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It was only appropriate that the stars of the All-Star Game were those Yankees from the north. 

Iran War 3.0: Where Did This All Go Wrong?

Authored by Alastair Crooke

When the US Navy, in co-ordination with Qatar and Oman, tried to slip a convoy of four vessels through the Strait of Hormuz, via Omani waters, last Tuesday night – rather than pass via Iran’s officially approved route – Trump may have imagined (or been told) that with the massive funeral for the late Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei under way, that Iran would not react as the US Navy attempted to force open an American corridor. Trump however, misread the Iranian jibe – Hormuz is its “atomic weapon.” Iran will not relinquish it.

Trump insists – in clear contradiction to the terms set out in paragraph five of the MoU – that Iran has no right to interfere with any ship trying to transit the Strait of Hormuz. Iran nonetheless is acting within the terms of the agreed de-escalation framework, and has warned repeatedly that it would strike any vessel circumventing the Iranian control mechanism.

Iran responded directly to Trump’s challenge to Iranian control of the Strait by striking two vessels with missiles and a third with an armed drone. A forth Qatari-owned tanker, laden with liquefied natural gas, was set ablaze, forcing its crew to abandon the stricken vessel.

These Iranian ripostes provoked Trump to order American air strikes against Iranian targets; to reimpose sanctions on the Islamic Republic’s oil exports; and to revoke the MoU framework he had signed with what he called the “Iranian scum” – thus ending the ceasefire. “We hit them hard last night,” Trump said at the NATO summit in Ankara. “We will probably hit them hard again tonight.”

Trump did hit Iran again Wednesday night – even though Iran had not attacked another vessel seeking to by-pass the Iranian corridor. In response, Iran launched ballistic missiles and drones at US bases in Kuwait, Bahrain, the UAE and Muwaffaq Al-Salti airbase in Jordan.

Vice-President Vance is saying to Iran, “If you try to close the Strait of Hormuz, the American military will respond. It’s that simple” – i.e. Iran either keeps the Strait fully open to all, or the US will keep hitting it, as it did on Tuesday night.

Iran insists that it is the US that has violated the MoU and (via the spokesman for Iran’s Parliamentary National Security Committee) warns that further attacks by the US on Iran will be met by a comprehensive all-out surprise offensive by Iran – and potentially by other options too, such as an Iranian withdrawal from the NPT, changing the country’s nuclear doctrine, and closing the Bab al-Mandab Strait alongside the Strait of Hormuz.

So, Vice-President Vance is saying if Iran restricts Hormuz (i.e. it stays open to friendly states’ vessels) the US will escalate. And Iran is responding to this threat by warning that it will escalate militarily – two strikes for every one American strike – and that they may also turn to new doctrines of warfare.

Essentially, Trump has plunged into an escalatory trap, seemingly in part out of pique at his collapsing polls at home. He did, however, directly put himself in this situation by trying to “act cute” during the Khamenei funeral pre-occupations in order to try to gain a “quick win.”

How long will this escalatory episode last? Certainly, it will not lead to the opening of the Strait; nor bring a return of the status quo ante that preceded the war. As long as Iran maintains its ability to exert control over Hormuz, there is no basis to assume that the situation will return to what it was.

On the contrary, and more likely, the crisis will accelerate the onset of looming global economic crisis that could last until the economic pain becomes acute, as the drawdown on sour crude continues – and as the effects on the real economy in the West become visible.

With shortages of munitions and the drawdown on air assets from the Middle East already beginning, Trump probably lacks the wherewithal to go full “Iran War 3.0.”

The timeline to this new bout of low-intensity tit-for-tat therefore, is likely dictated by refinery inventories in the US; but also by the extent of the “hurt” being experienced by Trump back home in the context of his fading political prospects, but also by his dislike for any personal humiliation.

Where did this all go wrong? Possibly the crux of it derives from the moment that Iran’s new Supreme Leader, Sayyed Mojtaba, issued his statement that he had held a different view on the MoU to that of the negotiating team, but had agreed to proceed with it after receiving an assurance from the Iranian President that he would ensure and take into account Iran’s overarching principles in respect to relations with the US.

