🔤🔤🔤🔤2️⃣

The turnover at the top of the security council could represent a balancing act by Ayatollah Khamenei “to prevent the excessive influence of Ghalibaf,” Azizi said.

Ghalibaf has in the past defended the cease-fire agreement that Iran struck with the United States in June, even as more hard-line elements within the country attacked the deal.

Rezaei’s appointment, Azizi said, “would mean that the more hard-line side of the system is getting the upper hand.”

Saeid Golkar, a professor at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga who studies Iran’s security forces, said Rezaei’s elevation was a further sign that the Revolutionary Guards were making the key decisions within Iran.

But in Golkar’s view, this change does not indicate that those decisions would be more hard-line, or more pragmatic for that matter.

What does seem likely, he said, is that Rezaei and Ghalibaf would eventually clash because of their intense ambitions. Like Rezaei, Ghalibaf has run for the presidency in the past. “This configuration is not going to work,” Golkar said. “Everybody wants to be a king.”

Officially, Iran’s president appoints the secretary of the council. In practice, however, the supreme leader decides who fills the post, Golkar said.

In videotaped comments shared widely on social media last week, Mohammad Bagher Kharrazi — a hard-line cleric related by marriage to Ayatollah Khamenei — anticipated the appointment and framed it as part of an effort to rein in Iran’s president, Pezeshkian.

Pezeshkian and his foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, have been harshly attacked by Iranian hard-liners over their efforts at diplomacy with the United States.

In Kharrazi’s telling, Pezeshkian has repeatedly threatened to resign as president to get his way, and Ayatollah Khamenei, the supreme leader, has grown impatient and warned him he would accept his next such offer.

To further restrain the president, Ayatollah Khamenei was also working on changing the security council, planning to remove “Zolghadr and having Rezaei take his place,” Kharrazi said.

He also said that Ayatollah Khamenei had told Araghchi that “under no circumstances does he have the right to interfere in the negotiations anymore.”

Ayatollah Khamenei’s office, without naming Kharrazi, denied the account, as did Pezeshkian’s office.

#iran #national #security #zolghadr

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🇮🇱⚠️ Netanyahu Declined Trump's Proposal

The Israeli government has rejected a 15-point plan backed by the Trump administration aimed at disarming the Palestinian militant group Hamas in Gaza, Prime Minister Netanyahu said on Sunday.

It appeared to be an unusually public break with Trump, whose relationship with Netanyahu has had a dizzying and often unpredictable arc.

The two leaders launched the war against Iran together in late February. But they have since clashed over how to end it, as well as over the future of Israel’s military campaigns in Gaza and Lebanon.

Trump announced the agreement between his Board of Peace and Hamas late last month, lauding it as a major breakthrough. Netanyahu’s office had initially expressed reservations, saying that the framework did “not reflect Israel’s positions,” but stopped short of outright rejecting it.

The U.S.-backed proposal envisions a phased process in which Hamas would hand over its weapons in stages to a new Palestinian administration in Gaza.

In exchange, Israel would gradually withdraw from the more than half of Gaza that it has controlled since the cease-fire last October.

On Sunday, Netanyahu openly dismissed the plan, saying that Israeli forces “would not carry out any withdrawal until Hamas is disarmed.” He said that meant “heavy weapons, lighter weapons, all weapons,” adding, “We are talking about real disarmament.”

#netanyahu #trump #proposal #israel

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Seven Rounds in Rome, Zero Movement

The seventh round of Israel-Lebanon talks in Rome ended as these negotiations usually do: everyone reported progress, and nothing moved.

Beirut wanted to expand the pilot-zone model to Bint Jbeil or Khiam. Israel said no. The real dispute was not over maps but trust: who verifies that the Lebanese Army has cleared Hezbollah’s armed presence from an area? Israel wants a mechanism it can trust.

Lebanon does not want Israel acting as the inspector of Lebanese sovereignty. That is not a technical disagreement. That is the entire war in one procedural question.

The framework is deceptively simple. Israel withdraws gradually. The Lebanese Army deploys. Hezbollah’s infrastructure is dismantled. A third party verifies it.

