[Today’s Iran war post should be completed by 8:00 AM EDT, so please return or refresh this page then for a final version]

The various Iran war live feeds were quiet today, but short-lived lower temperatures are misleading. The Saudis are still refusing to consider Ansar Allah demands for ending the conflict and are attempting what Erin Brokovich would call a lame-assed show of force, via a coalition of the weaklings. Note the US falls in that category by being repeatedly unable to subdue Ansar Allah. Egypt has still not assigned responsibility for a drone attack on an American-owned LNG platform. Iran has cleared its throat and depicted it as an Israel false flag. If so, this would hardly be the first instance; the Saudis among others have been on the receiving end of similar capers.

We’ll soon turn to an important new talk by Ted Postol with Daniel Davis, where Postol assesses certain Iranian missiles as more potent than even Russia’s Oreshnik. Postal also dismissed US claim that it has new bombing tricks up its sleeve.

On the economic front, oil eased a bit even though Lloyd’s is taking an even dimmer view of war risk in the Red Sea than it did a few days ago.

First to kinetic and related informational warfare matters. Aljazeera’s Iran war live feed: shows things are relatively quiet for now:

• Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) says it targeted a US base in Kuwait in response to US attacks on Iran on Thursday.
• The US strikes included one on a building on Qeshm island, which killed a couple and their two-year-old child.

A brief detour on Kuwait: the Wall Street Journal deigned to note that it is in quite a fix since the US is considering withdrawal. From The U.S. Liberated Kuwait but Now Struggles to Protect It From Iran

The U.S. is now rethinking the scope of its footprint in the emirate, said U.S. officials familiar with the deliberations, even as Kuwaiti officials have said they still need a firm commitment of American support.

Tehran has pummeled Kuwait with hundreds of missiles and drones, targeting its power and desalination plants, international airport and Persian Gulf port, as well as cutting off its oil exports through the Strait of Hormuz. The U.S. has said American-made air defenses have shot down most of the Iranian salvos and saved countless lives. Still, the U.S. installations have drawn repeated Iranian strikes, including one in March that killed six American servicemembers in one of the deadliest attacks of the war.

Kuwait has so far weathered the strikes on its power and water supplies, drawing on reserve capacity and emergency repairs. But the conflict has underscored the danger of a sustained campaign against Kuwait’s civilian infrastructure—and the vulnerability of longstanding U.S.-Kuwaiti defense ties.

Back to a bigger picture view. Admittedly, Iran is at the epicenter of the conflict. Nevertheless, the landing page at PressTV provides the best quick tour d’horizon so far:

On the escalating Saudi-Ansar Allah conflict, Responsible Statecraft provided a primer in Houthis in YemenHouthis v. Saudi Arabia: Round 2. This time it’s regional. Frustratingly, the story uncritically takes up the Saudi claim that drones were fired on it by Iraqi militias, when not only did the Iraqis deny it but Ansar Allah was offended that they were not give credit.² Nevertheless, key bits:

…it helps to picture the crises as a set of nesting dolls.

The innermost doll is Yemen’s own civil war: a decade-old fight between the Houthis (officially known as Ansar Allah), who rule the populous north from Sana’a, and Yemen’s internationally recognized government, formally led by a body called the Presidential Leadership Council. The roots of this war trace to the 2011 Arab Spring revolution, which toppled Yemen’s long-serving president and left a power vacuum the Houthis moved to fill, seizing Sana’a in 2014. Saudi Arabia and a coalition of partners intervened in 2015 with the explicit aim of reversing that takeover and restoring the internationally recognized government, and the war has continued in one form or another ever since.

The middle doll is Saudi Arabia’s broader rivalry with Iran, a contest for regional leadership that has run since Iran’s 1979 Islamic Revolution, when Tehran’s new theocratic government began exporting a revolutionary, Shia-inflected challenge to the Gulf’s Sunni monarchies.

Since the Houthis’ seizure of Sana’a in September 2014, Iran has absorbed the group into what it calls its “axis of resistance,” supplying it with weapons, funding and technical know-how, turning Yemen into an arena of proxy war between Tehran and Riyadh.

The outer doll is the American-Iranian war itself, now in its sixth month, which has all but closed the Strait of Hormuz and pushed oil prices to record highs. This conflict set the other two into motion.

