#Vance #Midterm #Rally

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The Pentagon’s Missing Four

The Pentagon’s public casualty database lists 18 U.S. military deaths since the Iran war began on February 28. Six officials familiar with the department’s internal accounting told The Washington Post the real figure is at least 22. One put it at 23.

The missing number is not a rounding error. It is four or five families whose losses do not appear in the public ledger of a war the administration calls Operation Epic Fury. The Pentagon declined to explain the gap.

The public database counts 14 deaths under Operation Epic Fury and four more under “Overseas Operations,” a category used after a July ceasefire collapsed and attacks resumed.

Two further deaths announced by the Defense Department, Sgt. Devin Seibel’s May 31 training accident in Irbil and Maj. Sorffly Davius’s March 6 medical emergency in Kuwait, do not appear by name in the public database either.

Officials say not every undisclosed death is necessarily combat-related, but all involved U.S. personnel stationed in the region during the war.

That classification matters beyond the nightly body count. A line-of-duty investigation determines what benefits a service member’s survivors receive. The government has turned a casualty tally into a filing system with consequences for widows, children and parents.

More than 820 troops are listed as wounded, many with traumatic brain injuries after Iranian strikes on U.S. bases.

CENTCOM’s estimate puts the war’s cost at $43.6 billion through early September, including about $28 billion in munitions, while excluding damage to U.S. bases.

The official scoreboard has room for $28 billion in missiles. It is still looking for four dead Americans.

Ahead of the congressional midterms, fuel prices and the number of dead Americans are becoming the kind of numbers that can kill a presidency and sink a Republican ticket.

Washington can relabel the war. A voter filling a gas tank and a family planning a funeral will not need the Pentagon’s database to recognize it.

#UnitedStates #IranWar #Pentagon #Midterms

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Yemen’s Expanding Front

Saudi warplanes reportedly entered Sanaa’s airspace overnight, triggering air-defense activity and attempts to intercept them. Yemeni media later pushed back on claims of a large aerial battle over the capital, while reports from the ground described a broader campaign taking shape across Yemen’s north, south and Red Sea coast.

The Houthis reported advances toward southwestern Taiz along the Jabal Jardad axis and said they had taken the Jabal al-Aghbara area in Lahj governorate.

Satellite imagery analysis also indicated damage to hangars at Saudi Arabia’s King Khalid Air Base after Houthi missile and drone strikes.

Earlier this month, the Houthis said they had targeted the base’s weapons depots, command facilities, radar systems and runways; Riyadh has promised a “firm” response after missile and drone attacks wounded 13 civilians in three Saudi cities.

In Saada, Saudi artillery fire hit al-Hajlah in Razih district, wounding two women, according to Houthi-linked reports. In Marib, fighting broke out in Wadi Ubaidah between the Islah-aligned Emergency Forces and gunmen from the al-Muayli tribe.

Homes burned, tribal figures were reportedly among the casualties, and armed convoys from Murad and neighboring tribes moved to support al-Muayli.

The Houthi leadership called supporters into Sanaa to protest accusations that the group fired missiles toward Mecca. Crowds answered with chants branding the allegation a Saudi operation and demanding more support for the movement’s forces.

By evening, reports said Saudi aircraft were hitting Houthi targets in Sanaa. By night, Saudi Arabia was reporting another missile-and-drone attack. The conflict now moves in loops: airstrike, missile barrage, rally, retaliatory strike, then another map with different colors.

#Yemen #SaudiArabia #Houthis #RedSea

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The School in the Kill Chain

The Pentagon’s Minab investigation found that two U.S. Tomahawks hit Shajarah Tayyebeh Elementary School after a chain of preventable failures: stale intelligence, compressed target approval, missing civilian-harm review and excessive faith in AI-assisted targeting.

The strike on February 28 killed at least 123 children and more than 150 people overall, according to officials familiar with the inquiry. The Pentagon still has not publicly accepted responsibility.

President Trump has suggested Tehran was to blame and in July he said nobody might ever be able to establish what happened. Pentagon personnel reportedly knew within hours that the U.S. was responsible.

The site had once belonged to an IRGC naval unit. By 2017, satellite imagery showed new walls and entrances separating it from the military compound.

