Summary:

• Trump pledges Iran ‘excursion’ going to be ended soon, but warned “Iran will be hit harder” if it starts up again, or if Tehran targets global global oil supplies.

• When asked by reporter, Trump refuses to say if new Ayatollah has a target on his back.

• Trump tells Republican conference it is going to be a short-term excursion in Iran, but he’s ready to see the mission through against “evil” Iran.. Says of Tehran, “They should’ve cried uncle two days ago.” And Iran campaign will be “finished pretty quickly”.

• Trump tells CBS “the war could be over soon.” Oil prices drop on the headline.

• Trump calls choice of new supreme leader ‘a big mistake’

• Lebanon wants direct peace talks with Israel to end fighting but Israeli rejects it, also amid US skepticism: Axios.

• Trump says too soon to talk about seizing Iran’s oil but does not rule it out, tells NBC.

• Analyst consensus on question of potentially protracted conflict: Iran Signals a Fight to the End With Appointment of Khamenei’s Son

• Senator Graham: “The American Embassy is being evacuated in Riyadh because of sustained attacks by Iran against the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.”

• Timeline to end Iran war? Trump signals decision will be only after ‘mutual’ decision with Netanyahu.

• Trump Truth Social post calls for Australia to give Iran National Woman’s Soccer team Asylum, but it remains unclear if the whole team is actually requesting it, or if individuals are.

• Iranian official to Al Jazeera: “we are able to continue the war for a long time and there is no room for diplomacy now.”

• G7 ‘closely monitoring’ energy markets, ‘ready’ to take necessary measures, including poss oil stockpile release.

• Younger, reportedly more ‘hardline’ Ayatollah takes command as regime stability continues: Military and political elites have pledged allegiance to Mojtaba Khamenei, who replaces his slain father as supreme leader and is viewed as a figure favored by the IRGC.

• Offramp, or more global shock & pain ahead? Trump after seeing oil prices: Short term oil prices, which will drop rapidly when the destruction of the Iran nuclear threat is over, is a very small price to pay for U.S.A., and World, ONLY FOOLS WOULD THINK DIFFERENTLY!

• Threat of whole regional war ongoing: Turkey says second Iranian ballistic missile shot down by NATO defenses in airspace, but then NATO quickly contradicts – saying no 2nd missile was intercepted.

• Nation-building, nation-smashing, divergent US-Israeli aims? More from Trump “…will work tirelessly to bring Iran back from the brink of destruction, making it economically bigger, better, and stronger than ever before.” But US officials distance themselves from big weekend attacks on Iranian oil.

• Iran shuts door on ceasefire talk possibility, accuses US of seeking ‘partition’: as several countries have begun mediation efforts; however Foreign Ministry says: “While military aggression continues, there is little room to talk about anything other than a decisive response.”

• CENTCOM confirms 8th US troop death; More Iranian missile/drone hits on Gulf sites, IDF ground operations expand inside Lebanon

* * *

Update(1550ET): A more carefully scripted public address on the Iran war was given by President Trump from Florida late afternoon, in which he reviewed how the ‘excursion’ in Iran is going. He pledged it’s going to be ended soon, but warned “Iran will be hit harder” if it starts up again, or if Tehran targets global global oil supplies.

But on this issue, Trump issued nothing new on a potential move to militarily enter the Strait of Hormuz to ensure free passage, only assuring it will be made “safe”. He said military objectives are “pretty well complete” but that there are still some very important targets to be hit. Also interesting is that when asked by a reporter, Trump refused to say if new Ayatollah has a target on his back.

US CENTCOM has meanwhile said that thus far in Operation Epic Fury over 5,000 Iranian targets have been hit, and 50 Iranian naval ships have been destroyed or damaged. 

Footage from Iran right now looks like something out of a movie. I have no idea what they are hitting or how they are hitting, but this is something completely new for me. pic.twitter.com/yHxbEy32BA

— Open Source Intel (@Osint613) March 9, 2026

More on possible timeline or an exit:

Reporter: You called it an excursion. You said it would be over soon. Are you thinking it will be over this week?

Trump: No, but very soon. pic.twitter.com/R4G95Q2O6r

— Clash Report (@clashreport) March 9, 2026

* * *

Update(1710ET): Watch President Trump tell a Republican event that he expects it to be a short-term ‘excursion’ in Iran…

President Trump called the Iran war a “short-term excursion.”

Follow: @AFpost pic.twitter.com/mwDx0EikXM

— AF Post (@AFpost) March 9, 2026

Update(1545ET): President Trump just told CBS News that he believes the US-Israeli war with Iran is “very far ahead of schedule” and so it could be over soon. Considering this whole thing started with talk of a mere four day timeline, then quickly morphed to four or five weeks, before Hegseth declared eight weeks would be needed… is this the White House preparing for a quick draw down and off ramp? Here’s what Trump told CBS by phone:

“I think the war is very complete, pretty much,” he said. “They have no navy, no communications, they’ve got no air force. Their missiles are down to a scatter. Their drones are being blown up all over the place, including their manufacturing of drones. If you look, they have nothing left. There’s nothing left in a military sense.”

Oil rapidly dropped… down 30% from overnight highs:

Offramp brewing? Notice below there’s now no mention of removing the regime, and especially important is no mention of destroying the Iranian nuclear program. Additionally, no mention of destroying Iran’s ability to project power via proxy forces.

SECRETARY RUBIO: The goals of the mission against the Iranian regime are clear:
– Destroy their ability to launch missiles
– Destroy factories making these missiles
– Destroy their navy pic.twitter.com/KPUpMGNtDf

— Department of State (@StateDept) March 9, 2026

TRUMP JUST SAID THE WAR COULD SOON BE OVER pic.twitter.com/oJeyEjERrc

— Polymarket Money (@PolymarketMoney) March 9, 2026

* * *

Update(1240ET): Iran on Monday is seeking to showcase its continuity and ‘stability’ of government after a week of heavy US-Israeli bombardment failed to produce regime change. Instead, Tehran is vowing to fight back, saying it can keep the war going for as long as needed. Analysts have pointed out Iran needs to inflict a cost on the US and Israel, fearing it will just be attacked again somewhere down the line, even if years from now. 

And yet, Trump admin officials have been signaling the American public there won’t be a protracted war. But on this big looming question, The Wall Street Journal is out Monday with the following ominous headline suggesting a lengthy conflict ahead: Iran Signals a Fight to the End With Appointment of Khamenei’s Son…

The elevation of Mojtaba Khamenei, a conservative long close to Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, shows that Trump’s efforts so far to cow the regime into surrender have failed. It also appears to have put hard-liners in firm control of the country, with moderate and reformist factions long marginalized. The 56-year old Khamenei is expected to take a confrontational stance toward the West.

His appointment also shows that Iran won’t acquiesce to Trump’s demand that he approve the country’s new top cleric. Trump told Axios last week that “Khamenei’s son is unacceptable to me.”

The younger Khamenei’s ascendance “suggests the continuation of the same old strategy: repression at home and resistance internationally,” said Sanam Vakil, director of the Middle East and North Africa program at Chatham House. 

There remains the question of if US and Israeli goals and objectives are truly aligned on the Iran war. Some of Trump’s latest remarks are cause for concern, and highlight the aforementioned question: “Iran was going to destroy Israel and everything else around it. We’ve worked together. We’ve destroyed a country that wanted to destroy Israel,” Trump asserted.

The President indicated that he would keep the ultimate prerogative but while consulting directly with Netanyahu. “I think it’s mutual, a little bit. We’ve been talking. I’ll make a decision at the right time, but everything’s going to be taken into account.” Some admin officials are likely looking for a quick exit ramp, which would probably involve a politically expedient moment to declare ‘victory’ and get out. But will the Israelis cooperate when/if that moment comes?

Some establishment thinktanks in the US are meanwhile taking note that the administration is struggling with an exit strategy. For example, via the NY-based Soufan Center:

Yet, experts and global officials are quick to point out that all layers of Iran’s existing power structure oppose U.S. influence in Iran and the broader region. Regime officials differ only by degree, and the opportunities to mimic the transition achieved in Venezuela are narrow. When addressing reports last week that Mojtaba Khamenei, the newly announced Supreme Leader, was favored to succeed his father, Trump said the pick would be “unacceptable.” Axios quoted him as saying: “We want someone that will bring harmony and peace to Iran…They are wasting their time. Khamenei’s son is a lightweight. I have to be involved in the appointment, like with Delcy [Rodríguez] in Venezuela.” 

