day one-hundred fifty-two (13. 689)

Jordan, whose Hashemite monarchy administers the religious site in Jerusalem and maintains the status quo treaty that stipulates only Muslims can prayer there, convenes an emergency meeting of ministers from the Islamic world due to the possible Israeli takeover of the al-Aqsa mosque and Dome of the Rock, which the Jews refer to as the Temple Mount. Tensions are heightened as illegal settlements continue to edge out the Palestinian population in the West Bank. With Qatar reportedly brokering indirect talks, US secretaries of state and the treasury hint that a deal over the Strait of Hormuz will be achieved very soon (“possibly today or tomorrow” as opposed to two-weeks) and fuel prices will begin to tumble as Trump complains about oil companies’ record quarterly profits and demands lower petrol prices. Iranian president Masud Pezeshkian asserts he has no intention of resigning amid speculation regarding his political future.

day one-hundred forty-two (13. 653)

After Trump’s reciprocal tariffs were ruled executive overreach by the US supreme court, the American president has sought other avenues to rebuild his regime of punitive levies on what he perceives as uncooperative partners taking advantage of his largess, including imposing a fifty percent tariff on Canadian goods over forest fires and a ten percent base tax on some eighty countries Trump accuses of forced labour practises. Amidst intense exchanges of fire and the lowest maritime traffic passing through the Persian gulf in almost two months, Trump further insists without evidence that Iran is engaged in “far more serious talks” but not quite ready (beaten into submission) to make a deal yet. Iranian proxies, the Houthi rebels in Yemen declare that they do not intend to completely the Bab al-Mandab strait and access to the Red Sea—only the Saudi side. Riyadh launches strikes on the port city of Hodeida in response. US bases (plus Amazon data-centres and warehouses) in the region continue to come under attack, vowing to kill an American soldier for every Iranian civilian life lost to the US nightly raids. After sacking the defence minister, Zelenskyy relieves his army chief, both Kiev and Moscow under fire.

day one-hundred thirty-eight (13. 641)

Middle Eastern nations are on high alert has hostilities continue to flare, the Revolutionary Guard declaring that Iran is in a state of all out war as US forces strike the southern cities of Shiraz and Tabriz and western Azerbaijan province. Sirens blare across Kuwait, Bahrain and Qatar as more ballistics fall. Trump repeats his vow that the deaths of service members will be avenged many times over with secretary of state Rubio accusing Iran, rather obviously, of using its control of the Hormuz as “leverage against the world” whilst calling on other countries to share the burden of protecting global shipping. US fighter jets based in Germany are to be stationed at Israeli air force stations for safety. New York City mayor Zohran Mamdani speculates on the possibility of enforcing a warrant issued by the International Criminal Court—of which the US is not a signatory—should Netanyahu visit for a UN summit in September to the outrage of the American president, saying that the Israeli prime minister will in “no way, shape or form be arrested” and extradited. After a Riyadh-led occupation of the airport of the Yemeni capital of Sanaa to prevent Iran from sending aid to the rebels, the Houthi declare access to the Red Sea cut off to Saudi Arabia. US peacekeeping operations begin in southern Lebanese “pilot zones” as part of the trilateral peace agreement with Tel Aviv. Hamas names new political bureau chief, Khalil al-Hayya.

day one-hundred thirty-three (13. 622)

Facing international backlash, just like over his arbitrary and vacillating tariff regime, Trump walked back his plan to impose twenty percent transit fees on all cargo passing through the Strait of Hormuz, turning to investment deals in the gulf to help offset costs of policing the waterways. US strikes continue with explosions reported on Qeshm Island and the deployment of submarine drones—threatening to bomb bridges, highways and power plants over stalled talks, whilst Iran continues aerial assaults against Jordan, Kuwait, Bahrain and Saudi Arabia. New sanctions against the Iranian shadow financial network by America are announced. The governor of South Carolina appoints Lindsay Graham’s sister to serve out his term as the governor of Kentucky demands an in person interview with Mitch McConnell and a medical assessment, wanting to make his own appointment should McConnell be unable to return to the senate chamber.

