Dire Straight
Week of March 13-19, 2026
Welcome to TRACKING THE CRISIS, a weekly round-up from The Democracy Collaborative tracking the administrative, legislative, and other actions of the Trump Administration as well as the many forms of legal and movement response from across a broad range of social, political, and economic actors. TDC is providing this service for collective informational purposes, as a tool for understanding the times during a period of disorientingly rapid flux and change in the U.S. political economy. This round-up is produced by humans, not by Artificial Intelligence. TDC should not be understood as endorsing or otherwise any of the specific content of the information round-up.
TRUMP TRACKER: Administration actions
Major escalations in Iran war rattle geopolitical order, increase likelihood of U.S. ground war as Trump scrambles for a way to reopen the strait of Hormuz. After three weeks of disruption, Iran’s blockade of the strait of Hormuz matured into a full-blown global energy crisis this week as Israel dramatically escalated the war through its choice of targets in Iran. Israeli strikes this week killed at least four of Iran’s top leaders, including the Islamic Republic’s Intelligence Chief Esmail Khatib, Basij militia commander Gholamreza Soleimani, IRGC spokesman Ali Mohammed Naini, and Ali Larijani, head of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council and the one Iran official widely believed to have been most capable of negotiating a diplomatic offramp out of the hostilities. Missiles also struck dangerously close to Iran’s Bushehr nuclear reactor, prompting a sharp warning from the IAEA; and on Wednesday, Israel attacked the South Pars gas field shared by Iran and Qatar, touching off an Iranian response that threatened a chain reaction, not only damaging critical oil infrastructure in the Gulf but also wrecking lingering hopes of a timely resolution to the conflict and all but guaranteeing its effects will be severe, global, and long-term. U.S. military commanders announced this week the deployment of thousands of additional troops to the region, including two Marine Expeditionary Units and three more warships, raising speculation of a U.S. ground operation as the next phase of the war unfolds. Over 1,500 are confirmed dead in Iran and over 1,000 in Lebanon, along with nearly 30,000 injuries in a dozen countries; and another elementary school in Iran was destroyed by U.S. strikes this week after the Pentagon’s AI system targeted it for having the word ‘Shahed’ in its name. Meanwhile, amidst the steady stream of contradictory pronouncements from the White House, the once-formidable pillars of hard and soft power that undergirded the world’s assumptions regarding U.S. military dominance and economic hegemony for decades appear to have crumbled as the planet watched Trump scramble, threaten, and ultimately fail to effect any kind of forward movement towards resolving the conflict, favorably or otherwise. Over the weekend, Trump’s call to reassemble the usual “coalition of the willing” among European powers to secure the Strait of Hormuz and provide armed escorts to oil tankers fizzled as ministers from country after country, many of them alienated by Trump’s recent belligerence over Greenland, declined to join him in the task of opening the Strait by force. Germany’s Foreign Minister noted how similar efforts in the Red Sea to break the Houthi’s 2023 blockade proved “not effective,” while German Defence Minister Boris Pistorius cut straight to the chase, saying “we have a situation we did not provoke, we didn’t cause this at all.” After meeting in Brussels to discuss the possibility of extending the EU’s naval mandate to the Strait of Hormuz on Monday, March 16, the 27 member countries of the European Union emerged with a consensus rejection of Trump’s demand. “This is not Europe’s war,” said the EU’s top diplomat, Kaja Kallas, after the meeting; although EU interests were directly at stake, she left no doubt that “Europe has no interest in an open-ended war.” Continental Europe also appears to have quietly denied the use of their airspace to U.S. jets taking off from British bases to make long-range bombing runs over Iran, as amateur documentation of U.S. flight tracking data indicated. China dismissed Trump’s invitation to participate, as it continues to receive oil from Iran and the war has raised its geopolitical