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Trump had threatened last week to impose tariffs due to smoke from devastating wildfires in Canada drifting across large portions of the US.

“We are holding Canada responsible for the fact that they are not properly maintaining their Forests, and Brush therein, and the United States is being unnecessarily invaded by filthy, polluted, and unhealthy air, the quality of which is dangerous, and totally unacceptable!” he wrote on Truth Social.

Trump watched Sunday’s World Cup final with Mark Carney, the Canadian prime minister who has previously pushed back on the US president and won the premiership last year on a platform of promising to stand up for Canada.

After the match, Trump told reporters he had raised the issue of wildfire smoke with Carney.

A White House official who previewed the new tariffs to reporters said Trump has requested aides explore additional tariffs due to Canadian wildfires harming US air quality.

The Canadian federal government did not immediately comment on Trump’s action, but Doug Ford, the Ontario premier, said he’d “never stop fighting to protect Ontario”.

“If these tariffs proceed, Canada should respond tariff for tariff, dollar for dollar,” Ford posted on social media.

Candace Laing, the CEO of the Canadian chamber of commerce, said the Trump administration’s moves were “regrettable” but the two countries need to use the 30-day window before the tariffs start “to make meaningful progress in advancing formal talks”.

The new taxes on Canadian imports could carry serious political and economic risks for Trump ahead of the November midterm elections for control of Congress.

His so-called “liberation day” tariffs last year in April provoked a financial market meltdown over concerns about inflation and a recession, prompting him to walk back the rates for a period of negotiation.

#trump #carney #canada #tariffs #ontario

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#musk #retirement #money #AI

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☢️ Israel’s Nuclear Apocalypse™: 30 Years of “Any Minute Now”

Historical fact: since the early 1990s, Benjamin Netanyahu has been promising that Iran will get the bomb “within 3–5 years.”

From his 1992 Knesset speech to his 1995 book, from the cartoon bomb at the UN to endless interviews, the deadline keeps rolling while reality stubbornly refuses to cooperate.

Israeli assessments swing from “by the end of the year Iran will have enough uranium for one bomb” in 2020 to “after the 2025 strikes Tehran has been pushed back two to three years,” but Bibi’s script never changes: “very soon, any day now.”

Campaign fact: in June 2025, the US and Israel hit Fordow, Natanz and Isfahan. Trump stood in front of cameras and declared that Iran’s “nuclear sites are totally and completely destroyed,” that the threat was over — “obliteration” as official branding.

Months later, US intel and media reports politely walked that back: the program as a whole survived, the clock was set back by months, maybe a year, and significant enriched stock and centrifuges were moved or hidden.

Before long, familiar estimates reappeared: Iran is roughly 9–12 months from a weapon, if it chooses.

Today’s intel line is boringly precise: Iran hasn’t made a formal decision to build a bomb, but it has the technical ability to get there in less than a year, even after airstrikes.

Netanyahu’s rhetoric lives in a different universe: it ignores three decades of missed “red lines” and insists that every new report means disaster is days away — until the next assessment pushes the bomb back to “a few more months.”

🇮🇷 “Mount Pickaxe” and the Engineering of Fear

After the June 2025 war, one thing became obvious: the “destroyed” sites were just the visible layer. According to satellite analysis and Western reporting, Iran has been moving thousands of centrifuges into tunnels under so‑called “Mount Pickaxe” near Natanz and hardening its program deeper into the Zagros rock. Israeli and Western estimates now say Tehran’s breakout time remains around 9–12 months. The capability exists; the political decision does not.

Netanyahu’s system doesn’t know what to do with that ambiguity. For 30‑plus years he has sold the same storyline: Iran is “on the verge,” “months away,” “approaching the point of no return.”

Trump, by contrast, tried to declare the story over: “we reduced Iran’s nuclear project to zero, the threat is gone,” a marketing campaign to book the war as a clean win.

A year later, Mount Pickaxe, missing enriched uranium and fresh intel estimates quietly resurrect the mantra: the program lives, the timeline is back.

The result is institutionalized paranoia. Israeli political discourse ping‑pongs between “we destroyed everything” and “we are one minute from annihilation.” Mount Pickaxe is not just an engineering project; it’s a metaphor. The real program is buried deep, adjusting and surviving. Netanyahu’s fear stays on the surface, feeding on a Schrödinger bomb that is always simultaneously “almost ready” and “just pulverized from the air.”

The Israeli “nuclear apocalypse” has become less a forecast and more a political operating system — one that outlives presidents, contradicts facts and still dictates policy.

