U.S. Secretary of the Treasury, Scott Bessent, officially announced the start of ‘Operation Economic Outcast’ against Iran. According to the White House, it marks the beginning of an economic isolation campaign that includes sanctions, secondary sanctions, and cutting off all economic lifelines to Iran.

Any country doing business with Iran, facilitating trade, or providing credit, will be hit with secondary sanctions.

• Middle East Spectator

Correction to claims posted in last megathread:

Iran denies receiving invitation to join Mecca defense pact

The clarification comes after Mehdi Rahimi, the head of the Iranian parliament’s Khaneh Mellat news agency, told Al Mayadeen on Saturday that Tehran had received an invitation to become a member of the Mecca pact and was considering it.

On Monday, however, Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmaeil Baghaei rejected the claim, stating that no formal invitation had been received in Tehran. At the same time, he said that discussions with the pact members concerning broader regional security have been proposed and are under consideration.

Possibly misinfo spread by Iran to attempt to get an invitation or to gauge responses or someone misinforming the head of the parliament in Iran for similar purposes. Could also be a case of one hand in Iran not knowing what the other is doing due to the consequences of resilience against future decapitation strikes and the fragmented mode the government is operating in since that time. Skepticism is always warranted if someone outside the diplomatic corps makes claims relating to diplomatic matters I think as it could have just been some guy in Turkey or Pakistan with zero authority floating the idea to the parliament speaker in a phone call.

IMO Mecca pact is probably anti-Iran, or at least Iran exclusionary, it's a contingency against American failures to defend them pact. It's not anti-zionist, it's not about regional good governance and dialogue. It's against Iran and possibly an attempt to hedge against the zionist entity but not one that will likely work if it actually gets in the way of expansion of the greater "israel" project. Influence pushing and muscle flexing by Turkey in particular but also Pakistan to have some weight when they come to the US to talk about things.

Trump: "Lots of 'bluster' from Doug Ford, who is the Premier of the Canadian Province of Ontario, but who is better known as the less charismatic, intelligent, and overall unimpressive brother of the late, great, Rob Ford. America has been carrying Canada for decades, but no longer! The U.S.A. will always be far bigger, richer, and stronger than Canada. Without the United States, Canada couldn’t survive — It’s where they get all of their money and, because of their current bad leadership, primarily Governor Carney, and his Flunky, Ford, they will not be allowed to keep taking advantage of the United States — Their key to survival. Remember, much of the Electricity, Oil, and Gas that Canada gets is transported through the U.S.A. Someone should get these clowns to 'fall in line' or, the consequences for Canada will be far WORSE! Canada’s Unemployment Rate is now at 10%, and rapidly rising. Their businesses are fleeing for the United States, and it’s all because of their failed policies, and inept leadership! The days of ripping off our Farmers, and other Businesses, are OVER! Thank you for your attention to this matter. President DONALD J. TRUMP"

https://archive.ph/DqCG2

The US Navy has battled operational tempo ordeals for years. The Iran war exposed the flaws.

Vague operational planning and a lack of transparency during U.S. actions in Iran have exacerbated the U.S. Navy’s longstanding logistics, maintenance and manpower issues — and sailors are feeling the effects, congressional leaders, retired military officials and deployed sailors have told Military Times.

::: spoiler more

Following revelations from families about some U.S. service members aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln struggling with mental health after 250 days without a port visit, sailors, retirees and lawmakers told Military Times that troops were absorbing consequences of longtime flaws within the sea service that have been worsened by the current conflict. The Navy has struggled for years to meet high operational tempo demands, they said. Deployments are regularly extended, scheduled maintenance is missed and the shipbuilding pace remains glacial, leading to delays in delivery and an undersized fleet. The issues have spanned multiple presidential administrations but have been compounded by the handling of the Iran war and ensuing military operations, sources said, leading to dire circumstances for some sailors. Leaders have disputed the descriptions of deteriorating conditions aboard the Lincoln and denied reporting about quality-of-life concerns. Asked recently by reporters about families’ concerns over the length of the deployment, President Donald Trump dismissed the question, saying that it’s “not nearly long enough.” Asked about those same concerns, Adm. Daryl Caudle, the service’s chief of naval operations, told Military Times, “Sailors first is not a slogan — it’s a warfighting imperative.” “The sustained pace of operations in the Middle East has only reinforced that taking care of our sailors and maintaining combat readiness are inseparable,” Caudle said.

