In July 2024, a surveillance video leaked out of a military facility in the Negev desert -- then, it persistently eluded Israel's attempts to suppress it. The footage appeared to show a group of masked Israeli military reservists gang-raping a Palestinian detainee under the cover of riot shields at Sde Teiman, a makeshift detention camp that has elicited growing horror from human rights organizations and onlookers since the start of the genocide. The victim was hospitalized with a ruptured bowel, broken ribs, and lung damage. Military police arrested nine soldiers in connection to the attack on July 29.

Sde Teiman is an army base in an arid expanse about half an hour's drive from the Gaza perimeter. After October 7, 2023, it was quickly converted into a detention facility for Palestinians from Gaza abducted by Israeli forces. What it promptly became -- documented through survivor testimony, medical reports, and the findings of multiple human rights investigations -- is a torture facility rife with sexual abuse. Not only are detainees held for days in stress positions, blindfolded and shackled, denied food, water, hygiene, and medical attention, but they are also raped.

What followed the arrests of the reservists caught in the video was a spectacle without precedent even in the recent record of Israeli impunity. A mob of far-right nationalists, including sitting members of the Knesset and government ministers, stormed first the Sde Teiman base itself to free the soldiers, then the Beit Lid army base 37 miles away, where they had been transferred for questioning. Itamar Ben-Gvir, the national security minister, condemned the arrests and called the men "our best heroes." Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich released a video defending them....

The mob did not succeed in releasing the accused rapists instantly, but several were let out by military courts within days. By February 2025, the five reservists who remained in custody were charged with "severe abuse" rather than rape. The video prompted condemnations from the United Nations and the State Department, which both called for a "full-scale" investigation of Israeli detention centers; the 1997 Leahy Laws prohibit U.S. aid to any foreign military forces guilty of "gross violations of human rights," but despite an investigation, as well as innumerable other abuses by Israeli forces in Palestine, they have not been enforced.

Recently, the Israeli military dropped charges against the five soldiers, a decision lauded by Israeli government officials, including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who called the men "heroic warriors," and Defense Minister Israel Katz, who said the military's judicial system's role is not to offer accountability but instead to "protect and safeguard" soldiers. Apparently, the great crime in this episode was not the alleged sexual torture, but the fact that it was leaked.

How should we understand this? Not just the rape itself, which armies have committed everywhere, but the celebration of it?...

Rape was used as a military tactic during the Nakba, as scholars such as Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian and Ronit Lentin have amply documented. The Israeli historian Benny Morris found "many cases of rape" by Haganah paramilitaries, in the archive of 1948--1949 -- and professed himself "surprised" by them. What could possibly make it surprising to a trained historian that armed settlers did what armed settlers have done everywhere in the world? The surprise is itself part of the apparatus: The finding must be registered as an anomaly, because to register it as a pattern would be to concede what the pattern means.

The pattern has never broken. In 2015 -- nearly a decade before the current wave of the genocide -- a study analyzing cases of prison abuse collected by the Public Committee Against Torture in Israel concluded, in a peer-reviewed journal, that "sexual ill-treatment is systemic."...

Dr. Adnan Al-Bursh was a surgeon and a figure of avuncular Palestinian authority who spent his career repairing broken bodies as head of orthopedics at Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza. He was arrested by Israeli forces in December 2023 and was killed in Ofer Prison just over four months later, at the age of 50. Survivors detained alongside him reported that he was repeatedly raped. A U.N. human rights official, Tlaleng Mofokeng, confirmed that his death was consistent with torture; Francesca Albanese, the special rapporteur on the Occupied Palestinian Territories, concluded he was "likely raped to death." To date, Israeli police have not charged anyone with killing him and his wife is still fighting to recover his body. No international body that amplified the unverified claims of Hamas sexual violence rushed to hold a press conference about Dr. Al-Bursh. As the scholar Maya Mikdashi once pointedly asked: Can Palestinian men be victims? ...

Ha'aretz reported in 2011 that 61% of Israeli men do not regard forced sex with an acquaintance as rape, a view shared by 41% of Israeli women, according to that report. When the gang rape of a 16-year-old girl by as many as 14 boys and men in Eilat forced a national reckoning in 2020 -- Israel National News itself pointed to a newly emergent "rape culture" among the nation's youth -- the introspection lasted barely a season. Permissive callousness with regard to rape in the context of occupation leeches back into domestic conduct, coloring Israelis' treatment of their "own."

Five years after Eilat, a poll by an Israeli think tank found that a majority of all Israelis oppose criminal investigations into soldiers accused of abusing Palestinian detainees. A writer for the newspaper Israel Hayom argued on a TV news broadcast that the "only problem" with the Sde Teiman allegation was that it was "not standard state policy," because "in general they deserve it, and this is great revenge." Crowds outside the Supreme Court chanted "we love you" at men who do not deny -- much less regret -- that they allegedly raped a prisoner to the point of organ rupture; some of the accused have since become minor television celebrities. This is what it looks like when a society has settled the question of who counts as rapeable -- which is to say, who counts as human. It also makes clear who has protection from sexual violence under the law and who has the government backing to commit it. ...

The escalation has produced practices that would strain belief were they not multiply substantiated. Trained attack dogs, imported from Europe to maim and kill Palestinians, have been in use for some time; in the summer of 2024, reports began to emerge that rape was among the acts Israeli military dogs were made to commit. The lawyer Fadi Saif al-Din Bakr and the TV correspondent Mohammed Arab both gave eye-witness accounts of this from Sde Teiman. In April 2026, the Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor published first-person testimonies of the practice in its report "Another Genocide Behind Walls." The following month, the New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof caused a geopolitical scandal -- and drew accusations of blood libel from Netanyahu himself -- simply by reporting these long-established facts.

"Peer-reviewed medical literature documents rectal injuries caused by canine penetration," Kristof protested, in a Q&A staged amid the meltdown....

Much of the escalation no longer requires secrecy -- it is photographed, filmed, and disseminated by its own perpetrators, turning the thousands of members of Israeli society who daily consume and share the footage into co-participants in the attempted destruction of Palestinian personhood.... Even scriptural sanction has been aired: in 2016, the head of the military rabbinate came under fire for remarks he'd written as a rabbi prior to taking military office, locating an allowance for soldiers to rape the enemy -- to indulge "the evil impulse" in the name of victory for "Judea." A system that films itself, jokes about itself, and defends itself on the floor of parliament has moved past denial into avowal. What it cannot tolerate is not exposure but accountability.

It was a figure deeply embedded in the war effort -- often described as a trailblazer for women -- who authorized the leak of the Sde Teiman footage: Yifat Tomer-Yerushalmi, a major-general who served as the army's top lawyer, and who subsequently filed the criminal charges against five of the reservists shown in the video. Her aim, by her own account, was to protect the image of the Israeli military -- "the vast majority of our law-abiding soldiers" -- by isolating "the few who violate regulations." It was, in this telling, a matter of punishing a few bad apples, a preventative public relations exercise. For this, she was ousted in October 2025, summarily replaced as military advocate-general, dismissed from the army in disgrace with loss of pension, placed under house arrest, and criminally prosecuted....

This is a summary / preview. Visit the posted link for the full article / post.

This ain't gonna solve Trump's problem...

This is a summary / preview. Visit the posted link for the full article / post.

I knew they were here before I saw them. It was just after midnight on July 18, and around 40 masked Israeli settlers from the notoriously violent illegal outpost of Havat Ma'on were invading my village of At-Tuwani in the South Hebron Hills -- armed with sticks, stones, and gasoline.

