Patricia Teitelbaum, President of the International Movement for Peace and Coexistence, opened the third-anniversary commemoration of the 7th October 2023 Hamas massacre by welcoming guests to an exhibition named Memory, Dignity and the Duty to Prevent.
Held in the European Parliament in Strasbourg on 7th October, it was co-organised by IMPAC and the American Jewish Committee’s Transatlantic Institute, and hosted by Hildegard Bentele, the German EPP MEP who chairs the Parliament’s delegation for relations with Israel. Over 200 were present, including at least 55 MEPs.
Photographs by Israeli Ziv Koren lined the gallery. Sculptures by the Gaza-border blacksmith Yaron Bob, forged from rocket metal, stood among them. Teitelbaum said the gathering was meant to restore dignity stripped from the victims and to commit those present to preventing a repetition. “Our common duty to prevent, to combat extremism and radicalisation, that would be a noble way to honour those who were murdered.”
Benedetta Buttiglione, director of the AJC in Brussels, thanked former hostage Omri Miran for being in the room, and called Bob’s rockets-into-roses a refusal to let destruction have the last word. Memory, she said, because the dead would not be forgotten; dignity, because every victim was a human being and not a statistic; and a duty to prevent, because remembrance meant taking responsibility.
Sarah Mordekhay, from the Eshkol region on the Gaza envelope, then lit candles in memory of some of the victims she knew, such as Bernard Cowan from kibbutz Sufa. She described 7th October as the deadliest massacre of Jews since the Shoah, but this time in their homeland: entire families wiped out, “not for what they did, but for who they were.” Never again, she said, meant no justification for terrorism and no tolerance for antisemitism.
Bentele, as host, recalled that more than 1,200 people were murdered that day, including citizens of EU member states, and that 44 EU citizens were among those taken hostage. Some survivors, she said, later took their own lives because the suffering was unbearable. She turned to Miran, who spent 738 days in Hamas captivity, and called his journey from Israel to Strasbourg an act of courage. “Remembrance is our responsibility,” she said.
European Parliament President Roberta Metsola spoke next and began with an apology. Two days earlier, French MEP Rima Hassan of La France Insoumise had visited the exhibition and thrown down the Israel flag, causing the EU flag to fall as well. Witnesses said she stepped over the European flag and made no attempt to pick it up.
Addressing Miran, she said she felt she must apologise, nonetheless. “I hope, dear Omri, you know that the actions of one person this week do not reflect the sentiment, ethos or belief of the vast, vast majority of members of this house who are as outraged as me.” The room applauded. She recalled her visit to Kfar Aza and Re’im on 13th October 2023 with the Speaker of the Knesset: the smell of death, a child’s burnt swing, and a make-up brush handed to her in a bus shelter at Re’im, which still sits on her desk.
She named the Bibas children, Ariel and Kfir, and spoke of girls who survived sexual violence in captivity only to meet sceptics. She did not confine the dead to Israel. “So many since also died in Gaza,” she said. “We are not blind to anyone’s suffering.” The way forward, she argued, had to end terror, disband Hamas and its proxies, and renew the fight against antisemitism. “The line between legitimate criticism and antisemitic narratives should be a chasm that no one crosses.”
Yaron Bob then presented Metsola with a sculpture, the Hand of Peace, a hand rising from broken ground to hold a broken olive branch. The branch was broken, he said, because the losses were terrible; the hand still held it because hope had not been given up. “My dream is that one day there will be no more rockets for me to use”, he concluded.
Israel’s ambassador to the EU and NATO, Avi Nir-Feldklein, asked who in the room had woken that morning wondering whether their country would survive the day. He thanked Metsola for speaking when others stayed silent and told Miran that an entire nation had rejoiced at his return.
Miran spoke last. Abducted from Kibbutz Nahal Oz, he described the safe room with his wife Lishay and their daughters Roni, then two, and Alma, six months old; the murder of the kibbutz security coordinator, Ilan Fiorentino; and the moment terrorists used a 17-year-old neighbour to force the family to open the door.
