After the US officially admitted it deployed weapons into outer space earlier this week, Russia and China expressed concerns, calling it a threat to international peace and demanding the immediate stoppage of all such activities.

During a regular press conference on Tuesday, September 15, Guo Jiakun, official spokesperson of China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, said that “China opposes any arms race in outer space or any attempt to weaponize it and turn it into a warzone.”

He further said that “China stands for the peaceful use of outer space and keeping it safe” and urged the US to “stop expanding military build-up in outer space, and uphold global strategic stability with concrete actions.”

Russia’s Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Maria Zakharova said that the US weapons deployment is a threat to international security and puts a question mark on the stability in outer space. 

“Russia has for many years been consistently drawing the attention of the global community to the grave consequences for international security that Washington’s destructive course may lead to,” Zakharova said.  

She said her country seeks “urgent practical measures to prevent arms race in outer space” and reiterated Russia’s push for a “multilateral legally binding instrument banning the deployment of weapons in outer space.” 

Though it has long been a subject of speculation, a couple of US military officials, earlier this week, admitted that its military is operating weapons deployed in outer space.  

The admission was made by US Air Force Secretary Troy Meink on Monday during a conference. He said that the US “has on-orbit space control weapons capable of defending the joint force against hostile adversary action.”

Meink’s statement was substantiated by US Space Force chief Douglas Schiess, who a day later, on Tuesday, said that in the coming years the US is even planning to increase the number of orbital weapons already used by the members of his military unit.

Urgent need of legal prohibitions

Underlining the threat that the deployment of weapons in outer space poses, several countries, including Russia and China, have been calling for an international treaty to prevent any arms race in outer space for decades now.

The existing instrument, the UN Outer Space Treaty (1967) makes clear that “outer space is not subject to national appropriation by claims of sovereignty, by means of use or occupation, or by any other means.”

It also prohibits the deployment of “nuclear weapons, or other weapons of mass destruction in orbit or on celestial bodies or stationing them in outer space in any other manner,” but it says nothing about the deployment of conventional weapons, despite declaring it should be used for peaceful purposes only.

None of the US military officials spoke about the nature of weapons deployed by the US in outer space.

Though only a handful of countries have the technological capability to explore outer space in any significant way, several countries have used satellites for military and war purposes for decades now.

The US has a dedicated space force which has recently held exercises related to possible military conflicts in space.

The deployment of weapons and claims of exclusivity, apart from increasing possibilities of an arms race between the existing powers in space; the US, Russia, and China, may also make the rest of the world more insecure.

Zakharova said that Russia is planning to submit a proposal for the creation of an international instrument legally prohibiting all weapon deployment in outer space during the upcoming annual UN General Assembly session.

She asked for more countries to join the Russian initiative and co-author the treaty document.

A fine agosto l’Istat ha pubblicato le previsioni della popolazione italiana residente fino al 2080. Sono dati che vengono adottati per stimare i fabbisogni per pensioni o spesa sanitaria. Comprendono anche il ruolo dei flussi migratori. Con qualche sorpresa.

L'articolo Chi vivrà in Italia nel 2080? proviene da Lavoce.info.

At the BRICS Business Forum in Bharat Mandapam on Friday, Russian President Vladimir Putin read out the numbers. The eleven members of this grouping now produce more than 40% of the world’s output. The G7 produces 29. Over the last five years, BRICS countries generated more than half of all global growth. The G7 managed 18%. Narendra Modi, speaking at the same event, added that the bloc is home to half of humanity and a quarter of world trade.

This is not rhetoric. The center of gravity of the world economy has moved, and India is in the chair while it happens.

Now recall something else that took place in that same hall. On May 24 of this year, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio sat down in Bharat Mandapam for an interview with India Today. Asked about Iran’s closure of the Strait of Hormuz, he called it “illegal, unlawful, reckless, dangerous, and unacceptable.” Then he said something more revealing. “I think the whole world needs to say that, and most of the countries in the world are saying that. India is saying that.“

A US official, sitting in Delhi, announced India’s foreign policy position on its behalf. Nobody in the room corrected him. In the same interview Rubio said the trade agreement was “weeks, not months” away. Four months later, it is still unsigned.

India and the construction of the Global South

In March 1947, months before independence, Delhi hosted the Asian Relations Conference. At the Bandung Conference in 1955, India’s first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru was among the chief architects of an idea that seemed audacious then and remains unfinished now: that newly free countries did not have to rent themselves to Washington or Moscow to be taken seriously. The Bandung spirit produced the Non-Aligned Movement, then the Group of 77 in 1964, and then the demand through the 1970s for a New International Economic Order, which was simply a demand that the IMF and the World Bank stop working only for the countries that funded them. India made those arguments first and made them at a time when the material conditions were not as conducive as we see today.

What India has done inside BRICS follows directly from that. At the Delhi summit of 2012, under Manmohan Singh, the group took up the idea of a development bank and asked its finance ministers to study it. That became the New Development Bank, with an Indian, K.V. Kamath, as its first head. The same summit set up the $100 billion Contingent Reserve Arrangement. At Goa in 2016 both were made operational, and India put forward the idea of a BRICS credit rating agency, aimed squarely at the three Western firms whose verdicts decide what every poor country pays to borrow. In 2021 India proposed the BRICS platform for digital public goods. Across four chairships and two very different governments, India’s contribution has been consistent: turning complaints about an unfair world into institutions that can actually be used.

Now look at how Washington talks about the country.

In July 2025, announcing his first tariffs, US President Donald Trump called India and Russia “dead economies” and said they could “take their dead economies down together, for all I care.” He has called India the “tariff king” and its trade rules “obnoxious.” After Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi went to the Shanghai Cooperation Organization summit, Trump called the relationship “a totally one-sided disaster.” In April this year he shared, without comment, a post describing India as “some other hellhole on the planet.” Our foreign ministry replied that this was “uninformed, inappropriate and in poor taste.” When Rubio was asked in Delhi about the racist abuse Indians face in America, he said that “every country in the world has stupid people.”

