Weekend Edition
“Most mornings I learn more from New Items than I do from all of the traditional papers I read combined.” — Michael Blair, former presiding partner, Debevoise & Plimpton.
> Senior Iranian hardline officials are upset over Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian’s March 7 (apologetic) statement about Iranian attacks on regional countries. Pezeshkian’s comments reiterated a long-standing regime policy rather than signal a policy shift, yet still drew criticism from hardliners, which highlights the extent of divisions within Iran’s leadership.
> The combined force expanded its airstrike campaign to include Iranian oil production and storage facilities for the first time on March 7. The IDF struck two oil refineries and two oil storage facilities in Iran. Disruptions to Iran’s energy sector will likely worsen the country’s ongoing energy crisis and lead to more widespread and frequent electricity shortages and outages.
> An Israeli journalist reported on March 7 that Israel estimates that Iran has about 120 missile launchers remaining. US Central Command (CENTCOM) Commander Admiral Brad Cooper stated on March 5 that ballistic missile attacks from Iran have declined by roughly 90 percent since the strikes began.
> Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky discussed the Iranian drone threat with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman al Saud on March 7. Iranian drone strikes targeting Saudi territory have damaged civilian infrastructure and forced the closure of Saudi Arabia’s largest domestic oil refinery and export terminal. Zelensky said that Ukraine is “ready to help” Saudi Arabia address the threat posed by Shahed drones.
> The combined force struck the IRGC Aerospace Force infrastructure in Tehran on March 7, likely to degrade Iranian air defense capabilities and command and control. The IRGC Aerospace Force is the principal operator of the Iranian missile and drone arsenals. (Sources: understandingwar.com, nytimes.com)
2. The U.S. and Israeli attacks on Iran have unfolded at unprecedented speed and precision thanks to months of planning, a massive assemblage of military force and a cutting-edge weapon never before deployed on this scale: artificial intelligence. AI tools are helping gather intelligence, pick targets, plan bombing missions and assess battle damage at speeds not previously possible. AI helps commanders manage supplies of everything from ammunition to spare parts and lets them choose the best weapon for each objective. (Source: wsj.com)
3. The U.S. Army in recent days abruptly canceled a major training exercise for the headquarters element of an elite paratrooper unit, officials said, fueling speculation within the Defense Department that soldiers specializing in ground combat and a range of other missions may be sent to the Middle East as the conflict with Iran widens. The 82nd Airborne Division at Fort Bragg in North Carolina includes a brigade combat team of about 4,000 to 5,000 soldiers ready to deploy on 18 hours notice for missions as varied as seizing airfields and other critical infrastructure, reinforcing U.S. embassies and enabling emergency evacuations. Its headquarters element is responsible for coordinating how those operations are planned and executed. (Source: washingtonpost.com)
4. Iran’s top national security official, speaking on national television as the war entered a second week, said Tehran would not surrender or let up on retaliatory strikes and vowed to hold President Trump responsible for killing Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Ali Larijani, the head of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council and a close confidant of Ayatollah Khamenei, said Iran was determined to avenge the killing of the leader, who died last Saturday on the first day of the American-Israel campaign of airstrikes against Iran. Mr. Larijani said the United States “must pay the price.” “Americans must know that we will not let them go,” Mr. Larijani said. “Our people are with us, our leadership is united, there is no division in fighting Israel and America.” (Source: nytimes.com)
5. Iran is targeting the radar systems that serve as the eyes of the air defenses in the Middle East, hitting several in recent days and degrading the ability of the U.S. and its allies to track incoming missiles. Iranian strikes in retaliation for the U.S. and Israeli bombing campaign have hit radar, communications and air defense systems in Qatar, the U.A.E., Jordan, Bahrain, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia, according to U.S. officials, military analysts and commercially available satellite images. The strikes are often carried out by Iran’s one-way attack drones, such as its Shaheds, which are a fraction of the cost of the missiles that the sophisticated U.S. systems were designed to defend against. Iran has fired fewer missiles in recent days. (Source: wsj.com)
6. Russia is providing Iran with targeting information to attack American forces in the Middle East, the first indication that another major U.S. adversary is participating — even indirectly — in the war, according to three officials familiar with the intelligence. The assistance, which has not been previously reported, signals that the rapidly expanding conflict now features one of America’s chief nuclear-armed competitors with exquisite intelligence capabilities. Since the war began Saturday, Russia has passed Iran the locations of U.S. military assets, including warships and aircraft, said the three officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the matter’s sensitivity. (Source: washingtonpost.com)
7. CBS News:
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said that President Trump is "well aware of who's talking to who" amid reports that Russia is providing intelligence to Iran on U.S. movements in the region.