day one-hundred thirty-two (13. 617)

Former staunch critic turned ally of Trump, the hawkish long term senator from South Carolina Lindsey Graham dies suddenly after a short unexpected illness, having recently returned from a trip to Ukraine and championing increased sanctions against Russia at the relatively young age of seventy-one for the gerontocracy, whilst the country has been awaiting news on the health of former senate leader Mitch McConnell, hospitalised for weeks with no explanation or sighting, fuelling speculation that the Kentucky senator is dead or effectively so. It’s not outside of the realm of possibilities that Graham was assassinated by a Russian agent—not so much for his stance but to spook Trump, already a target for the killing of Iran’s former Supreme Leader. It is believed that the developments on McConnell’s heath are being withheld until the statutory filing date to prevent Kentucky’s Democratic governor from calling a special election before the mid-terms, leaving the seat vacant, South Carolina’s Republican governor can appoint a replacement for Graham. Iran launches retaliatory strikes on US bases in Qatar, Kuwait and Bahrain after the US conducts attacks on coastal radar site and air defence systems, America insisting that the Strait of Hormuz is reopened.

day one-hundred twenty-five (13. 594)

Dayslong funeral services are held for the late Supreme Leader with the new ayatollah still conspicuously absent from public view. OPEC has agreed to increase production as the Strait Hormuz gradually opens. Trump is slated to discuss maritime security at the upcoming NATO summit as trade resumes between Qatar and Iran as well as ending the Russia-Ukraine war. A cargo ship is attacked off the coast of Yemen. Tehran names a new commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.

day one-hundred twenty-two (13. 580)

The Qatari foreign ministry reports positive progress related to the Islamabad MOU, despite the fact Tehran might not be participating and rejects US assertion regarding IAEA inspectors to all nuclear research facilities and rejecting Trump’s condition on unfrozen assets being used to exclusively buy American agricultural products. Through traffic continues to flow through the Hormuz, shippers say the Strait is still like a war-zone. Moscow conducts a deadly air raid over Kiev with multiple drone and missile strikes.  US declines to renew Trump’s version of the NAFTA trade deal struck with Canada and Mexico in January 2020.

day one-hundred twenty-one (13. 576)

The Qatari foreign ministry confirms that no high-level meeting between US and Iranian officials is scheduled to take place in Doha over the coming days despite the arrival of envoys Kushner and Witkoff, Tehran saying it is currently not negotiating with Washington in any capacity and will not resume talks until violence ends in Lebanon. Concerned over increased executions has prompted French lawmakers to sponsor individual death-row political prisoners, whilst German intelligence services find that Iran is spying on opposition activists domestically.

day one-hundred thirteen (13. 543)

Keir Starmer tenders his resignation as prime minister and leader of Labour, following a series of political crises and rifts internal to the party over economic and immigration policy and election strategy after the success of conservative Reform UK in the general election. Starmer is expected to be replaced by Andy Burnham before the end of parliament’s summer recess. The Iran delegation leave Switzerland after a day of productive talks, with a sixty day waiver on oil sanctions granted and agreeing with the US in principle to a roadmap for peace, allowing the IAEA to inspect its nuclear facilities. With secretary of state, Rubio headed to the region to allay security fears, it remains unclear what US vice president Vance and special envoy Witkoff and Kushner have accomplished, the president’s son-in-law preoccupied with massive demonstrations in Albania over a planned property development deal that would damage fragile swampland and corruption in the government that acquiesced to this project in the first place. Sticking-points regarding Iranian restitution and possible conditions being placed on unfrozen assets also remain—though the negotiations have settled on an island of optimism that a final peace settlement could be in place by February.

day one-hundred twelve (13. 541)

