ALL HANDS TO THE PUMPS!

The Popular Perspective on work songs has long been that they establish unity of effort.

As newcomers dove into a vast backcatalog of songs, many quickly highlighted just how catchy these tunes really are. But while early sea shanty composers didn’t envision ever reaching the top of the charts, they certainly wrote them to be earworms. The sea shanty is only one variant of a work song—rhythmic melodies designed to help laborers keep pace with one another during repetitive, often backbreaking jobs. Other types of work songs developed over generations among Appalachian coal miners, prison chain gangs, and British textile workers, just to name a few examples.

Yes, tightening the side-wall on the Big Top:  "Break it, pull it, shake it, now downstake it!  Move on to the next one."

PROGRESS?

As of this afternoon, the latest edition of the Victor E. Garden is being planted, and the ongoing negotiation over nuclear materials that the current owner doesn't want to part with goes on.  Perhaps Commander Salamander is asking the right question, "If Iran Wants to Rule Rubble, Should we Let Them?"

We’re in it now, and at this stage—having taken away the Islamic Republic’s conventional heft and ability to maintain her proxies—we have to deal with the secondary effects—getting the free flow of goods at market prices out of the Strait of Hormuz choke point…while keeping pressure on the Islamic Republic.

We are trying to find some agreement with the forces ruling the Islamic Republic that seem content to destroy Iran as long as they rule over the rubble, and impoverish everyone else as long as it helps support goal #1.

There's a division of war objectives, with the United States concentrating on restoring freedom of navigation and taking control of the fissile material, the Israelis seeking an end to non-governmental organizations with weapons cutting up on their borders, and who knows what ancient rivalries are playing out among the Gulf Arab states and Persia, who are not parties to the cease fire, such as it is, the United States and Israel have mostly been respecting.

STAGNATION IN THE STRAIT OF HORMUZ.

A source called Windward assesses portions of the Strait of Hormuz as "controlled maritime holding zones" with commercial movement "heavily restricted."  Make of the headline, "Kharg Stalls as Iran Expands Maritime Control Across Hormuz" what you will.  On one hand, they report no evidence of any new tankers being loaded at Kharg Island, on the other they note a good deal of speedboat activity consistent with the revolutionary guards setting up their tolled operation.  In their assessment, idle ships are serving as floating storage tanks, while the speedboats support some combination of blockading outbound traffic and aiding international trade among Arabian Gulf ports.

IRGC-linked maritime surveillance and patrol activity remained elevated throughout the Strait operating area during the reporting window.

On May 11, Windward identified more than 200 fast craft operating across the broader Strait area. By May 13, approximately 342 high-speed craft were assessed operating across five monitored Hormuz sectors, significantly above the May 4–10 baseline.

In their assessment, Iranian authorities are "attempting to formalize operational control" over the strait, with that activity disrupting shipping rather than improving transit conditions in a way that might put some money in the mullah's coffers.  "Windward assesses that widespread AIS suppression, EMCON behavior, and dark staging activity are increasingly reducing maritime transparency across Hormuz and complicating the distinction between commercial shipping, sanctions-evasion operations, and state-supported maritime activity."  There are, however, relatively few goats to distinguish from the sheep, to mix metaphors.

IT'S CALLED SURRENDER.

Predictably, Jake Johnson with Common Dreams takes the side of the mullahs.  "Iranian Official Says Trump Rejected Peace Proposal That Was ‘Reasonable and Generous.’"  Foreign Ministry mouthpiece Esmail Baghaei is whining like an overindulged child.  “Is our proposal for safe passage through the Strait of Hormuz unreasonable?  Is establishing peace and security across the entire region irresponsible?”

Yes, and yes, because what remains of his government would like to control ingress to and egress from the Arabian Gulf, and Herr Baghaei's vision of peace and security still includes paid gangbangers masquerading as religious believers chanting "death to Israel," internal security forces punishing dissent with death, and work continuing on a nuclear weapon.

LET THE ANACONDA'S COILS TIGHTEN.

In The American Thinker, Heyrsh Abdulrahman, who has foreign policy experience germane to the conflict, notes, "The era of believing the Iranian regime can simply be managed indefinitely appears to be ending, and Washington should not waste the opportunity created by that realization."  It's a lengthy essay, considering several dimensions of the conflict, and it reinforces the Cold Spring Shops position that the current Iranian government ought not have nuclear capabilities, ought not be financing gangbangers masquerading as religious zealots in Asia Minor or beyond, ought respect the status of the Strait of Hormuz as an international waterway, and ought compensate the Gulf Arab states for damages resulting from their unstructured response to the Israeli and United States military campaign.

