Michele Kearney's Nuclear Wire - Major Energy and Environmental News and Commentary affecting the Nuclear Industry. Nuclear Activities
Thursday, March 5, 2026
[Salon] Israel's strategy of chaos - ArabDigest.org Guest Post
Israel's strategy of chaos
Summary: Arab Digest editor William Law's guest this week is the defence and security analyst and Gulf specialist Andreas Krieg.
The US/Israel war against Iran is upending security in the Gulf states and creating global anxiety and uncertainty. Donald Trump entered the war with no exit strategy. Now he and his administration are wavering. However, Benjamin Netanyahu has an end game: to create chaos in the neighbourhood believing it will give Israel security at home and dominance in the region.
You can listen to today's podcast by clicking here.
The widening US-Israeli war on Iran is also generating direct economic shocks for Egypt. To keep up with the latest developments there, besides today's podcast we are circulating below an edited version of Hossam el-Hamalawy's latest Egypt Security Sector Report. Hossam is a journalist and scholar-activist, currently based in Germany. He was involved in the Egyptian labour movement and was one of the organisers of the 2011 revolution. Follow his writings on Substack and X.
The most immediate impact on Egypt has come through energy. Israel’s suspension of natural gas exports, invoked under “force majeure” following the strikes on Iran, abruptly removed roughly 1.1 billion cubic feet per day from Egypt’s supply system. With domestic production standing near 4.1 billion cubic feet per day against demand exceeding 6 billion, authorities have moved to reschedule LNG cargoes and sharply increase fuel oil use in electricity generation, with consumption of the low quality heavy fuel oil mazut rising more than threefold in a bid to maintain grid stability and avoid renewed load shedding.
An Israeli gas platform off the coast of Gaza appeared to be on fire after Israel and the United States attacked Iran on Saturday
Egypt, meanwhile, suspended the export of roughly 100 million cubic feet of natural gas per day to Syria and Lebanon via the Arab Gas Pipeline following the halt of supplies from Israel’s Tamar and Leviathan offshore fields, a government official told Asharq Business.
The escalation is also reshaping Egypt’s border environment. Israel’s closure of the Rafah Crossing after the strikes on Iran has halted humanitarian and medical transit between Gaza and Egypt, constraining Cairo’s role as the enclave’s main relief corridor and increasing pressure along its northeastern frontier.
At the same time, war risk is spilling into global shipping lanes. Major container operators such as Maersk and CMA CGM have suspended transit through the Suez Canal and rerouted vessels around the Cape of Good Hope, an early indicator of how insurers and shipping companies price regional instability. Any sustained diversion threatens canal revenues, one of Egypt’s primary sources of hard currency, compounding pressure on an already fragile balance of payments.
The risks were publicly acknowledged during an iftar with senior military, police, GIS, and government officials 1 March where Sisi warned that escalation could disrupt oil flows and further erode Suez Canal revenues if the Strait of Hormuz were affected while at the same time attempting to calm domestic audiences by insisting: “Rest assured about Egypt… no one can come close to this country.”
In addition to the stock market slump, the tourism industry is expected to take a strong hit as rising regional instability typically triggers immediate travel advisories and booking cancellations across Red Sea destinations. Tour operators and insurers tend to treat the wider Middle East as a single risk environment meaning escalation far beyond Egypt’s borders can rapidly translate into falling arrivals and reduced foreign currency inflows.
As external shocks mount across energy supply and Suez Canal revenues, Cairo’s room for manoeuvre narrows further reflecting Egypt’s diminished position as a regional power in decline. President Sisi has already moved to contact Gulf sponsors whose financial backing underwrites Egypt’s fragile economy, underscoring how regional escalation rapidly translates into renewed dependence on its principal creditors.
Wednesday, March 4, 2026
Tuesday, March 3, 2026
Monday, March 2, 2026
[Salon] The end to deceptive Trumpian diplomacy(3/2/26) - Guest Post
https://strategic-culture.su/news/2026/03/02/end-deceptive-trumpian-diplomacy/
The end to deceptive Trumpian diplomacy
With the demise of diplomacy, the conflict has moved from the realm of strategic calculus and realism into one of psychological conditioning.
