hexlint

@HFI_Research China was going to buy the oil regardless of whether Trump lifted sanctions. What this tells us is that Trump wasn't prepared to follow through with enforcing sanctions on China given guaranteed retaliation, so the face saving move is to lift sanctions beforehand

By narrowly lifting the sanctions, Chinese oil traders will buy everything Iran has in transit with no enforcement worries. Nicely done.

@WeTheBrandon Iraq corridor only gets us some oilfields before running into mountain fortress. This oil doesn't do us any good if Iran still controls the Hormuz strait, we already have plenty of stranded oilfields in the GCC

Kharg Island might very well be a feint. We might be going in from Iraq.

@ThiedeInvests Makes sense, you don't burn fuel to hike on your moose pasture

Rick Rule considers the impact of high oil prices on the (junior) gold and silver mines negligible…

The USA is preparing to deploy elements of the 82nd Airborne Division into the Middle East region - CBS News 🇺🇸🇮🇷‼️‼️‼️‼️‼️‼️‼️‼️‼️‼️‼️‼️‼️

@RealRickRule Here's my 2 cents, I could use that 6 cents in return

6 cents

BREAKING: US is preparing to deploy the 82nd airborne division to the Middle East-CBS

@jam_croissant x.com/i/status/20343…

@jam_croissant I knew these past few days were going to be wild cause Cem was on vacation. Surprisingly reliable indicator

@Nostre_damus "Mission Accomplished!" just a quick decade left of boots on the ground to wrap things up

@cougedit93 @sungleeiq Paratroopers only attack a few days before MEU arrives, just enough time to secure site and conduct mine sweeping ops to clear way for LHA

@hexlint @sungleeiq Troops that haven’t even left, meaning they are a month away. What happens to those 10k troops during that time?

🚨🚨🚨 THE U.S. IS SENDING MARINES TO TAKE KHARG ISLAND. THERE'S ONE PROBLEM: IT'S A SUICIDE MISSION. 🚨🚨🚨 To reach Kharg Island, the Marines must first transit the Strait of Hormuz — a narrow chokepoint that Iran has turned into a KILLING FIELD. Then survive a 380-mile dash along Iran's coast. Then land on an island Iran can simply BLOW UP before they arrive. Let that sink in. 💀 Step 1: Transit the Strait of Hormuz — MINED with sea mines, swarming with suicide boat drones, under constant missile and aerial drone attack from the IRGC 💀 Step 2: Survive a 20-24 HOUR dash (380 nautical miles) along Iran's coastline — exposed to anti-ship missiles, hypersonic ballistic missiles, cruise missiles, small boats, and suicide drones — aerial, surface, AND subsurface 💀 Step 3: Arrive at Kharg Island — only to find Iran has BLOWN UP its own refineries, leaving Marines stranded in a town of 8,000 hostile civilians in a cloud of POISONOUS smoke 💀 Step 4: Hold an island with NO strategic value anymore — surrounded on ALL sides by Iranian firepower ⚠️ This is from Malcolm Nance — a 36-year U.S. Navy intelligence veteran who served in ACTUAL combat zones. Not a Twitter analyst. A man who's BEEN in these waters. And he's saying this is IMPOSSIBLE. ⚠️ The British tried to control the Persian Gulf for 150 years with the most powerful navy on Earth. They eventually LEFT. The U.S. is about to learn the same lesson — with fewer ships and a FAR more armed Iran. They're showing you carrier strike groups and amphibious ships heading to the Gulf like it's a show of force. They're NOT showing you the MAP. The Strait of Hormuz is 21 miles wide at its narrowest. Iran controls the ENTIRE northern coastline. Every ship that enters is in range of THOUSANDS of missiles, drones, and mines. It's not a transit — it's a gauntlet. Here's what nobody is asking: If the U.S. can't safely transit the Strait of Hormuz → How do the Marines reach Kharg Island? → If they CAN'T reach it, what's the point of sending them? → If there IS no point, why are they being deployed? → Because this isn't strategy — it's ESCALATION without a plan. The contradiction is insane: Trump says Iran surrendered → but the Pentagon is sending Marines on a mission that a 36-year Navy veteran calls impossible → you don't send amphibious assault ships against a "surrendered" enemy → you send them when you're preparing for a war you haven't told the public about yet. Iran doesn't need to BEAT the U.S. Navy. It just needs to make the Strait of Hormuz UNUSABLE. One mine hits one ship → insurance collapses → shipping stops → mission over. Iran has THOUSANDS of mines. The U.S. has Marines on ships that were designed for beach landings, not mine warfare. This isn't D-Day. This is Gallipoli. And the people planning it either don't know the geography or don't CARE about the Marines they're sending in. Prepare accordingly. 🚨🚨🚨 Twitter is suppressing this. Like + RT + Follow before it's gone. ⚠️

@RealRickRule Communism actually working as intended for once!

" sanctions"?

