Samuel Forey

“That is the question”

Charles de Gaulle may not be in the Gulf, but France is very much in the fight. French Rafales operating out of the UAE have, in the last three weeks, reportedly downed 60+ Iranian Shahed-136s using MICA missiles - the Dassault Rafale is quietly making a very loud statement about the jet’s bite.

La voie de l'épée : Frapper et espérer 👉lavoiedelepee.blogspot.com/2026/03/frappe…

La neurodiversité est-elle ce qui a permis l'évolution de l'espèce humaine ? Alors que les séquences d’ADN sont restées figées pendant des millions d’années chez tous les autres mammifères, elles sont ont soudainement évolué chez nos seuls ancêtres... à lire ⬇️

The US conveyed its proposal to Hamas: "Complete handover... and full decommissioning" of arms belonging to Hamas in exchange for large-scale reconstruction of Gaza. npr.org/2026/03/19/nx-… by @DanielEstrin The Israeli gov is counting on Hamas' refusal, to get the US green light to resume the war on Gaza, this time without the operational challenge of dozens of live Israeli hostages inside

"In January, Danish soldiers were sent to #Greenland, carrying explosives to destroy the runways in the capital Nuuk and in Kangerlussuaq in the event of an American attack. The cargo also contained blood bags from Danish blood banks to treat wounded soldiers" swedenherald.com/article/source…

The oil market mess is much worse than you think ft.trib.al/7hWwSYD

C’est un futur bien sombre qu’il dessine.

🇺🇸 En train de regarder Trump en direct du Bureau ovale. Je décrypte son parcours politique depuis 2015 et je peux vous dire qu’il bout intérieurement. Le refus de l’OTAN de le suivre à Hormuz est une humiliation qui le met en rage. Dans son esprit paranoïaque, ce refus vient confirmer tout le mal qu’il pense du Traité atlantique. L’opposition à l’OTAN est une des seules constantes politiques de Trump à travers un parcours où il a toujours été prêt à dire ce qui lui permettait d’être élu, même s’il devait se contredire. Les deux autres ? Les frais douaniers et… la théorie de la supériorité génétique. Oui… Son opposition à l’OTAN est, comme ses deux autres certitudes, sûrement ancrée dans son histoire familiale. Mais elle devient une réalité publique en septembre 1987. Là, il publie à ses frais, dans les trois plus grands quotidiens américains, une lettre ouverte qui critique le cœur de l’alliance. C’est un moment clé dans le parcours de Trump. C’est son entrée dans l’arène politique. Presque 30 ans avant son arrivée à la Maison-Blanche. Et, hasard ou pas, quelques semaines après son retour de son premier voyage à... Moscou. Da ! Si ce type de décryptage vous intéresse, abonnez-vous gratuitement à Maintenant Media sur YouTube.

Kissinger on Europe in 1966. Remarkable foresight here. This is from ⁦@nfergus⁩’s amazing biography of Kissinger, Vol. 1.

Aparté Moyen-Orient - Je ne suis peut-être pas le premier à remarquer cela, mais je note que pour Bally Bagayoko, le nouveau maire de Saint-Denis, il y a une fiche wikipedia en anglais uniquement... Et non en français. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bally_Bag…

Students who took notes by hand scored ~28% higher on conceptual questions than laptop note-takers. Writing forces your brain to process and compress ideas instead of copying them.

Meanwhile, this is among many deeply disappointing steps taken by Sharaa government around a variety of freedoms that clearly signal growing conservative trend. Not a surprise but was not inevitable. No one has bandwidth today to press Damascus to respect freedoms.

This article is compelling and smart. I’ve seen it forwarded around a lot. Let’s walk through why it’s wrong.  1. The author argues that Iran’s military infrastructure especially its drones and missiles are being systematically taken apart.  True. But in the aftermath who is going to keep it that way? After the 12 day war Israel and Trump declared Iran’s capacity to make war “obliterated” and set back for a generation. Less than a year later they went back to war because of how quickly Iran was rebuilding. This campaign is much more comprehensive, but the same problem still applies. How to avoid being stuck in the aftermath in a “mow the lawn” scenario where the US has to expend tremendous assets that could be directed elsewhere in the world - especially towards the Indopacific. And where the region operates at a new unstable normal where all previous taboos on military action are off. 2.  He argues that the nuclear infrastructure had to be disassembled because one president after another had just let Iran’s nuclear program grow. Not true. Obama had managed to dramatically and verifiably reduce Iran’s nuclear capacity through the JCPOA. Trump killed that. 3. He argues Iran is self harming by stopping its own oil from going through the Strait of Hormuz. This was always an assumption before the war, but they’ve managed to shut down the Strait for everyone else while still exporting 1 million bbls per day of their own stuff.  That makes this much more sustainable.  4. He Argues that Iran’s proxy networks are dramatically weakened. True, but also as we’ve learned from previous conflicts they will regenerate and it’s impossible to root them out with a military strategy alone if there is no political follow up to create a better alternative. That is why Israel is on the verge of a major campaign in Lebanon only a year and a half after supposedly setting back Hezbollah for a generation. These fights are costly Pyrrhic victories that will just need to be fought again and again and again unless there is a political strategy to consolidate victory which both Israel and the US have failed at since October 7th.  5. Finally, the author argues that we need to ignore the President’s own words about regime change and the Iranian people rising up and focus on what the military is doing.  But that’s not how war works. War is fought to achieve a political objective. If there is no clear objective set out by the political leadership it’s impossible to translate battlefield victories into a consolidated win.  By setting the bar at regime change Trump has made it extraordinarily hard for the US to be perceived as winning even if the military executes the plans. Perception is a big part of the battle in war. And again the costs are incredibly high. And as the author argues, the only way this works is if there is a plan to contain and keep Iran down in the aftermath. Do we have any faith in Trump to do that? Again that is going to be incredibly expensive and require a presence like what the US left in the Middle East after the first Gulf War to contain Saddam.  That’s something we could afford in 1991 when the US was a unipolar power. But not in 2026 when we have a real competitor in China that we need to manage.  aljazeera.com/amp/opinions/2…

