[Today’s Iran war post again went live before finished. I have to go out today so it may not be complete before 9:00 AM EDT. Please return or refresh this page then for a final version]
After some had hoped that there might be a pause or even cooling off in the Middle East after Iran and Israel exchanged strikes triggered by Israel bombing Beirut despite Iran reaffirming that the ceasefire needed to include Lebanon.1 But rather than leave well enough alone, which Trump briefly seemed inclined to do, he used the pretext of the downing of an Apache helicopter, in which no lives were lost and for which Iran has said informally was not the result of an attack, to launch yet another wave of strikes to which Iran promptly responded.
The strategic significance of this latest exchange of blows looks to be more important than the kinetic impact.
First, it suggests that Trump regards Iran as the element of his current impasse that he is most likely to be able to bend to his will, as opposed to Israel. A secondary reason for the latest pounding may be for Trump to keep generating news coverage that can be spun as proof of US primacy and control.
Second, Trump continues to believe that he can pound Iran into submission. However, the latest exchange appears to confirm that the US generally loses each time. It expends costly and scarce materiel when Iran can and does retaliate with much cheaper and more abundant weaponry. Iran is continuing to attrit the US.
Third, despite the very loud Trump noises, this attack was not all that consequential (see for instance the assessment by Professor Mohammed Marandi at the top of what soon became a frustrating talk with Mario Nawfal), save from the war crime of hitting a water plant that served 20,000. 2 Aljazeera reports that Iran repaired the damage in 12 hours.
Fourth, Iran demonstrated it maintains escalation dominance. Iran again closed the Strait of Hormuz.
After unpacking the latest exchanges a bit more, we’ll turn to fresh presentations by former close Trump ally Robert Barnes on Trump’s deteriorating cognition and emotional control, which includes a very strong view that Trump cannot consummate a “deal” with Iran and needs to be maneuvered to exit. Finally, Trump made a new claim that the US secretly got 100 million barrels of Iranian oil through the Strait of Hormuz. Aside from the “Iran” part being denied by Trump’s own energy secretary, many experts questioned the magnitude of possible covert oil movement. This new Trump claim smacks of being new messaging to try to undercut the rising level of insider alarms, confirmed by data, on the imminent arrival of the oil supply cliff. Independent of how credulous oil futures traders continue to be, Trump will soon see, as did King Canute, that he cannot hold back the tide.
Predictably, Bloomberg focuses on the US action and not the Iran retaliation. From its landing page:
And its summary at the top of US Strikes Iran in Trump Escalation Over Stalled Peace Talks:
- The US military launched strikes against “multiple” targets in Iran for the second straight day after President Donald Trump accused the country of dragging out talks on an interim peace deal.
- US Central Command said it had begun “additional self-defense strikes” at 5:15 p.m. New York time on Wednesday, targeting surveillance systems, air defense sites and communications networks.
- Trump said in a Fox News interview that he had spoken with top Iranian officials Wednesday and they had asked him to halt the bombing, but he added the US would hit Iran again if its leaders didn’t sign an agreement.
By contrast, from Aljazeera at the same time I accessed the Bloomberg Middle East site:
Its live feed does not yet have much detail. Middle East Eye’s live feed reports that Israel is making new attacks on Baalbek and Nabatieh in Lebanon.
Hindustan Times provides Iran’s account of the damage done in return:
I had the misfortune to listen to most of the Hegseth presser in the second half. It really is…something.
More on Iran’s claims from Hormuz Letter:
BREAKING: Iran’s IRGC announces it struck dozens of US military targets across five bases overnight in two large ballistic missile and drone waves.
In Jordan, Iran hit and destroyed F-35, F-15, and F-16 hangars at the Al-Azraq Air Base with 12 ballistic missiles.
In Bahrain, several P-8A Poseidon aircraft at Sheikh Isa Air Base and Patriot radar defense systems at the US 5th Fleet HQ were hit with drones. Iran also struck US installations at the Ali Al-Salem and Ahmad Al-Jaber bases in Kuwait, for a combined total of 18 US targets hit in the Kuwait-Bahrain wave.
