Intel Update - March 21 - Counting Chickens

Hello again, everyone, and welcome back to the Underground. This is the Intel update for March 15th through the 21st, 2026. We are officially 3 weeks into the war to stop the spread of Iran and the threats at home and overseas are starting to stack up. So, let's get right to it. Overall, the main focus has been on the expansion of the war in the Middle East due to entering a new phase of the war. The United States keeps bombing targets in Iran and the Iranians continue sending drones to attack American positions throughout the region. Down in the Red Sea, the Houthis have announced that they are now joining the war and will be opening up a southern front soon. They haven't done anything yet, but this is another threat to be aware of as the overall map of this war starts to expand around the globe. Around the world, another series of events that are underway right now are the second and third-order effects, which are starting to become more significant. This morning, the Times of London reported that government officials are working on plans to implement fuel rationing in the UK if the Strait of Hormuz continues to remain closed for much longer. Of course, these are just initial plans. Nothing is going into effect so far. However, this does go to show that what happens in the Middle East immediately impacts Western Europe and the United States at some point. All the way over in Southeast Asia, fuel rationing is already underway, and equally as important are the fertilizer shortages that are expected to impact the region during the upcoming rice planting season. It is still a few months away. However, even though this war has gone on for just a few weeks now, we're starting to have to think about famine potential here in the next few weeks. Separately, the United States has lifted some oil export sanctions on Iran so that they can export the oil that they have loaded onto their ships before the war began. Yes, you heard that right. We are actively bombing a nation every minute of the day, and at the same time we are allowing them to export oil for the first time in many years. This doesn't really matter anyway, I guess, because before the United States lifted sanctions, the Iranians were already carrying on business as usual with well over a dozen tankers meandering through the strait from Iran to the international market, mostly China and India, after the war began. In fact, even after President Trump announced the largest bombing raid in the history of the Middle East, his words not mine. The petroleum facility on board the island is operating just as it has since before the war, and tankers have been unloading oil at the terminal and departing even after the island was bombed. So, at the very wave top level, these are the concerns that we are looking at over the next few weeks. Economic instability and logistical challenges that we can't really predict ahead of time, but also the diplomatic complications that come about after the United States has torpedoed our relationships with everyone in the Middle East except for one country, which makes all kinds of international cooperation difficult in the long run. We are bombing Iran, and Iran is targeting our allies' oil facilities, and we are unsanctioning Iranian oil. So, suffice it to say that the situation is complicated at best. Concerning strategic movement for this week, like I mentioned, we are witnessing some major movements. In the Red Sea, the Ford carrier strike group is maneuvering north towards the Suez Canal after a laundry fire caused major damage to the ship. Initially, a fire was reported in the ship's laundry a few days ago, which is perfectly normal on board ship, and at the time it wasn't really worthy of mention. However, after a few days it became clear that this was a 30-plus hour firefight that actually had quite a bit of the crew involved in it over a period of almost 2 days. And then, the US Navy came out and said that the propulsion system was perfectly fine, which immediately raised eyebrows because that's kind of like sitting on an airplane and the pilot hopping on the intercom to state that the plane has a slight problem with the beverage cart, but engines 1 and 2 are perfectly fine, and there's definitely no problem with the fuel tank. Why would you even say that unless the situation was far worse than you had initially stated, which is the case with the Ford because this laundry fire, or whatever it was, was so serious that she is now combat ineffective, and she is being pulled off station to pull into Crete to conduct repairs. So, strategically, 50% of the aircraft carriers dedicated to this mission are offline, which is suboptimal. Likewise, other task forces are inbound to the Middle East. The USS Tripoli is almost in CENTCOM just a few days out from her journey from Japan, and the USS Boxer departed San Diego a few days ago. Both of these amphibious ready groups have Marine Expeditionary Units on board and both are scheduled to fall under CENTCOM's command in a few days with combat operations being possible probably by the end of next week at the earliest. In addition to the flat tops moving around, indications and warnings are mounting that the 82nd Airborne has been placed on some