The withdrawal of the remaining US troops from Iraq is a victory for the Iraqi nation and the resistance force in the region, Iran claimed on Thursday, October 1, also calling for greater cooperation between both the countries to achieve complete sovereignty for Iraq.
“The US, despite possessing vast resources and equipment, has been expelled from Iraq, and the Iraqi people are celebrating this victory,” head of Iran’s Quds’ forces Esmail Qaani said during a program held in Tehran to mark the second anniversary of the Israeli assassination of Hezbollah leader Hasan Nasrallah.
He thanked the “resistance of the Iraqi nation and the heroes of the Resistance Front” for making the end of the US occupation a reality.
The US withdrew all its remaining forces from Iraq on September 30, as per the 2024 understanding between both the countries marking the conclusion of over a decade-long military presence in the country.
The news of the withdrawal led to widespread celebrations in Baghdad and other parts of the country on Wednesday.
The US occupied Iraq during the 2003 war which lasted until 2011 when it publicly stated that it withdrew all its forces. They were then re-deployed in 2014 as part of the international coalition fighting against the Islamic State or ISIS.
Iraqi people, as well as the resistance groups in the country, have been demanding the withdrawal of all foreign troops from the country for years now. Their presence is seen as undermining the country’s sovereignty.
Due to popular resistance, most of the foreign troops left the country by 2019 after a victory was declared over ISIS. Remaining US troops were redeployed to some bases in Baghdad and Erbil.
In 2020, the Iraqi parliament adopted a resolution demanding the withdrawal of all remaining foreign troops from the country following popular protests over the US assassination of Qassem Solemani during a visit to Baghdad. Soleimani was the head of Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corp (IRGC) and key military strategist.
Qaani claimed that the US withdrawal from Iraq is also a victory for Iran which has been in support of the call on the ground that the presence of foreign troops in the region undermines regional security and stability.
Qaani also linked the withdrawal to the setbacks the US faced in its war with Iran in the last seven months. Contrary to its expressed wish to force Iranians to surrender within days of the war launched on February 28, “they encountered a reality vastly different from their calculations,” he said.
The US had used its military presence and the bases in Iraq to launch attacks across the border in Iran in the past and also during the ongoing war. This has prompted Iranian retaliations causing destruction and death of some of its servicemen.
Iran has also accused that the US military’s presence in Iraq has been used by Israel for its clandestine operations inside the country.
Reacting to US withdrawal from Iraq, IRGC said on Thursday that it is the beginning of its withdrawal from the entire region.
Qaani expressed hope that in the aftermath of US troop withdrawal there will be increased coordination between the governments in Iraq and Iran for purging the remaining US influences on the country and creating a secure and sovereign Iraq.
Though the US has withdrawn militarily, the legacy of its occupation still remains in Iraq. It continues to control Iraq’s economy by controlling the payments to its oil exports which are routed through the American Central Bank.
Oil revenues made up 90% of the Iraqi government’s total budget and over 40% of its national GDP.
Qaani accused that banning the Iranian airlines to Iraq and other countries in the region is a distraction used by the US to undermine the significance of its military defeat.
Iraq and several other countries in the region complied with the US sanctions on Iranian airlines last month following Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent’s threats of secondary sanctions.
by Carlo Domenico Cristofori
We are approaching the anniversary of one of Mossad’s most meticulously organized plots: the October 7, 2023 attack on Israelis along the Gaza Strip border, carried out with the complicity of Hamas mercenary terrorists directed by Israel. We wrote about many investigations that we summarizez below…
According to intelligence experts, there is an intensifying risk of new false-flag operations such that terrorist operation aimed at legitimizing plans to depopulate the Gaza Strip; these plans have now extended to the West Bank and Lebanon, in line with the insane “Greater Israel” project of Israeli Zionist regime Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
That is why serious consideration should be given to the CIA analysts and Iranian politicians who suggest that two suspected terrorist attacks—the one at the Royal Air Force base at Fairford and the incident involving the FlyDubai flight—were FALSE-FLAGE actions.
Let us start with a premise: for the American Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and the Israeli Mossad, organizing actual terrorist attacks is easier than staging a “Hollywood-style production”—which is what many inexperienced bloggers believe the scuffle on the UAE flight was.
In fact, planning a terrorist plot requires only a few skilled secret agents and a handful of expendable victims, whereas a video production requires dozens of extras who are difficult to blackmail and control.