⚡️Massive Israeli-U.S airstrikes on Sarandaj, Iran pic.twitter.com/6SNOYb11hU

— War Monitor (@WarMonitors) March 9, 2026

* * *

Iran’s military and political leadership has reportedly pledged allegiance to Mojtaba Khamenei, who as we reported was named Sunday to replace his slain father, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, as the country’s new supreme leader. The relatively young 56-year old is not some Delcy Rodriguez character, as he’s a military veteran of the eight year Iran-Iraq war and saw his wife Zahra killed in an Israeli airstrike. He’s said to be the favored IRGC choice and more hardline than his father Ali Khamenei.

The United States and Israel continue to unleash their mass bombing campaign across Iran, with explosions reported in Qom and Tehran hours after weekend Israeli strikes on oil facilities sent toxic smoke and even oil-infused rain across the Iranian capital. There’s been emerging reports suggesting there’s been some divergence or even distance on war aims and strategy between the US and Israel; however, this could also simply be war propaganda put out by officials – and yet probably President Trump doesn’t like to see oil go up in flames.

Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmaeil Baghaei of course has a different theory. He said in a fresh statement that the attacks aim “at partitioning our country to take illegal possession of our oil riches.” He likely has Syria in mind, which Iran propped up on support of Assad for over a decade, but which has been permanently fractured, weakened, and a once significant Russian-supplied anti-air defense and missile arsenal utterly destroyed. The Syria model is something Israeli policy makers have talked about for decades, and Israel appears to be willing to smash an entire Iranian nation of 90+ million.

With this in mind, Baghaei emphasized there’s no halting the fight at this stage: “While military aggression continues, there is little room to talk about anything other than a decisive response,” he said Monday. Trump recently said operations won’t cease until there’s “unconditional surrender” by Iran.

Despite the massive scale of Israeli and American firepower, the strikes clearly have not dismantled the regime’s core structures, arranged precisely to endure such external shocks and maintain power. There’s also not yet been any clear examples of elite fractures. 

“We’re not seeing it, and we’re unlikely to see it,” Alan Eyre, a Farsi-speaking former diplomat who served on the U.S. nuclear negotiating team with Iran, told The Wall Street Journal. “The IRGC and other elites benefit the most from the status quo and would rather fight than switch.”

The same publication reviews that the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, created in 1979 to safeguard the Islamic revolutionary system, includes about 190,000 active-duty troops. It is the most elite core defense perimeter running the war and reports directly to the Supreme Leader, even bypassing Iran’s conventional armed forces. In addition to this, there’s a sort of domestic IRGC internal security force over the country – roughly 600,000 irregular Basij militia members which can mobilize.

Day 9: Iran war is wider and longer:
— new, harder line leader in Iran
— new leader promises “new phase”
— 130+ drones by Iran last 24 hours
— US talking “limited” ground forces
—desalination hit in Bahrain
— oil $102, 4 yr high
— Americans disapprove, 59% v 41%
— Russian… pic.twitter.com/NaL8yvzEtr

— Robert A. Pape (@ProfessorPape) March 9, 2026

At a moment oil prices have surged more than 25% to kick off the week, their highest levels since mid-2022 as some major producers cut supplies and fears of prolonged shipping disruptions spread through global markets due to the expanding war – Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said Sunday that Tehran would only contemplate a ceasefire for a permanent end to the war on its terms.

He reminded the West that Iran did accept a ceasefire which ended the 12-war in June. Of course, Iran is currently trying to inflict as much pain as possible on the US and Israel before such a potential end – also as Israel continues to experience rare severe damage to its cities, bases and infrastructure from ongoing ballistic missile attacks. On the question of an offramp, below are a couple of unconfirmed developments and headlines:

—Iran are seeking peace talks with the US with Qatar, Oman & Italy involved in mediation: CNN/News18

—Israeli Defense Officials Start to Ask How the Iran War Ends: WAPO (“A few senior officials in Israel are starting to voice concern about the escalating, open-ended attack on Iran – and suggesting possible exit ramps that might halt the war before it further damages the region and the global economy.”)

The Foreign Ministry’s Baghaei has further addressed President Trump’s ultra-provocative suggestion that Iran’s borders could change. Asked last week whether Iran’s map would look the same after the war, Trump said, “That I can’t tell you. Probably not.”

Baghaei blasted Trump for treating the world like a real estate deal: “The US president and others have made statements about many parts of the world – from Canada to other countries – as if the entire planet were prime real estate and governments were merely real estate agencies,” the FM spokesman said. “For the people of Iran, the map of the country represents everything that every Iranian is proud of and is willing to sacrifice their life to protect.”

As for ‘sacrifice’ – but on the US side of things, an eighth American soldier has now been confirmed killed, one day after Trump oversaw a dignified transfer ceremony at Dover Air Force Base. Interestingly Fox News has come under fire for its mishandling of the coverage.

Trump after seeing oil prices:

Short term oil prices, which will drop rapidly when the destruction of the Iran nuclear threat is over, is a very small price to pay for U.S.A., and World,

ONLY FOOLS WOULD THINK DIFFERENTLY! pic.twitter.com/GctyxuO6Up

— Clash Report (@clashreport) March 9, 2026

Current mass WH messaging…

The message just went out. “Short term pain, for long term gain.”

pic.twitter.com/DVZt2dolIi

— Clayton Morris (@ClaytonMorris) March 9, 2026

In the Gulf, Saudi Arabia has accused Iran of continuing attacks against the kingdom due to “baseless claims” – including allegations that fighter jets and refueling aircraft stationed in Saudi Arabia were preparing to join the war. This after on Saturday Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian apologized to Arab Gulf states and said Tehran would stop striking neighboring countries unless attacks on Iran originated from their territory; however, those attacks have not actually appeared to stop – as the consensus is that the elite IRGC is in charge, and there’s likely even autonomy of command decisions with units under emergency war orders.

Saudi Arabia’s Foreign Ministry said Monday of Pezeshkian’s ‘apology’ that Iran “has not reflected that statement in practice.” It laid out that Iran has “continued its attacks based on baseless claims that are not grounded in fact, including allegations that the Kingdom had previously clarified were false, namely the claim that fighter jets and refueling aircraft had departed from the Kingdom to participate in the war.”

⚡️Bahrain:The moment the fire broke out in the fuel tanks of BAPCO Energy Company after it was targeted by a swarm of Iranian drones. pic.twitter.com/wHh8aCxkxt

— War Monitor (@WarMonitors) March 9, 2026

Saudi officials have said its aircraft patrols were purely defensive. “The continued Iranian attacks represent further escalation, with significant implications for bilateral relations both now and in the future,” the ministry said.

Elsewhere in the Gulf, thick smoke has been seen rising from the direction of the Bapco oil refinery in Bahrain, according to a witness cited in Al Jazeera and other reports. Bahrain reported that an Iranian drone strike on the island of Sitra, whihc injured 32 people overnight. Gulf states continue generally reporting new strikes as Iran carries out retaliatory attacks across the region – after Tehran’s own oil and fuel storage sites have been blown up in major weekend attacks.

Israel’s ‘second front’ in Lebanon also continues to escalate, as multiple Israeli airstrikes struck the southern suburbs of Beirut on Monday, including at least one targeting Al-Qard Al-Hassan, which is a financial institution linked to Hezbollah, according to Lebanon’s National News Agency.

Hezbollah said Monday that it is busy fighting Israeli forces that landed in eastern Lebanon by helicopter across the Syrian border, the second such operation since the start of the latest conflict with Israel. There’s already a ground war ongoing in southern Lebanon. Hezbollah described said it detected “the infiltration of approximately 15 Israeli enemy helicopters” from the Syrian side of the border in eastern Lebanon, an area long under Hezbollah influence.

Meanwhile, US envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner reportedly plan to travel to Israel on Tuesday to meet Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, according to Axios reporter Barak Ravid, who is seen as close to the Israeli government. The trip hasn’t been officially confirmed, however.

