{"id":417,"date":"2026-03-12T17:13:05","date_gmt":"2026-03-12T17:13:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/rudymartinez.wtf\/stuff-and-nonsense\/2026\/03\/12\/the-rest-of-the-world-report-day-12-morning-edition\/"},"modified":"2026-03-12T17:13:05","modified_gmt":"2026-03-12T17:13:05","slug":"the-rest-of-the-world-report-day-12-morning-edition","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rudymartinez.wtf\/stuff-and-nonsense\/2026\/03\/12\/the-rest-of-the-world-report-day-12-morning-edition\/","title":{"rendered":"The Rest of the World Report | Day 12 \u2014 Morning Edition"},"content":{"rendered":"

Wednesday, March 11, 2026 | 6:00 AM Eastern \/ 12:00 PM Paris<\/h3>\n

Twice-daily briefings on the US-Israel-Iran war for Americans who want the full picture. Sourced exclusively from international and independent press.<\/em><\/p>\n

THE NUMBERS (as of 6:00 AM Eastern)<\/h3>\n

Iran killed<\/strong> 1,300+ civilians (Iran\u2019s UN Ambassador Iravani, March 11)
Iran injured<\/strong> ~10,000 (Iranian Health Ministry)
Iran internet blackout<\/strong> 264+ hours \u2014 below 1% connectivity \u2014 NetBlocks: \u201cmost severe government-imposed nationwide shutdown on record globally\u201d
Lebanon killed<\/strong> 570+ (Lebanese Disaster Risk Management Unit); 780,000+ displaced (Lebanese Social Affairs Minister) Israel killed<\/strong> 15+ civilians, 2 soldiers; 1,929+ injured
US KIA<\/strong> 8 confirmed \/ 140 wounded (Pentagon)
Ships attacked in\/near Hormuz<\/strong> 14+ total since Feb 28 (UKMTO) \u2014 3 struck this morning alone Brent crude<\/strong> Highly volatile: $83\u2013$94 range in 24 hours; peaked ~$120 Monday
US gas prices<\/strong> $4\/gallon nationally, up <\/s>14% in two weeks (AAA)
Strait of Hormuz<\/strong> Effectively closed; 17 incident reports filed with UKMTO since Feb 28<\/p>\n

STORY 1: THE STRAIT IS A WAR ZONE<\/h3>\n

Three ships struck this morning. The CEO of the world\u2019s largest oil company says the word \u201ccatastrophic.\u201d No one in Washington has a plan.<\/h3>\n

Early Wednesday morning \u2014 while most Americans slept \u2014 three commercial vessels were struck by unknown projectiles in and around the Strait of Hormuz.<\/p>\n

The Thailand-flagged bulk carrier Mayuree Naree<\/em> was hit 11 nautical miles north of Oman, caught fire, and was forced to evacuate most of its crew. The Japan-flagged container ship One Majesty<\/em> sustained hull damage 25 nautical miles northwest of Ras Al Khaimah in the UAE. A third vessel, a Marshall Islands-flagged bulk carrier, was struck roughly 50 miles northwest of Dubai. All three crews are reported safe. No one has claimed responsibility. The fires have been extinguished (Reuters, UKMTO, The National \u2014 March 11, 2026).<\/p>\n

These are not isolated incidents. Since the war began on February 28, the UK Maritime Trade Operations has logged 17 incident reports in the Persian Gulf, the Strait of Hormuz, and the Gulf of Oman \u2014 13 of them classified as attacks. The total number of vessels hit since the conflict began is now at least 14 (Reuters\/UKMTO).<\/p>\n

The IRGC\u2019s stated policy is unambiguous: \u201cWe will not allow a single liter of oil to leave the Middle East while US and Israeli attacks continue,\u201d a Revolutionary Guard spokesperson told Iranian state media on Tuesday (Reuters). Shipping traffic through the strait \u2014 which in normal times carries roughly 100 vessels per day and approximately 20% of the world\u2019s daily oil and gas supply \u2014 has dropped to near zero.<\/p>\n

