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The tallest player in college basketball history plans to take his long strides from Gainesville, Fla., to Orange County.

Olivier Rioux, who is 7-foot-9 yet seldom played at Florida, has committed to UC Irvine, he announced on Instagram. His move likely was prompted by the near certainty that he wouldn’t crack the Gators’ starting lineup next season, either.

Florida is expected to be ranked No. 1 entering the 2026-27 season after finishing 27-8 and ranked No. 9 in the final AP poll behind three star players. Thomas Haugh and Alex Condon announced they would return and Rueben Chinyelu is expected to withdraw from the NBA draft and also return.

Rioux, who will be a redshirt sophomore, grew up in Quebec and played at IMG Academy in Bradenton, Fla., before attending Florida as a preferred walk-on. He appeared in 11 games, scoring seven points, becoming the tallest player to score in a Division I game.

He will be fun to watch play regardless of whether he is dominant. Rioux dunks without jumping, a feat highlighted by his first college field goal against Saint Francis in December 2025 and a memorable March Madness moment in 2026 with an offensive rebound and put-back dunk.

He didn’t play more than a few minutes at a time because Florida coach Todd Golden said he lacked the stamina to do so.

Mamadou Ndiaye, who is 7-foot-6, played at Irvine from 2014-2016, likely confident he would be the tallest ever to suit up for the Anteaters. Ndiaye twice was named Big West defensive player of the year and helped Irvine to a Big West Conference title and NCAA tournament berth. He played five years in the NBA, including for the Clippers in 2004-05.

Rioux is one of only three college basketball players in history taller than the decorated former Irvine center, according to ESPN. The Anteaters can only hope Rioux makes a similar impact.

Last season Irvine won the Big West regular-season title but lost to Hawaii in the conference tournament. The Anteaters went 32-7 in 2024-25. Guard Jurian Dixon starred on both teams but transferred to Virginia this offseason.

According to the Florida media guide, Rioux is the Guinness World Record holder for tallest teenager. He stood 6-1 at age eight, 6-11 by sixth grade and became a certified 7-footer the next summer. Rioux played on Canada’s national team at various age levels.

The center redshirted in 2024-25 when Gators won the national title in 2025 and appeared in 11 games last season. In late March, he announced that he would enter the portal in search of more playing time. On Thursday, he made a decision.

“Next stop: Irvine, California,” he wrote on social media.

In an era of 150-page novels in 14-point font, and books on Venezuela’s recent history that feel like overly long opinion pieces, Ulises Milla’s Editorial Alfa opted for something entirely different: a chronicle of how chavismo took over the Venezuelan State between 1999 and 2004, the product of ten years of research, divided into two volumes totaling more than 1,400 pages.

It is titled La oscuridad no llegó sola (no English translation yet), taken from a line by a Colombian poet, and has a subtitle that speaks volumes: “chronicle of a Venezuelan tragedy.” Yes, it is a chronicle in the broadest sense of the term, a systematic and multifaceted account that protects a series of events from oblivion in a specific era. It is also a Venezuelan tragedy, one among many, in which everything leads to an unhappy ending that seems inevitable, as in those of Aeschylus or Sophocles.

There is a classical feel to Mirtha Rivero’s new work, not only because she has drawn on literary genres that are over two millennia old, but also because it is a book that took a long time to write, one made to transcend time. For this reader, it is another essential text about our past, like José Domingo Díaz’s chronicles of the First and Second Republics or Lisandro Alvarado’s Historia de la Revolución Federal, and certainly like Rivero’s previous work: the bestseller La rebelión de los náufragos, published in 2010. It does not attempt to impose a personal thesis, defend one side or one figure, or propose a solution to the nation’s ills. It is an effort to understand how things happened, on a scale vast enough to allow the patterns of behavior developed by political actors over those years to emerge.

For those of us who experienced these events firsthand, through the media, La oscuridad no llegó sola still reveals aspects of the story we didn’t know, thanks to the quantity and quality of its sources. For those who were too young, it is an unparalleled document on how the traditional political class underestimated chavismo, how chavismo took advantage of the negligence and frivolity of its adversaries to seize control of institutions, and how the anti-politics we saw explode in La rebelión de los náufragos helped demolish what little remained of that democracy, which committed suicide, or allowed itself to die. A tragedy that, with its variations, has happened before. And that will very likely happen again. La oscuridad no llegó sola by Mirtha Rivero is available on Amazon and in bookstores in Spain. From Monterrey, Mexico, where she has lived for several years, the economics journalist who is showing how Venezuela’s contemporary history must be written spoke with Caracas Chronicles.

I want to start with the moment when La rebelión de los náufragos was published, had the impact it did, and you began the journey that led to these two volumes. You addressed this in the preface to La oscuridad no llegó sola, but what was the process like for defining not only the 1999-2004 timeframe, but also the questions you wanted to answer?

After La rebelión de los náufragos was published, I didn’t immediately consider any other topics. It was the third book I had written, but it was the first one that was published, and its reception changed my way of working. It was like a shock. For a year and a half, I couldn’t think about another “topic” because I was adapting to that new reality. It was in mid-June 2011 that another topic emerged. I wanted to answer a question: What happened in the 2004 recall referendum? For me, it was personally very important because, as a result, my husband and I began looking for a new place to live. Did voting fraud occur or not? What was it like? How did we get to that point? So I marked the period: from Chávez’s inauguration on February 2, 1999, until the day of the referendum, August 15, 2004.

It wasn’t so much that chavismo was pressuring the Supreme Court, but rather that a large part of society favored a Constituent Assembly.

I had to go back quite far because Chávez didn’t appear out of nowhere. Nor did other figures: the architects who helped him set up his political machine, those who accompanied him from that day forward, and those who had been with him even before the 1992 uprisings didn’t appear out of nowhere. They all have a past and a reason for being there, just like the people who kept appearing in my research. I confirmed along the way that during those years, the foundations were laid and the entire structure that allows chavismo to endure was built. As I guide my narrative, I realize that I not only have to look back, but that I often force myself to project into the future. For example, I look back when I discuss the oil industry, which is an important topic in my chronicle, but I also look forward when someone talks about the changes in the judicial sphere that the 1999 Constitution imposed, and I’m going to the trial against Judge Afiuni in 2009.

I see. For me, La oscuridad no llegó sola is a twin of La rebelión de los náufragos, in its structure, its tone, and its intention: first, you show how the political class sacrificed democracy with Carlos Andrés Pérez and paved the way for chavismo, and now we see how it overestimated its own strength and underestimated Chávez. Was describing this hall of mirrors the plan, or did it emerge during the research?

It wasn’t the plan. I didn’t see it as a continuation, nor as a hall of mirrors: it turned out that way, the story led me there. Exploring the recall referendum was actually a pretext for me to delve into that era, which I was afraid of. What was important was what happened before the referendum. How the referendum was repeatedly postponed until Chavismo had all institutions and powers under its control, which culminated in the expansion of the Supreme Court, and how it was able to regain popular support through direct subsidies via the social missions. How the opposition promoted the recall referendum without having a candidate to challenge Chavismo if Chávez lost and elections were held.

What did you learn, while writing this book, about the ability of the various opposition leaders to interpret reality? Do you share the common opinion that popular support for Chávez was underestimated in 1998 and 1999?

I was very surprised by their inability to see what was right in front of them. We had already seen how short-sighted the political parties were, their reluctance to form and renew themselves, since the 1980s. This is evident in the conspiracy against Carlos Andrés Pérez in 1993, based on a check from the secret fund that had been annulled in 1989 and was used against him in 1992; in the corruption accusations made by (future chavista minister) José Vicente Rangel; in the resistance to the reforms of the Presidential Commission for State Reform; and in the insistence of the old leaders on remaining political bosses.

There were people who knew who this Hugo Chávez they were opposing really was, but even so, there were those clumsy last-minute maneuvers in the 1998 campaign, and they weren’t prepared for the scenario in which Congress would be eliminated, as Chávez himself had said would happen. They acted with great carelessness in the face of Chávez’s rise: society, the political parties, and even a political animal like Teodoro Petkoff underestimated him. I was very surprised that they didn’t know how to confront the lieutenant colonel, the authoritarian tendencies that came with him, the power-hungry Left that accompanied him, the people who applauded the military coup attempts of 1992. They offered no resistance when Chavismo abolished Congress, taking advantage of the anti-political sentiment that had also been brewing since the 1980s. The lack of vision, and even of any statesman-like discourse, on the part of the politicians, did surprise me greatly.

One of the book’s many achievements was to unearth and trace a somewhat forgotten but key episode: how the Supreme Court accepted the Constituent Assembly’s suspension of the Legislative Branch. Did that also surprise you, how they paved the way for the dissolution of the separation of powers? How much pressure was chavismo exerting on the Supreme Court?

