Replies to post #426537 on Liberal Free Chat Zone (NOLIB)

[ksquared]

Morning, EZ. Aren't we lucky we were born in this country?
I've mentioned this before. Years ago, a Coastie who came to my aid said about the middle east...
Build a wall around it, throw the weapons in, and let them have at it.

That whole region is cursed with an ancient tribal warrior mentality.
After 9-11, no muslim should have been let in here and the ones who weren't citizens should have been shipped out.
Just my hate-filled opinion.

[ksquared]

Three vessels hit by Iranian fire in Strait of Hormuz hours after Trump extends cease-fire
By Samuel Chamberlain Published April 22, 2026 Updated April 22, 2026, 6:40 a.m. ET
(Enough is enough. Seems to me, it's sh*t or get off the pot time...)

Three container ships were hit by Iranian gunfire in the Strait of Hormuz Wednesday, hours after President Trump announced he was indefinitely extending a cease-fire with the Islamic Republic.

Iranian state TV also reported that two of the vessels had been seized by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), while semiofficial news agencies reported the third vessel was “stranded” on the Iranian coast.

The captured ships were identified as the Panama-flagged MSC Francesca and the Epaminodes. The third vessel was identified as the Euphoria

Confirmation from non-Iranian sources that the ships had been seized was not immediately available.

The IRGC said in a statement the ships “allegedly operated without authorization, repeatedly violated regulations, manipulated navigational aid systems and sought to covertly exit the Strait of Hormuz, endangering maritime security.”

https://nypost.com/2026/04/22/world-news/iran-opens-fire-on-container-ship-in-strait-of-hormuz/

[ksquared]

The 2 critical Iran lifelines the US has left largely untouched — just as cease-fire talks stall
By Capt. Lance B. Gordon Published April 21, 2026 Updated April 22, 2026, 6:55 a.m. ET

The blockade is necessary, but it is not enough. If the cease-fire ends without a deal, two decisive targets remain that Washington has not yet pressured: Kharg’s loading infrastructure and its floating reserve.

The cease-fire with Iran, though extended, could end any day now. Meanwhile, Iran has fired on tankers, opened and closed the Strait of Hormuz within hours and rejected Washington’s core demands.

The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, not Iran’s civilian government, is calling the shots. And a senior US official confirmed this week what the numbers have shown all along: “Iran has no money. They’re broke. We know it. And they know we know it.”

If that is true, a deal is closer than the chaos suggests. But only if Washington uses the right instruments.

The air campaign produced real results. Iran’s nuclear infrastructure was damaged, its navy destroyed, its proxy network disrupted. Those are real and significant gains.

The naval blockade announced after last weekend’s failed Islamabad talks is cutting off 90% of Iran’s seaborne trade.

Yet even as the US prepares to board additional Iran-linked dark fleet tankers in international waters, the IRGC’s ability to hold out remains intact, because Washington has left two critical financial lifelines largely untouched.

Cut off oil funds
The first is Kharg Island. Kharg handles 90% of Iran’s crude exports, roughly 1.5 million barrels a day, worth about $140 million daily at current prices.

Iran’s defense budget channels over half of those oil revenues to the military, with the IRGC taking the largest cut. That money pays 190,000 personnel. The blockade squeezes Iran’s imports and has made outbound shipments far riskier, but it does not touch Kharg’s loading terminals, storage tanks or the pipelines connecting the island to the mainland.

Washington has struck Kharg’s weapons. It has not struck Kharg’s wallet. Those are not the same target.

Forcing Iran to shut in production due to lack of storage would risk long-term reservoir damage, including permeability loss, water coning and formation compaction — effects that could permanently reduce future output and cash flow.

The second lifeline is a floating reserve of roughly 200 million barrels of Iranian crude sitting on tankers near China, about five months of export supply that the IRGC stockpiled before the war as a financial cushion.

Stronger measures
The blockade and planned boardings do not yet fully neutralize it. As long as that reserve exists, the IRGC can sustain its current position for months without a single new barrel moving through Hormuz.

If the cease-fire expires without a framework agreement, two steps would change the IRGC’s calculus in ways nothing deployed so far has managed.

The first is a targeted strike on Kharg’s loading equipment, the trucks, pumps, manifolds and loading arms that move oil from storage onto tankers. Under normal conditions, this equipment can be repaired in weeks. Under sanctions, with spare parts unavailable, the timeline stretches to months.

Because these facilities directly fund IRGC military operations, they may constitute legitimate military objectives under the Law of Armed Conflict, subject to full legal review. Former CENTCOM commander Gen. Kenneth McKenzie said publicly this month that Kharg is legally defensible and that striking it would shut down Iran’s oil export capability.