From Tasnim News in US F-16 Fighter Jet Shooed Away by Iran’s Air Defense:
“After the enemy F-16 fighter jet violated the airspace of the Persian Gulf and the IRGC air defense system fired a missile at it, the aggressor fighter jet fled the scene,” the IRGC public relation office said on Thursday morning.
In addition:
🔺 Iran Claims Detailed Intelligence Operation Behind Strikes on U.S. Bases
Fars News cited a source saying Iran carried out a “complex intelligence and operational plan” in its early Thursday strikes on U.S. military bases across the region, claiming significant damage to… https://t.co/4eoMEScrxw
— Drop Site (@DropSiteNews) June 11, 2026
In related developments, The Cradle reports IAEA passes anti-Iran resolution, demands Tehran reveal location of enriched uranium. From its article:
The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Board of Governors passed a resolution on 10 June demanding that Tehran declare the fate of its enriched uranium stockpiles and allow inspectors to verify them.
The text submitted by Washington, the UK, France, and Germany passed with 21 votes in favor, three against, and 10 abstentions, according to diplomats cited by Reuters.
Russia, China, and Niger opposed the resolution, the sources added…
Tehran condemned the vote, calling it a politically motivated measure “devoid of professionalism.”
Iran’s mission to the UN in Vienna condemned the IAEA Board of Governors’ latest resolution on Iran’s nuclear program, calling it a politically motivated measure lacking professionalism.
Tehran questioned the agency’s credibility for failing to condemn recent attacks on Iranian… pic.twitter.com/H4eKsMfWlu
— The Cradle (@TheCradleMedia) June 10, 2026
Now to the Robert Barnes bombshells, starting with one that aired second yesterday:
This is a must watch but for those who are time-pressed, key bits from a lightly cleaned-up machine transcript:
Napolitano: Do we know how Trump came to decide to invade Iran?
Barnes: Yeah, from the people that I’ve talked to, the president’s decision-making has changed and this was in the buildup prior to the going into Iran, but from people that were around the president on a regular basis communicated that, you know, the president that used to be art of the deal, always plan for the worst, expect for the best, the the positive thinking tethered by a form of sort of hardcore realism, the the president who loved getting like 55 different second opinions on any topic or subject, the you know, that president, the president who was uber rational and uh and hardcore in making practical and tactical decisions was mostly gone by the by December, by late winter. It had been slipping and eroding since late summer of 2025.
And now you had someone that almost the way they described him thought like a toddler that were very emotionally driven. would confabulate constantly, didn’t like to hear second opinions or even second guesses what he was thinking at a given moment, would get mad and enraged. Even people like Bessent and others would walk around on eggshells around him because his temper was out of control.
You sort of saw it in some of the social filters.
But the most disturbing aspect was the confabulation they were describing that they would tell him something and then he would somehow forget it the next day. and not so much out of forgetfulness, but if he didn’t want to hear something, he decided it wasn’t true and even if he heard it and was told it many, many times over. Vice versa, if he wanted to believe something, he believed it was true even when his top advisers told him it was not true.
So, in the buildup to the Iran war that people like Vice President, there was literally nobody on board the the war to begin with uh within the US administration. Everybody voiced skepticism and doubt. Even uh Secretary of State Rubio voiced out.
Napolitano: Even Even Pete Hegseth
Barnes: Even Pete Pete Hegseth voiced out, then he became a big war champion.
One can take issue with whether Trump was all that good a decision-maker in his better days. However, what Barnes says now is credible by virtue of how Trump conducts himself in public, including the way he regularly explodes at female reporters who dare to persist in questioning him.
Later in the same talk:
Napolitano: Who runs American foreign policy, Donald Trump or Marco Rubio?
Barnes: That’s a good question. I would say predominantly it’s the Israel lobby at the moment, but not alone. And then Trump’s emotional, psychological whims.
Barnes also explains why Tulsi Gabbard stayed on so long: she hoped to last another six months so she could complete a report on Ukraine’s biolabs.