level of pre-alert to deploy. I do not know for sure if the warning order has been issued just yet. I do not think it has been and right now this may just be a general preparation rather than a more deliberate deployment. Honestly, if I were in command of a unit like the 82nd right now, I would be doing the same thing and wanting to make sure that things are good to go without any explicit order from higher up the chain. So, it could be that, but time will tell how this develops. Switching gears to focus on the home front for this week, indications and warnings are mounting of the threats to the homeland becoming more significant. Although, I must say we are really mostly grasping at straws because we really cannot say that X attack will take place at X place or at X time. And a lot of the events that have been made public over the past few weeks, we cannot really do much with. Again, the intelligence gaps are very, very large with nearly all of the terrorist attacks that have happened over the past few weeks. So, there's not a whole lot we can do other than just remain vigilant. Nevertheless, there have been a few incidents impacting the homeland this week worthy of mention. Last night, reports hit the mainstream media regarding a growing threat, drones. Several instances of drone swarm incursions have been reported at American military bases over the past few months, but a few weeks ago when the war began in the Middle East, these drone incursions kicked into high gear. Instead of seeing one or two quadcopter style drones, we're starting to see drone swarms at American military bases and other sensitive sites. I have many anecdotal reports that I cannot publicly share regarding these drone sightings, but based on what has been reported in the mainstream media, these are starting to become more significant. The PAO at Barksdale Air Force Base reported many drones in their airspace last week after the war began. For context, Barksdale is a facility that is known for hosting the bulk of our B-52 fleet. These probing reconnaissance efforts have been reported at many other installations, and apart from the drones, we have also seen an increase in IED attacks within the United States over the past few weeks. This week, we had the IED that was discovered at the visitor's center of MacDill Air Force Base, which was in place to the day after the memorial service for the service members who were lost during the war. This timing was probably intentional, but again, there is not really a whole lot of information in the public sphere on this incident at the moment. Hope to have more next week, though. Concerning the more indirect impacts of the war within the United States, Americans have been slow to feel the impacts of the war on the other side of the planet, but nevertheless, those impacts will be felt in very unique ways. For instance, many people are saying that we don't need the strategic oil reserves, or all that oil goes to China anyway, or some other political message to state that whatever is happening in the Middle East doesn't actually matter here at home, which is really just misleading because the situation is vastly more complicated and more nuanced than that. So, these claims are not only false, but they're misleading in terms of what it means for commodities. It turns out that introducing scarcity of a commodity impacts that commodity, no matter where it is on the planet. So, even if the United States produced 100% of the oil and gas that we needed, and if we could refine it all by ourselves with no outside help, since oil is a global commodity, if it becomes scarce in one part of the world, the price of our oil goes up, too. A lot of people right now are debating on whether or not we can actually make up the difference for the production of our oil here in the homeland, and people can argue about that if they want, but we but we have to really remember is the opportunity cost, which impacts commodities a lot more than one might think. So, we're going to start feeling the effects of the war over the next few days and weeks as these impacts begin to be identified. Of course, the early and easy one that's that most people can understand, or at least the way that most people will be impacted by the war, is gas prices. Gas is up a dollar over what the national average was before the war began, so people may not understand why this is happening, but it is. So, this is how global markets work. Just like the COVID era when it comes to logistics, we're playing with things that we don't really understand because we simply cannot predict the trickle-down effect of bringing chaos to any part of the world. In other words, we don't know what we don't know. And as the war continues, we're going to start identifying exactly the things that we're not really going to miss until they're gone, right? And on the diplomatic front, China is all happy to sit back and start developing new relationships as our own partners start questioning which horse they hitched their wagon to. So, at the very strategic level in terms of diplomacy and economics in the Middle East, the situation is most certainly not good, and it's only going to get worse the longer this war goes on. Moving to the more tactical situation on the ground, we