The Supreme Leader Mujtaba Khamenei’s statement put on notice both the US – and the Iranian negotiators – that Iran’s approval of the MoU was no open mandate, but rather closely tied to the 10 principles originally enunciated by the new Supreme Leader.

At some point, the Iranian leadership seemingly came to the conclusion that Iran was being played by the US; that the MoU was a deception –

…and that the entirety of events since the announcement of the MoU reflected a US strategy based on the view that in the previous round of the war against Iran – [that the US and Israel] failed to achieve their objectives – necessitating a halt to the confrontation, albeit temporarily, in order to regroup and prepare “more thoroughly” for a new round when the right conditions arise.

This led to the Iranian reassessment that the Hormuz and Lebanon components constituted the vital leverage to engage in a new war as the West ramps up pressure as a holding strategy – whilst the US and Israel prepare for the next round of war.

The interim US strategy is no change to US-Israeli objectives, but rather an adjustment to their operational mechanisms to provide for certain compromises that Washington considers necessary (i.e. closer working with Turkey and via Erdogan to engage Syria’s Jolani) to reshuffle the Lebanon deck, and then to “assess how the cards lie,” as Vance outlined.

It is not certain that this new US policy will work. The world is changing rapidly. Their expected triumph of Israel over the Middle East has resulted in failure. Trump’s MoU ploy to open Hormuz likely will fail, too.

The connected war on Russia and the siege of China are faltering too – and Israel’s (until now unassailable) hold over the US is in question too. A senior US democrat, Rahm Emanuel, and potential 2028 US Democratic presidential candidate, spoke in Israel yesterday; he warned in no uncertain terms that Israel “has lost the world’s support, become a ‘regional pariah,’ [and that its] alliance with the US is ‘at a crossroads’.”

And finally, a “black swan” now can be observed swimming in increasingly sunlit waters – Eric Katz writing in Notus writes that, “a draft report inside the US Treasury Department is set to warn of the risks posed by the artificial intelligence market, likening key aspects of it to the dotcom bubble that upended the US economy when it burst in the early 2000s.”

Treasury analysts wrote –

Career Treasury analysts found that AI firms are more deeply entrenched in the US economy than their dotcom predecessors and pose significant risk to the entire system if financial conditions change, productivity goals are missed or various choke points stymie growth.

A downturn in the AI market would send shockwaves throughout the entire economic ecosystem.

A market downturn in the US – exacerbated by an energy crisis – could spell disaster for Trump’s midterm hopes.

Tyler Durden Tue, 07/14/2026 - 23:25

The high-tech hunt ended an hours-long manhunt for a suspected wanted on suspicion of felony domestic violence.

China's Mass Production Of Dual-Use Drone Engines Fuels A Global Proliferation Crisis

China's greatest military advantage may be its ability to convert its massive civilian manufacturing base into wartime production of low-cost, one-way attack drones modeled after Iran's Shahed-136.

This is especially alarming because the U.S. defense industrial base is only beginning (read here) to prepare for a transition to wartime output, even as a global drone procurement race accelerates. Nation-states are set to stockpile millions of autonomous, low-cost weapons in the years ahead.

We have already shown readers how Chinese firms appear to be ramping up production of Shahed-style drones, with open-source footage from social media increasingly pointing to expanding production capacity.

Some scary stats on China's militaro-industrail complex's capacity:
- China casts more metal products than the next nine countries combined and >5× the US.
- Its shipbuilding capacity is ~200× the US (a total-capacity figure, not per-ship speed).
- It makes ~90% of the world's… pic.twitter.com/RcxKN4SDZZ

— Léo (@LeoKharon) July 13, 2026

The latest finding centers on the drone's powerplant: the Iranian MADO MD-550 engine, which is used throughout the Shahed family and in Russia's Geran-2 variant. MD550-type engines are also being mass produced in China and widely advertised on Chinese e-commerce platforms, including Alibaba.

