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UPDATE 🔴
— Open Source Intel (@Osint613) March 18, 2026
Iranians are reporting that they have seen a massive decline in Basij checkpoints around Tehran.
This comes after IDF have has been systematically targeting the IRGC suppression forces checkpoints. https://t.co/c8fTTxzlM7
Ed: Hey, if you were in the Basij units, would you want to show up to work these days? In some cases, the Basij forces are just showing up in street clothes to fool drone operators. I'd bet that works once or twice, but it probably only delays the inevitable.
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ABC News: Qatar has ordered Iranian Embassy officials to leave the country within 24 hours due to Iran's repeated targeting of its territory, the Qatari Foreign Ministry announced Wednesday.
"The Ministry clarified that this decision comes in the wake of repeated Iranian targeting and treacherous aggression that targeted the State of Qatar, violated its sovereignty and security, in flagrant violation of the principles of international law, UN Security Council Resolution No. (2817), and the rules of good neighborliness," the Qatari Foreign Ministry said in a statement.
"The Ministry emphasized that the continuation of the Iranian side in this hostile approach will be met with the State of Qatar taking additional measures to ensure the protection of its sovereignty, security, and national interests," the ministry said.
Ed: This is a big deal. The Qataris have made themselves important by acting as mediators between the West and Iran, Hamas, and Hezbollah. The US has wasted a lot of time and talk on this mediation, while allowing Iran to string us along via Qatar nearly all the way to nuclear-armed status. The Iranians now only have Turkey as a go-between, and Turkey's value to the US has been on the decline ever since Erdogan took power.
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This is Qatar tonight.
— 𝐍𝐢𝐨𝐡 𝐁𝐞𝐫𝐠 🇮🇷 ✡︎ (@NiohBerg) March 18, 2026
They were the regime in Iran's greatest ally in the region and consistently did Khamenei's bidding.
But when push came to shove, none of that mattered and Qatar was bombed regardless.
Let this be a lesson.
Never trust a mullah. pic.twitter.com/wGlbmZlJuH
Ed: Qatar learned this lesson ... belatedly.
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gCaptain: Strike Iran, and Europe either bends or goes dark in an energy crisis.
The European shipping community and political establishment spent the past year dismissing, undermining, and mocking every Trump maritime initiative. They scoffed at the USTR tariffs. They laughed at the SHIPS Act. They blocked the IMO exemptions. They refused to take American maritime policy seriously.
Now their energy supply runs through an insurance facility controlled by Washington.
“Let their navies figure it out.” Except everyone knows they cannot. European naval forces are too small, too slow, and too poorly equipped for sustained convoy escort operations through a contested strait. All the European navies combined could not send more than three ships at a time to defend the Red Sea. An entire German task force sailed around Africa to avoid it.
Eventually Europe will have to capitulate to get the U.S. Navy, and the U.S. insurance backstop, to fully reopen the Strait.
What does “capitulate” look like? The IMO carbon tax. Greenland. Tariff concessions. The SHIPS Act. Every maritime policy priority that Europe and China have been blocking for the past year.
Ed: I must say, I had not considered this. I think oil prices will do enough political damage to Trump in the midterms that he has plenty of incentives to deal with the Hormuz crisis. But this hypothesis makes sense, especially if Trump really wants to change the world more than he wants to win a midterm.
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CBS News’ @nancycordes asked White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt why President Trump would appoint Joe Kent to run the counterterrorism center if he believed Kent was “weak on security.” pic.twitter.com/Cf50gGHIvk
— CBS News (@CBSNews) March 18, 2026
Ed: Fair question, not exactly a confidence-building answer, but this is small potatoes now. Kent was a huge mistake, clearly, and now he's made that obvious.
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Mediaite: Sen. John Fetterman (D-PA) said his party does not have a leader — or a human one, at least.
Instead, he argued the Democrats are driven by a seething hatred for President Donald Trump, or what is often referred to as “Trump Derangement Syndrome.” Fetterman made the claim during an interview on the All-In podcast on Wednesday.
“Who do you think leads the Democratic Party today?” Co-host David Friedberg asked.