It didn’t surprise me that much, because we experienced it firsthand. The chavistas had just come to power and were barely learning how to use it, and they couldn’t exert pressure before Chávez took office on February 2, 1999. It wasn’t so much that chavismo was pressuring the Supreme Court, but rather that a large part of society favored a Constituent Assembly, even though a constitutional reform would have sufficed. Many people believed that this Constituent Assembly would save the country, to create a new, bright, efficient nation. Everyone was riding that wave. As Simón Alberto Consalvi said, we cannot absolve the people of their decisions.

Some of your interviewees, as expected, fall into hindsight bias: assigning to certain moments a meaning that we see today but that wasn’t easy to discern then. For example, everyone in your book says they knew the 2002-2003 strike was a bad idea, but that “the majority decided”: Didn’t you yourself fall into hindsight bias? Because when I write about those years, I have to tell myself, “Remember what you thought then about the 2002 general strike, not what you think today.”

One can always fall into that bias because one isn’t objective, pristine, but I was very careful about that and made an effort to compare the accounts. Because many interviewees told me things that didn’t happen as they said; they were mixing what others had told them with what they would have liked to have happened. My own interpretations of a particular moment fell apart as I investigated. Sometimes the same scene had six different testimonies, and I had to cross-reference them, sometimes going back to the witnesses to confirm or discuss parts of their story. The good thing is that I encountered very little reluctance from the interviewees, although of course there were people who didn’t want to talk, who stood me up, and I even made trips for nothing. 

Both the oil workers and the dissident military officers were convinced they were right and that they could convince some people, while these people already had a plan in place.

With those I did talk to, I sometimes confronted them, because now it turns out, for example, that nobody agreed with the national civic strike, or as we called it then, the “oil strike.” But the investigation was able to determine who truly resisted, and how society pressured for a repeat of what happened on April 11, even though it was so unlikely to have any effect.

April 11, 2002, is like the novel Rashomon; the same event is seen differently depending on many perspectives. But it’s quite well documented; much less known is what happened within PDVSA, and you contributed a lot to those of us who aren’t familiar with the oil world. How do you see today the role played by the oil executives when they decided to step outside their bubble? 

Within that bubble were people like Edgar Paredes and Juan Santana who, having been involved in university politics, were politically savvy. They knew their place and what might happen, but also what they needed to do. They created that protest movement to rescue PDVSA. Society joined them because, in reality, it used the PDVSA conflict as an excuse to protest many other things, but the oil workers were trying to defend their company because, ever since Chávez was elected in ’98, they saw him as a threat. Naively, they believed they could change the policies because they came from a school of thought where debate and consensus were reached. But even during the 2002 strike, they continued fighting to rescue PDVSA. They were fighting for the country too, but to rescue the country, they believed, PDVSA had to be rescued. The same was true for the soldiers in Plaza Altamira. Right or wrong, they wanted to rescue the FAN (National Armed Forces) where they had made their careers, without understanding that they couldn’t, because the first political prisoners of chavismo were military personnel.

The idea that Chávez also provoked the April 11th march, or the movement to crush it, is a narrative he fabricated after those events.

Both the oil workers and the dissident military officers were convinced they were right and that they could convince some people, while these people already had a plan in place. They thought that the truth would prevail and that the people would act for the good of the country. But that wasn’t meant to happen. They suffered a lack of understanding of the country’s political history, of what the 1992 coups meant. Because they were caught up in their own business, in what they knew. In fact, not all the oil workers or the military saw Chávez as a threat and voted for him in 1998, like a large part of the country.

Reading the book, I came to feel more empathy for what the oil workers and even certain military personnel, did than for what the politicians did.

Because they actually did more than the politicians in terms of trying to rescue their respective organizations. With all their naiveté, the oil workers and the military did force others to act. They gave their all to try to save not only their professional world, but democracy itself.

The book makes it clear that Chávez sought out conflicts, he provoked them. Even the massacres, not to mention the strikes: he sought out battles because he saw them (and he was right) as opportunities to wipe out pockets of resistance. Right? Do you see this as a pattern that connects everything from the 2001 enabling legislation to the recall referendum?

Chávez sought out battles because it was his way of life. He always said, like Pinochet, that he was a soldier. I believe he launched the enabling legislation package in 2001 to impose his agenda, not to provoke, because I don’t think he knew it would generate such strong resistance, even though there had already been protests since 2000. He introduced those laws at the last minute and without consulting anyone because he was an authoritarian who believed he was the center of the world. The idea that he also provoked the April 11th march, or the movement to crush it, is a narrative he fabricated after those events. He knew there were disaffected military officers and expected a classic coup, which he planned to counter with civilians, but he didn’t provoke it, because in fact, his intelligence services ultimately failed him. Just as there are people who, after the strike failed, said they never agreed with it, he rewrote history to impose the narrative that everything was his agenda. But many things surprised him, even though he eventually managed to navigate each situation. However, after April 11th, he did dedicate himself to provoking conflicts, now with the advice of Fidel Castro, and surrounded by radicals like Alí Rodríguez Araque. 

Another pattern I noticed is the persistence of anti-politics, how distrust of political parties shaped different situations. And you get the feeling that this still resonates with people, that three decades after the 1990s, anti-politics continues to define us, right?

The parties were already badly weakened, following a decline that began in the mid-1980s, and even more so after what happened with Pérez II. Their crisis became impossible to hide by the second year of Chávez’s presidency, but anti-politics was very much present during Chávez’s election itself, before that night of April 11, 2002, when decisions were made driven by the desire to remove politicians from important matters. Although politicians met, participated in discussion groups, and sought solutions on their own, such as promoting Adán Celis as transitional president, anti-politics was pervasive across all sectors and prevailed among the main actors who attempted to remove Chávez from power in 2002. The book includes testimonies from politicians who recount how the media favored the opinions of emerging civil society actors who viewed politicians as corrupt and stuck in the past. And yes, as you say, this continues today. Those in power still promote this idea of ​​politicians as a corrupt caste that led the country to ruin. Because it’s very easy to blame politicians for something in which the citizenry also played a part.

Eight candidates for California governor shared a stage for 90 minutes Tuesday night, their second of three scheduled debates before the June 2 primary.

My colleagues Gustavo Arellano and Mark Z. Barabak joined me to decide who the winner was, or if there was a winner at all.

Arellano: The real MVP in this debate? State Supt. Tony Thurmond.

He brought up his family story — child of a Panamanian immigrant who lost his parents young, someone familiar with “government cheese” as sustenance growing up — in a way that didn’t sound forced or pedantic.

He usually stayed within the time limits that were barely enforced by moderators. And he kept knocking down Chad Bianco again and again, drawing applause when he brought up the Riverside County sheriff’s takeover of hundreds of thousands of ballots.

Thurmond is the only gubernatorial candidate currently holding a statewide position, a former Richmond City Council member and Assembly member. “Elect someone with a lived experience,” he told the audience in his closing statement.

So why has Thurmond polled so low again and again to the point that he keeps not getting invited to debates and therefore not getting in front of California voters?

California has never elected a Black governor — in fact, the state is notorious for not voting in Tom Bradley in 1982 even though polls showed him leading George Deukmejian all the way to Election Day (the phenomenon of voters telling pollsters what they think they want to hear instead of what they actually feel is now known as the Bradley Effect).

As California’s Black population keeps shrinking, it would’ve been wonderful to see Thurmond do better than he has.

Chabria: Gustavo is spot on with his take on Thurmond. He came across as polished, capable and knowledgeable. But also, he’s just too far down in the polls for any kind of comeback.

In my mind, though, Xavier Becerra was the clear winner. No, he didn’t blow the other candidates away.

But he landed more than one punch that will almost certainly be on social media feeds for weeks to come, especially when he went at Republican Steve Hilton. Early on, he called President Trump “Hilton’s daddy.” Later, he quipped at Hilton, “We don’t need a talking head for Fox News to tell us how the government works.”

The debate was chaotic in more than one moment, but Becerra managed to get more than his share of airtime and use it wisely. Tom Steyer, the other Democratic front-runner, mired himself in wonk-talk. He wanted to get deep into policy, and got lost in complicated issues such as oil refineries.

Steyer didn’t have a single memorable line, though his closing statement did redeem him somewhat. He called himself the “change maker,” and promised, “if you want change, there is only one person on this stage they are afraid of” — they being tech titans, oil companies and other gods of industry.

It was the same for Katie Porter and Matt Mahan, who didn’t do anything wrong, but also, didn’t break out.

But those back-and-forths of Becerra and Hilton are priceless because they’re quick and shareable. I won’t be surprised to see voters drift Becerra’s way, even if only a bit.

Barabak: No runs, no hits, no errors. Seven men — and one woman — left standing.

I didn’t see, or hear, anything that seems very likely to drastically shake up or dramatically reorder the governor’s race. No breakout performance that will launch any of the candidates into clear-cut front-runner status. No major gaffes to leave any of the contestants sprawled on the killing floor.

So to that extent, I would score Becerra as the evening’s (modest) winner. He’s clearly having a moment, surging from political near-death to the top tier in polls. (Though, let’s be clear, it’s still a muddle, with several candidates bunched in the 15%-20% support range.)