‘We need more ships’

Following outcry about conditions aboard the Lincoln, the Navy moved the Nimitz-class carrier USS George Washington from the Indo-Pacific to the Middle East, where it arrived Wednesday. The ship is reportedly replacing the Lincoln, which will now steam toward its homeport of San Diego. The move temporarily leaves the western Pacific without a U.S. aircraft carrier, the presence of which is a key part of the U.S. military’s effort to deter China in the South China Sea and reassure regional allies. Operational tempo concerns, meanwhile, are nothing new for the service, according to retired Vice Adm. Fozzie Miller, who served as commander of U.S. Fifth Fleet and U.S. Central Command from 2012 to 2015. Miller joined the Navy in 1979. From his early days in uniform, the service’s goal, he said, was to operate at a level that was neither too harsh for the individual sailor nor too unbearable for the equipment vital to mission success. An adequate number of warships was integral to maintaining that balance. “We could use more carriers or less [operational] tempo,” Miller said. “It’s one or the other, but we’re a global Navy with global responsibilities, and so if we’re going to fulfill those, we need more ships.” Rear Adm. Thomas Moore, who led the Navy’s acquisition program and went on to become commander of Naval Sea Systems Command, told Congress in 2013 that the service is “an 11-carrier Navy in a 15-carrier world.” The demand is unlikely to dwindle, he said. Thirteen years since Moore’s statement, the Navy is still at 11 carriers. With the USS Nimitz scheduled to retire at the end of next year, that number may soon be 10.

note that the Nimitz was already supposed to have retired, and instead got its service extended

The USS Harry S. Truman and USS Gerald R. Ford are currently sidelined for maintenance after deployments, the latter of which notched a post-Vietnam record 326 days at sea in May after it was extended to support operations in the Middle East. The Nimitz-class USS John C. Stennis is undergoing a years-long overhaul. The USS Ronald Reagan, also a Nimitz-class, is expected to be deployable by the end of August after a 17-month repair period. The Nimitz-class USS George H.W. Bush is in the Middle East. “We just don’t have enough aircraft carriers right now in this rotation to sustain all the things we want to do, and I think this is a long-standing problem,” said Steven Wills, a Navy surface warfare officer who retired after 20 years. In 2014, the Navy began implementing the Optimized Fleet Response Plan, or OFRP, deployment model, which places maintenance, training, evaluations and a single eight-month deployment within a 36-month cycle. The service says the framework is intended to produce a more comprehensively manned and trained force while providing predictability to deployment schedules for sailors and their families. In 2016, however, the U.S. Government Accountability Office found that heavy operational demands led the Navy to increase ship deployment lengths and reduce or defer ship maintenance. Those decisions made deployments less predictable, ate into training time, contributed to declining ship conditions and increased the time ships required for much-needed maintenance. From fiscal 2014 through 2019, Navy ships spent more than 33,700 additional days in maintenance beyond intended scheduling, leading to fewer vessels available for training or operations.

