Let's check in on the current status of Operation Epic Fail:
Hormuz: Still closed
Gulf states: Still a few drones away from being returned to uninhabitable sand
Americans: Making all sorts of noises, but no closer to "winning" (the definition of which varies wildly by the day) than a month ago
Iran: Firing missiles, drones and LEGO AI propaganda videos without pause
Israel: Bogged down in Lebanon
EU: About to start energy rationing, because idiocy
Russia: Not doing much of anything out of the ordinary
Democrats: Salivating at the increasing likelihood of seizing power again

Have I missed anything?

Well well well, would you look at that.

I've heard chatter that this particular photo might be AI. I can't tell, one way or another — but there were announcements that a group of Ukrainian "instructors" and some supposed "defense" drones had arrived to the Gulf, with Iran then saying they destroyed the warehouse and killed the lot of them.

Obituaries such as the one linked above are the usual method of "laundering" casualties — as the Iranians themselves pointed out, all of a sudden a lot of American troops had "hiking accidents" and the like, all to cover up the death toll of the war. Kiev has been doing this from the start.

All sides in war lie to some extent, by commission or omission. We will find out soon enough who is telling the truth in this case.

Trump was saying just yesterday he didn't care about Hormuz, and now it's leverage in talks with the "New Regime President" (Ayatollah Vovan al-Lexusi, perhaps?)
The trouble with pushing the envelope of conjuring reality (which has worked for Trump so far, against all odds) is that it works until very suddenly it doesn't.

I haven't heard a better explanation for why the Ukraine frontline appears largely static, so here you go:

There are no longer any prison recruits or foreign fighters in many Ukrainian line brigades — because they have been transferred to the assault infantry branch.

The "Assault Forces", General Syrski's brainchild, were the right tool to deploy in the situation the AFU was in last year. They are the perfect machine for countering Russian infiltration tactics, which was the doctrinal innovation that carried much of the Russian success in the 2025 summer campaign.

It's more complicated, but the tl;dr is that a bunch of two-man infiltration teams penetrate deep into Ukrainian lines, cross what people call the "kill zone" and start overrunning and killing Ukrainian drone operators, or at least forcing them to retreat -- retreating drone operators means more functional army units can move in, thus, moving the entire frontline and leading to the color changing on the maps.

Syrski's Stormtroopers are the perfect counter to this tactic. The tl;dr on Ukrainian Assault Forces is that they are the fix to one of the biggest Ukrainian problems: quickly redeploying forces.

The Ukrainian army does not have maneuver reserves anymore, and likely won't have any going forward, due to immense manpower problems, and what available manpower there is being funneled into the Assault Forces. Redeploying companies or even platoons from 10 different brigades all across the frontline into one place to reinforce a sector about to collapse takes A LOT of time and is super ineffective -- even worse now with the Ukrainian rail network severely degraded and incapable of transporting serious troop numbers.

The "Assault Forces" fix this. They are the lightest of light infantries. They have nothing. No supply lines, no mechanization, barely any motorization, not even mortars. A non-existent logistics footprint. You stuff 100 guys into two busses and they can get from anywhere to anywhere within a day, max. You throw them into the kill zone to force Russian infiltration teams into infantry combat, which means the Ukrainian drone operators don't flee and don't die, which means the frontline doesn't move.

It works because the "Assault Forces" are much more mobile than our reserves. Obviously, nobody wants to serve in these units because they're a meat assault death machine. You remember the video from near Grishino a couple days ago. All the prison volunteers and many foreign fighters have been shoved into the Assault Forces, too. Alcoholics, junkies, criminals, deserters, press-ganged conscripts. These people are supposed to be consumable items. It's like Wagner's Project K on steroids. It's an inhumane and cruel way to wage war but at the moment it just... works. You just shove 50 losers into a bus and they have "strategically redeployed" within 6 hours. By the time they're dead the next bus has arrived. The "carousel".

It's kind of a short to medium term solution, because the casualties produced by Syrski's Stormtroopers (they even use the leopard as their emblem, which is Syrski's personal call sign (Барс) are unsustainable in the long run, considering how much strain the Ukrainian army is already under with regards to manpower. There are also second-order effects such as stripping personnel from line brigades to feed the meat conveyor belt, which is bad for unit cohesion and other things.

But for now it works, and the Russian military's main task for 2026 is to figure out a way to counter this counter (that's basically what war is: a counter to the counter deployed against your counter to whatever your enemy is doing).

There are several ways to go about this -- I think Russian high command has big plans for the Unmanned Systems Forces, which are currently being greatly reorganized and expanded. Western analysts have started writing about the "Russian Drone Line", a doctrinal concept that is offensive in nature, as opposed to the defensive "Ukrainian Drone Line". We'll talk more about this later.

Russians with Attitude

Trump is seemingly insane, right? He's posting "praise Allah" and profanities, while threatening to "just blow everything up" if Iran doesn't capitulate by Tuesday evening (0330 on Wednesday, Tehran time). Most people's reaction is to be appalled, and rightly so. And yet...

"In death ground, fight" Sun Tzu wrote 2,500 years ago. There's an argument to be made that wars need to be prosecuted to the fullest, or your enemy will use your decency against you. Whether you agree with this or not is irrelevant: that's what Trump believes, and it accurately reflects the sentiment of a large number of Americans, perhaps even the majority. If you don't believe me, check the savagery with which the US fought in the Pacific during WW2. Or look up the behavior of William T. Sherman, Phil Sheridan and Nathan Bedford Forrest during the Civil War.