There have been suggestions Becerra needs to show a bit more fight and he did so Tuesday, in particular taking on Hilton. Some of his jabs seemed a bit forced and stagy. (That line about Trump as “Hilton’s daddy.”)

Better, as Anita noted, was the jab from the former congressman, state attorney general and Biden cabinet secretary about a Fox “talking head” explaining how government works.

I found Porter to be crisp and authoritative on policy; Steyer to be repetitive (I’m the only change agent on this stage, look how much money is being spent to stop me — though it’s a small fraction of the sum he’s sunk into his vanity-cruise campaign); Mahan and Antonio Villaraigosa to be largely afterthoughts, and Bianco to have all the warmth and appeal of the grouchy old man telling kids in the neighborhood to get off his damn lawn!

The Riverside County sheriff seemed not to be running for governor of California, but rather mayor of MAGA-ville, a strategy apparently intended to nab one of two spots in the June primary, allowing him to go on to crushing defeat in November.

I agree that perhaps the night’s most surprising performance came from Thurmond. The state schools superintendent is mired in bare single digits in polls and only just made the debate stage after being left out of last week’s meetup in San Francisco.

His chances of being California’s next governor are somewhere between zero and nil, which is why he escaped serious scrutiny. That said, he made the most of the 90 minutes on stage, laying out his compelling up-from-poverty life story and seeming to relish taking on Bianco in particular.

Too little, too late. But Thurmond certainly acquitted himself well.

What else you should be reading
The must-read: ‘This is like the Russian mafia’: L.A. judge elections see unusual drama
The deep dive: Gavin Newsom wants to break up with Elon Musk. Tesla is making that difficult.
The L.A. Times Special: John Seymour, Anaheim mayor and U.S. senator, dies at 88

Stay Golden,

Anita Chabria

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SACRAMENTO —  Xavier Becerra seems like the type of steady, trustworthy fellow you’d like your daughter to marry. But she’s attracted to a charming party animal.

Then the flashy dude does something really stupid and repulsive. Daughter is jarred into her senses and decides to size up the unexciting but reliable guy.

That’s how I’m seeing the suddenly captivating contest to succeed termed-out Gov. Gavin Newsom.

OK, it’s not a perfect analogy. Becerra is 68, been happily married for 37 years and the couple have three grown children. But the principle’s the same: He’s the safe choice. The hot other character merely fooled lots of people for a while.

Becerra is suddenly getting a hard look because the fast-stepping, front-running Democrat Eric Swalwell revealed himself to be totally unworthy of public office.

Five women accused the married Bay Area congressman of sexual misconduct, including rape. He denied the allegations but apologized to his wife for past “mistakes in judgment.” Donors, endorsers, staffers and voters immediately fled his campaign. And he quickly slunk away.

And Becerra surged.

Why?

“People are looking for something stable,” Becerra answered when I asked. “Everybody likes pizzazz and glitter. Then all of a sudden their hero falls from grace. And they look for who they can trust.”

Dan Schnur, who teaches political communications at USC, UC Berkeley and Pepperdine, says: “Democrats had a near-death experience with Swalwell. They don’t seem to be in the mood to take more risks.”

Schnur calls Becerra “this year’s version of Joe Biden’s 2020 campaign.” He’s the safe choice. “Sometimes being ‘none of the above’ is good enough.”

Since Swalwell’s collapse, the once-floundering Becerra has had a meteoric rise in the polls.

A survey conducted for the state Democratic Party showed Becerra rising by 10 points from single digits to tying Tom Steyer, a billionaire hedge fund founder turned climate warrior. Close behind was former Orange County Rep. Katie Porter.

Those three are now the leading Democratic competitors for a slot on the November ballot. The top two vote-getters in the June 2 primary, regardless of party, will advance to the general election.

Republican former Fox News host Steve Hilton was leading the entire field in the poll, followed closely by Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco.

Steyer and Porter are both liberals in their ideology and personalities. Neither are flamethrowers, but they‘re fiery. In contrast, Becerra also is an ideological liberal, but with a low-key demeanor that might cause one to mistake him for a political moderate.

San José Mayor Matt Mahan is clearly a Democratic centrist. But in this era of intense polarization, moderation may be a hard sale. At least, it has been so far for Mahan.

Among those six Democratic and Republican candidates, Becerra boasts by far the most outstanding political resume.

He was U.S. secretary of Health and Human Services under President Biden. Before that as state attorney general, California’s mild-mannered “top cop” showed his aggressiveness by suing the first Trump administration 123 times and winning the vast majority of cases. He also served 12 terms in Congress from Los Angeles and became part of the Democratic leadership. And he served one term in the state Assembly.

That’s an impressive list. But Schnur says Becerra was “the least impressive” candidate in a 90-minute televised debate last week.

“He talked in very vague generalities,” the former political operative says, but adds: “In the middle of the other candidates’ drama and emotional outbursts, he seemed very calm and safe.”

Some pundits and pols have been calling on Becerra to show more fire. But that’s not him. He’s guarded and understated. It’s how he’s wired. If he attempted a personality change, it probably wouldn’t work. There’s a risk of it seeming contrived and phony.

But Becerra should be more specific on issues. Exactly how would he make life better for Californians?

His basic answer when asked how he’d solve a given problem pestering California is essentially: Trust me. I’ll meet with all sides and figure it out.

That’s not just a cop-out. It’s his pragmatic modus operandi.

That reserved style prompted this shot during the debate from Porter, who tends toward specificity:

“Mr. Becerra, you have all these lovely plans. But there are never any numbers, any revenue plan, any details. … The how, the why and how much, it’s all missing.”

Becerra responded with some rare emotion: “That’s very rich to hear from someone who’s never had to actually run a government.” The former Cabinet secretary said he’d balanced four federal HHS budgets that were larger than the California state budget.

I asked Becerra about some issues last week. Here’s partly what he said:

Housing costs: Expedite building by streamlining more regulations. “We’ll continue to have rules, but let’s make them smart rules.”

Gas prices: Keep more refineries from closing. “Let them know they can operate and produce and not lose money. That’s an easy one.”

High-speed rail: ”We’re going to build the bullet train, but not this bullet train. It’s too expensive. Sit everybody down and come out with a position.”

Banning new gas cars by 2035: Is Newsom’s goal realistic? “Seeing what I see, no. We can’t make it by ‘35, but we can make it.”

But let’s be honest. Elections usually turn more on likability than policy positions.

“Decency may be a quality that goes a long way” in the governor’s race, says longtime Democratic strategist Darry Sragow. “In part that’s because of the Swalwell revelations and also because of Trump, who’s not decent. Decency may be what people are looking for.”

But Democrats are riled up by Trump and they’re also demanding backbone and fight.

Many are eyeing Becerra as someone perhaps worth partnering up with. A bit more passion from him could help sustain their interest.

What else you should be reading

The must-read: The congressional landmine stirring fears about the midterm election — and a Trump power grab
Brace yourself: Voter ID controversy headed for California with initiative on November ballot
The L.A. Times Special: How a Trump-endorsed Republican could become California’s next governor

Until next week,
George Skelton

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Chinguetti, Mauritania – Bookkeeper Muhammad Gholam el-Habot gently pulled a pair of white gloves onto his slender hands and set about his routine in his high-ceilinged, cool library lined with steel bookshelves.

He opened a thick manuscript printed in Arabic. After leafing through its brown and frail pages, looking for damage, el-Habot closed the book with a satisfied thud, rubbed his fingers over the wrinkled leather cover, and carefully placed it in a white cardboard box.

“These books are very important to my family and me,” the librarian said, as the midday sunlight spilled in through open wooden doors. He spoke in Hassaniya Arabic, the dialect spoken in Mauritania, his voice low, his sentences halting and poetic. Fat flies buzzed around his long oval face as he worked.

“My relationship with them is like that of a father and his son,” he continued. “We must protect them until God takes the land and all the people who are on the land.”

The el-Habot family library is only one of a handful of its kind still operating in Chinguetti, a medieval fortress town or ksar in Mauritania’s northern Adrar region. Once a centre of commerce and Islamic learning between the 13th and 17th centuries, it is now largely abandoned as, over the decades, locals have sought opportunities in bigger cities.

Chinguetti is also at the mercy of a changing climate.

Mauritania, in northwest Africa, is 90 percent Sahara desert and has faced desertification for centuries. Now, human-induced climate change is an accelerant. Sand and flash storms occur more frequently, while extreme hot or cold seasons last longer than usual.

Those pressures are a “big deal” for precious books, said Andrew Bishop, a researcher at the University of Wyoming studying climate impacts on Saharan cultures.

“Extreme heat and less predictable rainfall patterns means that texts are increasingly damaged by water or heat, making many manuscripts beyond repair. More than that, the mud libraries themselves are not built for sudden rain and longer summer of over 40 degrees (Celsius, or 104 degrees Fahrenheit),” he told Al Jazeera.

