🚔📊 Israel’s Top Party for Personal Security

A recent HaMadad survey, analyzed by Shmuel Rosner, placed Otzma Yehudit first among parties Israelis associate with fighting crime and improving personal security. The underlying crosstabs, sample details, field dates, and margin of error were not available in the material reviewed, so the finding should be treated as a reported poll result rather than a complete measurement of public opinion.

The party’s leader is National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, who has held the portfolio since December 2022.

Crime and violence remain a central problem, especially in Arab communities. The Abraham Initiatives has recorded 151 Arab citizens killed in crime- and violence-related incidents in Israel so far in 2026, according to figures cited in recent coverage.

Ben-Gvir can point to policies that are highly visible to his voters: looser gun-licensing rules, tougher prison conditions for Palestinian security detainees, and a campaign against unlicensed construction. His political advantage is the ability to sell public anxiety back to the people who feel it.

A separate and stronger claim is the demolition count.

Ben-Gvir announced this week that authorities had demolished their 10,000th “illegal structure” during his enforcement drive. The milestone was marked in Juarish, a neighborhood in Ramla. The ministry’s wording referred to structures across the country, a category that can include permanent buildings, shacks, caravans, tents, and agricultural enclosures.

In a response to criticism, Ben-Gvir said he had demolished 10,000 “houses” in the Negev in the past year and a half. The claim is broader than his ministry’s own announcement in two ways: it turns nationwide structures into homes, and relocates the entire count to the Negev.

Those are not interchangeable figures. The improvement in enforcement may be real. The political number is doing more work than the underlying category can support.

Ben-Gvir has also made political symbolism central to his public appeal: his past portrait of Baruch Goldstein, the noose imagery used by his circle, and his promotion of capital punishment for people convicted of terrorism. A death-penalty bill does not itself specify hanging, and the proposed execution facility is a separate policy initiative.

The poll returns us to the same question. Israelis may rank Otzma Yehudit highest on personal security not because crime has fallen under Ben-Gvir, but because he has made fear, punishment, and visible force the clearest product on offer.

#Israel #BenGvir #OtzmaYehudit #Crime #PersonalSecurity #Politics #Knesset #FarRight

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🇸🇾✈️ An Airfield Nobody Agrees On

Israel’s strike on Abu al-Duhur air base has produced a rare public clash between Israel’s defense minister and the Trump administration’s envoy for Syria.

Tom Barrack, the U.S. ambassador to Turkey and special envoy for Syria, said the intelligence Israel presented before the strike did not hold up. Israel raised concerns about possible Turkish movement at the base about six days earlier, he said. U.S. intelligence agencies checked and found that no such movement was taking place.

Barrack outlined other possibilities. Israel may have detected a threat no one else saw. Or it may have learned of a future Turkish plan to expand training at the site and treated it as a deployment already under way. He also raised a darker possibility: Israel may have been trying to provoke a Turkish response during an election period.

The Turkish military, Barrack said, could have scrambled its own aircraft after seeing Israeli planes approaching without knowing their target or purpose. Cooler heads in Ankara kept it from escalating.

Regional stability, apparently, depended on who in Turkey took the first phone call.

Barrack also disclosed that Turkey, Israel, and Syria coordinate every evening against ISIS. “As long as there is a vacuum,” he said, “ISIS is very aggressively trying to reconstitute itself.” The three governments coordinate against ISIS at night and publicly accuse one another of preparing for war by day.

He then said Israel still occupies the Golan Heights in violation of U.N. resolutions and international law. That position tracks the international legal consensus and U.N. Security Council Resolution 497, but it contradicts Trump’s 2019 recognition of Israeli sovereignty over the territory.

Israel’s response arrived on Saturday, the Jewish Sabbath, when the defense minister’s office does not usually issue lengthy political statements.

Israel Katz said the IDF had repeatedly recommended a strike based on “clear intelligence” about Turkish intentions at Abu al-Duhur. Israel, he said, warned Syria through senior channels, shared the information with U.S. officials, and struck only after Damascus failed to respond.

“Erdogan was caught with his hand in the cookie jar and was forced to back down,” Katz said. He called Barrack’s comments inaccurate and said they contradicted Trump’s position on the Golan.

Much of Katz’s statement was aimed at home. He accused Israel’s opposition and parts of the media of portraying the operation as political out of ignorance, a failure to understand Israel’s security interests, and a reflexive urge to attack the government.

Turkey’s presidency supplied the reverse accusation, calling Israeli statements cheap election tactics by a government trying to escape responsibility for war crimes.

The dispute over Abu al-Duhur now has three versions: Israel says it stopped a Turkish deployment; Washington says the intelligence was wrong; Turkey says there was nothing there to stop.

