[ConservativeTreehouse] Secretary Bessent Announces “Narrowly Tailored, Short Term Sanction Relief” for Russia
President Trump and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent are facing mounting criticism for creating a window for Russia to sell oil and gas to the global market via “narrowly tailored, short-term” sanction relief. However, few people are putting the issue into context, and the background here is exceptionally interesting.
According to the terms announced by Secretary Bessent, the license to sell applies solely to Russian crude or petroleum products loaded onto vessels as of March 12 and is valid through midnight Washington time on April 11. [Treasury Notice Here – OFAC Technical Details Here]
[YouTube-Promethean Action] This was the centerpiece of yesterday's show — and it's being buried by the war coverage.
Four FBI Ops. Zero Arrests — Until Now. Here's What Changed.
Kash Patel just blew the lid off four consecutive FBI counterintelligence operations against Trump — and the files were hidden even from the FBI itself. Here's what we covered yesterday, and what's next.
John Solomon and Kash Patel have exposed four consecutive FBI counterintelligence operations targeting Trump and his supporters over the past decade:
Crossfire Hurricane,
Round River,
Arctic Frost,
and Plastic Echo.
These weren't ordinary criminal investigations. They were counterintelligence operations — conducted under Executive Order 12333 — which means the FBI could wiretap, run black bag jobs, and use the media as a weapon, all without the normal legal guardrails.
Barbara laid it out: these files were hidden in "privileged access" vaults, classified even from most of the FBI. That's why nobody's been in handcuffs yet — the evidence was literally locked away. Kash Patel is now declassifying it, and what's coming next could be explosive.
[Facebook] [I've included the link to the article in the comments since the images are important]
You won’t believe how bad the Times was this time. It might as well be launching Iran’s missiles for it at this point. On Wednesday, the New York Times ran a treasonous story —the latest in a treacherous series— headlined, “U.S. at Fault in Strike on School in Iran, Preliminary Inquiry Says.” The strike is old news, still debated— but the Times just won’t let go of it, and the most horrifying part is everything else the moronic Times is deliberately ignoring.
The story begins with a horrifying error. Somebody, somewhere, had blundered. On February 28th —the first chaotic day of the war— an errant missile fell like an avenging angel on an all-girls’ grade school in Minab, a small coastal town sitting right on the war-torn Strait of Hormuz in southeastern Iran. Scores of children were instantly slain. The Iranian propaganda machine instantly cranked into high outrage gear, and I’m not referring to the Times (yet).
A furious debate ensued over whose missile it was —the U.S., Israel, or Iran’s— which still remains unsettled.
Although Iran is an active war zone and is closed to journalists, the Times somehow received minute-by-minute, high-resolution photos and videos of the strike’s immediate aftermath, the grave digging, the burials, the grieving parents, and the ongoing community memorials, from a variety of angles and compositions that would make a team of professional wedding photographers jealous, including multiple overhead drone shots and so on.
It has never said, not a single time, how it got those images. Sources.
Since the strike, the Times has published at least ten separate articles about the Minab school, plus a full episode of its flagship “The Daily” podcast, all building methodically toward the same baked-in conclusion that Iran’s war propagandists have been arguing since ten seconds after the missile hit: America did it. Nearly every day, a Times reporter hounds President Trump at a press conference somewhere: but what about the GIRLS’ SCHOOL?
On March 5th: “Analysis Suggests School Was Hit Amid U.S. Strikes.” March 8th: “U.S. Tomahawk Hit Naval Base Beside Iranian School, Video Shows.” March 9th: “Missile Appears to Be U.S.-Made.” March 11th: “U.S. at Fault, Preliminary Inquiry Says.” Each headline ratcheted the accusation a little tighter, like a prosecutor laying out exhibits before closing arguments.
The wall-to-wall coverage had its impact. 120 Democrat lawmakers wrote War Secretary Hegseth demanding that it be “investigated as a possible war crime” — even before the DoD’s own investigation is finished. It has only been two weeks. During the war. They are pretty busy right now, and it’s not like we can get in there and test the missile fragments.
🚀 Oh, how the Times lies. It lies, and lies, and lies. It’s not even clever about it. In the second graph of Wednesday’s story, the Times blithely concluded that, “the strike was the result of a targeting mistake by the U.S. military, which was conducting strikes on an adjacent Iranian base of which the school building was formerly a part.”
