Intel Update - Sep. 12 - Tanker Wars

Hello again everyone and welcome back to the underground. This is the Intel update for September 6th through the 12th, 2026. Just when we think things can't get any more insane, the world decides to throw us a curveball. And this week, the missile East has kicked into high gear once again with both sides intensifying their targeting of merchant vessels. Both Iran and the United States have shifted to a new phase of the war, which I think can be safely classified as a tanker war, as both sides are targeting tanker vessels without making any progress toward a solution to the conflict. Around the world, the war in Europe has remained hot as always, with both Ukraine and Russia carrying on as before and continuing to strike oil refineries. In the United Kingdom and Ireland this week, protests against illegal immigration have intensified once again as the populace keeps pressure on the government agencies that are allowing the invasion by sea. Several high-profile protests have been undertaken at the port facilities where migrants are being imported to, with the protest growing by the day. Within the Middle East, the Houthis have made major gains after they have advanced dozens, if not hundreds of miles over the past week, expanding their control of Yemen. Similarly, Saudi Arabia has been hosted to significant attacks on their East West pipeline, which has caused major setbacks in oil exports. Within the homeland this week, there have been a few items of note that I did not mention in the Standard Wire reports. So, let's run down the list so that we're all caught up. In Texas this week, an Iranian cyber group claimed credit for a cyber attack on the AT&T network, which caused a brief outage on Monday. Somewhat interestingly, AT&T have flatly denied this. They say that the outage was caused by someone stealing copper. So, what actually happened here is anyone's guess. It's possible that the Iranians are lying about conducting the attack to make themselves look better, but it's also possible that American utility companies would want to downplay the impact that malign actors can have on their systems. Also, on the cyber front, the cyber attack from last month involving Boston Scientific turned out to be much more significant than they first disclosed. Earlier this week, Boston Scientific filed a report with the SEC regarding the impact the cyber attack had on their operations, which turned out to actually shut down most of the company for a couple of weeks. Not only were customer orders shut down for a long time, but the company's sterilization chambers and manufacturing facilities were taken completely offline due to the cyber attack. Around the country, the impacts of a major driver's license data breach are still being felt, which originated from the discovery of over 153 million American and Canadian driver's licenses being sold on the dark web. After this was discovered a couple of weeks ago, the leak was eventually traced back to idscan.net this week, which is a company that works with various entities to scan driver's licenses for various companies. For instance, marijuana dispensaries, medical companies, hotels, and so on. Chances are, if you've ever had to hand your driver's license to a cashier for something and they've scanned it into their system with a barcode reader, your driver's license could possibly be in the idscan.net database. And now that database is for sale on the dark web. Other major cyber incidents this week involved a cyber attack on the hospital in an arr county of Maryland, which took their appointment scheduling system offline. So all in all, even though things are thankfully not popping off kinetically in the United States, the fifth generation warfare continues on, mostly in the form of cyber attacks that cause everything from inconvenience to major logistical problems. These attacks are certain to continue and get even more substantial in the ramp up to the election season. So that will be something to remember over the next few weeks. Within the Middle East, everyone's favorite region. I know two different wars have become united in their impact to the global economy. The hottest conflict this week has been reported down south in Yemen as the Houthis have made significant gains this week. Houthis have captured the port of Mocha and now control the entire Yemeni coastline on the Red Sea. They also pushed out to a few of the islands in the Red Sea and the Bubble Mandeb Strait. So they now control and have more positive influence over these two main waterways on the mainland. My guess is that while they consolidate the gains they have made, they will probably begin pivoting east with the port city of Aiden very likely to be on the chopping block next. The Saudis don't really have the resources to fight this. They've demonstrated this by asking the United States for help by calling the White House twice in a single day. And if they're wise, they might want to start rethinking their stance after the Houthies have been targeting Saudi petroleum infrastructure, such as these strikes on the East West pipeline a few days ago. This pipeline, which is actually two separate pipelines running next to each other, is the only way the Saudi Arabia could bypass the straight. And as of this morning, this pipeline network is