SITUATION REPORT | March 11, 2026 | 07:30
// MISCHIEF CLEARANCE REQUIRED //
⬛⬛⬛ EYES ONLY ⬛⬛⬛
A Capital Mischief SITREP on Day 11 of War with Iran
SOURCES:
Satellites. Signals intelligence. Thirty years of people who lie to Congress but tell me the truth. A hundred grand a year in research from firms whose clients don’t fly commercial. A Founding Member who goes by Surfski and a Financial Times story nobody else is covering. Three intelligence principals who briefed me Monday night.
And tonight, after four days in the theater of operations, I had a proper drink.
That’s how men say, “I’ve seen some things,” when the things are mostly grandchildren, noise, negotiations, snack debris, and the creeping realization that a four-year-old can break you faster than geopolitics ever could.
My daughter and son-in-law came back Tuesday night. The grandchildren are alive. Nobody was harmed. I say that like a joke, but once you get to a certain age, “nobody was harmed” is not a punchline. That’s grace.
My grandson looked at me and asked, “Saba, how bad was it?”
I said, “There are things I’m not ready to discuss.”
He said, “So… bath time.”
That’s cold. The boy didn’t mock me. He diagnosed me. That’s worse.
Diagnosis means he saw the face, read the silence, and placed me in the same category as soap, steam, and personal defeat.
My son-in-law came bearing gifts: three hand-rolled cigars from the Cigar Factory in New Orleans.
He knows I’m partial to Montecristos. He assured me these were rolled by a 74-year-old Cuban named Pancho, which is the sort of logic I choose to respect in a family member.
The big surprise was when my daughter pulled out a bottle of Old Rip Van Winkle 10 Year. Not Old Pappy 23. But there’s a point in a man’s life where “not exactly what I wanted” still feels like love if it arrives from the Buffalo Trace Distillery and pairs well with silence.
Then Cristina gave the nod. That nod means she has considered the collateral damage, and decided the old man has earned one evening in Georgetown off parole.
That is the intelligence community’s way of saying: the asset has been cleared to resume operations. So I poured the drink and lit the cigar.
And it tasted less like bourbon than absolution.
Let’s go to work.
FOR THE 4,000 OF YOU WHO ARRIVED THIS WEEKEND
Welcome. You found this room because somebody smarter than your financial advisor sent you a link.
On Saturday I published a piece called “IF YOU OWN STOCKS, A BOND, OR A DOLLAR BILL, READ THIS BEFORE MONDAY MORNING.” 94,531 people read it. 1,968 shared it. 1,605 liked it. 303 restacked it.
On Monday I published “The $115 Billion That Just Disappeared From Your Tax Cut While You Were Sleeping.”
If you have not read them, stop here and go read them now. Everything in today’s piece builds on Saturday and Monday.
Those are the foundation. This is the detonation.
If you’ve read the earlier columns, then you know the trail: the five calls, the five receipts, the $115 billion number, Larry Williams, May 27.
And you know my warning on private credit. It was Hotel California all along: easy entry, flattering marks, and an exit door that gets much smaller the moment everyone heads toward it at once.
Today you find out who is running the hotel. And why the fire exits are welded shut.
WHO IS WRITING THIS
I advised six U.S. Presidents. Both parties.
I ran classified operations in jungles I still cannot name. The CIA gave me their Agency Seal Medal. The DNI gave me the National Intelligence Distinguished Public Service Medal. The Air Force gave me the Distinguished Public Service Medal.
I won a $120 million trading competition while 72 other traders watched my positions in real time.
On February 11, I told 23,509 of you that America was 30 days from war with Iran. I identified the window for the latest case: March 8 through March 15.
The clocks converged in 17 days.
The bombs fell on February 28. My birthday.
Founding Membership is $2828. Signs matter. My early Founding Members read these:
I Almost Missed the Most Important Question of My Life Because I Had to Pee
The people who paid attention positioned.
The people who called it background noise are repositioning now.
WHAT HAPPENED SINCE MONDAY
Monday morning, I told you the war had already eaten your tax cut. By Tuesday night, it ate the Strait of Hormuz.
Oil touched $119 overnight. Then the President said the war was “very complete, pretty much” and it crashed to $84. A 29% intraday swing. The biggest reversal since COVID.
Then his Defense Secretary launched the most intense bombing day of the entire war. Most aircraft. Most bombers. Most strikes. That is not a wind-down. That is an escalation wearing a press conference as a disguise.
Then his Energy Secretary posted on social media that the Navy had escorted a tanker through Hormuz.
The post was deleted minutes later.
