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Opinion
US and Iran Test Each Other's Red Lines Over Strait of Hormuz
This is a dangerous game.
Jul 08, 2026
For the second time since the US-Iran Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) was signed, Washington and Tehran have slipped back into direct military confrontation. The United States struck “80 targets in Iran with precision munitions” after Iranian forces fired on several ships transiting the Strait of Hormuz without prior coordination with Tehran. The scale of the American strikes reportedly far exceeded the previous U.S.-Iran exchange, suggesting that Washington sought not merely to retaliate but to reestablish deterrence. The United States also reimposed sanctions on Iranian oil sales, reversing one of the central concessions of the MOU. The IRGC, in turn, claimed to have attacked 85 US military sites across the region, including the Fifth Fleet headquarters in Bahrain and Ali Al-Salem Air Base in Kuwait, and said eight were destroyed.
At the heart of the dispute are two competing interpretations of the MOU. Tehran's reading is that while the Strait of Hormuz is to remain open, all commercial traffic during the 60-day interim period must be coordinated with Iran as the parties negotiate a permanent maritime arrangement. Washington, by contrast, interprets an "open" Strait to mean that vessels may transit either the Iranian or Omani shipping lanes without coordinating with Iran.
For Tehran, this is not a technical disagreement but a strategic one. Iranian officials fear the United States is using the MOU to erode Iran's control over the Strait by rejecting any requirement for coordination and, in effect, establishing an alternative corridor that could remain open even if war resumes. Such an arrangement would deprive Iran of what many of its strategists regard as its single most important source of leverage in a future conflict: the credible ability to disrupt maritime traffic through Hormuz. From Tehran's perspective, commercial shipping can resume without surrendering that leverage—but only if all vessel movements continue to be coordinated with Iran, thereby reinforcing its nominal authority over the waterway.
Washington counters that the text of the MOU does not explicitly require ships to obtain Iranian authorization before transiting the Strait. Instead, it assigns Iran responsibility for ensuring the safe passage of commercial vessels, a distinction the United States argues falls short of granting Tehran operational control over all maritime traffic. Paragraph 5 of the MOU states:
Upon the signing of this MoU, the Islamic Republic of Iran will make arrangements using its best efforts for the safe passage of commercial vessels, with no charge for 60 days only, from the Persian Gulf to the Sea of Oman, and vice versa. The traffic of commercial vessels will immediately start, and considering the need for removing the technical and military obstacles, and de-mining by the Islamic Republic of Iran, will be instated within 30 days.
Following the previous round of fighting, the two sides explored a compromise under which commercial vessels would coordinate their transit with both Iran and a designated Gulf Cooperation Council state. Under such an arrangement, ships would notify Tehran while also reporting to a GCC maritime authority, balancing Iran's demand for oversight with Washington's desire to avoid granting Tehran exclusive control. The talks, however, appear never to have been finalized before they were suspended for the funeral of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
During that pause, several commercial vessels—with their AIS transponders switched off—attempted to transit the southern shipping corridor without notifying Tehran. Iran viewed these voyages as a direct challenge to its interpretation of the MOU and responded with force.
Both sides are clearly testing each other's red lines. If the dispute were solely about ensuring the safe passage of commercial shipping, vessels could simply transit through the Iranian shipping lane. Tehran has not prevented ships from using the northern corridor. Instead, the insistence on using the southern corridor without notifying Iran appears designed to challenge Tehran's claim that it exercises authority over the Strait—a claim the United States and most Gulf states have long rejected. Beyond questions of transit tolls or administrative fees, no country in the region is eager to legitimize Iranian control over one of the world's most strategically important waterways. The current confrontation is therefore less about navigation than about sovereignty and strategic leverage.
The compromise discussed before the talks were suspended offers a sensible way out. Requiring vessels to notify both Iran and a designated GCC maritime authority would defer the sovereignty dispute without prejudging its outcome, allowing commercial traffic to continue while negotiations over a permanent arrangement proceed. Sacrificing the entire MOU—and the far more consequential regional framework it could ultimately produce—over the question of who nominally manages the Strait for the next few weeks would be a costly and unnecessary mistake.
