In a major international espionage story, August Hanning, the former German intelligence chief, who was the head of the Federal Intelligence Service (BND) from 1998 to 2005, has been charged with “obtaining classified information from a former employee of the Federal Intelligence Service (BND) and using it in connection with his private consultancy work.”
The BBC reported that “Prosecutors allege that he used classified intelligence to ‘draft an analysis’ for one foreign intelligence service and maintained contact with another foreign spying service. Investigators have not disclosed which foreign powers were involved.”
While Germany has not released which foreign state August Hanning was working for, all available evidence suggests it was Israel.
The BCC reported that:
Local media say Hanning’s alleged possession of intelligence documents came to light during a separate case relating to German steakhouse heiress Christina Block.
Hamburg public prosecutor’s office accused Block of orchestrating the kidnapping of her two youngest children in 2023 due to a custody dispute. Investigators allege Hanning was involved in an earlier attempted kidnapping of the children, which he denies.
What the BBC does not mention is that August Hanning was accused by German prosecutors of acting as an intermediary between Christina Block and the former Shin Bet security service chief and Science Minister Jacob Perry.
Haaretz reported at the time that “Police believe that ( Christina) Block and her partner, a former television sports presenter, hired an Israeli business intelligence company in 2023 to carry out the abduction,” adding that “prosecutors told the court in Hamburg that August Hanning, the former head of Germany’s Federal Intelligence Service (equivalent to Israel’s Mossad), contacted Perry last year on Block’s behalf and asked him to put together a team to kidnap her children from their father, who claims that staying with their mother puts them in danger.”
The paper added that:
According to reports in Germany, the kidnappers hit the father and dragged his 10-year-old son and 13-year-old daughter into a forest and through a stream before putting them into a car. The children’s mouths were taped shut and one of them was tied up. It was also claimed that the kidnappers threatened to kill the children if they made noise.
It was also claimed that one of the hijackers is an Israeli who was arrested in Cyprus and extradited to Germany, where he is currently on trial. Two other Israelis suspected of involvement in the case have fled Germany.
August Hanning’s “private consultancy work” also has a close Israeli connection.
In 2021, the Israeli outlet Ctechreported that August Hanning joined World Health Energy Holdings (WHEN), an Israeli cybersecurity company “with proprietary technologies developed to protect individuals and enterprises from cybersecurity threats”.
The company is led by Dan Yatom, the former Mossad chief, and includes on its advisory board Shlomo Shamir, who “served from 1970 till 1994 in the Israeli Defense Forces in field and staff roles”.
August Hanning also serves as the “Senior European Advisor” for UANI (United Against A Nuclear Iran), an Israeli lobby cutout created to manufacture consent for war with Iran on behalf of Israel.
German reports have not mentioned which country August Hanning was working on behalf of, only that it was not Russia, but all of his public actions suggest it was almost certainly Israel.
Israeli ground troops have been conducting more and more infiltration into southwestern Syria, with at least eight such incidents reported in the last 24 hours. The cross-border raids have been done chiefly in Quneitra Governorate, along what was previously a UNDOF demilitarized zone. That demilitarized zone was occupied by the Israeli military in late 2024, […]
The Green Party member behind the "Zionism is racism” motion is close friends with an al-Qaeda terrorist who plotted to bomb passengers landing at Heathrow from Israel.
France greenlit 35 military sales to Israel between May and September 2026, according to a joint investigation by the Palestinian Youth Movement and the French collective Urgence Palestine, with all shipments bound for subsidiaries of lead Israeli arms maker Elbit Systems.
The report states that suppliers based in five French regions manufactured the equipment, which includes cooling units used in tanks and missile launchers, visors fitted to the helmets of helicopter and fighter jet pilots, surveillance systems, and assorted electronics.
French arms firm Thales built and shipped control panels used to fire weapons remotely, a technology that rights groups and Gaza-based journalists have repeatedly reported Israel using to shoot civilians in their tents and on the streets, children among them.
Of the 35 shipments, 33 left from Paris’s Charles de Gaulle Airport, 32 of them aboard Israel’s national carrier El Al.
French Defense Minister Catherine Vautrin told parliament last week that France supplies no offensive weapons to Israel, repeating the government’s position that such sales ended in 2024.
Thomas Nayla, a lawyer with Urgence Palestine, dismissed that distinction, tellingMiddle East Eye that, given items such as tank cooling units and pilot visors, “there is no way these can be considered defensive.”
The new findings follow an April report by the same two groups, which counted more than 525 shipments of French military-use equipment to Israel between October 2023 and March 2026, arming the Israeli military throughout the genocide in Gaza.
The French shipments are part of a broader pattern in which European governments and companies continued to supply Israel with military and dual-use equipment throughout the Gaza genocide, even as several governments publicly criticized Israeli apartheid and war crimes, and announced partial or symbolic restrictions.
Germany, Israel’s largest European arms supplier, approved more than $930 million in export licenses to Israel in the first five months of 2026 alone, according to Germany’s news magazine Der Spiegel, citing Economy Ministry data
Britain, meanwhile, has touted its suspension of some export licenses while keeping F-35 components largely exempt, and has still approved at least $236 million in fixed-value military export licenses to Israel since October 2023, according to Campaign Against Arms Trade, a figure that excludes the open licenses covering much of its F-35 contribution.
