That's Not A Bug, It's A Feature!

It's hard to tell if the latest reports on Mojtaba Khamenei were dug up after diligent search by US and Israeli intelligence, or if they were deliberately planted by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard -- the cumulative effect is the same. As of this morning, for instance,

President Trump was stunned to learn last week that US intelligence indicates new Iranian Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei may be gay — and that his father, the late Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, feared his suitability to rule the Islamic Republic for that reason, The Post can reveal.

Trump couldn’t contain his surprise and laughed aloud when he was briefed on the intel, according to sources.

So OK, Mojtaba's gay, but he's in a coma, so it doesn't matter -- and who benefits from this state of affairs? The Revolutionary Guard, who reportedly pressured the Assembly of Experts to name him Supreme Leader on his father's death. They wanted a non-entity in that role from the start. And in another wrinkle over the weekend,

Several international reports now claim that Mojtaba Khamenei may have been secretly transported to Russia for medical treatment after sustaining injuries during early strikes in the conflict. According to these claims, he could be recovering at a private medical facility connected to one of Vladimir Putin’s residences.

However, neither Iranian nor Russian officials have confirmed these reports, leaving the situation surrounded by uncertainty and speculation.

Or he could be just plain dead.

With speculation rife, even Donald Trump is unsure if Mojtaba Khamenei is dead or alive.

“I don’t know if he’s even alive. So far, nobody’s been able to show him,” he told NBC.

Gay, in a coma in Iran, in a coma in Russia, or dead -- it's all the same, he's a cipher, a Great Pumpkin in the constitutinal scheme. If he's gay, he'll be out if he ever wakes up. If he's in Russia, it means he's alive, but he's beyond anyone's ability to take him out with bunker busters, while it's also convenient to have him effectively in exile, and he'll likely stay there. If he's dead, the Revolutionary Guard seems in no hurry to replace him.

However, although the usual blatherers explain Iran's constitution as a limited theocracy (or something like that), what they say bears no resemblance to reality. Here's how it's supposed to be:

After the Iranian Revolution of 1979, the position and office of supreme leader was created by the Iranian Constitution. It is based on the concept of the Guardianship of the Jurist, or “Velayat-e Faqih.”

. . . According to articles 57 and 110 of the constitution, the supreme leader sets domestic and foreign policy and supervises all branches of the government, including the executive, legislature and judiciary. Through the Guardian Council, he has the power to vet electoral candidates and veto parliamentary laws.

. . . While the supreme leader is the head of state, the president is the head of the government. After the supreme leader, the president is the second-in-command of the executive branch. As such, he answers to the supreme leader and executes his decrees.

. . . In 1979, the Assembly of Experts of Leadership, or Majles-e Khobregan-e Rahbari, was created in the new constitution and held its first election the same year. Article 111 of the constitution authorizes the assembly to appoint, supervise and, if necessary, remove the supreme leader.

. . . In essence, the supreme leader approves the candidates who are potentially elected to a body that oversees him. For this reason, as observers point out, the assembly has not been known to seriously supervise or overtly challenge him.

Except that reports from inside Iran indicate that the Iranian Revolutionary Guard told the Assembly of Experts to elect Mojtaba Khamenei, Ali Khamenei's gay and bumbling son who may be dead, Iran's new Supreme Leader. But as with everything else, Article 110 of Iran's constitution puts the Supreme Leader over the Revolitionary Guard. How does the Revolutionary Guard get to elect the Supreme Leader? I asked my AI oracle just that. It answered,

As of March 16, 2026, reports indicate that the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) secured Mojtaba Khamenei's appointment as Supreme Leader through a combination of intense political pressure, physical threats, and strategic manipulation of the Assembly of Experts' emergency sessions following the assassination of Ali Khamenei on February 28, 2026.

. . . The IRGC Intelligence Organization allegedly threatened Assembly members and their families to ensure a vote for Mojtaba.

. . . Commanders applied "heavy pressure" through constant phone calls and in-person meetings leading up to the vote.

The IRGC insisted on a rapid decision, arguing that the wartime situation required immediate leadership.

Opponents were given limited time to present arguments, and some sessions were conducted online or in undisclosed locations to minimize dissent and outside interference.

So the IRGC, arguing that the wartime situation required immediate leadership, pushed through the election of a bumbling gay guy whom they already knew was in a coma. This might be desgnated a coup, but my guess is that it was already the case that the former Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei, was kept in power by the IRGC, which had been the de facto power running the state pretty much from the start.

Edward Feser argues that Trump's attack on Iran doesn't fit "just war doctrine" because it hasn't been undertaken by the proper constitutional authority (although he neglects to mention that the War Powers Resolution of 1973 gives Trump precisely the authorization he is using to conduct this operation). But if he insists that Trump observe all the constitutional niceties -- which in fact he is -- then what of the IRGC, which has put in place a puppet Supreme Leader who may even be unaware that his country is at war, when he would be expected to make national policy under Iran's constitution?

This goes to the basic quesiton of how a state can negotiate with a state that doesn't gtve its negotiators the power to negotiate in any practical way, because the source of state authority is so unclear.

