This is an important observation and concern and is doubly true for Iranian officials:

A timely piece: “Normalizing Neo-Imperialism? The Project of a Land Bridge between Jebel Ali and Haifa" by Benoit Challand

Yes good article. It could have mentioned that Suez remained closed for 6 months and after 1967 it was closed for 11 years

Thing Trump doesn’t understand is that for a protection racket to work, the enforcer has to protect as well as coerce.

Another nice set of essays by Equator on the war

This is true for almost all the islands in the Persian Gulf being discussed.

NYU’s student paper did a good job contextualizing the closure. NYU AD and other universities in the Arabian Penninsula do have an option to speak out against military attacks on any and all universities, including in Gaza.

A prescient piece on “route-making” and the dream of a new Israel-centered Middle East. “The unprovoked war of aggression by Israel and the U.S. against Iran (March 2026) will generate new ideas for “route-making” and addressing the problem of logistical bottlenecks.”

Bombing desalination plants is a war crime. It is also stupid move by USreal

Five percent of the globe's oil tankers are trapped inside the Persian/Arabian Gulf: From Bloomberg newsletter.

This actually made me laugh out loud

Call it what you like — strategic failure, decline of hegemony, ass backwardness…. But here we are:

Another very nice piece and translation by Reza

I believe this is in the Abbas Abad neighborhood a few streets away from my grandmother’s house

Man with his dog flees from bombs in Tehran. (Photo by Pooria Hatami)

"Western support for Iran was conditional not merely on political obedience, but on economic subordination. Bending the knee was not enough. Surrendering industrial ambition was the real price of Western backing." Kadivar writes the history of West's opposition to Iranian steel

Ervand Abrahamian’s interview before the start of the war was quite prescient (if you attended out panel at NYU, you heard the same analysis by him on Feb 26)

April 1 is a big threshold— this is why Thailand, Pakistan, Indonesia, etc all have arrangements with Iran or are in talks to gets their ships in and out of the Persian Gulf

A good piece on securitization of Iranian society. People ask me what English sources to read on the war and I find for a mainstream outlet Al Jazeera English has been nuanced and doing actual reporting

US/Israel now bombing university campuses — the same places that were the sites of anti-regime protests a few weeks ago. And I wonder what provosts and deans of US universities on Qatar and the UAE are thinking this morning

The US appears to have deployed the Gator Scatterable Mine system over Kafari, a village near Shiraz, in southern Iran overnight. Several people were killed according to Iranian media.

Today/ Friday on zoom at noon PANEL DISCUSSION: BEYOND EXILE; MIGRATION, MEMORY, AND THE IRANIAN DIASPORA Amy Malek (William & Mary), Amin Moghadam (University of Poitiers), Omid Asayesh (University of Calgary)

A young girl plays on a seesaw along the Persian Gulf shoreline as distant military facilities burn in the background. #Iran #IranWar

This was a really interesting discussion about Israel’s war on Lebanon, political struggles in Lebanon, and the role of technology and arms-length war-making in the region

It is interesting that in the English language media only the Financial Times and Democracy Now actually think about the GCC as more than a gas station.

Since the war started, 40% of academics reported self-censoring on Iran - double the prewar number and a troubling trend. Pahlavi supporters attacking scholars is making discussion of Iran as toxic as Israel/Palestine. And that’s really bad. abuaardvarkghost.ghost.io/what-middle-...

A thousand NYU contingent faculty went on strike Monday and today they have a real contract with real security in one of the most expensive places on earth

A great labour of love and grief - Remembering Gaza Scholars, a memorial website featuring biographies of dozens of the academics murdered in the Israeli onslaught on Gaza: rememberinggazascholars.org

I get a lot of questions about if the IRI establishment is now being dominated by IRGC and security people. Yes, but this is a 20 plus story and not new. They types of IRGC commanders may be changing and the context is different

“Voluntary political limit” being overturned by USreal war on Iran

"One friend said he'd be waiting for me at the airport. He said that I had no idea how important this was to all of them. He said that their families could be rich, pay off all their debts, and afford to send their kids to private schools for better lacrosse coaching."

ICYMI: Yesterday we released the second in our series of MERIP Roundtable podcasts on the Iran war. This episode featured Naghmeh Sohrabi, Kaveh Ehsani and Toby Jones in discussion with James Ryan on the experience of the war for ordinary Iranians. LISTEN NOW buff.ly/JT37hMK

I have a short piece in this MERIP collection of essays on the war on Iran and across the region. Some great interventions covering a lot of topics: IRGC, Lebanon, GCC, geopolitics, Afghanistan, and more

Add to the list of "collateral damage": the UAE shuts down one of the oldest hospitals in Dubai and besides patients missing out on treatment; nurses from the Philippines and elsewhere left worried about getting paid.

Yes, that scenario is on the cards

The South Pars attack is a major escalation and worsen the war, but it also will really hurt many Iranian civilians. Iran’s electricity production is built around natural gas, in particular South Pars.

This is going to escalate matters. The Qatari response to the USreal bombing South Pars is noteworthy

A great essay : “This war, if it continues, may produce the first truly collective Gulf memory: national and transnational at once, the kind that does not ask for a passport before it admits you to its grief.”

I don't think FIFA can realistically even consider this. Not when Iran could make knockout rounds that have to be played in the U.S. and not with the real possibility that the U.S. bombs other countries that are in the World Cup. This is pretty specifically what FIFA signed up for.

The U.S.-Israel war can keep killing IR leaders, but it is unlikely that it will crumble. The regime for decades has changed and can and will do so . It is just not the type of change that Iranian people, or Washington or Tel Aviv want

Important discussion: “It is estimated that as much as 70 percent of the Gulf’s food imports pass through Hormuz. Its closure thus represents a threat to the food security of the Gulf, but the disruption also risks supplies for the wider Middle East.”

The third part of our symposium on the American-Israeli war on Iran: @warghetti.bsky.social on bombs over Beirut Aslı Bâli on the arsonists of world order and a dispatch from the first days of war in Tehran, translated by Salar Abdoh www.equator.org/articles/dea...

Another example of how the Gulf region is central to the contemporary world— in this case the humanitarian aid sector

30/ This is a great graphic: Not all Crude Oil is the same. "Asia's refineries are built for Gulf crude That's exactly what's disappearing from Hormuz right now You can't just swap in US Light Sweet. It doesn't run the same way. Why there's no easy substitute:" x.com/jackprandell...

This is why in the 21st century you have to think of “the Gulf” in terms of stocks as well as flows

And you want him to find an off ramp?

"Today, each of the three actors at the center of this strategy, Washington, Tehran, and Tel Aviv, have, in different ways, deepened the insecurity they were meant to manage." I wrote about the current crisis @jadaliyya.bsky.social www.jadaliyya.com/Details/47233

It was my pleasure to contribute to this @jadaliyya.bsky.social round table on the War on Iran and International Law www.jadaliyya.com/Details/47234

“Wikoff’s failure to comprehend key technical realities suggests he misunderstood the Iranian nuclear proposal and was ill-prepared to negotiate an effective nuclear agreement.”