Since March 2022, an unofficial truce kept Yemen’s civil war, the Houthi-Saudi war, and the Saudi-Iranian rivalry in Yemen quiet even as the outer dolls rattled. That calm helped pave the way for a Saudi-Iranian rapprochement in 2023. What is new, and dangerous, is that all are now moving together.

This month saw the fiercest clashes in years between Houthi fighters and government-aligned forces in the southern province of Dhale, which left dozens killed on both sides. Briefing reporters in Riyadh — where much of the official Yemeni government’s leadership operates — Yemen’s new foreign minister, Afrah al-Zouba, said, “at the end of the day, we are prepared for any escalations.” She also warned that the “Houthis want to copy the Iran experience in Hormuz.”

As we pointed out yesterday, Ansar Allah is considering imposing a tolling system.

Lloyd’s List is assisting Ansar Allah in chocking traffic by talking insurer-protective steps. From Marine underwriters extend high-risk areas after Houthi attacks on Saudi tonnage

• Range shifted 800 km north to take in Jeddah and Yanbu
• Going rate likely to emerge in next few days
• Move comes as VLCC Hormuz transit cover tops $10m

Joint War Committee decision will see more owners subject to additional premiums

Needless to say, the Saudi efforts to Do Something look inadequate to the task. From the Guardian in Saudi Arabia prepares sea and possible land offensive against Houthis:

Saudi Arabia is preparing for a major military offensive against the Houthis by sea and possibly by land in central Yemen, Yemeni sources believe, in a move to break the chokehold on its oil exports through the southern Red Sea.

Saudi forces have been seen withdrawing from the east of Yemen in what could be preparation for a land offensive. At the same time, Riyadh is trying to organise a naval coalition to protect shipping from Houthi attacks in the Red Sea and the Bab al-Mandab strait.

The Saudi defence ministry said on Thursday that 14 states including Turkey, Pakistan, Egypt, Sudan and Djibouti had issued a joint statement supporting a multinational maritime defence coalition.

The UAE has yet to sign up.

This pathetic effort fails Stalin’s “How many divisions does the Vatican have?” test. As As Larry Johnson said to Nima, “This is a bit of a joke.”

Nevertheless, the hopium is strong:

This isn’t the final number yet. The U.S. is deciding how they will join, and the Europeans are waiting for that decision. Unlike the Strait of Hormuz, the Bab-el-Mandeb strait affects European commerce much more.

As I wrote days ago, the escalating is on the way and involving… https://t.co/oUqgWC1aC1

— Patricia Marins (@pati_marins64) July 31, 2026

Note that PressTV earlier had tried to link the Iran attack on Jordan that broke the pause by also discussing the US again trying to get ships through the Strait of Hormuz in the same article but did not go as far as depicting that action as the basis for the new strikes. There may have been more than one score to settle:

According to Iranian media, five IRGC instructors were killed in American-Saudi joint airstrikes against Iraq last night.

That’s likely what prompted Iran to launch the “surprise missile attack” against Jordan. pic.twitter.com/edb2FUNSkV

— MoloMonitor 🇮🇹 (@MoloWarMonitor) July 29, 2026

Now to the dueling post-mortems over the Iran strikes on the US base in Jordan. From Tasnim News in IRGC Releases Image to Challenge CENTCOM Denial of Damage at US Base in Jordan

Earlier on Thursday, the IRGC announced that its Aerospace Force had launched a retaliatory missile strike on Al Azraq Air Base in Jordan after the US used bases in the Arab country to carry out deadly attacks on residential homes on Iran’s Qeshm Island. The IRGC said the missile attack destroyed three American F-35 fighter jets, heavily damaged three others, and killed several US military personnel, including officers and technical and maintenance staff.

And:

🚨Satellite Imagery Confirms Iran Targeted US F-35 Fighter Jets In Jordan

The images show clear indications of direct hits.

Iran earlier claimed to have struck F-35s. There has been no official denial of this & it is not yet known the extend of the U.S. losses. pic.twitter.com/wDeRISiJo7

— MintPress News (@MintPressNews) July 30, 2026

Oddly in its later statements, the IRGC underplayed the destruction of maintenance facilities. Ben Panga had posted the IRGC initial statement from Fars Telegram yesterday, and highlighted a key section:

🔹In response to this crime and to help you liberate the Islamic land of Jordan from the scourge of the American occupiers, this morning, IRGC Aerospace Force fighters attacked the deployment ramp and maintenance shed of the American enemy F-35 fighter jets at Al-Azraq Air Base with several ballistic missiles, completely destroying 3 F-35 aircraft and causing heavy damage to 3 others.