offline. Of note, the circumstances of these strikes are not entirely clear. Last night, the Saudi government stated that the East West pipeline was struck by drones launched from Iraq, which is interesting because if that is true, that would be the first time that's happened in a while. Several Saudi media outlets made no mention of the Houthi strikes that also took place. So, right now, it looks like the pipeline pumping stations might have been hit by both Iraqi militia or unnamed groups within Iraq and the Houthis. It's hard to say who actually hit the main pumping station which took this uh pipeline system offline. There have been other strikes too. We're still waiting on more clear satellite imagery to determine exactly what got hit. But there has been a lot of abnormal flaring incidents. So emergency uh flaring and venting of flammable gases all up and down this pipeline right after the attacks. So it doesn't look like they just hit one pumping station. It looks like they probably hit several. Local sources are claiming they hit eight different pumping stations. I don't know about all that. Maybe, maybe not. I don't know. But they certainly hit one big one for sure. And it looks like they hit probably several smaller ones as well. It's really hard to say. Once again, waiting on more uh clear satellite imagery to determine exactly what happens. But this is still a very interesting development. To the north in the Persian Gulf, the other conflict is still going on this week as the war reignited earlier this week with the United States beginning a new phase of the war. The exact timing of everything is really hard to verify, but the general sequence of events this week has been as follows. Last Saturday, a series of exchanges took place between the United States and Iran, which snowballed into more routine targeting throughout the week. I have not been able to nail down exactly who started firing first, but the first major milestone was reported by Iran with the targeting of an American warship. As we recall, last weekend, Iran targeted the USS George Washington aircraft carrier with a new type of anti-hship ballistic missile, which caused the ship to take evasive action. Whether they intended to hit the ship or if it was a warning or if it was a test, all of that is debatable. There's really not a whole lot of evidence to figure out exactly what the intent was behind this targeting action. However, around the same time, a couple of destroyers in the Gulf of Aman were also targeted in a similar manner. No US Navy ship was hit, at least officially. But this was the spark that was needed to kickstart another phase of the war. After that missile was launched at the aircraft carrier, the United States responded by striking Iranian merchant ships off the coast of Oman and in the vicinity of Car Island. From there, the Iranians hit back hard, striking American bases in Jordan. These bases were targeted because the Iranians determined that the aircraft that carried out at least some of these strikes came from Muakal Salty and Princess Han air base. Iran launched several dozen ballistic missiles and drones, which resulted in over 100 PAC 2 and PAC 3 interceptors being launched by Patriot batteries around the region in order to take out the incoming Iranian missiles. Despite this effort, many missiles made it through defenses to strike American bases. Right now, casualty reports have not been disclosed by the Pentagon, but the casualty figures on the DoD's website keep getting updated, so maybe within a few days, we'll have a better idea of how many people were killed or wounded. After these initial strikes on Saturday and Sunday night, Iran continued pressing their attacks throughout the week with new missile attacks on American bases being reported every single night up until Thursday. The trend this week has been for Iran to launch what we might call, you just colloquially, a preemptive strike. So Iran is not interested in the tit fortat kind of back and forth you strike us we strike you kind of thing. Iran has been launching strikes just in advance and the United States has not been retaliating for the most part. To the best of my knowledge uh the United States has not responded to the missile strikes on Muakulti and Princess Asan air base. Nor have they responded to the uh missile strikes that were targeting the UAE or Kuwait from I think a week and a half ago. So there's been quite a bit of debate as to why the United States is not retaliating to these specific strikes. I don't know. Maybe they're trying to save munitions. Maybe they figure they don't want to escalate it anymore. I don't know. My gut assessment is that I think they're probably trying to save up as much munitions as possible for a further advancement of the campaign within about a month or so. That's just a hunch and not really based on anything solid. I I think that that's probably what they're trying to do. They're trying to get together an October surprise, so to speak. And that might be why the United States is not retaliating. Let the Iranians hit bases that are largely empty. They're not completely empty. There's still Americans there. Americans lives are still in harm's way. But the United States does not want to spend a whole lot of expensive tomahawk missiles at the moment. I think they're saving