A rifle was pointed at Roni’s head. As he was led away, the child broke free and screamed for her father. He did not look back, afraid they would be shot. He was beaten by a mob on entering Gaza, held in 23 places, including tunnels about 30 metres underground, and filmed for propaganda. His captors, he said, told him they would repeat 7th October “until the last Jew had either left or been slaughtered.”
Asked whether Gaza’s losses had changed their minds, they answered that 50,000 babies had been born that year: “50,000 new martyrs.” Pressure on Israel, and what he called a false symmetry between Hamas and Hezbollah and Israeli self-defence, had been read by those captors as encouragement, not as a call for peace.
Hildegard Bentele, the host MEP, had already given the day’s answer to the flag incident, writing on the evening it happened: “Knocking down the EU and Israeli flags at our commemoration exhibition does nothing to ease that suffering. We should come together to honour the victims and work to ensure such atrocities never happen again. Remembrance deserves respect.”
Standing on the deck of the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln, Secretary Pete Hegseth looked up at the flattop’s superstructure and got a good indication of many of the targets the Lincoln Carrier Strike Group (CSG) destroyed during its six-month fight with Iran. In a photograph shared by the Pentagon’s image distribution site, Hegseth is seen examining a wall of so-called kill marks stenciled onto the superstructure.
By our count from the image and a video taken during Hegseth’s visit, both of which you can see below, there are 103 one-way attack (OWA) drone kill marks and 34 ship kill marks. These represent the number of each the CSG took out. It is unclear whether there are other kill marks we can’t see.
Though they resemble Shahed-136s, which are the most notorious of Iranian OWA drones, these silhouettes would represent all types shot down, and Iran has many. The same holds true for the ships. The photograph shows stencils of frigates or corvettes but these would be a generic symbol for surface craft kills.
Secretary of War Pete Hegseth visits U.S. Navy Sailors aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln (CVN-72) near San Diego, Calif., Oct. 7, 2026. (DoW photo by U.S. Air Force Staff Sgt. Madelyn Keech) Staff Sgt. Madelyn Keech
On board to welcome the ship and its crew as it headed back to its home port of San Diego after a tumultuous and historic deployment, Hegseth extolled the strike group’s accomplishments. Reading from the Presidential Unit Citation awarded to the strike group for its work during Epic Fury, Hegseth noted that it shot down 77 one-way unmanned attack drones and sank 64 Iranian vessels between the start of Epic Fury on Feb. 28 until it departed the region on Aug. 22.
The Lincoln CSG also conducted 3,693 combat sorties, delivered 1.37 million pounds of ordnance, launched 450 Tomahawk Land Attack Cruise Missiles (TLAMs), destroyed 21 anti-ship cruise missiles and defended against four fast-attack craft and explosive-carrying wooden sailing vessels.
It is unclear at the moment why there are at least 26 more drone kill marks stenciled onto the Lincoln than the number of drones shot down listed in the unit citation and why there are 30 fewer ship kill marks than the tally noted in the citation. The Pentagon referred us to the Navy, and we are waiting for a response from the service.
Kill marks on aircraft embarked aboard Lincoln indicate that the carrier strike group also destroyed several Iranian submarines and other weapons. These were not listed in the unit citation or in any kill marks stenciled onto the Lincoln that we could see.
An image provided to TWZ by aviation photographer Jeff Rojas, who goes by the handle @jro_photography on Instagram, shows a submarine kill mark on one of the F/A-18F Super Hornets of the U.S. Navy’s Strike Fighter Squadron 41 (VFA-41), the “Black Aces.” That is one of the aviation squadrons embarked on the Lincoln during Epic Fury.
A close-up look at the broken submarine and other kill marks on one of VFA-41’s Super Hornets. (Jeff Rojas) Jeffrey Rojas
In total, VFA-41 alone launched 421 missiles and bombs during its time supporting Operation Epic Fury. You can find the details in our story about the squadron here.
In addition, an image published by The Aviationist showed “an extraordinary array of target markings on a VMFA-314 F-35C, apparently representing an oil tanker, three submarines, a surface combatant, a Shahed-type drone, an artillery piece, and several ground-based launchers.”
