Strat58 cat

Alaska Airlines v. United Airlines, 948 F.2d 536 (9th Cir. 1991).

[Rapid Response 47 @RapidResponse47]

NEC Director Kevin Hassett: Venezuela became Socialist, their energy production got cut down to almost zero. Countries that adopt Socialism, within a few years, have skyrocketing death rates. Socialism is really something that should be gone, and the fact that so many in the Democrat Party that support it—they don't know what they're supporting.

[OSINTdefender @sentdefender]

Several Iranian one-way attack drones targeted and struck a military base earlier tonight in Northern Kuwait, officials tell Israel’s i24NEWS.

[Mossad Commentary @MOSSADil]

Reports of multiple explosions at Al Doha Military Base in northern Kuwait. The cause and extent of any damage remain unclear.

@Osint613

[Jason Brodsky @JasonMBrodsky]

Initial, unconfirmed reports of an #Iran regime drone attack on #Kuwait. Every time there is a last minute plea to the U.S. from mediators to deescalate and call off strikes, they can’t deliver diplomatically and the Islamic Republic keeps attacking.

[Open Source Intel @Osint613]

Trump: "This is their last chance to make a deal before decapitation."

[Institute for the Study of War @TheStudyofWar]

MORE: IRGC-affiliated Fars News denied on August 2 that Iran agreed to a plan to reopen the strait. An informed Iranian military source told Fars News that the strait will remain closed as long as the United States continues to conduct “hostile actions.” The source added that vessels can only transit through Iran’s traffic separation scheme and with permission from the IRGC Navy. This report highlights how some IRGC factions, likely including Vahidi’s faction, seek to retain full control over all traffic in the strait and likely oppose an arrangement in which Iran would only control inbound traffic in the strait. The IRGC controls the forces that have repeatedly attacked shipping in the strait in recent months, and it could therefore try to undermine an arrangement in the Strait of Hormuz that it deems contrary to the regime’s interests.

Iranian negotiators’ reported openness to the US- and Qatari-formulated proposal is consistent with Iranian “pragmatist” actors’ support for negotiating a diplomatic settlement to advance Iranian objectives. “Pragmatist” officials such as Araghchi, Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, and President Masoud Pezeshkian have consistently advocated for using diplomacy to secure Iranian interests, such as securing Iranian control over the Strait of Hormuz and obtaining economic relief. Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian has repeatedly voiced concerns about the economic costs of war, and he convinced Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei to accept the memorandum of understanding (MoU) in June by highlighting the MoU’s economic benefits.

[Institute for the Study of War @TheStudyofWar]

NEW: Iranian negotiators such as Foreign Affairs Minister Abbas Araghchi may be willing to make limited compromises with the United States over the extent of Iranian control over the Strait of Hormuz. The Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) faction led by IRGC Commander Major General Ahmad Vahidi, which appears to be currently dominating regime decision-making, will likely reject any arrangement that meaningfully reduces Iranian control over the waterway, however.

Other Key Takeaways:

US President Donald Trump stated on August 1 that he canceled planned strikes on Iran after Iran — presumably referring to Iranian negotiators — and regional states informed him that they had agreed on the parameters of a deal that reportedly includes the “immediate, complete, and total opening” of the strait and “an end to Iran’s nuclear threat.”

Israeli media also reported on August 2 that Araghchi agreed to a US- and Qatari-formulated proposal in which vessels would enter the Persian Gulf through Iranian waters and exit through Omani waters.

An arrangement in which Iran controls inbound traffic in the Strait of Hormuz would still enable Iran to control which vessels can enter the Persian Gulf and thus continue to undermine the United States’ interests as well as global commerce. Iranian officials have repeatedly emphasized that they seek to prevent “hostile” vessels, including US Navy vessels, from entering the Persian Gulf.

Some Iranian regime officials may be seeking to appease ultra-hardliners by emphasizing that the regime is exploiting pauses in US military operations and periods of diplomacy to reconstitute military capabilities and import new equipment. Iranian Artesh Spokesperson Brigadier General Mohammad Akraminia explicitly stated on August 2 that Iran “fully exploited” the MoU and ceasefire to import new equipment, repair and reconstruct damaged systems, and produce new systems.

[Rapid Response 47 @RapidResponse47]

.@POTUS on Iran: "Now what we're doing is we're talking to them in the form of a negotiation. It begins tomorrow afternoon — and we'll see."

