Conversations Among The Ruins

CNN says Trump has a plan to end the Iran war: a three day bombing campaign built around the MOAB, the “Mother of All Bombs.” Charlie and Peter Erickson take the plan apart. It is a 22,000 pound surface bomb, smaller...

Charlie opens with a question he’s been sitting on since a dinner with establishment friends: are we the weirdos? Peter’s answer is that the gap isn’t between sane people and doomers, it’s between smug people and people...

Trump’s diesel deal with Putin adds up to about five days of US consumption. What did Trump actually get on that phone call? Not much diesel. What he did get was a fight with Zelensky, who wasn’t on the call, wasn’t...

The Houthis are hitting Aramco facilities, airports and Riyadh itself, and Saudi Arabia is calling everyone for help: 200 US advisors, British refueling, French air defense, troops from Turkey and Pakistan under a Mecca...

Everyone is watching the carriers and the bombers. The real linchpin of US power in the Middle East may be Saudi Arabia, and it is cracking. Riyadh has reopened its war on the Houthis, the Houthis have answered by...

Iran just hit a 2.5 million barrel supertanker in the Strait of Hormuz and the United States did nothing. Now the USS Theodore Roosevelt is steaming toward the region with 9,000 troops behind it. Peter argues the...

Three white vans, one barrel of gasoline, five men released on bail within hours. That is the "terrorist plot" against RAF Fairford that British and American officials are already pinning on Iran. In this episode Peter...

Scott Bessent says the Strait of Hormuz is wide open and Iran is two weeks from its last oil shipment. Iran says it hit 19 ships in two days. Tanker trackers put flows at half of pre-war levels. Somebody is lying, and...

Donald Trump stood before the UN General Assembly and read a prepared text that threatened to send Iran and its future generations to hell. Charlie and Peter Erickson ask what it means when the American president talks...

Trump had the planes loaded for a massive strike on Yemen. Then he called it off. Charlie and Peter Erickson ask what that tells us: if the US had the means to punish the Houthis for taking Saudi Arabia's pipeline...

Trump says he has a "big decision" to make about whether to annihilate Iran. Axios says the administration is discussing a full resumption of the bombing campaign after the midterms. But the Fifth Fleet's port in...

Saudi Arabia's east-west pipeline is shut, the Strait of Hormuz is closed, and the world's oil markets are about to feel the full weight of both. Charlie asks Peter the question underneath everything: what exactly is...

Ukraine is losing men, money and its Black Sea lifeline, yet the front lines still refuse to crumble. Peter Erickson explains why drone warfare has turned every advance into a slow grind, why a collapse is still...

In 48 hours the Houthis took Taiz, the southwestern coast and the island at the narrowest point of the Bab al-Mandab, while Saudi-backed forces surrendered en masse on camera. Then came the strike that matters most...

The Strait of Hormuz has settled into a rhythm: CENTCOM hits Iranian tankers, and Iran hits back at roughly twice the rate. Five tankers struck, ten targeted in return, plus two US vessels and a massive barrage on...