Today’s Iran war update will be more telegraphic than usual. I do not normally prepare original posts on Saturday and had the competing duty of assembling Links. I will endeavor to have a completed version by 8:00 AM EST. Please make additions and any corrections in comments and if you arrive early, refresh your browser and re-skim at 8:00 AM.
At the risk of again seeming perversely optimistic, if financial time operates as it normally does, faster than political or real world (here kinetic war) time, there is a prospect that market upheaval will throw an impossibly big spanner in Trump’s prosecution of the Iran war. Even though Brent crude rose and remained over $90 a barrel (and I am told that Fox News, Trump’s favorite information source, yammered about that and the decline in stocks on Friday), his team still seems to be in considerable denial about the rising economic costs and real risk of investor revolt. A poor jobs report, with a decline of 92,000 and a small uptick in unemployment, showed that there is already underlying weakness in the US.
Bloomberg provides a good one-stop overview of not just information to investors but also concerns. A late-in-day Friday snapshot of the landing page:
Admittedly, the finance community may not yet be willing to accept that the continuing Trump utterances are admissions of impotence. There are report of Gulf state, particularly the Saudis, attempting to engage the Iranians. Mind you, this comes after the Financial Times reported that at least some prominent players were deeply upset about the high cost the US was casually inflicting on them:
Khalaf al-Habtoor, a prominent Emirati businessman, reflected Gulf frustrations about being dragged into a war triggered by the US and Israel in a social media post addressed to Trump.
“A direct question: Who gave you the authority to drag our region into a war with #Iran? And on what basis did you make this dangerous decision?” he said on X. “Did you calculate the collateral damage before pulling the trigger?”
He pointed out that the Gulf states were expected to be major funders of Trump’s plan to rebuild Gaza and backers of his wider “Board of Peace”.
He said Arab Gulf countries had “contributed billions of dollars on the basis of supporting stability and development”, adding: “These countries have the right to ask today: where did this money go? Are we funding peace initiatives or funding a war that exposes us to danger?”
More on divisions in the Gulf due to the US leaving them high and dry and prioritizing defense of Israel:
At the same time (I believe it was Alastair Crooke in an fresh interview with Chris Hedges) suggested that the leadership of some nations in the reason may be playing a double game, still supporting the US campaign because they find an Iran win, at least in the sense of confirm that the US cannot insure security in the region, as severely damaging to them. The UAE and its fellow travelers have profited greatly from positioning themselves as sunny, luxury-filled enclaves for the global wealthy. Tourism and travel are sure to plunge if that brand proposition is revealed to be empty.
Nevertheless, Iran made a concession of sorts to the bleating of its neighbors. From Arab News in Iran president apologizes to neighboring countries for attacks:
President Masoud Pezeshkian apologized for Iran’s attacks on regional countries, insisting that Tehran would halt them and suggesting they were caused by miscommunication in the ranks.
Pezeshkian made the statement in a prerecorded address aired by state television after repeated attacks Saturday morning on Bahrain, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.
“I apologize … to the neighboring countries that were attacked by Iran,” said Pezeshkian in a speech broadcast by state TV.
Pezeshkian said its temporary leadership council had approved the suspension of attacks against neighboring countries unless an attack on Iran came from those countries.
However:
Iran’s president said the council has decided to stop all bombing of nearby countries IF no attacks depart from these countries.
Be aware of the IF.
— Elijah J. Magnier 🇪🇺 (@ejmalrai) March 7, 2026
If you think the US will stop using bases in the region to attack Iran, I have a bridge to sell you.
But Trump will take any opener to flog the idea that the US is triumphing. Lead story at the Financial Times now:
But Pezeshkian’s remarks are consistent with one of our beliefs: Iran will stop shooting once the US and Israel stop shooting at them. But it seems logical for Iran to keep the Strait of Hormuz closed until it has broken US resolve.
Iran is relenting with the Strait of Hormuz closure…..with some exceptions. From Bloomberg in HORMUZ TRACKER: Iran-Linked Ships Transit as Others Stay Away:
• Strait of Hormuz transit remains near a standstill for a sixth day, with Iran-linked tankers the only large vessels making the crossing in the past 24 hours.
• Traffic through the Strait of Hormuz has effectively flatlined following several attacks on merchant ships, with missile and drone activity posing a critical risk to all vessels.
• The inability to move oil tankers into and out of the Gulf means storage tanks are filling and some refineries have cut capacity, with countries such as Iraq and Kuwait scaling back production.
So far, aside from the hare-brained idea of a war risk insurance backstop (not feasible on any relevant time frame save perhaps for US carriers, who are small fry in maritime insurance), the latest bright idea has been for Treasury Secretary to provide a 30 day sanctions waiver. Per Anadolu Agency:
The US may consider lifting sanctions on additional Russian oil shipments to ease a temporary global supply gap, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent told Fox News on Friday.
The remarks follow a US decision to issue a temporary 30-day waiver allowing Indian refiners to purchase Russian oil in an effort to maintain global supply….
Bessent said the Treasury Department is examining whether additional sanctioned Russian crude shipments could be released to the market.
“We may unsanction other Russian oil,” he said. “There are hundreds of millions of barrels of sanctioned crude on the water … by unsanctioning them, Treasury can create supply.”
