By Gold & Geopolitics - March 2, 2026

Yesterday I wrote that Trump needed a knockout or technical knockout in roughly two weeks. It’s been three days. He’s already moved the goalposts from four days to “four-to-five weeks, but we have capability to go far longer”. Then, when pressed on timeline: “Whatever it takes”. (Draghi didn’t copyright it. Big mistake.)

“We will easily prevail”, he added. Four American soldiers disagree. They’re dead.

CENTCOM confirmed the fourth fatality this morning – a soldier who’d been seriously wounded during Iran’s initial strikes and succumbed overnight. The wounded count has tripled from 5 to 18. And those are just the numbers they’re releasing on day three of what was supposed to be a surgical operation.

Let’s talk about the story of the day: three F-15s shot down. CENTCOM says they were “mistakenly shot down by Kuwaiti air defenses” at 04:03 UTC. Friendly fire. An accident. These things happen in the fog of war.

Three of them. Simultaneously.

Kuwait’s own military statement said aircraft “fell” over its territory. Fell. Not “were shot down by our air defenses in an accident we deeply regret”. Fell. Like they tripped. Kuwait didn’t claim responsibility for shooting them. Kuwait said they crashed.

CENTCOM’s statement included a curious detail: the jets were downed “during active combat that included attacks from Iranian aircraft, ballistic missiles, and drones”. Iranian aircraft. That’s a phrase that deserves more scrutiny than it’s getting. What Iranian aircraft? The IRGC doesn’t have stealth fighters roaming Kuwaiti airspace. Iran’s air force consists largely of F-14 Tomcats from the 70s and some MiG-29s. If those were operational and engaging US jets over Kuwait, that’s a massive escalation nobody’s discussing. And if they weren’t, then what hit those F-15s?

Video footage that circulated before the official narrative solidified showed something hitting an F-15 from behind. A heat-seeker, by the looks of it. Small warhead, maybe 15-20 kg. Effective though. One theory that’s making the rounds is that Iran used a S-300 system at a range of roughly 240 km. The timeline doesn’t help CENTCOM’s version either. The E-3G AWACS took off from Prince Sultan Air Base at 03:20, heading toward Kuwait, arriving around 04:40 – after the jets were already down. You send up your airborne early warning platform after losing three fighters?

All six aircrew ejected and were recovered alive. That’s the one piece of genuinely good news. Kuwaiti citizens helped recover at least one pilot. But CENTCOM then did something revealing: every US military aircraft in the region switched their transponders on. Publicly visible on FlightRadar24. That’s the universal sign of “please don’t shoot us, we’re broadcasting our position to everyone, including the enemy, because we’re more afraid of our own side’s air defences than we are of Iran”.

Hezbollah’s back. That ceasefire from November 2024? Well, it lasted about 15 months, which in Middle Eastern terms is . . .

[SNIP]