Asked if the American people can expect conversations with the Russians to stop their involvement in the conflict, Hegseth said Mr. Trump “has a unique relationship with a lot of world leaders where he can get things done that other presidents, certainly Joe Biden, never could have.” He added that “through direct conversations or indirect, through him one-to-one or through his Cabinet, messages definitely can be delivered.”
When asked whether Russia’s involvement puts U.S. personnel in danger, Hegseth said: “We’re putting the other guys in danger, and that’s our job. So we’re not concerned about that. … But the only ones that need to be worried right now are Iranians that think they’re gonna live.”
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt, when asked during an appearance on Fox News about Russia providing intelligence to Iran on U.S. assets, said she could not comment on “intelligence reports that are leaked to the press.” The intelligence aid from Russia was first reported by The Washington Post.
“Whether or not this happened, frankly, it doesn’t really matter, because President Trump and the United States military are absolutely decimating the rogue Iranian terrorist regime,” she said. (Source: cbsnews.com. The Hegseth interview will air on ‘60 Minutes’ this evening.)
8. Two ships owned by an Iranian company that the United States has accused of supplying material to Tehran’s ballistic missile program departed a Chinese chemical-storage port this week laden with cargo and headed for Iran, according to a Washington Post analysis of ship-tracking data, satellite imagery and Treasury Department records. The vessels are part of the Islamic Republic of Iran Shipping Lines (IRISL), a state-owned company under U.S., British and European Union sanctions that has been described by the U.S. State Department as the “preferred shipping line for Iranian proliferators and procurement agents.” (Source: washingtonpost.com)
9. Iranian missile and drone attacks have disrupted the flow of commerce through one of the global economy’s most critical hubs, paralyzing much of the ocean and air traffic that carries goods between Asia and Europe while punishing investors in faraway financial markets. Just one week into the U.S.-Israeli assault on Iran, the war’s economic casualties extend well beyond the oil and natural gas shipments that normally transit the Strait of Hormuz. The closure of several international airports in the conflict zone, including the world’s busiest in Dubai, idled nearly one-fifth of global airfreight capacity, interrupting shipments of consumer electronics, pharmaceuticals and precious metals. The shipping impact illustrates a broader economic truth: The war is hitting the economies of Europe and Asia harder and faster than it is striking the United States. (Source: washingtonpost.com)
10. Oil prices surged to the highest level since 2023 as the war in the Middle East roiled commodities markets, sending the costs of everything from petrol to jet fuel spiralling and threatening a new bout of global inflation. Brent crude settled 8.5 per cent higher on Friday, leaving the international oil benchmark up 28 per cent this week to $92.69 a barrel. US marker West Texas Intermediate leapt 36 per cent this week to $90.90, in its biggest weekly rise on records stretching to 1983. The rally came after US-Israeli strikes on Iran at the weekend, and Tehran’s counteroffensive stymied transits of oil tankers through the Strait of Hormuz, a waterway that carries about a fifth of the world’s oil supply. (Source: ft.com)
11. Richard Haass:
The current war against Iran is a textbook war of choice.
America did have other viable options, above all diplomacy, especially as no convincing case has been made that an imminent threat had to be dealt with militarily. The contrast between Washington’s near-unlimited willingness to compromise and demonstrate patience when it comes to persuading Russia to end its aggression against Ukraine and its unrealistic demands and lack of patience with Iran in the run-up to this war is as stark as it is telling. Ukraine’s offer to help defend against Iranian drones while Russia reportedly provides intelligence to Iran only makes the double standard worse.
