Michel de Bruin

Why Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Kuwait, and Bahrain Cannot Do Anything Against Iran Right Now Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, and Bahrain are completely paralyzed in the face of Iran. Days ago, Israeli media reported an agreement between Qatar and Iran, and the facts confirm it: attacks launched from Qatari territory have ceased, and strikes against Qatar have also stopped. The situation with the other four countries is the opposite. Iran has been attacking these countries on a daily basis for more than 30 days. While Iran claims that cooperation with the United States is the reason for the attacks, that cooperation has not stopped. In Saudi Arabia, collaboration with the US and Israel runs even deeper, including the provision of infrastructure, aerial refueling tankers, bases, and logistics. Every week, these countries issue bombastic threats to enter the war against Iran. In practice, it is pure bluff. Beyond the obvious fear of destruction to their oil and port infrastructure, they lack the real capacity to sustain a prolonged conflict. Join my Substack to read the full article: open.substack.com/pub/global21/p…

The IDF is so low on personnel in fighting its forever wars, that it is sending combat soldiers with PTSD back to the front against their will and against the advice of their own health professionals: 1) There are 37,500 soldiers with mental health injuries. 15,000 of them have not yet gone through a medical committee (a process that can take years). The IDFs new policy does not exempt those still in process from combat. 2) Commanders explicitly threatened soldiers with being declared AWOL if they didn't report, which carries serious legal consequences. Some were threatened with military police showing up at their homes to arrest them. 3) The IDF has been dismissing evidence of serious mental trauma. Commanders ignored psychiatric documents presented by soldiers, including letters stating a soldier was "dangerous to himself and those around him." One commander's response to a soldier in day hospitalization was essentially "figure it out." Mental health struggles were framed as normal: "Everyone is like that, everyone has their problems" 4) Soldiers respond due to a deep sense of duty. Commanders invoked the weight of the war — "the most important war in the history of the Jewish people" to override personal health concerns Soldiers feelt intense loyalty to their fellow fighters One soldier internalized the pressure himself: "I told myself my brain is already scratched up, so what's a few more scratches." 5) One soldier said, "I sent my commander a document from a psychiatrist explaining I'm dangerous to myself and those around me, and he still told me I had to report. I begged, I cried to him on the phone, but he said 'I'm sorry, but whoever doesn't show up is considered AWOL, with all the consequences.'" 6) All this is happening despite a wave of suicides in the IDF and the warnings of IDF psychologists who say this will make it worse. Prof. Eyal Fruchter, former head of the IDF's mental health division says: "It's a particularly bad idea to take people who are already high-risk and send them back to the battlefield — the consequences could be severe." There have been 279 suicide attempts documented since 2024, over 60 of which were successful. The fact that 15,000 soldiers are stuck in a years-long medical committee process suggests the bureaucracy is being used as a retention tool. This is the sign of a desperate army without personnel to support expansionist ambitions in Lebanon, Syria, Gaza, the West Bank and Iran. So the common IDF soldier is being run to the ground to allow this insane militaristic agenda.

The IDF has begun to run out of primary targets, such as regime HQs, nuclear facilities, known missile sites, etc. They announced that will be done in a week or so. Now they will be moving to secondary targets such as police HQs, industrial infrastructure and dual use facilities. There is no limit to the targets AI and human intelligence can generate. But they will be less important. What this means: 1) The Iranian regime, its missile program and its nuclear program have not been seriously degraded by the bombing. They survived the use of the bank of targets that Israel and the US created over the years, shaken but strong. 2) There is a difference between physical damage and functional suppression. You can blow up a building, but if the scientists, engineers, and blueprints survive in clean rooms or deep underground bunkers, the program is merely paused, not erased. If the regime can still command a single drone unit or launch a "lucky" missile at a tanker in the Strait of Hormuz, they maintain deterrence-by-denial, proving they haven't been degraded in a way that changes their behavior. 3) There is a lot of destruction but no strategic gain. Military and industrial capabilities can be rebuilt. Paradoxically the regime seems stronger than before the war due to the rally around the flag effect. 4) There will be diminishing returns on bombings. As each target becomes less important, the bombings get less bang for their buck and the damage from rising oil prices to the economy increases. 5) What is happening now Targeting Inflation. When the high-value targets (HVTs) are gone, military bureaucracies often lower the threshold for what constitutes a military objective to justify continued operations. Grinding bombing on Iran does have an effect on the economy and social cohesion, but it is accruing slowly. Meanwhile, the damage done to the West economically is accruing quickly. The switch to secondary targets will decrease the military effect. It is an admission of defeat.