Elbit Systems, which supplies roughly 85 percent of Israel’s drones and ground-based equipment, has been central to the Israeli military’s relentless onslaught across West Asia.
The arms company’s Hermes drones provided near-total aerial surveillance and target selection for attacks, and its AI-enabled Tzayad system identified more than 800,000 “targets” across Gaza and Lebanon in two years by the company’s own account.
The firm posted record profits throughout the genocide, boasting that its Tzayad system had flagged “up to or over half” of Gaza’s civilian population and infrastructure as targets while marketing its Gaza-used weapons to buyers as “battle-tested” to command a higher premium.
In the course of his recent speeches, Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich has laid out the position calling once again for the outright annexation of much of southern Lebanon, saying that territory losses should serve as a “penalty” for Israel’s enemies for opposing them. In one speech he declared that both Gaza and Lebanon “will […]
Israeli politician Moshe Feiglin, the leader of Israel’s Zehut party, who has a clear path to a seat in the Knesset in the upcoming election, has said in a new interview that it would be “moral” to kill babies in Gaza. Feiglin made headlines last year when he declared that every child and every baby […]
Iran’s economic adaptation over decades, marked by domestic production, regional trade and Asian partnerships, is on course to thwart Washington’s economic terrorism.
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.
The new American campaign has been accompanied by extraordinary predictions from senior American officials, including Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent’s claim that Iran could have “nothing left to trade” within two weeks.
Speaking on September 27, Bessent claimed 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 on Iran since 1979 while repeatedly expecting economic pressure eventually to produce collapse.
Yet the economy did not disappear, and Iran instead developed domestic industries, expanded regional commerce, strengthened trade with Asian powers and accumulated extensive experience operating outside Western financial channels.
The proposition that an economy which has absorbed American sanctions for almost half a century will suddenly disintegrate within two weeks therefore indicates the depth of delusion among the current US leadership.
Iran enters this confrontation possessing a large domestic market, extensive productive capacity, enormous energy resources and deeply established commercial relationships across Eurasia.
These are not temporary sanctions evasions assembled during the present crisis, but economic capabilities developed over decades through investment, industrial learning, regional integration and repeated adaptation to external restrictions.
The most important fact about Iran’s economic structure is its size, because a country with more than ninety million people possesses a domestic market capable of supporting extensive production independently of Western consumers.
The World Bank describes Iran as relatively diversified for an oil-exporting economy, with a substantial domestic market, a large workforce and significant activity across manufacturing, agriculture and services.
That domestic market sustains production across food, pharmaceuticals, construction materials, steel, petrochemicals, machinery, transportation, consumer goods and numerous intermediate industrial sectors serving Iranian households and companies.
Iran is therefore not an economy that must export continuously merely to keep its factories operating, because a substantial portion of its production already serves domestic consumption, investment and infrastructure.
That distinction becomes particularly important when external restrictions are designed around the assumption that cutting foreign trade will automatically paralyze domestic economic activity.
A country whose productive system is centered on domestic demand possesses an economic engine that continues operating even when international transactions become more complicated.
Iran has also spent decades building industrial capabilities specifically suited to its own resource base, population, infrastructure requirements and energy-intensive economy.
Steel production, petrochemicals, cement, refining, power generation, construction, food processing and pharmaceuticals represent substantial industrial ecosystems involving domestic engineering, manufacturing, logistics and skilled employment.
These capabilities have repeatedly expanded during periods when access to Western investment and technology was severely restricted, demonstrating that Iranian industrial development does not depend upon continuous Western participation.
Iran’s long exposure to sanctions has produced another asset that cannot be imposed or removed through a Treasury designation, namely a large body of accumulated technical and commercial experience.
When foreign manufacturers withdraw, Iranian companies have learned to redesign equipment, substitute components, develop domestic suppliers and work with companies from countries willing to maintain commercial relationships.
Academic research has documented this process in Iranian industries, including evidence that sanctions simultaneously restricted access to foreign technology while encouraging the development of domestic technological capabilities.
The resulting industrial knowledge extends beyond individual companies, because engineers, technicians, procurement specialists and managers have accumulated practical experience with restricted supply chains over successive decades.
A manufacturer that has operated under sanctions for years does not design its procurement system around the assumption that every international supplier will remain available indefinitely.
It develops alternatives as part of ordinary business planning, creating a commercial culture in which substitution, regional sourcing and domestic production are integrated into industrial decision-making.
This is one of the strongest reasons the prediction of sudden economic emptiness looks disconnected from Iran’s actual economic structure.
There is no single foreign supplier whose disappearance can remove Iran’s entire industrial capacity, because Iranian production is distributed across thousands of domestic enterprises and numerous regional supply relationships.
The system has been shaped by scarcity for so long that adaptation has become embedded within the operating methods of Iranian companies themselves.
Iran’s geographical position provides another form of economic strength that cannot be erased by financial sanctions, because the country physically connects several of the world’s most important commercial regions.
Iran borders Turkey, Iraq, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan, Afghanistan and Pakistan, while its southern coastline provides direct access to the Persian Gulf and Gulf of Oman.
Those borders connect Iranian commerce with the Caucasus, Central Asia, South Asia, the Persian Gulf, Turkey and Iraq, creating commercial possibilities extending in several directions simultaneously.
This geography gives Iran direct access to neighboring markets while also placing the country along important transportation corridors linking Russia, Central Asia and the Indian Ocean.