The White House said it never happened. Oil whipsawed again. Either the Energy Secretary lied to the market, or the White House lied about the lie. Both are bad.
Then CNN reported that Iran has begun laying mines in the Strait of Hormuz. Physical mines. In the water. The kind you cannot talk away with a press conference.
Then we learned the U.S. Navy scrapped its last four dedicated minesweepers in January. Not mothballed. Scrapped. Five months before a war where the enemy is now mining the only waterway that matters.
Then the Pentagon quietly disclosed that 140 American service members have been wounded. Not 8. One hundred and forty. Seven dead.
Then three Iranian officials, on the same day, slammed the door on negotiations. The Foreign Minister on PBS: “I don’t think talking with Americans anymore would be on our agenda.” The Parliament Speaker on X: “We are not seeking a ceasefire. An eye for an eye, without compromise, without exception.” The IRGC: “Iran will determine when the war ends.”
Then a Republican senator, John Kennedy of Louisiana, stood in front of reporters and said what no one in his party had said: “It was terrible. We made a mistake.”
He was talking about the school. 168 children. A Tomahawk missile. A 2013 map that nobody updated.
That is what happened between Monday and Tuesday.
And the CPI drops in one hour.
BRIEFING INDEX
CHAPTER ONE: The Phone Call. Putin and Trump. One hour. Five simultaneous plays. A man who knows when the war ends because he is the one who decides. (Free)
CHAPTER TWO: The Ship Nobody Is Talking About. A Chinese intelligence vessel in the Gulf of Oman, recording everything. The rare earth card that controls every weapon we are firing. (Free)
CHAPTER THREE: The Crowned Prince and the Two Irans. Mojtaba’s silence. The IRGC’s defiance. A government that cannot agree on what day it is, negotiating a war it cannot stop. (Free)
CHAPTER FOUR: 168 Children and a Tomahawk. The evidence. The 2013 map. The senator who apologized. This chapter is written straight. No humor. No flourish. Facts only. Restraint is respect.
CHAPTER FIVE: Five Satellites Over the Gulf. Russian targeting intelligence. Eight dead Americans. Air superiority confirmed. And the most dangerous escalation nobody is covering.
CHAPTER SIX: $119 to $84 on One Sentence. The oil chaos. The deleted tweet. The mines. The minesweepers we scrapped. The SPR math. The 51 days.
CHAPTER SEVEN: The Clock They Can All See. The $44 trillion overvaluation. The stealth QE. The adversary’s view of America’s political weakness. The chapter that will go viral.
CHAPTER EIGHT: The Bombs, the Hotel California, the Scoreboard, and What I Am Doing With My Money. Goldman is selling shovels to the gravediggers. And the receipts are still on the table.
CHAPTER NINE: The Board. Four players. Four quadrants. One clock. The close.
Three chapters are free, because I'm generous like that. The other six are for grown folks who are TIRED. Tired of the arrangement.
You know the arrangement. Right now you're in a box. No windows.
Somebody is shoveling shit through a slot in the door. And you're eating it. You're eating it and going, "Mmm, thank you, sir, is there any more?"
That's the arrangement. That's the DEAL.
I'm just the guy saying hey, there's a door. The door costs two dollars a day. Because of course it does. They don't charge you for the shit. They charge you for the exit.
For the People Who Scroll
I know. Nine chapters. You just got here. Your coffee is still too hot and your portfolio is already too cold.
I spent years briefing generals and presidents. You know what they actually read? Not the memo. Not the appendix. Not the 200-page National Intelligence Estimate that took eleven agencies four months to write and three lawyers two weeks to declassify.
The picture.
One page. Four players. Every move. Every card. What they want. What they fear.
If that is all you read, you will know more than every talking head on cable news today and most of the people trading the open.
But if you want to know why the house always wins, you have to read the chapters.
Starting with the number that drops in 55 minutes.
8:30 AM. THE LAST POSTCARD FROM FEBRUARY.
In about an hour, the government will tell you inflation is under control.
They will be using February’s data. February. When oil was $70. When the Strait of Hormuz was open. When the Supreme Leader of Iran was alive and nobody had heard of his son. When the Energy Secretary had not yet posted and deleted market-moving disinformation about a tanker escort that never happened. When mines were a theoretical risk, not a physical reality.
That is like checking the weather in Maui and packing for a hurricane in Houston.
The consensus: headline CPI around 2.4% to 2.5%. Core at 2.5%. Goldman expects used car prices to fall. Grocery prices decelerating. Shelter cooling. The number will look tame.