Remember: the US military has not yet concluded it was one of our missiles. But set that aside. Let’s assume, for the sake of argument, the Times is right. That one phrase, “an adjacent Iranian base,” is a whole story of its own. A story the Times has avoided telling.
The base is the Sayyid al-Shuhada military complex— the headquarters of the Asif Brigade of the IRGC Navy. It’s not some random army outpost. It is an IRGC Naval command headquarters on Iran’s most strategically critical coastline overlooking the Strait of Hormuz. The school building’s history makes it even more damning.
According to open-source satellite imagery, the school was originally walled inside the IRGC compound as recently as 2013. In 2016, they built a fence between the base and the school, a thin facade allowing the Times to mendaciously call it “adjacent to” the base instead of “part of” the base.
But to be perfectly clear: this was a building that was literally inside an IRGC Naval headquarters compound until about ten years ago, on property that the IRGC built, next door to an active naval brigade HQ, in the most militarily sensitive province in Iran. And the Times’ framing was that America should have known it was “a school” and avoided strikes on the base.
The Times never, ever asked why Iran was running a girls’ school on a naval base in the first place.
It gets worse. U.S. officials told the Times they couldn’t determine when the school and the base had “separated”— which is diplomatic language for “they hadn’t separated.” As the U.S. (and the Times) knew, Iran had already ordered all in-person classes suspended nationwide after strikes began. Yet somehow, at this particular school, attached to this particular IRGC base, the girls were still attending class. The Times never mentions this fact, either.
How could we possibly have known that Iran forced these particular girls, next to its most sensitive naval base, to attend school when all the other schools had been closed? That’s another question the Times never explores.
The Geneva Convention, Article 51(7), Additional Protocol I clearly states: “The presence or movements of the civilian population shall not be used to render certain points or areas immune from military operations.”
In other words, in civilized countries, keeping children in a military facility during an active shooting war has a name. It’s called using human shields, which itself is a war crime under Article 51. But the Times never asked that question, what was the good reason for having the girls in an on-base school when all other schools were closed for war. It asked not once. In dozens of breathless, accusatory articles and a brain-dead podcast.
But wait. There’s more. And this is what makes the Times’s coverage so much worse than mere negligent journalism.
On March 3rd, the Times published a fawning analysis headlined “Iran’s Strategy: Expand the War, Increase the Cost, Outlast Trump.” The article called Iran’s campaign of bombing hotels, airports, oil refineries, water treatment plants, Amazon data centers, and cargo ships across six sovereign nations as —get this— “asymmetric endurance.” The Times approvingly quoted analysts calling Iran’s targeting of civilians as a clever plan to “spread the pain.” One expert enthused that Iran was “enlarging the battlefield.” Another called it a “test of wills and stamina.” One more would have described it as “mostly peaceful protesting.”
The word “war crime” has never appeared in these stories. At least, not applied to Iran.
On March 6th, the Times covered Iran’s attacks on unarmed and undefended commercial shipping under the headline “Iran’s Chokehold on Strait of Hormuz Strains Oil and Gas Shipping,” admiringly describing the bombardment of defenseless civilian vessels as “leverage over global energy flows.”
On March 10th: “Trump Tries to Sidestep Blame for Any Civilian Deaths in Iran.” (Blame was assumed.) On March 12th —yesterday— the Times published “What Is the Strait of Hormuz and Why Is Iran Blocking It?” The subheadline: “Tehran is using the world’s most important transit point for oil and gas as leverage against its enemies.”
Oh, how clever the Iranians are! They use leverage! Strategy! Asymmetric endurance! Not terrorism. Not war crimes. Leverage.
Let’s review what the Times considers to be “leverage.” Since February 28th, Iran has deliberately —not accidentally, not with outdated targeting data, but deliberately— launched missiles and drones at targets like:
A luxury hotel on Dubai’s Palm Jumeirah
The Hayat Palace Hotel in Bahrain
Dubai International Airport (four civilians wounded)
Jebel Ali port in Dubai
A Thai-flagged cargo ship in the Strait of Hormuz, set on fire
Kuwait’s civilian airport fuel tanks
A desalination plant in Bahrain — because apparently drinking water is a fair military objective, according to the Times, anyway
Bahrain’s only oil refinery, forced to declare force majeure
Saudi Aramco’s Ras Tanura refinery, operations halted
Qatar’s Ras Laffan LNG facility, the largest on earth
Private civilian commercial data centers in the UAE and Bahrain — believed to be the first deliberate military targeting of data centers in history
Oil refineries across five countries: Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE
Hotels. Airports. Drinking water. Offices. Data centers. Cargo ships. The world’s energy supply. All deliberately targeted. None of them “accidents.” None of them adjacent to military bases that someone ‘forgot’ to update on a target list. Iran deliberately pointed its weapons at civilian targets and mashed the button, over and over and over.