The CEO of Saudi Aramco, the world\u2019s largest oil company, said the quiet part out loud on Tuesday. On an earnings call, Amin Nasser told investors: \u201cWhile we have faced disruptions in the past, this one by far is the biggest crisis the region\u2019s oil and gas industry has faced.\u201d He warned of \u201ccatastrophic consequences for the world\u2019s oil markets\u201d and said the disruption was already having \u201cdrastic domino effects on aviation, agriculture, automotive and other industries.\u201d Global oil inventories are at a five-year low. Aramco has activated its East-West pipeline \u2014 the only remaining export route \u2014 to bypass the strait entirely, piping crude overland to the Red Sea port of Yanbu. It cannot carry enough (Reuters, Semafor, The National \u2014 March 10, 2026).<\/p>\n

The International Energy Agency is now recommending a coordinated release of strategic reserves exceeding 100 million barrels in the first month \u2014 a figure that would be among the largest emergency releases in history (Reuters, Times of Israel \u2014 March 11, 2026).<\/p>\n

Senator Chris Murphy (D-CT) sat in a two-hour classified briefing on the war this week. He cannot disclose classified information, but here is what he said publicly on Threads: the war goals as presented to Congress do not include<\/strong> destroying Iran\u2019s nuclear weapons program \u2014 the stated purpose Trump has repeated publicly since Day 1. Regime change was also confirmed to be off the table. When senators asked what happens when the bombing stops and Iran restarts missile production, administration officials \u201chinted at more bombing. Which is, of course, endless war.\u201d On the Strait of Hormuz specifically, Murphy was unambiguous: \u201cThey had NO PLAN. I can\u2019t go into more detail about how Iran gums up the Strait, but suffice it to say, right now, they don\u2019t know how to get it safely back open. Which is unforgiveable, because this part of the disaster was 100% foreseeable.\u201d (Sen. Chris Murphy, Threads \u2014 March 10, 2026)<\/p>\n

The briefings, Murphy noted, are all closed. \u201cTrump can\u2019t defend this war in public.\u201d<\/p>\n

Three ships are burning in the Strait this morning. Aramco says \u201ccatastrophic.\u201d A US senator says there is no plan to reopen it. And the administration that started this war has not held a single public hearing on its goals.<\/p>\n

\ud83c\udf0d TRANSLATOR\u2019S NOTE:<\/strong> The international financial and energy press \u2014 Reuters, Bloomberg, The National, Semafor \u2014 has been covering the Hormuz crisis as an existential economic emergency since Day 1. The Aramco CEO\u2019s \u201ccatastrophic\u201d warning made front pages across Asia, Europe, and the Gulf. In the US, it ran as a business item.<\/p>\n

\ud83c\uddfa\ud83c\uddf8 WHAT AMERICAN READERS NEED TO KNOW:<\/strong> The Strait of Hormuz is not a foreign policy abstraction. It is the pipe through which one-fifth of the world\u2019s energy supply moves every day. It is also the thing a US senator \u2014 with access to classified briefings \u2014 just confirmed the administration has no plan to reopen. The ships burning there this morning are cargo vessels. Their crews are civilian sailors. That is the world your gas price lives in right now.<\/p>\n

STORY 2: THE GAP \u2014 WHAT TRUMP SAYS VS. WHAT IS HAPPENING<\/h3>\n

\u201cPretty much over.\u201d \u201cUltimate victory.\u201d \u201cLittle excursion.\u201d Meanwhile: Day 12.<\/h3>\n

On Monday, President Trump told CBS News: \u201cI think the war is very complete, pretty much.\u201d He said Iran\u2019s military had been wiped out. Hours later, at a separate event with Republican lawmakers, he said: \u201cWe haven\u2019t won enough. We go forward more determined than ever to achieve ultimate victory.\u201d On Tuesday, he called it a \u201clittle excursion\u201d that would conclude \u201csoon\u201d \u2014 while simultaneously threatening Iran with \u201cdeath, fire and fury\u201d if they kept blocking Hormuz (NBC News, NPR \u2014 March 10, 2026).<\/p>\n

