US attacks Iran and Tehran retaliates across Middle East as both vie for control of strait

US attacks Iran and Tehran retaliates across Middle East as both vie for control of strait

Jacob Magid

The US launched strikes on Iran early Tuesday morning, hours after President Donald Trump said Washington was “reinstating” a blockade on Iran in the Strait of Hormuz. Trump separately suggested the United States will charge other ships for safe passage, upending hundreds of years of American policy supporting freedom of navigation across the globe.

Iran responded with attacks targeting Bahrain, Jordan and two tankers associated with the United Arab Emirates traveling through the strait, killing one mariner and wounding eight. The Emirates threatened to retaliate against Iran, potentially drawing the nation that is home to Abu Dhabi and Dubai back into fighting with Tehran.

The attacks come as Iran and the US vie for control of the strait through which a fifth of all traded crude oil and natural gas once passed in peacetime. The price of benchmark Brent crude oil rose to a one-month high of over $84 in trading early Tuesday, still well below the nearly $120 reached at the height of the war but threatening to make costs everywhere higher.

It also further shredded a ceasefire in place from an interim agreement between Iran and the US to end the war. The accord is now almost halfway through the 60-day period in which they were supposed to negotiate a final accord, which also was meant to address Iran’s disputed nuclear program and other issues.

A US air base in Jordan was targeted by Iranian ballistic missiles on Tuesday, Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps said, while calling on Jordanians to dismantle American bases in the kingdom.

“You know very well that not only do we not have any enmity with your country, but we also love you, the noble people, who understand the pain and oppression of the Palestinian people more than any other nation,” the IRGC said in a statement carried by Fars News.

Jordan’s armed forces said on Tuesday they intercepted and shot down four missiles that entered Jordanian airspace from Iranian territory, according to state news agency.

The United Arab Emirates’ Defense Ministry said early Tuesday that Iran attacked two tankers in the Strait of Hormuz, killing one mariner and wounding eight.

The Emirati Defense Ministry said Iran launched two cruise missiles at the tankers Mombasa and Al Bahiyah. The attacks set both tankers ablaze, though the fires were extinguished.

Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard claimed the attack on the tankers, saying the vessels “ignored repeated warnings.”

“They chose to pass through a minefield and were subsequently targeted and disabled,” the Guard said.

The Emirati Defense Ministry said the attack on the tankers killed one Indian national and wounded six Indians and two Ukrainians.

“The UAE reserves its full right to respond to this escalation and to take all necessary measures to protect its territory, its citizens and residents,” the Defense Ministry added.

The Emirates used similar language before launching attacks against Iran during the war. Fighter jets could be heard overheard Tuesday morning in Dubai.

Bahrain also came under renewed attack on Tuesday morning as Iran retaliated over the latest round of US airstrikes. Bahrain sounded its missile alert sirens three times, urging the public to seek shelter. Explosions were heard in the Bahraini capital Manama. There was no word on any damage or casualties from the attack.

Overnight, US forces completed their latest wave of strikes on Iran, which the US Central Command began earlier in the day at Trump’s direction.

The five hours of US strikes were the third consecutive night of attacks against Iran as Trump reinstated a blockade of Iranian shipping and proposed charging a 20% fee to guard the Strait of Hormuz.

Iranian media reported strikes on a number of the cities and said four people had been wounded and rescue operations were underway.

But on Tuesday, oil minister Mohsen Paknejad insisted Iran’s oil exports were continuing as usual.Trump said Monday he would probably soon order a strike on the Pickaxe Mountain nuclear site.

Asked about Pickaxe, which was not among the three nuclear facilities targeted by the US last year, Trump said the US was closely surveilling it.

“Pickaxe is a possible target for a nice big fat shot right near the front door,” he said. “We see no activity there. They’re not doing well with their nuclear situation… We’ll probably give Pickaxe a shot relatively soon.”

Satellite images released earlier this month showed recent construction and vehicle activity at Pickaxe, which is tunneled into a mountain near the main Natanz nuclear facility. The exact purpose of the site is not known, and inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency have never been granted access.

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US strikes targeted port city of Bushehr, Iranian state media says

US strikes hit the port city of Bushehr, which hosts a nuclear power plant, local authorities say, as fighting between Tehran and Washington escalates.

“Four points in the city of Bushehr were hit by enemy projectiles at noon (0830 GMT),” deputy provincial governor Ehsan Jahanian is quoted by official news agency IRNA as saying, blaming the attacks on the United States.

It is unclear if the nuclear facility was hit.

5 explosions heard near Strait of Hormuz’s Bandar Abbas, Iranian state broadcaster says

Iranian state television reports that five explosions were heard around the port city of Bandar Abbas, near the Strait of Hormuz, which has been at the center of renewed Iran-US fighting.

“A few minutes ago, five explosions were heard west of Bandar Abbas,” the state broadcaster says, without providing further details.

The Latest Model Cars: Big Brother Is Watching You

The Latest Model Cars: Big Brother Is Watching You

Alejandro A. Tagliavini

An article written by Steve Watson in Modernity.news, gives an account of how the surveillance state has found its new frontier: the dashboard of your car. What was once a symbol of American freedom and independence, automobiles are rapidly transforming into a high-tech cage that watches their every move and can override their decisions at will.

