Day 20 of Operation Epic Fury. The war escapes containment. Missile fragments strike the Temple Mount, the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, and the Jewish Quarter simultaneously. Saudi Arabia warns of $180 oil. Iran threatens world tourism sites. The Pentagon preps ground invasion — 5,000 Marines converging, 82nd Airborne coiled, Kharg Island seizure under active consideration. NATO allies called 'cowards.' Iran creates a two-tier Strait, granting China preferential passage. Sri Lanka declares Wednesdays a holiday. Thailand orders civil servants to take stairs. Eight frameworks applied: Escalation Dominance (Kahn/Schelling), Oil Weapon Theory (Yergin/Adelman), Economic Interdependence (Copeland), Sacred Space and Political Violence (Hassner), Spillover and Contagion (Lake/Rothchild), Alliance Coercion (Snyder), War Aims Drift (Rosen), Humanitarian Intervention inverted (Wheeler/Bellamy). Sixteen perspectives steelmanned. Cartographer voice. CSIS anchor. The map at Day 20.

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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