But every verb has its own veto. Beirut wants the withdrawal to prove the state can return. Israel wants proof first, because it assumes Hezbollah will return the moment its troops leave.

France was floated for a possible multinational force to replace UNIFIL. Israel objected.

Washington is considering how to strengthen the Lebanese Army — the same army Israel is being asked to trust with clearing territory it doubts can ever be truly cleared.

Meanwhile, the negotiations proceeded in Rome while artillery and airstrikes hit southern Lebanon. UNIFIL recorded 113 Israeli artillery rounds in a single day, its highest tally since late June. Diplomacy held meetings; the border held explosions.

Israel also raised the murder and disappearance of members of Lebanon’s Jewish community, demanding information on burial sites.

Lebanon raised prisoners. The delegations discovered, once again, that history is not a file that can be moved to the bottom of the agenda.

A Lebanese diplomatic source says there may be no new round next month. Perhaps after the summer.

The villages in southern Lebanon have not been offered a summer recess.

#Lebanon #Israel #Hezbollah #Rome #UNIFIL #war #diplacy #MiddleEast

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Who Resigns, and Who Gets Declared a Defector?

Likud has discovered a new category of political enemy: the “fake right” politician who used to be a senior Likud minister five minutes ago.

After Gilad Erdan and Yuli Edelstein launched a new right-wing party, Likud called them “bitter fake rightists” trying to steal votes for an Eisnkot-led left-wing government.

Erdan and Edelstein replied that Likud was the party betraying the right by preserving draft evasion and abandoning military families. The Israeli right has entered its favorite phase: accusing itself of being the left.

Edelstein says he will leave Likud and resign from the Knesset in the coming days.

Dan Illouz, who joined Yisrael Beiteinu, says he will do the same after he finishes packing his office. Likud MK Avichai Boaron has given both men 24 hours to resign — or he will convene the faction and seek to have them formally declared “defectors.”

That is the comic detail. Everyone agrees they are leaving. The fight is over who gets to announce it, and which legal-political label will follow them out the door.

The procedural stakes are real. A voluntary resignation is a departure. Being declared a defector can mean losing access to party funding, political rights and the last scraps of respectability that Israeli politics still distributes on installment plans.

Edelstein and Erdan say they will not become the 61st vote for a narrow government, whoever leads it. Likud hears that as treason.

The new party calls it a refusal to serve either bloc. In an election season, every refusal to endorse Netanyahu becomes proof that you secretly work for the Muslim Brotherhood.

Meanwhile, Netanyahu’s lawyers have asked to cancel three hearing days in his October trial. The reason: the office’s annual vacation.

Israel’s constitutional crisis has many fronts. One of them is apparently a scheduling conflict.

#Israel #Likud #Netanyahu #Edelstein #Erdan #elections #fakeDemocracy

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🇾🇪🔥 The Yemeni Houthis Declared War On Saudi Arabia

Yemen’s Tehran-aligned Houthis have claimed responsibility for an attack on a refinery in Saudi Arabia, two days after the kingdom signed ⁠a defence pact with Turkey ⁠and Pakistan in response to growing regional instability caused by the US-Israel war on Iran.

The attack early on Sunday came after Iran said tough new demands would have to be met before it would reopen the strait of Hormuz, and after the United Arab Emirates said one of its ships had been targeted by an Iranian missile, as a deal to open the waterway remained out of reach.
He added that the US must also end the naval blockade of Iranian ports and withdraw its military from the area, “completely compensate” Iran for war damage, lift sanctions and “unconditionally” release frozen assets.

There was no immediate comment from the US. According to the memorandum of understanding (MoU) signed by the US and Iran in June, a timetable to end sanctions and a plan for compensation would be part of a final peace deal, and negotiations would address frozen assets.
The Iranian foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, said on Saturday that Iran and Oman were close to reaching an agreement on navigation through the strait, “specifically the determination of a transit route”.