By 2018, the location showed painted school walls, a soccer field, line-up zones and playground markings. The school operated openly, had a website and appeared on Google Maps.

One analyst had flagged changes as early as 2019, but the note sat in a system disconnected from the principal military intelligence database. The target library kept calling a school an IRGC facility.

Maven Smart System, Palantir’s AI-enabled military platform, helped turn that obsolete classification into a recommended first-day target.

CENTCOM personnel expected the system to flag stale intelligence or contradictions. Palantir says Maven does not own the underlying data and bears no responsibility for gaps in it.

After Minab, the company added a feature to re-review intelligence, detect target-disqualifying factors and flag information human reviewers had missed. The product update arrived after 123 children did not.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth had cut Pentagon civilian-harm-mitigation staff by roughly 90%, leaving fewer than 20 people across the relevant teams.

CENTCOM’s unit fell from 10 people to one. No civilian-harm specialist reviewed Minab before the strike.

Meanwhile, the administration demanded more than 1,000 Iranian targets hit in the war’s first 24 hours. The kill chain was asked to process years of neglected target files in days.

On March 2, Hegseth called the campaign “the most lethal and precise air power campaign in history,” free of “politically correct wars.”

The precision system then fired two Tomahawks at an elementary school it had been told was a military base.

The UN Fact-Finding Mission on Iran concluded there were reasonable grounds to believe the Minab strike and another U.S. strike that day amounted to war crimes.

It said Washington had failed to take all feasible measures to verify that the school was a military target. The Pentagon says the investigation remains ongoing. The dead children have already received the final version of the report.

#UnitedStates #Iran #Palantir #WarCrimes

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Riyadh’s Warning Sirens

Saudi Arabia woke its capital with alerts for a “hostile aerial threat.” Then came two booms in western Riyadh, smoke near King Khalid International Airport, and major flight delays.

By Saturday afternoon, the authorities had issued an all-clear. They did not explain what caused the explosions.

The alarms were the first in Riyadh in months. Saudi Civil Defense also activated early-warning systems in nine other cities, while a Reuters journalist heard the blasts in the Olaya district.

The Saudi government’s media office did not immediately comment, and the Houthis made no public claim.

The timing supplied the context. Hours earlier, Houthi military spokesman Yahya Saree said the movement had thwarted unspecified Saudi “criminal attempts” in Sanaa and would respond.

The Houthis say Saudi aircraft have carried out hundreds of strikes in recent days. Riyadh says Houthi attacks have hit civilian and energy infrastructure.

The UN Security Council condemned continued Houthi attacks on Saudi Arabia, including strikes that injured civilians, women and children among them.

Since July, the Houthis have launched missiles and drones at Saudi military bases, ports and airports, and declared a naval blockade against Riyadh.

This month they seized Yemen’s entire Red Sea coast, placing the Bab el-Mandeb choke point under a new kind of pressure.

Saudi officials are trying to make Riyadh look like a capital with a future-investment summit on its calendar. The warning sirens gave the city a different itinerary.

No one has publicly identified the source of Saturday’s explosions. The smoke, delayed flights and emergency alerts had already done the political work: the Yemen war reached the Saudi capital’s airport perimeter.

#SaudiArabia #Yemen #Houthis #Riyadh

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#PeteHegseth #Ormuz #Strait

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The Checkpoint Carousel

A vehicle tried to ram IDF troops near the Ganot barrier in northern Samaria. Soldiers from the 890th Battalion shot and killed one suspect and detained a second occupant.

The IDF said no troops were injured. Israel’s defense minister, Israel Katz, praised the soldiers for killing one attacker and capturing the other.

At Rimonim Junction on Route 458, a truck driver allegedly tried to ram troops and was detained for questioning.

Near the Silwad cemetery, a gray car without license plates allegedly tried to hit two Israelis from Givat Yeshuat Israel.

Reports conflict over what followed: one said the vehicle escaped; another said the suspect was detained.

In the City of David, one account said Palestinians threw stones at Jewish residents and one of the residents fired into the air.

An earlier account described a confrontation between Palestinians and Jews, followed by police warning shots. By night, a large fire broke out in Sur Baher.