them up for later on. So that's just a theory though. What the United States has been striking has been civilian ships. So on the American side, the United States has begun the targeting of merchant vessels as reprisal for the Iranian targeting of US Navy vessels. So, as it stands, the Pentagon, but specifically Sentcom Commander Admiral Brad Cooper and Secretary of War Hegsth, have stated that for every American warship that that is targeted, the United States will target Iranian civilian ships, specifically tankers, which is exactly what the US Navy has done this week. Several Iranian tanker ships have been sunk andor targeted in general this week, though the exact nature of each strike has varied. Some strikes have been the classic disabling strikes, such as a hellfire strike on the ship's rudder or the engine room. Some ships, however, have been deliberately sunk and struck with very substantial munitions. I do not know why some vessels have gotten the comparatively light treatment of just a rudder strike and why other ships have been hit really hard. Sentcom has not really been clear on why they are targeting these ships differently, but it could be due to the aircraft involved in the strikes. I'm not sure. It could just be that they struck with what they had on their wing. I don't really know. Either way, this tit fortat tanker war has continued with the Iranians targeting American warships as well as tanker vessels trying to sneak through the straight and the US has retaliated by striking merchant vessels only for the most part. No land strikes have been reported in Iran this week except for a couple of strikes that were speculative strikes in Sirk. I don't know if those got confirmed or not, but for the most part, the US has been striking things mostly on the water this week. The United States has also not hit any military targets this week that I have found, which is the gigantic elephant in the room. Some of you might be asking, "Wait a minute. Iran is striking warships and the United States is striking civilian ships. That doesn't sound quite right." Well, yeah, I can't really refute that. So, unfortunately, the PR victory this week has gone in Iran's favor because now they can claim that their strikes on merchant vessels are justified because the US is now doing it, too. I do not know the logic behind the United States deliberately targeting civilian ships explicitly and clearly for the purposes of reprisal, but it's not very good. just to kind of crack that can just a little bit. Uh there are some reasons as to why it would be legal for a military strike to be conducted on a civilian vessel. But most of those reasons are in like coastal defense doctrine as in like there's a ship who's approaching your shoreline and it's within the 12 nautical miles of your your territorial waters and it refuses hails and you strike the ship to stop it from coming closer to your country. Right? There are reasons as to why that is considered to be normal in, you know, most maritime law. But it gets really tricky when you're in the Middle East and you're not in your own territorial waters and you're not trying to disable the ships. You're explicitly stating that you're trying to sink civilian ships, not disable them. They're not a military threat. And you also acknowledge that there's no clear self-defense criteria being considered with these strikes. So again, this is not really good. Uh, I don't know what Sentincom wants to gain by doing this, but they stand a lot to lose on the information front. I don't know, man. I would not want to be the JAG officer who would be sitting at the table during the approval process for legally authorizing these strikes. I have been trying to rack my brain this week trying to figure out how in the Sam Hill they have made these strikes legal. And I don't think they are. I think they just did it anyway. And from what I know, I don't think these strikes would have been legal dynamic strikes because there's no hostile intent or hostile act. Most of these ships are sitting at anchor and you can't even see anyone on the ship. There's no military hardware on the deck of the ship. So, you can't claim, you know, self-defense when you're striking a ship at anchor, a civilian vessel at that. And on the deliberate targeting side, civilian ships are labeled as civilian ships. They're not something that you can just target willy-nilly. So, I don't know. I would be very interested in I don't know 50 or 60 years when these documents finally get declassified to find out what logic they were using and what sections of the Sentcom targeting guidance were they using to strike these ships. All of that being said, at this point I would be willing to bet that key decision makers within the Pentagon are probably thinking about their behavior in the context of the looming potential change of the internal political situation within the US. If the US is intentionally and voluntarily striking civilian targets as retribution for Iran striking military targets, that alone is pretty strong evidence that the United States is desperate for a win that has not materialized. And once again, it just serves up a softball to the Iranians, which they didn't have to do. It's an unforced error. Besides that, right, the propaganda value of this is is quite significant. So, I guess