Michael Young
22.7K posts
@BeirutCalling
Senior editor, Carnegie Middle East Center. Author of The Ghosts of Martyrs Square: An Eyewitness Account of Lebanon's Life Struggle (Simon & Schuster 2010).
The regime in Iran continues to launch non-stop cluster missiles at Israeli cities hoping to kill civilians. That’s a war crime.
🇺🇸🇮🇷 Sen. Perry says Iran will pay the $200 billion war bill after the regime changes. Ah yes, the "they'll pay us back after we win" strategy. Worked great in Iraq. Oh wait...
من جديد يثبت وليد جنبلاط حرصه على الداخل. يتمايز وينفرد بمواقفه، يخاصم هذا ويعادي ذاك، ولكن حين تكون الوحدة الوطنيّة هي الأساس لا يحيد الرجل عن خطّه. تؤكّد معلومات "المرفأ" أنّ جنبلاط أبلغ أصحاب الشأن أنّه لن يسمّي ممثّلًا عنه للمفاوضات مع العدوّ دون إجماع لبناني كامل. وتضيف المعلومات أنّ جنبلاط لا يرفض إرسال موفد في حال غياب ممثّل عن الطائفة الشيعيّة فقط لا غير، وإنّما يشترط حصول توافق وطني جامع في هذا الإطار، إذ إنّه لا يريد أن يشترك في 17 أيّار جديد بعد 42 عامًا من مساهمته هو بإسقاط 17 أيّار القديم، في 6 شباط 1984. #المرفأ #لبنان #وليد_جنبلاط #المفاوضات #ElMarfaa
.@SecScottBessent: In the coming days, we may unsanction the Iranian oil that's on the water. It's about 140 million barrels, so depending how you count it, that's 10 days to 2 weeks of supply, that the Iranians had been pushing out, that would have all gone to China. In essence, we'd be using the Iranian barrels against the Iranians to keep the price down for the next 10 or 14 days, as we continue this campaign. So, we have lots of levers.
Following on @joekent16jan19's full-throated attack on the #Iran war yesterday and his connection with @DNIGabbard, it is not really a surprise to read the just-published @ODNIgov annual threat assessment and find not a single sentence that raises an urgent alarm about the Iranian threat - nuclear, missiles, terror or otherwise - and could be cited to justify @POTUS' decision to employ massive military force against the Islamic Republic. Indeed, the report actually makes the opposite case, suggesting that there was limited imminent threat from #Iran: "Even before the [current] conflict, Iran’s strategic position was significantly degraded by setbacks in the region and its failure to resolve domestic frustrations." (p. 32) In the "homeland" section, there are 16 paragraphs on the threat of Sunni jihadists -- just one, bland sentence on the threat of Iran-supported terrorism. The foreward mentions everything from fentanyl to immigration but doesn't even mention Iran. (In case you think it was written weeks ago, it states early on "Information available as of 14 March 2026 was used in the preparation of this assessment.") Doesn't look like the @WhiteHouse and ODNI are on the same page. If I were @POTUS, I wouldn't be too happy with this. dni.gov/files/ODNI/doc…
