Press TV – October 7, 2026
Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmaeil Baghaei says the United States and the Israeli regime have a history of manufacturing false-flag incidents only to clean up their messes around the world.
In a Wednesday post on his X account, the Iranian official said such scenarios would not save them from the quagmire of the aggression against Iran.
Baghaei said telling lies about Iran and accusing it of having a role in security incidents would fail to justify the US-Israeli aggression against the Islamic Republic.
“In a world where the American and international public is weary of an unlawful war of aggression against Iran, and where the aggressors have no honest way to justify a war of choice, even a raft made of lies can look like salvation to those who are drowning,” he said in the post.
The post also included a video elucidating previous US and Israeli false-flag operations, including massive US media campaigns denoting the existence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, which led to the invasion of the country in 2003, and Israel’s involvement in a case in Egypt in 1954, known as the Lavon Affair.
“False flags are an old craft: manufacture the incident, assign the blame, and harvest the consequences,” said Baghaei.
The post came after officials in the US and allied countries suggested that Iran may have had a role in recent security incidents, including on a Flydubai flight from the United Arab Emirates to the Israeli-occupied territories and in a suspected plot against an American base in Britain.
Iran has roundly rejected the accusations, calling them a pretext for launching renewed aggression against the country, months after the US and the Israeli regime were forced to end a previous offensive under a ceasefire reached in mid-April.
By Eldar MAMEDOV
Contact us: info@strategic-culture.su
The right-populist leader deserves scrutiny but offers clarity on Russia–Ukraine and Iran.
The frontrunner in France’s 2027 presidential race—Marine Le Pen from the right-wing National Rally party—has laid out foreign-policy views that American supporters of realism and restraint can approve of, regardless of how they feel about the rest of her program.
While the National Rally has been successfully marginalized and kept out of power in recent decades, one shouldn’t take it for granted that the French political establishment will find a way to thwart Le Pen—meaning her views could certainly become policy. The latest polls show the consolidation of her lead: According to Toluna-Harris Interactive, in a runoff she would take 57 percent against the centrist candidate (and a former prime minister under President Emmanuel Macron) Édouard Philippe and a staggering 69 percent against Jean-Luc Mélenchon, a far-left firebrand.
Of course, the spring of 2027, when the elections are to take place, is still a long way off. Political fortunes can change—as the left-wing outlet Mediapart’s recent investigation into old social media posts written by a teenage Jordan Bardella, now the National Rally president, is meant to demonstrate—but the National Rally’s supporters see such attacks as evidence of the establishment’s ill-fated and cynical effort to derail Le Pen.
Whatever you may think of her, at least her foreign policy views are coherent. On Iran, Le Pen—once labeled a “Trump ally”—offered a far clearer assessment than Macron with his equivocations. “We would still need to know what Trump wanted to do there,” Le Pen said. “Because for now, we still do not know what he wanted to do. He clearly has not achieved his war aims and he is setting the whole planet on fire.” While Macron tends to caveat his criticisms of Trump’s war with accusations that Iran has sought to destabilize the Middle East, Le Pen simply condemns the war on grounds that it’s bad for the French people.
She’s also warned of global inflation “that will have consequences for all peoples” and argued it is “better to convince the U.S. not to go and wage war against a country and an ancient civilization, a complicated country, and probably much more powerful than Donald Trump imagined.”
The events have confirmed Le Pen’s judgement. A civilization of 90 million people with millennia of history cannot be simply bombed away, as Trump (and the Republican Party) are learning to their distress heading into a difficult midterm election season. Le Pen is well aware that the people in France, like elsewhere, are paying the price for this adventure.
On Ukraine, Le Pen has been equally direct while diverging from Macron more dramatically. She warned the conflict has only two possible trajectories: “Either NATO is drawn into this war, and it will be the Third World War, or we will witness a hundred years’ war.” She has called for a major peace conference, made clear she is willing to talk to both President Vladimir Putin of Russia and President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine, and insisted that Germany, Poland, and Turkey be brought into the negotiating process.
She has gone even further, promising to halt French military aid to Ukraine, on the grounds that France cannot afford to sustain the amount of assistance Macron has been authorizing. Here she will have to explain herself in greater detail. A blanket cutoff is not a serious policy if the goal is to bring the war to an end as soon as possible—any settlement would require Kiev’s consent, as well as Moscow’s.
