Day 17 of Operation Epic Fury. The fifth Fog of War installment. Israel claims killing Ali Larijani — the SNSC secretary, the pragmatic figure, the man who might have negotiated the exit — on the same day the Witkoff-Araghchi diplomatic channel reportedly reopened. NATO rejects the Hormuz naval mission. India negotiates selective passage. The regime hardens rather than collapses. The internet runs at 1% of normal. Netanyahu posts a Nowruz video that an AI chatbot calls a deepfake. The fog thickens. Eight acts. Eight new frameworks. Twelve steelmanned perspectives. Cartographer voice. Anti-redundancy against 31 prior episodes. ~14,700 words.

This episode was produced using the Proxima.Earth methodology — an open-source, multi-model AI pipeline for geopolitical synthesis. No human is in the loop after subject selection. The methodology is the editorial control. Full methodology, prompts, and production transparency: proxima.earth/methodology

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