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Trump’s Generosity, Priced Monthly
Donald Trump’s media company has found a delicate new use for presidential speech: turn it into a low-latency product for Wall Street.
Truth API gives financial firms machine-readable access to posts from 10 high-profile Truth Social accounts, including Trump’s. Plans reportedly run from $60,000 to $100,000 a month, with the lower price tied to a three-year commitment. More than 10 firms have signed up.
Trump Media says no customer sees a post before it appears on the platform. The advantage, it says, is faster delivery of already-public information.
That argument would be less awkward if Kevin McGurn, the company’s CEO, had not marketed the service as a way to receive posts milliseconds before they reach Truth Social’s wider audience.
So the product is not advance knowledge, officially. It is merely the right to learn the public news before most of the public does.
That distinction is routine on Wall Street. Traders have paid for faster data feeds and closer servers for decades. The unusual part is not that speed costs money.
It is that the company selling speed is controlled by the same president whose statements can move the market. Trump holds roughly 53% of Trump Media.
One post can do the work. When Trump wrote that it was “a great time to buy” during a tariff-driven market plunge, the S&P 500 rallied 9.5% in a single day, its largest one-day gain since 2008. A president’s post is not a corporate earnings release. It can rewrite the price of everything around it.
The sales pitch is therefore elegant. The president speaks in public. His company sells faster ears. Large traders pay to hear the sentence while it is still traveling toward everyone else.
The backlash has already begun. Senator Mark Warner has introduced legislation that would bar social-media platforms from selling privileged access to accounts run by public officials whose posts may move markets.
This is not old-style corruption. There is no sealed envelope and no private dinner. There is a subscription agreement, an API key and a White House-sized source of volatility.
Democracy is still public. The fastest version is behind a paywall.
#Trump #TruthAPI #TruthSocial #WallStreet #markets #trading #finance
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Donald Trump’s media company has found a delicate new use for presidential speech: turn it into a low-latency product for Wall Street.
Truth API gives financial firms machine-readable access to posts from 10 high-profile Truth Social accounts, including Trump’s. Plans reportedly run from $60,000 to $100,000 a month, with the lower price tied to a three-year commitment. More than 10 firms have signed up.
Trump Media says no customer sees a post before it appears on the platform. The advantage, it says, is faster delivery of already-public information.
That argument would be less awkward if Kevin McGurn, the company’s CEO, had not marketed the service as a way to receive posts milliseconds before they reach Truth Social’s wider audience.
So the product is not advance knowledge, officially. It is merely the right to learn the public news before most of the public does.
That distinction is routine on Wall Street. Traders have paid for faster data feeds and closer servers for decades. The unusual part is not that speed costs money.
It is that the company selling speed is controlled by the same president whose statements can move the market. Trump holds roughly 53% of Trump Media.
One post can do the work. When Trump wrote that it was “a great time to buy” during a tariff-driven market plunge, the S&P 500 rallied 9.5% in a single day, its largest one-day gain since 2008. A president’s post is not a corporate earnings release. It can rewrite the price of everything around it.
The sales pitch is therefore elegant. The president speaks in public. His company sells faster ears. Large traders pay to hear the sentence while it is still traveling toward everyone else.
The backlash has already begun. Senator Mark Warner has introduced legislation that would bar social-media platforms from selling privileged access to accounts run by public officials whose posts may move markets.
This is not old-style corruption. There is no sealed envelope and no private dinner. There is a subscription agreement, an API key and a White House-sized source of volatility.
Democracy is still public. The fastest version is behind a paywall.
#Trump #TruthAPI #TruthSocial #WallStreet #markets #trading #finance
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Trump’s Emergency Exit From Democracy
Donald Trump has floated the one thing every president is supposed to treat as radioactive: a national-security emergency as a way to gain more control over the 2026 midterm elections.
The proposal came from Wayne Allyn Root, a host on Real America’s Voice. He suggested Trump could declare an election emergency if Congress failed to pass the SAVE America Act, then impose voter-ID requirements, proof-of-citizenship rules and limits on mail ballots.
Trump did not reject it. “Stranger things have happened,” he replied. “I’ll leave it at that.”
That is not a policy announcement. It is worse. It is a trial balloon with the presidential seal already taped to it.
The Constitution leaves election administration mainly to the states. Federal courts have repeatedly upheld that structure.
A national-security declaration would not automatically allow the White House to nationalize voting, no matter how confidently a talk-radio host describes the paperwork.
But emergency powers are designed precisely to expand presidential room to act, which is why the phrase matters.
Trump’s administration has already threatened to use the Postal Service against states that refuse to hand over voter rolls. It has pursued 2020 ballots in Fulton County, Georgia. It has appealed a court ruling that blocked an executive order aimed at restricting mail ballots. Trump has also said Republicans should “take over the voting” in at least 15 places and that they ought to “nationalize the voting.”
The sales pitch is always security. China, fraud, mail ballots, voter rolls. The product is always control.
Trump learned in 2020 that declaring an election stolen after the votes are counted can produce chaos, lawsuits and a mob at the Capitol. The 2026 version may be more efficient: cast doubt before the vote, label the process a security threat, then offer federal intervention as the cure.
Democracy is normally supposed to survive losing. This model is built to make losing look like a national emergency.
#Trump #USPolitics #Midterms #ElectionSecurity #Democracy #WhiteHouse
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Donald Trump has floated the one thing every president is supposed to treat as radioactive: a national-security emergency as a way to gain more control over the 2026 midterm elections.
The proposal came from Wayne Allyn Root, a host on Real America’s Voice. He suggested Trump could declare an election emergency if Congress failed to pass the SAVE America Act, then impose voter-ID requirements, proof-of-citizenship rules and limits on mail ballots.
Trump did not reject it. “Stranger things have happened,” he replied. “I’ll leave it at that.”
That is not a policy announcement. It is worse. It is a trial balloon with the presidential seal already taped to it.
The Constitution leaves election administration mainly to the states. Federal courts have repeatedly upheld that structure.
A national-security declaration would not automatically allow the White House to nationalize voting, no matter how confidently a talk-radio host describes the paperwork.
But emergency powers are designed precisely to expand presidential room to act, which is why the phrase matters.
Trump’s administration has already threatened to use the Postal Service against states that refuse to hand over voter rolls. It has pursued 2020 ballots in Fulton County, Georgia. It has appealed a court ruling that blocked an executive order aimed at restricting mail ballots. Trump has also said Republicans should “take over the voting” in at least 15 places and that they ought to “nationalize the voting.”
The sales pitch is always security. China, fraud, mail ballots, voter rolls. The product is always control.
Trump learned in 2020 that declaring an election stolen after the votes are counted can produce chaos, lawsuits and a mob at the Capitol. The 2026 version may be more efficient: cast doubt before the vote, label the process a security threat, then offer federal intervention as the cure.