Marine F-35C Also Sports Three Submarine Kill Markings After Operation Epic Fury
An exclusive image obtained by The Aviationist reveals an extraordinary array of target markings on a VMFA-314 F-35C, apparently representing an oil tanker, three submarines, a surface combatant, a…
It should also be noted that some of the drone kill marks seen on the Lincoln could have been the result of shootdowns by the carrier’s escorts. The Arleigh Burke class guided missile destroyers USS Frank E. Petersen Jr, USS Spruance andUSS Michael Murphy all serve as critical air defense platforms for the carrier strike group. Those vessels were also the ones launching the TLAMs, as well as potential submarine involvement.
Arleigh Burke class guided-missile destroyer USS Frank E. Petersen, Jr. (DDG 121) transits the Arabian Sea, June 27, 2026. (U.S. Navy photo) U.S. Central Command Public Affa
Late Thursday morning local time, Lincoln finally returned home. The carrier departed San Diego on Nov. 21, 2025, and an arrival closed out a total deployment of 321 days, by our count. That’s just shy of the 326-day record USS Gerald R. Ford set in May, representing the second-longest deployment in the modern carrier era.
In addition to racking up successes against Iran, the marathon deployment drew scrutiny over the grueling conditions sailors and Marines experienced aboard. In August, crew families described supply shortages and difficult living arrangements, as TWZreported at the time. The accounts led to widespread media coverage, which Acting Secretary of the Navy Hung Cao called dishonest while also acknowledging that “a small number of mental health cases were treated with no loss of life, meal plans were adjusted when fresh resupply was unavailable, without a single meal being missed, calls home were limited when the operational threat was too high.” At least eight personnel across the strike group attempted suicide during the cruise, Cao wrote in a letter sent to Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand that was obtained by CNN.
The kill mark stencils weren’t the only symbols of Lincoln’s deployment. On Wednesday, Hegseth used symbology to push back against concerns raised about the long journey.
“There were a few folks in the media who tried to turn the USS Abraham Lincoln into some sort of a symbol,” Hegseth said. “A symbol of dysfunction, or a symbol of low morale, or a symbol of a failed mission. And what I look out right here or when I talk to your leadership, and I haven’t had a chance to talk to a number of you, I know it’s the exact opposite.”
UPDATE: 5:59 PM Eastern –
After the Lincoln pulled into its home port, new images emerged. The following picture shows additional kill marks, including 10 of submarines.
Sailors aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln look on as the ship docks at its homeport at Naval Air Station North Island on return from a historic 10-month deployment on Oct. 8, 2026 in Coronado, California. (Photo by Mario Tama/Getty Images) Mario Tama
Let’s start with exclusive intel. On Thursday, Yahya Ali al-Ra’i, speaker of the Sana’a-based House of Representatives under Ansarallah, delivered a letter to Sardar Ayaz Sadiq, the speaker of Pakistan’s National Assembly, requesting Pakistani mediation between Ansarallah and Riyadh.
Ra’i, widely respected, has been the speaker in Sana’s since 2008. Sadiq began his current term as speaker in Islamabad in March 2024. This direct parliamentary channel is immensely significant as a diplomatic opening – as Pakistan faces enormous pressure, domestically and across the lands of Islam, over its real commitments related to the Saudi Arabia vs. Yemen clash as determined by the Mecca Defense Alliance.
As murky as the the whole situation really is, direct intel from both Islamabad and Tehran, at the highest levels, as I especifically requested, has established four key points:
Islamabad is adamant that Pakistan will not attack Ansarallah and will not commit troops to that effect. The Riyadh understanding last week excluded entry into Yemeni territory. Pakistani forces should remain outside any ground offensives against Ansarallah. That seems to be the case – for now.
Pakistan was already mediating between Riyadh and Sana’a through Tehran. Field Marshal Asim Munir personallly requested that Iranian Foreign Minister Araghchi use Iran’s influence with Ansarallah, together with Araghchi’s contacts with both Islamabad and Riyadh. Pakistan’s Foreign Office did not deny this diplomatic channel.
