Brace Yourselves For War Between Iran and Israel

[Mark7]

It makes him seem more like a tragic character under the influence of forces larger than him, with no possibility beyond playing his role.

Like a small YouTube channel, when one video goes viral.

 

[Asa]

This is kind of my take as well.

While I can put myself in his shoes, as a westerner and say that I understand what drives a person to make a decision to not speak up, to play along because there's deep personal pain otherwise. I also have to look at how deeply complicit the US in general has been in the genocide that is not even hidden anymore, for decades and when you measure it up, I truly cannot defend it. I understand it, but I am unable to defend it. I do not think Trump is a bad man himself, looking to harm someone on purpose, but fear got the best of him and that can be just as bad sometimes.

I recall a video of a Hamas leader (not sure exactly when, I do know it was discussed in News Real) but it was the leader showing up to work the day after his family had been murdered by Israel. In that moment I felt he embodied the struggle of the people he represented, carrying on despite the tragedy set upon you, everyone and everything you love. Trump in that sense perhaps, embodies the western and particularly the US condition, completely and utterly controlled by blood thirsty and murderous entities, who use our sensibilities to keep us in place.

And that's the real mind blowing fact, they use the drive to protect that which we love, and that which we've become comfortable with, to attempt to exterminate those very things elsewhere in the world. "since you love your kids, you won't stop me from bombing someone else's kids" type proposition, which is twisted and criminal, but very real.

And I think that's the crux of the question for the US, in a sense, MAGA can only exist if the misery used to make America "great" is maintained, making the US truly moral, or as moral as it believes itself to be, can only be achieved if all that misery is atoned for, and that would mean the US isn't great any longer, or at least not the hegemon, but it would maybe have a soul to fight for. But if Trump's anything to go by, perhaps the US would rather turn a blind eye if there's a promise to hold on to the unsustainable dream for just a bit longer, like hitting the snooze button on the alarm.

My personal circumstances have made it easier to put myself in Trump's shoes recently, in that our baby daughter has been very sick and I've been in a lot of a pain around the prospect of losing her - which, thankfully, is almost certainly not going to happen. But its enabled me to ask myself the question of what I would do in Trump's shoe's with an enlarged perspective, in that a threat to my children's life could probably, if I'm being honest, convince me to do almost anything. And Trump has displayed great courage to pass through what he has passed through - lawfare, assassination attempts and on and on. So he doesn't lack courage, but most men have an achilles heel, and his has evidently been found.

But you make a great point by contrasting that behaviour with that of the Hamas leader. And that got me thinking about what it is about the 'Semites' which makes their elimination so important to STS forces. The Cs have identified Iranians, Iraqis and Russians as, inter alia, carriers of that 'gene', for want of a better turn of phrase. And I think we can see that such people are, on the whole, more willing to courageously act for the 'greater good' than westerners. And that kind of jives with my experience of living in Bulgaria, surrounded by Bulgarians at all times. My impression - albeit a binary and simplified one - is that 'Slavs' (forgive me for the crass grouping of diverse people under that heading) are, broadly speaking, instinctively cooperative and communitarian, whereas westerners are, broadly speaking, instinctively individualistic and competitive (which has required a difficult, but ultimately enriching, adaptation on my part). And so the 'Semites', who are willing to sacrifice themselves for the greater good of the network they belong to, are a threat to STS hegemony in a way that westerners are not. And Semites thereby implicitly understand that its the soul that counts, not the body, and act accordingly.

 

[Ruth]

I think Trump has been psychologically profiled and wouldn't be the President right now if he didn't fit the profile. That is to say, he is not the kind of person who would find the courage or strength to speak out against the blackmail. If he were, he wouldn't be in that position.

It seems like a risky strategy from the ptb, because they can't be certain what he will do or how he might change. But if they got any indication that he might be considering speaking out then he could be silenced quickly. Maybe immediately.

He wouldn't be President if he hadn't turned his head at the right moment at Butler. Now, he's protecting the very people who did that to him and wanted him dead in the first place. They're Iranian, btw.....

 

[Alejo]

And Trump has displayed great courage to pass through what he has passed through - lawfare, assassination attempts and on and on. So he doesn't lack courage, but most men have an achilles heel, and his has evidently been found.

And I personally think it's only half his worry for those he loves, I think the rest of it is his own ego and inability to admitting to being wrong. It's like the perfect recipe for blackmail.

 

[MJF]

There have been several posts on this thread about the eschatological ('End of Days') dimension to this conflict, highlighting especially the Christian fundamentalists' Armageddon scenario and the return of Christ (the 'Second Coming') and the Jewish desire to create Eretz (Greater) Israel, build the Third Temple and welcome the promised Messiah. As regards Jewish eschatological beliefs, these are chiefly promoted by the ultra orthodox Jewish community who are currently in the ascendancy within the coalition Israeli government led by Benjamin Netanyahu. Many commentators on the present conflict in the Middle East like to point to the fact that Iran is a rigid theocracy led by the country's Mullahs whereas Israel is a western style secular democracy. This distinction is now no longer entirely true.