Democracy is normally supposed to survive losing. This model is built to make losing look like a national emergency.
#Trump #USPolitics #Midterms #ElectionSecurity #Democracy #WhiteHouse
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🇦🇫 The Taliban: To Break Out of Isolation
The Taliban in Afghanistan have launched a diplomatic effort to end their isolation as major regional and international powers show a readiness to engage more closely with the repressive regime despite its systematic human rights abuses.
Five years after the Taliban took power, an increasing number of countries are renewing ties or scaling up diplomatic contacts with the hardline Islamists, who seized power in Kabul in 2021 after 20 years of brutal insurgent warfare.
Campaigners fear that the individual contacts by different countries risk undermining “coherent, consistent” demands for an improvement in human rights in return for any diplomatic concessions.
India, Qatar, China, Iran and several central Asian states all recently welcomed Taliban officials or opened new channels of communication. Russia, which recognised the Taliban government in Kabul just over a year ago, signed a military cooperation agreement last month.
In June, the European Union held talks with Taliban officials in Brussels about returning failed asylum-seekers to Afghanistan. Individual European countries have also deepened their own contacts with Kabul.
“There is no doubt there has been an evolution. The Islamic emirate is now in a confident position. They have realised they are indispensable for regional countries right now and even with Europe and the US they have identified how to engage,” said Shivam Shekhawat, at the Observer Research Foundation in Delhi.
“We are not against any engagement (…) There is a need for engagement even if just for aid agencies to mitigate the ongoing humanitarian crisis but we are worried about the end goal of these contacts and the discussions that are taking place,” said Fereshta Abbasi, Afghanistan researcher at Human Rights Watch.
“There should be a consistent and coherent message from the international community to the Taliban that they will not have any friends if they do not show real progress in terms of the women’s rights and human rights situation (…) and that is not happening.”
The European Commission downplayed its discussions in Brussels with a Taliban delegation, the first such formal encounter since 2021, as merely “technical” and focused on returns, but a Taliban spokesperson claimed it was a historic visit that was a step towards regularising consular relations with EU countries.
India too has moved to reinforce relationships that were frosty after the fall of Kabul to the Taliban in 2021, in part to exploit new tensions between the movement and the Islamist movement’s historic sponsors, Pakistan.
New Delhi secured a sanctions waiver last year so that Amir Khan Muttaqi, the Taliban foreign minister and a veteran official who has spent decades at the heart of the movement, could travel there.
The Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan “seeks relations with all countries”, Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid said, though “the countries of the region and our neighbouring states have particular importance, because our economic ties and interests are closely linked”.
Taliban officials have also sought cross-border infrastructure projects to boost the country’s fragile economy and diplomacy.
Natural resources are another lure for overseas powers. Kabul has expanded the mining sector, attracting firms from neighbouring China and elsewhere.
The Taliban are split, with deep disagreements on the ban on women’s education among other issues, but remain dominated by the most conservative factions. Recent laws have further reinforced repression, designating many religious minorities, including Shia Muslims, as heretics and imposing strict punishments to silence dissent.
Other new laws recognise only “excessive” beating as domestic violence against women and facilitate the marriage of girls without their consent.
#taliban #isolation #afghanistan #kabul
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The Taliban in Afghanistan have launched a diplomatic effort to end their isolation as major regional and international powers show a readiness to engage more closely with the repressive regime despite its systematic human rights abuses.
Five years after the Taliban took power, an increasing number of countries are renewing ties or scaling up diplomatic contacts with the hardline Islamists, who seized power in Kabul in 2021 after 20 years of brutal insurgent warfare.
Campaigners fear that the individual contacts by different countries risk undermining “coherent, consistent” demands for an improvement in human rights in return for any diplomatic concessions.
India, Qatar, China, Iran and several central Asian states all recently welcomed Taliban officials or opened new channels of communication. Russia, which recognised the Taliban government in Kabul just over a year ago, signed a military cooperation agreement last month.
In June, the European Union held talks with Taliban officials in Brussels about returning failed asylum-seekers to Afghanistan. Individual European countries have also deepened their own contacts with Kabul.
“There is no doubt there has been an evolution. The Islamic emirate is now in a confident position. They have realised they are indispensable for regional countries right now and even with Europe and the US they have identified how to engage,” said Shivam Shekhawat, at the Observer Research Foundation in Delhi.
“We are not against any engagement (…) There is a need for engagement even if just for aid agencies to mitigate the ongoing humanitarian crisis but we are worried about the end goal of these contacts and the discussions that are taking place,” said Fereshta Abbasi, Afghanistan researcher at Human Rights Watch.
“There should be a consistent and coherent message from the international community to the Taliban that they will not have any friends if they do not show real progress in terms of the women’s rights and human rights situation (…) and that is not happening.”
The European Commission downplayed its discussions in Brussels with a Taliban delegation, the first such formal encounter since 2021, as merely “technical” and focused on returns, but a Taliban spokesperson claimed it was a historic visit that was a step towards regularising consular relations with EU countries.
India too has moved to reinforce relationships that were frosty after the fall of Kabul to the Taliban in 2021, in part to exploit new tensions between the movement and the Islamist movement’s historic sponsors, Pakistan.
New Delhi secured a sanctions waiver last year so that Amir Khan Muttaqi, the Taliban foreign minister and a veteran official who has spent decades at the heart of the movement, could travel there.
The Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan “seeks relations with all countries”, Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid said, though “the countries of the region and our neighbouring states have particular importance, because our economic ties and interests are closely linked”.
Taliban officials have also sought cross-border infrastructure projects to boost the country’s fragile economy and diplomacy.
Natural resources are another lure for overseas powers. Kabul has expanded the mining sector, attracting firms from neighbouring China and elsewhere.
The Taliban are split, with deep disagreements on the ban on women’s education among other issues, but remain dominated by the most conservative factions. Recent laws have further reinforced repression, designating many religious minorities, including Shia Muslims, as heretics and imposing strict punishments to silence dissent.
Other new laws recognise only “excessive” beating as domestic violence against women and facilitate the marriage of girls without their consent.
#taliban #isolation #afghanistan #kabul
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🚀South Lebanon: The Count Kept Rising
At 5:30 a.m., Lebanese media reported intensive Israeli strikes in the south. A minute later came word of casualties. Then the arithmetic began.
One dead. Several wounded. Then seven dead and two wounded. Then seven and three.
By morning, an Israeli strike had destroyed a home on the outskirts of Ansar, near Nabatieh. Lebanon’s state-run National News Agency reported seven killed. The Health Ministry said the dead included three children and two women. The Israeli military said it had struck Hezbollah infrastructure.