Reader Cat Burglar noted:

Taking out an F-35 maintenance center was quite a coup by Iran, given that the aircraft requires so much work to stay in readiness. In the medium term, taking out repair shops could choke off F-35 use.

As for the drone strike on the US-owned LNG platform in Egypt,¹ Iran has issued a denial:

Egypt is an important friend and partner in the region, and its security is of utmost importance to us.

We must all be vigilant against Israeli plots and false-flag operations designed to undermine regional peace.

The threat is clear, mutual, and fearful of Muslim solidarity.

— Seyed Abbas Araghchi (@araghchi) July 30, 2026

Larry Johnson, in the same talk with Nima where he discussed the Saudi coalition scheme, also deemed the LNG attack on Egypt to be a false flag.

Some realism is sneaking through at Bloomberg, via Trump Faces Escalation Conundrum as Iran War Flares Once Again:

• The US is facing a conundrum after another night of massive strikes on Iran, with options to escalate the conflict or focus on restocking strained munitions and calming turmoil in global energy markets.
• The latest round of strikes hit “dozens” of targets linked to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, but analysts doubt that such strikes would undermine the IRGC’s ability to conduct retaliatory strikes or force Tehran to commit to anything not in its national interests.
• The US faces several warning signs that may push it away from major escalation, including depleted munitions, rising economic and human toll of the war, and concerns about US vulnerability in a potential conflict involving China….

Tellingly, the expert quotes were downbeat (one more, at the close, was equivocal tending to pessimistic):

“I doubt that such massive strikes would undermine the IRGC’s continued ability to conduct sustained retaliatory strikes or to continue to threaten commercial shipping in the Strait of Hormuz,” said Jim Lamson, a former CIA analyst on Iran and a researcher at the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies. “I also do not think that such massive strikes would force Tehran to cry uncle and commit to anything that is not in its national interests.”…

“I’m skeptical that further escalation has a high chance of achieving US objectives in Hormuz, which for better or worse has become the war’s new center of gravity,” said John Hannah, an analyst at the Jewish Institute for National Security of America, a typically hawkish research organization. “Certainly not at a cost that Trump, the American people, or the world economy are prepared to pay.”

And an even sterner warning at Middle East Eye, Middle East Eye, in US needs to move bases from Gulf to Israel, former Centcom commander says. Note that this article describes how the Biden Administration recognized that the bases hard by Iran were exposed and even recommended a pullout then:

The US needs to relocate its bases in the Gulf to Israel and neighbouring countries to better protect its assets from Iran’s missiles and drones, the former head of US Central Command (Centcom), General Frank McKenzie, said at a webinar last week.

“No one in their right mind would ever put the Centcom forward headquarters, you know, 100 miles away from Iran, [in Qatar], yet that’s where it is,” he told the Jewish Institute for National Security of America, referring to al-Udeid military base.

McKenzie, who was the top military official overseeing US forces in the Middle East from March 2019 to April 2022, said that in 2022, he and other officials told the Biden administration that the constellation of US bases around the UAE, Kuwait, Qatar, and Bahrain was vulnerable to Iranian attacks and US forces should be dispersed to the West, including to Israel.

“We proposed to [the] then Biden administration that we consider moving bases to the West to include Israel, to include Egypt…places we might flush to the West if we get into a fight with Iran,” he said, adding that the Biden administration “aggressively” shut down the idea…

McKenzie’s comments echo a June report by Middle East Eye that cited former senior US officials and analysts saying that the US’s basing system would likely need to be restructured, given the vulnerabilities Iran exposed during the war…

McKenzie said he supports maintaining a presence in Gulf states in a show of solidarity with the US’s Arab partners. He said the US could use Gulf facilities to refuel, but switch its long-term presence to countries like Israel, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia’s Red Sea coast…

McKenzie said Israel is preferable to other countries because it would impose the fewest restrictions on access, basing, and overflight, collectively known as ABO. McKenzie said Israel would also offer superior air defence protection compared to the Gulf states….

“Probably Israel is the place where you’re going to have the fewest ABO restrictions on your aeroplanes. That’s why Israel is a particularly attractive location.”

Now to the important discussion by Ted Postol of the potency of Iran’s Al Fatah versus limited US means. Postol gives a very good overview of how traditional ballistic missiles work versus ones that can change their flight path in the terminal phase, so his entire presentation is very much worth a listen. Even so, certain parts were noteworthy.