It's worth recognizing that the victories over both Germany and Japan in World War II could be effected only when Hitler's suicide gave his designated successor, Dönitz, the clear state authority to order surrender. In Japan, the use of the second nuclear bomb in particular forced a cabinet deadlock in which the emperor finally had to assert his authority to order surreneder, and this was effective only after an attempted coup to remove him.

This suggests that some equivalent crisis of state authority in Iran will be needed to end the current war. It will likely involve a removal of the IRGC from de facto control of the state.

The Dönitz Conundrum

One incongruity that "just war" theorists seem to miss is that while they claim an abstraction called "just war doctrine" has developed over millennia, examples of its practical application under law are few and far between. Using AI purely as a semi-omniscient reference librarian, I can come up with only a few "just war" tribunals before the post-World War II Nuremberg trials, such as the 1474 trial of Peter von Hagenbach for atrocities committed during the occupation of Breisach.

After that, we have to wait almost 500 years to reach Article 227 of the Versailles treaty, which "publicly arraigned" Kaiser Wilhelm II for "a supreme offence against international morality." However, he was never brought to trial as the Netherlands refused to extradite him, and he lived there until his death in 1941.

In other words, we baaically have only one solid example of applying "just war doctrine" in a quasi-jurisprudential environment anywhere in ancient or modern history, the Nuremberg trials, and like war itself, they're messy indeed.

As we gain more perspective on these trials, it becomes clearer how little actual justice was done. A good many of the worst actors simply escaped, including figures like Adolf Eichmann, who was ultimately kidnapped, tried, and executed in Israel, but many others were never tracked down. Albert Speer, a despicable figure who was handsome and charismatic, ran the Nazi war machine as armaments minister in the last years of rhe war, and as head of the Todt organization actually built the concentration camps.

But he saved his life by portraying hinmself as the repentant "good Nazi", and after 20 years in prison built a media franchise for himself in that role. And a whole range of rocket scientists were too valuable to both the US and Soviets to put on trial at all, like Wernher von Braun, who was able to use NASA's publicity machine to make himself a Cold War US national hero, although he used slave labor to assemble the V2 rockets.

On the other hand, we have the case of Karl Dönitz. From the start of the war until 1943, he was commander of the U-boats; after that, he was commander-in-chief of the navy. On his suicide on April 30, 1945, Hitler named him his successor, but over his short period as head of state, he saw his main job as constituting the authority to organize the surrender, as well as facilitating the surrender of as many German forces as possible to the Americans and British, rather than the Soviets. According to Wikipedia,

Following the war, Dönitz was held as a prisoner of war by the Allies. He was indicted as a major war criminal at the Nuremberg trials on three counts. One: conspiracy to commit crimes against peace, war crimes, and crimes against humanity. Two: planning, initiating, and waging wars of aggression. Three: crimes against the laws of war. Dönitz was found not guilty on count one of the indictment, but guilty on counts two and three.

His defense strategy was unique: he argued that he'd done only what the Allies had themselves done in the prosecution of the war. In fact, his lawyers called US Admiral Chester Nimitz, Commander-in-Chief of the U.S. Pacific Fleet, to testify on his behalf. Nimitz testified via a sworn affidavit on July 2, 1946.

Nimitz acknowledged that the US had conducted "unrestricted submarine warfare" from the start of the war in 1941, the same charge made against Dönitz. He confirmed that U.S. submarines were also ordered not to rescue survivors if doing so endangered the submarine.

Because the Allies had employed the same methods they were charging Dönitz with, the tribunal ruled that although he was convicted on two counts of his indictment, his sentence would not be based on his breaches of international law regarding submarine warfare. He received a ten-year sentence, the shortest of any major defendant, a majority of whom were sentenced to death, and less than even Speer's 20 years.

Beyond that, After the verdict, more than 100 senior Allied officers, many of them high-ranking Americans, wrote letters to Dönitz expressing their disappointment and disapproval of his ten-year sentence. He served the full ten years and died at the age of 89 in 1980. Like Speer, he attempted to build a media career after his release, but his publicists apparently didn't have what Speer's had to work with.

Certainly the opinion of many US and Allied officers after the war was that many of the German admirals and generals were competent, professional military men who were simply doing their duty, and Dönitz, even if he wasa a committed Nazi, seems to have been an example on which they focused.

But the Nuremberg trials bring up a major problem with "just war doctrine". It's been developed by philosophers and intellectuals, or in other words, it was created in cloud-cuckoo land, a product of a fantasy that, as General Sherman would say, you can somehow refine war. Dönitz was able, even in a highly politicized show-trial environment, to advance as best anyone could that this isn't the nature of war, and by "just war" standards, each side is going to be found about equally guilty.

And of course, nobody put Truman, Oppenheimer, or General Leslie Groves on trial for crimes against humanity. After all, they won the war. "Just war doctrine" in the end is a propaganda tool and an intellectual exercise in self-congratulation; it promotes an unrealistic fantasy about the nature of war.

Secretary Hegseth Channels General Sherman

Addressing the crash of a US KC-135 air refueling plane this past Thursday, Secretary of War Pete Hegseth remarked,

War is hell. War is chaos. And as we saw yesterday with the tragic crash of our KC-135 tanker, bad things can happen. American heroes - all of them.