In a post shared on X, users detailed the multiple complaints about Subaru's improved "EyeSight" AI system, which is present in the latest models. According to drivers, the system gets quick glimpses beyond their intentions to plan their route. At the same time, Biden-era federal mandates were put in place to make this level of surveillance mandatory on every new vehicle by 2027.

They even catch a momentary glance to change a song or admire the landscape and activate constant alerts. Thus, its new Emergency Stop Assist with Safe Lane Selection function can detect an "unresponsive" driver and issue increasing alerts through sounds and vibrations at the steering wheel, and then take full control: automatically brake, reduce the vehicle's speed, direct it to the side of the road, and activate hazard lights.

This is not an optional trick but would be imposed by the state. It's being rolled out as standard "safety" technology, but drivers call it a domineering electronic babysitter who treats competent adults like children. It serves as a chilling preview of where the entire auto industry is headed under government pressure.

This type of intrusive surveillance is precisely the tool that a police state would dream of to exert total control over personal movements. If authorities achieve deeper integration with these systems, they could effectively decide when, where, and who can drive.

The launch of Subaru is just the latest sticking point in a broader push toward vehicle surveillance that goes far beyond basic security. A federal mandate - included in the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act of 2021 - requires all new passenger vehicles sold in the US to include advanced drunk or drug-impaired driving prevention technology, starting with 2027 model years.

As detailed in the New York Post report, this means infrared cameras and sensors that constantly monitor eyes, faces, head position, and behavior for distractions, drowsiness, or deterioration, with the power to prevent the car from starting or limit its operation. It seems very appropriate, but it implies a great deal of arbitrariness if it comes into the hands of bureaucrats.

Manufacturers are already patenting and deploying even more aggressive systems, including biometric scans that analyze everything from gait to heart rate to AI face scanning, lip reading, and emotional monitoring. The problem is that the data won't stay in the car: it could make its way to insurers for risk scoring, law enforcement, or worse, to the knowledge of Big Brother: as cross-checks of drivers with police databases, before the vehicle is even allowed to move.

Authorities are already showing interest in using these tools as a weapon for broader travel restrictions. In Massachusetts, Democrats introduced a bill aimed at reducing vehicle miles traveled statewide to meet climate goals, pushing policies that critics say amount to limiting the distance people can drive in their own cars, clearly limiting their freedom.

What starts as "safety features" and "environmental goals" ends with the car deciding personal freedom, to the point of deciding who can leave the garage.

It is not only the statists of the left who try to monitor in order to control, but also those of the right. For example, the president of Argentina has had meetings with Peter Thiel, surrounded by controversy over the publication of a manifesto by his surveillance company Palantir that summarizes the central ideas of the book The Technological Republic.

"The only real answer is rejection: refuse to buy these guarded vehicles... and preserve the used car market as the last refuge of true driving freedom," concludes Steve Watson.

Hormuz update:

Comfortably Bomb

Michael Every

This is not a sustainable long-term dynamic, but for a few weeks, or months at most, the market may continue to say “there is no pain” in spot oil prices even if wide crack spreads were already telling another story on refined products before this latest fighting started.

The key question is if this is a temporary or a longer-term geopolitical issue: arguably it’s both. However, the US may be gambling it can resolve the Hormuz situation to the energy market’s satisfaction before things become critical.

The message from US CENTCOM is clear: “The Strait of Hormuz is open to all vessels seeking to lawfully transit the international waterway. US forces are positioned and prepared to ensure that freedom of navigation remains available despite unwarranted Iranian aggression, harassment, threats, and arbitrary declarations. Iran does not control the strait. Traffic is flowing.” In pledging this, the US aims to ensure that Hormuz doesn’t bother markets the way that it did earlier in the war. That implies: 

1. Taking out Iranian facilities in and along Hormuz so the threat to the southern Omani channel is diminished. 

2. Providing defensive cover for ships passing through from drones, missiles, small boats, and mines, etc.  

3. Shielding GCC allies, particularly their energy and critical infrastructure, but where stocks of missile interceptors are reportedly low. Very notably, Iran has so far not struck at these key GCC facilities again in recent attacks. That could suggest Tehran realises there are limits to what it can do to its neighbours if it also wants to offer alternative regional leadership ahead.  

These US tasks, mirroring the late-80’s Operation Earnest Will in the Iran-Iraq War's Tanker phase, may require help from the GCC and NATO. While US allies have been reticent to (publicly) act in this regard until now –and the Saudis blocked Operation Project Freedom with the same goal– that dynamic may change with the recent narrow avoidance of an energy crisis and the narrative that Iran alone is now blocking Hormuz.  

Moreover, it has been revealed that the US continued with a covert version of Project Freedom anyway without Saudi assistance. 

It’s credible to assume US (and GCC/coalition) naval escorts with air cover could move substantial energy volumes through Hormuz via Omani waters even under duress. Recent operational data suggest the US military directly escorted tankers carrying significant amounts of oil successfully through the Strait. The US claims this was as high as 7 million barrels per day. Sustained throughput of meaningful amounts of oil and products via these military escorts appears theoretically feasible, albeit at higher costs from insurance premia and longer transit times. That turns a serious supply shock into a manageable disruption. 