The problem is not that China manufactures small aviation engines; it is that commercially available, dual-use engines can be incorporated into Shahed-style drones with limited visibility into the final buyer or end use.

The United Nations has identified the Iranian MADO-550 as the engine used in the Shahed drone family, while the U.S. Treasury has said the sanctioned Oje Parvaz Mado Nafar Company (commonly known as Mado company). 

Chinese vendors on Alibaba advertise MD550-type UAV engines in large quantities, although the listings alone do not show any connection to a Chinese state weapons program.

More importantly, the Alibaba listings are evidence of commercial availability, not proof that Beijing is deliberately supplying one-way attack drone programs. However, the listings only highlight the erosion of the boundary between civilian manufacturing and weapons production.

The real threat is that long-range strike drones can increasingly be assembled from commercially produced parts at a scale traditional export-control systems were never designed to contain. This means Shahed-style systems are likely to proliferate far beyond nation-states, spreading to proxies, criminal networks, and other threat actors.

Like this: 

• Fiber-Optic Kamikaze Drone Found In Mexico Signals New Drone Threat South Of Border

Latest evidence:

• Why Is China Advertising Insane War Drones On Facebook

The question is no longer whether these drones will reach the West, but when.

Tyler Durden Tue, 07/14/2026 - 23:00

England’s path to the semifinal tells an equally compelling story as Argentina's.

"Had Joe Biden gotten out in October of 2023, we would have a Democratic president. Don't kid yourself.

Open Borders Are A Death Sentence To Western Nations

Authored by J.B.Shurk via AmericanThinker.com,

As simmering conflicts between Western citizens and Western governments boil over the next few years, we must never forget how we got to this point: Elected officials and irremovable bureaucrats occupying permanent administrative roles have refused to respect the wishes of the citizens whom they ostensibly represent and serve.

From the United States to the United Kingdom, citizens have demanded that their governments secure national borders and end the steady flow of illegal aliens into their communities.  From France, the Netherlands, and Germany to Australia and New Zealand, citizens have demanded that their governments arrest and remove Islamic immigrants who are guilty of rape, murder, or other violent crimes.  With the exception of President Trump’s efforts to enforce immigration law and deport illegal alien criminals (despite formidable resistance from the courts, leftist NGOs, and Establishment politicians from both the Democrat and Republican Parties) in the United States, no Western official has done anything to remedy the scourge of unlawful mass invasion in a deliberate, meaningful, and effective way.  Instead, Western governments hide from their citizens the true number of illegal immigrants living among them.  Western governments hide from their citizens a full accounting of the crimes committed by foreign nationals who should never have been permitted entry in the first place.

Mass illegal immigration is not a new problem.  In the United States, President Ronald Reagan signed the Immigration Reform and Control Act into law in 1986.  Defended by both political parties as a way of combating illegal immigration while providing long-term lawbreakers legal status, it effectively awarded millions of foreign nationals amnesty.  Politicians convinced the American people to support this trade-off: In return for citizens’ reluctantly permitting the government to reward the unlawful behavior of foreign immigrants who had no right to reside in the United States, the government would protect citizens by cracking down on future illegal immigration and punishing businesses that hired illegal immigrant workers.  The U.S. government never lived up to its side of the bargain.

Instead, U.S. officials have lied to their citizens for forty additional years.  Until President Trump entered office, U.S. borders were not secured.  Businesses were rarely punished for hiring illegal aliens.  Unbeknownst to most American citizens, State and federal welfare programs continued to add illegal aliens to their taxpayer-funded dole rolls.  School districts in both cities and small towns continued to enroll illegal alien children.  Hospital emergency rooms continued to overflow with illegal alien patients seeking “free” medical care.  American jobs — especially blue-collar jobs — continued to go to illegal aliens because employers could pay foreigners less, avoid state and federal taxes, and use the threat of deportation as exploitative leverage over their workforces.  Illegal alien workers continued to place downward pressure on hourly wages.  Illegal aliens continued to place upward pressure on the costs of housing, energy, and household necessities.  

