Malcolm Nance spent decades doing naval intelligence in these exact waters, and what came down over Bahrain this week alarmed him.
By his count, one warhead broke apart into 60 BOMBLETS the size of basketballs, from a weapon class he says Iran had only ever fired at Israel.
A Patriot can pick off the booster and still watch the rest explode below.
His read on the target choice is colder.
Bahrain hosts the Fifth Fleet, and his conclusion is blunt: punish the kingdom until it quits the coalition.
He also dismantled the failed interception theory circulating online, point by point.
Then there is the mystery he flagged from the overnight strikes: of every island on Iran's coast, only tiny Kish lost its radar, its port, and its drinking water in a single night.
Why planners make an island thirsty is a story that reaches back to a famous ruse at Midway.
Knocking out the thing that makes saltwater drinkable, he says, is what you do to leave defenders thirsty and weakened ahead of a raid.
His verdict on where all this is heading came without varnish: this war is, in his words, "on the way to stupid."
@MalcolmNance
