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Trent Telenko Profile picture
@TrentTelenko
Mar 23, 2024 • 19 tweets • 6 min read • Read on X
Scrolly
We are seeing a lot of posts and articles on X about Ukraine's OWA drone strategic bombing campaign against Russian refineries .

People, including Jake Sullivan over at the Biden Adm. NSC think this is about AFU cutting off Russian oil.

They're wrong. It's about explosives.
1/
The Ukrainian strikes on Russian refineries are less about POL than reduction of nitrogen,ammonia and methanol feed stocks for Russian explosives and propellants for it's artillery and missile production.

2/
Ukrainian OWA drones are engaged in strategic counter battery fire against the Russian artillery supply chain providing the explosive fillings & propellent for shells, rockets and missiles.

[This also has knock on effects for Russian fertilizer production.]

3/
Image
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Nitrogen, ammonia and methanol are the bell book and candle of chemical feedstocks that Russian refineries supply to it's war machine.

Fixing nitrogen is especially key in making high explosives.

4/ Image
When the US EPA talks about crude oil refining, it mentions nitrogen thusly:

"Undesirable elements such as sulfur, nitrogen, and oxygen are removed by hydrodesulfurization, hydrotreating, chemical sweetening, and acid gas removal."

5/
 epa.gov/sites/default/…
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When you look up Russian Methanol production on Statistica, it reflects Russia's huge petrochemical refinery infrastructure.


6/statista.com/statistics/126…
The International Energy Agency's "Ammonia Technology Roadmap" says Russia is about 8% of the world Ammonia production capability.


7/iea.org/reports/ammoni…
When you look at modern explosives and artillery shell/rocket propellent on Wikipedia, a lot falls out that shows what Ukraine is up to with it's campaign against Russian refineries.

1. RDX and HMX are made from Formaldehyde that is made from Methanol and ammonia (both of

8/
1. Con't ...which are oil refinery products) via Hexamethylenetetramine.

2. TNT is made from Toluene, which is a refinery by product of gasoline.

3. Nitroglycerine is a made from Nitrogen, is a biodiesel by product, and is used to make #2 TNT.

9/
4. Ammonium perchlorate for rocket fuel comes from ammonia, for which see #1.

So, we have a lot of evidence here that Ukraine's anti-refinery campaign is more about removing oil refinery made chemical feedstocks for Russia's artillery supply chain than cutting off oil money

10/
...or fuel to the Russian Army. Yet, before I posted this, no one seems to have noticed any of that.

And everyone, especially the Jake Sullivan lead Biden Adm. National Security Council is screaming oil.

What's going on?

11/ft.com/content/98f15b…
Two things are happening here.

First, Illia Ponomarenko (@IAPonomarenko) is exactly right as to how Russian Reflexive Control Information Warfare has captured Jake Sullivan's crowd at the Biden Administration National Security Council.

12/
The second thing is US intelligence on Russia's artillery logistics and associated economic supply chain has sucked rocks for more than 80 years.

The CIA based all of it's Soviet artillery logistics projections on pilfered Warsaw Pact documents...

13/
...and mirror imaging pallets & forklifts on the Soviets without ever giving any collection priority to the problem or actually looking at chemical feedstocks.

The 80 year feedstock & forklift miss points to the intelligence validation step as a threat to career promotion

14/
...inside intelligence agencies.

It won't let senior intelligence analysts feed to senior politicians what they want to hear.

Their poor 1980's Iran-Iraq War intelligence product reflected this careertist patron-client defect.

15/
When the Lockheed Martin WARSIM software development team went to US Army TMs/FMs, the OPFOR World Equipment Guide and AMSAA for Russian log-data, it was INA (Item not Available) because "mirror imaging was good enough."


16/
What we are seeing with the combination of 80(+) years of intelligence dysfunction & the JD degree spin doctor run NSC is the ultimate American Government expression of the Dunning - Kruger Effect.


17/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E…
We have people running the US Russo-Ukrainian War security policy at the NSC that have absolute confidence in bad intelligence product, while knowing absolutely nothing.

And who are too lazy to do a flipping internet search on Russian refineries chemical feedstocks.

18/18 End
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More from @TrentTelenko

Trent Telenko Profile picture
Apr 1
This fact:

"Oil revenue collapsed to roughly 5% of the national budget, down from 32% the prior year. Taxes increased over 60%. Food prices climbed at least 50%. ATMs across major cities are running out of cash."

Underlines a major point of mine. 🧵

1/
Since Clausewitz, the West recognized "war as an extension of politics."

