@GenFlynn - General Mike Flynn
Good morning America on the east coast. Our strongest allies in the Middle East (ISRAEL), if not the world, are in a state of war. Pray for a rapid end to this violence. Pray for a successful outcome for Israel. And for those who pay close attention, Hamas and its supporters in Iran and elsewhere (including some in our own US National Security apparatus), must know they cannot get away with this violent and premeditated act of war. 🙏🏼🙏🏼🙏🏼
@bennyjohnson - Benny Johnson
RIGHT NOW: Iran’s parliament is chanting “Death to Israel! Death to America!” as their terror cells massacre Israeli women and children This is the regime that JOE BIDEN just gave $6BILLION & a pathway to nuclear weapons too Pure evil
@NikkiHaley - Nikki Haley
Joe Biden just green lit $10B to Iran. Iran's proxies are targeting American troops abroad and just killed dozens of our citizens in Israel. Joe Biden needs to wake up—we look like fools paying terrorists who attack us and chant "death to America." https://bit.ly/3FYwZPE
@TrumpsMustache - Trump's Mustache
And the militias will keep doing it.....striking them doesn't impact Iran a bit... FJB and his weak foreign policy... He'll continue to coddle Iran and China Pentagon: Almost 60 Troops Injured by Iran-Proxy Forces in Iraq and Syria https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2023/11/15/pentagon-confirms-almost-60-troops-injured-by-iran-proxy-forces-in-iraq-and-syria/ via @BreitbartNews
@lakemonstercl1 - 🇺🇸Steve2A🇺🇸God🇺🇸Family🇺🇸Country🇺🇸
They don’t care about the American people, that much is very obvious. Leave our sons and daughters alone. https://t.co/pF2qSQ4zL0
@RealJackHibbs - Jack Hibbs
Just for the record, these things did not take place under the strong leadership of President Trump. The continued weakness of the United States and its departure from the Middle East theater of influence has now proven fatal as many of us warned. Iranian backed forces have attacked yet again, the United States, which now puts it over 100 military missions against US forces. US military analyst are predicting an increase in Islamic activity against the United States and US interest worldwide as we approach January 3 and the anniversary of the elimination of terror mastermind Soleimani. It is obvious that the United States has seen her best days and that her military expeditions from here on out, could prove to be a self-inflicted wound. Weakness always breeds violence, and the United States has never been weaker. if reports are true, coming from our southern borders, then we are weaker than we could have imagine leaving us terribly vulnerable. Pray for our military, but pray, especially for a change in leadership from top to bottom for The “United” States of America https://youtu.be/qjR_0w02quU?si=IgLRmrP9Xr-L7YF7
@LindseyGrahamSC - Lindsey Graham
When the Biden Administration says ‘don’t’, the Iranians ‘do’. The Biden Administration’s rhetoric is falling on deaf ears in Iran.
@LindseyGrahamSC - Lindsey Graham
Their policy of deterrence against Iran has failed miserably. There have been over 100 attacks against U.S. forces in the region. Iran is undeterred.
@LindseyGrahamSC - Lindsey Graham
I am sending my condolences to the families of our fallen heroes in Jordan. I am also wishing a full recovery to those injured. Our forces in Jordan and Syria are there to protect the American homeland and to provide stability in a troubled region. Their service and sacrifice will always be appreciated. They are true heroes.
@LindseyGrahamSC - Lindsey Graham
The Biden Administration can take out all the Iranian proxies they like, but it will not deter Iranian aggression. I am calling on the Biden Administration to strike targets of significance inside Iran, not only as reprisal for the killing of our forces, but as deterrence against future aggression.
@LindseyGrahamSC - Lindsey Graham
The only thing the Iranian regime understands is force. Until they pay a price with their infrastructure and their personnel, the attacks on U.S. troops will continue.
@LindseyGrahamSC - Lindsey Graham
Secretary Austin’s efforts to deter aggression against our forces in the region has failed miserably. I’ve long since lost confidence in the Biden national security team to deter Iran. If they do not change their policies now, more American service members in the region will pay the price.
@LindseyGrahamSC - Lindsey Graham
Hit Iran now. Hit them hard.