The significance of Zamanian’s argument is therefore practical rather than rhetorical, because no financial authority can relocate Iran away from its geographic position.
Goods can move through different borders, suppliers can be found in different countries and exporters can redirect shipments towards different markets when commercial conditions change.
Iran has consequently developed a regional trading system that does not depend upon one border, one port, one customer or one foreign economic relationship.
Its trade with Iraq, Turkey, the United Arab Emirates, Afghanistan, Pakistan, the Caucasus, Central Asia and China represents an extensive commercial geography developed through years of interaction.
The World Bank has documented precisely this shift, noting that Iranian trade has increasingly pivoted towards neighboring countries and China as sanctions have restricted conventional international economic relationships.
That transformation is now an established feature of Iran’s economy rather than an emergency measure invented after the latest American escalation.
China gives Iran’s economic system another dimension because it combines enormous industrial capacity with sustained demand for Iranian energy and other commodities.
In other words, Iran possesses access to a major global market even while facing comprehensive American restrictions on its oil industry.
China also supplies Iranian companies with machinery, manufactured products, electronics, industrial equipment and intermediate goods required across the domestic production system.
The relationship therefore operates in both directions, with Iran supplying commodities and China supplying industrial goods, creating a commercial relationship considerably broader than the simple sale of sanctioned oil.
Iran consequently does not need unrestricted access to every Western market when it possesses substantial trade relationships with China and numerous neighboring economies.
Iran’s energy resources provide perhaps the clearest demonstration of the country’s underlying economic strength.
It ranks second globally in proven natural-gas reserves and fourth in proven crude-oil reserves, giving the country extraordinary resource depth beneath its existing industrial economy.
These resources provide not merely potential export earnings but also abundant domestic energy and petrochemical feedstocks supporting Iran’s manufacturing, electricity generation, transportation and industrial production.
Iran has consequently developed an extensive downstream economy that converts hydrocarbons into refined products, petrochemicals and industrial inputs rather than relying exclusively upon crude-oil exports.
The World Bank has specifically noted that sanctions encouraged additional processing of crude oil and hydrocarbons into petrochemicals, illustrating how restrictions have contributed to changes within Iran’s economic structure.
The country’s resource base also gives it a durable position in Asian energy markets, where large industrial economies require reliable supplies of oil and petrochemical products.
That is why American attempts to eliminate Iranian oil revenue confront persistent commercial demand rather than an absence of buyers interested in Iranian resources.
The financial system represents another area where Iran has developed substantial independent capacity after decades of exclusion from conventional Western banking.
Iran’s economic ties span a broad network of foreign entities, reflecting its commercial reach across banking, shipping, logistics, commodities, and manufacturing.
Against this background, Bessent’s latest prediction appears less to be an independent economic forecast than an expectation based on what the American campaign is intended to achieve.
His claim that Iran will have nothing left to trade within two weeks assumes that removing one major source of oil revenue effectively removes the economic foundations supporting the entire Iranian system.
Iran’s actual economic structure is considerably broader, because oil exports represent one component of national economic 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 an economy that has adapted to sanctions through changing trade patterns and alternative payment mechanisms.
Those facts should not be confused with economic collapse, because contraction in a particular period is fundamentally different from the disappearance of productive capacity, markets and commercial institutions.
The historical record is even more significant, because American sanctions have been imposed repeatedly since 1979 and have been intensified dramatically during successive administrations.
The sanctions regime has targeted Iranian banking, oil exports, investment, technology, shipping and foreign companies, with especially severe measures introduced during the 2010s and after Washington abandoned the nuclear agreement.
Iran nevertheless retained its industrial base, rebuilt oil exports after earlier restrictions, expanded non-oil exports and redirected a growing share of trade towards neighboring countries and China.
The American expectation that economic pressure would eventually produce decisive Iranian economic capitulation has therefore been tested repeatedly against an economy that continued adapting.
Predicting that a strategy that failed to trigger economic collapse over half a century will suddenly achieve it within fourteen days merits no serious consideration, because it reveals the naivety of its proponents.
Washington now possesses powerful financial tools, but financial power does not eliminate Iran’s factories, oilfields, farms, engineers, consumers, borders, ports, regional markets or established commercial relationships.
Iran enters the current phase with an economic architecture extending from domestic manufacturing plants to Chinese refineries, from Persian Gulf shipping networks to northern Eurasian trade corridors.
Its domestic market provides magnitude and size, its industrial base provides production, its energy reserves provide commodities and its geography provides access to several major commercial regions.
In other words, Iran already possesses the domestic capabilities and international relationships required to keep its economy operating beyond the reach of any single American economic sabotage.
Israeli attacks in Gaza on Tuesday have killed at least two Palestinians, according to reports from the Strip, as the IDF continues its constant violations of the US-backed ceasefire deal that was signed nearly a year ago. The Palestinian news agency WAFA reported that a young man, identified as Mohammed al-Yazji, was killed by an […]
The West Bank too is crumbling, as IDF finds excuses to kill Palestinians, steal land, demolish homes, even rewrite history. Latest news and headlines here.
Originally posted on October, 7, 2026 – updated on October, 8, 2026
As the tragic anniversary of October 7, 2023, approaches —the day Hamas terrorists massacred Israelis near the Gaza Strip border, triggering the genocide in Palestine perpetrated by Benjamin Netanyahu’s Zionist regime —we are publishing an exclusive intelligence analysis.