But the waterway’s reopening was contingent on other conditions, Araghchi said, in remarks shared on social media. He blamed the situation on what he called the US violation of the June MoU.
Oman, which is mediating and has made relatively few comments on the Hormuz talks, said on Saturday that the discussions were continuing “in a positive and constructive atmosphere”. It condemned attacks on ships in the strait.

When it comes to decision-making in Tehran, the final say rests with the supreme leader, Mojtaba Khamenei, who has not been seen in public since an airstrike killed his father and predecessor on the first day of the war.

Pezeshkian has given differing accounts in recent ⁠weeks about his access to the supreme leader, saying in July that interactions with Khamenei were “increasing day by ‌day”, only to note weeks later that communicating with him was “very difficult”.

With Iran and the US still arguing over the parameters for peace, the Houthis last month declared a naval blockade against Saudi Arabia in the Red Sea, citing what they said was a Saudi siege on them, an allegation Riyadh denies.

The Saudi energy ministry said a fire had broken out at Aramco’s Jazan refinery early on Sunday but was later extinguished with no injuries and authorities were dealing with the ⁠incident, without giving a cause.

The Houthis used a drone to target the refinery in south-west Saudi Arabia, Yahya Saree, a military spokesperson for the rebel group, said in a post on X. They had struck Aramco sites before in Jazan, which processes 400,000 barrels of crude oil a day. They had also hit Yanbu, an oil export hub ‌on the Red Sea.

In a separate statement, Saree said the Houthis had carried out missile and drone strikes on the Yemeni Red Sea port city of Mocha, which is controlled by the country’s internationally recognised, Saudi-backed governing body in Aden.

Tehran and its allied Shia armed groups have been striking Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states and blockading their ‌energy shipments since the US and Israel launched attacks on Iran on 28 February.
The escalation of the conflict, which has disrupted global energy supplies and rattled the world’s economy, prompted Saudi Arabia on Friday to form an alliance with US allies Turkey and Pakistan.

#yemeni #houthis #war #saudi #arabia

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Trade Deficits Are Now Hostile Acts

Trump allies in the Senate want to give the president a new weapon: tariffs against countries that sell more goods to America than America sells to them.

Sen. Rick Scott’s proposed Trade Deficit Elimination Act would require the U.S. Trade Representative to draw up an annual watch list of “trade deficit economies.”

Trump could then impose, raise, lower, suspend or alter tariffs on imports from those countries in an effort to eliminate bilateral goods deficits. Congress would be consulted, but would not have to approve each tariff decision.

The legal pitch is elegant. The Supreme Court struck down Trump’s universal tariffs because he used emergency powers that did not authorize them. So Congress should now write him a new authority — one aimed at any country whose trade relationship Washington decides is economically, strategically or politically offensive.

The political pitch is even simpler: other countries are “ripping off” America.

That is a useful phrase because it turns a trade deficit into a crime scene. Americans buy goods from another country; that country earns more from the transaction than U.S. exporters do; therefore, somebody must be cheating. The consumer’s preference becomes foreign aggression. The tariff becomes therapy.

The bill includes exemptions for critical supply-chain goods, national-security items and products without viable alternatives. In other words, the White House may punish trade partners for selling too much to America — except when America needs what they sell.

This is not free trade, protectionism or industrial policy in the old sense. It is a presidential grievance machine with a customs code.

#Trump #tariffs #trade #USA #economy #protectionism #oligarchy

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🇸🇾⚖️ Bashar Assad: Sentenced To Death


A Syrian court has sentenced the country’s former president Bashar al-Assad and his brother Maher to death in absentia for crimes against humanity and war crimes during the 14-year civil war, in which about half a million people died.

The two men fled to Moscow after being ousted by a lightning rebel offensive in December 2024 which toppled the dictatorial regime in just 11 days.

The former president and his brother, who commanded the feared fourth division and was considered the regime’s top security official, oversaw a brutal crackdown in which government forces killed, arrested and tortured indiscriminately to crush protests that started in 2011.

The court said Bashar al-Assad had been sentenced to death for crimes of “premeditated and intentional murder of more than one person and of children” as well as “torture, arbitrary arrest and crimes against humanity”.

