View on web

ZEITGEIST

April 15, 2026

The U.S. blockade of Iranian ports enters its third day after no ships transited to or from Iranian ports on Tuesday, but the more unsettling development is what's happening inside Iran itself. The war that the U.S. and Israel launched hoping to create the conditions for regime change has instead produced a regime that is harder-line than its predecessor. The new supreme leader, 56-year-old Mojtaba Khamenei — chosen by clerics after surviving the airstrike that killed his father — hasn't appeared in public since his appointment, fueling speculation he was badly injured. But the men governing in his absence are defiant. Iran's new national security chief, Mohammad Bagher Zolghadr, is a former Revolutionary Guard commander who personally participated in assassinating two policemen before the revolution and later helped found the Quds Force. His predecessor, Ali Larijani, studied Kant and built a reputation as a pragmatic negotiator; Zolghadr writes about defeating Israel and taking over its territory. The new IRGC commander, Ahmad Vahidi, is accused of participating in the 1994 Buenos Aires bombing that killed 85 people. "The war changed the regime — and not in a good way," said Danny Citrinowicz, who formerly headed the Iran desk for Israeli military intelligence. "We created a reality that is worse than what Iranians were facing before the war."

Europe, meanwhile, is drawing up two parallel plans that underscore deepening transatlantic strains. The first is a contingency architecture inside NATO — informally called "European NATO" — designed to preserve the alliance's deterrence if the U.S. pulls out or withholds support. The critical shift is Germany: Berlin, which for decades resisted French calls for European defense sovereignty, is reversing course under Chancellor Friedrich Merz after he concluded Trump was prepared to abandon Ukraine and that clear values no longer guide U.S. policy within NATO. Berlin's move unlocked broader agreement among the U.K., France, Poland, the Nordics and Canada. Finland's president, Alexander Stubb, called Trump after the president's latest threat to leave NATO to brief him on Europe's plans. "The basic message to our American friends is that after all these decades it's time for Europe to take more responsibility for its own security and defense," Stubb said. The hardest gap to fill remains nuclear deterrence — France and Germany have opened discussions over whether Paris's arsenal could be extended to cover other European nations.

The second track is a postwar plan to reopen the Strait of Hormuz that could exclude the Americans. French President Emmanuel Macron said the international mission would exclude "belligerent" parties — meaning the U.S., Israel and Iran. On Friday, Macron and U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer will convene a Paris meeting with several dozen countries, most joining by videoconference, to discuss policing the strait once hostilities end. The U.S. won't attend. Germany, which has faced high political and legal hurdles to overseas military ventures since World War II, could spell out its commitment as early as Thursday. Demining is key: Europe has upward of 150 mine-clearing vessels, while the U.S. has largely decommissioned its minesweeping fleet. But the mission would come only after a cease-fire, and would need Iranian approval — conditions that could be a long way off.

The chaos in the physical oil market underscores why. As of Monday, Dated Brent, reflecting actual physical delivery, had risen to $132.74 a barrel — while Brent futures for the nearest delivery settled at $99.36. The gap is historic, according to Gary Ross of Black Gold Investors, who said the market has never seen a disruption of this size. Traders aren't willing to place big bets in futures because the volatility is too extreme; some huge oil-futures trades were suspiciously well timed relative to Trump's social-media posts, with more than $760 million worth of Brent and WTI futures changing hands roughly 15 minutes before one announcement. The White House has warned staff against insider trading.

Trump's clash with Pope Leo XIV, combined with backlash to his Christ-like AI image, has become his most significant breach with religious supporters since returning to office — and it is deepening. On Tuesday he told the Italian newspaper Il Corriere della Sera that Leo "shouldn't talk about war, because he has no idea what's happening" with Iran. What makes Leo such a formidable opponent is structural: unlike his predecessor Francis, who fired off provocative sound bites and sometimes alienated American bishops, Leo has been methodically building broad support within the global church. "Francis was a rock star, but Leo is the conductor of an orchestra," said Francesco Sisci of the Rome-based Appia Institute. Leo enjoys a 34-percentage-point net-positive rating among U.S. registered voters, compared with a 12-point net-negative for Trump. A Fox News survey in March found 52% of Catholics disapprove of Trump's performance. As one Catholic literary journal editor put it: "Leo's position is a lifetime appointment, and Trump is already a lame duck."