Iran\u2019s response was equally direct. The IRGC said Tuesday: \u201cIran will determine when the war ends.\u201d Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi told PBS NewsHour that negotiating with the US would not \u201cbe on the table\u201d again. \u201cWe have a very bitter experience of talking with Americans,\u201d he said \u2014 noting that indirect nuclear talks were underway last June when the US attacked Iran the first time, and again in February 2026 when the US attacked a second time (PBS NewsHour, NPR \u2014 March 10, 2026).<\/p>\n

On Wednesday morning, the IRGC announced what it described as its \u201cmost intense and heaviest operation yet\u201d \u2014 three hours of continuous missile launches including Khorramshahr medium-range ballistic missiles targeting US bases in Kuwait, Bahrain, and Erbil, and Israeli cities including Tel Aviv, Haifa, and West Jerusalem. Sirens sounded across central Israel. Air defenses in Saudi Arabia intercepted six ballistic missiles aimed at Prince Sultan Air Base and 24 drones overnight (Al Jazeera, ABC News, Times of Israel \u2014 March 11, 2026).<\/p>\n

Defense Secretary Hegseth said Tuesday would be \u201cthe most intense day of strikes \u2014 the most fighters, the most bombers, the most strikes.\u201d US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent went on Fox Business and said \u201ctonight will be our biggest bombing campaign.\u201d Both statements were made publicly, on the record, on the same day the President called the war a \u201clittle excursion.\u201d<\/p>\n

Germany\u2019s Chancellor Merz, after meeting with Trump at the White House, offered a different assessment: \u201cAn endless war is not in our interest.\u201d<\/p>\n

\ud83c\udf0d TRANSLATOR\u2019S NOTE:<\/strong> The disconnect between Trump\u2019s public statements and his own cabinet\u2019s statements has been covered with open alarm by the international press \u2014 not as partisan criticism, but as a factual risk to allied coordination and market stability. When a head of government calls an active war a \u201clittle excursion,\u201d the rest of the world notices.<\/p>\n

\ud83c\uddfa\ud83c\uddf8 WHAT AMERICAN READERS NEED TO KNOW:<\/strong> The gap between \u201cpretty much over\u201d and \u201cmost intense day ever\u201d is not a communications problem. It is a strategic problem. And the senator who sat in the classified briefing this week says the war goals as presented behind closed doors don\u2019t match what the President is saying in public. Americans deserve to know which version is true.<\/p>\n

STORY 3: THE SUPREME LEADER NO ONE HAS SEEN<\/h3>\n

Iran has a new leader. He was wounded on Day 1. He has not appeared in public since.<\/h3>\n

Mojtaba Khamenei \u2014 son of the assassinated Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, selected to succeed him by Iran\u2019s Assembly of Experts \u2014 has not made a public appearance since the war began twelve days ago.<\/p>\n

The New York Times reported Wednesday, citing both Israeli and Iranian officials, that Mojtaba was wounded in his legs in the opening US-Israeli strikes on February 28 (NYT \u2014 March 11, 2026). Israeli intelligence assessments shared with Reuters corroborate the injury. The Iranian president\u2019s son responded Wednesday that Khamenei is \u201csafe and sound.\u201d The PMO has not released footage of him.<\/p>\n

This matters beyond the obvious. Iran\u2019s political structure requires a visible, functioning supreme leader. Mojtaba was a largely unknown figure before the war \u2014 a mid-ranking cleric with no military command experience, elevated in extraordinary circumstances while his father\u2019s compound was still burning. An injured, invisible supreme leader in the middle of the country\u2019s biggest military crisis in four decades is a significant variable.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, Reza Pahlavi \u2014 the son of the last Shah, and Iran\u2019s most prominent opposition figure in exile \u2014 released a video message Wednesday morning calling on Iranians to stay home, stock supplies, and await his \u201cfinal call.\u201d \u201cWe have now reached a very sensitive stage of the final struggle,\u201d he said. He called for continued nightly rooftop chants as a sign of unity and appealed directly to Iranian police and military to \u201cjoin the people\u201d (Newsweek, multiple sources \u2014 March 11, 2026).<\/p>\n