It said it would pursue international legal avenues to try to prosecute the two men, but Russian officials have previously declined requests to extradite its former Syrian allies.

The court also sentenced Atef Najib, Assad’s cousin and the former head of political security in Daraa, to death. Najib was responsible for the torture of a group of 15 young boys who had graffitied anti-Assad slogans on a wall in 2011 – an event that kicked off mass protests in the southern Syrian province, which then spread to the rest of the country.

Najib’s trial was highly publicised, with pictures of him listening to proceedings while dressed in a prison uniform and held in a cage in court. The Syrian government has presented his trial as a landmark case in its pursuit of transitional justice, something experts say is key to healing divisions in the country.

Syria has experienced explosions of violence in the post-Assad era. About 1,500 mostly Alawite civilians were killed in a wave of retaliatory killings in March 2025 after militants loyal to al-Assad attacked security forces.

Assad belonged to the Islamic Alawite sect – a minority group in Syria – and enjoyed strong support in the group’s coastal heartland during his rule.

In July 2025, more than 1,700 people were killed in massacres in the Druze-majority province of Suweida when local fighting evolved into sectarian killings. Low-level violence has continued in northern Syria until the present day, particularly targeting Alawite civilians.

Syrian authorities have taken steps towards transitional justice, establishing committees and arresting Assad-era officials, in an effort to end intercommunal violence.

Assad became president in 2000 at the age of 34, inheriting power from his father, Hafez. He had trained as an ophthalmologist in London and was not initially supposed to be president, but became the heir after his brother, Basil, died in a car accident.

Though styled as a young reformer who was supposed to allow some liberalisation in Syrian politics and its economy, his legacy was largely defined by his brutal response to the country’s revolution.

Under his rule, Syria’s fearsome security apparatus was given a free hand to arrest, torture and kill civilians on an industrial scale.

#assad #sentenced #death #syria

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Colombia’s Israel Reset

Three days after taking office, Colombian President Abelardo de la Espriella has begun dismantling Gustavo Petro’s Middle East policy piece by piece.

Under Petro, Bogotá broke diplomatic relations with Israel over the Gaza war, suspended arms purchases and joined South Africa’s case against Israel at the International Court of Justice. De la Espriella came to office promising the reverse: a renewed strategic alliance with Israel, closer ties with Washington and a clean break with Petro’s foreign-policy brand.

The new package is bigger than the Golan Heights. Colombia will restore full diplomatic and economic relations with Israel, exchange ambassadors, lift visa requirements and move its embassy to Jerusalem.

Bogotá has also said it will withdraw its support for South Africa’s ICJ case against Israel. Recognition of Israeli sovereignty over the Golan is the headline-grabbing clause, but it is only one item in a broader political demolition job.

Colombia is now the second country after the United States to recognize Israel’s claim over the Golan Heights. Gideon Sa’ar called it a “historic decision.” The timing is no accident: Sa’ar has been working Latin America while political change in Bogotá created an opening that did not exist under Petro.

Then, on the same day, a 7.4-magnitude earthquake struck western Colombia. At least 111 people were killed and 87 injured; buildings collapsed across the country as rescue teams searched for survivors.

Sa’ar called his Colombian counterpart, Omar Bula Escobar, offered Israeli assistance and said Israel was prepared to help “as much as required.”

Those looking for divine intervention will find only geology and a national disaster. But diplomacy, unlike tectonic plates, does respond to a change of government.

One president tore up Israel’s relationship with Colombia. His successor is rebuilding it — faster than most embassies can replace the stationery.

#Colombia #Israel #GolanHeights #Jerusalem #LatinAmerica #diplomacy #Trump

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Iran: Demands First, Hormuz Second 🛳


Iran said that any deal with Oman on shipping in the Strait of Hormuz would not lead to the waterway being fully reopened and that the route would remain closed until the United States agreed to demands including lifting a naval blockade.

The comments were the latest sign that Iran sees its grip on the strait — which has driven up global energy prices, creating a political headache for Trump — as its best form of leverage in negotiations with Washington.