Footage from northeast Tehran, oil and energy sites continue to burn:

⚡️ Northeast Tehran pic.twitter.com/WT2GN9VHao

— War Monitor (@WarMonitors) March 9, 2026

As for ‘what’s next’ – escalation or offramp… the following from Bloomberg suggests there could be a gateway to ground troops if things take an escalatory war path: “Trump is weighing the option of deploying special forces on the ground to seize Iran’s near bomb-grade uranium, according to diplomats. He told the Times of Israel that a decision on when to end the war will also involve Benjamin Netanyahu,” Bloomberg reviews of prior weekend reporting.

This as there are claims that Washington and Tel Aviv don’t see eye to eye on ultimate war aims and strategy: “Israel’s strikes on 30 Iranian fuel depots Saturday went far beyond what the U.S. expected when Israel notified it in advance, sparking the first significant disagreement between the allies since the war began eight days ago, according to a U.S. official, Israeli official and a source with knowledge.” But all of this fresh reporting of ‘distance’ between the close allies who are executing Trump’s Operation Epic Fury could by design be meant to create artificial distance between the president and what might prove to be an unpopular war.

Asian benchmark Newcastle coal prices jumped more than 9% to $150/ton (as per BBG data) at the start of the week, as energy flows across the Gulf area remain disrupted and transit through the Strait of Hormuz has significantly slowed. The rise in coal prices is being driven by a broader energy shock, with surging gas prices making coal a more economical substitute fuel for power generators.

Last week’s IRGC kamikaze drone attack, which shuttered Qatar’s massive LNG export facility – responsible for roughly 20% of global supply – has been the driving force behind gas-to-coal switching, especially in Europe, as gas prices have soared 50%.

Samantha Dart (Global Co-Head of Commodities Research) penned a note late this weekend on natural gas:

“European natural gas prices (TTF) closed the week up 88% from pre-Iran-conflict levels, at 53 EUR/MWh. For context, approximately 20% of global liquefied natural gas (LNG) volumes flow through the Strait of Hormuz, largely produced by Qatar, and no reroutes exist. This flow is 100% halted at the moment, with Qatari production fully down following a drone attack.

We base-case that Qatari LNG production will be restored by early April, and we have accordingly raised our April TTF forecast to 55 EUR/MWh, well into the 45 EUR/MWh (fuel oil) to 71 EUR/MWh (diesel) gas-to-oil switching range because we think increased fuel switching away from gas will be required to normalize European gas storage ahead of the next winter. We have not changed our 21 EUR/MWh 2027 TTF forecast. In a scenario where the Qatari supply shock lasts over 1 month, we would expect TTF prices to rally further to the mid-70 EURs/MWh, where diesel is currently priced, to incentivize further switching. A scenario where the shock lasts longer than two months would likely lift TTF above 100 EUR/MWh to incentivize broader industrial demand destruction across Europe and Asia.”

Notice that Exhibit 2 above shows TTF is already in the coal-switching range. The rest of Dart’s note can be read here. 

In a separate note, UBS analyst Manik Narain warned of EM energy risks if the Hormuz chokepoint remains clogged:

“EM Asia appears most directly at risk, accounting for ~73% of oil shipped through the Strait of Hormuz. 40-70% of India, Korea and Thailand’s oil supply transits this route; while Thailand and Taiwan generate 45-60% of electricity from gas, indicating potential price risks to tech and other industrial supply chains if the conflict doesn’t abate soon.”

The duration of the conflict is key because higher NatGas prices will only spur continued gas-to-coal switching.

UBS highlighted that EM power generation in countries such as Mexico, Thailand, and Taiwan remains heavily exposed to oil and gas, leaving electricity systems vulnerable as fuel prices surge. Taiwan stands out, given its major role in the global AI chip supply chain, meaning rising power costs there could have implications far beyond domestic electricity markets.

Related:

• These EM Countries Face Greatest Risk If Energy Shock Spreads

Operation Epic Fury has been one way to ‘Make Coal Great Again’…

Authored by Steve Watson via Modernity.news,

In yet another brazen attempt to erase history, the London Museum Docklands has half-covered a portrait of 18th-century merchant Beeston Long with Madras cloth, all in the name of “reclaim[ing] Caribbean history.” This symbolic shrouding targets Long’s investments in Jamaican plantations, turning a piece of British maritime legacy into a virtue-signaling prop.

Critics see this as part of the left’s relentless campaign to erase uncomfortable truths about the past, prioritizing feelings over history and sidelining the achievements of figures who built modern Britain. With new panels lecturing visitors that such artworks can “obscure” or “sanitise” links to slavery and “evoke emotional responses,” the museum is pushing a narrative that gives “voice to those whose cultures have been impacted by colonialism.”

The portrait of Beeston Long, a former Bank of England governor who oversaw Docklands expansion, now hangs partially obscured by cloth exported to the Caribbean during colonial times. Museum officials claim this intervention helps “reclaim the histories of colonised Caribbean nations” and celebrates the Windrush Generation’s influence.

Museum covers up portrait of former Bank of England governor who owned slaves to ‘reclaim Caribbean history’ https://t.co/w1KJ9mmWVd

— Daily Mail (@DailyMail) March 9, 2026

They assert the Caribbean community was “essential” to the area and “invited to migrate to Britain to help rebuild the ‘mother country’” between 1948 and 1971, noting arrivals “created the Tower Hamlets we know today.”

Displays further declare: “Many of the objects in this gallery were created for and through the oppression of enslaved people. European colonialists exploited African and Asian peoples and lands relentlessly.”

To top it off, an installation called Holding Emotions offers visitors ways to “reclaim wellbeing” and “ground yourself,” complete with doodling tips and comfy seats for those triggered by history.

This isn’t an isolated incident. Recall the removal of Robert Milligan’s statue outside the same museum in 2020 amid Black Lives Matter unrest, which remains in storage. National Museum Cardiff yanked a painting of colonial governor Thomas Picton in 2021 to “decolonise” its collection.

As we’ve covered before, this woke purge has targeted icons across the West. In Wales, the government flagged statues of “old white men” like Admiral Horatio Nelson – an “aggressor who conquered peoples” – General Arthur Wellesley, Charles, 2nd Earl Grey (an abolitionist), and Winston Churchill for removal, claiming they fuel perceptions of white male dominance and “can be offensive to people today.”

Across the pond, Theodore Roosevelt’s equestrian statue at New York’s American Museum of Natural History was covered and removed in 2021, labeled a symbol of “racial hierarchy” despite honoring him as a naturalist. It was shipped to North Dakota on “indefinite loan.”

Thomas Jefferson’s 187-year-old statue was crated and hauled out of New York City Hall that same year over his slave-owning past, with lawmakers calling him a “slaveholding pedophile” and offensive. Republican Joe Borelli accused Mayor de Blasio of a “progressive war on history.”

A statue of Thomas Jefferson, who was the third president of the United States, has been removed from New York City Hall after a unanimous vote by a committee, because of his links to the slave trade.

Latest videos here: https://t.co/WuXYjxfxy1 pic.twitter.com/M7UQ8W6hqa

— Sky News (@SkyNews) November 23, 2021

Even anti-slavery heroes weren’t safe: In 2021, statues of abolitionist William Pitt in Edinburgh and biologist Thomas Henry Huxley at Imperial College London faced removal for vague “links to the British Empire” and papers that “might now be called ‘racist.’” One critic noted: “This is what happens when Edinburgh Council hands editorial control… to a secretive cabal of activists.”

But there’s hope on the horizon. Last year, President Trump signed an executive order to restore improperly removed statues and monuments, overhauling the Smithsonian to ditch “divisive, race-centered” narratives and return to “truthful and uplifting views of American history.”

The order, titled “Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History,” tasks officials with reviewing and reinstating monuments taken down in the past five years, aiming to make museums “educate rather than indoctrinate” by July 4, 2026. As the White House stated, many were removed to “perpetuate a false revision of history.”

This latest London fiasco underscores how leftist institutions continue their assault on Western heritage, using “reclamation” as cover to divide and demoralize. Many see it as cultural vandalism, a removal of the unvarnished story of our past – warts and all – for future generations.

Your support is crucial in helping us defeat mass censorship. Please consider donating via Locals or check out our unique merch. Follow us on X @ModernityNews.

Companies across the Gulf are rushing to purchase political violence insurance as regional fighting intensifies, seeking protection for major infrastructure and commercial properties against the growing risk of attacks and collateral damage, according to FT.