«Reacting to claims by Britain and others against Iran over the incident involving the Emirati aircraft, as well as Iran’s warnings about hostile actions, Baqaei said Iran remains fully prepared to defend itself» Iranian Tasnim News agency reported.
“This is merely a reminder of an experience that the world has witnessed for itself over the past seven months,” Esmail Baghaei, Spokesperson for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Iran, said at a press conference on Sunday.
The remarks came after a Flydubai flight from Dubai to Tel Aviv was diverted to Saudi Arabia on September 30 after its co-pilot allegedly attacked the captain and attempted to take control of the aircraft. Passengers and crew subdued the co-pilot, allowing a reserve crew to land the plane safely. Investigations into the incident remain ongoing.
Gospa News, in the Daily Wars Diary have suggested the FALSE-FLAG hypothesis already on the same day of the incident (link updates here).
Baqaei said the latest claims should be viewed in light of the Zionist regime’s and some European countries’ history of using false-flag operations. Iran is being accused “solely on the basis of fabricated evidence,” he stated.
The spokesman cited Britain’s allegations concerning RAF Fairford and the Emirati aircraft as an example, saying even children could see how clumsily such anti-Iranian claims have been constructed.
Baqaei said the Israeli regime and its European supporters appear to be seeking to divert attention from the situation in Gaza as well as their own aggression against Iran, while creating the impression that Iran poses a threat to the world. “This is a worn-out tactic,”he said.
«US President Donald Trump has suggested, without providing evidence, that the co-pilot may have been linked to Iran, saying he was responding to what he had been hearing. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu initially said it was too early to determine whether Iran was involved, while Israeli officials later said the co-pilot appeared to have been acting alone» Tansim added.
«Media reports have identified the co-pilot as an Omani national, with reports alleging that he had previously been barred from flying in Oman over concerns about extremist views» Iranian agency concluded.
Excerpt of a long interview published by The Trends Journal YT channel held by Edmund DeMarche with Johnson.
Larry Johnson, the former CIA analyst from Sonar21.com, says there seems to be more questions than answers after the FlyDubai cockpit attack that nearly crashed a plane en route from the UAE to Israel.
He also talks about the reactions from Trump and Netanyahu.
In the same interview Johnson spoke also about US-Iran war perspectives saying: “US Navy hasn’t ENOUGH SHIPS, FUEL to continue BLOCKADE near Hormuz”
Iran has rejected attempts to link Tehran to a recent incident aboard a Flydubai passenger jet, calling the allegations a “false flag” operation. Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Esmaeil Baqaei said the claims were based on fabricated evidence.
Below is an excerpt from a news report by Firstpost, an Indian news and media website.
A report lasting approximately seven minutes analyzes the various theories and presents the first interviews with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Damodardas Modi, the Indian Ambassador to the UAE, and the injured Indian pilot—seen with a visible head bandage—who confirms that the assault actually took place.
These details address the doubts raised by former CIA analyst Larry Johnson regarding the authenticity of the fight in the cockpit—unless, of course, the Israeli Mossad conspired with Indian intelligence as well…
On RAF Fairford suspected terrorist plot ex-CIA Operations Officer Charles Finfrock said:: ‘There’s some aspects of this that remind me of a really successful internal security operation, where they’ve penetrated the cell, where they’re following the investigation, following the operation very closely, and they stop it before it can become dangerous”.
“The FBI has done this wonderfully several times in the US where they’re able to put somebody inside and stop something like this before it even gets close to being active. And so I don’t see it as a false flag. I wouldn’t see what the benefit of a false flag there would be”.
But we have to recall that there certainly would have been an advantage…
In fact, UK military intelligence has provided—and continues to provide—support to the US, and thus indirectly to Israel, regarding military tensions in the Middle East.
Moreover, it is the only European country so far to have begun providing support to the Houthi separatists in Yemen—who, being Shia Muslims, are backed by the theocracy in Tehran.
Therefore, a “false-flag” attack in England could have—and still could—increase the likelihood of UK military intervention in support of Israel and against Iran.
Ex-CIA Operations Officer Charles Finfrock added:
“But this to me strikes me as a real operation that had been covered well on both sides of the Atlantic and now we’re trying to get our story straight about explaining how much we knew about it and when and where and why”.
“And sometimes these things that you’ve seen, they come off looking very ham-handed because we’ve been so involved in the investigation, so we don’t let it evolve to the point of actually having a working bomb”. Afshin Rattansi: ‘And they all get released on bail anyway.’
A “false flag” operation is one carefully premeditated over a long period by a foreign intelligence entity to implicate an enemy nation and discredit it in the eyes of global public opinion.
It is planned down to the finest detail, carrying the risk of causing actual casualties.
In fact, if unforeseen “collateral damage”—such as unexpected deaths beyond the planned injuries or killings—occurs during the operation, the orchestrators are even more pleased, as the resulting bloodshed lends greater credibility to the terrorist attack.
Historically, the CIA (US counter-intelligence) and Mossad (Israeli counter-intelligence) have been recognized masters of such plots, occasionally utilizing partners such as the secret services of other nations or terrorist groups.
In many of these false flag operations, the recruited and trained perpetrators may be suicide attackers, as was the case with the September 11, 2001 attacks.
In other instances, they may be secret agents unaware that they have been marked for death—as happened to Lee Harvey Oswald regarding his involvement in the fatal assassination of President John Fitzgerald Kennedy in Dallas on November 22, 1963, where other snipers fired the lethal shots.
Abstract of Biggest BOMBSHELLS Uncovered by Internet Sleuths in the Newly Released JFK Files
Now, we are approaching the anniversary of one of Mossad’s most meticulously organized plots: the October 7, 2023 attack on Israelis along the Gaza Strip border, carried out with the complicity of Hamas mercenary terrorists directed by Israel.
“The revelation by the daily newspaper *Haaretz* regarding the October 7 massacre is making headlines worldwide and shaking Israel, which is caught between the war in the Gulf and the challenge of next month’s elections”—this is the report from RAI’s mainstream news service, which overlooks the investigations into the matter that were suppressed immediately after the 2023 attack…
“UAE leader Mohammed bin Zayed warned Benjamin Netanyahu in a phone call that Hamas was preparing a major military operation in Gaza, but the Prime Minister did not inform intelligence or military officials.”
In a single day, 859 Israeli civilians, 278 soldiers, and 57 law enforcement officers were killed in towns, kibbutzim, and military bases surrounding the Gaza Strip. Hamas militants also attacked a music festival—the Nova festival—attended by approximately 3,000 young people, killing 364 participants and abducting 44. By the end of the attack, 251 people, including about 30 children, had been abducted and taken as hostages into the Strip.
Subsequent investigations—which were never adequately pursued by the Israeli judiciary due to opposition from the Zionist regime of Benjamin Netanyahu (who is on trial for corruption and other offenses)—have highlighted three pieces of unequivocal evidence regarding the plot:
In the eyes of many Israelis, all of this legitimized Netanyahu’s plan for the depopulation of Gaza—a plan devised many months prior to the Hamas attack.
Carlo Domenico Cristofori
RELATED INVESTIGATION
The nomination was announced on Monday, 5 October, after Dan held consultations with Romania’s parliamentary parties at the Cotroceni Palace. Niculescu now has the task of finding sufficient support for a government after five months of political deadlock.
Dan said he had chosen the candidate he believed had the best chance of assembling a majority. “Romania needs a government. We need a budget for next year,” he said after the consultations, according to Romanian reporting on the nomination.
Niculescu, 55, is a former journalist and diplomat who has served as a secretary of state at Romania’s Foreign Ministry and national coordinator for the country’s accession to the OECD. He was Romania’s ambassador to France between 2016 and 2022 and was also accredited to Monaco and Andorra.
Accepting the nomination, Niculescu said his first task would be to build a parliamentary majority. He promised a government programme centred on predictable economic policy, public spending discipline, investment and Romania’s European and Euro-Atlantic commitments.
The appointment follows three unsuccessful attempts to replace the government of Ilie Bolojan, which was removed in a no-confidence vote on 5 May after the Social Democratic Party withdrew its support. EU Today reported at the time that 281 lawmakers backed the motion, bringing down the pro-European administration.
Eugen Tomac was the first candidate asked to form a government but relinquished the mandate after failing to secure sufficient support. Adrian Veștea was then nominated, but his proposed government was rejected by parliament.
The third candidate, PNL MEP Siegfried Mureșan, was nominated in September. His government received 182 votes in the parliamentary confidence vote on 30 September, well short of the 233 required. That defeat left Dan facing a fourth round of negotiations with the same fragmented parliament.