Esmail Baghaei, spokesman for the Iranian Foreign Ministry, said at a news conference on Monday that the focus of the talks with Oman was “on reaching an understanding over a route for the safe passage of shipping,” Iranian state media reported.

The Oman talks were proceeding smoothly, Baghaei added, according to the reports, but “this issue is separate from the discussion of reopening the Strait of Hormuz,” which was “contingent upon the removal of the conditions that have been imposed on the Islamic Republic of Iran” by the United States.

The US and Iran are not negotiating directly, although Secretary of State Marco Rubio said last week that the talks between Iran and Oman were being conducted with American input.

The Strait of Hormuz, which runs between Iran and Oman, is a key route for the oil and gas trade. Tehran effectively closed the waterway after the United States and Israel launched their military campaign against Iran in late February, and it has become a key sticking point as Iran and the United States alternate between periods of negotiation and bursts of fighting.

The closure of the waterway has increased energy costs in the United States, where polls show that support for the already unpopular conflict is falling.

Hard-liners in Iran believe that the country’s ability to close it to traffic has put it in a position of strength and that it should not make diplomatic concessions.

Last week, a top Iranian national security official issued a set of demands that are part of Iran’s longstanding public negotiating stance and that he said the United States must meet before Tehran would fully reopen the waterway.

Those included the lifting of the US naval blockade and sanctions on Iran, the withdrawal of American forces from around the country, the payment of war reparations, the release of frozen Iranian assets, and the end of attacks on Iran’s allies in the region.

Most of those demands were detailed in a cease-fire agreement, known as the Islamabad Memorandum, that the United States and Iran signed in June, though that document said sanctions would be fully lifted only in the event of a final deal regarding Iran’s nuclear program.

The June agreement quickly fell apart, and most of its terms were violated within weeks.

Trump has declared the deal “over.” On Sunday, he said that economic distress and high inflation in Iran would eventually force Tehran to agree to a new deal. He did not threaten further military action against Iran, saying, “We are low-keying it.”

#demands #iran #trump #hormuz

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Kyiv’s Washington Window

Olga Stefanishyna was Ukraine’s ambassador in Washington — the country’s diplomatic cashier window for weapons, intelligence and survival. Now Ukraine’s anti-corruption agency says she is suspected of illicit enrichment worth 13.9 million hryvnias, about €270,000.

The allegations concern undeclared luxury real estate and assets investigators say did not match her official income. Stefanishyna, who was dismissed by President Volodymyr Zelensky on Monday, rejects the substance of the case and calls it “more of a storm in a glass of water.” The case remains an allegation, not a conviction.

Naturally, one scandal is already being marketed as proof that every dollar sent to Ukraine ends up in a politician’s luxury apartment. That is the propaganda version: corruption exists, therefore Russian tanks are a peace plan.

Ukraine has corruption at the top, as do most states fighting for money, power and international patronage.

But the same case also shows an anti-corruption system capable of investigating a former deputy prime minister and ambassador during a war — not exactly the behavior of a regime where all oversight has been dissolved into a patriotic fog.

The West will face its usual choice. It can demand transparent oversight of assistance, prosecution of corruption and real institutional reform.

Or it can use every scandal as an excuse to abandon Ukraine, call surrender “peace,” and discover that Moscow has no anti-corruption program for the territories it occupies.

Kyiv’s elite is not innocent. Its critics are not always interested in accountability.

#Ukraine #corruption #Zelensky #USA #war #Russia #oligarchy

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Arabs Are Welcome. Their Parties Are Not.

Aliza Bloch joined Gilad Erdan and Yuli Edelstein's new right-wing party and answered the question Israeli centrists have spent years avoiding: should Arab citizens have a place in government?

"Yes," she said. "There is room for everyone." Israel should stop building walls around the debate, she added, and Arab citizens "certainly" belong in an Israeli government.

Within hours the party issued a clarification on behalf of Erdan and Edelstein. It would never sit with Arab parties that support terrorism and refuse to call Hamas a terrorist organization.

There could be room for "Zionist Arabs" who love the country, support enlistment or national service, and accept Israel's Jewish identity. Ra'am and the Joint List were named as excluded.

