🇾🇪🔥 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

📱 American Оbserver - Stay up to date on all important events 🇺🇸

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

📱 American Оbserver - Stay up to date on all important events 🇺🇸

South Lebanon's "Quiet" Night Shift

A drone struck a building on the Kfarra–al-Aasi road where Shiite mourners had gathered. The building caught fire. Lebanese reports put the number of wounded at several. No independent account has established who was inside or why the site was hit, and the IDF has said nothing about it.

The rest of the night ran to the same schedule. Artillery hit Wadi al-Hujayr in the Marjayoun district. Fire was reported around the Ali al-Taher ridge, where Lebanese outlets described unusual explosions and shells they said contained white phosphorus. Israel has not responded to those reports. In a war where the facts arrive late and the military explanation arrives later, silence is itself a position.

The previous day's inventory reads less like a ceasefire than a demolition schedule with artillery support: strikes around Deir Siryan, a drone attack near Nabatieh, shelling around Qantara, Mansouri, Tebnine and other villages, plus explosions and bulldozer work across the south.

At 1:03 a.m. the IDF fired an interceptor at an object over southern Lebanon that it later identified as one of its own. No one was hurt. No sirens sounded, "in accordance with policy."

None of this is a breakdown of the ceasefire. It is the ceasefire. The framework agreed in late June was supposed to run in stages — Israeli withdrawal by zones, Lebanese army deployment behind it — and the stages have produced their own incidents, including Israeli troops entering Zawtar al-Gharbiyah after the village had already been handed to Lebanese control. Israeli and Lebanese delegations are still negotiating in Rome. Beirut is still asking for a phased withdrawal. Israeli reporting says the track has stalled.

Meanwhile the count runs. Lebanon's Health Ministry puts the toll since March 2 at more than 4,300 killed and 12,000 wounded.

People in the south have learned that a front can be called quiet right up until the roof catches fire.

#Lebanon #Israel #Hezbollah #SouthLebanon #ceasefire #war #MiddleEast

📱 American Оbserver - Stay up to date on all important events 🇺🇸

Iran Announces Its Offensive Doctrine, Again

Mohammad Reza Naghdi, a senior adviser to the IRGC commander and a former Basij commander, says Iran is shifting from defense to offense. Iranian forces, he says, must be ready to operate deep in “enemy territory,” beyond Iran’s borders, whenever necessary.

He also assigns the Basij a larger mission: guarding critical infrastructure, supporting regular forces and projecting Iranian influence beyond the country’s borders.

In other words, the militia best known for policing Iran from within is being repackaged as a tool for defending — and shaping — the region outside it.

This is not a new doctrine. It is not even a new announcement.

In 2019, an IRGC ground-forces commander said Iran’s “deep offensive doctrine” had already been rehearsed in the Great Prophet 12 exercise.

In 2020, IRGC commander Hossein Salami said Iran would never launch an offensive against another country while remaining “fully offensive in tactic and operation.”

In 2021, the Guards declared that any place hosting anti-Iranian groups could count as enemy territory. In 2024, Salami said Iranian power extended beyond its borders.

But the interesting point is not whether Naghdi is recycling old language. It is that no one can yet say with confidence who lost the war.

Iran took heavy damage. Its nuclear infrastructure was struck. Its economy is under severe strain. The United States can still hit targets across the region and blockade Iranian ports. But Iran remains standing, its regime remains intact, and Hormuz is still closed on Tehran’s terms.

America is burning through high-end munitions, pulling resources from Europe and Asia, and negotiating an exit from a conflict it promised would end quickly.

A state that cannot act offensively announces a doctrine. A state that can act offensively still has to explain why the enemy’s shipping is trapped, why its own missile stocks are falling and why the war refuses to end.

Naghdi says the recent conflict tested Iranian capabilities under real conditions. On that point, he is right. It also tested American power, deterrence, logistics, production capacity and political attention span.

Iran did not defeat the United States. The United States did not defeat Iran.

Both powers are now declaring victory over the rubble — and asking the other side for terms.