The corollary of that is "politics is an extension of money."

Iran doesn't have any money, thanks to hyper-inflation and now an 84% reduction in oil revenue.

2/ Image
The failed January 2026 Iranian uprising kicked off because hyperinflation caused massive food insecurity that required the mass murder of 30,000 (+) Iranian protestors to suppress.

The 12-day war and the current one have made Iranian hyper-inflation far worse.

3/
Read 6 tweets
Trent Telenko Profile picture
Mar 31
Not for US aircraft. ⬇⬇️

Hardened aircraft shelters are against the secular budget religion of US flying service flag ranks.

Not that other Western air forces are any better.

1/
The Chief of Air Staff RAAF 12 months ago gave a lecture trashing HAS as a bad idea and how "dispersal is better."

Dispersal didn't help USAF E-3G's in Saudi Arabia because they had nowhere to disperse too.

Places like Italy are politically off limits.
2/ Image
The RAAF CoS appeared to believe that every HAS was like the cheapest Iraqi HAS that we could crack with a single BLU-109/B, not the serious HAS needing multiple BLU-109/B down the same hole.

All of China's HAS built since 1991 are of the 2nd variety or are 'super-hardened' deep tunnels.

3/3Image
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Read 4 tweets
Trent Telenko Profile picture
Mar 29
War is a question of interests, not legality. Iran with, it's support of the October 7th attack, kicked off an existential war with Israel for the latter to prevent Iran from getting the A-bomb.

Israel won't survive as a nation after three Hiroshima class nukes...

Iran War🧵
1/
- riding ballistic warheads in a saturation missile attack - slam into its major cities.

The Trump Administration agreed with Israel on Iranian nukes both in the 12-day war and with the current war.

2/
The Iranian use of a space launcher as an ICBM against Diego Garcia made the current Iran war an existential one for the USA, given the EMP threat Iran represents to the unhardened American power grid.

Imagine the population of the American west - especially Las Vegas! -
3/
Read 9 tweets
Trent Telenko Profile picture
Mar 27
How the mighty RAND has fallen.

Anyone claiming Iran will survive long term without explaining how Iran recovers from currency hyperinflation IN THE MIDDLE OF A WAR marks themselves as incompetent yo-yo's.

1/3
bylinesupplement.com/p/why-the-iran…
Hand waving, "They will use ForEx from oil and barter instead of the rial" is ignoring what happened during January 2026.

I dare anyone to do a word search at that link for the text strings "hyperinflation," "Rial" or "foreign exchange."

None are present.

2/
The Iran questions at hand are as follows:
1. Will the Regime fall via a controlled air campaign driven collapse, or
2. After a protracted Syria style civil war with 6 or 7 figure #'s murdered by IRGC thugs, &
3. Will Iran destroy the Gulf's power & H2O supply while dying?

3/3
Read 4 tweets
Trent Telenko Profile picture
Mar 26
The Mullah Regime of Iran is in very deep trouble. Any critical thinker can see that.

What I find remarkable is how many people who should know better are so blinded by their hostility to Netanyahu and Trump that they ignore the military context and the domestic context inside Iran.

1/Image
The outcome of this war was decided before it began. The January 2026 uprisings occurred because the Iranian currency had collapsed and the economy was collapsing.

This was due to a massive increase in American economic warfare starting right at the beginning of the second Trump administration. Inflation was over 100% a year in January 2026.
2/
The war has made this much worse. Hyper-inflation has now set in and that has only one ending. IMO Iran’s economy and mullah regime will totally collapse in 4-5 months, even if the war ends immediately.

Even if oil exports last until then, hyperinflation means the oil industry workers will go out on strike and the regime protection forces must seek other jobs to feed their families. The latter has already started to happen.
3/Image
Read 15 tweets
Trent Telenko Profile picture
Mar 21
Nothing says hyperinflation like a ten million currency unit banknote.

The US and Western nations need to be three weeks into planning for relief and stability operations to prevent mass starvation in Iran after the Mullah Regime goes down.

After the Mullah's🧵
1/
The horrid impending humanitarian disaster reality for Iran is the current regime is a dead man walking because of hyperinflation.

Iran lacks the administrative ability to replace the current hyperinflated currency in the traditional manner...

2/
...of a three day closing of the banks and handing out new note for old.

In addition, the close down of the internet for security reasons combined with the striking of Iranian bank data centers means there are no operable credit or debit cards.

3/
Read 12 tweets

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