arrive at the grand question this week: How goes the war? This week, several high-profile incidents have taken place. The Israelis targeted the South Pars gas facility, which sparked a major international incident due to the Qataris being dragged into this war more directly. And as a result of that attack, various messaging has been undertaken by the White House, which is honestly confusing, and I don't really know how to read it at this point. In the Persian Gulf itself, a humanitarian crisis is developing among the merchant vessels that are currently stranded and unable to transit the Strait of Hormuz. Many of these vessels are starting to run out of food and water, and many port authorities around the region are not letting merchants enter the ports to top off their supplies, either because they just don't have the supplies or because of the risk of a ship being sunk pier-side. Other vessels are too big to enter the shallow water ports anyway, and so they're having to go get food and water in crew boats. It's It's utter madness at this point. Considering targeting efforts on all sides, we are starting to see the effects of what we sometimes refer to as changeover. This is a rarely discussed phenomenon that occurs in warfare, which in this case is an example of basically running out of ammo with one weapon system, and therefore having to switch to another. What makes this a phenomenon is that there is an equal and opposite reaction depending on whether or not you were the aggressor or defender in a particular situation. The United States began the war using expensive standoff munitions, but the Iranians retaliated. They started their counterattack by using their more old and obsolete missiles. Similarly, on our side, we began the war using our brand new PAC-3 missiles in the Patriot batteries, but the Iranians began with their cheapest and least capable munitions. So, when it comes to purely an analysis of the munitions that have been used, the United States started with our best, and the Iranians started with their old and busted. Now, after the Iranians have caused us to expend our best, they can transition to their best. We saw this in Israel in particular because Israel got hammered a lot by a lot of those missiles on the very first day. But, after about a week or so, the Iranians had started using cluster munitions, why is this? Well, if the Iranians have oversaturated your missile defenses and you're running low on THAAD missiles, you're running low on Iron Dome stuff for more of the low-level drone attacks, and if you're running out of high-level interceptors, now the Iranians can start using their best munitions both to increase lethality and also to oversaturate the missile defenses that remain. Likewise, the United States is starting this changeover process in many regards as well, which you can read in two different ways. CENTCOM has stated that they are now beginning to use AH-64 Apache and A-10 Warthog gun runs along the Iranian coastline, engaging targets as they come up. Now, these weapon systems, both attack helicopters and low-level closer support aircraft, these are low-level assets. These are going to be targeting things very close to the ground, not from a thousand miles away. Now, you can read this as the United States is so awesome that we don't have to use the more expensive munitions anymore, and we're just mopping up the Iranians from close range. Or, you can read it as this. CENTCOM is having to assume more and more risk, throwing anything and everything at the Iranians at breakneck pace, simply because it is a question of volume. This is how I personally read the situation because of two things. For one, the photos coming out of the B-52s departing on bombing missions indicate that they are still using standoff munitions, in this case JASSM cruise missiles, and I believe the JASSM ER or extended range variants as well are also being used. Also, the successful targeting of the F-35 a few days ago is a huge tell, not just for the F-35 platform itself, although I'm sure some Lockheed guys are getting ripped over the coals right now, but also because it confirms that 3 weeks into this fight, the US has not achieved one of their stated goals, which is uncontested airspace. Pete Hegseth directly stated that this was a goal, and it has not happened yet, which is not an indictment of any kind on the US Air Force. It's just stating the obvious, which is that this is a hard fight, and the US is nowhere near mopping up the Iranians like the White House has been indicating. Remember that F-35 platform has been touted over the past decade as being an indestructible, next-level, completely amazing platform that is immune to all this kind of stuff. So, you can't really fall back on the classic argument that might have been made saying, "You know what? Even under the best of circumstances, one or two planes are probably going to get shot down. It's a war, things are crazy, stuff like that." Well, no, you can't really make that argument because you explicitly made the argument that the F-35 was invincible, and the Iranians proved that it's not because the Iranians hit it with probably a very low-level or a very old SAM system. Now, granted, the F-35 is clearly an amazing platform because it ate a