THE ROADS NOT TAKEN?

Reason's Matthew Petti describes the current scrap with Iran as a "pointless war."

I'm tempted to crack wise about Amtrak's pointless arrow being with us for over fifty years, and this pointless war has been going on for almost that long.

Mr Petti's thesis is provocative.

Although the war came out of the blue for most Americans, the Iran hawks spent decades working to put the United States in this position. They made it politically easier to go to war than not go to war. Politicians took it for granted that Israel and the Arab monarchies' problems with Iran were also America's problems. But hawkish factions from both parties also shot down any attempt to solve those problems through compromise or even containment of Iran. They pushed the U.S. to take greater and greater risks while avoiding a public debate on war.

"If Iran presents a quasi-existential menace, diplomacy is a political liability and sanctions don't work, what is left besides military force?" Robert Malley, the Biden administration's envoy to Iran, wrote in a recent New York Times essay criticizing his former boss for helping create the conditions for war. "If the United States wants to stop plunging into Middle East wars, it needs to value its own interests more than it hates its old enemies."

The hawkish coalition's shifting goalposts, designed to make avoiding war impossible, haunted the execution of the war itself. Since the conflict began, the Trump administration has thrown out many different, contradictory victory conditions: overthrowing the Iranian government, making a deal with the Iranian government, destroying Iran's nuclear program, sending Iran's entire industrial base "back to the Stone Age," unleashing a "prosperous and glorious future" for Iran, taking control of the Strait of Hormuz, or letting the strait "open itself."

For many hawks, the specific rationales for fighting Iran don't seem to matter. What they want is someone to pay for the past decades of U.S. failures in the Middle East.

Did those "past decades" begin with an embassy seized in the fall of 1979?  When a government's spokesmen refer to the United States as a "Great Satan" and Israel as the "Lesser Satan" and riles up constituents to yell "Death to America" might one at least be a little fretful about that country developing a nuclear weapon?  That the current government is skin-suiting Persian traditions of long standing might also be reason to swap it out?

SAGE ADVICE FOR OUR TIME.

In Brussels Signal, Conrad Black offers a verdict that it might behoove the process-worshippers in the faculty common rooms to read and understand.

China is a challenge but not a rival and America’s ostensible allies are much less formidable than they were in the World Wars or even most of the Cold War. If Europe wishes to be taken seriously by the Americans, it has to act seriously and bring something to the party besides unction, loquacity, patronisation, and the compulsive will to appease America’s enemies.

For that consummation to be achieved, dear reader, it is essential that the coils of the anaconda continue to tighten.

What appears to be the last shot in the locker for the beleaguered and fragmented Iranian regime is the false claim that they control the Strait of Hormuz. The United States Navy could certainly convoy oil tankers through in approximately three 30-tanker convoys per day. They have the ships and aircraft necessary to assure reasonable safety and could put Marines on all ships to repel boarders and respond instantly to shore attacks and to the small craft of the Iranians that have so terrorised unescorted tankers. President Trump has already declined the belated offer of the Europeans, who need this oil, to assist in clearing the Strait. The United States doesn’t really need oil from this source and its lack of alacrity in reducing the price of oil for allies who would not allow the United States use of their own airspace and American bases in their country for the purposes of conducting this war, is understandable.

In his view, the mullahs might posture and puff in the way of men of Asia Minor, but it's likely for show for the benefit of their own subjects, but they won't do anything foolish.

The correlation of military forces now between the United States and Israel on one side and Iran on the other is approximately a thousand to one, and any recourse to aggression against the United States by Iran would be so horrifying a mistake that even the blooded and divided fighting bull government of the Islamic Republic has eschewed it. The departure of the United Arab Emirates from OPEC also indicates that that country will assist in moderating the world oil price while Iran flounders to the end of this operetta of a war in which the principal terrorism-sponsoring country in the world and a relentlessly belligerent source of threats and outrages has been reduced to impotent mendicancy, all at a cost to the United States of eight battlefield fatalities and a non-combat accident in which five other servicemen died.

What has been most remarkable in the response of the West has been this sour grapes recognition that the United States does not need anything from NATO to achieve its international strategic goals.

All of which might be true, and yet now is not the time to go wobbly.

Turn over the fissile material and destroy the machinery of uranium enhancement.  Stop funding proxies throughout Asia Minor.  Compensate the Gulf Arab states for damages to their tourist infrastructure.  Recognize that the Strait of Hormuz is international waters.