No country of India’s size is spoken to this way. The damage is not to anyone’s feelings. It is what other governments now expect of us.

Standing is not a sentiment. It is a prediction that other capitals make about how you will behave when you are pushed. For seventy years, the prediction about India was that it would not be told what its position was.

Five things India should do this week

Start with Iran, because the silence there has cost us the most.

Standing with Tehran has nothing to do with liking its government. A member state of the United Nations was illegally bombed by Israel and the United States of America, and its leadership killed. If the largest grouping of developing countries cannot say so plainly, then sovereignty becomes a privilege granted at Washington’s pleasure, and every country sitting in Bharat Mandapam holds it on loan. Bandung was convened to reject exactly this, and India wrote the rejection.

Our own losses are not abstract. The frigate Dena was sunk on March 4 with 87 men aboard, days after exercising with the Indian Navy at Visakhapatnam. Admiral Arun Prakash, a former navy chief, called it “a perverse act” by a country “supposed to be friends and partners.” More than 11 Indian sailors have been killed since. The Hormuz carries most of our cooking gas, and its closure puts queues outside Indian kitchens. The Iranian port city and free-trade zone Chabahar, representing a decade of Indian money and our only road to Central Asia that avoids Pakistan, was abandoned when an American waiver was allowed to lapse in April. We have been here before. In Trump’s first term, India resisted American sanctions on Iran and then gave in completely, ending every barrel of Iranian oil and damaging a relationship built over centuries.

So why does the Indian state keep walking towards Washington after every humiliation? Not out of confusion. The corporate class that matters politically in this country raises money in New York, lists there, sells services there and answers to regulators there. For them, alignment is good business. For the sorghum farmer in Rajasthan, whose tariff protection was traded away in February, it is ruined. Over 45% of Indians still depend on farming.

The chairship is the one thing Washington cannot take from India this week. Five demands would make the Delhi Declaration an important step towards global south solidarity and action.

One. Name it. The declaration must say what was done to Iran and to the Strait of Hormuz and must reject unilateral secondary sanctions as a category. Washington has increased sanctions on its targets by 933% in recent decades. A bloc that cannot describe the main act of force in its own year has told everyone what its words are worth.

Two. Put Global South debt at the center. Some 3.4 billion people live in countries that spend more on debt interest than on health or education. In 2023 the poorer nations paid $25 billion more to foreign creditors than they received. India should make debt relief the bloc’s headline demand and push the New Development Bank to lend without IMF-style conditions attached.

Three. Open the door wider. BRICS should stop behaving like a club of the eleven. Expand New Development Bank membership to developing countries outside the grouping, give partner states a real say rather than a seat at the back, and have India publicly champion Africa’s place in the bloc’s decision-making.

Four. Build food security together. Set up the grain exchange, and behind it a shared reserve that member and partner countries can draw on. India, of all countries, knows what it means to depend on someone else’s harvest. We must remember the history when India went to Washington for wheat in the 1960s and spent thirty years making sure we would never do it again.

Five. Make reform a demand of the bloc, not a bid for ourselves. India has spent two decades asking for a permanent Security Council seat. It should spend this week asking for Africa’s, and for an end to the 85% voting rule that gives the United States a permanent veto at the IMF. Ask for everyone, and the asking carries weight. Ask only for yourself, and it looks like what it is.

In 1947 India convened the Asia Relations Conference in Delhi with no power and enormous standing. In 2026 it has real power and is spending the time standing down. A new Bandung will not be built by a country that waits to be told what it thinks.

Atul Chandra is the Asia Co-Coordinators of Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research.

This article was produced by Globetrotter.

Secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council Mohsen Rezaei refuted United States President Donald Trump’s latest claims about his country seeking fresh talks. He reiterated that there will be no new talks with the US until it implements the conditions already agreed upon.

“Dont get distracted by the US president’s mix signals-from ‘no negotiations’ to ‘we are ready to talk.’ The stakes around oil and the straits have changed. Damage control won’t stop what’s coming,” Rezaei said in a post on X on Tuesday, September 15.

Rezaei was responding to Trump’s latest claims made on his social media post about Iran seeking a deal “quickly and badly.” Trump called Iran a “failing nation” and said he will decide “whether or not the US will choose to engage.”

Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian, during his visit to the 18th BRICS Summit in New Delhi earlier this week, also said there is no need for fresh talks with the US until the conditions in the Islamabad Memorandum of Understanding (MoU), signed between the two countries in June, are implemented.

Iran and Oman are seeking regional consensus

On Monday, Iran claimed it had finalized an agreement with Oman regarding the management of navigation through the Strait of Hormuz and said it’s details would be announced soon. 

“The understanding between Iran and Oman, as two littoral states, has been finalized. In consultation with Oman, we will decide on the next step, including how to announce or register the understanding,” official spokesperson of Iran’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs Esmail Baghaei said in a press conference on Monday, September 14.

He also claimed that a scheduled discussion over the issue with the Persian Gulf countries on Monday was canceled at the last minute after Saudi Arabia’s intervention. He called the Saudi move “ill-advised” and a lost opportunity.

It is speculated that the Saudi intervention is linked to recent attacks carried out by Yemen’s Ansar Allah forces inside its territories, hitting a crucial oil pipeline and King Khalid Air Base, along with other infrastructure.

Ansar Allah claimed its attacks inside Saudi Arabia were in retaliation to hundreds of Saudi airstrikes and over a decade-long blockade of the country.