An upended supply network

While the Navy has long struggled with carrier availability, current U.S. leadership has created more operational tempo issues through poor planning and insufficient wartime support, according to lawmakers and a sailor who deployed in support of the Iran war. “Logistics was a complete failure the entire time out there — food, supplies, parts,” said the sailor, who served aboard an Independence-class littoral combat ship and was granted anonymity due to fear of reprisal. Iranian attacks damaged the Navy’s longstanding logistics hub in Bahrain in February, disrupting the regional supply network supporting ships operating in the Middle East. The Navy shifted the new logistics hub to Naval Support Facility Diego Garcia, an atoll in the Indian Ocean that sits more than 2,000 miles away from the service’s carrier strike groups in the Middle East. Diego Garcia’s distance proved to be problematic, the sailor said, with the hub requiring the LCS to place a food order 30 days in advance. Those orders were nearly impossible, however, with an influx schedule exacerbated by poor planning, the sailor added. Sailors were unable to resupply from the hub, instead grabbing whatever could be salvaged from replenishment-at-sea oilers. “There’s no excuse for why, if we’re at war, we can’t get an expedited food order,” the sailor said. Rep. Mike Levin, D-Calif., told Military Times that the logistical issues described by the sailor were due to preparation failures. “I’ve spoken to a lot of people who’ve been deployed, and you know, the basic problem seems to be that if they were going to use Bahrain as a hub to restock, to get food and to provide rest and all that,” Levin said. “If that was the idea, well, clearly that didn’t work out. After February, March — [the administration] should have thought of that.”

‘People can break, too’

At least two sailors attempted to jump overboard from the USS Abraham Lincoln, families of Lincoln sailors previously told Military Times. While the individual mental circumstances of the incidents remain unknown, the frantic operational tempo of combat operations inevitably takes a natural toll on service members, according to one sailor who has deployed to the Middle East aboard an aircraft carrier during the current conflict. “Just like machines, people can break, too,” said the service member, who was granted anonymity for fear of reprisal from leadership. “They need rest.” Time to rest was not always available. Losing sleep was sometimes part of ensuring safety. If equipment broke, sailors would, at times, work well beyond normal shifts until it was fixed. In some instances, completion of the task could mean the difference between life and death. In a 2021 review, the GAO found that just 14% of Navy officers surveyed slept at least seven hours per night during a recent deployment, while 67% reported five hours or less. GAO also found that the Navy routinely assigned fewer sailors to ships than workload studies indicated were needed to safely operate them. By 2023, surface-fleet sailors were averaging 5.25 hours of sleep every 24 hours, below the Navy’s standard of providing at least 7.5 hours of sleep opportunity. GAO identified crew shortfalls and mattress problems as challenges to managing fatigue. For its part, the Navy has implemented measures to try to address the issue, including initiating a study involving about 1,600 sailors wearing Oura rings to monitor sleep and other biometric indicators while underway.

But lack of sleep, according to personnel, has been just one detriment experienced during the conflict with Iran. Service members have also faced food shortages onboard the carrier, the sailor said, with quality that fluctuated between bad and horrible. “It was either undercooked, overcooked or unrecognizable at all,” the sailor said. As extensions piled on, a decline in morale took on a recognizable tone at the phone center or in conversations at the galleys. Humor darkened even more than usual, and port visits meant less and less. “These things have been happening on deployments for always,” said Parker Moore, a nuclear reactor operator who served aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln before its recent deployment. “It is bad, but it is always bad.”

:::

cont'd in response

https://www.wsj.com/business/energy-oil/u-s-says-oil-is-pouring-through-hormuz-trackers-cant-find-it-306faebd (seems unarchivable unfortunately)

U.S. Says Oil Is Pouring Through Hormuz. Trackers Can’t Find It.

Industry firms that count ships, oil output and imports aren’t able to verify the full volume of oil the U.S. claims is getting through Iran’s chokehold

::: spoiler more

The Trump administration says large volumes of oil are slipping through the Strait of Hormuz. The trackers whose job it is to count the world’s oil shipments see much less Energy Secretary Chris Wright said last week the U.S. military had helped ship over 15 million barrels* of crude and oil products out of the waterway last Tuesday. He put the average oil exports through the strait over a seven-day period at more than 8 million barrels a day. Earlier this month, Wright said the seven-day average stood at around 9 million barrels a day. The count from commercial ship trackers tells a different story, with estimates ranging from roughly 2 million to 6 million barrels a day. Industry figures on the amount of crude oil and oil products being loaded onto ships in the Persian Gulf and delivered to buyers don’t corroborate the U.S. claims.