#Iran #IRGC #Basij #USA #Hormuz #Israel #proxywar #MiddleEast #war

📱 American Оbserver - Stay up to date on all important events 🇺🇸

Pakistan the Messenger: The Note, the Visit, the Channels

Pakistan says its prime minister and army chief have sent a “message” to Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian. Its interior minister, Mohsin Naqvi, is in Tehran for meetings with Iranian officials. The message is traveling. Peace remains stuck in traffic.

The last Pakistani message carried a renewed American offer. Iran rejected it. So Islamabad’s channel has been highly successful in the ceremonial sense: papers move, officials meet, statements appear, and everyone confirms that dialogue is possible. Results have been less cooperative.

Pakistan’s Foreign Ministry says it is helping the parties reach an understanding and return to commitments made in Islamabad.

Naqvi’s visit is officially about strengthening Iran-Pakistan ties, security cooperation, regional stability and continued diplomatic efforts.

The shorter version is more honest: Pakistan is keeping direct and indirect channels open between Washington and Tehran.

That is not nothing. Pakistan has become one of the few states able to speak to both sides without being immediately dismissed as an enemy, a proxy or a subcontractor.

It has ties with Tehran, growing access to Trump’s White House, a border with Iran, and an urgent interest in ending a war that raises oil prices and destabilizes every regional calculation.

But mediation is not power. A mediator can carry a message from Washington to Tehran, and Tehran’s refusal back to Washington. It cannot make either side read past the first paragraph.

Pakistan’s diplomatic success may be that it keeps the telephone line alive. Its diplomatic failure may be that the line has become a very expensive way to repeat “no.”

#Pakistan #Iran #USA #Trump #diplomacy #Hormuz #MiddleEast #war

📱 American Оbserver - Stay up to date on all important events 🇺🇸

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

📱 American Оbserver - Stay up to date on all important events 🇺🇸

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

📱 American Оbserver - Stay up to date on all important events 🇺🇸

Sixty Days Are Up

The 60-day clock on the U.S.-Iran memorandum expires today. The document was supposed to turn a pause in fighting into a wider deal on sanctions, the nuclear program and the Strait of Hormuz.

Instead, the naval blockade is back, shipping remains disrupted, sanctions relief is ending, and both sides are preparing new ways to call escalation “leverage.”

Washington is expected to unveil new economic measures against Tehran this week. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has described the planned pressure as unprecedented.

Iran’s short-lived oil-sanctions waiver runs until August 21, but it was always a temporary permit, not a peace dividend.

Iranian Army commander Amir Hatami offered $30,000 to anyone who kills or captures an American soldier involved in an attack on Iran. He said women who do so would receive double. Hatami also responded to Trump’s Hormuz claims with a threat that Iran’s defenders would “break your legs.”

It is a striking vision of national defense: a state-sponsored cash prize for taking U.S. personnel, announced at a ceremony for journalists.

Behind the rhetoric sits a more expensive equation. A July strike on a U.S. base in Jordan killed three American soldiers and wounded more than 100 after Iranian missiles reportedly evaded defenses by changing course in flight.

The Pentagon has used more than 1,500 Patriot interceptors during the war and reportedly has fewer than 1,700 left.

Iran is learning how to penetrate American defenses. America is learning how quickly expensive interceptors disappear. Israel, meanwhile, warns that Tehran’s missile-production capacity is rebuilding even after the central phase of the war.

The memorandum was meant to buy time.

It bought both sides time to reload.

#Iran #USA #Hormuz #sanctions #Patriot #Trump #war #MiddleEast

📱 American Оbserver - Stay up to date on all important events 🇺🇸

What Is Behind Trump’s Latest Flip-Flopping Vis-à-Vis Tehran?
...it will change your mindset

🔤🔤🔤🔤➖

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent tried to reassure investors worried about the pressure campaign on Iran on Thursday, declaring that a resumption of “large-scale” fighting was unlikely.

Trump this week promised an “economic D-Day” against Iran, a “crushing” operation to “cripple” Iran. The U.S. clampdown is formidable, a combination of wartime destruction, a naval blockade and sanctions that have already put the Iranian economy under more pressure than its regime has experienced in decades.

