The US-Israeli war on Iran has exposed a widening gap between Washington’s promises to protect its allies and its ability to sustain that protection, with expensive missile interceptors being consumed faster than American manufacturers can replace them, The Atlantic reported.
In an investigation titled “The THAAD Delusion,” Christopher Leonard argues that the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense system became a cornerstone of US security arrangements in the Middle East despite being developed for a more limited battlefield role.
Iran’s ability to maintain missile attacks has challenged the assumption underpinning that role: that American forces would survive an opening barrage, then rapidly destroy the launchers responsible.
Instead, a prolonged conflict has placed mounting pressure on interceptor supplies, exposing weaknesses in US military planning, weapons procurement, and industrial capacity.
A missile shield built around a short war
According to the report, THAAD was originally intended to protect critical military deployments during the initial phase of a conflict, allowing US aircraft and naval forces time to respond.
Washington subsequently promoted the system as a central component of broader missile shields for regional allies, including the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia.
The distinction has become consequential during the war on Iran. While THAAD has intercepted ballistic missiles effectively, Leonard writes that Washington neither accumulated enough interceptors for sustained operations nor established the manufacturing capacity needed to replace them quickly.
US interceptor stocks depleted by sustained warfare
Drawing on estimates from the Center for Strategic and International Studies, the report says US forces used more than 150 THAAD interceptors during the 12-day war in 2025 and another 190 to 290 during “Operation Epic Fury.”
CSIS estimated that approximately 250 interceptors remained in the US stockpile. The report notes that additional deliveries could affect those calculations, while Washington has not disclosed its remaining inventories.
The depletion extends beyond THAAD. The investigation also described heavy consumption of Patriot interceptors and offensive weapons, including Tomahawk and JASSM missiles, placing pressure on multiple parts of the US arsenal.
The investigation identifies Iran’s combination of ballistic missiles and comparatively inexpensive drones as a major challenge to American defensive planning.
THAAD interceptors cost about $12 million each, according to the report. Repeated Iranian missile launches therefore impose substantial financial and logistical costs even when interceptions succeed.
At the same time, Shahed drones, which the article puts at $20,000 to $50,000 apiece, require separate defenses because THAAD cannot intercept them.
This combination forces defending militaries to confront different threats simultaneously while managing limited ammunition. The report describes regional forces using helicopters and costly air-to-air missiles against drones as pressure on their defenses increased.
Leonard’s central argument is that interception accuracy alone cannot deliver the lasting security Washington offered its partners when the attacker can sustain successive waves.
Industrial weaknesses slow replenishment
The article traces the shortage to years of budget decisions that favored major weapons platforms over ammunition reserves, alongside a concentrated defense industry dependent on vulnerable networks of specialized suppliers.
THAAD missiles require intricate assembly and components sourced from hundreds of companies. Expanding production involves increasing capacity throughout that network, rather than simply adding workers at a final assembly plant.
Pentagon assessments cited in the report found that substantial increases in production for several missile systems could require billions of dollars and take years.
The investigation also scrutinizes defense contractors’ spending priorities. Lockheed Martin distributed $6.8 billion through dividends and share buybacks in 2024, while RTX returned $3.7 billion to shareholders, even as industry representatives argued that factory expansion required advance funding or long-term government contracts.
Washington’s protection promises face scrutiny
The implications reach beyond ammunition shortages. US weapons sales helped bind allied militaries to Washington through shared equipment and reliance on American supplies, the report notes.
However, delayed deliveries and competing wartime demands have prompted some partners to seek alternatives, raising questions about the reliability of those arrangements.
Stephen Wertheim, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, told The Atlantic that the consequences could reshape Washington’s regional position.
“We could be moving away from a Middle East that can be fairly described as being an American-dominated region,” he said.
No one would claim that the Iran War has been a political godsend for President Donald Trump and the Republican Party. But some Israel-First conservatives are willing to say—and lately have been incessantly saying—that the Iran War hasn’t been a political scourge.
Those Israel-First conservatives are wrong, even if the devil is, at least partly, hidden in the details. The Iran War has damaged Trump’s approval ratings, consumed his presidency, and darkened the GOP’s prospects in the upcoming midterm elections.
A chief proponent of the argument that Trump hasn’t suffered all that much from the Iran War is Ben Shapiro of the Daily Wire. Shapiro’s political analysis is plainly motivated by the fact that he was a loud and influential proponent of the war who promised—falsely, as it turned out—that Iran couldn’t close the Strait of Hormuz, a chokepoint for the global energy trade.
“There’s an op right now to pretend that the real reason for President Trump’s unpopularity is foreign policy, but that is not true, by the polling data, it is not true,” said Shapiro on a recent episode of his podcast. “The reality is that Americans have affordability concerns, President Trump came into office saying he was going to alleviate the affordability concerns. He has not in fact alleviated the affordability concerns, and therefore, his polling numbers have consistently slid since Liberation Day.”
This is a bit like me saying my wife isn’t mad at me because of the drinking, but because I drunkenly crashed the car.
The Iran War, as everyone now knows, has driven up prices at the pump—prices which, unfortunately for Trump, are prominently displayed on every major street across the country. On the eve of the war, regular gasoline averaged $2.98 per gallon. Today, at the time of writing, the average price is $4.48. Americans are notoriously averse to high gasoline prices and tend to punish presidents over the issue, sometimes even when the president can’t justifiably be blamed.
But make no mistake: Virtually every sentient adult understands that 1) oil comes from the Middle East, 2) Trump started a big war in the region, and 3) gas prices shot up right afterwards. And again, even if Americans didn’t grok the connection between the war and the gas-price spike, the latter would still have hurt Trump politically, and it would still be a knock-on effect of the former.
It’s not just prices at the pump that have gone up because of the war. Groceries and other consumer goods travel across this vast land on tractor-trailers that run on diesel and get a lot fewer miles per gallon than even your Uncle Larry’s F-350. Diesel prices have smashed records and now sit at around $6.50, up from $3.76 before the war.
No wonder truckers are furious, prompting rumors of an imminent strike.
And no wonder the Iran War has contributed to general inflation in America. Anyone who has been reading the official economic reports knows the war is responsible for more than a third of recent inflation.
Before the war, inflation was trending down, only a couple ticks away from the Federal Reserve’s target of 2 percent. It seems likely that Trump, if he hadn’t started his dumb war in the Middle East, would have garnered praise for presiding over declining inflation and that the Fed would have cut interest rates, juicing economic growth. Instead, inflation now sits at 3.4 percent.
(As an aside, this weekend I traveled to Istanbul, where many Middle Easterners of various nationalities complained to me that Americans only oppose the war because of the gas prices. That’s simply not true. The war has been unpopular since day one, when all that Americans knew was the American-Israeli strikes had killed Iranian leaders including the Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei.)
Shapiro, ever the neoconservative, insinuated in the quote above that the decline in Trump’s approval rating owes more to his tariffs than to his war. The data doesn’t back that up, as the conservative commentator and election analyst Ryan Girdusky noted on X in response to new survey data. “The most eye opening part of this poll is that Trump’s approval rating and the strength of the economy went up right after Liberation Day,” Girdusky said. “Fell slightly afterward and then plummeted at the start of the Iran War.”
Shapiro has unwittingly helped uncover another, subtler, way in which the Iran War has indirectly damaged Trump’s approval ratings and, by extension, the Republican Party brand. Shapiro recently went on Fox News to commiserate with the host Mark Levin—another Israel-Firster and warmonger—over all those dastardly antiwar conservatives blaming the Iran War for everything.
“Iran is a 4-percent issue with the American people,” Levin said, as Shapiro nodded in agreement. Levin was referring to Fox News polling that shows not many Americans name the Iran War as their top issue. “So, whatever happens in the midterms, it doesn’t appear that Iran’s going to drive anything one way or another.”
“I think that’s exactly right,” Shapiro replied.
Part of the problem with Levin’s analysis has already been covered above. In the Fox poll, a plurality of Americans—34 percent—named the cost of living as the most important issue, and the Iran War has made living costlier.
But the subtler problem is perhaps even more illuminating. Simply put, Americans believe Trump is too focused on foreign policy at the expense of the problem they really care about, which, in fact, his Iran War has exacerbated. This is a PR disaster for the Trump administration and the GOP. Americans don’t prioritize the war that has dominated the headlines and distracted the White House, even as Trump claims to have boldly prevented Iran from unleashing nuclear apocalypse.
It may be grotesque to find silver linings in this dumb and deadly war, but here’s one: Americans no longer buy the war narratives. That is certainly not, however, a silver lining for Republican candidates in this year’s election, no matter how cynically they try to distance themselves from the war. In fact, it’s a good bet they’ll do much worse than if Trump hadn’t launched this unnecessary war, despite what Shapiro and his ilk may tell you.
US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent’s prediction that Iran’s economy would soon collapse underscores the depth of delusion within the current American leadership.
“Iran is absolutely not sanctionable,” Deputy Economy Minister Mortaza Zamanian said this week as Tehran worked to keep trade flowing despite Washington’s latest sanctions campaign.
Zamanian cited Iran’s extensive borders, established commercial routes and longstanding trading relationships, saying that they make it impossible for external pressure simply to switch off the country’s economy.
His remarks came as Washington intensified its economic terrorism against Iranian oil, shipping, aviation, finance, technology and foreign companies supporting those sectors.
US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said that Iran would probably make its final oil deliveries to China within two weeks, after which, he asserted, “they will have nothing.”
That prediction deserves comparison with history, because American administrations have imposed increasingly severe sanctions since 1979 while repeatedly expecting economic pressure eventually to produce decisive Iranian economic collapse.
The economy did not disappear under those campaigns; instead, Iran developed domestic industries, expanded regional commerce, strengthened Asian trade and accumulated extensive experience operating outside Western financial systems.
The proposition that an economy which has absorbed American sanctions for almost half a century will suddenly become economically empty within two weeks therefore indicates the depth of delusion among the current US leadership.
Iran enters the current confrontation with a large domestic market, substantial productive capacity, enormous energy resources and deeply established commercial relationships extending across neighboring countries and wider Eurasian markets.