@CaptCoronado - US Civil Defense News
🚨Update: US President Joe Biden and his administration officials have discussed a massive military response to the recent attack on a US military base that killed three US troops and wounded over 30 others, near the border between Jordan and Syria by pro-Iranian groups! https://t.co/0ySABYj5cy
@4Mischief - • ᗰISᑕᕼIᗴᖴ ™ •
Congresswoman Elise Stefanik (Rep-NY) has moment of silence for the 3 American service members killed by Iran 🙏🏼🙏🏼 and rips Biden’s lack of leadership. Her quote on Joe Biden is spot on ~ “Illegal immigrants come first, American families come last in Joe Biden’s America” https://t.co/uLep11OsYI
@ABCWorldNews - World News Tonight
The U.S. is preparing for retaliatory strikes in response to the drone attack that killed three American soldiers and injured 40 others in Jordan. Pres. Biden said he holds Iran responsible for supplying weapons used in the attack. @MarthaRaddatz reports. https://trib.al/1Imac8L
@DC_Draino - DC_Draino
Soldier killed by suicide drone in Ukraine prays right before explosion I don’t know which side this man fought for, but does it really matter? This war is killing thousands of young men and women, and for what? NATO expansion? Biden crime family cover up in Ukraine? Profit? Trump will end this conflict almost immediately Biden will push the gas until it turns into WW3 Those are our choices
@PierrePoilievre - Pierre Poilievre
Horrified that Tehran-backed Hezbollah launched a deadly terrorist attack in a children’s playground and soccer field in the town of Majdal Shams. Anaida & I are thinking of the families whose loved ones won’t come home tonight. Conservatives will always stand with Israel and all democracies against terrorism.
@rpetty - Ryan Petty
🚨🚨Wow! Must see ad from dropped by @realDonaldTrump. These Gold Star families will not be silenced. We will not forget the 13 needlessly soldiers killed in Afghanistan. The Biden-Harris administration has been an international embarrassment. https://t.co/UPzUfOUxss
@JDVance - JD Vance
It has been 50 days since Kamala Harris became the presumptive nominee of the Democratic Party. In the dead of night yesterday, she finally released her campaign policy page. Here's what I think of it 🧵
@JDVance - JD Vance
1) Kamala Harris claims she wants to cut taxes for middle class families, but here's what's in her plan: IRS Audits for working families: Getting audited is a horrendous experience, even if you’ve done nothing wrong. Harris cast the tie-breaking vote to hire 87,000 IRS agents to audit more people. As recently as last summer, 63% of new audits fell taxpayers earning less than $200,000. The IRS, like Kamala Harris, claims that it’s not going to increase audits on people making under $400K, but the Treasury Inspector General stated the agency’s strategic plan, “did not include specifics on how the IRS was going to ensure it met this commitment.” That’s because they have no intention of ensuring they’re not going to audit middle class families—that’s where they’re going to find the money to pay for their massive spending proposals. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, under questioning in the House, could not deny that 90 percent of new audits under the IRA would be on households earning less than $400,000. The nonpartisan Government Accountability Office found that the majority of additional taxes the IRS recommended from audits from 2010-2021 came from taxpayers with income less than $200,000. It’s even harder to pretend that taxing working men and women isn’t their focus when you think about the reporting requirement Biden-Harris signed into law to require businesses to fill out a 1099K form on transactions over $600 made using third-party payment platforms. The reporting threshold before their bill was $20,000. There’s no minimum number of transactions in their bill, so a single transaction over $600 that triggers the reporting requirement creates more paperwork. Even Senate Democrats have backed different bills to blunt the impact of this enormously burdensome mandate. The Government Accountability Office found this aspect of the Harris tax record would result in at least 30 million new 1099K forms getting sent out in 2024. The Joint Committee on Taxation found that over 90 percent of the tax burden will fall on middle class families and gig workers. The Biden-Harris tax plan, as explicitly outlined in their formal budget request to Congress would increase taxes by $5 trillion. That’s going to stack on top of her inflationary climate spending bills and drag the economy down further. It’s been estimated that “the tax changes in the Biden-Harris budget would reduce long-run GDP by 1.6 percent…wages by 1.1 percent, and employment by about 666,000 full-time equivalent jobs.” That’s nearly a million people out of work and lower wages for everyone in order to shift money towards the Harris Green New Deal—as she said to CNN in her first interview after nearly a month as the Democratic nominee, her values haven’t changed on that policy, which she supported enthusiastically when she was in the Senate. All in all, the Biden-Harris record has been a massive wealth transfer from working people to the Green New Deal’s constituencies—the Harris tax plan is going to be more of the same, no matter what kind of claims she makes during the campaign.
