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Debt Rattle April 14 2026

Apr 142026
 
 April 14, 2026  Posted by at 9:53 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , , , ,  40 Responses »


Thomas Cole The Course of Empire – The Consummation of Empire 1836


• How Iran’s Mosaic Doctrine Is Fracturing (Zineb Riboua)
• The IRGC’s Seven Fatal Strategic Mistakes (Zineb Riboua)
• To Blockade or Not Blockade, That Is the Question. (Scott Pinsker)
• US Allies Loudly Reject Trump’s Scheme To Blockade Hormuz (ZH)
• Fill’er Up: Trump’s Middle East Master Plan (Stephen Green)
• US Military to Enforce Embargo of What No One Is Supposed to Be Buying (CTH)
• As the Worms Turn (James Howard Kunstler)
• Magyar Beats Orban In Battle For Hungary: What Happens Now? (RT)
• Atkinson Transcripts and Background ICIG Investigative Documents Released (CTH)
• Bank of Russia Disputes Freeze of Assets by EU (TASS)
• Trump Reportedly Planning Mass Pardons Of Administration Officials (ZH)
• White House: ‘Era of Amnesty Is Over’ (Catherine Salgado)

 


 

https://twitter.com/EricLDaugh/status/2043465286423040010?s=20 https://twitter.com/QuantumGuard17/status/2043330005174788222?s=20 https://twitter.com/RealDonKeith/status/2043690895120216186?s=20

 


 

 


 


It can be hard to get reliable information about a far-away war. This looks promising.

Zineb Riboua is a Moroccan Berber who works at the Hudson Institute.

“Iran’s military defeat is in plain sight”


“Zineb Riboua is a research fellow with Hudson Institute’s Center for Peace and Security in the Middle East. She specializes in Chinese and Russian involvement.”

• How Iran’s Mosaic Doctrine Is Fracturing (Zineb Riboua)

Following President Trump’s announcement of a cease-fire, US Central Command (CENTCOM) commander Admiral Brad Cooper stated: “Iran has suffered a generational military defeat.” Tehran’s response has been a single counterargument: the Islamic Republic still stands. That argument mistakes the question. The survival of the Islamic Republic is not in dispute. What is in dispute is whether the surviving entity retains the capacity to direct the forces operating in its name.


Iran developed its mosaic military doctrine by drawing direct lessons from Saddam Hussein’s collapse in just twenty-six days. After the 2003 invasion of Iraq, Iranian Brigadier General Mohammad Ali Jafari reorganized the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) in 2008 into thirty-one provincial commands, each with its own weapons stockpiles, logistics chains and pre-delegated authority. Asymmetric warfare is the recourse of states that cannot prevail conventionally. Dispersion and concealment are the tools of a military that has already conceded the conventional battlefield.

Israel, operating alongside the United States in Operation Epic Fury, mastered asymmetric tactics and turned Iran’s own doctrine against it, employing intelligence penetration, targeted eliminations and network disruption with superior precision. The clearest demonstration came before the operation began. In July 2024, Israel assassinated Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh inside a Revolutionary Guard guesthouse in Tehran. Iran’s security services must now operate under the assumption that they do not know the extent of the compromise and that uncertainty is the most debilitating condition an intelligence service can face. Operation Epic Fury then pushed that penetration to its extreme.

The killing of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, the elimination of hundreds of senior IRGC commanders and the degradation of the Quds Force’s extraterritorial capacity together constituted a decapitation campaign of unprecedented precision. More importantly, fractures between Iran’s political leadership and its military have already surfaced publicly. On March 7, 2026, President Masoud Pezeshkian issued a televised apology to Arab Gulf states for missile and drone strikes conducted during the conflict, pledging that further attacks would cease. That a sitting president apologized for his own military’s actions within minutes of their execution illustrates precisely what pre-delegated authority has produced: a military that the political leadership must answer for rather than control.

Three vulnerabilities now compound one another. The first is the mosaic doctrine’s foundational limitation under sustained pressure. The doctrine solved the problem that Saddam could not, preventing decapitation from producing immediate collapse. It never solved attrition. The mosaic delays the timeline of dissolution but leaves the dissolution itself intact. The cease-fire arrived at a moment of Iranian weakness, and the pressure that produced that weakness remains available to Washington. The Islamic Republic knows that each day the cease-fire holds, it does so on terms that Washington can revise. The second vulnerability is structural.

The mosaic doctrine distributed resilience horizontally across provincial land commands, but the IRGC’s functional branches — its navy, air force, missile corps and cyber and intelligence directorates — each represent a distinct accumulation of “tiles” with separate supply chains and command structures.The United States has dismantled these branches sequentially rather than simultaneously, degrading each functional pillar while removing leadership at the center. The result is a system weakening from two directions at once: horizontal provincial networks loses coherence as the vertical command spine collapses, and neither compensates for the deterioration of the other.

The third vulnerability is financial, and the most immediately exposing. The IRGC’s ability to sustain operations and evade sanctions has depended on Hezbollah and the broader proxy network to move money and provide the transactional infrastructure linking the center to the periphery. That system has been degraded. Iran’s shadow fleet — the network of vessels moving sanctioned oil through falsified documentation and ship-to-ship transfers — has faced intensified US interdiction. China-linked front companies that provided financial cover to the IRGC have been sanctioned in successive rounds by the US Treasury.

