Jason Brodsky

🚢The new Hormuz Strait initiative will not necessarily include U.S. Navy ships escorting commercial ships, according to two U.S. officials 🚢One of the officials said U.S. Navy ships will be "in the vicinity" in case they need to prevent Iran's military from attacking commercial ships moving through the strait 🚢The officials said the U.S. navy is going to provide commercial ships with information on the best maritime lanes in the strait especially when it comes to using lanes that were not mined by the Iranian military

A tanker has reported being hit by unknown projectiles while transiting about 78 nautical miles north of the city of Fujairah in the United Arab Emirates, the United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations agency ​says. timesofisrael.com/liveblog_entry…

Ebrahim Azizi is himself a former commander in the #IRGCterrorists and a veteran of the Iran-Iraq War so he should remember what happened during Operation Praying Mantis. Best not threaten the U.S. Navy.

President Trump did not announce an escort mission just now, US officials say. Project Freedom, earlier called the Maritime Freedom Construct, is a coordination cell. It’ll tell US-flagged ships and others the safe lanes to navigate the Strait of Hormuz (aka no mines, etc.)

U.S. oil falls below $100 per barrel after Trump says U.S. will guide ships through the Strait of Hormuz.

The Iranian rial has plummeted in value to an exchange rate of 1,912,500 (for one US dollar). The rial has lost about 22% of its value in the last week.

1 The WSJ quoted an Iranian official saying Tehran could attack US warships with tools like "mine-carrying dolphins". The claim was understandably ridiculed, but there's a long history of Iranian officials invoking animals in warfare and espionage. 🧵news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_ea…

Iran's currency has lost ~ 20,000% of its value since 1979, when the Islamic regime took this nation hostage. Pointing to Iran's $0.11/gallon gas price as a sign of regime beneficence is like praising Zimbabwe's trillion-dollar banknotes as signs of wealth. The price is cheap in dollars because the rial is worthless, wages have collapsed, and roughly a third to half the population lives in poverty. The regime raised gasoline prices from ~$0.09/gallon to ~$0.14/gallon in 2019 and faced one of the largest uprisings since the revolution. It then massacred thousands of Iranians and shut down the internet to hide the evidence. The minimum monthly wage in Iran stands at 166 million rials (~$115), far below what families need: a basic monthly family basket costs at least 580 million rials (~$380). A decade ago, the minimum wage was worth ~$235; today it is worth roughly $94, a 60% real-terms collapse in a decade.

What appears conciliatory at first glance is, on closer inspection, a blueprint for Iranian dominance. It is effectively demanding that the GCC trade sovereignty and deterrence for a subordinate role in a Tehran-led regional order.

I remember when some commentators at the beginning of his term thought that President Trump would just sign any deal with #Iran's regime as long as it had his name on it. Boy were they wrong.

"According to the sources, #Iran is proposing a "complete freeze" on uranium enrichment activity for a period of up to 15 years. After that period ends, it would be permitted to resume enriching uranium at a low civilian-grade level of 3.6%, under a principle of "zero stockpiling," meaning no enriched uranium inventory." If this is true, Iran's position is softening. Only a few weeks ago, Iran was offering only a complete freeze of uranium enrichment activity for 5 years. The blockade is working. Keep the pressure on. israelhayom.com/2026/05/03/ira…

Sec. Bessent on Operation Economic Fury: "We are suffocating the regime, and they are not able to pay their soldiers… And we have upped the pressure on anyone trying to remit money into Iran to help the IRGC."

Houthi seizure of commercial vessel off Somalia suggests possible coordination with Somali pirates — a convergence that would expand Tehran's maritime disruption capacity beyond the Red Sea. nytimes.com/2026/05/02/wor…

Your references to “fundamentally different data sets” and “parallel reality” @StrickerNonpro are precisely what prompts me to reply. I think you are overstating the clarity of the case. The JCPOA was never the magic solution some now suggest. It had benefits, but also serious risks, sunset clauses, and strategic consequences that unfolded over time. Even Obama acknowledged the sunset problem: once advanced centrifuges came into play, "in year 13, 14, 15...breakout times would have shrunk almost down to zero" (NPR April 2015). That alone should make us more modest about claiming that one side saw reality while the other lived in fantasy. The deeper flaw in much pro-JCPOA analysis is that it is static. It judges the deal as if its consequences were frozen in 2015. They were not. Over the next eight years — and especially after October 7 — the costs became clearer: the nuclear file had been artificially separated from the regime’s broader system of coercion: missiles, drones, proxies, hostage-taking, maritime threats, regional intimidation, and domestic repression. As I argued in Iran Crisis Notebook #2: The Layered Roots of the Current War, bit.ly/4w3TY4y this war did not begin with the United States or Israel. It began in 1979, when the Islamic Republic launched its revolutionary war against America, Israel, the liberal West, and its own people. The current confrontation is not a war Washington or Jerusalem started; it is their effort to finish a war the regime began and has sustained for 47 years. And on “parallel reality”: I lived and worked in Iran for more than a decade, then spent more than a year in Evin prison, including eight months in IRGC solitary confinement, as a political prisoner and U.S. hostage. I was interrogated for years by senior IRGC officers. I know what a parallel reality looks like. It is the worldview of the Islamic Republic itself: every deal is treated as a tactical instrument in a zero-sum struggle to preserve revolutionary power, in which it is the entire rest of the world that is driving the wrong direction on the highway (to use a Persian joke). The idea that remaining in the JCPOA would have strengthened “pragmatic elements” and pushed Iran in a more moderate direction is, in my view, the real illusion. After the Green Movement was crushed in 2009, genuine reformist politics inside Iran was systematically destroyed. Leaders were imprisoned or exiled. Reformist parties were banned. Newspapers were shut down. I was in prison with some of those people. So yes, data sets matter. But assumptions matter more. And the assumption that the Islamic Republic was gradually moderating is one I simply do not recognize — not from lived experience, not from research, and not from the regime’s own conduct. If there is a parallel reality here, it is the belief that a revolutionary regime built on hostage-taking, repression, proxy warfare, and anti-Western struggle was quietly evolving toward moderation because of a nuclear bargain.

Government offices and institutions in Tehran were placed on heightened alert on Saturday, with many staff ordered to remain on “full alert” amid security concerns, Tehran-based #Iran news website Rouydad24 reported on Sunday. The outlet said employees at Iran’s state broadcaster were told to collect personal belongings and prepare for possible evacuation if an emergency was declared. iranintl.com/en/202605038029

Archival video circulating on social media this weekend showing how the #IRGCterrorists in #Iran have been preparing for asymmetric conflict with the U.S. for years--it's a contest of endurance. The U.S. military has prepared as well. Here the late IRGC commander-in-chief Hossein Salami teaches a course in the 1990s. This was probably recorded when he was commander of the IRGC University of Command and Staff.

The currency in #Iran is weakening even more as the day goes on. Today trading with the dollar hit 1,910,000 rials.

On Sunday, #Iran's rial further weakened, with the dollar trading at around 1.87 million rials.