At the Federal Reserve, things got stranger. Prosecutors from Jeanine Pirro's office showed up unannounced at the construction site for the Fed's $2.5 billion headquarters renovation on Tuesday, asked for a tour and spoke with construction workers before being told they couldn't access the site without preclearance. The Fed's outside lawyer, Robert Hur, objected in a letter, pointing to a federal judge's ruling last month that the investigation appeared designed to "harass and pressure" Chair Jerome Powell. Separately, the Senate Banking Committee scheduled Kevin Warsh's confirmation hearing for April 21. Warsh, Trump's pick to succeed Powell, disclosed financial holdings worth between $131 million and more than $209 million, including stakes in SpaceX and Polymarket, alongside the assets of his wife, Jane Lauder, whose net worth Forbes estimates at $1.9 billion. Sen. Tim Scott said he expects Pirro's investigation to end within weeks, though he conceded he has no evidence of that. Sen. Thom Tillis still says he will withhold his vote until the probe is resolved, and Powell's term ends May 15.

While the Middle East consumes Washington's attention, Xi Jinping staged a quiet spectacle in Beijing. Last week, he hosted a 14-second handshake with Cheng Li-wun, chairwoman of Taiwan's biggest opposition party, in the Great Hall of the People — not the neutral turf of the 2015 Xi-Ma meeting in Singapore. The "10-point gift package" Beijing dangled felt less like negotiation and more like a landlord offering a reprieve on the rent. Even as the two sat down, Taiwan's defense ministry was tracking 16 Chinese warplanes crossing the Taiwan Strait's median line. The timing was deliberate: a distracted superpower is a slow superpower. With Trump's visit to Beijing on the horizon, Xi appears to be using the optics to suggest, as former Taiwanese legislator Jason Hsu argued, that Taiwan is not a unified democracy resisting coercion but a divided polity with voices willing to talk.

In the commercial space race, Amazon struck a roughly $10.8 billion deal to buy satellite operator Globalstar, giving its Leo satellite venture a boost against SpaceX's dominant Starlink network. Globalstar's key asset is spectrum that could, subject to telecom regulators' approval, let Amazon deploy a direct-to-device satellite fleet beginning in 2028. Amazon also agreed with Apple to power satellite services for iPhones and Apple Watches. The acquisition comes as Blue Origin is gearing up for the next launch of its New Glenn rocket, set to carry a commercial payload for the first time, and both Blue Origin and SpaceX are racing to develop lunar landers for NASA's planned 2028 moon landing.

The AI industry, meanwhile, is confronting a problem that no amount of compute can solve: its tools are getting smarter, but their mistakes are getting harder for humans to catch. A Gemini user in Minneapolis was alarmed when the chatbot cited detailed emails — senders, liquor brands, ice-cream requests — from what appeared to be someone else's Gmail account. Google determined it was a fabrication. A user asked Claude to add keywords to her résumé and it changed her university from City University of Seattle to the University of Washington and dropped mention of her master's degree. Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania call the tendency to accept AI-generated information "cognitive surrender." Separately, experts warn that as models get better overall, users may become less likely to catch occasional fabrications. Fifty-one investor-owned utilities, racing to power the boom behind all of this, are planning a historic $1.4 trillion in capital spending over the next five years — up more than 20% from a year ago — with more than 30 citing data centers as a driver.

In South Hadley, Mass., residents voted decisively against the steep property tax hike that officials warned was needed to prevent deep cuts to schools, police and public works. The $11 million override failed 65% to 34%; the $9 million option went down too. The town administrator said she wasn't surprised: "It was definitely a big ask of voters who are dealing with a lot." What comes next — no school sports, slashed AP classes, reduced police staffing — will test whether South Hadley is, as Chris Morrill of the Government Finance Officers Association put it, "perhaps the canary in the coal mine" for communities facing the end of pandemic-era aid.

A new supreme leader who hasn't been seen in public, a Europe planning for life without American leadership, a pope outlasting a president, a physical oil market unmoored from its own futures — Wednesday's landscape is one where the old frameworks are failing faster than new ones can be built. The question isn't just who holds power, but whether anyone can hold things together.

ZEITGEIST DISPATCH — April 15, 2026

zeitgeist.wsjd.at

Manage your subscription at buttondown.com