Read more: Over 300 killed in Yemen in clashes between Ansar Allah and Saudi-backed forces

Ansar Allah has also announced it will target Saudi ships carrying crude through the Bab-al Mandeb in the Red Sea.

In the past, Saudi Arabia had accused Iran of supporting Ansar Allah militarily. Iran has denied such claims, calling Ansar Allah an ally with its own independent agenda. 

Earlier, both Iran and Oman had claimed that the regional meeting on Monday was not postponed for a later date, with Omani Foreign Minister Badr Albusaidi saying the delay was in the “interest of consensus.”

The talks for an agreement over the joint management of traffic through the Strait of Hormuz with Oman began in June, after Iran proposed it.

On August 25, Iran and Oman announced an initial agreement on the establishment of a temporary joint maritime corridor and a joint-mine clearance project.

The agreement, once finalized, is expected to “restore safe navigation” through the Strait while preserving the sovereignty and sovereign rights of coastal states, Press TV reported.

Strait of Hormuz is closed

On the evening of September 14, a super tanker hit a mine after trying to cross the Strait of Hormuz through what Iran calls the “illegal route” near Omani waters, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) said in a statement.

Later it was reported that several of the crew members of the said ship were missing.

The IRGC reiterated its warnings to all the ships in the Persian Gulf to refrain from using the US-backed Omani route, repeating the claims about the Strait of Hormuz being shut and under its full control.

The IRGC has repeatedly questioned US President Donald Trump’s claims of the restoration of free navigation through the Strait, calling them lies. 

The Strait, through which nearly 20% of the global energy trade flowed before the US-Israeli war on Iran began in February has seen a massive fall in traffic, causing disruptions in energy supplies after the Iranians restricted traffic in retaliation.

Oil prices have crossed USD 100 per barrel several times since then. They again crossed the mark earlier this week due to the renewed escalation and fear of a blockade of oil trade through the Bab-al-Mandeb, after Ansar Allah’s warnings of targeting Saudi ships.

Nearly 12% of global trade in energy happens through the Bab-al-Mandeb. 

On Monday, Iran reiterated that the US is solely responsible for the global impacts caused by the blockade of oil trade in the region.

The US war and naval blockade against Iran are the direct reasons for the closure of the Strait, Ali Bahreini, Iran’s permanent representative at Geneva, said during a UN Trade and Development (UNCTAD) meeting asking the international community to acknowledge the fact that such unilateral actions are harmful for the global economy.

Iran assured that it will lift the blockade on the Strait of Hormuz the moment the US announces the end of its war and lifts the naval blockade and economic sanctions on Iran.

Problem

The BRICS summit concluded in New Delhi on Sunday, with Indian prime minister Narendra Modi having hosted the two-day gathering as chair. As with many meetings of the group of emerging economies, this edition brought together the leaders of China, India and Russia and featured plenty of anti-Western rhetoric. This was also Chinese leader Xi Jinping’s first visit to India for more than six years, in the latest example of Sino-Indian normalisation following a sustained period of tensions.

New Delhi’s normalisation with Beijing over the last year looks like more of a tactical de-escalation than a realignment. Nevertheless, India has over that time begun to agree more measures to provide greater access to Chinese investment in manufacturing and climate technology, both areas important for India’s development. This should act as a warning for Europeans. If India cannot source technology and capital from partners in Europe, it will seek to do so from China even while remaining suspicious of Beijing from a security point of view.

Solution

New Delhi continues to view Beijing as a threat and seeks deeper security and economic ties with Brussels, as well as with Washington, despite the difficulties President Donald Trump presents. Modi has thus worked to prevent the BRICS from tipping into a purely anti-Western vehicle, since this would run against India’s interests.

Europeans also see India as an increasingly vital partner, following the EU-India trade deal agreed earlier this year, as Europeans diversify geopolitically in the face of tense transatlantic relations. But India’s bilateral agreements with China, including on the sidelines of the BRICS meeting, show that the EU must not take the mutual benefits of closer ties for granted.

Ahead of Modi’s anticipated visit to Brussels later this year, the EU should accelerate its plans further to strengthen Europe-India ties. For instance, it should enhance the existing Trade and Technology Council to drive cooperation in areas like AI, while also moving forward cooperation on defence and security, and making faster progress on India’s plans to join the Horizon Europe funding programme for research and innovation.  

Context

The EU and India signed a landmark free-trade agreement in New Delhi in January, alongside a new security and defence partnership. Both sides aim to build on these with wider cooperation initiatives to encourage greater cooperation and investment in areas like semiconductors, AI and clean-tech supply chains.

India supported moves at the 2023 BRICS summit to agree on a major membership expansion. The group began as a much smaller coalition of just Brazil, Russia, India and China, and South Africa—hence “BRICS”—but has since grown to eleven members, including Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, Saudi Arabia and the UAE as well as a wider grouping of observer and partner countries that attend summits and align themselves loosely with the bloc’s agenda. The group is internally divided, and not just in terms of China and India. Both Iran and the UAE are members, for instance, despite longstanding regional tensions. This year’s summit produced a limited declaration including vague promises to enhance cooperation.

Source

The Saudi Ministry of Energy announced on Friday, September 11, that the East–West Pipeline across the Riyadh and Madinah regions was subjected to multiple attacks a day earlier, leading to its closure as a precautionary measure.

According to media reports, the strategic pipeline carries roughly 4 to 5 million barrels of oil per day, which equals 4% to 5% of the total global oil supply.

The Saudi Foreign Ministry clarified in a statement issued on Saturday, September 12 that the attacks were launched from Iraq by multiple drones, adding that they resulted in injuries and some damage to the pipeline. No groups have claimed responsibility for the attacks yet.

The ministry also confirmed that Saudi Arabia will not respond to the attacks at this stage, allowing the Iraqi government to take the necessary measures to prevent attacks “originating from the Iraqi territories” against Saudi Arabia and neighboring countries.