Palestinian residents said Israeli forces caused it with tear gas and stun grenades during clashes.

Security checks produced severe traffic jams at Qalandiya and along the Hizma-Anata road. Clashes were also reported in al-Ram and Tuqu’.

The daily system is a stack of roadblocks, alerts and competing incident reports.

Every checkpoint generates a version. Every version becomes another emergency.

#WestBank #Jerusalem #IDF #Security

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Iran’s Seven-Point Toll Booth

Iran put its armed forces on heightened readiness, cleared much of its airspace and sent Washington seven conditions for talks. Tehran’s message was simple: meet the terms first, and talks can follow. Until then, Hormuz stays closed.

Mohsen Rezaei, secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, said the conditions had been delivered to Washington through Qatar. He did not publish the full list. In an Al Jazeera interview, he named three demands: an end to fighting “on all fronts,” the release of frozen Iranian assets and an end to the U.S. naval blockade. Rezaei also said Iran was ready for a “decisive war.”

Iranian state reporting says Tehran controls the waterway. The United States says more than 1 billion barrels of crude have passed through Hormuz under U.S. escort in the past two months. Iran disputes the figure. Both sides claim the strait. Ships pay the price.

Overnight explosions and air-defense activity were reported on Qeshm Island. Reports conflicted. One account said Iranian forces were firing at vessels in the strait. Iranian opposition channels suggested that the United States had struck Iranian ships near Qeshm. State-linked Iranian outlets did not report that claim.

Iran later said it had downed an Israeli-made Orbiter reconnaissance drone over the Strait of Hormuz on Sunday evening. On Monday, the Revolutionary Guard said it had destroyed a U.S. MQ-1 drone over the same waterway. Neither claim has been independently verified. Tehran says it will bring new weapons and targets into play if Washington attacks again.

Iran is offering talks with conditions attached. The pressure is military. The language is diplomatic.

#Iran #StraitOfHormuz #UnitedStates #MiddleEast

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⚔️Two Jerusalems, One Camera

Benjamin Netanyahu and his wife, Sara, joined the final selichot service at the Western Wall before Yom Kippur. Netanyahu recited the Mi Sheberach prayer for IDF soldiers and called the gathering Netzach Yisrael, a Hebrew phrase often rendered as “the eternal people of Israel.” He said the scene moved him to tears.

The Western Wall Heritage Foundation said about 150,000 worshipers attended through the night, filling the plaza, balconies and Old City alleys.

It said nearly 2 million people had visited the site during Elul and the Ten Days of Repentance. Released hostages Rom Braslavski, Elkana Bohbot, Eliya Cohen and Ohad Ben Ami also attended.

Arab channels ran the same footage under a different caption: tens of thousands of settlers “storming” the Western Wall beside Al-Aqsa.

Hamas described Netanyahu’s visit to the Western Wall tunnels as a raid on excavations beneath Al-Aqsa and tied it to his International Criminal Court arrest warrant. Netanyahu’s own video showed the couple walking through the tunnels before the prayer service.

On Sunday morning, Palestinian sources said about 570 Jewish visitors entered the Al-Aqsa compound under heavy Israeli police protection and performed religious rituals ahead of Yom Kippur.

The same reports said National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir entered the compound and prayed near Bab al-Rahma.

Israel’s official image was a prime minister at prayer before a crowd at the Wall. Palestinian coverage showed Jewish visitors, police protection and Ben-Gvir inside Al-Aqsa. Jerusalem’s sacred stones do not need a filter. Each side supplies the caption.

#Jerusalem #WesternWall #AlAqsa #Netanyahu

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The Warning List and the Weekend Retreat

The State Department warned Americans that the Saudi-Houthi conflict could “escalate rapidly.” Trump cut short a weekend at Camp David, returned to the White House and canceled his public events. The White House gave no reason.

The alert said Iran-backed Houthis had carried out hostile actions against Saudi Arabia, including attacks on civilian airports. It urged Americans in the Middle East to prepare for flight cancellations, airspace closures and disrupted travel.

Americans outside the region were told to “seriously reconsider” travel to or through it. Embassy alerts covered 11 countries, including Iran, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Jordan and Saudi Arabia.