prestige as sales of BYD electric cars surged throughout oil-starved Asia. On Tuesday, Trump huffed that the U.S. didn’t need NATO to open the Strait anyway, as the New York Times reported on an Oval Office conversation in which Trump had pressed the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Dan Caine, to open the Strait, only to be told that the U.S. Armed Forces, with its trillion-dollar budget and cutting-edge weaponry, was militarily incapable of outmaneuvering Iran in the Strait of Hormuz. Later in the week, as fuel prices spiked up to 35% across Europe, the UK sent a team of military experts to confer with U.S. commanders on a strategy to reopen the Strait as four other EU countries and Japan signaled readiness to assist, although no details were offered as to what this really amounts to in military terms. Switzerland, citing its neutrality doctrine, halted weapons exports to the United States on Friday. Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi warned the United Kingdom that Iran saw allowing the American military to use British bases as participating in the aggression. In a rant on Truth Social on Friday, Trump called European allies “cowards” over their reluctance to join the war and mocked NATO as a “paper tiger” without the United States, while also saying it would be “so easy for them, with so little risk” to execute a “simple military maneuver” that the U.S. military remains unable to achieve by itseldf. NATO withdrew its personnel from Iraq early Friday morning, saying it “has adjusted its posture, safely relocating all its personnel from the Middle East to Europe”; another official was quoted as saying “the entire NATO mission has been withdrawn.” The move came a day after NATO jets were scrambled to the Baltic Sea after a Russian reconnaissance plane breached NATO airspace boundaries Thursday; NORAD scrambled U.S. jets for the second time this week after Russian warplanes were spotted operating over international waters near Alaska. Air Force commander Gen. Gregory Guillot, head of U.S. Northern Command and NORAD, noted that Russian military aircraft are operating near the United States and Canada at “a rate above historical norms.”
Israel also expanded its front against Lebanon, striking deep into central Beirut and its suburb of Dahiyeh, known as a ‘refuge’ for displaced refugees as troops amassed on the border for a ground invasion of southern Lebanon. On Monday, leaders from the EU and Canada warned Israel against mounting an invasion of Lebanese territory, citing the massive humanitarian crisis already underway as the number of displaced in Lebanon surpassed one million. Israeli forces nevertheless surged into southern Lebanon on Monday, killing dozens of civilians and driving the remaining residents north of the Zahrani river to create what Defence Minister Israel Katz termed a ‘buffer’ zone, raising fears of another Gaza-like occupation. Troops were met with stiff resistance from Hezbollah fighters as Iran unleashed a flurry of cluster missiles into Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, killing an elderly couple. Israel accused Iran of violating international law, which was met with accusations of hypocrisy given that Israel has routinely used cluster bombs in Gaza and Lebanon in recent years. The cluster munitions on Iranian warheads have posed challenges for Israeli defenses, as officials rushed to dampen reports that Israel is running critically low on interceptors. The IDF attempted but did not entirely succeed in suppressing footage of the damage inflicted upon Tel Aviv as Iran targeted specific addresses of Israeli political and military leaders, with insiders quietly conceding that Iran’s sustained warfighting capacity exceeded their initial estimates. Iran’s ability to overwhelm air defenses with waves of inexpensive, easy-to-replace Shahed drones has reshaped the face of aerial combat and shattered the illusion of U.S./Israeli air superiority in this conflict, as Trump and Hegseth’s near-daily pronunciations that “100% of Iran’s military capability is destroyed” have continually been belied by Iran’s tactical successes. This week, a $102 million U.S. F-35 fighter jet made an emergency hard landing after taking a direct hit from a $20,000 Iranian drone. Former Special Forces commander Seth Krummrich remarked to the Financial Times that “no one has done more with less than the Iranians.”