PRIZE AND BOOTY.

Maritime law features all sorts of interesting terminology.  The most familiar pairing might be flotsam and jetsam.  At law, how that stuff wound up in the water (loosely, floated off as opposed to jettisoned) determines who has the right to retrieve it.

Now contemplate, with or without a dead-man's chest and a bottle of rum, prize and booty.

Prize law is the body of maritime law and the law of armed conflict that applies to captured neutral or enemy merchant vessels. Prize law applies to civilian merchant vessels, distinct from enemy warships or aircraft, which automatically become booty of war when captured. Prize law only applies during armed conflict, making it distinct from routine maritime interdictions or sanctions enforcement, which can occur outside armed conflict and are not necessarily belligerent acts. Eight specific grounds make a neutral state’s vessel capturable, including breaching a blockade, carrying contraband, and resisting visit and search. Contraband consists of goods destined for an enemy of a belligerent and susceptible to use in armed conflict, a definition that was has not been broadly applied since World War II. According to U.S. policy, a blockading state has the right to stop vessels bound to or from blockaded ports anywhere on the high seas and apply prize law. Although the U.S. has recently interdicted other Iran-linked vessels outside the Strait of Hormuz, the U.S. has invoked maritime interdiction and sanctions enforcement for those interdictions, not for blockade violations.

The law has developed over the years and it isn't as simple as putting Marines on the bridge and steering a course for a friendly port.

Once vessels are captured, they can be escorted to a port under belligerent jurisdiction for inspection and adjudication by a prize court. That court would determine whether the capture was lawful. If so, the court may condemn the vessel and cargo as prize, and award title to the capturing state.

Meanwhile, back at the Strait of Hormuz, a few ships might be moving, but free movement by ships from or for Gulf Arab ports isn't happening.

Maritime activity across the Strait of Hormuz and adjacent corridors is showing early signs of recovery, but under sustained enforcement pressure and continued sanctions-driven disruption.

Transit volumes rebounded on April 25 following several days of suppressed movement, with all crossings conducted under full AIS visibility. At the same time, U.S. enforcement activity expanded beyond the Gulf, highlighted by the interception of a sanctioned LPG tanker in the Arabian Sea.

Iranian export infrastructure continues to operate under strain. Kharg Island shows active loading alongside a growing anchorage queue, indicating throughput pressure rather than a full recovery in export flow.

Across the system, vessel behavior reflects a controlled reopening environment, where movement is resuming, but under active monitoring, enforcement risk, and persistent sanctions pressure.

The article notes increased open and clandestine transit of the strait, without disaggregating Gulf Arab traffic that enjoys freedom of transit once clear of the area from Iranian traffic subject to U. S. enforcement anywhere at sea.

As far as effects on the price of gasoline, Stephen "Vodka Pundit" Green notes,  "Sure, nobody likes paying four bucks for gas, although $5 gas under Joe Biden would be $5.75 in today's dollars. But as Robin Brooks noted this weekend on Substack, 'the current physical shortage of oil was entirely predictable and got priced long ago.'"

We'll take stock of the motor fuel prices another day.

ANOTHER LOST WEEKEND IN ISLAMABAD.

Pakistan's government, which might be acting as agent for what passes as Iran's government, is hosting another round of discussions between Abbas Aragchi, who is touring several capitals including Moscow, and Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner.

Red State's "Captain Ed" Morrissey isn't expecting much.

Pakistan isn't part of the US-Israel war with Iran, and except for a couple of attempts in the early days, it has not been the recipient of Iranian retaliation, unlike the experiences of Iran's Persian Gulf neighbors. Pakistan has good relations with the US – not as good as those GCC states, but warm enough, especially after Trump brokered a peace agreement after war briefly broke out between Pakistan and India.

Araghchi doesn't need "consultation" with Islamabad to know what steps Iran has to take to end the war. They have to surrender their highly enriched uranium (HEU), end support for terror proxies, renounce their illegal claim to sovereignty over the Strait of Hormuz, and negotiate missile limits with Israel and the countries in the Abraham Accords. Araghchi's problem is that he doesn't have any power to negotiate on any of those points, because the IRGC has depantsed him publicly and made sure everyone knows he's an impotent boob with an airplane at his disposal, and that's all.

Araghchi likely knows that Trump won't extend the ceasefire as another favor to Pakistan.