That gap is the war in miniature. Israel sees infrastructure. Lebanon counts people pulled from the ruins of a house.
The attack followed a Friday speech by Hezbollah leader Naim Qassem, who described the June 26 U.S.-mediated framework agreement as “an Israeli order written in Israeli ink” that Lebanon’s authorities had signed. He urged them to reverse what he called a “sinful” mistake. Reuters reported the quote from Qassem’s speech.
But neither the timing nor the rhetoric establishes why the strike happened. Israel says only that Hezbollah acted against its soldiers near the Ali Taher ridge, without describing what occurred. The military cited that action as the reason for strikes on both Ali Taher and Ansar. The ridge is about six miles from the Israeli border and has become a recurrent flashpoint.
Elsewhere: artillery fire near Ali Taher and Wadi al-Hujeir; controlled demolitions in Hadatha and Zawtar; fighter-jet strikes near Nabatieh al-Fawqa; small-arms fire in Aita al-Jabal; and later attacks near Aitaroun, Tyre, Mays al-Jabal and al-Mansouri.
A later strike on Deir al-Zahrani initially left two dead and nine wounded, according to the Lebanese Health Ministry. The ministry later revised the toll there to four dead, bringing the day’s reported total to at least 11 killed. The New York Times reported nine deaths at an earlier point in the day; other reports later cited 11.
Prime Minister Nawaf Salam described the escalation as “extremely dangerous.” He said the people killed in Ansar were not “military infrastructure,” and that women and children were not military targets.
The June 26 framework agreement was supposed to exchange an Israeli withdrawal from southern Lebanon for Hezbollah’s disarmament and a wider Lebanese Army deployment. Israel says it will maintain its positions until Hezbollah disarms.
Hezbollah calls the arrangement surrender.
#Lebanon #Israel #Hezbollah #Nabatieh #Ansar #DeirAlZahrani #war
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At 5:30 a.m., Lebanese media reported intensive Israeli strikes in the south. A minute later came word of casualties. Then the arithmetic began.
One dead. Several wounded. Then seven dead and two wounded. Then seven and three.
By morning, an Israeli strike had destroyed a home on the outskirts of Ansar, near Nabatieh. Lebanon’s state-run National News Agency reported seven killed. The Health Ministry said the dead included three children and two women. The Israeli military said it had struck Hezbollah infrastructure.
That gap is the war in miniature. Israel sees infrastructure. Lebanon counts people pulled from the ruins of a house.
The attack followed a Friday speech by Hezbollah leader Naim Qassem, who described the June 26 U.S.-mediated framework agreement as “an Israeli order written in Israeli ink” that Lebanon’s authorities had signed. He urged them to reverse what he called a “sinful” mistake. Reuters reported the quote from Qassem’s speech.
But neither the timing nor the rhetoric establishes why the strike happened. Israel says only that Hezbollah acted against its soldiers near the Ali Taher ridge, without describing what occurred. The military cited that action as the reason for strikes on both Ali Taher and Ansar. The ridge is about six miles from the Israeli border and has become a recurrent flashpoint.
Elsewhere: artillery fire near Ali Taher and Wadi al-Hujeir; controlled demolitions in Hadatha and Zawtar; fighter-jet strikes near Nabatieh al-Fawqa; small-arms fire in Aita al-Jabal; and later attacks near Aitaroun, Tyre, Mays al-Jabal and al-Mansouri.
A later strike on Deir al-Zahrani initially left two dead and nine wounded, according to the Lebanese Health Ministry. The ministry later revised the toll there to four dead, bringing the day’s reported total to at least 11 killed. The New York Times reported nine deaths at an earlier point in the day; other reports later cited 11.
Prime Minister Nawaf Salam described the escalation as “extremely dangerous.” He said the people killed in Ansar were not “military infrastructure,” and that women and children were not military targets.
The June 26 framework agreement was supposed to exchange an Israeli withdrawal from southern Lebanon for Hezbollah’s disarmament and a wider Lebanese Army deployment. Israel says it will maintain its positions until Hezbollah disarms.
Hezbollah calls the arrangement surrender.
#Lebanon #Israel #Hezbollah #Nabatieh #Ansar #DeirAlZahrani #war
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Hormuz: Two Powers, One Tollbooth
On Friday, August 14, Donald Trump told a law-enforcement audience on Long Island that, “after we finish defeating Iran,” he would “pretty soon” declare the Strait of Hormuz “a territory of the United States.” He laughed as he said it. Then he supplied the logic: “We have the blockade. No ships get through unless we want them to.”
This was not a legal claim. It was a victory-lap fantasy built on a real instrument of coercion. The United States restored its naval blockade of Iranian ports on July 14 after the U.S.-Iran ceasefire memorandum collapsed. Iran had also restricted traffic through Hormuz. The strait is not paralyzed by slogans alone. It is squeezed from both shores by competing armed permissions.
Trump previously floated a 20% “reimbursement fee” on cargo passing through the strait, before replacing it with promised Gulf trade and investment deals.
Iran, meanwhile, has sought recognition of its own control over passage and proposed payments for what it calls security and navigation services.
International-law experts cited by NPR said such fees would violate the rules governing passage through an international strait.
So the dispute is not really about sovereignty. It is about who gets to sell the escort, write the rules and collect the tariff.
While the speeches were still making the rounds, the UAE said Iran had carried out a hostile missile attack on two vessels linked to Abu Dhabi National Oil Company as they transited Hormuz. No crew members were injured.
The UAE Foreign Ministry called the attack a violation of freedom of navigation and accused the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps of using the strait for “economic coercion or blackmail.”
The attack’s technical details remain contested. Iranian sources have claimed underwater drones were used. Reuters-verified satellite imagery showed oil slicks near Iran’s Qeshm and Sirri islands, evidence that the contest for maritime control is already leaving damage on the water.
Trump can promise a new American territory. Tehran can promise that Hormuz will remain Iranian.
The actual authority is exercised by whoever can stop the next tanker.
#Hormuz #Iran #USA #Trump #UAE #shipping #oil #MiddleEast
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On Friday, August 14, Donald Trump told a law-enforcement audience on Long Island that, “after we finish defeating Iran,” he would “pretty soon” declare the Strait of Hormuz “a territory of the United States.” He laughed as he said it. Then he supplied the logic: “We have the blockade. No ships get through unless we want them to.”
This was not a legal claim. It was a victory-lap fantasy built on a real instrument of coercion. The United States restored its naval blockade of Iranian ports on July 14 after the U.S.-Iran ceasefire memorandum collapsed. Iran had also restricted traffic through Hormuz. The strait is not paralyzed by slogans alone. It is squeezed from both shores by competing armed permissions.
Trump previously floated a 20% “reimbursement fee” on cargo passing through the strait, before replacing it with promised Gulf trade and investment deals.
