By Kyle Anzalone | The Libertarian Institute | September 29, 2026

The Department of War announced a nearly $21 billion, five-year contract to produce Advanced Medium-Range Air-to-Air Missiles (AMRAAM). While AIM-120 missiles are designed for warplanes in air-to-air combat, they can also be used as ground-launched missile interceptors.

The Pentagon announced the contract on Monday. “We are working across the defense industry to ramp production and build the Arsenal of Freedom,” said Under Secretary of War for Acquisition and Sustainment Michael P. Duffey. “This award strengthens our ability to equip the Joint Force and our allies with a proven air-to-air capability, ensuring our warfighters maintain a decisive advantage.”

Raytheon, or RTX, is the primary beneficiary of the contract. The deal was issued as an undefinitized contract action, meaning details of the cost and number of missiles could change. Under the contract, Raytheon will produce up to 1,900 AMRAAM missiles annually.

The AMRAAM, or AIM-120, missiles are designed to be fired from America’s fleet of fighter jets. There are multiple variants of the AIM-120 missile, and the Pentagon announcement did not disclose how many of each variant Raytheon has been contracted to produce.

While the AIM-120 is primarily an air-to-air missile, it can also be fired from the National Advanced Surface-to-Air Missile System (NASAMS), a ground-based air defense system. The AMRAAM-ER is an extended-range variant designed specifically for ground-based air defense.

Ukraine has relied heavily on the NASAMS system for air defenses. In April, the Center for Strategic and International Studies estimated the US has between 4,000 and 4,500 AIM-120 missiles in its stockpile. It noted that the US could use the AIM-120s as a cheaper option to down Iranian drones compared to Patriot or Standard Missiles. However, the AIM-120s still cost $1 million each.

Three of the four Afghans who left their country to compete last week in the Chess Olympiad in Samarkand, Uzbekistan, were detained at the border on Monday when they returned to Afghanistan, where chess is banned by the Taliban government. The players are under house arrest in Kabul and face penalties that could include corporal punishment. The fourth player has been able to return home without reprisals.

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The Cradle | September 29, 2026

Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) released a letter on 29 September addressing the US population – urging it to “force” Washington to “distance” itself from Israel, and expressing a readiness for “coexistence and peace,” while also vowing to continue fighting for Iran’s rights.

“Our purpose in sending a letter to the US people goes beyond media propaganda and creating familiarity with Iran’s reasoning. This is not a short-term or purely promotional move … Choosing a ‘letter’ as a tool to convey our message directly and clearly was a method selected based on the realities on the ground,” said IRGC spokesman Hossein Mohebbi.

“The countries neighboring or located near the US, whether along its land or maritime borders, do not possess the military and security capabilities to pose a serious threat to the US,” he added following the letter’s release, urging US citizens to question Washington’s military expansionism and the presence of hundreds of its military bases across the globe.

Mohebbi went on to ask, “What is the purpose of deploying 800 US military bases around the world?”

The letter itself poses several questions to the US people, while urging them to “see through” the official claims made by Washington.

This included US, as well as Israeli, claims regarding the Iranian nuclear program.

“For 25 years … the [US] claimed that Iran is only … months or weeks away from building a nuclear bomb … If this were true, why has Iran not yet gone through with its plan to build a bomb? If Iran was only a little while away from making the bomb 25 years ago, when it was far less technologically advanced … then it should possess dozens of nuclear bombs today.”

It also pointed to US intelligence reports acknowledging that Tehran is not looking to weaponize its program.

Additionally, it slams US official claims and declares to the US people that Washington’s bases were “decimated” throughout the war.

This has been confirmed through satellite imagery and western media, not just Iranian outlets.

Tehran, through the letter, also repeated its longstanding declarations to the people of the US that Iran is opposed to their government and not them themselves.

“The people who burn the American flag are not hostile to the American people; it is the oppression and aggression of the American government that they are denouncing,” the letter reads.

“We can live together in peaceful coexistence. Remove from power the evil, deceitful, and violent politicians who are responsible for America’s current state. Entrust your affairs to the wise, not the wily. Make sure your politicians understand that the world has changed,” it adds.

The letter also urges the US people to “distance itself from Israel, as the occupiers of Palestine will, sooner or later, have to leave the land they occupy and return to their countries of origin.”

The letter stresses that Tehran will “continue fighting” despite “all the hardships that our enemies impose on us.”

It comes as reports indicate Washington is planning to renew bombing against Iran. Tehran has vowed much wider retaliation than before in the event of such actions.

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Once, as a young adult in the city, I was walking home after a long day of work. The main street leading to my place wasn’t well lit, with dark stretches between streetlamps. There was a huddle of men under one, some standing around, some lounging against the post. They moved in the orange light, turning as one to face me. Something shifted in the air. 

An earlier version of me would have been slower to respond, given them the benefit of the doubt. But after a recent knife-point mugging, I had begun to develop a sort of second skin—a keen, physical sense of danger. I slipped back into the shadows and ran in and out of alleyways. I doubled back, cut across fences, and scaled half walls. I made no sound at all; I made it home. I had made a spiraling maze in real time. They could not find me.

In his essay “From the Tree to the Labyrinth,” Umberto Eco, a lover of labyrinths, explores how we “create and organize knowledge.” Moving away from the restrictive “tree” model, Eco approaches the “labyrinth” model, listing three kinds—a unicursal labyrinth, with only one path to the center and back; a multicursal maze, with many paths, all but one leading to dead ends; and an infinite network of interlinked points, which he calls by the borrowed term “rhizome.”

There are many labyrinths and mazes woven into my memory—verbal, textual, graphical, physical, metaphorical. Tamil kolams, for instance: My mother draws small, perfect threshold patterns at home, and immense, geometrically flawless labyrinths and mazes for events—no outlines, no tools, just her seeing eye and moving hand. When the sky is still dark, she dips folded muslin in wet, ground rice and draws liquid lines on the clean floor. She must draw each bit before the white dries on her hand, which it does almost instantly. Nothing can be erased or redrawn. She must keep moving until the whole kolam is done—the body walking the labyrinth even as it summons it out of nothing, the labyrinth making the world even as it is devoured by little black ants.

Eco’s rhizome model, to its credit, says we may never know everything, but we can keep going. Jorge Luis Borges certainly did, over and over like a modern-day Scheherazade. He wrote The Garden of Forking Paths, The Library of Babel, Funes the Memorious, The House of Asterion, and more, for those of us that love our awful infinities rendered in chewy, fictional ways. 

It’s been so long since the mugging and the maze. Those events (and others like them) ingrained hard habits into me. Unless I’m absolutely certain about the safety of the time and the place, I don’t listen to music as I walk. I wear barefoot shoes. I wear my bag cross-body, coax my hands out of my pockets. I note the exits and sit like a mob boss, the door never to my back. But I myself am softer, and I understand the ways of wayfinding a little better now.