Many of Chinguetti’s 4,500 residents now live in cement buildings outside the original confines of the abandoned ksar, built out of dry stone and red mudbrick. There are fears that the entire area, which is about 500 square kilometres (200 square miles) – about the size of Prague – is at risk of being buried by surrounding sand dunes in the long run, although there is not a clear timeline yet.

Islam’s ‘seventh holiest city’

El-Habot did not always want to be a bookkeeper.

But when his father grew sick in 2002, he took over the approximately 1,400 manuscripts out of obligation. It was an honour in his culture to be selected, he said.

It would be out of the question now, the 50-year-old librarian said. He imagines that his two sons would reject the duty, as many of their peers have left to explore economic opportunities in the capital city, Nouakchott, or elsewhere.

“This is something that we have to do; it is a family obligation,” el-Habot said, with a bewildered expression. “This is not even a question to be asked.”

The family manuscripts are sacred because they are rare. The bookkeeper’s ancestor, Sidi Mohamed Ould Habot, was one of about two dozen Chinguetti scholars who travelled around the Muslim world between the 18th and 19th centuries, from Egypt to Andalusia, in search of knowledge.

Between them, the scholars amassed a vast fortune of about 6,000 scripts. They covered almost every topic: Islamic jurisprudence, the hadith or teachings of the Prophet Muhammad, mathematics, medicine, and poetry. Some of the works came from the scholars themselves, including the older el-Habot, who wrote about the science of poems.

The books were stored in about 30 libraries in Chinguetti, open to people from all over the world.

At the time, the town was famous because of its location at the crossroads of trans-Saharan trade routes linking the Sahel and the Maghreb. Camel caravans guided by nomadic Berber traders transporting goods – mostly salt and gold – between northern Africa and the southern empires used the city as a way station, transforming it into a commercial hub.

Muslim pilgrims on their way to Mecca on foot or camel would gather in Chinguetti and prepare themselves spiritually and mentally for their long, difficult journey before heading on to Cairo. Islamic and scientific texts were exchanged, bought and sold in the town.

In West African lore, Chinguetti was referred to as Islam’s seventh holiest city. Others nicknamed it the “Sorbonne of the Sahara”, according to UNESCO.

Generation after generation managed the libraries. Over time, as the caravan trade declined due to new European sea routes, the old town emptied and several libraries closed.

“Chinguetti was the mother of all people,” el-Habot said, referring to the town’s old status as the main capital of the region. Indeed, the area now known as Mauritania was called “Bilad Shinqit” or Land of Chinguetti. In the local Soninke language, it translates to “spring of horses”.

“People had to go because they wanted to feed themselves, get education for their kids, and get better opportunities for themselves too,” el-Habot said, adding that there were no universities close by, and only a handful of primary and middle schools.

Some within his family have moved on, as well, the bookkeeper said. Those, like him, who stayed back, wanted to respect their ancestor’s three wishes.

“His wishes were that the library stay in Chinguetti, that it should be open to all seekers of knowledge, and that a male descendant of his who is religious and morally upright be the bookkeeper,” el-Habot explained. Not following those instructions, he said, could invite God’s anger.

Chinguetti’s decline is largely due to the lack of support for its traditional lifestyle, Bishop said. Annual rainfall in Mauritania has decreased by 35 percent since 1970, making it harder for herders to graze or for date palms to produce fruit.

In 1996, UNESCO granted Chinguetti and three other Mauritanian ksour World Heritage Status, cementing their rich legacy. The few people still living in the old town are allowed to renovate but only minimally, to keep its original stone architecture and the typical Moorish structuring where houses are lined up along narrow alleys that lead to a mosque with a square minaret.

Just outside Chinguetti are the excavated ruins of Abweir, a town of 25,000 believed to have been founded in 777 AD, and believed to be the “original” Chinguetti. Its residents moved from the settlement, locals believe, in 1264 – likely after a conflict. Over time, the area was completely swallowed by sand.

Saving the manuscripts

El-Habot’s job, while enjoyable much of the time, is also taxing, he admitted.

Preserving old books by reprinting or digitising the most worn-out manuscripts before they become unreadable is a costly process. He often needs chemicals to keep away book-eating insects and has to fund more suitable storage.

Then, there is the weather, which is out of his control. Mauritania swelters in the dry season between April and December, and is bitingly cold in the winter months that follow. Old pages are sensitive to both extremes and can become brittle, el-Habot said. Sometimes, when it is really hot, he places buckets of water around the library hall to spur humidity.

Flash floods, meanwhile, threaten water damage.

Visitors to the library usually pay a small fee, but tourist numbers dropped drastically across Mauritania in the mid-2000s, when armed groups attacked foreigners. The COVID-19 pandemic also reduced the flow of travellers.

Mauritania has since clamped down on violence. Tourists are slowly coming back, el-Habot said, and some of the locals who left have also returned.

In 2024, a $100,000 UNESCO restoration project provided air-conditioning units, computers and printers, as well as shelving units and storage boxes to 13 family libraries to stimulate the sector. But most libraries remain closed, their texts scattered among members. The lack of capacity of young people who are not as interested in preserving Chinguetti’s culture will continue to pose a challenge, Bishop said.

Back in the library, el-Habot continued working, his thin frame bent over his manuscripts. He opened one book and pointed excitedly at its pages: They depicted the moon in its luteal phases, and an eclipse. A third page showed the holy cities of Mecca and Madina.

“I have to protect this heritage,” el-Habot said in his low voice. “As mine, and also for all of humanity.”

The Fitzpatricks missed the cut in last year’s Zurich Classic and finished in a tie for 11th in 2024.

But this victory earns them a cheque worth £1m.

“It was a struggle,” Matt, who won the 2022 US Open, said.

“I was doing zero to help him but he was fantastic on the back nine. I said ‘just give us a chance on the last to hit a bunker shot like that’.”

“It means the world. I’m absolutely speechless, it was a grind today but he was unbelievable and I could not be more proud.”

The event was played over four rounds, with teams of two alternating between fourball (best ball) in the first and third rounds and foursomes (alternate shot) in the second and fourth rounds.

Matt, 31, already had two wins this year, including last week’s RBC Heritage.

When the late and great Times sports columnist Mike Downey decided years ago to write about jockey Billy Shoemaker, he did so perfectly. His lead sentence:

“Billy Shoemaker was born 2 pounds 6 ounces and it was the only edge he ever needed in life.”

That remains noteworthy now, because when they run this year’s thoroughbred classic at Churchill Downs on May 2, it will mark 40 years since “Billy The Shoe,” still the third-winningest rider in the sport’s North American history and perhaps its most memorable, won his fourth and last Derby aboard a 17-1 longshot named Ferdinand.

In 1986, Snow Chief was the 3-1 Derby favorite. He was trained by colorful and often grumpy Mel Stute, who was, like Shoemaker, a fixture at Santa Anita. His jockey was a young Alex Solis, who came from Panama, was still struggling with the English language then and had quickly dazzled the Southern California racing world with his talent.

Jockey Bill Shoemaker smiles as he holds a large plaque presented to him at Santa Anita on Jan. 1, 1953, in recognition of winning 484 races. He promptly added to the total by winning the first race of the day.

(David F. Smith / Associated Press)

It was an era in sports somewhat less contentious, more inclined to celebrate its history and its moments and less inclined to look for more. A few weeks earlier, Jack Nicklaus had won the Masters, at age 46. It was a hugely popular outcome, just as Shoemaker’s would be. It was quite the time for legend building, those few months in 1986.

The Derby network telecast brought the comfort of an easy chair. Jim McKay, who had done it for years, took viewers through the likely race scenarios. Al Michaels, whose racing chops were notable well before he asked the world if it believed in miracles and well before the NFL hustled him away to greater fame and fortune, pitched in on the telecast with thoughts on the pageantry and some race angles. A young Michaels, with thick black curly hair and the same distinctive voice, broadcast from the track and touched on the interesting elements of Shoemaker’s presence.

“Ferdinand is at 17-1,” Michaels told the audience. “A few years back, you couldn’t get 17-1 with Shoemaker if he was riding Mr. Ed.”

Shoemaker was already a legend and had already won the Derby three times by then. But any mention of his Derby expertise was, and always would be, sprinkled with a disclaimer about his 1975 ride on Gallant Man, when he misjudged the finish line while leading on the home stretch, pulled up his horse and lost a race he had pretty much won.

In ‘86, that was all soft peddled by the media, which mentioned it more out of duty than reportorial necessity. Ferdinand was, after all, a 17-1 longshot, easier to downplay or ignore. Also, Shoemaker was 54, not exactly an age to be looked upon as a contender. No jockey that age had ever won the Derby — and still hasn’t. There was respect for his seniority, but mostly an assumption that he was the past, not likely the present. He had led North American racing in victories for 29 years, finally totaling 8,833. But much of that happened prior to 1986.