The World Bank describes Iran as relatively diversified for an oil-exporting economy, with substantial manufacturing, agricultural and service activity supported by a large population and significant domestic consumption.
That domestic market sustains production across food, pharmaceuticals, construction materials, steel, petrochemicals, machinery and consumer goods, meaning Iranian production does not depend entirely upon continuous access to Western consumers.
Iran has also developed major industrial capabilities suited to its own resources and infrastructure, including steel, refining, petrochemicals, cement, power generation, construction, food processing and pharmaceutical manufacturing.
These capabilities have continued developing despite restrictions on Western investment and technology, demonstrating that Iranian industrial activity does not depend upon permanent participation by Western companies.
Iran’s prolonged exposure to sanctions has produced accumulated technical and commercial knowledge, giving Iranian companies decades of experience managing restricted supply chains and unreliable access to foreign suppliers.
When foreign manufacturers withdraw, Iranian companies have learned to redesign equipment, substitute components, develop domestic suppliers and cooperate with businesses from countries willing to maintain commercial relationships.
Academic research has documented this process, showing that sanctions can simultaneously restrict foreign technology while encouraging domestic technological development and adaptation within affected Iranian industrial sectors.
The resulting knowledge extends beyond individual companies, because engineers, technicians, procurement specialists and managers have accumulated practical experience managing shortages, substitution and alternative sourcing.
Iranian manufacturers therefore do not design procurement systems around the assumption that every international supplier will remain available indefinitely, making adaptation part of ordinary commercial planning.
Iran’s geography provides another economic advantage, because the country borders Turkey, Iraq, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan, Afghanistan and Pakistan while possessing coastlines reaching the Persian Gulf and the Sea of Oman.
Those borders connect Iranian commerce with the Caucasus, Central Asia, South Asia, the Persian Gulf, Turkey and Iraq, while transportation corridors also connect Iran with Russia and wider Eurasian markets.
Financial sanctions can make transactions more difficult, but they cannot physically relocate Iran or eliminate its access to neighboring markets, suppliers, transportation routes and established regional trading relationships.
Iran has consequently developed commercial links involving Iraq, Turkey, the United Arab Emirates, Afghanistan, Pakistan, the Caucasus, Central Asia and China through years of sustained economic interaction.
The World Bank has documented Iran’s increasing trade orientation toward neighboring countries and China as sanctions restricted conventional international relationships, making this regional pivot an established economic feature.
China adds another dimension because it combines enormous industrial capacity with sustained demand for Iranian energy while supplying machinery, manufactured products and industrial inputs required throughout Iran’s domestic economy.
The US-China Economic and Security Review Commission identifies China as Iran’s largest trading partner and estimates that China imported approximately 1.4 million barrels of Iranian crude daily during 2025.
Chinese independent refiners have continued purchasing Iranian crude through commercial arrangements designed to reduce their exposure to American financial restrictions and sanctions enforcement.
That relationship demonstrates why Iran does not require unrestricted access to every Western market when Chinese demand and extensive regional commerce provide alternative markets for Iranian commodities.
Iran’s energy resources provide enormous economic depth, with the World Bank ranking the country second globally in proven natural-gas reserves and fourth globally in proven crude-oil reserves.
Those resources provide export potential while also supplying abundant domestic energy and petrochemical feedstocks supporting manufacturing, electricity generation, transportation and numerous energy-intensive industrial activities.
Iran has consequently developed a substantial downstream economy converting hydrocarbons into refined products, petrochemicals and industrial inputs rather than depending exclusively upon crude-oil exports.
The World Bank has noted that sanctions encouraged additional processing of hydrocarbons into petrochemicals, illustrating how restrictions contributed to changes within Iran’s export structure.
Iran has also developed financial mechanisms outside conventional Western banking, including bilateral currency arrangements, exchange houses, barter, intermediary companies and indirect settlement channels supporting international commercial activity.
The World Bank has documented growing use of bilateral currency exchange, barter and indirect payment mechanisms as Iranian trade shifted increasingly toward neighboring countries and China.
These arrangements provide alternative methods for exchanging value when conventional dollar-based transactions become unavailable or prohibitively difficult.
Their existence helps explain why Washington increasingly targets third-country banks, intermediaries and commercial facilitators, because Iranian commerce extends through extensive international networks beyond domestic financial institutions.
Against this background, Bessent’s prediction assumes that eliminating a major source of oil revenue would effectively remove the broader economic foundations supporting Iran’s productive system and commercial institutions.
Iran’s economic structure is considerably broader, because oil exports represent one component of national activity alongside manufacturing, agriculture, services, domestic consumption and regional commerce.
The World Bank estimates that Iran’s economy contracted during the Iranian year ending March 2026, while simultaneously describing adaptation through changing trade patterns and alternative payment mechanisms.
Economic contraction, however, is fundamentally different from the disappearance of productive capacity, infrastructure, commercial institutions and domestic relationships sustaining millions of Iranian consumers and businesses.
American sanctions have repeatedly targeted Iranian banking, oil exports, investment, technology, shipping and foreign companies, yet Iran has retained its industrial base and redirected substantial trade toward neighboring countries.
Washington possesses powerful financial tools, but financial restrictions cannot physically eliminate Iran’s factories, oilfields, farms, engineers, consumers, ports, borders or commercial relationships accumulated over decades.
The central question is therefore whether American pressure can erase the productive, geographical, resource and commercial foundations Iran has accumulated across nearly half a century of economic adaptation.
Nothing in Iran’s economic history demonstrates that those foundations can disappear within two weeks, particularly while the country retains domestic production, regional markets, energy resources and established commercial relationships.
Iran therefore enters the present confrontation with domestic capabilities, energy resources, industrial capacity, geographic advantages and international relationships capable of keeping its economy operating despite intensified American terrorism.
Iraq’s government has declared September 30 the final date for ending the US-led coalition’s military mission. Prime Minister Ali al-Zaidi’s office says October 1 will find the country “free of any foreign military presence,” closing a deployment that once reached about 170,000 US troops.
But withdrawal leaves intact much of the damage inflicted by the invasion and the 13 years of sanctions that preceded it, along with the financial arrangements through which Washington continues to exert influence.
The US left Iraq’s productive economy devastated, its institutions dismantled and reshaped, and its workforce left increasingly dependent on a state funded by oil. Access to that income remains vulnerable to US pressure.
The question after the troops leave is how much control Iraq will have over the economy they leave behind.
Thirteen years of sanctions
The erosion of Iraq’s economy began long before March 2003. The UN Security Council imposed sweeping sanctions after Saddam Hussein’s regime invaded Kuwait in 1990. Drawing on internal UN records, Joy Gordon’s Invisible War describes one of the most comprehensive and devastating sanctions regimes ever imposed.
The embargo quickly collapsed incomes. Reconstructed World Bank estimates showed GDP per capita collapsing to a third in a single year, going from about $3,527 in 1990 to $1,255 in 1991.
Public employees who had earned $150 to $200 a month before sanctions were earning $3 to $5 by 1996, according to a 1997 assessment. By 2000, the International Committee of the Red Cross reported salaries as low as $2 a month and unemployment around 50 percent.
Factories, power stations, and water plants could not recover without imported equipment and spare parts. Yet any member of the sanctions committee could hold an entire contract indefinitely, even over a single disputed item. Gordon documents Washington’s use of the “dual-use” designation to restrict goods as basic as water pipes. By August 2002, the UN counted 2,058 contracts worth about $5.2 billion that had been placed on hold, including $745 million in oil industry equipment.
The restrictions also placed Iraq’s oil income beyond Baghdad’s direct control. Under the Oil-for-Food program, buyers paid into a UN-administered escrow account. After deductions for compensation, administration, and weapons inspections, the proceeds could finance only approved purchases. Iraq exported roughly $65 billion in oil under the program but could not use that money as ordinary budget revenue for wages, maintenance, or local services.
The collapse pushed skilled workers out of their professions. A UN humanitarian survey of 1,157 degree holders employed by aid organizations found 725 in general-service or menial jobs, including doctors, engineers, and scientists working as drivers, clerks, and guards.
By the time US troops arrived, Iraq had endured years of falling wages, industrial decline, and lost expertise. The occupation’s first decisions deepened that damage.
Dismantling the state, contracting out reconstruction
On May 16, 2003, the occupation authority issued Order 1, barring senior Baath Party members from public employment and requiring the screening of senior staff in ministries, hospitals, and universities. A week later, Order 2 dissolved the Defense Ministry, army, Republican Guard, and intelligence bodies.
The International Center for Transitional Justice estimates that Order 2 alone left about 400,000 conscripts, officers, and officials without jobs. The World Bank counted more than 2 million unemployed Iraqis, nearly 30 percent of the labor force, around 2003–2004. Meanwhile, Iraq’s health minister estimated that roughly half the country’s prewar doctors had fled as kidnapping and assassination made their work increasingly dangerous.
The occupation then opened the weakened economy to foreign competition. Order 39 allowed wholly foreign-owned companies and guaranteed investors treatment no less favorable than Iraqi businesses, while excluding natural resource extraction. Other orders suspended tariffs, later replaced by a flat 5 percent levy, and capped income tax at 15 percent from 2004. The World Bank warned that rapid opening would cost jobs in a country whose private sector was too weak to employ displaced workers.
Reconstruction brought billions of dollars, but much of the spending flowed through foreign contractors. The United States spent more than $60 billion over roughly a decade, according to the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction (SIGIR). More than $25 billion went to training and equipping security forces after the occupation had dissolved Iraq’s existing military institutions.
SIGIR found that reconstruction began without adequate security, consultation with Iraqi ministries, or planning for long-term maintenance. Its final report estimated waste at $3 billion to $5 billion from the main reconstruction fund and as much as $8 billion overall. The largest early infrastructure contracts went mainly to US firms. A $1.8 billion award to Bechtel in January 2004 was open only to American bidders.
Iraq’s own money followed a similar path. UN Security Council Resolution 1483 established the Development Fund for Iraq to receive oil revenue, with the occupation authority directing spending until June 2004.