The question now is whether the dual-notification arrangement can still be revived after the exchange of fire over the past 12 hours, or whether this latest escalation has closed the diplomatic window altogether. The coming hours are likely to provide the answer.
One final observation: by responding with both military force and the reimposition of sanctions on Iranian oil exports, Washington appears intent on establishing escalation dominance—not merely deterring further Iranian action but demonstrating its willingness to raise the costs far more sharply than Tehran. The contrast with the first post-MOU confrontation in the Strait is striking. This time, the US response has been substantially more severe, suggesting that Washington is seeking to redefine the deterrence equation before negotiations can resume.
There is, however, a danger in Washington's decision to rescind the general license permitting the purchase of Iranian oil. The license was intended to serve as one of the MOU's principal incentives for Tehran to remain committed to the agreement. But an incentive is only as valuable as its credibility.
Even before this latest escalation, Iran had struggled to attract new buyers. Many governments and companies were reluctant to enter long-term arrangements because they feared negotiations would collapse and the license would expire without renewal. That uncertainty alone diminished the commercial value of the concession.
From Washington’s perspective, Iran’s alleged violation of the MOU is serious and warrants a response. But if the United States is seen as issuing and withdrawing the license too readily, potential buyers may conclude that access to Iranian oil is too politically volatile to justify the risk. That would weaken one of Washington’s most important sources of leverage. The less valuable the license becomes in the marketplace, the less valuable it becomes at the negotiating table—and the less the United States can demand in return for restoring it.
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4 Years After Dobbs, Abortion Is Still on the Ballot
This November, will the American people show up to the polls to defend reproductive freedom? Or, will our elected officials succumb to pressure from extremists seeking to ban abortion nationwide?
Jul 08, 2026
In today’s post-Roe world, the current landscape of abortion care is not defined by a single sweeping law or dramatic congressional vote. Instead, it is shaped by something far more subtle, sinister, and more consequential for millions of Americans. As we speak, every lever of government is being used to chip away at our reproductive freedom—and anti-abortion extremists are just getting warmed up.
This November, will the American people show up to the polls to defend reproductive freedom? Or, will our elected officials succumb to pressure from extremists seeking to ban abortion nationwide?
This year marks four years since the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision, which overturned Roe v. Wade and eliminated federal protections for abortion care. As the lead plaintiff in Zurawski v. Texas, I have felt the full weight of the deadly Dobbs decision, and what happens when extremism infiltrates our democracy leading to devastating consequences for women and patients nationwide.
In a recent New York Times piece entitled “The Missing Middle in the Abortion Debate,” the author asserts that candidates need to find a “middle ground” and compromise when it comes to abortion laws in states like Texas. But the reality is that there is no “middle ground” when lives are at risk.
Protecting abortion access is still popular with Americans across the political spectrum, and yet, anti-abortion extremists and lawmakers continue to ignore what most Americans want.
As soon as Roe was overturned, states with anti-abortion legislatures quickly instituted trigger bans resulting in several women dying in states like Texas, Georgia, and North Carolina after being denied or delayed abortion care. In the years since we lost federal protections for abortion rights, many more women and patients from across the country have jumped through unimaginable hurdles just to seek care they needed.
Let me be clear, the piece treats abortion like a line on a chart. I know how being denied abortion care can mean the difference between life and death, and I also know that compromising on reproductive rights can cost women their lives.
My husband Josh and I always knew we wanted a family, so after trying for over a year, I found out that I was pregnant with my baby girl, Willow. However, at 18 weeks pregnant, our lives completely changed when we learned that my cervix had prematurely dilated, that amniotic fluid was leaking from my body, and that Willow was not going to survive to birth. Because of the Dobbs decision, which happened two months prior to everything I was experiencing, doctors sent me home because they could not legally treat me. Days later, I was in the ICU with sepsis, fighting for my life. Today, because I was denied the care I desperately needed, I am unable to bear children in the future.
My pregnancy was wanted. My daughter Willow was wanted. In a perfect world, I would be growing my family with my husband and daughter by my side. Instead, I turned my trauma into advocacy and have spent the last four years fighting for women across the country to be able to access safe abortion care.
