Lion's Fury - Day 66 (In Ceasefire)
My 18th Report on Iran War 2
Today’s Image
What you are looking at are annualized changes in national Gross Domestic Product for several major countries and Israel as projected by the International Monetary Fund and published on CNBC’s web site. This is real data based on projections of current changes in GDP. Israel is projected to grow at nearly 4% during 2026, ranking second only to China. In 2023 Israel’s GDP was 2.7% and in 2024 2.05, picking up pace in 2025 at 4.4%. So some of this is likely due to a rebound from the economic pullback resulting from the 2023 Judicial Reform protests and, of course, the October 7 massacre and its aftermath. Nonetheless, it is pretty amazing to see such optimistic projections while the country is fighting an active war along our northern border with Hezbollah, a 6 week aerial war with Iran that might resume any day and dealing with Hamas in the south.
And compare that news with this graph:
This is the official exchange rate of Iranian Rials to US dollars over the past year. That’s right, the Iranian currency has depreciated by half compared to the US dollar. Back in May, 2025 it was about 80,000 to the dollar. After the 12 day war it spiked to about 97,000 to the dollar. Then after the onset of the Iran War 2 it actually gained value for a brief period until about the time that the blockade started when it lost another 25% in value. It is now at 189,000 rials to the dollar. This is 100+% annual inflation.
Allied Casualties
IDF - 12 soldiers
USA - 13 members of the armed services,
Israel - 29 civilians
Since my last post, nearly two weeks ago, two soldiers have died in combat in Southern Lebanon, Sergeant Idan Fuks (Z’’L), 19 and Sergeant Liem Ben Hamo (Z’’L), 19. They were killed in separate incidents but both resulting from inbound FPVs (First Person View) kamikaze drone operated by Hezbollah. I will talk more about these below. Here are the photos of Fuks, on the left, and Ben Hamo.
Incidentally, both men were killed while we were technically in a ceasefire.
In My View - The Cloud of War Part 2
Since we are in a ceasefire with Iran I thought it wise to use the time to impart my view on the current situation. In my last post, Lion’s Fury - Day 51 (In Ceasefire), I argued that:
There will be no long term agreement
I saw little chance for a long term agreement between the US and Iran under the current conditions. The positions are just too far apart. It took 9 years of brutal fighting and more than 1,000,000 lives for Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the founder of The Death Cult, to finally agree to a ceasefire with Iraq back in 1989. Ahmed Vahidi, the current commander of the IRGC, fought in that war and remembers it well. He is more than willing to sacrifice his population in an effort to preserver the precepts of the Islamic Revolution of 1979 along with the corrupt regime they have created.
The US Naval Blockade will work
Yes, some Iranian tankers have slipped by. Those arriving at destination ports now or being found in the South China Sea escaped before the blockade took real effect. And a few are slipping through by hugging the Iranian, then Pakistani coastlines before entering International Waters with their AIS systems disabled. Without the permission of the Pakistani Government it would be illegal for the US Navy to intercept these boats in their territorial waters. And coming too close to the Iranian coastline places the ships in range of cruise missiles. But, those getting by are few in number. Overall the blockade is working.
The mainstream media in the USA and Europe will tell you otherwise. Do not believe them!! They are so focused on finding ways to discredit the Trump Administration that they are printing any stories which then can use to try and show that the war effort is failing. They just want to see the Trump Administration fail, even if it costs American lives.
Return to kinetic actions only if it is truly warranted
I argued that a return to a kinetic action should only happen if there was an opportunity to destroy more buried missile cities or infrastructure related to military uses - missile production, missile sub-assembly, nuclear facilities, space, etc. A renewed wave of aerial strikes will result in The Death Cult launching serious attacks on oil and civilian infrastructure throughout the Gulf States, and of course Israel. There is roughly 5 million barrels of oil getting out through the Saudi and UAE pipelines and it is best not to disrupt that flow.
I thought it best to avoid deploying US troops on the ground as I felt the risk outweighed the opportunity. The risk to US military lives would be significant.
US Naval blockade will take longer than you are being told
I did not think it necessary to try and put a time schedule in place, but it is my view that the Trump Administration is being a bit too optimistic on how long it will take for the effects of the US Naval Blockade to start taking its toll. We are not likely to see the real impact of the blockade for another 1 to 2 months.
How will the impact of the blockade manifest itself?
1. IRGC’s main source of revenue will dry up
The Death Cult’s primary revenue stream is oil sales and to a lesser extent drugs, other contraband and bitcoin mining. Oil sales finance the IRGC, the Iranian Army, its military industrial complex and its system of proxies. Turn off the revenue, a Basij member doesn’t get paid and can’t support his family. The effect of turning off the money won’t be felt for another few weeks as the last of the oil shipments are still a few days from reaching their destination ports. So it is my guess that we won’t see the impact for another 4-6 weeks. Only then will The Death Cult start depleting whatever gold or other stockpile they have. At that point they will not be able to pay the salaries of the IRGC, Basij, police, army, etc. And we should start seeing some indicators that the system is breaking down. The fact that their recent “peace proposals” have a one month time fuse suggests that this is when the money runs out.