On March 31, dozens of money changers linked to the IRGC were arrested across the United Arab Emirates following the escalation of Gulf tensions after Iranian strikes, severing one of the regime’s most critical cash arteries. A network that cannot pay its operators does not remain in a network for long. Washington enters the cease-fire holding all the cards: military dominance, financial strangulation and a regional architecture that has isolated Tehran from the Arab world it once sought to mobilize.

Iran’s response has been to threaten the Strait of Hormuz, the final lever a regime reaches for when it has exhausted all others. That threat is a measure of desperation, not strength. The operation has not concluded, but the conditions for Iranian defeat are in place. The entity that emerges from what comes next will bear little resemblance to the Islamic Republic that launched its doctrine of resistance four decades ago. What remains depends entirely on whether Tehran meets Trump’s terms.

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Zineb Riboua from last week. “Seven critical miscalculations have left the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps reeling, while U.S. and regional forces tighten their grip.”

• The IRGC’s Seven Fatal Strategic Mistakes (Zineb Riboua)

The first strategic mistake was the Strait of Hormuz. Iran’s logic was that sustained pressure on global energy flows would ignite the markets and force Trump to recalculate, withdraw, or watch the Gulf states turn against American operations out of economic self-preservation. But Trump has publicly declared that opening the strait is “not for us,” instead calling on European allies who rely on the strait to “go get your own oil.” His threat on Sunday to bomb Iranian power plants made it even more clear that the strait’s closure will not cause an American retreat.


These declarations carried a meaning beyond the immediate military context. Trump is running two operations simultaneously: one against the IRGC, and one against the assumption that the United States will indefinitely underwrite regional security at its own expense. His threats to leave NATO, vow to send the IRGC back to the stone age, and triumphalist mid-operation address thanking Gulf partners for their support are not the improvisations of an undisciplined communicator. They are the deliberate signaling of a strategic repositioning, designed to press allies into assuming greater responsibility abroad. The operation itself is a demonstration of what American military power can accomplish when it decides to act without hesitation.

Trump is also using the Strait of Hormuz crisis to accelerate something the administration has sought from the beginning: a Middle East in which American allies assume primary responsibility for their own neighborhood, freeing Washington to concentrate its strategic attention on the Western Hemisphere. Burden sharing was long treated as a European conversation about defense spending. The Strait of Hormuz has just expanded the terms of that project to the entire Eastern hemisphere by including Gulf countries as well.

The Hormuz gambit has also alienated Beijing, which is losing patience with Iran’s active disruptions to Chinese energy supply lines. The purpose of any military operation is to improve your own posture or degrade the enemy’s calculus in your favor. The IRGC achieved neither, and in the attempt, accelerated its own isolation on every front simultaneously.

The second strategic mistake was time. The IRGC likely assumed that Trump’s stated desire for speed signaled an appetite for a fast exit, and that the organization could survive by dragging out negotiations, delaying any serious accommodation, and outlasting American political resolve through attrition. But time cannot be purchased in a war where American strikes are hitting command and control infrastructure at its foundations and frontline units are receiving no meaningful replenishment. The IRGC has made a career of mistaking American restraint for American weakness, and the cost of that error is now being denominated in destroyed batteries, dead commanders, and a command architecture that grows less coherent with each successive wave of strikes.

The third strategic mistake was tempo. In nearly every crisis in the past two decades, the IRGC’s strategy has been to control the pace of escalation with its adversaries, calibrate pressure, and determine when and how confrontations would intensify or recede. But that model depends on a predictable opponent. Trump has demolished that predictability, and the range of American military options—from additional carrier groups and Marine landing forces to airborne troops and an ever-expanding list of targets—have multiplied more quickly than the IRGC can adapt. As Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth said last week, “Our adversary right now thinks there are 15 different ways we could come at them with boots on the ground. And guess what? There are.” The IRGC now finds itself reactive, off-balance, and unable to dictate the terms of the next exchange.

The fourth strategic mistake was overestimating its capacity to reinvigorate the Arab world against a joint American and Israeli operation. The IRGC’s regional theory of legitimacy rested on the proposition that Arab populations in the Middle East could be mobilized against American and Israeli military action in ways that would constrain Gulf rulers and force them to distance themselves from Washington. But the Abraham Accords architecture has proven more durable than Tehran anticipated, and the Arab street has failed to materialize as a meaningful strategic variable in any theater that mattered.

The fifth strategic mistake was information warfare. We’ve seen this play out before. After October 7, Hamas and Hezbollah seeded social media with fabricated footage, manufacturing narratives of resistance among Western audiences. But the illusion of battlefield success became an internal liability, feeding a leadership culture in which accurate damage assessments were suppressed in favor of narratives that preserved morale at the expense of strategic clarity. The IRGC is repeating the pattern, trying to win the battle of public opinion even as it loses the one on the ground.

The stakes are considerably higher this time, because the propaganda apparatus is operating against a backdrop of acute domestic crisis: runaway inflation, capital flight, water scarcity, and an economy in structural collapse. An organization that cannot accurately assess its own battlefield losses is even less equipped to reckon with the degree to which the Iranian population it claims to protect has already stopped believing in the institution meant to govern them.