Right now, anti-abortion extremists are leveraging every opportunity to ban abortion nationwide—no matter the cost. They are orchestrating a layered, coordinated effort to restrict abortion access through our judicial system, state legislatures, and federal agencies. Anti-abortion extremists are taking these measures to achieve several goals at one time: eliminate abortion care without further complicating their chances in the upcoming midterm elections.
And yet, anti-abortion politicians and lawmakers have been relentless in their efforts to chip away at abortion access. From Sen. Josh Hawley’s (R-M. attacks on medication abortion, and Senate Republicans upholding President Donald Trump’s ban on abortion care for veterans or demanding anti-abortion riders in critical funding legislation—these extremists have demonstrated a clear commitment to enacting their anti-abortion agenda.
What’s alarming is that these attacks are not happening in isolation. Republicans are publicly avoiding discussion of abortion ahead of November. However, wherever they are governing, they are actively fighting to take away our freedom to choose.
Though the post-Dobbs landscape was initially framed as “a return to states’ rights,” the reality is that Trump and his administration have taken a number of covert steps to diminish abortion care, while allowing states to lead the charge in an all out assault on abortion rights. Republican-led state legislatures are advancing laws to block the mailing of abortion medication, criminalize its distribution, and even classify these medicines as controlled substances.
Furthermore, several states have taken up lawsuits similar to Louisiana v. FDA to challenge federal approval and distribution rules. In other words, state-level bans are being weaponized to attack all forms of abortion care and eliminate a patient’s ability to receive comprehensive reproductive healthcare.
As we look toward November, now more than ever we must be mindful of who will stand up for reproductive freedom—because lives are on the line. Abortion is on the ballot once again, and we deserve to know who will protect our freedoms without hesitation or compromise.
I recently traveled back to Washington, DC to tell my story alongside more than 150 abortion storytellers to talk about the impact of the Dobbs decision on our lives and in our communities. We met with both Democratic and Republican offices to stress the importance of fighting for reproductive freedom to save lives.
Protecting abortion access is still popular with Americans across the political spectrum, and yet, anti-abortion extremists and lawmakers continue to ignore what most Americans want. According to the latest data by Navigator Research, a majority of Americans continue to believe that abortion should be legal in most cases and that lawmakers who support anti-abortion policies, including banning or restricting contraception and abortion nationally, are deal-breakers.
The debate is no longer just about whether abortion is legal in a given state. It’s about who controls the systems that determine access: courts, agencies, supply chains, and Congress.
Extremists are weaponizing the machinery of democracy to erode our freedoms—not all at once, but piece by piece, at the expense of American lives. Now more than ever, we must use our voices at the ballot box and beyond to fight back.
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What I Saw When I Stopped Pretending
I invite you to sit with me in this feeling of brokenness, and to step outside of the American delusion of war making and "peace through strength"—the normalization of coercion and dominance.
Jul 08, 2026
Some of the most peaceful moments of my life were spent standing on the deck of a US Navy aircraft carrier just before dawn. It feels like looking over the entire ocean, into endless blue water. An aircraft carrier is massive—like a floating city on the sea—and yet you can still feel the gentle rocking from the ocean's waves through the soles of your feet. When you breathe into this moment—the salty air filling your lungs—you're reminded of how incredibly small you are in the grand scheme of things. The realization causes a sort of lightness and fluttering within the chest, an overwhelming sense of gratitude for all that you cannot understand.
Then the day begins. The launch of the first F/A-18 fighter jet tears a sonic hole through the silent morning. Naval airmen run around the deck, bracing themselves and clutching their headsets to evade the thundering sound. The whole ship shakes as it launches jet after jet, white and gray trails marking their courses across the serene blue sky. Fuel and oil cover the hands and faces of mechanics working throughout the day and into the night to make sure the jets keep coming and going, launch after launch. There is not enough ocean breeze to prevent the sweat that stains our coveralls. The mixture of stenches—salt, oil, sweat—sticks to the hair inside your nostrils. It is the same the next day and the next. Preparation for war—for terror—is a never-ending, completely mundane affair. We eat our oatmeal, we don our coveralls, we load the jets, we drop the bombs, we do it all again.