I say this because I learned yesterday that even with the pressing needs of the War, the Israeli Parliament enacted a bill permitting religious tribunals the power to arbitrate civil disputes which are currently the purview of the secular court system. Quoting the Times of Israel:​

Following an hours-long opposition filibuster, a government-backed law significantly expanding the authority of the state’s rabbinic and Sharia court systems was passed into law by the Knesset, with 65 lawmakers voting in favour and 41 against.

The bill, sponsored by the ultra-Orthodox Degel HaTorah and Shas parties, gives the religious tribunals the power to arbitrate civil disputes which are currently the purview of the secular court system. Rabbinical courts were allowed to act as arbitrators in financial disputes until 2006, when a court decision determined that they had no standing to do so.​

The new law will let religious courts rule on certain civil disputes if both parties consent, raising concerns about unequal bargaining power and potential threats to women's rights, while most opposition leaders vowed to repeal it once back in government.

The enactment of this law shows that the ultra-Orthodox lobby expressing itself through the new powers of the Rabbinical courts and tribunals is now on the ascendancy bringing Israel closer in nature to the theocratic Iranian state that it so detests.

The passage of this bill into law may shed some light on who is really running the show in Israel given what the C's said about Netanyahu's role in the latest session dated 21 March 2026:
​

(Joe) Just on that last thing about Israel, would it be true to say that Netanyahu is not very important in terms of running the country of Israel, the government of Israel and the war?

A: Yes

Q: (L) So somebody else is running things.

Will this current conflict become more and more a case of the mad Mullahs of Iran versus the mad Rabbis of Israel?​

 

[Fluffy]

And I personally think it's only half his worry for those he loves, I think the rest of it is his own ego and inability to admitting to being wrong. It's like the perfect recipe for blackmail.

What if it’s bigger than just Trump’s family being mutilated before his eyes and they’ve cut off his eyelids so like can’t not watch. When I say ‘just’, that’s a horrific thought in itself, I really think you have to be a parent to understand how we are intrinsically and instinctively programmed to protect our children at all cost, it’s a gruelling thing to imagine your children suffer, I feel like I’m going to demolecularise if I try to contemplate one of my kids being abused in such terrifying ways, something that haunts me is that frazzle drip, I just cannot imagine the obscene amount of suffering one must endure having that happen to them.

The ‘what if’, may be he’s been threatened that it’s not only his family, but the whole of the USA, hundreds of millions of people’s blood on his hands.
I’m going to assume he knows who’s running the show and of their capabilities, who knows what they’re telling him what they’ll do, stretch our imaginations as far as they go and it’s probably worse way than that… how about spending eternity watching on in indescribable horror as your child gets their face cut off while getting raped with a serrated baseball bat (sorry about the graphic speech but I presume it’s a lot worse than this on every level) … I feel sorry for Trump. He might be a bit of an ego maniac, but he’s essentially not a bad person, he’s been played to the extreme and there’s no way out…

I think I’d kill myself after killing everyone I love, but then he’s probably unable to do that too, they’d just reanimate everyone or do some time flipping and go back to change it all so that option’s off the table too.

It sounds like I’m defending him, I am, I’d be terrified too!

 

[daddycat]

I'm seeing allegations that Iran is accepting the cryptocurrency Tether USDT as payment to pass through the Strait of Hormuz. To me, Tether USDT is Epsteincoin, Pizzagatecoin, piece of garbage scam. If it is true that Iran is accepting Tether USDT, then it seems to me that it is an indication that the Iranian deep state occupies Iran. A big club that includes Israel, US deep state, and Iranian deep state. It is an indication that we are all being played in this war. It would be Trump Soleimani all over again.

BREAKING: The IRGC toll booth at the Strait of Hormuz right now accepts three currencies: cash, yuan, and cryptocurrency. The third one is the one that keeps sanctions lawyers awake at night. Because the third one moves at the speed of light through rails that no government on Earth fully controls.

The Financial Times and Lloyd’s List confirmed that payments for the $2 million per-tanker toll are accepted in cash, cryptocurrency, or barter. The dominant crypto rail, per Chainalysis reporting on IRGC flows, is USDT on the Tron blockchain. The reason is mechanical: Tron settles in approximately 3 seconds per block, charges negligible fees, and operates with limited identity verification on many access points. A $2 million stablecoin transfer can be initiated, confirmed, and received before a sanctions compliance officer finishes reading the transaction alert.