#Syria #Israel #Turkey #AbuAlDuhur #TomBarrack #IsraelKatz #Erdogan #GolanHeights #MiddleEast

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🌊🇺🇸 American Territory

Donald Trump explained U.S. policy in two sentences.

First: “We have total control of that whole area having to do with the Strait of Hormuz.” Iran, he said, wants a deal but refuses to make the right one.

Then: “I view the Strait of Hormuz as an American territory right now. It’s an American territory.”

The operational numbers are specific for an administration that has kept much of the operation vague. U.S. Central Command says its forces have redirected 68 commercial vessels, disabled three, and boarded two to enforce the naval blockade against Iran.

Energy Secretary Chris Wright said the U.S. military helped move more than 15 million barrels of oil and petroleum products through Hormuz on Tuesday. Including pipeline exports, nearly 20 million barrels left the region.

The seven-day average moving through the strait has risen above 8 million barrels a day, he said. “Thanks to the U.S. Navy, oil is flowing through the Strait of Hormuz.”

Before the war, roughly 20 million barrels a day of crude, condensates, and petroleum products passed through Hormuz. What remains is a reduced flow, sustained by a full naval operation and a blockade.

Iran’s leverage has also changed shape. Tehran, which threatened to close the strait, now says it has authorized Iraqi tankers to pass through it. The country that once threatened to shut the artery is issuing permissions to its neighbors.

Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, Iran’s parliamentary speaker, says Tehran has received messages from neighboring countries about new “security arrangements and economic cooperation.” Translated, that means the region is working out how to manage the crisis around Iran without waiting for Iran.

A report by the Jerusalem Center for Foreign Affairs argues that pressure on Iran will fail unless Washington closes four routes: commercial links through Turkey, smuggling networks through Iraq, cryptocurrency channels, and front companies. The report’s premise is that these routes let the Revolutionary Guard and businesses linked to the regime protect themselves while shifting the cost onto ordinary Iranians.

Its recommendation is to close the escape routes and force powerful networks to compete over a shrinking pot. The report argues that this kind of internal struggle offers a more plausible route to political change than another war from outside.

#Iran #USA #Trump #Hormuz #Oil #CENTCOM #Sanctions #IRGC #MiddleEast

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⚠️ Iran Has Warned Its Neighbours Against Joining US


The new leader of Iran’s top security body has warned its neighbours against joining new US efforts to squeeze Tehran’s economy, and threatened US commercial interests in the region, as Trump doubled down on his fanciful view that the strait of Hormuz was a new US territory.

Mohsen Rezaei, the hardline new leader of Iran’s supreme national security council, told state television that Iran would target oil-shipping routes out the Gulf – alternatives to the strait of Hormuz – if its neighbours joined what he called the “economic war” waged by the US.

Those neighbours would be “considered an enemy” and “we will target their interests”, he said.

Rezaei was a commander-in-chief of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) for most of the 1980-88 war with Iraq and was named this month in a series of senior appointments widely seen as hardening Tehran’s political and military stance.

His interview with broadcaster IRIB is his most extensive public statement since his appointment.

Rezaei also claimed the Islamic republic had more cards to play in the war, saying “we have not yet attacked any American economic interests”.

“So far, we have only targeted military bases, but if they want to impose economic sanctions on us, the United States has oil and economic companies around Iran and elsewhere, and we will strike them,” Rezai said in the interview, broadcast on Saturday.

Last week, Trump announced a new campaign to isolate Iran’s economy, threatening “tremendous economic consequences” on any country that helps or does business with Tehran, as the US president’s unpopular war drags toward the six-month mark without any significant sign of resolution.

Trump’s efforts to finish the war he started along with Israel on 28 February have foundered after a ceasefire agreement signed in June collapsed – leaving Iran in control of the strait of Hormuz, a waterway that was the conduit for one-fifth of the world’s oil supplies before the conflict.

One of Iran’s major trading partners, the United Arab Emirates, announced on Tuesday last week that it was suspending all trade and financial transactions with Tehran until further notice.

The US treasury has for months been carrying out Operation Economic Fury, aiming to cut off Iran’s funding with targeted sanctions, while a naval blockade in the strait of Hormuz has sought to block Iranian ports from exporting oil vital to keeping the country’s economy afloat.

On Saturday night, Trump again shared on his social media platform a map graphic showing the Gulf and describing the strait of Hormuz as a “new US territory”.

Rezaei said in his interview that discussions continued with cross-strait neighbour Oman over management of the waterway, and said fees would be imposed.

France's Macron and Saudi crown prince Mohammed bin Salman are expected to discuss plans to develop alternative routes to the strait of Hormuz during the Saudi leader’s two-day visit to Paris that starts on Sunday, according to officials in the presidency who weren’t authorised to speak publicly.