Iran, meanwhile, has sought recognition of its own control over passage and proposed payments for what it calls security and navigation services.
International-law experts cited by NPR said such fees would violate the rules governing passage through an international strait.
So the dispute is not really about sovereignty. It is about who gets to sell the escort, write the rules and collect the tariff.
While the speeches were still making the rounds, the UAE said Iran had carried out a hostile missile attack on two vessels linked to Abu Dhabi National Oil Company as they transited Hormuz. No crew members were injured.
The UAE Foreign Ministry called the attack a violation of freedom of navigation and accused the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps of using the strait for “economic coercion or blackmail.”
The attack’s technical details remain contested. Iranian sources have claimed underwater drones were used. Reuters-verified satellite imagery showed oil slicks near Iran’s Qeshm and Sirri islands, evidence that the contest for maritime control is already leaving damage on the water.
Trump can promise a new American territory. Tehran can promise that Hormuz will remain Iranian.
The actual authority is exercised by whoever can stop the next tanker.
#Hormuz #Iran #USA #Trump #UAE #shipping #oil #MiddleEast
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Bahrain, Qatar, and the Gulf’s War Zone
The Gulf monarchies are not watching this war from the balcony. Bahrain lost a U.S. naval logistics hub.
Qatar shot down Iranian bombers. Both have become physical terrain in a conflict Washington and Tehran describe as if it happens somewhere else.
The New York Times reports that Iran’s early-war strikes heavily damaged the U.S. Navy’s Bahrain facility, including the logistics hub that supported forces across the region.
The Navy shifted much of that work to Diego Garcia, a British-controlled island in the Indian Ocean about 2,200 miles from the carrier groups operating in the Gulf of Oman.
The longer supply line has contributed to the USS Abraham Lincoln’s strained deployment, alongside the exhaustion of its roughly 5,000 sailors and Marines.
At the other end of the Gulf, Qatar became a combatant by geography.
On March 2, two Iranian Su-24 bombers were flying low toward Al Udeid Air Base, the main U.S. military hub in Qatar, and the Ras Laffan liquefied-natural-gas complex.
CNN sources said the aircraft were roughly two minutes from their targets, flying at about 80 feet and carrying bombs and guided munitions. Qatar radioed warnings and received no response.
Its air force classified the aircraft as hostile and sent F-15QAs into the country’s first reported air-to-air combat. The Qatari fighters shot down both Iranian bombers over Qatari waters.
For six months, Iran said it was still trying to determine what had happened to three crew members. On August 15, it made its first direct accusation against Qatar.
Brig. Gen. Mohammad Bagherzadeh, who heads Iran’s armed-forces committee for missing personnel, wrote to the president of the International Committee of the Red Cross.
In the letter, published by the IRGC-affiliated Fars agency, he alleged that Qatar captured three pilots alive and has held them without access to relatives or Iranian officials.
He named them as Javad Salehi, Abdolmajid Dashtian and Omran Behraveshian. The claim has not been independently verified. Qatar had previously said it had no information on their fate.
Bagherzadeh cited the Third Geneva Convention, including Articles 70 and 78, which require a detaining power to permit prisoners of war to notify families of their capture and to send requests or complaints.
But that legal machinery has a prior obstacle: Qatar does not acknowledge holding the men.
Tehran says they are prisoners of war. Doha says it has no information. The dispute begins before any Red Cross form can be filled out.
Bahrain paid with a damaged base. Qatar paid with the first air-to-air kill in its history and, if Iran’s allegation is true, three prisoners who have vanished into a legal void.
#Iran #Qatar #Bahrain #DiegoGarcia #USNavy #AbrahamLincoln #ICRC #war
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The Gulf monarchies are not watching this war from the balcony. Bahrain lost a U.S. naval logistics hub.
Qatar shot down Iranian bombers. Both have become physical terrain in a conflict Washington and Tehran describe as if it happens somewhere else.
The New York Times reports that Iran’s early-war strikes heavily damaged the U.S. Navy’s Bahrain facility, including the logistics hub that supported forces across the region.
The Navy shifted much of that work to Diego Garcia, a British-controlled island in the Indian Ocean about 2,200 miles from the carrier groups operating in the Gulf of Oman.
The longer supply line has contributed to the USS Abraham Lincoln’s strained deployment, alongside the exhaustion of its roughly 5,000 sailors and Marines.
At the other end of the Gulf, Qatar became a combatant by geography.
On March 2, two Iranian Su-24 bombers were flying low toward Al Udeid Air Base, the main U.S. military hub in Qatar, and the Ras Laffan liquefied-natural-gas complex.
CNN sources said the aircraft were roughly two minutes from their targets, flying at about 80 feet and carrying bombs and guided munitions. Qatar radioed warnings and received no response.
Its air force classified the aircraft as hostile and sent F-15QAs into the country’s first reported air-to-air combat. The Qatari fighters shot down both Iranian bombers over Qatari waters.
For six months, Iran said it was still trying to determine what had happened to three crew members. On August 15, it made its first direct accusation against Qatar.
Brig. Gen. Mohammad Bagherzadeh, who heads Iran’s armed-forces committee for missing personnel, wrote to the president of the International Committee of the Red Cross.
In the letter, published by the IRGC-affiliated Fars agency, he alleged that Qatar captured three pilots alive and has held them without access to relatives or Iranian officials.
He named them as Javad Salehi, Abdolmajid Dashtian and Omran Behraveshian. The claim has not been independently verified. Qatar had previously said it had no information on their fate.
Bagherzadeh cited the Third Geneva Convention, including Articles 70 and 78, which require a detaining power to permit prisoners of war to notify families of their capture and to send requests or complaints.
But that legal machinery has a prior obstacle: Qatar does not acknowledge holding the men.
Tehran says they are prisoners of war. Doha says it has no information. The dispute begins before any Red Cross form can be filled out.
Bahrain paid with a damaged base. Qatar paid with the first air-to-air kill in its history and, if Iran’s allegation is true, three prisoners who have vanished into a legal void.
#Iran #Qatar #Bahrain #DiegoGarcia #USNavy #AbrahamLincoln #ICRC #war
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🚨 A Perfect Burglary: Antonello da Messina’s Works Were Stolen
Four of the most important works of art by the 15th-century Renaissance master Antonello da Messina were stolen during a national holiday from a museum in the Sicilian port city of Messina.
Thieves gained access to the regional museum of Messina, or MuMe, on Saturday evening, possibly capitalising on attention being focused on La Vara, a huge religious festival that takes place in the city on 15 August, when Italy marks the ferragosto national holiday.
Bypassing the alarm systems, the gang broke into a security display box and stole four wood panels painted by Antonello.
Thieves took three of the five surviving panels that made up an altarpiece known as the Polittico di San Gregorio, one of the Sicilian painter’s most important works.
