Explosions heard around Chabahar in Sistan and Baluchestan, the southeastern province on the Gulf of Oman. $THE $BANANAS31 $SENT Up the coast, Bushehr in southern Iran saw air defense activity too, with explosions also reported there.
No one knows the source of these explosions yet.
Axios says it's not the U.S., NAYA says it was from Kuwait, and Faytuks says it cold be the Gulf.
🇺🇸 Donald Trump: "Meloni is not the old Meloni, I'm shocked by her. I thought she was brave, but I was wrong." $SENT $DEXE $SKL 🇮🇹 Meloni: "Italy does not care about what Donald Trump says."
🇮🇷🇰🇼🇧🇭 Channel 11 now claiming Gulf states, likely Kuwait and Bahrain, have launched a joint strike operation against Iran. $SENT $LITE $THE Eyewitnesses on the ground in Kuwait reporting missile launches.
🚨🇺🇸🇮🇷 The strike-pause pattern decoded: Washington is deliberately bombing in bursts to let diplomacy breathe. $RVN $TUT $DEXE -Per a U.S. official to CNN, diplomacy is actively working behind the scenes right now, with the U.S. striking then pausing "to avoid escalation and let diplomacy work"
-The Pentagon is maintaining a target list as LEVERAGE, with preparations ready for potential strikes tonight if needed
-Aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln, crews loaded fighter jets with armaments and pilots drilled, with the captain telling thousands aboard to maintain readiness
-Officials called Iranian claims of fresh U.S. strikes tonight inaccurate, while stressing strikes could resume "if needed"
The rhythm of the past 72 hours suddenly reads as deliberate choreography.
Two record nights, then silence, wasn't exhaustion, it was sequencing: hit, hold, negotiate, keep the list loaded.
The target list as standing leverage is the entire performance-based doctrine in operational form, every un-struck site is a bargaining chip.
🇺🇸🇮🇷 Washington just reached for its financial weapon at the exact moment the physical one sits in Iran's hand
Think through the sequencing. $THE $ARB $SENT The strait had just posted its best day of the entire recovery, 41 ships out in 24 hours.
Then came the tanker attacks, the strikes, and the waiver revocation, and now Iranian oil is back on the sanctions list while the IRGC declares Hormuz closed to anyone who won't recognize its authority.
Here's the contradiction nobody in Washington is pricing.
Sanctions are a patience weapon.
They work by isolating a country financially over years. But Iran's counter is a speed weapon, the ability to choke a fifth of the world's oil overnight.
Reimposing maximum pressure removes Iran's last financial reason to keep the strait calm, at the precise moment American buffers are thinnest.
U.S. inventories sit at levels last seen in 2004, the reserve has been draining for months, and Trump himself admitted the cushion is weeks from critical.
Financial pressure assumes time is on your side.
The energy math says it isn't. Iran can bleed slowly for years.
America's tank runs on a deadline, and Tehran just watched Washington restart the clock.
🚨🇺🇸 🇮🇷 The nuclear talks never stopped. A U.S. official confirms negotiations continued straight through the strikes...
$BANANAS31 $THE $SKL
-Per CNN, the U.S. and Iran remain engaged in technical negotiations on nuclear issues, with the official saying "the United States is still committed to finding a resolution"
-The official's bottom line stands: "Iran can never possess a nuclear weapon"
-The MOU is described as "performance-based," with Iran's ship attacks and the half-open strait constituting "failed performance at an unacceptable level"
-The official branded Iran's vessel attacks "acts of terrorism"
This is the revelation that reframes the entire week.
Through 170-plus strikes, four-country barrages, a "ceasefire is over" declaration, and a burial, the technical channel never actually closed.
The bombs and the diplomats have been working in parallel the whole time, exactly the dual-track this war has run since April.
"Performance-based" is the doctrine in one word: the strikes are the penalty clause, not the end of the contract.
🇷🇺🇮🇷🇺🇸 Russia says any Iran deal has to work for everyone
Lavrov, Russia's foreign minister, wants a settlement to the U.S.-Iran war that doesn't just satisfy the two sides trading blows.
$ARB $SENT $DEXE
He says the damage runs wider, to Iran's neighbours, the U.S., and every country hit by the economic mess around the Strait of Hormuz, the lane that carries a big slice of the world's oil.
Speaking after a Mozambique visit, he said it can only end with a deal reflecting all parties, not just the ones fighting.
The Fed announces leadership for five task forces reviewing its monetary policy conduct, including a16z's Marc Andreessen on the productivity and jobs panel.
🇷🇺🇺🇦Russian President Putin Rejects Peace Freeze and Orders Push for Full Donetsk Control as Russia Prepares a large scale escalation.
$TUT $SENT $ARB
Putin has turned down freezing the front lines. Russia plans to keep attacking to seize the rest of Donetsk and may need more troops to do it. No peace talks breakthrough expected soon.
Putin rejected his advisers' proposal to freeze the war along the current front line. The Kremlin believes the army will still be able to occupy the remaining part of the Donetsk region, and Putin calls this a "matter of principle."
🚨BREAKING: CFTC is set to block CME’s fast-track bid for a 24/7 oil futures contract, per FT.
$THE $ALLO $ARB
CME wanted to launch a new 10-barrel WTI-linked futures contract that could trade around the clock, allowing investors to manage oil exposure whenever major news breaks.
Regulators are reportedly concerned the energy market is not ready for a flood of 24/7 derivatives trading.
🇮🇷🇮🇶IRAN Masses IRGC Special Forces Near Iraqi Kurdistan, Signals Possible Ground Strike.
Statement from Iranian field commander;
‘If the Kurdish groups, with backing of the U.S. and Israel, try to infringe on Iranian sovereignty, we will not only push them back—we will establish a security zone of several kilometers