As we wind down the business week, the Captain has correctly spelled out United States' war aims.  Israel's government might have additional aspirations, and their ongoing negotiations with Lebanon's government to crack down on Hezbollah provide an additional list of items for negotiations.  In addition, the Gulf Arab states might want to hang onto some of the Iranian money laundered through Gulf Arab banks to cover repairs to their hotels and airports.

As far as moving cargo for and from Gulf Arab ports, neither the United States Navy nor their European nor Indian nor Japanese counterparts have yet organized convoys or escorts.

LET THE ANACONDA'S COILS TIGHTEN.

As of this afternoon, Pakistani diplomats have forwarded a request from Iran to continue the cease-fire.

President Donald Trump said on Tuesday that he will not go forward with new strikes on Iran at the request of Pakistani officials, extending the ceasefire between the U.S. and Iran.

Trump said Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif and Field Marshal Asim Munir asked the U.S. to “hold our Attack on the Country of Iran until such time as [Iranian] leaders and representatives can come up with a unified proposal” to end the war.

Trump added that the U.S. will continue to blockade Iranian shipping in the Strait of Hormuz, which has served as a key point of tension between the two countries.

No "unified proposal" suggests that the mullahs' ten point plan that Code Pink types endorsed, only yesterday, as "a workable basis for negotiations" might no longer be operative.  You'd think, if this Iranian academic correctly assesses the situation as “Iran believes it has the upper hand and that this must be established in any future confrontation,” that somebody would have informed the Pakistani mediators that the Iranian negotiators stand by their ten points, and then it would be up to National Command Authority to make counter-offers.

Our President seems to be in no hurry to send negotiators to Pakistan, which suggests he's standing by his base position, which is that the nuclear physics ends, the funding of terrorist proxies in other countries ends, the Strait of Hormuz  remains an international waterway with no tolls, and Iran's ports are closed until those conditions are met.

A LOT CAN CHANGE IN A WEEK.

At the beginning of the week, a Daily Kos diarist posted a cartoon critical of United States war aims.

That's likely a dig at Our President's dig at Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

THE MERCANTILIST TEMPTATION.

Those oil tankers that transported the final shipments out of the Arabian Gulf had to go someplace after they delivered their cargoes.  Many of them are heading to United States ports for their next load.

I don't know whether this train, which passed the train watching camera at Sturtevant on Sunday, is a load of ethanol or of Bakken crude.

The You Tube channel soundtrack includes Canadian Pacific radio, and of late train crews have been calling attention to trespassers more frequently of late.  Whether that reflects a security bulletin or the effect of better weather on kiddos looking for new places to take selfies I don't know.

I do know that Our President is hailing all those tankers heading Stateside to pick up, and some of his cheering section in the media are carrying on about "jobs" and "exports" and all the rest.  Which is true, but let us balance that against the higher prices for finished product and the efficiency losses from sending the natural gas crude carriers over longer distances between loads.

As far as the Strait of Hormuz, Windward's most recent briefing notes, "The operating environment is now defined by active enforcement, partial compliance, and continued evasion, with vessel movement shaped by both restriction and adaptation."  There are still some eight hundred ships of all kinds west of the strait, which is a lot of cargo still to move.  The briefing noted that one of the outbound ships flew the Chinese Flag with a Hong Kong port.  Some people are making a lot of noise about that.  The ship has a cargo from one of the Gulf Arab states and its manifest is in order for passage.

IRAN'S PAPER BLOCKADE.

Only last week, I asked, "Where is the fleet of Aegis carrying destroyers and cruisers to quarantine the Iranian ports?"  I got the answer I was hoping for on Saturday when two Arleigh Burkes sailed into the Strait of Hormuz, ignored Iranian requests to go away, and sailed out again.  In so doing, they made the case that Iran's closure of the strait was a paper blockade.  That's something the United States Navy understands well: there was a reason Gideon Welles rushed anything that would float to close secessionist ports in 1861: should some other naval power (meaning primarily Britain and France in those days) send a warship to make a port of call in Charleston or New Orleans, the rules of war (even without a transatlantic cable let alone radio) allowed that power to declare it was a blockade in name only, and interesting diplomatic or military things could follow.

BLOCKADING HATTERAS INLET IS HARDER.

I allude, of course, to Gideon Welles's Anaconda Plan, which ultimately strangled the rebellion.  It took four years to implement, because getting control of the Mississippi River and the Atlantic and Gulf of Mexico America wasn't easy.  Note how in four years, Vladimir Putin hasn't been able to do something similar with Ukraine.

HOW IT'S GOING.