Sometime in the ‘90s, American politicians and government bureaucrats began admitting to Americans that there were roughly eleven million illegal aliens inside the United States.  For the next thirty years, politicians and bureaucrats repeated the same “eleven million” figure as if no net-increase in immigration had occurred.  Anybody living in small-town America knew this to be a demonstrable lie.  In the nineties, local school classrooms were made up almost entirely of American kids who grew up speaking English in households whose families had been living in the United States for generations.  As each year passed, those same classrooms were increasingly filled with kids whose parents had come from all over the world, and even small school districts were forced to hire staff who could attend to the needs of an increasingly foreign student body unfamiliar with basic English.  

Former Border Patrol Commander Greg Bovino has said repeatedly that there are more than one hundred million illegal aliens residing in the United States.  In other words, roughly one out of every three people living inside the borders of the U.S. is a foreign national unlawfully here.  If those foreign nationals are employed, then they are likely guilty of identity fraud and committing a number of additional state and federal crimes.  Of those committing identity fraud, many are using social security numbers stolen from American citizens.  Illegal aliens who steal Americans’ identities adversely affect citizens’ credit scores, tax obligations with the IRS, and background checks.  Illegal aliens who fraudulently vote by claiming to be American citizens steal votes from actual American citizens.  Foreign nationals who illegally vote in American elections deny American citizens legitimate representation and undermine Americans’ constitutional form of self-government.

In 1986, lawmakers from both parties promised an end to illegal immigration.  Instead, tens of millions of new illegal aliens have continued to arrive.  In return for grudgingly acceding to the government’s desire to provide a one-time gift of amnesty to those foreigners whose first act in the country was to break our immigration laws, Americans continued to lose jobs, pay more for everything, and be defrauded by identity theft.  Even worse, they were forced to watch as foreign cultures transformed their schools and towns.  They were forced to watch as foreigners successfully ran for political office and pushed foreign policies and beliefs upon American citizens.  

New York City has a Muslim mayor from Uganda who has been a naturalized U.S. citizen for only eight years.  Minneapolis has a Muslim member of Congress from Somalia who became a naturalized U.S. citizen at the age of seventeen.  Roughly 4% of Congress are foreign-born naturalized citizens, while 15% of Congress have at least one immigrant parent.  A third of the judges occupying prestigious and powerful positions on the D.C. District Courts were born in foreign nations.  

These numbers are going in one direction — up!

When President Barack Obama spoke enthusiastically about “fundamentally transforming” the United States, this is what he had in mind.  If you invite third-world communists to break into your country, pretty soon your government will be filled with third-world communists, too.  Americans were never consulted about this “fundamental transformation.”  Politicians and bureaucrats steamrolled American citizens with tall tales of foreign immigrants fleeing violence in their home countries and seeking safety in the United States.  Nobody tried to explain why all the foreigners fleeing persecution in their home countries still wave their national flags in American neighborhoods and at American sporting events.  Nobody tried to explain why foreigners from all over the world couldn’t obtain asylum in countries closer to home.  Nobody tried to explain why so many foreigners claiming asylum in the United States continue to visit their friends and families in their native countries. 

No American ever voted for this radical transformation.  No politician or government bureaucrat respected American citizens enough to seek their consent.  Nevertheless, politicians and bureaucrats continue to lie to the American people by pretending that foreign nationals are not taking over their society.  Because they despise American citizens, government officials tell obvious lies without shame.

Where is all this shameless and callous disregard for the will of American citizens headed?  It is headed toward the same dead end already appearing in other Western nations such as the United Kingdom, Germany, Spain, and France: Increasingly, Western peoples are electing political representatives who promise to end divisive and deadly mass immigration policies.  The more that government officials undermine their citizens’ electoral will, the more that citizens are turning to the streets to be heard.  

Peaceful forms of civil disobedience are evolving into violent altercations with police. 

Instead of listening to their citizens, Western governments call them racists and censor their online speech.  At some point, citizens will conclude that their governments have become threats to their security and way of life.  Governments will lose their legitimacy.  Western countries will become battlefields.  Open borders guarantee that Western nations will die.

