🛢 Everyone is asking when the war ends.

The more precise question — the one the market should be pricing — is whether the exit people are imagining actually exists.

It doesn't.

🔗 The Hormuz Ledger

🇦🇪❌🇵🇰 - Pakistan says it will repay $2 billion of matured loan deposits to the UAE.

Pakistan was granted a two-month extension to negotiate the rollover of the $2 billion loan which initially matured back in February 2026. The negotiation has since broken down and UAE is now demanding that Pakistan return the money immediately.

Pakistan is grappling with an acute cash crunch. Its USD reserve is at $16.4 billion and dwindling, with another $1.3 billion bond payment due in April.

This fiscal pressure raises serious questions about Pakistan's aptness to mediate in the Iran war. UAE is among the primary targets of Iranian drone and missile attacks.

@GeoPWatch

🇺🇸🇪🇨 The US Navy's USS Nimitz (CVN-68) was spotted by the European Space Agency's Sentinel-2 L2A in the Pacific Ocean heading south-west towards Ecuador ahead of exercises with the Ecuadorian Army.

The Nimitz was supposed to retire last month but her service was extended

🔗 SA Defensa

✡️☢️ Jewish political commentator, Mark Levin, who president Trump watches on the regular, listed casualty numbers of several historical battles.

When he got to the Battle of Okinawa, Levin put an emphasis on this battle as the reason why former president Harry Truman decided to drop the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

At the end Levin calls on his viewers to rally around the Commander-in-Chief [Trump] and support the war with Iran until the "nuclear threat" is eliminated.

🔗 InfoLibNews

🇮🇱☢️🇮🇷 Israeli Channel 14 had a panel on March 29th which included Israel's minister of national security, Itamar Ben Gvir, discussing dropping a "neutron bomb" on Iran.

Neutron bombs are low yield nuclear weapons designed to maximize radiation poisoning in the vicinity of the blast but with a reduced physical power of the blast.

Channel 14 correspondent, Dror Balazada, hints that unconventional weapons may already have been used.

🔗 B.M.

🇷🇸🇭🇺🇺🇦 Serbian authorities discovered several explosive devices near a gas pipeline going to Hungary.

Both Hungary and Serbia have summoned their National Security Councils to discuss the incident.

Ukraine has been trying its hardest cause a fuel crisis in Hungary for its staunch opposition to Ukraine's entry into the EU and the unconditional and unlimited funding the EU hands to Kiev. Ukraine has already bombed several pumping stations on the Druzhba pipeline.

@CIG_telegram

🇮🇷⚔️🇺🇸 A FOX News reporter stated that there were several U.S. servicemen injured in the CSAR mission last night, contradicting president Trump's claims that there were "no wounded Americans" besides the weapons officer that was rescued.

Griffin: We don't know the condition of the airman at this point. I can tell you that the injuries are likely to be serious. A number of service members were injured.

🔗 Acyn (@Acyn)

🇺🇸🇮🇱❌🇱🇧 Yedioth Ahronoth:

In Israel, the assessment is being reinforced that in light of Lebanon's continued failure to deal with Hezbollah, and with the decline of American and Western trust in Lebanese state institutions, a new regional reality may crystallize around understandings between Israel and the new Syrian regime regarding the sharing of security responsibility in Lebanon.

According to sources in Israel, the American disappointment with Lebanon is very deep, and the message that arrives according to estimates is that the Lebanese government has not even succeeded in implementing the minimum of what it has committed to, and that the Lebanese army is also unable - and perhaps in some cases unwilling - to confront the Hezbollah organization in a real way.

According to informed sources, Washington already recognizes that there is no effective partner in Lebanon today, there is no effective governing mechanism capable of disarming Hezbollah, and there is no local military force capable of imposing a new reality on it.

🔗 Middle East Observer

🇸🇾🇸🇾⚔️🇸🇾 A New York Times investigation found that abductions of women and girls from Syria’s Alawite minority were more common, and more brutal, than the government has acknowledged

A 16-year-old girl left her home in northwest Syria last May to visit a shop and disappeared.

Weeks later, an anonymous stranger phoned her distraught family and said that he had the teenager and would let her go if they paid thousands of dollars in ransom, according to four people involved in her case. The family paid the ransom and the girl returned in August, more than 100 days after she had been kidnapped. She told confidants that she had been held in a dank basement and was regularly drugged and raped by strangers, the four people said. A medical exam turned up yet another shock: She came home pregnant.

Since rebels ousted the dictator Bashar al-Assad in late 2024, panicked families and activists trying to help have regularly sounded the alarm on social media that women and girls from Syria’s Alawite minority have mysteriously disappeared or been kidnapped. Many fear that their sect is being targeted as retribution for the brutality of Mr. al-Assad, who also belongs to the Alawite sect.

The government has denied that Alawite women and girls are being targeted by kidnappers, saying that it has confirmed only one such case.

But a NYT investigation based on dozens of interviews with Alawites who say they were kidnapped, their relatives and others involved in their cases found that these abductions have been common and often brutal.

The Times verified the kidnappings of 13 Alawite women and girls, in addition to one man and one boy. Five said they had been raped. Two came home pregnant. The family of one woman said it sent $17,000 to kidnappers who never released her, and provided screenshots of ransom demands and the money transfers. A 24-year-old said she had been held for three weeks in a filthy room where men raped her, beat her, shaved her head and eyebrows and cut her with razor blades. Her relatives also paid the kidnappers and in this case secured her release, according to four people involved in her case.

Syrian activists say they know of scores of such kidnappings but details are difficult to confirm because victims and their families are too scared to talk. Most people who spoke with the Times did so on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisals from the government or the kidnappers. The Times is not identifying most of those who were kidnapped for the same reason.

The kidnappings took place against a backdrop of deep distrust between the Alawites, who make up about one-tenth of Syria’s population, and the new government. Mr. al-Assad relied heavily on his sect in his military and security services while in power.

Last March, that anger fueled days of sectarian violence in northwestern Syria that left about 1,400 people dead, according to a U.N. investigation. The inquiry found that some government security forces had participated in the killing, leaving many Alawites afraid of them.

🔗 https://archive.ph/04iSD

🇦🇪 It May Take a Year to Restore Abu Dhabi Aluminum Output, EGA Says

The Middle East’s biggest aluminum producer said it may take as long as a year to restore full output at its Abu Dhabi plant, following an Iranian attack a week ago.

Emirates Global Aluminium said the Al Taweelah smelter went into emergency shutdown, after suffering significant damage from missiles and drones. The company has completed an initial damage assessment of the facilities in the United Arab Emirates and is in contact with customers whose shipments may be impacted, it said in a statement Friday.

The Middle East accounts for about 9% of global aluminum production, but the impact of the war is being amplified because constraints on output elsewhere have eroded inventories, leaving the market with little buffer to cushion any shocks. Even before the attacks on EGA’s facilities, the industry was bracing for more production cuts as Strait of Hormuz disruptions affected the flow of raw materials for the region’s plants.

“To resume operations at the smelter, EGA must repair infrastructure damage and progressively restore each of the reduction cells,” the company said in the statement. “Early indications are that a complete restoration of primary aluminum production could take up to 12 months.”

Aluminum prices have climbed more than 10% on the London Metal Exchange since the start of the Iran war.

Al Taweelah is one of the world’s biggest smelters, producing 1.6 million tons of cast metal in 2025. Other facilities at the site in Abu Dhabi, including an alumina refinery and a metals recycling plant, could resume some production earlier, pending a final damage assessment, EGA said.

🔗 https://archive.ph/0zmTH