there's no real use in kind of griping about it so much because, well, there's not a whole lot we can do about it. But potential legal issues aside, the immediate impact that will be mostly felt here in the homeland will be in the economic realm. And the energy crisis is getting worse by the day. And on that front, with the energy impact to the homeland here, it is challenging to describe this problem without seeming almost alarmist or unreasonable. But at this point, it would be wise to forecast not just high energy prices, but sheer availability issues. Many people who don't follow the energy markets might theorize that, okay, the war doesn't really matter. All it does is just makes things more expensive and, you know, gas prices will just simply climb higher and higher, rising steadily in conjunction with the crisis in the Middle East, getting worse. In the mind's eye, we picture a sliding scale. If the situation deteriorates and the Iranians and the Americans start fighting again, prices go up. If things calm down, prices go down. Within this line of thinking though, it's easy to get caught up in the academia of purely number crunching without really fully considering what happens at the far ends of the spectrum. One of the big problems with this is that a lot of times we forget to take a step back and just look at how far off the rails and and off of the manuals and out of the textbooks we've gotten. A lot of the stuff that happens dayto-day in the United States, but especially around the world these days, we don't necessarily have a super good uh frame of reference for. We are indeed living in historical times and outliers and statistics based on extreme circumstances at the very far edges of like re you know historical records. These kinds of events are very hard to rationalize in terms of everyday life. Prices climbing higher is true to a point. Gas prices will continue to rise until availability becomes an issue. It's really hard to put a number on this because we've had es and flows. This conflict has gone on for so long that demand is starting to contract. So global oil and petroleum demand is expected to contract and and get smaller over the next few months and well at least into next year. Diesel is the canary in the coal mine that is the sharpest early indicator for how the situation is quite serious. But this is mostly due to diesel already being strained more than other fuel types over the past 6 months. The sharply rising diesel prices this week are also a reflection of the exponential nature of the problem. It's slow to rise and then suddenly bedum erupts all at once. Will we ever get to a point of, you know, mass gas shortages? I I don't know. But it's unlikely to happen in the immediate short term, even with the chaos in the Middle East. We're probably not going to be running out of gas anytime soon, at least over the next couple of months. But we are losing the buffer that we have had for many decades now. Even considering these serious developments over there in the Middle East, it will take a few more weeks for things to get to the point that we really start freaking out. So, it's definitely not freakout time just yet, but it's it's time for a little bit of concern here. So right now concern is elevated because something has got to give and the options for solving this crisis are dwindling. Looking forward to the next few months. We do have a few milestones on the menu which will complicate what issues we face this winter. First up we have the impacts of the East West pipeline being out of action in Saudi Arabia for the foreseeable future. I don't know how long this pipeline will be down for. I'm waiting on some crisp satellite imagery to figure out exactly what got hit. We need to figure out exactly how bad the situation is in Saudi Arabia. And of course, the Saudis aren't exactly uh keen on letting the public know how bad it is. So, we're going to have to kind of circle back around uh when we get some more imagery of the region, which might take a week or so. In short, that pipeline being offline is something we need to keep an eye on over the next week or so whenever we can figure out how bad the situation is. Up next, next month is the anniversary of the October 7th attacks in Israel. And there is growing concern that the week of October 7th is going to present another flash point for the war to escalate. Since this will be a little bit less than a month from the midterm elections, everyone who's not America stands to gain from trying to escalate the situation to pressure us. So, that's something to be aware of. I'm I'm going to be watching that week quite significantly because there's been a lot of speculation and conjecture about what is planned for that week. Some of it is quite concerning. All of it is just a guess, but it would be wise to be aware of that potential flash point as we get closer to it. Likewise, if it turns out that the Iranian and American attacks on oil tankers resulted in traffic through the straight dwindling once again, this is going to mean that the loss of the Saudi pipeline is going to make this slog through the next few months of the energy crisis that much more impactful. So, with all of this geopolitical stuff in mind, let's talk about what we can do right now and kind of wrap up with some general thoughts on how we