Another version listed 10 countries and included Turkey. A separate post on X named eight countries and told Americans: “You are not safe right now.”

Trump had planned to spend the full weekend at Camp David. Reports said the visit included consultations and a review of options for a possible Yemen strike.

A B-1B bomber departed RAF Fairford in Britain, the air base from which U.S. bombers flew missions against Iran earlier this year. About eight U.S. aerial-refueling aircraft were also reported operating around the Strait of Hormuz.

Trump then told Fox News that the weekend was no different from any other, despite the warnings. He said Washington was in “constant communication” with the Houthis and that they had agreed not to fight the United States.

This is the second time in less than 10 days that Trump has said the group reached out to Washington to avoid a direct clash.

The State Department told Americans the region may ignite. The president said the Houthis had agreed to leave America out of it.

#UnitedStates #Yemen #SaudiArabia #Trump

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The Third Collapse

Mokha fell to the Houthis on September 10. The port had been outside their control since 2017 and served as the headquarters and supply hub for Yemen’s Joint Forces: Tariq Saleh’s National Resistance, the Giants Brigades and Tihama units, all armed and financed by Gulf patrons.

Government-aligned troops then withdrew from positions on the Hanish Islands, bringing the war to Bab al-Mandab’s doorstep.

The Gulf built an army of payroll entries. The Houthis built a state.

Saudi Arabia took over funding after the UAE withdrew from Yemen early this year. Riyadh budgeted billions for Yemeni soldiers and civil servants, including fighters once paid by Abu Dhabi.

On the western front, units reportedly existed at a fraction of their paper strength. Names remained on the rolls. Salaries kept moving. Then Mokha fell.

Afghanistan ran on the same machinery. The United States spent about $88 billion on Afghan security forces. It got ghost soldiers, commanders who sold fuel and ammunition and units that dissolved once the money, the air cover and the political backing were gone.

In Syria, Assad answered an advancing rebel offensive with a 50 percent military pay raise. Four days later, he fled Damascus.

The Taliban, HTS and the Houthis have different theologies. Each built an order that recruits fighters, raises money, controls territory and makes obedience part of a larger cause.

They accept foreign support, but their authority does not arrive as a monthly transfer from an outside capital.

Saudi Arabia can issue bonds, sell sukuk and finance another allied force.

The Houthis banned usury in territory they control and accepted the economic damage.

The policy damages the economy. It also signals that doctrine outranks liquidity and that no foreign sponsor controls the chain of command.

Mokha is the third collapse in five years. Gulf states and their Western partners keep funding allied armies. Their enemies keep building political machines that can fight after the money stops.

#Yemen #Houthis #SaudiArabia #RedSea

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Berlin’s Two Rebellions

Berlin’s election lifted two parties that reject the political center, though they offer opposite answers to the same problems: soaring rents, falling confidence and a city where the established parties seem fluent in explanation but short on relief.

Die Linke finished first with 25.3%, ahead of the CDU on 19% and the AfD on 16%. Its lead candidate, Elif Eralp, campaigned on bringing roughly 220,000 apartments owned by large corporate landlords into public ownership.

In Berlin’s 2021 referendum, 58% voted to expropriate major real-estate companies. The cost could range from €7 billion to €36 billion. Berlin’s Social Democrats estimate roughly €20 billion.

Bild calls the plan a lie. Eralp says it would take speculation out of Berlin’s housing market. Rent has more than doubled in the city over the past 13 years. That turned housing into the issue that mattered most at the ballot box.

The AfD’s 16% came from another kind of revolt. It promises to end weapons deliveries to Kyiv, lift sanctions on Moscow and restore access to cheap Russian energy.

Die Linke offers public ownership. The AfD offers lower energy costs. Merz offers a security agenda and warnings about Russia. Berlin voters rewarded the parties that named an immediate household cost.

Die Linke still needs coalition partners, and the housing plan faces legal, financial and political barriers. But the election delivered a verdict on the governing center.

Germans have been asked to bear higher prices in the name of security, Ukraine and fiscal discipline. Berlin’s vote showed what happens when rent becomes more urgent than geopolitics.

