Alexander Query
4.9K posts
@AlexanderQuery
Reporter in 🇺🇦 for @United24media - former coordinator #RSF Press Freedom Center/ Correspondent for foreign media
🚨 EXCLUSIVE: Donald Trump has told The Telegraph's @connor_stringer he is strongly considering pulling the United States out of Nato after it failed to join his war on Iran. Read the US president's thoughts on what Putin thinks of the alliance and the UK's reluctance to spend on defence here 👇 telegraph.co.uk/world-news/202…
NEW: President Trump tells @steveholland1 in a brief interview that he will express his "disgust" for NATO at tonight's speech and that he is "absolutely" considering withdrawing the United States from NATO
The Strait of Hormuz is not closed. It is sorted. Iran has built a three-tier access system for the most important waterway on earth. Tier one: allies transit free. Malaysia cleared seven vessels through diplomacy at zero cost. India negotiated zero-fee passage. Pakistan secured clearance for 20 ships. Iraq transits without charge. These countries proved geopolitical alignment and the IRGC waved them through the Larak corridor without collecting a rial. Tier two: compliant neutrals pay. At least two tankers, likely Chinese-linked, paid up to two million dollars each in yuan through Kunlun Bank intermediaries. COSCO container ships attempted the corridor, were turned back on first approach when documentation was incomplete, then succeeded days later with revised paperwork. These are the vessels that prove the system works. They submit IMO numbers, ownership chains, cargo manifests, and crew lists to the IRGC’s Hormozgan Command. They receive clearance codes. They are escorted by pilot boats through the five-nautical-mile channel between Qeshm and Larak. They pay in a currency that does not route through SWIFT. Every successful yuan transit is a live proof-of-concept for non-dollar energy settlement. Tier three: adversaries are denied entirely. The committee plan bans American vessels, Israeli vessels, and vessels from any country participating in sanctions against Iran. These ships do not get vetting. They do not get codes. They do not get escorts. They get the AL SALMI, burning off Dubai, as illustration of what the corridor looks like without permission. But the toll is not the real cost. War-risk insurance is. Premiums have surged from $40,000 per VLCC transit before the war to $600,000 to $1.2 million today, a 30-fold increase, now running five to ten percent of hull value. A VLCC carrying $50 million in crude oil can absorb a combined $3 million in toll and insurance as a fraction of cargo value. A container ship carrying $5 million in manufactured goods cannot. The insurance premium alone exceeds the profit margin on non-oil cargo. The strait has become an oil-only VIP lane. Crude flows selectively for those who can pay the combined cost. Everything else waits, reroutes around the Cape of Good Hope, or does not move at all. And the US Navy is not inside the strait. The Abraham Lincoln strike group operates from standoff in the Arabian Sea. Three Littoral Combat Ships sit in the Persian Gulf. Marine expeditionary units are positioned for contingency. But zero American warships have transited the strait or escorted commercial traffic since the war began. The Navy told the shipping industry it has “no availability” for Hormuz escorts. The world’s most powerful fleet keeps respectful distance from a waterway controlled by a country whose navy is 92 percent destroyed because the mines, drones, and shore missiles that remain make close-in presence prohibitively risky. The result is a geopolitical sorting algorithm operating at the molecular level. One hundred and eighty-one vessels transited in all of March. Pre-war traffic was 138 per day. Of those 181, roughly 70 percent were Iranian-affiliated. The remaining 30 percent were vetted allies or yuan-paying neutrals. The 20 percent of global oil that once flowed freely through this strait now flows selectively, conditionally, and in currencies chosen by Tehran. Iran lost its air force. It lost its navy. It lost two thirds of its production capacity. It retained the only thing that matters: 39 kilometres of coastline on both sides of the narrowest point. The US Navy will not enter. Chinese tankers will. And the sorting algorithm processes another vessel, collects another yuan payment, and demonstrates once more that geography is the one military asset that cannot be degraded by precision strikes. The strait is not closed. It is under new management. open.substack.com/pub/shanakaans…
Well this is wild: Embassies are told to recruit local influencers, academics and community leaders abroad to carry counter-propaganda messaging, an approach designed to make American-funded narratives feel locally organic rather than centrally directed. theguardian.com/us-news/2026/m…
La liberté d’expression, c’est aussi laisser entendre des points de vue qui déplaisent.
🇺🇦🇷🇺 Les médias russes rapportent que le contact a été perdu avec un avion de transport militaire An-26 au-dessus de la Crimée temporairement occupée.
🔴 URGENT - Donald Trump envisage de retirer définitivement les États-Unis de l'OTAN. C'est peut-être ce qu'il va annoncer cette nuit.
TRANSPARENCE. Pourquoi et dans quelles conditions la rédaction de France Télévisions a-t-elle réalisé l'interview de Sergueï Lavrov, chef de la diplomatie russe ? l.franceinfo.fr/kos
I asked Europe's main producer of tanks and artillery what he thinks about the cheap drones wrecking all those tanks and artillery pieces in Ukraine. "This is not innovation," he said of the Ukrainian weapons. "This is how to play with Legos." An exclusive interview with Armin Papperger in my profile of his company, @RheinmetallAG, whose stock price has grown 15-fold since the Russian invasion, as the Europeans buy up all the tanks and artillery he can produce. Out today @TheAtlantic. Gift link below.