CENTCOM confirmed that while the crash involved an unspecified incident with two aircraft in friendly airspace, the loss of the aircraft "was not due to enemy action or friendly fire". So, what was it due to? All we really have is Secretary Hegseth's characterization: "War is hell. War is chaos."

As best as commentators with experience in mid-air refueling can surmise without other confirmation, two KC-135 tankers collided during some type of refueling maneuver. One was so badly damaged that it immediately crashed, killing all six of its crew. The other had less severe damage, it was able to return to its base, and its crew survived.

I've been ruminating on the idea I began to develop a week ago, that "just war doctrine" is a category error. Let's apply this to the KC-135 collision. On one hand, it was a wartime event. Accidents are common in wars. Someone lights a cigarette near an ammunition depot far behind the lines, it explodes, and many people are killed and maimed. It's neither enemy action nor friendly fire, it just happens in war.

Can we interrogate such an episode using "just war doctrine"? I don't see how. Just cause? The cause is basically absurd, it doesn't compute. Legitimate authority? Murphy's law, stuff happens. Right intention? Well, it was neither friendly fire nor enemy action, no real intention there. Last resort? No resort, it was an accident. Probability of success? Murphy's law, success not an issue. Proportionality? Shouldn't have happened at all.

It's just something that happens in war, a terrible accident. "Just war doctrine" is irrelevant. The only solution to the problem of wartine accidents is to eliminate war, but war is part of the human condition, and it won't go away. So there is a whole type of wartime event to which "just war doctrine" can't be applied, but they can't be separated from the nature of war.

In Gilbert Ryle's famous example, a category error is like a university president explaining to a visitor the function of the various departments, the registrar, the dining hall, the dormitories, the alumni office, but the visitor replies, "You haven't shown me the university". In the case of just war theory, a cabinet secretary might explain the various events in a war to a visitor, attacks, defense. medical care, logistics, accidents, war prisoners, and so forth, but the visitor replies, "You haven't shown me the justice".

What interests me in the current debate (such as it is) over "just war doctrine" is that there is so little reference to the experience of professional military, who only now and then make what is essentially an argument that war is a category whose nature is injustice. General William Tecumseh Sherman, who was a general, not a philosopher, nevertheless made remarks on war as a category throughout his life, for instance in a letter dated September 12, 1864, to officials of Atlanta, including Mayor James M. Calhoun, advising them to evacuate the city, because he was going to burn it down.

War is cruelty, and you cannot refine it. . . . You might as well appeal against the thunder storm as against these terrible hardships of war. They are inevitable and the only way that the People of Atlanta can hope to live in peace & quiet at home is to Stop the war, which can alone be done by admitting it began in Error and is perpetuated in pride. . . . I want peace and believe it (can) now only be reached through union and war, and I will ever conduct war partly with a view to perfect & early success.

This he finally did on November 11-15, 1864. He appears to have given the Atlanta authorities every warning that this would happen, along with every assurance that his army would provide cover and help for all those evacuating, but in the end, he would have to deatroy the whole city. The question of whether Sherman's burning of Atlanta was "just" is still open; the Georgia historical marker on the burning notes,

On Nov. 11, 1864, Chief Engineer Orlando M. Poe directed the demolition of stone and brick buildings using specially made battering rams. On Nov. 15, Poe's troops burned the wooden buildings in the downtown business district around the site of this marker. Though houses and churches were not targeted, some were burned nonetheless. Many houses had already been dismantled by both armies to make way for fortifications. Contrary to popular myth only forty percent of Atlanta was left in ruins.

I've alwaya thought that the Cathechism of the Catholic Church throws up its hands in uncertainty at the end of Paragraph 2309, which outlines one set of "just war" criteria. It enumerates them, with particular stress on avoiding "evils and disorders graver than the evil to be eliminated" -- but in the end, it simply says, "The evaluation of these conditions for moral legitimacy belongs to the prudential judgment of those who have responsibility for the common good."

In other words, figure it out as best you can. Because, I'm increasingly convinced, war is its own category. You can't parse the good and evil out of it.

Iran Status Updates

I simply haven't been able to find any good single source on what's happening in the Iran war. Unlike the first year or so of the Ukraine-Russia war, when Oryx provided confirmed equipment losses, and the Institute for the Study of War provided overall updates. Now, legacy media is remarkably incurious, probably due to the refusal of most outlets to sign rhe October 2025 Pentagon media agreement. On the other hand, nobody in alt media seems up to the job of adding two plus two in any insightfiul way.

Instead, we get stories like US Intel: Iran Govt Not at Risk of Collapse:

U.S. intelligence indicates that Iran's leadership is still largely intact and is not at risk of collapse any time soon after nearly two weeks of relentless U.S. and Israeli bombardment, according to three sources familiar with the matter.

A "multitude" of intelligence reports provide "consistent analysis that the regime is not in danger" of collapse and "retains control of the Iranian public," said one of the sources, all of whom were granted anonymity to discuss U.S. intelligence findings.

But how do we reconcile that report with this?