But neither can “support Ukraine for as long as it takes” work without a clearly defined end-game, and France’s fiscal situation dictates it cannot remain the default policy. Negotiations with all parties, including Russia, should not be treated as an appeasement or betrayal. Any serious attempt to settle the war would require Ukraine to make painful compromises on its NATO aspirations and territorial integrity, while Russia would have to compromise too on credible security guarantees for Ukraine or at least a greenlight for Kiev to rebuild and maintain a credible conventional military deterrent. Le Pen has identified the problem and signaled openness to unavoidable parts of the solution, but she still needs to explain the strategy.
Compare that with what the mainstream is offering. Macron is playing up the “Russian threat” and apparent hybrid attacks by Moscow against Europe. Meanwhile, according to the well-informed Le Figaro journalist Georges Malbrunot, French intelligence officers, while acknowledging the threat, believe that Macron overstates it. Macron’s aim, Malbrunot writes, would be to “steer the choices of the French ahead of the presidential election, targeting Le Pen and Melenchon—the two extremes that are lenient toward Russia.”
In a similar vein, Le Pen’s center-right rival, Edouard Philippe, lashed out at her, saying that “weakening Ukraine, as Marine Le Pen wishes, is threatening the security of Europe and France. I will do everything to prevent it.”
Then there is Gabriel Attal, Macron’s protégé and a possible successor. He delivered a grand speech in Reims calling for a “United States of Europe.” Europe’s security, he said, is being attacked by Russia, its economy by China, and its values by the United States. The remedy is a federalist utopia that he promises to build in “a matter of years.”
There might be a compelling case for EU nations to deepen their economic and technological integration. But the grandiloquent federalism talk sounds tone-deaf when what the French voters care most about is purchasing power, immigration, and French security.
This is the state of France’s foreign policy debate. The mainstream candidates are frightening voters with threat narratives, selling unachievable federalist fantasies, and equivocating on the U.S. war with Iran. The one major candidate discussing how to end wars rather than prolong them, and how to engage non-Western great powers rather than simply pick “a good” side over “an evil” one, is described by the establishment as extremist.
This does not mean Le Pen deserves uncritical support. Her historic ties to Russia warrant scrutiny, and her promise to halt aid to Ukraine needs to be coupled with a more detailed policy proposal and a broader strategy to end the war.
She is right on Iran, but her party has also forged close ties with Israel, seemingly based on a common antipathy to Islamism and to fend off accusations of antisemitism. On the Middle East, it remains to be seen whether national interest or ideological anti-Islamism will primarily inform her policies should she be elected president. Also, given her party’s lingering toxicity among the French elites, it’s far from clear that a President Le Pen would be able to attract diplomatic talent from the center-right to translate her instincts into workable policies.
But these are debates worth having. It is no longer credible to simply dismiss Le Pen and offer fearmongering and fantasy as a substitute for a debate. Perhaps the French establishment should ask itself an uncomfortable question: Why is it that voices advocating for diplomacy and sanity come from the camps they call “extreme” (both on the right and on the left)? Instead, the mainstream should make the language of diplomacy and peace its own. If it doesn’t, it should not be surprised when voters turn to those who do.
Original article: www.theamericanconservative.com
President Donald Trump said it without weighing the possible electoral consequences for Republican candidates in California, less than a month before the midterm elections. Far from generating laughter or support for his war with Iran, his comments have raised concern and could affect the vote in a state governed by Democrats since 2011. During a rally in Nebraska on Monday, the president said Iran could “take out” Los Angeles or San Diego, two of the largest cities in the United States, calling it a “small price” to pay to eliminate what he says is the threat posed by the Iranian regime.
© Nathan Howard (REUTERS)
Why would the European Union list the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps as a terrorist organisation in February, and then, seven months later, have its top diplomat sit down with the foreign minister of the government the Guard Corps defends?
At the UN General Assembly last month, EU chief diplomat Kaja Kallas met Abbas Araghchi, who served in the Guard Corps during the Iran–Iraq war.
Dutch prime minister Rob Jetten met president Masoud Pezeshkian, who in 2019 joined fellow parliamentarians in wearing the Guard Corps uniform to protest Washington’s terrorist designation of it. France, Italy, and Norway held meetings of their own.
These talks came less than nine months after Iranian security forces, on 8 and 9 January, killed protesters on a scale without precedent in the country’s modern history.
The human rights group HRANA has verified more than 7,000 deaths, and the UN special rapporteur warned that the toll may exceed 20,000.