Insurers and brokers say they have received hundreds of inquiries in recent days from asset owners looking for coverage that protects against war-related threats. The policies typically cover damage caused by terrorism, missile debris, civil unrest, strikes, riots and other forms of political instability.

Demand has surged as the conflict in the Middle East expands, with Iran and allied groups launching missile and drone strikes against Israel and nearby countries following a joint U.S.–Israeli bombing campaign. Investors and businesses in Gulf states including Saudi Arabia and Oman are increasingly concerned about the possibility that the violence could spill over into neighboring economies.

Industry experts say the financial impact of the conflict could be unusually large. Fergus Critchley, global head of terrorism and political violence at broker WTW, warned the current crisis could produce losses “significantly larger and more catastrophic” than those seen in recent years.

FT writes that much of the new demand is coming from Western companies operating in the Gulf, which insurers say are often considered more likely targets. Raj Rana, who leads war and terrorism coverage at broker Bowring Marsh, said his firm alone has fielded more than 50 requests for political violence coverage since last weekend.

Requests have come from a range of sectors, including renewable energy and hospitality. Solar projects in Saudi Arabia and hotels in Bahrain and Qatar have all sought protection as companies worry about both direct attacks and indirect damage such as falling shrapnel from intercepted missiles.

Digital infrastructure has also faced threats. Drone strikes this week targeted data centers operated by Amazon in the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain, according to security experts who suspect Iranian involvement. Microsoft said its regional operations had not been disrupted.

Some businesses in the region already carried terrorism insurance before the conflict escalated. However, brokers now recommend broader political violence coverage, which also protects against unrest such as riots, strikes and civil disturbances.

The surge in demand has pushed premiums sharply higher. Insurers say prices rose early in the week to several times their previous levels. Previously, coverage for political violence on an energy project in Saudi Arabia or the UAE could cost less than 1 percent of the insured value. By Thursday, the cost had climbed to roughly five times that rate. For example, securing $10 million in coverage for a $20 million project could now cost about $500,000, compared with under $100,000 before the latest escalation.

Authored by Thomas Brooke via Remix News,

Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni has sharply criticized judicial decisions blocking the detention of migrants transferred to Albania, citing the case of a Moroccan rapist with a long criminal record whom authorities say they cannot detain or deport after he applied for international protection.

Speaking to RTL 102.5, Meloni said some court rulings preventing the continued detention of migrants transferred to Italian processing centers in Albania were “surreal” and undermined public safety.

“I also wonder where the feminists are in the face of these events,” Meloni said during the interview, referring to the case of one of the migrants, Moroccan national Fathallah Ouardi, who had been transferred to Albania but was later returned to Italy after judges refused to validate his detention.

Meloni said the man had a lengthy criminal record. “The record of one of these migrants includes convictions for drug dealing, resisting a public official, conspiracy to commit sexual assault, and gang rape,” she said, as cited by Secolo d’Italia.

According to the prime minister, the court rejected the detention order after the migrant applied for international protection.

“This is someone who entered Italy illegally, started dealing drugs, and gang-raped a woman — we can’t detain him, we can’t send him to Albania, we can’t repatriate him, and we’re almost forced to grant him international protection,” she said, adding that such decisions raise serious questions about the protection of victims and public confidence in the justice system.

“How can we guarantee the safety of citizens like this?” she asked. “These decisions are surreal; they affect not the government’s work but citizens’ rights, first and foremost, the right to safety.”

“What trust can a woman who has been gang-raped have in the system if her rapist can’t even be deported?” she added. “I also wonder where the feminists of ‘Non una di meno’ are on these issues.”

The Italian leader also defended her government’s migration policies, including the controversial use of offshore migrant processing centers in Albania.

“I am determined to do what the citizens have asked me to do: a tough policy on irregular immigration, including with new tools like the centers in Albania,” Meloni said.

“Even though some are trying everything they can to prevent it, I am determined on this and am willing to work three times, four times, ten times harder if necessary.”

Remix News provided reporting this week on another Moroccan national accused of raping a 26-year-old woman in Bottanuco in what was a sustained attack over the course of an evening. The suspect was born in 1987 and has accumulated a series of criminal charges and convictions in Italy over more than a decade.

Authorities say he was investigated for drug trafficking between 2014 and 2015 and charged with illegal immigration in 2015. Records also list illegal entry and residence in Trentino in 2016 and theft in 2017.

Court documents further list convictions including resisting a public official and drug trafficking in 2014, as well as participation in sexual assault and gang sexual assault in 2018. A further drug trafficking conviction was recorded in 2025.

Read more here…

Authored by Kay Rubacek via The Epoch Times,

Something happened last week that most people scrolled past.

Two Amazon data centers in the United Arab Emirates were struck during Iran’s retaliation for U.S. military action. Another facility in Bahrain was reportedly damaged after a drone landed nearby. The earlier strikes that triggered the retaliation were said to have used AI-assisted targeting systems.

It was a brief moment in the news cycle, quickly overtaken by the next political story. But the implications are difficult to ignore.

Artificial intelligence has now crossed into active geopolitical conflict.

The infrastructure that powers the digital world—the same systems that store family photos, run businesses, and answer questions on our phones—has become strategic wartime infrastructure. Algorithms woven quietly into civilian technology are now helping guide decisions about where weapons land.

Humanity crossed a threshold, and most of us scrolled past it.

But we know from history that major technological shifts rarely announce themselves with a single dramatic moment. They appear first as signals in small news items, policy disputes, unexplained departures by insiders.

Another signal appeared almost at the same time.

The federal government recently removed the artificial intelligence systems developed by Anthropic from its networks. Shortly afterward, OpenAI stepped in with a defense agreement of its own.

The public does not know the full story behind the change. We do not know exactly what demands were made behind closed doors, what ethical guardrails were contested, or why one of the world’s leading AI companies was suddenly pushed out of federal systems.

But the episode itself is another signal.

And yet another signal has been appearing quietly inside the AI industry itself: the departure of safety researchers.

Over the past several years, numerous high-profile researchers tasked with studying the risks and safety of advanced AI systems have left their posts at leading companies and research labs. Many of these departures have come with little public explanation.

Those researchers rarely describe the internal debates they witnessed. Few are in a position to do so.

But patterns like this matter. When the people closest to a powerful technology begin stepping away quietly, it often means they have seen tensions the public has not yet been invited to examine.

History has seen moments like this before.

In the early 1940s, scientists working on what became the Manhattan Project realized they were building something unprecedented. Some raised concerns about what the technology might mean once it left the laboratory. But those debates happened largely behind closed doors. The public understood the stakes only after the technology had already been used.

Artificial intelligence may be unfolding along a similar pattern. We are seeing the signals now—researchers leaving, governments disputing ethical guardrails, and AI systems appearing inside real geopolitical conflict.

Yet the public conversation about artificial intelligence is still shaped by a set of assumptions that make these signals harder to recognize.

Misconception #1: AI Is ‘Just a Tool’

This analogy is comforting. We imagine AI the way we imagine a calculator or a word processor—machines that perform tasks efficiently while remaining firmly under human control.

Tools can become strategic assets in war. But they do not generate their own outputs in ways their creators sometimes struggle to explain, nor do they require constant negotiation over the ethical boundaries of their behavior.

Modern AI systems are not programmed line by line in the traditional sense. They are trained on vast datasets and learn patterns within that data. Their behavior emerges from statistical relationships rather than explicit instructions. AI researchers describe these systems as “grown,” not built. And that makes them fundamentally different from the tools we are used to controlling.

Misconception #2: AI Is Neutral

AI systems are trained on human-generated information. That information reflects human biases, historical conflicts, and uneven representation.

When an AI system generates an answer, it synthesizes patterns it absorbed from that material.

AI has developed fluent language skills that can create the illusion of objectivity. But confident language is not the same as truth.

The recent disputes between governments and AI companies illustrate this clearly. Debates over surveillance limits or autonomous weapons are not simply technical questions. They are moral ones. Guardrails exist precisely because the systems themselves are not neutral.

Misconception #3: Humans Fully Control AI

Traditional software behaves according to explicit instructions written by programmers.

Modern AI systems operate differently. Their outputs are probabilistic, generated through layers of learned relationships inside the model.

Developers are now using AI systems to build AI systems and to manage other AI systems. They are using AI to write code that in the past they would have written themselves, and it’s happening so fast that they cannot monitor or even understand every line of code being generated by systems that do not sleep.