Despite yesterday’s indefinite postponement and Iran closing the Strait of Hormuz over deadly strikes in Lebanon (American forces in the region dispute this claim saying ship traffic continues to flow), diplomatic delegations scrambled to reach Lucerne to begin formal talks. Trump publically admits that the US is is four-weeks away from an even more debilitating oil shock. The US team consisting of the same ineffectual members, Vance, Witkoff and Kushner, dispatched in a succession of negotiations that quickly spiralled into war is in attendance. Israel announced it refuses to withdraw from its security zone south of Beirut, neither side directly represented in the talks. Discussions are expected to carry on for days with side sessions addressing maritime security, but the main focus is on the sticking points of deescalation and Iran’s nuclear programme—the proposal presently being to not allow inspectors and to dilute the existing stockpile to well below weapon-grade. Fuel sales are suspended in Crimea after a wave of attacks by Ukraine on the illegally annexed territory.

day one-hundred eight (13. 525)

As the G7 summit concludes, Trump lashed out at a media reports of the publication of a leaked copy of the MOU furnished by CNN—telling world leaders that Obama bribed his way to secure the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (the 2015 plan these governments supported and were not pleased with the unilateral and ultimately violent withdrawal from) in order to deflect from the fourteen-point memo’s commitment for restitution and relief from sanctions, squandering whatever political capital and goodwill he had accrued by retreating from the war he started, spending unaccounted billions and causing the death of thousands to not achieve the objectives cited for the conflict—chiefly preventing Iran from building atomic weapons, which it was not doing in the first place but definitely sees the need for now. Rather than apologising or offering thanks to allies and mediators for their patience and suffering, Trump only strangely A much worse and more brittle settlement than the JCPOA, the White House had pledged to release the details prior to Friday’s signing ceremony at the Bürgenstock Resort above Lake Lucerne—the Qatari-owned property chosen for its remoteness—but we are unlikely now to get much of a preview, if privy to the terms at all, I thought though the leak prompted a partial read-out. Threatening to return to bombing if Tehran backslides, Trump admonished them to “behave,” repeating a line from early failed negotiations headed by the US vice president, “if it works out, I’m going to take the credit—if not, I am blaming JD,” Trump suggests he might he stick around to sign himself with Iranian counterpart Pezeshkian (update: which they did). Meanwhile, Hezbollah and the IDF continue to clash in Beirut (Netanyahu says he has not seen the document and has not asked); the IAEA approaches Kazakstan to potentially store Iran’s supply of enriched uranium as negotiations continue, though Iran now pledges to destroy its stockpiles through dilution—this truce only extends the ceasefire for sixty days—and the first tankers leave Iranian ports, the US blockade suspended.

day seventy-one (13. 416)

Tehran has to yet office an official response to Washington’s peace deal and terms of the truce. Putin offers to take and store for safekeeping Iran’s stocks of enriched uranium if it would help reach a compromise. Iran blames the US for escalation of skirmishes and violating the ceasefire by attacking its commercial vessels and warns of retribution with assault militarily. Fighting between Hezbollah and IDF intensifies with the terror group attacking an army base in Israel as talks for settlement continues with Lebanon, southern neighbourhoods of Lebanon under fire for the first time in weeks. US secretary of state Rubio meets with intermediaries in Qatari, hoping to forward negotiations as a tanker carrying liquified natural gas approaches the Strait of Hormuz, first such delivery sourced from the American ally since the war began. FIFA chiefs maintain that the Iranian national team will participate in its friendly group stage matches to be hosted in Tucson, Arizona as scheduled.

 

synchronoptica

one year ago: a failed Soviet mission to Venus (with sychronopticæ), China’s last telegraph stations plus a harrowing escape attempt from the eruption of Pompeii

fourteen years ago: a night in the Gasometer of Leipzig plus satanic panic

 

fifteen years ago: heat mitigating strategies plus mass alter systems

day twenty (13. 276)

Following an Israeli airstrike on the Iranian south natural gas field, Tehran retaliated with more attacks on energy infrastructure in neighbouring Gulf states including Kuwait and Qatar—prompting Trump to threaten to “massively blow up” the rest of the damaged reservoir. Whilst the US administration denies any foreknowledge of the Israeli plan, sources tell the press it was coordinated and approved by Trump as leverage to re-open the Strait of Hormuz, which when the fighting pauses, Iran proposes a transit fee, like for the Panama Canal. Saudi Arabia is contemplating a military response to the constant volley of missiles and drones on its territory. Fuel prices continue to climb, jumping by as much as forty percent in Europe.

