Post Hoc Capital, LLC

Tweets, retweets, and likes are not investment advice. “Book is Book” -Subhas

[Mark Dubowitz @mdubowitz]

This is fair. It doesn’t mean the MOU is a good deal, nor does it guarantee the negotiations will succeed. But the United States and Israel achieved extraordinary military successes.

Precisely because of those successes, it is imperative that President Trump not squander the greatest leverage any U.S. president has ever built against the Islamic Republic.

[Zineb Riboua @zriboua]

Trump shattered the Iran status quo that all administrations had preserved. For the first time in the history of the US-Israel alliance, Israel executed a full-scale military operation in complete operational harmony with Washington. He dismantled the missile-and-drone architecture that his predecessors had allowed to metastasize across the region for a decade. He mobilized Treasury and Energy simultaneously to prevent a global recession while a major military campaign was reshaping one of the world's most critical strategic chokepoints. He imposed sanctions against Chinese teapot refineries, the financial backbone of Iranian oil revenues, and still held the Xi summit, forcing Beijing to absorb the cost without an exit ramp. He brought the Gulf Arab states and Israel into operational collaboration under CENTCOM, something every prior administration deemed structurally impossible.

But yes, Trump is "doing like Obama," and ceasefires along the way are complete "capitulations."

[Emily Schrader - אמילי שריידר امیلی شریدر @emilykschrader]

United States of Qatar in action

[Haviv Rettig Gur @havivrettiggur]

He might have a point. The Sunnis of Syria remember the atrocities of the Syrian civil war, and Hezbollah’s role in them. They’d love nothing more than to see every last member and supporter of Hezbollah shuffled off to the afterlife.

But this would be catastrophic for Lebanon, far more than the Israeli operation.

The upside for Israel: Since it wouldn’t be Israel doing the fighting, no westerner would care.

[Marc Thiessen @marcthiessen]

🤦‍♂️

[Mossad Commentary @MOSSADil]

☢️ IF TEHRAN HAD ANY DOUBTS ABOUT WHETHER IT NEEDED A NUCLEAR DETERRENT, THOSE DOUBTS ARE GONE

Anyone who thinks the Iranian regime will simply give up its nuclear ambitions is delusional.

Maybe they won’t manufacture the weapon inside Iran.

But they have allies.

Pakistan has nuclear weapons.
China has nuclear weapons.
Russia has nuclear weapons.
North Korea has nuclear weapons.

And after this war, if Tehran had any doubts about whether it needed a nuclear deterrent, those doubts are gone.

The regime now believes it faces an existential threat. And regimes that believe they face an existential threat do everything in their power to survive.

That is the North Korea model.

Nobody is seriously talking about overthrowing North Korea anymore. Why? Because it has nuclear weapons.

That is exactly the lesson Tehran will take from this war.

And that is the danger of this “deal.”

One day, the world may wake up to the announcement that the Iranian regime has tested its first nuclear weapon — and by then, they may already have a hidden stockpile behind it.

That will be the legacy of pretending the regime can be negotiated out of its survival strategy.

[Hussain Abdul-Hussain @hahussain]

America will give $300 billion to Iran?

That’s a gigantic number of ballistic missiles and explosive drones.

Also, thousands gunned down and assassinated.

[Ambassador Yechiel (Michael) Leiter @yechielleiter]

This photo of “starved” Muhammad Zakariya Ayyoub al-Matouq (18 months) was published by The @nytimes, @BBC, @CNN, @SkyNEws, and more.

The truth is he was born with cerebral palsy and hypoxemia. An unpublished photo showed his mother and healthy three-year-old brother. A correction for this was published several days later, hidden deep in the Times’ website.

That’s not journalism, it’s propaganda.

Read more in the #ModernBloodLibelBook at the link in my bio

[Michael McDonough @M_McDonough]

🚢Claims about Hormuz reopening are exactly why we built this:

If ships start moving through the Strait with AIS transponders on, you’ll see it in the index — updated every 30 minutes alongside Suez, Bab al-Mandeb and Panama.

[Mariam Wahba @themariamwahba]

“the implicit violence of the American presidency.”

These are not serious people.

[Ambassador Yechiel (Michael) Leiter @yechielleiter]

Hezbollah’s ceasefire violations don’t fit neatly into a 280 character post.

Here’s a list of what they fired at Israeli troops and citizens.

💥 June 13th:
11:35 - 1 Rocket
11:42 - 1 Missile
11:48 - 2 Rockets
12:09 - 1 UAV
12:42 - 3 Rockets
16:38 - 1 Rocket
16:45 - 8 Rockets
17:17 - 2 Rockets
17:55 - 5 Rockets
18:14 - 1 Rocket
19:10 - 11 Rockets
19:16 - 1 Rocket
22:08 - 2 Rockets

💥 June 14th:
01:09 - 2 UAVs
01:52 - 3 Rockets
02:02 - 1 UAV
02:54 - 1 UAV
04:19 - 2 UAVs
04:24 - 1 UAV - 2 injured
04:26 - 1 Rocket
04:30 - 2 Rockets
04:41 - 1 UAV
05:24 - 10 Rockets- 3 injured
06:03 - 1 UAV
07:06 - 1 UAV
07:09 - 3 Rockets
07:27 - 1 UAV
07:48 - 1 UAV- 1 injured
08:24 - 1 Missile
08:44 - 3 Rockets
08:50 - 1 Rocket
08:58 - 1 Rocket
09:39 - 1 UAV
09:58 - 8 UAVs
10:15 - 3 Rockets
11:19 - 2 UAVs
11:58 - 9 Rockets
12:07 - 1 Rocket
12:09 - 1 UAV
13:05 - 1 UAV
16:38 - 2 Rockets
18:39 - 1 Rocket
22:25 - IED explosion on IDF troops
23:14 - 3 terrorists approached troops

💥 June 15th:
08:36 - Terrorist tried to attack troops
10:13 - Terrorist tried to attack troops

[Hussain Abdul-Hussain @hahussain]

If you don’t know what that means, it means the shooting stops but Israel will continue to control a depopulated security zone that used to house over half a million Shia, many of whom are Hezbollah partisans.