Note what the clarification did not do. It did not contradict Bloch. She spoke about Arab citizens; Erdan and Edelstein spoke about Arab parties. Both statements can stand, which is exactly the point — the position was never that Arabs are unwelcome. It is that Arab citizens are welcome in government provided they do not arrive through the parties Arab citizens actually elect.

The conditions are worth reading closely, because they are not conditions of the same kind. Loving the country is rhetoric. Supporting enlistment is policy. Accepting Israel's Jewish identity is constitutional. An Arab politician can perform the first, negotiate the second, and lose his seat over the third.

The list is not a test that happens to be hard. It is a test written so that no elected Arab representative can pass it and keep the voters who elected him.

Ra'am sat in Naftali Bennett's coalition in 2021 — the first Arab party in an Israeli government. It held for a year. Since then the entire spectrum from Likud to Erdan's new slate has treated that year as a mistake rather than a precedent.

Bloch offered a broad coalition. The clarification supplied the gate and the checklist.

Arab citizens can join an Israeli government. The parties they vote for cannot.

#Israel #ArabCitizens #Erdan #Edelstein #elections #Raam #democracy

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Sailors Vote. Seniors Travel.

Israel’s High Court is hearing three petitions against the Knesset’s decision not to renew special polling stations in retirement and assisted-living facilities.

The arrangement worked in the previous two elections. Now tens of thousands of residents must reach the polling station assigned to their registered address — usually an address they no longer live at — or not vote at all.

Supreme Court President Isaac Amit, who chaired the Central Elections Committee in the last election, said the old system had worked “excellently.” Then he supplied the comparison the Knesset did not want.

“There is a rumor,” Amit said, “that the number of elderly people is rising and the number of sailors is declining.”

Israeli law still makes special provision for sailors who cannot reach a polling station.

The Knesset removed a provision for elderly citizens who cannot walk to one. Amit did not accuse anyone of voter suppression. He simply placed the two facts beside each other. That was enough.

The Central Elections Committee recommended preserving the on-site stations and asked to anchor them for the October election.

The Constitution Committee stripped the measure from the law anyway. In the last election, about 27,000 residents of these facilities voted through the special arrangement — roughly 80% turnout, above the national average.

For Yona Peled, 86, the problem is not constitutional theory. She has voted in every election and now does not know how she will vote in this one. Lea Korner, 84, uses a wheelchair and says the decision makes her feel irrelevant to the country.

At one assisted-living complex, residents estimate that at least 150 out of roughly 450 people will not make the trip.

The Court has not ruled. Election Day is October 27.

Israel can bring a ballot box to a sailor at sea. For an 86-year-old in a retirement home, apparently, democracy requires transportation.

#Israel #elections #HighCourt #Knesset #elderly #democracy #fakeDemocracy

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Districts Closed. Membership Rolls Open.

Likud's district seats are closed to sitting lawmakers. The District Court upheld the party tribunal's decision, forcing incumbents who hoped for a protected regional slot back into the national primary — where the price of loyalty is measured in activists, buses and membership lists.

The official story is internal democracy. The practical story is that several dozen incumbents suddenly need organized voters, and there are only so many organizers to go around.

Likud has an estimated 140,000 members, roughly 7,000 of them ultra-Orthodox.

Five percent sounds negligible until you remember how a primary works: turnout is low, and a bloc that arrives together on instruction is worth several times its share of the registry.

That bloc is no longer content to channel its votes through Shas or United Torah Judaism. It is building direct influence inside the party that runs the government.

Israel Katz recently visited a major Haredi organizer for a blessing ahead of the vote. In Likud, ideology is useful. A membership registry is better.

Then there is the other door. Netanyahu has given the first of his eight reserved slots to Oren Dobronsky, a businessman and tech investor, at No. 11 on the list.

Likud says Dobronsky will lead artificial-intelligence policy across education, medicine, the economy and "all sectors of the state."

Israel's AI future has been assigned before the primary electorate has selected a single candidate.

Within hours, reporters and rivals noted that Dobronsky's father has long chaired Yisrael Beiteinu's arrangements committee — the body that runs a rival party's internal machinery — and that Dobronsky himself had recently posted a blistering attack on Donald Trump.