Originally composed of six panels created for the Monastero di San Gregorio, which was destroyed in the 1908 Messina earthquake, the altarpiece was the only work by the Sicilian painter never to have left his home city.
A fourth work was taken from a secure display case: a small double-sided painting depicting the Virgin and Child with a Franciscan monk on one side and Christ on the other.
The painting had belonged to the Wilhelm Soldan collection and was sold by Christie’s to the Sicilian regional government in 2003, the year it was attributed to Antonello.
Born around 1430, Antonello trained in Naples where he studied the works of Provençal and Flemish artists, whose influence is apparent in his works.
In February, the Italian government secured a rare Antonello masterpiece at auction in New York, spending $14.9m on his Ecce Homo. The painting, sold at Sotheby’s, is an intensely human portrait of the suffering Christ, believed to have been completed about 1460.
The theft took place after Italian police on Friday had recovered three paintings by the French masters Paul Cézanne, Pierre-Auguste Renoir and Henri Matisse that were stolen earlier this year from a private museum near the northern city of Parma.
#antonello #messina #works #stolen
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Four of the most important works of art by the 15th-century Renaissance master Antonello da Messina were stolen during a national holiday from a museum in the Sicilian port city of Messina.
Thieves gained access to the regional museum of Messina, or MuMe, on Saturday evening, possibly capitalising on attention being focused on La Vara, a huge religious festival that takes place in the city on 15 August, when Italy marks the ferragosto national holiday.
Bypassing the alarm systems, the gang broke into a security display box and stole four wood panels painted by Antonello.
Thieves took three of the five surviving panels that made up an altarpiece known as the Polittico di San Gregorio, one of the Sicilian painter’s most important works.
Originally composed of six panels created for the Monastero di San Gregorio, which was destroyed in the 1908 Messina earthquake, the altarpiece was the only work by the Sicilian painter never to have left his home city.
A fourth work was taken from a secure display case: a small double-sided painting depicting the Virgin and Child with a Franciscan monk on one side and Christ on the other.
The painting had belonged to the Wilhelm Soldan collection and was sold by Christie’s to the Sicilian regional government in 2003, the year it was attributed to Antonello.
Born around 1430, Antonello trained in Naples where he studied the works of Provençal and Flemish artists, whose influence is apparent in his works.
In February, the Italian government secured a rare Antonello masterpiece at auction in New York, spending $14.9m on his Ecce Homo. The painting, sold at Sotheby’s, is an intensely human portrait of the suffering Christ, believed to have been completed about 1460.
The theft took place after Italian police on Friday had recovered three paintings by the French masters Paul Cézanne, Pierre-Auguste Renoir and Henri Matisse that were stolen earlier this year from a private museum near the northern city of Parma.
#antonello #messina #works #stolen
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Trump posted a video created with the help of AI, in which he allegedly shows George Washington a tour of the White House ballroom, a building that does not yet exist.
#trump #AI #video #ballroom
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#trump #AI #video #ballroom
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A Drone, Three Wounded, and the Family in the Headquarters
At about 2:30 a.m., an explosive drone launched by Hezbollah detonated near troops from the IDF’s elite Yahalom combat-engineering unit on the Ali al-Taher ridge. An officer and two soldiers were seriously wounded and taken to hospital. Their families were notified.
The first official Israeli response did not come from the military. It came from Netanyahu’s office, in English, on the Sabbath.
That choice had an audience. The English statement was meant for Washington, foreign embassies and international newsrooms before they began asking about the strike that followed. The Sabbath timing said waiting until nightfall was not an option.
The Prime Minister’s Office said Hezbollah had violated the June framework agreement by attacking Israeli troops in a “security zone.” It said the IDF then struck the Hezbollah headquarters from which the drone attack had been directed. The statement added that the military learned only afterward that civilians had been inside the site.
That creates a problem inside the explanation. If Israel learned later that the commander’s family was present, it can say they were not the target.
But the stronger claim, that Hassan deliberately used them as human shields, requires evidence of his intent. The public statement offers none.
The IDF later named the target as Ali Samir al-Haj Hassan, described as a Radwan Force battalion commander. It said he ran Hezbollah activity from a command center in Ansar and that other operatives involved in planning attacks were killed with him.
Hezbollah-aligned Al-Manar, by contrast, described Hassan as an operations officer. Both accounts agree that his family was inside the building.
Lebanon’s Health Ministry reported seven killed in Ansar, including three children and two women, and two wounded. A separate Israeli strike in Deir al-Zahrani killed four people and wounded nine, raising the day’s toll to 11 dead and 11 injured. The reports do not establish whether every person in photographs circulating online, or every person described as part of Hassan’s family, was killed.
The strikes were not confined to one point on a map. Ali al-Taher is near Nabatieh, while Ansar lies roughly nine miles away; the Ansar attack was among the deepest Israeli strikes in Lebanon in about two months. President Joseph Aoun said the attacks violated the June framework agreement and sent a “clear message” against the U.S.-backed negotiating track.
Israeli ambassadors Yehiel Leiter in Washington and Mike Huckabee in Jerusalem repeated the human-shield account. The argument had moved beyond the battlefield into a diplomatic messaging campaign.
The fight over what happened to one family is now running alongside the fight for the ridge.
#Israel #Lebanon #Hezbollah #IDF #AliAlTaher #Ansar #Nabatieh #FrameworkAgreement
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At about 2:30 a.m., an explosive drone launched by Hezbollah detonated near troops from the IDF’s elite Yahalom combat-engineering unit on the Ali al-Taher ridge. An officer and two soldiers were seriously wounded and taken to hospital. Their families were notified.
The first official Israeli response did not come from the military. It came from Netanyahu’s office, in English, on the Sabbath.
That choice had an audience. The English statement was meant for Washington, foreign embassies and international newsrooms before they began asking about the strike that followed. The Sabbath timing said waiting until nightfall was not an option.
The Prime Minister’s Office said Hezbollah had violated the June framework agreement by attacking Israeli troops in a “security zone.” It said the IDF then struck the Hezbollah headquarters from which the drone attack had been directed. The statement added that the military learned only afterward that civilians had been inside the site.
That creates a problem inside the explanation. If Israel learned later that the commander’s family was present, it can say they were not the target.
But the stronger claim, that Hassan deliberately used them as human shields, requires evidence of his intent. The public statement offers none.
The IDF later named the target as Ali Samir al-Haj Hassan, described as a Radwan Force battalion commander. It said he ran Hezbollah activity from a command center in Ansar and that other operatives involved in planning attacks were killed with him.
Hezbollah-aligned Al-Manar, by contrast, described Hassan as an operations officer. Both accounts agree that his family was inside the building.