“Oh, we don’t have one,” Fetterman said. “I think the TDS, that’s the leader right now… our party is governed by the TDS. And now it’s made it virtually impossible without being punished as a Democrat to agree something’s good or I agree with the other side.”
Ed: Fact check: True. And while it's not yet impacting midterm polling – which looks pretty good at RCP these days for Dems at +4.9 – it's taking a toll on the hard-Left wing that has taken over the party the last several years. As for a party leader, that's what the party will choose in the 2028 presidential primary. Functionally, it's Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries, but in reality, Fetterman's correct. Or perhaps one can even say that Donald Trump is the leader of the Democrat Party, as it exists entirely just to oppose him and proposes nothing that addresses the issues voters care most about.
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🚨It is hard to overstate how bad the newest economic numbers are.
— Scott Rasmussen (@ScottWRasmussen) March 18, 2026
✅Just 24% of voters say their finances are getting better while 39% say worse.
✅For the previous ten weeks, the number saying better or worse was roughly even.
✅This is the most pessimistic assessment measured… https://t.co/ce1ux6Qsyo
This is the most pessimistic assessment measured since President Trump won the 2024 election.
Ed: On the other hand, Republicans have their problems in this midterm cycle, too. The war has been a distraction from these points, and with gas prices skyrocketing, it has amplified some of the bigger risks. Trump had better hope he can wrap this up by the middle of April.
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The way many American commentators and even elected officials are rooting for the US to lose, sometimes subtly, sometimes rather obviously, is not getting enough attention. https://t.co/L4OJgpXGZX
— David Bernstein (@ProfDBernstein) March 18, 2026
Ed: Is this partisan, or is this a symptom of something worse? I'd call it post-Vietnam syndrome, but I think it's more than just the scars of that lengthy and very costly intervention. We have built an America where our first instinct is skepticism about our country that frequently tips over into outright cynicism, the result of indoctrinating several generations of young Americans into an ideology that always sees the US as a force of ill will rather than a force for good.
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WSJ: Battered by Iranian strikes and the disruption of the Strait of Hormuz, the United Arab Emirates and some fellow Persian Gulf states have come to view Iran’s theocracy as an existential enemy. They now want the regime they once courted to be neutered, if not dismantled, when the conflict ends—so the ordeal is never repeated. ...
Leaving Iran in control of the Strait of Hormuz once the guns fall silent would be a disaster for the Gulf states, said Muhanad Seloom, a professor at the Doha Institute for Graduate Studies in Qatar.
“The Iranian regime has crossed every red line,” he said. “Now it is in everyone’s interest, and this includes the Gulf countries, to have the U.S. finish the job. Imagine if the war stops now, and Iran declares victory saying that the U.S. has been defeated? Iran would hold the whole region hostage, and every time Iran would be under pressure, it would hit the Gulf countries—because that taboo has been broken, and hitting them worked.”
Ed: Well, at least the Gulf states have a smarter take on this than the American public. Now, anyway.
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BREAKING 🔴
— Open Source Intel (@Osint613) March 18, 2026
Channel 14 reports Pezeshkian is weighing resignation. He told aides:
"The IRGC blocks me from all military and strategic decisions and won’t even let me speak to the Supreme Leader. I feel useless." pic.twitter.com/ZmYKYGPxKO
Ed: Still too fun to check, but also too fun to miss. Take this with a big grain of salt, but bear in mind that it still provides an accurate depiction of Pezeshkian's situation.
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NY Times: Otherwise, Mr. Goldberg said, attacks on Kharg Island’s oil infrastructure — or, for example, the power plant that enables it — could be a means to further weaken what remains of the Iranian regime and increase the chances that a popular uprising could topple it. He argued that Iran may not have the means to retaliate more heavily against the oil assets of U.S.-friendly countries in the Gulf.
“If the end state of Epic Fury is that the regime is still there,” Mr. Goldberg said, using the name of the U.S. campaign, “then you might consider some sort of closing act that disrupts their ability to access that oil revenue.”
Military officials have declined to say what missions the Marines being sent to the Middle East would be assigned to carry out. Rather than seizing Kharg Island, they could be ordered into a different, no less dangerous mission — helping to secure the Strait of Hormuz, which their ships would need to transit before getting to the island.