Control, in this environment, is not a switch. It is more like a moving boundary that no one has ever seen before, and the language to even define it is still in its infancy.

Misconception #4: The Experts Know Where This Is Going

In most scientific fields, experts disagree within a fairly narrow range. In artificial intelligence, the range of opinion is unusually wide.

Some researchers believe AI will revolutionize medicine and scientific discovery. Others warn the technology could produce serious societal disruption if development outruns human wisdom.

Among those raising such concerns is Geoffrey Hinton, a Nobel Prize winner and one of the foundational figures of modern AI research.

That range of opinion does not prove disaster is coming. But it does reveal that even the people building these systems do not fully agree on where they lead.

Artificial intelligence is integrating rapidly into the systems that shape modern life—communication, commerce, national security, and governance.

We are seeing signals across all of these domains. We can see clearly that AI is shaping our future whether we like it or not. The question is whether we will recognize the signals in time to understand what is unfolding, or whether we will wait, as societies often do, until the consequences make the signals impossible to ignore.

Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times or ZeroHedge.

A pair of cargo ships tied to a sanctioned Iranian state shipping line have quietly departed a Chinese chemical hub and are now sailing toward Iran carrying what analysts suspect is missile fuel precursor, according to fresh Washington Post analysis of ship-tracking data and satellite imagery.

The vessels have been identified as Shabdis and Barzin, which operate under Islamic Republic of Iran Shipping Lines (IRISL), the state carrier sanctioned by Washington and many allies. The IRISL has long been accused of shipping materials tied to Iran’s ballistic missile program – something which the US and Israel say they are trying to currently eliminate in the ongoing Operation Epic Fury.

Both ships recently docked at Gaolan port in Zhuhai on China’s southeastern coast, a major chemical-handling facility that processes large volumes of industrial compounds, including sodium perchlorate – which is critical for producing solid rocket fuel, the report says.

Officials and and analysts were cited in the Post as concluding the cargo likely includes sodium perchlorate destined for Iran’s missile program.

“Given the track record, the most parsimonious explanation is that they’re loading the same commodity they’ve been shuttling for the past year-plus,” Isaac Kardon, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, pointed out.

So in a way this is nothing “new” for Beijing-Tehran ‘illicit’ trade, however what is new is seen in the following:

While a dozen other IRISL ships have visited the port since the start of the year, experts emphasized that China’s allowing a ship to depart for Iran with weapons-related material during a war in which they have called for restraint would be extremely notable.

Indeed, as Kardon continues, “China could have held these vessels at port, imposed an administrative delay, invented a customs hold – any number of bureaucratic tools, but didn’t.”

Just days before US and Israeli bombs began to fall on Tehran, we featured analysis which questioned, Will China Come To Iran’s Rescue? “While China avoids direct confrontation, it has not shied away from visible military cooperation – also as “Earlier this month, Russia, China and Iran deployed naval vessels for joint security exercises in the strategically vital Strait of Hormuz,” we featured.

Beijing’s official position remains that it supports “safeguarding Iran’s sovereignty, security, and territorial integrity” while opposing “the threat or use of force in international relations.” As was also featured:

China is unlikely to dispatch troops or engage directly in any conflict, but to interpret this as passivity would be to misread the nature of 21st-century great power competition. China’s support for Iran is real, multifaceted, and in some ways more sustainable than military intervention; it just operates on a different strategic wavelength.

Beijing has meanwhile formally rejected the allegations that it is moving missile-production material to the Islamic Republic, arguing that the United States exaggerates routine commercial or dual-use trade.

And the below is a monitoring report from just weeks before the Trump-ordered campaign on Iran began:

MORE: Iran received a large shipment of a chemical precursor for solid missile propellant from China on February 13.

Western media reported on January 22 that two Iranian cargo vessels, Golbon and Jairan, carrying over 1100 tons of sodium perchlorate, will travel from China to… https://t.co/4U80VPt8mG

— Institute for the Study of War (@TheStudyofWar) February 15, 2025

Washington has directed parallel criticism at Russia and China’s ‘dual-use’ trade and cooperation in certain sensitive industrial sectors which overlap with defense. But both also see this as their right, in the end, based on national sovereignty. 

Via WatchesOfEspionage.com,

Watches as Tools of Money Laundering and Illicit Finance

Luxury timepieces are one of the most effective mediums to move illicit funds around the globe and a tool to integrate those ill-gotten gains into the financial system.  Transnational criminal networks, terrorists, narcotraffickers and corrupt politicians have used watches to launder money as a part of global illicit finance.

The Weight of a Million Dollars – 22 pounds

A million dollars weighs just over 22 lbs.  I learned this during one of my first tours as a CIA Case Officer.  Like any other morning, I mounted my Gary Fisher mountain bike and rode out the gate of our compound for a quick exercise ride in the hills surrounding the African capital where I was working.  This activity was “in pattern,” should I have surveillance, they would note the departure, but it would not warrant further investigation.  A trained eye might have seen that something was different, however. The dead weight of ten thousand $100 bills in my backpack made the bike top-heavy and awkward to ride. 

The operation was simple and routine. After a long Surveillance Detection Route (SDR) through the hills and side streets of the third world capital, I worked my way to a predetermined ops site.  The watch on my wrist would have (probably) been a Timex Ironman, my go to Digital Tool Watch (DTW) for exercise over the past two decades.  I would have checked the time before moving into the site, confirming that I would hit the operational window.  In espionage, timing is everything.

Right on time. I identified a couple in the alley.  We established bona fides with a verbal parole — a predetermined phrase and response.  I then handed them the heavy backpack in exchange for a similar one and rode off in the other direction, the entire exchange lasting less than a minute. In tradecraft lingo it was a “BE” (Brief Encounter). 

A standard CIA Case Officers EDC, read more HERE

Except for the backpack stuffed with cash, it was a routine day for a case officer. Certainly not the stuff of Hollywood but instead a crucial operation for the global network of intelligence collection. Due to compartmentalization, I didn’t know who the individuals were that I handed the backpack to or why they needed the large sum of cash, though I have my suspicions.  They had likely just arrived in the country and could not bring the cash in through customs without drawing scrutiny.

Watches as a Currency:

One takeaway from this operation is that money is heavy.  It’s inconvenient, bulky and difficult to transport, not to mention having to explain it away if discovered.  This is why many illicit actors, spies and criminal networks rely on expensive but innocuous luxury items to move funds across borders.  Given the significant increase in value of timepieces, watches are a favored currency when it comes to illicit activity.  I easily could have handed off a single watch to transfer that same value to the couple that morning.

The value-to-weight ratio of a Rolex, Patek Philippe, Audemars Piguet or other premium brands is exceeded only by precious gems, making it easy to physically transport a watch across international borders. The vast, unregulated, and fragmented gray market makes converting timepieces into cash relatively easy. Unlike vehicles, gold, and diamonds, there is no oversight or registration for timepieces and a million dollar Patek can be worn on your wrist, easily breezing through customs.

Lebron James wearing a “Tiffany Blue” Patek Philippe Nautilus Ref. 5711, a watch that has sold for 100 times its original price at $5,350,000 at auction. 

Luxury Watches – Money Laundering:

The international financial system is heavily regulated and monitored by law enforcement and intelligence services to identify illicit activity. Transactions over $10,000 are automatically flagged and international border law restricts the amount of cash one can bring in/out of a given country undeclared. 

By contrast, watches are a perfect medium for exploitation by bad actors.  They are innocuous and liquid, and pawn shops, auction houses and high-end dealers often turn a blind eye to these activities. Every major auction house has been involved in a controversy where profitability triumphed over ethics at some point. This isn’t to say that they’re willfully supporting money laundering, rather that it is simply a frequent occurrence.

Eight days after 9/11, CIA officers pick up $3 million cash in three cardboard boxes. This money would enable the Northern Alliance (NA) commanders to pay their troops and convince other tribes to rally to the NA rather than fight them. (Photo Credit: CIA)

Moving Illicit Funds – A Case Study

Imagine, you need to move $1 million from the United States to Turkey.  The logical choice is a traditional bank transfer, which would require you to deposit it in a financial institution.  This would alert the authorities who would request an explanation for how you came about the funds, for both tax purposes and Anti-Money Laundering (AML) enforcement. Carrying cash would require a 20 pound duffel bag, making hand-carrying it cumbersome and again would cause scrutiny from customs officials, resulting in questions and import tariffs and complications. Additionally, you introduce a major security risk by carrying that much cash around and potentially becoming a target. 