This video marks the launch of a new Gospa News series titled “TOP SECRET Interview” by Fabio G.C. Carisio—founder and director of Gospa News—which will also be republished on the long-standing American site VT UnCensored Foreign Policy (where Carisio hosts a column).
This features an interview with Antonio Evangelista, a top Italian police official and counter-terrorism expert who spent seven years as Interpol official in Jordan, and who is now an author of geopolitical essayes and novels concerning international intrigue.
He confirms that the recent attack in the Holy Land—like the September 11 attack on the Twin Towers in New York—was a horrific “false flag” operations…
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.
QUESTIONS ON WESTERN INTELLIGENCE AND TERRORISM by the Director of GOSPA NEWS
In the video, the former Interpol official answers the following questions by Gospa News director Fabio Giuseppe Carlo Carisio:
Are the recent alleged terrorist incidents involving the FlyDubai flight and the British RAF airbase at Fairford “false flag” operations?
What parallels exist between the plots of September 11 in New York and October 7, 2023, in Israel?
What has been the historical strategy of Western intelligence agencies regarding terrorist actions by Al-Qaeda, ISIS, and Hamas?
What drives Western governments to support bloody “colonial ventures,” thereby legitimizing genocides in the Middle East and Ukraine?
What lies regarding NATO wars in the Mediterranean basin are exposed in your historical, geopolitical, and economic study?
Do US, Europe and Italy face a real risk of a world war?
No summary today. If you want to hear the answers, watch the video to the end.
Below the video, you will find links to the major investigations mentioned in the footage.
VIDEO INTERVIEW to ANTONIO EVANGELISTA – Former Interpol official in Jordan
Every day, children are killed in Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza. Where are the outraged headlines?
The number of children killed in Gaza since Israel started its onslaught, following the Hamas attack on 7 October, 2023, is estimated at more than 21,600.
The UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) says that since the so-called Israel-Hamas ceasefire, an average of “at least” one child a day – 300 children over 300 days – has been killed in the enclave.
Children, toddlers, and babies are being killed in their homes, schools, hospitals, shelters, and on roads marked by displacement. They are also dying because the basic structures that should protect them – family, healthcare, education, food, water, and refuge – have been systematically destroyed.
Where are the urgent statements from EU and world leaders?
EU governments continue to authorise arms transfers to Israel despite rules which require governments to deny licences where there is a risk that military equipment will be used for serious violations of international humanitarian law.
Every EU member state is also bound by the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child and the EU’s own treaty, which requires the union to promote children’s rights.
Why are these international rules and domestic commitments not being applied to the children of Gaza?
Mourners light candles during a mass funeral and vigil for 105 Palestinians near the rubble of the Al Tajj building in Gaza City on 30 September 2026 (Source: EPA/MOHAMMED SABER)
Children rights beyond Ukraine
The EU does care for children. In Ukraine, the EU treats children as individuals rather than statistics: it convenes coalitions, compiles names, traces families, imposes sanctions, creates mechanisms for return and makes the fate of children a central diplomatic demand.
In her State of the Union address last month, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen – a proud mother and grandmother – introduced and praised the courage of Sasha, a six-year-old Ukrainian girl who lost a leg in a Russian missile strike in Ukraine but has now returned to her beloved gymnastics.
Von der Leyen quite rightly made the suffering of Ukrainian children intimate and personal. It is more than time she did the same for Palestinian children.
But let’s not only blame political leaders for their indifference, their lack of historical knowledge of Palestine’s occupation and their limited understanding of Palestinian calls for justice.
Parts of the legacy media must also own up to their responsibility in normalising the abhorrent.
Powerful mainstream media have preferred to “repeat Israeli propaganda and sometimes simply cut and paste IDF press releases” rather than accept the analysis of Palestinian journalists, writers and scholars, writes Bhakti Shringarpure.
Her criticism reflects a wider ongoing discussion on the sourcing and framing of Gaza coverage, with studies spotlighting how Western media has described Israeli suffering by using emotive language around 11 times more often than Palestinian suffering. References to Israel’s “right to defend itself” appear roughly five times as frequently as references to Palestinian rights.
Also, as the immediate shock of the bombardment recedes – but the killing continues – Gaza has dropped down the news cycle.
Assal Rad, author of “Don’t Say Palestine: How the Media Manufactured Consent for Genocide”, describes the logic: “The façade of a ceasefire has created the space to cover it less. In reality, the conditions on the ground for Palestinians in Gaza have not changed.”
It is also less politically costly for leaders and media to focus on settler violence and settlement in the occupied West Bank, since it can be described as the work of “extremists” rather than of the Israeli government.
EU silence
Our lack of a strong reaction to what is happening is Gaza is also the story of how bystander societies can watch, absorb, and rationalise horrors – and move on.
Additionally, the killing of Palestinian children is preceded by their political “unchilding”, a process which Palestinian scholar Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian says begins before the missile falls, when Palestinian children are imagined not as children with futures but as demographic threats, future militants, or extensions of an armed group.
Their age, instead of guaranteeing greater protection, becomes entangled with suspicion.
Even amid such savage violence, some people are not giving up.
Their bosses may still look the other way, but EU Staff for Peace, which holds vigils in front of the European Commission and the EU Council every Thursday, has held gatherings to read out the names of children killed in Gaza, thereby according individuality to children whom the political and media systems have reduced to numbers.