Be Amazed (James McConnachie, Aeon, October 2017)

Abhimanyu, warrior prince, has broken into the Cakravyūha, the battle formation of the colossal whirling disc. While still in his mother’s womb, he had overheard his father, the great warrior Arjuna, discuss war strategy with his uncle Kṛṣṇa, and filed the knowledge away in his preternaturally precocious mind. Now the Kurukṣetra War is upon them, and 16-year-old Abhimanyu has found his way to the center of the moving labyrinth. He is a trained warrior, no doubt, but he is alone, fighting seasoned Kaurava generals on all fronts. They have trapped him away from his fellow Pāṇḍavas. They have sunk his chariot, killed his horses, and broken his sword and bow. Abhimanyu raises a chariot wheel above his head. He doesn’t know how to come out. He never heard the end of the conversation.

This heartbreaking story from the Sanskrit epic The Mahābhārata was likely my own mythical introduction to the labyrinth. McConnachie, too, starts with a myth—a Greek mythopoeic myth—but first he runs a little labyrinth on the morning of his own wedding. His essay for Aeon moves lucidly through history, architecture, religion, folklore, games, psychoanalysis, New Age rituals, and more. 

P.S.: Don’t worry about Ariadne; she gets to chill with Dionysus. Theseus’s dad, not so great.

Instinctively, we sense that mazes and labyrinths are essentially metaphorical—even if it is not always clear what they represent—which explains why it’s so common to seek the meaning of the maze in myth. According to the ancient Greek story, as retold by the Roman writers Plutarch and Ovid, Minos of Crete demanded a tribute from the city of Athens in the form of seven young men and seven women. They would be imprisoned inside the Labyrinth created by Minos’ brilliant architect Daedalus, and there sacrificed to the Minotaur, a monstrous creature born of the unnatural union between Minos’ wife and a white bull.

The brave and ambitious Theseus gets himself chosen among the Athenians and, on arrival in Crete, seduces Minos’ daughter, Ariadne. She secretly arms him and slips him a “clew” of thread. (This is the old word for a ball or skein of yarn and is, fascinatingly, the origin of the English word “clue.”) Theseus kills the Minotaur, escapes the Labyrinth, runs off with Ariadne, and should return home happily—except that he abandons Ariadne on the island of Naxos and then, upon homecoming, forgets to change the color of the sails on his ship as he promised his father he would do if he survived. On seeing the black canvas, the old man drowns himself in the sea.

How the World’s Foremost Maze-maker Leads People Astray (Nicola Twilley, The New Yorker, November 2021)

Adrian Fisher has over 700 mazes across 42 countries to his name, “including one on a skyscraper in Dubai and another that’s now reproduced on Britain’s five-pound note.” He’s also likely the only person to make a successful business out of mazemaking. Twilley profiles Fisher comprehensively, and not a little warily.

Starting with the design of the medieval Christian labyrinth, the most famous of which is in the Chartres Cathedral, France, Fisher slowly included other complex features. “Fisher realized that if he wanted to make mazes he first had to make people want mazes,” Twilley writes. According to Oskar van Deventer, an engineer and creator of renowned mechanical puzzles, he’s the “world’s best maze psychologist,” using what he knows about how people behave “against the unsuspecting solver and even against the suspecting solver.”

In 1980, Fisher was twenty-eight years-old and working for I.T.T., a multinational manufacturing company, where he was responsible for productivity enhancement. He was increasingly drawn to the idea of designing mazes; he’d even formed a company, Minotaur Designs, with a wealthy labyrinthologist and former diplomat, Randoll Coate. But public commissions proved elusive. “At first, I thought it was impossible,” Fisher said. “How do you start? How do you do it?”

Runcie’s dream gave him an idea: Fisher wrote to the letters page of the London Times, briefly outlining the maze’s long history as a Christian symbol and noting that, as in the Archbishop’s dream, a maze’s goal is typically reached not by “pressing toward the center” but, rather, by “returning almost to the edge,” in order to find the proper path. In his signature, Fisher styled himself a “Maze Consultant,” and, before long, this stealth marketing had reeled in a customer, and Minotaur’s first public commission. 

How Brainless Slime Molds Redefine Intelligence (Ferris Jabr, Nature/Scientific American, November 2012)

What can live without a brain or a nervous system, eat better than you, navigate mazes, and win scientists not one, but two Ig Nobel Prizes? The answer is a single-celled organism called the slime mold, also affectionately known as the blob. 

In the 2000s, Toshiyuki Nakagaki, a scientist at Hokkaido University, scattered bits of a single Physarum polycephalum in a maze, a few dots in a petri dish. The bits grew enough to find each other, and then grew some more to fill the maze. The mold then retracted itself from the dead ends, restricting itself to the most rewarding path—and this was the least it could do. Using its ability to grow up to a meter; its ability to analyze, solve problems, and optimize in real time; and its own slime as “externalized spatial memory,” it “effectively re-created Tokyo’s railway network in miniature as well as the highways of Canada, the U.K., and Spain.”

Catch a glimpse of this incredibly cool mold in action in this WIRED video: Mycologist Explains How a Slime Mold Can Solve Mazes. Looks like Nakagaki will have the last laugh, after all. And if you’ve ever wondered how other animals are so much better at this stuff than us, read Kathryn Schulz’s essay for The New Yorker, “Why Animals Don’t Get Lost.”

Gardeners sometimes encounter them in their backyards—spongy yellow masses squatting in the dirt or slowly swallowing wood chips. Hikers often spot them clinging to the sides of rotting logs like spilled bowls of extra cheesy macaroni. In Mexico some people reportedly scrape their tender bodies from trees and rocks and scramble them like eggs. They are slime molds: gelatinous amoebae that have little to do with the kinds of fungal mold that ruin sourdough and pumpernickel. Biologists currently classify slime molds as protists, a taxonomic group reserved for “everything we don’t really understand,” says Chris Reid of the University of Sydney.

Something scientists have come to understand is that slime molds are much smarter than they look. One species in particular, the SpongeBob SquarePants-yellow Physarum polycephalum, can solve mazes, mimic the layout of man-made transportation networks and choose the healthiest food from a diverse menu—and all this without a brain or nervous system. “Slime molds are redefining what you need to have to qualify as intelligent,” Reid says.

Haunted Mazes (Joe Milutis, Cabinet, Winter 2007-8)

I had some trouble choosing a quote from this retro maze of an essay. Every passage seemed appealingly contrarian, sometimes even to the essay’s own points, every idea poised for intertextual sparring with the other pieces in this reading list (something I secretly enjoy). 

Yes, it is gleefully haunted by its own ideas going back and forth and switching back upon themselves, and yes, it will make you question a few axiomatic notions about labyrinths and mazes. But maybe because times have changed, maybe because no one seems to be saying labyrinths are better than mazes or vice versa any longer, some of the arguments may seem a little heavy-handed. 

But some, like this one seemingly drawing from Freud/Jung psychological arcana, still sparkle: “The maze is the labyrinth’s uncanny.”