Barnes’ closely preceding conversation with Nima had covered similar ground:
From a lightly cleaned-up machine transcript:
Barnes: Well, first I should say the ceasefire happens and then Lebanon as you point out now but also all the way back then [Israel] immediately breaches it. In fact, they you they escalate right after the ceasefire is entered into. And first people thought, oh they’re just doing that to try to get everything out before they have to really shut down with the ceasefire. No, they were doing it to completely undermine the ceasefire.
So in response the Iran said, “Well, we’re not fully opening up the Strait” Then the and then Trump said, “Okay, I’m keeping the blockade in.”
Then the deal is, there’s an announcement of a ceasefire. Iran announces the Starit is open.
And Trump decides to confabulate in his brain literally, just make it up that, oh really they’ve agreed to give me all their nuclear materials and they’ve agreed to all these things they didn’t agree to. And the and so Trump blows it up. Trump says oh, all throughout this the Iranians are playing us. No, it’s Trump playing everybody. The Iranians have been straightforward through the whole negotiations. Everybody inside the White House knows the guy that’s that keeps tap dancing around this is Trump himself.
So then Iran was like, “Okay, we’ll reclose the Strait.” And since then, at least six times, that original deal has been put back into force with just Iran demanding a little more each time. Like, okay, if you’re going to breach it, then we’re going to have to demand you pay a higher price before any good conditions get met….
Trump hits the panic button and he sees all this criticism from the Israel lobby because he obsessively watches Fox News.
He hears it, you know, from the donor class and from senators like Wicker and Graham and all those lunatics who he likes to listen to for whatever reason. And he chickens out over and over again.
And people always assumed he would chicken out in favor of the markets. Instead, he doesn’t. He chickens out in favor of the Israel lobby. He’s so intimidated and afraid of criticism from that crowd that he decides to make what was likely an accident if it was anything. The idea that a drone attacked and was was targeting a helicopter that was flying however high in the sky and the only two people on board come out completely unscathed. Sorry, that doesn’t happen….
So he immediately goes back in and starts escalating again. And in the in his confabulated mind, when he emotionally decides for psychological reasons, he needs to do something that’s just plainly stupid. Keeps saying, “Every other president before me has been stupid.” But and that’s how Iran has played him.
No, every other president before Trump has not been as stupid as Trump. He’s going to go down as the dumbest president we’ve ever had in his second term as as well as the most corrupt in American political history, which is saying something uh in the recent era. Trump decides to go back in and reescalate, and he’s talking about doing it again today….. When you can’t do either one of those deals, you’re literally dealing capable….
That’s why Joe Kent, I and some others with friends and allies on the anti-war side in the administration have been advocating from day one, just get Trump to get out.
He’s never going to do a reasonable deal. He’s not capable of doing a reasonable deal because he is so fear riddled..
This is why I keep telling people he can’t make a good decisions. His decision-making process is completely broken. The Trump, anyone has known from any time before, is gone.
It’s just gone. And so he’s he thinks like a toddler, like it’s two-year-old level thinking. And the consequence of that is what he will do is he will convince himself that the bad thing can’t happen. So when he when he changes direction for emotional reasons, he then rationalizes his decision…
He’s driven entirely by fear. Fear of humiliation, fear of embarrassment, fear of comparison to Obama, fear of criticism from the Fox News crowd and the Israel lobby, fear of being humiliated on the global stage if Iran actually does develop and show off that they have nukes. It’s just fear, fear, fear, fear, fear of getting so crushed in the midterms that he gets impeached and removed from the presidency. That’s all that’s motivating him. But whatever short term, whatever fear short-term dominates, he rationalizes and excuses and justifies to himself that the other fears on the other side of the ledger will never come true. And it takes massive efforts to break through to him.
That’s also why you see him flip-flop within a day, within a minute, within an hour. That’s different emotions, different fears dominate at different times. In my view is their best hope for the US, the world is a Trump exit not a Trump deal because he’s not capable of a deal.
Now to Trump’s claim about successfully getting Iranian oil out of the Strait of Hormuz for US benefit. The Janta Ka segment below has the relevant clip starting at 3:30, which rolls immediately into the US Energy Secretary’s denial in Congressional testimony:
Trump later adjusted his assertion:
Mind you, it is entirely possible that the US has gotten some oil out despite the Iran closure. But I doubt the claims about volume. Some experts do not see the Trump claim as new news, as in shadow transits have been reasonably well captured (if nothing else when the cargo arrives at port):
🛢️ Oil market analyst Rory Johnston cautions against reading too much into reports of rising “dark” shipping activity through the Strait of Hormuz.