The sixth strategic mistake was the assumption that China would serve as a meaningful backstop when the pressure became acute. Intelligence reporting indicates that Beijing has continued to provide data support to the IRGC, and Chinese technology remains embedded in what survives of Iran’s surveillance architecture. But this cannot compensate for the IRGC’s structural deterioration, and China appears unwilling to escalate its material support to a level that invites direct American economic retaliation. Thus, the IRGC is accumulating losses faster than any external partner is willing or able to replace them.

The seventh strategic mistake, and the one most structurally irreversible, was Iran’s decadeslong strategy to build its offensive and defensive architecture almost entirely around a proxy network that the U.S.-Israeli campaign has systematically dismantled. Hezbollah entered the current war already severely diminished from its 2024 confrontation with Israel, its leadership decimated and its southern Lebanon infrastructure severely damaged. The Syrian buffer that Iran spent years and billions of dollars constructing has collapsed entirely, and American and Israeli forces have degraded the Houthi operation in Yemen past the point of meaningful military utility.

Read more …

Q: Is blockade (also) a verb?

• To Blockade or Not Blockade, That Is the Question. (Scott Pinsker)

To be, or not to be, that is the question:
Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles
And by opposing end them.
—William Shakespeare’s Hamlet


Nothin’ like a good existential crisis, eh? Because if you remember your high school English teacher (or used Cliff’s Notes; I’m not here to judge), Hamlet was asking whether it’s better to live or die. “To be, or not to be.” Which is the exact same question President Donald Trump wants Iran to consider: Make a deal and surrender your nuclear ambitions, “you crazy bastards,” or I’ll shoot you in the frickin’ head. The trouble is that Iran isn’t taking Trump seriously. For many reasons — most notably, self-preservation — the mullahs are incentivized to stall, drag their feet, and negotiate in bad faith because it accomplishes three things:

1) Communicates to the Iranian people that the regime is still strong and powerful. (Capitulating too quickly would communicate the opposite, risking rebellion.)
2) Increases the economic pain points in the U.S., Europe, and Asia. (The longer the conflict, the greater the financial chaos — and thus the political cost to Trump.)
3) With global sentiment/polls strongly opposing Israel and America, Iran’s negotiating position will grow stronger over time. (So the longer they wait, the more they’ll gain.)

This led to Iran seizing the Strait of Hormuz and blockading access. Which then led to Trump blockading their blockade with a blockade of his own. It’s a blockade of a blockade! We’ve gone from 4D chess to 4D blockades. Will it work? The New York Post says yes: “Trump Brilliantly Calls Iran’s Bluff — With His Own Strait of Hormuz Blockade” Whoever’s calling the shots in Iran wasted yet another chance for peace over the weekend, and now President Donald Trump will again call Tehran’s bluff.Iran’s negotiators refused to satisfy America’s demands Saturday in talks in Pakistan, as regime leaders bet that playing the Strait of Hormuz card would get Trump to blink. Instead, he played it right back at them — announcing his own blockade, so that Iran’s oil exports (which had continued despite the war) will also be blocked.

[…] They assumed America would be help captive by conventional wisdom; our president proved them wrong. Trump once again tried to reach a peaceful settlement; the Iranians again refused: Now they’ll pay yet a higher price for thinking they could get him to chicken out. Bloomberg says no: “The Hormuz Blockade Is a Throwdown the U.S. Can’t Win” For a man who understands the power of leverage, Donald Trump is being remarkably slow to recognize the influence Iran has gained in the Strait of Hormuz. The US president’s threat to complete its closure by blocking Iranian exports through it, too, is far more likely to drag him deeper into a politically damaging war than to force Tehran’s capitulation.

[…] [T]he president will at some point have to recognize some hard truths: He has not won yet, he does not have a clear military path to doing so and neither he, nor the global economy, can afford to keep Hormuz closed.

[…] For now the unfortunate reality is that the regime has “the whip hand,” as the former head of Britain’s MI6 Alex Younger put it last month. That isn’t because it is stronger than its enemies, but because it knows it can block Hormuz and is more willing to inflict the resulting economic pain on its own people than is Trump or other nations around the globe.The US administration needs to recognize it cannot hope to get a quick win in these circumstances, even if it blockades all trade with Iran through Hormuz.

Question for the readers: Which outlet is right and which one is wrong? Answer from the writer: Yes. The New York Post is correct: Trump’s blockade of a blockade deprives Iran of profiting from ransom payments and/or selling any oil, thus increasing its economic suffering. It weakens one of the mullah’s biggest bargaining chips. If you assume that Iran is negotiating in good faith, weakening the mullahs’ bargaining position makes tactical sense. But Bloomberg is also correct: It’s extraordinarily unlikely that Trump can blockade his way to victory, especially in the short term. More likely than not, the blockade would have to last months — if not years — to bear fruit, and for a candidate who ran on the platform of “no more forever wars,” that’s not an attractive option.

Besides, the economic pain will be shouldered unevenly, with the nations that actually care about the welfare of their people screaming far louder than the mullahs. Iran doesn’t mind suffering — as long as everyone else suffers, too. If you assume that Iran is negotiating in bad faith, a blockade of a blockade is an incremental tit-for-tat escalation that increases everyone’s pain points without bringing us any closer to a real solution. In other words, it’s a waste of time.