Worst for Shoemaker, he had drawn the No. 1 hole, the starting spot closest to the infield that is usually a death knell for Derby horses. The gate opens and the entire field dashes for the rail, all coming down on top of the 1-hole starter. Shoemaker and Ferdinand held ground for a while, but by the time they got to the back stretch, they were dead last. They were still there as the field got to the top of the home stretch.

Then the cavalry charge to the finish began and Shoemaker went with the crowd, to the outside. At one point in the home stretch run, he was six horses wide.

Then, he made one of those moves that made William Lee Shoemaker “Billy The Shoe.” He saw an opening to his left, squeezed through it and soon had Ferdinand almost to the rail — and in full gallop. Before anybody could analyze what had happened, Ferdinand, carrying a jockey who probably never weighed 100 pounds in his career — thanks to the birth advantage Downey so aptly pointed out years later — was cruising past the leaders and sailing home a winner.

Ferdinand, ridden by Billy Shoemaker, heads down the homestretch to win the Kentucky Derby on May 5, 1986, in Louisville, Ky.

(John Swart / Associated Press)

The victory made legendary trainer Charlie Whittingham a Kentucky Derby winner for the first time. He was 73 and had disliked running young horses in a pressure race such as the Derby. The Triple Crown races are only for three-year-old thoroughbreds. Whittingham won another Derby three years later with Sunday Silence. He trained into his 80s.

Shoemaker’s career rightfully was topped off by that Derby victory, as well as his win in the Breeders’ Cup Classic in 1987.

The aftermath of that 1986 race was less kind, although nobody could take away what Shoemaker had accomplished. The jockey who finished last in the ’86 Derby was Laffit Pincay Jr., who later passed Shoemaker’s North American victory total with 9,530 wins. Pincay’s total was topped by Russell Baze, who took 12,842 wins, but in a riding career that featured wins at lesser tracks against lesser competition. When Baze broke his record, however, Pincay was there to offer his congratulations.

By the time Shoemaker won the 1986 Derby, he had little left to achieve. He not only won 11 Triple Crown races, but he also had won, to mention a few prestigious races, the Hollywood Derby, the Hollywood Gold Cup, the Oak Tree Stakes, the San Luis Obispo and the Santa Anita Derby.

Jockey Billy Shoemaker smiles as he rides Ferdinand, the 1986 Kentucky Derby winner, at Hollywood Park after winning the Breeder’s Cup.

(Bettmann Archive via Getty Images)

Each one eight times.

Shoemaker moved into thoroughbred training after he stopped riding. He was a fixture around Santa Anita, as he had been as a jockey. His success was mixed, certainly less than he had as a jockey.

On April 8, 1991, after a day of golf in the Inland Empire, Shoemaker was headed west on the 210 freeway in San Dimas. The road at that point includes an exit to the right for the 57 freeway south and under the 210. Shoemaker swerved right off the 210 and rolled his Ford Bronco down the embankment, about three stories high, and onto the 57 freeway. Police confirmed he was intoxicated during the crash. Shoemaker suffered a broken neck and spent the rest of his life in a wheelchair, from which he continued as a trainer for several years.

Billly Shoemaker is in the winner’s circle at Santa Anita in March 1976 after winning his 7,000th race.

(Associated Press)

Shoemaker eventually sued the state of California because there was no guard rail at the site, the Ford Motor Co., to whom he alleged that the Bronco was a rollover risk, and Glendora Community Hospital for alleged incorrect treatment when he was bought in. Ford paid him at least $1 million, after agreeing to do so if he received no money from the hospital. There is no record of him getting any money from the state of California.

Shoemaker died in October 2013. He remains third on the North American jockey career win list with his 8,833.

Ferdinand was sent to stud in 1989 and sold to a breeding farm in Japan in 1994. In 2002, reports surfaced that Ferdinand had been sent to a slaughter house in Japan, where he became food for either humans or pets, or both. Racing’s indignation over that, as well as that of anger in the general public, prompted the formation by Congress of a bill that would ban the slaughter of horses in the United States.

It never passed.

At a school with the rich athletic tradition of Santa Ana Mater Dei, it is rare to be the first to achieve anything, but Matteo Huarte made history Saturday by becoming the Monarchs’ only CIF singles champion at the Ojai Valley Tennis Tournament.

After losing in straight sets to Rishvanth Krishna from Irvine University in last year’s final, Huarte was not about to squander his second chance. He raced to an early lead in the first-set tiebreaker, then broke to open the second set on his way to a 7-6 (3), 6-1 victory over Woodbridge’s Brayden Tallakson in front of a packed grandstand at Libbey Park.

Huarte had four service breaks — the last being a cross-court passing shot on match point. The final resembled Huarte’s semifinal win versus Irvine University’s JiHyuk Im in which he took the first-set tiebreaker 7-4 then cruised 6-2 in the second set.

“I’m happy I was able to do it for my school,” said Huarte, a junior who has committed to USC. “We’ve played each other a couple times and the key was to manage his serve and get into the rally. Once I got ahead of him in the tiebreak and then won the first game of the second set I was able to run away with it.”

Mater Dei’s only other title in the Ojai tournament’s long and storied history came in doubles in 2008 when Charlie Alvarado and Chris Freeman upset top-seeded Tyler Bowman and Jon Kazarian of Peninsula in three sets.

“It’s kind of hard to believe I’m the first to do it,” said Huarte about his singles title.

Last year, Huarte fell in the Southern Section semifinals to Palos Verdes ninth-grader Andrew Johnson, who went on to beat Tallakson 6-4, 6-3 in the final.

Tallakson was trying to make history of his own Saturday at a venue near and dear to his heart.

Woodbridge’s Brayden Tallakson celebrates after his quarterfinal victory over Beckman’s Rohan Grewal at the Ojai Valley Tennis Tournament on Saturday.

(Steve Galluzzo / For The Times)

“I started playing tennis down in lower Libbey, my dad Steve grew up here and won the men’s tournament, so this place is like home for my family,” said Tallakson, who quickly downed Palisades freshman Kensho Ford 6-2, 6-1 in the semifinals. “Matteo came out real aggressive, I made a couple errors on big points and he was just the better player today.”

Tallakson won the boys’ 14s division at Ojai in 2022 and had he prevailed Saturday, he would have been the first player to capture CIF singles and doubles titles at Ojai since Santa Barbara’s Nathan Jackmon won the doubles in 1993 and the singles in 1994. Tallakson won the doubles crown in 2023 with older brother Avery, with whom he will reunite next year at Boise State.

Peninsula seniors Colin Bringas and Edward Feuer completed one of the most dominant runs through the doubles draw ever seen at Ojai by beating Harvard-Westlake’s Aaron Chung and Chase Klugo 6-4, 6-2 in the finals. The Panthers’ duo did not drop a set in six matches and did not give up more than three games in a set until the first set Saturday when they broke in the ninth game to go up 5-4 and then served it out.

Bringas and Feuer are the first Peninsula pair to reach the CIF final at Ojai since 2011 and the third tandem in history to win it, joining Rylan Rizza and Jeff Kazarian in 2001, and Kazarian and Tiege Sullivan the following year.

Peninsula seniors Colin Bringas, left, and Edward Feuer celebrate after winning the CIF boys’ doubles title at the Ojai Valley Tennis Tournament on Saturday.

(Steve Galluzzo / For The Times)

“We’ve been playing together since second or third grade and we’ve been best friends since middle school at Ridgecrest Intermediate [in Palos Verdes],” Bringas said. “I always play the ad side, he’s always played the deuce court. I think the key was big serves … they make it easy for the net person to put balls away.”

Bringas and Feuer have partnered at Ojai the last three years, losing in the quarterfinal round as sophomores and juniors but steamrolling this year. They made a measly three unforced errors in a 6-1, 6-1 semifinal wipeout of Marina’s David Tran and Alejandro Hill. Tran was playing in his second straight final, having taken the runner-up prize with Trevor Nguyen in 2025.

“We were confident we’d win, but we felt the pressure and knew there are a lot of good teams here,” said Feuer, who plays No. 1 singles for dual matches while Bringas plays the No. 1 doubles spot with another teammate. “It’ll be really strange playing against each other next year.”

Bringas is bound for Westmont College and Feuer is headed to Point Loma Nazarene — rival NCAA Division II programs in the Pacific West Conference.

Harvard-Westlake, Woodbridge and University shared the Griggs Cup trophy, presented to the school with the most combined wins in singles and doubles. All three notched seven victories to force a three-way tie for only the fifth time since the award debuted in 1955 and the first since Santa Barbara, Palisades and Fresno Bullard were tri-champions in 1997. University has won it 13 times.

On April 20, the United States fired at and then seized an Iranian-flagged container ship close to the Strait of Hormuz in the northern Arabian Sea, amid its blockade of Iranian ports.

It was similar to a scene which played out in the 1980s during the so-called Tanker War between Iran and Iraq, during which both countries fired on each other’s tankers in the Strait of Hormuz, seeking to cripple each other’s economies.