I currently work for the antiwar organization CODEPINK, but long before that, I was an enlisted member of the US Navy. My last job in the Navy was easy compared with others. I was the operations specialist for a squadron of fighter pilots. I worked with the commissioned officers, pilots whom I affectionately called "the frat boys of the Navy." They were young, zealous, mostly white men hyped about their jobs. I mean, they got to fly ultrafast planes and practice dropping bombs all day. Isn't this the American boy's dream? I sat in their lounge every day, making sure everything was documented and accounted for to get them launching and landing their jets with enough fuel, with the right parachutes, and at the right times.
I joined the military for the same reasons many young people do. My parents couldn't afford to send me to college. I was desperate to get out of the house, stuck in a place whose only immediate opportunities were casinos and hospitality work, and burdened with a brain and heart that were very eager to prove something. Along came Polly—or, in my case, a Navy recruiter. Travel? Free college? Free basic housing? A mission bigger than myself?! I thought about it for half a second before I signed up.
When I told the pilots about my studies and my evolving love of the sea, they laughed, saying, "Well, don't pay attention to how much fuel we dump in the ocean."
American war making is in the mundane. I'll say it again and again. Most of us are mere assembly workers in a war-making factory, so disconnected are we in this 21st-century age of war. Most of us are kept far away from the bloody realities of our jobs. At the end of the day, my job was to push paper. I saw a copy machine more than I did a gun. I don't have valiant stories of combating ISIS. I never leapt onto a grenade to save my comrades. And yet, my spirit and conscience would not let me get away with this blissful ignorance, this American-made delusion, for long.
My saving grace—and the start of my awakening—was the fact that I was a loner. I had a unique job; no one else did what I did. I was kept away from my peers and didn't care to belong. On the weekends, when many Naval airmen would go out partying, drinking, and building all that collective trauma and camaraderie together, I'd drive four hours from the coast of Virginia to its forest interior. I was always looking for a good hike, a mountain to climb, a waterfall to swim in. In my solitude, I felt an ancestral sense of connection to the land and stars. I could feel love in the light glow of the sun that somehow still reached me between the dense forest trees. Swimming at the base of a waterfall felt like a gentle cleansing—a return to the womb of the Earth herself. There was an innate sense of safety that would wash over me as I lay under the night sky, waiting for asteroids to streak across the stars and rain down on me.
I fell deeply in love. I started going to school while still on active duty. I decided to study Environmental Science. When I told the pilots about my studies and my evolving love of the sea, they laughed, saying, "Well, don't pay attention to how much fuel we dump in the ocean."
That statement stayed with me. It followed me onto that deck of the aircraft carrier, lingering with me on those quiet mornings when I looked over the sea. What kind of world was I actually building? What kind of destruction could I possibly be contributing to?
They say that if you're lucky, you can see dolphins swimming, leaping in the waves close to the ships. I was never blessed with such a sight. But I began to think about that fuel, clogging their blowholes, poisoning their lungs. I began to think about the places where we dropped boots and bullets and bombs. I thought of the people whom I deemed enemies and yet knew nothing about. Do they not deserve to enjoy the refreshing peace of a waterfall too? Do their lungs know the crisp, clean air of a mountain walk, away from bullets and the exhaust of aircraft engines? Something broke within me then—something irreparable. And I could no longer pretend to belong.
I don't think I am the only person feeling this way. And those who do, I invite you to sit with me in this feeling of brokenness, and to step outside of the American delusion of war making and "peace through strength"—the normalization of coercion and dominance. This is an invitation to see what you see, to let it wash over your conscience and compel you to change course. Yes, it is frightening to grapple with the truth, but to ignore it guarantees our collective death, both in spirit and in the material world.
I have seen nothing that so succinctly explains and connects the US military's active demolition of people with the destruction of the environment until I watched Abby Martin’s 2025 documentary film, Earth's Greatest Enemy. It offers thorough, undeniable evidence that our country’s ongoing military campaigns and occupations are destroying entire communities and ecosystems. To me, this film encapsulates both a sense of grief and of hope: grief over the horror that US militarism has inflicted upon us and the planet, and hope, embodied in the people who continue defending their homelands, waterways, and communities against the seemingly insurmountable force that is the US military. Earth’s Greatest Enemy is available now on major streaming platforms. I invite you to watch the film, to invite friends to watch the film, and then tell me what you saw, tell me what you felt.