In September, the UN fact-finding mission concluded that the crackdown amounted to crimes against humanity. Nor has the killing stopped: Iran Human Rights counted at least 532 executions in the first eight months of this year, including protesters arrested in January.
After a massacre, a foreign policy guided by European values should pursue one aim above others: making a repetition more costly for those who would order and carry it out.
Naming and shaming raises the reputational cost of repression, targeted sanctions raise its material cost, and delegitimisation raises the political cost of staying loyal to the regime.
They work only in combination, since sanctions without delegitimization tell the regime’s elite that their assets are at risk, but their standing is not.
Europe has used the first two instruments. The EU listed the Guard Corps in February and sanctioned additional Iranian officials for human rights abuses.
However, these measures target assets and individuals, while the government that presided over the killing keeps its seat at the top table.
The UNGA in New York showed how little the third instrument has been used.
The terrorist listing freezes the Guard Corps’ funds. Neither Araghchi nor Pezeshkian is on an EU sanctions list.
Yet it leaves a question unanswered: how far should the logic of a terrorist designation extend to the government that funds and publicly defends it?
Article 21 of the Treaty on European Union requires the Union’s external action to be guided by human rights and to be consistent.
Branding the Guard Corps a terrorist organisation in Brussels while posing for photographs with the government it defends in New York sits uneasily with that obligation.
This inconsistency is costly. In a study in foreign policy analysis, my co-authors and I examined how Iranians reacted to US sanctions. Comprehensive sanctions produced a rally around the government, even among reformists.
The 2019 designation of the Guard Corps, by contrast, produced almost no rally outside the regime’s hardliner core. Thus, targeted pressure on the security apparatus does not drive Iranians into its arms.
Handshakes, on the other hand, may give the apparatus exactly what targeted sanctions are meant to withhold: international legitimacy.
The photographs from New York reach two audiences.
The first sits inside the state: an officer deciding whether to fire on a crowd, or to step aside, weighs one question above most others, namely whether the regime will survive, and each of those photographs suggests an answer.
The second audience is the families of those killed, executed, and blinded since January. For them, the message is that Europe has moved on after eight months.
I am not against diplomacy. Kallas raised the sharp rise in executions with Araghchi, and Jetten raised human rights and Iranian actions on Dutch soil with Pezeshkian. Channels on shipping, detained Europeans, and de-escalation should stay open.
My objection concerns the level and the format: a meeting between leaders, photographed at the General Assembly with no public conditions attached, is not a technical channel.
Concerns voiced in private do not travel as far as the photograph, which signals normal relations with a government that has done nothing to earn them.
Four steps would help.
First, the Council should agree on a common line: contact at the technical and envoy level, and leader-level meetings only on public conditions, beginning with a halt to protest-related executions.
Second, human rights sanctions should move up the chain of command, to those who answer politically for the security forces.
Third, member states should invest in accountability that does not depend on Tehran, such as universal jurisdiction cases and evidence-sharing with the UN mission.
Finally, Europe should engage openly with Iran’s democratic opposition.
The EU has already decided, in law, what the Guard Corps is. Its leaders have yet to act accordingly. A massacre answered with sanctions in February and handshakes in September does not raise the cost of the next one. It lowers it.
Benjamin Netanyahu used an official event commemorating the victims of the Hamas-led October 7, 2023 attacks (held on Monday, according to the Hebrew calendar date) to accuse the world of spreading “blood libels” about Israeli actions in Gaza.
© DEBBIE HILL / POOL (EFE)
The Pakistan government’s decision on Monday, October 5, to deploy its armed forces to Saudi Arabia and provide other military assistance in its fight against Yemen is facing widespread criticism from the left and other progressive sections within the country.
Critics have questioned the rationale behind the decision, expressing concerns that it will further erode the credibility of Pakistan among the people in the region and unnecessarily drag it into endless wars.
According to the joint statement, the constituents decided “to move immediately to the practical implementation of the collective defense commitments” under the Mecca Joint Defence Agreement and provide military force and other capabilities to Saudi Arabia to protect its security and territorial integrity.
The statement was issued after a meeting of the Strategic-Political and Defence Committee of the Mecca Alliance countries in Riyadh on Monday.
The Mecca Alliance is a three party group (Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Turkiye) created earlier this year as a regional collective security alliance.
Though Pakistan has one of the largest armed forces in the world along with being the sole Muslim majority country with a nuclear weapon, the decision has invited strong criticism from the scholars and activists in the country.