missile and it still was able to fly, but still, we now see the risks that are coming to light. Three weeks into this war, the US has blown up a lot in Iran, but has this been enough to reduce combat power in Iran enough to where we feel safe enough to send a carrier through the strait, absolutely not, hard no on that. In fact, at this point, I would be very hard-pressed to believe that if this war ends anytime soon, as in it ends diplomatically and not militarily, I would doubt that the US would send a carrier through the strait ever again. Bottom line, this war, like all wars through history, is not going as well as expected for the aggressor based on the Pentagon's own metrics. And we can prove this very easily. The fact that not one, but two Marine Expeditionary Units are being deployed for this war is a strong indicator that things are not going to plan because if they were going to plan, why were these units not on station already before the war? And this is something that is not unique to the United States. Any nation which starts moving strategic assets after starting a fight clearly did not expect those resources to be needed. Likewise, evacuations of American positions around the region continue because once again, the United States did not expect the Iranians to target their bases in the region, which sounds hard to believe, but that's exactly what President Trump stated, he said this openly. And it does align with what has been observed over the past few days. Suffice it to say, American positions in the Middle East are getting hit harder than they have ever been hit before, and the damage that has been done to American positions throughout the Middle East is substantial. Now, the 64,000 lb elephant in the room is exactly what those two Marine Expeditionary Units are supposed to be doing in the Middle East. And I have been racking my brain trying to figure out exactly what we're trying to do with these here. My first gut feeling was that the triple-E was either a bluff, or it was for maritime security, or some other low-level task because you can't really do much with just one MEU, i'm sorry, guys. I hate to break it to you, but Iran is a big country. Even if we were to just avoid the Persian Gulf, avoid the Strait of Hormuz. Let's just take those two out of the equation. The coastline of Iran outside of the Strait of Hormuz is about 500 mi. So, you've got to go past 500 mi of Iranian coastline before you even get to the Strait of Hormuz. And then you've got hundreds more miles past the Strait of Hormuz before you get to the end of the Persian Gulf. Again, Iran is much bigger than it seems on the map. It seems like a small country on the map, but it is very large. Qeshm Island, for example, which has been in the news a lot lately. This is the main island in the Strait of Hormuz, and it's one of the main Iranian strongholds within the strait that kind of overlooks down onto the waterway there. Many of the drone attacks are being launched from this area, and there's a pretty good coastal defense contingent on this island. There's a lot of nooks and crannies to hide drone launchers and stuff like that. The only problem is this island on the map, it looks pretty small, but just for scale, it's roughly the size of Okinawa. In 1945, it took about 180,000 troops to seize Okinawa, and Qeshm Island doesn't even have a coastline suitable for an invasion. Most of the island is complete sheer like Cliffs of Dover cliff face. Another theory I've seen being talked about by pundits on a lot of the mainstream media that I have unfortunately had to watch regarding this conflict are are what about the smaller islands? Okay, so Qeshm Island is too big, what about the smaller ones? Well, let's take Larak Island for instance. This is another island in the strait that the IRGC use as a kind of a stronghold. It's more of a more of a recon base than anything else, but it does have coastal defenses. And it looks kind of small and cute on the map, right, wrong. This is actually the size of Iwo Jima, which took about 80,000 Marines to seize back in 1945. So, hopefully now the concerns are quite clear with the littoral considerations here. The White House is openly lying about how much they have devastated the Iranian coastline. Showing individual strikes on old generation launchers does not really paint the full picture. If we're showing clips of one missile or one bomb hitting one launcher or one target, how much do you think that pans out over 500 miles? Even if you were to just look at the map that I have right here, all of the points that you see by my lightest count in terms of the common intelligence picture map product that I have made, all of these red points on the map, all the sites that all of the potential targets that could be bombed, 95% of what they have militarily is not on my maps. Similarly, for American targeting efforts, I've mapped about a 15 to 1800 points that have been hit or struck that we can confirm have been hit or struck via satellite imagery or video from the ground. And if we're talking 15 to 1800, that's quite a bit less than what the United States has claimed, which is a well over 5,000 strikes. So, the White House has claimed 5,000 strikes. I've got on my maps 1,500 to 1,800 or so. So, we're