France and Saudi Arabia have formed a taskforce on energy and logistics connections between the Middle East and Europe that is scheduled to meet at the ministerial level on Monday.

The officials said the work would focus on identifying the most strategic projects, securing financing and establishing roles for French companies.

#iran #join #american #trump #france

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🎈🟨 The Yellow Line and the Kites

The sequence in Deir al-Balah unfolded in fragments: an Israeli drone strike near the Palestinian Mental Health Association in al-Bassa; reports of casualties; then confirmation that one man was killed and another wounded when two missiles hit a home’s courtyard.

The dead man was Sharif Hussein al-Hasanat, 44. Israel identified him as a Hamas company commander in the Deir al-Balah battalion who had helped rebuild the group’s underground infrastructure and was planning attacks against Israeli troops and civilians. Palestinian medical sources identified him as the owner of the home that was hit.

The strike occurred beyond the Yellow Line, the ceasefire boundary separating Israeli-held areas from the rest of Gaza. The line has also moved westward since the ceasefire took effect, further restricting access to land inside the enclave.

Hamas has called on the ceasefire’s mediators and guarantors — including the Trump administration, Egypt, Qatar, and Turkey — to press Israel over repeated strikes. The demand matters because disarmament is supposed to be the next step in the agreement: U.S. officials have discussed beginning it within 30 days, with an American general supervising the process.

The same weekend supplied material for competing ceasefire claims.

Givati troops shot a man who crossed the Yellow Line and approached their position in southern Gaza, the IDF said. Troops from the 99th Division later detained another alleged Hamas operative carrying a knife after he crossed the line in central Gaza.

This is a ceasefire in which killings and detentions are counted by the day.

On the Israeli side of the fence, the day’s threat came on paper and string.

Four kites crossed from Gaza and were found near Be’eri. The IDF said they contained nothing suspicious and posed no danger. Uri Epstein, head of the Sha’ar HaNegev Regional Council, said residents would not accept another assurance that “everything will be fine” after October 7. “The writing is already in the sky,” he said, demanding that the army act against every kite in real time.

In Gaza, anti-Hamas militias said they had captured several Hamas members in what they called a successful military operation in the north.

#Gaza #Israel #Hamas #YellowLine #Ceasefire #DeirAlBalah #Beeri #MiddleEast

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🇮🇶🇪🇬 Hamas Moves Between Baghdad and Washington

A Hamas delegation led by Osama Hamdan was reported to have met in Baghdad with Hadi al-Ameri, head of Iraq’s Badr Organization and a central figure in the country’s Iran-aligned political and militia network.

If confirmed, the meeting would underline a familiar fact: Hamas still operates through the regional relationships built with Iran and its partners. Baghdad is not Doha or Ankara. But it is part of the same political geography in which Hamas’s external leadership has sought money, protection, influence, and military support.

At the same time, Washington is dealing with Hamas through a very different channel.

On Sunday, Jared Kushner, President Trump’s envoy, met Khalil al-Hayya, Hamas’s overall leader, in El Alamein, Egypt. It was Kushner’s second meeting with al-Hayya after their October 2025 talks helped produce the ceasefire and hostage-release agreement. The meeting marked another break with Washington’s long-standing policy of refusing direct engagement with Hamas, which the United States designates as a terrorist organization.

Kushner was joined by Nickolay Mladenov and Tony Blair, senior envoys of the U.S.-backed Board of Peace.

The body is intended to oversee the Gaza roadmap, including a planned transfer of Gaza’s civilian administration to a Palestinian technocratic committee and a process for placing Hamas weapons under that committee’s control. Egypt, Qatar, and Turkey also sent senior diplomats.

The central dispute was not diplomatic etiquette. It was sequencing.

Hamas told Kushner it would begin handing over weapons only after Israel publicly committed to the plan’s terms. Israel has maintained that it will not withdraw until Hamas is fully disarmed.

The American-backed framework asks each side to move first while promising that the other side eventually will.

Freddy Eytan, a former senior Israeli Foreign Ministry official and researcher at the Jerusalem Center for Foreign Affairs, criticized the meeting as a step toward legitimizing Hamas. In an opinion piece, he wrote: “How can Donald Trump authorize direct negotiations with a terrorist organization?”

He argued that Israel should “be uncompromising on security issues and obtain robust guarantees from the United States.” This is Eytan’s assessment, not an account from the negotiating room.

Hamas can speak with an Iran-aligned militia leader in Baghdad while its leadership negotiates with a U.S. envoy in Egypt.

The organization is not being asked to choose between those channels. It is being asked to surrender weapons while keeping both open.

#Hamas #Gaza #Iraq #Egypt #Kushner #Iran #Ceasefire #MiddleEast

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🇵🇸 “Palestine Exists,” Says Ra’am. The Denial Choir Begins.