Customs and Border Protection (CBP) Officer processes a passenger into the United States at an airport. (DHS Photo by James Tourtellotte)

So, what do you do?  You could convert it to diamonds and hide them in a tube of toothpaste (or concealed in your body), but again, if caught, this cannot be explained away.  So, you visit the diamond district in New York, purchase a dozen Rolex and AP watches, each of which could be worth up to $500k per watch.  You use couriers to “smurf” the watches on commercial flights, each one wearing a watch on the wrist and a couple in a carry-on bag.  For the cost of a few round-trip tickets, the watches could be relocated to Istanbul relatively risk-free. 

A single (new) Rolex Dayton can have a street value of $30-$50k, vintage significant higher (James Rupley)

Once you arrive in Turkey, you find the local watch dealer and offer to sell for cash, or a bank transfer to integrate them into the financial system, the first step of money laundering (placement, layering, integration).  Given the illicit activity, you may lose some money on the sale, but this is simply the cost of integrating illicit funds.  The dealer is happy to purchase them below market value and not ask questions.

Well over $100k in Rolex Watches (Photo Credit: Jame Rupley)

Hezbollah’s Illicit Finance:

In 2015, an investigation by the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) revealed that Hezbollah, a Lebanese Shia terrorist organization, purchased large quantities of watches in Europe, which were then transported by couriers to Lebanon where they were sold for cash.  Hezbollah reportedly purchased €14 million in watches from a single store in Germany, thus evading international monitoring.  (The movement and exchange of expensive goods has long played a role in informal Middle Eastern “Hawala” money transfer networks throughout the globe.)

This practice is so common that Dutch law enforcement has urged watch dealers to refrain from cash transactions.  Several high profile arrests of criminal networks in Spain, Netherlands, Romania and Belgium revealed luxury watches as integral to the movement of illegal funds, and closely associated with the recent increase in watch crime in the region.

Money Laundering:

The 3 Stages of Money Laundering (Image Credit: Alessa)

Money Laundering (ML) is the act of integrating illegally acquired cash to legitimate financial institutions with the goal of concealing the illegal origins of those funds.  While this is traditionally associated with criminal networks, in the intelligence world, cash is king and most intelligence services practice some form of benevolent money laundering.  Watches can play a crucial part in each step of the money laundering process.

• Placement: Step one is introducing illicit gains into the financial system.  In the example above, this can occur with the sale of the watch and the depositing of those funds into a bank account by the purchasing party.  At initial scrutiny, this will appear to be a legitimate transaction.

Breaking Bad- money laundering (AMC)

• Layering:  Step two is the process of moving those same funds through multiple transactions to conceal the origin of the funds.  Once funds are converted, one could use the illicit funds to purchase watches, and then resell them in a manner to distance the original transaction and repeat this process.  The example above of transferring watches overseas could be another example of layering in addition to potential placement. 

• Integration:  The final last step is returning the funds to the criminal organizations for personal use, thus appearing legitimate. 

Embezzlement and Money Laundering- Former Brazilian President Bolsonaro 

According to press reporting, in 2022, Former Brazilian President Bolsonaro found himself in hot water for (reportedly) selling a gifted Saudi Rolex and a Patek Philippe watch, netting him $68k.  Bolsonaro used a third party (smurf) to transport the watches to the United States and quickly found a buyer in a relatively obscure Pennsylvania mall.

If true, Bolsonaro used the same technique as above to transfer the value from Brazil, convert it into dollars and then (supposedly) repatriate that cash to Brazil.  This is an example of Money Laundering by disguising an unreported diplomatic gift and converting that gift into a usable currency.

This is not the first scrutiny of Bolsonaro’s gifts from foreign governments, in 2021, a Brazilian government official was reportedly detained at the border with more than $3 million in jewels from Saudi Arabia in a backpack, allegedly gifts for Bolsonaro and his wife.  

The world is not all flowers and rainbows and we expect to continue to see the use of luxury timepieces in the global illicit finance network, particularly as prices for these luxury goods remain high.

Before Operation Epic Fury began, corporate media published a few very concerning headlines:

Fast forward to Monday afternoon: Operation Epic Fury against Iran has entered its 10th day. Jared Cohen, President of Global Affairs and Co-Head of the Goldman Sachs Global Institute, warned investors on the GS Weekend Macro Call that regional spillover risks worldwide were among his top concerns.

Latest headlines in the Middle East:

• Iran Signals ‘Fight To The End’ Under New Ayatollah, As US Struggles To Define Israeli-Coordinated Endgame

• “Let Them Keep Playing Games”: Iran Warns Of $200 Crude Oil

• G-7 Leaders Reject SPR Release Plan, But ‘Stand Ready’ After Initial Jawbone Efforts Fade

The focus of this note is not the energy market or global spillover risks. Rather, it is the fact that DARPA found time to publish a press release about an experimental aircraft with a historic lineage of X-planes.

DARPA said the new aircraft, called the X-76 and being built by Bell Textron, is designed to solve one of military aviation’s biggest trade-offs: combining airplane-like speed with helicopter-like runway independence.

The program, run jointly with U.S. Special Operations Command, aims to produce an aircraft that can cruise above 400 knots, hover in austere environments, and operate from unprepared surfaces.

DARPA said the X-76 has passed the Critical Design Review, and the program is moving into manufacturing, integration, assembly, and ground testing.

“For too long, the runway has been both an enabler and a tether, granting speed but creating a critical vulnerability,” said Cmdr. Ian Higgins, U.S. Navy, serving as the DARPA SPRINT program manager. “With SPRINT, we’re not just building an X-plane; we’re building options. We’re working to deliver the option of surprise, the option of rapid reinforcement, and the option of life-saving speed, anywhere on the globe, without needing any runway.”

It seems like DARPA found a sweet spot to debut the X-76, given the world seemingly at war. This likely means more war funding from taxpayers and, most likely, tailwinds for defense companies to push new products.

Submitted by Dylan Baddour via Inside Climate News (emphasis ours),

The imminent depletion of water supplies in Corpus Christi threatens to cut off the flow of jet fuel to Texas airports and other oil exports from one of the nation’s largest petroleum ports, triggering potential shockwaves through energy markets in Texas and beyond.

Without significant rainfall, Corpus Christi is headed for a “water emergency” within months and total depletion of the system next year, according to the city’s website.

“The impacts are going to be felt tremendously through the state, if not internationally,” said Sean Strawbridge, former CEO of the Port of Corpus Christi Authority, the nation’s top port for crude oil exports, in a 40-minute interview Thursday. “This should be no surprise to anybody. We were talking about this over a decade ago.”

Other current and former officials, alarmed at what they call a lack of preparations, have suggested the potential for an economic crisis involving mass layoffs, disruption of fuel supplies and billions of dollars in emergency spending to avoid an evacuation of the city. 

Strawbridge, who now lives in Houston, laid the blame on city leaders, citing “their lack of experience, their lack of knowledge, their lack of recognizing the risks” in a bumbling, decade-long endeavor to build a large seawater desalination plant that would veer the region off its clear course towards calamity.

“They’ve found themselves in quite a dire predicament as a result of those poor decisions,” Strawbridge said. “Time is up.” 

A spokesperson for Corpus Christi Mayor Paulette Guajardo declined interview requests, citing “prior commitments,” and did not respond to follow-up questions. City manager Peter Zanoni also did not respond to questions. Instead, Corpus Christi public information manager Robert Gonzales provided an emailed statement.

“The water shortage in the Coastal Bend is the result of a historic five-year drought,” it said. “Currently, the City of Corpus Christi has $1 billion in City Council-approved and funded water projects underway to address our water needs. The City remains committed to ensuring water security for the more than 500,000 residents and our commercial and industrial customers.”

Depletion of this region’s reservoirs would lead to “controlled depression” for the local economy, “mass unemployment” and “industrial total shutdown,” according to a two-page report by Don Roach, former assistant general manager of the San Patricio Municipal Water District, which supplies many of the region’s large industrial water users.