Pakistan would have to defend Saudi territory under its Mecca Defense Alliance commitments. Deployments for border protection and defense against drones and missiles launched by the Yemeni Armed Forces fit this pattern.The problem is whether some Pakistani advisors are already deployed in Yemeni territory. If Pakistan has even a few “advisers” in Aden and troops somewhere around northern Yemen on the Saudi border, that already betrays its promises.
Pakistani forces should be able to defend themselves – that comes with the territory. It’s a stated contingency; not a prediction of retaliation. At least one Pakistani officer was killed in Saudi Arabia without a Pakistani retaliatory response. That spells out restraint – at least for now.
Transiting Hormuz: use CIPS and pay in rials
On the wider U.S.-Iran front, diplomatic moves support what we have been reporting for the past few days on Transition Protocol. Pakistan in fact is desperate to maintain engagement with both Riyadh and Tehran, alongside non-stop coordination with Beijing. After all, China completely supports Pakistan mediation; and Araghchi keep speaking to Munir, as he did following talks with Wang Yi in Beijing.
Meanwhile, on the Washington front, speculation is feverish all over the spectrum over preparations for a Trump administration renewal of the war – including potential strikes on Iranian energy infrastructure and even, quite worrisomely, nuclear targets. There is no final decision yet by the Psycho/Sociopath in Charge, much less a launch date.
The immediate risks anyway are staggering.
Diplomacy – even in ersatz form – is mired in impasse. Tehran remains – and will continue to remain – anchored to its existing conditions, detailed by the dead cat MoU, but now carrying the threat of blocking transit routes along Oman’s coastline that it considers illegal. Washington for its part is obsessed with vast nuclear concessions.
Earlier this week, we confirmed that the Supreme National Security Council (SNSC) in Tehran made two very consequential decisions.
Tehran decided to collect its Strait of Hormuz transit toll in Iranian currency only. No yuan, no crypto. Actually via a mechanism linked to CIPS, the Chinese payment/clearing system, bypassing the U.S. dollar. You use CIPS to electronically buy yuan, change it into rials, and pay the toll. Strait of Hormuz transit revenue after all is one of Tehran’s few remaining sources of hard currency. The new mechanism will definitely strengthen the value of the rial.
Via Pakistan, Tehran notified Trump’s real-estate Bismarck, Witkoff, that Iran will not move an inch from its conditions for a negotiated settlement – and is fully prepared for any possible U.S. offensive. And this after J.D. Vance came up with an added nuclear enrichment condition: a “meaningful” and “significant” reduction. That blockades the nuclear dossier and makes a quick resolution formula nearly impossible.
The bottom line is that the escalation ladder could get out of control in no time.
Coming Yemeni Storm 1.0 in effect
On the Saudi-Yemen front, the Yemeni Armed Forces are absolutely ruthless. The Coming Yemeni Storm 1.0 is already in effect.
The damage at Jeddah refinery, close to Yanbu, is massive. Ansarallah is simultaneously hitting Saudi Arabia’s eastern and coast and western coast, plus the East-West pipeline in between.
For all practical purposes Sana’a is going for the whole key Riyadh infrastructure. The U.S. defense umbrella is a joke: remaining PAC-3 and Patriot batteries are useless against Yemeni ballistic missiles.
Saudi troops may number at best 75,000, plus 125,000 from the National Guard. The Yemeni Armed Forces command at least 350,000 that can be easily ramped up to 800,000. To expect “help” from the GCC petrosheiks doesn’t even qualify as a joke.
The Yemeni Armed Forces also unleashed two ballistic missiles plus explosive drones in the direction of Aden’s international airport. Ansarallah said the target was Saudi military supplies that had just arrived at Badr Camp, the mercenary HQ adjacent to the airport. An unspecified number of high-ranking Saudi officers and officials – perhaps even some Pakistanis – were killed.
Turkey for its part is also about to put boots, aircraft and air defenses on Saudi ground. These Turkish forces in thesis could protect Riyadh, the holy cities and the East-West pipeline. Ankara, just like Islamabad, insists it has no plans to enter the war inside Yemen.