Thursday’s diplomatic negotiations (26 Feb) – for all the panglossian noise from mediators and negotiators – confirmed the essential impasse. The U.S. demands presented to Iran were:
The complete dismantling of the Fordow, Natanz, and Isfahan nuclear sites.
The transfer all enriched uranium to the United States.
The ending of all sunset clauses, and permanent restrictions.
The Acceptance of Zero Enrichment – with only the Tehran Research Reactor allowed to remain.
Minimal sanctions relief upfront; further relief only after full compliance.
These demands plainly were formulated to obstruct, rather than facilitate, any diplomatic solution. It reflects a strategy rooted in the viscerally-held presumption of Iranian weakness that, in the face of a U.S. military show of force, was confidently anticipated would surely yield to Iranian capitulation. That hypothesis always was hubristic. It has proved manifestly false as predictably, Tehran rejected the U.S.’ demands:
[Iran] insisted on recognition of its right (under the NPT) to enrich uranium for civilian needs.
Rejected ‘zero enrichment’.
Refused to transfer Iranian enriched uranium from its territory.
Insisted that any agreement must both include recognition of its right to enrich – and a significant lifting of sanctions. Iran rejects the notion of indefinite restrictions placed upon it.
The mood music at the end of the talks was determinedly upbeat. Iran’s lead negotiator FM Araghchi said: “Today’s round was the best among the rounds so far. We clearly presented our demands”. The Iranian side wanted to make clear for both domestic and overseas audiences that they (at least) had negotiated in earnest.
Reports from the U.S. however, suggest that the decision to attack was already made during the 29 December 2025 Mar-a-Lago summit, between Netanyahu and Trump.
The Iranian leadership well understood that any concessions that Iran might reasonably have offered in the talks would not have given Trump his desired quick political ‘win’. The more so, as Iran insisted that missile defences were non-negotiable.
Whilst placing Iran’s nuclear program at the centre of the talks, U.S. Secretary of State Rubio – ahead of this (last) round of negotiations – nonetheless underlined that from Washington’s perspective, the threat of Iran’s ballistic missiles to be “a fundamental component that cannot be ignored”.
Rubio’s unlikely claim however is consonant with Israeli Hebrew press reporting that after Netanyahu’s December 2025 meeting with Trump, it was Netanyahu who demanded that the U.S. strike Iran’s ballistic missile capabilities — and that striking its missile armoury must take priority over attacks on Iran’s nuclear facilities.
The same (Israeli) reporting said that Trump accepted Netanyahu’s peremptory demand.
Overall, Trump has remained adamant that whatever the Iranian stand-off outcome – whether achieved through Iranian capitulation or attained by military force – he personally had to exit the confrontation appearing ‘strong’ and having an historic ‘achievement’ under his belt.
A war in search of a rationale
Thus, with the demise of diplomacy, the conflict has moved from the realm of strategic calculus and realism into one of psychological conditioning. That is, how to characterise a war without any clear rationale to an increasingly doubting American public. And how best to trigger war in such a way to provide the right psychological advantage to Trump in the lead up to Midterm elections.
Hence, we have the absurd claims by Trump that Iran is working to produce ICBMs with which to attack the U.S. mainland. In this psy-narrative, Trump is not just saving Israel, he is saving America!
These psychological conditioning considerations are forcing a divided Trump Team to move further and further away from reality – scrabbling to find the plausible casus belli to justify a military strike on Iran. Iran, despite Rubio’s claims, does not threaten the U.S. with ICBMs. Iran does not pose a threat to the U.S. at all — nor does it possess nuclear weapons.
Make no mistake, Will Schryver observes,
“This is an American war of choice. This war – and all its consequences – are owned by the United States. This is Trump’s war. This war was started January 3, 2020, by Donald Trump’s direct order”.
But for Team Trump to say out loud that a strike on Iran is about cementing Israel’s Middle East hegemony, is considered by the Team to be a non-palatable framing for touting ‘another big Middle East war’ to an U.S. electorate adverse to casualties and increasingly sceptical of Trump’s prioritising of Israeli interests.
The dilemma of a lack of rationale for war evidently became so acute that U.S. officials agreed that Israel should strike first, in order to make an Iranian war as ‘politically palatable’ to the domestic audience as possible.