[Mossad Commentary @MOSSADil]

IRAN SIGNALS PUSH TO REVIVE ISLAMABAD MOU WITH U.S.

Iranian MP Hassan Ghashghavi says mediators are working to revive the 14-point Islamabad Memorandum of Understanding that briefly halted the June Iran-U.S. war.

“There is an effort underway to revive the 14-point Islamabad agreement, particularly by the mediators.”

“They know that the main issue and, in fact, the key to the matter right now is the issue of the Strait of Hormuz, so yes, there is an exchange of views.”

[Rapid Response 47 @RapidResponse47]

.@POTUS: "They have a weakening yen and they wanted a little bit of help, and we're always there for Japan. Japan has been very good to us — with the exception, of course, of Pearl Harbor."

[Open Source Intel @Osint613]

As Trump spoke about ceasefire and Hormuz talks with Iran, IRGC forces are firing on ships.

You can’t make this up.

[Strat58 cat @Strat58Cat2]

@RapidResponse47 @POTUS A deal that keeps Iran non-nuclear and opens the strait, or a bigger bombing campaign that destroys Iran economically for ten years - with collateral damage around the Gulf from Iranian Scuds? It's an easy decision to give peace a chance. Iran however keeps refusing to make it.

[Open Source Intel @Osint613]

President Trump:

“I was asked by Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Qatar, and Iran to hold off strikes. It would have been a massive attack. When the allies asked to call it off, you gotta say, ‘Well, let’s see.’

There is a deal on Hormuz, and it will be a deal on the nuclear.”

[Voices of WW2 @VoicesofWW2]

August 1, 1944. On this day George Patton's Third Army officially becomes operational in France, and the man who had been kept on a leash for two years is finally let loose. What follows is one of the fastest, most aggressive armored campaigns in American history.

Patton had spent much of the war in a strange limbo. Brilliant, profane, theatrical, the best exploiter of armor the Americans had, and also a loose cannon who had gotten himself in serious trouble for slapping shell-shocked soldiers in Sicily. The high command sidelined him, and then used his very fame as a weapon, making him the nominal head of a phantom army group in the deception plan that kept the Germans staring at Calais long after D-Day.

Now the deception had done its job and the breakout at Avranches had blown the front wide open. On the first of August, Third Army came alive under his command, and Patton did what nobody else would have dared. He funneled division after division through the single narrow bottleneck at Avranches in a chaotic, bumper to bumper rush, waving off the textbook worries about his flanks, and hurled them out into the open country beyond in every direction at once.

His tanks tore across France at a pace that stunned everyone, including his own superiors, liberating town after town, covering in a day what had cost weeks in the hedgerows. Within weeks he had helped trap the bulk of the German army at Falaise and was driving toward the Seine and Paris. The grinding, bloody stalemate of Normandy was over, and the war in the west became a pursuit, with Patton in the lead, exactly where he had always wanted to be.

[Strat58 cat @Strat58Cat2]

https://t.co/B6rxSBasPN

[Rapid Response 47 @RapidResponse47]

.@SecRubio: "There are plenty of people in American academia and, frankly, in American press that sympathize with the Cuban regime... A failed state 90 miles from our shores that happens to be aligned with adversaries to the United States is a national security threat."

[Strat58 cat @Strat58Cat2]

@JasonMBrodsky Disadvantage? We're making more interceptors. This is the United States. We are not a static power. WWII was typical. We lack interceptors. The mechanisms of capitalism remain in effect. We pay green dollars for interceptors. Heaven and Earth will move to deliver what's required.

[Department of State @StateDept]

SECRETARY RUBIO: “If you look at the history of espionage in the United States, Cuba is the only country that consistently has implanted and embedded spies in our system – without even paying them.”

[Rapid Response 47 @RapidResponse47]

.@SecRubio: "To the average American, you see Cuba, a small country 90 miles off our shores, 9.5 million people population — but people forget that when it comes to things like espionage and influence operations, they actually are an influence and espionage superpower."

[Mossad Commentary @MOSSADil]

🚨 CBS: U.S. & ISRAEL PREPARING PLAN TO STRIKE IRAN’S ENERGY INFRASTRUCTURE

CBS reports the U.S. and Israel are coordinating on a potential large-scale campaign targeting Iran’s energy infrastructure, though officials say no final order has been issued and Israel has not been asked to participate.

President Trump: “We will target them very hard. They will eventually reach a point where they say they can’t take it anymore.”