Week-end Wrap – Political Economy – March 08, 2026
by Tony Wikrent
War
Rubio Says the US Launched a War With Iran Because Israel Was Planning To Attack
Dave DeCamp, March 2, 2026 [DefendDemocracy.Press]
“It was abundantly clear that if Iran came under attack by anyone, the United States, Israel, or anyone, they were going to respond and respond against the United States,” Rubio told reporters.
“If we stood and waited for that attack to come first, before we hit them, we would have suffered much higher casualties. And so the president made the very wise decision — we knew that there was going to be an Israeli action, we knew that that would precipitate an attack against American forces,” he said.
Rubio’s comments align with reporting from The New York Times that said when Tucker Carlson recently met with President Trump and tried to convince him not to launch a war with Iran, the president said he had no choice but to join a strike that Israel would launch….
How The War With Iran Was Bought By Adelson Money.
[The Dissident, via Naked Capitalism 03-02-2025]
The current unfolding American/Israeli war on Iran was in large part bought by two of Trump’s largest pro-Israel donors, the late Sheldon Adelson and his wife Miriam.
In 2016, when Trump first ran for president, the Washington Post reported that , “The couple gave a total of more than $21.2 million to Trump’s cause, contributing to several organizations, including Trump’s campaign, Republican committees and a pro-Trump super PAC, according to federal finance disclosures.”
This money, in large part, was given in exchange for Trump to carry out Israel’s desired policy on Iran….
Trump, looking back at his first term as president, has not hidden the influence Adelson’s money had on his Middle East policy.
During a speech to the Israeli Knesset Trump boasted, “Miriam and Sheldon would come into the office. They’d call me, he’d call me. I think they had more trips to the White House than anybody else I can think of … she loves Israel. But she loves it, and they would come in, and her husband was a very aggressive man, but I loved him. He was a very aggressive, very supportive of me. And, he’d call up, ‘Can I come over and see you?’ I’d say, ‘Sheldon, I’m the President of the United States, it doesn’t work that way.’ He’d come in”.
Trump similarly boasted on the campaign trail in 2024 that, “Miriam and Sheldon would come into the White House probably almost more than anybody outside of people that work there. And they were always after — and as soon as I’d give them something — always for Israel. As soon as I’d give them something, they’d want something else”, and last year boasted , “Sheldon was an amazing guy, and he’d come up to the office, and there was nobody more aggressive than Sheldon. he’d always say 10 minutes, it turned out to be about an hour-and-a-half, and what he did is he fought for Israel. He just wanted to take care of Israel”….
Dean Obeidallah, Mar 07, 2026
… the CIA together with British intelligence … devised what came to be known as “Operation Ajax” to remove Mosaddeq from power and reinstate the pro-Westen, pro-big oil Shah. [Mosaddeq was the Iranian premier who tried to terminate British ownership and control of Iran’s oil fields.]
The CIA and Britain’s MI-6 orchestrated the arrest of Mosaddegh, who was charged and convicted of treason. He lost power and remained under house arrest for the rest of his life. (In 2013, the CIA finally admitted their role in removing Mosaddeq.)
That ended democracy in Iran. In return, the Shah gave the Western oil companies exactly what they wanted and that was massive profits from Iranian oil by way of a new agreement.
But the United States under various administrations was far from done with the Shah and oppressing the people of Iran. From there, the Shah began to dismantle the judicial system, suspended civil liberties, extinguish dissent, etc.
And worse, he did it with the help of the United States. As one Iranian dissident detailed in 1979, The Shah created his brutal secret police known as SAVAK that suppressed dissent using torture and killings, all “under the friendly guidance of the CIA.”
How MI6 Laid Iran War’s Foundations
Kit Klarenberg, Mar 03, 2026
In October 2008, The Daily Telegraph reported on a leaked assessment of then-Presidential candidate Barack Obama, prepared by London’s ambassador to Washington. While identifying many areas of consensus, it foresaw a “potential clash” between Downing Street and an impending Obama administration, over Iran “his desire for ‘unconditional’ dialogue with Iran.” This was at odds with Britain’s commitment to the UNSC’s “requirement of prior suspension of enrichment before the nuclear negotiations proper can begin.” It was thus necessary to change the future White House incumbent’s thinking.
Unbeknownst publicly, during this time MI6 was embroiled in a covert operation to “develop understanding” among foreign governments of the Islamic Republic’s apparent quest for nukes, and therefore “pressurise Iran to negotiate.” A leaked CV of Nicholas Langman, longtime British intelligence dark arts specialist and head of MI6’s Iran Department 2006 – 2008, boasts how he “generated confidence” in its assessment Tehran secretly had a dedicated program to develop nuclear weapons among “European, US and Middle Eastern agencies.”
Asawin Suebsaeng and Prem Thakker, Mar 07, 2026 [Zeteo]
… In recent days, US officials and other close allies have privately briefed Trump that if he wants to achieve what he says he wants to achieve in his illegal war – including “unconditional surrender” by the Iranian government – then he is going to have to deploy ground troops to Iran, four knowledgeable sources in or close to the Trump-Vance administration tell Zeteo.