The IRGC’s crypto architecture is not improvised. Chainalysis documented over $3 billion in IRGC-linked USDT flows in 2025 alone, used for sanctions evasion, oil settlement, and proxy funding across Hezbollah and Houthi networks. The Hormuz toll gate is the latest application of an infrastructure that was already operational before the first missile was fired. The war did not create the crypto rail. The war gave it a chokepoint to monetise.

The United States has responded with targeted sanctions. OFAC has designated dozens of IRGC-linked Tron addresses. Tether has frozen identified wallets. But the disruption rate, per Chainalysis estimates, remains approximately 10 to 20 percent of identifiable flows. The gap between identification and enforcement is structural. The IRGC uses layered transfers through multiple addresses, cross-chain bridges to other networks, over-the-counter desks in jurisdictions beyond US reach, and integration with yuan settlement channels for larger state-linked transactions. Each layer adds obfuscation. Each bridge adds jurisdiction. Each OTC desk adds deniability. The 3-second block time means the funds have moved before the freeze order arrives.

Behind the crypto toll, a parallel rail operates at the state level. Russia’s digital ruble and China’s e-CNY are being used in bilateral trade with Iran for oil and fertiliser settlement on sovereign, permissioned blockchains that sit entirely outside US jurisdiction. These are not decentralised networks. They are centrally controlled ledgers operated by the Russian Central Bank and the People’s Bank of China. The United States cannot sanction a sovereign central bank’s own ledger. It cannot freeze a digital ruble that never touches a US-regulated rail. The CBDC channel handles the larger, slower, state-to-state flows. The USDT channel handles the tactical, fast, deniable flows. Together they form a two-tier payment system that bypasses the dollar from both the top and the bottom.

This is the war’s financial dimension that almost nobody is covering. The kinetic war degrades launchers and flattens headquarters. The energy war closes the strait and blocks fertiliser. The financial war builds a parallel payment system under live fire that may outlast the conflict itself. The yuan toll collects at the gate. The USDT transfer settles in 3 seconds. The digital ruble clears between Moscow and Tehran on a ledger Washington cannot read. And the dollar, which has governed energy settlement since 1974, watches from the other side of the strait where 400 ships are waiting and none of them are paying in greenbacks.

The molecules are trapped. The money is not. And the money that moves through the toll booth is building the infrastructure that the molecules will use when the strait finally reopens, in a currency that is no longer the dollar.

https://twitter.com/x/status/2036408589427073429

 

[Ðekel]

Just bumping this reply from Gaza thread to check on Dekel.

Dekel, are you ok?
We are not seeing too much about what is happening in Israel but I note you have not been on the forum since 5 March. Thoughts and prayers are with you and your loved ones, I really hope you are all ok. You don't need to give any information about what is going on if you are concerned about that being tracked / repercussions (that is very understandable). Just want to check on you. I really hope you and your family (and your little fur ball ) have been able to move somewhere safer, even if just temporarily. I know they didn't want to leave but I really hope your parents are able to see the wisdom in making choices that support the highest for you all.

Hi forest_light !

My partner and I moved to Canada six months ago. Unfortunately Mr. cat was sick and passed on before our move. We miss him dearly.

Thank you for checking up on me, I really appreciate that.

I've been in getting-things-together mode for the past months. I did think quickly updating the forum here about my situation, but never got around to it.

Yes, parents support my decision and I've pointed out that they should consider abandoning the sinking ship over there as well.

Hope you are doing well ?

 

[axj]

To me, Tether USDT is Epsteincoin, Pizzagatecoin, piece of garbage scam.

The federal reserve bankster cartel coin, a.k.a. the dollar, does not seem to be much better. Iran is simply using payment methods that cannot be easily blocked. That in itself does not seem to be an indication of collusion with the US/Israeli deep state.

 

[daddycat]

This poster explains why it will take many years to repair the damaged factories. It sounds really bad.

Qatar's Real Problem Isn't the War. It's the Machines.