Everybody except the New York Times understands exactly what this is. The Alma Research Center said Iran was “clearly targeting civilian objectives — including residential buildings, hotels, shopping malls, airports, and ports.” Six Gulf nations issued a joint statement saying, “Targeting civilians and countries not engaged in hostilities is reckless and destabilising.”
The U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations called it out: “Iran’s practice of targeting civilians and civilian infrastructure is reprehensible. Iran is indiscriminately attacking innocent families and civilians” across eleven different countries. The UAE government said, “Targeting civilians and civilian objects is condemned and rejected by all legal and humanitarian standards.”
Even Amnesty International —not exactly a neocon think tank— said Iran’s strikes “could amount to war crimes.” And just yesterday, the military think-tank Institute for the Study of War compiled a list of Iranian strikes on peaceful civilian ships:
When Trump’s military takes out narcoterrorist submarines in the Caribbean, it’s a war crime. When Iran does it against peaceful merchant ships, it’s strategy.
Good luck finding any of those quotes about civilian strikes in the Times’s many stories or their silly podcast. It’s much worse than that glaring omission. The New York Times looked at Iran deliberately bombing hotels and airports and drinking water across half the Middle East— and crowned it strategy. Called it a “test of wills.” Clapped like mental patients.
“Asymmetric endurance.” The World’s Paper of Record overworked its thesaurus, but dropped its moral compass into the Red Sea. Bloop.
Having cheerfully reframed Iran’s campaign of civilian terror as a savvy geopolitical chess move, the Times spun around and devoted dozens of articles, a podcast episode, scores of mindless press conference questions, and weeks of righteous investigative fury to the one strike where it could blame America— one single accidental hit on a former military building, on the war’s first day, using ‘outdated’ targeting data, on a school that Iran had suspiciously kept open inside an active IRGC naval base during active hostilities.
Nobody —not even the Times’s own sources— has accused the U.S. of hitting that school on purpose. But the paper’s Magoo-like myopia apparently prevents it from seeing the exact same alleged war crimes being committed daily by Iran against other countries in the same war. Iran’s propaganda team couldn’t possibly do it any better.
🚀 Many Iranians reacted exactly opposite to the Times’s narrative frame. An Iranian refugee in Canada called it what it was: spreading lies and propaganda for the regime:
Another Iranian woman called out oleaginous Governor Newsom for parroting the Times’s propaganda:
Four days ago, an Iranian warblogger made the case that the missile that struck the school was an Iranian misfire and not American:
Regardless of whether @PersianGoddd is right, his post shows Iranians leaping to defend the US from the fake claim that the U.S. deliberately targeted an elementary school. There are many more. At 12:33 last night (does the man ever sleep?), even President Trump seemed to have had it with the Times’s treasonous war coverage and posted this to Truth Social:
To tell you the truth, I have about had it with the Times, too. Someone should check whether IRGC, Inc. owns shares in the Grey Lady or sits on its board or something. Why is the Times carrying so much water for the invisible Iranian regime?
🚀 Speaking of Schrodinger’s Ayatollah, yesterday (March 12th), a written message attributed to Mojtaba Khamenei was read by a newscaster on Iranian state TV while they showed a still photo. No video, no audio. Just a photo and someone else reading his words. That’s it.
The Iranian public has never heard the voice of their (allegedly) new Ayatollah. We can argue about whether the guy is alive or dead, but clearly, he’s not exactly crushing it in the public relations department. It’s still Weekend at Mojtaba’s. Except you could at least see Bernie.
#1
I get his Coffee and Covid column daily via email. Always smart, acerbic, and well-reasoned. I recommend it
Posted by: Frank G ||
03/14/2026 1:28 Comments ||
Top||
#2
Nothing innocent about any of this.
Evil regimes around the world seek the destruction of USA. So,they've infiltrated formerly Left-leaning institutions and have gradually transformed the Overton Window for what is "normal" discourse:
NY Times et al.
TV news
Ivy League
NFL
K-12
City and State govt
Congress
Hollywood
ACLU SPLC NYC Mayor's Office.