Francis Galgano, an expert in military geography at Villanova University, said that he viewed an operation for Kharg Island as “perhaps more likely” than one against the coastline of the strait. Seizing Kharg Island would give the United States “an extreme pressure point on the Iranians,” he said.
“Any commitment of ground troops changes the calculus at home and abroad,” Mr. Galgano said. “It would be a huge step.”
Ed: This is a not-too-tilted analysis of the options for Kharg Island. The ramped-up attacks on the Gulf states are likely going to push Trump into seizing the island, if for no other reason than to use it to force Iran into a negotiated capitulation. Iran is still pumping and selling oil, which needs to stop, but in a controlled fashion that doesn't freak out the oil markets, or China for that matter, its main client. Seizing it would allow the US to regulate Iran's oil exports in the way we've imposed ourselves on Venezuela's. Trump will likely appreciate that level of power.
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I have no problem believing that Cesar Chavez was a sexual abuser. I have a very hard time believing that the legacy media just discovered this.
— Megan Basham (@megbasham) March 18, 2026
Ed: Same. And I suspect they are only willing to throw Chavez under the bus now because he opposed illegal immigration, based on its economic impacts on unskilled labor in the fields.
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Jerusalem Post: For the first time since the outbreak of hostilities, the Iranian street did not respond with state-mandated mourning on Wednesday. Instead, thousands poured into the squares of Tehran and other Iranian cities, celebrating not only the traditional Iranian Chaharshanbe Suri, the “Festival of Fire,” but also the systematic dismantling of the forces that have long held them captive.
The celebrations were fueled by news of the elimination of Iran’s top security chief, Ali Larijani, and the head of the Basij repression unit, Gholamreza Soleiman, figures widely regarded as the architects of the brutal crackdown on protesters last January.
“The celebrations we are seeing in the streets are not just for Chaharshanbe Suri,” said Tamar Eilam Gindin, an Iran expert at the Ezri Center of the University of Haifa. “The people are celebrating the killing of the two. To the Iranian public, Larijani was the face of the January massacre.”
Ed: Let's hope this is not too premature, but is instead the harbinger of liberation of the long-oppressed Iranian people.
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🚨 Breaking: Hossein Dehghan replaces Ali Larijani.
— Dr. Eli David (@DrEliDavid) March 18, 2026
During Dehghan's time as Defense Minister, Israel stole the regime's entire nuclear archive. Khamenei was so enraged that he demanded the sacking of Dehghan.
They have officially hit the bottom of the talent barrel 🤡 pic.twitter.com/F0G9Sncj0T
Ed: If true, notice that the IRGC bypassed Pezeshkian. And that the failure class has taken power by default.
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Jon Levine at the Free Beacon: New York City's first lady, Rama Duwaji, glorified terrorist violence in a wide range of posts made on social media when she was a teenager and in her early 20s, celebrating members of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) terror group and the First Intifada, a Washington Free Beacon review of her old X and Tumblr accounts found. ...
Duwaji was in her late teens and early 20s when she made the majority of the posts, and the accounts with which she made them appear to be inactive now. They came at a time when she was living in the Middle East. While she is of Syrian descent, Duwaji spent her early childhood in New Jersey. Her family moved to Dubai in 2006, and Duwaji eventually transferred from the Virginia Commonwealth University School of the Arts in Qatar to the school's Richmond campus.
In the posts, Duwaji celebrated other members of the terrorist PFLP as well. In March 2015, when she was 17, New York City's future first lady reposted a tweet on International Women's Day praising the terrorist Shadia Abu Ghazaleh. It shows a photo of Ghazaleh, a leading PFLP figure who participated in the bombing of an Israeli bus and led several other terrorist attacks, posing with a rifle. She was killed in 1968 when a bomb she was building in her home—which she intended to use to blow up a building in Tel Aviv—exploded accidentally.
Ed: Can I borrow David Bernstein's shocked face for this one?
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Amazing. pic.twitter.com/WMwKBaMZl5
— James Lindsay, anti-Communist (@ConceptualJames) March 18, 2026
Ed: Maybe they shouldn't mess with the Israelis until they close the Genie Gap. (Let's see how many of you whippersnappers even get that joke.)
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