@JDVance - JD Vance
2) Kamala claims she wants to make rent more affordable and home ownership more attainable, but that's not what her plan would do at all. Kamala wants to give every first time homebuyer a $25,000 check toward downpayment assistance. What she fails to leave out is that this would likely raise the average home price by the same amount, making her plan moot. We also haven't heard how the debt-burdened federal government would pay for such a plan. There’s also no guarantee that this down payment assistance will be limited to citizens. The campaign has yet to lay out what requirements there will be, beyond being a first time homebuyer and having a two year history of rental payments. One reporter has indicated that only an SSN or taxpayer identification number will be required. If that’s true, then this would leave open the door for millions of illegal immigrants to get this assistance. And this wouldn’t be the first time housing assistance has gone to noncitizens—there are a number of federal housing subsidies that noncitizens are eligible for: including the HOME Investment Partnership Program and Treasury’s pandemic era Emergency rental assistance program. But under Kamala, the potential for assistance to go to illegals isn’t the only issue. Couple that with Kamala’s CFPB and DOJ effectively forcing banks to lend to noncitizens. They’ve rewritten guidance mandating that banks cannot deny loan applications strictly on citizenship grounds, even though citizenship and residence status bear a large impact on loan repayment prospects. Vice President Harris also mentions how she'll spur the construction of "3 million more rental units." While she outlines an admirable plan, it's tough to take it seriously. This Vice President has overseen an administration that has enacted new red tape for multi-family and single-family construction. We've seen her Housing and Urban Development Department enact green energy requirements for new rental units, mandatory strictly-cosmetic updates to public housing units, and more regulations that will make it harder to grow the rental supply. That's not the end of it. The Vice President seems to think that the ongoing housing crisis is strictly due to a supply problem, but it's not. Her policies have also driven demand for housing through the roof, particularly when looking at the price and availability of rental units. As I've outlined before, and as academic research supports, mass immigration drives up demand, threatens the American dream of homeownership, and makes housing less affordable for working Americans. When a city’s immigrant population increases, the area’s home prices and rental costs rise by a comparable amount. But the effects vary by neighborhood: home values are negatively correlated with the immigrant concentration. The result: only current homeowners in non-immigrant, wealthy neighborhoods stand to benefit from mass immigration. Working-class residents see their rental costs soar, and their home values decline. It's common sense, we can't fix our housing crisis until we address the crisis at the border.
@JDVance - JD Vance
3) Vice President Harris claims she'll "take on the everyday obstacles and red tape that can make it harder to grow a small business." However, under her administration, the SEC has promulgated at least 47 rulemakings, the majority of which have not been mandated by Congress, and we've seen Treasury enact burdensome compliance regulations, with some even aimed at small businesses, like the Administration's preferred implementation of the Corporate Transparency Act. This doesn't sound like cutting red tape to me. It sounds like the opposite: enacting overbearing regulations that stifle innovation and kill job creation.
@JDVance - JD Vance
4) Kamala Harris claims she wants to make our education system a pathway to the middle class. Take it from me, a working-class kid who went to Ohio State on the GI Bill and then to Yale: education can absolutely be pathway to the American Dream. But I’m not naive enough to think that our current system works for everyone. It obviously doesn’t. Fewer than one-in-five American students goes smoothly from high school to college to a career that uses their degree. Kamala Harris doesn’t want to address these problems. Instead, she wants to double down on the failures of our education system. She wants taxpayers to write off more student loans, to increase subsidies that will only drive up tuition costs, and to send even more money to some of the worst-performing universities in the country. Here’s what I’d like to know: What will Harris say to Pennsylvania ironworkers who are upset that they have to pay for someone else’s college degree? The answer, I’m afraid, is absolutely nothing. Kamala Harris, like the rest of our education establishment, treats the majority of hard-working Americans without a college degree as an afterthought. We’re the only developed country in the world without a distinct, vocational education pathway, and yet Kamala Harris thinks the solution is to send even more money to universities.