It seems to me that hidden behind contemporary etymological distinctions is an attempt to tame multicursality, by way of denigrating multicursal mazes as merely “childish” versions of more sober, unicursal ones. Multicursality challenges meditative clarity with multiple versions, no clear centers, and a sense of ambivalence and confusion. These complications, however, are the point of the labyrinth. Even if we grant that labyrinth merely designates the one-path New Age labyrinth recycled from the medieval era, the object is still haunted by a misrecognition. For even the medievals retained a sense of the unicursal labyrinth’s ambages—the equivocation at the heart of its windings, which the New Age version does not readily admit. Additionally, the labyrinth that is the legacy of the medieval period is enmeshed in a circuit of analogies to such a degree that it is impossible to map out all its symbolic equivalences and their implications without ending up in the muck of indistinction. This tendency of the labyrinth to connote so much is part of what makes it an antithesis to sureness, rationality, and clarity. Its structure is mystically congruent with the idea of a dark or enchanted forest; it is also a stand-in for earthly conundrum, brain fold, uterine canal, spiritual struggle, or psychosexual journey. Its center: Mary, the alchemical rose, Jerusalem, princess, Minotaur, inner-self, lotus blossom. And of course there are the various rewards that the multicursal maze holds out for its young adepts (pots of gold, pies and cakes, utopian wonderlands of bunnies and lollipops). Labyrinthine confusion is not merely an issue of its tortuous corridors, its solution not merely the cheese in the corner. Labyrinth enfolds into labyrinth across times, cultures, and myths.

“Backrooms” Gets Lost in Its Own Labyrinth (Adam Nayman, The Ringer, May 2026)

It’s the yellow that first holds you down, like the yellow fog in T. S. Eliot’s The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, like the yellow wallpaper in Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s story of the same name. There’s something about this sickly yellow, but there’s more.

Backrooms is young YouTuber Kane Parsons’s widely acclaimed horror debut. Failed architect Clark manages a strip-mall furniture store called Cap’n Clark’s Ottoman Empire. During his insomniac wanderings, he stumbles upon a doorway in the store’s basement—the entry to the mysterious Backrooms. (The trailer is a relatively safe place to start before you attempt full liminal dread.) 

Nayman’s critical voice stands a little apart from what seems to be near-universal approbation for the film, which he says “exists in its own liminal space between ambitious experiment and fascinating failure.” But he sounds, I must say, somewhat like a parent speaking of his gifted kid—one who could go very far if only he applied himself a little more. What if the kid knows something that others don’t?

[O]ne of the lurking, not so elusive themes of Backrooms—a movie that doesn’t lack for entry points—is the postmodern terror of reiteration without end, the unsettling and melancholy notion of reality as a series of adjoining, subterranean echo chambers, each a slightly altered copy of the last. “Six hundred million square miles of randomly segmented back rooms,” read the original, anonymous, and extremely viral 4chan post that ended up being used as a blueprint by hordes of online architects eager to build their own additions onto a freestanding urban legend; the sprawling, relentlessly subdivisional logic of this online lore, and the fact that anyone could contribute to it at any time, turned the expanse of the Backrooms into a pretty nifty allegory for itself. 

Parsons was 16—and going by the online handle Kane Pixels—when he made his first Backrooms short in 2022: a found-footage-style clip created in Blender and After Effects. His innovation was to place the preexisting images into a paranoid narrative framework about a research facility offering egress to another dimension; the first clip centered on an amateur filmmaker who gets lost in the Async complex and chased by an unseen creature. 

The Far North of Experience (Rebecca Solnit, Guernica, June 2013)

Solnit describes one summer she spent on an Icelandic peninsula, “in the company of strangers and birds.” 

“Creation is always in the dark because you can only do the work of making by not quite knowing what you’re doing, by walking into darkness, not staying in the light. Ideas emerge from edges and shadows to arrive in the light, and though that’s where they may be seen by others, that’s not where they’re born,” she says, and goes to the last dark place she could find that summer—a labyrinth called the Path, lit by the faintest lavender-blue light.

Lyrical and more atmospheric than her engaged treatment of labyrinths in Wanderlust: A History of Walking, this essay shows us a gentle way of being we would do well to heed.

A labyrinth is an ancient device that compresses a journey into a small space, winds up a path like thread on a spool. It contains beginning, confusion, perseverance, arrival, and return. There at last the metaphysical journey of your life and your actual movements are one and the same. You may wander, may learn that in order to get to your destination you must turn away from it, become lost, spin about, and then only after the way has become overwhelming and absorbing, arrive, having gone the great journey without having gone far on the ground.

In this it is the opposite of a maze, which has not one convoluted way but many ways and often no center, so that wandering has no cease or at least no definitive conclusion. A maze is a conversation; a labyrinth is an incantation or perhaps a prayer. In a labyrinth you’re lost in that you don’t know the twists and turns, but if you follow them you get there; and then you reverse your course.

The end of the journey through the labyrinth is not at the center, as is commonly supposed, but back at the threshold again: the beginning is also the real end. That is the home to which you return from the pilgrimage, the adventure. The unpraised edges and margins matter too, because it’s not ultimately a journey of immersion but emergence.

Labyrinth (Amelia Gray, The New Yorker, February 2015)

Dale, reader of “Hellenic myth” and all-round good sport, has organized the Pumpkin Jamboree. It’s a way for the townspeople to have some weekend fun while raising money for the local fire department. Its highlight is always the corn maze. “Only it isn’t a maze this time,” Dale says, “It’s a labyrinth.” 

This unexpected turn of events thins the crowd, but it looks like Jim, his friend, might be willing to give it a go. “Now, you go on, Jim. This is my life’s effort distilled. Find out what it’s all about.”

It’s not easy to take a well-worn, spoiler-free myth known since Plutarch and make it sound fresh. Gray has done that here in her short story without a wasted word, and her Daedalus, cornfield architect, is just getting started.

Dale watched them leave, fingering a pumpkin’s thick stem and surely considering his hours of lost work. He starts his mazes a few months beforehand, cutting into the young corn when it’s tall but not yet sprouted, taking a pass first with the tractor and then with the riding mower to pull out the brace roots and tamp the corn down. He draws the maze plans on drafting paper and displays them afterward in his swept-out garage addition—he calls it the Hall of History—with other jamboree memorabilia: the gearshift from the original hayride truck, trotter prints from the winning pigs. We gather around to reminisce about which wrong turn we took and what was waiting for us on the other side.

Knowing what he must have put into it, I thought it was a shame to stand by and see everyone go. The sun was still low in the sky, and it was lonely at home, where the TV had been broken for a week, and the tap water had begun to taste oddly of blood. “I’ll go first,” I said. “I’ll do it.”

Kanya Kanchana is a writer from India.

Editor: Krista Stevens
Copyeditor: Carolyn Wells

At the UN last week, Ed Miliband shared details of a secret "damning" climate spy report. Ben Pile points out that a similar secret report appeared 22 years ago – and not one of its apocalyptic predictions came true.

The post Spies and Their Climate Lies appeared first on The Daily Sceptic.

Costa Rica’s Minister of Foreign Affairs, Manuel Tovar, was dismissed from his post last week by the country’s president Laura Fernández. Tovar was considered one of the “heavyweights” of the country’s dominant political faction, having previously served as Minister of Commerce under President Rodrigo Chávez.