From a lightly edited machine transcript:

Postol: I would say that they probably have a few tens of meters of accuracy at the target, which is very good, especially when you’re delivering a warhead. The warhead, I’ll show you delivers the equivalent of about a 4,000 or 5,000 lb explosive at the target.
That’s an enormous explosive charge. And most of the power of that explosive of that explosion comes from the kinetic energy of impact. In other words, this thing hits the ground so fast that it just vaporizes.

It’s much it’s well beyond, you know, for example, it’s traveling at a speed well beyond that of the Oreshnik munitions.

Davis: Wow

Postol: [Oreshnik missiles] Are hitting the ground at maybe 3 kilometers per second. This thing is hitting the ground at over four kilometers per second.

Now 3 kilometers/s gives you the equivalent kinetic energy of gives you the equivalent explosive energy of the weight of the munition uh in TNT. In other words, all of this this is not explosion explosion from uh uh explosive materials. It’s an explosion from all of this kinetic energy being nearly instantaneously converted uh to kinetic energy from you know the the war the piece of material that hits the ground gets compressed so fast by the interaction with the ground that it superheats to 5,000 6,000 degrees Kelvin temperature of the sun surface and that expands violently outward like an explosion. It is an explosion.

Now, when it hits at 4 km/s, that’s 4 km divide by 3 km/s. So, it’s maybe say it’s one and a half or 1.6. Um, you square that and that gives you the rough equivalent energy in TNT of hitting the ground at a little bit over four kilometers/s, which is about two and a half when you do the arithmetic carefully.

So the weight of the warhead is 1,000 kilograms. So it’s say it’s 2,000 pounds.

You get a a factor. So 2,000 lbs of just non explosive material compressed turned into kinetic energy into an explosion by kinetic energy impact. So that brings you up to 5,000 pounds of explosive power. Plus, you have a couple of thousand pounds of explosive material in the warhead. So, this thing has the power of a 5,000 or 6,000 pound explosive when it hits the ground. And it does tremendous damage….

You can see that in the back of this warhead, it has a rocket motor. See the rocket motor is in the forefront and that rocket motor is able to generate a couple of thousand pounds of thrust over time intervals of 30 seconds, 40 seconds, you know, no problem at all.

So, so that’s during the entire time of re-entry. Now, if we go to slide six, we can actually see this is one of these warheads arriving in Israel. That long bright plume, the front. You can’t see the warhead, but that long bright plume is the rocket motor exhaust. So, it is accelerating this warhead to enormous speeds. And when that warhead hits the ground, it um it delivers a tremendous explosive force.

You can see the whole sky is lit up from the light. That’s the light generated by this enormously high temperatures in the generated by the kinetic energy and the explosion. That’s like four or 5,000 pounds of explosion explosive energy being instantaneously released. And if you look in the next slide, we can even see a powerful shock wave.

You can see um an an intense shock wave.

You know, this is really an intense explosion to have a visible shock wave generated by the explosion.

This section later is delicious:

Davis: Let I I do want to ask you something because it’s in the news actually right now. That is that uh apparently the commander of Central Command, Admiral Cooper, is suggesting that President Trump try and change the war one more time, but this time with another two-week campaign, but just heavier bombs.

One of the things that really stood out to me, and I’d really like your view on this, is that Cooper argued in favor of stepping up attacks to completely diminish Iran’s missile capabilities. According to NBC, the “go big” approach, he said, would diminish would minimize the US’s need for the use of defensive munitions since there would be less incoming fire from Iran. But I still keep going back to this heavier bombing. Do do we have anything that’s going to get through this stuff, that’s going to knock what didn’t in the first 40 days or the second 13?

Postol: Well, I don’t know what he’s talking about. I mean and I think he doesn’t know what he’s talking about, too, because what kinds of bombs is he talking about? I mean, it’s ridiculous.

The bombs that we have can cannot penetrate close to the depths that you need in order to get at these under mountain targets. We do have penetrating bombs that may be able to get at tunnels because they’re tunnels that are just built in open desert areas. But you don’t know where the tunnels are. If you know where a tunnel entrance is, you don’t know where the tunnel goes behind.

So I know where the tunnel entrance is. Here it is. And the tunnel goes somewhere and the tunnel goes and it takes a turn and it takes another turn and it takes another turn and there there other tunnels off it. I have no way of knowing where those tunnels are.