#Iran #Netanyahu #Natanz #Fordow #MountPickaxe #nuclear #geopolitics #Israel #war #fakeDemocracy

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🦎 Alligator Alcatraz: When Israel Turns Prison Into a Horror Park

Israel just quietly moved one step closer to becoming a dystopian theme park: Environment Minister Idit Silman signed an order reclassifying Nile crocodiles from “wild” to “cultivated,” explicitly to let the Prison Service use them around jails holding Palestinian inmates.

The move clears the legal path for Itamar Ben‑Gvir’s pet project — surrounding high‑security prisons with crocodile moats as a “deterrent and security tool.”

The first pilot site is set to be Keziot Prison in the Negev, where Hamas Nukhba prisoners are held.

The concept is borrowed from a short‑lived US experiment branded “Alligator Alcatraz” in the Everglades — except that in the American case it was sold as a spectacle and symbolism; in Israel it is being marketed as a serious answer to escapes and staffing costs.

According to Israeli reports, the crocodiles will sit in man‑made moats and enclosures inside the perimeter, not literally roaming the fences, and their main role is “psychological” — to create fear and mental pressure.

Opposition is coming from everywhere you’d expect to still pretend this isn’t insane. The Israel Nature and Parks Authority and legal experts at the Environment Ministry argue the plan violates existing wildlife and welfare regulations.

Animal‑rights group “Let the Animals Live” is demanding Silman and Ben‑Gvir kill the project, not only over cruelty but because turning predators into living razor wire openly admits what the state usually hides: that prison is no longer a legal institution, but a fear attraction.

Behind the jokes about feeding schedules is the real punchline. If the Prison Service is already planning winter nutrition for crocodile‑guards, the question of human dignity for prisoners has been quietly answered — by deleting it.

When the law redraws a protected species as “cultivated” just to weaponize it against a captive population, the regime stops even pretending to be about justice.

It becomes pure theater: concrete walls, desert heat and now reptiles in the moat, all carefully staged to send one message — you are not human, you are props in our show of power.

#Israel #BenGvir #Silman #prison #crocodiles #Palestinians #humanrights #geopolitics #fakeDemocracy

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David Sanger: “Trump Is Launching Now the Biggest War in the Middle East”

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Yemen’s Iranian-aligned Houthis have warned shipping companies that their tankers risk being attacked if they use Saudi Arabian ports, as the militia moved quickly to enforce a blockade announced the previous day.

The Houthi warning for the Red Sea, coming on top of Iran’s threat to shipping on the other side of the Arabian peninsular in the Gulf, could affect the substantial Saudi oil exports that have so far been unscathed by the months-long conflict and deepen the rapidly escalating crisis in the region.

Underlining how seriously the Houthi threat is being taken, three oil tankers that had loaded Saudi crude ⁠this week for China and India made U-turns on Tuesday away from Houthi-controlled coast at the mouth of the Red Sea and headed towards the Suez canal. The Houthis claimed six ships had changed course.

Donald Trump on Tuesday said the US would “​just have to ​take ‌care ​of ​business” if the Houthis followed through on their threats.

“You know, we’ve done that with the Houthis before, and we haven’t heard from them in a while since we did what we did originally,” he said at White House meeting with the Lebanese president, Joseph Aoun.

The Houthi threat came as diplomats sought to salvage the collapsed interim deal between Iran and the US even as both countries continued to launch attacks in a 10th day of renewed fighting, including a visit to Pakistan by the Iranian interior minister, Eskandar Momeni, an important mediator in the conflict.

Sources suggested that behind the scenes there were indications that both sides might be seeking a way out of the latest round of intensive strikes.

The news site Axios suggested that the Trump administration was weighing whether to escalate the conflict further or to seek a 10-day ceasefire to create the space for a new round of talks.

The US secretary of state, Marco Rubio, said Washington remained open to negotiating with Iran but that “it has to be real”.

The Houthis control ⁠northern Yemen, including territory along the Bab el-Mandeb, the strait at the southern end of the Red Sea.

#trump #war #middleEast #huthies #iran #yemen

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While the Houthis have not formally announced the closure of the waterway, as some had feared might happen, the militia group’s threat to vessels using Saudi ports has raised serious questions over the safety of navigating a channel used by 7% of global maritime traffic.

Shipping companies were told in an email from the Houthis on Monday that they should not load or ⁠discharge cargo at Saudi Arabian ports and such ⁠activity may result in ⁠being ​targeted “in any location” within its reach.