The decision was made by Fernández on September 24, because, according to a statement, her foreign minister failed to inform her of an invitation to a meeting held in New York City aimed at strengthening the so-called Shield of the Americas.

Shield of the Americas is a political-military alliance led by Donald Trump that seeks to secure Washington’s geopolitical leadership in the region, and which right-wing and far-right Latin American governments have joined enthusiastically.

Right-wing President Fernández said that failing to report such an important meeting constituted an act of negligence on Tovar’s part. The Costa Rican president also said that Shield of the Americas is a “fundamental platform in the fight against drug trafficking and organized crime.”

The president did not travel to the United States to deliver her speech at the UN General Assembly because she was on an official visit to Colombia with her counterpart, the far-right Abelardo de la Espriella.

The Costa Rican presidency reported that the invitation – which was not extended to her – came from US Secretary of State Marco Rubio himself. Several heads of state from Shield of the Americas member states participated, including Javier Milei of Argentina, José Antonio Kast of Chile, Rodrigo Paz of Bolivia, Daniel Noboa of Ecuador, Irfaan Ali of Guyana, Nasry Asfura of Honduras, Santiago Peña of Paraguay, Luis Abinader of the Dominican Republic, and Keiko Fujimori of Peru, among others.

In this regard, Fernández publicly apologized to the US ambassador to the Central American country, Melinda Hildebrand: “I reiterate to your country my firm and resolute commitment to continue supporting the Shield of the Americas alliance… I regret my absence… The failure to forward that invitation from your government to me did not go unnoticed, and today the foreign minister of the Republic was dismissed,” which clearly demonstrates the enormous importance San José attaches to an invitation from Washington.

Tovar’s dismissal comes on the heels of a series of dismissals of key ministers in Fernández’s government, a development the opposition has used to highlight a certain instability in the very young administration.

“We are concerned about serious foreign policy mistakes that need to be corrected… Second, we are concerned about the stability of the cabinet: in less than five months, five senior officials – including ministers and deputy ministers – have already been dismissed. That instability is not in her best interest, nor in that of her government or Costa Rica,” said the leader of the National Liberation Party caucus.

For his part, the former foreign minister did not explain the reasons behind his decision not to inform Fernández about the invitation. In a post on X, he said briefly: “I thank Laura Fernández for the opportunity to serve the Costa Rican people from the Casa Amarilla, and I wish her every success as President of the Republic for the good of the country. Finally, I would like to commend the team at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs for the passion and dedication with which they undertake every mission on behalf of the country. To them, I offer my eternal gratitude. I accept this moment with great peace of mind. I will always stand by the just causes of the Costa Rican people and the international community.”

The reasons behind Tovar’s decision remain unknown, although several sectors of the opposition have raised suspicions about an alleged ulterior motive on Fernández’s part for not attending the Shield of the Americas meeting – which, if true, could reveal political and diplomatic contradictions deeper than they might appear at first glance.

Al Mayadeen | September 28, 2026

Iran has warned the United Nations that US President Donald Trump’s threats to “annihilate” the Islamic Republic constitute a grave development, particularly because the remarks were made from the podium of the UN General Assembly.

Gholamhossein Darzi, Iran’s ambassador and chargé d’affaires to the UN in New York, raised the issue in a September 27 letter addressed to UN Secretary-General António Guterres and the President of the Security Council, Jérôme Bonnafont.

Darzi’s letter came in response to Trump’s September 22 address to the 81st session of the UN General Assembly, during which the US president said he could “annihilate the Islamic Republic” if no agreement was reached with Tehran. The wording appears in the official UN transcript of Trump’s speech.

Iran says threats made at UN carry wider implications

Darzi said Trump’s remarks were neither isolated nor ambiguous, arguing that they form part of a continuing pattern of public threats against Iran by the president of a permanent member of the UN Security Council.

“These repulsive statements are not ambiguous remarks or isolated utterances. They are rather part of a sustained pattern of public threats against Iran by the head of a permanent member state of the Security Council,” Darzi wrote.

“This latest development is particularly grave and alarming because the United Nations General Assembly is not a venue for threats of annihilation,” he added.

The Iranian envoy stressed that the General Assembly serves as the UN’s principal universal forum and was established to promote international peace, cooperation, and relations among states.

In the letter, Darzi referred to several previous statements by Trump that he said demonstrated a broader pattern of threats against Iran.

He cited remarks on March 22 in which Trump threatened to “hit and obliterate” Iranian power plants, followed by statements on March 30 threatening destruction of Iran’s energy facilities and other vital infrastructure, including desalination facilities.

Iran calls for UN response to threats

Darzi argued that the issue extends beyond political rhetoric, saying an explicit threat against a sovereign UN member state raises questions concerning the UN Charter, international peace and security, and the prohibition on the threat or use of force.

He further linked the latest remarks to ongoing US-Israeli aggression against its sovereignty and territorial integrity since February 28, as well as attacks that targeted civilians and civilian infrastructure.

“The issue before the Organization is therefore not merely one of political rhetoric,” Darzi wrote, arguing that failure by the international community to respond could normalize threats against entire nations and undermine the authority of the UN Charter.

The UN has itself emphasized the need for restraint and adherence to international law during the current high-level week. In his September 22 opening address, Secretary-General António Guterres said the principle that force cannot determine whose lives and rights matter was under “profound strain” and called on world leaders to use the week for de-escalation and dialogue.

Iran reiterates right to self-defense

Darzi said Iran would continue to defend itself against any further aggression and reserved its “full and unimpeachable right to self-defense.”

He also said Tehran reserves the right to pursue legal avenues to seek accountability from states and individuals it holds responsible for losses and damage inflicted on the Iranian people.

“Regardless of whether these threats are merely delusional fantasies, they will, as in the past, never materialize or be put into action in the face of the resolute resistance and determined defense of the Iranian people and armed forces,” Darzi wrote.

The Iranian envoy requested that his letter be circulated as an official document of the UN Security Council.

On Sunday, NBC News reported that Marines were injured during an Iranian cruise missile attack while transiting the Strait of Hormuz on Sept. 14. The network’s sources said the Marines were not on a U.S. Navy ship, but they did not identify which vessel they were on. However, a former Royal Mail vessel that at one point was being converted into a floating armory stands out as a strong possibility.

While much remains unclear about the Sept. 14 incident, there was only one vessel known to have been struck that day, according to the United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations (UKMTO) and a maritime security official we spoke with. The ship was eventually identified by several maritime media outlets as the M/V St. Helena. Again, the St. Helena’s involvement remains unconfirmed, but the ship’s interesting background is of particular note.

“Eight U.S. Marines were injured two weeks ago when an Iranian cruise missile attacked the ship they were operating on in the Strait of Hormuz,” NBC reported, citing three U.S. officials. “The Marines were not seriously injured, but they sustained smoke inhalation and possibly traumatic brain injuries, as they had symptoms of concussions, such as headaches, the officials said.”

“The Marines, seven of them enlisted and one officer, all returned to duty soon after the Sept. 14 attack, the U.S. officials said,” according to the network. “The officials said the Marines were operating as part of a battalion landing team during the Iranian anti-ship cruise missile attack.”

