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Jerusalem
Joined August 2011
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Jonathan Hessen retweeted
I reviewed 110 financial documents and reports of main Iranian land and sea transportation companies along with regional custom data. Here is what @CENTCOM new Task Force Iron Gate — announced today to squeeze Iran’s land borders and the Caspian — is actually up against.
Since April 2026, a U.S. naval blockade has shut Bandar Abbas and Chabahar, ports that handled roughly 163 million tons of cargo and about 80% of Iran’s trade.
But Iran has seven back doors: Iraq, Turkey, the Caspian Sea, Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan, Afghanistan, and Pakistan. Together they carried about $22 billion in trade in 2024–25 — $15.3B out, $6.8B in. Since the blockade, every one of these corridors shows traffic surging.
That is the gap Iron Gate has to close. A thread with the numbers, corridor by corridor. (1/10)
Jonathan Hessen retweeted
Secretary Rubio on April 1, 2026:
“We were on the verge of an Iran that had so many missiles and so many drones that no one could do anything about their nuclear weapons program in the future.”
Rubio called that prospect:
“An intolerable risk.”
He argued Iran could not be permitted to protect its nuclear ambitions behind an overwhelming arsenal of conventional weapons. realclearpolitics.com/video/…
Jonathan Hessen retweeted
CENTCOM forces disabled a commercial vessel in the Gulf of Oman, Nov. 7, after the ship’s civilian crew ignored repeated warnings and attempted to violate the naval blockade against Iran multiple times. A U.S. military aircraft fired precision munitions at the stern of St. Kitts-flagged M/V Huda, disabling the ship after CENTCOM forces directed the crew to abandon targeted spaces. The cargo vessel tried to depart regional waters after visiting an Iranian port.
Read the full release online: centcom.mil/MEDIA/PUBLIC-REL…
Jonathan Hessen retweeted
.@SecRubio: “It would have been very easy to do what multiple presidents before him have done, which is just ignore the Iran thing, leave it for the next guy."
“But this president didn't do that. He confronted it because what Iran wants to do is not just destroy our country; it's destroy our way of life and threaten our children,” he added.
Jonathan Hessen retweeted
I've lost count of how many times I've said this publicly over many months. Midnight Hammer prevented the nuclear breakout; Epic Fury prevented the missile breakout they needed to reconstitute the nuclear program and reach a zone of immunity.
Jonathan Hessen retweeted
Rewards for Justice is offering a reward of up to $20 million and possible relocation for information about Iran’s nuclear program, including its facilities, equipment, and associated personnel, such as those in the scientific community, or the movement of any of the above.
Submit a tip: rewardsforjustice.net/reward…
Jonathan Hessen retweeted
Secretary of State @marcorubio speaks at CPAC Mar-a-Lago 🇺🇸
Jonathan Hessen retweeted
A gentle but firm reminder.
More Marco Rubio from President Trump’s Cabinet meeting on March 26, 2026
“The people that run this country are radical Shia clerics. These are religious fanatics. Look what they are doing now at their weakest point. This is the weakest Iran has ever been. And look at what they’re doing. They’re attacking embassies. They’re attacking hotels. Imagine what these people would do if they had a nuclear weapon. That is an unacceptable risk for the world”
We're doing what's right not what's popular. That's what effective public servants should do.
We've lost the midterms. To turn back now without resolving the issue would be ridiculous.
#MAGA
Jonathan Hessen retweeted
Victor Davis Hanson just rejected JD Vance’s claim that the Iran war cost Republicans the midterms.
“It’s not the war.”
Now, he says President Trump needs to hit Iran “very, very hard.”
“Pickaxe Mountain.”
“For two or three weeks.”
Hanson is convinced that Trump “did the impossible” in the beginning of the Iran war, “but they didn’t explain it.”
“They didn’t say to the American people, 7 presidents said you can’t let them get a nuclear weapon.”
“They’re closer than ever before.”
“This is an existential threat.”
“When the war broke out, he had over 50% approval.”
“And they had a spectacular success for the first 38 days.”
“There were mistakes, but the biggest problem was we had almost won.”