An Iraq Revenue Watch analysis of contracts paid from Iraqi funds found that US companies received 74 percent of their value. US and British companies together received 85 percent, while Iraqi firms received 2 percent. Audits found that 73 percent of the value of Development Fund contracts above $5 million had been awarded without competitive bidding.
Oversight was inadequate even to establish how some of that money had been used. A 2010 SIGIR audit found that the Defense Department had failed to establish required accounting controls for about $8.7 billion of the $9.1 billion it received from the fund. It could not document spending of about $2.6 billion.
The result was a reconstruction process that directed vast sums abroad while leaving Iraq with damaged services, limited productive capacity, and institutions struggling to rebuild.
An oil-funded system of patronage
With factories closed or looted and no private industry to replace them, the state became the place where Iraqis look for work. An assessment by the International Fund for Agricultural Development, using World Bank data, says public employment accounts for nearly all formal jobs and 40 percent of all jobs. Salaries and pensions took about 90 trillion dinars, roughly $69 billion, more than 40 percent of the 2024 budget, and the World Bank says another half a million government jobs were added during the spending expansion that preceded 2025.
The private sector has not filled the gap. Estimates put imports at more than 90 percent of the goods in Iraqi shops, while manufacturing makes up only around 2 percent of GDP. The World Bank says nearly 29 percent of the population is aged 15 to 29, and that this large group is entering the labor market amid limited job creation, a preference for public-sector work, and a private sector too small to absorb them. Youth unemployment is about 32 percent, and only around 11 percent of women take part in the labor force.
The IMF’s 2025 assessment describes the same pattern, citing high unemployment, an excessive state footprint, corruption, a weak banking system, and an inefficient electricity sector, and it called the wage trajectory fiscally unsustainable. Analysts describe a cycle in which secure public wages raise the pay that educated workers expect, private firms struggle with unreliable power and weak finance, and young graduates keep turning to the state for jobs, which raises the demand for more public hiring.
Oil pays for all of it. The World Bank estimates that oil supplied about 88 percent of government revenue and 91 percent of exports in 2025.
The financial levers Washington keeps
Iraq’s oil income has passed through outside hands since 1996, first a UN escrow, then the occupation authority’s fund, and now the New York Fed.
The Development Fund’s accounts were opened at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, where Iraqi oil revenue still flows. Buyers pay dollars into a Ministry of Finance account, and the Central Bank of Iraq converts part of the income into dinars for government spending. US jurisdiction over dollar clearing, correspondent banking, and physical cash shipments gives Washington substantial influence over Iraq’s access to its money.
In January 2020, after Iraq’s parliament called for foreign troops to leave, the Trump administration threatened to block access to the account. Iraqi officials said it then held about $35 billion and warned that losing access would disrupt salary payments and the exchange rate.
US restrictions introduced in November 2022 forced banks seeking dollars for international transfers to disclose the final beneficiaries and purposes of transactions through an electronic platform, with requests screened by the New York Fed. US and Iraqi accounts linked the measures to concerns about transfers to sanctioned Iranian actors.
Consequently, more than 80 percent of daily wire requests were initially blocked or returned. Transfers fell from $224.4 million on October 17, 2022, to $22.9 million on January 17, 2023. Demand shifted to the parallel market, where the dinar traded at about 1,588 to the dollar in February against a newly set official rate of 1,300. In a country dependent on imported food and consumer goods, restricted dollar access raised costs for ordinary households.
In April 2026, Washington applied pressure through physical cash, halting a shipment of about $500 million and suspending parts of security cooperation. Iraqi officials said the halt affected banknotes used for travel, medical treatment, education, and retail exchange, while electronic transfers for imports continued. Some shipments resumed in July. On September 26, Baghdad announced that Washington had agreed to continue them.
US sanctions have also reshaped access to Iraq’s oil fields. Russia’s Lukoil left West Qurna 2 after sanctions, and Chevron signed agreements to take over its development. During al-Zaidi’s July visit to Washington, Iraq signed dozens of agreements with companies including ExxonMobil, KBR, Halliburton, and Shell. US Energy Secretary Chris Wright cited more than $60 billion in commercial agreements, while al-Zaidi told The National that US companies would receive top priority. According to the Atlantic Council, Donald Trump framed the deals as American oil companies taking the place of US forces.
As US forces prepare to leave Iraq, they leave behind a trail of devastation. Decades of sanctions and occupation have weakened its productive economy, dismantled state institutions, and left livelihoods dependent on an oil-funded system of patronage. The consequences will endure long after the troops depart.
Washington retains substantial power over Iraq through its influence over dollar access and the financial channels that sustain the state. The withdrawal ends a military mission, while leaving Baghdad to contend with both the damage of US intervention and the control Washington continues to exercise.
Iraqi anti-terror resistance group Kata’ib Sayyid al-Shuhada has rejected any surrender of its weapons, with its spokesman stressing that resistance would continue despite pressure and that Iraqi resistance fighters would sustain their support for their fellow fighters in Lebanon.
Sheikh Kazem al-Fartousi, spokesman for the group, which is a subdivision of Iraq’s Popular Mobilization Units (PMU) coalition, made the remarks to the Lebanese news website UNews.
“We have not retreated from the resistance, and there will be no surrender of weapons,” he said, the website reported on Tuesday.
“The resistance’s weapons in Iraq are at its disposal and Iraqi resistance would continue supporting the Lebanese resistance,” the official added.
“The pressure has not deterred us from continuing along this path and will not lead us to retreat even a single step in confronting the enemy.”
The statement came as the Iraqi government, headed by Prime Minister Ali al-Zaidi, has, as a result of US pressure, been seeking to advance a plan to establish a state monopoly over weapons.
A day earlier, Haj Abu Mujahid al-Assaf, the security official of Kata’ib Hezbollah, another member of the PMU, also pointed to the upcoming prospect of expulsion of US-led forces from the Arab country, saying that, upon the occasion, the Iraqi people would celebrate the expulsion, associating the pending development to the efforts made by Iraqi resistance groups.
Al-Assaf further warned that if the restrictions imposed by the United States on Iranian aviation continued after October 1, the Iraqi people would take a clear position, adding that the possibility existed of closing border crossings with countries participating in the Washington’s efforts at targeting the Islamic Republic.
Head of the Political Council of the Iraqi Harakat Hezbollah al-Nujaba, Sheikh Ali al-Asadi, criticized Baghdad’s decision to prevent Iranian aircraft from landing at Iraqi airports, stressing that it constitutes compliance with US pressure and warning that popular action could follow if the decision is not reversed.
Speaking to Al Mayadeen, al-Asadi said, “We regret the decision by the Iraqi authorities to prevent Iranian aircraft from landing in Iraq.” He described the decision as “submission to American bullying,” adding, “The Iraqi decision-maker must reconsider it; otherwise there will be popular pressure aimed at changing the decision.”
He said the issue extends beyond Iraqi airports, invoking longstanding ties between Iraq and Iran. “The issue goes beyond airports. There are close relations with Iran, and therefore we must not bow to an irresponsible decision by America,” he said. “Popular options will be the most pressing, and all possibilities are on the table.”
Sheikh al-Asadi attributed growing US influence in Iraq to weaknesses among domestic political actors. “The weakness of the domestic political actor has allowed the American occupation to impose its decisions in Iraq,” he said, adding, “The decision-maker can choose not to implement American decisions, as some countries do.”
He stressed that “the decision must be sovereign and independent politically, economically, and in terms of security,” defining sovereignty as “complete independence, with Iraq being the decision-maker in all aspects of life.
According to Sheikh al-Asadi, “There are personal and partisan interests behind the absence of independence in decision-making.” He also accused Iraq’s political class of adopting contradictory positions toward Washington, slamming duality in the political class: on the one hand, it agrees to American decisions, while on the other, it condemns them.
He added, “The Resistance’s positions have been clear from the beginning, while the Iraqi politicians have ambiguity and complications.”
Iraq’s main problem is corruption
Turning to the issue of weapons and the debate over their regulation, Sheikh al-Asadi said his movement had held discussions with the Coordination Framework and rejected the term “weapons confinement”. “We discussed the matter with the Coordination Framework and rejected the term ‘weapons confinement.’ We established that the term is harmful and changed it to ‘weapons regulation,’” he said. “Iraq’s biggest problem is corruption, not weapons,” he asserted.
“We are in favor of the Dawn Strike against corruption, but we want it to continue. There are clearly identified corrupt figures, and the law must be applied to them,” the Iraqi leader said. He also expressed deep distrust of Washington, saying, “We do not trust the Americans one iota, and they do not keep their word.” He added, “What happened with Iran is the biggest proof that the Americans do not keep their word. They struck Iran during negotiations, and this is proof of their treachery.”
US assassination unit, like Blackwater
Shikh al-Asadi said Iraq should remain free of US interference in its internal affairs. “Iraq must be free, and the American envoy must not interfere in economic, security, or political affairs,” he said. He added that his movement had information about US activities in Iraq, saying, “We have information about all the American movements and about the division they established, which includes Iraqis under their supervision.”
“We know where this division is located and what its duties will be in the coming phase, and all of this is being monitored,” Sheikh al-Asadi warned. He revealed that the goal behind the creation of this division is to carry out assassinations and create discord, saying, “It is like ‘Blackwater’ under another name.”
He added, “The American movement is suspicious, and they have security companies that entered to compensate for the American military withdrawal.”
Al-Nujaba rejects political participation under current system
Sheikh al-Asadi said Nujaba had no decision to participate in Iraq’s political process. “We in Harakat Hezbollah al-Nujaba have no decision to engage in the political process, and we are not convinced by the way it is being managed,” he said.
On the issue of weapons, he told Al Mayadeen, “The conditions for handing over weapons are ending the American occupation and all foreign presence, including the Turkish presence.”
He added that the Peshmerga should fall under the command of Iraq’s commander-in-chief of the Armed Forces and warned that “the separatist factions are one of Iraq’s problems, and whenever Resistance intervention is necessary, we will intervene in every inch of Iraqi territory.”
