Welcome to a Hump Day (“Haftanın Ortası” in Turkish): Wednesday, April 1. Don’t worry, I’m not going to fool you even though it’s April Fools’ Day. Instead, I’ll show below the lovely April page from the fifteenth-century Très Riches Heures du Duc de Berry, showing elegant people at The Château de Dourdan. A University of Chicago site describing the depictions says this about the page:
The arrival of spring, hope and new life – the grass is green and a newly betrothed couple are exchanging rings in the foreground, accompanied by friends and family. The chateau is another one of the Duc’s, that of Dourdan.
You can see what remains of the château in this article.
It’s also Holy Wednesday, National Sourdough Bread Day, National One Cent Day (but the pennies are gone! Bring ’em back!), Poetry and the Creative Mind Day, National Trombone Players Day, and, most important, Atheist Day (who is the one atheist they’re celebrating? Let us raise a glass and a middle finger to all those blockheads who tell us that New Atheism is dead). And don’t forget that Passover begins at sundown tonight. Stock up on matzos while you can.
Here’s a short video of my favorite jazz trombonist, Jack Teagarden, playing “Basin Street Blues” with his band:
Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the April 1 Wikipedia page.
And there’s a Google Doodle today marking the expected launch of the Artemis 2 crewed moon-circling voyage, expected to launch at about 6:24 Eastern US time today. The mission has a two-hour luanch window with backup windows through April 6. The mission will last ten days. Click below to see where the Doodle takes you:
A notice: AT 85, Richard Dawkins refuses to slow down. He’s traveling to both New Zealand and Australia in November, and his schedule is below. Click on the screenshot to go to the page where you can buy tickets:
Da Nooz:
*Yesterday’s war news from It’s Noon in Israel, called “The IDF’s accidental game changer.”
It’s Tuesday, March 31, and the thirty-second day of Operation Roaring Lion. The global price of oil has reached $113, up less than one percent since yesterday. Here are the latest developments while you were asleep:
- Last night, Donald Trump shared a clip of a massive strike on Isfahan on social media. According to Ynet’s Ron Ben-Yishai, what initially appeared to be a strike on ballistic missiles may have in fact been the burial of enriched uranium deep underground in a way that will prevent the Iranians from accessing it. The U.S., it seems, has given up on prolonged ground action that would also entail many casualties.
- According to the AP Lebanon has requested that Ukraine’s embassy in Beirut hand over a Syrian-Palestinian man with Ukrainian citizenship suspected of working for the Mossad. The man was originally detained by Hezbollah in September after allegedly parking a motorbike rigged with an explosive device near Beirut airport. He escaped to the Ukrainian embassy on March 6 after an Israeli airstrike on an adjacent building gave him an avenue of escape.
- Four soldiers from the Nahal Reconnaissance Unit were killed yesterday evening after their force engaged terrorist cells in close-range combat in southern Lebanon. Capt. Noam Madmoni, 22, from Sderot, was the team commander. Sgt. Maj. Ben Cohen, 21, was from Lehavim; Sgt. Maj. Maksim Antis, 21, was from Bat Yam; and Staff Sgt. Gilad Harel, 21, was from Modi’in-Maccabim-Re’ut all fell in the engagement. IDF fatalities rise to 11.
- Internal Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir’s law supposedly mandating the death penalty for terrorists convicted of deadly attacks passed the Knesset 62–48 last night. In reality, the law achieves little and is more a political stunt than a meaningful step toward the implementation of capital punishment.
Now, on to the details.
“If you had a time machine,” I ask the senior Israeli minister, “and you knew a month ago that this is what would happen, would you still vote in favor of war?”
“First of all, yes,” he replies. “You have to understand, this was a cold and calculated gamble. The Iranians were planning to move their entire nuclear and missile industry underground, in a way that would have made it nearly impenetrable. In any case, we would have attacked this year—but with the Americans by our side, there was no dilemma.”
“The main achievements of the war are the severe damage to ballistic missiles and their production. This time, after hitting the entire production chain, it will be much harder for them to recover.”
“It’s also worth remembering,” the official added, “that for years, the nightmare scenario in Israel was a multi-front war with hundreds of casualties on the home front. Last year, in ‘Rising Lion,’ in 12 days of war against Iran alone, there were 30 fatalities. Now, in a war with three times as many fronts and three times as many enemies, there are 20. What is that if not proof that ‘Rising Lion’ was not in vain—and neither was ‘Roaring Lion’?”
