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Good morning,

🎶 Friday Listening: Billy Joel - We Didn't Start the Fire

Unfortunately, folks, no time for chit chat today. The war in Iran is approaching a very dangerous moment. One that's starting to keep me up at night. The more I report, the more people I speak to, and the more I read, the more worried I am that this situation is building to a place that could spiral out of control far more than it already has.

The one "good" thing about this conflict thus far is that it's been relatively contained to a handful of players: Iran, Israel, Lebanon and the US. The Europeans have stayed out of it, and hard to blame them. The Gulf countries, led by Saudi, have taken some bad hits from Iran but have outsourced their responses to us. China has been cushioning the blow from the energy crunch for all of us by drawing down from its own massive strategic reserves, which is one big reason why the price at the pump right now has a 4-handle on it rather than a 5 or 6. And with the exception of Hezbollah in Leb, Iran's other proxies have been silent.

That is now changing. In the last 48 hours or so, the Houthis of Yemen declared a blockade of Saudi tanker traffic through the Bab el-Mandeb Strait, another one of these global maritime chokepoints to the west of the Persian Gulf down at the south end of the Red Sea, between Yemen on the Arabian Peninsula and Djibouti/Eritrea on the Horn of Africa. (Aside: who put all these maritime chokepoints right next to the world's most ass-backwards, unstable countries? Funny joke, whoever it was.)

Bab el-Mandeb, which translates to "The Gate of Tears" for reasons I'd rather not know, is equally vulnerable as the Strait of Hormuz in terms of global shipping. The Houthis say they've already hit at least two tankers transiting that strait and will attack any tankers moving Saudi crude through Bab el-Mandeb going forward. The reason why this one is arguably more critical than Hormuz is its linkage with the Suez Canal, which carries a third of all global container traffic. Without this artery, the only way to get your stuff to Europe or the US on a ship is to go all the way down to the Cape of Good Hope at the bottom of Africa, which is expensive and time consuming.

Remember during Covid when that container ship somehow got itself wedged into the Suez for a few days? That was hilarious. But it majorly screwed up tanker traffic in the middle of an already growing supply-chain crisis. Remember trying to order a piece of furniture or some other big-ticket item four or five years ago, and the lead times were like 18-24 months... if it even showed up at all? Now imagine that multiplied by 100 if the Houthis manage to make the Red Sea un-navigable.

Well, why don't we just hit the Houthis if they start lashing out? The Houthis get painted as these rinky-dink Yemeni pirates but they are actually tough as nails. When they started attacking ships in response to Israel's invasion of Gaza after Oct. 7, it took 18 months for Trump to come in and do a ceasefire/capitulation with the group because we couldn't even establish air superiority over them. Underestimate the Houthis at your own risk, is what I’m saying.

Now the Houthis have chosen the moment of highest impact to join this war on behalf of their patrons in Tehran, when oil prices are high and energy reserves are low around the world. Brent crude crossed $100 yesterday, up 12% this week. The general consensus among people who follow this stuff is that $125/barrel for any extended period is when the wheels start to fall off the global economy. We're still a ways from that mark, but the more this war expands> the more countries draw down their reserves> the higher Brent goes> the higher energy inflation goes> the higher interest rates go... now we're talking about the possibility of a major global recession happening right into the teeth of a US election with Republican majorities at risk. This is Iran's trump card, as it were. Why wouldn't they use it? I would!

The other wild card that's making me so nervous is, of course, Trump himself. Think about what we know about the man. We know that when he is cornered, he lashes out. We know that he cannot bear a long-running humiliation like this. And it has become abundantly clear that there is no conventional military solution to the problem he created here, short of a large-scale, open-ended ground invasion that will make last weekend’s casualties look like a walk in the park. He does not appear to have an appetite for that, thank God. 

Now pay attention to the consent-manufacturing factory. The WSJ reported this week that "Israeli intelligence" believes Iran moved its uranium-enrichment program deep inside Pickaxe Mountain, one of its nuclear sites that is even deeper and more protected than the ones we hit a year ago (back when we were told/lied to that the US and Israel "obliterated" Iran's nuke program). So Mossad is leaking to US media that this is where Trump should focus his attention. That WSJ report then made its way over to Fox News, which has been doing segments on how we would go about attacking this site. Fox tends to do these segments on its morning show, using big flashy graphics, maps and pictures, hoping to catch the eye of the only viewer of that show who matters: the president himself. Here's a clip of noted military expert Brian Kilmeade talking through the television to the president about how precision strikes could penetrate Pickaxe Mountain if done the right way.

Sure enough, Trump has started talking openly about launching an operation on Pickaxe Mountain, saying we're gonna start bombing the site "very heavily" soon. Getting this guy to do your bidding is so easy once you crack the formula: plant the story in a major US paper, get Fox to pick it up and run a lot of segments about it that he then sees through the osmosis of having that channel on 24/7 around him, and viola. I used to say during Trump 1 that the most influential person in America was the associate producer at Fox News whose job it was to write the words that show up on the lower part of the screen (chyrons, as we call 'em in the biz). I still think that's true.