Ra’am convened in Tayibe to select its Knesset slate and authorize party leader Mansour Abbas to reserve slots for possible recruits. Abbas opened with a statement designed to trip every Israeli coalition wire:

“The State of Palestine exists, and most of the world recognizes it, except for the United States and Israel. We want them to recognize it as well, and we are working to achieve peace, reconciliation and an end to the occupation and the conflict.”

The conference approved a list led by Abbas, followed by Walid Taha, Walid al-Hawashla, Iman Khatib-Yassin, and Yasser Hujeirat. It also authorized Abbas to reserve places on the ticket while talks continue over a possible move by former Yesh Atid MK Yoav Segalovitz. Abbas said Segalovitz would be suited to serve as national security minister; Segalovitz has not formally joined Ra’am.

Then Israel’s political class began racing each other to reject the premise.

Gadi Eisenkot wrote: “There is no Palestinian state, and under a government we establish, no Palestinian state will be created.”

Benjamin Netanyahu seized on the same line. “As long as I am prime minister, there will be no Palestinian state controlled by Iran: not in Gaza, and not in Judea and Samaria. Period.” He then cast Abbas as proof of the danger posed by a prospective left-wing coalition with the Muslim Brotherhood.

The point is not that Abbas, Eisenkot, and Netanyahu agree on Palestinian statehood. They plainly do not. Abbas’s line became raw political material: Ra’am offered recognition; Eisenkot offered refusal; Netanyahu turned both into a campaign argument about coalition arithmetic.

The Joint List is watching from the Arab flank. Its chairman, Yousef Jabareen, says the reunited alliance expects more than 10 seats in the next election and claims Ra’am was invited to join but “was not serious.” Ra’am, meanwhile, is betting that Abbas’s route still runs through a future governing coalition.

In Israeli election politics, a Palestinian state can be a legal fact, a security threat, an impossible promise, and a coalition weapon — often inside a single news cycle.

#Israel #Palestine #Raam #MansourAbbas #Eisenkot #Netanyahu #Elections #Knesset

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🌊🇺🇸 Trump’s Hormuz Pageant

Donald Trump posted the same image again: the Strait of Hormuz circled on a map and labeled “NEW U.S. TERRITORY.” No treaty. No annexation. Just a presidential marker pen having a maritime episode on Truth Social. It was the second time in a week he had shared it.

Iran replied with a toy-block animation. This is the current contest over one of the world’s most consequential shipping chokepoints: a presidential graphic versus an animation.

Neither side should be taken at its word. Tehran calls the strait closed. Trump calls it American. The waterway remains legally international, and neither slogan answers the questions that matter: who can move cargo, how safely, and for how long.

Beneath the performance, some ships are moving.

The New York Post, citing UK Maritime Trade Operations data, reported that nearly 200 vessels crossed Hormuz last week, up from about 150 the week before and roughly 40 two weeks earlier. That is an increase of almost 400 percent from the low point — but still only about one-fifth of prewar traffic.

Oil firms from Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates have reportedly hired tankers that turn off their transponders while using a U.S.-backed route near Oman. In other words, the Gulf’s oil is moving under American protection, provided it does not advertise its itinerary.

That gives Trump material for the show: more hulls in the strait, a corridor that functions, a map ready for the cameras. It does not make Hormuz American territory, and it does not turn a volatile, partially reopened passage into a dependable victory.

But Iran supplied the day’s accounting problem. Its central bank said the Oil Ministry had deposited $7.5 billion in oil-sale and foreign-exchange proceeds over the first four months of the Iranian year. It does make the word “blockade” less straightforward.

A blockade that still leaves billions reaching the central bank is not a slogan-proof reality. It is a contested system with leaks, exemptions, and very good accountants.

#Trump #Hormuz #Iran #Oil #Shipping #USA #MiddleEast

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🎟🇮🇷 Iran: Food Vouchers and Dreams From the River to the Sea

An Iranian lawmaker on parliament’s Economic Commission has called for food-assistance vouchers to rise with inflation, so poorer households can keep up.

On the same day, the hardline daily Kayhan attacked President Masoud Pezeshkian and parliament speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, saying their remarks projected weakness to the enemy.

The prescription was familiar: rely on military power, domestic capability, and national effort; do not yield to sanctions or pressure. A state debating whether its food vouchers cover inflation is instructed to trust its domestic capabilities.

Iran is also claiming an invitation to join the Mecca Joint Defence Agreement, a new Saudi-Turkish-Pakistani security pact. Mehdi Rahimi, head of Iran’s parliamentary news agency, told Lebanon’s Al Mayadeen that Tehran had received an offer and was considering it.

