At least it was the KC-135’s and not the E-3. 5 isn’t even a percentage of tanker capacity, so it should be pretty short term.

You're kidding right?
Since when is not wanting to get into another middle east conflict "cheering for the Iran team"?

Since when is holding the guy that said "no more pointless wars" accountable to his words "cheering for the Iran team?

“Mover/Gonkey” disagree.

Facepalm emoji

Rick, that first sentence is really out of line.

What an awful thing to accuse us of. You should be ashamed.

If you self identify as someone cheering for the Iran team you have every right to feel offended. If you don’t so self-identify, then it is clearly not applicable to you and you shouldn’t feel offended.

Nonetheless Rick, not the sort of gratuitous comment designed to lower the temperature of the thread.

Not one single person on this thread has implied support for Iran. Not one. To say what he said, clearly addressing those of us who do not support the war, is unnecessarily incendiary.

As I noted.

EXACTLY. Some their content has become comical considering their F-teen backgrounds….

I think it’s the unwavering blind loyalty talking.

If we don't take out Xerxes now, we estimate they're only months to possibly a decade away from making Greek fire, and then what? I know Darius said he wasn't going to pursue it, and after Salamis, we'd pretty much obliterated all of their manufacturing capability, but I hear they've been chanting death to Sparta, so we better round up everybody we can to go help out Athens.

https://nypost.com/2026/03/18/lifest...o-fuel-prices/


SAS to cancel a 1000 flights due to soaring gas prices

The minute a non-farcical, quasi-verifiable no enrichment/salt accord is signed, this ends. But as noted here more than once, by summer latest, we’ll announce unilateral, premature victory & pause. Saddam had no program. These children sacrificing monsters do. Think and say whatever you want to about it, political bs aside, this is what stalking spiritual fanatics wielding superpower swords looks like. Should’ve dealt with this 20 years ago.

That regime is brutal and full of monsters but before we start pointing fingers at them for killing children, perhaps we should look in the mirror

The headline is a lot scarier than the actual article........

Oh yes, we’re guilty as hell. Not to mention who it was built the 1st Little Boy. What concerns me most is how stretched thin our global police force has become. If we weren’t in over our heads after surrender in Afghanistan, we are now. Taco Tuesday is fast approaching. Has to be.

It amazes me that a President's voluntary actions are likely to put the economy into a deep recession (if not worse), destabilize the world, and severely strain relationships with our Allies and nobody has the Chutzpah to do anything about it. If Americans aren't coming home in body bags are they simply numb to their future?

From the Financial Times:

Donald Trump’s one-time pick to lead the Bureau of Labor Statistics has said the US economy is too weak to handle oil at $100 per barrel as he warned of rising consumer prices triggered by the war in Iran.

“I don’t think this is an economy that is going to be able to handle $100 a barrel for oil, it’s just not,” EJ Antoni told the FT.

“The economy is weaker than we thought it was, and inflation is worse than we thought it was,” he added in a call on Wednesday, shortly before the Federal Reserve’s March rate-setting meeting.

“The lower energy prices that we saw in 2025 helped put downward pressure on prices throughout the economy. Now . . . we’re going to see higher energy prices have exactly the opposite effect and put upward pressure on prices throughout the economy.”

I think that Iran could probably shut down The Red Sea. I think they could probably reduce the world's fertilizer supply by a third, greatly increasing the risk of inflation for food and reducing the food supply. I think Iran could successfully attack desalinization plants in the Middle East potentially making large areas of the Middle East uninhabitable.

Depends how desperate we all get, I suppose. I think we have a long way to go if we don't find a way out. The Iranians are facing an existential threat, and I'm not sure Trump has a way to get out of this without accepting a very ugly deal.

No, we think this is the most opportune time in 47 years.

Iran being closer to a nuke proves better justification, not better opportunity.

Kinda of pathetic how prepared our allies are considering midnight hammer really wasn’t that long ago.

It begs the question of how good their playbook really was for Iran having nukes.

How do you figure Iran could shut down the Red Sea that is nearly 1,000 miles away from them?

Possibly Houthi proxies in Yemen? Seems like it would be a lot harder for them than the SoH though.

The Houthis are scattered and disorganized at best. They have not shown any signs of significant resistance other than small, uncoordinated attacks. The Saudis have put them in their place numerous times when they attack Saudi interests. Any attacks on commerce in the Red Sea would likely be met with swift, severe retorts from Saudi, Egypt, and possibly Israel and the US as well.

Egypt will respond to any major threats in the Red Sea as it would severely impact their income from the Suez Canal.

I still do not see any reasonable exit strategy here. The options are still:

1) Declare "victory" and end the bombing. However, a) Bibi wont' stop until he's set all of Iran ablaze, because if anyone benefits from continued chaos and war in the Middle East, it's him and his cronies. Also b) while we may have chiseled away at Iran's conventional military capabilities, all we have done is replace a wizened radical cleric with a younger, more radical, version of that cleric. (We also killed his wife, son, mother, and probably other family members, so I'm sure he's just chomping at the bit to negotiate with us.)