The debate over whether the Trump administration and Benjamin Netanyahu’s government in Israel were right to have launched this war when they did is raging. It will (and should) continue long after the guns are silent. But the question now is: when and how should this war be brought to an end? (Source: ft.com)
12. Michael Kugelman, Atlantic Council:
Tensions between Pakistan and Afghanistan are rising. If unrest resulting from the Iran war spreads to Pakistan, it could destabilize the country by further emboldening separatist and insurgent groups operating in the border regions. Persisting concerns in Islamabad over terrorist groups operating in Afghanistan and past failures to mediate the conflict make escalation into a full-scale war between Pakistan and Afghanistan a distinct possibility. (Source: atlanticcouncil.org)
13. President Trump ordered the U.S. military into Ecuador this week to strike drug cartels, and now he’s poised to do the same in more than a dozen other Latin American countries under a new proclamation he signed Saturday. In remarks before the signing ceremony, flanked by the leaders of many of those countries, Trump described the proclamation as “a commitment to using lethal military force to destroy the sinister cartels and terrorist networks.” He touted the U.S. military’s “amazing weaponry” — and said all the other Latin American countries need to do is identify the location of cartel operatives. (Sources: politico.com, whitehouse.gov)
14. The Economist:
(The) election in Baden-Württemberg (today) kicks off Germany’s Superwahljahr, a “super election year” in which five of the country’s 16 states go to the polls. The centre-right Christian Democrats (CDU) hope to unseat the Greens, who have run the south-western state, one of Germany’s largest, for 15 years. But the CDU’s polling lead has evaporated in recent weeks. Cem Özdemir, the Green candidate and the son of Turkish guest workers, could become Germany’s first-ever state premier with an immigrant background. A loss for the CDU would be a disaster for Friedrich Merz, Germany’s conservative chancellor.
Economic anxiety has shaped the campaign in one of Europe’s richest regions. Home to Mercedes, Porsche and countless car suppliers, Baden-Württemberg built its prosperity around a technology—the internal combustion engine—facing obsolescence. Lay-offs have inspired (exaggerated) fears that Stuttgart, the state capital, could become a second Detroit. Aiming to capitalize on the angst, the hard-right Alternative for Germany may achieve its best-ever result in a western German state. (Source: economist.com)
15. Politico.eu:
Germany’s pro-business Free Democrats, on the brink of political extinction, face a make-or-break state vote this Sunday that party leaders believe may well be their last chance to claw back relevance.
Leaders of the fiscally conservative Free Democratic Party (FDP) — which was part of Germany’s previous, ill-fated coalition government under former Chancellor Olaf Scholz — have long pinned their hopes for a national revival on this Sunday’s election in the southwestern state of Baden-Württemberg, traditionally one of the party’s strongholds.
Instead, the vote now may end up being a death knell for a party that long played a central role in postwar German politics, wielding outsized influence as a kingmaker between the two major centrist parties that once dominated the political landscape.
With the FDP now hovering just above the 5 percent threshold of support needed to make it into the Baden-Württemberg legislature, according to polls, the party is at risk of crashing out of the state parliament for the first time in its history. (Source: politico.eu)
16. Senator Flávio Bolsonaro is narrowing his gap with President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva in Brazil’s looming election, with a new poll showing both effectively tied in a potential runoff vote. Flávio, a right-wing senator and eldest son of imprisoned former President Jair Bolsonaro, would receive 43% of the vote to Lula’s 46% in a head-to-head scenario, newspaper Folha de S. Paulo reported on Saturday, citing the latest Datafolha survey. Lula’s lead over Flávio has narrowed from 15 points in December to 3 points in the latest poll — within the survey’s margin of error of plus or minus two percentage points, making it a technical tie. The recent poll also confirms a trend seen in the AtlasIntel’s late February poll, which showed both candidates tied in a second-round vote for the first time. The election(s) will be held in October. (Sources: bloomberg.com, www1.folha.uol.com, americasquarterly.org)
17. Bloomberg.com:
BlackRock Inc. curbed withdrawals from one of its biggest private credit funds after client requests for redemptions spiked, the latest sign of investor anxiety about the $1.8 trillion private credit industry.