The B-52s were on their way to Iran when Our President announced something along the lines of a cease-fire over Iran and pending negotiations in Pakistan.  According to Juan Cole, Iran won the war.

It did not win as in, scoring a knockout. It won in the sense that if I went 12 rounds with Deontay Wilder and was still standing up at the end of it, it would count as a win.

The Israeli-US attempt to decapitate the government failed. Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was assassinated along with family members, but the 88-member clerical Assembly of Experts simply elected his son, Mojtaba Khamenei, to succeed him. The civilian minister of defense was killed, which is probably a war crime. President Masoud Pezeshkian appointed IRGC General Majid Ebnelreza as acting minister of defense. The pragmatic civilian Secretary of the National Security Council, Ali Larijani was assassinated, likely another war crime. He was succeeded by hard liner Mohammad Bagher Zolghadr, a former IRGC general. In essence, Trump and Netanyahu made an internal coup against Iran’s centrist pragmatists in government, ensuring that they were replaced by far right hard liners.

Going into the war, the Iranian government had just committed a massacre of thousands of protesters and was without a friend in the world. Trump and Netanyahu committed breathtaking war crimes on Iran and acted and spoke so monstrously that many countries ended up at least rhetorically supporting Iran, or at least opposing the war on it. Israel comes out of the war a pariah. The US is too rich, big and powerful to be a pariah but its standing has certainly plummeted and it can expect much less cooperation going forward.

Iran likely inflicted billion dollars worth of damage on the 13 US military bases in the Middle East, most of which are largely destroyed. It used cheap little drones to take out radar installations in Kuwait and elsewhere worth hundreds of millions of dollars, blinding the US to its missile barrages and allowing some deadly strikes, as on Dimona in Israel. Iran demonstrated that having a US military base does not protect the host country but rather exposes it to greater danger. Most US military personnel appear to have had to flee the bases, relocating to local hotels. Iranian intelligence in the Gulf is good enough so that some of those hotels were attacked by drones. Some personnel arrived back in Washington D.C. with only the clothes on their back and Pete Hegseth doesn’t seem to have helped them much.

That might elicit earnest nods in an Ann Arbor common room, but it might be that eliminating as many Iranian government officials as the allies have has fractured the unity among what's left of the government's leaders, and that might have led to Pakistan suggesting private peace feelers that are distinct from what the mullahs are offering for their subjects' edification.  Read on , and discover that even Mr Cole might see the Iranian victory as pyrrhic.

Iran has seen important research institutes, university programs, steel mills, petrochemical complexes, and other economic and infrastructural sites destroyed. It is likely, however, that these can be rebuilt if Iran has convinced Israel that it has the means of deterrence. It is likely that Russia and China will help with the rebuilding, behind the scenes, because a strong Iran able to stand up to the US and its Israeli proxy is in their interests.

Predictable stuff from a long-time suck-up to the jihad.

THE ENVIRONMENTAL DEATH CULT.

Isn't a non-government actor interfering with waterborne commerce committing piracy?  "Ocean Defenders Collide With Industrial Krill Trawler in Antarctica."  Apparently because with less whaling, there are more hungry baleen whales about, and somebody has to protect their opportunities to feed.

“The krill fishing industry is fully aware of the damage they cause, such as killing whales in their nets, yet they do all they can to greenwash krill products,” said Bob Brown Foundation Antarctic and marine campaigner Alistair Allan. “We applaud the brave actions of the Captain Paul Watson Foundation, who are ensuring that the plunder of krill does not go unchallenged.”

“Krill is violently sucked out of Antarctica’s fragile wilderness all for products we don’t need, such as fish farm feed, pet food, and supposed health products,” Allan added. “It’s time for the world to boycott all products with krill in them.”

It is not for the likes of Ocean Defenders to determine what their neighbors "don't need."  Fish farming might take the pressure off natural fisheries, pet food keeps cat ladies from being crazier, and "supposed health products" could refer to Big Pharma's products or to the stuff of nature cures.  The luxury beliefs of environmentalist wackos can be deadly.

TOO EARLY TO BE PUTTING A PIN IN IT?

Hurricane season begins on the first of June.  (I have no memories of a sappy love song rhyming "typhoon" and "monsoon" along with the obligatory "moon" and "June" and sometimes "spoon" and "croon.")  That doesn't stop the punters from getting their first guesses out.  "Atlantic hurricane season forecast 2026: 11-16 named storms predicted by AccuWeather."

Roman priests might have examined the stones in chicken gizzards.  These days, the entrails are more liquid.