Critics have pointed out how its armed forces have already been engaged in numerous domestic conflicts, such as prolonged operations against the terrorist groups such as the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), and other separatist forces in Balochistan
These groups have been allegedly involved in carrying out large-scale violent attacks against civilian and military targets.
Terrorism and the failure of the country’s armed forces to curb it has emerged as one of the central issues in the ongoing long march to the capital, Islamabad, by thousands of supporters of former Prime Minister Imran Khan and the country’s main opposition party Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI).
Pakistan, which is also facing a grave financial and economic crisis is also involved in cross border fights with the Taliban-ruled Afghanistan for months now and has an active decades-long conflict on its eastern borders with India.
Given the multifrontal engagement of the Pakistan army at the moment it would be dangerous to get involved in yet another conflict in West Asia, experts have pointed out.
Saudi Arabia has been involved in an over-a-decade-long war against Yemen since 2015. It has imposed a complete air, sea, and land blockade on the country, which has caused an unprecedented humanitarian crisis in the Arab world’s poorest nation.
Though the joint statement issued after the meeting on Monday did not name Ansar Allah or Yemen explicitly, it condemned the alleged attacks on Mecca and Medina, two of the holiest places of Islam, last month.
Ansar Allah has denied Saudi Arabia’s accusations about its involvement in those attacks.
“Pakistan is getting sucked into the Saudi-Yemen war. We can all thank Trump for igniting a new war in the Middle East. But shouldn’t we also have more sense to stay out of such a quagmire?” asked Taimur Rahman, leader of the left-wing Mazdoor Kisan Party (MKP), in a post on X on Tuesday.
Ammar Ali Jan, leader of another major left formation in the country, the Haqooq-e-Khalq Party (HKP) claimed that the “deployment of troops in Saudi Arabia is a dangerous escalation that can push Pakistan into an endless quagmire.”
He questioned the government for moving against “the people of Yemen” who “have shown exemplary solidarity to Gaza despite suffering endless aggression and siege,” claiming “attacking them would be a political and moral catastrophe.”
Abbiamo assistito a uno spettacolo da prima serata – in realtà un doppio inganno: il 11 settembre rivisitato su FlyDubai.
Il 30 settembre, termine ultimo per una possibile mossa militare iraniana contro il blocco navale di Trump , è passato senza che l’Iran intervenisse. L’Iran ha mantenuto la sua posizione, senza però sferrare l’attacco decisivo contro la Marina statunitense (che è così lontana) impegnata nel blocco. Ma lo spettacolo deve continuare. Come piano B, abbiamo assistito a uno spettacolo in prima serata, in realtà una doppia farsa: la riedizione dell’11 settembre su FlyDubai.
Questa patetica trovata non è mai stata un “attacco terroristico”; si è trattato di una mediocre operazione psicologica del Mossad, confezionata in modo approssimativo e arricchita da una serie di comparse improbabili, tra cui un idraulico che ha preso i comandi dell’aereo perché lo aveva visto in televisione.
I manipolatori erano il culto della morte in Medio Oriente, gli stessi Emirati Arabi Uniti e Washington. La narrazione ufficiale è per persone con un QI inferiore a 50: un copilota “jihadista” – guarda caso proveniente dall’Oman, perché la demonizzazione lo richiede – tenta di far schiantare un aereo pieno di sionisti. I proverbiali passeggeri eroici – idraulico incluso – lo sopraffanno a mani nude.
Il culto della morte sta facendo di tutto per assolvere gli emiratini da ogni responsabilità. L’attenzione è puntata sul “terrorista” omanita.
Ecco la combinazione perfetta: i musulmani sono e saranno sempre terroristi; il culto della morte è sempre una vittima; e l’Arabia Saudita deve consegnare il “terrorista” al culto della morte.
Un gioco da ragazzi, quindi, per un copilota contrabbandare un coltello nell’aeroporto ultra-sorvegliato di Dubai, a bordo di una delle rotte più sorvegliate del pianeta. E che dire dell’aeronautica militare, fanatica della morte, che non è riuscita a impedire l’atterraggio dell’aereo a Tabuk?
Perché il piano è sempre stato quello di atterrare a Tabuk. Si tratta della più grande base aerea saudita nel nord-ovest, e la più vicina a Israele; la setta della morte ha cercato per anni di ottenerne l’accesso. Ora potrebbero finalmente ottenere tutto: accesso allo spazio aereo saudita, informazioni riservate e altro ancora, grazie alla pressione congiunta di Abu Dhabi e Washington.
