Damn the re-ordering happens fast

Israel struck Lebanon +100 times today, incl. across Beirut, killing & injuring hundreds while displacing thousands. It threatened more such strikes in next 48 hours while claiming Hizballah fighters fleeing to “mixed areas.” Israel is doing several things, as it always has. 🧵

All of these people who have offered bullshit analysis about Iran for the past 10-20 years, should just stay quite. Don’t add more harm to what you have done. Media has to hold these “Iran experts” accountable for ripping up the JCPOA, predicting revolution at every turn, and so much more

A brief history of America’s long war, oil/capital, and imperial decline in the Gulf. www.jadaliyya.com/Details/4730...

My reply to the forum about "On the Semicivilized" @dukepress.bsky.social has dropped in @CSSHJournal. What, I ask, are the grounds for collective life with int'l order buried under the rubble in Gaza, Beirut, and Tehran? What are the horizons of political life and sovereignty today?

We need more anti-war from everyone. Flood the zone

It is excruciatingly difficult talking to family in Iran. I was asked “will they really bomb all the electrical grids and water supply in 48 hours?” I didn’t know what to say and shamefully changed the topic. Don’t underestimate how terrorized people are when trillion $ war machines are unleashed

From March 2 through April 5, Israel killed at least 1,461 persons in Lebanon + injured another 4,430. This includes 97 women killed (511 injured) + 129 children killed (443 injured). This also includes 54 health workers killed and another 145 injured.

A brief history of America’s long war, oil/capital, and imperial decline in the Gulf. www.jadaliyya.com/Details/4730...

The genocidaires have already started their shooting and crying films.

Here’s a thought, officials from all the countries: stop the fucking war, and Hormuz will open

I don’t always listen to podcasts, but when @lalehkhalili.bsky.social is on one, you can be sure I do podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/e...

The University of Arkansas is moving ahead with terminating Shirin Saeidi, a scholar who literally wrote the book on Women and Politics in Iran, over tweets critical of Israel. Just colossally stupid in this moment. arktimes.com/arkansas-blo...

Memo on "Israel, the Axis of Resistance, and the End of Deterrence" for the POMEPS Studies 58 (@pomeps.bsky.social) pomeps.org/israel-the-a...

Another nice set of essays by Equator on the war

The US is flailing, trying to replace the oil flows from Hormuz: "One executive at a major independent western oil company said the firm had received repeated requests from the US government to increase production since the war started." www.bloomberg.com/graphics/202...

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

Oil producers *hate* prices going too high. I wrote for @the-breakdown.bsky.social about one of demand destruction, Saudi Arabia and "fair price" of oil www.break-down.org/oil-war-ii/

Iran has not closed the Strait of Hormuz. They have unsettled imperial systems that worked there for the last century or more, British & American. But stuff is moving. Just not in the ways we are accustomed to. Still, don’t accept the claim of closure, which reflects American expectations of power.

You don’t say…all this bluster about threats to Saudi oil installations. The Wahhabi-Zionist prize is a failed state in Iran, regional instability that keeps the US in the region, and high oil prices. The formula since the 1980s. www.nytimes.com/2026/03/24/u...

New essay on Palestine and oil wars past and present

Trump is TACO’ing on the war so he’s making shit up to declare victory over the lunatic fanatics. . . the MAGA base. Iranian agency denies report of talks to end war - www.reuters.com/world/middle...

Maya is always the smartest voice in the room. She gets to the heart of it here. www.jadaliyya.com/Details/4726... @jadaliyya.bsky.social

Trump's ultimatum green-lit Israel intensifying destruction of Iranian infrastructure. Israel seizes on his inability to keep his mouth shut and Trump’s in the familiar place of appearing to being backed into a corner of his own making. Still, he loves the attention. www.nytimes.com/live/2026/03...

4) Is it possible to think with the war in Afghanistan here -- that the US has fought a long war in the Gulf just to help elevate exactly the power and political dynamic it claimed for so long that it was fighting against? Is Iran Donald Trump's Afghanistan?

3) There is still time for the US and Israel to do something even more remarkably stupid. But, I think the writing is on the wall that the US half-century hegemonic project in the Gulf is under more than just a little pressure.

2) I think Iran will have a role in dictating terms to the US for it to end. This does not mean Iranian hegemony or military supremacy, but it is clear that they have inverted the militarized-energy regime and the long-term American aim to secure the "flow of oil" from the ME.

1) An Afghanistan corollary in the Gulf? The US has spent the last 50 years securing its military primacy in the Gulf -- through the Carter Doctrine, intervening in the Iran-Iraq war, the long war on Iraq, filling the region with its stuff, and now this ridiculous display of against Iran.

The off ramp has arrived. Iran has laid bare the weakness of the US. Trump will negotiate a return to something akin to the status quo ante, declare victory, and not realize that he has undermined a 50 year-old security myth about the need for the US to secure the Gulf. apnews.com/article/iran...

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

“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.” To understand the war’s deepest impact in the Gulf, read Gulf voices like @miraalhussein.bsky.social

“The base case, several oil officials in the Gulf’s biggest producer said, is that prices could soar past $180 a barrel if the disruptions persist until late April.” www.wsj.com/finance/comm...

"If crisis is a profit engine for fossil capital, then stability is a precondition for a just transition. That requires demilitarization, public investment and a political economy that treats energy as a public good not a commodity."

If you missed MERIP roundtable yesterday: www.merip.org/2026/03/war-...

“The American-Israeli war on Iran and Lebanon is not a war for oil. Still, it is an oil war. And oil’s role will produce short-term devastation and deepen long-term horrors.” By @the-breakdown.bsky.social

@merip.bsky.social with a smartly curated set of short reflections on the war, providing what MERIP does best - sharp thinking and broad accessible analysis. This is a great place to start for understanding the regional dynamics. www.merip.org/2026/03/war-...

@jdryan08.bsky.social and @merip.bsky.social with the second installment of their podcast on the war out today. Happy to be part of the discussion. www.merip.org/2026/03/the-...

New essay on Palestine and oil wars past and present

Roundtable on the War on Iran and International Law with Noura Erakat, Luigi Daniele, Shahd Hammouri, Ata Hindi, Maryam Jamshidi, and Darryl Li www.jadaliyya.com/Details/47234

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

Thanks @johnmerrick.bsky.social and @the-breakdown.bsky.social for running essays on oil and the American-Israeli war in the ME, including one from me on empire and Palestine. www.break-down.org/oil-war/

The first part of our symposium on the American-Israeli war on Iran. @tobycjones.bsky.social on the deep and terrible intertwining of Empire, oil and Palestine. @guylaron.bsky.social on the history, and future, of oil wars. www.break-down.org/oil-war/

Iran and America’s Long War in the Middle East www.newglobalpolitics.org/iran-and-ame...

“Someone” cancelled my family’s flight out of the country at the last second. We got our boarding passes. We checked our bags. Went through security. Then at our gate our reservation ‘disappeared.’

I have organised an amazing roster of *virtual* presentations for the Centre for Gulf Studies at Exeter. Check out these incredible superstars, and register for the events (Tuesdays 17-18.30 London time) here: www.exeter.ac.uk/research/cen...

🚨 300 tickets sold! Join us for a free panel on the war economy, the climate impacts of war & the geopolitics of the climate transition. Speakers: @stephensemler.bsky.social, @triofrancos.bsky.social & @iliasalami.bsky.social 🪑 @lalehkhalili.bsky.social 📅 16 Oct 6PM BST 🔗 shorturl.at/NwJCL