Oil prices soar as Israeli strike on South Pars gas field provokes retaliatory attacks on regional oil/gas infrastructure, igniting a geopolitical firestorm with lasting impacts in the Middle East and beyond. Israel’s decision on Wednesday to bomb the South Pars gas field, shared by Iran and Qatar, ignited a literal and geopolitical firestorm that propelled the conflict into a new, dangerous phase. Iran announced it would target five oil and gas facilities in three Gulf countries, and warned their governments to evacuate personnel ahead of retaliatory strikes. Less than 12 hours later, Iranian attacks on Qatar’s Ras Laffan refinery – the largest liquefied natural gas production facility in the world – caused “significant damage” to the facility, which had paused production since the outset of the war. Qatar’s Foreign Ministry blamed Israel for taking a “dangerous and irresponsible step” toward escalating the war, and called on all parties to de-escalate the conflict; after repeated strikes set a substantial portion of the facility ablaze, Qatar expelled its Iranian embassy and diplomatic attaches. Oil rose sharply and stocks took a nosedive in global markets as Iranian attacks continued into Thursday and investors’ hopes of a quick recovery to pre-war levels faded fast; missiles hit Kuwait’s Mina Al-Mahdi refinery as falling pieces from intercepted Iranian cluster bombs damaged infrastructure and equipment near Ben Gurion airport. After Saudi interceptors encountered drones headed for Riyadh and attacks in UAE damaged its Bab gas field, Habshan facility, and tankers off its coast, both Saudi and UAE Foreign Ministries lashed out at Iran for “dangerous escalations that threaten global and regional security”; and Saudi Arabia said it “reserves the right to take military actions against Iran if deemed necessary.” Saudi Arabia hosted an emergency meeting of Gulf Arab countries in Riyadh, which issued a call for Iran to stop the attacks, as strikes continued overnight.As the dust began to clear on Thursday, the consequences were becoming clear: 17% of the world’s largest liquefied natural gas refinery in Ras Laffan has been damaged, along with significant damage recorded at several other sites. Oil hit $119 a barrel in intraday trading as countries enacted emergency fuel-saving measures such as work-from-home days and providing relief to oil-dependent communities and industries as the International Energy Administration called the war the “greatest threat to global energy in history.” Gulf States, trapped in the middle and bearing the brunt of the conflict, publicly directed their ire towards Iran but also reportedly harbored deep resentment towards the United States for failing on its security guarantees and leaving them on their own. According to the Guardian, Gulf states had spent weeks lobbying the Trump Administration before the war started, hosting negotiations over the nuclear program and strongly warning Trump of the likely regional consequences of attacking Iran; and yet, the attack commenced without notification or consultation of any member of the Gulf Cooperative Council. The Wall Street Journal reported on Thursday that Arab allies “are fuming that they don’t seem to have any influence with the Trump administration despite heavy investments of time and money." During a meeting with Japan’s prime minister, Trump was asked why no U.S. allies were consulted before starting the war; Trump replied that “we wanted a surprise,” elaborating with an uncomfortable joke directed towards Japan as he invoked Pearl Harbor: “You know about surprises, don’t you, Japan?” Trump then claimed that “nobody could have predicted” that Iran would respond by striking Gulf states, despite having been briefed several times by intelligence officials before the war on the precise content of the response that many experts have written about openly in the press and Iran had publicly articulated several times in its deterrence threats. Trump later posted on Truth Social that Israel had attacked the South Pars gas field “out of anger,” and reiterated that “the United States knew nothing about this particular attack,” contradicting the Pentagon’s earlier statement that had been widely reported on Wednesday. Trump pronounced that Israel will not attack gas facilities again, unless Iran attacked an innocent party, in which case he would “massively blow up the entirety of the South Pars Gas Field at an amount of strength and power that Iran has never seen or witnessed before.” At a press conference on Thursday, Netanyahu stressed that Israel ‘acted alone’ in the South Pars attack and reiterated that such an attack will not be repeated.