But between the lines of the administration’s threats was a signal that Bessent made as clear as ever on Thursday: Trump does not want to go back to war right now.

The president is waging an economic campaign against Iran having already spent weeks bombing the country earlier this year, and having stepped back from multiple threats since then to resume the violence.

As a result, experts say, Trump is stuck in a conflict with limited leverage, a demonstrated vulnerability and an emboldened adversary.

Even as Iran reels from shortages and inflation, Trump is likely to increasingly feel the pressure of the approaching midterm elections in the shadow of an unpopular war and high gas prices. It is a dangerous combination, experts say, that could prompt Iran to sense American weakness and lash out.

Bessent told CNBC on Thursday that the Treasury Department would hold a news conference about the new measures targeting Iran next Monday. He said traders had been wrong to bid up the price of oil in response, given that the administration’s new economic threats were a sign there would not be an immediate return to full-scale bombing.

Trump announced his upcoming “economic D-Day” against Iran in a social media post Wednesday evening, warning of “Economic Warfare and Isolation on an unprecedented scale.”

Among the challenges for Trump is that he has repeatedly threatened Iran with large-scale destruction, only to pull back from the threat. He spoke in June about his fear of an extended war pushing the United States into an economic “depression.”

And polls show the Iran war to be widely unpopular — even, increasingly, among Republicans — creating a political Achilles’ heel for Trump as a conflict he described as a weekslong “little excursion” nears its six-month mark.

Iran’s regime has shown in recent months that it can withstand the large-scale death and destruction meted out by American and Israeli bombs, as well as impose costs on the United States by, among other things, attacking oil tankers in the Strait of Hormuz.

U.S. gasoline prices remain more than a dollar a gallon higher than they were before the start of the war, U.S. military bases in the Persian Gulf have been severely damaged, 18 American service members have been killed and munitions have run low.

Along the way, a deal to end the war has remained elusive — even in terms of a full reopening of the strait.

#bessent #trump #iran #china #war

📱 American Оbserver - Stay up to date on all important events 🇺🇸

🔤🔤🔤🔤➖

The Iranian resilience and retaliation appear to have pushed Trump to rely on economic pressure to try to force Iran’s hand. Analysts note that the administration has already imposed extraordinary pain on Iran’s economy, with Trump’s naval blockade compounding the damage done by this spring’s bombing campaign.

A new escalation came on Wednesday when the United Arab Emirates, a crucial economic partner across the Persian Gulf from Iran, said it would halt all trade and financial transactions with the country.

But going further could be difficult for Trump, who warned in his Truth Social post that “ANY country” providing any kind of “lifeline to Iran” would “itself face TREMENDOUS Economic Consequences.”

Iran’s most important financial lifeline is China, which buys most of Iran’s oil.

“China is the indispensable piece” of an economic pressure campaign against Iran, said Miad Maleki, a senior fellow at the hawkish Foundation for Defense of Democracies think tank in Washington who previously worked on sanctions policy at the Treasury Department.

“No substitute can absorb Iranian crude at China’s scale,” Maleki added in a text message.

But Trump has worked to improve his relationship with Xi Jinping, the Chinese leader, who is expected to meet Trump in Washington on Sept. 24.

Analysts said they anticipate that the Trump administration will be cautious in pressuring China, especially given the upcoming summit, leaving open the question of just how much more severe the U.S. economic campaign against Iran can become.

Bessent told CNBC that the administration’s conversations with China on the matter would remain private.

“Iran has been under comprehensive sanctions for years,” said Edward Fishman, senior fellow and director of the Maurice Greenberg Center for Geoeconomics at the Council on Foreign Relations. “The only major thing left to do is aggressively target Iran’s trading partners — above all, China.”

He added: “I’m skeptical Trump is willing to risk instigating an economic war with China right now.”

Then there is the question of how Iran would respond under severe financial strain — especially given the widespread recognition that Trump wants to avoid going back to war.