There are lots of reasons the numbers can diverge. Many ships are crossing the strait at night with their transponders off, making them hard to track by radio signal or satellite imagery. Big tankers can carry 2 million barrels apiece, so missing one or two can make all the difference. Measurement periods also make a big difference, as do assumptions about how full ships are when they cross. Wright has said private data firms are undercounting ships that move covertly through the waterway. Still, a persistent gap remains between Washington’s estimates and what the market can independently verify. “What’s remarkable is how similar tanker trackers’ numbers are. You’d expect someone to have figured out a way to validate the White House numbers if there was a way,” said Rory Johnston, founder of Commodity Context, an oil-market research firm. “As of yet, I haven’t seen anyone do it.” U.K. Maritime Trade Operations, which is affiliated with the Royal Navy, cited U.S. Navy data in a report over the weekend that said the U.S. facilitated 74 transits through Hormuz from Thursday through Saturday, or around 25 transits a day on average. The numbers don’t specify how many were oil tankers or how many barrels they carried. The UKMTO hasn’t independently verified the U.S. data, but believes it to be accurate, a person familiar with the matter said.

“Commercial traffic through the Strait of Hormuz remained at reduced levels,” UKMTO said in its report. “Independent tracking data indicated suppression with single-digit numbers transiting in both directions.” The discrepancy echoes the oil market’s familiar bane of “missing barrels”—volumes that show up in one set of figures but can’t readily be accounted for elsewhere. Such debates ultimately get settled in physical markets, where the oil is either available or it isn’t. So far, markets are relatively relaxed, with benchmark Brent crude futures elevated around $90 a barrel but well off their wartime highs, indicating the market isn’t desperate for supplies. Earlier in the war, a yawning gap emerged with physical market cargoes priced well above Brent futures, signaling immediate supply pressure and traders’ optimism that the war would be over soon. That gap—once as large as $36 a barrel—has narrowed to less than $6 in recent months, according to Argus Media, a price-reporting agency. Futures prices for oil that flow out of the Gulf, such as a grade of crude known as Dubai, have come down from $160 a barrel in late March to around $97 a barrel Friday, according to Argus Media. But the discrepancy does matter in terms of setting expectations for oil traders and for judging who is winning the economic war of attrition that Washington and Tehran are fighting, with oil as a key weapon.

The U.S. Navy for months has successfully guided some tankers through a protected route along the Omani side of the strait, eroding Iran’s control and easing the pressure on global oil markets. Iran responded in July by attacking ships using the route, sinking an agreement to open the waterway. On Monday, it threatened to fine or detain 46 ships it said had broken its rules for transiting the strait. The United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia have also managed to route millions of barrels a day around the blockade by piping them across the desert to the Gulf of Oman or the Red Sea. Mohsen Rezaei, a top Iranian official, said late Sunday that those routes will be threatened if the U.S. continues its campaign of squeezing Iran’s economy. Kuwaiti, Iraqi and Emirati officials said some tankers are getting through under separate arrangements with Iran, meaning not all of the traffic is moving under U.S. protection. Ship trackers say roughly a third of the vessels that have transited the strait during August have used the Iranian-administered route along the northern reaches of the waterway.

With the war knocking out large volumes of supply, oil prices and the global economy are unusually sensitive to how much crude might come to market. Kpler, a ship-tracking firm, estimates that exports of crude and oil products through Hormuz have run at about 2.3 million barrels a day so far in August, down from 4.9 million barrels a day in July. Huax, another tracker, puts a current range for crude and refined products at 2 million to 5 million barrels a day. Johnston’s latest seven-day average of confirmed transits is about 4 million barrels a day, though he expects that to be raised to 5 million to 6 million as ships that made dark crossings turn their transponders back on after they clear the strait and their voyages can be reconstructed. Data from Vortexa, another tanker tracker, runs closer to the administration’s numbers but only across a short window. It says its seven-day average recently peaked at 9.2 million barrels a day. But its 28-day moving average, which the company says is more representative because it smooths out short-term spikes and volatility, remains at around 6 million barrels a day, underscoring how dramatically the picture can change depending on the dates selected.