None of the three founding governments has publicly confirmed the invitation. For now, Iran’s prospective place in the region’s new security architecture remains somewhere between a signal and a rumor.

That uncertainty has not limited Tehran’s imagination. While officials weigh a possible defense arrangement with neighboring states, an Iranian parliamentarian has reportedly demanded “all UAE territory” as compensation. Regional integration, apparently, begins with an invoice to a neighboring country.

In Tehran’s Revolution Square, effigies of Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu were displayed amid chants of “Death to Israel” and “Death to America.” Quds Force commander Esmail Qaani said Israeli settlement expansion and military operations could not conceal Israel’s “strategic failures” since October 7. He added: “The Palestinian dream from the river to the sea is more alive than ever.”

The survival strategy is to outlast Trump’s remaining two years and hope Democrats return.

#Iran #Economy #Rial #Sanctions #Chile #MeccaAgreement #Trump #MiddleEast

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🇬🇧 Four Days of Darkness — Somewhere Britain Wasn’t Looking

Iran-linked hackers reportedly shut down a British power plant for four days in July. The Telegraph called it the first known case of hackers affiliated with Tehran successfully forcing a UK electricity facility offline — and the most consequential Iranian cyberattack of its kind reported so far.

The target was a small generator. The outage did not affect Britain’s national electricity supply, according to the UK government. No regulated operator reported an outage to the National Cyber Security Centre. Four days offline, and the British public had no reason to notice.

That does not make the intrusion irrelevant. It suggests that attackers linked to Iran may have moved from probing industrial systems to taking a British generating asset offline. But British authorities have not publicly confirmed the attribution, and officials have not identified the facility. The account relies on unnamed sources and concerns a single, limited incident.

The timing is part of the picture. In July, U.S. authorities warned that hackers had remotely accessed water and wastewater infrastructure in at least seven states, disrupting monitoring and control functions. Reporting later expanded the count to systems targeted in at least 12 states. Officials have treated Iran as a leading suspect, but have not formally attributed the attacks.

A government facing sanctions, a collapsing currency, and shrinking maritime leverage can still make itself expensive to ignore. Not by blacking out Britain.

Not yet. By showing that small, overlooked pieces of Western infrastructure can be reached — and that someone will have to spend money, manpower, and political attention to make sure the next target is not small.

#Iran #Cybersecurity #UK #CriticalInfrastructure #CyberAttack #USA #WaterSecurity

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🇵🇰🇮🇷 The General Going to Tehran

Iran announced that Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi spoke by phone with Pakistan’s army chief, Field Marshal Asim Munir, about regional developments and “effective ways to strengthen peace, stability and security.” Tehran then said Munir would arrive Monday with an official delegation for meetings with senior Iranian officials.

Officially, this is bilateral cooperation and Pakistan’s effort to promote regional peace. In practice, Pakistan has become a channel both Washington and Tehran are willing to use when direct diplomacy stalls.

Reports say Munir will carry American messages and test whether talks between Tehran and Washington can be restarted. Pakistan has helped mediate contacts between the two sides, while Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian defended a U.S.-Iran memorandum of understanding on Sunday as the best available route out of the war. The document’s terms have not been made public.

The uniform matters.

Washington sends envoys, sanctions notices, and Trump’s maps of “NEW U.S. TERRITORY.” Pakistan sends the man who commands its army. Tehran receives him because the messenger arrives with access to Washington, ties to the region, and enough institutional weight to make a phone call look like a negotiation.

Lawrence Norman of The Wall Street Journal expects Washington and Tehran eventually to return to negotiations over a memorandum. His assessment is that Iran will demand more concessions at the outset and that Trump may agree. That is analysis, not a confirmed negotiating position.

If Norman is right, the political theater has an awkward ending. After the blockade rhetoric, new sanctions, the collapsing rial, and Trump’s annexation-style graphics, the United States could return to the table with Iran asking for more than before.

For now, Munir’s visit is not proof of a deal. It shows that when public language gets louder, diplomacy changes costume and enters through a side door.

#Iran #Pakistan #AsimMunir #Araghchi #Trump #Diplomacy #Sanctions #MiddleEast

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#minneapolis #protests #spiderman

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#trump #presidency #struggle

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🇺🇦 Burnham Will Boost Ukraine’s Capacity To Make Its Own Long-Range Missiles

🔤🔤🔤🔤1️⃣

Britain will boost Ukraine’s capacity to make its own long-range missiles, Andy Burnham will announce on Monday, as he travels to Kyiv for the country’s independence day on his first foreign visit as prime minister.

Burnham will arrive in the Ukrainian capital on Monday morning at a crucial time in the war, with Kyiv braced for another wave of Russian missile attacks and Zelensky, facing his most direct domestic challenge.

While the announcement will probably take years to have an impact on the war, it is likely to escalate tensions with Moscow at an already fraught moment in UK-Russian relations.

