Photo by Jo Kassis via Pexels
Hello and Welcome to this Q1 Round-Up edition of What Just Happened?, a semi-comical digest of the most important news from the UK, US and the World. Look out for us every now and again, and follow us on Facebook and Twitter.
The World
One Man’s “little excursion” is another’s Third Gulf War
The British refusal to let the US use UK military bases for the initial offensive strikes against Iran is an indication of an assessment by the UK that going to war with Iran was not in the best interest of the allies. After the UK and other allies did not join the US and Israel in their initial strikes on Iran, the UK offered to support in a defensive capacity (as did other countries). Trump then complained that it was too little too late and said the US didn’t need any help, before then asking NATO to help secure the Strait of Hormuz; a request that the allies have been reasonably cautious about responding to. NATO has stepped up security in the Mediterranean, Britain has sent HMS Dragon, a destroyer specialized in air-defense, to help protect RAF Akrotiri in Cyprus after a drone hit the runway.
Iran has quite predictably closed the strait of Hormuz, except to its allies, and started attacking other nations in the gulf. It is sanity preserving to be skeptical of claims that “nobody could have predicted this”, since, in fact, people with relevant knowledge and experience wrote publicly about how exactly this would happen. Here’s another article, thanks to our friends at the Wayback Machine, describing Iran’s threats to close the Strait of Hormuz in 2018. There is nothing new about geographic choke-points. In recent years about ¼ of seaborne oil passed through the strait and about ⅕th of the world’s Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG).
Having dropped the pro-democracy banner that came with previous American interventions in the middle east, one finds oneself wondering what this is all about. While announcing the initial strikes and the ostensible decapitation of the regime, Trump theatrically called upon Iranians to take their chance for a revolution, imploring them to “take over your government”. Almost immediately afterwards, the US Secretary of Defense, Pete Hegseth, said this is not a “regime change” war.
Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei was not toppled in January’s protests, nor immediately thereafter, having brutally suppressed a popular uprising by killing upwards of 7,000 Iranian civilians (some estimates range up to ~35,000 deaths). Having been in power since 1989, Khamenei was killed in the opening US/Israeli strikes on February 28th. In the first week of the war, Trump described the fighting as “very complete” while the Secretary of Defense described the war as only just beginning. In the second week of the war, Trump referred to the military action as “a little excursion”.
Tulsi Gabbard, the Director of National Intelligence confirmed that Iran did not pose an “imminent nuclear threat” to the US; nevertheless, Gabbard chose to deviate from written remarks during a congressional hearing, presumably to avoid contradicting her boss, that stated “no efforts” had been made [by Iran] “to try to rebuild their enrichment capability” since the previous US strikes [last summer].
Rather than reinforcing this by reading the above out loud at the hearing, as was expected, Gabbard basically insisted that it wasn’t the intelligence community’s responsibility to determine if an imminent threat exists, only the president can do that. This sort of “politicians” answer is not only an abandonment of objectivity and impartiality but effectively an abdication of responsibility. Joseph Kent resigned from his post as the Director of the National Counterterrorism Center on March 17th on account of the Iran war and it’s worth reading an excerpt from his resignation letter:
“I cannot support sending the next generation off to fight and die in a war that serves no benefit to the American people”
It is difficult to not be at all concerned that Kent was keen to not be associated with the fallout of this war. A shooting in Texas that saw 4 people killed (including the shooter) is being investigated as a possible act of terrorism (initially) suspected to be linked to the war in Iran. This prompted the governor, Greg Abbott, to order the Texas National Guard to protect critical infrastructure. Another incident in New York saw two ISIS supporters, 18 and 19 years old (one of whom was still in high school), arrested for throwing two makeshift bombs (that fortunately didn’t go off) into crowds at an anti-Islam protest in at Gracie Mansion in New York.
The Ukrainians are understandably concerned about a drawn-out war in the Middle East depleting US munitions, particularly Patriot missiles (surface-to-air “interceptor” missiles that help protect against Russian aircraft and missiles). Additionally, higher oil prices benefit Putin in virtue of the Russian economy’s dependence on oil revenues. To make matters even worse for the Ukrainians, Trump has taken the Iran conflict as yet another opportunity to threaten NATO, saying that “it will be very bad for the future of NATO” if allies don’t help secure the Strait of Hormuz.