The swift liberation by the Yemeni Armed Forces of the western coast close to the Red Sea also made it crystal clear how the so-called Saudi “coalition” – actually a gang of proxies/mercenaries – was deploying de facto terrorists all along.
Ansarallah recovered a wealth of foreign passports – especially from Kuwait, Qatar, Turkey and Syria – belonging to ISIS and Al-Qaeda goons. Call it the Terror Inc. Legion.
I’ts the same old song. Qatar and Turkey, in sync, instrumentalized the transfer of ISIS/Salafi-jihadi goons from Syria and Iraq: they were welcomed in Yemen by the Islah Party. Turkey was the key transit route; at least 2,100 of these ISIS assets are Turkish.
AQAP is back!
Way back in 2020, Ansarallah had already seized documents, maps, and videos showing ISIS/Daesh and Al-Qaeda jihadis directly supported by Riyadh roaming Yemen, with captured goons confessing they were paid, weaponized and logistically supported by the Saudis.
Now a new incarnation of the former al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) is alread in effect – via at least 20,000 Daesh/takfiri terror goons “imported” from Syria. They will be sent to Aden governorate – following the request, actually the demand by MbS himself, fully approved by the Trump administration and its throat-slitter vassal turned President in Damascus, former ISIS al-Jolani.
The definitive headline of the whole affair though is that the House of Saud is attacking Ansarallah to protect the death cult in West Asia.
By controlling the Bab al-Mandab, Ansarallah de facto cuts off the Israeli port of Eilat. That had already happened before during the genocide of Gaza. Riyadh was furious because they had struck deals for the – now virtually scrapped – NEOM project that would connect up to Eilat once the Trumpian Abraham Accords were up and running.
Considering the whole picture, all hell could still break loose due to a single spark. Possibilities include: a Yemeni strike on Saudi Arabia causing massive casualties; a toll-enforcement mess in the Strait of Hormuz; an Iranian strike on a GCC petro-sheikh target, following an American provocation; an Iran-linked attack on a U.S. base, once again folowing an American provocation; and most of all a Sociopath-forced “land, air and sea” CENTCOM (mis)adventure.
The war inaugurated a terrible new global order in which armed drones kill civilians who are neither named nor counted.
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There were nights full of terror. Our village was bombed constantly,” says Zalmay Khan. Afterward, he goes to pray. Because of his wounds, he cannot kneel, so he prays sitting down.
Khan is in his early twenties and now works as a Taliban intelligence officer. As a boy, he says, he learned to read the sky before he learned to read words. His village in Wardak province, near Kabul, was bombed, then bombed again. First came American planes, then NATO’s, then those of the Afghan army the West had built. By night it got worse, when jets and armed foreign contractors hit villages and killed civilians seemingly at random.
“I became a Mujahed [a Taliban fighter] naturally,” Khan tells me.
He is not an outlier. In village after village on my most recent trip to Afghanistan a few weeks ago, I met men who grew up as the so-called war on terror’s raw material. Some wear the Taliban’s turbans, and some do not. Almost all of them say the same thing, with remarkable calm: The American narrative of this war belongs to the past. After two decades of war and destruction, it is their turn to control narratives and to rule the country.
October 7, 2026, marks exactly 25 years since the United States began bombing Afghanistan. The anniversary will pass in Washington with little reflection. In Afghanistan, the reality of it is lived daily.
Drones and Ghosts
The war on terror made history in a way few people remember. In its opening weeks, the United States used an armed drone against a target in Afghanistan, one of the first such attacks ever, in an attempt to kill the Taliban’s founder, Mullah Mohammad Omar, in Kandahar. Omar was not hit on October 7, 2001. He survived and reportedly died of natural causes a decade later, which the Taliban kept secret for years.
Who died instead? The record offers almost nothing: no definitive or officially confirmed names, ages, villages. One news report cites unnamed Kandahar residents suggesting the raid killed Omar’s 10-year-old son and the child’s stepfather, but the Taliban’s ambassador to Pakistan declined to confirm or deny this report.