Sheikh al-Asadi further argued that the continuation of armed resistance was linked to the circumstances that justify it: “The resistance has its justifications for resistance, and when these justifications end, so does resistance,” reminding that the justifications do not end with the mere withdrawal of the remaining foreign troops in the country.
Iraq’s leadership must use its leverage
Al-Nujaba’s top official said Iraq’s political leadership must understand the country’s sources of strength and leverage and use them to advance its independence and sovereignty.
Speaking about Iraq’s leadership, Sheikh al-Asadi said he believed the current political figure in question “wants to serve the public interest and do the required work,” describing him as someone who is acting “based on his Shia identity, if I may put it that way.” However, he said the figure is “new to politics” and lacks advisors genuinely committed to helping him succeed.
“Unfortunately, he does not have advisors who are genuinely committed to making his experience successful. Rather, his advisors are concerned with making themselves successful,” Sheikh al-Asadi said.
He stressed that the advisors attempt to influence the political leadership based on what they receive from Washington, adding, “They do not want to help him become a successful figure who can lead during this stage and perhaps the next stage.”
“Whoever leads Iraq must understand what Iraq truly is and what the cards of strength and leverage in Iraq are,” he said. He questioned the interests of foreign powers in Iraq, asking, “Who needs Iraq? Does Europe not need Iraq? Does Turkey not need Iraq?”
Sheikh al-Asadi also pointed to the Development Road project, asking, “Doesn’t the Development Road that they are talking about need Iraq?”
“All of these are leverage cards a political actor can use to achieve what he wants,” he said. “He can even use the cards held by the Resistance factions as leverage. We are offering him this card and telling him: Use us for the sake of serving Iraq.”
Al-Asadi says US sought to persuade factions to give up weapons
According to Sheikh al-Asadi, several US allies had contacted his movement seeking a truce. “Many of America’s allies sent us messages asking for a truce, including the American chargé d’affaires who “tried to contact us through one of the politicians and asked to meet with us.”
He also said US officials had offered projects and incentives in exchange for abandoning strategic weapons. “The Americans offered projects and incentives on condition that we give up our strategic weapons that reach Israel, but we rejected them,” the Iraqi official said. He warned that US pressure would continue even if armed factions surrendered their weapons, saying, “American pressure does not stop at any point. Even if the factions hand over their weapons, they will move on to the Popular Mobilization Forces and then to the Defense Ministry.”
He concluded by highlighting that Washington had sought for years to alter the leadership of the Popular Mobilization Forces. “The main American project for years has sought to change the leadership of the Popular Mobilization Forces and dilute it, but the religious authority and some politicians rejected that,” Sheikh al-Asadi said.
They’ve been shown to raise electricity bills, pollute drinking water, do little to boost local employment while threatening millions of jobs in a variety of industries, and top executives have warned that the technology they support could wipe out all of humanity by the end of the decade. But rather than take widespread public opposition to artificial intelligence data centers at face value, House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) announced he had […]
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.
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.
The US, Denmark, and Greenland have signed a new agreement to expand American military activity on the island. Washington calls Greenland vital to its security, but an expanded military presence also raises an older question: What risks does the Arctic island take on in return?
The agreement builds on a defense partnership dating back to 1951. That history includes an episode that brought the risks of Washington’s Cold War strategy into sharp focus: An American mission over Greenland that ended in a nuclear disaster.
The nuclear patrols over Greenland
In the 1960s, in the middle of the Cold War, the US Air Force launched Operation Chrome Dome. This mission implied keeping bombers armed with nuclear weapons on continuous airborne alert, ready to strike the USSR if necessary. If you’ve seen the film ‘Dr. Strangelove’, you’ll remember that Major T.J. ‘King’ Kong’s crew was involved in such a patrol mission.
Theoretically, this strategy was feasible: It would have made it impossible for the USSR to disarm the US with a single blow. However, in practice, as the number of nuclear-armed aircraft patrols increased, so did the number of incidents involving nuclear weapons.
Then-US Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara advocated for ending this program, arguing that Americans had already established an effective early warning system for ballistic missile launches, so the US could take fewer risks and cut costs. However, the Strategic Air Command resisted this idea, fearing it would decrease their importance and result in budget cuts.
A horrific incident occurred in 1966 over Spain when a bomber collided with a refueling tanker aircraft, resulting in several fatalities and nuclear bombs landing on beaches and in the Mediterranean Sea. Despite this incident, the US considered the nuclear threat from the USSR a matter of primary importance, one which justified any security measures.
Eventually, after intense debates, a compromise was reached: The number of patrolling bombers would be reduced, but the airborne patrols would continue.
Thule Air Base in northern Greenland was established in the 1950s. A Mercator projection map gives a distorted sense of distance; in reality, its location was very convenient for potentially launching missiles at the USSR and monitoring missile launches from there. It also provided a convenient vantage point for reconnaissance of the Novaya Zemlya Soviet nuclear test site.
Thus, the US Strategic Air Command built a military base in northern Greenland. The name referred to ‘Ultima Thule’ (farthest Thule) – a mythical island at the edge of the world. The base housed bombers, reconnaissance planes, radar systems, missile launch sites, and early-warning radars. In its most active period, Thule base housed about 10,000 personnel. Additionally, the US launched the highly classified Project Iceworm, which aimed to build a wide network of nuclear missile launch sites concealed in tunnels beneath the ice. One could say Greenland became thoroughly inhabited.
Seven men, four hydrogen bombs, and a fire in the sky
On January 21, 1968, a B-52 bomber rose into the air, carrying four megaton bombs. It took off from New York to visually monitor the nuclear alert system, bearing four thermonuclear bombs, each with a yield exceeding one megaton.
The standard crew consisted of five members; however, a third pilot and a substitute navigator were included on the mission.
Everything started out smoothly. But eventually, the factor of human error came into play.
The third pilot, Major Alfred d’Amario, took aboard a few cloth-covered foam cushions to make his flight more comfortable. He placed the cushions under the instructor navigator’s seat and went to replace co-pilot Leonard Svitenko, who went to take his rest period. The cushions remained in place.
Not long after, the pilots opened an engine bleed valve which channeled hot air from the engine to the heater. Unfortunately, the heater was defective and quickly became dangerously hot.
At some point, the pilots noticed the smell of burning rubber filling the cockpit. While they searched for the source of the burning, a fire had already started onboard. The navigator went looking for the flames, and, on discovering the fire, attempted to extinguish it using two fire extinguishers. However, he was unable to put it out.
Captain Haug, the aircraft commander, requested an emergency landing at the airbase. All the extinguishers had been used, but the fire continued to spread. Smoke thickened to the point that the crew could hardly see each other in the cockpit. Ultimately, as the plane neared Thule Air Base, Haug ordered everyone to abandon it.
Out of the seven crew members, six managed to eject relatively safely. Tragically, co-pilot Leonard Svitenko sustained fatal head injuries while trying to escape.
Haug and d’Amario landed directly on the airbase grounds. The base personnel immediately mobilized to search for the remaining crew. A polar night enveloped Greenland, and the weather was dreadful. A representative of the Royal Greenland Trade Department, Jens Zinglersen, significantly eased the search efforts by contacting local Inuit residents who organized dog sled teams. Thanks to their collective efforts, three other aviators were found – they had landed within a mile and a half of the base and were quickly located.
Gunner Staff Sergeant Calvin Snapp was less fortunate. He ejected first and landed nearly 10 km from the base in -30C degree temperatures. Wrapping himself in his parachute, he waited for help for 21 hours before being rescued by a search team. Miraculously, they found him alive, though severely hypothermic.
But the worst was yet to come. The aircraft carrying thermonuclear munitions was still flying northward and burning up. Finally, it crashed onto the ice about 12 km west of the airbase. There was still plenty of fuel onboard; it ignited on the ice, causing spectacular pyrotechnic effects. The bomb’s non-nuclear explosives detonated, partially melting the ice and scattering radioactive debris everywhere.
There was another poignant detail, however. Greenland belonged to Denmark, which had declared its entire territory a nuclear-free zone. And now, a bomber armed with nuclear weapons had crashed there – though the Danes (at least those who didn’t work in the government) were unaware that there was also radioactive debris all over the ground. The Danish government quickly issued a statement claiming that the aircraft was not in Greenland’s airspace and had only entered it due to an onboard emergency. This was a complete fabrication, but it served as a cover-up for the situation.
The US found itself in a delicate situation that urgently needed fixing.
Cleaning up a nuclear disaster in the Arctic night
The cleanup operation was dubbed Project Crested Ice (or unofficially, ‘Project Doctor Freezelove’). The operation was led by General Richard Overton Hunziker, a seasoned veteran and WWII hero.
A team of scientists, nuclear specialists, and a massive number of troops were dispatched to Greenland. Their mission was to remove all radioactive materials before spring arrived and the contaminated ice would be carried off into the ocean. The polar night brought fierce winds and bitterly cold temperatures, making the task even more challenging.
Radioactive elements were scattered across a 1-mile (1.6 km) by 3-mile (4.8 km) area. In the midst of it was an ice hole measuring 50 meters in diameter. A blackened patch measuring 670 by 120 meters and heavily contaminated with uranium and plutonium was clearly visible from the air.
The US suggested to the Danish authorities that they should just wait for spring when the ice would melt and everything would sink into the Arctic waters. But Denmark was outraged. The Americans were given a choice: Either clean up their mess or close down the Thule base and leave Danish territory.
It must be said that Hunziker and his team worked heroically. They established a small town on the ice, complete with igloos, a power station, a runway, a communications hub, and a decontamination chamber. An icy road connected them to the airbase.
Thousands of people toiled under the harsh conditions, illuminated by floodlights as they cut through the contaminated ice, loaded it onto transports, and hauled it to storage, where it was boxed up in tanks for shipping back to the US. Ice was collected using graders, packed into wooden crates, which were then loaded into steel tanks and onto ships. Debris was recovered manually – some pieces were sizable, but the smallest were no bigger than a battery. Contaminated areas were identified using simple Geiger counters.