As naval tensions rise again in the Strait of Hormuz – this time between Iran and the US – we break down what happened in the 1980s and examine the parallels and differences between the situations then and now:

How the 1980s Tanker War played out – a timeline

The war between Iran and Iraq began in 1980 when then-Iraqi President Saddam Hussein launched a full-scale invasion of Iran following Iran’s 1979 Islamic revolution.

In 1984, this war reached the Gulf when Iraq attacked Iranian oil tankers, seeking to cripple its oil-revenue-dependent economy. Iran retaliated by firing at oil tankers belonging to Iraq and its allies in the Gulf.

According to a report by the University of Texas’s Robert Strauss Center for International Security and Law, Iran also threatened to close the Strait of Hormuz then, but did not do so since its own economy, already crippled by the war, was dependent on exporting oil to the rest of the world through it.

In November 1986, when Iran struck Kuwait’s ships, Kuwait asked for foreign help. The former Soviet Union was the first to respond and helped escort the nation’s ships in the Gulf.

The US, led by then-president Ronald Reagan, launched Operation Earnest Will in July 1987, also seeking to protect tankers in the Gulf and render more assistance than Moscow. The operation involved reflagging Kuwaiti tankers with the US flag so they could legally sail under US protection.

According to an article by the Veterans Breakfast Club, a US-based website which shares experiences of former US military veterans, during Washington’s very first escort mission in July 1987, a reflagged tanker hit an Iranian mine in the Gulf.

“The convoy continued, but the incident made clear that the United States had entered a shadow war with Iran at sea,” the article said.

“Over the next fourteen months, dozens of US warships rotated through the region escorting tankers and protecting shipping lanes. US forces also conducted special operations to hunt Iranian mine-layers at night and conducted strikes against Iranian military positions and ships. The mission wasn’t a small one, consuming 30 US Navy ships at one time,” the article added.

Then in April 1988, the US frigate USS Samuel B Roberts was damaged by an Iranian mine in the Strait of Hormuz. Historian Samuel Cox, writing for the US Naval History and Heritage Command (NHHC), noted in 2018 that by the end of 1987 that vessel was so badly damaged, that “the only thing actually holding the ship together was the main deck”.

So, the US launched Operation Praying Mantis, seeking to destroy Iranian vessels.

The tanker war eventually ended in August 1988, following a United Nations-brokered ceasefire agreement between Iran and Iraq.

Cox noted that by the end of 1987, “Iraq had conducted 283 attacks on shipping, while Iran attacked 168 times. Combined, the attacks had killed 116 merchant sailors, with 37 missing and 167 wounded, from a wide variety of nationalities.”

“Initially, there was great concern that the attacks would cut off the vital flow of oil from the Arabian Gulf, but all they really did was drive up insurance rates. The world’s need for oil was so great, that over 100 dead merchant seamen was apparently an acceptable price,” he wrote.

What is happening in the Strait of Hormuz now?

The current hostilities between the US and Iran in the Strait of Hormuz began when Tehran, whose territorial waters extend into the strait, closed passage to all vessels after the US and Israel began bombing the country. On March 4, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) declared that it was in full control of the strait, and ships would need to get clearance from them to pass through it.

Shipping through the strait collapsed by 95 percent, sending the price of oil – 20 percent of global supplies of which are shipped this way – soaring above $100 a barrel.

Iran, through its imposition of control over who passes through Hormuz, has for almost eight weeks now, determined which vessels can exit the strait from the Gulf into the Gulf of Oman.

At first, Iran indicated that it would allow “friendly” ships to pass if they paid a toll. On March 26, Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi told Iran’s state TV: “The Strait of Hormuz, from our perspective, is not completely closed. It is closed only to enemies. There is no reason to allow the ships of our enemies and their allies to pass.”

Vessels from Malaysia, China, Egypt, South Korea, India and Pakistan passed through the strait through most of March and early April.

Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) provided these vessels with an alternative route through the Strait of Hormuz to avoid potential sea mines. US officials, including Donald Trump, have said mines have been placed there by Iran, although it has not officially confirmed or denied this.

But on April 13, alarmed that Iran was continuing to ship its own oil out of the strait, the US imposed a naval blockade of all Iranian ports. Since then, US Central Command has said US forces have directed 33 Iran-linked vessels to turn around or return to an Iranian port.

On Monday, the US military fired on and then captured the Iranian-flagged container ship Touska close to the Strait of Hormuz in the northern Arabian Sea, and, a day later, detained another oil tanker sanctioned for transporting Iranian crude oil as it sailed in the Bay of Bengal, which links India and Southeast Asia.

In a post on social media after detaining the Touska, the Pentagon wrote: “As we have made clear, we will pursue global maritime enforcement efforts to disrupt illicit networks and interdict sanctioned vessels providing material support to Iran – anywhere they operate.
International waters are not a refuge for sanctioned vessels.”

Since the US naval blockade of Iranian ports began, Tehran, which was earlier allowing vessels from “friendly” nations to pass through the Strait of Hormuz, has further tightened its grip on the strait.

Justifying the decision not to allow any foreign ships to pass until the US ends its naval blockade on April 19, Iran’s First Vice President Mohammad Reza Aref said the “security of the Strait of Hormuz is not free”.

“One cannot restrict Iran’s oil exports while expecting free security for others,” he wrote in a post on X.

Last Saturday, Iran reportedly fired at two Indian-flagged merchant vessels in the strait. The IRGC said the two ships were attacked because they were “operating without authorisation”, according to state media reports.

Then, on April 22, Iran captured two container ships seeking to exit the Gulf via the Strait of Hormuz after firing on them and another vessel.

What are the parallels between the two wars?

Just like during the Tanker War of the 1980s, shipping has been severely disrupted by the US-Israel war on Iran, upending global oil and gas prices.

According to an April 17 article by the World Economic Forum, from the mid-1980s when the Tanker War took place, to the start of the new millennium, a barrel of crude oil averaged $20.

On Friday, while a ceasefire between the US and Iran was in effect, a naval battle was still playing out in the Strait of Hormuz, and Brent crude, the international benchmark, topped $106 per barrel. During open warfare between the US, Israel and Iran in March and early April, oil rose as high as $119 per barrel.

Mines in the sea are another problem common to both time periods.

While vessels were damaged by mines during the 1980s Tanker War, there has so far been no report of vessels being damaged by mines in the current war. However, the risk is the same.

US President Donald Trump has said the US will ramp up efforts to remove mines from the Strait of Hormuz. This has not begun yet, however.

According to CNN, there are only a few US minesweeping ships in the Gulf. The US Navy also told the broadcaster that four dedicated minesweepers stationed in the Gulf region were decommissioned last year.

John Phillips, a British safety, security and risk adviser and former military instructor, told Al Jazeera: “There are some clear parallels between the current situation in Hormuz and the Tanker War of the 1980s. In both cases, the basic idea is the same: pressure at sea can have effects far beyond the water itself.

“A relatively small amount of naval disruption, whether that means mining, harassment of shipping, missile threats, or attacks on tankers, can create real strategic and economic consequences, especially in a chokepoint like the Strait of Hormuz. So in that sense, the original Tanker War is a useful reminder of how vulnerable global trade can be when the maritime domain becomes part of a wider political or military confrontation.”

What are the differences between the two wars?

During the Tanker War, the US escorted ships to protect them from Iranian attacks and also deployed vessels to remove mines. NATO countries like the United Kingdom, Belgium, the Netherlands, France and Italy also joined.

But in the current standoff in the Strait of Hormuz, US allies like the UK and other NATO nations have refused to join Washington in reopening the Strait of Hormuz, or begin minesweeping operations, fearing they will be dragged into the war.

In a post on Truth Social in early April, the US president took aim at allies, “like the United Kingdom”, which, he said, have “refused to get involved in the decapitation of Iran”, telling them to either buy US fuel or get involved in the rapidly escalating war.

“You’ll have to start learning how to fight for yourself, the U.S.A. won’t be there to help you anymore, just like you weren’t there for us. Iran has been, essentially, decimated. The hard part is done. Go get your own oil!” Trump wrote.

The framework of the US-Israel war on Iran is different from that of the war between Iraq and Iran in the 1980s, experts say.

“In the 1980s, the Tanker War was part of the broader Iran-Iraq War, so the shipping attacks were tied to a much larger land conflict between two regional armies. Today, the situation is more about Iran’s standoff with the United States and its allies, and the maritime activity is less about asymmetrical war at sea and more about deterrence, signalling and the threat of escalation,” said Phillips.

“The military lesson, really, is that Hormuz is still one of those places where limited actions can have outsized effects, but the modern setting is more fast-moving, more technologically advanced and potentially more volatile than the original Tanker War,” he added.

Analysts have also pointed out that, unlike in the 1980s, Iran is currently stronger when it comes to withstanding attacks and naval blockades by the US.

In the Tanker War, Iraq was militarily supported by Western allies, while Iran was under a US arms embargo imposed in 1979 after the Iranian revolution. While this gave Iraq a military advantage, Iran’s IRGC used asymmetric warfare tactics by striking Iraq’s allies’ ships and oil tankers.