not getting the full picture here. I just want everyone to be clear about that. We're not getting the full picture when we're looking at this stuff, but it's the best that we can do for now, best I can do for now. So, one of the main things that we just don't have a whole lot of fidelity on is the Iranian army. Like, what is the Iranian army doing right now? They have a ground force. They have a ground army of about 700,000 troops. And if you call up the local police forces, the militia, and all the other forces, you can probably get to like 1.1 to 1.3 million. Figures vary, obviously, and there's going to be quite a few casualties so far, but nobody's mentioned them at all. Nobody's mentioned the Iranian army at all. And the White House is pretending that they are bombing everything into oblivion. And personally, I don't think they're doing too much at the strategic level. Yeah, they are hitting missile launchers. And a missile launcher that's blown up can't be used again, right, that looks really cool. But at the strategic level, there are questions as to what the capabilities still remain, because the Iranians are still launching missiles. They're now launching their good missiles. They're now launching their good drones. And they're able to launch fewer and fewer of those because defenses have been degraded throughout the region. The United States has said that the strait is open, right? Trump has got his advisers on television saying telling merchants to, you know, have courage and go through the strait. Like, what are we doing here, you know? The president's telling people to sail their ship into a potential minefield here, a literal minefield in some cases, with no guarantee for their safety whatsoever. The White House is trying to call the merchant mariners who are not sailing through the strait. He's trying to call them cowards, which is just baffling. If the strait were open, if that were true, then why is the American aircraft carrier in the region too scared to even get close to it? If Trump wants maritime shipping to feel safe about transiting the strait, then why don't they send their carrier through? Or the five American warships that are currently in the Persian Gulf that no one seems to remember are there. Why is it that the United States is still loading up B-52s with JASSM stand-off munitions, which are launched from hundreds of miles away from Iran? Clearly, there is enough risk that makes stand-off munitions a major requirement for this fight, at least for some targets. And if we are using stand-off munitions, I have no idea why are we are even remotely considering a ground combat element at this point, because this goes against all military doctrine. And I'm not saying this because of any kind of personal feeling towards the war, although we all have personal feelings towards the war, right? I'm saying this because I am utterly aghast at the potential for us to even think about a ground combat element when we're still using stand-off munitions. Bottom line, I'm quite concerned that the Pentagon is counting their chickens before they're hatched, and I think that they think they might have a shot at it. I think the Robert McNamara LBJ era of thinking is definitely in play in the White House, and I think they're getting high on their own supply, and throwing out most strategic doctrine because politicians and generals alike are being force-fed the drone strike footage, and thus lay they are making high-level strategic decisions based on low-level tactical data. I genuinely think that they don't know that even if we were to use nuclear weapons, Iran could probably eat a half a dozen nuclear detonations before they would be softened up enough for a ground invasion to be possible. And the media has been pushing the idea of taking Kharg Island hard over the past few days. As unfortunate as it is, you really have to look at Fox News every now and then, unfortunately, to figure out what the neocon war establishment is trying to push in terms of military strategy here, and they're pushing Kharg Island right now, which to me is sheer and utter madness. We cannot even get an aircraft carrier within a hundred [snorts] miles of the strait, much less transit it. So, Kharg Island is completely off limits unless they want to do a helicopter assault force or like a half raid, which would be a bloodbath in every single scenario that anyone can dream up. Over the past week or so, I have been sitting at my desk trying to figure out what angle they might be able to press, what how they might be able to prosecute this war. And honestly, I can't figure out where they would want to get a foothold. You can definitely get a foothold in many places along the Iranian coastline. The question is, why would you want to, like, what's the point? What are they going to do? If you could put 4,000 Marines on the Qeshm Island airfield, the Qeshm International Airport, former International Airport. If you could do that, go right now, and you could do it without taking any casualties, what would be the point, what would you do? You're going to go door-to-door looking for Iranian soldiers to deliver right, like, what's the point? So, I don't understand what they're trying to do because again, the strategic vision for this war