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Russia repeatedly captured satellite images of Prince Sultan airbase leading up to the Iranian attack that damaged multiple aircraft and wounded American troops, according to a summary of Ukrainian intelligence shared with NBC News


JUST IN: The US Navy is investigating whether sailors aboard the USS Gerald R. Ford deliberately set fire to their own ship to end the deployment. That is the sentence. Read it again. The $13 billion carrier, the most expensive warship ever built, is now diverting to Souda Naval Base in Crete next week for refueling, repairs, and a formal investigation into the March 12 fire that damaged sections of the vessel and left more than 600 crew without proper sleeping quarters. Kathimerini, one of Greece’s most established daily newspapers, reported the details citing sources with direct knowledge of the planned port call. The investigation explicitly includes the possibility of deliberate sabotage by crewmembers. The Ford has been at sea since June 2025. Vice Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Jim Kilby told the Senate Armed Services Committee the deployment will run approximately 11 months, with return to Norfolk not expected until at least May. The crew was told they would be home months ago. They were extended. Then extended again. Then redirected into the largest Middle East military operation since 2003. And now some among them may have decided that fire was the only exit. If confirmed, this would be one of the most serious internal discipline events in the modern US Navy. A crew sabotaging its own vessel in a war zone does not happen because of poor food or bad weather. It happens when the institution has pushed human endurance past the point where the mission feels survivable. Eleven months at sea. Iranian drones striking Gulf airports daily. Eleven Reapers shot down in seventeen days. Gulf states pressing Washington not to stop but to escalate. No rotation ship. No relief force. No ceasefire on any horizon. And the carrier that embodies forward American naval power is pulling into a Greek port because 600 of its sailors have nowhere to sleep. The Crete diversion is the signal the market should be reading. The Ford is the only US carrier in the Gulf theatre. When it pulls into Souda, the sustained naval posture that was supposed to backstop convoy escorts, deter Iranian mining operations, and project power through the spring planting season temporarily loses its centrepiece. Repairs take days at minimum. Investigation takes longer. Every day the Ford sits in Crete is a day the Hormuz permissioned chokepoint operates without the threat of carrier-based air power overhead. After Crete, the Ford is expected to return to Gulf waters. The 11-month deployment timeline holds. But the sabotage investigation tells you something that no deployment order can override: the human beings inside the machine are breaking. The Mosaic Doctrine does not break. Provincial commanders do not file for shore leave. Standing orders do not need sleeping quarters. Mines do not experience morale collapse. The cheapest blockade in modern history runs on sealed packets and radio handsets while the most expensive warship in human history diverts to port because its own crew may have tried to burn their way home. The fertiliser trapped behind the permissioned strait does not care whether the Ford is in the Gulf or in Crete. The planting calendar does not pause for a sabotage investigation. And the 31 autonomous IRGC commands running the chokepoint do not need a $13 billion aircraft carrier to feel tired before they do. They were designed never to feel anything at all. Full analysis: open.substack.com/pub/shanakaans…



🇧🇭🇮🇷🇮🇱 The retaliation pattern is now impossible to ignore Bahrain's ALBA, one of the world's largest aluminum smelters, was hit by Iranian missiles last night. Two employees injured. This comes alongside the UAE aluminum plant strike in Abu Dhabi. Follow the chain. Israel bombed Iran's three largest steel plants. Iran responded by hitting the Gulf's aluminum and metals industry. Tit for tat. Same sector, different country. Now here's what should terrify every leader in the Gulf. Coalition forces struck a major water facility in western Iran this week. Iran has rivers, dams, and reservoirs to fall back on. Gulf states don't have that luxury. Qatar gets 99% of its drinking water from desalination. Bahrain, Kuwait, and Oman over 90%. Saudi Arabia and the UAE over 50%. If Iran follows the same pattern, and it has every single time so far, Gulf desalination plants are next. That's the drinking water for tens of millions of people. Source: rnintel, @ConflictAlarm








A popular Australian tourist destination has started a "Keep the poo out of the pool" awareness campaign urging visitors to use toilets. The lagoon has been shut down nine times since September due to "faecal incidents".




Time to answer the question. What’s Plan B?



“The Pentagon is lying to us. Iran hit the Gerald Ford and took it out of commission. They told us there was a fire in the laundry room.” - Nick Fuentes