TWZ cannot independently confirm that Marines were on board the St. Helena or that they were injured. We reached out to the Pentagon and U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) for more information. The Pentagon referred us to CENTCOM, and CENTCOM declined comment.

The incident took place amid an uneasy truce between Iran and the U.S. broken up by sporadic Iranian attacks on ships transiting the Strait of Hormuz. At the same time, the U.S. military is enforcing a blockade on Iranian ships, during which it has struck several for trying to bypass that effort as well as in retaliation for Iranian attacks on shipping. Negotiations between Washington and Iran have ebbed and flowed, and U.S. President Donald Trump is once again mulling a choice between continuing talks or renewing large-scale attacks.

As we noted earlier in this piece, after the vessel was struck, several maritime industry trade publications identified it as the St. Helena.

“Iran has attacked a historic former British Royal Mail passenger ship in the Strait of Hormuz,” TradeWinds News reported on Sept. 15, a day after the incident. “Maritime security sources identify the 6,800-gt St Helena (built 1989) as the latest vessel to be hit by an ‘unknown projectile’ in the war-torn waterway. The attack was reported late on Monday, according to UK Maritime Trade Operations, which cited a ‘verified source’ for the incident without identifying the vessel.”

“UKMTO has received a time late report of an incident within the Strait of Hormuz,” the organization reported on Sept. 15, citing an incident that took place a day earlier. “A verified source has reported that a vessel has been struck by an unknown projectile.”

“There is no reported damage or environmental impact,” UKMTO added. “Authorities are investigating.”

According to Lloyd’s List, the ship was being operated by the Ambrey maritime security firm at the time it was struck. Ambrey declined to comment. 

Shipping expert Sal Mercogliano and open-source investigator Tom Bike were among those suggesting the St. Helena could have been the vessel at the heart of the NBC report.

Exactly what the St. Helena was doing at the time it was struck is unclear; however, the ship has had a very unusual past.

The vessel entered into service in 1990 and “sailed between Cape Town, South Africa and Saint Helena and Ascension Islands, carrying both passengers and cargo, some of which was Royal Mail, earning her the rare RMS designation,” according to Cruise Arabia and Africa.

The St. Helena was Britain’s last working postal ship, according to Maritime Executive. After it was retired in 2018 because it was no longer needed for that function, things got really interesting.

Two different organizations took over the vessel, including, as we noted earlier in this story, a company that was planning to use it as a floating armory in the Middle East.

“Renamed MNG Tahiti, the 103-meter (340-foot) ship is being readied by her new owner MNG Maritime to become a floating armory working in the Gulf of Oman,” Maritime Executive wrote on April 22, 2018. “She will deliver security guards and weapons to vessels sailing through the region and is expected to be operational in her new role in the next few months.”

It is unclear what happened to that plan. However, two years later, an off-road racing series called Extreme E said that it “secured exclusive use of the former Royal Mail ship in 2018.” After that, the ship underwent “an extensive refurbishment process, which has included total overhaul of steelwork, engines, generators, propellers, interior and cabin space, and more, making it not only fit for purpose, but also as efficient as possible ahead of its new mission.” 

The ship was “specifically designed to transport all the infrastructure and equipment the Extreme E needs for their race weekends,” the organization stated. The plan was to have the ship serve “as its freight and logistics hub due to her versatility and ability to carry and unload a mixture of cargo, like all 10 of the championship’s ODYSSEY 21’s [electric off-road racecar], as well as team members and guests. This was also fit with a Science Laboratory so research can be conducted enroute to the race locations.”

Both the St. Helena and MNG Tahiti have the same international shipping identification number of IMO 8716306, according to the MarineTraffic website.

On Sept. 17, 2024, the St. Helena was put up for sale, according to Horizon Ship Brokers. The current ownership is unclear. We reached out to Horizon Ship Brokers for more details.

Last year, the saga of the St. Helena took a new turn. A company called Terra Nova Expeditions chartered the vessel for Antarctic cruises, but those plans were scrubbed last month because the vessel was stuck in the Persian Gulf and was no longer available for the Antarctic sailing season.

It was last tracked via its transponder near Dubai nearly two months ago, according to MarineTraffic.

While we can’t confirm that Marines were onboard when St. Helena was hit, Marines have been training for this exact mission set. USNI News reported in 2023 that a “force of 100 Marines, newly trained by Navy personnel,” stood ready “to respond, if ordered, to provide armed security aboard foreign commercial ships transiting the Strait of Hormuz.”

Those Marines were members of the 26th Marine Expeditionary Unit (MEU) embarked on the three-ship Bataan Amphibious Ready Group (ARG), USNI added at the time.

It is unclear if those plans are still in place and if Marines in the region have actually been ordered to provide armed security for foreign vessels sailing through or near the strait. Regardless, Marines could be quickly trained to take on this mission set and have drilled for ship boarding and searches for years, especially special operations and specially-tasked units. CENTCOM declined to comment when we asked if there are U.S. personnel embarking on commercial ships transiting the Strait of Hormuz.

At the same time, it is possible that the unique attributes of St. Helena made it a convenient host ship for sea base operations for U.S. forces in the region specifically for this crisis. Adapting commercial vessels for exactly this purpose has a long history around the Strait of Hormuz, as it was a central facet of the Tanker Wars during the 1980s, that saw U.S. forces operate from barges in the region. Today, commercial vessels remarkably similar to St. Helena operate in similar roles, especially in support of special operations and interdiction operations.

Once again, we have no idea what the ship’s mission was at the time of the incident and if Marines were simply helping it transit safely out of the Persian Gulf or something more, but the attack did expose the fact that individual Marines are more involved with activities in this tumultuous body of water than it may seem.

Contact the author: howard@twz.com.

The post Claims Swirl Around U.S. Marines Injured Aboard Mystery Vessel Attacked In The Strait Of Hormuz appeared first on TWZ.

Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI), the country’s main opposition party, announced a long march to the capital, Islamabad, on Sunday, October 4, as part of its ongoing nationwide movement to demand the release of its leader and former Prime Minister Imran Khan.

The march, which was originally scheduled to be held on Sunday, September 27, starting from Peshawar, was postponed on Friday after the party’s top leadership decided it needed more time to mobilize to face the state’s preparations to block it.

Thousands of people have been taking to the streets in different parts of the country demanding the immediate release of Khan, his wife Bushra Bibi, and other party leaders.

Khan’s party and supporters have also accused the Shehbaz Sharif-led coalition government in the country of deliberately ignoring Khan’s bad health condition and trying to “slowly kill him in prison” by keeping him in solitary confinement.

They have also alleged that Khan has been denied access to his family members and party colleagues in Rawalpindi’s Adiala Jail for almost six months now and demanded that he be transferred out of the jail to a private hospital.

State repression

Meanwhile, the security forces have fortified the capital, blocking all the ways leading to the capital with shipping containers and large deployments after the government called the protests illegal and threatened consequences for the PTI leadership.

Pakistan’s Interior Minister Mohsin Naqvi had earlier called the march a failure and “a drama” and warned that if the PTI does not abandon its plan to go to Islamabad the state will find a “permanent solution” to stop them.

