Sunday 29th March 2026

Welcome to The 10! This week: strategic blunder, weapons plunder, torn asunder

Mar 29, 2026

*Dark days: will it get worse before it gets better?*

10 MIDDLE EAST / Playing it strait 🤯

Political strategist Lee Atwater’s dictum that “perception is reality” was tested to breaking point as the world and the leader of its free section realised that reality can’t do without oil. “This war is a politically disastrous mistake… there will be no going back in transatlantic relations to before January 20th 2025,” German prez Frank-Walter Steinmeier said. “If you like this war, enjoy the first part… because everything after this will be harder,” US Army general Stanley McChrystal said. Not to be outdone, ECB prez Christine Lagarde warned that rising energy prices would cause a “real shock… probably beyond what we can imagine at the moment”. Meanwhile, the US prez blustered on as the rest of the US government dealt with the long-predicted result of a closed waterway that controls 20% of the global supply of oil and gas; bad actors from the Strait of Malacca to the Panama Canal considered their options for mayhem; and Iranian authorities marvelled at how they’d been gifted the upper hand by a man who prides himself on, among other things, deal-making. Diplomats pointed out that any future talks will be harder than before the war, and entry-level chess-teachers cried at the woeful incompetence. But because the only person Trump ever really negotiates with is himself, he never noticed.

09 RUSSIA / Kit for tat 🪖

Moscow added drones to the aid packages it’s been sending to Tehran since the start of the war, say Western spooks. They reckon the Kremlin is sending rejigged versions of Iran’s own Shahed models (which they used in Ukraine) but stopping short at the S-400 air defence system, for fear of inciting US wrath. “The Russians dramatically improved the Shaheds, including modifications to the engines, navigation and anti-jamming capabilities,” Sciences Po prof Nicole Grajewski said. “So these systems are already more advanced than the ones Iran was producing domestically.” In a sign of how intertwined the Iran war is with the one in Ukraine, Kyiv is sending Gulf countries the anti-drone tech it developed to repel Russian attacks on its own soil.

08 CASPIAN SEA / Shipping pain ⚓

Intertwined part 8,986: the world’s largest inland body of water became yet another flashpoint in the ever-spreading Iran war, with Russian spokesman Dmitry Peskov warning Israel to stop striking targets there. His reprimand came after last week’s offensive, when Jerusalem wiped out missile boats, a corvette, a shipyard ‌and a command centre: “We have been able to take out their navy ⁠capabilities in the Caspian Sea,” the Israeli Air Force’s Lieutenant Colonel Nadav Shoshani said. Iran and Russia signed a strategic partnership treaty last year, and use the waterway to transport weapons to and fro.

07 CHINA / Switching power 🔋

As governments become increasingly aware of energy security, some are worried that Beijing’s majority stake in the production of renewables could pose a cleaner, greener threat. China boasts as many wind farms and solar panels as the rest of the world put together, and supplies a lot of this digital-first, remotely-controlled infrastructure to other countries too. “If the equipment has to link back to a central apparatus controlled by a Chinese company in order to work,” the National Cyber Security Centre’s ex-boss Ciaran Martin warns, “the risk probably can’t be mitigated.”

06 IRAN / School raze 🎒

After the Trump admin ummed and ahhed over who bombed the girls’ school in Minab that killed over 100 kids, geolocated footage showed a US Tomahawk missile hitting the compound of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps it was part of. The question now is whether it constitutes a war crime: as the lawyer David Allen Green pointed out, “there is still a requirement under international law for an attacker to do what they can to make sure they know what they are attacking”.

05 SLOVENIA / Patriot games 📣

PM Robert Golob’s centre-left Freedom Movement took it by a whisker in parliamentary elections, with Janez Janša’s right-wing SDS a strong second. Amid populist posturing from both sides – and even a cameo by hardcore Israeli spy outfit Black Cube – the triumph of progressive politics over flag-waving fuckery depicted by the mainstream media didn’t quite match the reality on the ground.

04 SUDAN / Human blights 💔

As the flames of one war sucked the airwaves out of another, the army bombed a teaching hospital in Darfur, a region controlled by the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces, killing at least 64. “Parties to the conflict in Sudan continue to use increasingly powerful drones to deploy explosive weapons with wide-area impacts in populated areas,” UN human rights chief Volker Türk said.

03 US / Dork radio 📻

Thanks to Prez Trump’s open-door policy to policy, ICE agents may replace immigration officers at understaffed airports. The proposal came about after Linda from Arizona suggested it on The Clay Travis & Buck Sexton Show.

02 UK / Channel hopping 📺

Two great British institutions acknowledged the 21st century: the BBC appointed a tech bro as its new boss, while the Church of England elected a... wait for it… woman.

01 INTERWEBZ / All pork 🐷

A Vietnamese potbelly became the most popular pig on Insta, with 1.1m followers.

Make-it-into-a-tea-towel of the week: moving targets 👣

Where the world’s displaced are going: