone. Every catastrophe has its infrastructure – the courtiers, the flatterers, the transactionalists, the true believers, and the merely opportunistic who supplied the scaffolding. Bibi and MBS worked the organ grinders’ handles with professional dedication. But the monkey chose to dance. And in the corner, a daggy bloke from Cronulla was clapping.

An evangelical church interior with a Middle East map projected above the pulpit, flanked by American and Israeli flags.

The Fog of Holy War: How America and Israel Blundered Into a Conflict They Cannot Win, Cannot Define, and Cannot End

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There is an old military principle, so obvious it barely needs stating: before you start a war, know what winning looks like. Know how it ends. Have a plan for the morning after. The United States and Israel, in launching Operation Epic Fury against Iran … Continue reading The Fog of Holy War: How America and Israel Blundered Into a Conflict They Cannot Win, Cannot Define, and Cannot End

Silhouetted figures seated at a circular table in a bare, harshly lit room, backs turned to a door standing slightly ajar, light bleeding through the crack.

No Exit

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Jean-Paul Sartre wrote a play about three people locked in a room with an unlocked door nobody would walk through. He called it No Exit. He was writing about Operation Epic Fury seventy years before it happened. A forensic anatomy of a war built from mutual imprisonment, strategic miscalculation, and the fatal habit of assuming the other side thinks like us.

Dark editorial illustration of shadowy figures in ornate portrait frames on a gallery wall, a burning city visible through a window behind them, suggesting the architects and beneficiaries of a catastrophic war.

Netanyahu, MBS, Putin and the Useful Idiot 

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Russia feeds Tehran American targeting intelligence. Netanyahu needs the war to continue. MBS counts his oil revenues. One hundred and seventy-five children were at school in Minab when the missile struck. The mathematics of this catastrophe have been visible from the start. That nobody in Washington appears to have done the sums is the most damning fact of all.

Dark editorial illustration of a suited figure shouting into a microphone at a podium, facing a vast labyrinth of ruins under a bruised purple sky with a distant burning city on the horizon.

Trump, The Dealmaker’s Fatal Error

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Trump demands unconditional surrender from a nation of 90 million. Iran elects a hardline new Supreme Leader and rules out any ceasefire. The MAGA
coalition fractures. What began as targeted strikes has become a war without an exit, a plan, or a president capable of admitting either.