Lebanon’s Health Ministry reported seven killed in Ansar, including three children and two women, and two wounded. A separate Israeli strike in Deir al-Zahrani killed four people and wounded nine, raising the day’s toll to 11 dead and 11 injured. The reports do not establish whether every person in photographs circulating online, or every person described as part of Hassan’s family, was killed.
The strikes were not confined to one point on a map. Ali al-Taher is near Nabatieh, while Ansar lies roughly nine miles away; the Ansar attack was among the deepest Israeli strikes in Lebanon in about two months. President Joseph Aoun said the attacks violated the June framework agreement and sent a “clear message” against the U.S.-backed negotiating track.
Israeli ambassadors Yehiel Leiter in Washington and Mike Huckabee in Jerusalem repeated the human-shield account. The argument had moved beyond the battlefield into a diplomatic messaging campaign.
The fight over what happened to one family is now running alongside the fight for the ridge.
#Israel #Lebanon #Hezbollah #IDF #AliAlTaher #Ansar #Nabatieh #FrameworkAgreement
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Why Trump Has Cosied Up To Kim Jong-un
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Trump a déclaré qu'il réduisait les exercices militaires conjoints des États-Unis avec la Corée du Sud visant à dissuader la Corée du Nord, bien que les responsables militaires des deux pays aient averti que le régime de Kim Jong-un apprenait de nouvelles tactiques sur le champ de bataille de la guerre en Ukraine.
Les exercices sous Ulchi Freedom Shield, l'un des deux principaux exercices annuels organisés par la Corée du Sud et les États-Unis, commencent lundi et se poursuivent jusqu'au 27 août.
Ils devaient impliquer environ 18 000 soldats sud-coréens, aux côtés des forces américaines et du personnel de 11 des 18 États membres du Commandement des Nations Unies (UNC), l'organisme multinational qui supervise l'armistice de 1953 qui a mis fin aux hostilités de la guerre de Corée.
Trump a ajouté qu'il était trop tard pour annuler les exercices, il avait donc ordonné au secrétaire à la Défense, Pete Hegseth, de les “réduire considérablement”.
Il a également déclaré que la Corée du Sud avait refusé d'aider à la “dénucléarisation de la République islamique d'Iran”.
La Maison bleue présidentielle sud-coréenne a déclaré qu'elle examinait le poste de Trump et “espère que les relations amicales entre les dirigeants américains et nord-coréens conduiront à un dialogue significatif entre les deux pays, ouvrant des discussions visant à faire progresser la paix et la stabilité dans la péninsule coréenne”.
Les alliés continueraient à se coordonner sur leur posture de défense combinée et leurs exercices militaires, a-t-il déclaré.
Samedi, Trump a également partagé une vieille photo de lui posant avec le dirigeant nord-coréen sur Truth Social, répétant son affirmation selon laquelle les deux “s'entendent très bien”, ce qui a conduit à la spéculation qu'il renouvellerait sa tentative d'avoir un sommet avec Kim.
Trump a précédemment suspendu les principaux exercices militaires américano - sud-coréens dans la poursuite de la diplomatie avec Kim.
Les exercices ont ensuite été repensés et repris sous des formes et des noms modifiés.
#trump #kimJongun #pyongyang #coréeduSud
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Trump a déclaré qu'il réduisait les exercices militaires conjoints des États-Unis avec la Corée du Sud visant à dissuader la Corée du Nord, bien que les responsables militaires des deux pays aient averti que le régime de Kim Jong-un apprenait de nouvelles tactiques sur le champ de bataille de la guerre en Ukraine.
Les exercices sous Ulchi Freedom Shield, l'un des deux principaux exercices annuels organisés par la Corée du Sud et les États-Unis, commencent lundi et se poursuivent jusqu'au 27 août.
Ils devaient impliquer environ 18 000 soldats sud-coréens, aux côtés des forces américaines et du personnel de 11 des 18 États membres du Commandement des Nations Unies (UNC), l'organisme multinational qui supervise l'armistice de 1953 qui a mis fin aux hostilités de la guerre de Corée.
Trump a ajouté qu'il était trop tard pour annuler les exercices, il avait donc ordonné au secrétaire à la Défense, Pete Hegseth, de les “réduire considérablement”.
Il a également déclaré que la Corée du Sud avait refusé d'aider à la “dénucléarisation de la République islamique d'Iran”.
La Maison bleue présidentielle sud-coréenne a déclaré qu'elle examinait le poste de Trump et “espère que les relations amicales entre les dirigeants américains et nord-coréens conduiront à un dialogue significatif entre les deux pays, ouvrant des discussions visant à faire progresser la paix et la stabilité dans la péninsule coréenne”.
Les alliés continueraient à se coordonner sur leur posture de défense combinée et leurs exercices militaires, a-t-il déclaré.
Samedi, Trump a également partagé une vieille photo de lui posant avec le dirigeant nord-coréen sur Truth Social, répétant son affirmation selon laquelle les deux “s'entendent très bien”, ce qui a conduit à la spéculation qu'il renouvellerait sa tentative d'avoir un sommet avec Kim.
Trump a précédemment suspendu les principaux exercices militaires américano - sud-coréens dans la poursuite de la diplomatie avec Kim.
Les exercices ont ensuite été repensés et repris sous des formes et des noms modifiés.
#trump #kimJongun #pyongyang #coréeduSud
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Сheong Seong-chang, vice-président du groupe de réflexion de l'Institut Sejong basé à Séoul, a déclaré que Trump pourrait aller plus loin s'il rencontrait à nouveau Kim, décidant potentiellement de suspendre complètement les exercices ou de réduire le nombre de soldats américains sans consulter la Corée du Sud.
Il a déclaré que l'alliance américano-sud-coréenne restait “extrêmement importante”, mais a fait valoir que Séoul devrait progressivement réduire sa dépendance en matière de sécurité vis-à-vis de Washington et s'orienter vers la sécurisation de sa propre capacité de dissuasion nucléaire, une idée qui bénéficie d'un large soutien public en Corée du Sud malgré son rejet par le gouvernement et son opposition internationale.
Lim Eul-chul, un expert de la Corée du Nord à l'Université de Kyungnam, a ajouté qu'il était peu probable que Pyongyang soit ému par l'annonce de Trump.
“Le Nord ne considérera cela comme significatif que si les exercices conjoints sont annulés dans leur intégralité plutôt que réduits. Il y a peu de raisons de considérer cela comme significatif.”
La Corée du Nord a approfondi ses liens militaires avec la Russie depuis que les deux pays ont signé un pacte de partenariat stratégique global en juin 2024, voyant Pyongyang fournir des troupes, des munitions d'artillerie et des missiles balistiques pour soutenir la guerre de Moscou en Ukraine.