Burnham said in a statement on Sunday night :

“On Ukraine’s 35th anniversary of independence, the Ukrainian people should be in no doubt: the UK is behind you today and for as long as it takes.

“I am proud of the contribution our country has made to Ukraine and I want the Ukrainian people to hear it directly from me that our support will not waver. After all, Ukraine’s security is our security.

“The friendship between our two countries will long outlast Russia’s illegal war. In both the fight and in the rebuilding to come, we will stand with Ukraine and deliver opportunities for people across both our countries.

“Russia should be in no doubt of our resolve. We will not back down until there is a just and lasting peace.”

Burnham will announce in Kyiv that the UK will help France set up assembly lines in Ukraine for long-range missiles, which Macron, promised last month.

Macron spoke to Zelensky on Saturday to promise to deliver separate interceptor missiles, which could help counter the recent barrage of high-speed Russian missile attacks on Kyiv.

Meanwhile, European leaders have condemned Friday’s drone attack on a busy shopping centre in central Ukraine, which killed 16 people in Zelenskyy’s home town of Kryvyi Rih.

The Ukrainian military has run out of US-made Patriot interceptors, and Trump, recently backtracked on a promise to let Ukraine build its own.

However, Zelensky said over the weekend he still wanted to buy more US-made Patriots, adding that Ukraine was happy to pay for them rather than receive them as military aid.

“I wanted to secure 300 Patriot missiles for the winter package,”

he said.

“The request from our air force is 360.”

He added that he had reached an agreement with France on at least one air-defence system ​this year, and with ‌Germany on the supply of ​about 600 ​interceptors in 2027-28.

#burnham #ukraine #missiles #zelensky

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🔤🔤🔤🔤2️⃣

Macron posted on X on Saturday:

“It is crucial to provide Ukraine with all the necessary means to defend its skies and thwart this aggression (…) It is essential that all countries with capabilities at their disposal also join this effort.”

The British announcement is a small step in a much larger and longer-term project that could lead to Ukraine making its own long-range versions of the Storm Shadow cruise missile in several years’ time.

But the move is likely to trigger further criticism from Moscow at a time when tensions between the UK and Russia are already high.

Last week, Russia accused the UK of deliberately escalating the conflict by allowing Ukraine to launch attacks with British-made drones, warning that the deeper Britain’s involvement, “the higher the price it will pay”.

This weekend it emerged that Russia had withdrawn its ambassador in London without naming a replacement, prompting speculation it was downgrading its diplomatic presence in the UK.

Burnham has insisted that Russian threats will not weaken British support for Ukraine, saying last week: “

We are not fair-weather friends. We will be there in Ukraine’s hour of need, and that won’t change.”

The prime minister will on Monday use a meeting of the coalition of the willing, which comprises 34 countries that have promised to help secure Ukraine in the event of a peace deal with Russia, to underline that commitment.

The meeting will be co-chaired by Burnham and Macron, who will join remotely via video link.

Merz, the German chancellor, will also take part in the call as the leaders discuss ways to help Ukraine repel the recent wave of long-distance attacks.

While there, Burnham will attend independence day events, the details of which are being kept secret amid concerns of a major Russian attack, and receive an award in recognition of the UK’s support for Ukraine.

Zelensky is facing the most concerted internal political challenge of his presidency after the call for an election by his former defence minister Mykhailo Fedorov.

The Ukrainian president responded to Fedorov’s dramatic announcement for the first time this weekend, telling reporters on Saturday that holding elections, which have been suspended since the war began, risked splitting the country.

“I believe that if we want to destroy the country, then during such a war we can move in the selection of elections,”

he said in a briefing to selected journalists that was held on Saturday, but details of which were reported on Sunday.

“I believe that during such a war, elections in general are big risks. Elections right now are a tsunami for the state that will split Ukraine,”

he added.

#burnham #ukraine #missiles #zelensky

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🇹🇷 The Sultan, the Territory, and the Party

A senior Israeli intelligence official is warning that unless Israel sets clear red lines in Syria and the eastern Mediterranean, Turkish forces will keep moving closer. The forecast is cinematic: Turkish tanks on the Golan Heights, Turkish warships off Caesarea.

The immediate dispute is less theatrical but more concrete. Israel struck Syria’s Abu al-Duhur airbase on August 18, saying Turkish forces were preparing to deploy there. Damascus says Turkish officers had visited for training and military cooperation, not to establish a base. Turkey calls Israel’s allegations baseless.

There are quiet contacts as well. The United States is trying to build a deconfliction mechanism among Israel, Turkey, and Syria after U.S. envoy Tom Barrack called the Israeli strike an “unnecessary escalation.”