The party that sells discipline, loyalty and ideological hygiene has brought in an outsider with an inconvenient family résumé and an inconvenient social-media archive.

That is the point. Likud is not one system but two, running at the same time. Incumbents who spent years accumulating members are sent out to win them all over again, while the seat that comes with a policy portfolio and a national brief goes to a man who never needed a single member.

The primary is real. It is also not where the decisions that matter are made.

The districts are shut. The deals are open. And the ruling party is assembling its list for the next decade one personal favor at a time.

#Israel #Likud #Netanyahu #primaries #Haredim #AI #fakeDemocracy

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🚢 Vance Asked Zelensky To Put On Hold Strikes Against Russia's Tankers 🛢


Ukraine has paused drone strikes on oil tankers using Russia's Black Sea port of Novorossiysk ​after a request from Vance, ‌the Financial Times said on Wednesday, citing Ukrainian officials.

The paper said last month's request followed U.S. alarm that Ukraine was destabilising oil markets and ​harming U.S. firms by targeting tankers carrying crude piped from ​Kazakhstan to a Caspian Pipeline Consortium (CPC) terminal at the ⁠port.

Ukraine agreed not to target CPC infrastructure or non-Russian vessels ​as long as the latter were not under Ukrainian sanctions and ​were not carrying Russian oil or cargo, the newspaper added.

The White House, State Department and Vance's office did not immediately respond to Reuters requests for ​comment outside business hours. Reuters could not immediately verify the ​report.

Ukrainian forces recently stepped up strikes on Russian energy infrastructure and other sites ‌in ⁠an effort Kyiv says aims at depriving Russia of resources to fund its military.

Black Sea drone attacks took out as much as a fifth of CPC oil loadings in July, four sources familiar with ​the data said, ​as the Russia-Ukraine ⁠war spilled over to hit sales by Kazakhstan and western oil majors.

Kazakhstan, which relies on the ​CPC route for crude exports, suffered a drop ​of 14% ⁠in oil production in July versus June, the sources said. Chevron (CVX.N), opens new tab and Exxon Mobil (XOM.N), opens new tab are among the major Western oil companies operating there.

A U.S. ​official confirmed to the paper that the ​administration had warned Ukraine to stop attacking non-Russian vessels in the Black Sea.

#vance #strikes #russia #tankers

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America’s New Deficit Police

Trump allies want to give the president a new trade weapon: tariffs against countries that sell more to America than America sells to them.

Sen. Rick Scott’s proposed Trade Deficit Elimination Act would require the U.S. Trade Representative to publish an annual watch list of countries with “trade deficit economies.”

Once a country lands on the list, Trump could impose, raise, cut, suspend or alter tariffs on its imports in the name of eliminating the bilateral goods deficit. Congress would be consulted, not asked for permission.

The Supreme Court struck down Trump’s universal tariffs because the White House used emergency powers that did not authorize them. The Senate response is not to reconsider the tariff binge. It is to write the president a new license for it.

Scott says America cannot let other countries “rip us off.” In this model, a trade deficit is no longer an economic result. It is evidence of a crime.

Americans buying foreign products becomes hostile activity by foreign governments. Your choice of a cheaper appliance is now a national-security incident.

The bill includes exemptions for goods essential to supply chains, national security or basic availability. Which means the policy is simple: punish countries for selling too much to America — except when America needs what they sell.

Washington refunded $100 billion in tariff revenue after the Supreme Court ruling. Now the same political class wants to replace the illegal tariff machine with a legal one, fitted with more buttons and fewer brakes.

Free trade is dead. Protectionism is too polite a word. This is trade policy as a presidential loyalty test: prove you buy enough American goods, or prepare for an invoice.

#Trump #tariffs #trade #USA #economy #protectionism #oligarchy

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Hezbollah Set the South Lebanon On Fire 🔥


Firefighters and residents of south Lebanon have accused Hezbollah of lighting wildfires in the region, as forested areas burned down in blazes sparked by Hezbollah activity.