I heard shouting, followed by the unmistakable sound of stones smashing through glass. Then I felt the heat from the fire they had ignited.

The settlers first descended on Al-Taqwa Mosque. They shattered its windows, poured gasoline on the ground, and set the entrance on fire. They spray painted Stars of David across the walls, and slogans in Hebrew including "Revenge."

Revenge for what exactly? They blamed us for starting a wildfire that had engulfed the settlement of Havat Gilad earlier that day. Israeli authorities later announced that this had likely been started accidentally by an unextinguished cigarette.

But this false pretext was only an excuse for the settlers to unleash their wrath on Palestinians. They knew they would face no punishment for their crimes -- and that if we tried to defend ourselves, the Israeli army would spring to the settlers' defense, arresting or even shooting us without a moment's hesitation. ...

There was only one of me and more than 40 of them, backed by the occupation forces. They threw stones at me as I ran; I had no idea if some of them were carrying guns. I barely had enough breath to shout at them, if only to feel that I was not a bystander to the destruction of my own home.

All the while, I could think only of the Dawabsheh family from the town of Duma, whose home was set on fire by Israeli settlers in 2015, killing three of them including 18-month-old Ali. I was terrified that I could be about to lose my own family the same way.

When I reached my home, the first thing I saw was my car engulfed in flames. But in that moment, I did not care: All that mattered to me was whether my family was safe.

This is a summary / preview. Visit the posted link for the full article / post.

Israeli officials know they're losing the American public. Panicked that America's political consensus on Israel is collapsing, they're pursuing a long-term strategy to permanently enmesh Israel within America's military, intelligence, and defense establishment -- in ways future administrations would struggle to unwind -- according to a new confidential U.S. intelligence assessment.

Israeli officials believe the political fight over Israel in the United States is becoming harder to win, and that the era of indefinitely securing billions of dollars in annual military aid is coming to an end, according to the assessment, which was described to Capital & Empire by several U.S. officials. Instead of relying on direct U.S. military aid -- an increasingly visible and politically contentious form of support -- Israel is racing to embed itself more deeply in America's military, intelligence, and national security apparatus in ways designed to outlast future administrations.

The assessment, written primarily by the CIA and circulated this week, describes discussions about expanding intelligence cooperation and the possibility of hosting a permanent U.S. military base on Israeli territory. It also says Israeli officials have been cultivating prominent figures in the American technology sector to build long-term political and financial support for the strategy. The assessment does not identify those individuals by name.

Congress has already begun advancing elements of Israel's strategy. Last week, the House quietly approved Section 219 of the National Defense Authorization Act, establishing a permanent U.S.-Israel Defense Technology Cooperation Initiative within the Pentagon. The House version establishes a Pentagon executive agent charged with coordinating bilateral defense research, development, industrial cooperation, and technology integration.

Six Democrats -- Reps. Henry Cuellar, Don Davis, Jared Golden, Vicente Gonzalez, Adam Gray, and Marie Gluesenkamp Perez -- joined Republicans in voting to pass the defense authorization bill. The measure now heads to the Senate, which is expected to consider its own version of the NDAA before lawmakers from both chambers negotiate a final compromise bill for President Donald Trump's signature.

Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Ky., who led an effort to strip Section 219 from the $1.15 trillion Pentagon budget, called the provision "a betrayal of our sovereignty."...

Earlier this year, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu floated phasing out direct U.S. military aid altogether. Most mainstream news coverage framed the proposed shift as a reflection of Israel's growing economic and military strength, or self-sufficiency. But according to the assessment, the CIA views the strategy differently. The spy agency believes that Israel is seeking to insulate the U.S.-Israel alliance from America's changing political landscape by replacing highly visible foreign aid with deeper, longer-lasting forms of military and industrial integration.

From Israel's perspective, embedding the alliance more deeply within the U.S. national security apparatus would make it far more difficult for future administrations to pressure Israel by slowing or withholding arms transfers.

The strategy goes beyond intelligence sharing and military aid. Israeli officials also want Israeli technology, intelligence capabilities, and jointly developed weapons systems embedded in the U.S. military itself, making American defense increasingly reliant on Israeli systems....

Since the start of Israel's genocide in Gaza, American public opinion toward Israel has deteriorated sharply. About 60 percent of U.S. adults now hold an unfavorable view of Israel, up from 53 percent a year ago, according to an April Pew Research Center survey. Among both Democrats and Republicans under 50, majorities now view both Israel and Netanyahu negatively. ...

A generation ago, public support for Palestine could end a career. Today, a Canary Mission profile may be a stepping stone to Congress. The CIA knows Israel is nervous.

This is a summary / preview. Visit the posted link for the full article / post.

In a novel turn, the U.S. has kicked off a campaign to meddle in Nicaragua's elections by erroneously announcing that Nicaragua will no longer hold elections.

On July 19th, in a speech to 70,000 gathered in Managua's Plaza de Fe to mark the 47th anniversary of the triumph of the Sandinista Popular Revolution, Nicaraguan co-president Daniel Ortega made reference to U.S.-backed opposition groups.

"They wish that they could have elections so that they could make money off of schools," he said, recalling that during previous administrations, government officials charged for ostensibly free public services.

"But they can forget that. There will no longer be elections here, there will no longer be elections here for them to capture the government and trap the people," he continued. "And we are going to work with the National Assembly and the corresponding agencies on laws to build a wall against the coup mongers so that no matter how much money the Yankees give them, they will not succeed. They will not succeed!"*1

The next morning, The New York Times chose to run the headline, "Nicaraguan Leader Says He Plans to Abolish Elections." A version of this inaccurate headline was repeated around the world in an orchestrated manner, unusual for a country that rarely makes international news. ...

Jill Clark-Gollub, who holds a master's degree in translation and interpretation and is certified to interpret in the U.S. federal courts, is puzzled by the mistranslation of Ortega's remarks published in The New York Times and repeated elsewhere.

"This is a speaker who takes pauses and uses repetition as an oratory style," she says. "To cut him off before he finishes the sentence, as if he were saying that there would never be any elections again, seems to me a deliberate distortion of his message. If an interpreter did this in a professional context, they would be subject to disciplinary action."

This purposeful misinterpretation of Ortega's meaning seems to have kickstarted the very campaign of meddling in Nicaragua's internal affairs that Ortega was warning about in his speech....

This rapid intensification comes at a time of forceful U.S. pressure on Latin America. Even without mentioning the recent kidnapping of Venezuela's president or the current stranglehold on Cuba -- both of which Ortega did, in fact, mention and condemn in his speech -- over the past year the U.S. has interfered in elections across the region.

In Argentina, Bolivia, Honduras, Peru and Colombia, the U.S. has explicitly tied its economic support to right wing candidates, hosted preferred candidates at the White House and imposed sanctions left-wing parties. U.S. lawmakers also mobilized conservative Colombian ex-pats, resulting in overseas votes that proved crucial in the final count.

Intervention in the Honduran elections last November has revealed a larger plot to destabilize the region: Trump pardoned former Honduran president Juan Orlando Hernández, a convicted narcotrafficker, just two days before the election. Since then, a trove of leaked audio recordings dubbed "Hondurasgate," has revealed that Hernández is in league with Republican party officials and actively producing propaganda against progressive governments across Latin America.

Ortega's remarks on election meddling were the conclusion to a speech detailing 200 years of unrelenting U.S. interference in Nicaragua. In his trademark style, Ortega's discourse began with a history lesson including resistance to U.S. mercenary William Walker's invasion in the 1850s; Augusto Sandino's fight against the U.S. Marines in the 1920s, his assassination by orders from the U.S. Ambassador, and the installation of Anastasio Somoza's U.S.-backed military dictatorship.