Les deux pays sont également sur le point d'achever le premier pont routier jamais construit entre eux, sur la rivière Tumen, dont une enquête open source a conclu qu'il fonctionne davantage comme un corridor logistique militaire que comme une route commerciale. Les médias d'État russes disent qu'il devrait ouvrir ses portes en septembre.
L'avertissement est typique de la rhétorique que Pyongyang déploie avant les grands exercices américano-sud-coréens. Les responsables ont décrit à plusieurs reprises l'exercice comme étant de nature “défensive”.
Chun In-bum, lieutenant général à la retraite qui commandait les forces spéciales sud-coréennes, a souligné l'importance de se préparer en temps opportun aux capacités qui seront nécessaires pour se préparer aux nouveaux défis à venir.
“Il s'agit d'une très sérieuse amélioration des capacités nord-coréennes. Et nous ne devons pas prendre à la légère cet environnement de menace.”
#trump #kimJongun #pyongyang #coréeduSud
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Trump Tries To Ooze in Hormuz: No Reopening Coming Soon
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Trump’s cease-fire with Iran in June envisioned a broader deal to end the war and rein in the country’s nuclear program, all negotiated within 60 days.
But that deadline, set to pass on Monday, has been essentially abandoned, and the war has transformed into a contest of willpower and economic endurance that has no end in sight.
There have been no publicly reported U.S. strikes on Iranian targets since late July. Yet the effective collapse of the agreement underscores how Trump has struggled to end the war he started in February alongside Israel, and how far he remains from the ambitions of the June deal, including fully reopening the Strait of Hormuz, a critical waterway where Iran has choked off oil and gas shipping since the fighting began.
Those inside the White House are well aware that they will blow past Monday’s deadline and that the conflict has largely morphed into one of economic warfare, according to two Americans familiar with the negotiations.
The current strategy bears a striking resemblance to previous, yearslong U.S. attempts to isolate Iran in the hopes of compelling it to abandon its nuclear ambitions. The policy had mixed results, and some analysts are skeptical that even severe economic pressure on its own will force Iran to change course.
After all, that was the approach Trump attempted in his first term, even though his Treasury secretary, Scott Bessent, said last week that he was about to impose financial penalties unlike any seen before.
The June memorandum of understanding was widely seen as a boon for Iran, granting the regime badly needed sanctions relief even as talks over tough concessions like nuclear enrichment were postponed for later.
However, Iranian leaders opted to escalate again rather than consolidate their gains from the deal, according to Nate Swanson, an Iran expert at the Atlantic Council, a Washington-based research group.
Ships could move through the Strait of Hormuz freely before the war. Iran’s insistence that the deal’s vague language on the issue gave it control over the waterway led to the deal falling apart.
Iran began firing on ships that transited in channels outside Iranian waters, and American forces retaliated by bombing southern Iran, prompting a cycle of attacks and counterattacks across the Middle East.
#trump #hormuz #araghchi #iran #whitehouse
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Trump’s cease-fire with Iran in June envisioned a broader deal to end the war and rein in the country’s nuclear program, all negotiated within 60 days.
But that deadline, set to pass on Monday, has been essentially abandoned, and the war has transformed into a contest of willpower and economic endurance that has no end in sight.
There have been no publicly reported U.S. strikes on Iranian targets since late July. Yet the effective collapse of the agreement underscores how Trump has struggled to end the war he started in February alongside Israel, and how far he remains from the ambitions of the June deal, including fully reopening the Strait of Hormuz, a critical waterway where Iran has choked off oil and gas shipping since the fighting began.
Those inside the White House are well aware that they will blow past Monday’s deadline and that the conflict has largely morphed into one of economic warfare, according to two Americans familiar with the negotiations.
The current strategy bears a striking resemblance to previous, yearslong U.S. attempts to isolate Iran in the hopes of compelling it to abandon its nuclear ambitions. The policy had mixed results, and some analysts are skeptical that even severe economic pressure on its own will force Iran to change course.
After all, that was the approach Trump attempted in his first term, even though his Treasury secretary, Scott Bessent, said last week that he was about to impose financial penalties unlike any seen before.
The June memorandum of understanding was widely seen as a boon for Iran, granting the regime badly needed sanctions relief even as talks over tough concessions like nuclear enrichment were postponed for later.
However, Iranian leaders opted to escalate again rather than consolidate their gains from the deal, according to Nate Swanson, an Iran expert at the Atlantic Council, a Washington-based research group.
Ships could move through the Strait of Hormuz freely before the war. Iran’s insistence that the deal’s vague language on the issue gave it control over the waterway led to the deal falling apart.
Iran began firing on ships that transited in channels outside Iranian waters, and American forces retaliated by bombing southern Iran, prompting a cycle of attacks and counterattacks across the Middle East.
#trump #hormuz #araghchi #iran #whitehouse
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Reopening the strait has increasingly become Trump’s main focus in the conflict, even though he initially said the war was meant to empower the Iranian people to overthrow the existing regime, severely degrade its missile capability and stop Tehran from getting a nuclear weapon.
Abbas Araghchi, the Iranian foreign minister, said over the weekend that Iran had yet to decide whether to resume talks with the United States. But the 60-day timeline was no longer relevant, he added, given that the June agreement was essentially defunct.
“We did not have a cease-fire that now needs to be extended,”
Araghchi said.
“We had an end to the war, which has now taken on a new status.”
Former U.S. officials who worked on Iran say the prospect of a new nuclear deal between the United States and Iran within 60 days was always remote, although the agreement provided for extensions.
A previous, Obama-era, agreement took about two years of delicate talks to negotiate. Trump withdrew from that deal, called the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, in 2018.
On Saturday, the United Arab Emirates’ foreign ministry slammed Iran for attacking a vessel affiliated with the state-owned Abu Dhabi National Oil Company the previous day. Iranian officials did not comment.
White House on Saturday did not respond to questions over whether the administration had developed actual plans to take control of the Strait of Hormuz. Trump’s aides also did not respond to questions over the approaching Monday deadline.
Iranian officials, in turn, have defied Trump as they push their own demands — including one that they had not made before war.
“Accept reality once and for all. So far, you have suffered major strategic defeats,”
Kazem Gharibabadi, the Iranian deputy foreign minister, said on social media.
“The Strait of Hormuz has been Iranian, is Iranian, and will remain Iranian.”
#trump #hormuz #araghchi #iran #whitehouse
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Ali al-Taher’s White Night
One explosive drone, three seriously wounded Israeli soldiers, and a whole night of war machinery started moving.
Israel’s security establishment believes Hezbollah launched Saturday’s drone from the underground complex beneath the Ali al-Taher ridge near Nabatieh.
The Israeli reading is blunt: the fighters inside are not preparing to surrender. They are preparing to fight. The IDF describes the site as Hezbollah’s regional “nerve center,” with dozens of operatives believed to be underground.