Iraq said it seized the drone launching platform used in the attack

For his part, Head of Iraq’s Security Media Cell (SMC), Lieutenant General Saad Maan confirmed on Saturday that “an intelligence and security task force exerted significant effort and succeeded in locating and seizing the launcher” involved in the attacks on the Saudi pipeline within Iraqi territory.

Moreover, Maan affirmed that investigations and intelligence operations are underway to apprehend the perpetrators.

He added that the Iraqi Armed Forces approved a request from Iran to participate in the investigation regarding the attacks on the Saudi pipeline and their repercussions.

Repercussions of the attacks on global oil trade

Saudi Arabia’s East–West Pipeline represents an alternative oil transportation route bypassing the volatile Strait of Hormuz.

Therefore, the temporary closure of the pipeline has severely restricted this essential alternative, pushing Brent crude oil price to hit USD 108 per barrel on Monday, September 14.

Furthermore, reports indicate that the incident will disrupt crude delivery to Europe and Asia for weeks, particularly after the Ansar Allah-led Yemeni Armed Forces expanded their control around the Bab al-Mandeb Strait.

Read more: Ansar Allah seizes strategic Red Sea port city and liberates prisoners held by Saudi-backed forces

At the end of August, the Greek government signed the “Achilles Shield” agreement – a €3 billion “defense” deal with Israel. Under the terms, Israeli companies including Rafael Advanced Defense Systems and Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI) will develop and build anti-aircraft and anti-ballistic systems for Greece.

“This is the largest defense export deal in the history of Israel-Greece relations, and one of the largest in the history of the State of Israel,” the occupation’s Ministry of Defense stated. “Greece’s choice of Israeli technology as the backbone of its most ambitious air defense buildup program in the past decade reflects the depth of trust built between the two countries.”

“Under the deal, Israel will build Greece a comprehensive, multi-layered air defense array, drawing entirely on Israeli-made systems and on the extensive operational experience Israel’s defense establishment has gained during the war.”

The “war” in the statement being the genocide Israeli forces have been conducting in Gaza since October 7, 2023.

An influx of Israeli investments in Greece

According to journalist Vangelis Ilias, the new deal should be contextualized within broader trends of Greek capital and subsequent governments deepening ties with the occupation power.  While the current Mitsotakis administration did not initiate this trend, he says, it deepened it both before and since the genocide in Gaza began. “Over the past 6-7 years, we have witnessed an influx of Israeli investment funds into Greece, both in the real estate sector and through the acquisition of former public – but not exclusively public – companies in various sectors of the economy, one of which is defense.”

Israeli real estate investments in Greece have already had a notable impact on people’s everyday lives, driving up rents and making housing more unaccessible. Endeavors in the defense sector might have been more lowkey, Ilias adds, but they are widespread and expanding under the sight of NATO and European institutions. “In the south of the country, in Kalamata, there is a large Greek Air Force base that also falls under the NATO umbrella as an International Pilot Training Center,” he says, emphasizing the presence of Elbit Systems in the area.

Israeli companies have also purchased local military enterprises, including Intracom Defense, operating in electronic warfare and drone production. “Through this acquisition, the Israeli state-owned company IAI gained access to the European Defense Fund (EDF), an EU mechanism intended exclusively for financing European defense procurement programs – something that was made possible only thanks to the active support of the Greek government,” Ilias adds.

“[Achilles Shield] has been promoted by the domestic media and the elite as an agreement that shields Greece,” he adds. “[Under the claim] that the money being spent, while not going to healthcare and education, or toward supporting the incomes of citizens who are still trying to recover from the years of economic crisis, protects us from those who seek to harm the country, with Turkey always implied in this context,” he explains. 

“In this era of crises, military buildup, and preparations for a full-scale war, they are trying to present this not only as something reasonable but also as something necessary, where strategic agreements between states take precedence over the needs of the people and international law, overlooking genocides or the ethnic cleansing of an entire people.”

The deal’s Achilles’ heel: reliance on Israeli arms

While Greek officials described the deal as a breakthrough for Greek sovereignty, critics have warned of dangers on several fronts. To begin with, in the announced distribution of funds, local industry expects only €750 million of the total €3 billion. The rest goes to Israeli arms companies making the genocide in Gaza technically feasible.

And despite the amount of money being spent, parts of the agreement have been presented inconsistently to the public. “We’re talking about a complex system of sophisticated weapons utilizing artificial intelligence, with a central control unit that operates based on computer code, Ilias emphasizes. “There has been extensive debate over whether this code will belong to Israel or be controlled by Greece. So far, the government’s responses to a barrage of questions from the opposition have been neither reassuring nor consistent. This remains to be clarified.”

The expenditure has been heavily criticized by left movements, including the Communist Party of Greece (KKE), in the context of EU armament taking place at the expense of labor rights and social services. “Costing more than €3 billion, this agreement forms part of the broader ‘2030 Agenda’ arms program serving NATO’s needs, for which our people are paying dearly – tens of billions of euros – at the expense of their rights and needs,” the KKE pointed out.

Like most other EU governments, the Mitsotakis administration has announced harmful labor and social reforms just as it committed billions for Israeli arms producers. This new-old austerity agenda has met widespread resistance. Recently, tens of thousands demonstrated in Thessaloniki demanding dignified wages and pensions, efficient public healthcare, and investments in education. “Not one euro for imperialist wars,” they insisted.

The “Achilles Shield” deal also adds to the case made by academics and activists worldwide that Israel is using the Gaza genocide to market its weapons. This is apparent not only from the purchase list, but from official statements as well. The Israeli Ministry of Defense announced similar deals are part of a broader strategy “to expand defense exports as a central tool for strengthening the IDF’s force buildup, influencing Israel’s foreign policy standing worldwide, and bolstering the Israeli defense industry and economy.”