In every person, there is a soldier or warrior spirit, long waiting for a direction worth fighting for. This Earth is a place worth protecting, and in its people is a common humanity worth putting your body on the line for.
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Drone Warfare Turns Oil From a Resource Into a Liability
A Ukrainian drone attack on Russia's largest oil refinery highlights the inherent vulnerability of fossil fuel infrastructure, especially when compared with renewable alternatives.
Jul 08, 2026
I visited Omsk once, or at least its airport; we were en route from Moscow to Ulan Ade on the Mongolian border, and the Aeroflot flight landed there to refuel. (It was a memorable journey; this was still the Soviet Union, and on boarding for the full-day flight, the stewardess handed each passenger a baggie with a scrawny chicken drumstick). All of which is to say, I’m equipped to pronounce, with the gravitas proper to a pundit, that Omsk is long ways from anywhere else.
Including the Ukrainian border, which makes it remarkable that Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s drone specialists managed to fly a whole squadron of their craft more than 2,500 kilometers from home and bomb the heck out of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s largest oil refinery. It was the high point of an ongoing campaign designed to highlight what may be Russia’s greatest weakness: that it, like a number of other countries, is heavily dependent on oil.
Just as US President Donald Trump has proposed building American prosperity on the back of “energy dominance" via “liquid gold,” oil was supposed to be Russia’s strength, the source of its greatest riches. (John McCain memorably called it a “gas station with nukes.”) And indeed in the early days of the war, Russia flexed its hydrocarbon muscle, threatening to cut off Europe’s gas supply. Throughout its invasion of its neighbor, Russia has relied on the often-covert export of oil via its fleet of “shadow tankers” to keep revenue flowing. Trump of course made this easier and more profitable for his buddy by temporarily lifting sanctions in the wake of our own ill-advised attack on Iran.
But if our attack on Iran has made other nations demonstrably more nervous about relying on the import of hydrocarbons, Ukraine’s attacks on Russia’s petroleum network should make them nervous about depending on the stuff even if they don’t have to bring it in from afar. It turns out that in the drone age it’s a very risky business, because it relies on colossal pieces of infrastructure that can’t be easily defended.
Once you can run cars and heat pumps and cooktops off the power those panels and turbines generate, then you’re far more protected against attack.
One of those is the supertanker—there was one on fire Tuesday in the Gulf, apparently hit by an Iranian missile because it strayed from the Tehran-approved shipping lane. Ukrainian drones attacked another Monday in the Sea of Azov, crippling the vessel. There’s essentially no defense for these slow-moving giant ships if an adversary with a few drones wants to take one out—they are, after all, a floating pool of flammable liquid.
Another vulnerability is the terminal where you load and unload the crude—Ukraine got one of those Monday too, in occupied Crimea:
The facility serves as a major logistics hub for petroleum products on the occupied peninsula, handling the receipt, storage, and transfer of oil between rail infrastructure, storage tanks, and tankers
And a third—and perhaps most exposed—is the refinery. An oil refinery is one of the most specialized pieces of equipment humans have ever built; anyone who’s ever driven by one on the highway will recognize that the tangle of pipes and tanks that makes each so complicated. It’s an industry truism that no two are alike.
That means that they’re highly vulnerable. If you aim your drone well, maybe it will smash, say, the ELOU-AVT-11 Unit, which at Omsk is what they call the thing that does the initial distillation and desalination of the crude. Without it, the secondary units that produce, say, gasoline and jet fuel have nothing to work with. And this is highly complicated equipment not easy to replace—given Western sanctions, the current guess is six months to a year. And it’s not as if Ukraine has hit just that refinery—in fact, it was one of the last squares on a drone pilot’s bingo card. As Illia Kabachynskyi reports:
It's also worth remembering that Ukraine has already hit all 10 of Russia's largest refineries, some of them more than once. That means it's no longer a single plant waiting for repairs—it's effectively all of them at once, which piles additional pressure on repair crews and on the supply of replacement parts that are hard to source under sanctions.
Russia started this energy war, of course—over the years of the conflict it has targeted heating plants and the like, trying to freeze the fighting spirit out of the Ukrainians during their long winters. It’s been effective at producing cold, but not at winning the war; along with the attacks on schools, hospitals, and other civilian targets it seems to have helped reinforce the Ukrainian will to resist.
