Kuhestak Buries Its Dead as the War Settles Into Economic Siege
Mass funerals were held in the Iranian town where Tuesday’s strike hit a wedding; witnesses say several houses were struck, and internet shutdowns are hampering documentation. “We are not carrying coffins on our shoulders,” a local barber said. “We are carrying the dark future that awaits us all in the south.” No new strikes were reported on Friday — but American diesel hit an all-time record $5.85 a gallon, the expired June memorandum has given way to what analysts call a sweeping economic blockade, and Mr Trump’s war approval sits at 31%.
A day without missiles is not de-escalation; it is the war revealing its resting state — a siege economy enforced at sea and priced at every fuel pump from Bandar Abbas to Washington state, where diesel at $6.81 a gallon is doing to American haulage costs what sanctions were meant to do to Iran’s. The analysts’ consensus captured by the BBC — stasis, with Tehran’s “thumb on the jugular of the global economy” — describes a conflict neither side can win quickly and neither can afford to leave, while the barber’s coffins line shows what the south of Iran understands about who pays meanwhile. The approval numbers — 31% for the war, a president at 33% — are the variable to watch: wars of attrition are lost first in polling. Watch the weekend’s twin diplomacy — envoys in Moscow, and whether anyone answers Mr Pezeshkian’s reciprocity offer.