In other words, the first known attempt to kill a man with an armed drone killed people no one has ever definitively identified, and it set the template for the type of warfare that would dominate over the next decades. No one can say who the victims were. But if the pattern of the following years is any guide, many were likely civilians, like the thousands of victims who came after them. During the Obama years, Afghanistan officially became the world’s most drone-bombed country.
That template repeated itself so often that Afghans developed names for the many men who were declared dead after supposed “surgical strikes,” but who then reappeared alive: mord-e zinda (the living dead) in Farsi and khyali marr (the not truly dead) in Pashto. I call them “Taliban ghosts.”
It continued across successive U.S. administrations, even across the bureaucratic, supposedly methodical “kill lists” infamously used by the Obama administration used to mark people for death from the skies.
The obvious question was almost never asked: If Omar was not the victim, who was killed instead? In the logic of the drone war, a body is a statistic, and a body in a targeted area becomes a militant by default. The dead were not counted, and the stories of their families, who were left to count for themselves, largely continued to go unknown.
Strikes did not only create ghosts. They also created recruits. Researchers, journalists, and Afghan elders have long described the same pattern: A village is hit, a family is destroyed, and the Taliban offer the survivors the only form of justice made available to them. By the end of the war, entire districts had made that choice, not out of ideological conviction but out of grief.
Democratic Torture
One of the people I talked to on my recent trip was a Taliban official who had been held at Bagram, the American prison north of Kabul, for several years. He told me what the Americans wanted from him. “Accept our democracy or get tortured and rot here. That’s what they told me,” he recalled.
The aim, as he described it, was reeducation by coercion: Accept our system, our ideology, and the pain stops. He refused. By his account, he left more committed than when he arrived. He was freed in 2020 under the prisoner exchange the United States negotiated with the Taliban, part of the same Doha process that handed the country back to the movement the war was purportedly meant to destroy.
Consider the sequence. A man is imprisoned and tortured to make him embrace a political order. He then walks out of the prison and eventually helps govern. The war’s own methods created much of its failure.
I make no argument here that the Taliban’s rule is benign. Women and girls have been shut out of education and public life, and dissent is severely punished. These facts belong in any honest account. But an honest account also includes what the war did, who did it, and whom they harmed; the powers that waged it have shown little interest in reckoning with that part.
A War Passed On
Here is the part that does not fit the story that the war on terror ended in August 2021: someone else is still fighting it.
Pakistan is currently bombing Afghanistan. Just a few days ago, Pakistani airstrikes killed at least 10 civilians, most of them children, in the provinces of Helmand and Kunar.
Pakistani authorities say they are targeting militants of the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan, or TTP, often known as the Pakistani Taliban. Afghans on the ground, and independent reports, repeatedly describe civilians as being among the dead. Islamabad has also forced hundreds of thousands of Afghans, many of them born there, out of Pakistan.
The phrasing used to justify these attacks is familiar: “Terrorists were eliminated.” Anyone who covered the American war has heard that sentence before, and the same pattern follows. The claims are hard to verify, the dead are hard to identify, and the people left behind are not asked.
Pakistan has run this game before, and it has historically done well for itself out of it. In the first days of the war on terror, Islamabad aligned itself with Washington while, according to critics and many former officials, hedging its bets with the Taliban. The United States poured billions into Pakistan in military aid and reimbursements. A double game paid for itself.
For a military establishment that benefits from a war to fight, an enemy is an asset. That helps explain why the army has so little tolerance for those who challenge its role. This pattern goes beyond the foreign policy of one country alone. It is a system — one created by the U.S. but now adopted globally — that requires a threat to warrant its continued expansion and removes the people who question its logic.
If Pakistan again needs an Afghan threat to justify its budgets, its alliances, and its hold on power at home, the logic is the same as in 2001. The war on terror, seen from Islamabad, is a renewable resource.
The Violence That Made the TTP
The TTP itself is not a mystery. It did not appear from nowhere, and it cannot be blamed on Kabul alone. It grew out of Pakistan’s own tribal areas, where decades of military operations, drone strikes with Islamabad’s tacit consent, and brutality under former Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf shattered communities. Many of these massacres have been forgotten outside the region. In the tribal belt they are not.