. . .According to IDF intelligence, the regime’s political leadership now believes there is no way to repair the war damage; Iran simply lacks sufficient funds.
It reportedly has broken the spirit of many in the regime. The assessment is that, given a prolonged economic recovery after the war that will inevitably consume the vast majority of state budgets, massive protests will erupt.
It appears that Trump is reading the same intelligence, which may explain why the threats in his ultimatums have shifted from military targets to the gray area of civilian/military infrastructure, specifically Iran’s energy and oil facilities.
Still, as the minister told me regarding regime change at the outset of the war, “there were more optimistic and less optimistic assessments, but no one could guarantee that while bombs were falling on Tehran, the masses would take to the streets. There is no doubt that the war has brought the regime closer to its end—but I cannot tell you whether that will happen before Trump finishes his term, or before Netanyahu finishes his.”
I suspect we all want a regime change in favor of more democracy, but it’s certain that we differ in whether we think that will ever happen. I don’t think the people will take to the streets so long as the government threatens to kill them if they do, and that is still an active threat.
*Given that the negotiating positions of Iran and the U.S. are far apart, and apparently widening, the Free Press prepares us for what’s to come in a piece called, “The Battle of Hormuz Approaches.”
. . .And should it refuse to agree to terms acceptable to Trump, the president could conceivably attempt to declare victory while leaving Iran with de facto control of the Strait of Hormuz and in possession of its “nuclear dust,” as he likes to put it. But after all his past rhetoric about Iran’s nuclear ambitions, the idea of allowing Iran to retain a nuclear stockpile will be a hard sell—and leaving Tehran in effective control of the Strait is simply not strategically feasible. After all this, the Iranians would retain the ability to torture the global economy with mischievous glee.
Enter the Marines—and elements of the 82nd Airborne Division plus, reportedly, Army Rangers and Navy SEALs. The exact numbers of elite American ground troops being sent to the region are only beginning to come into focus, and we could see a head count in the five figures in the days to come. This is not enough troops to “invade Iran” in the sense that we invaded Iraq in 2003. It is not even enough to seize and hold terrain on the Iranian mainland for more than a limited period of time, even given conditions of near–air dominance.
But islands are a different story. The principal goal of a battle to control the Strait of Hormuz and its flanking seas will be to flip the current economic situation, where the world’s commercial traffic is restricted while Iran’s flows with few obstacles. Iran should have to fight for its economic life, while the world gets to use the Strait for free commerce.
It would be preferable, for political reasons, to accomplish such a task through air and sea power alone. It is possible that military planners have no intention of putting these troops in combat in the Gulf, and the deployments to the region are simply to provide options for emergency scenarios, or are in service of a potential raid targeting nuclear sites on the Iranian mainland. But military planners may have concluded that the Iranians must be denied the use of terrain that they have been using to control maritime traffic in the Strait, and that they need boots on the ground to accomplish that. Larak Island, a piece of rock and sand that in recent weeks has gained the nickname of the “Tehran toll booth” due to the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps’ (IRGC) reported use of it to manage the Strait, is an obvious potential target. Nearby Qeshm Island is also strategically relevant to the movement of traffic, but quite large, and putting troops there would run greater risks than seizing smaller islands like Larak. And there are numerous other small pieces of land relevant to questions of sea control: Abu Musa, Lesser Tunb, and Greater Tunb to the west, and Hormuz Island itself at the top of the Strait.
There’s also Kharg Island, but destroying or attacking that could have substantial effects on world oil prices, as Kharg is the principal exit point of Iranian oil. More:
. . .Such ground deployments, should they occur, would supplement a broader naval and air campaign to reassert control of the waters stretching from Kuwait to the Arabian Sea—a major undertaking for any navy. And while the risks to American forces doing limited ground operations on islands would be less than those for operations on the Iranian mainland, there would still be very significant risks.
It is not clear that our military has yet learned the lessons of warfare being taught in Ukraine since 2022. That we are slow students is most apparent in our unpreparedness for defending economically against cheap Iranian drones, with which we can be sure any troops fighting in the Gulf will be targeted. (This, despite the fact that the drones being used by Russians in Ukraine originated in Iran.) The failure to be attentive students, tied to an ideologically driven dismissiveness of the cause of Ukraine and an arrogant belief that we will just fight differently (and better) than the Ukrainians—an oft-encountered view in the Pentagon—may not look so defensible in hindsight.