Everyone is talking about force majeure. Everyone is talking about 13 million tonnes of LNG offline. Everyone is talking about what it means for gas prices and European energy security and Trump's $750 billion deal.
Nobody is talking about the machines.
I'm going to show you why the physical hardware inside Ras Laffan Industrial City is the real reason Qatar's recovery will take half a decade. Why the global supply chain for the most critical components cannot produce replacements at the speed or scale required. And why five workshops in Germany, Italy, Japan, and Wisconsin hold the timeline for the entire global energy market in their hands.
This is the story nobody on this app is telling you. Because almost nobody on this app knows what an Air Separation Unit is.
They're about to find out.
What is an Air Separation Unit and why does it matter?
An Air Separation Unit is a cryogenic plant that takes ambient air, cools it to minus 190 degrees Celsius, and separates it into its component gases: nitrogen, oxygen, and argon. The process exploits the fact that nitrogen and oxygen have different boiling points. Cool the air enough, and you can distil it like whisky. Except the column is 60 metres tall, the cold box weighs 470 tonnes, and the tolerances are measured in single-digit Kelvin.
Why does this matter for LNG? Because every liquefaction train at Ras Laffan requires massive quantities of high-purity nitrogen. Nitrogen is injected into the LNG process as a refrigerant component and to control the heating value of the final product. Without nitrogen, the train cannot produce specification-grade LNG. The ASU is the lung of every LNG facility. Cut the oxygen supply to a human body and the organs shut down. Cut the nitrogen supply to an LNG train and the entire downstream chain goes dead.
For Gas-to-Liquids plants, the dependency is even more severe. Shell's Pearl GTL facility at Ras Laffan, the world's largest GTL plant, does not just need nitrogen. It needs pure oxygen. Thirty thousand tonnes per day of it. Methane and pure oxygen are combined at 1,300 degrees Celsius in autothermal reformers to produce synthesis gas. Without oxygen, no syngas forms. Without syngas, the 24 Fischer-Tropsch reactors sit cold. Without Fischer-Tropsch, no diesel, no naphtha, no kerosene, no base oils. The entire $19 billion facility becomes an industrial monument.
Pearl GTL consumes 1.6 billion cubic feet per day of North Field gas and produces 140,000 barrels per day of GTL products plus 120,000 barrels of oil equivalent in NGLs and ethane. Its eight Air Separation Units are the single most critical upstream system in the entire complex.
Pearl GTL's eight ASUs are among the most complex machines on Earth.
Linde Engineering, the German industrial gas giant now part of Linde plc, built all eight cryogenic ASUs for Pearl GTL. Linde described the contract as the largest EPC award in the history of air separation. Each unit produces 3,800 tonnes per day of oxygen. Combined output: approximately 30,000 tonnes per day. Each cold box weighs 470 tonnes and stands 60 metres tall. Each unit is driven by a 70-megawatt steam-driven air compressor.
The critical components, aluminium plate-fin heat exchangers and rectification columns, were fabricated at Linde's workshops in Schalchen, Germany and Dalian, China. Then shipped as pre-assembled modules to Ras Laffan.
The original EPC contract for all eight units was valued at approximately $800 million to $1 billion in 2006 prices. The total Pearl GTL project cost $18 to $19 billion. The ASU complex alone represented roughly 5 percent of the entire facility cost.
Here is the number that matters: the lead time for manufacturing a single mega-scale ASU, from contract signing to operational commissioning, is three to four years.
Three to four years.
If even one of these units is destroyed, it cannot be replaced before 2029 at the earliest. If multiple units are destroyed, you are looking at 2030 or beyond.
What do we actually know about the damage?
This is where intellectual honesty separates analysis from speculation. And I am going to be precise.
QatarEnergy CEO Saad al-Kaabi confirmed on March 24, 2026 that Iranian missile strikes on March 18 to 19 damaged LNG Train 4 and Train 6 at Ras Laffan. Combined capacity: 12.8 million tonnes per annum. Approximately 17 percent of Qatar's 77 Mtpa export capacity. Repair timeline: three to five years. Estimated revenue loss: $20 billion per year.
Force majeure was declared on long-term contracts with China, Italy, South Korea, and Belgium. The force majeure could last up to five years.
Shell separately confirmed that Pearl GTL Unit 2 sustained damage requiring approximately one year of repair. Pearl GTL Unit 1 was undamaged and continues to operate.
Here is what has not been confirmed by any official source: whether Pearl GTL's Air Separation Units were specifically destroyed.
The claim that the ASUs were destroyed originates from satellite thermal analysis by an energy industry blog. Their reasoning is logical. The ASU complex is large, prominent, and the thermal signatures in FIRMS data suggest fire or explosion in that area. But the blog itself acknowledged that no official damage assessment had been released.
Shell's one-year repair estimate for Pearl GTL Unit 2 is fundamentally inconsistent with full ASU destruction. If those eight ASUs were gone, Shell would not be quoting one year. They would be quoting four to five. The one-year timeline strongly suggests the ASUs survived but surrounding infrastructure, piping, control systems, structural elements, was damaged by blast effects, fire, or shrapnel.
Three caveats. First, Shell may be understating the damage for commercial or insurance reasons. Second, cryogenic equipment operating at minus 190 degrees with temperature differentials measured in single Kelvin can suffer internal damage from shock, vibration, or thermal cycling during uncontrolled shutdown that may not be visible externally. Third, the strikes caused fires and extensive damage across the complex, and proximity alone creates risk.
I am going to give you the analysis both ways.
If the ASUs survived: Pearl GTL Unit 2 comes back in roughly a year. The main story remains 12.8 Mtpa of LNG offline for half a decade.
If the ASUs are destroyed: Pearl GTL joins the multi-year timeline. The global supply chain for cryogenic equipment becomes the story. And that supply chain cannot deliver.
Either way, the LNG train damage alone is catastrophic. But the ASU angle reveals something far more important about the fragility of the entire global energy system.
Only five companies on the planet can build these machines.