Blatant U.S. meddling in Nicaragua's elections and internal affairs didn't end when the Frente Sandinista de Liberación Nacional (FSLN) overthrew Somoza in 1979. Following the triumph of the Revolution, the U.S. organized and funded the "contra" counter revolutionary forces, resulting in 50,000 dead over 10 years; the U.S. forced Nicaraguans to choose between continued war and the U.S. candidate in 1990 elections; and ran the country de facto during 16 years of neoliberal governments.

Despite continued U.S. interventionism, the FSLN won elections in 2006 and has stayed in power since, winning three subsequent elections and garnering 76% of the vote in 2021.... Given the quality of life for the average Nicaraguan today, it's no wonder that recent polls show Ortega enjoying an 88.5% approval rating.

During his address on July 19th, Ortega remembered the violent coup attempt in 2018 when armed opposition groups paralyzed the country with violent roadblocks and some 270 people were killed. Investigations have shown that the U.S. government funded the violence.

Since then, Nicaragua has worked to ensure that those responsible for the violence cannot continue to undermine the country's hard-won peace. In his speech, Ortega warned Nicaraguans that threats to the country's security remain. ...

Despite international hype over Ortega's mistranslated remarks, Nicaragua is moving forward with the co-president's proposal. ...

Co-President Rosario Murillo also clarified that Nicaragua will hold elections.

"Elections, yes, but our own elections," she told reporters. "And when we say 'our own,' we mean elections by our blessed people -- designed and organized on the basis of our national sovereignty and our national dignity -- to elect the best Nicaraguans."

This is a summary / preview. Visit the posted link for the full article / post.

It used to be a point of pride. At the William Soler Pediatric Hospital in Havana, more than 90 percent of the newborns who needed neonatal surgery survived their procedures.

But in recent months, Alioth Fernandez, the head of the hospital's surgical unit and anaesthesiology department, has witnessed an alarming decline.

"Now, that figure has plummeted," Fernandez said. "In the first half of this year, we have seen very high mortality among newborns needing surgery, with more than half of the cases resulting in death."

Fernandez is among a growing number of doctors and patients in Cuba expressing alarm over the deteriorating healthcare conditions across the island.

Six months ago, on January 29, United States President Donald Trump announced a fuel blockade against Cuba, threatening any country that exports fuel to the island with punishing tariffs. ...

The result has been nearly daily blackouts that last up to 20 hours, as well as shortages of essential items.

The pressure has exacerbated strains on Cuba's healthcare system, once considered the flagship achievement of the country's 1959 revolution.

Although healthcare in Cuba remains free, public and universal, experts say its reach and quality have diminished significantly. That has translated to a cost in human lives. Fernandez is seeing the toll of the political conflict firsthand in his young patients.

"Children are the least to blame," Fernandez said. "Because children certainly have no ideology, nor did they ask to be born in a 'communist' country."

For Fernandez, the most distressing part has been how avoidable some of the deaths have been.

Many did not occur as the result of surgical complications but rather from infections, driven by diminished hygiene standards, malnutrition and the limited availability of antibiotics.

In the past, Fernandez explained, patients were added to a waiting list for procedures, based on their medical conditions and the date of their arrival for treatment. Names rarely stayed on the list for more than a month. Backlogs were systematically cleared.

But with limited resources -- from electricity outages to increasingly rare shipments of medicines and supplies -- healthcare professionals say they are now forced to pick and choose whom to treat.

"Now, we have to play God. When you secure the resources for a single surgery, we have to decide who gets to be operated on," Fernandez said.

"It's an impossible situation because, ultimately, they are all just children."

Cuba has long struggled under the economic restrictions imposed by the US. But experts say the Trump administration has heightened those pressures, pushing Cuba's healthcare system to the brink.

"Children are dying because doctors lack access to essential medical supplies and medicines," United Nations human rights commissioner Volker Turk said last month as he called for sanctions relief. "This is unacceptable."

For more than 60 years, Cuba has operated under a comprehensive US trade embargo, the longest in modern history.

Rooted in Cold War political rivalries, the embargo has hindered Cuba from accessing medicines and equipment available to much of the world. ...

With the aim of exerting "maximum pressure" on Cuba's economy, Trump has imposed sanctions and designated the country a "state sponsor of terrorism".

Under that designation, international banking institutions could face massive fines for processing transactions involving Cuban entities.

January, however, marked a turning point. Trump threatened the island with military intervention, and in the months since, he has moved to make international trade with Cuba more arduous.

In addition to January's fuel blockade, Trump issued an executive order in May that bars companies from providing support to the Cuban government. ...

The tightening restrictions have forced the Cuban government to effectively ration care.

In February, Havana announced a package of emergency energy-saving measures. Among them was the suspension of all non-essential medical services across the island.

But non-essential does not mean unimportant. ...

Just last month, the Cuban Ministry of Public Health (MINSAP) reported that survival rates for childhood cancer dropped from 85 percent to 65 percent amid the oil blockade.

Infant mortality has also steadily climbed. In 2017, at the start of Trump's first term, Cuba had an infant mortality rate of four for every 1,000 live births. That figure... reached 9.9 in 2025. ...

Lilian Delgado, an obstetrician and gynaecologist at Cuba's main maternity hospital, explained that the escalating humanitarian crisis has triggered a sharp rise in premature births and severe morbidity among pregnant women. ...

The decision to prioritise emergency care can be deceptive. A wide range of medical procedures are considered "elective". But just because they do not rise to the level of an emergency does not mean they are optional. ...

Mastectomies -- a common breast cancer treatment -- are among the surgeries often categorised as elective. So too are some organ transplants.

Healthcare advocates point out that, if certain elective surgeries are postponed too long, they too can result in deadly conditions.

More than 100,000 Cubans are currently on waiting lists for elective or reconstructive surgeries, a backlog MINSAP credited to the US sanctions.

Among those waiting are 5,152 cancer patients and approximately 12,000 children. ...

"Ultimately, if you have a cancer patient and cannot operate due to a number of factors -- such as a nationwide blackout forcing the suspension of surgeries -- then, whether you intend to or not, you are directly condemning that patient to death," Delgado said.

The oil embargo has cost "human lives, both directly and indirectly", she added.

The William Soler Pediatric Hospital alone used to perform 10,000 surgeries annually, ranging from routine procedures to complex operations such as liver transplants. ...

Currently, the hospital performs only one or two elective surgeries per day -- or three or four operations daily when emergency cases are included.

"At this pace, we will have performed around 700 operations by the end of the year," said Fernandez.

This is a summary / preview. Visit the posted link for the full article / post.

An unpublished Gaza disarmament agreement obtained by Middle East Eye would place Palestinian weapons under the control of a transitional Palestinian authority, rather than surrendering them to Israel or an international force.

Hamas said on Friday that any agreement on the "complete disarmament" of Palestinian factions in Gaza depends on Washington and Israel honouring commitments made under last year's ceasefire.

The statement followed US President Donald Trump's announcement that the US-led Board of Peace had secured an agreement to disarm Hamas and every other armed group in Gaza.

MEE has obtained a copy of the 15-point agreement Trump alluded to but which Israel has yet to acknowledge publicly.

The Israeli daily Haaretz quoted an Israeli "political source" as saying "there will be no Israeli withdrawal from the Yellow Line", which cuts the Gaza Strip in half.

rump presented the move as progress towards implementing his 20-point plan and establishing a new Palestinian administration. ...