Perhaps a smarter strategy is to hit the mullahs with a threat they dread far more than a blockade. I’m talking about the two words that have horrified Americans since the Iraq War of the early 2000s: regime change. But not Iraqi-style regime change, where we plant U.S. soldiers overseas and try to build a new government from the ground up in a foreign land. That’s regime building, not regime change. I simply mean smashing the current regime.

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They’re proud of not securing their own energy. That won’t last.

• US Allies Loudly Reject Trump’s Scheme To Blockade Hormuz (ZH)

The United Kingdom and several other countries rejected Washington’s plan to impose a blockade on Iranian ports and target ships transiting the Strait of Hormuz, which has gone into effect Monday. Prime Minister Keir Starmer made clear his stance that “we are not supporting the blockade” in a fresh interview with BBC Radio. He emphasized that the UK is not “getting dragged in” to the US-Israeli war against Iran, but still stated that it’s “vital that we get the strait open and fully open.”


As fully expected Spain’s government also condemned the US move, with the country’s Defense Minister Margarita Robles having said, “It’s just another episode in this downward spiral we’ve slipped into,” adding that Trump and Netanyahu “want to impose rules on the international community, which is illogical.”Earlier we reported that France is working with the UK on a conference to organize a “strictly defensive” and “peaceful” mission to reopen the Strait of Hormuz.

President Emmanuel Macron said, “As regards the Strait of Hormuz, in the coming days, together with the UK, we will organize a conference with those countries prepared to contribute alongside us to a peaceful multinational mission aimed at restoring freedom of navigation in the strait.” He added, “This strictly defensive mission, separate from the warring parties to the conflict, is intended to be deployed as soon as circumstances permit.” Still, Paris has rejected a US request to join a military coalition to forcibly reopen the strait, essentially paralleling Britain’s position.

At the same time Germany has not weighed in strongly one way or the other. A German government statement has said that “The US military’s announcement did not mention a blockade of the Strait of Hormuz, but rather a blockade of Iranian ports – that is a different approach.” Meanwhile, Turkey has strongly opposed the blockade and called for renewed diplomacy, while China too is warning against escalation and urged stability.

US Central Command (CENTCOM) announced it would begin a blockade “of all maritime traffic entering and exiting” Iranian ports starting at 10:00am Eastern Time on Monday. It added, “The blockade will be enforced impartially against vessels of all nations entering or departing Iranian ports and coastal areas, including all Iranian ports on the Arabian Gulf and Gulf of Oman. CENTCOM forces will not impede freedom of navigation for vessels transiting the Strait of Hormuz to and from non-Iranian ports.”

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“.. we just sort of… you know… made another Persian Gulf?”

• Fill’er Up: Trump’s Middle East Master Plan (Stephen Green)

“The spice must flow.” Fans of Frank Herbert’s Dune know that melange makes interstellar travel and trade possible. Its only source is the desert world of Arrakis, which makes it the most valuable real estate in the known universe. The spice is addictive. Arrakis is home to crusading religious fanatics whose supreme leader holds the spice hostage.If you’re thinking, “That sounds an awful lot like Persian Gulf oil,” Herbert is way out ahead of you.mPresident Donald Trump gets it. But what if, instead of spending another 40 or 50 years letting religious fanatics keep a stranglehold on the world’s supply of melange — er, oil — we just sort of… you know… made another Persian Gulf?

https://twitter.com/dangambardello/status/2043360878704091580


And called it the Gulf of America? Well, here it is: “Hundreds of supertankers, the kind that carry two million barrels each, are currently racing toward the US Gulf Coast from every direction, Atlantic, Indian Ocean, around Africa, the scenic route, the ‘we were heading to Saudi Arabia but never mind’ route,” Jesús Enrique Rosas noted this weekend. While most people — including Yours Truly — were focused primarily on last week’s ceasefire and whether the Islamic Republic would actually increase its stranglehold on the flow of Gulf oil, actual oil buyers adjusted accordingly.

“The more Iran leans on Hormuz, the faster global energy flows reroute around it. Over time, that erodes Tehran’s leverage and cuts into its long-term power,” Osint613 posted Sunday. That “Master Plan” bit from the headline is mostly hyperbole. Supporters and critics alike — the honest critics, that is, who deserve protection under the Endangered Species Act — understand that Trump acts as a chaos agent. He knows the end result he wants, even if sometimes only broadly defined as “Make America Great Again.” The established rules and methods don’t allow for that, so Trump is happy to blow things up (sometimes literally), and see what can be rebuilt from the pieces.

The thing about that Persian Gulf stranglehold is that, like the Sword of Damocles, it’s most effective before it’s used. Now that Tehran has tried (and only partly and temporarily succeeded) in closing the Strait of Hormuz, “About the only escalation option the IRGC has is to renew its missile and drone attacks on neighboring Gulf states,” as my Hot Air colleague Ed Morrissey put it on Monday. But “Trump has an escalation for that as well: Bridge and Power Plant Day. Let’s see how long it takes for Iran to provoke it.”

Looking at the bigger picture, Rosas also wrote: “Iran played its biggest card and the main result is that the United States became the world’s emergency gas station and China’s cheap energy subsidy evaporated. The spice — er, oil — must flow. But Trump rewrote the rulebook about where it flows from. This is where “Drill, baby, drill” meets MAGA foreign policy, so to those America Only people still fuming that Trump isn’t (and never was) an isolationist, now do you get it?