Critics have argued that Greece’s arms deal risks making the country captive to Israel’s defense industry and alienating it from other countries in the region. “In practice, strategic relations with the murderous state of Israel, together with joint military preparations, are adding fuel to the fire of imperialist rivalries in the region, as well as the conflicts between the bourgeois classes of Turkey and Israel, and of Greece and Turkey, in the Aegean and the Eastern Mediterranean, with the peoples being the victims,” the KKE emphasized.

Read more: Amid mass protests in the West, Israel’s military footprint expands in Eastern Europe

“Greece’s ruling class has made a strategic choice to align itself closely with the Western alliance,” Ilias says, referencing events since the Greek Civil War. “It is particularly worth noting that, as a result, the Greek people have borne the brunt of the bloodshed.”

And while the post-Civil War regime attempted to crush “the popular and anti-imperialist movement that existed in the country,” he concludes, they did not succeed. 

“This is partially why we still see today such a stark contrast between the ruling class and the organized, collective reactions of significant segments of the Greek people throughout the country against the genocide perpetrated by the Israeli state against the Palestinian people. These reactions are multifaceted, with segments of the working class – beyond just the youth – actively participating.

Following a fresh escalation in the war in Yemen over the last few days and reports of possible US involvement, Iran called for an end to all forms of external interference in the country and reiterated the need for the resumption of Yemeni-Saudi dialogue to end the decade-long conflict.

Iran “reiterates its principled and steadfast position regarding the necessity of respecting Yemen’s independence, national sovereignty and territorial integrity, and the need to end the illegal and inhuman blockade of the country,” its Ministry of Foreign Affairs said in a statement on Friday, September 11.

The statement followed the news of Saudi Arabia seeking fresh assistance from the US against the Ansar Allah-led Yemeni forces, who captured various strategic locations around the country’s Red Sea coast earlier this week in a fresh escalation in fights with Saudi-backed forces.

Saudi Arabia has already carried out over 60 air strikes in Yemen since the outbreak of the recent fights. On Thursday, Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman reportedly called President Donald Trump asking for US military intervention as well.

The US has previously supplied key military assistance and weapons to the Saudi Arabia-led coalition in the war against Ansar Allah. It was withdrawn during the Joe Biden administration briefly, after a massive popular campaign against US involvement.

The US has bombed Yemen on several occasions in the past months, citing its alleged attacks on “freedom of navigation” in the Red Sea during the Yemeni campaign against Israel in support of the Palestinian people in Gaza.

US military involvement in Yemen

On Thursday, US officials admitted the US was ready to assist Saudi Arabia and forces backed by it in Yemen once again in order to “protect its core national security interest” in the region.

The US has once again defined its core interest in the region as the “protection of freedom of navigation” in the Red Sea through which around 12% of global trade passes.

The US claims Ansar Allah is acting as a proxy of Iran and sees the escalation in Yemen as an Iranian attempt to block oil trade through the Red Sea as well, after its ongoing blockade in the Strait of Hormuz.

This is despite Ansar Allah rejecting such media reports and assuring that their latest campaign does not threaten ship movements through the Bab al-Mandab.

Iran maintains that Ansar Allah is not a proxy but an independent force and an ally.

The US has already deployed over a 100 military advisors to Saudi Arabia to assist it in the war, according to reports in US media.

Saudi Arabia has imposed a comprehensive land, sea, and air blockade on Yemen since an international coalition led by it started the war in 2015. The blockade prevented the flow of crucial humanitarian supplies to the country causing a massive crisis, including hundreds of thousands of Yemenis dying due to the lack of food and medicine during the COVID outbreak.

The Saudi blockade even threatened flights carrying patients and people trapped outside the country from landing at Sanaa airport. The only exception was during a short period in 2022 when a pause in the war after rounds of negotiations facilitated by the UN had temporarily provided some relief.

Ansar Allah announced the end of the 2022 ceasefire following Saudi Arabia’s attacks on Sanaa airport in July, threatening an Iranian aircraft with diplomats demanding the immediate end of the decade-long blockade.

Noting that the people of Yemen have a right to “a dignified life free from pressure, intimidation and oppressive blockade,” Iran demanded the immediate resumption of the dialogue on the roadmaps already agreed upon in the past.

Iran also offered its offices to facilitate the Yemeni-Saudi dialogue.

The Israeli army announced on Thursday, September 10, that it dismantled Hezbollah’s underground infrastructure beneath Ali al-Taher ridge in southern Lebanon.

The army claimed that the strategic facility contained scores of Iranian-made rockets, missiles, unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), machine guns, and hundreds of mines and explosive devices.

It added that a central command complex of Hezbollah’s Badr Unit was located within the infrastructure, and included command centers, weapon storage rooms, and living quarters, which enabled the group’s fighters to operate underground for long periods of time.

The Israeli forces used 1,100 tons of explosives in the operation to demolish the two-kilometer tunnel network beneath Ali al-Taher, triggering a 4.1-magnitude tremor.

Israeli media outlets quoted unnamed military officials as saying that Hezbollah fighters, who were holed up inside the tunnels, chose to resist the Israeli forces, though they were given the option to surrender.

The massive operation in the Ali al-Taher ridge came one week after the Israeli forces declared that they had seized the highland.

What makes the Ali Al-Taher ridge a strategic target?

Besides serving as a nerve center for Hezbollah’s Bader Unit, Ali al-Taher provides a commanding vantage point over the city of Nabatieh and the Iqlim al-Tuffah region, which represent primary operational, logistical, and command centers of the Lebanese resistance group.

Furthermore, the highland, which rises about 600 meters above sea level, overlooks vital transportation routes and areas around the Litani river, and those connecting the coast to the Bekaa Valley.

