Sit with that contradiction for a second, because Malcolm Nance built his whole case on it.
Treasury's blockade map runs through three doors: Turkey, the UAE, Iraq.
Malcolm's arithmetic on the first door is simple.
Ninety-three million Iranians need bread, flour, and everything Europe ships, and it all rolls through Turkish crossings where fortunes get made the moment blockade premiums lift prices 15%.
Iraq's door stays open too, because thousands of Shia pilgrims cross it every single day.
Now the man who spent decades in signals intelligence watching Syrian radar reads the strike itself. Israel cratered a runway and deliberately spared the ancient jets parked beside it.
A warning engineered to be repairable.
His caution for anyone in Israel itching for round two:
"they don't want that smoke"
Turkish pilots are NATO pilots with NATO training, American forces sit at Incirlik, and Ankara commissioned the world's first drone aircraft carrier while everyone was looking elsewhere.
Malcolm's closing thought reframes the whole region.
The Mecca pact has quietly become the Muslim Abraham Accords, states recognizing each other with Israel not in the room.
Syria is reportedly considering joining.
@MalcolmNance