Tyler Durden Tue, 07/14/2026 - 22:35

If the Padres decide to listen on Miller — at 48-48 they could go either way, buy or sell — the Yankees have a decent, middle-rung prospect list and could match up fairly well with San Diego.If the Padres decide to listen on Miller — at 48-48 they could go either way, buy or sell...

The Cowboys' defense has already taken a slight hit. 

Gavin Newsom has a long record of blunders, from the French Laundry to the Train to Nowhere. The latest is the Hollywood tax credit, which he canceled by mistake.

The Met, Chapin School, Spence School and Dalton School have been ordered to remediate their tainted water-cooling towers by Thursday.

The move sparked online debate, with some questioning if the redesign is truly for comfort or just a cost-cutting measure.

An American seismologist who spent his career studying North Korean nuclear tests has been locked up in China for years and is expected to be hauled in front of a court over spying charges, his wife and advocates said.  Youlin Chen, 54, was cuffed by Chinese authorities on Nov. 5, 2024, at Beijing International Airport...

Fast Food Giant Under Investigation Over Explosive Diarrhea Outbreak: Report

Federal and state health officials are reportedly zeroing in on Taco Bell restaurants as a possible culprit in one of the biggest parasite outbreaks to slam the U.S. in years, a nasty bug that turns your guts into a nonstop disaster zone of explosive diarrhea and misery.

More than 4,000 people have already been sickened, the vast majority of them in Michigan, where victims are enduring days of gut-wrenching, bathroom-racing hell that has hospitalized at least 80 people so far.

The Washington Post reports that officials are probing whether contaminated fresh produce at the fast-food chain helped spread the Cyclospora parasite, which hitches a ride in feces-tainted veggies. No smoking gun has nailed Taco Bell or any single supplier yet, but the chain has yanked lettuce, cilantro, onions, pico de gallo, and guacamole from some Detroit-area locations after a nationwide recall notice surfaced last week.

Taco Bell insists it is playing it safe and putting customers first.

"The health and safety of our guests is our top priority," the company said in a statement obtained by the Post. "Public health officials have not confirmed a link to Taco Bell or any specific ingredient, so we have voluntarily pulled some items at select spots as a precaution while authorities continue their review."

Michigan is ground zero for the outbreak and is getting absolutely hammered, with a staggering 3,300-plus cases and hundreds more piling up daily as state health officials repeatedly flag leafy lettuce and salad greens as the leading suspect after interviewing more than 1,000 sick patients.

"Current results point to lettuce or salad greens as a potential source," Michigan's health department warned Monday. Meanwhile, federal officials at the CDC and FDA are being far more cautious, insisting there is no confirmed single multistate outbreak and that the numbers are not yet definitively unusual even as they log 145 cases across 17 states outside Michigan, along with 20 hospitalizations.

As we previously noted, Cyclospora cayetanensis is a microscopic parasite that loves hitching rides on fresh produce. Once it gets inside you it unleashes watery diarrhea, vicious cramps, vomiting, nausea, exhaustion, and fever that can drag on for days or even weeks if left untreated.

One victim, Cristy Cooper, recently spoke from her hospital bed to the New York Post about the nightmare that started June 25.

"This is worse than any flu I have ever gotten. It is just so miserable," she said. "I am worn out from it. I really am."

Tyler Durden Tue, 07/14/2026 - 22:10

NBC Sports Bay Area is losing another familiar face.

LAS VEGAS — Zuby Ejiofor’s defense and indefatigable motor got him to the NBA. But his shooting will determine his success now that he’s there. That’s why Atlanta has encouraged — no, ordered — Ejiofor to let it fly in summer league. And the rookie from St. John’s has done just that, to encouraging results....

The actress plays Athena, the goddess of wisdom and warfare, in Christopher Nolan's Greek epic.

The actress plays Athena, the goddess of wisdom and warfare, in Christopher Nolan's Greek epic.

Rays fans can catch their breath — for now.

In the most memorable and troubling line of his inaugural address, Mayor Mamdani vowed to “replace the frigidity of rugged individualism with the warmth of collectivism.”