Trump appeared in an interview with Fox News' Brian Kilmeade on Friday [today], where he appeared to confirm that Khamenei is still alive but injured.

"I think he's damaged, but I think he's probably alive in some form," Trump said.

Other sources provide possible details:

Opposition groups in the diaspora have claimed that Khamenei is in a coma and is being treated in great secrecy in hospital, ignorant of both his elevation to the post of supreme leader and the devastating damage suffered by his family.

The failure of the government communications machine to publish a single photograph, video or even text from Mojtaba three days after his elevation led to the inevitable speculation that the assembly of experts, wittingly or unwittingly, had elected a corpse or cardboard cut-out to run the country.

How can this not suggest some level of potential instability in the country? And what about this?

WILD: The predicted “future” came within 24 hours. This is Israeli Air Force footage of drones and jets blowing up Basij checkpoints all around Tehran today, based on tips called in by Iranian citizens. A revolution with air support against a regime with no air defence. https://t.co/SZNn3mseMU pic.twitter.com/JRvRNUWZQP

— Saul Sadka (@Saul_Sadka) March 13, 2026

Or this?

The regime's top brass seems to have decamped to the distant city of Mashhad, as far away from the US bases and carriers—and from Israel—as you can get without actually fleeing to Afghanistan. They have abandoned the capital. https://t.co/xkXk2KHe23 pic.twitter.com/tcIExBPCGs

— Saul Sadka (@Saul_Sadka) March 11, 2026

And another development mirrors what I learned during my tech career: a functioning society depends on bank data centers. Cash is available only as long as the ATMs work. If you can't process credit cards, you don't do business, and society collapses. So what did the Americans and Israelis do?

An Iranian bank data center in Tehran has reportedly been struck by a missile by US-Israeli forces.

The Jerusalem Post and London-based outlet Iran International report that a Sepah Bank facility was struck by a missile early Wednesday (March 11).

The facility, on Haghani Street, was reportedly a digital security center for the bank that housed its data infrastructure.

. . . The strike was confirmed by the Iranian armed forces, though not whether it was a data center. Bank Melli and Bank Sepah are both reportedly suffering outages, but claimed this was preventative.

A spokesperson from the Khatam al-Anbiya Central Headquarters told state media that an administrative building linked to ⁠Bank Sepah on Haghani Street was struck, calling the attack “illegitimate and unconventional.”

Owned by the Iranian government, Bank Sepah is reportedly the organization responsible for processing salary payments for Iran's military and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.

US banks are required to maintain backup facilities for their data centers; otherwise, recovering account and transaction records would be nearly impossible if data storage devices at a site are destroyed. In fact, this is a modern doomsday scenario that nobody mentions, but US and Israeli planners appear to be keenly aware of it:

This morning, hundreds of thousands of Iranians woke up to frozen bank accounts. Customers of Bank Sepah and Bank Melli got an SMS saying their accounts were locked, @NarimanGharib posted on X. The banks' websites and service channels are blocked, and it's not possible to log… pic.twitter.com/6d4TB3cUIu

— Joe Truzman (@JoeTruzman) March 10, 2026

Social media speculation, as we see here, is that the regime has "frozen" funds, but a much simpler explanation is that the networks are down because the bank's computers are under rubble. But let's check in with the conventional wisdom. On Monday, I mentioned Prof Robert Pape, a political science professor at the University of Chicago, and his essay in Foreign Affairs. Yesterday, he provided an update via Substack:

The war began with a coordinated U.S.–Israeli strike on Iranian leadership and military targets. The opening campaign destroyed facilities and killed senior officials. In purely military terms, the operation appeared successful.

But the political objective—rapid regime collapse or capitulation—did not occur. The Iranian state remained intact, and the government quickly reasserted control.

I think this misstates the situation on the ground, which has been obscured by the fog of war. Yes, the opening campaign destroyed facilities and killed senior officials, but we still don't fully know the extent of the damage. The mullahs were eager to establish the impression of quickly reasserting control, but as best we can tell now, this involved replacing the Supreme Leader with a comatose, or at least severely disabled, successor.

The prewar contingency plan was to devolve decisionmaking to 31 separate Revolutionary Guard districts, who would continue to fight under independent commands. It appears that with a seriously compromised Supreme Leader, this will have to continue, meaning there is no longer a coherent national strategy. The prewar political structure of the state by definition no longer exists. Pape contines,

When early success fails to produce the expected political result, leaders often double down. Because the stronger side possesses overwhelming military power, decision-makers assume they hold escalation dominance -— the ability to climb the escalation ladder faster and higher than the opponent.

I asked my AI oracle to provide a definition of "escalation" in a military context. It replied,

In military and strategic contexts, escalation is defined as an increase in the intensity or scope of a conflict. It involves a shift from a lower level of violence or limited geographic area to a more severe or expansive state of war.

As far as I can see, the US and Israel haven't escalated the scope or violence level of the conflict, still not quite two weeks old. It began with all-out aerial bombing, missile, and drone attacks using conventional explosives against the Islamic Republic of Iran. It continues with all-out aerial bombing, missile, and drone attacks using conventional explosives against the Islamic Republic of Iran. The attacks continue to be carefully targeted to minimize civilian casualties. No nukes, no carpet bombing, no additional countries, no escalation.

