CIA Director Ratcliffe warned Moscow during his late-August visit that Russia's economy could collapse "just as the Soviet Union did at the end of the Cold War" if the war continues.

Putin reportedly canceled a planned meeting with Ratcliffe after receiving the assessment.

The US message:

The battlefield is heading toward stalemate, but Russia can't sustain the war economically.

Source: FAZ

Netanyahu shared new Israeli intelligence with MBZ showing Iran is resuming nuclear progress, including new construction at the Pickaxe mountain site ~140 miles south of Tehran.

He also told the meeting Israel assesses Iran could initiate an attack "in the coming weeks."

CNN confirms a senior Saudi security official attended the expanded meeting, which also covered Houthis, Bab al-Mandeb, and the Strait of Hormuz.

Russia launched a large-scale missile and drone attack on Kyiv overnight, killing at least two people and injuring four.

Homes, warehouses, vehicles and a non-residential building were damaged, with fires reported across Kyiv and the surrounding region.

A Flydubai flight from Dubai to Tel Aviv briefly squawked hijacking code 7500, prompting Israeli Air Force jets to scramble.

It later switched to emergency code 7700 and disappeared from flight-tracking coverage near Tabuk, Saudi Arabia.

The plane landed safely at Tabuk Airport.

French President Macron:

We have become old. We do not want to see it, but our continent has become old. We have rebalanced it only through immigration.

Either growth does not happen in the same way and diminishes because there is less demographic growth, or it can only happen if we also know how to manage the migration question.

French President Macron:

China is massacring our industrial base — partly through innovation after Covid, but also by subsidizing its companies eight times the OECD average.

That is not acceptable. We are not respecting the rules of the game, and we are not protecting our companies.

We Europeans have been naive. We said: "We are open to everyone because we want to trade with others."

But in reality, we are doing much less trade with others.

Netanyahu:

The situation is under control. We are working to bring the passengers back to Israel.

The U.S. has withdrawn from GRECO, the Council of Europe’s anti-corruption watchdog, as the Trump administration continues pulling back from international organizations it says are inefficient or overreaching.

The U.S. had participated in GRECO since 2000. Russia and Belarus are the only other countries to have left the group.

Source: ABC News

The U.S. and coalition partners have formally ended Operation Inherent Resolve in Iraq after 12 years, with forces and equipment leaving Erbil Air Base.

The Pentagon said Iraqi forces will now take primary responsibility for security and suppressing ISIS remnants, while the U.S. continues targeted training and intelligence support.

French President Macron on Brexit:

Brexit is the biggest lie of the last 30 years.

Those who said, "We will be richer" — eight points of GDP less ten years later.

"We will solve the problem of immigration" — it is more complicated than before.

"We are going to crush it in international trade" — it is worse.

Jake Sullivan:

President Trump has basically shattered the American alliance system to the point where the question is not how much damage has been done. The question is: can these alliances actually survive beyond Trump?

Will a new president be able to walk into rooms with our NATO allies, with our Asian allies, with others and say, "Let’s work together?" Or is that new president going to get the cold shoulder?

That’s how degraded the situation is today, to great cost to the U.S.

Jake Sullivan on Gaza:

There was a certain trap in the thinking of: we can get to a ceasefire and hostage deal. We negotiated one in November of 2023 and more than 100 hostages came out, and those were great days.

The guns fell silent, people came home, aid trucks went in at scale, and we overlearned the lesson from that — that that was achievable — and then thought, okay, we’re going to keep working till we get another one in place that ultimately ends the war.

And we consistently thought that it was closer than it was. It ultimately came to pass. When we left office, there was a ceasefire and hostage deal in place, but it took too long to get there, with so much suffering and death and tragedy in the meantime.

And I spend a lot of time thinking about that and having that weigh on me. But avoiding that kind of trap, I think, is an important lesson going forward.

Jake Sullivan on China:

We just had Xi Jinping in town. Trump rolled out the red carpet for him. For the first time in decades, an American president actually went to Andrews Air Force Base and stood at the side of the plane as this foreign autocrat showed up on American soil.

And I’d be fine with all of that if the American people were getting something out of it. But the net result was Xi walked in and out a very confident man that he essentially has the catbird seat in the U.S.-China relationship.

And I think Trump has put us in a very challenging position in that competition.

Jake Sullivan on Trump:

There are certain things about Trump that reflect underlying trends in our country.

But some aspects of the way he approaches foreign policy are totally at odds with where a bipartisan majority of Americans are — like on NATO or on Russia or on corruption.

So I don’t think we should take him as a symptom of, like, this is just where America is and there’s no going back. I don’t accept that.

Senior Israeli official to N12:

A very serious disaster was averted. The co-pilot is currently being questioned, and indications are growing that he wanted to take control of the plane and crash it with the passengers on board.

Israeli Opposition Leader Yair Lapid:

We are fighting what I believe is the most justified war in the world, but we are creating disasters in the process.

You are not going to recover from that if a minister in the government says that an atomic bomb should be dropped on Gaza and you don’t fire him.

You are not going to recover from that if a senior minister in the government says that starving children is a legitimate weapon and you don’t fire him the next morning.

Israeli Opposition Leader Yair Lapid:

The difference between us is that Bennett does not want a Palestinian state, and I simply understand that it is impossible.