Experts also say that since the 12-day war between Iran and Israel last year, Tehran has shifted its military doctrine from one that is primarily about defensive containment to an explicitly offensive asymmetric posture.

“Iran today appears more structurally aggressive in doctrine where it is formally embracing earlier and more extensive use of regional missiles, drones, cyberattacks and energy coercion [when energy resources and infrastructure are targeted or cut off], but is operationally constrained by battle damage, sanctions and internal instability,” Phillips, the risk adviser and a former military chief instructor, told Al Jazeera in an interview on March 2.

A former US ambassador to Bahrain, Adam Ereli, also told Al Jazeera that Iran and the IRGC have “revolutionary fervour”, which means they can “survive”.

“They can tolerate pain for a lot longer than I think most American decision-makers and planners calculate,” he said.

MORE than three decades after London helped launch her career, Tori Amos is back in the city, headlining the Royal Albert Hall for a tenth time. 

The US singer is chatty and upbeat despite staying up until 5am, still riding the high of her gig the night before. 

With her striking red hair falling in waves and her vivid green eye make-up, Maryland-raised Tori, who has called Cornwall home since the late Nineties, looks every inch the star. 

“London was the place that gave me my big exposure explosion,” she says.

“It really did shake my life up. And here we are again. 

“London broke Silent All These Years in the autumn of 1991, and then launched [debut album] Little Earthquakes, which rippled out to the States and the rest of the world.

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“America really discovered me through London, and then the UK did, too. From there, it just kept rippling outwards.” 

On her forthcoming 18th album, In Times Of Dragons, Amos turns political dread, female resistance and personal storytelling into something unique and mythic.  

She says: “I’m very reclusive at home and I’m not very sociable there so when I’m on tour I go from this insular life, where I do a lot of reading, music and writing, and step into this much more exposed life.” 

The contrast between Amos’s secluded home life and her role as a performer feeds directly into an album shaped by both personal reflection and political unease. 

The record is a response to the current political climate in America because, as a songwriter “a lot of my work is documenting time,” she tells me. 

“That’s what I did with Little Earthquakes, which followed my time of failure after [her synth band] Y Kant Tori Read when I had to go back to play piano bars.  

“I have a history of documenting things — my miscarriage in 1998 and that journey, then my 2002 album Scarlet’s Walk which documented 9/11 when I actually wrote some of it on the tour bus.” 

The idea for In Times Of Dragons came through the muses — otherworldly entities — that Amos believes bring her music.  

She has spoken widely about these guiding forces, which she says have inspired her songwriting since childhood.

And last year she published children’s book Tori And The Muses, all about them. 

She says: “This message came to me through the muses that I needed to document America at this pivotal time in history. 

“And I had to personalise this.

“It came to me a year ago that I needed to be me in the story and be closely connected to one of these people, and what that would look like, because they are personally affecting us. 

“I had to turn the volume on that to create this narrative, whatever turning into a dragon looks like.” 

The album follows the story of Tori trapped in a world run by billionaire tech moguls and lizard dragons, who threaten democracy through corporate greed and authoritarianism. 

Amos says: “Jane Mayer writes about the genesis of this in Dark Money, which is one of the most important books people need to read if they’re asking, ‘How did we get here?’. 

“This has been going on since the Seventies.

“As Mayer documents, figures like the Koch brothers — and I use that as an umbrella term for a wider movement — helped shape it, along with super PACs [organisations that spend millions supporting political candidates] and all the rest. 

“It seems there was an understanding that progressive teaching in universities had to be excavated, cut back and penetrated by a very tight right-wing philosophy that is now upon us. 

“And I’m not just talking about Republicans and Democrats. I’m talking about tyranny versus democracy.

“If you had asked me about this even around the Scarlet’s Walk era, I was already going after it through that record, and then through [2007 album] American Doll Posse during the Bush-Cheney administration with the wars, the manipulation, all of that. 

“Then there was a period of relief, when a different, more inclusive philosophy came in, whatever your politics are. 

“For me, it’s about the philosophy.

“As a songwriter, I’ve been tracking that through my career. 

“On this record, I had to take a personal journey and look at the effects of what this very small cabal of men is doing — and there are women involved too, we can’t get confused about that. 

“There’s Cambridge Analytica, the involvements of the Mercers, Rebekah Mercer [the right-wing US heiress and political donor] and all those interconnections.” 

The album’s story sees Amos’s character flee and reunite with her daughter.

This part is played by her real-life daughter Natashya, who co-wrote tracks Veins, Strawberry Moon and Stronger Together — the latter of which she also sings backing vocals on, and is one of the most emotional songs on the record. 

“She was in DC at the time, in law school, and she graduates in a few weeks,” says Amos proudly.  

“She’s going into criminal law and really had her finger on the pulse. 

“On a daily basis she’s seeing things that the wider public probably isn’t, unless you’re a political journalist. 

“We’re so inundated that the little freedoms being quietly taken away can be missed. 

“Criminal law is her calling.

“So, writing these songs with her, with her understanding of what’s happening in the field she’s chosen, and her exposure to the shock of what is being torn to pieces, was hugely important. 

“She says we are past constitutional crisis and what’s going on is absolutely shocking.” 

The final song, written last- minute for the album, is Ode To Minnesota — a response to the deaths caused by ICE agents there. 

She says: “Heinous, atrocious crimes are being committed and so this is the world of the record.”  

Amos, 62, has a long history of addressing America in song, and In Times Of Dragons continues that while exploring wider patterns of male power. 

It’s also a reminder of her role as a feminist icon and the influence she’s had on artists such as Lady Gaga, Florence Welch and St Vincent (real name Annie Clark).  

“Annie’s one of my dear friends,” she says of St Vincent.

“She’s fabulous. We have a giggle and I’m thrilled for her, for her art, and for the way she’s balancing motherhood so beautifully. 

“It’s lovely to see people who came to my shows when they were younger. 

“She’s talked to me about Choirgirl [Tori’s 1988 album From The Choirgirl Hotel] and what it meant to her when she first heard it, and we’ve had laughs about that. 

“And it’s the same with the guys too. 

“I’m off to an event later and the guy doing the Q&A used to stand by the stage door as a teenage gay kid.  

“To see these people grow up, and to still be able to bask in their creativity and development, is a beautiful thing to witness.” 

But while Amos is moved by the artists and fans who have grown up with her work, she is hesitant to define her own feminist legacy. 

She says: “It’s not for me to say, that’s more for other people to decide. 

“Believe it or not, I’m a bit introverted about that.

“What I think I’ve tried to do, and what I have done, is there for those who know it. 

“What’s important to remember is that there was no social media then.

“When people ask, ‘Was it easier back then?’, well, in some ways no, and in others yes. 

“We did have a music business with a few women in record companies, though only a few in executive positions.

“One or two could balls their way through, but you really had to.

“And if you didn’t have that tenacity in the Nineties — especially to get played on radio — it was tough. 

“At an alternative station in the States, they might add two women out of 64 slots, and the other 62 would be men.  

“I’ve spoken about that with some of my contemporaries over the years, Alanis [Morissette] being one of them, and it was not a good feeling — knowing that talented women with very good records were simply not being added to the station. 

“And touring took money. 

“That’s why I never had tour support.

“In the early days, I went out with just a piano, my tour manager and a sound guy. That was it. 

“We kept the costs down, and luckily the shows sold out, because the Press had really got behind me.” 

Today, Amos points to Dolly Parton as proof that women can keep evolving, performing and owning the stage on their own terms as they get older.

“She is fantastic and she’s aware we are a different generation that played this game and played it well,” says Amos.

“There are women who are still playing the game beautifully, and they still have the physicality and the health to do it.  

“I used to have a three-and-a-half octave range when I was doing those one-woman shows.

“But with the change of life — becoming a dragon, if that’s the menopause analogy — you adapt or you collapse.

“For me, it wasn’t a crisis in the way it has been for some women we’ve read about in the Press, and I have huge empathy for that.

“But vocally, I did have to make changes. 

“I didn’t want to alter the top lines of songs with those very high, wide-ranging melodies, so on the last tour I simply didn’t play them.  

“Then I thought, ‘No, that isn’t what I want.

“I want the whole catalogue available to me as a storyteller’. 

“So, I decided to bring in backing singers who could hit those notes.

“It was a strategic, compositional choice.

“I didn’t want to be in a position where I could only perform 40 per cent of my catalogue because of range. 

“And we’re having a blast. 

“They’re amazing singers. 

“I’ve gained four notes at the lower end and I feel like I’m down there rocking with Nick Cave, but that’s the trade-off. 

“I gained more on the lower end, while recognising that if I want to play those songs, you can only transpose them down so far before they lose their essence. 

“I have so much respect for Nick Cave.

“I used to run into him in the early Nineties.

“His work has always been a beacon of beauty and darkness — expansive work that makes you think.” 