The biggest problem for trackers is that many tankers are going dark. Ships normally broadcast their identity, position, speed and direction through AIS transponders, a radio-based automatic identification. But with many vessels switching off their AIS before crossing Hormuz, analysts have to reconstruct the voyages using satellite imagery and other clues. “So many ships are transiting dark, which makes it difficult to tally total tanker movements in real time,” said Bridget Diakun, maritime intelligence and research director at Lloyd’s List Intelligence. “We are partially waiting for AIS to come back on, but we also need to wait for satellite imagery to be available to validate sailings through Hormuz.” Satellites can help identify ships at berths in the Gulf and then in areas beyond the strait where ship-to-ship transfers occur. But satellite imagery just captures points in time and isn’t great for tracking the chokepoint itself, as it misses the bulk of the movements at night, she said. Detecting a ship doesn’t settle how many barrels moved. Analysts need to establish whether it was laden with oil or sailing empty. A very large crude carrier, or VLCC, is capable of holding roughly 2 million barrels, but that doesn’t mean it is full. The U.S. military has wider sources of information given its active presence around the Gulf, advanced sensors and communications with ships in transit. “I can’t get to 10 million barrels a day from the vessel and cargo picture available to me,” said Arsenio Longo, the founder of Huax. “The military may well be seeing vessels through radar, aircraft or other surveillance that commercial feeds miss.”

There is another way to check: Oil can’t move through the strait if it isn’t first put on tankers somewhere in the Persian Gulf. Those figures also don’t line up with the U.S. transit claims. LSEG puts crude and product loadings inside the Persian Gulf at about 4.4 million barrels a day in July and 1.9 million so far in August. The data provider says Iraq, which lacks a major bypass route, loaded just 1.1 million barrels a day so far this month, less than a third of prewar levels, while Kuwait loaded 0.5 million, one-fifth of its prewar rate. Kuwaiti officials say they are exporting more, around 1 million barrels a day. The ultimate check on Washington’s numbers is whether the barrels ultimately surface somewhere. Even if tankers disappear while crossing Hormuz, much of that oil should eventually show up in data on barrels unloaded to buyers or middlemen. So far, the U.S. government’s claimed volumes aren’t fully showing up in other countries’ import volumes. According to LSEG data, an average of 11.6 million barrels per day of Middle Eastern crude and refined products have been or are scheduled to be discharged in Asia. That number includes oil exports routed around Hormuz by pipeline, not just barrels escorted through the chokepoint. :::

https://archive.ph/0xqc1

Gamblers have made $8 million on Polymarket betting on military operations

Researchers say the win rate among 152 accounts on Polymarket is so high that they are “the most likely insiders” betting on the site.

::: spoiler more

A small number of gamblers have made $8 million placing military and defense-related bets on the Polymarket prediction site, most placed by about 150 accounts that almost always bet correctly. The researchers say they suspect the accounts are linked to military insiders who could be flagged for law enforcement as “the most likely potential insiders,” researchers said in a new report. When the most successful of those accounts bet on unlikely military events, researchers found, they won virtually every single time. “Traders acting on specialized, non-public information possess an edge that is valuable only within a limited set of markets, and that produces win rates difficult to attribute to luck,” researchers with the Anti-Corruption Data Collective said in a new report released Thursday. The researchers studied the small number of bettors who met two criteria: ”The concentration of their betting within less than 100 markets and two topics, and unusual accuracy (over 75%) of their longshot bets.” The same research group published a report in April that found a high risk of insider trading on military-related Polymarkets after observing that “longshot” bets on military operations won 52% of the time, which was four times more often than other types of markets.