Iran accused the US and its European allies of misusing the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) for their own narrow geopolitical objectives, eroding its credibility and paving the way for the ultimate collapse of the international non-proliferation regime.

The Islamic Republic’s response on Wednesday, September 9, followed the adoption of a resolution by the IAEA Board of Governors, which accused it of non-compliance with its safeguard regulations and referred Iran to the UN Security Council for further action.

The resolution, drafted jointly by the US, the UK, France, and Germany was adopted. A majority of 23 countries voted in favor and eight others abstained. China, Russia, and Niger voted against the resolution.

Thanks to the resolution, for which the US and its European allies lobbied aggressively, forcing several countries to vote in favor, Iran has been referred to the UNSC for the first time in over 20 years.

The resolution asks Iran to immediately start complying with IAEA regulations and resume inspections of its nuclear facilities, with the IAEA chief Rafael Grossi expressing concerns about lack of clarity about the fate of Iran’s enriched uranium and the conditions of its nuclear facilities since the beginning of the war.

Iran has denied any violation of the IAEA safeguards, pointing out that regular inspections of its nuclear facilities were suspended after the IAEA withdrew its inspectors due to safety concerns during the 12 days of US-Israeli bombings in June 2025.

Read more: How the US & Israel used Rafael Grossi to hijack the IAEA and start a war on Iran

Iran has also claimed that the IAEA demands for the immediate resumption of inspections to its nuclear sites and expecting the implementation of normal safeguards amidst the ongoing war is “materially impractical” and “irrational.”

It also accused the IAEA of failing to do its work properly and exposing without any need “highly confidential information regarding the nature and whereabouts of Iran’s nuclear stockpiles” without prior consent, Press TV reported.

Political resolution 

Iran accused that the resolution is politically motivated and biased. It further described it as yet another attempt by the US and Israel to force Iran’s “surrender” after failing to achieve anything through military means in the last year.

It questioned the US authority to sponsor such a resolution when it has repeatedly used force against Iran, in complete violation of previous IAEA resolutions calling for “diplomatic solutions” to its nuclear issue.

“Not only did they ignore all efforts for a diplomatic solution, but they also bombed peaceful, safeguarded nuclear sites, violated basic principles of international law, and the UN Charter, brutally committed war crimes, and killed thousands of civilians, including 168 children at a primary school and guests at a wedding,” Iran’s mission in Vienna said in a statement on Wednesday.

“They attack Iran’s nuclear facilities under the IAEA safeguards, disrupt the normal verification process, and then use that very disruption as a pretext for adopting a resolution” against Iran, Kazem Gharibabadi, Iran’s deputy foreign minister said in a post on X on Wednesday. 

Gharibabadi also dismissed any possibility of further action on the resolution in the UNSC as two permanent members, Russia and China, have opposed its adoption.

A joint statement issued by Russia and China after the vote on the resolution in the IAEA BOG called the resolution “irrelevant” and a pressure tactic designed to undermine the cooperation between Iran and the IAEA.

Underlining the absence of a reference to the ongoing US aggression against Iran, Russia and China maintained that it amounts to ignoring the “root cause and principle factor underlying the current situation.”

On Saturday, September 5, US Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee visited Turmus Ayya village northeast of the West Bank central governorate of Ramallah and Al-Bireh.

The purpose of the visit was apparently to meet the residents of Turmus Ayya, the majority of whom hold US citizenship, and hear about the spike in Israeli settler violence against them in recent years that resulted in deaths and damages to their properties.

Read more: Family of Palestinian-American man killed by settlers in West Bank demands US take action

A symbolic and contradictory visit

While the unusual visit was seen by some as an important diplomatic engagement, commentators and analysts slammed the move as “largely symbolic,” doubting its ability to put an end to these ongoing crimes against Palestinian-Americans in the West Bank.

Critics also highlighted a contradiction in Huckabee’s rhetoric, pointing out that his condemnation of violent settler attacks as “criminal acts” and “terror” clashes sharply with his long-standing, unwavering support for the settlement movement.

“I hope you recognize that I’ve been very clear in public statements saying that when someone takes over another person’s home, if there are squatters that come in and put up their own flags and take possession of something that does not belong to them; if they burn a car, if they torch a mosque, if they go into someone’s home and vandalize it, paint graffiti on the walls, that’s a criminal act,” Huckabee stated at his town hall meeting with the residents of Turmus Ayyah in the presence of reporters. 

“But it extends beyond a criminal act. It’s an act of terror. I’ve been criticized a little bit for calling that terror, but terror is when a person is forced to change his or her behavior because of the behavior of someone else who is trying to use intimidation to make them afraid to live in their own homes, to make their children afraid to play in their own yards, to be able to walk their own streets,” he continued.

During the meeting, the US Ambassador admitted the Trump administration’s inability to stop settler attacks or even investigate them.

“There are things the American Embassy cannot do. We cannot investigate criminal activity, because we don’t have that authority in another country. We cannot adjudicate criminal activity in another country because we don’t have the authority to do that,” Huckabee noted. 

Huckabee was censured for downplaying the scale of settler violence by describing the perpetrators as “a very tiny minority,” “a tiny little group of marauders,” and “a few hundred people.” Critics suggest that this perspective diminishes the gravity of the situation, especially as reports indicate that over 4,500 settler attacks have been carried out in the West Bank since the beginning of 2026.

Moreover, the US diplomat drew heavy criticism for using the biblical terms “Judea and Samaria” to refer to the occupied West Bank, during his discussions with Palestinians in Turmus Ayya.

This in turn pushed Sky News correspondent Adam Parsons to challenge him on the use of these terms.