The Mullahs had an intial strategy of "horizontal escalation" by the decentralized Revolutionary Guard districts, who would indiscriminately attack other Gulf states, including civilian populations. This stragegy has been not just ineffective, but counterproductive, driving those states into the US-Israel camp. But this wasn't really "escalation", it was a planned de novo first-stage retaliation, which hasn't worked.

Prof Pape's assumption in modeling the war begins with a historical error:

The fourth pattern concerns a central belief behind the strategy itself: the expectation that airpower alone can collapse regimes.

This idea has been tested repeatedly in modern war. In more than a century of airpower, it has never succeeded by itself.

I asked my AI oracle, "To what extent has collapsing the enemy economy been important in winning 20th century wars?" Citing World War II, it answered,

In the 20th century, economic collapse wasn't just a side effect of war—it was often the decisive factor that ended the fighting. While battles won territory, economic strangulation broke the enemy's ability to produce weapons, feed soldiers, and maintain domestic morale.

[World War II} was the century’s clearest example of "Industrial War." The Allies explicitly targeted the enemy’s economic vitals.

Strategic Bombing: The U.S. and UK focused on oil refineries, ball-bearing factories, and rail networks. By 1945, the Luftwaffe was grounded not for a lack of planes, but for a lack of fuel.

Submarine Warfare: In the Pacific, U.S. submarines sank the Japanese merchant fleet, starving the island nation of iron, rubber, and oil.

The Result: Japan’s economy had functionally collapsed months before the atomic bombs were dropped; they had the will to fight but no longer had the physical means to sustain a modern military.

What the US and Israel are waging is an updated version of World War II-style "Industrial War". Using the European version in particular, defeating Germany required Allied air superiority, which took several years to accomplish, because the two sides were technologically about equal. But by the end of the war, the German joke was, "If you see a silver plane, it's American. If you see a black plane, it's British. If you can't see the plane at all, it's German."

On the other hand, Germany wasn't able to prevail in its aerial war against the UK or the Soviet Union because, unlike the US in particular, it hadn't developed heavy bombers that could effectively carry out a full-scale aerial campaign.

In the case of Iran, air superiority was accomplished within hours, allowing the process of economic strangulation via aerial bombing to take place over succeeding weeks. This was a plan that was intended to be full-scale from the start, not an "escalation", and it was intended from the start to take several weeks. Every indication is that it's having the planned effect of strangling the Iranian economy, and strangling it good.

I think Prof Pate is simply unaware of what destroying a bank data center will do to disrupt an economy, especially if the bank either has no effective disaster recovery plan or can't activate it. If the soldiers or the Revolutionary Guard can't get paid, this thing is over. Closing the Strait of Hormuz will simply magnify the same effect. Prof Pate is reading the wrong history, as far as I can see.

Epstein Updates, US And UK

In the US, the most recent Epstein fallout is David Copperfield announces last Vegas show, weeks after Epstein ties revealed

David Copperfield has announced that he is performing his last show at MGM Grand in Las Vegas next month, an announcement that comes weeks after documents released in the Epstein files revealed new details about how the FBI viewed the illusionist’s relationship with Jeffrey Epstein, the late convicted sex offender.

The announcement that the 69-year-old illusionist’s last show would be held on 30 April appears to have been made suddenly. In a statement praising and thanking Copperfield for his 25-year stint at MGM, the company said in a statement that it would automatically refund tickets for shows that were booked after that date.

while this dog still isn't barking:

House Oversight Chairman James Comer said Wednesday that Jeffrey Epstein's long-time accountant Richard Kahn testified to his panel that he never saw a transaction between Epstein and President Donald Trump.

. . . “Mr. Kahn testified under oath that — because the Democrats asked this question — that he had never seen any type of transaction to Trump or anyone in his family,” Comer told reporters. “That makes the fifth witness now that’s testified under oath that they’ve never seen any involvement by Donald Trump or the family.”

So in the US, the revelations from the Epstein files are tapering off to hit only a few fading C-list celebrities, with confirmation after confirmation that Trump not only wasn't involved, but he reported Epstein to law enforcement.

In the UK, it's a very different matter: The Mandelson files lay bare the depths of Starmer’s poor judgment.

No one forced Keir Starmer to appoint Peter (formerly Lord) Mandelson as Britain’s ambassador to the United States. Indeed, to many, it was a very odd choice indeed, while some of us welcomed it. There were other names in the frame, there were arguments put forward in favour of a “service” appointment (a career diplomat) as opposed to a political appointment.

Starmer could have gone with the former; he went with the latter. His choice. There was apparently another political appointee who was appointable, according to government papers just released. Starmer went with Mandelson; his choice.

Officials warned him about the potential of reputational damage to the Government (and, of course, the Prime Minister himself). Mandelson was already known as a resigner, as we saw in 1998 and 2001 when he left Blair’s cabinet.

