The Ukrainian Interlude is over

April 16, 2026 X.T.M 7 Comments filed under Precedent, X.T.M

The Iranian One has just started

Nobody seems to be interested in Pakistan’s diplomatic resurrection. What does it mean that a country written off as failed just a year ago is now the hinge of a regional peace settlement and averting World War Three on the double. This is the actual story of 2026 and it is not on our comment boards.

Pakistan: From Failed State to Diplomatic Champion

A year ago, before Operation Sindor, Pakistan was being written off in every serious strategic publication in the English language. The IMF was reluctant. Every mainstream Indian and Western analyst agreed. Pakistan was finished as a regional actor of any significance.

Today Pakistan is mediating, leading, the Iran crisis. The Hormuz situation, which could have escalated into a catastrophic closure of the world’s most important oil chokepoint, is moving toward resolution largely because Pakistan has positioned itself as the only party credible with Tehran, Riyadh, and Washington simultaneously.

The war that looked civilisational is now looking more like a pivot point. Pakistan is not a failed state. India is not uniquely ascendant under PM Modi. The question of whether the BJP holds power post-Modi is now a live one, not a theoretical one. Iran is not isolated. Israel is not unbreakable. The realignment is happening now, in real time, and almost nobody seems to be writing about it.

Iran Stood Up Continue reading The Ukrainian Interlude is over

Ikkis: Thoughts on another Propaganda Movie

March 29, 2026 Maneesh Taneja 143 Comments filed under Maneesh Taneja, Popular

Second Lieutenant Arun Khetarpal is an Indian Army legend. A National Defense Academy (NDA) and Indian Military Academy (IMA) alum, Khetarpal was commissioned into Indian Army’s armoured regiment, Poona Horse and won India’s highest gallantry award the Paramvir Chakra, posthumously, for his heroism in the 1971 India-Pakistan war. Sriram Raghavan’s Ikkis is an autobiographical account of Arun’s life and the Battle of Basantar. A battle where Khetarpal’s Centurion tank took on the Pakistan army’s Patton tanks and fought valiantly before he succumbed to injuries on the battlefield. The movie stars Agastya Nanda, grandson of Amitabh Bachchan, as Arun Khetarpal with Dharmendra and Jaideep Ahlawat. The former plays the role of Brigadier Madan Lal Khetarpal, Arun’s father and the latter plays the role of Brigadier Nisar of the Pakistan army.

The movie recounts the visit of Brigadier Khetarpal, in 2001, to Lahore where he is hosted by Brigadier Nisar of the Pakistan Army. The senior Khetarpal is visiting Lahore for his college reunion and to visit Sargodha from where his family had to migrate in the aftermath of India’s partition in 1947. This story track runs in parallel to the story of Arun’s days at the NDA, IMA, days leading up to the battle and the battle itself. The senior Khetarpal, now in his eighties is all dewy eyed for his roots and the younger one, who has turned 21 (Ikkis is the word for the number 21 in Hindi) is eager and keen to prove his mantle on the battlefield. The retired Brigadier is serenaded by everyone, by his hosts, his former classmates and the family that now lives in his ancestral house. The young second lieutenant is learning the brutal nature of combat and the human cost of war as he rolls on towards Basantar. The dramatic arc of the movie ends with Brigadier Nisar telling the elder Khetarpal that he was the commanding officer of the Patton that shot the lieutenant’s tank and it was his assault that proved fatal.

I am a big Sriram Raghavan fan. His Johnny Gaddar makes it to every list of top 10 Hindi movies that I have ever made. Raghavan has the knack of writing stories and characters that are unconventional for commercial Hindi cinema, his plot twists don’t disappoint and nobody uses songs from Hindi movies of the 1950s, ’60s & ’70s like Raghavan. He eschews over the top dramatics and gets his actors to deliver pitch perfect performances.

Ikkis is handicapped by the fact that it is autobiographical. Raghavan has limited scope for crafting a story that surprises. This is his attempt at making a war movie and the stories of the two Khetarpals is a prop. He wants us to see that Indians and Pakistanis are the same people, there are no winners in a war, soldiers are common folk who pay with their lives for the idea of nationhood, there is common humanity that binds us all and the Pakistan army, just like the Indian army, is a professional force doing what is necessary. He uses all the tropes to make these points. Scenes of the elder Khetarpal with Brigadier Nisar’s family, his former classmates, the joyous outdoor dinner organized by the occupants of his ancestral home, the bullets ridden, lacerated bodies of soldiers and the depiction of Brigadier Nisar as an honorable gentleman who represents the best of Pakistan army. Continue reading Ikkis: Thoughts on another Propaganda Movie

“What did Op Sindoor actually accomplish”?