Israel is being sucked into a quagmire in Lebanon, and it is losing soldiers accordingly. A paratrooper in Battalion 890, Moshe Yitzchak HaCohen Katz was killed by Hezbollah rocket fire. He is the fifth IDF soldier killed in this campaign so far. What this means: 1) In the 24 hours surrounding the incident, the IDF reported approximately 250 rockets launched from Lebanon toward Israeli positions. 2) The nature of the operation is exposing soldiers to intense fire. The IDF is currently focused on expanding a security zone in southern Lebanon. Ground operations, which began on March 16, 2026, are intended to push Hezbollah's capabilities away from northern Israel and prevent their return to the area south of the Litani River. 3) The trouble is that Hezbollah can easily fire from north of the Litani, leaving the soldiers in a vulnerable position as they advance. It will be even worse when they stop. A security zone pushes anti-tank missiles further from the border, it doesn't solve the high-trajectory threat. That will creates a sitting duck scenario for the soldiers stationed within that zone. 4) Once the IDF stops advancing and begins fortifying positions, they transition from a mobile force to a static target. Hezbollah excels at attrition warfare, using IEDs and coordinated strikes on fixed outposts, which could turn this security zone into a drain on manpower and morale. 5) The increased distance between Israel and where rockets are fired when the security zone is in place will increase warning time for residents of the north. But it will not prevent fire at them which can proceed from a distance. 6) In previous Israeli occupations of Lebanon, Hezbollah relied on mortars and Sagger missiles. Today, their use of one-way attack drones means that even if a security zone pushes back physical launchers, the sitting ducks in fixed outposts can be targeted with high precision from far beyond the Litani more easily than ever. The IDF will likely have many more casualties, as it occupies Lebanon indefinitely. A return to the quagmire of 1984-2000 is all but certain. Meanwhile, the firing of rockets will continue. But this time with drones. Another ill conceived war.

The US has lost a good deal of equipment in the war with Iran so far. The damage inflicted by Iran significantly exceeded U.S. expectations: * 3 F-15E Strike Eagles — shot down by friendly fire * 1 F-35A Lightning II — emergency landing after possible Iranian attack * 1 KC-135 Stratotanker, lost after mid-air collision over Iraq on March 12; all 6 crew killed. The second KC-135 involved managed to land safely despite damage * 5 KC-135 Stratotankers — damaged in Iranian missile strike on Prince Sultan Air Base, Saudi Arabia; being repaired * 12+ MQ-9 Reaper drones — 8 shot down by Iranian missiles, 3 destroyed on the ground, 1 downed by friendly fire; additional Reapers damaged (~$16M each) * Additional MQ-9B SkyGuardian drones — also reported lost or damaged (~$30M each) * USS Gerald R. Ford — fire broke out March 12 in the main laundry space supposedly in non-combat circumstances. Undergoing repairs at Souda Bay, * AN/TPY-2 radar (Thaad battery, Jordan) — struck by Iran; costs at least $300M * AN/FPS-132 early-warning radar (Al-Udeid Air Base, Qatar) damaged by Iranian attack; costs ~$1B * AN/TPS-59, AN/FPS-117, AN/MPQ-64 radars — additional damage reported across the region * MIM-104 Patriot AN/MPQ-65 radar — reported damaged * Additional radar, communications, and air-defense systems across Qatar, UAE (including sites at Al Sader and Al Ruwais), Jordan, Bahrain, Kuwait, and Saudi Arabia * At least 17 U.S. sites across the Middle East have sustained damage. 13 are considered "unlivable." Total estimated cost: ~$4 billion and climbing This reflects the best available public reporting. Classified damage assessments, unreported infrastructure losses, and small-unit equipment destroyed at smaller outposts mean the true cost is likely considerably higher.

The war keeps getting worse. The Houthis have now joined, creating a new logjam in the Red Sea as the US Navy and Israeli Air Force are distracted. 1) The Houthis have threatened to target the Bab al-Mandab Strait, a vital shipping route connecting the Red Sea to the Suez Canal. This follows Iran's previous closure of the Strait of Hormuz, putting global trade under severe pressure. 2) Renewed Houthi attacks on shipping are expected to skyrocket oil and fuel prices and force global shipping to reroute around Africa once again. 3) Beyond just fuel costs, the war risk premiums for maritime insurance will likely triple or quadruple, making even non-oil cargo, like grain and consumer goods, prohibitively expensive for global markets. 4) The U.S. Navy may be forced to redeploy carrier strike groups or destroyers from the Mediterranean or Persian Gulf to the Gulf of Aden, thinning out the military presence in other high-tension zones. 5) It will add stress to the ailing interception systems, which are already overloaded as the Houthis shoot from the south. All this entry does is compound the major economic and military problems already facing Israel and the United States.