has not been conveyed clearly to the American people. No one really knows what we're doing here other than just causing a lot of destruction, and that's basically it. Which is If that's what they want to do, fine, but with a ground force, I don't know, man. I don't know what they're trying to do here. Venezuela was easy to call. Operation Midnight Hammer, again, was easy to call. But again, this situation now where we're in this, and we've been fighting for 21 days now, we've got 21 days of combat experience. We have got 21 days to lean on of what's been going on in the war, and so far, I don't know how this is going to work out. As all of this is developing by the minute, I'm going to do what I can to help map this out because I have a feeling that not only is de-escalation not on the menu anytime soon, but I think that we might be getting into a bit of a pickle here really soon when it comes to a ground force. I don't think it's too late to call it off. I don't think that the final decision has been made just yet, and there haven't really been that big many movements other than of course the Navy vessels with the Mew on board, but I certainly hope we break the trend, and this is actually a bluff. But at this point, I would personally be very surprised if some sort of ground combat element is not utilized. However, once again, things are changing rapidly, and everything is happening by the hour, right? And we have at least a week before any potential ground combat element is in position. So, we're going to have a few more days to go on the hunt for more indicators. I cannot definitively say we are going in just yet. I don't want to make that call at this at this point, but everyone can see that the indicators are stacking up. In addition to the tactical situation on the ground, this war has now expanded to include two combatant commands. This is no longer CENTCOM's baby alone as INDOPACOM is now involved due to Diego Garcia being targeted overnight. Last night, mainstream media reported that the Iranians tried to target Diego Garcia with two ballistic missiles. One missile splashed down on its own shortly after launch and the other was intercepted by the US Navy in the Arabian Sea. The reason this is so significant is that Diego Garcia is roughly twice the range of the max range that Iran was supposed to have. For those that don't know, Iranian missile range is basically just Israel. Their missile core, which is an entire branch of the military, was set up more or less with the goal of building missiles for combating their biggest threat, which is Israel. And you've got to respect that the Iranians are the ultimate haters because whenever a new missile came up on the drawing board, they'd basically say, "Can it hit Israel?" And that would be the main criteria for designing their new long-range ballistic missiles, at least. Their short-range stuff is obviously for more regional threats, but you get the general picture here. The Iranians were definitely not trying to do a North Korea and try to build an ICBM. They're not interested in hitting San Francisco or anything like that. The Iranians are not interested in hitting the United States, which is why the Diego Garcia shot is pretty interesting this morning. Now, it must be noted, and this is a very big pump-the-brakes moment. It must be noted that the reports that we have seen do not explicitly confirm that the Iranians actually have that much range. We do not know how far this missile flew before splashing down. And speaking theoretically for a moment, if I were the Iranians, I would definitely do it for purely deception purposes. I would lob a couple of ballistic missiles at Diego Garcia knowing full well that the missiles would land a thousand miles short, but also that the US would intercept them. So, the missiles fly out over the Arabian Sea, and then Navy dutifully intercepts them, and Iran claims that their missiles would have hit if it weren't for the meddling US Navy, right? Even if that wasn't the case, even if those missiles would never have gotten close to Diego Garcia. So, I guess the main distinction with this attack is whether or not you think that the Iranians would burn a couple of missiles to get everybody up in a tizzy, or if this was a legitimate attempt. That I do not know, and I guess the proof is in the pudding. The evidence on the other side of the aisle is also quite compelling, too. Why would the US Navy burn a missile if they detected that that Iranian missile was never going to hit anything anyway? Why would they try to intercept it at all? So, the fact that they tried to intercept it, and they did intercept one of those missiles, the fact that they did that is a pretty strong indicator that that missile would have hit something. Otherwise, they would have just let it pass and save the missile and make the Iranians look foolish, right? The other more obvious theory, which is kind of a blend of these ideas, is that maybe the Iranians are doing a little bit of live-fire testing. Maybe they Maybe they don't actually know their true range, right? Maybe they've built a missile, but they haven't actually tested it before, and they're trying to see how far they can really just send that sucker out there, which is probably the more