Yep. Another day another erratic reversal that changes nothing. There is no deal and there will not be. Neither side can back down so the conflict will continue to completion.

And yet who also benefit from any sanctions relief that unfreezes their ill gotten assets hidden abroad. We must remember both sides of the ledger.

Good. But hopefully they will change and become part of the solution rather than continuing their tradition of issuing strongly worded memos outlining what they oppose while sipping tea and munching on croissant.

There will be no deal. The conflict will continue, in one form or another, until the Iranian people are free to choose their own government.

The pragmatists want to live and rule over a decimated enslaved nation. The fanatics want to bring about Armageddon and believe they can. Both will fail.

Iran diplomacy wobbles as factions compete to avoid looking soft on US Apparent divisions over negotiations with the United States may have strengthened the most confrontational elements within Iran’s political landscape and facilitated the rise of new hardline actors.

This is interesting insight into what's going on in Tehran. It's increasingly clear that decapitation has impaired the system's ability to manage factional conflict and that pretending to have a supreme leader is not the same as actually having one.

The visible signs, which could be misleading, point to total institutional breakdown and rhetorical infighting that hasn’t yet devolved into using force against each other. The longer it takes for one faction to decisively take control the greater the chance of intractable fragmentation.

Following repeated executions of male opponents of the barbaric Iranian regime,it is now reported that a group of female political prisoners are to be executed by hanging. They are:
Bita Hemmati
Ghazal Ghalandari
Golnaz Naraghi
Venus Hossein Nejad
Panah Movahedi
Ensieh Nejati
1

😂

Threatening to leave because they fear a resumption of airstrikes?

The game was never off. The strait was never open and was never going to be open. Araghchi does not speak for the IRGC and the IRGC is in charge. It has been since the decapitation strike and will continue to be from now on. The toddler king is negotiating with people who have no authority.

Once again you have seen through the confusion and made the key observation. It’s very clear today that the people trump is negotiating with speak only for themselves and the people actually making the decisions have little interest in their words.

Not all heros wear capes, some sift through trashbags for the public good.

I was talking with some of them in Tehran recently. They believe that they are “winning” and that continued conflict is in their interest. This is the regime’s double edged sword. The more its victims believe its lies more dangerous it is for them to back down.

Ali Akbar Ebrahimvand, 16, has been arrested on Feb 18th, 2026.
They allowed only one visit and since then his whereabouts are unknown.
His father, who insisted on visiting him again, has been detained as well.

🤞

This is an encouraging sign on a generally depressing day.

From reddit, trash bins near government buildings in Budapest are filled with shredded documents.

Agreed, that's the dream. But, again, after they sat on their hands during the January massacre it's hard to imagine any scenario that would get them to act differently.

I think that's improbable in a totalitarian surveillance state like the IR.

At this point the only two paths I see are internal fracture of the repression forces and/or foreign boots on the ground countering them in the capitol.

It takes relatively few armed and trained forces to repress a large unarmed population if they are willing to shoot them. These thugs are not only willing, they seem to get off on it.

An uprising by unarmed civilians succeeds when the leaders are unwilling to give shoot-to-kill orders or when the operators are unwilling to carry out such orders. Before the January massacre there was a rational if misguided hope the latter scenario would play out. Now we know that's wrong.

Yes, Iranian drones fired by the regime’s proxies.

The Islamic Republic regime's drone attack on Kurds in Iraq today during the "ceasefire."

Sounds like maybe IED's at suppression checkpoints. This is new -- to say the least.

TISZA got 53,6% of the vote, but it translates to 70% of seats in parliament. That's how broken the Hungarian electoral system is. Orban's nasty creation was used against him. It's important that Peter Magyar now gets rid of it for good by rewriting the constitution.

More new recruits for the Islamic Republic's security aparatus.

It’s clear. Stay anchored in the Gulf until open navigation has been restored — just as almost all have been.

I can totally see trump doing this in 2028. In fact, it’s hard to imagine him not doing it.

It’s interesting that the Ford went through the Suez Canal and then immediately turned around and went back with an accidental onboard fire. Now the Bush is going a week out of its way to avoid the Red Sea all together. 🤔