As one EU staffer told me: “We only have a time slot of three hours and the last time we only managed to read out the names of children up to three years old. It took us one hour to read out the names of Palestinian babies under one-year old.”
Hind Rajab, who was five, was killed on 29 January 2024 by Israeli fire on the car in which she was trapped. Her body was found 12 days later alongside the bodies of members of her family and two paramedics who had gone to rescue her.
Israel has acknowledged firing on the car but has not admitted that her killing was unlawful, citing an ongoing investigation. In other words, there has been no accountability.
The obscenity is not only that Hind was killed, but that by now the killing of children in Gaza has become a familiar event.
The shame is that so many of us have constructed a hierarchy in which some children summon the world’s full moral and political force, while others are ignored.
Omar El Akkad, in his seminal book says that “One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This.” Given the cowardice on display over the last three years, I sometimes wonder if there will ever really be a true global moral reckoning.
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.
Spokesman Calls Attempts to Link Flydubai Incident to Iran a ‘False Flag’
«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.
Former CIA Official Larry Johnson: “FlyDubai Attack like a FALSE-FLAG”
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.
Iran Rejects FlyDubai Incident Link As ‘False Flag’ Operation. Interview to Indian Wounded Pilot
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…
Former CIA Officer: “RAF Fairford suspected Terrorist Plot: Was it a FALSE FLAG?”
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.’
The Awful “Masterpieces” of False-Flag: from JFK Assasination to WTC Attacks
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.
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:
the Israeli government delayed for months by refusing to negotiate with Hamas for the release of hostages, indirectly causing the deaths of 85 of them, while 168 were eventually released after a long and traumatic captivity.
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.
Israeli forces continue to operate in southwestern Syria, with incidents reported in Quneitra, Daraa, and Rif Damasq Governorates. While most of the cross-border incidents involve the Israeli military searching homes and establishing temporary checkpoints in Syrian territory, there are also increasingly destructive incidents to report. Up in Rif Damasq, Israeli troops not only entered a […]
In a pair of comments that broadly reflect why the ongoing Israeli invasion of Lebanon shows no sign of ending, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Hezbollah Executive Council head Ali Damoush both addressed their respective crowds and laid out their goals. Netanyahu, who was speaking at an October 7 memorial event, vowed that it […]
At least one Palestinian was killed, and several others were wounded on Monday in Israeli attacks targeting al-Mawasi in southern Gaza, an area filled with sprawling tent encampments housing Palestinian families displaced by Israel’s genocidal war. The Anadolu Agency reported that an Israeli strike in al-Mawasi killed one Palestinian man and wounded four people, including […]
Pope Leo XIV has offered prayers for Gaza following the Israeli strike that killed two Christian women in the besieged Palestinian territory, according to Father Gabriel Romanelli, a priest at the Holy Family Catholic Church in Gaza City. Romanelli, who is from Argentina, said in a YouTube video that Leo wrote to him after the […]
Once again Karl W. Miller has put numbers to a problem that most of the commentariat still treats as a temporary price spike. His latest forward outlook, “The Five-Year Global Energy Crisis,” dated October 3, makes an argument that should alarm every finance ministry from Berlin to Jakarta. The war’s damage to Gulf energy infrastructure is not a disruption that ends when the shooting stops. It is a reconstruction problem measured in years and trillions of dollars, and while it is solved, the world will be short of the fuels that run its economy.
A ceasefire is not a repair crew
Miller’s central insight is simple. A ceasefire can reopen a shipping lane overnight. It cannot manufacture a compressor, mobilize commissioning engineers, or pay a contractor. The next phase of this crisis, he writes, is a competition for cash, equipment, qualified contractors and finished fuel.
His cost model is sobering. In his aggressive case, rebuilding the damaged Gulf energy system requires $1.16 trillion in total program funding. Under prolonged stress, with scarce equipment, rising prices and delays, the bill reaches $2.53 trillion. Even his most favorable case runs to nearly half a trillion dollars. He is careful to say these are model outputs, not contractor quotes, and that the true extent of the damage is the largest unknown. An April assessment put energy-related repair costs at only $34-58 billion. But the direction of his argument doesn’t depend on the exact figure. Every month of delay makes the same repair more expensive, because the global market for specialized equipment and crews is already stretched by LNG expansions, refinery maintenance and power projects elsewhere.
The timeline is just as stark. Weighted by cost, the rebuild averages almost five years from today. Only 60% of the work finishes by 2031, and the longest-lead packages run to seven years.
The money problem comes first
The most original part of Miller’s analysis is about cash. A damaged refinery may be worth rebuilding and technically repairable, and still sit idle because the government that owns it has to pay for food imports, salaries, electricity and water first. Lost export revenue doesn’t stop those bills. When a state borrows to keep paying them, that money can’t also pay an engineering contractor.
Iraq shows the problem in practice. In July, it faced a monthly public salary obligation of about $5.96 billion with a funding shortfall of $2.52 billion. A government in that position rebuilds nothing. It pays its people, and the export capacity that would restore its revenue waits. Miller’s warning is that this trap can stop reconstruction before it starts: without engineering funds and vendor deposits, factory slots go to other customers and delivery dates slip.