March 23, 2026 RecoveringNewsJunkie 60 Comments filed under Popular, RecoveringNewsJunkie

23rd March 2003. Twenty three years ago today, a Pakistani Operative Zia Mustafa of the Laskhar-e-Toiba walks into the village of Nadimarg, Jammu and Kashmir. Wearing fake uniforms, Zia and his accomplices wake up the the village, and then proceed to murder 11 men, 11 women and a boy after lining them up. Walking away, the terrorists hear a baby crying, and order to silence him. The baby becomes murder victim #24. Link

23 March 2026, I read a comment on a BP thread discussing the West Asia war and Iran’s defiance, and the question that is the the topic of this post is asked.

I feel obligated to answer it. The statistics of so-called ‘non-state actor’ victims inflicted by Pakistani groups on Indian soil, since the 1990s, into the 2000s and beyond are stark. For an Indian who has grown up to adulthood in these years, actually lived through multiple decades where hundreds if not thousands of Indians dying as a result of the Lashkars and Jaish of the world was just part and parcel of life – all given succor by the Pakistani military and state. The datasheet linked here shows the tragedy that has been slowly but surely being deterred – and this is only starting with the year 2000. According to SATP, more than 25000 deaths occurred in J&K between 1988 and 2000.

The change in the public response of the Indian government, starting with the surgical strikes in 2016, and then escalated with the Balakot Bombing raids, and the direct and sharp decrease in the number of terrorism incidents is unmistakable. Operation Sindoor, the 4 day skirmish that took place in May 2025 on the heels of unarmed tourists being murdered in cold blood – is the exclamation mark in a simple statement that demonstrates Indian resilience and response when challenged with terrorism. No more will such attacks go unanswered. And the ultimate sponsors of such evil – the Pakistan Military itself – will have to bear direct consequences delivered. Via Brahmos-Mail.

Nobody needs a degree in statistics, to spot the co-relation in the timeline – India starts executing public retaliation in the aftermath of terror attacks, the frequency of such attacks drops sharply.

As far as the spreadsheets accounting and the nuts and bolts of what targets were hit during Op Sindoor that would count as “actual accomplishments” – there is ample evidence available for any objective observer to get themselves informed. From satellite imagery of multiple PAF bases and runways ‘double-tapped’ into shutting down for months, to ‘hardened’ aircraft shelters being demolished and rebuilt months after the fact.

But what Op Sindoor accomplished goes beyond merely a largely one-sided ledger of inflicting losses to military bases and flagship bases of terrorist organizations – Op Sindoor was a demonstration of commitment by the Indian state – a resolve that no longer will the nuclear umbrella allow the Pakistani Military to continue waging its ‘jihad of a thousand cuts’ without the consequences of a military conflict. One that will inflict costs not just on the bankrupt Pakistani state, with FATF gray lists hurting its citizens. Send terrorists to murder Indians, and bombs will drop on Pakistani Military bases in response. Op Sindoor is a promise of resolve. The Indian government will respond militarily if you threaten the security of its citizens.

Post-script: Apart from making an unambiguous demonstration of Indian deterrence when facing up against terrorism emanating from Pakistan, arguably the greatest indicator of the success of Op Sindoor, is the Pakistani Military’s attempt at copy-pasting their own version on Pakistan’s Eastern Border. Unfortunately, the results for the second sibling that was birthed from ‘Cracking India’ in 1947, have been a lot more….mixed.

The Hormuz Ultimatum: Wealth Doesn’t Win Wars

March 20, 2026 X.T.M 33 Comments filed under X.T.M

Wealth Doesn’t Win Wars

A contact in New York mentioned, almost in passing, that the shelves at their local (premium) supermarket were beginning to empty. Not bare, but noticeably thin, the way they go before a blizzard. People panic-buying quietly, without announcement. At LaGuardia, long queues that the local press has barely covered. The official newsflow says nothing. But the supermarket shelves don’t lie.