synchronoptica

one year ago: the MAGA aesthetic (with synchronopticæ), Sweet Georgia Brown (1925) plus assorted links worth the revisit

twelve years ago: conspiratorial thinking 

thirteen years ago: springtime rituals plus debating de-extinction

fourteen years ago: more on sovereign defaults 

seventeen years ago: Malagasy names 

day eight (13. 240)

Oil refineries in Basra operated by US defence contractor Halliburton have been struck. As the Gulf states of the UAE, Qatar, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia suffer fresh attacks and bombardments continue in Lebanon and Iran, independent reporting speculates that supplies of both ballistics and countermeasures are beginning to dwindle, with the US claiming that firepower on Tehran was to surge dramatically in the coming days and Trump saying there would be no further negotiations and would only accept unconditional surrender, the world still guessing about his endgame. An Iranian frigate was sunk outside of the theatre of war, returning from training manoeuvres off the coast of Sri Lanka by American naval forces, the first such expansion since WWII. Russian intelligence is supplying Iran with telemetry on US targets in the region.

synchronoptica

one year ago: the Silla Smile (with synchronopticæ) plus assorted links to revisit

thirteen years ago: historical monetary unions 

fourteen years ago: human-robot collaborations 

fifteen years ago: cooking by substitiution 

day five (13. 230)

Though there are disputed claims about the breadth of the US-Israeli dominance of the region with Iran stating it retains control of the Strait of Hormuz and Trump saying there are no enemy vessels in the waters, their naval power obliterated and offering US carriers as escorts for tankers, the belligerent spectacle seems beyond reproach with double the shock-and-awe campaign of the opening volleys of the 2003 Iraq war, hitting some two-thousand targets in Iran with over fifty thousand troops deployed and two hundred aerial assets launched from two carrier groups. Bombing continues in Beirut as Iranian missiles hit the Qatari Al Udeid base, the largest American presence in the Middle East. France is also sending its nuclear-powered aircraft carrier from the Baltics to the Mediterranean to safeguard its interests. Meanwhile the casus belli is still unclear with regime change being walked back and Trump expressing a desire to install some one from the current government into a leadership role—as with Venezuela—though admitting that they have killed most of the line of succession and there’s less emphasis for popular revolution and the narrative shifting from preemptive attacks under pressure by Israel to defensive countermeasures that Iran was going to fire the first shot, the inimical fog of war recently cited in attacks on trawlers in the Caribbean. Though most of Iran’s missiles and drones have been intercepted, Kiev offering to send its effective anti-drone nets to the region, markets and economies are yet in turmoil with no end in sight.  Airstrikes continue on Tehran as preparations are made for the late Ayatollah’s funeral and the expert assembly readies to appoint his son, Mojtaba Khameni, as the new Supreme Leader—Israeli avowing to assassinate whomever is put into the role.

synchronoptica

one year ago: US vice president Rufus DeVane King (with synchronopticæ) plus more on the Triadic Ballet

twelve years ago: world time zones diverging from true solar time 

thirteen years ago: over-apostrophisation 

that often happens in war (13. 224)

Hours after the assassination was proclaimed both by Trump and Netanyahu after destroying the Tehran compound of Khamenei, officials and domestic news sources denying the claim saying he was elsewhere or outside of the country, Iranian state news announced that the Supreme Leader had in fact been killed along with four members of his family and several other key leaders, including former president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and others in the Ayatollah’s line of succession, a handpicked group in case of his death, and decreed forty days of mourning via a VHF radio broadcast as most of the country has had no internet connectivity since the height of the protests and in conjunction with crippling cyberattacks to aimed at digital infrastructure and handicapping Iran’s own skilled hackers. Assaults by belligerents on both sides have continued unabated with the closure of the Strait of Hormuz and Iranian surrogate groups like the Houthis hindering Red Sea shipments and Kurdish separatists attempting to storm the US Iraqi Green Zone. Despite having to deflect a barrage of missiles for hosting US bases, the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Qatar stand to gain by ridding the region of an antagonist, an prospect too fraught and potentially costly to undertake themselves, but having found a far cheaper alternative with bribing Trump and his family, the used luxury jetliner and two-billion dollar consulting to fee to son-in-law Jared Kushner, this discount regime change undertaken by America and Israel is likely to result in disaster and certainly not lead to democratic reforms, perhaps reinstating the Shah and an royal autocracy that the other Gulf states find social acceptable for not calling out their hypocrisy and corruption with hyper-clericalism. The death toll continues to rise, with the bombing of a girls’ school in Minab adjacent to a barracks of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards and three US service members were killed in the line of duty. As Joe Biden once said if Israel didn’t exist then the US “would have to invent one.”

