🇷🇺🧠🤝🇮🇷❌🇺🇸🇮🇱 — 📰 The Washington Post | Russia is providing Iran intelligence to target U.S. forces, officials say | The targeting information has included the locations of American warships and aircraft in the Middle East, the officials said | March 6, 2026:

"Russia is providing Iran with targeting information to attack American forces in the Middle East, the first indication that another major U.S. adversary is participating — even indirectly — in the war, according to three officials familiar with the intelligence.

The assistance, which has not been previously reported, signals that the rapidly expanding conflict now features one of America’s chief nuclear-armed competitors with exquisite intelligence capabilities.

Since the war began Saturday, Russia has passed Iran the locations of U.S. military assets, including warships and aircraft, said the three officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the matter’s sensitivity.

“It does seem like it’s a pretty comprehensive effort,” one of the people said."

🗄 Archive

🔗 Source:

🛰 PlanetLabs is delaying the release of satellite images of the destruction caused by Iranian missiles to various points of interest in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, the UAE and Jordan by 96 hours.

The statement sent by PlanetLabs to its customers reads in part:

As part of Planet’s commitment to responsible data practices and the safety of personnel on the ground, we are implementing temporary adjustments to imagery access for a Designated Area of Interest (AOI) across the Middle East.

All new imagery collected over the Gulf States, Iraq, Kuwait, and adjacent conflict zones will be subject to a mandatory 96-hour delay before it is made available in our archive. This change applies to both high (SkySat and Pelican) and medium (PlanetScope) resolution data sets.

This measure is intended to prevent adversarial actors from using recent data for immediate Battle Damage Assessment (BDA) and is rooted in our commitment to ensuring the safety of allied and NATO-partner personnel and civilians on the ground. As the conflict evolves, the area impacted may change.

What this means for your workflow:

Effective immediately, customers will experience a 96-hour delay on all data in the Planet Archive over the Gulf States, Iraq, Kuwait, and adjacent conflict zones. This delay applies to customer-tasked data as well. Tasking and Archive data access over Iran will remain unchanged and continue to publish immediately, for the time being.

We recognize that timely data is critical to your operations. We are actively monitoring the situation and intend to resume standard service cadences as soon as safety conditions permit.

📝: 6 days into the war and we haven’t seen any satellite images of Israel from any of these companies. What are they trying to hide?

🔗 Tyler Rogoway

🇦🇿🇮🇱🇺🇸❌🇮🇷 — Azerbaijan deployed DANA M1 artillery systems to the Iranian border.

#BREAKING
🇦🇿🇮🇱🇺🇸❌🇮🇷 — Azerbaijan has withdrew diplomats from Iran, shut down its embassy in Tehran, and elevated the alert level of its armed forces, says the country's foreign minister.

🇺🇸🇨🇳🇹🇼 — Chinese warplanes have not entered Taiwan's air defense identification zone for about seven days, marking a rare pause in PLA aerial activity after years of near-daily incursions.

📝This step comes amid the war in the Middle East and ahead of a planned Trump–Xi meeting.

#URGENT

🇺🇸❌🇮🇷❗️ — United States President Donald J. Trump announces that NO DEAL will ever take place with the Islamic Republic and that now US is demanding from it nothing but UNCONDITIONAL SURRENDER

There will be no deal with Iran except UNCONDITIONAL SURRENDER! After that, and the selection of a GREAT & ACCEPTABLE Leader(s), we, and many of our wonderful and very brave allies and partners, will work tirelessly to bring Iran back from the brink of destruction, making it economically bigger, better, and stronger than ever before.

IRAN WILL HAVE A GREAT FUTURE. “MAKE IRAN GREAT AGAIN (MIGA!).”
Thank you for your attention to this matter! President DONALD J. TRUMP

🇨🇳🕊🇹🇼 — The Ministry of National Defense of ROC (Taiwan) reports that no Mainland Chinese plane was spotted over Taiwan Island’s Air Defense Identification Zone (ADIZ) for the seventh day in a row,

That's the longest gap period since at least 2023.

Ironically, it coincides with the ongoing Iranian Crisis, which is approaching seven days, with U.S. and Israeli strikes against Iran beginning last Saturday.

🇺🇸❌🇨🇳 China looked at the lessons of 20th century great power conflict and drew the conclusion that military power alone doesn't determine outcomes, upstream industrial capacity does.

The Allies won because of overwhelming industrial might. Japan and Germany lost because they lacked critical industrial inputs. Starved of oil, they were forced into gambles that cost them the war…Japan attacking Pearl Harbor to seize the oil in the Dutch East Indies, Germany marching to the Caucasus to take the Baku oil fields. Input scarcity doesn't just weaken you. It steers your decisions. It pulls decisions away from the optimal plan and toward the necessary plan.

China learned this lesson and decided to be the one holding the chokepoints. By embedding itself so deeply into the upstream supply chains that feed American military production, a conflict would trigger Western industrial paralysis and neuter its ability to fight a long war.

But the chokehold only works if the West doesn't rectify its supply chain vulnerabilities before China is ready to move on Taiwan. So China's central strategic requirement was to delay Western recognition of the threat for as long as possible.

Thus, China's entire foreign policy posture becomes oriented around appearing non-threatening. And it works because it aligns with the economic incentives of Western elites who benefit from cheap inputs and profitable trade. The cost of denial is kept artificially low. Raising the alarm looks like paranoia or protectionism when cheap goods keep flowing and no shots are being fired.

The administration is now racing to unwind its supply chain vulnerability before the conflict window opens. But that takes years, and they face significant inertia, both domestically and among allies who remain naively blind to the risk.

China knows this. So their strategy is to keep the West sleepwalking. Which means they can’t show their hand. If China comes into direct military conflict with the US in order to defend a proxy, the West wakes up. The inertia collapses. The reshoring and remilitarization that China spent decades trying to prevent happens on an emergency timeline.
But the US finally realized it could use this against them.

Since China can’t show its hand until it's ready to move on Taiwan, the US realized that it can turn China's greatest strategic asset, the pacifist disguise, into a structural trap.

They cannot take overtly aggressive action without triggering the Western industrial mobilization their entire strategy depends on preventing.

So the US can eliminate their proxies and China can’t respond without destroying the disguise.

Maduro removed. Cuba strangled. Now Iran.

Beijing must decide if defending the proxy is worth waking the West up? And the answer keeps being no.

Until China’s window to move on Taiwan opens, the pacifist posture that enabled its chokeholds constrains their response to US actions.

Everything the US is doing right now is a race to be ready before that moment arrives. Clear the proxies. Arm the allies. Break the chokeholds. And build new ones of its own.

https://x.com/michaeljmcnair/status/2029707043897028690

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