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EI—Jon Elmer, contributing editor, covers the third week of the war across the region, including developments in the Strait of Hormuz and Lebanon. This is a segment from The Electronic Intifada’s livestream on day 895 of the Gaza genocide. Ali Abunimah, Nora Barrows-Friedman and Jon Elmer were joined by Iranian scholar Setareh Sadeqi.

MOATS—Joe Kent’s outspoken resignation is not merely a personal act but a symbolic protest against an unjust war. His military background and direct connection to battlefield losses lend credibility and weight to his dissent. Such resignations can catalyze further dissent within the military and intelligence communities, potentially undermining the administration’s war efforts from within. This shows the deep fractures and moral conflicts faced by those serving in the US government and military apparatus.

PHIL. GIRALDI—And finally, for a bit of what just might turn out to be good news! The reports of the misfortunes of the world’s largest warship, the aircraft carrier USS Gerald R Ford, have been circulating for the past couple of weeks, starting with malfunction of the ship’s toilets, requiring repairs and maintenance. According to one report, it may have been due to deliberate clogging of the ship’s plumbing by crew members flushing and otherwise jamming clothing and other “indigestible” items into the pipes. There has also been a large 30-hour fire reported in the ship laundry room which has required returning to Crete for major repairs. The Ford has now left the operational area linked to Iran.

JM—Let’s put it this way— even a marginally effective Israeli strike is not possible without involving US assets —for example, US tanker and ISR support. That automatically would make the US a co-belligerent unless it denied Israel help.

Israel has its own tankers – albeit 60 years old and usable. It also has various workarounds for other deficiencies. And it has its own ISR and EW systems – a mix of resources that it claims enabled it to achieve air supremacy in the 12 Day War— except that that is fiction — most objective analysts believe they never attempted to enter Iranian airspace.

That means the Israelis could mount attacks, rely on the US media to portray those attacks as successful, and hope the US would join in.

But the US cannot enter the conflict without exposing its bases and naval assets and suffering unacceptable, if not catastrophic, casualties.

JULIAN MACFARLANE—[Quote] For the new round of negotiations in Geneva later this week, Putin has replaced Admiral Igor Kostyukov, the military intelligence chief, as head of the Russian negotiating team with Vladimir Medinsky, a lower ranking Kremlin official. Medinsky’s instructions are that the military terms of settlement on the Ukraine battlefield, insisted on by Kostyukov at the Abu Dhabi talks, be subordinated to the terms negotiated by Kirill Dmitriev, Putin’s principal negotiator with the White House.

The change in the Kremlin line is reported in the Russian media as the “Anchorage formula” and the “Dmitriev plan”[quote]