Two ships owned by an Iranian company that the United States has accused of supplying material to Tehran’s ballistic missile program departed a Chinese chemical-storage port this week laden with cargo and headed for Iran, according to a Washington Post analysis of ship-tracking data, satellite imagery and Treasury Department records.
The vessels are part of the Islamic Republic of Iran Shipping Lines (IRISL), a state-owned company under U.S., British and European Union sanctions that has been described by the U.S. State Department as the “preferred shipping line for Iranian proliferators and procurement agents.”
The Shabdis and the Barzin — which can carry up to 6,500 and 14,500 20-foot-long containers, respectively — had docked at the Gaolan port in Zhuhai, a city on China’s southeastern coast. Experts told The Post that Gaolan is a loading port for chemicals including sodium perchlorate, a key precursor for solid rocket fuel that Iran desperately needs for its missile program.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/other/ar-AA1XJBrc
Brash and bellicose, he sounded more like a cartoon bully than a sombre statesman. “Death and destruction from the sky all day long,” Pete Hegseth, wearing a red, white and and blue tie and pocket square, bragged to reporters at the Pentagon near Washington. “This was never meant to be a fair fight, and it is not a fair fight. We are punching them while they’re down, which is exactly how it should be.”
Hegseth, 45, a former Fox News TV host who now commands the world’s most powerful military, has this week become the face of Donald Trump’s war in Iran. That has set off alarm bells for critics who warn that the Secretary of Defense – pointedly rebranded “Secretary of War” – has rapidly transformed the Pentagon into the staging ground for an ideological and religious crusade.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/mar/08/pete-hegseth-pentagon-trump-iran
https://twitter.com/search?q=Tehran%20residents%20warned%20of%20acid%20rain&src=typed_query
Tehran was engulfed in flames once again overnight after the latest round of US-Israeli strikes, with the Iranian Red Crescent warning residents of “dangerous” and “highly acidic” rain as a result.
The US and Israel launched strikes that struck refineries and oil storage sites in the Iranian capital on Saturday evening, releasing “significant quantities of toxic hydrocarbon compounds, sulphur and nitrogen oxides”.