The fuel gap is the global transmission belt
For the rest of the world, the damage arrives through diesel and jet fuel. The figures Miller cites are already severe. Gulf diesel net exports in August were just over a quarter of prewar levels. Combined Gulf and Russian diesel exports were 1.6 million barrels a day below February. Global oil stocks had fallen 507 million barrels since February, and global refinery throughput in August was 4.2 million barrels a day below a year earlier.
Looking forward, Miller’s severe case assumes a shortfall of at least 3 million barrels a day of diesel and jet fuel, every year for five years. That’s about 1.1 billion barrels a year and 5.5 billion barrels over the period. He is explicit that this is a deliberate stress test, not a forecast, and that a faster-recovery path closes the gap by the fourth year. But the stress case is a plausible one. Restored capacity can be absorbed by refinery outages, deferred maintenance, recovering demand and delivery bottlenecks. Damaged refineries don’t come back at full capacity on the first day.
Inventories cannot fill a gap of that size for that long. Five and a half billion barrels is far beyond any country’s emergency stocks, which is why drawing down Europe’s reserves now, under pressure from Washington, only buys weeks. Without enough new supply, the balance can close in only one way: by using less fuel.
How the shortage reprices everything
The economic damage extends well beyond the missing barrels. When supply falls short, buyers bid for the marginal cargo, and that bid sets the price for all the fuel still being bought. Miller’s illustration: a $40-a-barrel premium across 10 million barrels a day of purchases adds $146 billion a year to fuel bills. Applied only to the 3 million missing barrels, it would add $43.8 billion and badly understate the real cost.
Scarcity also reprices credit. At $150 a barrel, a buyer purchasing 1 million barrels a day needs $2.25 billion to hold 15 extra days of inventory, and $3 billion at $200. Longer voyages tie up more fuel and more money in transit. A supplier can have the barrels while its customer can’t get a letter of credit. And a cargo that wins a bidding war for one country leaves another short. Competition redistributes the shortage before it eliminates it.
Who absorbs the shock
Diesel carries the crisis into the real economy. It runs road freight, farm machinery, mines, construction fleets and backup generators, none of which can switch fuels quickly. Higher diesel costs pass straight into freight rates and food prices, and when diesel isn’t available at any price, activity simply stops. Jet fuel carries the shock into aviation: higher fares, fewer routes and higher air cargo surcharges. Kerosene hits the households with the least room to adjust, in countries where it is still used for heating, cooking and lighting.
Miller’s regional assessment follows the money:
Europe competes for replacement diesel and jet cargoes while running its refineries close to their limits.
South and Southeast Asia face higher import bills, currency pressure and greater need for trade credit.
Africa and smaller importers are the most vulnerable. Tenders fail, credit lines run out, and small cargoes become uneconomic long before global stocks are exhausted.
The United States and other Atlantic suppliers face export demand competing with their own diesel needs, with refineries running so hard they have little tolerance for outages.
The ultimate balancing mechanism is demand destruction: freight deferred, low-margin factories idled, flights cancelled, and poorer importers losing every bidding contest. Miller warns against mistaking that for recovery. Lower consumption caused by rationing through price or credit is not a repaired energy system.
Case study: Europe
Europe shows what Miller’s framework looks like in practice. The continent burns about 5 million barrels of diesel a day, fuel for the trucks that move its goods, the tractors that plant its crops and, as winter approaches, the boilers that heat millions of homes.
How much does Europe produce, and how much does it import? Running flat out, EU refineries can produce roughly 4.5 to 5 million barrels a day of diesel and gasoil, and they are already operating close to their maximum. That leaves Europe roughly 85-90% self-sufficient at best. The remaining 10-15% comes from imports, and that margin sets the price for the entire market. Kepler puts the EU’s diesel imports from outside the bloc at about 580,000 barrels a day this year. Britain, which lost much of its refining capacity over the past two decades, is far more exposed: it imports more than half the diesel it uses.
The origin of those imports has changed dramatically. Russia was long Europe’s largest outside supplier until the EU embargoed Russian diesel in 2023. The Gulf filled much of the gap, until the war cut it off. Since March, the United States has supplied more than half of Europe’s diesel imports, and more than two-thirds in August and September. Europe has traded dependence on Moscow for dependence on Washington, and Washington has just shown it is willing to use that leverage, threatening an export ban unless Europe released its emergency stocks.
Europe’s diesel depends on imported crude as well. Its refineries run almost entirely on foreign oil: the EU imports about 97% of the crude it consumes. But the Gulf was never Europe’s main crude supplier. In 2025, Gulf Cooperation Council states supplied only about 7% of EU crude imports, Iraq another 5.8%. Europe’s crude now comes chiefly from the United States, Norway and Kazakhstan, which together supplied nearly half of EU petroleum imports in the second quarter of 2026. The volume has held steady; the bill rose 56%. But the crude isn’t the crude Europe’s refineries were built for. Much of Europe’s refining capacity was designed around medium sour crudes such as Russia’s Urals, with conversion units that turn the heavier part of the barrel into diesel. American shale crude is light and sweet. It refines readily into gasoline and naphtha, but it yields proportionally less diesel and jet fuel, the very products Europe is short of. As Miller notes, sour crude isn’t uniquely required to make diesel; the replacement barrels work, but not at the same yield or cost. The Gulf supply Europe really lost was finished diesel from Gulf refineries, and that is what the United States has replaced. The result is a double dependence: Washington is now Europe’s largest supplier of both the crude its refineries run and the diesel they can’t make. Even the non-American barrels carry risk. Most Kazakh crude reaches Europe through a Black Sea terminal at Novorossiysk, on Russian soil, a route that has already been hit by Ukrainian drones.