Now—with far more attention to avoiding civilian casualties—the Ukrainians are striking back, at defense plants, and especially at refineries. As Zelensky said Tuesday morning:
The very idea of Russia having a strategic rear is gone. For a long time, Russia believed it had territorial advantage no one else possessed, a deep rear, where it could safely keep everything its war depends on, believing no one could reach them. We have reached them.
But of course what’s at stake here is not just the oil that the Russian war machine runs on. In Russia, as in America, almost everything runs on oil. I remember that the one and only time that I sat down with former President Barack Obama, the first thing he told me was that “the price of gasoline is the most salient fact in American politics.” If that’s even close to the case in Russia, Putin better watch out: in occupied Crimea, gas prices are going above $10 a gallon. The government is desperately trying to import gasoline from as far away as India. As Pjotr Sauer reported Tuesday morning, police are having to draw guns to quell disturbances at gas stations where lines can stretch for kilometers, “fuel tourists” are crossing the borders with China and Kazakhstan to fill their tanks, and as a result:
“Mass fatigue with the war is turning into mass irritation,” said Andrei Kolesnikov, a Moscow-based political analyst. Even so, he said the shortages were unlikely to trigger widespread protests in Russia’s tightly controlled political system. “There is certainly shock, but the lack of any real means of influencing the situation—and the risks associated with trying to do so—make protests unlikely.”
This seems likely to get worse. Here’s a social media post from an Omsk resident watching the drone strikes: "Don't waste any time right now. Anyone with a car who's watching me—head to the gas station! The lines are about to get crazy."
And here’s an account of how Russian horse breeders are reporting a surge in sales because a steed is now cheaper to maintain than a car; check out the video of the equestrian cantering past the endless line at the gas station.
Ukraine has stood up to Russia’s attacks on its energy infrastructure mostly by starting to diversify: as Paul Hockenos reported last winter, the country is undergoing a rapid renewables revolution:
According to estimates from the Solar Energy Association of Ukraine, the nation installed at least 1.5 gigawatts of new solar generation in 2025—enough to power roughly 1.1 million homes—and grid operators intend to almost double the country’s renewable energy production over the next four years.
“Ukraine’s energy transition is not a slogan,” says Ievgeniia Kopytsia, a Ukrainian energy analyst at the Institute for Climate Protection, Energy, and Mobility. “Since the full-scale invasion, Ukraine has added over 3 gigawatts of new renewable energy capacity. It’s a security-driven transformation, unfolding under extreme constraints, that prioritizes decentralization, flexibility, and speed of recovery.”
In the most basic terms, a single missile can take out a gas-fired power plant. But as Jeff Oatham of DTEK, Ukraine’s largest energy company and its largest private energy investor, explains:
“You would need around 40 missiles to do the equivalent amount of capacity damage at a wind farm.”
Solar, too, makes an unattractive target. “Attacking decentralized solar power installations is not economically rational,” says Ukrainian energy expert Olena Kondratiuk. “Missiles and drones are expensive, and significantly disrupting such systems would require a large number of strikes, while the overall impact on the energy system would remain limited.” Both solar and wind parks can function even when parts of them are out of operation.
That’s because sun and wind and batteries are not like oil—they are small, interchangeable pieces of infrastructure, easily subbed in. There aren’t choke points like refineries and tankers and terminals; there’s no cascading failure. My roof is covered with solar panels, and I suppose a saboteur could put a ladder against the wall and climb up there with a hammer and do some damage. But it wouldn’t shut down the electric grid across New England; it would be a problem, not a crisis. Which in turn is why no rational saboteur would ever bother.
And once you can run cars and heat pumps and cooktops off the power those panels and turbines generate, then you’re far more protected against attack. If Vladimir Putin had an electrified Russia he would worry far less about Ukrainian drones. Of course, if the world ran on electricity Russia would never have built up the treasury required to act like a bellicose beast.
Look, world leaders should be moving quickly to clean energy because it’s the one scaleable weapon in the war against climate change. But I’ll take any motivation—and I’ll count it as a real bonus if a cleaner world is also one where it’s harder to attack your neighbors because they don’t have vulnerable infrastructure. The peace dividend from sun and wind could be very real.
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