And we have done nothing to eliminate their asymmetric warfare capabilities, because that is logistically impossible. All they need are a few committed agents in the US, of whom I'm sure there are many. Nothing to stop a dirty bomb from being smuggled into Times Square. Not to mention cyber attacks -- but oops, Elon DOGE'd a significant portion of our cyber defense capability out of a job.

2) Continue the aerial campaign until we run out of military targets. Then what? Wipe out Iran's oil production facilities? The economic shock that would cause is too massive to contemplate.

3) Put boots on the ground. Now not only will we be involved in a quagmire with precisely zero chance of "winning" (I do not believe any rational person assumes that the United States can successfully invade and occupy the entire nation of Iran.) Iran also happens to border many of the former USSR's territories, so what happens when we send in ground forces near those borders? This is how World War III could easily start.

I always thought that guy Kent was a crazy conspiracy theorist, but his letter of resignation made perfect sense and I agreed with every word.

Agreed 100%.

The Iranian regime, like pretty much every other regime in history, has always been about one thing: maintaining its own power. To do so, the regime has ensured not only that 90 million people must live in fear, but that at least a few million of those people have a very vested interest in the regime's continued existence. Not just the generals and high-ranking bureaurats, but the low-level goons in the Basenji (militia force) who have helped turn a once-proud nation into a totalitarian theocracy.

As you say, that regime is now fighting for its very existence; they have no reason to exercise any restraint whatsoever. So when people say "this'll be over in a few weeks" -- I wish I had some of what they were smoking.

(Also, I give it two more weeks before Trumpstein threatens to nuke Tehran.)

Two weeks eh? Says it or does it? Heading off a Nagasaki Tehran is the whole point. Personally, I hope Gabbard’s right. But she’s admin toast either way.

No one thought this except Israel. Look at the guy who resigned and his letter - it speaks volumes.



Our allies are basing their actions on what they’ve seen from our leadership. Can’t say I blame them. They made the right call to refuse.


Better than ours. Literally no one thought that, certainly not our U.S. intelligence services.

https://youtu.be/sJmlybB4I3I?si=sBuMHfpnAxFgQL9f

"No policy response can stop crude's (oil) ascent"

Insanity. Our economy will become martyrs for the Zionist entity.

[QUOTE=ShyGuy;4014307]No one thought this except Israel. Look at the guy who resigned and his letter - it speaks volumes.





Our allies are basing their actions on what they’ve seen from our leadership. Can’t say I blame them. They made the right call to refuse.

More like the Euros are terrified of their failed immigration policy’s and their abysmal green energy initiatives.
I’m not surprised by their lack of helping, sadly they are not the Euros of Winston Churchill.

You spelled "over reliance on Russian oil, coal and natural gas" wrong.

I read his letter, it didn’t say there would be a day in the future where attacking Iran would be easier with less consequences.

All it said was since we fumbled prior conflicts we should stay out.

We did not attack Afghanistan and Iraq because a 47 year opportunity presented itself.

The “regime” doesn’t have to change the new leader will scrap the nuke program like we scrapped the space shuttle program and the uniforms will say IRG to protect their pride.

He doesn’t care how close they are or aren’t, they have to stop pursuing interest in nukes, give up the enriched material, to make the bombs stop.

They had weeks of negotiations to give up the material knowing their centrifuges were destroyed, when enough leaders have died someone will give it up.

I see this as a huge possibility unfortunately.

Could have threatened that on the first day.

How come “boots on the ground” operation to go retrieve the enriched material is less likely.

Bag a W with a picture on truth social.

Why is an apocalyptic ending more interesting than an actual ending.

Iran has been "just weeks away" from a nuke for 30 years, according to Israel.

Geeze it was joke, if you're projecting crap on yourselves, that's on you. I've said repeatedly that *I* did not want to get into this. I do recognize that we have to see it through now... Basically Leeeroooy Jenkins!

And according to Iran’s negotiators too, most recently. It was either true or perhaps the stupidest bluff in the history of negotiations.

IMO (and in my experience) it's far more likely that IL would do the nuking.

It is likely they would do so with us trying to slam on the brakes to avoid it. We might have already talked them off the edge once or twice.

That is a possible scenario, within the realm of practical. Complex and challenging to be sure, and not assured of 100% success. But even partial success would set them back that much further.

It's also easier now with air dominance.

What IL says isn't necessarily what IL knows or suspects.

What matters is what they suspect... ultimately they will intervene if the timeline is known or suspected to be short. The consequences to them of missing the window would be loss of Tel Aviv... therefore existential.

Objection, assumes facts not in evidence.

We'll only know the "facts" when the midnight sun rises, at which point it's too late.

You can reasonably infer their likely future behavior from the past behavior and circumstances. Their neighbors have attacked them multiple times over the decades. Although their neighbor states are neutral or friendly in 2026, the issue is proxies which is to say Iran.

But the US president and a couple others would actually know in advance... extremely unlikely that IL would use nukes without at least a courtesy call, and a final opportunity to discuss. As I've said this may happened in the past, I'm confident that it did at least once although that might have a bluff on the part of IL to encourage our behavior in a certain direction.