While the US and Israel enjoy air superiority over Iran, having destroyed the Iranian airforce, decimated the Iranian Navy and hit many thousands of targets inside Iran (in addition to Israeli strikes in Lebanon), Iran is still able to launch missiles and drones at its neighboring countries oil refineries, hotels, airports and other civilian infrastructure. The grim and largely preventable human cost of all of this is in the thousands of lives so far and tens of thousands of injuries. Thousands of drones have been launched at the United Arab Emirates, hundreds of ballistic missiles and about 15 cruise missiles.
As a broad range of targets representing US interests in the middle-east are attacked by drones and missiles, including data centers, the economics of air defense become relevant. The relatively cheap propeller-driven Shahed drones that Iran & Russia have spent recent years developing can be made with commercially available parts (generating a distinctive lawnmower-like hum) and cost $10,000’s to build while Patriot missiles cost almost $4 million. More economical ways of dealing with these drones exist, such as Ukraine’s Sky Fortress; a network of more than 10,000 “passive” microphones (meaning they don’t emit radar frequencies so they’re harder to find and destroy) listen for the distinctive audio signature of the Shahed drones before dispatching mobile anti-aircrafts guns to shoot the drones down (which fly low and relatively slow and often evade detection until relatively near their target).
Another economical way of destroying drones is to shoot them with a laser. The British Royal Navy will be deploying their “DragonFire” Laser Directed Energy Weapon (LDEW) on ships as of 2027 after successful tests. The weapon requires 50kW of power and leverages a technology inspired by Formula 1 racing called a Flywheel Energy Storage System (FESS) to help the system manage its energy requirements without impacting the ship it’s attached to (or setting on fire like Lithium Ion batteries might).
In mid March the most powerful Iranian-backed militia in Iraq, Kataib Hezbollah, attacked the United States military base “Victory” in Baghdad. This video of a First-Person View (FPV) drone, i.e. someone is piloting the drone through a remote visual display, shows the pilot appearing to take their time exploring the base, looking for their target. It is indeed unsettling that the drone apparently evaded detection or interception, and had the liberty to choose its target in the base.
Foreign Affairs magazine has run an exceptionally high quality article, authored by Nate Swanson (former State Department Iran Strategy lead), entitled “How America’s War on Iran Backfired (subtitled: Tehran will now set the terms for peace)”. It also appears that Iran was believed to be replenishing their ballistic missile stockpile from an estimated 1,500 after exchanges of fire in 2024 and 2025; previous stockpiles around 2022 were estimated at ~3,000.
Betting on a Hell of a Time
“We don’t list markets directly tied to death” is a direct quote from the CEO of Kalshi, a prediction market that had just done exactly that and listed a market tied to the death of Khamenei, Iran’s late Supreme Leader. We’ve previously written about prediction markets here at What Just Happened? (see: “Don’t Bet on It”) and they’ve been in the news again this year both in relation to Iran and Venezuela. An anonymous individual made almost half a million dollars betting on the fall of Maduro just hours before the official announcement. Similar money was made on positions relating to the recent strikes on Iran; congress is starting to take an interest in policing insider trading on platforms like Polymarket, another popular prediction market.
Venezuela
At the beginning of 2026 the US launched an incursion into Venezuela to kidnap Nicolás Maduro. Here’s a January 3rd article from Defense One that’s now only available via the Wayback Machine, presumably because the authors decided it was a bit soon to announce the “launch of a regime change” especially since Maduro’s Vice President Delcy Rodríguez is now the acting president while Maduro remains the de jure president. The Venezuelan people want democracy, the last election was stolen and María Corina Machado, the opposition leader, has not been appointed to a leadership position but rather the apparatus of power that the previous dictator constructed has largely persisted. Machado, who has been promising to return to Venezuela “in coming weeks” for some weeks now, might well be arrested upon her return as the regime talks ominously of her having things to answer for should she return.
The Swiss New Year Bar Fire
Jacques and Jessica Moretti, the French couple that own Le Constellation, a youth oriented bar in Crans-Montana (a Swiss ski town) have both been under a criminal investigation for negligent homicide (among other charges) and were held in custody after a tragic New Year’s Eve fire killed 40 people, mostly teenagers and badly injured 100 more. Jacques was released from jail in late January after his wife Jessica, with an order to report daily to a police station, following a 200,000 Swiss Franc (~$250,000) bail being paid. A previous order had required he remain in custody for 90 days, since the authorities had determined him to be a flight risk. Early reports that one of the service doors was locked at the time of the incident showed the couple to be in a very deeply unenviable position indeed.