The cleanup crew worked with minimal protective clothing. Most people simply wore their regular Arctic expedition clothing.
By mid-September 1968, the operation was officially concluded. In total, 1,700 Danes and 700 Americans participated in it. While the disaster was a stark illustration of the consequences of foolish and irresponsible behavior, the cleanup crew – which braved the harsh cold and literally gathered radioactive waste by hand – accomplished real feats, which, however, remained largely forgotten.
It’s believed that around 93% of the radioactive materials were collected, but some remnants remained on the seabed. One hydrogen bomb likely sank among other debris. Attempts to locate it with a submersible were unsuccessful. A heap of wreckage was discovered on the ocean floor, and somewhere down there, it appears that the remains of the nuclear weapon still lie undisturbed.
In the 1980s and ‘90s, a scandal erupted. Danish cleanup workers launched a legal battle against the American government. Though they lost the case, they succeeded in forcing the release of numerous classified documents. Subsequent investigations revealed that cancer mortality rates among Danish workers involved in the cleanup operation were about one and a half times higher than those of the general population. It also turned out that the health monitoring of the cleanup crews after the incident was inadequate. Ultimately, officials concluded that radiation exposure wasn’t significant and found no link between the increased cancer rate and the 1968 accident.
A heated debate arose around the actions of Danish prime ministers Jens Otto Krag and H. C. Hansen. Krag portrayed himself as a naïve yet honest figure, insisting that he wasn’t aware of aircraft carrying nuclear weapons over Greenland. However, declassified US documents indicated that the Danish government was aware of everything. As for Hansen, he was the one who secretly approved the US to use Thule Air Base as part of its nuclear shield. However, by then, both prime ministers had passed away, and were unable to answer to the population.
After the incident, Operation Chrome Dome was officially shut down. After all, it was the second nuclear disaster in three years, and that was too much even for the ‘hawks’. Secondly, both Russians and Americans already had plenty of missiles, and the use of bombers seemed somewhat archaic. Finally, the USSR and the US initiated another period of détente and developed protocols for handling any accidental incidents involving nuclear weapons. While this didn’t help those who suffered or died from cancer as a result of the accident in Greenland, it did significantly reduce the risk of similar events in the future.
Evgeny Norin is a Russian journalist and historian focused on war and conflict in the former Soviet Union.
The Hungarian conservative media landscape is in the process of being bankrupted, gutted, or co-opted by the new Hungarian government under Péter Magyar. However, there remain a few holdouts, including Daniel Deme, who serves as the editor-in-chief of the English-language Hungarian news outlet Hungary Today as well as the German-language Ungarn Heute. Deme describes a “dire situation” brought on by a climate of fear, radical purges, mass layoffs, and little to no aid from key allies, including the Trump administration.
What is the current state of the Hungarian media landscape? How does it compare to the situation under the Orbán government?
Under the Orbán government, there were claims from the left that there were no media freedoms here, that journalists were persecuted. None of that was true. I’d say there was already a 60-to-40 split in the media landscape toward the left’s benefit at that time. But a difficult situation arose from the fact that Hungarian conservative right-wing media wasn’t independent enough, and that was really the case. It was very much talking to its own bubble.
I don’t think it was controlled by the government or presenting a government-controlled narrative. I think it was voluntary. But I think the culture of Hungarian conservative journalists was such that they wanted to stick to the central narrative, which was very close to the government.
On the other hand, you had foreign-funded left-wing media outlets. There were a few exceptions that survived commercially, but in very many cases they were funded by the Open Society Foundations and by the Norwegian Oil Fund. There’s a Norwegian radical-leftist sort of fund that is feeding the Hungarian liberal and woke environment, NGOs, and media outlets.
EXCLUSIVE: The Trump administration has largely abandoned Hungarian conservatives after Viktor Orbán’s loss, warns @daniel_deme_HU in an interview with @RMXnews.
“So, I think the State Department of the Trump administration is shooting itself in the foot by leaving this… pic.twitter.com/vOAE8iajro
And of course they were funded by European funds as well—awards, grants. So after the elections, the money that came from government advertising—by the way, they advertised in the left-wing media very heavily as well—just stopped immediately. And from week one, there was a purge of Hungarian right-wing media outlets. It wasn’t just the money that was taken away; the institutional standing was as well.
For example, the largest media conglomerate, Mediaworks, immediately started firing hundreds and hundreds of staff. What we haven’t even seen during communism: it wasn’t just that they removed the former Orbán government’s media managers from these public media outlets—they actually destroyed them. They shut them down.
And it was just outright scary, as if a foreign occupying force had arrived and shot our TV towers to pieces. One day we turned on our TVs and there was a blank screen. There was a black screen with an inscription that the “public media shouldn’t lie, and we are sorry that we lied for years, and this is going to change.” And that was it. That was it for weeks and weeks on end.
At the same time, it also happened with Radio Kossuth, a national institution. That’s a radio station that we used to listen to even during communism. And suddenly they switched it off. They just put some classical music on 24/7, and old people have complained to me that they used to turn it on in the morning and switch it off in the evening when they went to bed. It used to be part of their lives, and then there’s nothing. And now the only public television is completely turned into a Tisza Party mouthpiece.
There are a handful of surviving right-wing publications that, frankly, have not learned their lesson, in my opinion, about how to analyze Hungarian public and political life, and are very much continuing in the same line as before.
There are new shoots, I would say. It’s very hard to tell which ones are going to survive and which ones are not. And this is the situation when you realize one staggering fact: if you find yourself a media manager or an editor-in-chief, you start looking for funds and trying to survive, and you realize that there are no foundations, no grants for national, conservative, patriotic media in the world—anywhere.
Meanwhile there are dozens and dozens of rich funds for liberal, woke media that is spewing propaganda from Brussels or from the Democrats’ set of opinion-makers. So it’s amazing. There were two Hungarian foundations that sponsored some of the patriotic and conservative media in the country. They have both been shut down now and are now controlled by the Péter Magyar government.
So the situation is dire.
On the one hand, the conservative media has completely disappeared. We do not have a single conservative political daily on the newsstands now. Not a single one. Magyar Nemzet, which used to be everywhere, is now nowhere to be found. It has gone into weekly print production. And on the other hand, when you go onto social media and LinkedIn, you see ubiquitous adverts for left-wing journalists at left-wing outlets everywhere. They’re expanding. It’s like a golden age for them.
That’s a pretty dramatic transition. How many people would you estimate have now been laid off in the Hungarian media landscape since Tisza, since Magyar, won?
I would definitely estimate it near 1,000 people. And you have to understand that the Hungarian media landscape is fairly small, and these are almost exclusively members of either the public broadcasters or conservative media—almost exclusively. People have been fired in a completely absurd manner, without any justification, without any wrongdoing on their side. Not even only people who had been biased toward the Fidesz government. Even when they fired the managers of the public media, MTI, they found replacements, a couple of media managers well known in the business, and they were appointed.
One of them was supposed to be the manager of the news department at the Hungarian News Agency, and someone pointed out on social media—I think on Facebook—that yes, he had worked for the left, and he had also worked for right-wing media like Hír TV. Péter Magyar left a single comment on Facebook under one of these comments saying, “I don’t think so.”
The next day, the guy was called into the office of his boss and fired on the spot. When they found out that he had worked briefly at one of the conservative news TV stations, he was fired on the spot and removed. That’s all it takes today: just a short comment on Facebook from our new neo-Stalinist leader, Péter Magyar.
You said there’s not a single foundation in the entire world that supports conservative media in Europe. Liberal institutions outside Hungary were pretty active supporting numerous liberal and left-wing institutions, media outlets, and so on with money—taxpayer money from Europe and corporate money from various corporations, foundations, and so on. Now, where are the Americans? Where is the State Department? Where are the foundations? What is your opinion on this particular issue?
Well, on the one hand, the State Department launched in July a grant for free, sort of conservative institutions in Europe—$5 million, I think, for the entirety of Europe. And I think they have received more than 1,000 applications. Whoever I spoke to, from Italy to Poland, everyone was applying. We applied as well. But it’s a ridiculous amount. $5 million is basically the price of a single bomb in Iraq. So this was just a drop in the ocean.
And I have managed to speak to members of the American State Department—I do not want to describe any more closely who they were—and I basically just asked what they thought about this. And they said, “You’re on your own. You have to fight this fight from your own resources. We have to respect the will of the people.”
And this is very gentlemanly, you know. This is a very noble position from the State Department. They do not want to interfere in other people’s countries. But I have to add very quickly that this is not the way the Democrats see it, or money groups and oligarchs connected to the Democrats. The left does not have these sorts of scruples toward Europe and is continuing to fund the Hungarian far-left media and NGO networks. There’s a glut of funds for them. So I think the State Department of the Trump administration is shooting itself in the foot by leaving this space empty, leaving the Hungarian conservative network to wither. In four years, when they come back, where they used to have allies—honest allies and friends—where they used to have an infrastructure of pro-American political and economic circles, they will have nothing. They will only find NGO networks and political networks that are 100% allied either with the Democrats or with networks funded from the other side of the world, from the East.
I’ve tried to explain this to American diplomats and opinion-makers: there’s been a huge void created after the elections. This void is going to be filled very, very quickly. And if you do not move fast enough, you will find that others will recognize the potential in this network—and so they did. And I do not want to mention the names of the countries, but they are not the United States’ geopolitical allies, let’s say that.
What do you think the motive is from the State Department there? Is it that there are still a lot of left-wing holdouts in the State Department who are directing policy, or do you think this is the conservative mindset of letting the free market work? If the conservative outlets can generate ad revenue and play in this kind of private market, then those are the outlets that deserve to survive. And if they can’t, then they deserve to die.
I think there could be some of this, but the State Department is very well known to be the bastion of the Democrats in the international field. It is still completely dominated by left-wing activist foreign policy. You just have to look at U.S. embassies and their appointments from local talent, or the communications of some of their ambassadors.