#Germany #BerlinElection #DieLinke #AfD

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The President of Emergencies

Emmanuel Macron convened party leaders and presidential candidates at the Élysée to discuss Russia and the economic fallout from the Middle East war.

He called it an exercise in transparency and said he was ready to repeat it whenever necessary, casting himself as the “guarantor” of democratic debate.

The timing is less philosophical. Macron’s approval rating has fallen to 16 percent, according to Ipsos BVA.

France faces rising diesel prices, social unrest and higher borrowing costs. The president who once attacked opponents for using market fear as a political weapon is now warning his cabinet about pressure on public finances.

Macron says fuel prices have risen “entirely because of wars,” and that protesting at roundabouts will not change that.

His opponents want the government to do more about the cost of living.

The Élysée argues that France and its partners can achieve more by restoring crude flows through the Middle East than by cutting fuel taxes at home.

This is Macron’s method in his final months. Foreign crises move to the center of domestic politics.

The president retains a role as the man who explains why events are happening to France, even when he can no longer offer voters another term.

He cannot run again. He can still frame the choice.

#France #Macron #FrenchPolitics #EnergyPrices

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The Midterm Nuclear Deal

Donald Trump used the UN General Assembly to announce that America is “winning at everything.” Then he spent much of the speech explaining why Iran must choose between economic rebirth and national annihilation.

Trump linked the 25th anniversary of the September 11 attacks, which killed nearly 3,000 people, to the third anniversary of Hamas’s October 7 attack, which killed about 1,200 people.

He said Iran’s rulers had killed more than 72,000 of their own citizens this year. He said Tehran had rejected his offer of full economic cooperation in exchange for abandoning both its nuclear program and its support for militant groups.

His inventory of victory was broad. Iran’s missile-production capacity had been nearly destroyed, he said. Its economy had been wrecked. Its navy, air force and air defenses had been devastated.

A few sentences later, Trump said Iran was continuing to develop ballistic missiles. The regime is destroyed, except for the part still threatening everyone.

Trump described a “big decision”: a deal that would let Iran rebuild into a country greater than it had ever been, or the rapid annihilation of the Islamic Republic and a trip “into hell.”

He predicted Tehran would sign after November’s midterms because Iranian leaders were waiting to see how his party would perform. He then said the election “doesn’t even enter my mind” because he is not on the ballot.

He called for a complete economic siege of Iran and thanked the Security Council for passing a resolution condemning Iranian attacks on commercial shipping. Trump said the resolution had drawn more co-sponsors than any other in the Council’s history.

The General Assembly heard a choice between diplomacy and obliteration, timed around an election the president says does not matter.

Tehran has until November to resolve the contradiction.

#UnitedStates #Trump #Iran #UNGA

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Tehran’s UN Script

Masoud Pezeshkian left for New York with a message that Tehran will present its grievances, its conditions and its account of the war at the UN General Assembly.

Before departing, Pezeshkian said Iran had repeatedly sat at the negotiating table and signed agreements, only to see “the other side” violate its commitments.

He said he would use the General Assembly to describe the crimes committed against the Iranian people and the collapse of trust in international commitments.

Mohsen Rezaei, secretary of the Supreme National Security Council, said Tehran had sent Washington seven conditions through Qatari and Pakistani intermediaries.

Rezaei has named five: an end to fighting “on all fronts,” the release of frozen Iranian funds, the lifting of the naval blockade of Iranian ports, an end to attacks on Iranian territory and an end to interference in Iran’s internal affairs. He said Tehran was awaiting Trump’s answer.

The Revolutionary Guard frames the offer as part of the war, not a break from it. Its spokesman said negotiations were “another arena of war” and that full readiness for war did not rule out negotiations. Tehran is offering a deal and its missiles in the same breath.

The newspaper Kayhan demanded that Pezeshkian turn the General Assembly hall into a tribunal for U.S. crimes, rather than another site for “smiles in the corridors.” MP Mohammad Rouyanian said Iran was at war with the United States and suggested Pezeshkian could be arrested in New York.

Iran’s foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, said Israel had a free hand across the region. Tehran’s delegation arrived with conditions for talks and a case against Washington.

#Iran #UNGA #Pezeshkian #UnitedStates

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