“Then once they stopped in 38 [days], they were not quite done yet.”
“They hadn’t prepared for the Hormuz.”
Then, he says they failed by letting negotiations drag on for months on end.
“We still have eight months before the midterm.”
“Six months.”
“Five months.”
“Four months.”
“Three months.”
“They got into a haggling with people who don’t tell the truth and have no intention to negotiate.”
And now, he says Iran’s leaders are celebrating.
“These people are sky-high, high-fiving themselves that they stopped Trump with the midterms.”
“And they’re not going to negotiate.”
@VDHanson
Jonathan Hessen retweeted
News: Experts who supported military action against the Tehran regime’s nuclear, missile, and military threats and the current economic warfare campaign aren’t suddenly going to agree that it was the wrong call because of the election, which was about many issues. Leadership requires making tough but necessary calls.
If the regime falls next year, those who are calling for (wildly undemocratic) cancelations, silencing, and “holding people accountable” will have been wrong.
So go have a drink or a walk, calm down, and let’s meet on Monday on the battle space of ideas.
Unless you’re speaking based on foreign or other problematic funding or don’t really believe what you say, you have a right to be heard as much as I do.
Jonathan Hessen retweeted
This video explains a lot of what we've seen playing out over the last two years. And the last 72 hours.
Vance is in fact intensely loyal to someone. It's just not Trump.
Jonathan Hessen retweeted
Dear @JDVance,
You warned on Wednesday that the next few months would bring a lot of gaslighting. Then you wrote the first draft.
Your post says any honest conversation must start with the war. Great. Since April you have been the administration’s lead negotiator, which makes you the owner of the track that turned a seven-week bombing campaign into an eight-month stalemate. Every week of ceasefire that was not a peace kept the Strait a question mark and kept diesel where eighty-seven percent of voters said they could feel it. Had you spent the spring arguing for the one hour the President says it would take instead of extending the stalemate, the war would have been over by summer, the pump would have said so, and you would be writing a different post. You promised no forever war. You then built a ceasefire with no exit, and sat on it for seven months. Tell voters what settlement you believed was achievable, what deadlines mattered, and what the administration planned to do if negotiations failed.
You say you know a great many of the smartest people in politics, but not one of them has a name. (Tucker?) At least one of them cannot count (also Tucker?), because on your list of four things, items one and two are the same item, and item three is a bumper sticker. Item four is the only entry that names a country, and it is not the country we are at war with.
(BTW I can guess where item four came from. Days ago @TuckerCarlson wrote that the administration was considering striking Pickaxe Mountain under pressure from Netanyahu, on the strength of Israeli intelligence. That is your fourth item, written out in full. No one had to poll for it. It was posted.)
The poll itself. “Change our relationship to Israel” is broad enough to mean several incompatible things. What did those voters actually say? Did they spontaneously mention Israel? Were they offered a list? What percentage selected that answer? Were they objecting to this war, particular Israeli policies, American assistance, or the alliance itself? Why not publish the questionnaire, the sample, the percentages, and the crosstabs.
By contrast, the networks published their exit polls. The issues voters were asked about were the economy, democracy, immigration, corruption, the Iran war and artificial intelligence. Israel did not need a column, because voters were not voting about Israel. The sole evidence that the American electorate rendered a verdict on Israel is a phone call between you and a man you will not identify.
Contrast your response with @realDonaldTrump’s. Asked about your post, he acknowledged the war’s electoral cost and said he would make the decision again because long term it's the only answer. Agree or disagree, he defended his decision.
In July, you yourself said America would have fought this war without Israeli influence. You explained that the president independently opposed an Iranian nuclear weapon—and that you agreed.
Now your post finds room for an unnamed pollster’s undefined grievance against Israel, but none for an accounting of your own decisions as the administration’s lead negotiator.
Name the pollster. Publish the questions and the results. Tell voters which decisions you supported, which you opposed, and which you would reverse.
The President answered for his decision. That is leadership. If you want to be a leader, you need to be able to answer for yours.