. . . And all of this was on top of the extremely worrying association that Mandelson had with Jeffrey Epstein, as well as with the dead financier’s close friend, Ghislaine Maxwell (currently serving 20 years on child trafficking offences). Starmer had also been told about both of these relationships. But he decided that none of the above was reason enough to reject Mandelson for the top diplomatic job Britain has to offer. His choice. No one else’s.

Speculation over Starmer's ability to continue as Prime Minister began a full month ago, and the newest revelations don't seem to have changed the odds in any significant way. As of February 10,

The release of further Epstein files last week triggered a series of events that left U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer fighting for his political life, despite the fact that he never knew the late financier and sex offender.

Starmer is under pressure over his decision to appoint Peter Mandelson as U.S. ambassador, despite knowledge of Mandelson’s connections to Epstein. The latest document release by the U.S. Department of Justice revealed more messages between Mandelson and Epstein, including after Epstein had pleaded guilty in Florida to a state charge of felony solicitation of prostitution, a case that involved an underage girl.

Starmer, who is facing calls to step down, has apologized to the victims of Epstein for believing Mandelson’s “lies.”

UK commentators have been circumspect about how the latest revelations will affect Starmer going forward:

We will have to wait for further releases to get a better understanding of what the PM was told and why he took the decisions he did.

Only a small proportion of the documents - expected to run into the tens of thousands - was published on Wednesday, but Darren Jones said the government hope to publish the remainder "soon".

It will give more momentum to a scandal that is hurting Sir Keir with ministers and MPs braced for the dropping of thousands more documents that - if they pass national security clearance - will detail messages between Lord Mandelson and senior government figures for six months before his appointment, and during his time as ambassador.

. . . Two key figures who supported the appointment of Lord Mandelson - Mr McSweeney and the PM's former director of communications, Matthew Doyle - have left government.

But their former boss, who has been battling to survive, is now having to deal with the ongoing consequences of an appointment he clearly deeply regrets.

All of it, as one senior MP told me on Wednesday night, adds to the "general despondency" around this administration.

The contrast between Epstein's potential impact on the UK government and Trump's administration is stark. Starmer has already lost two key people, while speculation continues that between the Epstein-Mandelson revelations and his humiliation at Trump's hands over Iran, his time remaining may be short. Meanwhile, Kristi Noem's departure as Homeland Security secretary had nothing to do with Epstein, and so far, no member of Trump's administration has been directly affected by any Epstein ties.

Dan Bongino left as FBI Deputy Director, but this appears to have been because he was a general hothead and loose cannon, only in part because he was critical of Attorney General Bondi's handling of the Epstein files. Bondi herself may everntually be forced out, but this will be over general questions of competence, including poor communications over the slow release of the Epstein files, but not any direct Epstein connection. And the bottom line is that the Epstein files are fully out, while the Mandelson files in the UK are not.

The Times, though, thinks Starmer will last at least until May:

Conventional Wisdom: The Strait of Hormuz

In Monday's post, I noted that I wasn't going to cover the conventional wisdom on the Strait of Hormuz, because it was too big a subject, and the situation was fluid. But yesterday, I ran across a Substack essay that I think provides a pretty good snapshot of the thinking over the past weekend:

At midnight Greenwich Mean Time on 5 March 2026, seven of the twelve International Group Protection and Indemnity clubs that collectively insure roughly 90% of the world’s ocean-going tonnage executed identical cancellation notices for war-risk coverage across the Persian Gulf, the Gulf of Oman, and Iranian territorial waters.

. . . In that instant, seven letters accomplished what the entire Iranian navy could not.

. . . By every traditional metric of military dominance, the campaign is succeeding.

Yet the Strait remains commercially paralysed.

. . . [T]he 31 autonomous IRGC provincial commands that replaced centralised authority after the decapitation strikes create a counterparty problem that insurers cannot price and diplomats cannot negotiate.

. . . Global seaborne trade does not run on naval protection. It runs on a layered stack of private financial guarantees. . . . This stack possesses a critical structural vulnerability: the retrocession and ILS market systematically excludes war risk. The war-risk market therefore operates under a hard capital ceiling of approximately $1 billion in annual premiums and a handful of treaty reinsurers whose aggregate capacity cannot absorb a single major total-loss event.

. . . The problem was not merely that the probability of loss was elevated. The problem was that the tail was unlimited. A single [large tanker] total loss could easily exceed $150 million for the hull, $100 million for the cargo, and virtually infinite liability for environmental pollution. Against a premium pool that writes $1 billion annually, a single major claim would consume the entire global war-risk market’s revenue.

. . . Each additional day of closure feeds new data into insurer models, raising the actuarial cost of reopening and extending the closure in a reflexive, self-reinforcing loop. The down-barrier to closure was crossed in hours. The up-barrier to reopening, measured in the time required for sustained safe conditions, actuarial recalibration, and reinsurance capital replenishment, operates on a timescale of months to years.

. . . The market is not pricing a war. It is not pricing a chokepoint closure. It is not pricing a nuclear crisis. It is pricing a legacy framework in which these events are temporary, resolvable, and mean-reverting. The mechanism analysis establishes they are structural, self-reinforcing, and regime-changing.