While ‘whales’ often lose, ‘orcas’ almost always win

The collective’s new report hones in on 152 accounts, which researchers analyzed and found certain behaviors that “support our hypothesis that they are the most likely insiders.” The accounts, which researchers called “orcas” or “highly specialized, incredibly successful bettors,” were compared to whales, who spend the most on a wide range of markets to “devour enormous profits,” mostly at the expense of “small fish” bettors who tried their luck but end up “losing out badly to the fat larger competition.” The collective found that half of the orca accounts made their first long-shot bet within two days of making their Polymarket account and waged higher bets more often on high-risk, low-probability markets. The 152 orca wallets placed $2 million on military longshot bets and won 97.2% of the time for $8 million, or over $52,500 per wallet. Despite spending overall less money on bets than others, orcas still made a return of 132% compared to whales and small fish whose losses were as high as -2%. At least half of the orcas doubled their money.

The trends could pose larger national security implications, the report said. The collective observed orcas placing bets first that were then followed by whales (a group which also may include bot accounts) and small fish. As an example, orcas made a series of longshot bets around Feb. 16, 2025, and again 48 hours before the U.S. began its March strikes on Iran. Those bets were followed by whales and potential bots. “Because every Polymarket trade is visible on a public blockchain in real time, an insider betting on confidential military information is effectively broadcasting that information to foreign adversaries,” the collective said. “Copycat behavior amplifies these signals, making them virtually impossible to contain.” The collective also pointed out that Polymarket allows users to bet with cryptocurrency tools that make tracing an account to its owner next to impossible. As a result, pinpointing “potential suspicious activity,” like government officials or military personnel using non-public information for monetary gain, may not be possible. The report recommended that Polymarket require government-issued identification for all bettors. The group’s findings come amid ongoing insider betting cases involving U.S. and Israeli military personnel. In April, U.S. Army Master Sgt. Gannon Ken Van Dyke, a special operations soldier, was arrested and charged for making more than $400,000 in Polymarket bets related to Venezuela and the U.S. raid and capture of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro. Van Dyke was on a Navy vessel that helped stage the raid. In April, he pleaded not guilty and last month his lawyers asked for the case to be dismissed, arguing that federal prosecutors were trying to stretch current laws to make them fit his case. Several Israelis have also recently been arrested on suspicion of placing Polymarket bets based on classified information, including an arrest this month of an airman accused of using sensitive military information to bet on Iran and Yemen attacks. In May, Israel charged its first airman with similar crimes, and as part of his defense, the officer claimed that “The entire Israel Air Force is involved in gambling.” :::

Trump escalates Canada trade war as Ontario says ready to cut energy, critical minerals to US | The Cradle

Ontario Premier Doug Ford says Trump is trying to destroy Canada's auto industry and move it south to the US

Sec. Bessent: "Economic D-Day" for countries still trading with Iran.

Chinese banks are not a part of the sanctions package, despite this being "d-day" or whatever. We also are still hearing lies like "the US has control over the strait and China cannot buy from Iran" from media covering Bessent's speech.

https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/us-treasury-broaden-scope-secondary-sanctions-iran-source-says-2026-08-24/

BREAKING: The US now has just 41 days of crude oil inventory left, the lowest level in half a century.

Iran says "it will soon squeeze much harder."

Chang'e 7, China's next and potentially most interesting mission to survey the southern polar region of the moon has unfortunately been called off due to weather. Sadly this is the only launch window available for the rest of the year, as not only does the rover have to land at the time when the polar region receives the most light (Mid-November) but it also requires 3 months of lunar orbiting before that date to image the southern pole to assist with landing. It seems that the mission will be postponed until August of next year. Considering the recent Rapid Unplanned Disassembly of a Long March 7a rocket mid-flight a few weeks ago, it seems that 7 is not their lucky number.

CNBC - U.S. oil export curbs might be close, as SPR stockpiles approach minimum level: Analyst

🛢

As the SPR continues its plunge below 300 Mbbl, analysts are asking what the US could do to mitigate the damage before any doomsday situation happens.