likely theory. It could have been one of their existing missile systems that they set up to go farther, i don't know. Maybe they took the warhead out and replaced it with a smaller one so it could go farther, i don't know. This is all speculation, right? Either way, the Iranians are stretching their legs and trying to flex a bit now that the star of the show, their missile core, is starting to increase their attacks. So, that's where things stand right now. The war is only continuing to expand. The Iranians are getting better at their targeting efforts, and we are starting to dig to search for harder targets as time goes on. This is how all wars go, especially air wars. You kill all the dumb ones on the first day. You take out all the low-hanging fruit on the first day, and now we're starting to reach up to the top of the tree and trying to find the cream of the crop. And that's a lot harder to do for us, and it's a lot easier for the Iranians to do. So, again, inverse relationship here. As time goes on, the United States will have a harder time, and the Iranians will have an easier time. They have proven that their government did not only did not collapse after the initial strikes, but they probably planned for those strikes to occur. And also, they have been able to maintain command and control elements after this war began. So, in terms of how this war is going, I can't really say for sure. It's not really accurate to say someone's winning or someone's losing, but I can say that the United States is struggling to meet objectives. Whatever those objectives are, we don't really know with 100% certainty. But, when it comes to the Iranians, their goal of just surviving, their bar is so low it's on the floor. You know, just to survive. They're obviously very much able to meet that. And they are able to carry out increasingly more aggressive attacks and increasingly more pinpoint precise attacks as time goes on. So, that's something to think about as time goes on, and it's not something to degrade the United States military. This is just something that goes on in every conflict around the world, whether it's Russia and Ukraine or South Korea, North Korea, China, Taiwan. These are the concerns that are now playing out in real time in the Persian Gulf. So, again, this is nothing personal against any of the belligerents involved in this, this is pure reality. This is how warfare doctrine works. And we have to acknowledge the truth of the matter because none of the sides, none of the belligerents involved in this conflict are telling the truth, and we're seeing some some rather impressive propaganda being spread around on all sides. And we just got to cut right through it to get, you know, to the truth of the matter. So, while the conflict remains a central focus to the region, while we're kind of focused on the bullets and bombs of the region, extremely serious developments have occurred in Jerusalem, which I would like to touch on. Israeli forces, citing alleged security concerns, have closed the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in the Old City of Jerusalem. This church, one of the holiest sites in all of Christianity, has never been closed since its founding, shortly after the Lord Jesus Christ walked the earth. Even during the Muslim conquest of the city, even during the Ottoman Empire, the Islamic caliphs placed the church under custodianship and protected the building from harm. And even during the brutal Crusades, the church remained open. The church itself began operating internally with enhanced security posture since February 28th, since the war began, but as of this week, the church has been completely locked down by the Israeli government during the most significant time of the year for Christians, Great and Holy Lent. Right now, the church is preparing for the ceremony of the Holy Fire next month, a yearly miracle which occurs in the empty tomb of Christ inside the church. This closure would be a major incident even during the best of times, but during the lead-up most important yearly event for Christians, this is a clear case of deliberate persecution of the highest order for which there is no defense or justification, and is a very big deal when it comes to international relations. Similarly, Al-Aqsa Mosque has also been closed for some time for similar reasons, security, general security concerns. Al-Aqsa Mosque has also been closed several other times before by Israeli forces since times became a little bit more kinetic in 2023, but this year it was also closed directly before Ramadan. So, I did want to point that out. The Muslims have been impacted as well. It's just that Al-Aqsa being closed has happened before, and the two holiest sites in Islam are actually Mecca and Medina, so not exactly in Jerusalem. But again, Al-Aqsa is a major facet of the Old City of Jerusalem, and it's important to note nevertheless. I have also seen some reporting that the Western Wall has been closed as well, or at least had access restricted, but I'm not really sure about that, and all of the synagogues throughout Jerusalem, of course, remain open. So, regardless of whatever security threats exist, the decisions to close holy sites were made unilaterally by the Israeli government in violation of the