All these signs suggest a big escalation is imminent. Trump of course can always back down and just continue the status quo, whatever that even is at this point, but the entrance of the Houthis makes me think this war is about to go Big Time. I think Trump knows the GOP is cooked in November either way at this point and frankly doesn't care. So I don't think the midterms are a big factor here. (I've talked before about my personal pet theory that he actually wants Democrats to win big because it will give him a foil for the next two years.)

The scariest thing is that there just is not a way out of this that he can spin as anything other than a humiliating defeat — and Donald Trump does not like to be humiliated. On top of that, he sure as shit isn't going to like to be humiliated by Iran and its rag-tag proxies. Then the question becomes existential. I think the chances of this conflict going nuclear are still small. But they are rising by the day. You better believe a first-strike option on Iran, whether carried out by the US or Israel, has been put on the table. Maybe the target would be this mountain. And the worse this gets, the more it goes sideways, the fewer options there are for the commander-in-chief, the bigger the chance he gets talked into using it.

Hope I'm wrong, of course.

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Carlo Versano is Newsweek's Director of Politics and Culture. He has in-depth knowledge and experience covering a range of topics and stories over a 20-year career in the news business. Carlo joined Newsweek in 2024 after a stint at The Messenger. Before that, he was an Emmy-winning producer at NBC News. He is a graduate of the University of Richmond and the New School. You can get in touch with Carlo by emailing [email protected].

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By Giulia Carbonaro

The number of U.S. service members killed during the war in Iran was lowered from 18 to 14 on Thursday, with the Department of Defense's acting press secretary, Joel Valdez, saying the change was due to "temporary data disruptions."

However, three military officials gave a different explanation for the change, The New York Times reported, saying that the Trump administration decided to remove four service members killed between July 17 and 19—only three of whom have been publicly identified—because their deaths occurred after President Donald Trump declared a ceasefire in April.

Yesterday, I had the opportunity to serve as the White House Print Pooler and ride in the presidential motorcade for the first time.

No, I wasn’t in “The Beast,” the president’s limousine. I rode in one of the press vans reserved exclusively for the travel pool, but because I was the in-town pooler, I was able to join the motorcade.

It ended up being a pretty uneventful trip. We departed the White House at 2:10 p.m. and arrived at the EPA headquarters at 2:14 p.m., where President Donald Trump held an event.

Along the route, I watched mostly tourists walking along Constitution Avenue near the museums waving at the motorcade and taking photos as it passed.

The return trip was just as short. We left the EPA at 2:58 p.m. and were back on White House grounds by 3:01 p.m. Although I was part of the motorcade, I never actually saw the president get into his vehicle because he exited the building through a different door than the pooled press. I also did not see when he returned to the residence.

One advantage of serving as the pooler is that you’re present for every event that’s open to the press, which usually increases the chances of getting a question answered by the president. But he didn’t take any questions yesterday, which is uncharacteristic for him.

Jon Ossoff's coronation has finally arrived, but not the one you're thinking of. The Georgia senator has spent the past month watching his 2028 odds double on prediction markets, watching Trump devote a chunk of a primetime address to relitigating his 2021 runoff win, watching the speculation build that he's the future of his party. This week, he got the crowning touch: a Trump nickname.

Except the president couldn't stick the landing. At a Marietta rally this week, Trump reached for "Pinky Herman," a garbled mashup of Pee-wee Herman and, presumably, "pinko," before catching himself and correcting to the intended "Pee-wee Herman" jab he's been workshopping on Truth Social for weeks.

It's a rare miss from a man who turned "Rocket Man" and "Sleepy Joe" into cultural shorthand. Ossoff should actually be disappointed by this. A real, catchy nickname is basically a media booking machine. That's exactly the kind of screen time a 39-year-old senator trying to look like the future of his party would want right now.

Instead, Ossoff got a mumbled reference to a 1980s children's show host, one Trump himself seemed to sense didn't land.

The subtext was clear to her aspirant cancelers: I hear you, I see you, and I don’t care. This is 2026, not 2016.

“Maybe she or somebody else ought to get on the phone and get the votes. Right? It’s 50 around here.”

— Senate Majority Leader John Thune’s retort when asked about Karoline Leavitt saying President Trump’s “patience is running out” with Thune over the stalled SAVE Act.

Environmentalist and author Bill McKibben joins Carlo to break down the politics surrounding the current climate crisis. They discuss why the debate of climate change continues to circle in and out of public attention.

McKibben explains the importance of energy independence and why the clean energy transition is both an economic opportunity and environmental necessity.

Watch the latest episode here. ⬅

Newsweek is part of the Trust Project, which focuses on honesty, accuracy and fairness in journalism. Read more about our best practices. To get in touch with our newsroom with suggestions on how to point out possible errors, please contact us at [email protected].