The talking heads will say “moderate” forty times before lunch. Your financial advisor will exhale.
Do not be fooled.
January’s Producer Price Index already told you what is underneath this number. Core PPI jumped 0.8% in a single month. Nearly triple the forecast.
The hottest reading in six months. Year over year, core wholesale prices hit 3.6%, well above the 3.0% the Street expected.
Businesses are not absorbing these costs.
A 14.4% surge in wholesaling margins says they are handing them to you. That was before the war. Before $119 oil. Before every gas station in America repriced.
Here is the timeline.
Today: CPI prints cool. Market celebrates. Cable news takes a victory lap.
April 10: March CPI drops. This one captures $100 oil, repriced gasoline, the Hormuz insurance crisis, and the shipping cost explosion. Nobody will be celebrating.
May: April CPI captures a full month of war economy pricing. If oil stays near $85, this prints north of 3%.
By May 27, the Fed will be staring at accelerating inflation, a labor market already down 92,000 jobs, and a president who needs gas prices to fall before voters notice they rose.
Ninety-seven percent of the market is pricing no rate change at the March 17 FOMC. A cool print today gives Powell cover to say “moderating” with a straight face.
The data is two months stale on the single biggest input cost in the economy.
It is the equivalent of a doctor reading your bloodwork from January and telling you the bullet wound from March is nothing to worry about.
Twenty hours after the President said the war was “very complete, pretty much,” his Defense Secretary launched the most intense day of strikes since the campaign began. Most aircraft. Most bombers. Most precision strikes. Day 11.
That is not a wind-down. That is an escalation wearing a press conference as a disguise. The administration needs this number to be cool. It buys time.
Every adversary in this war can read the same calendar. They are betting time is the one thing the American president does not have.
That is what the next nine chapters are about.
If the print surprises hot, everything below arrives faster.
If it prints cool, read on.
Cool is the trap. A cool print is not relief. It is a sedative administered to a patient who is about to be hit by a bus.
It gives the Fed permission to do nothing for another month while March’s war economy data bakes in the pipeline. That is the most dangerous outcome of all.
And the bus now has a name.
While you were reading that number, Iran was laying mines in the Strait of Hormuz. The U.S. Navy scrapped its last dedicated minesweepers in January. 19.5 million barrels per day of hydrocarbons are stranded behind a mined strait we have no purpose-built ships to clear.
And if it prints very cool, below consensus, and the market rips and the talking heads declare victory? Change nothing.
Putin’s satellites do not stop transmitting because the CPI printed 2.3%.
China’s spy ship does not leave the Gulf of Oman because grocery prices decelerated.
The 400 kilograms of uranium underground in Iran do not become less dangerous because used car prices fell. The mines do not float away because your financial advisor smiled.
The war behind the war does not trade on a single data point. It trades on a calendar. And every adversary at the table can read it.
I just told you what the number will be before it dropped.
In about forty-five minutes you will know if I was right. Now ask yourself: what else am I seeing that you are not?
Three chapters are free. The other six are for people who have decided that $720 a year is less expensive than not knowing.
Now. Chapter One.
CHAPTER ONE: The Phone Call
On Sunday, March 9, two presidents talked for one hour.
The surface story is simple. Trump and Putin discussed Iran.
Putin had spoken with Iranian President Pezeshkian on March 6.
He had been talking to Gulf leaders. He presented himself as the man who could broker peace between Washington and Tehran.
That is the story every wire service ran.
Here is the story underneath it.
While Putin was offering to broker peace, Russian satellites were providing targeting intelligence to Iran that has helped kill American service members.
The Washington Post reported it March 6.
The intelligence includes satellite imagery of warship positions, aircraft locations, and radar installations.
Officials described it as a “pretty comprehensive effort.” Iranian attacks have become more precise since the war began, targeting command and control, radar sites, and communication posts in patterns that resemble Russia’s own Ukraine air campaign.
Seven Americans are dead. One hundred and forty are wounded. Some of those fires were cued by Russian satellites.
And Putin just got an hour on the phone with the President.
Hours before the call, Putin held a televised government meeting on global energy markets. He told Russian oil companies to pay down their debt because the price spike is temporary.
He warned that Gulf oil production dependent on the Strait of Hormuz risks halting completely within the next month and that the route is effectively closed.
Then he offered to supply Europe. Hungary’s Prime Minister Orban immediately called on the EU to lift sanctions on Russian energy.
Read that again.
Putin told his own oil companies the spike is temporary.
Western media covers Putin the way ESPN covers an enforcer in hockey. All muscle, no brain. A KGB thug who got lucky with oil prices.