The advantages of a successful Battle of Hormuz would be the restoration of regular shipping through the Strait and some calming of markets, plus the reduction of Iranian revenue to the point where it is hard to see how the regime could survive in the middle to long run. The best-case outcome is an Iran so weakened that it can no longer cause America and its allies strategic dilemmas as we (finally? maybe?) shift our focus to China.
. . .The disadvantages of even a successful fight are that it could be costly, could produce casualties, and could have a protracted tail—the escort operation to keep the Strait of Hormuz open in the 1980s lasted over a year. And there remains the question of what to do about Iran’s nuclear stockpiles, buried deeply in the interior of the country, the military options for which are even riskier than anything involved in operating along Iran’s coast.
You can see why President Trump would prefer a deal.
To me, a deal that leaves the present Iranian regime (or even part of it) in power is not a successful outcome to the war. And I suspect Trump knows that. But what do I know: I’m just a humble country biologist, not a political pundit.
*Speaking of negotiations, Iran is denying virtually everything Trump has said about negotiations.
In a flurry of claims over the past two days, Trump also said that Tehran has agreed to many of the 15 demands he transmitted last week through Pakistani mediators.
. . .Iran denied virtually all of Trump’s assertions. There have been no “direct” talks, Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmaeil Baqaei said Monday in Tehran, only messages sent through intermediaries. He described U.S. demands, which include an end to Iran’s uranium enrichment program, the surrender of more than 900 pounds of highly enriched material and strict limits on ballistic missiles, as “very excessive, unrealistic and irrational.”
In a social media post, Ghalibaf, who has previously denied reports that he was speaking to the U.S., derided the president’s claims as “so-called ‘news’ or ‘Truth’” and “just a setup” to lower the rising cost of oil.
Amid widely disparate accounts of who is talking to whom about what, both sides have begun targeting each other’s energy facilities in a significant escalation of the conflict. Iranian strikes hit Israel’s largest oil refinery in Haifa early Monday, while Iran acknowledged Sunday night attacks on its electricity grid that temporarily disrupted power in Tehran and nearby areas.
As Trump continued to weave between threats to extend the war and reassurances that it was close to ending, he said in a Monday morning post on his Truth Social platform that “great progress” had been achieved in “serious discussions” with a new, “more reasonable” collection of leaders in Iran.
But if a deal was not reached “shortly” and the Strait of Hormuz was not opened, he threatened, “we will conclude our lovely ‘stay’ in Iran by blowing up and completely obliterating all of their Electric Generating Plants, Oil Wells and Kharg Island (and possibly all desalinization plants!), which we have purposefully not yet ‘touched.’” Kharg Island, off the Iranian coast in the Persian Gulf, is Iran’s main oil shipping terminal.
Trump’s view that there is a pressure point at which Iran will capitulate is not universally shared.
Intelligence analysts have assessed that Iran’s view is that it has the upper hand in the conflict and therefore is not likely to respond to U.S. threats of force, said two people familiar with the matter, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss the sensitive information. The president has been briefed on that assessment, one of the people said.
As I said, I’m no pundit, but I think the war will go on so long as Iran has the enriched uranium, controls the Strait of Hormuz, and murderous theocrats are in power. He may ignore the last one, but he’s made very strong statements about the first two, and he’d look bad if he ended the war before they were resolved. I say this on the basis of Trump carrying not about what’s right, but about his own reputation.
*For some indiscernible reason, Trump, feeling his oats, is trying to destroy Cuba, largely by denying it oil. On Monday, however, he allowed one measly oil tanker to bring about 730,00 barrels of oil to Cuba, which won’t much alleviate the tremendous hardships experienced by the Cuban people.
The United States Coast Guard is allowing a Russian tanker full of crude oil to reach Cuba, delivering a critical supply of energy to the island nation after months of an effective oil blockade by the Trump administration, according to a U.S. official briefed on the matter.
The tanker, which is carrying an estimated 730,000 barrels of oil and is owned by the Russian government, was within several miles of Cuban territorial waters on Sunday evening, according to MarineTraffic, a ship-data provider. At its speed of 12 knots, it could reach its expected destination of Matanzas, Cuba, by Monday night.
The Russian ship’s arrival would shift the trajectory of a rapidly accelerating crisis in Cuba, buying the island nation at least a few weeks before its fuel reserves run out, analysts said.