This is how the consequences of a war 6,000 miles away arrive in the richest city in the world; not with sirens, but with gaps on the grocery shelves and unexplained airport delays that nobody in authority seems in a hurry to explain. The information lag is itself a story. There is roughly a week between what is happening and what is being reported. Don’t believe one’s lying eyes.

BB’s thesis is that military power is ultimately a function of GDP. It is a reasonable working assumption. It is also, we would argue, dangerously wrong in the specific conditions we are now watching play out in real time.

The United States and Israel are the two wealthiest, most technologically sophisticated military powers to have ever jointly prosecuted a war. Their adversary is a sanctioned, inflation-wracked theocracy that has been massacring its own citizens and losing proxy after proxy for two years. And yet here we are, Day 23 of Operation Epic Fury, with Trump issuing a 48-hour ultimatum to obliterate Iran’s power plants unless the Strait of Hormuz is fully reopened, Iran responding that any such strike will be met with attacks on U.S. and Israeli energy and infrastructure assets, Brent crude at $112 a barrel and Goldman Sachs projecting elevated prices through 2027, and the administration having exhausted every economic lever it possesses. The richer side is losing the economic war. The question is whether they know it yet.

Iraq, Afghanistan, and the Sociology of Surrender

The pattern is not new. We have watched it twice in living memory, in the same geography, and both times the lesson was the same. Continue reading The Hormuz Ultimatum: Wealth Doesn’t Win Wars

Pakistan must not treat Afghanistan like Gaza

March 17, 2026 X.T.M 155 Comments filed under Popular, Precedent, X.T.M

[A note to readers: BB’s open thread is taking a short break while he recalibrates to high-signal posting]

Pakistan Strikes a Hospital in Kabul.

Late on Monday night, the 28th night of Ramadan, a missile struck the Omid (“Hope”) Addiction Treatment Hospital in Kabul. It is a 2,000-bed facility built in a former NATO camp, housing thousands of young Afghans receiving treatment for drug dependency. Witnesses said they heard three explosions just as patients were completing evening prayers. Two bombs struck patient rooms directly. “The whole place caught fire. It was like doomsday,” one survivor told Reuters. Al Jazeera

Taliban authorities say 408 were killed and 265 injured; figures that remain unverified by any independent party, though the physical destruction of the hospital and the ongoing rescue operation are not in dispute. Rescuers were still pulling bodies from rubble by flashlight through the night. The UN human rights expert for Afghanistan, Richard Bennett, said he was “dismayed” and urged all parties to “respect international law, including the protection of civilians and civilian objects such as hospitals.” ABC News

Pakistan insists its strikes “precisely targeted military installations and terrorist support infrastructure” in Kabul and Nangarhar, with targeting “carefully undertaken to ensure no collateral damage.” CP24

One witness at the scene noted military units were positioned around the hospital perimeter; which may explain the targeting logic, if not excuse it. No secondary explosions consistent with an arms depot were filmed.

Afghanistan-Pakistan border: new centre of the 'war on terror', by Philippe Rekacewicz (Le Monde diplomatique - English edition, December 2009) — the war

The pattern matters as much as the incident.

Continue reading Pakistan must not treat Afghanistan like Gaza

They Blinded the Attackers in 72 Hours. No One Is Saying It.

March 9, 2026 X.T.M 55 Comments filed under X.T.M

hat tip: Richard Medhurst — full satellite analysis here

The Thing In Front of Your Nose

The uncomfortable truth about this war is not what Iran destroyed. It is what the destruction revealed was always already hollow.

Alaric - World History Encyclopedia — Alaric the Conqueror of Rome

Empires do not collapse when they are defeated. They collapse when the gap between their self-image and their actual condition becomes impossible to maintain. The Roman legions did not disappear because the Visigoths were militarily superior in any comprehensive sense. They disappeared because the infrastructure of belief that sustained them; the idea that Rome was invincible, that the civilisational order it represented was permanent, had been quietly rotting for generations before the walls were breached. What Alaric provided in 410 AD was not a military verdict. It was a legibility event. He made visible what had already become true.

I’ll note here: I fully support removing Khamenei, Nasrallah, Hamas; the architects of civilian suffering. Not at the cost of the innocent. That distinction matters and I won’t pretend otherwise.