@JDVance - JD Vance
5) Kamala says she wants to invest in affordable child care, but again that's not what her plan would do: As I’ve said before, I want our public policy to increase access to affordable childcare options and empower parents with the flexibility and resources to make the best childcare decisions for their family. Harris says that she wants families to “afford high-quality child care.” That may sound nice, but as always, Harris is light on detail and heavy on slogans. What might she mean by this? It’s tough to say, but the best indication would be the national childcare plan that she’s already laid out with President Biden as par of their “Build Back Better” plan. We all know how those policies turned out: skyrocketing inflation. But the childcare provisions of their plan were so extreme that not even a Democrat-controlled Congress could pass them. They wouldn’t have worked for many American families. Most parents who use a paid childcare center say they prefer a faith-based provider. What would Harris’s plan do for them? Nothing. Childcare providers based in a house of worship would have been excluded from funding opportunities. Other faith-based providers would be subject to additional regulations in order to access funding that might not have been able to meet. Many parents prefer to stay at home with a young child or have a loved-one watch them. Would Harris’s plan support these families? Not at all. Her proposal was only supports childcare centers and would offer no support to families that prefer not to send their children to daycare. Ensuring families have access to affordable childcare is an important challenge for our policy to help tackle. But the answer cannot be to force families into Kamala’s preferred one-size-fits-all model. We can support parents and their children without leaving millions of families behind.
@JDVance - JD Vance
6) Kamala Harris made it clear that she views American energy policy as a part of her wider fight against global warming. For example, she takes credit for passing the Inflation Reduction Act, which she claims lowered household energy costs while building a green energy economy. The reality of the IRA’s climate record, however, is much different. CBS News reported earlier this month that the cost of electricity has increased more than 28.5 percent since 2019, with the average American now paying nearly $300 each month just in utilities. These higher costs can be attributed to a shrinking supply of American electricity. More specifically, Harris's environmental policies have shuttered reliable coal power plants, slowed the approval of new natural gas plants and failed to enact permitting reform for American generation and transmission infrastructure. Instead, they have placed an increasing burden on less reliable sources of energy, such as solar and wind. These renewable sources are more dependent on conducive weather than coal and gas plants, which means they are most prone to failure exactly when Americans are most reliant on electricity to do things like heat their homes. Kamala’s energy policies are making Americans poorer and more vulnerable to extreme weather. As for the “new green energy economy,” let us look at the IRA’s effort to make American roads more conducive to electric vehicles. The IRA allocated $7.5 billion to build new EV charging stations along highways. In the almost two years since the IRA became law, the Biden-Harris administration has built just eight charging stations. This program is part of the wider Harris push to replace gas-powered cars with EVs, which has also fizzled. Many automakers, including Ford and General Motors, are delaying or curtailing EV rollouts amid lower-than-expected consumer demand, despite rosy predictions from administration officials and $7,500 federal tax credits to buy new EVs. Meanwhile, dealers are complaining that they cannot move the EV inventory they already have. Kamala Harris also pledges to advance “environmental justice” and pays fealty to international climate agreements. At best, the policies spawned by progressive and foreign ideologues will go the way of the EV push: billions of tax dollars wasted with American energy and auto workers left with uncertain futures. At worst, Kamala’s climate policies will increase energy costs for all Americans, degrade their standard of living with new climate mandates, leave them vulnerable to dangerous weather and make America a worse place to live. We all want cleaner air and water. What we do not want is more climate hysteria.