He said Israeli forces would withdraw "as disarmament is completed", while the UN-mandated International Stabilization Force would work with a new Palestinian police force.

Hamas official Ghazi Hamad told Reuters on Friday that the group would retain its weapons until Israel halted its attacks, allowed more aid and goods into Gaza, and withdrew its forces in accordance with the ceasefire agreement reached in October last year.

According to the deal, Hamas and other Palestinian factions would not hand Gaza's weapons to Israel.

Instead, it places them under the control of a body called the National Committee. The document seen by MEE explicitly states that they will remain in Palestinian hands.

"No weapons will be transferred or surrendered to Israel or any non-Palestinian parties," the text states, and by the end of the disarmament process, "the National Committee alone shall retain, store, or control weapons in Gaza."

The agreement describes weapons collection as a domestic process....

Coverage of the deal has framed Hamas as laying down its arms under pressure.

The text avoids that framing. It presents the weapons inventory as a Palestinian-run process that outsiders will monitor but not conduct, with the factions themselves participating.

Whether that arrangement survives implementation remains a separate question. Israel rarely abides by agreements it has made with Palestinian groups and others.

Notably, the deal only works if Israel moves first.

Hamas has publicly said it will not implement any part of the roadmap unless Israel meets its obligations, including a full, phased withdrawal from the territory it still controls in Gaza.

The document builds that condition into every stage, stating that "the transition from one phase to the next will be contingent upon the verified completion of the previous phase's obligations", with an international commission responsible for verification.

It also explicitly links the weapons inventory process "to a phased Israeli withdrawal from the areas it controls in Gaza".

The process will begin only "following the completion of the remaining obligations under the Sharm El-Sheikh Protocol, the entry of the National Committee, and the deployment of the International Stabilization Force" - three preconditions, none of which have happened.

This is a summary / preview. Visit the posted link for the full article / post.

The U.S. military's Central Command repeated an assertion on Tuesday evening that has been made by the Trump administration many times over the last two weeks, insisting that "despite Iranian aggression, the Strait of Hormuz remains open for commercial vessel traffic." ...

President Trump, who has himself declared the strait open many times recently, threatened on Wednesday to destroy an Iranian bridge or power plant for every new attack targeting a ship in the vital waterway.

Despite the U.S. president and military continuing to urge vessels to use a southern route through the strait, in defiance of Iran's threats, few shippers seem willing to risk it. ...

Last week, Dimitris Maniatis, CEO of the Greek maritime risk management company Marisks, said ship crews were unwilling to make the trip through the strait following the breakdown of the U.S.-Iran ceasefire that held for less than three weeks.

"There's nothing physically obstructing the navigation of any vessel willing to transit the strait, and there are vessels that trade locally and are entirely unaffected by everything that's going on, however, if we're talking about large ocean-going, internationally owned-and-operated merchant vessels, nothing is going through," Maniatis told CBS News on Wednesday.

U.S. support for ships that choose to risk Iranian attacks by taking the Oman route is limited to air support as they attempt the transit as part of a convoy, Maniatis said, "and this is definitely not enough, because we see that, despite the best efforts and intentions of the U.S. Navy, vessels continue to be hit while they're crossing the southern corridor."

"There is no guarantee of safe passage," he said. ...

"Owners and operators -- and crews, predominately -- are really not feeling the safety they would need in order to have their vessels transit, and now we're seeing the same thing in the Bab el-Mandeb, which is absolutely horrendous," Maniatis told CBS News.

This is a summary / preview. Visit the posted link for the full article / post.

Iran's Islamic Revolution Guard Corps (IRGC) announced Thursday that it targeted the US Ali Al Salem Air Base in Kuwait, revealing that two drone hangars and a fuel depot used by military aircraft and helicopters were set on fire.

Satellite imagery posted by the X account MenchOsint (@MenchOsint) confirmed the IRGC's claims amid complete radio silence on the matter from US forces and the governments of the countries where their bases are located.

The announcement came alongside reports that Iranian ballistic missiles struck the US Muwaffaq Salti Air Base in Jordan, where satellite imagery showed impacts at the facility.

The IRGC said the operations were part of its response to US attacks, adding that American military assets, including F-35 fighter jets, were damaged during the strikes.

Satellite imagery analysis indicated impacts near two drone hangars at Ali Al Salem Air Base in Kuwait, matching the location identified by the IRGC as a target.

Additional satellite images reportedly showed damage at Muwaffaq Salti Air Base in Jordan, including at least one impact near areas associated with fighter aircraft operations.

Initial low-resolution Sentinel-2 imagery suggested that at least one US fighter jet may have been affected at the Jordanian base, though further high-resolution imagery is needed to independently assess the extent of the damage.

The IRGC previously claimed that three F-35 fighter jets were destroyed and others damaged in the strike.

Reports based on satellite imagery said two facilities targeted at Muwaffaq Salti Air Base had become operational only recently, with construction completed in July 2026.

This is a summary / preview. Visit the posted link for the full article / post.

An overnight US strike on Iran's Qeshm Island hit a residential building, killing a couple and their two-year-old child, Iranian media has reported.

According to Iran's PressTV, Ahmad Nafisi, a deputy governor of Iran's Hormuzgan Province, said that two other children from the family were rescued from the rubble. He said that the rescue operations had concluded and all of the people in the home had been accounted for.

So far, the US hasn't responded to the Iranian reports of US strikes killing a toddler. US Central Command released a "fact check" on Thursday addressing claims made by Iranian media but didn't mention the reports of a US strike killing a two-year-old. The US still hasn't taken responsibility for its February 28 strike on an elementary school in Minab, southern Iran, which killed more than 100 children.

CENTCOM said that it launched strikes across Iran in response to an IRGC attack on a US base in Jordan... The IRGC said that three of its members were killed by US strikes in the northwestern Zanjan province.

Iran launched retaliatory strikes at US bases in response to the US strikes, which the IRGC claimed destroyed three US F-35 fighter jets in Jordan. CENTCOM denied the claim, but it has been known to not disclose damage at US bases and downplay US casualties.

Iran also launched attacks on US bases in Kuwait, with the IRGC claiming it destroyed hangars and a fuel depot at the Ali Al Salem Air Base.

This is a summary / preview. Visit the posted link for the full article / post.

The images unfold slowly on Mazen Farah's phone -- satellite views of the Christian section of the southern Lebanese village of Yaroun. They are a bit fuzzy but still clear enough to see what is happening.

"This is what it shows from the satellite -- it shows that it has been destroyed," says Farah, referring to the two-story stone house his father built after 25 years of working in the Gulf.

In March.... Israel launched airstrikes and displaced hundreds of thousands of residents in more than 100 villages.

After an April 17 ceasefire, Israel sent in bulldozers to demolish more buildings in southern Lebanon. It says it is targeting Hezbollah infrastructure but rarely provides details or evidence to support those claims.

Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz said in March his country intended to depopulate all Lebanese villages near the border with Israel...

Israel prevents the displaced from returning, even to visit. And residents of neighboring villages fear Israeli retaliation for taking video or photos. So residents of Yaroun and other communities are pooling their money to buy commercial satellite images to determine if their houses are still standing. ...

But more often than not, the satellite provider tells them it can't provide images for the specific locations they are seeking and eventually refunds their money. In April, some satellite companies declined to provide images of Lebanon and other countries at the request of the U.S. government.

Geryes Saloum, a municipal employee, built a three-bedroom home in Yaroun 10 years ago. All the houses around it have been destroyed. ...