@RealRickRule Rick you could do the Canucks a true public service by knocking some sense into the folks on Parliament Hill who fancy themselves to be pugilists

Might gasoline taxes in Canada effect affordability? Not leaving Trump blameless, but the most dangerous politician is the one closest to you

@MalcolmNance The plan is for 82nd paratroopers and CAB to take Kharg by air, secure the island from which to launch mine sweeping ops. This clears the strait for the MEUs to disembark onto Kharg for holding the island long term.

EVERYONE REPEAT AFTER ME You CANNOT get to Kharg Island with Marines until you successfully transit the Strait of Hormuz ... which the IRGC will make a living hell with sea mines, suicide boat drones, missiles and aerial drones Once past the SOH its a 20-24 hour dash (380nm) to Kharg along a coast that may be firing off antiship missiles, ballistic hypersonic missiles, cruise missiles small boats and suicide drones of all sorts, aerial, surface and subsurface. Then they can just blow up the islands refineries when you arrive so you have to live in a town of 8,000 who hate you in a cloud of poisonous smoke/gas

@mercoglianos Consolidate the crews onto one MSC cruise ship, pad passenger manifest with some Russians/Chinese for geopolitical cover, then pay the IRGC for safe passage through Hormuz, sail straight for Indonesia/Phillipines. Probably most cost effective method given airport chaos.

IMO pledges to try to get the seafarers out of Hormuz ▶️Secretary-general to work with Gulf states, shipping industry to evacuate stranded ships ▶️IMO agrees non-binding declaration condemning attacks on merchant vessels ▶️Countries will look to prioritise help for stranded ships, but whatever they do will be voluntary lloydslist.com/articles/2026/…

@tleilax___ Operation Avenge Bibi

Sending more troops. 22 to 30 days at sea to the reach the Persian Gulf.

This Iran war ultimately makes it easier for China to invade Taiwan, which is far more dependent on ocean energy imports. China will sneak a few cargoes through Hormuz using IRGC Navy patronage from pre-existing sanctioned crude trade. In ~12 months, China reaches escape velocity from Hormuz Strait dependency given existing stockpiles, national initiatives like coal-to-gas, EV mandates and electrolysis. Around that time, they will pivot from being a bystander hoping for resolution to the Iran war, into being an explicit backer of the Iran regime locked into a generational forever war with the US. That gives them the perfect setup to invade Taiwan. After Kharg Island bombing on Friday night, I'm fairly confident 82nd paratroopers/CAB will invade next week (probably from Kuwait), likely Wednesday night right after FOMC. USS Tripoli steaming ahead of her strike group to deliver MEU to hold the island a few days after 82nd invasion, plan is to secure Kharg and do a few Hormuz escorts for PR right before Trump lands in Beijing. This is how I know we are going into a generational forever war with Iran - because they plan to hold Kharg with a MEU. How this plays out is highly predictable: the Tripoli MEU will take visible, heavy casualties from drone and artillery barrage out of Bandar Abbas, public pressure pushes US to escalate into ground invasion on the port with further casualties, from there it's mission creep highway to Tehran. Except this forever war will be 10x worse than Afghanistan or Vietnam because Iran is a genuinely formidable enemy with fortress geography, chokehold on Hormuz, dual superpower backing, and a nuclear clock on top. The market isn't even close to pricing in what an unmitigated disaster into WW3 this will become.

@Nostre_damus I nominate Kuwait for hosting the 82nd CAB preparing to assault Kharg

@mercoglianos They should ask the MSC cruise ships for help, those usually come with more than enough food to last the crew for several months after disembarking passengers.

🚨Crews at risk in the Gulf🚨 Just heard from a crewmember on one of the 3,200 ships stuck in the Persian Gulf. A ship called the local port authority requested permission to dock as they had run out of water. They were denied permission! Multiple ships are in the same condition, with stores, food and fuel running low. Ports are overwhelmed and security is such that they are refusing permission for ships to dock. Crews cannot get off and reliefs cannot fly in. What is being done to address this matter @POTUS @SecWar @SecDuffy @DOTMARAD @IMOSecGen @IMOHQ.

I'm currently in Dubai and the banks are getting weird. Citi and Standard Chartered literally evacuated their offices this week. Told staff go home, work remote. HSBC closed their Qatar branches. Hedge funds are in "contingency mode." That's a polite way of saying they're bricking it. Analysts are saying customers could pull out $307 BILLION if this goes on another month. $307 billion. Let that number sit for a second. Bank withdrawals are "elevated" — that's the official word. A guy I know who works at Emirates NBD told me they've had more wire transfer requests in the last two weeks than in all of Q4 last year. Iranian accounts? Those are getting flagged and frozen quietly. No announcement. The UAE central bank just launched their biggest support package since COVID. That's not a good sign — that's a panic button. People are moving money to Singapore, Switzerland, anywhere that isn't in Iran's flight path. The dirham is pegged to the dollar so it looks stable. But that peg costs money to defend, and everyone's watching it.