@JDVance - JD Vance
7) Kamala Harris says she wants to secure our borders. Her record tells a different story: Harris touts her record prosecuting international criminals as California’s Attorney General. One of the reasons why California has so much migrant crime is because it is a sanctuary state that shields illegal aliens from deportation. Hence foreign criminals feel more protected in California. Another thing Attorney General Harris did as California’s AG was write a 2015 letter to the US Senate defending California’s sanctuary state policies and opposing a bill that would penalize the state’s noncooperation with federal immigration law. It is safe to assume that there would have been a lot fewer migrant criminals to prosecute in California if the state and AG Kamala had allowed ICE agents to do their jobs and deport them. Kamala Harris then claims to have supported a bipartisan border security bill that would have deployed more agents and drug scanners. I believe she is referring to Sen. Chris Murphy’s Border Act of 2024 (S.4361). What she won’t tell you is that the bill also codifies catch-and-release, allows up to 1.8 million illegals to enter before the border could be closed, gives billions of taxpayer dollars to the same NGOs that are driving the invasion and expands the executive parole powers used by Biden instead of limiting them. The bill’s author Sen. Murphy put it best when he admitted that, under his bill, “the border never closes.” I think all of that is totally unacceptable when our nation is facing a historic border crisis, which is why I and my Republican colleagues opposed it. Kamala Harris should have instead pushed for a standalone vote on new border agents and scanners. Kamala Harris also brags that, thanks to her efforts, border crossings are currently at 4-year lows. It is worth remembering that almost four years ago, on their first day in office, Biden and Harris issued executive orders that stopped border wall construction and stopped deportations. They then rescinded Trump’s Remain In Mexico policy, allowing every migrant with a dubious asylum claim to enter America while waiting in an years-long case backlog. As a direct result of these actions, America endured consecutive months record-breaking illegal immigration. Only once their Border Act was rejected, and border security consistently polled as a top concern of voters, did Biden and Harris issue orders that give the appearance that they care about illegal border crossings. She cannot take credit for nominally lower border crossing numbers after she spent almost four years holding the border wide open. But the most destructive part of the Kamala Harris border plan is where she says that she wants to give her 8.5+ million illegal aliens an “earned pathway to citizenship,” which means rewarding illegal aliens with amnesty and the right to vote in our next election. Promising amnesty and citizenship will create a gigantic magnet for illegal immigration that will entice people around the world to race across our borders. If there’s a takeaway from this section, it’s that Kamala opened our borders to 8.5+ million illegal aliens, lied about it for almost four years, blamed others when she got caught and now wants to reward those illegals with citizenship.
@JDVance - JD Vance
8) Kamala Harris has said she wants to support veterans and their families. She has completely failed to do so as Vice President: Right from the beginning, Biden and Harris charted a bad course, putting U.S. soldiers in harm's way. In Afghanistan, as the situation turned chaotic in 2021, a lot more could and should have been done to keep our people safe. People on the ground warned Biden and Harris - through a dissent channel cable - that the situation would get chaotic. The administration didn't listen. And so when the time came to move our people out of Kabul, we ended up running the operation out of Kabul's own airport, right in the city. It was chaos, and ISIS terrorists exploited that chaos to murder 13 U.S. service members at Abbey Gate on August 26, 2021. And the thing that gets me is this: Kamala Harris never once bothered to pick up the phone and call those families. Kamala Harris never once supported an investigation into the decisions that led to Abbey Gate. If Kamala Harris cared about veterans, she would have demanded accountability. She didn't. I think our veterans and their families deserve a genuine investigation into what happened at Abbey Gate. That's about accountability, yes, but it's also about making sure it doesn't happen again. The same mistakes that led to our losing people at Abbey Gate were repeated again and again and again. At Tower 22 in Jordan on January 28, 2024, we lost three service members to a drone launched by an Iran-backed militia. Different time, different place, different enemy - but a lot of the same mistakes. By that time, our forces had been under fire in Syria and Iraq dozens, hundreds of times since October 7 - and we weren't shooting back. The situation was chaotic, we weren't in control, it was only a matter of time before our people paid the price. Take your pick of military operations under this administration - from the pier to nowhere in Gaza to the Red Sea operation against Houthi militants, the common thread running through them is our soldiers get thrown into situations where they are sitting ducks, where they very often come to serious harm, with no serious thought given to how we're going to get the other side to stop shooting at us. That absolutely has to stop, and it will stop under President Trump. When Russian forces attacked us in Syria on President Trump's watch, we killed them. When we took on ISIS in the Middle East, we destroyed them. Our goal should never be to send our troops into harm's way as some kind of symbol of resolve. We send our troops in to win. That's how it should be.