can prepare for these strange times that are ahead over the next couple of weeks at least. Once again, it's a slow crash, right? So, it's not something that's going to be an emergency right here, right now, but it looks like we might have to start mitigating the effects of this expanding snowball of problems. It is, after all, National Preparedness Month, and I personally am going through and making sure that I have basic emergency preps taken care of, as well as some of the more pertinent energy needs. Obviously, with a more slow speed crash kind of disaster that we're living through here right now, I don't think that panic buying or emergency hoarding is really necessary at this point, but there are some things that I would recommend thinking about right now, especially since problems tend to compound at the worst possible times. As for me, I'm thinking of energy needs first and foremost. Again, just trying to get ahead of the winter time, trying to frontload a lot of issues, and it would probably be a good idea to start reassessing your energy needs, especially moving into the winter season. If you have an energy need that you think might be more expensive in a couple of months time, then it might be worth uh checking that out to see if if you can get kind of a discount at the moment, you may find that it's going to be expensive no matter what you do, but something to keep in mind. I know a lot of people use fuel oil up in the Northeast and down here in the south, we use uh propane a lot. A lot of times people have propane tanks and around this time of year, actually probably within the next month or so, people are going to start getting deliveries of propane or or natural gas. So, this might not affect hardly anyone or it might affect more of you than you might think. Either way is worth checking into. Another thing to be aware of is again communications. Kind of bringing this back to the news for this week in this country. Here in the homeland this week, we've really mostly been affected by cyber attacks. So, that's something that's going to continue for a while. There have been a lot of data breaches, a lot of leaks of PII. It's it's just been kind of a mess this month. So, keeping an eye on that would be a good idea. Making sure that you have a basic communications plan. A lost contact plan is probably one of the most useful things that you can have. Just getting together with family members or even friends and co-workers and hash out a plan for what to do if the cell phone towers go down for a couple hours. You know, that's something that's cheap and easy to do and you don't need to get involved with any, you know, complicated radio stuff. Just have a general plan for what to do if you, you know, can't make contact with family members. And generally speaking, I myself am over the next couple of weeks trying to look into see what things might get more expensive as the energy crisis gets more serious over the next few weeks. Obviously, if the war is going to continue on and if this tanker war is going to continue on, diesel prices are going to go up and up and up. And with diesel prices going up, everything else goes up because everything runs on diesel or coffee from Dunkin Donuts. But I'm not quite sure there's a difference between the two. Either way, it would be wise to start looking into the things that are going to get more expensive, big purchases you might have to make because it doesn't take a genius to see that shipping and delivery prices are probably going to go up over the next couple of months. We may not know exactly what's going to happen, but we can plan for generalities. And perhaps that's the best way to close things out for today, just the sheer uncertainty of it all. We do know that the war will continue. That's not going to be ending anytime soon. And because of that, energy prices will climb higher. What we don't know are the events that might take place further down the line, which make things worse. In a couple of months, we're going to be heading into the winter season in a compromised state already when the price of consumer goods is looking to increase because of rising fuel prices. So, you might find that by the time things get super serious, you have less flexibility than you thought you would have. Most of the time, this is not something that you can just purchase your way out of by hoarding preps, but having some capability on hand is good just in case things get squirly. So, that's all I have for today. I know kind of a long week this week, but thanks for sticking around. And for those of you who would like all of my research and mapping products, all of the sources for each report I write are on my Obsidian page. And if you want my more geospatial products, I've been updating my maps pretty much every day as usual. So, if you want the data, it's all there on ARGIS or my GitHub page as KMZ's for loading into ATAC. After all, who doesn't like going to an airsoft match with every single air strike that I've mapped in the Middle East on their phone? So for the professional larpers out there, I've got you covered. But if you have a more operational need for stuff like that, it's all there as well. So whatever you need, it's all there to pick through. So thanks again to everyone and I'll see you next time. And as always, fight in the shade.