i believe it’s god’s job to sit in judgment—my job is to defend america (12. 466)

Just returned from his first major foreign trip of his second term, treated with with imperial pomp and lavishing in the Regional Car Dealership Rococo lifestyle and gold-plate decor that he so admires, Trump’s agenda of deal-making—though overshadowed by a luxury jet offered by Qatar to replace Air Force One—was revealing about his priorities and “none of our business approach” to foreign policy. In parallel to multi-million dollar contracts favourable to American business interests secured without any of the bothersome talks of human rights issues, democracy, transparency, press freedoms or regional diplomacy—no mention of the suppression of dissent, sportswashing, the war in Gaza or even recent past postures to his hosts on supporting terrorist groups, Trump’s team of negotiators have been fronting at least the appearance of frenetic negotiations that included a ceasefire with the Houthis, lifting sanctions on Syria and renegotiating a nuclear deal with Iran, although the Persian Gulf will henceforth be known as the Arabian Gulf.  This collusion of contrasting, contradictory events, capitalism to paper over conflicts, may be coincidental and incidental to the administration’s penchant for flooding the zone but is very telling of what Trump wants and how he might be played.

i mean, i could be a stupid person saying—no, we don’t want a free, very expensive airplane (12. 455)

Never a fan of Air Force One and bemoaning the delay that defence contractors like Boeing have presented since commissioning a new presidential fleet during his first term, Trump’s first major foreign trip, an itinerary that returns to the Persian Gulf—which America re-flags as the Arabian, retracing the agenda of his first-term, rife with business deals is overshadowed by coverage that the Qatari royals have offered Trump a deluxe airplane. An uncontested violation of the emoluments clause of the US constitution, Trump says that they four-hundred million dollar flying palace would be registered as a gift to the military—tasked with outfitting the aircraft up to standard, never mind the cost of these security upgrades or symbolism associated—and then donated to his Presidential Library and not for personal use after his presidency. Prompting assurances to the press that the president was unconcerned about what Qatar might ask for in return, Democrat lawmakers are threatening an embargo on any country that might further enrich the Trump family through their largess.

wort des jahres (10. 374)

The Gesellschaft für deutsche Sprache in Wiesbaden (previously) has announced its Word of the Year for 2022, Zeitenwende—the end of an era and the beginning of a new one, for among other things real and feared declines in German leadership and influence economically, in industry, armaments and Fußball and for the return to war in Europe, and other terms and neologisms in the running. Rounding out the top ten were: Krieg um Frieden—war for peace, Gaspreisbremse—price controls for utilities, Inflations-schmerz—inflation pains, Klimakleber—for the Last Generation protesters glueing themselves to artwork, Doppel-Wumms—a double-boon for the electro-auto tax credit in the US “Inflation Reduction Act” that skews heavily in favour of American manufacturing at the expense of other markets, neue Normalität, das 9-Euro-Ticket, Glühwein-WM—for the fact that the Qatari World Cup wasn’t held in July but rather during Weihnachtszeit, and lastly Waschlappentipps—that is, government-issued suggestions on energy conservation in the shower.

drawbridge

Emboldened by geopolitics elsewhere, Saudi Arabia, we learn via Super Punch, is entertaining bids to terraform its escalating, long-standing tensions with neighbouring Qatar (previously) by turning the peninsula the country occupies into an island in the Gulf of Bahrain. The Saudi government plans to dig a two hundred metre wide moat along its sixty kilometre border, at an estimated cost of three-quarters of a billion dollars.