A developing El Niño will be one of the biggest forces shaping the 2026 Atlantic hurricane season, and is one reason the number of storms could be near to below historical averages. Still, hurricane preparedness is critical as multiple storms could make landfall in the United States this season.

It's foolish to live in the North without the snowblower serviced before the season and situational awarness on those days when maritime tropical air collides with continental polar.

WAS BULL RUN AN ESCALATION TRAP?

A lengthy post by Bret Devereaux, who appears to be a historian of some sort, provokes the title of my post.  As he develops his thesis, he offers the following origin story for the war.

The current war is best understood as the product of a fairly extreme gamble, although it is unclear to me if the current administration understood they were throwing the dice in June of 2025 rather than this year. As we’re going to see, this was not a super-well-planned-out affair.

The gamble was this: that the Iranian regime was weak enough that a solid blow, delivered primarily from the air, picking off key leaders, could cause it to collapse. For the United States, the hope seems to have been that a transition could then be managed to leaders perhaps associated with the regime but who would be significantly more pliant, along the lines of the regime change operation performed in Venezuela that put Delcy Rodriguez in power. By contrast, Israel seems to have been content to simply collapse the Iranian regime and replace it with nothing.

I note before we continue that National Command Authority anticipated an air campaign in excess of a month, that the United States and Israel have goals that align but are not congruent, that no battle plan survives its first encounter with the enemy, and that had the United States and Israel clobbered the mullahs on the basis of actionable intelligence that they would be meeting somewhere in Teheran without any coherent follow-on operations, somebody would probably already have leaked that to one of the legacy newspapers.

It is to that "solid blow" that I wish to turn.  Recall, in the summer of 1861, how the Georgetown cocktail party set packed picnic baskets and headed into Virginia to watch Gen^l McDowell and his forces smash up the secesh, march On to Richmond, and settle that hash once and for all.  We know that McDowell's plans came a cropper and that the cocktail party set got caught up in the ensuing skedaddle.

Let us suppose, for the sake of argument, that the Federal forces had prevailed and been able to occupy Richmond.  Mr Devereaux's essay works as an explainer for how occupying Richmond, with no forces in Memphis or New Orleans or Atlanta or Charleston would have failed.  The original capital city of the seceded states was in Montgomery, and it would be straightforward enough to return the political class there: and until something like Gideon Welles's Anaconda Plan closed the ports and reopened the Mississippi for the Union and wrecked the secesh's industrial base the war would go on.  If you think cartoonists of the era slagged on Abraham Lincoln for pursuing the war the way he, with Grant, Sheridan, Sherman; and Farragut and Porter did it, imagine those cartoonists with Richmond occupied and yet the war continuing.  Consider, also, that even with first Lee and then Johnston surrendering in April 1865 and with New Orleans, Atlanta, Charleston, and Richmond occupied, unreconstructed elements (in the manner of Iran's revolutionary guards with free rein to act locally) could continue the fight for years.  That's how the "Southern" "Poverty" "Law" Center made its civil rights bones, back in the day, litigating against such elements.

WILL THE THING BE PRESSED?

Our President is negotiating, or not, perhaps through an intermediary, with Iranian officials who are, or not, making decisions of state.  As we prepare for a weekend of recovery from the big O Scale show and determining the finalists in the basketball tournaments, Our President is hailing the passage of eight, or perhaps ten, oil tankers that he described as "a gift" and he has pledged not to make good on his threat to unleash the Air Force on Iran's power plants until April 6.  Iran's passage guarantees apparently didn't apply to at least two Chinese container ships.  His Secretary of State is still dickering with European diplomats who maintain a touching faith in the sort of diplomatic process that has worked so well for the past half century.  While the reality show president engages in the sort of showmanship that gets the Excessively Earnest People fretting, Israel's military continues to press its case.  "Defense Minister Israel Katz warned on Friday that Israel would ramp up its strikes on Iran in the coming days, citing continued Iranian ballistic missile fire at civilian targets in Israel, despite US President Donald Trump’s apparent efforts to bring the hostilities to a halt."

UNINSTALLING MULLAH 3.0 ... .... ...... ......

It's going on four weeks into combined combat operations by Israeli and United States military forces to change Iran's behavior.  The history of how things kicked off, once it comes out, will be interesting.  How quickly the allied forces put this campaign together once they had actionable intelligence about a high level gathering of religious and military leaders and a targeting list and broad outlines of objectives could be a tale of brilliant improvisation, or of hubris.  That might not come out in my lifetime.