We don’t even have an ambassador in Hungary, which kind of shows that our status is not as important for Washington as it probably used to be, or as it should be. You have to remember that Viktor Orbán stood up for Donald Trump in the darkest years and months of the lawfare, when he was being photographed in police stations, when he was getting his mugshot taken by police. Viktor Orbán was the only foreign leader who stood up and paid enormous political capital, invested a lot of political capital, into defending Donald Trump personally and stood by the Republicans in these dark periods.
With Hungarian conservatives face growing persecution, where is Donald Trump?
"You have to remember that Viktor Orbán stood up for Donald Trump in the darkest years of and months of the lawfare when he was being photographed in police stations, when he was getting his… https://t.co/Wtlujt32u2pic.twitter.com/HmHbkdVx9H
And yes, there was a lot of support from the United States before the elections, from JD Vance and Marco Rubio, even from Donald Trump himself. Not the support that we needed. What we needed, first of all, was a good look into the far-left financial networks that are tilting the Hungarian political sphere toward the left, toward Brussels, and toward the Democrats. And the other thing was action on the giant tech firms like Facebook, Google, etc., who are openly censoring Hungarian and European media content, influencers, etc. And they’re doing it so blatantly that we expected the new White House to crack down on this undemocratic, biased behavior. And this didn’t happen.
Do you feel that now that Orbán is out of power, the US is actually betraying the Hungarian conservatives?
I don’t think they’re betraying us explicitly. I think there is a recognition of the seriousness of the situation, but I haven’t heard a single word from Republican circles expressing dismay or concern about what is happening in Hungary, and there’s plenty to be concerned about regarding what has happened in the last four months.
What we’ve seen in Hungary being done by the Tisza government is unprecedented in Europe, even in left-wing countries, even in partial democracies like Germany. There’s persecution of right-wing influencers, etc. I’m not going to go into details, but the U.S. State Department is completely silent about this, and I would say now is about time to open their mouths and take a hard look at what’s going on in Hungary.
Orbán invited JD Vance at a sort of inopportune time for his own election campaign. This had already been after the bombing of Iran, and there was a pretty big energy price increase right before Orbán went to the polls. Some people even said that this may have contributed to a larger loss for Orbán in the end. What is your opinion?
Whether the visits by JD Vance or Marco Rubio helped or not, I think they didn’t sway Hungary either way. They were very much welcomed by the Hungarian conservative networks, and I don’t think any of the Tisza Party’s potential voters changed their minds about voting for Fidesz because they understood how important the support of the American administration is. It is very, very important, but they had their minds made up already, and I don’t think these high-level visits changed anything in any way.
You have to separate Fidesz’s campaign performance from what really happened, the result of the elections. There was such an incredibly violent, intensive, and aggressive communication campaign from Tisza’s international and domestic supporters that throughout my 25 years in communications I have not seen anything like this.
We had the Ukrainians close our oil pipeline, Brussels withheld the European funds from the Orbán government, the Polish secret services were spreading fake news about Viktor Orbán, the British intelligence services were fairly active in Hungary, and on Facebook and Google the salvos of thousands of comments in our comments sections and everywhere else were coming from bot farms and paid influencers. And it was just amazing. I don’t think any society could have resisted this intensity of disinformation and demagoguery that we saw in the elections.
Of course, the other side of the coin is that Fidesz had a terrible election campaign, and it’s kind of universally understood even among conservatives that they really messed up their election campaign, and everyone is paying a very high price for this.
Since the election, I’ve seen polling that shows Fidesz tanking even much further than their election results, and Tisza seems to be more popular than ever. This is about four months in now. What realistic chances do you see of the conservatives coming back to power, and how will the Hungarian media landscape—without a real conservative voice, or not much of one going forward—even present the conservative or right-wing viewpoint?
I think some of those polls are right, and maybe not to the extent that they are showing, but Tisza’s popularity has actually grown since the elections and Fidesz has fallen back. That’s partly because Viktor Orbán was such an incredibly dominant personality in Fidesz, and his removal from the political scene is a huge hit for Hungarian conservatives.
And his replacement, János Bóka, is a young and very well-informed and competent person, but I don’t think he’s a full replacement for Viktor Orbán, and some are skeptical about his charisma, etc.
Fidesz’s performance since the elections can only be described as sketchy, and we are expecting Fidesz to do much more than they are doing. And there’s, of course, the other right-wing party, Mi Hazánk, Our Homeland. They are to the right of Fidesz, and very brave and vocal, and they are organizing demonstrations and are very active in parliament as well. They are getting into debates with Péter Magyar, but when it comes to voting, they almost always vote with Tisza.
They even voted for the so-called Asset Recovery Office, which is an absolute betrayal not just of their voters, but of conservative Hungary as well. That’s just a huge misstep. So they are not to be relied on. I think the only solution we can hope for is the emergence of a new conservative party, but we do not even see the sign of anything happening yet, and it seems Hungarian conservative circles are still in shell shock post-election.
Beijing may let its technology giants buy more Nvidia high-end chips, giving the US chip designer a fresh foothold in China and keeping Chinese artificial intelligence (AI) developers tied to its software after months of stalled trade. China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) has asked major domestic companies, including ByteDance, Alibaba and Tencent, […]
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.
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.”
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 Presssaid 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.
It’s rather forgotten today how Washington’s post-9/11 imperial adventurism was not restricted to military intervention. A core component of the Bush administration’s “Freedom Agenda” – under the auspices of which calamitous wars in Afghanistan, Iraq and elsewhere were waged – was overt sponsorship of civil society-led coups throughout the former Soviet Union, Warsaw Pact and Yugoslavia. Citizens of these regions, and the world, live with this meddling’s destructive consequences to this day. The seemingly never-ending – and ever-escalating – Ukraine proxy war is a particularly visceral legacy.
The 1983 creation of the National Endowment for Democracy, a US state entity avowedly concernedwith executing overtly what the CIA once did covertly, ushered in a new era of “spyless coups”. Working in close conjunction with USAID and George Soros’ Open Society Institute, NED ever after provided funding, training and material assistance to NGOs, ‘independent’ media outlets, opposition groups, and other initiatives in service of regime change, across every corner of the world.
Come 9/11, NED and its confederates had devised a supremely cunning, cost-effective template for toppling troublesome governments – be they left-wing, nationalist, or even former US puppets who’d stepped out of line. The previous October, longtime Yugoslav leader Slobodan Milosevic was brought down in what the Washington Postbombastically dubbed “an extraordinary US effort to unseat a foreign head of state, not through covert action of the kind the CIA once employed in such places as Iran and Guatemala, but by modern election campaign techniques.”
At the anti-Milosevic effort’s forefront was Otpor! (Serbian: Resistance!), a rebellious NED-funded youth activist group. Through a mix of civil disobedience, non-violent resistance, rock concerts, street theatre, and graffiti, they fomented mass public opposition to the Yugoslav President. When election day came and official results pointed to Milosevic’s victory, an NED-funded “parallel vote tabulation” purported to expose major fraud, sending millions to the streets of Belgrade to peacefully demand the President’s resignation. Milosevic duly capitulated, in the face of seemingly overwhelming people power.
The supposedly heroic struggle of Otpor! and other US-supported anti-Milosevic groups was immortalised in a slick ‘documentary’, Bringing Down A Dictator. Milosevic’s fall provided a precise blueprint for future ‘color revolutions’ – so-called because frequently, the Empire-supported activists who led these mob putsches prominently adopted specific colours for their banners, branding and logos. Initially, US officials eagerly associated themselves publicly with this upheaval. Meanwhile, the mainstream media routinely published remarkably illuminating post-mortems of the revolts, extensively exposing Washington’s guiding hand and oft-enormous financial outlay.
Nonetheless, politicians, pundits and journalists alike universally framed colour revolutions as ultimately spontaneous uprisings by liberal, progressive elements with legitimate grievances, who yearned for democracy and freedom. In reality, they almost invariably produced corrupt, repressive governments that ruled via intimidation and brutality, including political assassinations. Post-colour revolution regimes also typically conducted sweeping privatisation and other ravaging ‘reforms’, destroying living standards for average citizens by prostrating their countries to the EU, IMF, NATO, World Trade Organization, and other mechanisms of Western economic, military, and political subjugation.
Slobodan Milosevic’s NED-orchestrated ouster is nicknamed the ‘Bulldozer Revolution’, due to iconic scenes during the upheaval of a wheel loader helping anti-government agitators occupy state buildings. However, its driver quickly turned against the “Revolution”. Subsequent “shock therapy” decimated Yugoslavia’s mixed market economy, causing his successful independent business to fail, and him to go bankrupt. He subsisted until his dying day on meagre state welfare payments. For most participants, subsequent colour revolutions were similarly an object lesson in being careful about what one wishes for.
‘External Shove’
In February 2005, President George W. Bush gave a swaggering address in Bratislava, Slovakia. He hailed how “in recent times, we have witnessed landmark events in the history of liberty.” This included Georgia’s November 2003 Rose Revolution, Ukraine’s Orange Revolution the next year, and Iraq’s Purple Revolution a month prior. “The advance of freedom is the concentrated work of generations,” Bush declared. He looked ahead to Moldova, and “inevitably” Belarus, “someday proudly [belonging] to the country of democracies [sic]”:
“Eventually, the call of liberty comes to every mind and every soul. And one day, freedom’s promise will reach every people and every nation.”
Moldova’s forced transformation into a staggeringly corrupt effective EU-US colony took many years. Belarus conversely remains stubbornly resistant to “freedom’s promise”, as defined by Brussels, London, Washington, and other centres of imperial power. Still, President Bush’s confidence was well-founded. Waves of insurrectionary unrest unleashed by his government’s “Freedom Agenda” had systematically swept away designated enemy governments one by one annually since he took office. Indeed, within weeks of Bush’s speech, Kyrgyzstan’s insufficiently pro-Western leader fell victim to yet another colour revolution.
He would not be the last. Prior colour revolutions had enthusiastically emphasised the importance of techniques of nonviolent resistance – many of which were crafted by Gene Sharp, who was intimately enmeshed within the US military and intelligence establishment for much of his life. However, Kyrgyzstan’s NED-created regime change army, KelKel – directly modelled on Otpor! – attacked police, torched government buildings and even carried out bombings. Their ferocity was actively encouraged and promoted by US-funded TV stations locally. Such belligerence subsequently became a colour revolution calling card.