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Blockade started yesterday.

• US Military to Enforce Embargo of What No One Is Supposed to Be Buying (CTH)

Oil and gas sales from Iran are under international sanction and not supposed to be taking place. However, oil and gas sales from Iran -violating the sanctions- have been taking place. CENTCOM is announcing that the U.S. military will now ensure the oil and gas from Iran doesn’t move. The U.S. will physically enforce the pre-existing global sanctions. A blockade begins tomorrow morning.


TAMPA, Fla. — U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) forces will begin implementing a blockade of all maritime traffic entering and exiting Iranian ports on April 13 at 10 a.m. ET, in accordance with the President’s proclamation. The blockade will be enforced impartially against vessels of all nations entering or departing Iranian ports and coastal areas, including all Iranian ports on the Arabian Gulf and Gulf of Oman. CENTCOM forces will not impede freedom of navigation for vessels transiting the Strait of Hormuz to and from non-Iranian ports. Additional information will be provided to commercial mariners through a formal notice prior to the start of the blockade.

All mariners are advised to monitor Notice to Mariners broadcasts and contact U.S. naval forces on bridge-to-bridge channel 16 when operating in the Gulf of Oman and Strait of Hormuz approaches. (SOURCE) Oil and gas from Kuwait will be allowed transit and passage. Oil and gas from the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and Qatar will also transit without issue. However, oil or gas from Iran will be blocked. China takes the biggest hit, again. The target now is to cut off the Iranian money supply. This blockade is happening against the little discussed backdrop of Dubai (UAE) targeting Iranian money changers.

DUBAI – The arrest of dozens of IRGC-linked money changers in the United Arab Emirates is one of the most serious blows yet to Tehran’s sanctions-evasion network, laying bare how heavily the Islamic Republic has depended on Dubai as an economic lifeline. Sources familiar with the matter told Iran International that UAE authorities detained dozens of money changers tied to financial entities linked to Iran’s Revolutionary Guards, shut down associated companies and closed their offices.

The crackdown follows days of mounting regional tensions and comes after other measures targeting Iranian nationals, including visa revocations and tighter travel restrictions through Dubai. For years, Dubai has served as Iran’s main offshore financial artery, where oil proceeds, petrochemical revenues and rial conversions were turned into dollars, dirhams and euros beyond the reach of the country’s battered domestic banking system.“This is going to be a real problem for Tehran because Dubai was an economic lung for the Iranian regime,” Jason Brodsky of United Against Nuclear Iran told Iran International. “That is economic pressure and diplomatic isolation in a way that the UAE is able to employ against the Iranian regime, and it will have a very considerable impact.”

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“They’re holed up in a bank demanding three large pizzas, a helicopter, and a personal phone call from Sydney Sweeney. . . .”— Greg Gutfeld on Iran’s negotiating position

• As the Worms Turn (James Howard Kunstler)

The Russians have a phrase for it: negotiation-incapable (ne peregovorosposobny). That is what the Iran delegation demonstrated during a long day of talks with the US team over the weekend in Islamabad. What part of “no nukes” didn’t they understand? All of it, apparently. The corollary question on the table — arguably more pressing for Iran — was: how much more punishment are you willing to suffer to sustain your dream of atomic bombs? You have no defenses left, no control of your air-space. Do you just want to sit in the dark for the next hundred years?


Such is the obduracy of the Shia death cult. They have no friends left in the world. Russia, you think? Not really. That relationship was pegged to geopolitical dynamics that are dead and gone. Russia is much better off normalizing relations with the USA so we can both be safe and secure in our spheres of influence. Europe is busy committing suicide. In this situation, China is little more than Iran’s very unhappy customer. Maybe Uncle Xi Pooh Bear can try talking some sense to whoever is left in-charge at the IRGC. . . give up your lunatic bomb dreams and just re-open the dingdang gas station! Pretty Please!

Anyway, why interfere with US operations in Hormuz? The USA is wresting control of the Persian Gulf from these maniacs who can’t be trusted to just stay open for business. Japan, the two Koreas, Indochina, India, also have to stand by with mounting frustration as these jihad-happy idiots starve Asia’s economies. A change in Iran’s attitude can’t happen soon enough and Mr. Trump is on the case. The blockade starts at 10a.m. today, Monday. Whatever’s left of Iran’s revenue stream goes out the window. Maybe they lob some rockets and drones at our ships. Maybe they hit something, maybe not. We’ll see where they launch from and that will be the end of X-number of remaining launch sites. Then there are the bridges, the power plants. FAFO mofos.

About those 1000 pounds of 60-percent enriched uranium (their precious bomb fixings). . . . You must imagine that it is either buried deeply under the rubble of Fordoz and Isfahan, or maybe distributed in many secret hidey-holes all over the place. . . or perhaps sitting booby-trapped somewhere. In short, there are many reasons to think that no special forces operation will be able to get at it. So, the only other conclusion is that Iran must be driven to a place where they will surrender the stuff willingly themselves. That could be a harsh place.

