SA

@VSCO addicted

[SA @kingsimon22]

Many thanks to @vsco for sharing my photo 🙏🏻🥰😍 #VSCO

[Francesco Sassi @Frank_Stones]

🚨 A 40°C heatwave, drying rivers, and wartime grid strikes: Romania has declared a 30-day state of alert over a severe power crisis.

Here is how climate change and geopolitics just converged to push Eastern Europe's energy grid to its limits. 🧵🇷🇴🇺🇦👇

[The OC Fans Club @Club_OC]

#tbt ❤️❤️ #TheOC

[𝓐𝓵𝓪𝓷 𝓟𝓪𝓾𝓵 𝓟𝓪𝓷𝓪𝓼𝓼𝓲𝓽𝓲 @AlanPanassiti]

Non so chi l'abbia fatto, ma è bellissimo #Italia90

(Just for fun)

[Aimen Dean @AimenDean]

Having spoken to a senior Saudi official about the NBC article regarding Project Freedom, I honestly think the article completely misunderstood what actually happened because it was written almost entirely from a US perspective rather than from a GCC perspective.

First of all, contrary to the impression being created, the GCC were NOT blindsided by Project Freedom.

They knew about it beforehand. Roughly half a day before. The airspace was opened. The facilities were available. Nobody objected. There was broad support for the idea because, at least publicly, Project Freedom was supposed to be a limited humanitarian-security operation aimed at relieving the 22,000 sailors trapped around Hormuz and allowing shipping lanes to breathe again.

Nobody in the GCC had a problem with that.

But here is the issue .. and this is the part the NBC article completely misses.
If you are asking GCC countries to participate in such an operation, then you need to be upfront about the rules of engagement from day one!

You cannot say:
“Please open your skies and bases, expose your energy infrastructure”
…only for everyone to discover afterwards that the actual American policy was apparently:

“Oh by the way, if Iran attacks you with ballistic missiles, cruise missiles and drones in several waves, we still won’t retaliate because Donald Trump is busy chasing The Deal.”

And this is exactly what shocked the Saudis. Not the Iranian attack itself.

The UAE/GCC expected retaliation.. This is Iran. Nobody in the Gulf is naïve about that anymore.
The shock came from the American reaction afterwards.

You had attacks against Emirati infrastructure. Fujairah was targeted. Multiple waves involving drones, ballistic missiles, cruise missiles.

And Washington’s response was basically:
“Meh. Minor incident. Let’s not escalate.”
Minor incident?!

For the GCC that was madness.

Because what Riyadh, Kuwait and Abu Dhabi suddenly realized was that Trump’s obsession with preserving “The Deal” had apparently reached the point where Gulf energy infrastructure was now considered acceptable collateral damage in the pursuit of his precious negotiations.

Everything became:
The deal.
The deal.
The beautiful deal.
The greatest deal.
The mother of all deals.
The ultimate “Art of the deal”
Or perhaps, more accurately:
The ultimate fart of the deal.

Because from the Gulf perspective, this stopped looking like strategy and started looking like desperate political vanity mixed with deadly wishful thinking.

Had the GCC been told beforehand:
“Listen, whatever Iran does to you during Project Freedom, America will not retaliate because we do not want to endanger negotiations…”
…they would have almost certainly refused participation from the start.

The problem was not Project Freedom itself.

The problem was discovering midway through the operation that the GCC countries were apparently expected to sit there quietly as punching bags while Washington played negotiation theatrics with Tehran. So the Saudis and Kuwaitis pulled plug!

Because the GCC know something US usually forgets:

Iran plays the long game.
You can freeze enrichment.
Pause enrichment.
Delay enrichment.
Sign ten agreements.
Twenty agreements.
Forty agreements.

But if the infrastructure remains…
If the centrifuges remain…
If the IRGC remains…
If the proxy network remains…

then eventually the game resumes.

There will be another distraction.
Another pandemic.
Another financial crisis.
Another war somewhere else.
Another paralysis in Washington.
And while the world is distracted, enrichment quietly resumes again.

Ironically, much of Iran’s highly enriched uranium stockpile expanded during the pandemic years precisely because global attention was elsewhere.

Judging by the reaction to the UAE attacks, the Saudis and Kuwaitis concluded that Trump’s version of deterrence had become:

“Please absorb the missiles quietly because I’m trying to write the sequel to “The Fart of the Deal.”

[Timeless Sports @timelesssports_]

1993. 💧

[nonleggerlo @nonleggerlo]

Ciao, è stata la settimana di

🎵 Il presidente del Senato La Russa fa un appello per Pucci: reintegratelo a Sanremo, ha sofferto
🇦🇱 Il vicepremier Salvini si complimenta con Ermal Meta: "Parla l’italiano perfettamente". Ma l’artista è in Italia da 30 anni
🚁 Mogol da Sanremo a Roma con l'elicottero dei pompieri, interviene il ministro dell'Interno Piantedosi: "Polemiche strumentali, ha scritto il loro inno"
👮🏻‍♂️ Tutta la destra italiana si schiera con il poliziotto di Rogoredo "senza se e senza ma", l'agente è stato poi arrestato
🙊 Nelle stesse ore il ministro dei Trasporti Salvini posta pure su Punch, "il piccolo macaco abbandonato che trova conforto in un peluche e commuove il mondo"
🚀 Il ministro della Guerra Crosetto si ritrova bloccato a Dubai durante una guerra, stava là per motivi personali: "rientro con un volo di Stato, però pago il triplo"
🇺🇸 Il ministro degli Esteri Tajani, dopo aver "osservato" il Board of Peace con tanto di cappellino rosso Maga di Donald Trump, dice che di Crosetto a Dubai "personalmente non ne sapeva nulla"

Paese immemabile.

[JordanMuse @JordanMuse_]

1996.

[Polymarket @Polymarket]

BREAKING: NVIDIA becomes first $5,000,000,000,000.00 company.

[SA @kingsimon22]

@theMilanZone_ @MatteMoretto @FabrizioRomano Praticamente non verrà nessuno 🤣 assurdo come ogni sessione estiva il Milan si trova nell’ultima settimana a capire chi prendere e chi no

[The OC Fans Club @Club_OC]

#tbt it's still #TheOC week ❤️❤️ #TheOC22 ❤️❤️

[2000s @PopCulture2000s]

The O.C premiered 22 years ago today

[SA @kingsimon22]

@nicxcine Mi avete messo voglia di vederla 😎

[The OC Fans Club @Club_OC]

#tbt ❤️❤️ #TheOC #Fab4

[SA @kingsimon22]

@antonello_gioia Ma se la nazionale italiana è mediocre nel suo insieme, che colpa ne ha Spalletti?! Ma dai

[Roland-Garros @rolandgarros]

A 🐐 moment.

#RolandGarros