US/Israel and Iran- (11 Viewers)

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    efil4

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    Thought we should start thread here - over weekend, US carried out strikes against Houthi elements in Yemen in retaliation for their actions in Red Sea.



    Houthi leader issued this statement- no US ships in Red Sea


    Houthis then attempted to strike US Carrier group

    This morning Trump took to Truth Social:



    So any missile/shot fired from Houthi elements in Yemen will be considered coming from Iran. Obviously this is wrought with problems, but we know Houthis will respond and continue attacks.

    So then what does this mean for Iran? Lots to unpack, but seems to me that the NO WAR POTUS is hell bent on getting into yet ANOTHER conflict in the ME. He is backing himself into a corner with statements and we could find ourselves embroiled in ME conflict again.
     
    Last edited:
    efil4 said:
    We moved over 15 Patriot/THAAD AD batteries to the Gulf States.....We absolutely knew.

    He is a liar. And its getting much easier to detect now.

    Click to expand...



    One easy way to detect if he is lying is just to see when he opens his mouth. When it's open he is lying. Same for if he it rage tweeting while on the toilet.
     
    We evidently cannot stop Iran from hitting gas fields and tankers around the ME.

     
    Optimus Prime said:
    IMG_2409.jpeg

    Don’t know if this is real or not

    A. Sounds like something he’d say

    B. Sounds like a total lie

    C. See A
    Click to expand...
    IMG_2416.jpeg
     
    Sounds like someone who sees the writing on the wall and making his job almost impossible to do.

    That doesnt give me all the "warm and fuzzies"
     
    And like clockwork, MAGAs on X have taken to calling him a traitor to America.

    Man o man, you hitch your wagon to MAGA and dont carry out your duties, the foot soldiers will try to eliminate you.

    Wonder what country has an army that does the exact same thing? They "zero" out the insubordinate. Hmmmmm.....
     
    I saw a video from Mr Global that had some interesting points about the oil industry-which some of what he said was corroborated by my financial advisor years ago. Companies like Exxon can make money regardless of the price of oil, and there is a sweet spot for oil prices where they will make the most money and it’s under $100/bbl. They make more money on crude when the price is high, but less money on the other end - refining. When the price of oil is lower - they will make a lot more money in the refineries than with the drilling. And they can actually inflate the price of petroleum a bit because when gas prices are on the low side nobody notices or cares.

    My financial advisor told me years ago that the CEO of Exxon had stated on a shareholder call that their profit margins overall were fairly independent of the price of crude oil. Which seemed counterintuitive at the time - and made more sense when Mr Global explained it the way he did.

    I would assume this only applies to massive corporations like Exxon though.

    Just found it interesting.
     
    MT15 said:
    I saw a video from Mr Global that had some interesting points about the oil industry-which some of what he said was corroborated by my financial advisor years ago. Companies like Exxon can make money regardless of the price of oil, and there is a sweet spot for oil prices where they will make the most money and it’s under $100/bbl. They make more money on crude when the price is high, but less money on the other end - refining. When the price of oil is lower - they will make a lot more money in the refineries than with the drilling. And they can actually inflate the price of petroleum a bit because when gas prices are on the low side nobody notices or cares.

    My financial advisor told me years ago that the CEO of Exxon had stated on a shareholder call that their profit margins overall were fairly independent of the price of crude oil. Which seemed counterintuitive at the time - and made more sense when Mr Global explained it the way he did.

    I would assume this only applies to massive corporations like Exxon though.

    Just found it interesting.
    Click to expand...

    Correct. Its all the "vertical" smaller ( from drill pad to services ) companies that feel the wild swings.
     
    efil4 said:
    And like clockwork, MAGAs on X have taken to calling him a traitor to America.

    Man o man, you hitch your wagon to MAGA and dont carry out your duties, the foot soldiers will try to eliminate you.

    Wonder what country has an army that does the exact same thing? They "zero" out the insubordinate. Hmmmmm.....
    Click to expand...

    I get where you’re coming from but at this point, I’m more likely to assume X backlash originates as astroturfing rather than organic. MAGA - as understood to be the flesh and blood average folks - will largely fall in line, but they are sheep and haven’t had time to form opinions about this guy yet.
     
    Guess this can go here

    Crazy stuff
    =========

    The message appeared in English on Emanuel Fabian’s phone.

    “You have 90 minutes left to update the lie,” said a WhatsApp message reviewed by The Washington Post. “If you do this — you solve in a minute the most serious problem you have caused yourself in life. And you won’t remember me anymore in a week.”

    Five days earlier, Fabian, a 28-year-old war correspondent at the Times of Israel newspaper, had published a short blog post reporting that an Iranian missile had struck an open area outside a Jerusalem suburb, harming no one.

    Until he began to receive messages that threatened his life and family, Fabian didn’t know his brief report had triggered a dispute over bets on the prediction market Polymarket on whether an Iranian missile would strike Israel on March 10. For those with money down, millions of dollars were potentially riding on his blog post.

    Fabian was spooked enough by the threats to at least entertain the idea of revising his published reporting, he told The Post in a phone interview Monday. That could score a win for Polymarket users who had bet against a missile strike occurring that day — and at least one had offered to send Fabian a share of the profits.