If Hezbollah tries to force its way through, Israel will open fire and war might resume.

For the deal to work, Hezbollah will have to settle for a ceasefire—one that means the militia’s wars have cost Lebanon land. This undermines the narrative that Hezbollah liberates land with its arms and should therefore keep them.

What will Israel do with the land? It will offer Lebanon the land back only if Hezbollah is disarmed in line with UN Security Council Resolution 1701. Hezbollah won’t disarm. Israel will control the depopulated strip indefinitely. The displaced will remain displaced forever, their return conditioned on Hezbollah disarming.

This is identical to Trump’s Gaza Peace Plan. Israel controls half of the strip that Palestinians can get back only if they disarm Hamas in line with UN Resolution 2803. Hamas never disarmed. The land never returned to Palestinians.

Lesson: “Resistance” militias Hamas and Hezbollah cannot prevent death or destruction, and can even cause land loss. The solution comes through disarmament only.

[DeLong🖖 @delong]

Hyperscalers are slamming on the brakes, metering “intelligence,” and discovering that someone still has to pay the datacenter bill. Anthropic chases profits, OpenAI fights for its life, Microsoft sells shovels, and everyone tries to figure out what—if anything—could... 1/

[Noah Rothman @NoahCRothman]

Bookmark for two to three weeks from now when it’s painfully obvious there is no durable agreement here and precisely no one cares.

[Zineb Riboua @zriboua]

Reminder that this supposed "deal" is another 60-day negotiation that may or may not lead to anything substantial. This happened at least 2 times, and each time it was to stabilize the market.

[Zineb Riboua @zriboua]

The "deal" is a ceasefire extension of another 60 days with Iran agreeing for the first time to not weaponize the Strait of Hormuz and with U.S. sanctions in place against both IRGC and China. There are different interpretations of this, but "capitulation" or "end of the war" aren’t accurate ones.

[Mark Dubowitz @mdubowitz]

Smart take by @havivrettiggur as you would expect. One addendum: the U.S. military has been running a quiet Project Freedom moving 2-6 million bpd through the strait for a total of about 120 million (not including the 5-6 million bpd through pipelines).

Trump could have significantly expanded this but this has been helpful in keeping oil prices down.

[Haviv Rettig Gur @havivrettiggur]

Everyone will have their take on the deal.

Mine is kinda what you'd expect.

1. Trump caved. The early-May naval attempt to break the closure of Hormuz -- Project Freedom -- could have worked. He didn't give it a chance.

2. He may nevertheless have done the right thing from an American perspective. On the larger chessboard, the one where America is curtailing Chinese lines of influence and supply on all fronts, he's gotten everything he needs. Iran's nuclear program is also set back dramatically. And worrying about gas prices come November is an extremely valid concern for an American president.

As I argued back in February, the US and Israel weren't fighting the same war. Roughly 80% of each side's war overlapped with the other's. But toward the end, their interests would diverge and America would bow out.

And so it was.

3. Israel remains in the region, Hezbollah remains ensconced in Lebanon and committed to murdering us all, Iran remains the same muqawama regime it always was, committed to mass-murder and mass-sacrifice of its own people. The decades-long war between the muqawama ideology and the Jews of Israel continues.

4. Israelis owe the United States a vast and abiding debt of gratitude for what it has done to Iran's missile and nuclear programs. That this finished on America's timetable rather than ours, that it was doing it for its own interests and not ours, these don't diminish the fact that we received from America more than we had a right to ask for.

5. And still, #3 remains true. We fight on. Because that regime is undeterrable, actually wants to destroy us all, and like the Nasserist ideology that once sent army after army at us to destroy us, will require a few more wars and perhaps another decade or two to defeat completely.

6. The new IRGC military dictatorship now in charge in Iran is built to survive catastrophe. But not to govern, reform or build anything of value.

Some commentators on the deal have suggested that the most damaging thing you could do to the Iranian regime at this point is send it back to its embittered people to try to govern the peace.

I think they might be onto something. It'd be a much safer and happier and more peaceful region if the regime falls from within and a new and better day dawns for the long-suffering people of Iran.

[Carlos Abadi @NewSamawal]

The US secretly approved a financial and maritime arrangement between Qatar and Iran, under which billions of dollars were paid to Tehran in exchange for free passage for Qatari tankers and ships through the Strait of Hormuz, three diplomatic officials now confirm.

This was a deliberate and conscious course of action by the US administration, which allowed its navy to turn a blind eye to the arrangement, in complete contradiction of its declared policy. The move was intended to ease the crisis in global energy markets and curb rising oil prices.
https://t.co/xDCmqWLT3B