BREAKING NEWS: EUROPEANS ARE IN SHOCK today after learning that a cash-for-weapons fund they set up as “priority” for Ukraine is to be diverted to the United States’ for its own use.

BREAKING NEWS: EUROPEANS ARE IN SHOCK today after learning that a cash-for-weapons fund they set up as “priority” for Ukraine is to be diverted to the United States’ for its own use.

• The Pentagon says they need to “restock the US military’s own inventories, rather than to send additional assistance to Ukraine,” the Washington Post reported a few hours ago.
• Military analysts say the real story is that the Iranians have badly damaged the US’s interception abilities. The Pentagon is scrambling to rebuild this function by grabbing equipment delivered or intended for use in South Korea and Ukraine.
• Ukraine leader Volodymyr Zelenskyy is furious. In the first three days of attacking the Iranians, the US used more than 800 Patriot missiles, more than Ukraine has ever received, he said.

CLUTCHING THEIR PURLS

Army bosses notified US Congress on Monday that it planned to divert US$750 million raised from NATO countries for PURL, the paper said.

PURL, which stands for the Prioritised Ukraine Requirements List, is a US-organized scheme that collected cash from other NATO members to make Ukraine the priority recipient of weapons.

Paperwork for the dramatic change of plan specifies certain weapons, such as air defence interceptor missiles ordered through the PURL program, to be instead diverted for US use.

This lends weight to multiple reports that the Iranians have destroyed a significant of the US’s ability to intercept Iranian missiles.

Israel’s “Iron Dome” is also faltering, with significant damage in Tel Aviv and other places.

NO CRITICISM ALLOWED

In Dubai and other parts of the Gulf, it appears that occasions when defence forces fail to intercept a missile, are spun as “successful interceptions with minor damage caused by shrapnel”. In Dubai and Qatar, more than 20 people have been arrested for departing from the official versions of events.

The use of European cash intended for Ukraine use to replenish the US’s own stock has come as a surprise. However, the leaders of NATO, the EU and the UK are not allowed to criticize the United States under some bizarre, unwritten convention.

The result was the strange antics we saw at a press conference yesterday. Reporters raised the issue several times.

But NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte declined to discuss the matter at all. (Have the west and China swapped places?)

WAR ON CHINA TO BE POSTPONED
The Iranians are defending themselves from the illegal US-Israel assault by damaging Gulf launchpads used by the attackers.

All 13 of the US military bases in the Gulf damaged, the New York Times reported yesterday, with Kuwait most badly hit.

Trump’s attack on Iran was intended as a quick operation to kill the country’s government leaders and destroy its military. But it has instead continued for four weeks, with multiple unintended consequences, including a global crisis over fuel stocks.

If it continues, the US’s long-planned war on China will have to be postponed, despite years of preparations and training, analysts say.