This analysis is thought-provoking, if not entirely coherent. What he seems to be saying is that if the Hormuz blockade persists for any reason -- he's most intrigued by the refusal of insurers to contemplate the risk of losing even a single tanker, which is complicated by the inability of all parties to negotiate reliably with 31 separate Revolutionary Guard district entities to guarantee safe passage -- there's the potential for a hyperinflationary doomsday spiral.

So far, it appears that facts on the ground, or on the water, are suggesting this analysis is unnecessarily hysterical (I think the level of jargon conceals its basic huysteria, too). First, shipping is moving through the strait, at however reduced a level. Second, ships are currently being attacked, but the damage isn't catastrophic:

Three vessels have been hit by unknown projectiles in the Strait of Hormuz, maritime security agencies and sources said Wednesday, as one of the strikes led to a fire onboard a ship and forced most of its crew to evacuate it.

The Thailand-flagged bulk carrier Mayuree Naree was targeted and damaged approximately 11 nautical miles north of Oman, two maritime security sources said.

. . . Earlier, the Japan-flagged container ship One Majesty had sustained minor damage from an unknown projectile 25 nautical miles northwest of Ras Al Khaimah in the United Arab Emirates, two maritime security sources said.

Its crew members are safe and the vessel is sailing towards a safe anchorage, the sources added.

A third vessel, a bulk carrier, was also hit by an unknown projectile approximately 50 miles northwest of Dubai, maritime security firms said.

The projectile had damaged the hull of the Marshall Islands-flagged Star Gwyneth, maritime risk management company Vanguard said, adding that the vessel's crew were safe.

In other words, the reality of Iran's retaliation in the Strait of Hormuz will be equivalent to its retaliation against Israel and the Gulf states, a diminishing level of missile and drone strikes, most of which are inaccurate or intercepted. On one hnad, too many players rely on the oil that comes through the strait, especially China. On the other, the market appears to be pricing in Trump's assurances. At about 1:15 in the video embe3dded at the top of this post, Mark Halperin says,

The president did a quick interview with a correspondent from CBS News, and what happened? Before that, everybody was all up in arms about the price of gas going up and the markets going down. And the president just said a few things to CBS News, and what happened after the president spoke? . . . The Dow Jones Industrial Average was down nearly 900 points before the president said what he said, which was basically this is going to be a quick war, everything's gone so well. After he spoke, [the Dow] went from 900 down to net up 240 points for the day.

The same applies to oil prices:

US West Texas Intermediate Crude Oil Futures with April 2026 Expiry, traded at $89.89 per barrel, down by 5.2%. This oil benchmark touched an intraday low of 84.45 and recorded an overall decline of 29.3% from $119.43 per barrel level that was touched on March 9th. Yesterday, US WTI plunged nearly 18%.

Brent Crude Oil Price: Brent crude has nosedived by nearly 26.2% and touched an intraday low of $88.10 per barrel. This is compared to $119.50 per barrel mark it hit on March 9. Yesterday, the price dropped nearly 9%.

The first link above is worried that the market "is pricing a legacy framework in which these events are temporary, resolvable, and mean-reverting." Indeed, that's what it seems to be doing, and it's trusting Trump on top of it. My guess is that it's probably right.

By the way, I hope things turn out OK for Mark Halperin. He works for Megyn Kelly in his 2WAY podcasts, and he's becoming increasingly pro-Trump, as the video embedded above suggests. Meanwhile, Megyn "Me Again" Kelly is reverting to her never-Trump roots.

Flashback to big shot "conservative" Megyn Kelly celebrating "trans kids."@megynkelly is for sale to the highest bidder. She has ZERO integrity. 🤡 pic.twitter.com/pwgqUEtXy2

— Right Wing Cigar King (@AlanCigarKing) March 3, 2026

I sure hope Mark Halperin comes through this in good shape, he's worked extremely hard to restore his career.

Trying In Vain To Save The "Special Relationship"

Via the UK Express:

A verbally bruised and battered Sir Keir Starmer is reported to have tried to cool tensions with President Donald Trump who is furious over Britain's reaction to the Iran war by trying to discuss the upcoming US visit of King Charles. The US leader has been outspoken in his criticism of the PM after Downing Street initially refused to allow American bombers to use RAF bases for the attacks on Iran which began on February 28.

. . . The Sun reports the phone call was "not a rosy affair" but that Sir Keir tried to use the Royal Family as a way of placating his outspoken American counterpart.

According to The Sun, the exchange between the two men was "testy" but Sir Keir mentioned King Charles and Queen Camillia visiting the United States at the end of April as a way of lightening the mood.

It sounds as if Starmer, like a good many others, still thinks Trump is basically a four-year-old, and he can be distracted by offering a lollipop -- or maybe by threatening to take the lollipop away:

Downing Street today [March 9] failed to confirm the King's state visit to America will go ahead next month following calls for it to be cancelled amid the Iran crisis.

King Charles and Queen Camilla are expected to fly to Washington DC at the end of April for a three-day visit to coincide with America's 250th anniversary celebrations.

But there is said to have been a last-minute 'wobble' about signing off the plans in the wake of Donald Trump's recent repeated attacks on Sir Keir Starmer and Britain.