Presso Transition Protocol abbiamo appurato che quando il leader della setta della morte si è recato “segretamente” ad Abu Dhabi per incontrare il capo degli Emirati Arabi Uniti, MbZ, in un incontro bilaterale, potrebbe aver incontrato anche persone provenienti da diverse nazioni arabe, tra cui Qatar, Oman, Libia e Marocco.
L’Arabia Saudita ha negato categoricamente di far parte del pacchetto. Lo stesso ha fatto la Giordania. L’Oman compare solo attraverso una fonte israeliana. Non vi è alcuna conferma ufficiale da parte di Qatar, Oman, Marocco o Libia.
Teheran ha comunque reagito con estrema irritazione, avvertendo di “conseguenze molto pericolose”. La determinazione iraniana è chiara: non permettere che quei chihuahua facciano deragliare il processo fondamentale di riduzione al massimo dell’influenza statunitense e israeliana in Medio Oriente.
Islamabad, dal canto suo, continua a perseguire l’impresa sisifea di avanzare a piccoli passi verso un progresso minimo, mediando sia tra Arabia Saudita e Ansarallah, sia tra Stati Uniti e Iran.
Martedì scorso a Doha, il Qatar ha effettivamente consegnato al ministro degli Esteri iraniano Abbas Araghchi la risposta degli Stati Uniti. Lo scontro sembra riguardare la sequenza degli accordi, piuttosto che i singoli elementi. Il testo, così com’è, è una sorta di versione migliorata del famigerato memorandum d’intesa fallimentare, noto anche come Accordo quadro di Islamabad. Nessuno scommette che il carro morto risorgerà, ancora una volta.
Russia, Iran, Yemen: diamo una lezione a quei bastardi senza pietà.
Ora veniamo al dunque: lo Yemen. E a quale livello di annientamento sono disposti a infliggere a Riyadh i duri di Sana’a. La distruzione degli impianti petroliferi è fin troppo facile: basta un’apertura graduale. Lo Yemen è in preda alla furia. E non si fermeranno davanti a nulla.
Possiamo già osservare una sorprendente convergenza tra la Casa dei Saud, la Marina statunitense al di fuori della Persia e la NATO nel Paese 404: vengono tutti martellati senza pietà. Russia e Iran non hanno ancora iniziato. E parliamo dello Yemen.
All’inizio di questa settimana, Sergey Karaganov lo ha ribadito pubblicamente: lo Stavka russo ha finalmente preso la fatidica decisione di porre fine alle sofferenze dei neonazisti di Kiev. E in una sessione informale di due ore al Valdai, alle porte di Mosca, il Gran Maestro Sergey Lavrov, in totale relax, ha ribadito ancora una volta che la Russia è pronta per la guerra in Europa. E sì, sarà rapida. Senza esclusione di colpi.
Ansarallah e le Forze Armate yemenite attendono che tre fattori si combinino: un’inevitabile Ora Zero che risuoni in tutta l’Asia occidentale; la crescente tensione e l’esplosività degli scontri interni alla famiglia reale e tra le tribù in Arabia Saudita; e il perfetto incastro di tutti i pezzi del puzzle per scatenare la prossima Tempesta Yemenita sull’Arabia Saudita.
Allo stato attuale, Riyadh non riconosce alcun attacco proveniente dallo Yemen, mentre Sana’a annuncia ogni giorno, con precisione svizzera, il numero di raid aerei sauditi sullo Yemen, che prendono di mira mercati, fattorie, case, ponti, infrastrutture idriche, reti di telecomunicazioni: il proverbiale manuale del sindacato Epstein.
L’Iran, dal canto suo, ha già alzato la posta in gioco, colpendo il giacimento di Bu Hasa della ADNOC, a sud-ovest di Abu Dhabi: si tratta di uno dei più grandi giacimenti di petrolio e gas onshore degli Emirati Arabi Uniti, che alimenta lo strategico oleodotto Habshan-Fujairah, l’unica via di esportazione degli Emirati Arabi Uniti che aggira lo Stretto di Hormuz.
Il gasdotto East-West, di proprietà dell’Arabia Saudita, è stato colpito tre settimane fa e bombardato nuovamente dallo Yemen all’inizio di questa settimana, ad Abqaiq.