Then came the long night.
Israeli aircraft struck the ridge and areas around Kfar Rumman, Deir Siryan and Qantara. Heavy artillery hit Nabatieh al-Fawqa. Lebanese media reported illumination rounds over the ridge, fires on its slopes and extensive Israeli aircraft activity. Hezbollah-linked outlets said the group fired anti-aircraft missiles toward the planes.
By Monday morning, strikes and shelling had also reached al-Mansouri, Kafra and Majdal Zoun. Reports said two civilians were wounded in a drone strike in Kafra.
The ridge has become a tunnel with a town attached.
Israeli and Lebanese reports describe a widening ground operation involving infantry, air power and other forces. Israeli officials say they want to destroy the underground system and remove Hezbollah from the area.
Lebanese sources describe exchanges of fire and a campaign to take control of the hill. The contest is no longer about one drone. It is about who owns the ground above a buried command structure.
Iran’s reported threat to fire missiles at Israel if Hezbollah and IRGC intelligence material is captured completes the picture.
Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz said “no account on any front will remain unsettled” and promised forceful action to protect Israeli soldiers and civilians. The language is designed to make an operation around a single ridge sound like a regional ledger.
A Lebanese political source told Nidaa al-Watan that Hezbollah is escalating militarily in order to derail the possibility of direct Israel-Lebanon negotiations, while waiting for an Iranian green light for a broader confrontation.
#Israel #Lebanon #Hezbollah #AliAlTaher #Nabatieh #IDF #Iran #FrameworkAgreement
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One explosive drone, three seriously wounded Israeli soldiers, and a whole night of war machinery started moving.
Israel’s security establishment believes Hezbollah launched Saturday’s drone from the underground complex beneath the Ali al-Taher ridge near Nabatieh.
The Israeli reading is blunt: the fighters inside are not preparing to surrender. They are preparing to fight. The IDF describes the site as Hezbollah’s regional “nerve center,” with dozens of operatives believed to be underground.
Then came the long night.
Israeli aircraft struck the ridge and areas around Kfar Rumman, Deir Siryan and Qantara. Heavy artillery hit Nabatieh al-Fawqa. Lebanese media reported illumination rounds over the ridge, fires on its slopes and extensive Israeli aircraft activity. Hezbollah-linked outlets said the group fired anti-aircraft missiles toward the planes.
By Monday morning, strikes and shelling had also reached al-Mansouri, Kafra and Majdal Zoun. Reports said two civilians were wounded in a drone strike in Kafra.
The ridge has become a tunnel with a town attached.
Israeli and Lebanese reports describe a widening ground operation involving infantry, air power and other forces. Israeli officials say they want to destroy the underground system and remove Hezbollah from the area.
Lebanese sources describe exchanges of fire and a campaign to take control of the hill. The contest is no longer about one drone. It is about who owns the ground above a buried command structure.
Iran’s reported threat to fire missiles at Israel if Hezbollah and IRGC intelligence material is captured completes the picture.
Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz said “no account on any front will remain unsettled” and promised forceful action to protect Israeli soldiers and civilians. The language is designed to make an operation around a single ridge sound like a regional ledger.
A Lebanese political source told Nidaa al-Watan that Hezbollah is escalating militarily in order to derail the possibility of direct Israel-Lebanon negotiations, while waiting for an Iranian green light for a broader confrontation.
#Israel #Lebanon #Hezbollah #AliAlTaher #Nabatieh #IDF #Iran #FrameworkAgreement
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Gaza: Two Drones an Hour, Three “Martyrs” in One Family
At noon, an Israeli drone struck a tent near the Kuwaiti Hospital in al-Mawasi, west of Khan Younis. Less than an hour later, another drone hit a home in northern Nuseirat.
Palestinian reporters described injuries in both places. The first strike hit the tent of the al-Rai family in a displacement camp. The second hit the home of Raafat Abu Khabiza.
In the official IDF version, the same hour contained two threats removed from the map: one Palestinian Islamic Jihad operative in Khan Younis and one Hamas operative in Nuseirat, both allegedly advancing attack plans.
The agreement, then, is functioning normally. It includes targeted killings.
By evening, the first target was identified as Tareq Anwar al-Rai, described by Israeli sources as a Palestinian Islamic Jihad operative. Palestinian accounts called him the third “martyr” from his family.
That word has a family archive behind it.
His brother, Mohammed al-Rai, was killed in an Israeli airstrike in Rafah in 2007. Israeli security sources identified him as the militant who fired the grenade from a mobile launcher during the 2004 APC disaster on the Philadelphi Route, which killed five Israeli soldiers transporting explosives.
Another brother, Khamis al-Rai, was described as a senior Islamic Jihad commander and was killed in Rafah in 2015.
Three brothers. Three Israeli strikes. More than two decades of attrition, promotion, revenge and obituary language.
Israel calls it removing immediate threats. Gaza calls it martyrdom. Both descriptions avoid the more durable fact: a militant organization and the military targeting it have spent a generation turning a family name into a recurring file.
#Gaza #Israel #Hamas #IslamicJihad #KhanYounis #Nuseirat #AlMawasi #war
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At noon, an Israeli drone struck a tent near the Kuwaiti Hospital in al-Mawasi, west of Khan Younis. Less than an hour later, another drone hit a home in northern Nuseirat.
Palestinian reporters described injuries in both places. The first strike hit the tent of the al-Rai family in a displacement camp. The second hit the home of Raafat Abu Khabiza.
In the official IDF version, the same hour contained two threats removed from the map: one Palestinian Islamic Jihad operative in Khan Younis and one Hamas operative in Nuseirat, both allegedly advancing attack plans.
The agreement, then, is functioning normally. It includes targeted killings.
By evening, the first target was identified as Tareq Anwar al-Rai, described by Israeli sources as a Palestinian Islamic Jihad operative. Palestinian accounts called him the third “martyr” from his family.
That word has a family archive behind it.
His brother, Mohammed al-Rai, was killed in an Israeli airstrike in Rafah in 2007. Israeli security sources identified him as the militant who fired the grenade from a mobile launcher during the 2004 APC disaster on the Philadelphi Route, which killed five Israeli soldiers transporting explosives.
Another brother, Khamis al-Rai, was described as a senior Islamic Jihad commander and was killed in Rafah in 2015.
Three brothers. Three Israeli strikes. More than two decades of attrition, promotion, revenge and obituary language.
Israel calls it removing immediate threats. Gaza calls it martyrdom. Both descriptions avoid the more durable fact: a militant organization and the military targeting it have spent a generation turning a family name into a recurring file.
#Gaza #Israel #Hamas #IslamicJihad #KhanYounis #Nuseirat #AlMawasi #war
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