. . . Liberal Democrat leader Sir Ed Davey is among those demanding that Sir Keir advise the King that his proposed state visit be called off.

He said a 'huge diplomatic coup' should not be given to someone 'who repeatedly insults and damages our country'.

This came following Trump's weekend swipe at Starmer and the UK generally:

President Donald Trump on Saturday slammed British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, saying he was joining the war in Iran after the U.S. has "already won."

"The United Kingdom, our once Great Ally, maybe the Greatest of them all, is finally giving serious thought to sending two aircraft carriers to the Middle East," Trump wrote on Truth Social. "That’s OK, Prime Minister Starmer, we don’t need them any longer — But we will remember. We don’t need people that join Wars after we’ve already won!"

It's significabt that Shlomo Zwickler in The Times of Israel says, "That boy who dared say ‘The Emperor Has No Clothes?’ – His Name is Donald Trump":

Apparently, it takes the unconventional persona of a Donald Trump to be able to state the obvious, the logical and the historical truth. That the intelligentsia is bellyaching about his mislabeled audacity is amazing nonsense and utter hypocrisy.

A key reality that Trump has been pointing out for the past several weeks is that Israel has replaced the UK as the US's key strategic partner.

It wasn’t long ago that Sir Keir Starmer was being hailed on the international stage for his skill as a “Trump whisperer”.

The prime minister was the envy of his international allies for his ability to, against the odds, develop a strong relationship with the famously volatile US president.

But the interviews that the US president has given in the last 48 hours to the Daily Telegraph and The Sun, in which he criticised Sir Keir’s refusal to allow attacks on Iran to be launched from RAF bases, and the UK’s decision not to join the raids, surely mark the end of the relationship.

The Times suggests that if King Charles and Queen Camilla can't get the job done -- that is, distracting Trump with a lollipop -- maybe the Prince and Princess of Wales can pull it off:

When President Trump sat down to his unprecedented second state banquet in St George’s Hall, Windsor, it was a made-for-TV moment that would stay with him for the rest of his life.

The US president leant towards the Princess of Wales and beamed at her, as if looking at a favourite child on their graduation day.

Kate, dressed in a custom couture Phillipa Lepley gown and a gold lace coat, Trump’s most-loved colour, beamed back.

She was, Trump said in his speech, “so radiant and so healthy and so beautiful”.

Trump said that the bond between the US and UK “inspired Sir Winston Churchill … to coin the phrase special relationship”.

The problem is that Trump is the most powerful man in the world. If the US armed forces chose to attack Britain, they'd likely have results not much different from Venezuela. He'd keep the Royals in place like Delcy Rodriguez becaise it suited his purpose, not because he was in awe of them or even liked them. But the reality is he doesn't need them, and he doesn't need the UK.

For years, warnings about the declining strength of the Royal Navy have been largely ignored. The crisis in the Middle East has placed the size and readiness of the RN in the spotlight, with various politicians and sections of the mainstream media describing Britain’s naval position as “weak”, “embarrassing” and “a disgrace”.

. . . The Navy is not just hollowed out, but is now actually incapable of performing many of the routine tasks it was managing until quite recently. This breakdown is not the result of losses in combat or even the pressure of high-tempo operations, but has been caused by long-term under-resourcing and mismanagement.

. . . It is also worth recognising that the current Middle East crisis, serious as it is, does not represent an existential threat to the UK. It may be of little comfort to service personnel or British citizens currently exposed to danger in the Eastern Mediterranean or the Middle East, but this conflict offers a warning to address weaknesses before it’s too late. This is infinitely preferable to discovering how vulnerable we have become during a confrontation with Russia that could endanger the whole nation far more directly.

But the writer here is maintaining another polite fiction, that this is all something new that might be reversed over the next decade or so. I asked the oracle, "Was Winston Churchill forced after 1943 to recognize that the Americans were in complete control?" It answered,

Yes, after 1943, Winston Churchill was effectively forced to acknowledge that the United States had become the dominant partner in the Allied alliance. While he had spent years "wooing, cajoling, and flattering" American leadership to secure their resources, the shift in power became undeniable during the major conferences of that year.

. . . By the Quebec Conference in August 1943, it was clear that the upcoming invasion of France would be predominantly American in terms of troops and material. Consequently, Churchill was forced to concede that the Supreme Commander of Operation Overlord should be an American -- a role he had previously hoped would go to a British officer.

. . . During the Tehran Conference (November–December 1943), President Roosevelt and Joseph Stalin often aligned against Churchill’s preferred "Mediterranean strategy". Churchill realized that the U.S. and the Soviet Union, both possessing significantly more troops, would now dictate the course of the war.

. . . By late 1943, Churchill's vision for a postwar "Supreme World Council" already explicitly recognized the necessity of U.S. leadership and the importance of maintaining a "special relationship" to ensure future security.

But all Trump is really doing is forcing the UK to recognize that the "special relationship" has been a dead letter for decades. The last UK Prime Minister who could woo, cajole, and flatter the US into maintaining it was Margaret Thatcher. But compare the UK in the 1980s and early 1990s to Israel now.