@Schilling1776 - Terry Schilling 🇺🇸
President Biden couldn’t even respect the time of the families who lost their children in the disastrous Afghanistan withdrawal he orchestrated. Our military families deserve better. https://t.co/lHhwH1lgfL
@LindseyGrahamSC - Lindsey Graham
All Americans are heartbroken this New Year’s Day because innocent people enjoying their lives were killed or injured in a senseless, cowardly act of terrorism. May God grant healing to the wounded and comfort to the families of the fallen. Over the last several years, we have allowed radical Islam to regain its footing in places like Afghanistan. That inevitably leads to inspired attacks against our homeland and that of our allies. To protect America, we have to keep radical Islam beaten down throughout the world. If not, we will pay a heavy price at home.
@iamclearer - iamclear
This dummy Donald Trump is blaming dei/diversity on the Black hawk/American airlines crash. Look at who one of the pilots on the black hawk is, Andrew Eaves. Trump ugly ass is so dumb. Man he makes me sick. #planecrash #Diversity #DEI #Trump #dumbasstrump https://t.co/Ff4dmV9iQf
@RichardEntuboca - Richard Entuboca
Who gives a fuck what CENTCOM does or doesn’t contradict, Mark? They’re a buncha lying, illegitimate, non-American, election-fraudster fa***ts and traitorous Jews who are working for Israeli interests and the IDF. Just like you, Mark.
@RichardEntuboca - Richard Entuboca
Without IDF Unit 8200 election fraud, Mark, many/most of those “CENTCOM” fa***ts wouldn’t even BE in those positions. They’d be replaced by people who actually give a FUCK about the truth, about America, about the Constitution and holding the criminals behind everything terrible in this country (and across the globe) ACCOUNTABLE for their heinous crimes. Because they’re NOT. FUCKING. AMERICAN. You know them well, Mark. They’re your fucking donors at TheBlaze, you vile fa***t.🖕
@goddeketal - Dr. Simon Goddek
> Israel attacks Iran > Normal Americans: “What the fvck?” > Politicians: “We stand with Israel.” > Every statement reads like it came straight from AIPAC HQ In case you were wondering: yes, you're living in an occupied country. https://t.co/MrjhzKSGys
@The_Tradesman1 - The Tradesman
🚨 U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson publicly endorsed President Donald Trump’s military strikes on Iranian nuclear sites, calling them an example of “America First” policy. The strikes targeted facilities in Fordow, Natanz, and Esfahan, Iran, and were carried out following Iran’s refusal to agree to a nuclear disarmament deal. Johnson emphasized that the action demonstrated U.S. resolve and aimed to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons. The statement was issued from Washington on June 21, 2025.
@Saul_Sadka - Saul Sadka
Lots of "mask off moments" from congressional Democrats as they collectively mourn, for some insane reason, the Iranian nuclear program. They should have kept the masks on: they are exposing some real ugliness.
@VishBurra - VISH BURRA 🏴☠️
I have to ask, is the astroturfing of the term “Woke Right” a foreign influence operation being peddled by the Israeli Government? I broke down the evidence in my monologue for “The Matt Gaetz Show” on One America News Network tonight with Patrick Casey.
@VishBurra - VISH BURRA 🏴☠️
Literally just broke on Breitbart. https://www.breitbart.com/middle-east/2025/08/28/netanyahu-you-cant-be-maga-if-anti-israel/
@VishBurra - VISH BURRA 🏴☠️
Someone from the WH is listening…
@VishBurra - VISH BURRA 🏴☠️
@misfitpatriot_ It’s vague and you’re a meathead. That’s how you ended up as Netanyahu’s pawn.
@BarackObama - Barack Obama
We don’t yet know what motivated the person who shot and killed Charlie Kirk, but this kind of despicable violence has no place in our democracy. Michelle and I will be praying for Charlie’s family tonight, especially his wife Erika and their two young children.
