GradyNiblo

I’m just here for some info

[Patricia Marins @pati_marins64]

Iran ignores Mecca Pact and Houthis open fire, while Israel voices concern

The Iran-aligned Houthis ignored the announcement of the Mecca Pact and opened fire on Saudi and allied positions. Saudi Aramco’s refinery in Jazan was targeted by a drone attack in the early hours of this Sunday.

The complex processes around 400,000 barrels of oil per day. In Najran Province, a region in the southern part of the kingdom that has suffered attacks over the last 72 hours, an offensive on Thursday left 11 injured and the airport closed indefinitely.

The Houthis also opened fire on the Port of Mokha and forces linked to the Saudi government. The operation involved a combined assault of ballistic missiles and more than 20 drones.

Yemen’s Ministry of Transport confirmed severe damage to the commercial infrastructure of the historic pier and the deaths of at least 7 people.

Military camps of Saudi-funded Yemeni government forces in Al-Ruwaik, Al-Thaniyah, and Al-Abr suffered massive missile attacks on Friday. The offensive resulted in the deaths of at least 58 soldiers, marking one of the worst escalations in the region in years.

The Mecca Pact does not intimidate the Houthi offensive precisely because Iran knows it is an alliance meant much more for intermediation with Iran itself.

Neither the Turks nor the Pakistanis will enter a war against Iran, let alone the Saudis. The main issue is deterrence and managing the relationship with the Yemenis.

But how can this be done without the Saudis sitting at the table and lifting the air blockade on Yemen? Riyadh will not accept the unification of Yemen under Houthi leadership, nor is it in any position to win a war today that it failed to win years ago.

There is no short or medium-term solution for Yemen, just as there is no stabilization for Lebanon and no withdrawal of Israeli troops from southern Syria.

All Middle Eastern problems seem to be at a standstill, and Israel appears to be expressing fresh concerns

Read more:

https://t.co/0EiHteA9si

[BBC Breaking News @BBCBreaking]

Israel rejects US President Donald Trump's peace plan for Gaza https://t.co/jz6B8mShfT

[Saagar Enjeti @esaagar]

I couldn't believe this headline so I tracked down the original report and it left me even more stunned

"SM-3 Block IIA (64 months), THAAD (53 months), SM-6 (53 months), and PAC-3 MSE (42 months) all require 3.5 to 5.5 years from contract award to lot completion."

[Alex Cole @acnewsitics]

One side is a convicted felon married to a former nude model. The other is a Michigan-born doctor married to a psychiatrist.

[Tim Miller @Timodc]

Should add that this is private property being seized by eminent domain from Americans and given to Mexico. I remember listening to @seanhannity @IngrahamAngle outrage over Kelo. Do Fox viewers know about this?

[Chris Menahan 🇺🇸 @infolibnews]

Mark Levin throws a fit over Americans not wanting to fight Israel's wars, insisting that the "Greatest Generation" would be eager to fight Iran and wouldn't be complaining about higher prices.

"I remember a time when America would say, 'Let's go! Let's destroy that country!'"

He wonders if a draft would "work" today and insists that "the vast majority of us are utterly unaffected" by "what's going on in Iran."

[The New York Times @nytimes]

Breaking News: Israel rejected a U.S.-backed plan aimed at a phased disarmament of Hamas in Gaza, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said. https://t.co/B2Asogpjc9

[Danny (Dennis) Citrinowicz ,داني سيترينوفيتش @citrinowicz]

As time passes, Tehran appears increasingly confident that the pressure is shifting onto Washington.

Iranian leaders seem to believe that the United States is now more eager than Iran to bring the confrontation in the Strait of Hormuz to an end, and, crucially, that Washington has few attractive military options for changing that equation.

From Tehran’s perspective, the United States faces a serious escalation dilemma. A broader military campaign could eventually require a deeper and potentially ground-based U.S. commitment, while strikes against Iran’s energy infrastructure could trigger an unprecedented Iranian response, further disrupting global energy markets and imposing significant costs on the U.S. and global economies.