“You’ve called it Judea and Samaria, that’s not what the rest of the World calls it, it’s not what Palestinians call it, and you’ve said that there is a small number of settlers across the West Bank. People here say that your words are empowering violent settlers who live over there to intimidate and to commit acts of violence on a daily basis. Do you take personal responsibility?”  Parsons asked.

Huckabee answered, saying:

“I strongly disagree with your conclusion that I am endangering people. I am here today to listen to people who have their legitimate grievances. The reason I use the terms Judea and Samaria is because they’re ancient biblical terms of this land. 80% of the bible happened in the area of Judea and Samaria. The West Bank is a nebulous term to me.”

For many, Huckabee’s justification has not absolved him from the responsibility. It rather lays bare his pro-Israel stance, deeply anchored in his evangelical Christian faith and Christian-Zionist convictions.

It is worth noting that even during Huckabee’s visit to Turmus Ayya, two Israeli settlers drove directly past the home hosting the visiting delegation. While this provided a striking example of the routine intimidation the village faces, it was also widely interpreted as an act of direct defiance of the US delegation.

The Ansar Allah-led Yemeni Armed Forces seized the strategic Red Sea port city of Mokha on Yemen’s western coast on Thursday, September 10, pushing back Saudi-backed forces.

The development came one week after clashes over territorial dominance between the two sides escalated on September 3 and continued on the subsequent days.

Ansar Allah’s control of Mokha seaport represents a critical military and economic development, because of its close proximity to Bab al-Mandeb strait and due to serving as a key coastal staging ground along the Red Sea coast.

Because the Bab el-Mandeb Strait handles roughly 12% of global trade and vital energy supplies, the development would reshape regional and global geopolitics, particularly with maritime traffic in the Strait of Hormuz already restrained by the US-Iran war.

Read more: Iran warns South Korea against joining US military actions in Strait of Hormuz

Navigation in the Red Sea is safe for all except for Saudi ships, says Ansar Allah

Head of Yemen’s national delegation Mohammad Abdulsalam affirmed in a post he wrote on X that the freedom of navigation and international trade movement in the Red Sea and Bab al-Mandab “is safe and orderly”, reassuring that “there is no cause for any international concern regarding it, for it faces no danger from Yemen’s side.”

Meanwhile, Yemen’s Humanitarian Operations Coordination Center (HOCC) announced on Thursday that navigation in the Red Sea is safe for all global shipping companies, except for  Saudi ships, which are still subjected to the previous ban. 

Ansar Allah liberates all its prisoners from Saudi jail on Yemen’s western coast 

The head of Ansar Allah’s National Committee for Prisoners’ Affairs Abdul Qader Murtadha confirmed on Thursday that the movement succeeded in liberating all its prisoners from the detention facilities of the Saudi-backed forces on Yemen’s western coast.

Iran “targeted two US vessels and eight oil tankers in the Strait of Hormuz, inflicting heavy damages to them,” the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) said in a statement issued on Wednesday, September 9.

The IRGC claimed the attacks were carried out in retaliation to US attacks on five of its oil tankers in the Persian Gulf hours before.

On Tuesday, the US Central Command had claimed that it destroyed five Iranian oil tankers after Iran “targeted a US Navy warship with ballistic missiles twice over the past two days.” It also claimed that the Iranian attacks had failed to cause any harm to the warship or US personnel.

The IRGC claimed that 10 ships trying to cross the Strait of Hormuz through the “unauthorized” US-sponsored route near Oman were also attacked for violating its restrictions on navigation through the region.

“The Strait of Hormuz remains firmly under the surveillance and management of the capable and valiant IRGC navy,” the statement underlined, refuting the claims made by President Donald Trump earlier about the US Navy having full control over the crucial waterway that has been at the core of the latest rounds of the war.

Iran also carried out “large-scale” missile attacks on the US military base at Al-Azraq in Jordan on Tuesday night, targeting maintenance and deployment centers of F-35s, F-16s, and other fighter jets.

The Iranian Navy announced on Tuesday that it captured an advanced unmanned US Navy submersible or submarine at the entrance of the Strait of Hormuz.

The latest round of escalation in the six-month-long war on Iran is attributed to the failure of the US to force Iran to lift its blockade on the Strait of Hormuz. In violation of the terms of the peace deal signed in June, the US first bombed Iran various times and then shifted to economic warfare late last month. This is the second round of military escalation, which began earlier this month.

Read more: US resumes airstrikes on Iran after month-long pause

On Tuesday, both sides warned against further attacks, with US Secretary of State Marco Rubio threatening that Iran will lose more oil tankers if it continues its attacks on US naval ships in the region.

Chief of Staff of Iran’s armed forces Ali Abdollahi replied with his own set of threats, claiming if the US strikes Iranian oil tankers it will face retaliation against most of its military bases in the region.

US imposes fresh unilateral sanctions

On Tuesday, the US Department of the Treasury imposed fresh sanctions on Iran’s aviation sector as part of the so-called “operation economic outcast,” which is an attempt to economically isolate the country.

It targeted over two dozen airlines, both private and commercial, including Mahan Air Cargo Services, for their alleged role in the “regime’s destabilizing activities, in procurement and transfer of weapons and ferrying the personnel.”

The sanctions aim to stop the supply of new aircrafts and spare parts for the existing ones, as well as halting the support of general sales agents to the identified entities by “any foreign firm and individual,” threatening them “with serious consequences” for any violations. 

Last month, the US announced that it was launching an operation to economically isolate Iran, asking all the countries in the world to sever any kind of existing economic or trade relation with it, threatening them with US sanctions otherwise.

Most of the countries have not actively responded to Washington’s demand, except the UAE, which decided to suspend all its economic ties with Iran after US Secretary of Treasury Scott Bessent announced the policy.

The economic isolation was announced as a superior strategy for dealing with Iran after months of military actions failed to force Iran to lift its blockade on the Strait of Hormuz.