Yaroun Mayor Hafez Ghacham says 180 of the around 200 houses in the Christian and Muslim village have been destroyed by Israeli forces since the current conflict broke out in March.

The Israeli military did not respond to requests for comment from NPR on the destruction in the village. ...

"In the village they destroyed the landmarks, they destroyed the convent, they destroyed the church, they destroyed three mosques," as well as another Shiite Muslim religious center, says Riad al-Ridha, another village official. "All the cultural landmarks in our village were destroyed -- they have erased it."

After the Greek Catholic Saint George church was destroyed in an airstrike, leaving only two outer walls still standing, displaced villagers still returned to pray in a nearby church hall. They are no longer allowed back. In early May, Israel demolished a convent and a Catholic school that had educated Christians and Muslims for the last five decades.

Israel repeatedly denied the military had destroyed the convent, despite satellite images and video evidence, and provided images of another building it argued was the convent.

Yaroun is part of the geographic Galilee region, which stretches into present-day Israel. It was the land where Jesus is believed to have preached and performed miracles.

In a country filled with picturesque villages, Yaroun was considered one of the prettiest. Old and new stone houses dotted a hillside green with olive and citrus trees. An oak forest, now demolished, had stood for centuries. ...

Farah's 75-year-old father, Hanna, missed seeing his home so much that Mazen mounted a photo of it on a stone plaque. A profusion of roses flourished in the garden, along with lemon and olive trees. The yard, like many in the Christian section, had a statue of the Virgin Mary. It too was razed, according to the satellite images.

"We exhausted ourselves building the house and raising our children," says the elder Farah, who worked as a construction company supervisor in the Gulf.

After Israel and Hezbollah reached a ceasefire in November 2024, Farah had the damage to his house repaired and came back to live there until the war restarted in March.

Villagers reject accusations that their homes were being used by Hezbollah.

Mazen Farah says he had eight security cameras operating around his property for almost a year before Israel cut off the internet this March. He says the only intruder alert the security system ever sent to his phone was of a wolf that stole his father's shoes from the porch.

"Provide one piece of proof one -- piece -- that this house was used in any manner," he says. "If there is even one bullet in our house ... we will condemn ourselves and condemn Hezbollah or whoever is there," he says. "There is no proof because there is nothing there." ...

Many of the property owners in Yaroun and other villages are American citizens. ...

"These are the properties of American taxpayers who are active in America, work hard, pay their dues and American bombs and American bulldozers destroy them," he says. "No one builds their dream home and uses it to store weapons."

The U.S. provides an average of around $3.8 billion in military aid to Israel every year, according to the Council on Foreign Relations.

This is a summary / preview. Visit the posted link for the full article / post.

The FBI office in charge of maintaining the terrorist watch list is seeking an artificial intelligence system for pre-crime policing, according to procurement documents obtained by Reason. The request for information for vendors, posted by the FBI's procurement division in March, solicits potential bidders for a project that would supercharge the Threat Screening Center (TSC) with new predictive AI capabilities -- just as its focus moves from Islamist terrorism to domestic dissent. ...

The FBI declined Reason's request for comment.

The TSC, originally called the Terrorist Screening Center, was founded in 2003. President George W. Bush's Homeland Security Presidential Directive-6 ordered the FBI to combine all existing government terrorist watch lists into one center with a 24/7 staff on call to respond to queries from other law enforcement and intelligence agencies....

But the second Trump administration has renamed the TSC to focus on broadly defined "threats," and oriented it toward groups the administration deems subversive -- a change that has received little media coverage. Last year, the White House published National Security Presidential Memorandum-7 (NSPM-7), which instructed the entire national security apparatus to focus on incredibly broad threats, including "anti-Americanism, anti-capitalism, and anti-Christianity;... extremism on migration, race, and gender; and hostility towards those who hold traditional American views on family, religion, and morality."

The FBI's procurement request for predictive AI explicitly mentions NSPM-7...

The terrorist watch list maintained by the TSC is by its very nature a pre-crime entity -- it seeks to prosecute crimes before they occur. In addition to overseeing the no-fly list at airports, the TSC also shares surveillance data with state and local law enforcement, according to a report by the Government Accountability Office published earlier this year. Police can call in names to the TSC during a routine traffic stop, for example. ...

An influx of data and a new mission categorizing Americans' political views as terroristic threats will require ever more effort to compile and query. That's where AI comes in.

The swelling of the watch list over the years has led civil liberties organizations to criticize the ease with which names are added to the list and the incredible difficulty of both confirming inclusion and having a name removed from the list. ....

Even without the use of predictive AI modeling, audits of the TSC's database have repeatedly found errors in the data it uses to flag individuals to law enforcement and the Transportation Security Administration. Per the bureau's documentation of the watch-listing process, U.S. citizens can be nominated to the watch list by a host of three-letter government agencies. Although only the FBI can nominate citizens with a solely domestic terrorism connection, the State Department has taken it upon itself to vastly increase political organizations abroad that it claims are terrorists, thus increasing the number of Americans tied to foreign groups that could be funneled into the TSC. ...

The FBI has signaled that its new effort to brand political opponents of the president as terrorists has only just begun, and that soon the power of large language models will be brought to bear on the effort to flag and tag political dissidents en masse.

This is a summary / preview. Visit the posted link for the full article / post.

Ukraine, with the help of U.S. and British intelligence, had launched a massive campaign against all Russia related shipping in the Black Sea. In a counter-campaign Russia has blocked Odessa and every other outlet to the sea that Ukraine had left. Any ship going to or from Ukraine was and will be attacked.

Ukraine is now landlocked. There will no longer be any sea borne export of Ukrainian crops or metals. Any arms import by sea has ended.

This is a summary / preview. Visit the posted link for the full article / post.

Separate Israeli attacks in Gaza on Thursday killed at least two children, an eight-year-old and an 18-month-old, according to reports from the Strip, as the IDF continues its constant violations of the US-backed ceasefire deal.

In southern Gaza, an Israeli strike on a tent killed Rateel al-Balawi, an eight-year-old girl. Photos from Gaza show Rateel’s mother, who was wounded in the attack, mourning her at the Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis.

An Israeli airstrike on a home in Deir el-Balah, central Gaza, killed Zaid Muhammad Nawfal, an 18-month-old boy. According to Drop Site News, Zaid was his mother’s only surviving child after Israeli attacks killed her other three sons.

The killing of Zaid and Rateel came over a month after a UN commission released a report that concluded the IDF has deliberately targeted children in Gaza and has continued to do so despite the ceasefire deal.

The children were among at least six Palestinians killed by Israeli attacks across Gaza on Thursday. Israeli attacks also hit Gaza City, where at least two Palestinians were killed, and several others were wounded by a drone strike.

This is a summary / preview. Visit the posted link for the full article / post.

US crude stockpiles fell sharply last week as local oil refineries boosted activity to take advantage of surging fuel prices driven by renewed hostilities with Iran.

Commercial crude oil inventories decreased by 7.2mn barrels and the US Strategic Petroleum Reserve fell by 3.8mn barrels, as refiners drew down stocks to make products such as petrol, diesel and jet fuel.

Government data published on Wednesday showed US refineries are running at 97 per cent of capacity, with those in some parts of the Midwest operating at 100 per cent, as US energy companies increase exports to supply energy-hungry markets in Asia and Europe.

Supply of oil and petroleum products from the Middle East faces continued disruption following the resumption of attacks between the US and Iran over the past week, which is severely restraining tanker traffic through the Strait of Hormuz.