The security forces had arrested a large number of PTI leaders and workers in order to derail the protests. The PTI last week said that even its elected members of the National Assembly were arrested.

Three of Khan’s sisters Aleema, Uzma, and Noreen Khan were also arrested by the Pakistani authorities last week and jailed for 30 days on charges of being an alleged “threat to public order.”

The PTI released a statement on Monday, September 28, claiming Khan’s sisters have not been allowed to meet their family members or lawyers at Kot Lakhpat Jail in Lahore. Calling the situation of their incarceration “alarming” and a violation of their fundamental rights.

The previous mobilization to Islamabad in November 2024 had also witnessed large-scale state repression leading to clashes between the security forces and the PTI workers. Over a dozen people, including four security officials, were killed in those clashes.

Three years of incarceration 

Khan, largely considered the most popular political leader in Pakistan’s politics today, was first arrested almost a year after he was ousted from his Prime Minister’s post in May 2023. He led the Pakistan government from August 2018 to April 2022.

The interim government that assumed power after his removal filed over a hundred cases against Khan, accusing him of the misuse of power, corruption, and violence against the security forces during the May 9, 2023 protests.

However, he was released after a court ruled his arrest was illegal only to be arrested again on August 5, this time after a district court sentenced him to three years in prison in the Toshakhana case, related to the state department that stores valuable gifts given to Pakistani officials by foreign dignitaries. Later his wife Bushra Bibi was also arrested.

Though a higher court later overturned his conviction, he and his wife have remained in Adiala Jail facing charges and even convictions in several other cases. 

Many leaders in Khan’s party, PTI, were either arrested or forced to denounce the party and politics in public altogether. 

Despite the fact that the PTI was blocked from contesting national elections in February 2024, it emerged as the largest opposition group in the country’s National Assembly after it decided to field its candidates as independents. 

PTI and Khan’s supporters maintain that the cases against Khan and his wife were politically motivated and fake.  

Ammar Ali Jan, leader of the Left wing Haqooq-e-Khalq Party (HKP) and a member of the Tehreek-i-Tahaffuz Ayeen-i-Pakistan (Movement to Save Pakistan’s Constitution or TTAP) formed as a broader alliance to fight for Khan’s release has condemned the continued incarceration of Khan and the repression of movements for his release. 

He also questioned the state’s narrative about the failure of the movement, pointing out how it has made every effort to oppress it, including the arrests and fortification of the capital.

Militants and supporters of President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva participated, this Sunday, September 27, in demonstrations as part of the national mobilization “Let’s go, Lula,” held a week before the first round of elections. In Rio de Janeiro, “CarnaLula 2026” spanned the length of Copacabana beach.

With a microphone, PT Senate candidate Benedita da Silva spoke about the importance of Carnival as an expression of popular culture and called on those present to also vote for a progressive bloc in the Rio de Janeiro Legislative Assembly and the Federal Chamber of Deputies. She reinforced the discourse that, in this election, not only democracy is at stake, but also national sovereignty. “We will not be anyone’s backyard,” she repeated Lula’s phrase.

Read more: Brazil’s presidential campaign heats up

In São Paulo, the event began with Carnival parades, circus performances, and bike rides on Paulista Avenue, where candidates gave speeches in defense of democracy. “Denialism will not prevail,” said Senate candidate Simone Tebet. Federal deputy Erika Hilton echoed Tebet, speaking about the importance of electing candidates who will steer Brazil away from fascism and who are in favor of the working class, as well as defending the end of the 6×1 work schedule. Also present at the event, actor Humberto Carrão told Brasil de Fato that he urged voters to decide the presidential election in the first round.

The capital of Minas Gerais, Belo Horizonte, was one of the cities with the largest number of activities in support of Lula’s re-election. Among them was a flag-waving demonstration in the city center, where hundreds of activists unfurled a banner that read “Lula of Brazil.” In a review of the event, Pedro Martins, a member of the Alvorada collective, one of the organizers of the action, spoke of the need to occupy the streets. “It was a spectacular event, with all the social movements gathered. This week was an important week, showing that we need to go to the streets, and only in this way can we turn the vote around and achieve victory,” he told Brasil de Fato.

In Florianópolis and Curitiba, supporters held a bike ride carrying flags in defense of Lula’s candidacy. In Brasília, the gathering was on the Eixão, a fast road that connects the Plano Piloto from north to south.

Lula’s campaign reported that the day’s events were organized in a decentralized manner, with more than 500 activities planned across the 27 state capitals and hundreds of municipalities. The program included walks, motorcades, leaflet distribution, and cultural performances.

First published by Brasil de Fato in Portuguese.

Al Mayadeen | September 28, 2026

Iraq’s Ambassador to Tehran, Yasser Abdul-Zahra al-Hajjaj, announced that Najaf International Airport will reopen to Iranian flights within 24 hours, according to the Iraqi News Agency.

Al-Hajjaj confirmed the airport will resume receiving flights from Iran within the stated timeframe.

The suspension of Iranian flights to and from Iraqi airports, particularly Najaf International Airport, had triggered a wave of condemnation from official, factional, and religious authorities in Iraq. They called for the decision to be reversed, rejecting US dictates.

Iran submits formal complaint to ICAO over US aviation restrictions

Meanwhile, Iran has submitted a formal complaint to the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) regarding US restrictions imposed on Iran’s aviation sector, the head of Iran’s Civil Aviation Organization, Abouzar Shiroudi, announced on Monday.

Shiroudi said the organization held consultations with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs before filing the complaint, as part of efforts aimed at restoring air routes. In remarks carried by the Iranian news agency IRNA, he said, “It is necessary to use diplomatic and legal potential to protect the rights of the country’s aviation sector.”

He added that “Iran’s Civil Aviation Organization, using all legal tools and in close coordination with the country’s diplomatic apparatus, prioritizes the follow-up of necessary measures to remove obstacles and resume all flights on routes that previously operated.”

The remarks follow US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent’s announcement on September 21 that Iranian airlines “will effectively be forced to cease operations as of September 23, due to secondary sanctions imposed on aviation service providers.”

By Maya Kareen | Press TV | September 28, 2026

Nearly 466 days ago, just seven days into the unprovoked and illegal US-backed Israeli military aggression against Iran, The Economist provocatively placed a torn Iranian flag on its cover and asked: “How will this end?”

The image was widely interpreted as a metaphor for the possible collapse or fragmentation of the Islamic Republic in the face of overwhelming military force.

At the time, the narrative surrounding Iran was dominated by predictions of its imminent defeat, the weakening of its leadership, and even the possible collapse of the Islamic Republic under the weight of an aggression that came amid Iran-US indirect nuclear talks.

The article went on to ask whether what it described as Israel’s first war against Iran “will also be the last,” or whether it would “lead to a series of Iran-Israel wars that mire” West Asia in years, if not decades, of further violence.

Written before the United States directly joined the war of aggression by illegally bombing Iran’s Fordow, Natanz, and Isfahan nuclear facilities on June 22, the article also suggested that Washington should move beyond “merely defending Israel and deterring Iran” and join the occupying regime in attacking Iran’s peaceful nuclear program.