It would also reduce pressure on a Cuban government facing a looming economic collapse and escalating threats from Washington, and show that, at least for now, the island can still depend on its longtime ally Russia.
The Trump administration had been enforcing what amounted to an oil blockade around Cuba since January, threatening nations that had been sending fuel to the country and, in one case, escorting a tanker heading toward Cuba away from the island.
The Coast Guard has two cutters in the region that could have attempted to intercept the Russian tanker. Yet the Trump administration did not order those vessels to act, according to a U.S. official briefed on the matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss operations. Barring orders instructing it otherwise, the Coast Guard planned to let the tanker reach Cuba as of Sunday afternoon, the official said.
Cuba is in big trouble, and one tanker is not going to solve it. The country needs a continuous infusion of oil, and almost certainly will have to capitulate to Trump, even becoming a democracy, without that infusion. I hope that is the case, for Cuba is full of good people under a bad regime. But one has to ask what right Trump has to keep trying to effect regime change in country after country (he failed in Venezuela). Cuba would be transformed if it were a democracy, but of course it would be transformed into a Caribbean vacation paradise, with all the charm it has ruined by tourism. But the people should be able to decide themselves what happens to their country.
*A federal judge has halted Trump’s construction of a huge ballroom on the site of the now-destroyed East Wing of the White House.
“The President of the United States is the steward of the White House for future generations of First Families. He is not, however, the owner!” Leon wrote in a 35-page ruling issued Tuesday afternoon.
“No statute comes close to giving the President the authority he claims to have,” he wrote.Leon, an appointee of President George W. Bush, also wrote that Trump has not identified a law that allowed him to demolish the White House’s East Wing last year without congressional approval.
He stayed his order for two weeks and ruled crews could continue construction necessary to ensure the safety and security of the White House.
Within hours, the Trump administration notified the court it would appeal Leon’s decision, which the White House called “egregious.”
“President Trump clearly has the legal authority to modernize, renovate, and beautify the White House – just like all of his predecessors did,” White House spokesman Davis Ingle said in a statement, adding: “We … are confident we will prevail.”
And, according to the news last night, Trump isn’t just going to clean up the site until Congress weighs in: he’s going to keep the construction going:
Speaking in the Oval Office, Trump told reporters that Leon was “so wrong” for ruling that the ballroom needed congressional approval. He suggested that many parts of the project would move forward, such as the ballroom’s bulletproof glass and anti-drone installations on the roof, citing Leon’s decision that the White House could proceed on efforts to ensure safety and security.
“I’m allowed to continue building as necessary,” Trump said. He also attacked the group that brought the lawsuit, the National Trust for Historic Preservation, on social media.
So who’s going to stop him now? The Supreme Court? According to his demented interpretation of the law, he could destroy and rebuild the entire White House (no doubt putting “TRUMP” in big letters over the door) if he so wished.
Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili has criticisms of the EU:
Hili: The State of Palestine nominated the European Union for the Nobel Peace Prize.
Andrzej: For what?
Hili: Formally for the obligation to attach caps to cartons of milk and other beverages, contributing to the preservation of the Earth and peace worldwide.
In Polish:
Hili: Państwo Palestyna wysunęło kandydaturę Unii Europejskiej do Pokojowej Nagrody Nobla.
Ja: Za co?
Hili: Fromalnie za ustawę o obowiązkowym przymocowaniu zakrętek do kartonów z mlekiem i innymi napojami, co przyczynia się do ratowania Ziemi i pokoju na całym świecie.
*******************
From Now That’s Wild:
From Give Me a Sign:
From Jesus of the Day:
And from Norm. Clearly the Jews are the ones responsible for making gas prices go up! This was reportedly seen in Ohio, and appears to be real. Look at that schnoz!
Masih shows five more Iranian protestors set for execution:
The regime’s execution machine has sped up and is rapidly executing innocent prisoners.
With every additional day the terrorist regime stays in power, more people are executed and tortured.
In recent days, many people have been executed.Five Iranian protesters sentenced to… pic.twitter.com/RikEFmsB45
— Masih Alinejad 🏳️ (@AlinejadMasih) March 31, 2026
Luana contributes one highlight from the recent convention in Winnipeg of Canada’s New Democratic Party (NDP). I’ve watched some of the convention, mostly with my jaw hanging open. To read more about how a party for workers has been taken over by wokers, see the Quillette article, “The tragicomic death throes of Canada’s (former) workers’ party” (article archived here).