Despite the conciliatory backpedaling, the incident has left Gulf states and other allies pondering existential questions around two key issues in this war: first, whether U.S. and Israeli interests and objectives are actually diverging at this point, and what that may mean for a possible endgame or offramp out of the current crisis; and secondly, the willingness – or even the capability – of the U.S. to stick to its security agreements in this or any subsequent international conflict in light of rapidly declining U.S. hegemony and, as the crisis wears on, the increasingly likely outcome of a decisive strategic defeat of the United States at the hands of Iran. Analysts speculate that the Gulf states may be banking on a decoupling of the United States from Israel in the immediate pursuit of the war as they pivot to more robust regional alliances, possibly backed by China’s rising superpower status, to deal with a now-isolated Israel as well as an intact but wounded Iran through statecraft. Both scenarios seemed more likely on Friday as Trump announced he may be ‘winding down’ U.S. involvement in the war and withdrawing with or without consensus with Israel, while Mojtaba Khamenei’s Nowruz message to Iranians struck a celebratory note as he declared the enemy had already been ‘defeated.’ On the one hand, Saudi prince and Trump confidant Mohammed bin Salman, various UAE officials, and other Gulf diplomats appear to be encouraging Trump to stay in and make even more aggressive moves towards Iran (a detail that did not pass the notice of Iranian Foreign Minister Araghchi); while on the other hand, some of the same figures met in Riyadh this week to discuss how to overhaul or even cut their strategic ties to the United States and regain agency in their region, as recent events made clear that their return on investment in the U.S. alliance has been less than advertised. Oman’s top diplomat, Badr Albusaidi, published an op-ed in The Economist appealing to U.S. allies to help ‘extricate America from an unwanted entanglement’ with Israel in the Iran war, while on Thursday, Qatar made a last-ditch, semi-coded appeal to Iran during a press conference in which the Foreign minister added, in his plea for Iran to de-escalate, that “everyone knows who the main beneficiary of this war is, and who is dragging the whole region into this conflict.” Saudi Arabia, moreover, has been working with China on an alternative shipping route that could allow China-bound oil tankers to make an end run around the strait of Hormuz, and other Gulf states are reportedly cultivating new relationships with Turkey, Pakistan, and various European countries. Indeed, the questioning of U.S. security alliances is extending beyond the Gulf, as Cyprus indicated it was rethinking its relationship with the UK military base it hosts, and the war is inspiring attacks against U.S. embassies worldwide.
The Gulf realignments in turn, may ultimately mediate how, where, and to what extent the impacts of the current crisis reverberate around the world and into the near future. According to Qatari energy executives, rebuilding the damage done to Ras Laffan alone will take up to five years, resulting in a loss of output to the tune of $20 billion. The reduction, in absolute terms, of oil and gas production capacity in the Gulf will have immediate compounding effects that will likely impact the already-disadvantaged areas of the Global South, including Sub-Saharan Africa and parts of South Asia. Saudi Arabia predicts that oil could reach $180 if current conditions persist; given the already-fragile state of the global economy, an oil shock of this magnitude may tip the balance into financial crisis, and will inexorably trigger a recession in the near term as central banks face the spectre of stagflation. Analysts are calling attention to a dark-horse problem surrounding the contraction of LNG supplies in particular, which is its role in agricultural fertilizer, thus raising the probability of a global food crisis. Even with historic volumes of oil being released from the Strategic Petroleum Reserves, returning to normal flows, much less a break on prices, could take months or even years. Iran is currently in control of oil flows in the Gulf, selectively allowing oil tankers and cargo ships (mostly bound for China) to pass through. Iran indicated last week that they may consider granting passage to tankers carrying oil that has been paid for in Chinese yuan – a potentially world-changing economic gambit. Iran announced this week that it is currently negotiating yuan-denominated deals with eight countries for passage through the strait. Official voices out of China have been either silent or cautious, citing the additional demands of reserve-currency status, but with the Gulf States already reassessing their U.S. investments, even a partial shift away from the petrodollar norm, combined with a strategic defeat and military withdrawal, could spell a definitive end to the U.S.-dominated postwar world order.