So the the only way if I happen to have a warhead that might reach deep enough to go through the top of a tunnel, I need to know where those tunnels are and I have no way of knowing that. So I don’t know what Cooper’s talking about.

Who is this guy? I’m sorry yYou have to show my ignorance. Who’s Cooper?

Davis: Oh, he’s the commander of Central Command.

Postol: Well, that explains why.

Davis: Yeah, that’s a big problem. I I and so I mean if that be the case then I mean I’m asking what’s probably an obvious question here but it’s still one that needs to be asked. If 40 days and 40 nights of bombing did not penetrate all these mountain these missile cities that are scattered throughout the country and then the 13-day bombing campaign didn’t, I don’t know how another 14-day campaign with heavier bombs is going to have a different outcome than the previous one. So, where is that going to leave us if we use up yet more of our offensive capacity on an unattainable objective?

Postol: I don’t know where we’re getting these three star and fourstar generals from at this time. I mean, I think there was a time where a three or four star general had some knowledge of the weapon systems they were supposed to be dealing with. But this is ridiculous. This guy doesn’t know what he’s talking about.

And some odds and ends:

Big if true:

On the energy front:

“It has reportedly purchased 33 US LNG cargoes, worth around $1 billion, to replace disrupted supply and protect deliveries to customers across Asia.”

This is a serious signal and not the continuation of operations. Qataris buying American LNG? It’s the end of times in… https://t.co/turNpcwQrZ

— Patricia Marins (@pati_marins64) July 30, 2026

US, which saw crude exports surge past 6 million b/d in May, does not have the crude oil inventory to help supply the rest of the world.

A lot of the commercial crude inventory buffers elsewhere that were turned into exports are gone.

Zip, nada, zero.

So what we are now… https://t.co/H3BB8hyXoj

— HFI Research (@HFI_Research) July 31, 2026

The Trump Administration has woken up to the fact, thanks to private parties jerking their chain, that the US has a wee refinery capacity issue. But the plans to address that are likely to work as well as the Trump Hormuz reinsurance scheme did, which is not at all. Not only do real world timelines result in “too little, too late” relative to the arrival of the crunch, but the Trump Administration has shown that it is incapable of managing its way out of a paper bag. From Politico in The Trump administration wants more gasoline made in idled refineries from California to sunny St. Croix:

The White House has had discussions with a wide range of potential suitors to reopen defunct petroleum refineries from the Virgin Islands to California amid rising anxieties over higher fuel prices, according to three industry executives familiar with the talks. National Energy Dominance Council officials confirmed they have fielded inquiries from potential investors, and the industry sources said the NEDC connected those investors to relevant agencies to discuss how the government could help facilitate investments….

The St. Croix refinery, which operated from 1966 until 2012 and briefly again in 2021, could prove particularly attractive given the billions in refining equipment and infrastructure already at the site and its strategic location along Atlantic shipping lanes. But reviving the facility would mean overcoming a troubled operational and environmental history, including the short-lived restart attempt pushed by the first Trump administration.

In 2021, just months after the plant reopened, EPA under the Biden administration ordered it shut down after a series of flaring accidents rocked the plant, raining oily mist on nearby residents and triggering large releases of hydrogen sulfide and sulfur dioxide.

A sanity check:

🌴The Trump admin AGAIN wants to restart the Limetree Bay refinery. Flashback to 2019, I'm a baby energy reporter unaware that the next year+ of my life will be about PE burning billions trying and failing to do this.

I'll take Things That Aren't Likely to Happen For $300, Alex. pic.twitter.com/FwnErOL3mv

— Laura Sanicola (@LauraSanicola) July 30, 2026

Done for today! Perhaps see you tomorrow!

_____

¹ I could spend all day cleaning up nonsense like this. Sloppiness and abject misrepresentations are widespread, particularly on podcasts.

² Some background. Commentators have pointed out that this was clearly a warning shot:

🇪🇬⚡️ Drone Attack on LNG Terminal in Egypt

An explosion occurred at the liquefied natural gas (LNG) terminal in the Port of Damietta, Egypt. According to the maritime security firm Ambrey, at least one drone struck the U.S.-owned, Marshall Islands-flagged LNG storage vessel… pic.twitter.com/mgd0aGhpQw

— Barong (@Barong369) July 30, 2026