An Iranian missile and drone attack struck Prince Sultan Air Base in Saudi Arabia wounding 10 U.S. personnel, two seriously, and damaging several refueling aircraft. The accuracy of Iranian missiles and their continued ability to launch have taken a massive toll on US forces in the Gulf.

The basic premise of this [Zionist] ideology was that the Jews constitute a nation, and not a religion—a redefinition of Jewishness that resulted from a broader ideological innovation in Jewish history: the creation of modern Jewish nationalism ... [T]he word “nation,” which previously had a very loose meaning that could apply to essentially any group of people united by some common bond (one spoke, for example, of the “nation of students”), now acquired a highly specific and exclusive meaning: every person’s primary identification was as a member of his or her nation, rather than other forms of self-definition or loyalty—religious, regional, local, even familial. This superseding national identity required, among other things, a continuous common history (invented by nationalist historians), led by national heroes reaching back to antiquity, and a “national language” which had to replace previous modes of communication, now derogated as dialects which had to be eliminated. In due course, crucial to the new nationalisms was the insistence that each nation required political sovereignty—preferably, complete independence—in clearly demarcated territories that belonged in a biological manner to that nation and that nation alone, but had in whole or in part been taken away from it by foreign occupiers, from which it had to be liberated. ... While for the most part Zionism followed this common pattern of modern nationalisms, it also diverged from it in crucial ways. First, since antiquity the Jews had described themselves, and had been defined by others, as a “people” or a “nation,” even though the latter term was understood in a different way from its later nationalist usage. Thus, the Hebrew Bible uses three words to convey the concepts of Jewish peoplehood or nationality: am, goy, and leom. It is not at all clear what the difference was, if any, between these terms for the Biblical authors, but over the course of time the most common appellation for the Jews as a group became am yisrael, the people of Israel. With the invention of modern Jewish nationalism in the middle and late nineteenth century, however, the third and least common Biblical term—leom—came to be used as the basis for the Hebrew versions of the new European conceptions of “nation,” “nationhood,” and “nationalism,” so as not to confuse them with the more typical pre-nineteenth-century terms. Michael Stanislawski, Zionism: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford University Press, 2017), pp. 18-19

This explains a LOT. China has been providing Iran with a stream of high quality chips, missiles, explosives and other materials: 1) China provided Iran with dual-use components, including inertial sensors and satellite navigation modules, often acquired through Chinese intermediaries to bypass sanctions. These chips are essential for any electronics, but particularly for the guidance systems of drones, like the Shahed series, and missiles. 2) In early 2026, China granted Iran access to its BeiDou-3 Navigation Satellite System, significantly improving the accuracy of Iranian drone and missile strikes. Combined with Iran’s recent transition from U.S. GPS to China’s BeiDou-3 Navigation System, these chips allow for high-precision, jam-resistant strikes that are much harder for Western forces to intercept. 3) Beyond chips, China has supplied over 1,000 tons of sodium perchlorate, a precursor for solid rocket fuel, enough to power hundreds of ballistic missiles. This allows Iran to rapidly replenish its arsenal even after heavy battlefield losses. 4) Potentially, the most significant recent development is the reported acquisition of the CM-302 supersonic "carrier-killer". This was designed to his US Navy carriers. This all explains why Iran has been so effective and why they may be able to further escalate and hit targets like desalination plants and even carriers. It also shows that China is going all in, in order to frustrate the US and to test its weapons systems.

As I've previously stated, Israel's aspiration to become a regional hegemon is pure delusional hubris. Israel is too small and vulnerable, lacks the required demographic and resource base, and is fully dependent on external support. Already in Iran we are learning that Israel has bitten off more than the US can chew on its behalf. A state that can't decisively defeat a second-order militia like Hamas, or administer a fatal blow to Hizballah, and needs the full might of the US to wage war against Iran - a state under comprehensive sanctions since the 1970s - is now threatening to take on NATO member Turkey? Pure delusional hubris. And after hubris comes nemesis.

