🇺🇸❌🇨🇭 The US is bypassing Switzerland’s Patriot payment freeze by redirecting F-35 funds through a shared military sales fund, making the move effectively “useless.”

Over “a low three-digit million” CHF (100M+) has already been shifted, forcing Switzerland to cover new gaps in its F-35 budget.

Swiss officials say the situation is “very unsatisfactory” and warn it is “damaging trust” in US arms agreements.

So, when Switzerland stopped paying for Patriot, the U.S. just took money from another Swiss project (F-35) instead.

Switzerland said: “We won’t pay.”

The U.S. said: “We’ll take the money anyway, from another account.”

🔗 https://clashreport.com/defense/articles/patriot-crisis-us-seizes-switzerlands-fighter-jet-funds-07crgkch8ihr

🛢📉 France says that oil output will not return to pre-3rd Gulf War levels before 2030

France's Finance Minister Roland Lescure revealed on Wednesday that between 30 and 40 per cent of Gulf refining capacity has been damaged or destroyed by Iran's retaliatory strikes, leaving a shortage of 11 million barrels a day on global oil markets.

Lescure warned it could take up to three years to restore damaged facilities, and several months to restart those that were urgently shut down.

With fossil fuel supplies under severe strain, both the UK and Germany signalled on Wednesday that the energy crisis is accelerating their green transitions.

This comes as European Central Bank President Christine Lagarde assured the continent that the ECB has several options for dealing with the inflation shock triggered by the US-Israeli war on Iran, and vowed that policymakers would not be "paralysed by hesitation".

🔗 https://www.france24.com/en/france-confirms-oil-crisis-says-30-40-gulf-energy-infrastructure-destroyed

🇱🇧⚔️🇮🇱 Israeli Army Takes Heaviest Tank Losses in Over 40 Years as Hezbollah Ambushes Destroy 21 Merkavas in One Day

The Lebanese paramilitary group Hezbollah has reported on the results of multiple ambushes launched against Israeli forces in southern Lebanon, with 21 Israeli Merkava main battle tanks reported on March 26 to have been destroyed within a 24 hour period. Other consequences of engagements have included the firing of over 60 rockets at targets in the Galilee region that day, complementing much longer range strikes against Israeli targets launched by Hezbollah’s close strategic partner Iran.

Hezbollah artillery units also targeted Israeli command positions in the Taybeh region, Rab Thalathin and Oudaiseh, while also firing on Israeli reinforcements that were dispatched to evacuate casualties. The paramilitary group reports regarding further strikes: “the headquarters of the Israeli Ministry of War (Kyria) in the center of Tel Aviv, and the Dolphin barracks belonging to the Military Intelligence Division north of Tel Aviv, with a number of special missiles.”

The bulk of Israeli armour losses occurred in a single engagement between the towns of Taybeh and Qantara, after Israeli units reportedly “advanced to carry out a manoeuvre aiming to seize control of the area.” Hezbollah’s official statement observed that its personnel “monitored them and prepared to lure the enemy into a well-planned ambush,” with the result that its forces “succeeded in thwarting the enemy’s manoeuvre, inflicting losses including 10 Merkava tanks and D9 bulldozers.”

The results of the successes reported to have been achieved by Hezbollah units represent the most extreme losses Israeli armour has suffered in over 40 years since the early stages of the Lebanon War when Merkavas and older U.S.-supplied tanks engaged newly operationalised Syrian Army T-72 tanks and anti-tank guided weapons.

One Merkava tank costs ~$6 million. The IDF acknowledged the deaths of just 4 personnel although the death toll is probably much much higher.

🔗 https://militarywatchmagazine.com/article/israel-largest-tank-losses-40yrs-ambushes-21-merkava

✡️ Israeli settler invokes biblical justification for genocide

The Holy Torah grants permission to expel every single gentile who opposes the notion of a Greater Israel, claims a settler on Israeli TV.

💬 “We will dispossess and expel,” he rants, “because there is no way for us to live here in the land of Israel if we don’t expel them from here.”

👍 US-Israel-Iran war | @geopolitics_prime

#BREAKING

🇾🇪❌🇮🇱❗️ — Sirens sound in Beersheba and surrounding towns in southern Israel due to a ballistic missile attack from Yemen!

Houthis joined the Third Gulf War!

@BellumActaNews

❗️🇮🇷⚡️🇮🇱🏴‍☠️ Iranian intelligence has arrested three people in Kermanshah who were under the control of the Israeli intelligence service "Mossad".

They were planning sabotage attacks on strategic targets and assassinations of Iranian military personnel, according to the Iranian state television and radio company.

🚨 USS Gerald R. Ford ‘out of action’ — ex-Indian general

The Iran war is effectively over for the damaged USS Gerald R. Ford, the world’s largest aircraft carrier, retired Indian Major General Gagan Deep Bakshi said.

🪖 The warship is “out of the combat area” and will soon head back to the US, he added — meaning the carrier’s 70 deck-based fighter jets are effectively sidelined.

👉 At least 600 sailors were earlier relocated after a fire broke out in a laundry area of the $13 billion carrier. The blaze was not combat-related, according to US officials.

👍 US-Israel-Iran war | @geopolitics_prime

🇮🇷⚔️🇺🇸🇮🇱 US interceptor stockpiles being depleted by Iran war, could take years to replenish

The Payne Institute estimates that the war has consumed about a third of the THAAD missile stockpile, whose annual production rate does not exceed about 100

A new US Congress study published last week on the THAAD ballistic missile interception system shed worrying light on the inventory of interceptors available to the US in the near future.

The document says, "There is concern that the rate of use of THAAD interceptors during Operation Epic Fury has further reduced the limited stock of interceptors."

Despite the problematic reputation that the THAAD system has acquired for itself over the past few years, during which it was deployed in the Middle East, Congress claims that the interception rate of the US system reaches about 90% of all Iranian ballistic missiles and drones, with an emphasis on the UAE, a comparable rate to the Arrow 3, the Israel-US jointly developed system, used exclusively by the IDF.

The study also found that half of all interceptions used to defend Israeli skies in the operation against Iran in June were made by the THAAD system - ninety-two interceptions in total out of an estimated supply of 632 interceptors, and added it would take many years before the stockpile of interceptors could be fully replenished.

"It could take three to eight years to replenish the THAAD missile stockpile, each of which costs an estimated $12.7 million." The Foreign Policy Research Institute (FPRI), which provided some of the materials to the Congressional Research Service (CRS), found that the first days of the current US Operation Epic Fury were more intensive than the opening of any other air campaign in the history of the US military, with 5,197 munitions across 35 types carrying a munitions-only replacement bill of $10 - $16 billion in four days.

🔗 https://www.jpost.com/defense-and-tech/article-891130