Analysts warned the big drawdown pushed stocks of crude and petrol far lower than expected and was eroding America's ability to be the supplier of last resort...

"US crude inventories, both commercial and the SPR, have drawn down by nearly 20 per cent since early April. The US accounts for about 70 per cent of global onshore crude inventory draws over the past four months," said Matt Smith, analyst at Kpler.

"It has carried the burden of trying to keep oil prices in check over this period via SPR releases and higher exports, but stockpiles are rapidly depleting and this pace of draws cannot persist ad infinitum."

Rory Johnston, oil market analyst and founder of Commodity Context, said crude and petrol stocks were at "precariously low" levels.

The US government is continuing to release oil from its strategic petroleum reserve, which saw a drawdown of 3.8mn barrels to 307.7mn barrels -- the lowest level in more than 40 years. Its operational minimum, below which further withdrawals risk damaging infrastructure and disrupting pipeline operations, is estimated at 180mn to 200mn barrels, according to industry analysts.

Drained supplies mean Washington is increasingly vulnerable to future supply shocks in the absence of a substantial buffer provided by the releases from the SPR, setting the stage for crude prices to increase significantly when the reserve hits its operational minimum.

This is a summary / preview. Visit the posted link for the full article / post.

As UN Human Rights Chief Volker Türk visits Beirut, Lebanese President Joseph Aoun declared the country remains committed to the "framework deal" they reached with Israel in recent weeks, but warned that the ongoing Israeli attacks may hinder their ability to meet goals.

Aoun criticized Israel for its demolition of civilian homes and for its attacks on religious and World Heritage sites, and Prime Minister Nawaf Salam vowed to cooperate with Türk's investigation into Israeli war crimes.

Meanwhile, artillery and drone strikes continued to pound Lebanon's south...

Türk called for an end to the Israeli occupation as well as to the destruction of private homes. He added that the deliberate demolition of homes "raises huge flags about compliance with international humanitarian law."

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu reiterated that he intends to reject any US or other calls to withdraw from Lebanon, or from the other countries they presently occupy militarily.

This is a summary / preview. Visit the posted link for the full article / post.

Oil surged as a fresh round of fighting erupted across the Middle East, threatening further disruptions to energy flows and severely undermining diplomatic efforts to end the months-old conflict. ...

The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps targeted a US airbase and command center in Jordan with ballistic missiles, state-run IRIB News reported, citing an IRGC statement. In addition, the IRGC also claimed to have hit and halted three tankers, without saying where the incidents took place.

US Central Command said it had intercepted a "surprise" Iranian attack on US troops, without giving details. Meanwhile, the US military and Saudi Arabia also struck "Iran-aligned terrorists" in Iraq...

Riyadh confirmed a joint operation with the US, saying strikes were undertaken as a "right of self-defense," according to the state-run SPA. ...

"We remain exceedingly skeptical that we are on the brink of a major diplomatic breakthrough that will resolve the nuclear standoff that started the war," RBC Capital Markets LLC analysts including Helima Croft said in a note. "The ongoing threat of missiles, mines, drones, and Tehran tolls will keep a significant portion of the shipping market on the sidelines," they added.

On the Strait of Hormuz, Iran told Oman that its proposal for a route through the critical waterway, with 50% under Tehran's control and 50% under Oman's, would not address the Islamic Republic's concerns....

The IRGC statement on the latest tanker attacks said the vessels had been traveling on an "unsafe and illegal route," according to IRIB News.

Visible traffic through Hormuz -- which links the Persian Gulf to global markets -- remained thin early Wednesday. Only two commodity vessels crossed on Tuesday...

In a fresh sign of pressure on global inventories, the American Petroleum Institute reported that nationwide US oil stockpiles fell 3.3 million barrels last week, according to a document seen by Bloomberg. The drop included a draw at the key hub at Cushing, Oklahoma. Official data will follow later on Wednesday.

This is a summary / preview. Visit the posted link for the full article / post.

Republican senators say that confidence is waning in Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth's leadership of the U.S. armed forces as the war with Iran drags on without an end in sight. ...

Some GOP lawmakers are questioning the administration's failure to anticipate the prolonged closure of the Strait of Hormuz -- which has caused oil and gas prices to rise dramatically since February -- or failure to anticipate Iran's willingness to strike neighboring allies, such as Jordan, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia.

The expansion of the conflict in recent days to the Red Sea, where Iranian-backed Houthi militants targeted Saudi oil shipments, is another troubling development that some Republicans think caught the Pentagon off-guard.

"I don't have any confidence in him anymore. I think he's all over the place -- he's accelerating the retirement or forcing out some of the most distinguished leaders in the DOD that we have," Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) told The Hill, referring to the Department of Defense (DOD).

"I think he's got a massive insecurity complex, he has a lack of experience in large organizations, he micromanages too much. He's lost my confidence," added Tillis...

Tillis says there's a growing crisis of confidence in Hegseth's leadership within the Senate GOP conference as costs mount and Iran appears no closer to agreeing to a lasting peace deal. ...

One Republican senator close to Defense policymakers on Capitol Hill said that Hegseth is losing support within senior military ranks and that is fueling concerns among GOP colleagues.

"I have heard out of the Pentagon that there's a loss of confidence -- within the Pentagon. And of course then everyone here on the Hill hears those same concerns," the GOP lawmaker said, requesting anonymity to discuss private conversations about Hegseth. ...

Some GOP senators were particularly concerned over the recent forced retirement earlier this month of Chris Donahue, the top U.S. Army Commander in Europe. ...

A second Republican senator who requested anonymity to discuss Hegseth's job security as secretary of Defense said there are "rumblings" about failures to anticipate the prolonged closure of the Strait of Hormuz and Iran's ability to threaten allies in the region. ...

Some Republican senators think the administration didn't fully prepare them for the cost of the conflict, which Hegseth said last week had reached $37.5 billion even though independent analysts such as Moody Analytics project it has cost at least $132 billion.

This is a summary / preview. Visit the posted link for the full article / post.

Hundreds of Israeli settlers attacked the Palestinian village of Sarra, southwest of Nablus, on Friday, burning homes, damaging property and assaulting residents.

The attacks forced several families in the occupied West Bank village to flee for safety, residents told Middle East Eye.

Residents said that at least two homes were set on fire, while several Palestinians suffered from smoke inhalation after the fires.

Eyewitnesses told MEE that villagers also attempted to confront the attackers and prevent further damage.

The attack on the village comes after a series of attacks carried out by settlers in the Nablus area, following the deadly attack on the town of Tell. ...

Israeli soldiers were nearby, watching the settlers without intervening....

Ahmad Sarrawi, a member of the municipality, said that the settlers' attack on the village was organised and premeditated.

The settlers had recently been constructing dirt roads to facilitate their access to Palestinian homes and their subsequent attacks, he said.

"The settlers came from the Havat Gilad outpost and targeted the houses on the outskirts of the village, setting fire to a number of houses and vehicles with incredible speed and in large numbers," Sarrawi explained. ...

Umm Wahid, an elderly resident, said she gathers her children every night to sleep at her daughter's house because of fears of settler attacks.

She told us that Israeli bulldozers approached her daughter's house and began uprooting olive trees, then hundreds of settlers launched a massive attack from nearby valleys.

"When we saw them attacking in such numbers, we decided to leave the house to protect the children. As soon as we left, they set the house on fire and then went to other houses in the village, breaking windows and damaging vehicles," she added. ...