complex administration of the Old City, which is jointly managed by a complicated arrangement of authorities throughout the city. I know we probably don't want to talk about this so much. Personally, I would really prefer it if there wasn't a holy war component to this conflict, but at this point it is painfully obvious that a good chunk of this war is actually being fought for the purposes of attempting to fulfill biblical prophecy, at least for some people and some of the major belligerents here. And honestly, guys, I really don't know what to do with that. Similar story with the strategic military doctrine at play here. I mean, I have a whole bookshelf of warfare publications going back detailing every armed conflict since the Napoleonic Wars, going all the way back to ancient warfare as well. And not a single student of the history of warfare would ever say that a ground invasion of Iran would be a good idea at this juncture. And right now, the White House and the dozen or so advisors around the president think that they have a chance at a ground invasion. They're floating this idea in the public sphere, are you high, i don't know. Maybe I'm just stupid here, and I just have more of a pigeonhole view of the conflict than I thought I did. So, if anybody out there has a good explanation or a good ability to explain the military merits of putting the these specific units on the ground in Iran, and how those units would achieve a strategic goal, because again, that's the whole point, right? You can put 4,000 Marines, 6,000 Marines, you can put 10,000 Marines on the ground in Iran. You can do that, 100%. I've got hundreds of HLZs they can use, but, what's the point? How would that help achieve the end goal of the war, that I don't know. Now, if you were to change the numbers and say 4 or 500,000 troops, I would say, "Okay, well, now we're talking about a about a military objective actually being met." But, 4,000 Marines and the 82nd, I'm sorry, guys, I just don't see what the point of this is in terms of achieving a strategic goal. So, moving forward over the next few days, my general plan is to continue monitoring the situation overseas, and especially here at home. I know that most people are vastly more concerned with what threats are present to the homeland, and I am concerned about this as well. That is my chief concern with all of this, the homeland. Civil unrest over immigration has seriously simmered down after President Trump pulled out of Minneapolis. And personally, I think that was the height that was the peak of immigration and deportation efforts. I would very much like to be wrong about that. I would love for deportation and immigration law enforcement operations to continue personally because it reduces the threats to the homeland. But, I personally think that we're we're really done with immigration being a focus by the White House for right now, for sure, same with Epstein. No one in any position of power is even going to go through the motions of pretending to care about seeking justice on that front. So, it'll have to be us. It'll have to be the little guy. It'll have to be us, the average taxpayer, who are trying to make sure that we don't forget the crimes that have occurred and also the crimes that are probably still in progress. So, I'm sorry to say that domestically it's a little bit of mixed news when it comes to civil unrest. The far left is still protesting. protests may or may not get kinetic. But, for the most part, they're not really upset because they got what they wanted. So, that will be something to be aware of as we move into the summertime. And on that front, let's wrap things up for today with the Ghost Net reports for this week. We cannot control what our nation is doing at the national level, but we do have enough control to do what we can to improve our own skills. We can moan and complain on the internet and we can doom scroll all day long. But, what are we doing each day to better ourselves? What are you doing to improve the world around you as it falls apart? Let me tell you, friends, there's plenty of work to do on that front. One line of effort is to make sure that we can keep in contact and share information in an off-grid manner, no matter what happens, whether it be internet communications outages or censorship alike. Maintaining that link to the world is very important, and this week the Ghost Net has been fantastic with many users providing helpful information on their local areas, which is always a good thing to see. So, that's all I have for today, everyone. Thank you for sticking around as I desperately try to get more organized with all of my data and make things easier for all of you to have on hand. Because that's what it's all about, right? Having access to information that you can use to make your own decisions. And if the data is hard to access or not really easy to understand, it's of no use. So, please continue to bear with me over the next few weeks as I try to figure out ways of balancing how much information is useful and how much is really just the chaff that isn't helpful. So, we'll get to it to do the best we can, and I hope all of us can do the same. So, thank you again, everyone, and I'll see you next time. And as always, fight in the shade.