One easy thing to do would be to stop exporting crude and refined oils. This would be an extreme step, but so is going below 100 Mbbls of diesel fuel which could be a breaking point for the markets which is coming soon.

Here is a chart of exports from prior months. Going by month, you can see that the US could easily save itself at the cost of the global market at large. I know many countries have diversified where they get their oil imports, but this move would still be quite a blow. Remember Russia has banned diesel and gasoline exports already due to the Ukraine strikes.

So in summary, options for where to get oil are going to get scarce for much of the world. And the US has more cards to play before we get to see Trump turn into Jimmy Carter like promised.

Our boy ripplebrain just did another Radio War Nerd appearance in which they try to answer the most pressing Hexbear newsmaxxer question in 2026:

Why hasn't Iran sunk a US carrier yet? (<-- free podbean link)

This comes just days after the first Ripplebrain RWN collaboration on Iran war premonitions and general missile warfare, which can be found further down in the podbean link as well.

Israel [sic] kills three Palestinians in Gaza after kites cross border fence | The Cradle

::: spoiler excerpt

Israeli [sic] forces killed three Palestinians in Gaza, including a four-year-old child, on 23 August, in response to several kites that harmlessly floated across the border fence into Israel [sic].

Israeli [sic] warplanes bombed a warehouse in the town of Al-Zawayda on Sunday, as well as two areas on Salah al-Din Street in central Gaza, Palestinian WAFA news agency reported.

Four-year-old Muhammad Abdel Salam Taha was among the three Palestinian victims killed by shrapnel sprayed by the bomb. Another six Palestinians were injured.

Israeli [sic] quadcopter drones opened fire on Shujaiya near Gaza City and Khan Yunis in southern Gaza, injuring at least a dozen more, including journalist Ezz al-Din al-Batsh. :::

First, and if you're wondering where I've been, I've been making a goddamn killing using Stalin's hysterically oversized spoon as a makeshift oil transportation vehicle and getting crude out of the Persian Gulf. If you have any similar anti-kulak devices laying around, like a grain storage pot with the carrying capacity of a VLCC, it's a great time to get in if you're nimble enough to dodge FPV drones.

The Islamic Republic of Iran denied on 24 August that it had been invited to join the Mecca defense pact between Saudi Arabia, Turkiye, and Pakistan, but confirmed that proposals have been made to hold regional security talks with the three countries.

from https://thecradle.co/articles-id/39527

Reuters: Putin hands Russian state right to take control of badly protected infrastructure objects

President Vladimir Putin on Monday handed the Russian state the authority to take control of critically-important ​infrastructure facilities if they are deemed to be ‌poorly protected from Ukrainian drone attacks and other threats.

The special powers, set out in a presidential decree, will allow the ​state to take over temporary administration of such ​facilities at a time when Ukraine has stepped ⁠up drone attacks on oil refineries and retail warehouses.

The ​state will be able to take control of physical ​and financial assets and formal ownership rights if the entities responsible for such facilities are judged to have failed in their duty ​to protect them and are too slow to ​repair them after any attack, according to the decree.

It listed fuel, ‌energy, ⁠industrial, communications, transport and logistics facilities and other objects regarded as critically-important for ensuring the security and economic stability of the state and the population as falling within ​the new ​decree's scope.

Quick thought for everyone to chew on this week:

Death to America and its external zionist tumor. The ever-crumbling empire grabs futilely at its fringes, only knocking further away that which it seeks to control. Every accusation is a projection and every projection is a prediction - As Bessent told us, "any nation that serves as a financial artery of a withering regime should expect to share in its isolation". Take a look at Canada and the UK and see if he's right.

War On Iran: – Borg Concedes Loss Of Control In Middle East | Moon of Alabama (checked ✅ for brainworms)

At least a part of the U.S. foreign policy borg has come to the conclusion that the U.S. has lost its primary role in the Middle East. There seems to be little appetite to regain the position.

The purpose of this post is to collect these voices.