Iran’s demands therefore sharpen the difficult choice facing the administration: accept a substantial portion of Tehran’s terms in order to end the crisis, or escalate militarily and risk paying a steep economic and strategic price, with no guarantee that additional pressure would force Iran to capitulate or even return to negotiations from a weaker position.

This is also why an agreement involving Oman, by itself, guarantees very little. The central question is not simply whether the Strait of Hormuz can be reopened, but what Iran receives the day after it does so.

Unless Washington and Tehran reach an understanding on that broader political bargain, any agreement risks becoming little more than an agreement "on paper", without resolving the underlying confrontation.

#IranWar‌

[OSINTdefender @sentdefender]

According to Israel’s Channel 13, the Israel Defense Force is preparing for the possibility of resuming independent strikes against Iran without the approval or support of the United States.

[Niall Stanage @NiallStanage]

1. “Great Poll Numbers. Thank You!!!”

2. The poll numbers.

[Rosemary Kelanic @RKelanic]

The Iranians have “already pushed [the U.S.] out of the Persian Gulf effectively in terms of usable military power,” I told @WSJ (gift link).

It’s time to end a regional basing footprint that’s an albatross—not an asset.
@defpriorities

https://t.co/JFbZwk61pF

[Ed Krassenstein @EdKrassen]

LMAO. Who made this?

[Tim Miller @Timodc]

Did not realize Trump was ceding American territory to Mexico as part of the wall project.

[Frank Luntz @FrankLuntz]

The @USGAO report found DOGE could not provide information to verify 96% of its reported savings from canceled grants.

The report also said DOGE claimed savings from millions of dollars in leases that had already been identified for termination.

[Tim Miller @Timodc]

This war is making Trump Shuttle look like a roaring success.

[Glenn Greenwald @ggreenwald]

The tactic of the GOP and Fox News for decades has been to distract and blind Americans from all the people and institutions responsible for the destruction of their economic security by feeding them the terrifying fairy tale that, somehow, the real problem in their lives are Muslims and their always-imminent sharia law, even though:

- Muslims barely constitute 1% of the US population.

- Even in the US states with the largest Muslim populations, they are roughly 3% of the population.

- In most US states, Muslims are less than 1% of the population.

- There are a grand total of 4 American Muslims in the 635-person US Congress, none in the Senate.

To look at all the pathologies plaguing the US, its communities, and American families, and then somehow embrace the fear-mongering idiocy that one of the top problems or causes are American Muslims, requires a level of coordinated, sustained, multi-pronged propaganda that is hard to fathom.

[Barbara Comstock @BarbaraComstock]

NYT details Trump incompetence in the Reflecting Pool. Aided and abetted by @DougBurgum

Put more simply: documents and interviews establish how a first-time contractor was paid millions of dollars to apply a novel solution designed by a golf club manager to a national landmark.

“It’s like asking the museum guard to restore a painting in the Met,” said Charles Birnbaum, the president of the Cultural Landscape Foundation, a nonprofit that has sued unsuccessfully to stop the work.

[Glenn Greenwald @ggreenwald]

It's absolutely amazing that our political and media discourse is fixated on smearing every Israel critic as "anti-Semitic," and pretending the US suffers a crisis of an anti-Semitism epidemic, and demanding denunciation rituals to banish these Israel critics as unrepentent bigots, while one of the US President's closest advisors casually proclaims -- not for the first time -- that "Muslims need to be treated like enemy combatants" and should be barred from holding public office, echoing the statement yesterday from a sitting member of the US Congress that "every single Muslim is.... a threat to national security and our Republic."

Find me a single comment -- just one -- from Zohran Mamdani, Abdul El Sayed, Tucker Carlson, Thomas Massie or Hasan Piker about Jews that is even 1/1000th as bigoted and Nazi-like as the vomit puked up over the last 24 hours about ALL Muslims from Laura Loomer and Nancy Mace. (In reality, you can't find one comment from any of them that is anti-Semitic without conflating "Israel" and Jews, but even if you could, it'd be in a different universe entirely from the kinds of false and hateful accusations made every day by the most influential people about all American Muslims).