Anna Barsky, writing in Hebrew Ma’ariv last week, argued that the suggestion that Israel ‘goes first’ “… seeps from the ironic to the chilling. Because it outlines a scenario in which Israel functions, consciously and by design, as the opening shot of a move that is intended first and foremost to produce a consciousness effect in the United States”.
The build-up of U.S. forces was first imagined by Trump to be, of itself, sufficiently intimidating psychologically for Iran, that capitulation was pre-ordained. Witkoff said it plainlyon Fox News: Trump was confused and frustrated as to why Iran had not already capitulated in face of such an American array of forces near to Iran.
But more than this, for Trump – who lives by grandiose statements and promises of ‘unbelievable American military prowess’ — he was disconcerted to see leaks revealing that, despite the force build-up, the U.S. does not have the military capacity “to sustain [beyond] a four to five day intense aerial assault on Iran – or a week of lower intensity strikes”. He later contradicted his Generals.
Trump’s Generals had provided him with a much more complex picture: They were not willing to guarantee regime change; there would be no certainty about the length of the campaign, and there would be no ability to accurately predict Tehran’s response – or the regional implications.
Likely, Trump, despite the warnings, imagined (or hoped for …) a short bloody war of a few days, after which he could claim ‘Victory’ over the extended debris, and then hope to manoeuvre towards a ceasefire — with media headlines shouting another ‘Trump Peace’.
Wars, of course, are never determined by one side alone. Iran warned that if it was attacked, it would trigger all-out war – not just in Iran, but across the region. On just the first day of the war, this is what Iran has now done, with attacks on U.S. bases across the Persian Gulf – U.S. military bases are on fire and smoking for all to see. Major oil companies have just suspended shipments through the Strait of Hormuz.
Trump – but more precisely Netanyahu – has just triggered a multi front war, with attacks on Israel from many directions (from Iran, Yemen, Iraq …). A long war is more likely than a quick war.
Trump is stuck in Zugzwang. He is compelled to make the move on Iran, but in so moving, aggravates his own situation – ‘Zugzwang’. Reportedly, “many inside the Pentagon believe the U.S. will face generational disaster if it over-commits to a large-scale conflict with Iran [and does not perform ‘brilliantly’]”.
Yet the ideological momentum for a strike originating from the camp of Netanyahu and his diverse auxiliaries and donors in the U.S. proved compelling. These latter see a U.S. strike as a ‘once in a generation opportunity’ to re-cast the geo-strategic map – to remake Iran as a pro-western ally of Israel in a new coalition at war with Islamic radicalism.
Such sentiments – though fantastical – should not be brushed aside lightly. They are deeply embedded in culture and in various eschatological beliefs.
War logistics carry their own momentum: Once the ‘spring’ of military deployment is released, it takes a major effort to wind it back. At the outset to WW1, it proved impossible for the European leadership to reverse the mechanics of deployment – simply owing to the limitations inherent to the railway system. It takes a major effort to bring wide war-momentum to a halt.
In triggering such an existential global trial of strength, Trump will not be able, like King Canute, to ‘command’ the tide to recede. He has started events that will determine our global geo-political future. The future of China, Russia and Iran will hang in the balance, one way or another.
The economic order hangs in the balance too. Trump’s solution to the debt crisis hangs largely on his trade war. The viability of Trump tariffs to mitigate its debt obligations hangs on dollar hegemony. And dollar hegemony largely is a function of preserving the myth of U.S. exceptional military invulnerability.
But with Iran effectively having called Trump’s bluff, he is faced with the humiliating choices of either TACO-ing out (i.e. by twisting some premature call for ceasefire, as in the 12-day war, to proclaim ‘Victory’), or were it to be a longer war, to accept the U.S. military being perceived as a paper tiger and seeing the consequences reverberate across debt markets.
Trump is a truly committed supporter of Israel, but he is within a whisker from sinking his Presidency on this rock.
Perhaps he had no choice.
Sunday, March 1, 2026
Saturday, February 28, 2026
CHINA MFA Spokesperson 中国外交部发言人 on X: "China is highly concerned over the military strikes against Iran launched by the U.S. and Israel. Iran’s sovereignty, security and territorial integrity should be respected. China calls for an immediate stop of the military actions, no further escalation of the tense situation, https://t.co/JzpKQgEpGy" / X
Friday, February 27, 2026
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