[..] Rumored to be released this week by the House Intelligence Committee: the transcript of former Intel Community Inspector General Michael Atkinson’s testimony about events that led to Impeachment #1 of Donald Trump in 2019. The transcript has been locked away in a vault since October, 2019. Tulsi Gabbard rooted it out. The shadowy Atkinson played a crucial role in positioning “whistleblower” Eric Ciaramella to spark off charges of the “Ukraine quid pro quo” phone call against the president. Ciaramella was then a CIA agent planted in the National Security Council. He may have been involved earlier in co-authoring the fake Intelligence Community Assessment (ICA) that kicked off the RussiaGate hoax in 2017. For Impeachment #1 Atkinson reportedly changed the whistleblower rules to allow Ciaramella to convey second-hand hearsay from sketchy NSC member Col. Alexander Vindman to Rep. Adam Schiff, then chairman of the House Intel Committee. The chain of actions suggests the impeachment was a CIA setup. The CIA director at the time was Avril Haines. Ms. Haines ran the London CIA field office during the period when former MI6 agent Christopher Steele was concocting the notorious Steele Dossier at the center of RussiaGate. It has long been suspected that RussiaGate was a joint CIA / MI6 operation. Isn’t it about time that Avril Haines sat for a deposition in these various matters? It might be nice to know if our main Intel Agency was involved in serial schemes to overthrow the US government.

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This changes the meaning of “election” in any European country. The EU killed it all. Hard to get back. They’ll come in wherever they want.

• Magyar Beats Orban In Battle For Hungary: What Happens Now? (RT)

Hungarian opposition leader Peter Magyar has pulled off a stunning victory in the country’s parliamentary election, with his Tisza party beating Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s Fidesz by more than 16 points. The result is set to dramatically change Hungary’s relations with the EU, Russia, and Ukraine. Just over an hour after polls closed on Sunday, Orban called Magyar to congratulate him on his win. With 92% of the ballots counted on Sunday night, Tisza was leading with 53.72% of the vote, ahead of Fidesz with 37.67% – a result in line with opposition-friendly pre-election polls.


Magyar campaigned on ending corruption, funding public services, and restoring ties with the EU. Orban promised to continue his program of tax breaks for citizens and levies on corporations, all while pledging to keep Hungary out of the Russia-Ukraine conflict. His campaign cast Magyar as a tool of the EU, who would cut off Hungary’s access to cheap Russian energy and back Brussels’ escalatory policies toward Moscow. A record 77.8% of eligible Hungarians voted, the highest turnout in any election in Hungarian history. Thanks to this unprecedented level of participation, “the democratic mandate of the next National Assembly will be stronger than ever before,” Gergely Gulyas, the Minister of the Prime Minister’s Office, told reporters.

“What the result means for the fate of our country and the nation, and what its deeper or higher meaning is, we do not know now, time will decide,” Orban told supporters in Budapest. “No matter how it turns out, we, as opposition, will serve our country and the Hungarian nation.”

Will Hungary maintain close relations with Russia?
This is highly unlikely. Magyar’s allies in the opposition media collaborated with EU spies to run stories of supposed Russian interference in the election, and Magyar led crowds in chants of “Russians, go home!” But he also said he will have to interact with Moscow, because “the geographical position of neither Russia nor Hungary will change.” Rhetoric aside, Magyar is unlikely to embrace a policy of open hostility toward Moscow, but his desire to mend ties with the EU will in all likelihood result in Budapest dropping its opposition to the bloc’s €90 billion ($105 billion) loan package for Ukraine – a decision that will be poorly received in Russia.

Will Hungary get the cold shoulder from the US?
Viktor Orban is a close ideological ally of US President Donald Trump, who dispatched Vice President J.D. Vance to Budapest to campaign for his reelection, and promised to use the “full economic might of the United States to strengthen Hungary’s economy” if Orban won. With Magyar in charge, Hungary will no longer be the darling of the MAGA movement, but relations between the two countries will likely remain cordial.

Will Magyar open Hungary to more immigrants?
Highly unlikely. Orban’s hardline immigration policies are exceedingly popular in Hungary, and Magyar has attacked the prime minister on immigration from the right, criticizing his decision to allow 35,000 guest workers into Hungary from outside the EU. It remains to be seen whether Brussels will pressure Magyar into accepting asylum seekers, and whether the liberal Western media criticizes him as intensely on the issue as it did to Orban.

How quickly can the EU release billions of euros it withheld from Hungary?
The EU is currently withholding around €20 billion in funding from Hungary, citing concerns over judicial independence, corruption, and Orban’s ban on LGBTQ propaganda. Magyar is on track to win the two-thirds majority necessary to modify Hungary’s constitution and implement the judicial reforms demanded by Brussels, but the EU will ultimately decide if and when to release the money. Additionally, Magyar has stayed quiet on LGBTQ issues, and any attempts to liberalize Hungary to meet the EU’s demands may prove unpopular with Hungarians. For Magyar, accessing this money is crucial. His program of spending on healthcare, education, and other public services depends entirely on the release of the funds.

Will Hungary be able to cancel its contracts for Russian oil?
Russia supplies almost 90% of Hungary’s oil and slightly more of its gas, and provides nuclear fuel for the Paks Nuclear Power Plant. The EU has mandated that its member states completely cut themselves off from Russian energy by the end of next year, but Hungary’s contracts with Russia extend to 2035. Magyar has promised to end Hungary’s reliance on Russian energy, but only when the contracts expire. However, he may be unwilling to continue Orban’s policy of obstructing EU sanctions packages to secure exemptions for Hungary, which will essentially force a cutoff before 2035.