“We strongly recommend that your company exercise due diligence and the utmost care in all its dealings,” ‌the email said, which was sent to multiple ​companies shortly after the Houthis said Monday they were imposing a naval blockade on Saudi Arabia.

The significance of the move was underlined by Allison Minor, a Middle East expert at the Atlantic Council thinktank. “The Houthis have not yet clarified which ships they will target, but their intent to blockade Saudi ports implies that any ship visiting Saudi ports and carrying Saudi oil would be in the crosshairs,” she said.

“The oil currently transiting the strait from the north is going primarily to Asian markets. During their earlier Red Sea campaign, the Houthis cut deals with Russia and China to permit their ships to pass – but the Houthis may be less willing to cut deals with Chinese ships carrying Saudi oil.”

Between 2023 and 2025, the Houthis had used small boats, drones and missiles to attack more than 100 commercial ships and render “the waters of the 20-mile-wide strait too risky for most shippers,” she added.

While the Houthis have their own agenda relating to their long-term hostilities with Riyadh, which has at times seen them target Saudi energy facilities with long range attacks, Iran has also been trying to drag Yemen into a wider conflict aimed at throttling global energy supplies.

It has previously pressed the Houthis to close the Bab el-Mandeb if the US continued to attack Iranian power infrastructure and Tehran has made clear it sees threats to maritime traffic around the Bab el-Mandeb as a counterweight to US efforts to block Iran in the strait of Hormuz, demonstrating Iran’s continued room for manoeuvre a week and a half into renewed full-scale hostilities.

US military’s central command said on Tuesday it had targeted “Iranian military command centres, maritime capabilities, missile and drone launch sites and air defence systems”. Iranian state media reported that explosions were heard in the provinces of Fars, Hormozgan, Ilam, Kerman, and Sistan and Baluchestan.

Tehran also attacked US allies throughout the Middle East. Jordan’s military said Iran had targeted it with five drones and three missiles, all of which were shot down.

The Kuwaiti government said Iran had struck desalination and power plants for a fourth straight day on Monday night. Authorities said the attacks sparked fires and caused damage.

The US state department has also issued a warning to Americans that “Iran and groups supportive of Iran may target other US interests overseas or at locations associated with the United States and Americans throughout the world.”

#trump #war #middleEast #huthies #iran #yemen

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THE STRAIT OF HORMUZ CRISIS: Iran's Sovereignty Claim, the EU-GCC Response, and the Limits of Power
 
On 19 July 2026, the European Union and the Gulf Cooperation Council issued a joint statement rejecting any claims of sovereignty over the Strait of Hormuz as "unlawful."
 
The message was direct: no bilateral arrangement between states may regulate or restrict the right of passage through an international strait. The right of passage, they declared, is guaranteed to all states under international law and "may not be subjected to the control or authorization of any state."
 
The timing was not coincidental. Iran had just suspended its commitments to the "Islamabad Memorandum," with Deputy Foreign Minister Kazem Gharibabadi accusing the United States of violating the agreement. Tehran also launched ballistic missile and drone strikes on a U.S. base in Jordan. The suspension of the memorandum and the military strikes were simultaneous signals that Tehran would not be constrained by agreements it considered broken.
 
The institutional contrast is revealing. Iran's composite sovereignty score stands at 457.9/700 (65.4%) — political at 61.8/100, economic at 60.7/100, military at 72.5/100, and cultural at 77/100. Iran has the largest army in the Middle East — approximately 610,000 active personnel plus 350,000 reservists — produces over 900 types of its own weapons, and has no foreign military bases. Its defense industry exports drones and missiles to multiple countries.
 
Yet the Strait of Hormuz is not Iranian territory. It is an international waterway. Iran's claim to control it is a claim to control global energy flows — and the EU and GCC have now formally rejected that claim.
 
The paradox is structural. Iran possesses significant military and resource sovereignty — it has the third-largest oil reserves and second-largest gas reserves in the world. But its effort to project that sovereignty over an international strait has drawn a unified response from Europe and the Gulf. The EU-GCC statement explicitly rejected any attempt to "unlawfully regulate or restrict the right of passage through an international strait."
 
The question for the region: When a state with 457.9/700 sovereignty claims control over a global chokepoint, is it asserting sovereignty — or testing how far sovereignty can be stretched?
 