Etc.
We can't even pass the SAVE AMERICA bill. Lolol
Leave now, whilst there's still some time.
Not kidding.
#3
Piecewise progression. If the bill doesn’t pass as a whole, it can be broken up in pieces most of it passed, one at a time. In the meantime funding sources from the government to the left continue being exposed and turned off, voter rolls and voting processes continue being cleaned up, and illegals continue being arrested or voluntarily removing themselves from our country. Oh, and the federal payroll continues shrinking.
And the War Department is teaming up with the IDF to beat Iran and its clients like a rented mule while an appalled world learns a useful lesson in consequences.
#8
Did the IRGC put their own daughters in that school? Did they use their own daughters as human shields?
Posted by: Abu Uluque ||
03/14/2026 12:14 Comments ||
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#9
They wouldn't have put their sons in harm's way like that.
Posted by: Abu Uluque ||
03/14/2026 12:15 Comments ||
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#10
If it were just some editors and "reporters" doing this, that would be one thing. But this stuff is what the NYT's audience wants to hear. 90 million Iranians living under a brutal regime is, to them, an acceptable price to show OrangeManBad.
Posted by: Matt ||
03/14/2026 12:31 Comments ||
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#11
40 minutes after the strike another missile arrived, killing many of the first responders.
A classic double tap, perfected in Iraq. Obama would frequently order drone strikes just to attract a crowd and then the second missile would kill more than the first.
There hasn't been a major attack on US soil since 9/11.
This works.
It will be interesting to hear the Burg comments on this one.
Posted by: Woodrow ||
03/14/2026 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[1786 views]
Top|| File under: Govt of Iran
#1
Comment: the first 20 seconds is the same as I saw two days ago. Along with a lengthy Twitter/X thread about how this video absolutely proved - or showed absolutely nothing. The most important argument from the thread is the US does not target civilian sites. Compare/contrast to Oct 7 Hamassniks.
Posted by: Bobby ||
03/14/2026 0:22 Comments ||
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#7
I used to stand watch at a harpoon station. The firing key wasn’t present so I would spend time programming in firing solutions in nearby vessels.
It strikes that this is not a flight pattern that would be used for a tomahawk. Why have it pop up to risk neutralization by AA fire? Does that path allow optimize the impact on Social Studies class? This psyop seems poorly conceived to me. It’s almost Palestinian.
Posted by: Super Hose ||
03/14/2026 7:38 Comments ||
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#8
My first thought was short of Supe's; why do that angle? and perspective lines make the 'missile' look huge. Remember views can look compressed with a big zoom on (hence the Playstation 1 looking trees and details), like the center field to home plate camera in baseball does.
Now I have questions if the plume is even real.
Somebody help me with the angular velocity vs. a vertical (and rather instant) plume, no floppies scattering to the left of camera view?
#9
@7 Not arguing one way or the other about the target, but you comment reminded me that there was a ground attack version of the Harpoon. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AGM-84H/K_SLAM-ER
**Harpoon missiles** originally used a **pop-up maneuver** during their terminal phase to improve effectiveness against naval targets.
This tactic involved the missile climbing to an altitude of approximately **5,900 feet (1,800 meters)** before diving at a steep angle—around **7 degrees**—onto the target ship. The primary reasons for this maneuver were:
- **To avoid thick armor**: The upper decks of ships are less armored than their hulls and belt areas, making them easier to penetrate.
- **To confuse defenses**: The sudden change in altitude disrupted **rate-aided tracking radars** used by ship defense systems, making it harder to predict and intercept the missile.
- **To enhance destructive effect**: The high-speed dive increased kinetic energy and allowed for deeper penetration into the ship’s structure before the warhead detonated.
However, this feature was later **eliminated or made optional** in newer variants (like Block 1D and beyond) to allow for **reusability**—meaning the missile could make a second pass if the first attack failed. Modern versions now use **programmable terminal attack profiles**, including sea-skimming or optional pop-up, depending on mission needs.
#12
For the sake of discussion, and pure armchair, I could see a sabot/bunker buster benefit from a 'pop up' and entry like so.
But, wouldn't that bleed a lot of energy, and need to regain that lost energy by using a propellant on the downward strike of the arc?