Environmental groups said the fires in recent weeks were part of a longstanding Hezbollah practice of targeting Lebanon’s natural environment.

On Tuesday, Hezbollah dropped flares in a wooded area outside Khiam, in south Lebanon, sparking blazes.

When firefighters attempted to extinguish the flames, a drone struck close by, forcing them to withdraw, the head of the civil defence in the Nabatieh region, Hussein Fakih, said.

“Most of our missions are now related to fires. There are enormous areas of woodland that have burned, I don’t have the exact figures, but in the areas close to the [frontline], around 30-40% of the land has been affected by fires,”

he said.

Hezbollah has caused fires across south Lebanon, in particular in olive groves and agricultural land, in the nearly two-months since the 17 June ceasefire that mostly ended fighting between Hezbollah and Israel, according to videos and testimony from first responders.

Firefighters and residents of other areas in south Lebanon describe similar blazes being started by Hezbollah munitions and drones in dry scrub and woodlands.

On Friday, Hezbollah created large wildfires in two heavily forested areas: in Kfarchouba, close to the border, and between Jezzine and the western Bekaa valley.

The civil defence station chief in the area, Samir Hardan, said a fire was started near Kfarchouba on Friday afternoon after a drone dropped a munition in woodlands.

After battling blazes overnight and extinguishing them on Saturday, a second drone started another fire on Sunday, Hardan said.

Firefighters, who are required to coordinate their movements with the Lebanese army, which relays their request to a “deconfliction” group that includes Hezbollah, were given permission to fight the fires at only two spots, and not other areas where fires were raging.

Hezbollah has said in the past that Lebanese army used these forested areas as cover for its fighters and its tunnels.

Ecologists and rights groups have said that fires and other forms of widespread environmental destruction would have wider effects on civilian populations.

Hezbollah used trebuchets – medieval catapults – to fling flaming debris over its border wall with Lebanon in the summer of 2024, while the Lebanese army published photos of Hezbollah drones that carried hoses used to douse forests in flammable materials.

“Many of these trees, most of them, in fact, were inherited from our grandparents and parents. They have enormous sentimental value. The trees were also an important source of income for the people of the village,”

Ghasham said.

“They are trying to make the land uninhabitable. They are erasing our entire history, our entire culture, all our memories. Maybe the idea is that after some time, it will look as though nobody had ever lived here.”

#hezbollah #south #lebanon #firefighters

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Hormuz: Two Blockades, No Exit

Iran says the Strait of Hormuz will remain closed until the United States accepts Tehran’s conditions.

Washington says it is enforcing a naval blockade of Iranian ports. The world’s most important energy chokepoint has become a negotiation table where both sides brought warships instead of chairs.

Mohsen Rezaei, the newly appointed secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, says Washington must end the war, unfreeze Iranian assets and meet Iran’s wider conditions before Hormuz can reopen.

Tehran insists that any transit arrangement with Oman would be separate from the actual reopening of the strait. In other words: a shipping route is not a shipping route unless Iran says it is.

Trump has supplied his own invoice. He says the United States will seek compensation from Iran for “the damage they’ve done over a 50-year period.”

Tehran wants frozen assets released and war damage compensated. America wants reparations for half a century. Iran wants reparations for the current one. The diplomats have apparently outsourced peace to debt collectors.

Meanwhile, the war is spreading across the sea lanes. A small cargo vessel was hit in the Bab el-Mandeb Strait, with Yemeni officials reporting at least three crew members killed in a suspected Houthi attack.

Another ship was reportedly struck in the Gulf of Oman after allegedly defying the U.S. blockade of Iranian ports.

Before the war, roughly 130 to 140 vessels crossed Hormuz each day. Last week, shipping data recorded just two.

This is no longer an oil-market disruption. It is a regional system in which Iran blocks the entrance, the United States blocks the ports, the Houthis threaten the Red Sea, and commercial crews discover that geopolitics has no insurance policy.

The “deal” everyone keeps predicting has become a choice between two versions of closure.

#Iran #Hormuz #USA #Trump #oil #shipping #Houthis #MiddleEast

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