The target is identified. The legal case looks solid. The capability is ready.

The second step is less conventional but potentially more powerful. Washington should designate the entire floating reserve under IRGC sanctions, extend the blockade’s intercept authority to cover any tanker attempting delivery and offer China a structured escrow arrangement. Proceeds from Iranian crude purchases would be held in a neutral account pending verified IRGC compliance.

While the US is preparing to board additional dark fleet vessels, physical seizure of tankers in Chinese-adjacent waters is not operationally realistic without Chinese cooperation. The financial mechanism achieves the same result without a naval confrontation in sensitive waters.

The complexities are real. Chinese acquiescence is not guaranteed, and the legal framework requires careful construction, but Beijing could be incentivized with eased US tariffs, technology concessions and guaranteed alternative oil supplies at competitive prices.

The concept does not need to be executed immediately to be effective. It needs to be communicated to the IRGC as a tool Washington is prepared to use.

Ideology vs. survival
An institution watching its financial cushion come under credible threat, with its payroll bank already struck and its export revenues blocked, faces a fundamentally different calculation than one that believes its reserves are safe.

The IRGC negotiating in Islamabad is harder and more ideologically driven than the leadership Washington dealt with in 2015. But ideology and institutional self-preservation are not the same thing. Even radical institutions protect their finances when those finances are directly threatened.

Iran’s military payroll bank, Sepah Bank, has already been struck and is under sustained cyberattack. The pressure is building. The question is whether Washington completes the squeeze before the floating reserve buys Iran another round of talks without real concessions.

The blockade is necessary, but it is not enough. If the cease-fire ends without a deal, two decisive targets remain that Washington has not yet pressured: Kharg’s loading infrastructure and its floating reserve.

Both directly hit the IRGC’s financial lifelines and appear legally sound under the Law of Armed Conflict. The analytical and targeting case for each is strong.

Washington knows Iran is broke. The question is whether it uses the tools that prove it.

Capt. Lance B. Gordon (US Navy, ret.) is a retired US Navy intelligence officer and US Army War College and New York University School of Law graduate. From RealClearDefense.

https://nypost.com/2026/04/21/opinion/the-2-critical-iran-lifelines-the-us-has-left-largely-untouched-just-as-cease-fire-talks-stall/

[ksquared]

Michigan’s ‘Dearborn Democrats’ herald the Islamization of US politics
By Rich Lowry Published April 21, 2026, 4:08 p.m. ET
(Of course the idiots who write for Michigan's school paper endorsed this schmuck. There's a reason I don't waste money donating to the school.
https://www.michigandaily.com/news/administration/amir-makled-defeats-regent-jordan-acker-at-democratic-convention-to-run-alongside-incumbent-paul-brown/ )

Michigan Democrats had to choose between a Hezbollah-sympathizing radical and a perfectly respectable former Barack Obama attorney.

Given the drift of their party, it wasn’t a difficult choice — it was the virulently anti-Israel extremist all the way.

At their convention over the weekend, Democrats selected Amir Makled as their nominee for a seat on the University of Michigan Board of Regents.

A Dearborn, Mich., lawyer, Makled represented pro-Hamas student demonstrators, called for the university to divest from Israel and expressed great respect for anti-Israel terrorists in social media posts.

He reposted X items referring to Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah as a “martyr” after he was killed in an Israeli strike.

He gave the same treatment to a Hezbollah official named Abu Ali Khalil, “a martyr on the road to Jerusalem.”

For his part, Qasem Soleimani got the honorific “Haj” after President Donald Trump eliminated him in a targeted assassination.

All the other terrorists killed by the United States or Israel in recent years might wonder why they didn’t rate and get similar Makled-endorsed Hallmark cards.

The Michigander has been admirably open-minded when it comes to rancid hatred of Israel.

He didn’t let his progressivism stop him from re-tweeting a Candace Owens post calling Israelis “demons,” who “lie, steal, cheat, murder, and blackmail.”

He praised Marjorie Taylor Greene and has endorsed the views of Tucker Carlson and anti-Semitic goon Dan Bilzerian.

Once upon a time, the mere association with such figures would be a deal-breaker in Democratic politics, but we live in the age of the horseshoe.

Extremes on the left and the right meet on common ground from different directions; the foremost wild-eyed left-right consensus is that Israel is a malign power with untoward power in US domestic politics.

It is telling that the Democratic incumbent on the Board of Regents that Amir Makled defeated, Jordan Acker, is a Jewish former Obama official who saw his office and his home vandalized in pro-Hamas agitation. (Another, non-Jewish Democratic incumbent member of the board survived the convention.)