Washington is not arranging a peace treaty. It is trying to prevent three armies from discovering each other’s red lines by accident.

Defense Minister Israel Katz had a different priority — answering his critics.

After the strike, Katz attacked opposition figures, analysts, and event hosts who, in his view, barely qualify as journalists. He said they first called the attack unnecessary and political, then objected to Israel’s public warnings to Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

Katz mocked the idea that Erdogan should not be angered, asking whether Israel had merely gone for an evening stroll “with a gentle breeze in the treetops.”

Afterward, Katz and National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir attended the birthday celebration of Channel 14 military correspondent Hillel Biton Rosen. The ministers were warning of Turkish armor in Syria while helping celebrate a television reporter. Governments can conduct deterrence policy and influencer relations before dessert.

Turkey’s record suggests that its deployments do not end with a press release.

In Libya, Ankara intervened in 2019 as Khalifa Haftar’s forces closed in on Tripoli. Turkish drones, military advisers, and Syrian fighters helped stop the offensive and preserve the UN-recognized Government of National Accord. Turkey then secured a maritime-boundary agreement with Tripoli that expanded its claims in the eastern Mediterranean and challenged Greek and Cypriot positions.

In Syria, Turkey has built a deep military footprint since 2016, first under the banner of fighting Islamic State and later through operations directed at Kurdish forces. Ankara controls or influences broad areas of northern Syria through bases, allied armed groups, infrastructure, and economic ties. The Sharaa government is trying to present itself as an independent authority, even as Turkish military cooperation deepens.

Israel has the stronger air force: stealth aircraft, precision weapons, and intelligence. Turkey has greater naval mass and an established capacity to project power across the eastern Mediterranean. These advantages do not offset each other. They become dangerous when each side believes the other is operating on its turf.

#Turkey #Israel #Syria #Erdogan #Katz #Mediterranean #Golan #Libya

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⚙️ Everyone Promises a New Round. Someone Is Already Billing for It.

House Speaker Mike Johnson says the United States will enter “a new phase” of the war with Iran “very soon.” He says allied countries will help, Iran cannot be trusted at the negotiating table, and Trump has already achieved what previous administrations could not: preventing Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon.

The logic is elegant the way a circle is elegant. The central objective has been achieved. Therefore, the war needs a new phase.

Seyed Mohammad Marandi, a former adviser to Iran’s nuclear negotiating team, says there is a “very high” chance that military conflict will resume in the coming days. He warned that any country helping Trump pressure and “starve the Iranian people” would be “severely punished,” adding that the global economy stood on the brink of collapse.

The language on both sides is designed to make escalation sound like someone else’s choice. Washington calls it an economic offensive; Tehran calls it siege. It is a bidding war over who gets to call the next escalation defensive.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent says Monday will bring “the single greatest financial offensive ever” against Iran. He calls it “economic D-Day” and warns that countries serving as financial arteries for Tehran will “share in its isolation.” Iran has answered by threatening penalties, including seizure, for vessels that violate its transit rules in Hormuz.

Meanwhile, the supply chain is already running.
The New York Times reports that Powerus, a West Palm Beach startup, began operating a small assembly site in the UAE last month. Workers there assemble 3-D-printed components into Guardian interceptor drones, built to destroy Iranian drones. Powerus says its affiliated factories now make about 3,000 interceptors a month and aim to reach global output of 15,000 a month by mid-2027.

The UAE site is one node in that network. The company says its model is to work with local manufacturers near the countries that need the weapons, rather than build factories in the United States and ship hardware across the world. The war is not only producing threats. It is producing a business model.

The next phase has not been formally announced. But the factory opened last month, the sanctions arrive Monday, and somebody has already decided that waiting is inefficient.

#Iran #Trump #USA #War #Sanctions #Drones #UAE #Hormuz

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🗳 The Right Counts Seats and Assigns Blame

Gilad Erdan says there will be “a major merger on the center-right before the election.” His intended partners are responding with the enthusiasm of people reading their names in a hostile takeover notice.

The Zionist Home–Reservists Party, led by Chili Tropper and Yoaz Hendel, called it strange that a party named “Unity” had focused on division since its creation. It said that if the job is branding every rival a leftist, Erdan has Netanyahu covered.

The numbers explain the panic.

A Kan News poll by Dudi Hasid gives Ofer Winter’s proposed list five seats if it includes journalist Netaly Shem Tov, activist Yoseph Haddad, and bereaved mother Lali Deri. But the new party would draw enough voters from Religious Zionism to push Bezalel Smotrich below the electoral threshold. The pro-Netanyahu bloc would fall from 51 seats to 50. Winter’s five seats would not expand the right; they would rearrange its losses.