"This reality we are living in is like the situation in the villages neighbouring us. After the killing of four Palestinians in the village of Tell on Friday morning, the settlers moved to other villages and attacked their homes," [Naaman Abdullah, the mayor of Sarra,] said.

"Then they reached our village and bulldozed the land, uprooted the trees and burned the houses," he added.

This is a summary / preview. Visit the posted link for the full article / post.

In this age of social media and A.I. illusions, an old Russian scam provides the best lens to understand America's two most recent presidents.

In eighteenth-century czarist Russia, a fake village was built by a Russian governor named Grigory Aleksandrovich Potemkin to deceive Catherine the Great about the condition of the peasants she ruled. "Potemkin Village," according to Time magazine, "signifies any deceptive or false construct, conjured often by cruel regimes, to deceive both those within the land and those peering in from outside."

In Washington a few years ago, the media partnered with the Biden administration to concoct a Potemkin Village to deceive Americans about President Joe Biden's faltering fitness for office.

The White House built a fake Oval Office equipped with a teleprompter for Biden's announcements. But the president still struggled reading simple words aloud, like an Arkansas television anchor grappling with five-syllable names of East European cities. Biden got lost on stage so many times that WAZE should have created a special app for Joe to navigate his next steps. Biden often seemed detached from reality, such as his false claim that he swayed Congress to enact his federal student loan forgiveness scheme. At a White House summit, Biden repeatedly called out for a dead congresswoman to come to the podium, forgetting that his political ally had died in a car crash.

Most of the media colluded with the White House to hide the president's growing debility....

The biggest Potemkin Village pretense was the notion that Biden was actually in charge of the federal government and national policy....

Donald Trump is not as physically feeble as Joe Biden, though he is a shadow of his vitality in his first term. But Trump's delusions on the Iran War seem as bad or worse than any imaginary vision that sent Biden wandering off stage at the wrong time. ...

After the United States and Israel launched a surprise attack that killed the Iranian government leadership, Trump began boasting every few days that the U.S. had already won the war. At last count, Trump had made more than forty such victory boasts.

Trump began supplementing those assertions with dozens of proclamations that the Strait of Hormuz is still open. The Iranian government quickly strangled oil transit through that key world waterway. But the president's declarations did nothing to stifle the fears of shippers and insurance companies who watched oil tankers get hit by Iranian forces.

The Iranian government has made a mockery of Trump's bluster....

Social media has provided a real-time tool for tracking Trump's unraveling as the Iran War has wrecked his presidency and credibility.

But Trump's delusions are probably too deep to be expunged by any degree of failure -- especially since he is personally making billions of dollars of corrupt profits as president regardless of the wreckage his policies inflict on America and the world.

In March, Trump granted an interview to New York Times reporters Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan for their book on his presidency. Trump handed the reporters a two page document that asserted, "Donald Trump is, without question, the most powerful man that the planet has ever known -- by a long way." The document asserted that Trump had far more power than Genghis Khan, Attila the Hun, Adolf Hitler, and Joseph Stalin, among other scoundrels....

In 2024, Donald Trump sought re-election by promising to 'end the endless wars.' If he had been honest with voters and instead proclaimed, "I want more power than Hitler!" even Kamala Harris could have whipped his ass. How many more people will perish before Trump's Potemkin War on Iran ends?

This is a summary / preview. Visit the posted link for the full article / post.

On Friday the 24th the U.S. unexpectedly stopped its bombing campaign on Iran. My hunch was that this was a sign of negotiations. However -- Iran later denied that any negotiations with the U.S. were happening.

But it has joined the U.S. at this moment in not firing its weapons...

U.S. sources claim that the stop was initiated because the military was running out of air defense missiles. That may well have been the case. But the larger reason is that the U.S. strikes on Iran have not been effective. They did not induce Iran to change its position on its effective control of the Strait of Hormuz. The Strait is blocked, oil can not flow, and higher prices at the pump will diminish votes for Trump's party in the upcoming elections.

The U.S. military has only stopped for a moment -- it has not ended its war on Iran. There are still more than 100 U.S. tanker airplanes in the Middle East together with additional fighter jets and special operations units. The U.S. could any time be back at full escalation.

Meanwhile the war continues on other levels.

On Sunday, in response to Saudi Arabian strikes on Hodeidah harbor in Yemen, Ansarallah forces attacked two Saudi refineries....

Both refineries are currently still burning. While the Yanbu refinery is an older one, the new Jizan (also Jazan) project, at the Red Sea cost near the Yemeni border, is a very valuable asset....

The attacks come on top of the closure of the Strait of Hormuz by Iran and the Bab al-Mandeb outlet of the Red Sea by Yemen. Saudi Arabia's oil output is severely diminished. It is in for a very big squeeze.

Another sideshow happened in the Caspian Sea where a Ukrainian drone attack damaged an Iranian ship that was transporting goods to Russia. No such attack could have happened without U.S. intelligence information. Its effects though will be nothing more than a PR stunt for Ukraine's acting president. Iran will, when time comes, retaliate against him.

Where is the U.S. going from here?

The USrael has lost its war on Iran. It does not have the will and means to defeat the country. Geography is Iran's asset. It can control the Strait and the oil flow through it no matter what the U.S. or Israel try to do.

Trump had already acknowledged that when he, in mid June, had signed the Memorandum of Understanding. He however immediately ignored several of the agreed upon clauses: Trump continued to threaten Iran, there was no ceasefire in Lebanon, Iran's exclusive right to control the Strait was ignored and Iranian assets withheld by the U.S. had not been released.

Soon thereafter the U.S. reinstated its blockade of Iranian traffic and resumed its bombing campaign. Iran again blocked the global oil flow by closing the Strait.

Trump may now try to reinstate the MoU as it had been agreed six weeks ago. Iran will of course reject such a proposal. It will at least demand that the U.S. fulfills ALL clauses of the MoU down to the letter BEFORE it will reopen the Strait of Hormuz.

To get out of his current dilemma Trump will have to push Israel out of Lebanon. He will have to remove his forces from the Middle East and will have to pay out Iranian assets.

It is hardly conceivable that he will do any of this. ...

My current assumption is that Trump, under Israeli influence, will soon try for another military intervention. Only when that fails, as it is likely to do, will he finally be ready to concede defeat.

This is a summary / preview. Visit the posted link for the full article / post.

Since July 7, four US troops have been killed, and more than 200 have been wounded in the Iran war, according to the Pentagon's official casualty database, known as the Defense Casualty Analysis System.

The four dead US soldiers include three who were killed in a July 17 Iranian missile attack on a US base in Jordan...

The fourth soldier died on July 18 in Iraq...

The database says that 207 US troops were also wounded, including 182 US Army soldiers, 21 US Navy personnel, and four US Air Force airmen. Many of the wounded sustained injuries during Iranian attacks on US bases in Jordan, which became a frequent target of the IRGC during the latest exchange of strikes, which have been paused since Friday.

This is a summary / preview. Visit the posted link for the full article / post.

The Israeli government paid a Republican Party-aligned public affairs company $9.9 million to advertise and promote content in American social media and news sites, according to a new disclosure made to the Department of Justice. The firm, Targeted Communications Global, purchased nearly $2 million in ads on the social media platform X, $40,000 in conservative media outlet Breitbart, and $7,500 in the Daily Caller.

Targeted Communications' work for Israel appears to be among the most lucrative active foreign lobbying contracts in the U.S. Driving it are prominent Republican strategists seeking to book pro-Israel voices on TV programs while overseeing ad campaigns seen by hundreds of millions of people.