There is ample evidence that The Death Cult is doing whatever it can to raise the desperately needed money to finance itself. Electricity generated by their power plants is being used to mine bitcoin while, at the same time, they are telling the public to start reducing electricity use by 10%, then 20%. In another month Iran will be entering summer season. Last year temperatures exceeded 50°C in some parts of the country. That is more than 120°F. Without air conditioning it will not be a pleasant summer in Iran.
There is little risk of starvation as Iran is close to agriculturally self sufficient. They subsidize the water and fertilizer for their farmers. The farmers waste large quantities of water because of these subsidies. That is the main reason they have misused their water resources and their President has threatened to evacuate Tehran more than once due to a lack of water.
2. They will destroy their only long term source of income
As you have no doubt read, The Death Cult pumps about 1.5 million barrels of oil a day from its wells. That oil is transported via underwater pipelines from the Iranian mainland to Kharg Island where it is stored in large tanks until they are loaded onto the tankers. Without a continuous flow of inbound empty oil tankers The Death Cult will run out of oil storage capacity. When that happens they will need to shut off the pumps. If they turn off the oil pumps there is a good chance that water will back flow into the wells and make it difficult, if not impossible, to restart the pumps in the future without major, major problems.
Most estimates I have read claim that the Kharg Island storage facilities will fill up within another 2 weeks. In the meantime the IRGC is scrambling to find other means of storing the pumped oil. They managed to find an old, decommissioned tanker and are filling it up with oil. The fact that they are doing this illustrates, despite claims by mainstream media to the contrary, that they are facing a serious problem. Such facilities are likely to buy them at most 2 days for each such tanker they can find.
3. They will slowly run out of fuel
Third, they will run out of fuel. Don’t forget that much of the petrochemical refining capacity was hit hard during the aerial kinetic attacks back in March and the first half of April. Even before the war, Iran imported much of its gasoline and diesel as it did not have enough refining capacity. Without fuel they cannot move their vehicles, cannot run their power plants, cannot run generators, etc. Ultimately, they will have to ration fuel even for the military industrial complex. How will they be able to “see” inside those missile cities without lights, light candles? How will they launch those missiles without fuel for their semi-trailers? Undoubtedly, they will do what they can to preserve the fuel for military use.
So, it is my view that we should start seeing the impact of the US Naval Blockade on the IRGC in 6 to 9 weeks. Then we will have better visibility as to how this story might end.
But, the Strait of Hormuz blockade is having a global impact?
This is true. As you have undoubtedly read or watched online the Iranian blockade of the SOH will affect the global economy. You are seeing its impact at the gas pump. Here in Israel we are paying 8.1 NIS per liter for gasoline. That is $11.91/gallon, which represents about 18% increase from pre-war levels. It is not just the deficit in oil and natural gas, but also byproducts such as fertilizer, even Helium used in the medical field (MRIs) and electronics (semiconductor processing).
There are some real and tangible efforts to mitigate the impact. The USA has increased oil, gas and Helium production by about 15% recently. Saudi Arabia and UAE are shipping oil by bypassing the SOH using previously deployed pipelines. Brazil has increased its output capacity. Overall these efforts are compensating for, about ⅓ of the lost capacity resulting from the SOH. Tankers have to re-route and the Panama Canal is very busy as ship traffic routes from the Gulf of Mexico (Gulf of America??) to the Pacific Ocean.
At some point, hopefully this year, the SOH will re-open fully to traffic. But I do not think that it will ever be the same. The Gulf States will move to reduce their dependency on the SOH, likely expanding the pipelines in the UAE and Saudi Arabia.
Couldn’t all of this have been avoided?
Much of the mainstream media will lead you to believe that this was a totally unnecessary war. I take a different view. As you can tell the IRGC has been preparing for such an operations as that of Lion’s Fury for decades, carving out large blocks of their GDP to build underground missile cities, speed boats. missiles, missile infrastructure and more. People, particularly the IRGC, do not build out such infrastructure unless they planned on using it. They blockaded the Strait of Hormuz once before and they were prepared to do it again.
Imagine, for a moment if they had the nuclear bomb. They would have taken over the Strait of Hormuz, blocked the traffic that they didn’t like and there would have been little that any country on Earth could have done about it. If they could disrupt oil distribution and power generation globally without the ability of the international community to stop it, don’t you think they would have done it?
Each President, from Jimmy Carter though Joe Biden, has “kicked this can” down the street expecting some future president to deal with it. I, for one, would much rather deal with it while The Death Cult doesn’t have a nuclear bomb with missile delivery that can reach Europe and likely the USA (in a year, perhaps). We, that is the globe, will be dealing with severe economic pain for the next several months. But I, for one, would rather deal with the pain now than deal with while they have a nuclear bomb and a means for delivering it.