UK joins the US economic war against Iran

The UK, a close US ally, announced its own fresh economic measures against Iran on Tuesday. The “sanctions” targeted UK supplies to crucial economic sectors in Iran, such as energy, mining, software, shipping, insurance, and banking, among others.

Iran sharply reacted to the UK’s unilateral move, calling it illegal and contrary to the shared interests of the two nations. It warned that “London’s alignment with the US policy of economic terrorism would further heighten the wall of mistrust between the two nations,” IRNA reported.

Reacting to the new set of sanctions against his country, Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi questioned its “novelty,” claiming it was a sign of the Trump administration’s failures to achieve any of its goals in Iran. 

“After 47 years of sanctions, the US went to war with Iran on behalf of Israel. The fallout has been disastrous for America, including its standing worldwide. After failing to achieve its aims through sanctions or war, Washington’s “novel” solution is…more sanctions. Seriously?” Araghchi wrote in his post on X on Tuesday.

Read more: Iran reverses the asymmetry

For much of the 20th century, the US represented not just a place on the map. It was also a point in time. When Western Europeans looked at images of America after the second world war—depictions of Hollywood’s glamour, American cars and newfangled labour-saving devices—they thought they were looking into the future.

The American Dream had an especially irresistible draw for Eastern Europeans behind the Iron Curtain, and for tens of millions of Chinese during the opening and reform era that began after Mao Zedong’s death in 1976. China’s great economic reinvention was inspired, in part, by Deng Xiaoping’s awe at American modernity, which he witnessed firsthand during an official visit in 1979.

But fast-forward to 2026, and the positions have been reversed. For most people in most countries, the future can now be seen in China. Just as Hollywood once showed the world what modern life looked like, China is showing African, Latin American and even American young people what an economy built on green energy, mobile payments and other services, and advanced robotics looks like. For Cobus van Staden of the China-Global South Project, the West is “increasingly being framed as backward-looking [and] associated with the past”, a phenomenon presumably accelerated by Trumpism, with its rejection of renewable energy, diversity and its social conservatism.

In the global south, young people aren’t just imitating Chinese practices like drinking hot water or trying out tai chi. They are watching as China reshapes their daily experiences

In many parts of the West, disillusionment has given rise to Chinamaxxing on social media, with American and European influencers performatively embracing Chinese mannerisms and aesthetics. And in the global south, young people aren’t just imitating Chinese practices like drinking hot water or trying out tai chi. They are watching as China reshapes their daily experiences.

This signals a genuine historical rupture. For generations, most countries defined themselves in relation to the West. Some sought (or were convinced) to emulate Western development models like the Washington Consensus, and many were keen to acquire Western technology and aid, or simply to get the West’s approval. Other countries did push back against the West’s influence and attack Western hypocrisy, but their counter-models were themselves defined by opposition to the West.

Either way, West-centrism was the prism through which geopolitics was conducted and interpreted. When countries in the Sahel invited Russia’s Wagner Group mercenaries to help them deal with insurgencies, it was seen as a reaction against France and its traditional role in the region. When Angola invited Sinopec to exploit its oil fields, it was seen as a snub to Portugal and Britain. And then there are the many challenges to US hegemony in the Middle East, Latin America and South-East Asia. Around the world, memories of bloody Western interventions or financial crises still linger.

Yet younger generations around the world are not even pro- or anti-Western so much as they are post-Western. For them, China, not the US, is at the centre of their conceptual universe and envisaged future.

What happened? One of the big differences between countries in the global south and the global north is their demographic profile. In the US and Europe, the median age is 40–50, compared to 19 in Nigeria, and 29 in South Africa, India and Lebanon. That means some 70% of Nigerians aren’t even old enough to have registered the 2003 US invasion of Iraq or the 2008 global financial crisis. As Cobus points out, young West Africans “never knew anything more than the US as we know it now”. The era of Donald Trump encompasses their entire political memory, and they presumably are not very impressed.

This shift in perceptions is not just an African story, of course. In Vietnam, which has long had a fraught relationship with China, young people are becoming less reflexively Sinophobic than their elders. Chelsea Nguyen, a researcher at the London School of Economics, credits the covid-19 pandemic for catalysing this change. The West’s perceived mishandling of the pandemic undermined its status as a model worthy of emulation. Many Vietnamese turned to exploring their own history and that of their Asian neighbours, including China. As in much of Africa, growing exposure to China’s rapid technological progress and Chinese consumer goods transformed the country’s global brand.

Meanwhile, Loubna El Amine, a China scholar at King’s College London, notes that in regions riven by instability—such as the Middle East, where the US itself is a big part of the problem— “a lot of the attraction of China is its absence rather than presence”. The latest Arab Opinion Index bears this out, showing that 77% of respondents view US policies as a threat to the region’s security and stability, compared with just 25% for China—and that was well before Trump launched his catastrophic war against Iran. And, of course, China carries none of the colonial baggage that complicates European interventions (or even peacebuilding efforts) in the region.

Still, China has been known to be aggressive in pursuing its economic agenda in the developing world, whether through predatory loans, acquiring critical national infrastructure or deliberately exporting its domestic overcapacity. Such behaviour ruffles feathers as much in Thailand, Mexico and Nigeria as it does in the US and Europe. Moreover, young people’s widespread distrust of their governments can easily bleed into unhappiness with China when political leaders are seen to be giving it undue privileges.

Since the pivot to China as an exemplar of modernity is in many ways pragmatic and non-ideological, its hold on the popular imagination is still tenuous. Lots of leaders in the West want to compete with China for “soft power”. But the key is not to counter Chinese “propaganda” or improve Western PR. The winners in the battle for hearts and minds will be those who offer real solutions to people’s problems and create more opportunities for prosperity than are currently available.

This article was first published by Project Syndicate on August 18th 2026

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