That includes refineries operated by Flint Hills Resources, Valero and Citgo that provide jet fuel to Texas airports and meet much of the state’s daily demand for gasoline.

“This waiting disaster is under the radar for the rest of the state,” said Roach, who worked 20 years at the water district and retired in 2014. “We hear nothing from the Texas politicians about the seriousness of the situation or any state plan to mitigate it.”

He no longer had access to current water data and contracts, he stressed, but produced the report based on his own knowledge. It said the costs of trucking in emergency water “would bankrupt many local small businesses and low-income households” while state emergency managers would need billions of dollars to “build emergency temporary pipelines or subsidize desalination barge rentals to prevent a total evacuation of the city.”

Strawbridge, a former director of the Port of Long Beach, said Roach’s assessment was “spot on.”

“No Time to Panic”

Zanoni, the city manager who has overseen Corpus Christi’s descent toward water depletion since 2019 and receives a $400,000 salary, rejected notions of imminent disaster during a press conference Thursday, when Lake Corpus Christi,  one of the city’s main reservoirs, dropped below 10 percent.  The press conference took place three days after Inside Climate News asked the city for comment about the impending water crisis.

“I think we are going to get through this,” he told TV cameras as he stood before the dwindling remnants of the lake. “We have confidence in what we’re doing. This is no time to panic.”

Zanoni, who holds a master’s of public administration from Florida State University, said the city had “worked tirelessly over the past months to bring everything that we humanly and possibly could to forego what could be this supply and demand issue.”

“Now we’re going to focus, with the City Council and the region, on being prepared in case supply doesn’t meet demand,” he said. 

“The best-case scenario, that assumes some level of rain, has this lake here going to about the early fall,” said Zanoni, who indicated that the summer months would give the city enough time to boot up its portfolio of new groundwater water projects..” 

James Dodson, a former director of Corpus Christi’s water department who retired this year as a private consultant and was involved in several of those projects, disagreed. He said residents and officials “are crazy not to be panicking.”

“It’s the very worst scenario that I’ve ever seen,” said Dodson, who oversaw a historic expansion of Corpus Christi’s water supply in the 1990s. “It’s going to be an economic disaster.”

For years, he said, the city dismissed repeated opportunities to develop groundwater import projects as it maintained a singular and fruitless focus on desalination. That includes projects that the city only recently scrambled to get started. Dodson doubted any will materialize in time.

“They’ve been kicking the can down the road for a long time and they’ve finally run out of road,” said a current regional water official who requested anonymity to preserve a working relationship with the city. “They’re looking at projects to do that they should have done five, six, seven years ago.”

The last hope to avert disaster, the official said, was a 20- to 30-inch rainfall. 

“It would basically have to be a hurricane,” he said.

A spokesperson for Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, Andrew Mahaleris, didn’t address specific comments about an impending water catastrophe or disruption of the state economy. In an emailed statement, he said: “Corpus Christi is an important economic driver not only for Texas but also the nation. The State of Texas has made significant investments into ensuring the Corpus Christi area has the water resources it needs to serve citizens and industry alike.”

He added that the governor “will continue working with the legislature to ensure Texans have a safe, reliable water supply for the next fifty years.”

“I Wouldn’t Say That It’s a Disaster”

Mere months remain, according to Corpus Christi’s online water dashboard, until the city enters a “Level 1 Emergency,” which begins 180 days from projected depletion of water supplies. Functional failure of the water system, or “dead pool,” will occur before total depletion. 

In a level one water emergency, the city’s plans call for an immediate 25 percent curtailment of water consumption. But city planners are only beginning to discuss what that would even look like and still haven’t determined how they would implement it.

“We can’t close and open everyone’s valves,” said Nick Winkelmann, chief operating officer of Corpus Christi Water, in an interview at City Hall last week. “One way to enact water restrictions is through pricing.”

The region’s largest industrial users, which collectively consume the majority of the region’s water, remain exempt from emergency curtailment. These multi-billion-dollar refineries, petrochemical plants and liquified natural gas facilities are built to run at a steady rate and can’t simply throttle down production in accordance with water availability. They consume large volumes of water primarily in cooling towers to prevent excessive heating and explosions. 

The city also may enact across-the-board, pro-rata curtailment at will, said Winkelmann, who assumed his role last September when the city’s former water director, Drew Molly, resigned days before the City Council pulled the plug on its long-running desalination project. “That will have an effect on all our customers.” 

For years, local business leaders insisted desalination was Corpus Christi’s key to overcoming the water limitations that had historically plagued it on this semi-arid coastline. Massive desalination plants, the first of their kind in Texas, were supposed to kick off an era of abundant water, financial prosperity and limitless economic expansion.

Instead, the plan drove this region to the precipice of ruin.  

“It has not gone as smoothly as it should have,” said Bob Paulison, a member of the Texas Chemistry Council, director of the Coastal Bend Industries Association and architect of the desalination project. “There are a lot of reasons for why that happened.”

He said he worked on desalination for 12 years, but the projects got bogged down by political fights, administrative processes, the COVID pandemic and “a tug of war which has resulted in very slow progress.”

“I wouldn’t say that it’s a disaster,” he said of the current situation, expressing faith that the city would complete new water projects before supplies run out. It was “too early” to assess when that could happen, he said. 

Presented with Roach’s report, Paulison expressed a longstanding respect for the veteran water manager and said, “It looks like it’s very dire, more dire than we’ve been looking at.”

“We’re relying on the model that the city has put together,” Paulison said. 

Regarding a potential shutdown of the entire refining and petrochemical complex, he said, “that could certainly shut down at some point, but we don’t see that happening in the early stages.”

Asked about plans to develop alternative jet fuel supplies for Texas airports in the case of a shutdown, Paulison said, “I’m sure that someone somewhere is working on that.”

Charles McConnell, a former assistant energy secretary with the Obama administration, wondered why concrete plans hadn’t been prepared. 

“Did it take them all the way to yesterday to figure out they’re going to run out by the end of the year?” he said. “That’s pretty pathetic.”

McConnell, who now teaches at the University of Houston, doubted that a shutdown of Corpus Christi’s industrial sector would have acute or long-lasting impacts beyond Texas. New producers would fill the gap, while new pipelines and supply chains would bypass the city. 

“It’s a surprise to me that none of those refineries and industries down there have their own desal plants,” said McConnell, who worked 31 years for the chemical manufacturer Praxair in Houston. “They’re using municipal water, for Christ’s sake!”

Rapid Expansion Followed the Shale Boom

The roots of this situation stretch back more than a decade, to the period of rapid downstream industrial expansion that followed the shale revolution in the oilfields of Texas. Strawbridge joined the Port of Corpus Christi Authority in 2015, as a surge of major industrial projects sought to build in the area. Even then, Strawbridge said, everyone knew Corpus Christi needed more water. 

In January 2016, Abbott traveled to Israel, where he toured the world’s largest seawater desalination plant and met with Israeli officials to discuss desalination.

Later that year, an industry group called H2O4Texas, with sponsors including Dow, Chevron and Marathon Oil, hosted an event in Corpus Christi.

“They were basically saying because of the growth in the Coastal Bend, we were gonna need desalination,” said Isabel Araiza, then a professor at Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi, who attended the event. 

That was the first that Araiza, a Corpus Christi native with a Ph.D. from Boston University, had heard of desalination. She said she was at the meeting for a different reason, finding it strange how many business and political leaders were there. 

The oil and gas industry wanted to build enormous projects in the region, processing oil and gas from Texas’ shale fields into myriad fuels, chemicals and plastics before loading them onto tankers for export. 

In March 2017, then-city manager Margie Rose sent a letter to ExxonMobil, the world’s largest private oil company, that said, “because the City aggressively protects water resources for the future by implementing a matrix of supply strategies, we feel that we have sufficient water supplies to meet your needs.” 

Six days later, the city requested funding from the Texas Water Development Board to study the feasibility and do preliminary design of a seawater desalination plant. 

Around that time, Strawbridge said, “it became very clear to the port authority that there was a difference of opinions as to how much water was available and how much would be needed to continue to attract large industrial investors.” 

“The city felt that it had enough water to last, based on its forecast, until 2040,” Strawbridge said. “We, the port authority, had a very different view of what that demand curve looked like.”

That’s when the port began developing plans for its own desalination plant, he said.

In 2018, a new, interim city manager, Keith Selman, promised another large volume of water to Steel Dynamics, which then built a steel mill in the area. 

