“Mideast Conflict Widens Across Multiple Fronts”. That’s the lead headline in today’s NYTimes:
Israel and Hezbollah, the Iran-backed militia, traded strikes early Monday after the breakdown of a fragile yearlong truce, opening another front in the widening war in the Middle East following the killing of Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
Hezbollah said it had launched rockets at Israeli territory overnight in retaliation for the death of Mr. Khamenei, who was killed in a joint U.S.-Israeli military operation on Saturday. Israel responded by attacking sites south of Beirut, the Lebanese capital, that are affiliated with Hezbollah, as Israel’s military chief of staff warned of a prolonged conflict.
The United States and Israel have conducted thousands of airstrikes across Iran since Saturday, and a defiant Iran has responded by firing drones and missiles at Israel and at U.S. allies in the Persian Gulf.
The Iranian Red Crescent said Monday that the U.S. and Israeli strikes had killed 555 people across Iran. China’s foreign ministry said the death toll included one of its citizens who was caught in the crossfire.
Lebanese state media reported that at least 31 people had been killed in the Israeli strikes. Residents packed highways as they tried to flee, and schools were turned into shelters.
On Sunday, the U.S. military announced that three American soldiers had been killed in a base in Kuwait, while another nine people were killed in a strike in central Israel. Five people were killed in the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait and Bahrain, which all host U.S. military bases, and four people were killed in Syria, according to official reports tallied by The New York Times.
Three American jets were shot down over Kuwait during “an apparent friendly fire incident” while they were taking part in the campaign against Iran, CENTCOM said in a statement on Monday.
“During active combat — that included attacks from Iranian aircraft, ballistic missiles, and drones — the U.S. Air Force fighter jets were mistakenly shot down by Kuwaiti air defenses,” the statement said.
Videos verified by The Times showed an oil tanker, the Skylight, ablaze off the coast of Oman on Sunday., and a small fire broke out at a Saudi oil refinery after two drones targeting the facility were intercepted, causing debris to fall, the state-run Saudi Press Agency reported.
The fighting shut down shipping through the Strait of Hormuz, the conduit for one-fifth of the world’s oil supply, according to shipping companies and Tasnim, a semiofficial Iranian news agency. The shipping company Maersk said it was halting some shipping through the Red Sea, hundreds of miles to the west.
A drone attack struck the American embassy compound in Kuwait, as Iran targets U.S. assets throughout the Middle East, according to two U.S. officials, who spoke anonymously because they were not authorized to discuss the matter publicly. In video from the scene verified by The Times, smoke can be seen billowing from an area surrounding the complex. The State Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment. There were no immediate reports of casualties.
Relax. Everything’s under control.
Federal agencies are starting to show signs of strain as the Department of Homeland Security’s shutdown enters its third week and the U.S. assault on Iran raises concerns about a heightened risk of terrorist threats domestically.
The department is continuing what it calls “essential” missions amid a partisan standoff in which Democrats have refused to fund the department without measures to rein in immigration officers. The funding lapse has had few implications for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, however, in large part because of the billions of dollars in funding Republicans in Congress approved for the agency last summer.
Over the weekend, Republican lawmakers maintained that President Trump’s military assault on Iran makes it even more critical that federal employees who help keep the country safe, including airport security officers, should not go without pay.
“We cannot afford delays,” Representative Andrew Garbarino, the chairman of the Homeland Security Committee and a Republican of New York, said in a social media post. “We must ensure DHS is operating at maximum readiness to prevent and respond to threats against our homeland.”
Democrats dismissed those arguments, saying they would keep demanding restrictions on immigration agents.
“I don’t have any obligation to fund a Department of Homeland Security that is violating the law every day,” Senator Chris Murphy, Democrat of Connecticut, said on CBS’s “Face the Nation” on Sunday.
Gee, I have an idea. Probably the same one that you have–re-designate the funds from ICE’s ongoing war against America to the so-called ‘vital’ functions of DHS.
RFK Jr. Promotes Measles Epidemic:
As South Carolina grapples with a measles outbreak that has infected nearly 1,000 people, groups with ties to the US health secretary, Robert F Kennedy Jr, are pushing to eliminate immunization requirements that protect children.
Activists are targeting vaccine mandates in states trying to tamp down measles as communities across the country struggle to stop the worst spread of the illness since the early 1990s. The Guardian found anti-vaccine groups are encouraging their followers to organize opposition to vaccine mandates in more than 20 states, including at least six with current measles outbreaks.
Leaders of this campaign include the anti-vaccine organization Kennedy led for years, a group run by his longtime book publisher, and Leslie Manookian, an Idaho film-maker, homeopath and activist whom Kennedy has called his friend.
Russia Benefits From Higher Oil Prices:
Russian President Vladimir Putin may have lost another close ally after the death of Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, but an oil shock from conflict in Middle East spells potential good news for his war chest.
The U.S.-Israeli war against Iran has closed the Strait of Hormuz, the narrow waterway giving access to the Persian Gulf and one of the world’s key chokepoints for tankers carrying oil and liquefied natural gas. That is firing speculation that global crude prices could spike dramatically, boosting Russian revenues.
“$100+ oil per barrel soon,” Kremlin envoy Kirill Dmitriev gloated on X Saturday evening. The current price of Brent crude is about $73 a barrel, while West Texas Intermediate trades at about $67.
Well, Putin’s Trump’s buddy, so why not? Could be the Law Of Unintended Consequences, or the consequences could have been intended.
Power Demands Could Overwhelm Our Grid:
Delaware– as part of the PJM energy grid– is likely headed for an energy shortfall and drop in reliability by the end of the decade.
That’s according presentations from independent energy auditor Reliability First and Delaware’s public advocate Jameson Tweedie.
Reliability First’s Diane Holder told lawmakers that the PJM region Delaware falls in moves from “elevated” to “high” risk by 2029 without more planned energy.
According to her organization’s report, “new data centers for artificial intelligence and the digital economy account for most of the projected increase in North American electricity demand over the next 10 years.”
“Not a prediction that there’s going to be an outage in 2029,” Holders said. “But things have worsened.”
With large data center development, Tweedie said, “we are in a period of dramatic growth where PJM will need to add the equivalent of a California or Texas-size power grid in just the next five years.”
PJM shared a plan outline that will get new energy generators connected to the grid more quickly and a definition of large load operators on its grid.
Importantly, Hansen said, PJM will ask large energy users to bring their own power to the grid, or be subject to restricted power usage when the grid is stressed. It’s a suggestion she worked on with the PJM legislators collaborative, which she said will make a difference in Delaware’s ability to negotiate with data center developers.
“Either bring your own generation or agree to be curtailable–that was a non starter before,” she said. “Now we all, as a region, have come to that conclusion. That’s really helpful for us, because that means, as a state, we don’t have to start from the ground floor.”
Yeah, let’s make sure those requirements are enforceable before we open the doors to data centers.
What do you want to talk about?