Currently in Taiwan, my favourite country on earth, thinking about how 16 years ago I made the decision to leave here and immigrate to a nation balanced on a precipice, about to plunge into total clown land and make itself an international laughing stock.
pic.twitter.com/fk8TRlk5dD— Mia Hughes (@_CryMiaRiver) March 30, 2026
From Emma; “NGL” means “not gonna lie”. And you probably heard about the theft of 12 tons of KitKat bars somewhere between Italy and Poland. (What are the thieves going to do with them?)
NGL, I expected this to end in KitKats. https://t.co/JhT7mgwXZN
— Emma Hilton (@FondOfBeetles) March 31, 2026
Larry the Cat is clearly no fan of Trump:
Translation:
“I started something I can’t finish and broke something I can’t fix so I’m going to walk away and pretend it’s your fault” pic.twitter.com/mdd0aXwNCC— Larry the Cat (@Number10cat) March 31, 2026
One from my feed. I love quokkas (a marsupial), though I’ve never seen one:
Translation:
“I started something I can’t finish and broke something I can’t fix so I’m going to walk away and pretend it’s your fault” pic.twitter.com/mdd0aXwNCC— Larry the Cat (@Number10cat) March 31, 2026
One I retweeted from The Auschwitz Memorial:
A pair of Dutch twin girls, Jewish of course, were gassed to death as soon as they arrived in Auschwitz. They were fourteen years old. https://t.co/yNSCMZfTuG
— Jerry Coyne (@Evolutionistrue) April 1, 2026
Two tweets from Dr. Cobb, still on hols. First, a book he recommended that I read (I don’t think he read it, but we’re both interested in the Amelia Earhart story:
What happened to Amelia Earhart? New book takes on the case.. Rachel Hartigan on her eminently readable new book, "Lost: Amelia Earhart’s Three Mysterious Deaths and One Extraordinary Life." arstechnica.com/science/2026…
— Jennifer Ouellette (@jenlucpiquant.bsky.social) 2026-03-30T13:46:37.291Z
This reminds me of a human log-rolling contest. Poor turtles!
Please enjoy the two minute crucible that is this turtle trying to get on to a log that other turtles are on.
— Chris Person (@papapishu.bsky.social) 2026-03-30T02:25:51.520Z
Yesterday’s ToI daily briefing video is 30 minutes discussing Iran, some history and current status of the North and Lebanon border, and the final ten minutes on the recent kerfuffle regarding Christian prayers at the Church of the Sepulchre for Holy Week. I seem to have become a visual learner in recent years and do better seeing videos rather than just listening to podcasts or reading. When reading WEIT I sometimes imagine jerry speaking the words as I read them and sometimes visualize the commenters whose photos we have seen. In any case the March 31 ToI daily briefing video ahould be at url
https://www.timesofisrael.com/daily-briefing-mar-31-israel-angers-christian-world-in-another-avoidable-scandal/
Don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good.
I don’t think we failed in Venezuela at all. The idea was to shake up the current system there, which we did (at almost no cost). Nothing was changing OTHERWISE – which is often the case with commie pukes. There are encouraging noises there. AND that pig Maduro gets to enjoy some of NYC’s harsher hospitality. 🙂
On Iran – with very few deaths we’ve decapitated the most evil regime of just about all of our lifetimes. can you name a worse one? OK, North Korea – its menace doesn’t include actually destroying four other countries like Iran’s does. (Lebanon, Syria, “Gaza”, Yemen, Iraq).
We’ve degraded their war and administrative abilities to a huge extent.
We’ve also degraded the “Axis of Ill Will” (Ferguson): China-Russia.
I was against most other kinetic American adventures abroad but I’m all aboard on these latest ones. More of THIS. And why NOT free the starving Cuban people if we can?
D.A.
NYC
I am afraid that if we don’t force regime change in Iran, it will use its oil money to continue to be a regional bully and fomenter of terrorism. The way it is trying to blackmail the U.S. by threatening its neighbors shows exactly why the Ayatollahs have to go. As for Cuba, I am not sure what “charm” it has now, except as a sort of Colonial Williamsburg for communists, but it’s ridiculous that we’ve let it continue to exist as a Communist country since the fall of the Soviet Union.
I notice in the judge’s opinion on the WH ballroom, she also did not quote any statute saying the President does NOT have the authority to make changes to buildings operated by the Executive. This looks like another case of a judge simply trying to block Trump based on their personal opinions.