The result was a generation radicalized by state violence, in much the same process I heard described in Afghan villages. The TTP is, in significant part, a product of the very policies now used to justify the continued bombing of Afghanistan. Without Pakistan’s violence in the tribal areas, the group would not look as it does. Accountability for that history will not come from the same army that carried it out.
The war on terror in Afghanistan was sold as a campaign against a specific enemy. What it produced was a country scarred by airstrikes, night raids, and detention, and an enemy that outlasted the world’s strongest military. It also produced a new precedent: That a state can kill from the sky, in secret, and rarely be asked who died, much less held accountable for its deathmaking.
That precedent traveled. Drones have gone from being an innovation in killing, one shrouded in secrecy, to a mainstay of battlefields on multiple continents.. The language of “surgical” strikes and “militants eliminated” has become standard, notably throughout the genocide in Gaza. And in Afghanistan, the war continues in new hands, with the same justifications and the same result.
On October 7, if this anniversary is marked in the U.S. at all, there will be speeches about sacrifice and lessons supposedly learned. The real lessons are available to anyone who asks the people who lived under the sky, and the most critical question is still the one nobody answered in 2001: Who was killed instead?
A newly updated Congressional Research Service (CRS) report counts 81 US military aircraft as lost or damaged in the ongoing conflict with Iran. EurAsian Times analyzes the losses Tehran sustained during the ongoing conflict.
The latest figure is nearly double the 42 aircraft the Congressional Research Service tallied in a May 2026 report, as the EurAsian Times reported at the time.
The jump from 42 to 81 most likely reflects updated reporting and newly available public information.
In addition to the Congress research figures, two other reports published by the Congressional Budget Office and the Pentagon’s inspector general had earlier provided deep insights into the war. The latest CRS report reportedly cited that data.
“As of August 1, 2026, the armed conflict with Iran has cost DoD approximately $38 billion. That amount reflects the costs of replacing expended munitions and equipment lost in battle, increased flying hours, other operations, and increased fuel costs,” the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) stated in the report last month.
Meanwhile, the Pentagon’s IG report estimated the US campaign cost $33.4 billion between February 28 and June 30, with at least $22.3 billion spent on munitions alone.
Citing information published by the CBO, the latest CRS states that the overall cost of the lost aircraft is between $1.9 billion and $3.3 billion, depending on the Pentagon’s replacement costs. However, CNN News was informed by some unidentified sources that the cost of the war is much higher–at least $45 billion–excluding damage to US infrastructure and bases spread across the Gulf, repeatedly struck by Iranian forces.
The revised losses in the Congress report include manned aircraft, helicopters, and drones, though it clarifies that the total is not a count of destroyed aircraft, adding that some damaged aircraft may have returned to active service after repairs.
It lists 12 F-15E jets as destroyed/damaged, up from four F-15E Strike Eagle Fighter jets listed in the May 2026 report. The US lost three F-15E fighters in a friendly-fire incident related to the Kuwait Air Force aircraft, whereas the fourth was downed by Iran using shoulder-mounted air defense systems, as previously noted by the EurAsian Times.
Wreckage of the USAF’s F-15E published by Iranian media after downing the jet in April 2026 (Via X)
Both CBO and IG reports also earlier listed just four F-15E losses. Therefore, the eight F-15Es mentioned in the new report are likely the jets that were damaged in an Iranian strike on the Muwaffaq Salti Air Base in Jordan in September 2026. Citing an unidentified US official, Reuters earlier reported that Iran had struck an A-10 Warthog, leaving it with a missing wing, while eight F-15s sustained light damage and were returned to service.
The latest list also includes the F-35A, the US Air Force’s most prized and expensive stealth fighter. The CBO report had earlier noted that replacing/repairing the aircraft would cost $120 million, without saying whether it would be written off or repaired.
Although some OSINT observers at the time believed this acknowledged the F-35 loss, others warned that the CBO was only recording the repair cost while leaving room for a potential replacement.
