It's been an awful weekend in geopolitics with the US and Israel attacking Iran by intense air strikes, killing the Supreme leader and provoking the regime into a defence strategy that appears to involve a regional destablilisation. Unlike the 12 day War back in June 2025 where the conflict was more or less contained to Iran and Israel, this weekend Iran has retaliated more significantly and struck military and civilian targets with ballistic missiles in nearly every country in the Middle East, bombed international airports, shipping ports and bombed tankers in the Straits of Hormuz (where 30% of the world's oil is transported through). It's difficult to the imagine that this conflict will be over in 12 days. The human cost is already mounting with hundreds of citizens killed and God only knows what will happen in the coming few days and the impact it will have on geopolitics. Vulture investors are eager for the stock markets to open tomorrow morning to bet on the resulting market volatility. It's chaos.
My Birding Whatsapp groups have also been in chaos today with birders in Oman being encouraged to flee the south (after Salalah port was bombed) and the British Embassy have recommended that all Brits return from Oman. Meanwhile Kuwaiti birders have been responding to alarms and sirens all day while the Steppe Eagle migration has started overhead of the missiles! Our birdguide from Thailand, Deng, was at Bangkok airport ready for a 3 week trip to Ecaudor (he was so excited about it) but its all been cancelled because he had a connecting flight in the Middle East and my travel partner from Thailand, Sean Clancy is stuck in India with all flights cancelled back to the UK.
It's difficult to say where any of this will go in the shorter term and my personal thoughts are with all the citizens (and birders!) that are caught up in these war games. Was planning on doing some work on our self sufficiency efforts at the Lodge this week so seems good timing as it's a therapeutic thing to do, to be building personal resilience when the planet starts becoming more unstable. Was also planning on doing more on Thee Bryans which also seems timely. It all helps with coping. Just a few weeks earlier and I would have been stuck in Thailand away from the family and three months earlier and I would have been evacuated from Oman. The difference of a few weeks in the history of a Regime which has been under pressure from the US and Israel for 40 years is a near miss! I've been spending quite a bit of time in the Middle East over the last couple of years with no idea that Iran could suddenly strike every single Middle East country. Shocking be so unaware of the risks.
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