The global supply chain for mega-scale Air Separation Units, units capable of producing 3,000 to 5,500 tonnes per day of oxygen, is concentrated in five companies. Five. For the entire world.
Linde Engineering, headquartered in Munich, is the dominant force. They built Pearl GTL's eight ASUs. They have delivered over 4,000 air separation plants across more than 90 countries since building the first commercial ASU in 1902. Their largest single unit produces 5,250 tonnes per day of oxygen at Reliance's Jamnagar refinery in India. Cold box weight: 800 tonnes. All critical cryogenic components are manufactured in-house at Schalchen, Germany, where 700 engineers generate 1.3 million production hours per year, and at their facility in Dalian, China.
Air Liquide, headquartered in Paris, has proven capability at 5,000 tonnes per day through the Sasol T17 unit at Secunda, South Africa. Commissioned in 2018 in under three years. Air Liquide now owns and operates Sasol's full 16-unit ASU complex at Secunda. Total output: 42,000 tonnes of oxygen per day. The largest oxygen production site on Earth. They have a Qatar presence through GASAL, a joint venture with QatarEnergy.
Air Products, headquartered in Allentown, Pennsylvania, has the deepest existing footprint at Ras Laffan. They supplied two ASUs for the Oryx GTL plant. They provided the natural gas liquefaction technology for all 14 LNG trains at Ras Laffan. They built helium extraction facilities. Their Jazan IGCC project in Saudi Arabia features six ASUs producing a combined 75,000 tonnes per day of oxygen and nitrogen. The world's largest industrial gas complex. Budget for the ASU scope alone: approximately $2 billion.
Hangyang, headquartered in Hangzhou, China, claims to be the world's largest ASU manufacturer by volume with over 4,000 units delivered. Maximum single-unit capacity: 3,600 tonnes per day. Chinese pricing is dramatically lower. A four-unit contract for Zhejiang Petrochemical totalled roughly $130 million. But their international track record outside China remains limited.
SIAD Macchine Impianti, headquartered in Bergamo, Italy. This is the company almost nobody outside the industrial gas sector has heard of. SIAD has delivered over 500 ASU units globally and is scaling into the mega range with a 3,500 tonne-per-day unit for the Pacifico Mexinol methanol project in Mexico. But here is the critical detail: SIAD was selected to supply four nitrogen-producing ASUs for QatarEnergy's North Field East expansion. One ASU per new LNG train.
That North Field East expansion has been suspended indefinitely.
The real bottleneck: five workshops that make one irreplaceable component.
Even these five ASU integrators depend on a single choke point.
The heart of every cryogenic ASU is a brazed aluminium plate-fin heat exchanger, known as a BAHX. These exchangers operate with temperature differentials of one to two Kelvin and require precision brazing in vacuum furnaces. The furnaces themselves are enormously expensive capital equipment that exists in extremely limited quantity worldwide.
Only five companies are qualified to manufacture BAHX units. They are organised under an industry association called ALPEMA. The five members: Fives Cryo in France. Kobe Steel (Kobelco) in Japan. Linde Engineering in Germany. Sumitomo Precision Products in Japan. Chart Industries in La Crosse, Wisconsin.
Five companies. For every cryogenic heat exchanger in every air separation unit, every LNG liquefaction train, every industrial gas facility, and every hydrogen plant on the planet.
BAHX lead times currently run 12 to 18 months or more. These are the components that set the critical path for any new ASU order. You can design the plant in six months. You can fabricate the columns and compressors in parallel. But you cannot start final assembly until the BAHX cores arrive. And those cores come from five workshops.
Other bottleneck components include multi-stage centrifugal air compressors supplied by FS-Elliott, MAN Turbo, and Siemens. Cryogenic turboexpanders from Air Products' Rotoflow division and Linde's Cryostar subsidiary. Structured column packings that must be fabricated to micron-level tolerances.
Each of these components has its own supply chain, its own lead times, its own capacity constraints. But the BAHX exchanger is the long pole in the tent.
What does this mean for Qatar's recovery?
The confirmed damage to LNG Trains 4 and 6, totalling 12.8 Mtpa, carries a repair timeline of three to five years. This is not just about physical damage to process equipment. Ras Laffan is in an active conflict zone. Ten thousand construction workers were evacuated from offshore platforms in 24 hours. The Strait of Hormuz has been effectively closed since March 11. Maritime insurance premiums have made commercial shipping through the strait economically unviable.
You cannot rebuild an LNG mega-train during an active war. You cannot ship 470-tonne cold box modules through a closed strait. You cannot commission cryogenic equipment when Iranian missiles might arrive during the nitrogen purge cycle.
The three-to-five-year repair timeline assumes the war ends, the strait reopens, and equipment procurement begins promptly. Every month of continued conflict extends that timeline.
But the damage extends far beyond the two LNG trains.
Qatar's North Field East expansion was 85 percent complete before the conflict. Four new mega-trains producing 32 Mtpa of additional LNG, targeted for late 2026 startup. The project has been suspended indefinitely. Al-Kaabi told Reuters it could be delayed by over a year. SIAD Macchine Impianti's four new ASUs for those trains are now in limbo.
The North Field South expansion, adding another 16 Mtpa by 2027 to 2028, and the North Field West expansion, adding 16 Mtpa more by 2029 to 2030, were supposed to lift Qatar's total capacity from 77 Mtpa to 142 Mtpa by the end of the decade. That entire roadmap is now fundamentally compromised.
Qatar was not just maintaining its current supply. It was building the infrastructure to become the dominant LNG supplier of the 2030s. The 142 Mtpa target represented roughly a quarter of projected global LNG capacity. That ambition has been structurally impaired.
Helium: the crisis nobody saw coming.
The Ras Laffan complex does not just produce LNG and GTL products. It produces approximately one-third of the world's helium supply.
Qatar operates three helium plants at Ras Laffan. Helium 1, online since 2005, producing 660 million standard cubic feet per year. Helium 2, the world's largest helium plant, online since 2013, producing 1.3 billion standard cubic feet per year. Helium 3, approximately 400 million standard cubic feet per year.
Combined capacity: roughly 2.4 billion standard cubic feet per year. Approximately 33 percent of global supply according to the US Geological Survey. All three plants have been offline since March 2, when Qatar initially halted LNG output.