On the home front: Unpopularity of Iran war splits GOP, MAGA base as Pentagon seeks additional $200 billion. As the U.S./Israel war on Iran begins to look less like last year’s ‘painless’ 12 Day War and more like other U.S. Middle East quagmires of the past, Trump’s political momentum is running into a quagmire of its own at home as the least popular war in U.S. history fails to gain momentum, questions are raised regarding the competency and/or motivation of senior officials, and the nagging criticisms and rumors that Trump has lost control of his floundering ‘excursion’ in Iran widens deep divisions within his MAGA base as well as among Republican lawmakers in Congress. Trump’s approval rating hit a new second-term low of -15.3 points on average this week as skyrocketing gas prices, backlash over Trump’s exploitation of Iran troop casualties for fundraising, the persistent lack of clarity around U.S. objectives in the war, and Iran’s stubborn refusal to validate Trump statements about being ‘totally defeated’ and continuing to launch missiles after its military capacity was supposedly ‘100% destroyed’ plagues Trump’s ability to control the narrative as the clock counts down to the midterms. Also unlike other recent U.S. wars, an Economist poll found that the war on Iran has had a total lack of the usual ‘rally-behind-the-flag’ effect that unites a national populace during times of war; unlike in Iran, where the this effect has been observed, serving to help keep the Islamic Republic’s regime intact instead of enabling regime change as Trump and Netanyahu had hoped. Division among GOP members of Congress on war support also complicates the Pentagon’s bid for an extra $200 billion to continue military operations against Iran; while stalwarts such as Speaker Johnson signaled willingness to fold it into a reconciliation vote to revive stalled DHS shutdown talks, Senate Republicans are split on reconciliation and the high cost of the war (around $1 billion per day) as well as anxiety over boots-on-the-ground operations, and currently do not have enough votes to advance it. Republicans united, however, to block another War Powers resolution introduced by Democrats, with Fetterman crossing the aisle to cast the deciding vote.The Trump coalition suffered a domestic blow this week when Joe Kent, the Trump Administration's Director of Counterterrorism, resigned in protest over the war and released an official statement saying “Iran posed no imminent threat to our nation, and it is clear that we started this war due to pressure from Israel and its powerful American lobby.” Kent, a right-wing MAGA ‘true believer’ and Nick Fuentes fan who lost his wife to a terrorist attack in Syria, touts a number of conspiracy theories and takes an ‘America First’ approach to foreign affairs, said in his resignation letter that there was no evidence that Iran was close to a nuclear bomb and thus did not pose an imminent threat to the United States. Democratic Sen. Mark Warner said that while he found the rest of Kent’s letter ‘deeply troubling’ (the factual conclusion was immediately followed up by an antisemitic conspiracy theory around Israel), on one point he “is right: there was no credible evidence of an imminent threat from Iran that would justify rushing the United States into another war of choice in the Middle East.” His protest resignation was mostly shrugged off by the GOP as a nobody who was likely ‘better off’ not having a government job, but his status as an anti-war MAGA populist granted him instant celebrity within MAGA. Tucker Carlson had Kent on his show within days of his resignation, and since then he has been a rallying focus for a significant portion of that MAGA base, which caught the attention of Kash Patel’s FBI. Soon after, a DOJ media leak indicated that Kent was ‘under investigation’ for leaking documents, sparking conflict between Trump loyalist and populist MAGA factions.
Cuba suffers nationwide blackouts under U.S. fuel blockade as Trump vies for the ‘honor’ of being the U.S. president that ‘takes’ Cuba. This week, the total fuel blockade against Cuba reached a critical stage as the national electrical grid collapsed, leaving 11 million without power nationwide for 29 hours and 29 minutes. The grid was reconnected to its largest oil-fired power plant on Tuesday, March 17 as technicians worked to restore microgrids in the rural countryside. The U.S. and Cuba advanced dueling narratives around the power grid’s collapse; where mainstream English-language media said that Cuba had not provided explanations for the blackout, implying secrecy, and quoted U.S. officials who blamed the Cuban government for the problem, regular technical updates were posted on Cuba’s state-sponsored news outlet Prensa Latina with comments from the engineers working on the problem. The island’s aging thermoelectrical generation system, combined with chronic fuel shortages, resulted in Monday’s collapse. Technicians described going into each of the major power plants to refurbish and clean various parts, overcoming challenges, and revamping the system’s architecture so that each district would have redundancy to a larger plant that could provide backup power. Cuba rejected a request from the U.S. Embassy to import diesel fuel for its own office generator, calling the request “shameless” in the face of millions that had to go without. Cuban state media sponsored low-tech cultural events to keep people’s spirits up throughout the blackout period, and announced new tax incentives and subsidies for citizens who installed agrovoltaic power systems in the countryside.Trump bragged on Tuesday that as Cuban infrastructure weakens under the blockade, he could ‘take’ Cuba and ‘do whatever I want’ with the island; Cuban President Miguel Diaz-Canel responded via Telegram, saying that the U.S. government “publicly threatens #Cuba, almost daily, with forcibly overthrowing the constitutional order,” and asserted that, to this end, it employs “an outrageous pretext: the severe constraints of a weakened economy – one that they have attacked and sought to isolate for over six decades.” Diaz-Canel reaffirmed Cuban sovereignty, denouncing the “fierce economic war being waged as a form of collective punishment against the entire population,” and said that “even in the worst-case scenario, Cuba is bolstered by one certainty: any external aggressor will encounter impregnable resistance.” Left politicians in Latin American countries, including Brazil, Chile, a union president from Uruguay, and parliamentarians from Italy and Spain expressed solidarity and denounced the blockade in their respective chambers. On Thursday Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum announced that she continued to work on a legal framework by which Mexico could restart oil shipments to Cuba regardless of the blockade. She noted that “the Right goes into a frenzy every time we mention this,” and emphasized that Mexico is sovereign in its right “to enter into a trade agreement with any country in the world,” as well as to provide material aid “at this time when the people of Cuba are suffering so greatly.” Former Mexican president Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador encouraged Mexican citizens to contribute to a bank account established by artists, journalists, and activists to buy food, necessities, and other resources for Cubans under the blockade. Solidarity convoys are on their way to Cuba from various countries in Latin America, Europe, and around the world, and will converge on the island by Saturday, March 21st.