Ukraine’s Orange Revolution
That colour revolutions represented a formal weapon of war in the Empire’s post-9/11 arsenal was enthusiastically spelled out by arch-neoconservative Max Boot in late December 2004. He gushed how Ukraine’s Orange Revolution days earlier, which brought a pro-Western government to power, was “one of the most inspiring events” of that year. Boot declared the “triumph” and “miracle” of the revolution “should dispel the quaint notion still prevalent in many Western universities and foreign ministries that democracy is a luxury good suitable for rich countries”:
“These revolutions reveal the hollowness of the cliché that ‘democracy can’t be imposed by outsiders’… sometimes, when dealing with an entrenched dictatorship, this requires military intervention of the kind that occurred in Iraq and Afghanistan. More brittle regimes can be brought down by their own people, but even they often need a little external shove… There was nothing nefarious about the US intervention in Ukraine.”
Boot boasted how Washington had “spent $58 million on democracy promotion in the last two years” in Ukraine. He proposed Kiev receive “expedited NATO and European Union membership,” to finish off the Orange Revolution. “In the meantime, we need to apply elsewhere the lessons of Ukraine” Boot demanded, suggesting “an obvious candidate for a similar transformation is Iran.” He explained, “it’s hard to think of a higher priority than the overthrow of the mullahs,” encouraging the Bush administration to prioritise “liberating Iran.”
‘USAID Help’
Such was the insurrectionary fervour of the time, in January 2006 USAID went to the extent of publishing a glossy magazine, Democracy Rising, revealing in detail Washington’s central role in fomenting “grassroots” rebellions as far afield as Afghanistan, Gaza and Lebanon. Dedicated sections on colour revolutions to date were replete with stunningly forthright passages. A section on Georgia’s November 2003 Rose Revolution described how NED had financed regime change training for local “lawyers, judges, journalists, members of parliament, NGOs, political party leaders, and others.”
The stated purpose of this investment was to give Georgians “a sense that they should regulate the government.” The Rose Revolution “was the climax of these efforts.” One recipient of US financial support remarked, “without foreign assistance, I’m not sure we would have been able to achieve what we did without bloodshed.” Meanwhile, several pages were dedicated to the Orange Revolution. It noted how thousands of Ukrainian journalists were given training in “investigative reporting”, bankrolled by NED and USAID.
An alumni told Democracy Rising this sponsorship “created a feeling that others stood with them ‘in the trenches’.” Concurrently, NED-affiliated Freedom House flooded the coffers of NGOs “that sponsored voter education, mobilized voters to get to the polls and observed elections.” These organisations “also held meetings, youth dances, rock concerts and karaoke to attract young voters,” and “ran public service ads on TV stations, informing people about their right to vote.” Meanwhile, “democracy trainers from Serbia, Slovakia, Russia and Croatia” were flown into the country.
In the second round of Ukraine’s presidential election, NED-financed NGOs claimed to have been inundated with tens of thousands of reports of fraud from voting stations all over the country, while exit polls they produced pointed to widespread rigging having denied pro-Western candidate Viktor Yushchenko a landslide victory. Vast protests, combined with opposition-organised general strikes, widespread civil disobedience and occupations of government buildings forced a rerun. A US-funded think tank apparatchik asserted:
“USAID help for the poll was absolutely important – the poll results after the second round made people go to the street.”
For all the hype and self-assurance of Democracy Rising, its publication came at a time when colour revolutions were increasingly being viewed with hostility and suspicion at a state and public level throughout the Global South. In every case, the radical outcomes promised by colour revolution leaders and advocates failed to materialise, while US rhetoric about the commitment of resultant pro-Western regimes to democracy and freedom was a perverse fraud.
In Ukraine, US-installed Yushchenko implemented economic austerity, slashed regulations and social spending, bailed out criminal banks, broke open state industry and natural resources for foreign plunder, attacked the rights of Russian speakers, and began preparing the country for locally-feared NATO membership. Within just nine months of entering office, his coalition government – comprised of Orange Revolution activists – collapsed due to deeply corrupt battles with feuding Ukrainian oligarchs over control of key media and industrial assets.
Yushchenko was voted out in the January 2010 presidential election, finishing fifth in the first round with just 5.5% of the vote. As Empire house journal Foreign Policy lamented years later, the Bush administration’s much-vaunted colour revolutions all turned out to be “terribly disappointing.” Each and every time, “elite corruption still continued apace” and “promises of far-reaching change never really materialized.” Damningly, “maladies that typified the preceding regimes quickly came to describe” the governments created by colour revolutions themselves.
‘Revolution Business’
That’s quite some euphemism. In Georgia, longtime Soros acolyte Mikheil Saakashvili granted himself unilateral power in key policy areas, before brazenly exploiting his position to harass and jail business and political rivals. Saakashvili’s targets would be raped and/or tortured in prison, their ordeals filmed for primetime broadcast on local TV networks. Grave questions abound over his personal involvement in several suspicious deaths, including government ministers’. He was voted out in October 2012, despite NED’s best efforts.
Kyrgyzstan’s 2005 Tulip Revolution installed Kurmanbek Bakiyev, who proceeded to run the country as his personal fiefdom for five years. Bakiyev’s relatives profited exorbitantly from legally questionable privatisation of state industries. For example, his family signed a highly controversial $1.8 billion deal to supply fuel to a local US military base, close to Kyrgyzstan’s total GDP in 2003. Elsewhere, Bakiyev’s brother oversaw Bishkek’s security apparatus – arbitrary detentions, bogus convictions, torture, and murders of opposition activists, journalists, and politicians became commonplace.
Bakiyev was himself chased out of not only the presidential palace but Bishkek itself in April 2010, following a massacre of anti-corruption protesters in which up to 100 were killed and at least 450 wounded. Thereafter, Kyrgyzstan was plunged into economic and political chaos for a decade, with numerous governments collapsing along the way. The freest and most stable Central Asian state prior to the Tulip Revolution, it is only since 2020 – following another Anglo-American coup – the country has regained some semblance of stability.
A key player in that upheaval was British ambassador Charles Garrett. He arrived in Bishkek from Macedonia, where as this journalist has revealed from April 2016 he steered what was known as the “colorful revolution”. Illegally obtained, deceptively edited wiretaps seemingly implicating government officials in shocking crimes produced huge protests, featuring widespread arson attacks and brutal clashes between demonstrators and police. Garrett distributed cash to NGOs and activists involved in the unrest from his diplomatic pouch, encouraging them to cause mass havoc.
George Soros’ Open Society Foundations, NED, and USAID were also colorful revolution participants. Some protesters even proudly wore “Soros Army” shirts. Despite a huge public counter-revolutionary fightback, the tumult paralysed the Macedonian economy and state, leading to the installation of a doggedly pro-Western, dangerously dysfunctional administration that engaged in industrial scale graft, jailed political opponents on bogus charges, and changed the country’s name despite widespread opposition. Meanwhile, existing economic problems, including crippling brain drain, were gravely exacerbated.
The unfailingly disastrous results of colour revolutions surely contributed to White House officials abruptly and firmly distancing themselves from the entire enterprise, before the Bush administration’s second term was even over. The “Freedom Agenda” was quietly forgotten. The President – who in October 2004 openly mandated financial assistance to Belarusian opposition activists, and once publicly praised the Rose Revolution as an example to be followed throughout the Caucasus and Central Asia – went so far as to deny the US was in the “revolution business” at all.
‘Alternate Reality’
Colour revolutions have continued apace ever since, with the same strategies being recurrently applied the world over, to varying degrees of success. All along, non-Western governments – in particular China, Iran and Russia – have become increasingly vocal in their condemnation of and opposition to colour revolutions, in some cases passing legislation seeking to curtail the operations of foreign funded NGOs on their soil. Yet, the mainstream media long ago adopted a rigid Omertà on Washington’s culpability for civil society-driven destabilisation overseas.
In a striking example of this paradigm shift, in November 2004, before the Orange Revolution was over, The Guardian published a revealing report exposing the “US campaign behind the turmoil in Kiev.” The outlet stated unambiguously the revolt was “an American creation, a sophisticated and brilliantly conceived exercise in Western branding and mass marketing that, in four countries in four years, has been used to try to salvage rigged elections and topple unsavoury regimes.” NED, the State Department and USAID were all fingered as culprits.
Fast forward to July 2015 however, and a Guardian article on Russia’s banning of NED under foreign agent laws quite amazingly relied on a brief quote pulled from the Endowment’s official website to describe its operations. In the intervening time, the Maidan Revolution overthrew Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych in February 2014, setting Kiev on the warpath with Moscow. Washington’s irrefutable involvement was strenuously denied at the time by the mainstream media, and has been ever since.
Following the Ukraine proxy war’s February 2022 eruption, The New York Times took vigorous aim at independent journalists for spreading the “conspiracy theory” Maidan was US-orchestrated, dubbing the proposition an “alternative reality” and “Russian disinformation”. This is despite every prominent Maidan actor – including the individuals who started the demonstrations – receiving NED or USAID funding, leaders of US-bankrolled organisations in the country advertising their intention to overthrow Yanukovych years prior, and theEndowment spending $20 million in the country in 2013 alone.
After the outbreak of war in Ukraine, NED removed its grant records on Ukraine, listing its investment in a panoply of initiatives in the country over many years – many of which ultimately targeted Russia, one way or another. In mid-2024, the Endowment undertook the unprecedented step of removing grant records for the entire world. Today, brief entries on different geographical regions describe in vague terms the Endowment’s specific aims locally, and overall sums being spent. The crucial questions of where, and on what, aren’t clarified.
NED going underground makes the task of tracking and exposing contemporary colour revolutions difficult, but not impossible. In September 2025, mass rioting ignited in Nepal. Major news outlets without exception reported the fiery agitation as an organic burst of dissent by the country’s disaffected “Gen Z”, motivated by corruption, unemployment, and state censorship of social media. Publications barely acknowledged demonstrators committed serious crimes, including torching Nepal’s parliament and the Prime Minister’s official residence, which sent occupants fleeing in helicopters.