Helium is extracted from the natural gas stream during LNG processing. It is a trace component of North Field gas, separated through cryogenic distillation. The helium plants cannot operate independently of the LNG facility. When LNG production stops, helium production stops.
And helium is irreplaceable in semiconductor fabrication.
It cools silicon wafers during plasma etching. It purges deposition chambers. It detects microscopic leaks. There is no substitute. No synthetic alternative. No workaround. Helium is a noble gas. You cannot manufacture it. You can only extract it from geological formations where it has accumulated over billions of years.
South Korea imports 64.7 percent of its helium from Qatar. Samsung and SK Hynix, which together fabricate roughly a quarter of the world's memory chips, are directly exposed. Spot helium prices have doubled in 14 days. Contract surcharges are up over 30 percent. Approximately 200 specialised ISO containers, each worth roughly $1 million, are stranded in the Middle East.
Liquid helium vaporises within 35 to 48 days if not replenished.
Tom's Hardware reported last week that the chip supply chain was on a two-week clock. SK Hynix claims diversified supply and sufficient inventory. TSMC says it does not currently anticipate notable impact. The Korea Semiconductor Industry Association says short-term supplies are adequate.
The real test comes if the outage extends beyond two to three months. When strategic reserves deplete, production lines slow. When production lines slow, the AI training clusters that consume billions of dollars in chips per quarter start missing delivery schedules. When delivery schedules slip, the market capitalization of every company building the infrastructure for artificial intelligence takes a hit.
QatarEnergy's own data shows 14 percent of Qatar's helium production capacity is permanently damaged. Reconstruction: up to five years. The planned Helium 4 plant, targeting 1.5 billion standard cubic feet per year and slated for 2027, was over 50 percent engineered before the crisis. Its timeline is now unknown.
One-third of the world's helium. Removed from the market by the same missile strikes that took out 17 percent of global LNG supply. From the same facility. On the same day.
The second-order cascade.
Follow the chain.
Iranian missiles damage Ras Laffan. Twelve point eight Mtpa of LNG goes offline. Force majeure activates on contracts with China, Italy, South Korea, and Belgium. Spot LNG prices surge 40 to 60 percent.
Simultaneously, one-third of global helium supply vanishes. Helium prices double. Semiconductor fabs in South Korea and Taiwan face supply constraints within weeks. Memory chip production slows.
China, which held 27-year LNG contracts with Qatar through Sinopec and CNPC worth 8 million tonnes per year, loses its contracted supply. Beijing's 2026-to-2030 five-year plan, released three weeks ago, explicitly calls for advancing preparatory work on the Power of Siberia 2 pipeline. The Iran war just destroyed China's negotiating leverage with Russia. The pipeline that was stalled for a decade on price disputes is now an existential priority. Watch for acceleration within six months.
If China pivots to Russian pipeline gas, it removes Chinese demand from the seaborne LNG market. That paradoxically frees up molecules for Europe. But it cements the Russia-China energy axis that Washington has spent a decade trying to prevent. Power of Siberia 1 hit full capacity in December 2024 at 38 billion cubic metres. The Far Eastern pipeline delivers 12 billion cubic metres starting January 2027. Add Power of Siberia 2 at 50 billion cubic metres and total Russian pipeline gas to China approaches 100 billion cubic metres per year. That is roughly what Russia used to send to Europe through Nord Stream.
The energy map of Eurasia does not shift. It inverts.
Qatar's North Field expansion, which was going to bring 64 Mtpa of new LNG onto the market by 2030 and was widely expected to create oversupply and lower global gas prices, is now delayed by a minimum of one to two years and potentially much longer. The expected oversupply that would have given buyers leverage against sellers just evaporated. Every US LNG project currently seeking final investment decision just became more attractive. Every European terminal under construction just became more strategically critical.
Five workshops. One conclusion.
Here is what the Air Separation Unit supply chain tells you about the state of global energy.
The entire recovery timeline for Qatar, the second-largest LNG exporter on Earth, depends on equipment that can only be manufactured in five countries by five companies. The most critical sub-component, the BAHX heat exchanger, comes from five workshops. The lead times are measured in years, not months. The order books are not empty. These companies were already building ASUs for Qatar's expansion, for Saudi Arabia's NEOM hydrogen project, for American LNG terminals, for Chinese coal-to-chemicals plants.
There is no surge capacity. There is no emergency stockpile of 470-tonne cold boxes. There is no way to accelerate a vacuum furnace brazing cycle that takes the time it takes because the physics of aluminium metallurgy does not respond to geopolitical urgency.
The machines that make the molecules that heat the homes that power the grids that run the fabs that build the chips that train the AI models that every government and corporation on earth is betting their future on, those machines are built by hand, in five workshops, with three-year lead times, and the ones at Ras Laffan are either damaged, offline, or both.
Every analyst, every fund manager, every energy trader watching the LNG market is focused on the number. 12.8 Mtpa offline. 77 Mtpa of Qatari capacity shut down. $20 billion in annual revenue lost.
Nobody is asking the right question. How do you rebuild when the machines that make the molecules take three to four years to manufacture, ship through a closed strait, and commission in a war zone?
You don't. Not quickly. Not at any price.
That is why QatarEnergy's force majeure extends to five years. That is why the North Field expansion is suspended. That is why Trump's leverage over Europe is not a negotiating position but a structural reality created by physics, geography, and the most concentrated industrial supply chain most people have never heard of.
Five companies. Five workshops. Three-year lead times.
The molecules are trapped at Ras Laffan. The machines that free them do not yet exist. And the workshops that build them are already full.
That's not a recovery timeline. That's a sentence.