Netanyahu’s answer appears to be political triage: attack Winter, ignore Erdan, and persuade Avi Maoz and Moshe Feiglin not to run. This is not a strategy for building a majority. It is an attempt to stop longtime allies from becoming statistical debris.

Erdan, meanwhile, is talking to Benny Gantz about a possible joint run. Kan reported that the two held preliminary talks, while Erdan has also met with Winter. For now, the parties are negotiating the same question in different rooms: who can merge without disappearing?

On the other side, Roy Folkman is reportedly weighing a return to politics after leaving Erdan’s camp and being approached by Gadi Eisenkot. Eisenkot’s new party has a different problem: it lacks parliamentary experience. Folkman chaired Moshe Kahlon’s Kulanu faction and knows how the Knesset works. A party built around a former army chief may now need a veteran legislator to explain the machinery.

Then there is the old score.
Eli Feldstein says Netanyahu excluded Itamar Ben-Gvir from the war cabinet at the start of the war after security officials warned him about the national security minister’s conduct. Ben-Gvir says he was excluded because Eisenkot and Gantz boycotted him. Two explanations for the same absence. Neither cancels the other.

And from Ra’am, a party routinely discussed as a potential coalition partner, MK Walid Taha says Israel is developing “an apartheid regime in the occupied Palestinian territories.”

The election has not started. The blocs are already negotiating their autopsies.

#Israel #Elections #Netanyahu #Erdan #Winter #Smotrich #Eisenkot #Knesset

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Kagan: Iran Is a Most Serious Danger

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A prominent US neoconservative strategist has argued that the US-Israeli war on Iran has backfired, failing to force Tehran into submission, while instead strengthening its regional position, exposing limits on US military power and turning the Strait of Hormuz into a major source of Iranian leverage, Al Mayadeen reported.

Writing in The Atlantic under the title Iran Unleashed, Robert Kagan contends that the balance of power across West Asia has shifted decisively after Iran withstood repeated US and Israeli attacks without accepting Washington's demands.

Given his political background, the assessment amounts to a striking acknowledgment of Washington's failed war strategy against Iran. It also effectively concedes an Iranian strategic victory:

Tehran survived the campaign without yielding and, in Kagan's assessment, emerged with greater deterrence, influence and leverage than before the war.

“The dominant power in the region going forward will be Iran, not the US or Israel”, Kagan writes, arguing that neighboring states are already adapting to a fundamentally altered regional environment.

Central to Kagan's argument is the failure of military pressure to compel Tehran to retreat.

Kagan identifies a major turning point in March, when “Israel” attacked Iran's South Pars gas field and Tehran retaliated against Qatar's Ras Laffan liquefied natural gas complex.

The importance of that response, he argues, was not that Iran could defeat the United States in a conventional air war, but that it demonstrated the ability to inflict enough damage on Gulf energy infrastructure to threaten a global economic crisis.

Washington subsequently stopped attacking Iranian energy targets and pressured "Israel" to do the same. Kagan argues that later US threats of renewed strikes repeatedly encountered the same problem.

#kagan #gulf #tehran #washington #israel

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Iran threatened retaliation, Gulf governments warned about the consequences, and Washington declined to escalate.

“American actions have made plain that Washington fears escalation more than Iran does—not just for now, but for the future”, he writes.

The Strait of Hormuz sits at the center of Kagan's assessment of Iran's strengthened position.

Rather than treating control over the waterway as a temporary bargaining tactic, he argues that Tehran increasingly views it as a permanent component of its geopolitical power and its strongest deterrent against another US or Israeli attack.

He describes the June memorandum of understanding between Iran and the United States as reflecting that altered balance.

Under the agreement, Iran would "make arrangements" for the “safe passage of commercial vessels”, while Tehran and Oman would discuss administration of the Strait “in line with the applicable international law and the sovereign rights of coastal states.”

Kagan goes further, arguing that control over Hormuz could offer Iran more practical leverage than possession of a nuclear weapon.

Whereas nuclear arms would primarily deter attack, influence over the energy chokepoint gives Tehran continuing leverage over states dependent on Gulf energy and could help it pressure adversaries and weaken US sanctions.

Kagan also points to shortages of key US missiles and interceptors, arguing that another prolonged campaign against Iran could undermine US readiness elsewhere, including in possible confrontations involving China or Russia.

A renewed assault could require greater reliance on manned aircraft while leaving fewer interceptors available to protect US bases and Gulf allies from Iranian retaliation.

Iranian officials have instead raised demands including the withdrawal of US forces, an end to the naval blockade, the lifting of sanctions, the release of frozen assets and compensation for wartime damage.

Kagan argues that Gulf governments that once relied on the United States as their primary security guarantor are increasingly being forced to reconsider whether Washington can protect them from the consequences of confrontation with Tehran.

#kagan #gulf #tehran #washington #israel

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