Malazan Empire: Werthead - Viewing Profile - Malazan Empire

Some commentators suggesting Trump is just being conciliatory after being told it will take most of this week to get the initial 2500 marines into position to land on the Iranian coast. Two additional batches of reinforcements will come after them, but are still a couple of weeks away.

One claim that the US military is favouring an operation to land at Chabahar, east of the Strait of Hormuz and not far west (60 miles or so) of the Pakistani border. Chabahar Bay is a very large (~12 miles wide) bay with multiple docks and good landing points, with the ports of Chabahar and Konarak on either side of the bay, and smaller settlements around the edge. This could form a foothold and allow US land forces to advance west to clear the Gulf coast. However, it's still on low-lying ground with the mountains behind it, and would be a sitting duck for drones, artillery and missiles. Landing just 2500 troops there would be suicide.

The number of Ukrainian long-range drone strikes on Russian territory has exceeded the number of Russian long-range strikes on Ukrainian territory. This may be down to the successful Ukrainian destruction of several drone factories. Russia may also be stockpiling drones for a large-scale attack. However, Russia has also been back-selling upgunned Shaheds to Iran, to the fury of some Russian soldiers on the front line.

Russian soldiers who witnessed/survived the crushing defeat at Lyman have started telling their stories about what happened. The Russians advanced with basically no artillery cover and limited drones; the Ukrainians had a lot of artillery and far more drones. As the Russians advanced out of the fire support of what drones they did have, the Ukrainians deployed armour to meet them, so Russian infantry was engaging Ukrainian tanks and IFVs with small arms (they had some AT weapons, but not enough). One Russian infantryman was screaming that each soldier needed to scrape together 20-30,000 rubles per attack to buy decent equipment just for one operation, and the donations that used to flow freely from back home have dried up. "The Ukrainians fucked us up like pigs at the slaughterhouse."

Ukraine is deploying 15,000 STRILA interceptor drones funded by Germany, each capable of shooting down Shahed drones at a low cost. The STRILAs do not use GPS and have EW-resistant systems, and act as reverse-mines, waiting until an enemy drone enters the sky above them and launching upwards to engage with limited reaction time.

Russian media is now reporting of the need for an intervention in Narva, the town on the border between Russia and Estonia. Some media are saying that if Russia takes Narva, Estonia and Europe will not dare to intervene.

Ukrainian intelligence has exposed a Hungarian spy network operating in Zakarpattia Oblast, the far western oblast on the border with Hungary. The handler for the network has been arrested, and was apparently collecting data on Ukrainian air defence positions, military deployments and local sentiment, including the reaction to Hungarian troops entering Ukrainian territory.

Iran has been saying there've been no discussions, official or otherwise, but other Gulf sources say that's not true, Oman has continued to act as an interlocutor, joined by Turkey and Egypt.

It certainly sounds like Trump is preparing some kind of ceasefire. Netanyahu is panicking, saying the conflict will still last "weeks."

There's a whistleblower case going on regarding Tulsi Gabbard sitting on a "very serious" complaint involving two foreign agents recorded discussing Jared Kushner and the CIA. The normal sequence of events for this would be a briefing of the Gang of 8 (the high-ranking bipartisan members of Congress with the national security brief), but Gabbard sat on the report for 4 months before finally that briefing was forced to happen a couple of days ago. The result of that briefing was members of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence going apoplectic why this incident was not reported sooner and what action is being taken.

This sounds extremely serious, the Gang of 8 is normally given emergency briefings only on matters of the highest national security importance (like the attack on Iran, for example).

Trump threatening to destroy Iran's electrical power grid if it does not open the Straits of Hormuz, Iran saying it will target all energy infrastructure in the Gulf in retaliation and warning it can carry out asymmetrical attacks in Europe and the US.

Iranian missiles hit Adad and Dimona, near Israel's main nuclear site. Over 100 casualties, somehow no deaths but several very serious injuries.

Europe's missile defences, particularly the landlocked AEGIS system in Romania and the various ships around Cyprus, are on alert for possible long-range missile launches at Europe.

This is all going swimmingly well.