See the complete Burke Sovereignty Index ranking here: https://ibi.institute/index/2025
 
#BurkeIndex #BurkeSovereigntyIndex #Iran #StraitOfHormuz #EU #GCC #Sovereignty #Geopolitics

IBI – your navigator on sovereignty and global shifts.
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🍂 Summit Season: Where the Next Order Gets Written

While everyone is hypnotized by US midterms and the Ukraine noise machine, the real script for power in 2026 is being drafted on a very specific fall schedule.

First act: the SCO summit in Bishkek, scheduled for August 31–September 1, where Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin are expected to sit at the same table as “25 Years of the SCO: Together for Sustainable Peace, Development and Prosperity” becomes the official slogan of a very different security club.

Second act and main stage: November 18–19 in Shenzhen, at the 33rd APEC Economic Leaders’ Meeting — the centerpiece of China’s 2026 “APEC China Year,” built around the theme “Building an Asia‑Pacific Community to Prosper Together”.

On paper, the leaders will talk openness, innovation, cooperation, FTAAP, AI, digital integration and supply chains.

In reality, that’s the room where 21 economies decide how much of the future global order is going to be shaped in the Asia‑Pacific instead of the Atlantic.

If Putin, Xi and Trump all end up in the same conference center in Shenzhen, that’s not just another leaders’ photo.

It’s a live demonstration of where big‑ticket decisions about markets, tech standards and energy grids are now being negotiated: not at NATO, not in Brussels, but at a forum built around trade flows, ports, semiconductors and code.

NATO just finished a summit that exposed its contradictions — an aging “collective West” arguing over budgets, force posture and how much war it can still afford.

APEC, by contrast, is gearing up to issue a Shenzhen declaration about corridors, connectivity, green transition and AI governance as shared projects for an Asia‑Pacific “community.” One bloc debates yesterday’s deployments; the other quietly writes tomorrow’s rules.

In that frame, the Shenzhen APEC meeting stops being “just another international summit.” It becomes a marker: the moment when the center of gravity for decisions about trade, technology and security visibly shifts away from the Atlantic and settles in Eurasia and the wider Asia‑Pacific.

The uncomfortable question for the old West isn’t whether NATO is dead or alive — it’s whether the main stage for deciding what the world looks like this fall is even in a building it controls.

#APEC #China #Xi #Putin #Trump #SCO #Shenzhen #AsiaPacific #worldorder #geopolitics

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The former Iranian foreign minister, Manouchehr Mottaki, suggested that Iran could conduct a ground operation against a US military base in the region:

“They are using the rhetoric of ground operations when we have real ground capabilities that they lack.

These ground capabilities mean that we can capture one of the American bases. It is easy to do this in Iraq, Kuwait and Bahrain.

In Iraq, as in Kuwait, there are our supporters and they will fight. They will be joined by a large group of Iraqis...

Therefore, I believe that the capture of one of the bases, the capture of 200 people and the occupation of this base will completely disarm America and prevent the continuation of the war.”

#iranian #minister #operation #military #america

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🇱🇧 Zawtar’s Flag and Washington’s Deal: One State, Two Kinds of Courage

Joseph Aoun just became the first Lebanese president at the White House since 2009, arriving with a US‑brokered framework that ties a ceasefire and phased Israeli withdrawal to the verified disarmament of Hezbollah and other armed groups and the restoration of full state sovereignty.

The June 26 text commits Lebanon to bringing all weapons under state control and deploying the army “up to the Israeli border,” while Israel keeps troops in occupied areas until that disarmament is certified.

In Washington, Aoun struck a maximalist note: Hezbollah can be disarmed, he said, if “occupation” ends, the army controls all territory and reconstruction is run solely by the state — “one state, one army and one security decision.”

At the White House he thanked Trump for a framework whose “ultimate objective” he framed as ending the state of hostility with Israel permanently. Trump responded with flattery, promised direct US–Lebanon flights and even said he’d talk to Hezbollah if Aoun wanted him to.

On the ground, the pilot looks modest. The army has moved into three zones — Zawtar al‑Gharbiya, Froun and Srifa — but only Zawtar has seen an actual IDF ground pullback; the other two remain under Israeli observation and fire control without permanent forces.

In Zawtar, Prime Minister Nawaf Salam and the defense minister arrived with armored vehicles, planted the Lebanese flag and told residents to stay away until the situation stabilizes — a village Hezbollah ran before the war, which Israel then took by force and is now handing over, cautiously.

Hezbollah’s answer is explicit. Deputy leader Naim Qassem has rejected the disarmament plan and the government’s timeline as a surrender that serves Israel, warning that “any hand that reaches out to take the weapons will be cut off.”