Johnston notes that while Kpler has recorded an uptick in vessels sailing without broadcasting their location since late May, dark… https://t.co/0d6C4hN27F
— Drop Site (@DropSiteNews) June 10, 2026
From the detail in Johnson’s tweet:
– there have always been dark transits
– there has been a notable uptick, as reported by Kpler, beginning late-May
– that dark transit uptick has been offset by far fewer “official” Iranian route passages
– traffic remains massively throttled, headline counts little changed
– also, this is still just functionally a stock draw at this stage so it doesn’t change much.
PS: Murmurs of some fresh loadings (which could mean *production*) are much more promising, but we’re still talking negligible figures and as with everything else they’re being blown out of proportion.
Additional context:
Lets say what Trump said is true and roughly 2 million barrels per day made it through in the last 40 days.
That is roughly 10% of normal traffic at the cost of an Apache helicopter, several drones, and god only knows how many billions a month it costs to sustain the blockade https://t.co/tHmZ537YPI
— Saagar Enjeti (@esaagar) June 10, 2026
More experts complain about the sorry state of price discovery in paper oil markets:
⚠️Tales of oil price manipulation: volatility collapsing because of the tighter and tighter cap on the price, while the situation on the ground worsens with every passing hour.
Pretty intuitive what’s going to happen to both the oil price and volatility once the cap breaks pic.twitter.com/XPbf0o2sQZ
— JustDario (@DarioCpx) June 11, 2026
And official impotence regarding the state of physical markets:
The oil shortages and high inflation of the 1970s were not fixed by higher interest rates.
It was fixed by the Alaska pipeline coming into service, Gulf of Mexico offshore oil scaling up and North Sea oil scaling up.
— Wall Street Mav (@WallStreetMav) June 11, 2026
Larry Johnson also questions the Trump secret operations claims for different reasons. From Trump’s Covert Oil Scam… Setting the Record Straight:
I want to focus on what Trump claimed today regarding oil coming out of the Persian Gulf. I am asking the key question up front… If you are running a successful covert operation for more than 30 days, why would you reveal it to the public? Answer: You wouldn’t if it was a truly successful covert program….
He claimed the operation resulted in more than 100 million barrels of oil making it to the open market and more than 200 commercial ships safely transiting the strait. Trump had earlier told reporters in the Oval Office that the US was “taking out” millions of barrels of oil in the middle of the night, and that Iran did not know because their radar systems had been destroyed by US strikes. He said he had been itching to reveal the operation but held back — implying he disclosed it now because Iran had already figured it out…
This is nothing but pure bullshit. Let’s look at the numbers. Prior to the start of the Ramadan War on 28 February, the Persian Gulf countries sent 20 million barrels of oil per day through the Strait of Hormuz. A very large oil tanker can carry 2 million barrels. In other words, at least 50 ships passed through the straits carrying what amounts to 5-days of exports from the Gulf.
And just to put this into further perspective, 100 million barrels represents 5-days of consumption in the US. This is not a consequential amount. It is small potatoes in the world context. But I return to my original question — Why is Trump blowing the cover on a supposedly successful op? It makes no sense.
As we said earlier, this looks to be a new market manipulation gambit, and a twofer, first to counter the falling potency of “Deal is just around the corner!” patter plus to push back against evidence of the coming oil cliff.
_____
1 Let us not forget that every time the US demonstrates bad faith by yet again attacking Iran, Iran adds to its demands. Iran has recently added that a ceasefire needs to include Gaza and the West Bank.
2
NEW: Our visual analysis suggests the United States hit two drinking-water facilities overnight in southern Iran with precision-guided munitions. Deliberately targeting civilian infrastructure could constitute a war crime. w/ @ckoettl @johnismay @ArtemisChats pic.twitter.com/oU1qCev3fk
— Christiaan Triebert (@trbrtc) June 11, 2026