Will the EU now be able to steal Russia’s frozen assets?
No. Despite Orban being portrayed in the media as the sole obstacle between the EU and its plans for Ukraine, the decision on whether to steal the roughly €210 billion in Russian assets frozen in the EU is an unpopular one. Leaders including Italy’s Giorgia Meloni, Slovakia’s Robert Fico, and the Czech Republic’s Andrej Babis all oppose the measure, as does Belgian Prime Minister Alexander De Croo, whose country the assets are impounded in.

As such, the EU is banking on its €90 billion debt-financed loan to keep Ukraine afloat. With Orban out of the picture, Brussels will likely be able to secure unanimous support for the loan, unless Fico or Babis object.

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7 years old. “Without DNI Gabbard, these documents would never have seen sunlight.” What do you mean, justice? Get ’em all, Tulsi!

• Atkinson Transcripts and Background ICIG Investigative Documents Released (CTH)

Office of the Director of National Intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, has retrieved, reviewed, declassified and forced the release of internal background documents related to the Intelligence Community’s collaborative effort to impeach President Donald J Trump in 2019. The HPSCI wants to take political credit for the release; however, the HPSCI was forced into this position by the diligent work of Director of National Intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard. Without DNI Gabbard, these documents would never have seen sunlight. This type of public information release is exactly why DNI Tulsi Gabbard has been targeted by friend and foe alike.


WASHINGTON, D.C.— Today, the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence released two declassified transcripts from 2019 hearings with the former Intelligence Community Inspector General, Michael Atkinson, following a security review from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI). The Committee received the declassified transcripts from the ODNI the evening of Friday, April 10, 2026. These transcripts are from two hearings held to examine Atkinson’s role in an alleged whistleblower complaint, which ultimately led to Democrats’ first impeachment efforts against President Trump in December 2019. (link)

Looking closely at the information in these three documents makes it clear why the HPSCI never wanted them released. Both current and former members, including Republicans, are tied to a pattern of willful blindness, knowing the details yet choosing to stay silent for months and even years afterward. Former HPSCI Chairman, then HPSCI Ranking Member Devin Nunes was a participant in the testimony. Former HPSCI member, now CIA Director John Ratcliffe was a participant in the testimony. Former HPSCI staff, now FBI Director Kash Patel was a participant in the testimony. [Think about it]

Principle Players – The National Security Council leaker was Alexander Vindman. The CIA “Whistleblower” was Eric Ciaramella. The Intelligence Community Inspector General was Michael Atkinson. There is a lot of information to review as the documents include:
(1) The CIA complaint from Ciaramella and subsequent ICIG investigation. (pdf)
(2) The first interview of the ICIG Atkinson by the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (HPSCI), dated September 19, 2019. (pdf)
(3) The second interview of ICIG Atkinson dated October 4, 2019. (pdf)

In total there are about 450 pages of documents and transcripts to read and review. The story they tell is remarkable as it outlines how internal people within the various intelligence agencies of the United States government, collaborated and used their positions of responsibility to target a sitting president for impeachment and removal. nIn short, in addition to all the “Spygate” surveillance and “Russiagate” wrongdoing, these documents highlight the real and actionable activity by the U.S. Intelligence Community to work collaborative with congress during their targeting of President Trump.

Do not lose sight of the forest while surrounded by the details of the trees. I will share much more detail about what evidence the documents show and put that detail into the context of what it means. Unfortunately, there are some alarming realizations about how our government operates and the false entities within it who claim a position to fight against the corruption, while keeping their mouths shut about specific evidence of corruption. Much more will follow, but right now I need to pray a little bit and maybe go for a walk.

Please begin to read the releases and share your thoughts in the comments below. There are more documents that need to surface, more stuff that I will never relent from locating and finding methods to bring it out. In the interim, thank you to Tulsi Gabbard for the painful truth we all need to absorb.

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it has to be declared grossly illegal at some point.

• Bank of Russia Disputes Freeze of Assets by EU (TASS)

The Central Bank of Russia disputed the freeze of Russian assets and charged the EU Council with the infringement on division of powers, violations of EU laws and procedure, and decision-making in absence of required competencies. Such wordings are contained in the statement of claim registered by the EU Court of Justice on February 27.


“The applicant argues that the regulation was adopted on an incorrect basis, in so far as Article 122 TFEU [Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union] cannot constitute a valid basis for the measures adopted since, substantively, they fall within the scope of restrictive measures against an entity of a third State and should have been based on Article 215 TFEU, which requires unanimity of the members of the Council. The use of Article 122 TFEU therefore constitutes a flagrant circumvention of the specific institutional framework provided for by the Treaties for the purpose of adopting such measures, in infringement of the division of powers and the institutional balance,” the statement of claim indicates.

The Bank of Russia demands cancellation of the decision to freeze sovereign assets and payment of legal costs by the EU Council.

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You can bet Trump is planning everything very meticulously. He did no mass pardons the first time around.

• Trump Reportedly Planning Mass Pardons Of Administration Officials (ZH)

Donald Trump has reportedly promised to pardon virtually his entire White House staff before leaving office, and the radius keeps growing. What started as a quip about anyone within 10 feet of the Oval Office has ballooned into something considerably more sweeping. “I’ll pardon everyone who has come within 200 feet of the Oval,” Trump allegedly said to a room of aides in a recent meeting, drawing laughs, according to a report from the Wall Street Journal. The report claims that staffers who raise the possibility of congressional investigations or prosecutions into policy decisions tend to hear about whether preemptive pardons are on the table.