@ArmchairW - Armchair Warlord
Well. War with Iran it is. I had hoped it would not come to this juncture, but here we are. Some thoughts after the day's fighting.⬇️ 1. As an initial matter, the Trump Administration's actions here are aggression and perfidy. This attack on Iran was unprovoked and occurred during negotiations in which the Iranians were by all indications willing to make significant and lasting concessions to assuage American and Israeli concerns about the peaceful nature of their nuclear program. Soon enough we will regret setting this precedent. 2. US and Israeli forces appear to have achieved tactical surprise by launching a limited decapitation strike first against senior figures in the Iranian regime. The measure of performance of the strike - did they hit what and whom they intended to hit - is currently the subject of... significant debate. The measure of effectiveness of the strike - did it dislocate the Iranian defensive response or cause panic and infighting in the regime - was negative. The Iranian military deliberately cleared what was at the time an airspace crowded with civilian traffic, brought air defenses online, and began launching retaliatory strikes about an hour later. 2A. The Iranians only brought their air defenses online after their airspace was clear of civilian traffic, suggesting they felt confident in their ability to absorb a limited first strike and also indicating that they very much wanted to avoid repeating Ukraine International Airlines Flight 752 with wild defensive fire. 3. Iran has thus far had some success penetrating US and Israeli missile defenses on the far side of the Middle East and considerable success smashing up US bases (and local critical infrastructure) in the Gulf and Iraq with their plentiful arsenal of short-range missiles and cruise drones. There's nothing really new and game-changing here from the Twelve Day War, as I pointed out earlier. They have a lot of missiles and drones and seem more than happy to contest with us on throw-weight. 4. As I pointed out earlier, the considerable standoff that US and Israeli aircraft are operating from has wrecked sortie generation. Coalition strikes on Iran throughout the day have been remarkably modest following the initial wave of attacks, likely due to a combination of delay from forced refueling, disruption to remote bases due to Iranian missile attacks, forced use of standoff weapons due to Iranian AD coverage, and Iranian AD attriting incoming salvos. Effects have not been particularly impressive either - I've seen a grand total of two strikes with noticeable secondaries. 4A. As long as the Iranian IADS network remains intact enough to deter Coalition forces from flying "downtown" into Iranian airspace proper, there's very hard limits on the amount of coercive power that can actually be applied to Iran. We only have so many standoff missiles and don't have a Russo-Chinese missile printer to call upon. And I remind the reader that our bigger and stronger adversaries (Russia and China) are very invested in ensuring that IADS network remains intact so as to preserve their ally. 5. There has been no noticeable regime fracture or civil insurrection in Iran. Everyone in the regime seems to have fallen in line immediately and all the demonstrations in Iran through the day have been pro-government. This is to be expected - the Iranians have not only rehearsed this, they've had multiple repetitions of executing it over the past year. 6. Mossad's attack network in Iran seems to be well and truly dismembered - as I suggested it had been earlier. There have been no reports of commando or insurgent activity in Iran over the course of the day. The Iranian internet is shut down at the moment and nobody seems to be posting online via Starlink. 7. Oil shock is a real prospect here. The Strait of Hormuz is closed. The Bab al-Mandeb is likely going to be interdicted soon by the Houthis. Iran has already begun limited strikes on oil and gas infrastructure in the region. Air and missile campaigns are inherently indecisive, and Americans are not going to tolerate a weeks or monthslong campaign that spikes oil to $150+/barrel. 8. Claims are floating around - out of Israel, of course - that this entire affair was a scheme cooked up by Trump and Netanyahu and that the negotiations were always a sham. I suspect that isn't the case, and that Trump was herded into action by Netanyahu threatening to attack unilaterally after the US "coercive task force" was finally fully assembled in the Gulf. So how does this end? Well, Trump has been quite explicit that he's aiming for a short war (probably trying to beat the markets), so I wouldn't be surprised if this is over relatively quickly. On whose terms... well, that's another matter altogether.
@RedactedNews - Redacted
The media is calling it a preemptive strike. Iran is calling it a declaration of war. At least 4 Americans are already dead. The Strait of Hormuz is closed. What happens next affects every single one of us. @RealScottRitter is with us. https://t.co/2jJFEvfMCJ