    Instead, he stood by his post, reported the threats to the police and wrote an article for the Times of Israel chronicling the harrowing experience. Fabian said he decided to publicize the story in the hope that “anyone who’s ever thinking about threatening a journalist will maybe think twice.”

    Fabian’s run-in with disgruntled bettors follows a string of recent controversies triggered by prediction markets, fast-growing online platforms that host markets where people can bet on the outcome of future events such as elections or the Academy Awards.

    In January, an anonymous user on Polymarket, which bars U.S. users, won $400,000 betting on the ouster of Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro just hours before U.S. forces took him into custody. In February, Fabian reported that an Israel Defense Forces reservist was indicted along with a civilian for using classified information to place bets on Polymarket.

    This month, users of rival Kalshi, which is approved to serve U.S. bettors, complained after the site declined to pay out on bets that Iran’s Ayatollah Ali Khamenei would be ousted, citing a policy of not allowing bets on a person’s death..........

    The bet that would turn into a nightmare for Fabian hinged on whether at least one Iranian missile would strike Israel on March 10.

    As sirens sounded across Jerusalem and the West Bank that day, indicating ballistic missiles in flight from Iran, Fabian began contacting authorities to see whether anything had landed or been intercepted. Within minutes, he published a brief post noting that medics were responding to reports of an impact near Beit Shemesh, a city about 20 miles west of Jerusalem. Soon after, he posted on X a dashcam video provided by a witness that showed a fiery explosion in a forested area not far from a residential complex.

    “One missile struck an open area just outside Beit Shemesh, first responders say and footage shows,” Fabian wrote, noting that no injuries were reported.


    Fabian moved on with his day, but on Polymarket, controversy was brewing. At the end of March 10, about $200,000 was at stake, according to a Post analysis of Polymarket data from crypto analytics data platform Dune and the website Polymarket Analytics.

    His blog post appeared to seal a win for users who had put money on at least one Iranian missile striking Israel that day. But in a group chat on the messaging platform Discord, a user pointed out that a daily report from the Israel Defense Forces did not mention any missile strikes on March 10. That user and others suggested the explosion may have been shrapnel from an intercepted missile.

    Under the terms of the bet on Polymarket, intercepted missiles did not count as strikes. And the terms said that if confirmation of a strike could not be provided within 48 hours, those who bet “no” would be declared the winners.


    Polymarket determines the “truth” used to resolve bets on its platform via a complex system of voting by users who have bought a particular cryptocurrency token. As those users debated who should win the bet over missile strikes on March 10 in the days following the blast, more Polymarket bettors piled in, wagering another $7 million, with some individuals standing to win more than $1 million if the market resolved to “yes.” And Fabian began to receive messages from strangers encouraging him to revisit his reporting.

    At first the messages were polite. “I’d appreciate it if you could update your article, as in its current form it does not reflect reality,” one correspondent told Fabian, according to his Times of Israel article. “Alternatively, if you have information that it was indeed a full missile that was not intercepted, I would be glad to be corrected.”


    Fabian said he didn’t know at the time why the person was so interested in what seemed to be a minor detail, given that the blast had not caused serious damage. His confusion grew as he began to receive similar messages from other strangers.

    “I started getting all these replies on Twitter, or X, where people asked me, ‘Hey, why aren’t you updating this story from the 10th of March?’,” he recounted. “I was so confused. Then I looked at the profiles, and I realized they’re all Polymarket bettors. That’s when it kind of clicked.”

    By Sunday morning one person’s messages to Fabian had grown menacing.

    In messages written in Hebrew on WhatsApp, which Fabian quoted in his published reporting and also shared with The Post, a user who called themselves “Haim” said if Fabian caused him to lose his $900,000 bet, “we will invest no less than that to finish you.” Alternatively, the message said, Fabian could change the article, “end this with money in your pocket, and also earn back the life you had until now.”

    When Fabian didn’t respond, Haim began sending messages counting down the minutes, and claimed that he knew exactly where Fabian lived and who his family members were. Eventually, Haim switched from Hebrew to English, telling Fabian he had “90 minutes to update the lie.”

    Fabian told The Post that he considered conceding to Haim’s demands.

    “I thought, ‘Do I just change it? Because it doesn’t really matter,’” he said. “But then I thought, ‘You know, if I do this now, they’re going to come back to me again and asked for other things to be changed.’ They would have probably never stopped doing that if they knew they could make money this way.”

    Instead, Fabian filed a police report, he said, and began working with his editor at the Times of Israel to publish a first-person account of the attempted shakedown. He said he hopes that the publicity will deter bettors from threatening other journalists in the future. But Fabian said he worries he won’t be the last — and that other journalists might respond differently.

    Asked whether it’s possible the bettors were right and the explosion was from the remains an intercepted missile, Fabian said he was confident it was a warhead, due to the size of the blast and verbal confirmation from the IDF. But he added that it’s not something he’d usually follow up on after a minor blast, given that it doesn’t matter to most people — unless they have money riding on the answer................

    A journalist reported a missile strike. Then came the death threats.​



     

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