Like Cave, Amos remains restlessly creative, and she is already thinking about where to go next.  

“After something as demanding as this, I’m doing a prequel to children’s book Tori And The Muses — that will be out next year,” she says.

“Her journey as a little girl with her muses.  

“It’s due next April — and there may be music to go with it too.” 

•  In Times Of Dragons is out on May 1. 

TORI AMOS 

In Times Of Dragons 

★★★★☆

WASHINGTON — Reporters assigned to travel aboard Air Force Two were told to prepare for an early morning departure on Tuesday for Islamabad until an unexplained delay — followed by a detour by Vice President JD Vance to the White House — revealed clues that something was wrong.

Iranian diplomats had not yet responded to U.S. proposals intended to form the basis of a new round of talks. Some were questioning whether they would attend at all. Had he departed as planned, Vance risked a humiliation, spending hours flying to Pakistan only to be stood up on arrival.

A crisis meeting at the White House led President Trump to announce an indefinite extension to a ceasefire deadline that had been set as a pressure tactic. Now, unable to bring the Iranians to heel, that pressure was suddenly off.

It was an early lesson for Vance in the many ways high-stakes diplomacy can veer off-course.

“There are obvious risks for Vance,” said Chester Crocker, who served as an assistant secretary of State in the Reagan administration, “being associated with failure or with a dubious deal.”

Trump’s aides are clear on the stakes in negotiations with Iran over its nuclear program and an end to the war. Control of the Strait of Hormuz could determine global oil prices for years. Any final deal will shape whether Americans ultimately conclude the fight was worth it — and could sway the outcome of the midterm elections.

But for America’s lead negotiator, the stakes are also personal.

Vance, a diplomatic novice, has found himself at the helm of an effort rife with political risk that has stymied seasoned diplomats ahead of an anticipated run for president.

The potential payoff is substantial, placing Vance at the center of an international stage with the power to end a historically unpopular war.

But he also may be forced to attach his name to a nuclear deal that provides Tehran access to billions of dollars in sanctions relief, in exchange for limits on its nuclear work that will ultimately expire over time, under conditional monitoring access for international inspectors — an agreement with striking echoes to a 2015 nuclear deal negotiated by a Democratic administration that was disparaged by his party for over a decade.

Vance is negotiating not on his own terms, but on behalf of a mercurial president whose decisions will ultimately determine whether an agreement can be reached. And the Iranians know that Trump’s days in office are numbered, with Vance, a war skeptic, possibly in line to succeed him.

One U.S. official familiar with the negotiations said the vice president is “a pragmatist,” realistic about the prospects of a deal.

“What he has to gain is an image that he can operate effectively on the world stage on a fraught issue. Even if he will give credit to the president, he will be seen as capable of resolving really hard, security-related problems,” said Dennis Ross, a veteran diplomat on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict who served in the George H.W. Bush, Clinton and Obama administrations. “What he has to lose is that he was given the role and did not succeed.”

Failure could raise doubts about his statecraft. But even success at the negotiating table could result in an agreement that turns off Republican voters he may need in a 2028 presidential bid.

“Vance is put in an impossible position,” said Arne Westad, a professor of history at Yale.

“Any deal with the current Iranian regime will be seen as problematic by many Republicans,” Westad said. “If he fails to secure a deal, he will be attacked by those who want an end to the U.S. war — and be seen as ineffective by the president.”

Reputation ‘on the line’

Trump has publicly acknowledged that Vance, a Marine Corps veteran who has consistently opposed U.S. military engagements in the Middle East, had reservations over launching the Iran war in the first place. “He was, I would say, philosophically a little bit different than me,” the president told reporters in March. “I think he was maybe less enthusiastic.”

For that reason, according to Iranian state media reports, Vance was seen by Tehran as their preferred interlocutor in negotiations. Iranian officials expressed gratitude when, during fevered talks ahead of the initial announcement of a ceasefire, they learned that Steve Witkoff, the president’s roving negotiator, had recommended that the vice president be included in the delegation — an exceptional gesture that marked Washington’s highest-level engagement with the Islamic Republic in history.

Republican strategists said Vance’s participation is a demonstration that Trump trusts him, an essential trait for any future Republican presidential nominee and aspiring heir to the MAGA movement.

“It’s rare that a vice president has been put in the position of directly negotiating with a foreign adversary,” said Terry Nelson, a longtime Republican media strategist. “We are engaging a very senior political leader in negotiations with a country that has killed U.S. soldiers and sown chaos in the region. I do think it’s an indication of our resolution and seriousness.”

Whit Ayres, a veteran Republican pollster who has consulted Republican senators and governors for more than three decades, said the vice president’s appointment as lead negotiator “elevates Vance as Trump’s heir-apparent even more than before.”

“Whether that becomes a plus or a minus depends on the outcome of the negotiations,” Ayres added, “and Trump’s ultimate standing with the Republican electorate, both of which are unknowns.”

Talks are currently deadlocked over long-standing demands from Tehran that its leadership has held since the early 2000s, when previously undisclosed nuclear activities first triggered international alarm over Iran’s expanding program.

Iran has periodically accepted temporary limits on its nuclear work — pausing uranium enrichment during talks and, under the 2015 deal, committing to a prolonged cap on enrichment at levels beyond any clear civilian need. But it has always insisted on a “right to enrich” on its own soil, rejecting U.S. attempts to permanently end the program as a foreign attempt to thwart Iran’s scientific progress.

Returning from the first round of ceasefire negotiations, Vance dismissed that position, articulated to him in Islamabad by the speaker of Iran’s Parliament.

“He said, ‘We refuse to give up the right to enrichment,’” Vance said. “And I thought to myself, you know what, my wife has the right to skydive, but she doesn’t jump out of an airplane, because she and I have an agreement that she’s not going to do that, because I don’t want my wife jumping out of an airplane.”

Echoes of a broken deal

The 2015 deal known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action — negotiated by veteran, nonpolitical U.S. diplomats and nuclear scientists over two years of near-constant negotiations — removed roughly 98% of Iran’s nuclear stockpile from the country, while keeping the country’s nuclear infrastructure largely in place, save for the decommissioning of a heavy-water plutonium reactor that could have provided Tehran with a second path to a nuclear bomb.

Under the agreement, Iran consented to limit its use of advanced centrifuges for 10 years, and to restrict uranium enrichment to below weapons-grade levels for 15 years. Inspectors from the U.N.’s International Atomic Energy Agency were granted unprecedented access to monitor the program, though some of these enhanced inspection measures were set to expire after roughly two decades.

In exchange, Iran regained access to tens of billions of dollars of its frozen assets, and settled a long-standing legal dispute with Washington that led the Obama administration to transfer $400 million in cash to Tehran. The episode prompted scandal on the political right, which accused Democrats of fueling terrorism through the funding of Iran’s proxy militias.

Now, after just two weeks of negotiations, the Trump administration is already acknowledging that a final deal with Iran would rely on a familiar formula: temporary caps on Iran’s nuclear work in exchange for substantial sanctions relief. Trump withdrew from the JCPOA in 2018.

Iran comes to the talks with added leverage today, able and willing to disrupt the flow of 20% of the world’s energy through the Strait of Hormuz. And the United States is negotiating alone, without its former partners in the “P5+1” — Russia, China, France, the United Kingdom and Germany — at its side.

Anna Kelly, principal deputy press secretary at the White House, told The Times that “after Democrats like Joe Biden and Barack Hussein Obama weakened our country on the world stage, President Trump has effectively restored American strength with the help of Vice President Vance, who is doing a great job leading the United States in negotiations with Iran.”

“The president and his entire national security team have an incredible track record in making good deals for our country, and the American people can rest assured that the United States will not enter any agreement that does not put our national security interests first,” Kelly said.

Matt Gorman, a longtime Republican strategist and chief communications officer at Targeted Victory, said the JCPOA was viewed particularly critically because it “was negotiated in peacetime.”

“Vance would essentially be ending a war, if successful, and that allows him to make a very different argument,” Gorman said.

The vice president is currently polling as the front-runner for the 2028 Republican presidential nomination, ahead of Marco Rubio, who — despite serving as Trump’s secretary of State and national security advisor — is not directly involved in the Iran talks.

Vance’s role at the negotiating table could help position him as a peacemaker, Crocker noted, distinguishing him from advocates of the war entering the presidential primaries.

But Vance “has been tasked by a president incapable of staying on message, with limited stores of credibility with adversaries as well as allies and a disregard for the complexities of the issues,” said Barbara Bodine, former U.S. ambassador to Yemen. “His task? A credible end to the war without clear objectives.”

“At best, this will be a faux-gilded JCPOA 2.0. Victory will be declared to no applause. On the line is not just Vance’s own reputation, but a demerit in his run for the 2028 presidency,” Bodine added. “The Iran portfolio was no gift.”

What else you should be reading

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The L.A. Times Special: The Flores twins built a drug empire with El Chapo — then betrayed him

More to come,
Michael Wilner
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