Yet even then, The Economist warned that such a war could spiral into a broader regional war, sending energy prices soaring by targeting Saudi Arabia’s oil infrastructure or blocking the Strait of Hormuz, a vital artery for global energy supplies.

Iran, however, did not turn the war into a regional war at that stage, nor did it close the Strait of Hormuz. It retaliated decisively and inflicted massive damage on the Zionist regime.

Following a powerful wave of retaliatory strikes against Israeli-occupied territories, the Islamic Republic demonstrated that it retained the ability to impose high costs on its adversaries.

After 12 days of war, Israel and the United States ultimately agreed to a ceasefire. The confrontation and US hostility, however, were far from over.

On February 1, the martyred Leader of the Islamic Revolution, Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei, warned that any new war initiated by the United States against Iran would inevitably become a regional war, engulfing all countries across the region.

Less than a month later, on February 28, Washington and Tel Aviv launched a second round of military aggression against Iran, again in the middle of nuclear diplomacy.

On the very first day, the United States and Israel assassinated Iran’s Leader and several senior commanders, apparently calculating that “decapitating” the country’s leadership would pave the way for the rapid collapse of the Islamic Republic and the so-called “regime change.”

That calculation, however, once again proved wrong.

Iranian armed forces mounted a sustained and forceful response, launching wave after wave of retaliatory strikes against Israeli-occupied territories and US military bases across the region.

Far from collapsing under the pressure, Iran demonstrated its capacity to absorb the initial shock, reorganize its command structure, and continue fighting on multiple fronts.

The war eventually reached the Strait of Hormuz, as Iran asserted its control over the strategic waterway, leading to severe disruption in global energy markets and exposing the vulnerability of one of the world’s most strategically important chokepoints.

After 40 days of war, the United States and Israel were once again compelled to accept a ceasefire. This time, the Trump administration even agreed to an Iranian proposal to end the imposed war.

The outcome was a striking departure from the expectations that had accompanied the opening hours of the aggression: instead of so-called “regime change,” Washington and Tel Aviv found themselves confronting an Iran that had endured the assassination of its senior leadership, absorbed unprecedented attacks and continued to resist and inflict blows on the enemy.

Since the April 8 ceasefire, exchanges of fire have continued intermittently, while the Strait of Hormuz has remained largely closed to hostile vessels.

Having failed to achieve its objectives through military means, Washington has increasingly turned to economic pressure, imposing new sanctions and pursuing a naval and aerial blockade against Iran. Yet the Islamic Republic has continued to withstand the pressure.

Also, despite sanctions, threats, political pressure and military aggression, Tehran has maintained that the Strait of Hormuz will only be reopened once the United States ends the imposed war on all fronts.

And now, more than 15 months after that torn Iranian flag appeared on its cover, The Economist has returned with an image that could hardly be more different.

Gone is the question of how Iran will end. Instead, the magazine has placed a new question at the center of its latest cover: “WHEN AMERICA WALKS AWAY.”

The change in imagery reflects a striking shift in the narrative. In June 2025, the focus was on Iran’s survival. Today, the question being raised is about the future of American power in West Asia.

But the transformation in the narrative is not limited to the language used on The Economist’s covers.

Over the past 15 months, the war has also produced a growing record of military, financial and strategic costs for the United States and its military-industrial complex.

Washington launched the war on Iran with many ambitious objectives, including crippling Iran’s nuclear and missile capabilities in order to undermine and weaken the Islamic Republic.

Yet months of war have instead left the United States facing tens of billions of dollars in expenses, damaged military facilities across the region, depleted stocks of some of its most sophisticated interceptors and other munitions, and casualties among its service members.

The following figures and assessments, many of them coming from US government agencies, American media outlets and Western think tanks, offer a picture of the price Washington has paid for the war — and of the widening gap between the objectives announced at its outset and the situation that has emerged months later.

$43.6 billion — and the bill is still rising

On September 18, The Washington Post reported that the US Central Command (CENTCOM) had estimated the cost of the war at $43.6 billion as of early September.

The figure included $28 billion to replace munitions expended during the war on Iran and more than $4.3 billion for equipment lost or damaged. The breakdown also put Air Force operating costs at more than $6.6 billion, Navy costs at about $2.2 billion, and Army costs at roughly $1.6 billion.

Crucially, the $43.6 billion estimate does not include the future cost of rebuilding or repairing damaged US military facilities across West Asia, according to the report.

The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) also published its own assessment on September 15, estimating that the war on Iran had already cost the Department of War approximately $38 billion as of August 1.

CBO said the figure included the replacement of expended munitions and equipment lost in battle, increased flying hours, other operational costs, and additional fuel costs.

But the most important part of the CBO assessment was its warning about the continuing cost.

It said if the war remained at the relatively low intensity seen in May and June, another month of fighting would cost approximately $2 billion. If fighting returned to the intensity seen in July, the monthly cost could rise to approximately $3 billion.

CBO also stressed that its $38 billion estimate did not include all costs borne by other parts of the federal government and did not include certain costs already incorporated into the regular military budget.

At least 228 US military assets damaged

The financial bill was accompanied by substantial physical damage to US military infrastructure.

On May 6, The Washington Post published a satellite-image investigation finding that Iranian attacks had destroyed at least 228 structures or pieces of equipment at 15 US military sites across West Asia.

The Post’s analysis identified 217 structures and 11 pieces of equipment that had been damaged or destroyed. The targets included hangars, barracks, fuel depots, aircraft, radar systems, communications equipment and air-defense systems.

The newspaper examined more than 100 high-resolution satellite images released by Iranian media and independently verified 109 of those images against imagery from the European Union’s Copernicus satellite system and commercial satellite imagery where available.

It found no evidence that the Iranian imagery had been manipulated. The Post also reported that the destruction was “far larger” than what had been publicly acknowledged by the US government.

The extent of the damage was subsequently reinforced by the US government’s own watchdog. In a report released on September 14, the Pentagon Inspector General provided what the Associated Press ​​​​​​said was the most comprehensive official accounting to date of the war’s impact on US military facilities.

The report said Iranian attacks had damaged or destroyed hundreds of buildings and other structures at US bases in Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Oman and Jordan.

The significance of this finding is that the damage was no longer based solely on satellite analysis or Iranian reports. It was acknowledged in an official US government assessment.

Dozens of MQ-9 Reapers and other aircraft lost or damaged

The Pentagon Inspector General’s findings also provided a clearer picture of damage to American aircraft.

According to Stars and Stripes on September 15, the war had resulted in damage to or destruction of as many as 30 MQ-9 Reaper drones, along with four F-15 fighter aircraft and more than six KC-135 tanker aircraft.

The report also noted that the cost of repairing or replacing some of these assets had not yet been incorporated into the Pentagon’s overall war-cost estimate.

In other words, even the $43.6 billion figure should not necessarily be regarded as the final bill.

The actual figure, however, is much higher. More than 50 MQ-9 Reapers have disappeared over Iranian skies, according to independent estimates.