How long can Europe store diesel? This is where Europe’s apparent cushion turns out to be thinner than it looks. Unlike crude oil, which can sit in salt caverns for decades, diesel degrades. Under ideal conditions, conventional ultra-low-sulfur diesel can typically be stored for six to twelve months. With stabilizers, biocides and well-managed tanks, that can be extended to 18 to 24 months. Oxidation forms gums and sediment, water collects, and microbes grow in the fuel.
European diesel has an added problem. The EU standard, EN 590, allows up to 7% biodiesel in road diesel, and biodiesel oxidizes faster than petroleum diesel. Concawe, the European refiners’ research association, recommends a maximum storage time of six months for biodiesel and current blends containing it. Strategic stockholders can extend that by holding biodiesel-free product, but even then the reserve has to be rotated, sold into the market and replaced with fresh fuel on a cycle of a year or two.
That changes what Europe’s reserve really is. EU countries and Britain held about 52 million tonnes of gasoil and diesel in June, including nearly 38 million tonnes of emergency reserves, roughly two months of consumption. But a diesel reserve is not a stockpile Europe can fill once and forget. It is a stock that must be continually turned over, which means continually bought, and bought in the same tight market Miller describes. Every barrel released now to satisfy Washington has to be replaced later, at a higher price, from suppliers who are already short. And because diesel degrades, Europe can’t solve the problem by buying extra while it’s cheap and holding it for years. A reserve with a shelf life of a year or two cannot cover a structural deficit that Miller’s severe case puts at five years.
The conclusion for Europe is stark. It produces most of its own diesel but has no spare refining capacity. It depends on imports for the margin that sets prices, and those imports now come mostly from a single supplier that has shown it will use them as leverage. And its emergency reserve is both perishable and finite. In Miller’s terms, Europe is one of the buyers most exposed to the marginal cargo, and the least able to wait out a five-year shortage.
The implications for the global economy
Put together, Miller’s analysis describes a world economy facing a prolonged supply shock, not a temporary one. Fuel costs feed into nearly everything, so central banks fighting the inflation this crisis has already produced will face pressure for longer than they expect. Emerging-market importers face a combination of high fuel bills, weak currencies and tighter credit that has historically produced debt crises and unrest. And the reconstruction itself will absorb capital, equipment and specialist labor that would otherwise build new energy supply elsewhere, so the shortage may delay the investment needed to end it.
Miller’s strategic conclusion is the one policymakers least want to hear. Ending the conflict removes one source of disruption. It does not repair the energy system, which requires a separate sequence of financing, engineering, manufacturing, construction and commissioning that will take years. Until that is done, reliable fuel and the cash to buy it will determine which economies absorb the burden. Neither will be distributed evenly.
The Trump administration and its supporters – including the Wall Street Journal editorial page – are working overtime these days to spin the news around the Iran war to make it appear that the US is winning and Tehran had better submit to Washington’s demands before it is wrecked, maybe even “annihilated.” Indeed, Trump is preparing the option of bringing the military hammer down on Iran after the midterm elections if Tehran has not surrendered by then.
In effect, Trump and his supporters are waging a “maximum pressure campaign” against Iran in the mainstream media.
This campaign is sure to fail. If anything, it reflects the Trump administration’s desperation. The president started a war the United States was bound to lose, and there is little he can do now to change that basic fact.
Trump’s propaganda campaign has two dimensions – one economic and the other military.
First, the administration argues that Iran is being economically strangled by the US naval blockade coupled with Operation Economic Outcast, the strategy announced by Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent on 24 August 2026. At the same time, it maintains that oil is once again flowing out of the Gulf at rates not far below those that prevailed on 27 February 2026. The implications are obvious: the economic punishment being inflicted on Iran will force it to capitulate soon, while the US economy – and the international community more generally – is well on its way to recovery.
Second, the US is now building up its military forces for a massive military strike after the mid-term elections, when Trump will be free of electoral constraints. This growing threat of a devastating US attack, coupled with the economic pain being inflicted on Iran, is designed to get Tehran to quit now, before its situation becomes even worse.
There are huge problems with this strategy. It sounds persuasive when the mainstream media dutifully purveys it, but it falls apart when one looks closely at what is actually happening.
Consider the military dimension. The headlines say the US is sending 10,000 additional troops and a third aircraft carrier – the USS Theodore Roosevelt – to the Persian Gulf region, creating the impression that Iran will soon be confronting three American carriers. Moreover, the additional troops – on top of the roughly 50,000 US troops already in the region – are portrayed as evidence that Trump is seriously considering putting boots on the ground.
The aircraft carrier story, however, is quite different from what the headlines suggest. The Roosevelt is reportedly being sent to replace the USS George Washington, while the supposed third carrier, the USS George H.W. Bush, has already left the Middle East and is now in Thailand. Thus, there is presently only one carrier in the region. Indeed, this is the first time during the war that the US has only one carrier in the Middle East, and it is difficult to imagine that there will be more than two – if even that many – after the midterm elections.