Trump is not behaving out-of-character, then. The real issue here isn't his language, but whether he has the ability to make good on his threats. I don't doubt his willingness to "blow it all up" but I am very skeptical it will actually achieve anything - beyond an energy apocalypse.

The US and Israel can absolutely bomb Iran to the level of Syria — but Iran can level Israel in return, while the US will have lost the last best hope to save itself from GAE. So they all go down together. Sad!

Lawfare, as we know, is the most powerful political weapon in the US. So why hasn't some Democrat NGO filed for an injunction on behalf of the Persian diaspora in California?
Crazy idea, perhaps, but it might just work.

In the end, both Trump and Iran declared victory — and Israel responded by bombing 100 places in Lebanon in 10 minutes, to make sure the ceasefire doesn't hold.
Because of course it did.

Whatever you may think about the US, Iran or Israel, you can't ignore the dynamic at work here: Netanyahu is using Trump and the American Empire to achieve his objectives, and Trump is burning through his political capital to deliver a victory for Israel, while his enemies at home are sharpening their knives and waiting for absolute power to fall into their lap.

He may yet be able to pull off some kind of miracle and avoid this outcome, but why get oneself into the position where one has to in the first place?

Christ is Risen!
(Image via t.me/putingers_cat)

Iran update: Trump has wrecked the ceasefire by demanding Iranian surrender on uranium (should've kept that nuclear deal!) then immediately declared a naval blockade of Iran — except not in Hormuz, which the USN can't safely access, but in the Gulf of Oman.

While Tehran has initially mocked this as both cowardly and ineffective, it seems to be working: the shipping has stopped. Now Iran is threatening to activate the Houthis and block the Bab-el-Mandeb (Red Sea, Suez) as well as the Gulf of Oman and the Arabian Sea.

Oh and Trump has also picked a fight with the Pope (though he's a woke Chicago liberal, who recently met with Democrat operative David Axelrod, so that's not exactly hard).

Wait, Russia is actually threatening to blow up drone factories in EU that are supplying 404?!
Finally? After 4 years? Not a joke?
<blinks>
Guess Iran left quite an impression.

Not commenting on the Iran ceasefire/peace until things are clearer. Trump is already talking about conquering Cuba, though. So much for fighting the enemy at home (and in Brussels), who is just biding their time…

Trump has the Devil's own luck, love or hate the man. When the ceasefire was declared, Iran controlled the momentum of the war, as well as the escalation ladder and the narrative. All of that got upended over the past week.

The US blockade of Iran (not Hormuz!) seems to be working, while the Iranians got egg on their face from the incident with the Indian captain begging not to be fired upon. Whatever ships Iran is letting through are turning back from the US blockade line (safely out of range of Iranian missiles). Now it's Trump who controls the escalation, narrative and momentum of events. Quite remarkable, when you think about it.

I've said it before and I'll say it again, if only Trump would use some of this energy and determination against domestic enemies instead of LARPing as emperor of the world...

Side note: Both America and Iran have acted with such audacity and aggression that they made Russian restraint in Ukraine look like weakness, enough so that even the Kremlin appears rattled. We'll see whether that translates into abandoning the utterly pointless "we don't do that-ism" that made the SMO necessary to begin with.

(Very light to nonexistent posting till the end of the month, I am traveling again. We'll see what happens!)

Trump almost getting assassinated by a Democrat and (another) NAFO sympathizer gave him a perfect pretext for a domestic crackdown and a foreign policy realignment. To no one’s surprise, he has once again missed both opportunities.

Mali seems to have survived a decapitation strike by jihadists (Al-Qaeda, ISIS, the usual tools), reportedly aided by Ukrainians and orchestrated by France.
Mostly thanks to the Russian “Africa Corps” which Moscow is still officially pretending doesn’t exist. (Sigh)
So far so good, but if Syria has taught us anything it’s that victory can be thrown away if it’s not seen through to the end.
Allowing the enemy any breathing space (or worse, ceding initiative) tends to turn out very badly.

I was VERY wrong about this. Within a day, Trump has reached out to Russia, put the Yookay monarch in his place, and taken the offensive after the US Supreme Court ruled that race-based election districts are illegal (big loss for Democrats). Ex-FBI chief Comey has been indicted on multiple charges (though not Russiagate, yet), along with a key aide of Dr. Anthony Fauci (pardoned by "Joe Biden"), involved in covering up the funding via proxies for the gain-of-function experiments that produced the Novel Coronavirus.

Baby steps, to be sure, but steps all right. When it comes to America, there is no politics-as-usual anymore. If Moscow and Beijing were counting on Washington self-destructing... they need to recalculate.

Whatever you believe about Russian deterrence and willingness to act on her own threats, all previous threats of this nature were deliberately kept extremely vague and unspecific. "Appropriate measures will be taken in response" (the usual stuff) vs "Massive missile strike against downtown Kiev, civilians and foreign diplomats GTFO if you want to live" is a huge rhetorical escalation that we have not seen before in this war

If RWA say this is significant, you can bet it is.
I really hope that Kiev gets the message. That said, that missile strike has been more than well-deserved for years now.