With respect to India, the Bessent claim looks to be closing the barn door after the horse is in the next county. India was close to top of the list of countries that would be harmed by loss of supply from the closure of the Strait of Hormuz. India was almost certain to buy Russian oil to fill the gap whether the US kept its pig-headed sanctions on or not.
As for other countries, Putin stated before the Bessent hand-waive that he might immediately assist Europe’s suicide pact not to buy Russian energy.
Russia could halt gas supplies to Europe ‘right now,’ amid a spike in energy prices triggered by the Iran crisis, President Putin warned, linking the possible decision to the European Union wanting to ban purchases of Russian gas and liquefied natural gas https://t.co/lRKY1A6XYg pic.twitter.com/PLkqFHPdhv
— Reuters (@Reuters) March 5, 2026
Now to kinetic war updates:
Tel Aviv, last night.
IRGC channel.
@SepahPasdaran pic.twitter.com/VcB0VRMcoD— tim anderson (@timand2037) March 7, 2026
Note that more and more indications that Iran is inflicting a lot of damage on Israel come as doubt are rising about the degree of punishment Iran is taking. Even though it seems unquestionable that civilian lives and infrastructure have been damaged, a CNN report showed that life for most Iranians seems to be continuing as normally as it can during a war, and in particularly food supplies and other basics of the economy are operating properly. Military expert are also raising red flags about US claims to have wiped out Iranian missile launchers. Chas Freeman in a talk with Daniel Davis cited a Douglas Macgregor account that in the 1997 Serbia air campaign, Serbia has 17 launchers but NATO forces reported 64 kills. Scott Ritter gave a similar account from the Iraq war, of how pilots quickly reported having destroyed a significant integral multiple of the Iraq missile launchers that existed as having been destroyed.
US missile: pic.twitter.com/Mo0p9co3bp
— . (@distantdeadstar) March 4, 2026
There were many fine talks on Friday but this one was a standout due to Wilkerson presenting both relevant operating detail, such as the process of screening and preparing active-duty soldiers for combat, as well as information he is receiving from contacts:
Some key items in this discussion:
The US has not provided photos confirming damage in Iran as one would expect by now
The US is firing into Iran nearly entirely at a distance, which makes even JDAMs less accurate, sot they miss targets most of the time
Stamrer knows the strike on Cyprus was a false flag
Larry Johnson has an important article on how The Trump Administration is Lying About American Casualties in the Persian Gulf Region:
Despite the Trump administration’s efforts to downplay US casualties after seven days of war in the Persian Gulf, clues are appearing on the internet that indicate the US has suffered more combat losses than reported. The first clue is this Xhitter (pronounced SHITTER) from Stars and Stripes.
K-Town refers to Kaiserslautern, a US Army base in Germany, which is located 13 miles east of the Landstuhl Regional Medical Center. So what? Well, on March 4, 2026 the Landstuhl Regional Medical Center (LRMC) in Germany—the largest US Department of Defense hospital outside the United States and the primary overseas trauma/evacuation hub for injured service members from Europe, the Middle East, and Africa—sent out a memo announcing the temporary suspension of its labor and delivery services “until further notice.” The memo did not explicitly define the “primary objective,” but LRMC’s core role is treating combat- and training-related injuries. It also is the main medical evacuation point for wounded troops from ongoing operations.
A knowledgeable friend who supervised DOD’s Wounded Warrior Program during the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars and worked with personnel at the LRMC, learned today that there is a flood of casualties arriving at the hospital. The numbers are so large that the hospital could no longer continue to spend resources on birthing babies.
Then this picture popped up on Telegram a little bit ago:
Consider also:
MORE POSSIBLE EVIDENCE THAT THE US GOVERNMENT IS HIDING THE CASUALTIES OF US TROOPS IN THE WAR WITH IRAN:
The hospital in Landstuhl Germany has closed down its entire labor and delivery ward to potentially accommodate US Troops.
Please watch the video below, and drop any source… https://t.co/256CALmTOK
— Godfroy (@g0dfr0y) March 6, 2026
Keep in mind that Johnson is discussing casualties, some of which may turn into fatalities. But recent Army Ranger Greg Stoker has pointed out that the armed services have a process for informing family members of deaths in combat. They do not include those losses in official counts until those notifications have been made. Stoker believes that this procedure makes it hard for the military to lie much about deaths. But injuries are in a completely different category.
Johnson in this article and both Larrys in the talk on Dialogue Works also took up the topic that the Trump Administration looks to be scrambling to send forces to the theater. We pointed out yesterday that Max Blumenthal had argued that the purported Kurdish campaign the US was trying to mount was likely a means for introducing special forces.
More rumors:
The USS George H.W. Bush carrier strike group is to be deployed in the Eastern Mediterranean, off the coast of Israel, as the US prepares for the deployment of troops into Iran.
Follow: @AFpost pic.twitter.com/taFrxwSbOp
— AF Post (@AFpost) March 7, 2026
Phone has been ringing off the hook. A LOT more units have just been activated for deployment than the public knows about… https://t.co/qax3F23lwM
— Mike Prysner (@MikePrysner) March 6, 2026
Former ambassador Chas Freeman and Daniel Davis also had an informative talk, more of the big picture sort. Freeman stressed that he expects Iran to get a nuclear weapon and also described their strategy as rope-a-dope, to keep taking Western punishment as they exhaust themselves, and then land a knockout blow.
Hopefully this is a big enough information dose for today. Back tomorrow.