They might want to read his dissertation.
Putin holds a PhD in economics from the St. Petersburg Mining Institute. Defended in 1997. The topic: strategic planning of mineral resource management in market economies.
The thesis argued that Russia’s natural resources are the country’s ultimate strategic weapon. Not oil as a commodity. Oil as a currency. Oil as leverage. Oil as survival.
He has governed according to that thesis for 25 years.
The man telling his oil companies to pay down debt is not a thug guessing at markets. He is an economist executing a resource strategy he laid out before most of his current adversaries held public office.
That is not a prediction. That is a schedule. He knows when this war ends because he is the one who decides.
After the call, Trump told reporters: “He wants to be helpful. I told him you can be more helpful by ending the war in Ukraine.”
That is the linkage. Iran and Ukraine are now one negotiation. Putin engineered this. He spent years positioning for exactly this moment.
Count Putin’s simultaneous plays. He is feeding Iran targeting intelligence so the war continues. He is presenting himself as the peacemaker who can end it. He is using the energy crisis to break European sanctions. He is linking Iran to Ukraine concessions. And he is telling his own oil companies to pocket the windfall while it lasts.
Five plays. One phone call. Zero consequences.
The payoff arrived in 48 hours.
Monday: Putin calls Trump. Offers to broker peace. Discusses Venezuela and oil.
Monday evening: Trump waives oil-related sanctions. Not just Iranian sanctions. Russian barrels are now flowing.
Tuesday: Putin calls Pezeshkian. He is now running the switchboard between Washington and Tehran. The man feeding targeting data to one side is brokering peace for the other.
Tuesday morning: Trump tells reporters that talks with the Iranian regime are “possible.” First time he has used that word. Yesterday it was “unconditional surrender.” Today it is “possible.”
Tuesday morning, same hour: Hegseth announces the most intense bombing day of the entire war. The U.S. has transitioned from cruise missiles to precision gravity bombs.
You only drop gravity bombs when you own the airspace. That means Iran’s integrated air defense system is functionally dead.
Putin offered peace. Got sanctions relief. Trump opened a door to talks. And simultaneously dropped more bombs than any day since the war started.
Putin’s “pay down your debt” speech was not a prediction. It was confirmation of a deal he already knew was coming.
But Putin is only one player at the table. The other is in Beijing. And he has a card nobody has seen yet.
CHAPTER TWO: The Ship Nobody Is Talking About
Her name is Liaowang-1. She is a Chinese signals intelligence vessel. And she is sitting in the Gulf of Oman, positioned near two American carrier strike groups, collecting on every electronic emission we produce.
Our electronic warfare techniques. Our signal patterns. Our encryption methods. Our carrier operations. Everything the United States military is demonstrating in theater, China is recording.
That is the war nobody on cable news is covering.
Here is what China says publicly. Beijing denied the CM-302 missile deal. Called for “immediate cessation of hostilities.” Wang Yi urged Iran to pay attention to “reasonable concerns” of neighbors.
Here is what U.S. intelligence shows. China may be preparing financial assistance, spare parts, and missile components for Iran.
The equipment list circulating in intelligence channels includes 50 CM-302 anti-ship missiles, HQ-16B surface-to-air missile systems, 1,200 MANPADS, 300 kamikaze drones, and HQ-9B anti-ballistic systems.
China denies. The intelligence community tracks.
Now the card that matters more than missiles.
Rare earths. China controls 29 export restrictions since 2022 on heavy rare earths. Dysprosium. Terbium. Scandium. Samarium. Every Tomahawk cruise missile requires approximately 20 kilograms of rare earth materials. Every Patriot interceptor. Every Javelin. Every drone we are flying over Iranian airspace right now.
No heavy rare earths, no drones, no interceptors, no war.
China controls the supply chain of the weapons we are firing.
And on March 31, Trump flies to Beijing. First presidential visit since 2017. Beijing only. No second city. “Security concerns.”
The President of the United States will be inside the sovereign territory of a nation whose intelligence ship is recording our carrier operations, whose factories may be shipping missile components to Iran, and who controls the rare earths in every weapon we are firing.
Despite Chinese ships ceasing their own Hormuz transits. China imports 40% of its oil through the Strait. Beijing halted diesel and gasoline exports this week. They are hoarding. Dozens of Chinese ships are trapped in the Gulf.
China is not a spectator in this conflict. China is the referee. And the referee controls the supply of the ball.
CHAPTER THREE: The Crowned Prince and the Two Irans
Mojtaba Khamenei. Son of the dead Supreme Leader. Selected by the Assembly of Experts while Israeli and American warplanes bombed Tehran and Isfahan. Father to son. First time in 47 years.