Niculescu therefore begins without an established majority behind him. During Monday’s consultations, the PSD continued to promote its own candidate, Sorin Grindeanu, while USR and AUR pressed for early parliamentary elections. PNL signalled greater flexibility but stopped short of committing itself to a new governing formula.
AUR leader George Simion has already said his party will not support Niculescu. USR, meanwhile, said it would examine the proposed cabinet, governing programme and the political majority behind it before deciding how to vote.
Under Romania’s constitution, a prime minister-designate has ten days from nomination to seek parliament’s confidence for the proposed programme and full list of ministers.
The repeated failures have also revived discussion of early elections. The president may dissolve parliament if no government receives a vote of confidence within 60 days of the first request for investiture and at least two attempts have been rejected, although dissolution is a presidential option rather than an automatic step.
Dan has so far indicated that he would prefer to exhaust efforts to form a government.
The political stalemate comes at a difficult economic moment. Romania is under pressure to reduce its budget deficit, maintain investor confidence and continue reforms tied to EU funding. The strain on the governing coalition had already become an EU fiscal issue before Bolojan’s government fell, with questions over budget consolidation and European recovery funding increasingly tied to political stability in Bucharest.
The immediate test for Niculescu will be whether his diplomatic background can translate into enough parliamentary votes to assemble a cabinet. His nomination leaves him more freedom than a candidate tied directly to one of the main parties, but the arithmetic remains unchanged: a government still requires at least 233 votes to take office.
I have watched Pakistan-Afghanistan relations long enough to distrust easy headlines, and last week’s news produced a few of them. At the Center-2026 (Tsentr-2026) war games in Russia’s Chelyabinsk region, Taliban officers stood among the foreign observers. Reports say it was the first time Moscow had invited a Taliban military delegation since the movement returned […]
The post Russia courts the Taliban without dropping Pakistan appeared first on Asia Times.
Paul Krugman is the greatest econ writer in the world, and also a legendary economist. But I sometimes feel that he has a blind spot when it comes to the value of new technologies. In 1998 he famously wrote: The growth of the Internet will slow drastically, as the flaw in ‘Metcalfe’s law’—which states that […]
The post What the AI boom is actually doing for Americans appeared first on Asia Times.
The 10th EU-Moldova Association Council will be held in Brussels on 5 October, chaired by EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas. Tofan will lead the Moldovan delegation, while Enlargement Commissioner Marta Kos will represent the European Commission.
The meeting will review Moldova’s accession process, political reforms, justice, freedom and security, foreign and security policy, trade, energy and wider economic co-operation. Regional and global security issues will also be discussed during a restricted session.
The timing is significant because Moldova has moved considerably further along the accession process during 2026.
In June, the EU formally opened negotiations on the Fundamentals cluster, which covers the rule of law, fundamental rights, democratic institutions, public administration and economic criteria. Progress in that cluster determines the overall pace of accession negotiations.
EU Today described that step as the point at which the accession bids of Moldova and Ukraine moved from political commitment to a practical rule-of-law test.
A second step followed in July when negotiations began on the External Relations cluster. That part of the process covers commercial policy, development co-operation and alignment with the EU’s common foreign, security and defence policy, including sanctions.
Moldova is consequently moving beyond the declaration that it has a European future and into negotiations over specific areas of EU law.
That process is taking place under conditions markedly different from previous rounds of enlargement.
Moldova borders Ukraine and has faced persistent Russian political pressure, disinformation campaigns and attempts at electoral interference. Energy vulnerability remains another concern, while the unresolved Transdniestria conflict leaves part of the country outside the effective control of the government in Chișinău and with Russian forces still present.
Security and accession policy have therefore become increasingly difficult to separate.
At the EU-Moldova summit in June, European leaders concentrated on accession, reform implementation and gradual integration into EU structures. The meeting took place only a week after the first negotiating cluster was opened.
EU Today argued at the time that the summit had turned Moldova into a test of whether enlargement can provide practical security and resilience for a candidate country exposed to sustained Russian pressure.
Finance is another component of that policy.
Moldova is benefiting from the EU’s €1.9 billion Reform and Growth Facility, intended to accelerate economic convergence and reforms connected to accession. The Commission’s current Moldova enlargement record shows that a second regular payment of €189 million was delivered in March 2026.
The Association Council will not decide when Moldova joins the European Union. Accession remains conditional on reforms, compliance with membership criteria, completion of negotiations and unanimous approval by the member states.