The unconditional power to pardon is one of the most sweeping powers offered to the presidency. This term, Trump has wielded clemency far differently than any other president, dispensing some 1,600 grants to date. Many have gone to allies and donors, or those who had hired them, coming after a social pull-aside or a round of golf. Some have received bipartisan criticism, including one to a crypto billionaire whose company boosted Trump’s own digital-currency company, and another to a former Honduran president convicted of conspiring with cartels to ship cocaine to the U.S. In Trump’s first term, he signed fewer than 250 pardons and commutations.

The president has repeatedly raised the specter of pardons with White House aides and other administration officials, particularly when staff have suggested they could face prosecution or congressional investigations over decisions, people familiar with the comments said. Trump is known to joke about matters that he later seriously pursues, and the frequent references have led some aides to believe he is serious about the pardons, too.

They certainly have reason to be worried that Democrats will attempt to weaponize their powers to launch endless investigations. They’ve repeatedly promised to do so. In response to Trump’s immigration enforcement policies, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries not only promised to prosecute ICE agents and Trump administration officials.

None of this happened in a vacuum. Trump reportedly weighed pardoning White House officials in the chaotic days after January 6, 2021, but decided against it. He later told advisers he regretted that decision. Democrats viciously went after Trump allies, rioters, and even Trump himself.

Critics will certainly want to treat this as a constitutional crisis in progress. But before the outrage fully crystallizes, it’s worth noting who opened the door. Joe Biden issued sweeping preemptive pardons for top officials and family members at the end of his term – including his family, Dr. Anthony Fauci, and the entire January 6 Select Committee – citing the possibility of DOJ scrutiny under Trump. Michael LaRosa, a former communications aide to Biden, had the intellectual honesty to say the quiet part out loud, saying, “By testing the boundaries of the pardon power, Biden cracked the door open and we can’t now complain about Donald Trump walking through it, even if he blows it wide open.”

The White House, however, is dismissing the Wall Street Journal’s report. “The Wall Street Journal should learn to take a joke,” White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said in a statement. “However, the President’s pardon power is absolute,” she added.

While the White House clearly doesn’t want to confirm the story, there’s reason to believe that even if Trump was joking, there’s a serious point behind it—and Joe Biden effectively gave him cover to act on it. The informal norms governing the pardon power took a significant hit during Biden’s final weeks in office. Trump declined to go that far when he left office in 2021, but with Democrats openly signaling plans to target his officials if they regain power, he may now feel compelled to act to protect them from what he sees as a weaponized justice system.

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From “Mass Pardons” to no amnesty. We have it all.

• White House: ‘Era of Amnesty Is Over’ (Catherine Salgado)

“No more activist judges shielding criminal illegals. No more endless delays. Only results.” The Trump White House is celebrating multiple massive immigration enforcement wins that signal the era of mass migration and mass amnesty is over. Since Donald Trump came back into office, federal authorities have removed three million illegal aliens from the United States through ICE deportations or voluntary deportations, which is the biggest reduction in illegal migration in modern history, according to a White House press release on April 9. This is exactly what the American people voted for. This is the sort of reform we hoped to see when immigration became one of the top issues in the 2024 election.


Besides the three million deportees, border officers have not released a single illegal alien into the United States at our borders for 11 straight months. The “era of amnesty is over,” indeed. The overwhelming majority of asylum claims have long been fraudulent, and that is one major area where the Trump administration implemented reform. The U.S. immigration authority now grants asylum in only 7% of cases, slashing the number of criminals and illegal aliens who tried to use asylum claims as a free ticket into our country. In contrast, under Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, the government approved over 50% of asylum claims, according to the release.

I will give just two illustrations of why this is a big deal. First, just this week, the U.S. State Department revoked the lawful permanent resident status it had granted to Hamideh Soleimani Afshar, the niece of mass-murdering Iranian jihad leader Qasem Soleimani. Afshar had obtained residency and a life of luxury in the United States by claiming asylum here. Yet she repeatedly returned to Iran and regularly spouted pro-regime propaganda, illustrating how bogus her asylum claim was. And second, back in 2024, an Ecuadoran “asylum seeker” raped a 13-year-old at knifepoint in New York. These are only two examples of how broken our asylum system was before the Trump administration took over.

The White House release also highlighted the following wins:
• Deportations and removal orders are surging: In fiscal year 2025, immigration courts issued nearly 500,000 removal orders — a 57% increase over the prior year — as criminal illegals are removed faster and in far greater numbers than ever before.
• The massive court backlog is being slashed: Hundreds of thousands of cases have already been cleared since Inauguration Day, with reductions accelerating every month — ending the years-long delays that let illegals remain indefinitely.

And, as noted above, the Trump administration has successfully closed our borders. The White House press release enthusiastically concluded, “President Trump promised to end the open borders nightmare — and he is delivering on that promise with unrelenting force. The era of catch-and-release, mass releases, and activist judicial amnesty is over.” As we celebrate the 250th year of America’s existence, there is no better time to reflect on what national sovereignty and security mean.

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https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/2043751159773704483?s=20

 

 

 

 

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