The theocracy became a monarchy wearing a turban.
The IRGC pledged “complete obedience.” Mass texts invited Iranians to Enghelab Square to pledge allegiance. Hundreds of thousands rallied. The Assembly was bombed. They reconvened. They voted for a dynasty.
And Mojtaba has not spoken publicly since the war began. Has not made a statement in his new role. Reports suggest he may have been wounded. Unverified. The IRGC is speaking. Mojtaba is not.
Iran does not have one government right now. It has two.
President Pezeshkian apologized to Gulf states for strikes on their territory. Said the IRGC acted “independently” after the leadership was killed. Hardliners pushed back. He retracted the apology the same day.
Then on Tuesday, three officials slammed every door.
Araghchi on PBS: “We have a very bitter experience of talking with Americans.” He pointed out the U.S. attacked during negotiations twice. June 2025. February 2026. Twice burned.
Ghalibaf on X: “Certainly we aren’t seeking a ceasefire. We believe the aggressor must be punished. An eye for an eye, without compromise, without exception.”
The IRGC spokesman: “Iran will determine when the war ends.”
Three doors slammed shut on the same day Trump opened a window.
Meanwhile, Iran’s Foreign Ministry stated the military has lost control over several units operating on old general instructions. ‘'
Units firing on pre-authorized orders without central command. That is not a military strategy. That is institutional fragmentation during active combat.
The problem is deeper than a fractured chain of command. Iran does not operate as one country right now. It operates as 31 distinct provinces.
Military orders issued before the Supreme Leader’s death remain standing. Those orders can only be revised by a living Supreme Leader. The new one has not spoken. May be wounded. Nobody knows.
The IRGC units in Hormozgan province are not waiting for a phone call from Tehran. Neither are the units in Khuzestan. Or Fars. Or Sistan-Baluchestan. They are executing the last instructions they received from a dead man.
The likelihood that all 31 provinces simultaneously obey a ceasefire order from a capital that has been bombed for 11 days, blacked out for 240 hours, and led by a ghost? About zero.
They will continue to fire across the Persian Gulf.
Desalination plants. Oil refineries. Transport infrastructure. Government services in six countries. Not because someone in Tehran picked up the phone this morning.
Because someone in Tehran picked up the phone before the war started, and nobody alive has the authority to hang it up.
That is what makes the mines so dangerous.
Mines are not a negotiating posture. Mines are infrastructure. You lay mines when you plan to hold a position for months.
The IRGC units deploying them are executing standing orders. A ceasefire announcement from a microphone in Washington means nothing to a crew in Bandar Abbas operating on instructions from a dead man.
There is no one to negotiate with. Not because Iran refuses. Because Iran cannot.
Iran has spent a third of 2026 offline. A 240-hour internet blackout.
Among the most severe government-imposed shutdowns on record globally, according to NetBlocks.
The regime blacked out its own population to prevent revolution. But in doing so, it also degraded its own command and control.
When you black out the internet to stop protests, you also black out the coordination network your own military uses.
Now the military picture.
Iran’s daily launch volume has collapsed over 90% in ten days. From 130 to 170 ballistic missiles per day and 500 to 700 drones on Days 1 and 2, down to fewer than 10 ballistics and 30 to 80 drones by Day 10. That looks like depletion.
But the IRGC Aerospace Force commander announced Monday: from now on, no missile with a warhead lighter than one ton will be launched. Fifty percent of Iranian ballistic missiles now carry cluster submunitions aimed at population centers.
That is not surrender. That is a shift from volume to lethality. Fewer shots. Bigger warheads. Aimed at civilians.
The question: is Iran running out, or is Iran concentrating?
And then there is the Hormuz hypocrisy. Iran is telling the world the Strait is closed. But satellite data shows Iran has sent 11 to 12 million barrels of its own crude through Hormuz since the war began on February 28.
Tehran is shipping while telling everyone else not to. The Strait is closed to the West. Open to Iran. Open to Russia. Open to China.
That is not a blockade. That is a toll booth.
You cannot negotiate a ceasefire with a government that cannot agree on what day it is. The people with the guns are not the people talking to Washington. And the new Supreme Leader, the man who theoretically commands all of it, has not said a word.
And that is before we get to the school.
Three chapters are free. The other six cost two dollars a day. That's the price of the door. You can pay it, or you can stay in the box, eat what comes through the slot, and say thank you sir, may I have another. The shit is free. It always was. The exit is what costs you.