Iran Front
Last night, Sunday, the Trump Administration announced Project Freedom, an operation that, on the surface, claims to be a humanitarian gesture to relieve the pressure on the hundreds of ships stranded inside the Arabian Gulf with their crew. When announced it was not at all clear what that meant as CENTCOM stated that it did not intend to escort ships through the SOH.
But according to this report CENTCOM managed to assist 2 US flagged commercial ships through the SOH successfully. (Throughout this, and previous, war I have come to rely on CENTCOM, the IDF and US Joint Chiefs of Staff for their honest assessments and reporting.). There were two US Destroyers that were somehow involved in assisting those ships. They came under fire by IRGC cruise missiles that were intercepted. According to Admiral Cooper, commander of CENTCOM, they reached out to many of the stranded ships in the Arabian Gulf offering to assist them in transiting the SOH. I guess only the two US flagged ships took them up on the offer. During the course of this operation CENTCOM Apache helicopters operating in the area destroyed at least 7 of the IRGC speed boats armed with missiles. That is 7 down and about 100 more to go.
And a UAE tanker operated by its national oil company ADNOC also managed to make it out of the SOH. It came under IRGC attack as well, but there was no damage or injuries reported on the ship.
It is clear that the IRGC is not happy with this development as it countermands its newly created authority on regulating traffic in the SOH. So it is not entirely clear where this is all heading. Most of us, here in Israel, are expecting that one consequence of this situation might be a renewal of aerial attacks on IRGC infrastructure in Iran. So far, no sirens here…
Elsewhere in the ‘hood’
UAE - Iron Beam & Iron Dome Systems Operating in UAE
Before reporting on what happened in the past 2 days near the UAE I think it necessary to provide some details on the level of military cooperation between Israel and the UAE since the onset of this conflict. I knew much of this before but could not report it as I was briefed by a friend who is an attache at the UAE Embassy here in Israel. I was sworn to secrecy.
The IDF dispatched both Iron Beam (laser based) and Iron Dome (missile based) systems to UAE along with the trained crews to staff them. Israel only has 2-3 Iron Beam systems in its arsenal, with more being built by Rafael Inc., an Israeli Defence Contractor. Those systems were instrumental in neutralizing BOTH inbound drones AND inbound ballistic missiles. The overall interception rate exceeded 95%. Word back from the UAE is that “we will never forget this assistance”. Who could have guessed 10 years ago that Israel would be assisting an Arab country in its defense.
In this, and other articles, they report on only the Iron Beam. But I know that both systems were deployed in the UAE. Just today the Iron Dome neutralized an inbound missile to the UAE. This is the first deployment outside Israel or the USA.
UAE - Coming Under Attack
Yesterday, a bulk carrier ship that was sitting about 11 nautical miles away from the Iranian port of Sirik and well outside the SOH came under attack by IRGC speed boats. No damage or injuries reported. Then large ships anchored near the UAE port of Ras Al Khaimah received warnings over the VHF emergency channels that the IRGC was threatening them unless they moved further away from the SOH. So they moved. But two ships were hit by drones that ignited small fires on board. It was not clear if they were the same ships or not. The IRGC seems to be firing on ships regardless of whether they cross into the SOH or not.
Now there are reports that a tanker well outside the SOH in the Gulf of Oman, near the UAE port of Fujairah was hit by an IRGC drone or missile. It is apparently a Korean tanker that had taken on oil from that port.
And a fire broke out at the Fujairah Oil Industry Zone (FOIZ) after being struck by an IRGC drone. Three men were moderately injured. The fire is now under control. The Fujairah port is in the Gulf of Oman and was attacked by the IRGC because UAE is diverting its oil to that port for the purpose of bypassing the SOH.
And more than 4 waves of missiles were fired into UAE airspace, all intercepted but damage was done to a civilian building.
Oman - Coming Under Attack
A residential building in the town of Bukha, Oman was hit by an IRGC drone. That town is near the SOH and inside the Arabian Gulf.
Lebanese Front
I will work on an update in my next post.
to be continued…
And In Your Copious Spare Time:
While this is a bit dated I still recommend reading this view from a retired IDF Brigadier General, Danny Van Biran entitled “Israel-US ‘decisive victory’ over Iran set to shape region for years”.
And this analysis appearing in Foreign Affairs written by Miad Maleki I found very interesting and very worthwhile “For Iran, Hormuz Is More a Weakness Than a Weapon”.
And while this is a bit off topic I thought that my readers would appreciate reading this summary of scientific genetic studies entitled “Who Were The Real Israelites?” These days we have “pundits” like Tucker Carlson claiming that all the Jews in Israel should take genetic testing as he is convinced that none of us are truly Jewish. The claim of the Palestinian Authority, and probably many of your neighbors, claims that while the ancient Hebrews might have lived in this part of the world all of us calling ourselves Jewish are actually descended from the Khazars or some other strange population. Using real scientific genetic studies, this author puts to rest all these crazy arguments…. read it!!