One of the things the data analysts on our side obsessed over was "composition"—whether the electorate looked close enough to 2024 for Republicans to win. And despite polls that showed a Democrat blowout, the data kept on telling us the same story: in some states turnout was merely OK, in other states it was downright amazing, and in no state was it catastrophic. There was a genuine sense of optimism on our team: our people were showing up.
So, I asked the smartest data guy I know, does that mean we're going to shock the world? "No," he told me. "We might do better than the polls suggest. But the data is telling us that a lot of Trump/Vance 2024 voters are pissed and planning to vote for the other guys. Our voters are turning out, but they may not vote for us."
Well, that looks prophetic now. Our voters did show up. In Florida, for example, the electorate was 9 points more Republican than Democrat, just a couple points worse than 2024. Undoubtedly there were places we could have done better on turnout. But the main problem is not turnout. The main problem is that many people who voted for Trump/Vance in 2024 voted for Democrats in 2026.
There will be a lot of infighting and arguing over what happened and why that is. One of the pollsters I really respect told me that our economic messaging wasn’t sharp enough down the stretch. I’m sure that’s true.
But the real reason we lost is obvious to almost everyone.
Another pollster—one of the smartest people I know in politics, told me yesterday we’d lose the generic ballot by 13 points. I felt negative going into Tuesday, but even I was shocked by this. In his polling, he saw that a lot of Trump 2024 voters were angry and planning to vote for Democrats. He asked those voters who had abandoned us what would cause them to come back on our team. The top four answers, accounting for nearly all of the responses were:
1) End the war
2) Focus on cost of living/inflation
3) Put America First
4) Change our relationship to Israel
Our voters showed up. And the above four reasons are why many of them voted for Democrats. This is according to a pollster who nailed the results. While many spent Monday attacking Rachel Campos Duffy for calling for a diplomatic resolution to the conflict, it turns out her political advice was sound. (She’s also a great person.)
In the next few months, there's going to be a lot of gaslighting. Expect to hear any number of establishment politicians say the solution to our woes is amnesty. I'm open to the idea that we should change enforcement—by focusing more on businesses that hire illegal labor, for instance. But anyone pushing amnesty is lying to you.
The reason we lost is the war. The president himself said so last night.
If you'd like to argue it was worth it, that losing the Senate for the next 6 years was worth it, then do so. Argue it was a worthwhile cost to pay. Agree or disagree, that's at least honest.
But everyone knows why we lost. And any honest conversation about where we go from here must start there.
I remain hopeful about our country. To the people who are pissed off and want to say, “I told you so”: you’re right, you did tell us so. Take that energy into electing Republicans who share your worldview. To the people who are just pissed at the results, you should be. Let’s take that anger and get back to the work of saving our country.
Jonathan Hessen retweeted
Egyptian prosecutors are pursuing the "maximum penalty" for Christian convert Said Mansour Rezk Abdelrazek on undisclosed charges. Abdelrazek's lawyers say he is being prosecuted for refusing to "renounce Jesus."
✍️ @DanielleGreyman
jpost.com/middle-east/articl…
Jonathan Hessen retweeted
Listen to the first full episode of CENTCOM's new podcast "Inside CENTCOM" — out now on podcast platforms or on YouTube: youtube.com/@centcom
Jonathan Hessen retweeted
تجمعنا مع الجمهورية التركية الشقيقة علاقات استراتيجية راسخة، ويسرني دائماً لقاء سعادة السيد يشار غولر، وزير الدفاع الوطني التركي، ومواصلة التباحث حول آفاق التعاون الدفاعي بين بلدينا، وتنسيق الجهود تجاه التحديات الإقليمية المشتركة، بما يخدم مصالح البلدين ويعزز أمن المنطقة واستقرارها.
Jonathan Hessen retweeted
Taliban have a seat in Congress and people are proud of this insanity.
Congratulations to the Islamic Emirate of the Taliban on securing its first representative in the U.S. Congress through American votes!
And a special thank you to the American voters who helped make this possible. Your contribution to Taliban normalization, the oppression of Afghan women, and the regime’s ongoing abuses will surely be remembered. Thank you for your cooperation! 👏
#TalibanRepresentative #TalibanNormalization #AishaWahab #AfghanWomen #StopTalibanNormalization