https://twitter.com/x/status/2036550606916296714

 

[daddycat]

The federal reserve bankster cartel coin, a.k.a. the dollar, does not seem to be much better. Iran is simply using payment methods that cannot be easily blocked. That in itself does not seem to be an indication of collusion with the US/Israeli deep state.

No one said anything about using the dollar. Lots of people are saying Chinese Yuan is being used. The use of Epsteincoin Tether USDT suggests one big club and we're not in it.

 

[Fluffy]

I watched a short informative 3 minute video on X that illustrates how much ME oil passes through the Strait of Hormuz each day, and which countries will be most heavily affected by an Iranian blockade of the Strait. I also found this post that says the Iranians are only allowing Chinese ships to pass.

Yesterday I went to our local gas station, and even though the prices were relatively the same, I could not fill up because all the diesel and gas reservoirs were empty. Could be a result of people panic buying, but will be interesting to see if it spreads to other gas stations.

https://twitter.com/x/status/2028906447996584143

Sounds like a good side plan to push green energy and social credit score.

Well, we didn’t see this coming

This dude has compiled a list of news articles that show governments taking measures to use the closing of Hormuz as the kick off in the game of the Global Economic Collapse using fuel as the scapegoat for the (likely meticulously schemed and planned) energy crisis, which snowballs into every other crisis. Up and coming are the digital ID and social credit score… get your smart phones ready

 

[Timótheos]

What if it’s bigger than just Trump’s family being mutilated before his eyes and they’ve cut off his eyelids so like can’t not watch. When I say ‘just’, that’s a horrific thought in itself, I really think you have to be a parent to understand how we are intrinsically and instinctively programmed to protect our children at all cost, it’s a gruelling thing to imagine your children suffer, I feel like I’m going to demolecularise if I try to contemplate one of my kids being abused in such terrifying ways, something that haunts me is that frazzle drip, I just cannot imagine the obscene amount of suffering one must endure having that happen to them.