MOVEMENT TRACKER
Conscientious objector movement growing within the U.S. Armed Forces as servicemembers refuse to join the illegal war against Iran. As of March 17, the Center on Conscience and War reported handling a 1,000% increase in active U.S. servicemembers who want to register their conscientious objection to the war in Iran and refuse to be deployed. On their X account, they posted some comments from the wife of a servicemember who is currently deployed in the Persian Gulf to illustrate the sense of widespread discontent among deployed troops regarding the conduct of this war. Details provided included: that most servicemembers, especially those from specific ranks, do not want to be there and do not support the mission; that confidence in the Department of War began to decline with the Venezuela mission, with another turning point being the bombing of the 175 schoolchildren in Minab at the start of the war; that the ‘buzz’ among military families is that government is not being honest about the number of casualties; that the call-up process for deployment has changed and is far more rapid than before. The Center also reports that in the last 2-3 days, after the escalation of the war with strikes on oil and gas facilities, many servicemembers have been calling to request expedited applications as they have gotten ‘surprise’ deployment orders to leave in as little as 2 days, and that at least 3 members of the Marine Expeditionary Unit called to the Strait of Hormuz have signed up with their organization as conscientious objectors. Marine veteran Brian McGinnis spoke out this week about the ‘massive shift’ happening within the U.S. military as Hegseth mobilizes troops for this war, and that many in the officer corps are ‘aware’ of the deep corruption and are trying to take a stand against it. Rumors are also circulating that the fire aboard the USS Gerald Ford that took the aircraft carrier out of commission last week may have been deliberately started by servicemembers who had already been overextended past their deployment period, and had just received news that their deployment had been extended for another 11 months. The ship had been at sea for nine months and had known issues, such a toilet system that was subject to “unexpected and frequent clogging.” The Ford is currently docked in Crete, where the Navy is conducting an investigation into the fire, which started in the laundry area and burned for over 30 hours before being extinguished.
International solidarity convoy originates from several countries to bring aid to Cuba in defiance of the U.S. blockade. As stories promoting regime change in Cuba proliferate in U.S. English-language media, activists and Cuban state media shared news this week of an international convoy that has been mobilized to bring much needed resources to the Cuban people who are dealing with acute shortages behind the U.S. blockade. Ships with the Convoy Nuestra America flotilla originated from the U.S., Chile, Uruguay, Europe, the Dominican Republic, Spain, Mexico, Puerto Rico, and Colombia, laden with food, clothing, solar and renewable energy components, and more to help Cubans survive the coercive measures the U.S. government is taking as Trump and Rubio eye regime change on the island. Cuba also received shipments of state-sponsored food aid this week from China and Brazil amounting to 80,000 tons of rice and other necessities, reiterating their ‘firm support’ for the Cuban people and against the US’s coercive measures. Puerto Rico pitched in with shipments of specialized medicines needed by Cuban doctors, and Russia expressed its ‘unbreakable’ solidarity with the besieged island nation. More information on the U.S. solidarity convoy can be found at LetCubaLive.info.