At the same time, it’s realistic to expect that on top of a cancelled Iranian oil sanctions waiver, the US could reimpose its blockade on Iranian oil to increase economic pressure on it.  

We can also expect more efforts to build alternative supply chains and pipelines that avoid Hormuz as possible around it. None of them are a short-term palliative to match the Saudi East West pipeline to Yanbu, but in the longer run they will reduce Iran’s leverage even further.  

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Things To Come: Mass Surveillance Systems

While the Political Circus Distracts Us, Flock Builds the Digital Police State

John W. Whitehead

“You had to live—did live, from habit that became instinct—in the assumption that every sound you made was overheard, and, except in darkness, every movement scrutinized.”—George Orwell, 1984

While Americans remain transfixed by the political circus—cheering for their preferred party, jeering at the opposition, obsessing over every manufactured outrage and waiting for the next spectacle—the Surveillance State continues its steady march forward.

The government is watching.

It watches where you go, whom you meet, where you worship, what medical offices you visit, what political rallies you attend, what protests you join, what books you read, what websites you visit and what causes you support.

It watches through your phone, your car, your doorbell, your appliances, your purchases, your social media accounts and the cameras positioned along the roads you travel every day.

This is how freedom dies in the digital police state: not always through dramatic declarations of martial law or soldiers stationed on every street corner, but through the gradual construction of a technological dragnet—an electronic concentration camp—so pervasive that privacy becomes impossible and anonymity becomes suspicious.

Enter Flock Safety, a private surveillance technology company whose automated license plate readers have spread throughout thousands of American communities.

These cameras, which do much more than photograph license plates, represent the next evolution of the government’s public-private surveillance partnership.

They document the time and location of every passing vehicle and record identifying characteristics such as its make, model, color, damage, roof racks, bumper stickers and other distinctive features. That information can then be placed in a searchable database and used to retrace a vehicle’s movements over time.

Yet the real power—and the real danger—of Flock does not come from the cameras alone.

It comes from artificial intelligence.

A camera can photograph a car. Flock’s AI-powered platform can identify and categorize a vehicle, compare an observation with stored records, generate alerts, identify connections and help police reconstruct where that vehicle has been.

AI is what transforms a photograph into the building blocks for a suspect society.

With AI, every driver becomes a data point. Every data point becomes a pattern. And every pattern becomes a suspicion.

This is how ordinary movements become potentially suspect and subject to government scrutiny. It allows law enforcement agencies to search not only for a complete license plate number but also for partial plates and physical descriptions such as vehicle color, make, model, damage, roof racks, bumper stickers and other identifying characteristics.

This is no longer surveillance conducted by individual officers following particular leads. It is surveillance conducted at machine speed, across entire populations, with algorithms deciding whose movements merit further scrutiny.

Consider the scale of what is taking place.

License plate cameras now log approximately 20 billion vehicle scans every month.

Twenty billion.

That is not targeted policing. That is mass collection.

The overwhelming majority of those scans do not involve stolen cars, wanted suspects, kidnappings or violent crimes. They document ordinary people carrying out the ordinary activities of daily life: driving to work, taking children to school, visiting friends, attending church, keeping medical appointments, participating in protests or simply going home.

Yet each of those innocent journeys becomes part of a searchable police database.

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On Schedule: Iran And Russia Strengthen Ties

Iran's New Supreme Leader Backs Stronger Ties With Russia

Sputnik

Iran is ready to remove obstacles to the implementation of joint projects with Russia, Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian's office said on Monday.

"During a meeting with Russian Energy Minister Sergey Tsivilev, the president emphasized the need to intensify the implementation of strategic agreements between Tehran and Moscow, declaring Iran's readiness to remove obstacles to the implementation of joint projects," the office said in a statement. 

Iran's Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei advocates for stronger ties with Russia, the statement said.

Russia and Iran discussed prospects for developing the two countries' energy infrastructure during Russian Energy Minister Sergey Tsivilev's visit to the Islamic Republic, the Russian Energy Ministry said.

"Russian Energy Minister Sergey Tsivilev, co-chair of the Russian-Iranian Intergovernmental Commission on Trade and Economic Cooperation, made a working visit to the Islamic Republic of Iran ... During the talks, the parties discussed prospects for the further development of Russia and Iran's energy infrastructure," the statement said.

Russia and Iran are steadily developing cooperation, including in the energy sector, Tsivilev said during the meeting, as quoted by the Russian Energy Ministry.

The parties discussed implementation of joint gas projects and preparation of bilateral cooperation agreements, the ministry added.

Iran and Russia are close to finalizing an agreement on the gas trade, Iranian Oil Minister Mohsen Paknejad said.

Paknejad said he had discussed with his Russian counterpart the implementation of agreements reached during the 19th session of the Russia-Iran Intergovernmental Commission in February 2026, as well as issues related to Russian investments in Iranian oil and gas fields. Possible solutions to existing problems in bilateral cooperation were also prepared.