Israel has sent five divisions into Lebanon in the most massive invasion of the country since 1982. But the IDF has run into serious trouble. Today one soldier was killed and 15 soldiers evacuated due to hypothermia. These are the main problems the IDF has run into: 1) Just in the last 24 hours a soldier was seriously wounded by mortar fire, another soldier was seriously wounded by rocket fire from Hezbollah and one soldier was killed in a direct face-to-face firefight. 2) Hezbollah claimed a record 95 operations in a single day, including strikes against IDF forces and rocket launches into Israeli territory. Even during the long months of fighting before the ceasefire, that number was never reached. 3) That is a result of the effective way Hezbollah has split itself into local units which fight independently, making it difficult for Israel to cut communications as they usually do. 4) Friendly fire is turning into a massive problem. Israel is using so much firepower in such a small space. When forces are searching buildings room by room, units can lose track of each other's exact positions. In darkness (as was the case here, with the 2:10 AM engagement), visual identification of friend vs. foe becomes extremely difficult. Hezbollah fighters often wear civilian clothing, adding to the confusion. 5) Hezbollah has had decades to pre-register firing coordinates across southern Lebanon. They know the terrain intimately and have pre-calculated firing solutions for key roads, buildings, and likely Israeli patrol routes. This means they can drop mortars with high accuracy onto Israeli positions very quickly, without much adjustment fire that would give warning. 6) Israel is essentially entering terrain that Hezbollah has spent years preparing. Tunnel networks, pre-positioned weapons caches, and booby-trapped buildings all favor the defender. The IDF has significant technological superiority in the air, but at ground level that advantage narrows considerably. There is no doubt the IDF will reach the Litani River. But they will do so at a high cost and will continue to take casualties as they occupy the territory. In addition, Hezbollah will be able to continue to fire on Lebanon from afar. This operation will not succeed.

The IDF Chief of Staff has warned that the IDF is on the verge of collapse after 900 straight days of war. This is what he told the government yesterday: 1) Reservists are being stretched to a breaking point across multiple active fronts simultaneously: Gaza, Lebanon, Syria, West Bank, and the Iranian front 2) No ultra-Orthodox conscription law has been passed, leaving thousands exempt from service in practice 3) The cabinet approved the legalization of dozens more outposts and farms in the West Bank, requiring additional troops to protect them 4) Jewish nationalist terrorism is surging in the West Bank, requiring an additional battalion to be deployed there, with possibly another needed soon 5) Mandatory service is set to shorten to 30 months in January 2027, the opposite of the IDF's request to extend it to 36 months 6) The government is avoiding passing the necessary laws (conscription, reserves, extended service) largely due to political pressures related to the Haredi exemption controversy The expansionist policies of the government are straining the army to the point of no return. The IDF cannot carry this load and will "collapse into itself" according to the Chief of Staff soon if the wars of expansion do not stop. Israel is simply not big enough and not rich enough to dominate the Middle East in the long-term.

They say: Iran is not Arab. Iran is Shia. Iran has its own interests. Iran uses the Palestinian cause. Fine. Accept all of that for the sake of argument. Accept that Iran's support for Palestine is partly strategic. Accept that there are geopolitical calculations involved. Accept every cynical interpretation of Iranian motives. Now tell me: what is your excuse? You are Arab. You are Sunni. You share language, culture, history, and in many cases a border with the Palestinians. The people being killed are your people by every metric you claim matters. Ethnicity. Sect. Language. Civilization. And Iran, the Persian Shia country you're so concerned about, is doing more for those people than you are. If Iran is using Palestine, what are you doing to Palestine? You are using Palestine too. Using it for speeches. Using it for fundraising. Using it to claim Islamic credentials with your own populations while conducting a completely different policy behind closed doors. The difference is that Iran's use of Palestine comes with weapons, money, fighters, and the willingness to absorb American sanctions and Israeli bombs in defense of it. Your use of Palestine comes with statements. Deeply concerned statements. Urgent statements. Strongly worded statements. The children in Gaza cannot eat your statements.

Let's say those two words and sit with them. The Persian Gulf. It has been called that for over 2,000 years. In ancient Greek sources. In Roman sources. In medieval Islamic geography. In every map made by every civilization that sailed it or studied it across two millennia of recorded history. It is called the Persian Gulf because Persia, Iran, sits on its northern shore. Because Persian civilization shaped the waters, the trade routes, the ports, the culture of that body of water for longer than most of the current Gulf states have existed as political entities. Iran is not a foreign power projecting into the Gulf. Iran is the Gulf's northern shore. And the arrangement that has been constructed, where Iran is treated as a threat to Gulf stability while American carrier groups park in Iranian-adjacent waters and American bases on Gulf soil are used to conduct operations against Iran, requires a profound act of geographic and historical denial to sustain. Iran is not threatening the Gulf. Iran is in the Gulf. Iran has always been in the Gulf. What is new is not Iran's presence. What is new is the American presence. What is new is the arrangement that pays for the American presence to be maintained against the country that has been on the Gulf's northern shore for three thousand years. The Persian Gulf is not a platform for killing Persians. Iran is telling you this clearly. The clarity will not get clearer.

