The Trump administration on Tuesday unveiled 36 sanctions targeting Iranian-linked airlines and foreign firms tied to the country’s aviation sector, marking its latest effort to topple Iran through “economic D-Day.” Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent sanctioned 27 Iranian airlines and nine other entities or companies across the world that…
Page A5From§Eachthe early bird edition — 8 September 2026
Treasury sanctions 36 Iranian entities, branding it 'economic D-Day,' the same fight Washington's been having since 2023.
As it ran on the front
Tuesday came in two versions, and I'm here to defend the first one. CENTCOM's version: an underwater drone suffered what Navy Capt. Tim Hawkins called, in a statement, an "operational mishap," more than a day before anyone said a word about it. Not a seizure, not a capture — a mishap, the Navy's own phrase, and I'd stack that against Tehran's version any day: that the Revolutionary Guard seized a U.S. drone in the Strait of Hormuz. "Malfunctioned" is the word every outlet ran with by Tuesday night, and I'll defend that too, even though — hold on, that's not actually the word in the statement. Hawkins never said "malfunctioned." The spokesman said "operational mishap." Somebody else wrote the headline word in. Strike that.
Fine. Doesn't change the bigger picture, which is that we're winning. We've been winning since April 2023, when an Iranian Navy commander went on state television and claimed his forces forced a U.S. submarine to surface in that same Strait for violating Iranian waters — a claim Washington denied then and would deny now, because that's what you do with a claim like that. Three years, one submarine turned one drone, same denial, same Strait. Call that winning if you want. I do.…
…(cont) And Tuesday we hit them where it counts: Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent sanctioned 27 Iranian airlines and nine other entities, the administration's own name for the campaign is Operation Economic Outcast, and the write-up I'm working from calls it the latest "economic D-Day" — an actual invasion, the one with the beaches, as the comparison for freezing some airline accounts. I stand by the comparison. I stand by all of it, the same way I'd stand by an investigation the Pentagon opened four days ago into whether one of its own missiles hit a wedding in Sirik and killed four people, two of them children, which Vance called "extremely skeptical" — no, wait, he was the one who was skeptical, not the missile. The investigation is real. The wedding is real. I don't have a version of that one that sounds like winning, so I'm going back to the drone.
“They're calling frozen airline accounts "economic D-Day" and a seized drone a "malfunction," and both words came out of a war room, not an instrument panel. Same Strait, same denial script since that submarine story in 2023 nobody in Washington ever settled — and four days before this press conference, the Pentagon opened an investigation into one of its own missiles hitting a wedding, four dead, two of them kids. That's the ledger: a landmark brand for the sanctions, silence for the wedding.”
“It's an operational mishap, not a malfunction, not a seizure — read the statement. Twenty-seven airlines, nine other entities, we're calling it economic D-Day, which, fine, if D-Day was a spreadsheet, and it's working, it's absolutely working, we're winning. Wait, did I just call sanctions an invasion? Forget I said that.”
The receipts
The Trump administration on Tuesday announced new sanctions against all of Iran’s airlines and nearly a dozen foreign companies doing business with Iran’s Mahan Air, which had earlier been sanctioned for its ties to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). The sanctions are part of Operation Economic Outcast, a financial pressure…
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U.S. Central Command on Tuesday confirmed an underwater drone malfunctioned while operating near Iran. The confirmation came after Tehran said the country’s Revolutionary Guard seized an unmanned drone in the Strait of Hormuz.
· An Iranian Navy commander claims on state television that the Iranian Navy forced a U.S. submarine to surface as it transited the Strait of Hormuz and that the submarine violated Iranian territorial w from the morgue, 20 Apr 2023
· US investigating if missile hit Iranian wedding ceremony, killing 4 from the morgue, 4 Sep 2026
· Trump Issues New Mass Murder Threat, Warning Iran of 'Biggest Attack of Them All' from the morgue, 1 Sep 2026
· The Israeli military confirms it has targeted nuclear facilities in Iran with the main goal of the operation being to destroy Iran's nuclear program. Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu confirms from the morgue, 13 Jun 2025
This page is a back-issue: the story as it ran, receipts as they were. The current edition is at the front.