Iran…Israel…Trump Evening 3/19/2026…Miller….We are en route to “an overwhelming victory.”

A new round of attacks on major energy facilities in Iran and Qatar on Wednesday raised concerns about energy supplies. To ease the crisis, the United States was weighing lifting sanctions on millions of barrels of Iranian oil, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent told Fox Business on Thursday. Still, the S&P 500 ended the day 0.3 percent lower.

Oil prices have been surging since the start of the conflict on Feb. 28, with international crude futures up almost 50 percent in less than three weeks.

As oil prices eased on Thursday afternoon, it allowed nervous investors to exhale slightly. But the market swings were a reminder of what analysts say is a stubborn truth: Prices will likely not dip meaningfully until the region is secure.

“It really comes down to when tankers can securely flow through the strait again,” said Jim Burkhard, the head of research for oil markets at S&P Global Energy. “But then you will have bottlenecks even after that opens.”

The pullback on oil prices on Thursday came after Mr. Trump told reporters in the Oval Office that he had directed Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel to cease attacks on Iran’s energy fields. Hours later, the Israeli leader said during a news conference in Jerusalem that it was no longer possible for Iran to enrich uranium or manufacture ballistic missiles after 20 days of bombardment.

He provided no evidence and said nothing about Iran’s stockpile of highly enriched uranium that was buried under the country’s nuclear site at Isfahan by U.S. strikes last year. The White House did not address his comments.

While an end to the conflict would reopen the shipping routes through the Strait of Hormuz, serious damage to infrastructure would be longer lasting.

Here’s what else we are covering:

• Ground troops: During a meeting with the Japanese prime minister, Sanae Takaichi, in the Oval Office on Thursday, Mr. Trump was asked about using ground troops in Iran. He said: “I’m not putting troops anywhere. If I did, I wouldn’t tell you.” Read more ›

• Missile attacks: Strikes on Wednesday and Thursday hit the Ras Laffan energy hub in Qatar, reducing the country’s natural gas export capacity by 17 percent and causing an estimated loss of $20 billion in annual revenue, according to Saad Sherida al-Kaabi, the country’s energy minister and head of QatarEnergy, the state-owned energy company. He said damage from missiles would take three to five years to repair and would affect supply to markets in Europe and Asia.

• Saudi Arabia: Saudi Arabia’s foreign minister said that the country reserved the right “to take military actions if deemed necessary” to protect itself from Iranian attacks. Read more ›

• Death tolls: Iran’s ambassador to the United Nations said last week that at least 1,348 civilians had been killed since the start of the war. On Wednesday, a Washington-based human rights group, the Human Rights Activists News Agency, reported that at least 1,369 civilians had been killed. The number of Lebanese killed rose to more than 1,000, Lebanon’s health ministry said on Thursday. At least 14 people have been killed in Iranian attacks on Israel, officials have said. The American death toll stood at 13.

The Guardian….

• Benjamin Netanyahu denied that Donald Trump was “dragged” into the war by Israel, as he tried to pour cold water on suggestions that Israel influenced the US’s decision to attack Iran and amid growing signs that the US and Israel are not aligned on their war aims. “Does anyone really think that someone can tell President Trump what to do, the Israeli prime minister said, later adding: “I misled no one.”

• Netanyahu also stated that Israel “acted alone” in striking Iran’s South Pars gasfield, though he didn’t address whether or not he had told Trump about the attack beforehand. “President Trump asked us to hold off on future attacks, and we’re holding out,” he added. Trump has distanced himself from Israel’s attack on the world’s largest gasfield (which he claimed on Wednesday that Washington “knew nothing” about), and confirmed today that he told Netanyahu to stop attacking Iran’s energy facilities.

• Netanyahu also claimed that Iran has “no ability to enrich uranium at the moment and no capability of manufacturing ballistic missiles”. He said that the war would take “as long as is necessary”, adding: “We will crush them entirely, all those capabilities.”

• Trump said there are no plans to deploy US ground troops in the regionand claimed that the US operation was “ahead of schedule”, but he did confirm that the Pentagon has asked Congress to approve a further $200bn to fund the war.

• US Central Command said that it has destroyed the Iranian regime’s surface-to-surface missile plant in Karaj. The plant was used to “assemble ballistic missiles that threatened Americans, neighboring countries, and commercial shipping,” Centcom said.

• France will double its humanitarian aid to Lebanon to the value of €17m ($19.7m), foreign minister Jean-Noel Barrot said, as Lebanon grapples with Israel’s latest military assault. Israeli strikes on Beirut and its ground invasion of southern Lebanon have killed over 1,000 people, including 118 children, and wounded more than 2,500 since Tel Aviv’s renewed offensive on 2 March. More than one million – roughly one in five – of the population have been displaced.

• An Iranian missile attack hit Israel’s Oil Refineries in the northern port city of Haifa but did not cause “significant damage“, Israel’s energy ministry said. Energy minister Eli Cohen said power was briefly disrupted, with electricity restored to most of those who were affected, Reuters reported.

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Wikipedia EXTENSIVE piece on the 2026  Iran War……

The 2026 Iran war first began on 28 February 2026, when the United States and Israel launched surprise airstrikes on multiple sites and cities across Iran, killingSupreme Leader Ali Khamenei and numerous other Iranian officials. Iran responded with missile and drone strikes against Israel, US bases, and US-allied countries in the region…..

Much More….

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What Nobody’s Telling Trump

by William Kristol

I doubt anyone on the inside is willing to tell President Trump the truth about how the war is going. But if some courageous truth-teller were to enter the Oval Office this morning and speak, he’d say this: It ain’t going great, sir. In fact, sir, it’s going pretty badly.

And if the president didn’t have this intrepid soul removed from his presence, and would listen for a minute or two, this is what more he would hear:

• The Iranian regime is surviving.

• The Strait of Hormuz remains closed—except to those ships the Iranians want to allow to go through, delivering Iranian oil to their allies.

• Global energy prices continue to rise and stock markets continue to fall. Inflation is ticking up and the Fed looks more likely to raise than cut interest rates in the near future.

• Iran’s military capabilities aren’t as degraded as we thought. In fact, Iran’s missile and drone launches, which had been declining in number over the first two weeks, have increased this week.

• Some of those missiles and drones are hitting their targets: After Israel attacked Iran’s South Pars gas field yesterday in a strike you pretended we didn’t know about ahead of time, Iran retaliated by hitting Qatar’s Ras Laffan terminal, the world’s largest liquefied natural gas facility.

• As the Economist put it yesterday, “Although President Donald Trump says he has ‘destroyed 100% of Iran’s Military Capability’, the 0% that remains is playing havoc with the global economy.”

• We’re facing a decision about deploying thousands of ground troops to try either to secure the Strait of Hormuz or to seize Kharg Island—and neither operation is assured of success.

• The Defense Department says we need to go to Congress for a supplemental appropriation—as much as $200 billion—to pay for the war and replenishing stocks, and it’s not clear the votes are there to approve the funds.

• Meanwhile, our allies abroad aren’t rallying to us.

• And there’s no sign that the American public is rallying to the administration either.

That’s what an honest analyst would tell the president of the United States.

But that’s surely not happening.

Instead of receiving intelligence briefings, President Trump is watching Fox. And what he heard last night was his most influential aide, Stephen Miller, telling Laura Ingraham that “President Trump has calculated through every permutation and every degree of strategy,” and that we are en route to “an overwhelming victory.”….

More…

image….Composite by Hannah Yoest / Getty