Everyone keeps asking me what will happen with the Gulf States, so I write a piece on that. The answer is complex. Read my article for free. Link below.

Think about what it meant to be a small country watching American power in 1999. Yugoslavia. A mid-sized European country with a functioning military, a real air defense system, genuine capability. Not a weak state. Not a failed state. Seventy-eight days of NATO bombing. Almost no ability to respond. Missiles falling on Belgrade. Infrastructure destroyed. No counter-strikes against NATO territory. No strikes against NATO allies. No ability to escalate in ways that changed the cost calculation for the other side. Just absorbing it. Until Milošević surrendered. Now think about what it means to be a small country watching the Iran situation. Iran closes the most strategic waterway on earth. Strikes the largest LNG facility in the world. Hits one of the most defended refineries of its strongest regional adversary. Issues a counter-threat to a presidential ultimatum that is credible enough to make the president withdraw the ultimatum. Publicly laughs at the reformulated American position. Watches the United States go to China for help. Watches China say no. And the strait is still closed. The same world is watching both of these events. The same world is updating its model of what American power means. Vietnam was one update. Afghanistan was another. Iraq was another. But all of those were updates in the category of: "American power is costly and has limits." They were still, fundamentally, about the giant stomping through someone else's house and eventually leaving, having caused immense damage but finding it wasn't worth continuing. This is a different update. This is the update that says: there are actors who can make the giant stop mid-stomp. That update is categorically different. And it is being received. Right now. In every capital that matters.

Some people will say: Iran is not innocent. Iran has its own imperial ambitions. The resistance axis is Iranian influence expansion dressed as liberation theology. Fine. Say that. Say it loudly, if you believe it. And then answer this question: Even if Iran's motivations are partly self-interested, even if the resistance axis serves Iranian strategic goals as well as Palestinian liberation goals, even if Hezbollah was an instrument of Iranian policy as much as a Lebanese resistance movement, does that change what Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Qatar are doing? Does Iran's complexity excuse funding a military campaign that is killing Iranian civilians? Does Iran's impurity of motive justify paying Americans to bomb Iranian infrastructure? You don't get to launder your own responsibility through Iran's complexity. The question of Iran's motivations is a separate question from the question of your actions. Your actions are: you are funding the war. Your actions are: you are providing the bases. Your actions are: you are writing the checks. Whatever Iran is or isn't, whatever Iran's strategic calculus is or isn't, your actions are your actions. And your actions are funding the killing. Own it or stop it. There is no third option that history accepts.

Sending troops to Iran because Iran’s “navy and air forces are defeated” is like sending a 3 year old into the ring to fight Mike Tyson because Tyson’s left little toe is broken. Iran never had a strong navy or air force to begin with. What Iran does have is one of the largest and best organized militia forces in the world. Millions of reservists who are ready and waiting to fight for their homeland, their faith and their lives. This is a suicide mission.

The Israeli city of Kiryat Shmona, the biggest city near the border with Lebanon is dying because of the inability or unwillingness of the Israeli government to protect it from Hezbollah attacks: 1) There is no security. 4,700 apartments with no adequate protection or none at all, with residents having only 10 seconds to reach a shelter when sirens go off. An 80-year-old man was hit by a rocket on the third floor of his building. 2) The population is collapsing. In 2023 there were almost 25,000 residents. Now there are 10,000. The mayor warns that if nothing changes, only 10 people will remain within a month, only those physically unable to leave. 3) 400 potholes from direct rocket hits remain unrepaired due to bureaucratic disputes over compensation. The mayor describes being forced to sign what he calls "extortion agreements" just to receive repair funds. 4) 25% of residents depend on welfare, and 28% of students in grades 1–8 are functionally illiterate. The mayor says businesses have no real incentive to set up this far north. 5) The city has no 24/7 emergency medical coverage. The mayor tried to bring in major hospitals (Sheba, Ichilov) but was refused by the Health Ministry, which reportedly said the city "doesn't justify" a medical center. The mayor says grimly: "Every morning I wake up feeling like the State of Israel is fighting me — not Hezbollah, not Iran. Me." It is worth noting that the population is mostly Mizrahi and poor and therefore, of little interest to the government.

In times of crises, some nations shrink, others rise. Not through force, but through wisdom Germany & much of Europe are shrinking Qatar is rising Despite being betrayed by the US & struck by Iran, Qatar speaks with wisdom, not anger. It looks to paths for peace, not revenge.