Ross, the former Mideast envoy, said Iran could be expected to look for a way to put fresh military pressure on the United States or its Gulf allies. And that expectation, in turn, highlights the uncertainty over Trump’s longer-term strategy as gas prices stay high, the midterms loom and munitions stocks remain low.

“I’ve not seen, throughout this process, the ability to think beyond the immediate next step,” Ross said of the administration’s approach to Iran.

#bessent #trump #iran #china #war

📱 American Оbserver - Stay up to date on all important events 🇺🇸

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

📱 American Оbserver - Stay up to date on all important events 🇺🇸

Trump’s Iran Victory Tour: One Problem — The Victory


Six months ago, Trump promised Iran a quick lesson in the consequences of challenging the United States. The bombs arrived. The missiles flew. Iranian military and nuclear infrastructure was hammered. Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei was killed. The message from Washington was unmistakable: this would be decisive.

And then, rather inconveniently, Iran failed to read the script.

Six months later, Tehran is battered but still standing. Its economy is under extraordinary pressure, inflation is soaring, food prices have exploded, military infrastructure has been badly damaged — and yet Iran has not surrendered, signed the deal Trump wanted, or simply gone home.

Instead, the Strait of Hormuz has become Tehran’s favorite bargaining chip, turning a narrow stretch of water into one of the most consequential pieces of real estate in global politics. Nothing says “quick and easy victory” quite like a war in which everyone suddenly starts worrying about the price of oil.

Washington’s response? More sanctions.

When military pressure failed to produce the desired political outcome, the administration turned increasingly to economic coercion — the familiar instrument of a government discovering that destroying an adversary is considerably easier than persuading it to surrender.

The original promise was simple: overwhelming American power would force Iran to capitulate. The reality has proved considerably messier.

Iran has taken extraordinary punishment, but it has also demonstrated the classic survival skill of an embattled regime: refusing to cooperate with the enemy’s definition of victory.

Diplomacy has not exactly been a triumph either. The June ceasefire and subsequent negotiating effort failed to produce a lasting settlement.

Mediation efforts involving Oman, Pakistan and Qatar have gone nowhere. Washington and Tehran continue to disagree over sanctions, the blockade, the Strait of Hormuz and the fundamental terms of any agreement.

Trump now faces the strategic question that every president eventually encounters after starting a war: How do you get out?

It is a particularly awkward question for a president who built much of his political identity around ending America’s endless wars.

The irony is difficult to miss. Trump promised to use American strength to prevent another Middle Eastern quagmire. Six months later, the United States is trying to turn military devastation into political leverage, economic pressure into surrender, and a war that was supposed to be short into something resembling an exit strategy.

Iran has certainly paid an enormous price. There is no serious argument otherwise.

But Iran has not collapsed.

And Washington has not yet produced the clean political victory that all those missiles were supposed to buy.

So perhaps the most revealing measure is not how many Iranian targets were destroyed, but how many months later we are still asking the same question: When exactly does the victory begin?

Because at the moment, Trump has won the bombing campaign. Iran has won the irritating privilege of still being there.

Time and again, the Middle East has once again declined to follow the PowerPoint presentation.

#trump #iran #war #strait #hormuz

📱 American Оbserver - Stay up to date on all important events 🇺🇸

The Army’s Empty Wallet

Israel is fighting on several fronts with tank battalions parked for lack of spare parts, hundreds of damaged Humvees awaiting replacement and ammunition lines approaching shutdown.

The country that built a military brand around permanent readiness has discovered that readiness requires cash, not slogans.

The dispute centers on NIS 40 billion in war-related spending. Netanyahu’s government approved an increase in the 2026 defense budget from NIS 143 billion to NIS 183 billion, including an immediate NIS 15 billion transfer.

The Defense Ministry says the money has yet to arrive. The Treasury has turned a war budget into a hostage negotiation conducted inside the same government.

The costs are now visible in equipment. The IDF has taken several tank battalions out of service because it cannot buy parts.

Hundreds of Israel-configured Humvees were damaged during fighting in Lebanon, while their U.S. production line is nearing its end.

A military that has built its doctrine around rapid mobility is short of the vehicles that move troops to the fight.