Trump, the sources say, has been receptive to these ideas, and he and others around him have been leaning toward sending in the troops. While no final decision has been made yet, internal momentum at top levels of the government is rapidly headed in that direction….
[TW: It should be clear by now that Trump is not getting the truth from his circle of lickspittles and sycophants. This has been a recurring problem in the history of government and business, and inevitably lead to some disaster or another (pdf). So set aside your initial reaction that these bastards are insane and stupid, and understand that Trump is making decisions on highly misleading advice and limited, carefully screened information. The Zeteo article continues:]
In multiple conversations over the past few days, several of these officials and outside advisers have told the president that a more limited, smaller deployment of special forces will almost certainly not be enough, and that he’d need to send further ground troops to get what he wants….
Some Republicans close to Trump have assured him – however flimsily – that this kind of troop deployment could be achieved without creating the type of Iraq War 2.0-style quagmire in the Middle East that the president and his top officials have long publicly railed against….
“He likes the idea of special forces,” a Trump administration official tells Zeteo. “But they’re telling him he has to go bigger to end this once and for all.”
Saudi Oil Storage Filling Fast, Kayrros Says
Rong Wei Neo, March 04, 2026 [Bloomberg, via feedspot.com]
Major oil storage sites in Saudi Arabia are filling rapidly as the key export route through the Strait of Hormuz effectively remains closed to shipping, according to geospatial analytics company Kayrros.
The Ju’aymah terminal on the country’s east coast “was quickly running out of spare capacity” as of March 1, Kayrros co-founder and chief analyst Antoine Halff wrote in a post on LinkedIn. Four of the six tanks at the Ras Tanura refinery – halted after attacks by Iran this week – were full, he said.
Iraq has started shutting oil production at its biggest fields due to the closure of the strait, and Halff said spare storage capacity at the Basrah terminal was less than two days of exports. OPEC’s second-biggest producer has very few tanks compared with output levels and exports, he added….
The U.S. will cover shipping losses in the Gulf, Trump says
Drop Site Daily: March 4, 2026
President Donald Trump said on Tuesday the United States will help cover financial losses for tankers or cargo ships attacked or blocked while transiting the Gulf, and directed the U.S. International Development Finance Corporation to provide government-backed political risk insurance for shipping companies operating in the region. Trump also said the U.S. Navy could begin escorting oil tankers through the Strait of Hormuz “as soon as possible.” Under normal conditions, about 80 oil and gas tankers cross the Strait of Hormuz daily, but shipping data from Kpler, analyzed by the New York Times, show only three tankers crossed since Monday. Brent crude prices hit $84 a barrel, up more than 15% since before the war and at its highest price since July 2024.
Spencer Ackerman, 4 Mar 2026 [foreverwars]
…the Military Religious Freedom Foundation (MRFF), has received “200 calls from more than 50 military installations across all the services” describing commanders who frame the Iran War for their soldiers, sailors, marines and airmen in terms like: “President Trump has been anointed by Jesus to light the signal fire in Iran to cause Armageddon and mark his return to Earth.” [As a Christian I just want to point out that the signal fire imagery is not from the Book of Revelation but from the Peter Jackson Lord of the Rings movies.—Sam]
Jonathan Larsen broke the story, and quotes MRRF’s founder-president, Air Force retiree Mikey Weinstein: “Many of their commanders are especially delighted with how graphic this battle will be zeroing in on how bloody all of this must become in order to fulfill and be in 100% accordance with fundamentalist Christian end of the world eschatology.” ….
[via Naked Capitalism 03-07-2025]
Iran’s Winning Strategy Shakes the World’s Biggest Military
[Global Geopolitics, via Naked Capitalism 03-07-2025]
Why the US is facing strategic defeat
[Policy Tensor, via Naked Capitalism 03-07-2025]
…What is the solution to this problem? If Iranian capabilities cannot be degraded for at least four months, the costs to the world economy and the United States would be intolerable. We will see a global inflation shock, global monetary tightening, a food crisis as the fertilizer shock cuts the next crop in half, and almost certainly a global recession. It will destroy the Trump presidency; it will destroy the GOP for a generation; and it would finally end the entrapment of the United States by its junior geopolitical ally.
Is there a military solution? What can the US do? John Warden’s decapitation idea was supposed to work. It did not. There is absolutely no sign of any political instability in Iran. “Zero” as a senior European official told the Washington Post….
But it gets worse still. I wrote about the implications of our mature precision strike regime that Krepinevich predicted in the early 1990s. This is “an international military order where standoff precision-strike capabilities have diffused far beyond the technologically-advanced great powers,” I wrote. But even I underestimated the Iranians.
The Iranians are not just deploying hypersonic missiles that the US has been unable to develop. They don’t just have the largest missile arsenal in the Middle East. Recent military developments have revealed surprising Iranian reconnaissance-strike capabilities.
The Iranians have managed to hit every single American military base in the region. But that is not the half of it. THAAD is one of the most powerful ballistic missile defense system in the world. If anything should be invulnerable to attack, it is this system. The Iranians have managed to hit and likely disabled every single THAAD battery in the region; all five of them….