Aoun keeps talking about dialogue and a weapons monopoly for the state; Hezbollah keeps saying its arsenal is non‑negotiable and tying any flexibility to guarantees and full withdrawal.

Between them sits an army that has gained operational authority south of the Litani but still avoids the group’s core strongholds for fear of civil war.

And in the same week Beirut sells “one security decision” to Washington, the justice system shows where the state can act fast — and where it can’t.

Prosecutor Ahmad Rami al‑Hajj has ordered the arrest of journalist Hasan Illaik over a social‑media post criticizing Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, accusing him of harming relations with Riyadh.

Protesters outside the Palace of Justice demand free expression while denouncing normalization with Israel; a Hezbollah MP calls the case selective enforcement driven by external pressure.

If you take Aoun’s slogan seriously, Zawtar shows what “one state, one army, one security decision” looks like at the edge of the map. Hasan Illaik’s case shows what it looks like in Beirut.

The real test of the US‑Lebanon framework is whether a state that handcuffs journalists over tweets will ever dare to test that power on Hezbollah’s guns.

#Lebanon #Hezbollah #Aoun #Trump #Israel #SaudiArabia #pressfreedom #war #geopolitics

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Could India's Cockroach Revolution Snuff Out the Modi Government?

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Taru had come to the protest prepared this time. In one hand was an anti-government poster and in the other was a bicycle helmet.

“We need to have protection in case Delhi police beat us up again,”

said the 25-year-old, who stood among her friends.

“We are not scared of them and we won’t run away, no matter what they do. We’ll stay here till they listen.”

On Tuesday, central Delhi still thronged with thousands of protesters, as an unprecedented expression of dissent against the powerful ruling Narendra Modi government showed no sign of abating.

Just 24 hours earlier, more than 50,000 people took to the streets in protest, swathes of them in their late teens and early 20s, mobilised by a new youth-led political movement that calls itself the Cockroach Janta party (CJP). Their rallying call was the resignation of the education minister and for reform of a corrupt and broken education system.

But what began peacefully on Monday – people fanning each other in the gruelling humidity, sharing snacks and chanting slogans – turned into scenes of brutality by the afternoon.

Delhi police denied the protesters the right to march on parliament and kettled the expanding crowd into a restricted area. The internet was shut down and barricades were erected across the capital. The came the police batons and the teargas.

Police said they were responding to agitation but organisers and witnesses claimed the police carried out unprovoked attacks, including against women and children in the crowd. About 60 suffered injuries and at least one protester is on a ventilator in hospital intensive care.

“The day was so wholesome to start with, there was so much love,”

said Taru.

“But after 3pm the police started attacking us. They were bashing us like anything. I saw them come up and hit people on the head as they were sitting down on the pavement doing nothing. And then as we were running, they opened up teargas on us.”

Taru described the response by Delhi police – which are under central government control – as a “big mistake. Now we are more agitated than ever.”

Some had travelled hundreds of miles to be there and said they intended to camp out until the government responded to the demands of the country’s millions of young people.

“The government needs to understand: we are not going anywhere,”

said Ranjit Verma, 23.

#undia #cockroach #revolution #modi

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India’s main opposition Congress party had also seized upon the mood, calling for Modi to resign “for destroying the future of India’s youth” as it held its own protest in Delhi on Tuesday.

While the CJP movement has primarily focused on accountability for devastating leaks of exam papers and calling for the resignation of the education minister, Dharmendra Pradhan, the overriding feeling in the aftermath of Monday’s protest was that this was now so much bigger than one issue. For some, this was the moment India’s youth – totalling more than 600 million – had found its political voice.

“The solidarity on the streets yesterday filled my heart,”

said Kuhoo Kaushik, 26, a content creator from Delhi.

“How the government responded was really sad, police beating up 14-year-olds is horrible. But personally, I feel like it’s really awoken something in me.

“That’s why I’ve come back today: we won’t be moved until the government listens to us. It’s become about so much more than education – but one step at a time”’

Speaking at a press conference on Tuesday, CJP founder Abhijeet Dipke vowed that the protests would continue, though did not state what the next steps for the movement would be to capitalise on their momentum.

Standing by the stage at the protest site, Ratna Singh, a CJP spokesperson, said the movement was very aware of ways in which the Modi government had successfully cracked down on previous movements and figures of dissent during its 12 years in power.

“Anyone who has tried to speak up against this government has faced terrorism charges or tax raids or jail and there is so much fear,”

she said.