\ud83c\udf0d TRANSLATOR\u2019S NOTE:<\/strong> The international press has covered the question of who is actually governing Iran \u2014 and whether anyone is \u2014 since Day 3. A wounded, invisible supreme leader during active war is the kind of leadership vacuum that can produce both capitulation and escalation unpredictably. The rest of the world is watching this closely.<\/p>\n

\ud83c\uddfa\ud83c\uddf8 WHAT AMERICAN READERS NEED TO KNOW:<\/strong> Iran still has nuclear material, still has missiles, and still has a chain of command \u2014 but the man now nominally at the top of that chain has not been seen in twelve days. If the goal is regime change, no one has explained what comes next. If the goal is something else, no one has explained that either.<\/p>\n

STORY 4: WHILE THE CAMERAS POINT AT TEHRAN<\/h3>\n

Six Palestinians were killed in the West Bank last week. Almost no one covered it.<\/h3>\n

Under the cover of the Iran war, settler violence in the occupied West Bank has surged to levels that Palestinian human rights organizations are calling among the worst since October 2023.<\/p>\n

Six Palestinians were killed by Israeli settlers last week alone. Three of them \u2014 Thair Farouk Hamayel, 24; Fara Jawdat Hamayel, 57; and Mohammad Hasan Murara, 55 \u2014 were shot in the head in the village of Abu Falah on Sunday. Seven others were wounded, four with bullet wounds. The Palestinian Health Ministry confirmed the deaths (The National, The Intercept \u2014 March 10-11, 2026).<\/p>\n

Palestinian-Israeli politician Ayman Odeh described the situation directly: \u201cIn the shadow of Netanyahu\u2019s war of survival [with Iran], gangs of settlers move from village to village, sometimes alongside the army, and murder Palestinians simply because they are Palestinians. All of this is happening under the auspices of the army and with the encouragement of the government. This is an official and deliberate policy, whose goal is ethnic cleansing in the West Bank.\u201d (The National \u2014 March 11, 2026)<\/p>\n

Far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir simultaneously issued an order making 300,000 Jewish-Israeli Jerusalem residents eligible for gun licenses \u2014 nearly the entire Jewish population of the city, regardless of military service. Palestinian residents of Jerusalem, numbering roughly 350,000 people \u2014 38% of the city \u2014 are not eligible (The National \u2014 March 11, 2026).<\/p>\n

Diab, a Palestinian farmer in the northern Jordan Valley, told The National: \u201cSettlers are using the fact that there are fewer eyes on what they are doing to carry out whatever they want.\u201d<\/p>\n

Messages circulating in Israeli settler WhatsApp groups called for violence against Palestinians to \u201cmatch\u201d the airstrikes on Iran. One graphic read: \u201cIt is time to launch a preemptive attack in all arenas, until the enemy is expelled from the country.\u201d (The Intercept \u2014 March 10, 2026)<\/p>\n

Le Monde correspondent reporting from the West Bank described the situation as a systematic escalation deliberately timed to the war (Le Monde \u2014 March 10, 2026).<\/p>\n

\ud83c\udf0d TRANSLATOR\u2019S NOTE:<\/strong> The international press \u2014 Le Monde, The National (UAE), Al Jazeera, The Intercept \u2014 has reporters on the ground in the West Bank right now. The story is not difficult to find. It has simply not been considered a lead story in American media while Tehran is burning.<\/p>\n

\ud83c\uddfa\ud83c\uddf8 WHAT AMERICAN READERS NEED TO KNOW:<\/strong> Three people were shot in the head in a Palestinian village on Sunday. The US provides military and political cover for the government whose minister is arming the population around them. This is happening now, in the same war, funded in part by American taxpayers \u2014 and it is not on the front page.<\/p>\n

WATCH LIST FOR THIS EVENING<\/h3>\n