Gulf Arab states didn't start the US-Israel war with Iran—and their ability to shape what happens next is more limited than it looks. A few thoughts on agency, lobbying, and who actually moved - and is moving now - Washington. 🧵

🚨 WOW! An American C-RAM OBLITERATED a munition launched at the US Embassy in Baghdad tonight That sound is freaking insane.

4/ Iran entered this conflict with a clearer, if more nihilistic, theory of victory. In the short term, it seeks to absorb the bombardment, survive as a regime, demonstrate sufficient military reach to cause pain across the region, and wait for economic and political pressure to force an American exit on terms Tehran can present as honourable. However Raphael Cohen from RAND has observed that Iran’s actions in this conflict, by striking Arab states that were previously neutral or mildly sympathetic, represents a fundamental strategic miscalculation.

Jerusalemites may beg to differ

If I had to guess what the Israelis plan, it would go something like this: (1) They occupy up to the Litani River, possibly opening a route to the Beqaa, through which they can connect to the occupied Golan; meanwhile, they grind down Hezbollah within areas south of the Litani; (2) This becomes an emptied buffer zone, north of which the Israelis would tightly control the area as far as Sidon, recalling that in the 1976 "red lines" agreement with Syria, the Israelis did not allow the Syrians to move south of Sidon, seeing it as an advanced security barrier. (3) The Israelis tell the Lebanese to disarm Hezbollah, or else they will risk losing the areas Israel occupies—thereby pushing the Lebanese state into a confrontation with the party and the Shiites. At worst, this creates chaos and civil war, which suits Israel just fine, protected as it is by the southern buffer zone. (4) Or, if the Lebanese refuse to enter into a civil war on Israel's behalf, the Israelis gradually integrate the south into their areas of control, as they did the Golan. North of that is an area of instability that keeps Hezbollah constantly occupied. (5) Lebanese promises of peace with Israel would be largely meaningless, as Israel is operating according to a security logic, and knows it is the Lebanese who will sue for peace once the Israelis have secured all the conditions they want. At that stage, the Israelis could impose peace, yet maintain control over all the land they have taken, or large swathes of it. This is what they seek in Syria and West Bank. Why not Lebanon? (6) Among these Israeli conditions is a new delineation of the maritime borders with Lebanon, giving Israel more hydrocarbon reserves than they already have today. The Israeli plan is the Iron Wall, hegemony, and Lebanon will not be able to do anything about it. (7) Hezbollah may think this would help it revive the resistance option, but would it? From where would it stage operations? From the Shouf, pushing it into a confrontation with the Sunni, Druze, and Christian communities? From the central and West Beqaa, where you have a signficant Sunni community? From the area south of the Awali or Zahrani, which would be under constant Israel surveillance and bombing? This would be a resistance with no strategic depth, one provoking the hostility of all non-Shiite communities. (8) In light of the above, what happens to the southern suburbs of Beirut? Do the Israelis destroy them completely, thereby cutting the community's ties to Beirut, eliminating a nexus of complex inter-Shiite communal relations, and erasing the focal point of the Shiite presence in the capital? We'll have to see. (9) This geographical fragmentation of Lebanon would revive doubts about the viability of a unified Lebanese entity. Caught between Israel on the one side and Iran and Hezbollah on the other, what chance would such a state have to survive? Lebanon can surprise, but ... (10) This is one possible scenario, but I'm sure there are many others.

🇮🇱 All eyes on Gulf, but FYI Israel's Leviathan and Karish fields remain shut down since the beginning of the war. 🔹Energy Ministry extended closure thro March 25-26 🔹Estimated losses of $95 mil p/week (manageable) 🔹MoE reportedly stockpiled coal & LPG in advance