🇮🇷💰🚢 💸 Ships are returning to the Strait of Hormuz, entering and exiting it through the toll booth established by Iran through the Qeshm and Larak islands.

The price — at least $2 million/ship.

Iran set that price for passage, and shipping companies appear to have agreed and are paying.

@CIG_telegram

🇵🇰🇺🇸🇮🇷⚡️ — Pakistan is trying to mediate an end to the U.S.-Israeli war with Iran, with its army chief speaking with President Trump, according to Bloomberg.

➡️ The country is positioning Islamabad as a possible site for negotiations, and U.S. officials might travel there if a resolution seems feasible.

➡️ Pakistan is using its ties with both Washington and Tehran, along with relationships with other countries like Saudi Arabia, to help broker peace.

🇱🇧❌🇮🇷 — Lebanon’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs summoned the Iranian Chargé d’Affaires and notified him that the designated Iranian Ambassador, Mohammad Reza Shibani, has been declared persona non grata.

➡️ He must leave Lebanon by March 29.

🇷🇺🇮🇷⚡️ — Russia is profiting from the war in Iran, with oil prices rising from around $70 to over $100, increasing state revenue, Reuters reports.

➡️ The boost allows Moscow to postpone planned fiscal tightening, including adjustments to its reserve fund and potential spending cuts.

➡️ Energy revenues are expected to jump roughly 70% month-to-month, easing short-term budget pressures despite sanctions and war expenses.

➡️ Officials plan to maintain current rules for now, possibly delaying reforms until 2027.

🇮🇷🇺🇸⚡️ — Iran has adopted a harder stance ahead of potential negotiations, demanding major concessions, Reuters reports.

➡️ Its key demands include assurances against further strikes, financial compensation for losses, formal control of the Strait, and no negotiations on its ballistic missile program.

🇺🇸❌🇮🇷 — BREAKING: The Pentagon is set to send a brigade combat team from the Army’s 82nd Airborne Division to the Middle East to support operations against Iran, according to WSJ.

➡️ A formal deployment order for the roughly 3,000-soldier unit is expected within the next few hours.

➡️ No final decision has been made on sending ground forces into Iran, officials said.

🇺🇸⚔️🇮🇶 The U.S. broke the truce it had with the Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF) as soon as the evacuations of Victoria Base and the Green Zone in Baghdad were done by assassinating the PMF commander in Anbar province, Hajji Saad Duway al-Baij.

Iraqi sources report that Saad al-Baij played a crucial role in negotiating this truce with the US allowing the USAF to safely evacuate all remaining personnel at the Victoria Base and the U.S. in response, killed him, hence last night's retaliation by the PMF against other American bases in Iraq.

This act continues to reinforce the rule that the U.S. is not a trustworthy, credible negotiation partner that will always go behind your back once they get what they wanted from you. This act continues to discourage any real diplomacy between Tehran and Washington D.C.

📝 Ahmad Askary: The one lesson we must take from the past 30 years is that what begins as an experiment in the periphery eventually makes its way back to the imperial core in a much more refined manner. The Israelification of the world is such a process.

The treatment of Palestinians became the treatment of neighbouring states in the region (destroying cities, infrastructure, expelling entire populations, killing governments to make governance impossible), which has become the treatment of countries further afield like Cuba (under siege with no electricity) and Venezuela (helicoptering in and kidnapping a country’s leader).

All norms incubated by Israel in the Arab world and, through colonisation of US halls of power, now spread to every node of decision-making in American empire, which has abandoned any pretense to a higher moral Christian or post-war Universalist notion of international law, and now fully adopts Israel’s Bronze Age/Old Testament mindset.

And all of these practices, incubated and proliferating in the periphery, will come back in refined form and deployed on the core’s citizens. The War on Terror brought back surveillance, militarised policing, “domestic threats”, etc. Palantir’s surveillance empire is another forward example.

The Israelification of the world is here. And what Israel does or wants is no longer a distant sand people affair, but something that increasingly defines the architecture of this decrepit civilisation.

🔗 Ahmad Salman

🇮🇶🤝🇮🇶❌🇺🇸🇮🇱 — The Iraqi National Security Council authorizes the Iraqi Popular Mobilization Forces and other security agencies to operate under the principle of the right to respond and self-defense to counter military attacks targeting their headquarters.

🔴 @alsaa_plus_EN

🇺🇸🤝🇮🇱 Gavin Newsom clarifies he is a “proud Zionist” who “reveres Israel.”

He said he “regrets” calling Israel an “apartheid state”, only meaning to describe Netanyahu’s leadership.

🔗 AF Post (@AFpost)