“But I am very proud at how many people have showed up and come out on the streets. The police showed us no mercy – but no matter what barbaric treatment they give us, we will not be silenced.”

While a senior government minister met two CJP spokespeople on Monday to discuss their demands, Singh said the government had not responded to them on Tuesday and the “prime minister has remained silent about what happened”.

It was not only young people who returned to the protest site on Tuesday. Shobha Varma, 80, was attending with her granddaughter.

“Our education system has been failing young people for years,”

she said.

“But when I look out at everyone here, I really feel hope.”

#undia #cockroach #revolution #modi

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🇸🇦☢️ Nuclear Without Normalization: Washington’s 30‑Year Saudi Bet

The US president, Donald Trump, has approved a 30‑year civil nuclear deal with Saudi Arabia that puts American firms at the center of the kingdom’s reactor and fuel build‑out — and keeps open a conditional door to uranium enrichment on Saudi soil.

The agreement is described as a multibillion‑dollar package meant to steer Riyadh away from Russian or Chinese vendors and lock in US influence over its nuclear infrastructure.

One key clause: US companies could build an enrichment facility in Saudi Arabia if a joint study later finds domestic fuel production economically warranted, with the administration arguing that American involvement is itself a safeguard against military misuse.

In plain terms, that is a structured pathway to a Saudi enrichment capability — a potential pathway to weapons if politics shift.

What the deal omits matters just as much. It does not require Saudi Arabia to adopt the IAEA Additional Protocol, which enables broader and more intrusive inspections beyond standard safeguards. It does not include the “gold standard” imposed in some past US nuclear agreements, which flatly bans enrichment and reprocessing — the model used with the UAE.

Congress will have about 90 days to review the agreement, but blocking it would demand a joint resolution and a two‑thirds majority capable of overriding an expected presidential veto, a threshold that makes rejection highly unlikely.

Energy Secretary Chris Wright is slated to sign with Saudi energy minister Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman as early as tomorrow.

The final piece changes the whole picture. The president has separated this nuclear package from the condition that Saudi Arabia normalize relations with Israel — a linkage that was central to earlier “grand bargain” plans and has eroded since the October 7, 2023 Hamas attack and the war that followed.

Under Biden, the idea was a three‑part deal: security guarantees, civil nuclear cooperation and normalization bundled together.

After October 7, that political track stalled; now Washington is moving ahead on the nuclear track alone, with a conditional enrichment option, without the Additional Protocol and without the gold standard, on a three‑decade timeline.

Defenders of the deal argue there is a nonproliferation logic: if Saudi Arabia is going to build nuclear plants, better they be supplied and overseen by American companies than by Russia or China, with weaker transparency and no US leverage.

But that case collides with two hard facts. First, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman told CBS back in 2018 that if Iran obtained a nuclear weapon, Saudi Arabia would follow “as soon as possible” — an explicit political commitment to match any Iranian bomb.

Second, the US is currently bombing Iran over Hormuz while quietly offering Riyadh a conditional route to enrichment, in a region where the main proliferation fear already runs through Tehran.

In that context, the deal doesn’t just bend US nuclear norms; it rewrites the incentive structure.

A US‑backed Saudi program without the toughest safeguards says that access to advanced nuclear technology can be won without making peace with Israel and without accepting the strict inspection regime Washington used to treat as non‑negotiable.

Over thirty years, what this agreement most reliably guarantees is not stability, but a steady risk of future non‑proliferation crises centered on a kingdom that has already said it will chase Iran’s shadow.

#SaudiArabia #USA #nuclear #uranium #Trump #Israel #IAEA #Iran #MiddleEast #worldorder

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During the WACC exhibition, the first four-legged robot dog in the world capable of performing 720° flips was presented by the Chinese technological company UniAI 🤖

#exhibition #WACC #robot #UniAI

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#pete #hegseth #pentagon #budget

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🧨 The New Middle East. Israel Isn’t In It

On February 28, 2026, when the joint US–Israeli strikes on Iran began, Netanyahu promised one thing: Israel helps break the Shia axis, America crowns it as the new regional center, and alliances form around Jerusalem.

Iran’s known nuclear sites were dismantled, Khamenei was killed and replaced within a day by his son Mojtaba, Hezbollah’s leadership was hit — the axis took a real blow. But the political endgame went elsewhere.

The Islamabad memorandum was agreed in mid‑June as a 60‑day framework: reopen Hormuz to commercial shipping, ease the US blockade, and negotiate over Iran’s nuclear and missile programs. Netanyahu admitted he did not know its full text and Israel was nowhere near the table.