What Monday’s meeting will show is whether the process is maintaining momentum.
Moldova and Ukraine formally began accession negotiations together in 2024 and entered the first substantive negotiating cluster together this June. The two countries remain politically connected in the EU enlargement debate, although Brussels formally assesses each candidate on its own record.
The next challenge is less ceremonial.
Opening clusters demonstrates political progress. Closing negotiating chapters requires legislation to be adopted, institutions to function and reforms to be enforced beyond their appearance in government programmes.
For Moldova, that work is being undertaken while the country manages Russian pressure, energy security, economic restructuring and domestic political change.
Monday’s Association Council will provide Brussels with its latest opportunity to judge whether those pressures are slowing the accession process or whether Moldova remains capable of moving through the EU’s negotiating machinery.
Tens of thousands of students took to the streets of Chile on Thursday, October 1, to demand that the government of the ultra-conservative José Antonio Kast not cut the education budget. More than 30 civil society organizations joined the call issued by the Chilean Student Confederation (CONFECHA) in support of the “national strike.”
Among the supporters were the United Workers’ Union (CUT), the Chilean Teachers’ Association, the High School Students’ Assembly, the 8M Feminist Coordinating Committee, the National Federation of Education Workers, and the National Association of Kindergartens, among others.
“We see that on September 30, the government presented a new bill to Congress, and the only certainties we have are the precedents set by this government in its first six months – which are cuts: cuts for working families, cuts for students in the areas of health, in education, housing, and social security,” said Laura Mlynarz, spokesperson for CONFECHA and president of the Chilean Student Federation.
She added: “In the face of that, we respond with social unity, we respond with organization, we respond with mobilization – especially in the face of an authoritarian government that refuses to listen to its citizens and refuses to create spaces for dialogue.”
The slogan “Not a single peso less for education” was chanted by thousands of people who filled Alameda Avenue, one of the main streets in the capital, Santiago. Kast, true to his neoliberal orthodoxy, announced budget cuts to Chile’s public education system.
In a presidential address, Kast announced the 2027 Budget Law, which calls for an investment of 17.3 trillion pesos in education – a figure lower than the 17.4 trillion allocated in 2026. While this may not seem like much, when inflation and other factors are taken into account, it may prove more alarming than it appears at first glance.
“These figures are insufficient and, I would say, misleading; they don’t even make up for a year’s loss in purchasing power,” said Mario Aguilar, president of the Chilean Teachers’ Association.
However, according to the president, the measure was taken to safeguard other social services: “We hope you understand that in the budget we have done everything possible to uphold social rights and that the issues of pensions and free education are covered. But when you protest, you also have to respect those who think differently.”
Kast is referring to the clashes between the police (Carabineros) and students that, according to some reports, resulted in at least 31 arrests.
But the student movement rejects Kast’s statements, which clearly place the blame for the clashes on the students. Laura Mlynarz said the government is seeking to silence the students through repression.
“This government criminalizes the student movement, and we are the ones who are most concerned about moving toward an equitable Chile – toward fair, dignified, and solidarity-based development,” said Mlynarz. Regarding Education Minister Aria Paz Arzola, she said: “The minister doesn’t want to listen to us; the minister doesn’t want to meet with us; and the precarious state of public education just keeps getting worse.”
The first incidents of violent repression were reported just a few minutes after the rally began. The police fired tear gas canisters, while students with their faces covered threw the tear gas canisters back and hurled other objects. The police also used water cannons, a move described as “brutal repression” by some media outlets.
Clashes were also reported between the protesting students and groups of right-wing students from private universities who, in support of Kast’s far-right government, asserted that “We don’t want a paralyzed Chile; we want a Chile that prospers.”
In this way, the Chilean student movement once again made its presence felt in the South American country and demonstrated that it still retains a significant portion of its capacity to mobilize in the face of attempts to radicalize the neoliberal model, as has happened in past years.
In 2019, tens of thousands of Chilean students launched a full-scale social uprising demanding profound changes in one of the key countries where neoliberalism was institutionalized thanks to the bloody Pinochet dictatorship (1973–1990), which left thousands dead and missing. The protests led to calls for a Constituent Assembly.
For now, Kast has attempted to implement his neoliberal agenda (which includes cuts to education and other social services) cautiously, mindful of the recent past and fearful of a new outbreak of unrest.
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