Based on publicly available information, the clear insinuations of a colour revolution could be discerned. An NGO that organised the protests, Hami Nepal, had clear links to organisations known to be in receipt of NED funding. Subsequent leaks amply demonstrated the Endowment and USAID expended substantial sums over the years preceding the coup training young Nepalese citizens how to protest, founding NGOs and political parties, and “advocate concerns” on issues such as corruption. Evidently, the post-9/11 “Freedom Agenda” never actually ended.
Most indicators suggest that the Republicans in the House and Senate are going to face a brutal backlash from the American people in November. Polling with generic ballots suggest a big win for the Democrats and likely the loss of Republican control of both houses of Congress.
There is little reason to cheer a Democratic party victory, however Republicans in charge have for the most part earned what is coming to them. They have refused to uphold their Constitutional obligation to take leading responsibility for war powers.
Earlier this year, President Trump launched what is the most unpopular war in US history when on February 28th he ordered a full US assault on Iran. Iran had not attacked or even threatened the United States and our own intelligence community continued – and continues – to claim that Iran is not building nuclear weapons.
The February attack followed last June’s US bombing of Iran after which the president claimed that the country’s nuclear program was “completely obliterated.”
Congress over too many years has been used to allowing the President to have his own way on matters of war and peace. Members bask in the false patriotism promoted by the media and special interests as the people “rally around the flag.” Eventually, when the war has gone on for years without “victory” – as in Iraq and Afghanistan – many claim they were never really for the war in the first place.
This time is different. There was no propaganda blitz. There were no attempts to convince the American people that the “smoking gun” could be a “mushroom cloud” as we were told in the run up to the 2003 Iraq war. The majority of Americans were against the war on Iran before it started and only became more opposed over time.
As the war drags on, we have seen the national debt pass $40 trillion, diesel fuel prices at the highest ever, and inflation hitting the middle class and poor even harder. The “cakewalk” again failed to materialize.
Incumbent Republicans seeking re-election are in such a panic over voter anger about the war that they have taken to calling for a quick end to it while on the campaign trail. When they get back inside the Beltway, however, they vote to keep the war going for fear of President Trump’s anger.
This is not leadership.
Late last week the Iranian delegation in New York for the UN General Assembly meeting offered an off-ramp. Essentially it was the same Memorandum of Understanding that President Trump signed last June and promptly disregarded, but on a shorter timeline. By Sunday, the President announced that he would reject the deal – a deal like one he already signed.
There is no strategy for winning this disastrous war, it is clear. From over-confidence on decapitation strikes to certainty of a quick military victory, the Administration is now promising that they will win by crippling Iran’s economy. The problem is that Iran has been operating under “crippling” sanctions for decades and has a high economic pain tolerance.
Unfortunately, both parties in DC are war parties, so again it is hard to cheer the likely Republican losses. But sometimes electoral losses can serve as wake-up calls. Eventually we may see the re-emergence of antiwar Republicans in the spirit of the late Sen. Robert Taft and a restoration of the Constitution.
With the US mid-terms in November looking like being somewhere between a heavy defeat and a bloodbath for the Republicans, Mark Littlewood looks at what comes after Trump and which are the bets worth taking.
Israel continues to face isolation in international forums as it continues its multi-front war on the peoples of West Asia. On Thursday, September 24, delegations from at least 77 countries walked out or left their seats vacant during the address of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the 81st session of the United Nations General Assembly.
The move was interpreted as opposition to Israel’s three-year genocidal aggression on Gaza, and atrocities across multiple parts of West Asia.
Arab nations that walked out included: Algeria, Comoros, Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Libya, Mauritania, Oman, Palestine, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, Tunisia and Yemen.
Asian states involved: Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Brunei, Darussalam, Indonesia, Iran, Kyrgyzstan, Malaysia, Maldives, Myanmar, North Korea, Pakistan, Türkiye, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan.
From Africa the following left the chamber: Angola, Botswana, Central African Republic, Chad, Congo (Republic of the), Democratic Republic of the Congo, Djibouti, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Eswatini, Kenya, Lesotho, Liberia, Madagascar, Mozambique, Namibia, Niger, Senegal, South Africa and Uganda.
Countries of Latin America and the Caribbean: Antigua and Barbuda, Bahamas, Barbados, Belize, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Cuba, Dominica, Guyana, Nicaragua, Panama, Peru, Saint Lucia, Suriname, and Venezuela.
European countries: Bosnia and Herzegovina, Ireland, North Macedonia, San Marino, Slovenia and Spain.
From Oceania: Tonga and Tuvalu.
Meanwhile, thousands of protesters took to the streets of New York City, where the UN headquarters is located, to protest Netanyahu’s visit and address, calling for US officials to comply with the warrant issued for his arrest from the International Criminal Court.
Netanyahu defies the world, vows to continue Israel’s multi-front regional war
Netanyahu began his defiant, combatant speech by calling the departing delegations “moral cowards”.
“If there are any other moral cowards who haven’t yet left this hall, please do so now,” the Israeli PM said, addressing an almost empty chamber.
During the rest of his speech, which lasted for around 40 minutes, he defended Israel’s military campaigns – including the strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities – and vowed “to continue to win” Israel’s muti-front regional war, claiming his government has “no other choice”.
Netanyahu categorically rejected international accusations of genocide in Gaza, labeling them “the greatest lie of the century”. He sharply criticized his vocal opponents, naming Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani, and the government of Qatar.
Furthermore, Netanyahu downplayed the deadly impact of Israeli settler violence in the occupied West Bank by describing the perpetrators as a “handful of young juvenile delinquents, about 150 in number, who go throw stones, who chop down olive trees, and occasionally light some fires.”
He also minimized the total number of Palestinian casualties resulting from settler attacks saying “maybe two or three dead” per year, although the UN reported in August that at least 23 Palestinians were killed and more than 1,040 others were injured in the context of settler attacks since the beginning of 2026.
Responding to statements made by Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa concerning Syria’s sovereignty over the Golan Heights, Netanyahu firmly asserted Israel’s permanent claim over the territory, invoking a biblical narrative.
“Jews have been on the Golan Heights since the days of Moses,” Netanyahu declared, asking Al-Sharaa to “read it in the Bible”.
Abbas continues to appeal to the US despite its sanctions on PA
For the second year in a row, the US State Department has denied entry visas to the President of the Palestinian Authority (PA) Mahmoud Abbas and a high-level delegation, preventing them from attending the United Nations General Assembly session in New York.
According to media reports, the Trump administration justified the revocation of visas by accusing the PA of pursuing legal action against Israel in international courts, and failing to meet past peace commitments. The decision drew wide international criticism for violating UN host-country agreements.
The US action put Abbas on the spot before the Palestinian grassroots, especially as his administration is known for appeasing Washington at the cost of the Palestinian people’s sacrifices.
Opening his pre-recorded speech delivered remotely, Abbas strongly condemned the revocation of US visas for Palestinian officials – including himself – as “punitive and unlawful”, rejecting the justifications provided by Washington.
He urged the US to lift the sanctions and restrictions it imposed on the PA, resume dialogue, and work alongside the international community to back the two-state solution.
Abbas stressed that the PA has fulfilled its governance and reform commitments, and reaffirmed his leadership’s dedication to international law and its ongoing stance against “violence and terrorism”.
In terms of the situation on the ground, Abbas cautioned that Palestinians are confronting the most dangerous phase in their modern history.
He detailed the repercussions of the ongoing Israeli genocide and the severe humanitarian crisis in Gaza, in addition to settlement expansion, land seizures, and the escalation in settler violence under the protection of Israeli forces in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem.
The Palestinian President warned that these systemic practices are designed to fragment the territory and forcibly displace the Palestinian people.
“We have, for long, warned the international community through the UN General Assembly and the Security Council that these Israeli policies that operate outside international law will destroy the two-state solution,” Abbas asserted.
The head of the PA slammed some countries for their silence and their continued supply of weapons to Israel.
While acknowledging the 20-point plan brought forward by US President Donald Trump for post-war Gaza, the related UN Security Council resolution and the Mladenov 15-point roadmap, he lamented the lack of tangible progress and called for the immediate expedition of phase two of the ceasefire deal.
Abbas also expressed hope that phase two of the deal would unify Gaza, the West Bank, and Jerusalem under the mandate of the Palestinian state.
Concluding his address, Abbas called on Trump to abide by his previous commitments made to Arab and Islamic leaders regarding the prevention of land annexation and forced displacement of the Palestinian people.
He further demanded the immediate, unconditional release of more than USD 6 billion in tax revenues withheld by Israel, alongside an end to the financial siege on Palestinian institutions.
With regard to the long-awaited legislative elections, Abbas affirmed that it will take place on November 28, followed subsequently by presidential elections.
He closed by reiterating the vision of a democratic, unarmed Palestinian state grounded in human rights and the rule of law, living side-by-side with Israel in “mutual security and peace”.
Visa revocations show concessions yield zero results, says Omar Assaf
Palestinian political activist and former prisoner in Israeli jails, Omar Assaf, argues that the denial of US entry visas to the Palestinian delegation highlights two critical realities.
First, it exposes a deep-rooted US hostility toward the Palestinian people and their leadership, actively blocking them from reaching the United Nations to make the World hear their grievances, assert their rights, and bear witness to the crimes of the occupation.
Second, it serves as a stark wake-up call for Palestinian leadership that the US administration cannot be relied upon, nor can it be viewed as an honest broker, or a mediator of any kind.
From his point of view, the incident makes clear that a policy of concessions, compliance, appeasement, and pleading yields zero results. Instead, the World only respects the language of strength, unity and upholding rights. Consequently, this must serve as a definitive lesson for Palestinians to close ranks under a unified national stance.
“We must firmly adhere to our people’s rights, stand resilient against challenges, and confront any aggression targeting our land and existence, including our fundamental right to make our voices heard globally to halt these ongoing crimes,” Assaf emphasized.
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