Are there reasons to pull a punch, sure, that is what the ginsu maverick etc. are, but that doesn't seem to be what the mission of a tomahawk is unless purpose built, which would raise the question, what would need such a tool unless it is to knock out a rather important target, a target so important that a baby school milk factory was painted on its face? Which connects to the point, if that theoretical bunker would be that important, where is the kinetic boost of the buster?
#14
Mullahs placed a 'girls school' adjacent a prime naval target. The target is hit, and the 'school' is destroyed. Bodies? Torn limbs? Funerals? Weeping parents? Names, hometowns? Remember the Paleo "Green Helmet Guy"?
Posted by: Bobby ||
03/14/2026 19:24 Comments ||
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#15
I suppose I got some of those ideas from the Jeff Childers piece posted today. But that was this morning!
Posted by: Bobby ||
03/14/2026 19:26 Comments ||
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Commentary by Russian military journalist Boris Rozhin
[ColonelCassad] The war against Iran has been going on for 13 days, longer than the summer war of 2025.
So far, it can be concluded that the US and Israel have failed to achieve their strategic goals.
1. The regime in Iran has failed to change. If anything, it has become even more rigid. Iran has not only refused to make concessions, it has tightened its demands and is issuing ultimatums.
2. The attempt to seize Iran through the color scenario has failed – instead of street protests against the ayatollahs, Iran is rallying around the flag.
3. Depriving Iran of the ability to strike throughout the region has failed. Iran retains every capability for a protracted and systemic missile war.
4. Establishing control over Iranian oil has failed – rather, Iran is attempting to establish its control over global oil prices.
5. Iran's key nuclear facilities are still intact and undamaged. In fact, we haven't seen any serious bombing of targets in Fordow and Isfahan.
6. Hundreds of kilograms of enriched uranium are still in Iran's hands in an unknown location. According to Trump, they should be converted into nuclear warheads by mid-March.
7. Hezbollah was not defeated. The assessment of its current strength turned out to be erroneous, which Israel has already experienced firsthand and is now forced to revise its war plans in Lebanon.
8. Complete air superiority over Iran was not achieved. Iran retained part of its air defense system, which operates from ambushes and inflicts heavy losses on the enemy's expensive drones.
Yes, Iran lost a number of key leaders and suffered heavy losses in ships and various military equipment, but at the same time, it consolidated itself internally, retained sufficient resources for a prolonged war, and was able to inflict enormous material damage on the aggressors, not to mention the colossal economic consequences of Iran's strategy for the West and the region.
Just as in the summer of 2025, those who buried Iran on the first day of aggression seriously misjudged Iran's potential and its ability to resist.
But in fact, it wasn't just some "Iran experts" who were misled by this misconception, but also the American military-political leadership, which followed Israeli assessments about the "fragility of the ayatollah regime" and ultimately found itself in a situation where the war plan failed and a new one had to be hastily cobbled together, something we've all seen in recent days, as Washington vacillates between behind-the-scenes proposals for an urgent ceasefire and cries of "total victory," which even the US itself laughs at.
However this war ends, and whenever it does, Iran has emerged victorious from the first round and has not become a whipping boy in a fight against a superior adversary that clearly didn't expect such resistance. It's also worth noting that if the operation against Iran was planned with the help of AI, that's more of an indicator.that it is still too early to let the "iron blockhead" get involved in such complex issues as planning a war and calculating its consequences.
1. The Strait of Hormuz must remain closed as a tool to pressure the enemy.
2. All American bases in the region must be closed or they will be attacked.
3. Iran will not give up on avenging its martyrs.
Other statements by Iran's new Supreme Leader:
1. His wife and sister were killed during the US attack on Iran.
2. He learned of his election as Supreme Leader from the news on Iranian television.
3. The Supreme Leader is grateful for the military assistance from Hezbollah and Iraq's Shiite militias, which are actively fighting the aggressors.
4. Iran is ready, if necessary, to activate other fronts in the event of further war (referring to the Houthis).
5. Iran will seek reparations from the aggressors. In case of refusal, Iran will confiscate their property, which it deems necessary.
6. If comparable compensation is not provided, Iran will destroy the property of its adversaries to an amount it deems appropriate. "They replaced the old Khamenei with the young Khamenei."
The new Supreme Leader is only 57 years old.
Posted by: badanov ||
03/14/2026 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[1807 views]
Top|| File under: Govt of Iran
#1
One has to wonder if the new leadership in Iran is getting honest reports about what is happening to Iran's military. Wouldn't be the first time a leader didn't get or didn't believe the information given to them.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