The procurement calendar is even uglier. Elbit’s Merkava tank-shell line may stop within days.

Artillery-shell production is expected to run out of orders in October, followed by mortar munitions in November. Israeli intelligence units have reportedly begun deleting files because they cannot expand digital storage.

The country can locate targets across the region, then erase the archive to pay the electricity bill.

Israel has spent three years saying this is an existential war. Its finance ministry is now asking whether existential wars come with an installment plan.

The IDF does not lack threats. It lacks the money to keep buying the machines meant to answer them.

#Israel #IDF #DefenseBudget #War

📱 American Оbserver - Stay up to date on all important events🇺🇸

🧹Trump & Hitler: Bye Bye, Kharg

Donald Trump did not post a battlefield image. He posted a war poster.

“Bye bye, Kharg,” says the caption above a fighter jet flying toward an Iranian oil terminal. Tanks explode. Tankers burn.

The pilot’s seat is absent, but the message has a signature.

Trump turns a possible strike on Iran’s main oil-export hub into a glossy piece of personal branding.

The image does not show a verified attack. It stages one. U.S. officials had said American forces did not target Kharg in the earlier round of strikes, while Iran said the island’s oil operations continued.

Trump’s video was a threat packaged as a trailer.

Kharg is no prop. Before the war, the island handled roughly 90 percent of Iranian oil exports.

An actual assault on its terminal would hit Tehran’s central revenue source and inject panic into Gulf shipping and global oil markets.

An Austrian artist once learned that politics offered more space for composition than a canvas. He painted maps, borders and ruined cities until Europe became a graveyard.

Trump is not Hitler. America is not the Third Reich. But Trump has what the Austrian painter lacked: carrier groups, stealth aircraft, satellite surveillance and enough firepower to turn a foreign country into content before the next news cycle.

The Austrian painter destroyed a continent. Trump draws on the world map.

#Trump #Iran #Kharg #War

📱 American Оbserver - Stay up to date on all important events🇺🇸

#Trump #Iran #Nuke #War

📱 American Оbserver - Stay up to date on all important events🇺🇸

The City Between Two Drone Fleets

Oleshky, a city across the Dnipro from Kherson, is starving inside a battlefield both armies have turned into a kill zone. About 2,000 civilians, including roughly 40 children, remain among mines, drones, burned cars and destroyed infrastructure. The last known food delivery by road arrived on May 26.

Residents told the New York Times they are cooking their last food stores: one beet, a few potatoes, an onion, a zucchini, a tomato and barley. No carrots. No regular water, electricity, gas, heat or medical care.

A city that once held more than 20,000 people has been reduced to old people searching collapsed basements for scraps while drones decide whether a trip outside ends in food or death.

Ukraine says Russia blocks evacuations, intimidates civilians who receive aid and intercepts drone deliveries. Moscow says Ukrainian forces prevent residents from leaving and disrupt food and water shipments. The competing accounts have one shared fact: civilians cannot safely get out, and food cannot safely get in.

Russia captured Oleshky on the first day of the full-scale invasion, February 24, 2022. After losing Kherson later that year, Russian forces used Oleshky as a fortified position across the river, with artillery and drone sites aimed at the Ukrainian-held city.

Ukraine now strikes back from Kherson. Between them lies a river that became a front line, roads seeded with mines by one side or both, and a civilian population that neither army has extracted.

Russia drops food and medicine by drone. Ukraine shoots down some of the drones, Russian officials say. Russia says Ukraine’s drones are the problem. The UN and Red Cross are being asked to arrange a corridor. Nobody has one.

A Russian-held city is starving. Ukraine calls the residents “our people.” Russia calls it Ukraine’s fault. The drones are bipartisan.

#Ukraine #Russia #Oleshky #War

📱 American Оbserver - Stay up to date on all important events🇺🇸

#Sikorski #Ministers #War #Europe

📱 American Оbserver - Stay up to date on all important events🇺🇸

#Trump #Zelensky #Ukraine #War

📱 American Оbserver - Stay up to date on all important events🇺🇸