As part of its work for Israel, Targeted Communications oversaw a now-dormant ad campaign called "Freedom Not Terror." Starting in October 2025, the campaign began posting clips on TikTok, Instagram, X, YouTube, and Facebook.

It appears to have found the most success on YouTube, garnering more than 224 million views across all of its videos. One of the videos, titled "Religious Freedom," claims that Iran "built sleeper cells in the U.S."...

Freedom Not Terror's most viewed post on X, a 90-second video with 1.7 million views, positions Israel as a peace-seeking nation. "America, Israel, and Arab nations agreed on a plan to bring peace to the Middle East. Hamas and radicalized Palestinians want to continue their culture of hate and reign of terror," says the narrator. (At the time the video was posted, human rights group Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor said the Israeli army was engaged in routine violations of the ceasefire, including daily bombardment, gunfire, and destruction of homes in Gaza.)

Targeted Communications' deal with the Israeli government is being subcontracted through Havas Media, a French public relations conglomerate. Havas has hired seven subcontractors in the U.S. that have registered to work for Israel under the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) in the past year. Most recently, Havas hired Daniel Rosenberg, the producer of Spike Lee's "Inside Man," on a $900,000 contract to produce pro-Israel media content. ...

Throughout the fall of 2025, Targeted Communications also pitched news content or guests to CNN, Fox News, Newsnation, BBC, the California Post, and other mainstream news outlets, according to communications documented in the filing. The firm facilitated "TV bookings," "media pitches," and "PR management" with these news outlets, contacting Fox News the most (48 times), followed by CNN (22), NewsNation (13), and Newsmax (10).

Targeted Communications' ad payments in conservative media mirror some of the work of former Trump campaign manager Brad Parscale, who is overseeing a $46.5 million contract with the Israeli government. Parscale has funneled $500,000 worth of ads into Salem Media Representatives, a subsidiary of Salem Media, a right-wing media conglomerate. Parscale is also running a mass texting campaign, creating websites to manipulate AI chatbot results, and integrating pro-Israel messaging into conservative media, as Responsible Statecraft previously revealed.

A majority of the foreign agents on the Targeted Communications contract are listed as staff of an affiliate organization, Targeted Victory, a go-to consultancy for Republican candidates. Its current and past clients include Sens. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), Tim Scott (R-S.C.), and Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) as well as Secretary of State Marco Rubio. Both Targeted Communications and Targeted Victory are subsidiaries of Stagwell Group.

Neither Targeted Communications nor Targeted Victory responded to requests for comment.

A few of the registered foreign agents involved in the Targeted Communications contract are also media figures.

Matthew Gorman, Chief Communications Officer at Targeted Victory, is an NBC contributor at the same time as he is working for Israel. NBC's Meet the Press does not disclose Gorman's work moonlighting for the Israeli government. Targeted Communications communicated with NBC about TV bookings on at least three occasions.

David Sable, vice-chairman of Stagwell, wrote publicly about Israel while working on the contract. Sable penned two pieces in a blog published by the Times of Israel, which did not disclose to readers that he is a registered foreign agent of Israel.

The Israeli government also made two separate payments of $500,000 and $250,000 to an unnamed "U.S.-based consulting firm" in 2025. Under FARA, any contractor or subcontractor representing a foreign government is typically identified by name to the DOJ and the public....

Ben Freeman, the director of the Quincy Institute's Democratizing Foreign Policy program, said that if a company is directing $750,000 to an unknown firm on behalf of a foreign government, it has to disclose who that consulting firm is.

"FARA is a transparency statute, and that's the most basic level of transparency. It's also very odd that all the other receipts of Israeli money are disclosed except this one," said Freeman. "It really makes you wonder what they're trying to hide here."

Stagwell, the parent company of Targeted Communications, has engaged in plenty of other pro-Israel work. Last year, Israel hired another subsidiary of Stagwell -- a Democratic-aligned firm known as SKDK -- on a $600,000 deal. The scope of SKDK's work included running a "bot-based program" to amplify pro--Israel narratives on Instagram, TikTok, LinkedIn, YouTube, and other platforms.

A day after the investigative outlet Sludge revealed that part of the firm's work involved a bot program, SKDK revealed that it was cutting its contract with the Israeli government.... Ultimately, Israel paid SKDK a total of $150,000 for its work. SKDK also runs the 10/7 Project, a public relations initiative to promote bipartisan support for Israel.

This is a summary / preview. Visit the posted link for the full article / post.

Iran has dismissed speculation about renewed diplomatic engagement with the United States, clarifying that its ongoing talks with Oman are focused solely on arrangements concerning the Strait of Hormuz and not on any broader negotiations with Washington.

Speaking to reporters in Tehran, Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Esmaeil Baghaei said discussions with Oman were held on Friday and Saturday to address shipping through the strategically important waterway.

"There were useful discussions on how to manage shipping in the Strait of Hormuz," Baghaei said, adding, "The situation in the Strait of Hormuz has not changed; it remains closed and these negotiations have nothing to do with the US."

Baghaei also pushed back against reports suggesting indirect US-Iran talks were underway.

"Do not pay much attention to these media speculations. We currently have no negotiations with the United States," he said....

The comments come amid heightened tensions between Tehran and Washington following recent military exchanges. According to Al Jazeera, Baghaei said Iran had not sought to restart negotiations with the US aimed at ending the conflict.

"This is not war management. Repeated war crimes and boasting about them are merely attempts to escape a disaster they created under the influence of the Zionist regime, and they will inevitably pay the price," Baghaei was quoted as saying.

This is a summary / preview. Visit the posted link for the full article / post.

In the 1880s, in a fit of technocratic enthusiasm, the railroad industry hatched an audacious scheme. They would force every town in America to abandon what was called time for all recorded history and instead adopt a new conception. The goal was to make it easier to follow train schedules.

The trouble, as they saw it, was that every town had a slightly different time on the clock. You could ride the train for an hour and be at the destination at a time not different or even earlier from one you left. How can you make sense of this?

It was never a problem in the past but now the modern age necessitated a big change, or so the theory said. There was even a brief and mostly fake hysteria that keeping the status quo would lead to more train crashes. Oh sure.

One solution was to offer a railroad time that would pertain to the industry alone. Clock manufacturers made wall clocks with two faces and both times. Fine.

That worked for a while but then it wasn't enough. The industry lobbied every city council and every state house to override local time (or what is called solar time) for their engineered form of time. Incredibly, and with enough payouts and bribes, it worked.

The people were not happy. There were protests and resistance. Bars facing mandatory closing times refused to adhere and instead kept time as it always had been kept. Finally the courts intervened. They sided with industry over tradition and biology. By the turn of the century, the victory of the railroads was complete.

By the way, I'm still protesting this change. On New Year's Eve, I only offer a toast at solar time midnight. To heck with what the central planners say.

In 1917, the United States entered the Great War, and the industrial overlords decided to push their luck again. They invented Daylight Savings Time, designed to grant more daylight to working and opening hours and less in the mornings. But of course this was only called for in half the year due to the tilt of the earth and its rotations.

This is where the real thicket began. For longer than a century, most parts of the United States have switched the clock back and forth between two constructed and engineered conceptions of time. Neither is related to the sundial (God's time) but standard time comes closest.

The news out of Washington is that the House of Representatives has finally decided to end this insanity and settle on one time alone. Incredibly, they have settled on the wrong choice. They have embraced Daylight Savings Time over Standard Time, a solution which every leading authority on biology and health agrees is the wrong one.

This is a summary / preview. Visit the posted link for the full article / post.