Iran War Day 35: Two US Planes Lost, Hormuz at 7%
- 🇺🇸 Two US warplanes downed over Iran in 24 hours: one crew member rescued, one still missing as search continues (Al Jazeera / US Defense Official) - 🛢️ Strait of Hormuz vessel traffic collapsed from 150 ships per day to 10-20; US crude hits $111 per barrel, biggest single-day gain in six years; national gas average at $4.
Choke the strait, choke the economy. The war found a way to tax the entire planet at once.
- 🌐 Britain hosts emergency Hormuz summit with 40+ nations plus the IMO; joint statement demands "immediate and unconditional reopening" (UK Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper)
- 🗣️ Trump addresses the nation, says the war is "nearly complete" (White House)
- 🚀 Artemis II crew now closer to the Moon than to Earth, three days into their lunar flyby mission (NASA)
- 🤖 Microsoft announces 1.6 trillion yen ($10 billion) AI infrastructure investment in Japan for 2026-2029, with cybersecurity cooperation clause (Microsoft)
- 🔬 Trump administration terminated or frozen 7,800 research grants including 1,300 at NSF; $700 million in grant funding left unspent at end of FY2025 (Stimson Center)
- 🇮🇷 8 civilians killed, 95 wounded in US-Israeli strike on a bridge in Iran's Alborz province (IRNA).
Quiet.
Week five of a war that was supposed to be over by now. Trump says "nearly complete," and somewhere a translator is struggling with what that means on the other side of the Hormuz blockade. Ships that used to move oil in batches of 150 a day now trickle through at 10, maybe 20, maybe less tomorrow. Oil at $111 is not just a fuel price. It is a war tax paid at every gas station by people who have no idea where Alborz province is.
Forty-plus countries sat in a virtual room hosted by Britain and asked Iran to please reopen the water. Please. The IMO was there. The EU was there. Forty flags and one polite demand. Tehran, for its part, was busy shooting down two American warplanes, one of whose pilots is still missing somewhere over land or sea as you read this. The White House is calling it nearly complete. The second crew member has not been found.
Microsoft picked this week to announce a $10 billion infrastructure deal with Japan. Which is also a story: when the Strait closes and the Gulf destabilizes, capital routes east. Japan gets AI data centers. The Middle East gets air raids. The geography of investment and the geography of violence are not coincidental.
The Trump administration is simultaneously defunding American science at a pace that would alarm any strategist. Seven thousand eight hundred research grants, gone or frozen. The NSF alone is sitting on $700 million it cannot spend. The irony is specific: while Microsoft buys Japan's AI future with American capital, the American government is quietly dismantling the pipeline that produces the engineers who would build that future at home.
Meanwhile, four astronauts are closer to the Moon than to Earth. The Artemis II crew launched three days ago and is now past the halfway point to a lunar flyby. It is the first time humans have aimed at the Moon in over fifty years. Almost no one is paying attention because Brent crude is at $111 and Netanyahu is talking about widening into Lebanon.
History is running two parallel processes and calling it the same week. One goes to the Moon. The other closes the strait and lights a bridge in Alborz province on fire. Eight people died on that bridge. Ninety-five were wounded. The sentence takes four seconds to read. They were in Alborz province, which most people could not find on a map. Which is how these things happen.
The war is nearly complete, the president said. The strait has 10 ships today instead of 150. The research grants are frozen. Two pilots are missing. The Moon is very close.