Medhurst has spent the last several days making the invisible visible; overlaying satellite photography on base after base across the Gulf, turning classified embarrassment into public record.

What Actually Happened

Iran strikes AN/FPS-132 early warning radar in Qatar | TURDEF — The billion dollar radar, one of 6 in the world

Continue reading They Blinded the Attackers in 72 Hours. No One Is Saying It.

India’s Guest. America’s Kill.

March 5, 2026 X.T.M 53 Comments filed under Popular, X.T.M

On the 4th of March 2026, a US submarine torpedoed the Iranian frigate IRIS Dena in the Indian Ocean, 40 nautical miles off the coast of Galle, Sri Lanka. At least 87 sailors were killed. Over a hundred remain missing. Pete Hegseth called it “quiet death” from the Pentagon podium; bragging it was the first torpedo kill since World War II.

MILAN at Vyzag

The IRIS Dena had just left Visakhapatnam. It had been India’s guest. Formally invited to MILAN 2026, the International Fleet Review hosted by the Indian Navy, attended by 86 ships from 74 nations. The Eastern Naval Command had tweeted a welcome photograph two weeks earlier: “reflecting long-standing cultural links between the two nations.”

Two weeks later, that ship is on the ocean floor. And from New Delhi, silence. Iran’s Foreign Minister Araghchi said it plainly: Frigate Dena, a guest of India’s Navy, was struck in international waters without warning. That line will not be forgotten in Tehran. It should not be forgotten in New Delhi either; because it is the most precise summary available of what Modi’s diplomatic positioning has actually cost India.

When guests are murdered

Say what you want about Pakistan’s post-colonial elite; and there is plenty to say. But since Pahalgam they have been reading the room better than New Delhi has. Not because Islamabad became richer or more competent. Neither of those things happened. What happened is simpler: when the bombs fell on Iran, Pakistan said nothing loud, and that silence was itself a signal. Across the Muslim world that signal was heard. Loyalty travels farther than power. Whether that loyalty is strategic or genuine is a separate question. The effect is the same.

Pakistan Post-Pahalgam Continue reading India’s Guest. America’s Kill.

2026 Iran War and the Gulf

March 5, 2026 sbarrkum 30 Comments filed under sbarrkum

Header Image: US Bases in Mid East. Iran is the only Sovereign country in the Mid East without US Bases

“God created war so that Americans would learn geography” ― Mark Twain

Why are the Gulf Countries not attacking Iran. Because they are extremely vulnerable
a) Resource and Economic Vulnerability
b) Political, Regimes can be overthrown
c) Targets because they host US Bases.

The US though they have bases in the Gulf, have not come to the aid of Gulf Countries. To the contrary they are evacuating personnel from the Gulf.

Bahrain: Politically Vulnerable: Hosts the biggest US base in the Gulf. It is also has Shia 50% with Sunni regime. The Shia majority have been very restive and any war related turmoil can allow the Shia to overthrow the Sunni Regime. (Shias were previously the majority, being approximately 55% in 1979. However, the increased naturalization of Sunni migrants and persecution of Shia Muslims by the ruling Sunni Al Khalifa family led to an alteration in the demographics.)

Qatar: Has the biggest LNG production and they have shut down production. Why: Cant afford to have drones or missiles or even debris hitting the storage. The whole storage will go up like a Nuclear Bomb
Qatar accounts for 20% of global LNG exports, with 80% of those volumes to Asia.

Saudi Arabia: Like Qatar Saudi Arabia is Resource attack vulnerable. Oil production can go up in flames even though the oil is less volatile. Also with the Gulf or Hormuz shut down oil exports are nearly nill. However, they have pipeline to the Red Sea port of Yanbu. So Saudis need to also keep Houthis happy so that the oil that reaches Yanbu and loaded into Tankers is not attacked by Houthis. (Only about 1 million barrells/day to Yanbu, compared to 6.8 miilion Barrells/day thru Gulf Hormuz.
Saudi too has significant Shia population (10-15%) located near the oil fields in the Eastern Province (Najran, and Medina)

UAE/Dubai; Very Economically vulnerable. Falling Debris has closed Dubai Airport, the busiest in the world. Dubai is an Worlds Financial center in the League of Hong Kong, London and New York. 90*% of Dubai are expatriates, some extremely wealthy. Revenues from oil and natural gas account for less than 5% of the Emirate’s revenues. If Iran hits world’s tallest building, the Burj Khalifa thats the end of Dubais Economic Wonder.

