Day Four

A TAM War Update

Tuesday, March 3, 2026

Dear readers,

I want to let you know that the war has interrupted the regular schedule and flow of TAM, and me, for the time being, but the metacritical work will return soon. I will try, in the days ahead, to interrupt the geopolitical dispatches with smaller reflections — metacritical fragments, notes from the interior — so that TAM does not lose to the news cycle. We will return to our regular programming. But not today.

Today there is a war to describe.

If you have not already seen it, I encourage you to read my latest essay in Mosaic, “After the Ayatollah,” which discusses what this moment means for the Middle East and the world.

Four days ago, the United States and Israel began bombing Iran. The Supreme Leader is dead. The Strait of Hormuz is closed. Iranian missiles are falling on Doha, Dubai, Riyadh, Manama, and Kuwait City. Hezbollah has reopened the Lebanese front. QatarEnergy — the world’s largest LNG producer — has halted production. And this afternoon, President Trump ordered the U.S. Development Finance Corporation to begin underwriting war-risk insurance for all maritime shipping in the Persian Gulf, with the promise of U.S. Navy escorts through Hormuz to follow.

The strike and its target. Operation Epic Fury began early on Saturday with joint U.S.-Israeli strikes on Tehran, Isfahan, Qom, Karaj, and Kermanshah. The primary target was Khamenei himself, whose compound was destroyed. Ali Shamkhani and several other senior officials were killed alongside him. The IRGC’s missile infrastructure, air defenses, and what remained of the nuclear program at Natanz have all sustained significant damage. CENTCOM has stated that it was instructed to “dismantle the Iranian regime’s security apparatus.” The Joint Chiefs chairman said the operation had been planned for years. Trump has said the worst is yet to come.

Iran’s response. Tehran launched Operation True Promise IV — missiles and drones directed not only at Israel this time but across the entire Gulf. The IRGC targeted Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar, Al Dhafra in the UAE, Ali Al Salem in Kuwait, and the Fifth Fleet headquarters in Bahrain. But Iran did not stop at military targets. Airports in Dubai and Kuwait were hit. A worker was killed at Abu Dhabi’s Zayed International Airport. Drones struck QatarEnergy facilities at Ras Laffan and Mesaieed, prompting the world’s largest LNG producer to halt all production. A fire broke out at Saudi Aramco’s Ras Tanura refinery. The U.S. Embassy in Riyadh was struck by two drones. Iran closed the Strait of Hormuz, and shipping traffic through the strait has dropped over eighty percent.

The numbers from the Gulf states’ air defenses tell a story of their own. The UAE alone reports intercepting 165 ballistic missiles, two cruise missiles, and 541 drones. Kuwait intercepted 97 ballistic missiles and 283 drones — and still accidentally shot down three American F-15s. Qatar downed two Iranian Su-24 bombers that approached its airspace. These are not the numbers of a limited retaliatory gesture. Iran is signaling it can make the entire Gulf burn.

The Gulf states’ impossible position. The GCC countries now face the choice they spent decades trying to avoid.

For a quarter century, Doha constructed what may be the most ambitious small-state strategy in modern history, a strategy of indispensability. Qatar hosted CENTCOM’s forward headquarters and maintained back-channels with Tehran. It sheltered the Hamas political bureau and mediated hostage negotiations with Israel. It ran Al Jazeera as a weapon of soft power against its own neighbors while courting their cooperation. It hosted the Taliban’s political office while American soldiers operated from its air base. The premise was rather straightforward: a country too small to defend itself by force could make itself too valuable to attack, especially as it pursues outsized influence: the region’s switchboard operator, the mediator no one could afford to cut off. Usefulness itself became a form of sovereignty. And then, on Saturday, Iranian missiles struck Doha. Drones hit the gas facilities on which Qatar’s entire economic existence depends. QatarEnergy halted all LNG production. The Qatari air force shot down two Iranian bombers. There are unconfirmed reports that Qatar then participated in offensive strikes against Iran. Whether or not that last detail proves true, the model is already broken, and Qatar’s strategy is unraveling in real time.

The same logic, with local variation, is playing out across the Gulf. Saudi Arabia confirmed that it would “take all necessary measures to defend its security,” and there are unconfirmed reports that Riyadh may be preparing to strike Iran directly. For years, the Gulf states built their national strategies on the assumption that they could maintain relationships with both Washington and Tehran, or at least be neutral, that money and diplomacy could substitute for taking sides. The Iranian missiles landing on their cities have ended that assumption. By striking the Gulf states, Iran has made them realize it is a direct threat, and may thereby have driven them into the very coalition Tehran most feared.

The messaging. The Trump administration has been less than sure-footed in explaining this war to the American people. On Monday, Secretary of State Rubio told reporters on Capitol Hill that “we knew that there was going to be an Israeli action,” that this would “precipitate an attack against American forces,” and that the U.S. struck preemptively to avoid higher casualties. He was answering a narrow question — operationally, why now, not why — and in the same remarks made clear that the operation “needed to happen no matter what” because Iran was approaching what he called a “line of immunity” in its missile and drone capabilities. But the first half of the statement was immediately seized upon, from the progressive left to the populist right, as a confession that Israel had dragged the U.S. into war. From Matt Walsh, Israel-obsessed right-wing influencers, to Democratic lawmakers, who declared there had been no imminent threat to America, it became an algorithmic spectacle. Hours later, Trump had overwritten Rubio’s account entirely, telling reporters in the Oval Office that “if anything, I might have forced Israel’s hand.” Vintage Trump.

It must be said that while the current wave of antisemitic and anti-Zionist obsessions would twist and turn regardless, the administration didn’t help the confusion by its “Epic” communications failure. In four days, the stated rationale for the war has shifted between preventing a nuclear weapon, preempting an imminent threat, destroying Iran’s missile infrastructure, and — said and then denied and then said and then denied — regime change. Defense Secretary Hegseth insists this is “not a regime change war.” Trump encourages Iranians to rise up. The Joint Chiefs chairman calls it a years-long plan. The disconnect is felt on the Hill, where Democrats had the chance to scold the administration that the operation’s goals have changed “four or five times.” It’s not too late, and the administration will inevitably get its messaging under control, hopefully, before the end of the war.

The insurance. Earlier today, after the major maritime insurance mutuals withdrew war-risk coverage for the Persian Gulf, Trump ordered the DFC — the Development Finance Corporation, an institution that exists to de-risk investment in developing countries — to provide political risk insurance for all shipping through the Gulf. He also signaled that the U.S. Navy would escort tankers through Hormuz if necessary, echoing Operation Earnest Will during the Iran-Iraq Tanker War of 1987-88.

The significance is this: it is not the Iranian navy that has closed the Strait of Hormuz. It is the collapse of the insurance market. Without war-risk coverage, shipping companies will not transit, regardless of whether the waterway is physically passable. Supertanker freight rates from the Gulf to China have hit all-time records. Oil prices have surged more than fifteen percent in three days. And the response from the most powerful country on earth is to repurpose a development bank as a wartime insurer and send the Navy to do what the private market will no longer underwrite.

The free flow of energy through the Gulf was never a natural condition. It was always underwritten by insurance but more so by the implicit guarantee that the world’s largest military power would keep the strait open. What has happened in the last four days is that the implicit has become explicit. The guarantee now has a name, a price, and a warship attached to it. This is another massive post-liberal adjustment in which the U.S. is idelining systems that no longer function as they should.

More to come.