The firm’s $26 billion HPS Corporate Lending Fund, one of the largest non-traded business development companies, said in a statement Friday that shareholders requested 9.3% of their shares, but management decided to cap the repurchases at 5%. While the total value of shares would have been about $1.2 billion, according to Bloomberg calculations, investors will get back about $620 million that the fund held at year-end.
It’s the clearest instance of gating withdrawals among major private credit funds since late last year, when investors grew increasingly skittish about the asset class after high-profile collapses raised concerns about lending standards. Many firms had thus far opted to meet the higher redemption requests or looked to repay investors by other means. (Source: bloomberg.com)
18. Scott Galloway:
The Paramount-WBD combo is two drowning men clinging to each other, hoping the combined weight of their $79 billion in debt will somehow act as a flotation device. It won’t, which is why Paramount’s debt was downgraded to junk status after the Ellisons “won” the WBD bidding war. With his new toy having a leverage ratio north of 6x, David Ellison has promised $6 billion in “synergies” within three years. (Netflix Co-CEO Ted Sarandos put the figure closer to $16 billion, after examining WBD’s books.) Synergies is Latin for layoffs. Additional “synergies” could be found by consolidating HBO Max with Paramount+ into a Franken-streamer no one asked for, merging CNN with CBS News, and going Cleopatra, i.e., selling one or both studio lots to real estate developers. (Sources: profgmedia.com, and many others)
19. Market research:
AI agents can now be used to predict and simulate human behavior—a capability that startup Simile is tapping to help large companies like CVS Health and Gallup replace people for polling and market research.
Simile, which recently raised $100 million in Series A funding led by Index Ventures, is part of a new crop of startups using artificial intelligence to upend the way businesses have traditionally gathered feedback from customers and conducted market research.
Market insights is a roughly $150 billion industry that has long relied on conventional consulting and market research companies. But AI is sweeping rapidly through the sector, and the AI-simulated “people” offer customers quick, affordable access to market research—essentially a shortcut instead of going the human route, said Seema Amble, a partner at Andreessen Horowitz.
Simile uses data gleaned from chats with human beings to train AI agents, who then become the digital twins of those people, said Joon Park, the Palo Alto, Calif.-based startup’s co-founder and chief executive. (Source: wsj.com. Italics mine.)
20. The New York Times:
In 2022, NASA deliberately crashed a spacecraft into a small asteroid named Dimorphos. The goal of this interplanetary smashup was to prove that if a killer space rock ever threatened Earth in the future, humans could deflect it and save our world.
The mission, called the Double Asteroid Redirection Test, or DART, worked: The crash shortened Dimorphos’s orbit around a larger asteroid, Didymos, by 32 minutes. It also generated a giant cloud of dust and debris captured by telescopes around the world and in space.
A new study shows that DART achieved more than that. Scientists found that the spacecraft’s impact shifted not only the orbit of Dimorphos around its parent asteroid, Didymos, but also the trajectory of the pair around our sun. (Sources: nytimes.com, science.org)
Quick Links: China’s top diplomat declared this could be a defining year for US-China ties. Smart essay: As artificial intelligence threatens jobs and deflation strains growth, Xi Jinping may finally be forced to expand the nation’s social safety net. Iran has chosen a new Supreme Leader, local media says. The U.S. and Israel have discussed sending special forces into Iran to secure its stockpile of highly enriched uranium at a later stage of the war. Under threat, Iraqi Kurds resist pressure to join Iran war. Daniel Yergin: Is the nightmare scenario for global energy here? Russia revels in a sudden reversal in fortunes as oil and gas prices soar. Allies fear Iran war will leave them without US weapons they bought. Trump’s attacks on Spain hand struggling Sanchez unlikely boost. Trump’s war in Iran divides America First loyalists. Maybe not: NBC News poll shows a full 90% of self-identified MAGA-aligned Republicans back the attacks on Iran, with just 5% saying they don’t think they should have been launched. Pam Bondi’s in trouble with Republicans on Capitol Hill.