It also became apparent that the bar hadn’t been inspected in 5 years by local authorities and that sound proof cladding on the roof of the basement may not have been up to code. It is believed that the fire started in the basement when sparklers set the wooden structure ablaze. Despite initial attempts from local officials to shirk responsibility, the Swiss Bar fire probe has widened to include five more local officials who are now under criminal investigation. Apparently the mayor of Crans-Montana, Nicolas Feraud, is among those under suspicion. The office of Italy’s Prime minister had called the release of the Morettis an affront to the victims. Let’s see if calling for people to be locked up becomes less fashionable as elected officials start to, quite appropriately, have their conduct investigated.
Italy says “No Brown Shirts at our Winter Olympics!”
The Italians have been up in arms upon reports of ICE being involved in security for the US Olympic delegation in Milan-Cortana this February. In January, hundreds of protestors gathered in Milan, ahead of the Winter Olympics to say “No ICE in Milano” following reports of US security at the games including an ICE unit; since ICE is within the Department of Homeland Security and has historically supported international events like the Olympics, this underlines how damaging recent events have been to America’s international image.
The US
The Last Refuge of the Incompetent
In the Foundation series, Isaac Asimov quipped that “violence is the last refuge of the incompetent. Following two shocking killings of civilians on the streets of Minneapolis, before the dust had settled, the mouthpieces of the Federal Government started to politically spin events. By this we mean to say they blatantly lied in an attempt to construct an alternative view of reality.
Stephen Miller slandered a Veteran’s Association ICU nurse as a would be mass murderer and the Trump administration suggested that he ought not have been carrying his legal firearm. This final point drew criticism from the National Rifle Association, a gun lobbying and advocacy group. In our efforts to describe these deeply troubling events we might be able to do no better than this excerpt from the Economist:
“They rushed to brand Mr Pretti, and Renee Good, a woman shot earlier, as terrorists. They have strained to ensure that investigations into those killings are safely under their own control. Impunity is a formula for more violence.”
Source: The Economist
While protestors have indeed shown restraint, the authorities have done less than the same. The Mayor of Portland has demanded that ICE leave the downtown area and a corporate apartment block is suing the government for second-hand teargassing of its residents repeatedly in recent months (i.e. setting off large quantities of tear gas in downtown Portland, where of course many people live, causing significant collateral harm). A statement from Keith Wilson the Mayor of Portland, Oregon pulled no punches:
“Today [January 31st], federal forces deployed heavy waves of chemical munitions, impacting a peaceful daytime protest where the vast majority of those present violated no laws, made no threat, and posed no danger to federal forces.
To those who continue to work for ICE: Resign. To those who control this facility: Leave. Through your use of violence and the trampling of the Constitution, you have lost all legitimacy and replaced it with shame. To those who continue to make these sickening decisions, go home, look in a mirror, and ask yourselves why you have gassed children. Ask yourselves why you continue to work for an agency responsible for murders on American streets. No one is forcing you to lie to yourself, even as your bosses continue to lie to the American people.
Our nation will never accept a federal presence where agents wield deadly force against the very people they are sworn to serve. I share the impatience with those who demand we use every legal tool at our disposal to push back against this inexcusable, unconscionable, and unacceptable violence against our community. I share the need to act. Actions that can withstand the scrutiny of the justice system take time – and we cannot afford to lose this fight.”
Spurious claims of electoral fraud, politicisation of key governmental functions (like the FBI, for instance), and myriad other forms of fuckery have begun to stoke fears that El Presidente’s personal militia might end up intimidating and harassing people on their way to the polls in coming months. Vox published an article entitled: “Trump has a plan to steal the midterms. It will probably fail”. The US will go to the polls in November, as of February 2026 YouGov reckon the Democrats have the edge.
Source: YouGov
The UK
You Said the Quiet Part Loud and the Loud Part Quiet
Everyone expected the Epstein files to bring down a government, it looks like we were just wrong about which one (it’s the UK Government). As the nth tranche of the much-talked about Epstein files have been released by the US Department of Justice (DOJ), and made publicly searchable, the US government (deservedly) caught flak for failing to properly protect and obscure the identities of hundreds of victims. As if this wasn’t bad enough it also appears that lots of other, potentially rather incriminating, evidence has yet to be made public: Hilary Clinton alleges a cover up is afoot!
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