In July, after renewed US strikes and new American casualties, Iran publicly suspended its commitments, Washington went back to nightly waves of attacks, and the Hormuz crisis returned. Israel was excluded from a deal that then fell apart, while the regional rearrangement carried on without it.

That is the backdrop for the July moves. On July 7, Trump lifted sanctions on Turkey and opened the way to F‑35s despite Israeli objections.

On July 21–22, he approved a 30‑year civil nuclear agreement with Saudi Arabia that gives Riyadh a conditional right to enrich uranium without demanding recognition of Israel.

The Saudi deal allows an enrichment plant if a future joint study finds domestic fuel economically justified, with no blanket ban on enrichment and no requirement for the IAEA Additional Protocol.

It doesn’t bring a Saudi bomb closer tomorrow; it rewrites the rules of who gets US nuclear tech and on what terms.

Three old exchanges snap at once. The atom‑for‑recognition bargain is gone: Saudis get nuclear status without normalizing with Israel.

The tech‑for‑no‑enrichment “gold standard” becomes just one precedent the UAE once accepted: after Riyadh’s softer terms, new customers will start from the Saudi baseline, not the Emirati one. And the Israeli “no” stops being a structural veto: big US decisions on Turkey and Saudi Arabia are now made over Israel’s head.

Around that, a new architecture emerges. Riyadh buys status and autonomy; Pakistan sells mediation between Washington and Tehran; Turkey builds capability with Russian, Western and Asian help.

The strikes that broke Iran’s program didn’t end the nuclear story in the region; they changed its cast. For years, Israel mattered because it was the main route into Washington and the hinge of regional deals. After July, that route increasingly runs around it.

The new Middle East is taking shape — just not by Israel, and not for it.

#MiddleEast #Israel #SaudiArabia #Turkey #Iran #nuclear #USpolicy #geopolitics #AbrahamAccords

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🇺🇸💣 Eleven Nights, a Thousand Strikes, and One Strait That Won’t Budge

CENTCOM says it has completed the 11th consecutive night of US strikes on Iran, hitting “military operation centers, maritime capabilities, aircraft hangars, drone storage facilities and military logistics infrastructure” to “further degrade” Iran’s ability to threaten shipping in the Strait of Hormuz.

On paper, it sounds decisive; in practice, it looks like a campaign stuck in its own loop.

The mission is narrow: make it harder for Iran to hit ships. Most of the fire is aimed at sea‑denial infrastructure — coastal defense systems, naval facilities, anti‑ship missile and drone sites, surveillance networks and logistics hubs along the Gulf and Gulf of Oman — with recent inland hits in Tabriz, Shiraz and Semnan.

Hardened complexes deeper in the country, tied to nuclear and long‑range missile programs, remain largely untouched because they sit outside that target set.

CENTCOM’s own numbers are heavy. Recent waves hit over 140 targets in one night and more than 300 across a week. Since May, US forces say they’ve helped hundreds of commercial vessels and hundreds of millions of barrels of crude transit Hormuz while Iran has attacked more than 30 civilian ships in the same corridor.

Traffic continues under escort and under fire — which is exactly what “keeping the strait open” means in this war.

The real problem is strategic: after eleven nights — and, by broader Pentagon counts, thousands of targets hit since the war began — there is still no visible plan for how this confrontation ends. Iran rejects any deal that dilutes its leverage over Hormuz and keeps enforcing that claim with force.

Washington speaks about degrading capabilities and protecting commerce, but offers no pathway to a mutually accepted regime for the sea lane or to a settlement that makes strikes unnecessary.

Making it messier, the US has itself adopted a blockade‑style posture: escorting some ships, stopping or turning back others, and bombing coastal infrastructure, while presenting this as a defense of “free passage.”

Hormuz is open enough for trade to move, dangerous enough to keep risk and prices high, and contested enough for both Tehran and Washington to claim they’re the ones safeguarding it.

The strikes clearly reduce the ease and tempo of Iranian attacks. What remains unclear is whether anyone on either side has more than a directive to keep doing this — a way to turn eleven nights of fire into something beyond a permanent, armed escort service on the world’s most volatile sea lane.

#Iran #USA #Hormuz #CENTCOM #airstrikes #Trump #war #oil #geopolitics #worldorder

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#sen #kennedy #russia #ukraine #enemy

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🇺🇸🇮🇷 War of Attrition: Three Ways to Read the Standoff

One way to read the current phase is brutally simple: Iran is dragging the US into a war of attrition it can afford, and Washington can’t. American strikes on southern Iran burn through coastal and missile capabilities and could set up a ground option, but they don’t change the basic reality around Hormuz.