We are witnessing the rise of the Dearborn Democrats, not in the literal sense, but in the same sense that Jeanne Kirkpatrick coined the phrase “San Francisco Democrats” in the 1980s.

Back then, San Francisco, an elite coastal city, stood for the dovishness and permissiveness of liberalism; today, Dearborn, home to a large Arab-American enclave, stands for an all-consuming opposition to Israel with all that entails, including a conspiratorial view of AIPAC and an underlying anti-Westernism.

The ethos of the 2024 “uncommitted movement” in Michigan, urging voters not to vote for Joe Biden in protest of his support for the Gaza war, has now surged to a formidable position within the Democratic Party.

A new Decision Desk poll shows 75% of Democrats favor the Palestinians over the Israelis.

The swing against Israel is even more pronounced among young voters.

An Echelon Insights survey found that among Democrats under age 50, 54% had an unfavorable view of Iran — while 62% had an unfavorable view of Israel.

The anti-Israel views of the right-wing influencers promoted by Amir Makled have yet to measurably change the orientation of GOP politics, but the Democrats are shifting rapidly.

In Democrats’ Senate primary in Michigan, Abdul El-Sayed, who says Israel is as evil as Hamas, could well prevail.

In New Jersey last week, Democrat Analilia Mejia, who had hesitated to say that Israel has a right to exist, won a House special election.

A Bernie Sanders-sponsored resolution to block the sale of military bulldozers to Israel last week won the support of 40 out of 47 Senate Democrats.

The Dearborn tendency, if it reaches full fruition, will leave many Jewish Democrats feeling politically homeless.

It will make the Democratic Party even more reflective of campus radicalism.

And if a Democrat wins the White House in 2028, the United States may well begin to treat Israel as though it’s the equivalent of apartheid-era South Africa.

X: @RichLowry

https://nypost.com/2026/04/21/opinion/michigans-dearborn-dems-preview-the-future-of-us-politics/

[ksquared]

The Iranians can’t be allowed to string us along much longer
By Post Editorial Board Published April 21, 2026, 8:24 p.m. ET

You can credit President Donald Trump with taking extreme risks for the sake of a possible peace, but we fear he’s simply putting off the inevitable by giving Tehran another cease-fire extension.

At the least, he should set a deadline of a day or two for the Islamic Republic’s factions to agree on an offer; if they can’t do it fast, they never will.

Caveat: The president has access to intelligence he can’t share; that we can’t make clear sense of his decision Tuesday doesn’t remotely mean he was wrong to delay a return to active operations.

Still, his stated reasons don’t add up: So what if Pakistan’s leaders asked Washington to hold off until the Iranians “can come up with a unified proposal”?

First off, the Pakistanis can’t possibly have a firm grasp on the regime’s internal struggles; they’re most likely just playing to their own public here, trying to look important by getting the prez to do as they ask.

Second, Tehran’s factions are sure not to unite unless they expect to lose everything if they don’t deal.

The US goals remain clear: End Iran’s nuclear program permanently; eviscerate its conventional-weapons power so it can no longer bully its neighbors; ensure the Strait of Hormuz will always remain completely open to all nations, with no “tolls.”

We’d also like to help Iran’s people, as Trump indicated weeks before Epic Fury’s launch, and as he showed with his call for Iran to cancel its plans to execute eight female civilians for political “crimes”: If the regime doesn’t fall, it should make some commitment to honoring basic world standards for human-rights protections.

US power can achieve all the hard-power goals without Tehran’s agreement; that’s what the original war plan aimed to do with the final two weeks’ bombing that the prez keeps putting off.

But every pause sees Iran digging up its missiles, moving to slaughter more civilians and otherwise doing the reverse of what Washington wants.

If the hardliners get another two weeks, they’ll find a way to at least partially restock their military assets.

The regime is always willing to talk and even make promises (as it did about opening the Strait last week), but has a flawless record of breaking its word: How much longer will Trump let it get away with tapping us along?

Putting off the completion of the Epic Fury plan only makes it more likely that energy prices and world economies won’t settle down before midterm voting begins.
Completely defanging Iran is what’s needed, not some meaningless peace of paper that pleases the Pakistanis and the global “peace process” twits.

If the Epic Fury plan isn’t enough, up the pressure: Sequester all the oil Iran’s hoarding in tankers near China; show we can destroy Kharg Island by doing some repairable damage; cut off every possible financial lifeline for the regime.

It’s perfectly fine to give Tehran another day or two, but no more: When they still can’t deliver, stop putting off the inevitable and finish the job.

https://nypost.com/2026/04/21/opinion/the-iranians-cant-be-allowed-to-string-us-along-much-longer/