The war has depleted America’s missile-defense stockpiles

Perhaps more consequential than the dollar value of the weapons fired is the depletion of America’s stockpile of advanced interceptors.

In its May 6 report, The Washington Post, citing an analysis by the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), reported that between February 28 and April 8 the US military had used at least 190 THAAD interceptors and 1,060 Patriot interceptors.

Those numbers represented approximately 53 percent of the US prewar THAAD inventory and 43 percent of its Patriot inventory. By September, the assessment had become even more concerning.

The Stimson Center, in a report published on September 22, said that by August the United States had used approximately 80 percent of its THAAD inventory and around half of its Patriot interceptors.

The same report said the Army had used “virtually all” of its ATACMS and Precision Strike Missiles (PrSM) — long-range weapons that would also be important in a potential conflict involving China.

According to Stimson’s assessment, replenishing some of these stocks could take years. CSIS estimated that Tomahawk inventories might not return to prewar levels until late 2030 or early 2031, while Patriot and THAAD inventories could take at least three years to recover.

The costs extend beyond the battlefield

The financial impact has also spread beyond the Pentagon. The CBO said on September 15 that the disruption of oil and gas shipments through the Strait of Hormuz had increased global energy prices, contributing to higher prices for gasoline, diesel and jet fuel in the United States.

CBO estimated that the war would leave US inflation in the first quarter of 2027 0.5 percentage points higher than it had projected in February 2026, while core PCE inflation was projected to be 0.3 percentage points higher.

The agency also estimated that three-month Treasury bill rates would be nearly 0.2 percentage points higher in 2026 than previously projected.

The Stimson Center went further, estimating the direct and indirect cost of the war at approximately $220 billion and putting the average household’s share at roughly $1,650. It attributed much of that wider economic burden to higher energy prices.

Stimson said that by September 15, average US gasoline prices had reached $4.32 per gallon, a 45 percent increase since the war began, while diesel prices had risen by approximately 70 percent.

Damage to US military facilities

Beyond the billions spent on weapons, operations and damaged military equipment, Washington also incurred substantial military, diplomatic and emergency expenses.

On September 14, the Pentagon Inspector General, as reported by The Washington Post, said Iranian attacks had caused approximately $184 million in damage to US military and diplomatic facilities in Iraq, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and the UAE.

Separately, the US State Department reported around $113 million in war-related and emergency expenses, nearly $80 million of which was associated with the evacuation of diplomats, their families and other US citizens and eligible individuals.

Around 9,000 US citizens were evacuated from the region during the war against Iran.

Iran’s missile program has begun rebuilding

The depletion of American interceptor stocks becomes particularly significant when considered alongside the continued resilience of Iran’s missile program.

On September 10, The Wall Street Journal reported that Iran had resumed production of ballistic missiles, despite the extensive US and Israeli attacks on its missile infrastructure during the opening phase of the war.

According to the report, US and regional officials said Iran was assembling both liquid- and solid-fuel missiles using stockpiled components at underground facilities.

Intelligence pointed to activity at several underground sites, including the Khojir missile facility, while Iran was also working on new underground assembly locations.

The report concluded that the renewed production underscored the difficulty of fully dismantling Iran’s missile program — one of the stated objectives of the war.

Six months on, the original objectives remain out of reach

This brings the military expenditure back to the central question: what did all of this cost actually achieve? Washington continues to describe the war on Iran as having severely degraded the country’s military capabilities.

But independent Western assessments point to a substantial gap between the original objectives and the situation that has emerged.

The Stimson Center, in its September 22 assessment, said the administration initially went to war with objectives that included ending Iran’s nuclear program, destroying its missile industry, annihilating its navy, and ending its support for the Axis of Resistance.

It concluded that the United States had failed to achieve those objectives. Instead, Stimson said, the mission subsequently narrowed to the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz — a goal that became necessary precisely because the war itself had disrupted shipping through the waterway.

“Six months later, little progress toward those goals has been made, while the mission has largely narrowed to the single task of reopening the Strait of Hormuz, a waterway the war itself closed.”

The figures tell the story of that widening gap: $43.6 billion in US military costs; $28 billion needed merely to replace expended munitions; more than 4.3 billion dollars in damaged or lost equipment; hundreds of damaged military structures; depleted THAAD and Patriot stocks; and a weapons-production system facing years of replenishment.

And yet, according to the Wall Street Journal, Iran is already rebuilding parts of its ballistic-missile production capability.

That contrast — between the scale of resources committed by Washington and the difficulty of translating military force into its original political and strategic objectives — is perhaps the most important evidence behind the dramatic change in the narrative surrounding the war.

And now, back to The Economist

This is where the latest Economist cover becomes particularly relevant.

More than 15 months after the magazine placed a torn Iranian flag on its cover alongside the question “How will this end?” the question on its new cover is no longer centered on Iran.

It asks: “WHEN AMERICA WALKS AWAY.”

“America seems to be stuck in the Middle East. It has no easy way out of its war with Iran. Yet the conflict, however it ends, will in fact mark something quite different: the moment when America pulls back from the region—in the sense that it finally relinquishes its hegemony there,” the article reads.

In a September 25 editorial, The Economist’s Deputy Editor Robert Guest makes a similar assessment, writing that the United States has enjoyed decades of dominance in the region, but that this era is now coming to an end.

“Now, as Mr Trump seeks a way out of his ill-planned war, something momentous is occurring. As we describe in our cover package, American hegemony in the Middle East is ending,” Guest writes.

The Cradle | September 28, 2026

The Iranian Embassy in London announced on 28 September its “categorical rejection” and strong condemnation of speculation regarding Tehran’s involvement in an alleged plot to attack a British military air base used by US forces.

In a post on X, the embassy criticized “recent baseless and malicious speculation circulated by certain individuals and British media outlets attempting to link Iran” to the incident, which occurred in the early hours of Sunday.

Gloucestershire Police had announced on Sunday that a “major incident” was taking place in the Welford area of ​​western England, leading to the evacuation of several buildings near the RAF Fairford air base.

Police stated that army explosive ordnance disposal experts were examining several vehicles and that five men had been detained on suspicion of offenses under the Explosives Act.

Residents were evacuated from 85 homes in the area near the base on Sunday as army bomb-disposal experts used a robot to examine three white vans.

The five men detained in connection with the alleged bomb plot, all British citizens, were released on bail on Monday, suggesting the incident is not serious, in contrast to early claims.

The men will remain under investigation, according to the head of counterterrorism policing, Laurence Taylor.

UK authorities continue to “explore multiple lines of inquiry” regarding the incident, Taylor added.

RAF Fairford has been used as a base by the US Air Force to launch bombing operations against Iran during the war that began in February.

The UK authorized the US to use the base for missions involving B-1B and B-52 bombers.

Britain did not join the US-Israeli war on Iran and initially denied President Donald Trump’s request to use bases in the UK.

However, then-prime minister Keir Starmer soon reversed course, announcing days later that he had agreed to let the US use bases in Britain for what he claimed were “defensive” operations against Iran’s missiles and their launch sites following Iranian attacks on UK interests and Britain’s Gulf allies.