The ‘what if’, may be he’s been threatened that it’s not only his family, but the whole of the USA, hundreds of millions of people’s blood on his hands.
I’m going to assume he knows who’s running the show and of their capabilities, who knows what they’re telling him what they’ll do, stretch our imaginations as far as they go and it’s probably worse way than that… how about spending eternity watching on in indescribable horror as your child gets their face cut off while getting raped with a serrated baseball bat (sorry about the graphic speech but I presume it’s a lot worse than this on every level) … I feel sorry for Trump. He might be a bit of an ego maniac, but he’s essentially not a bad person, he’s been played to the extreme and there’s no way out…

I think I’d kill myself after killing everyone I love, but then he’s probably unable to do that too, they’d just reanimate everyone or do some time flipping and go back to change it all so that option’s off the table too.

It sounds like I’m defending him, I am, I’d be terrified too!

It sounds like you may be letting your emotions influencing your thinking here, causing your imagination to run wild.

Of course one can imagine all kinds of horrific things happening, but it's probably not the most productive use of the imagination, when in reality the things being imagined are actually happening to real children in real life in other parts of the world, and have been happening for a long time.

This has been well documented and a search of "Israeli crimes" on X shows a never-ending list of such horrible and ongoing atrocities.

Is the imaginary suffering of Trump's children more important than the real suffering of the children of Gaza, Lebanon, Iran at the hands of the Israeli/American deep state?

Trump, by surrounding himself and aligning with zionists and Israeli-firsters (whether by blackmail, fear, ignorance, cowardice, narcissism or whatever) can't avoid culpability in the crimes of his handlers. As you say, he is probably well aware of what they are doing and continues to support and advance their agenda anyway.

By imagining excuses for his 180 degree turnaround and betrayal of his MAGA base because he's scared of what might happen to him or his family, and ignoring the very real suffering resulting from his complicity could be seen as an example of selective empathy.

Compare what you wrote above with your post on the latest session thread. It's good advice.

Than you for another brilliant session everyone

As we watch on we must remember we shape our reality with our thoughts, feelings and emotions, as hard as at may be, staying positive, finding joy and fun, laughing, loving, praying, learning and having hope are our safeguards to navigate the future.
Sweet dreams everybody, that’s what we can create, glory for all, don’t give up.
May the Divine Cosmic Mind be with each of you always.

Blessings

 

[seek10]

https://twitter.com/x/status/2036723277046137300

Is it sign of impending major earthquake in Israel?

• This natural communal roosting behavior, observed annually during migration through Israel's bird corridor, involves thousands of crows exchanging food-location information, as detailed in 1973 research by Tel Aviv University's Amotz Zahavi.
• While cultural lore from the Bible and Norse mythology associates crow flocks with death, peer-reviewed studies in journals like Science (2020) highlight crows' advanced cognition—comparable to monkeys—without evidence of prophetic significance.

 

[KJS]

Tether USDT is Epsteincoin

Precisely, via a connection with Howard Lutnick.

Iran is simply using payment methods that cannot be easily blocked.

I think they only need to blacklist an address. What's interesting is that all of the crypto is pretty compressed, with dead volumes across the board, so any quick moves trying to launder USDT would cause suspicious volatility.

(...) According to data released by ChainCatcher based on a report from AMLBot, between 2023 and 2025, Tether blocked 7,268 addresses, involving approximately $3.29 billion in USDT. More than half of this amount — about 53% was concentrated on the Tron blockchain.

https://www.binance.com/en-IN/square/post/34183308035809

USDT Bans 2025 | Dune

Dune is the all-in-one crypto data platform — query with SQL, stream data via APIs & DataShare, and publish interactive dashboards across 100+ blockchains.

dune.com

Adoption Scale: Iran's crypto economy is massive—recently estimated at nearly $8 billion annually—and is characterized by a stark divide between everyday citizens and the state.

How it's Used:

• Everyday Citizens: The USDT-toman trading pair is the most systemically important crypto market in Iran. Retail users rely heavily on domestic exchanges (like Nobitex) as a financial lifeline to shield their savings from currency collapse.
  
  
• The State: The Iranian government and military entities (like the IRGC) heavily utilize USDT for sanctions evasion. Recent blockchain intelligence reports revealed that Iran's Central Bank accumulated over $500 million in USDT to use as an "off-book" foreign exchange buffer to stabilize the rial and settle international trade. They frequently rely on the Tron blockchain for these transfers due to its speed and low fees, though Tether and global authorities have recently collaborated to freeze hundreds of millions of dollars linked to Iranian wallets.

How Iran’s Central Bank Used USDT to Bypass Sanctions and Support Its Currency

The Central Bank of Iran (CBI) acquired at least $507 million in the US dollar-backed stablecoin USDT and used it to bypass global sanctions, according to a new investigation by blockchain analytic...

www.financemagnates.com