…The all-important interdiction campaign to degrade Iranian capabilities has suffered a massive setback. That is why the US is rushing a third aircraft carrier to the region: because the US can barely use nearby air bases, it has to rely on naval aviation to fill in the gap….
The Failure of US and Israeli Air Defense
Larry C. Johnson, 6 March 2026 [Sonar21]
[TW: Johnson lists the known damage to US installations hit by Iranian drones and missiles.]
Iranian Attacks On Prized Missile Defense Radars Are A Wake-Up Call
Joseph Trevithick, Tyler Rogoway, Mar 7, 2026 [The War Zone]
Iran War: fmr IDF Soldier & Historian Omer Bartov
Daniel Davis [YouTube, via Naked Capitalism 03-07-2025]
‘Insane This Is Legal’: Democrats Allege Trumpworld Insiders May Be Betting on War in Iran
[NOTUS, via Naked Capitalism 03-02-2025]
Monopoly Round-Up: The Epstein Class Launches a War
Matt Stoller, Mar 01, 2026 [BIG]
I’ve long noticed the endless parade of investors heading over to Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Qatar, getting investments for everything from banking to artificial intelligence. Elon Musk secured money from the Saudis for his AI venture and his takeover of Twitter, Sam Altman sought billions from Abu Dhabi, Anthropic went after money from UAE and Qatar. And JP Morgan, Goldman, Morgan Stanley, Blackrock and Citigroup are competing heavily in the region.
And this trend is not new. In the 1970s, newly wealthy oil princes suddenly found themselves with over four hundred billion dollars, and had to put it somewhere. The deposited it in American banks, who then lent it all over the world, in what was known as “petrodollar recycling.” The corporate, banking, and oil prince worlds have only drawn closer and closer since. In the early 1980s, the merger boom unleashed by the Bork revolution started in the oil patch, and endless waves of mergers have been financed by Arab money. In the 2000s, on a political level, the Bush family linked Texas, the CIA, and the Saudis. In 2013, Al Gore sold his CurrentTV channel to the government of Qatar for $500 million. And in the shale revolution of the 2010s, Texas producers joined Saudi-led OPEC to keep oil prices high.
Today, the Middle East is full of investors in every major venture in the U.S., and most of our think tanks and diplomatic corps are part of that world. Arab elites are also part of the Western establishment. For instance, the giant video game company Electronic Arts was bought with Saudi money, in part because the Saudi prince, Mohammed bin Salman, is a gamer. He also brought the top U.S. comedians to his country for the Riyadh Comedy Festival last year.
The cultures are now so close that Saudi Ambassador Prince Bandar bin Sultan had a private jet painted with the Dallas Cowboys logo, as he was good friend with Cowboys owner Jerry Jones and loved American football. Indeed, while there’s a longstanding pretense of Arab antisemitism and dislike of Israel, it’s notable that both Arab and Israeli elites, including MBS and Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak, were extensively involved in the network of Jeff Epstein.
Dark money–funded think tanks pushed Iran regime change
[Drop Site Daily, March 2, 2026]
Conservative dark money networks funneled millions into think tanks advocating regime change, including the Center for Security Policy and the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies. Donors Trust, tied to conservative legal strategist Leonard Leo and funded in part by billionaire Barre Seid, gave more than $2.7 million to the Center for Security Policy between 2020 and 2023, while the Sarah Scaife Foundation, financed by the Mellon oil fortune, provided over $1.6 million to the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies during the same period. The groups have publicly urged the Iranian public to overthrow its government and warned of threats to the United States. Report from The Lever available here.
Les Leopold, Mar 02, 2026
It’s obvious that Trump loves the feel of power. It no doubt gives him a rush more intoxicating than any drug. He is the ruler of the strongest nation in the history of the world, but he doesn’t have the freedom to unilaterally act on domestic affairs, although he constantly tries. The courts are in the way, as is popular dissent. Judges and citizens are preventing him from exerting his will, even making him change course by removing troops and immigration forces. And it will, he surely knows, get even worse if the Democrats gain control of either house of Congress.
But he has a free hand in foreign affairs. The Supreme Court won’t stop him and there is no international court that the U.S. recognizes, nor does he believe he is morally bound by international law. He couldn’t care less about the U.N., and he hopes that military engagement against the weak makes him look strong to the American public. Also, in Iran’s case, a war with a quick victory has the added benefit of possibly improving his paltry approval ratings by diverting public attention away from “affordability” and the Epstein files. Already the joke is that they should have called the Iran adventure, “Operation Epic Epstein.
Twitter List: Middle East Sources
Thomas Neuburger, March 01, 2026 [God’s Spies]
The list is actively curated — feeds are added or deleted based on their value as sources of information, whether they are possibly wrong or not. Many pass on videos of announcements — Israeli, Iranian, etc. — and many post war footage often from cell phone sources.
Some of these posters are strongly opinionated, so be warned, while many are less biased analysts. Not every post is of value — true of all lists — but I try to keep the percentages relatively high.