So as you can see the Gulf countries need to play nice with Iran until the wsr End.

How will the War End. (some possibilities)
a) Iran Runs out of Missiles. (also low probability of layers of Iran Leadership Killed)
b) US Missiles are depleted
c) US has an Economic Shock (eg Stocks, DJI falls significantly eg to 40,000. Or US Treasury Bond yields spike to above 5%

When the dust settles regardless of Iran having lost it is going to be new Landscape in the Gulf. The US bases are most likely gone. When personnel are evacuated the looters come in like ants to dead carcass.

Saudi East-West Pipeline can pump oil from the country’s main eastern oilfields to the Red Sea and has capacity to transport around five million bpd if Yanbu has the capacity to load that amount of crude the pipeline can carry onto ships, traders and buyers said. Crude loadings at Yanbu hit a peak of just under 1.5 million bpd in April 2020
https://www.bairdmaritime.com/shipping/tankers/aramco-moves-oil-flows-to-red-sea-as-hormuz-grinds-to-a-halt

What the map below shows is that, due to a peculiar correlation of religious history and anaerobic decomposition of plankton, almost all the Persian Gulfs fossil fuels are located underneath Shiites. This is true even in Sunni Saudi Arabia, where the major oil fields are in the Eastern Province, which has a majority Shiite population.

https://theintercept.com/2016/01/06/one-map-that-explains-the-dangerous-saudi-iranian-conflict/

On Whose Side Is God?

March 3, 2026 X.T.M 65 Comments filed under Popular, X.T.M

The Wrong Question About Barbarians

Omar’s excellent piece raises the question of barbarians. I want to raise a harder one: whose side is God on? I ask this not as theology but as military analysis. Because the planners of Operation Epic Fury appear to have assumed the answer is obvious; and that assumption may be the central miscalculation of this war.

Isfahan: A Rich History and Unique Tourist Attractions - Persis Collection — *Barbanians*

The Pahlavist Map of Iran

The Pahlavists who helped guide this operation are, broadly speaking, secular liberals. Their Iran is Tehran’s northern suburbs, Los Angeles, Paris. Their model of the enemy is a man like themselves: attached to life, afraid of death, protecting assets and family and position.

Rational actors in the economic sense. You remove the leader, you remove the fear, the system collapses. This is a coherent theory of change. It just happens to be wrong about the specific civilization it was applied to.

Iran faces a pivotal moment. Can a tired regime contain a fresh wave of ... — Pretender to the Peacock Throne

The Gift of Martyrdom

Shia Islam is not organised around the fear of death. It is organised around the embrace of honourable death as the supreme spiritual achievement. Karbala is not a trauma to be processed; it is a template to be repeated. Husayn did not miscalculate when he rode into the plain knowing Yazid’s army outnumbered him. He made a theological choice.

The willingness to die without surrendering is not a bug in the Shia operating system. It is the entire point of the operating system. When you assassinate a Supreme Leader who has spent forty years framing his rule in exactly these terms, you do not break the system. You hand it the most powerful gift available: a martyr. Khamenei is now Husayn. The Americans gave him that.

Ashura Mourning Procession in Karbala, Iraq by students. - Islamic ... — *Yá Husayn*

On Sky Gods and the Human Spirit Continue reading On Whose Side Is God?

Open Thread: Israel Strikes Iran

February 28, 2026 X.T.M 134 Comments filed under Popular, X.T.M

Tehran has been bombed; University Street, home to a Military Intelligence base, has been struck.

Today is 9/11 in the Muslim calendar: the 11th of Ramadan, the 9th and holiest month.

US Marine guards at the American Consulate in Karachi opened fire on Shia protesters attempting to storm the compound, killing at least 12. Pakistani police and paramilitary Rangers were also present. The Sindh chief minister has ordered a probe into the deaths.

Shia communities in Kargil are mourning the death of their leader.

Imam Khamenei was not just a leader for Iran but seemingly for Muslims around the world. The Muslims of Kashmir took to the streets upon hearing news of Seyyed Khamenei’s martyrdom.