Colpire ADNOC e Abqaiq quasi simultaneamente potrebbe comportare la perdita di ben 13 milioni di barili di petrolio al giorno dal mercato. Non si ripete mai abbastanza che Iran e Yemen sono un tutt’uno. È questo il tutt’uno che conta, e nessun misero attacco informatico dell’11 settembre potrà cambiare le cose.
Iran’s economic adaptation over decades, marked by domestic production, regional trade and Asian partnerships, is on course to thwart Washington’s economic terrorism.
Press TV – October 6, 2026
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.
This story originally appeared in Common Dreams on Oct. 06, 2026. It is shared here under a Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0) license.
“Keep our city out of your reckless war talk,” said San Diego’s mayor, Todd Gloria, Monday night after President Donald Trump’s rambling speech at a rally in Nebraska included a particularly violent mention of the California city.
Gloria was among several Democratic political leaders who were incensed after Trump—moments after predicted the Republican Party would see a “tremendous victory” in the November 3 midterm elections—suggested that he would not object to an Iranian military or nuclear attack on San Diego and Los Angeles.
The president said that soaring prices for gas, groceries, and other essentials are a “small price to pay for keeping the world safe—keeping our country safe.”
Trump on Iran: Let 'em take out Los Angeles and San Diego, it's a small price to pay pic.twitter.com/Fc4BcjVDKj
— Headquarters (@HQNewsNow) October 6, 2026
He warned that Iran could “take out a city,” before adding that he would “let them” attack the two deep-blue cities—home to a collective 5.2 million people, with more than 20 million residents in the surrounding areas
“Let them take out Los Angeles. Let them take out San Diego,” Trump said at the rally in Grand Island. “This is a very small price to pay… It’s gonna be over very soon.”
The crowd responded to Trump’s comments with laughter and cheers. The president has frequently made Democratic strongholds like Los Angeles, Chicago, and his own hometown of New York City the targets of rhetorical attacks. He has also targeted those cities with the deployment of armed federal agents as part of his mass deportation agenda.
California Gov. Gavin Newsom, a Democrat whose name has been floated as a potential 2028 presidential candidate, condemned Trump’s remarks as “deranged and dangerous.”
“After sending the National Guard and Marines to occupy California, Donald Trump is now saying our foreign enemies should ‘take out’ Los Angeles and San Diego,” said Newsom, who later criticized Trump’s vice president and secretary of state for not speaking out against the comments.
“The SILENCE from JD Vance and Marco Rubio today is deafening,” said the governor.
Gloria added that San Diego, which is home to major military installations, “is not collateral damage. We are not expendable. And we are never a ‘small price to pay.’”
Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass accused Trump of compromising the safety of the nation’s second-largest city.
“The role of a president is to protect the country, not to actively threaten it and encourage attacks on American lives,” said Bass. “In the face of irresponsible threats, as Angelenos, we know how to stand together and protect our city.”
Jim Desmond, a Republican running for Congress in California’s 48th District, which lies in San Diego, was also quick to distance himself from the president’s comments.
Some observers claimed the president had simply been speaking in an “especially confusing style,” as journalist Daniel Dale suggested, and did not intend to suggest that the two cities could be acceptable collateral damage.
“Of course you can say it’s inappropriate regardless for the president to casually float the possibility of a city being wiped out,” he added.
Trump’s comments came days after it was reported that the Pentagon is prepared to send thousands more troops and a third aircraft carrier to the Middle East, as talks between the US and Iran remain stalled. Gas prices remain elevated, at $4.36 per gallon on average, and nearly two-thirds of respondents to an Associated Press poll in June said they disapproved of how Trump had handled the war, which he joined Israel in starting in February without congressional approval.
Sen. Alex Padilla (D-Calif.) had a succinct response to Trump’s remarks, referring to the constitutional amendment that allows members of a president’s Cabinet to remove him from office on the ground that they cannot fulfill the duties of the president.
“Twenty-fifth amendment NOW,” said Padilla.
introduction by Gospa News Editorial Staff
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.
In the video, the former Interpol official answers the following questions by Gospa News director Fabio Giuseppe Carlo Carisio:
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.
“NATO’s LIES ON MEDITERRANEAN WARS FOR GAS”. Exclusive Interview to Former Interpol EU Officer
US Researchers: “Investors may have had Prior Knowledge of Hamas Attack on Israel”
Declassified Guantanamo Court Filing Suggests some 9/11 Hijackers were CIA Agents
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