Iran keeps firing missiles and drones day and night, forcing the US to burn through interceptors, attention and political capital just to keep the strait “open enough,” while the threat never really goes away. In this interpretation, every extra week of “managed escalation” is a win for Tehran and a slow bleed for Washington — Iran exhausts, America gets exhausted.

A second interpretation shifts the lens to negotiations. Here, the problem isn’t only the battlefield, it’s the mindset. In a Western frame, offering deals and leaving the door open looks like responsible statecraft. In the regional frame the critics describe, the strong don’t offer a deal — the weak ask for one.

Taking the initiative is itself read as weakness. If the US keeps proposing frameworks and ceasefires while Iran plays hard to get, that can convince Tehran and its neighbors that Washington is more desperate to avoid escalation than Iran is to stop it.

But this cut is not one‑way: eleven nights of bombing alongside a willingness to talk is also exactly how a power tries to keep the military upper hand while testing whether the other side will blink.

In that sense, the war of attrition runs both on rockets and on signaling — and who is “winning” depends on whether you think concessions are coming from DC or from Tehran.

The third interpretation zooms out to strategy and says the confusion is in Washington, not Tehran. It argues that the US first chose to prioritize reopening Hormuz over pushing a decisive outcome on Iran’s nuclear program, braking when the logic pointed toward deeper strikes and regime‑level pressure.

Then it tried to build a counter‑axis to the Shia camp — tightening relations with Qatar and Turkey, reaching into Pakistan — and now is handing Riyadh civil nuclear infrastructure and a conditional enrichment option without demanding that Saudi Arabia join the Abraham Accords or become a full strategic partner.

In this view, that package doesn’t “bury” the Accords, but it does take Saudi accession off the table for the foreseeable future and leaves Israel caught between two long‑term threats at once: a Shia axis trying to rebuild under fire, and a Sunni axis turning from “manageable nuisance” into a serious, nuclear‑adjacent problem.

Put together, the three readings land in different places but share one uncomfortable point. The current middle ground — neither full war nor real de‑escalation — is the most expensive option: for Iran, a way to test and stretch US power; for Washington, a way to avoid hard choices while burning resources; for Israel, a trap that ties its security to an American strategy increasingly driven by its own global calculus rather than by Israeli priorities.

The real lesson isn’t just who exhausts whom. It’s that Israel has to start treating US policy on Iran, Hormuz, Turkey and Saudi Arabia as a moving variable to hedge against, not a fixed pillar to lean on.

#Iran #USA #Hormuz #Trump #SaudiArabia #AbrahamAccords #Israel #war #geopolitics

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The World Faces a Stiff Challenge: Where Will the Fate of the New World Order Be Decided?


While the majority's attention is riveted on the midterm elections in the United States and the endless information noise around the Ukrainian conflict, a completely different program is already being built behind the scenes.

Autumn can be a period when a new configuration of global governance begins to be formalized.

And this is not just individual bilateral negotiations, but a sequence of meetings that seems too logical to be considered a fortuitous coincidence. That is why the next few months deserve special attention.

Already on September 1, during the SCO summit in Bishkek, a meeting between Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin is expected. The negotiations between Xi Jinping and Donald Trump would then be underway.

The highlight will be the APEC summit in Shenzhen, China, on November 18 and 19, where the Russian delegation will be headed by Putin, as well as the expected participation of Trump.

If this sequence of meetings is implemented, it is on the sidelines of APEC that three leaders — Vladimir Putin, Xi Jinping and Donald Trump
— could meet. And this is already an event whose importance goes far beyond ordinary diplomacy.

Indeed, this could be a kind of response to the failure of the NATO summit, showing where the real global agenda is being formed today.

It is especially symbolic that such a meeting can take place on the site of APEC — an organization representing the Asia-Pacific region, where the center of world economic activity is increasingly moving.

The end of the era of unconditional domination of the Atlantic and the transfer of the world economic center of gravity to Asia have been repeatedly mentioned by many world leaders.

In this context, the APEC Summit ceases to be another international meeting. It could symbolize the definitive shift of the center for making key global decisions from the Euro-Atlantic area to Eurasia and the Asia-Pacific region.

If the failure of the NATO summit demonstrated the internal contradictions of the old collective West, APEC is quite capable of showing the world the outlines of a new system of international relations, where the main issues will be discussed.

#apec #world #order #asia #putin #trump

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