The larger problem is that the Iran war is severely straining the US Navy. Its senior leaders warn that the current operational tempo is not sustainable indefinitely. Carriers and other warships are being rotated through extremely long deployments, which cause significant maintenance and readiness problems that will have to be addressed at some point. This problem is compounded by the fact that US ships have lost access to nearby logistics facilities and increasingly depend on a supply chain that reaches back to Diego Garcia, which is about 2,500 miles from the Persian Gulf.
But even if three carriers are available to strike Iran, what could they accomplish in a renewed air campaign that the US and Israel could not accomplish together during the failed 40-day bombing campaign between 28 February and 8 April 2026? Some might argue that the US could finally destroy Iran’s oil infrastructure. The problem, however, is that Iran retains a second-strike capability and could retaliate by wreaking havoc on the oil infrastructure of the GCC states. One shudders to think what the consequences would be for the international economy.
On top of all this, the US faces a serious shortage of high-end weaponry, which is one of the main reasons it ended the 40-day bombing campaign and has shied away in recent weeks from engaging in tit-for-tat bombing exchanges with Iran. One would think that the shortage of critical munitions – both for striking Iran and defending against Iranian retaliation – would limit the scope and intensity of any renewed strategic bombing campaign, thereby reducing its chances of success.
Regarding ground forces, simply counting the number of U.S. military personnel in the Middle East is misleading when assessing the possibility of putting boots on the ground. What matters most in a ground war is the number of troops in actual ground-combat formations. I estimate that, of the roughly 50,000 U.S. military personnel already stationed in the region, about 5,000 belong to such formations: roughly 2,200 Marines and sailors in the 11th MEU, 2,000 soldiers from the 82nd Airborne, and possibly another 800 Army personnel in Kuwait associated with Task Force Spartan. Of the roughly 10,000 additional personnel now being sent to the region, another 2,200 belong to the 13th MEU. Most of the remainder are sailors assigned to the Theodore Roosevelt carrier and its supporting warships. Thus, given present deployment plans, I estimate that by late November the United States will have just under 7,500 personnel in ground-combat formations in the Gulf region—roughly 4,400 in the two MEUs and 2,800 Army personnel.
There is no way a ground force that small provides a promising option against a country with Iran’s population and geography. Even tripling that number to roughly 23,000—which is highly unlikely—would not fundamentally alter the problem. Retired Army General Barry McCaffrey estimates that securing the Strait of Hormuz would require roughly 150,000 troops and three to six months of fighting. For comparison, Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022 with roughly 190,000 military personnel, and that force proved insufficient to hold much of the territory Russia initially captured. Iran has more than twice the population Ukraine had at the beginning of the Russian invasion, and its geography is considerably more forbidding for an invading army.
Simply put, the United States has not assembled anything remotely resembling the ground force required for a large-scale invasion of Iran. Indeed, from Tehran’s perspective, an American decision to launch such an offensive with anything resembling the forces presently available would present Iran with an opportunity to fight the United States under exceptionally favorable circumstances.
At the risk of beating a dead horse, two further points are in order. First, given how unpopular the Iran war is with the American public, there would almost certainly be a huge uproar if large numbers of US soldiers began coming home in body bags. Second, how are the Marines, who are aboard amphibious assault ships, supposed to land on Iranian territory if the missile and drone threat from Iran is forcing the US Navy to keep those large and vulnerable ships far from the Iranian coast?
Let’s turn to the economic dimension. There is no question that the US is doing great damage to Iran’s economy and inflicting enormous hardship on the Iranian people. But that has been true for a long time. The key question is whether that punishment can coerce Iran into surrendering to American demands.
There is no evidence that Iran is caving in to American pressure, and there are three reasons to doubt that it will. First, it is exceedingly difficult to find a case in the historical record in which an economic blockade by itself caused the target state to surrender. Second, Iran sees the US and Israel as existential threats to Iran – hardly surprising given the genocidal language Trump has used when talking about Iran – and states that believe their survival is at stake are exceptionally difficult to coerce. Third, Iran has a formidable escalation option if the economic pain becomes too great: it can attack the oil and gas infrastructure of the Gulf states and Israel, as well as their highly vulnerable desalination plants.
In short, it is difficult to see economic pressure alone forcing Iran to accept Trump’s terms. That is probably one reason the United States is once again talking about using military force. But, as I argued above, that option holds little promise of producing a favorable outcome.
Finally, there is no question that more oil is flowing out of the Gulf today than was the case in early September. But both Iran and the Houthis are working hard to reverse that trend. Iran is attacking US-escorted tankers on a daily basis, while the Houthis are targeting vital oil infrastructure inside Saudi Arabia. Moreover, despite the increased flow of oil out of the Gulf, gasoline prices remain very high, and a host of other economic problems show no signs of easing anytime soon, including high diesel prices, persistent inflation, elevated mortgage rates, and dangerously high bond yields across much of the West.
All of this is to say that the Trump administration has powerful economic incentives to shut this war down as soon as possible. Indeed, it would hardly be surprising if there were a growing sense of desperation behind closed doors among Trump and his advisers.
This, of course, helps explain why the Trump administration and its allies are waging a media campaign designed to persuade Iran that its days are numbered and that it had better concede to American demands before it is too late. The facts, however, tell a different story. The success of this strategy therefore depends on Trump being able to bamboozle the Iranians into believing that Godzilla is closing in on them. There is little reason to think Tehran will be hoodwinked.
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