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Iran/Shipping attack update

Highly disturbing - Pentagon believes crew of Norwegian-owned tanker Front Altair detained by Iran. US officials say crew first rescued by merchant vessel, Hyundai Dubai, but Iranian gunboats surrounded ship demanding the crew. Captain ordered crew to surrender. 23 crew members being held in Iran.
“detained”, not rescued, implies Iran hiding something.

USS Bainbridge has 21 mariners on board from commercial cargo vessel Kokuka Courageous. Bainbridge beat the Iranians to the vessel and the crew requested support from the Bainbridge. The Kokuka Courageous is the same vessel that was later videoed showing Iranian patrol vessel crew removing what is believed to be a ‘limpet’ mine from the side. What adds confusion to this situation is that the owner of the Kokuka Courageous is reported to have statded that the tanker crew saw “flying objects” before attack, suggesting ship wasn’t damaged by mines. Could this be a Houti (sp)drone? The current status of the Courageous is that it is heading for the harbor of Khor Fakkan (UAE).

Threat summary - the likelihood of US military response to these attacks is relatively low. Some intelligence analysts suggest that until US lives are lost or facilities/assets are attacked, President Trump will exercise restraint. Current assessment is that there will be on invasion of Iran, but a substantial destruction of its force projection capabilities in the region.

Monday Monday

Twitter -
Many twitter purges have been very public - particularly those involving the banning of conservative voices. This weekend twitter at the behest of other countries (namely India, but others as well) has started a purge of OSINT (open source intelligence) accounts. These purged accounts are among the many that I look to for timely intelligence. Foreign govts forcing their ‘laws’ on a US based/operated corporation in the interwebs does not bode well for the so called freedom of speech these platforms built their following upon as well as closes off news other than the approved, SJW, politically correct kind of crap seen on MSM. Backlash is building but uncertain how effective this will be.

Iran
Iran announced that they will surpass their enriched uranium limits within 10 day. There are some analysts that believe Iran has enough highly enriched uranium to construct a nuclear bomb. It is also believed that Iran partnered with N Korea on the development of their nuclear weapons so as to get the technology while keeping out of reach is Israeli weapons systems.

South American Blackout
Suspected internet hacking of the power grid based on the wide spread nature of the outage. Concerned that this could be a test run for America.

Israel
Gaza sends more incendiary balloon bombs into Israel. Other than that, things are at their normal rumble.

Persian Gulf/Iran
Information flow about the attack on two tankers has dried up (twitter bans). One interesting factor is that Iran attempted to shoot down a US drone flying overhead. Not something one would do if entirely innocent about the incident. My best assessment is that until US personnel/assets are directly touched by Iran or its proxies, the US will keep its powder dry. If POTUS orders the trigger pulled don’t expect the limited mosquito strikes like past administrations, but something very very strong and hard (based upon his ordered strikes to date).