The Emerging Solution: Four Desalination Plants

That same year, Corpus Christi created a program exempting the region’s largest industrial water users from water curtailment restrictions during drought for a fee of $0.25 per 1,000 gallons. The city said it would use the money to fund the development of a new water source. The city’s water reservoirs were two thirds full at the time. 

In 2019, the city’s staff presented the City Council with a plan to build a seawater desalination facility. Exxon had taken up the city’s offer for water and planned to build a massive plastics plant called Gulf Coast Growth Ventures in partnership with Saudi Arabia’s national oil company. It would be the largest water user in the region, consuming as much as all city residents combined. 

“Large increases in water demand are projected to occur in 2022,” said a presentation authored by Paulison and given to the City Council by then-Assistant City Manager Mark Van Vleck. “To meet expected water demand, we need to move forward with the procurement of a seawater desalination plant now.”

The plant would produce 10 million gallons per day, cost $140 million and take two years to build, the presentation said. It needed to begin supplying water by the start of 2023. The City Council voted unanimously to move forward.

By 2020 the size of the proposed plant had doubled. “We were recognizing that we’re going to need more water,” said Ronald Barrera, a city council member who has served since 2018. “If we want to expand our economy, then we have to recognize that’s the way to go.”

As the scale of the situation came into focus, the city proposed a second desalination plant, and the port also proposed two. 

Sounding the Alarm

That’s when Encarnacion Serna, a retired chemical plant operations manager, found out about plans for one of those plants just up the shore from his waterfront home on Corpus Christi Bay. 

Serna, an engineer who had worked on reverse osmosis water systems for Valero and Occidental Chemical, reviewed the project’s application. What he saw, he said, astounded him: flimsy assumptions, unrealistic estimates and missing information. 

A facility of that scale, he knew, would require railcars full of pretreatment chemicals, create a mountain of sludge waste every day and consume a tremendous amount of electricity. But he didn’t see serious plans for any of that, he said.  

He dug deeper into the desalination boom and quickly saw what was going on: Politicians and businessmen had oversold their water supply, he said, and were scrambling for more as shortages approached. But none of them had any idea what they were doing, Serna remembered thinking as he reviewed the applications.   

“I’ve been trying since 2020 to let them know how catastrophic this is going to be,” he said in an interview at his home. “They’ve acted with a profound ignorance.”

Serna, a father of four who worked his whole life at chemical plants in Texas, didn’t think any of the proposals would produce as much freshwater as projected, come online as quickly as expected or cost as little as any of the applications stated. These were not going to solve the crisis that officials had teed up, he believed. 

In calls, emails and public comments to city and port officials, Serna raised the alarm at what he saw unfolding. He felt brushed off and soon stopped receiving responses. 

Serna knew that chemical plants and refineries can’t just throttle down water consumption at will. The multi-billion-dollar facilities are meant to operate consistently at a steady state with a set inflow of water. Changing that balance raised risks of explosions. The whole region was skidding toward catastrophe, Serna thought at the time, with no realistic solution in sight. 

In 2022, Gulf Coast Growth Ventures, the Exxon-Saudi partnership, began to draw water while the desalination facility meant to supply it still didn’t even exist on paper. 

Strawbridge, then CEO of the Port of Corpus Christi Authority, insisted a private desalination operator should build and run a large facility that could sell its water to the city. But the city wanted to operate its own. Strawbridge considered the location of the city’s project unsuitable. Both sides said the other took steps to undermine the project.

Meanwhile, veteran local scientists rejected environmental studies from developers claiming the massive discharge of brine from the plants wouldn’t turn the coastal bays and estuaries into hypersaline wastelands.

“I’ve read the engineering studies,” said Paul Montagna, an endowed chair at the Harte Institute for Gulf of Mexico Studies at Texas A&M University in Corpus Christi, in a 2022 interview with Inside Climate News. “And I just don’t get it.”

Environmentalists organized against the plants. Araiza, the college professor who attended the first desalination meeting, had become a leader among groups that were fighting desalination as a means to resist the onslaught of petrochemical projects in their area, which they saw as wealthy, outside interests swooping in to hijack their resources, institutions and environment. 

“They really thought it was just going to be a yes,” she said from her office at Del Mar College, beneath a poster of Che Guevara. “I think we helped slow things down.”

Barrera, the City Council member, started to feel uneasy as controversy and constant turnover on the council seemed to leave them unable to push the project forward.

“I’ve been accused of being a fearmonger,” he said in an interview at his office in downtown Corpus Christi. “Now everybody’s scared.”

It All Falls Apart

Strawbridge took an entourage of about 30 Texas lawmakers, businessmen and lobbyists to Israel in November 2022 to visit desalination facilities “to see that it is possible to solve for our water issues,” he said. 

Strawbridge encouraged the lawmakers to support the port’s development of a private desalination plant, which he said was urgently needed to cover for the failures of the city. But he drew public outrage from city officials when he applied for state funding for a facility that struck them as a competitor to theirs. 

Strawbridge said the trip to Israel ultimately led the Texas lawmakers to pass legislation in 2023 that created the state’s $1 billion water fund. 

But the trip, not disclosed to the public at the time, ultimately ignited a scandal that led to Strawbridge’s resignation when an investigation by KRIS 6 revealed that the Port, which is not a taxing entity, spent more than $200,000 taking the crew to Israel. The station described “a pattern of lavish spending” on that trip and in prior port activities. 

Strawbridge earned $750,000 in the prior year and had expensed an average of $10,000 per month on food and alcohol, including parties. One day later, Strawbridge resigned, but maintained that all expenses were incurred properly through his work representing the Port.

In an interview, he characterized the report and scandal as “a hit job” by political opponents and “an effort to hasten my departure from the Port.” 

“They used the expenses from the Israel trip as a basis for smearing my good name, although the trip ultimately proved fortuitous for the state and its water funding,” Strawbridge said. “Ultimately an independent audit of the previous five years of my expenses found absolutely no irregularities or departures from policy. But of course that wasn’t covered by KRIS 6.”

That year, 2023, was the hottest on record in Texas. Water levels in Corpus Christi reservoirs continued to plummet as the drought intensified. Desalination had moved to the center of Corpus Christi’s public conversation. Local politicians spoke for or against it while activists flocked to city council meetings and permit hearings.

“Blessed be the environmentalists,” said Serna, the retired engineer. “But 90 percent of them don’t know what the hell they’re talking about.” 

In January 2024, Corpus Christi City Council produced a new cost estimate for its proposed desalination plant of about $550 million to produce 30 million gallons of freshwater per day. 

“These numbers are ridiculously low, fraudulent and deceitful,” wrote Serna in an email to city officials. 

By that time, Serna was angry. The subject line of his email read: “The Legacy of the Imbeciles.” 

Where was the city even getting this cost estimate from, he asked, if it “does not have engineering and construction drawings.”

“All the city has at this time are deficits and bills incurred by lunatics in the millions of dollars already spent in the pursuit of this Scam project with nothing tangible on hand yet,” Serna wrote. 

Later that year, a new cost estimate put the project at nearly $760 million. Another estimate, in July 2025, said $1.2 billion. 

Two months later, Corpus Christi City Council, dominated by newly elected members and unable to stomach the cost, voted to cancel the project after a rancorous, 12-hour public meeting that broke repeatedly into yelling from the audience. By then, the Port of Corpus Christi Authority also handed off one of its desalination projects to the nearby Nueces River Authority and mothballed another.

Corpus Christi city leaders expressed optimism over plans to quickly pipe in groundwater from the Evangeline Aquifer about 20 miles away. But when users of that water, like the small city of Sinton, requested in February 2026 that an administrative law judge review Corpus Christi’s groundwater permits, hope faded for a timely solution, other than hurricane-scale rainfall.  

“Let the shit hit the fan,” said Serna. “Let dog eat dog.”

What does he think will happen to Corpus Christi? In time, he said, the refineries and chemical plants will probably build their own water projects, somehow, and possibly restart their facilities that they will have to mothball in the meantime.  

For residents, he said, life might be like it used to be for him, 70 years ago, as a boy in the Rio Grande Valley, when he would hang plastic jugs on mesquite branches and carry them on his shoulder to ask nearby companies for water. 

“This is the legacy of the imbeciles,” he said.