Furthermore, the latest list also reiterates the loss of the E-3 Sentry Airborne Warning and Control System (AWACS), which was struck and damaged while on the ground at Prince Sultan Air Base, Saudi Arabia, during an Iranian missile and drone attack.
However, instead of merely reporting the loss, it expressed concern about losing this highly specialized aircraft and the far-reaching effects it could have on the USAF.
“Congress may assess whether losses in certain high-demand platforms that are aging and limited in number, such as the E-3 Sentry, create capability gaps or increase risk in other theaters,” it stated.
A USAF E-3 Sentry damaged in Iran’s strikes
Notably, the US Air Force has only 16 of these critical AWACS remaining in its inventory, and losing each could disproportionately affect American combat posture in the Western Pacific, where the threat of war with China is never off the table.
Another newly listed loss on the updated CRS is the US Navy’s MH-60S Sea Hawk helicopter, which did not appear in the May 2026 list. On July 1, an MH-60S Sea Hawk from a George H.W. Bush aircraft carrier made an emergency landing in the Arabian Sea, although the Navy ruled out hostile action at the time.
Most of the rise since May is attributed to drones. The report now counts 45 MQ-9 Reapers lost, up from 24 in its May report. This is also a considerable increase from the 30 Reaper losses cited in the IG report. Furthermore, a US Army AH-64 Apache that was shot down over the Strait of Hormuz in June 2026 has also found its name on the list.
Notably, the newly published report raises several issues for Congress to address, including whether the Pentagon provides enough detail about the losses for lawmakers to assess the consequences and potential solutions.
CRS notes that the Department of Defense’s reporting on the losses has been limited or vague, especially since even the September 2026 Lead Inspector General report relied in part on earlier CRS open-source tallies rather than providing a fully independent, comprehensive public accounting.
What Did Iran Lose In The War?
Iranian authorities have offered only limited, selective figures on their own military and civilian casualties and have not published a comprehensive accounting of equipment destroyed during Operation Epic Fury launched by the US in coordination with Israel.
Iran has nothing equivalent to the CRS list. Open-source counts already disagree: one tracker puts Iranian aircraft losses above 90 airframes, mostly transports and tankers, while a narrower documented list counts 43.
Open-source trackers have recorded dozens of Iranian aircraft—combat jets, transports, tankers, trainers, and helicopters—destroyed primarily on the ground at air bases early in the campaign, although a few were downed in air.
In the initial days of the war, two Iranian fighters, a Northrop F-5 and a F-4 Phantom II, were destroyed in an Israeli strike at Tabriz Shahid Madani International Airport. Around the same time, the US destroyed two Iranian Sukhoi Su-22 aircraft at Shiraz Shahid Dastgheib Airport, along with two Lockheed C-130 Hercules and an Il-76 transport aircraft.
CENTCOM released footage of the two Su-22s. Satellite imagery was later cited for the two C-130s and the Il-76 at the same airfield. Further Phantom losses have been reported at the 3rd Tactical Air Base in Hamadan, but not documented to the same standard.
A Qatari Air Force Boeing F-15QA shot down two Iranian low-flying Sukhoi Su-24 tactical bombers on March 2, 2026, after they failed to react to radio warnings.
In the second week of March 2026, Israel said it had destroyed multiple IRIAF F-14 Tomcats in a massive air strike on Isfahan Airport, and 16 aircraft used by the IRGC Quds Force at Mehrabad International Airport were also struck. At the time, experts posited that these strikes may have wiped out the entire Tomcat fleet, particularly since some of these jets had already been destroyed in the 12-day war between Israel and Iran in June 2025.
Historian Tom Cooper estimated that only about 10 Tomcats were flyable when the war began, compared with roughly 35 still listed on paper.
Satellite imagery confirmed at least two, and probably three, destroyed at Isfahan; some higher counts include airframes later described as wooden decoys. Iranian state media released footage on June 10 of an F-14 returning from a mission, so the “fleet finished” claim did not hold.
At Mehrabad, imagery after the Israeli strikes showed damage to at least 17 aircraft, including a Boeing 747 and a Harbin Y-12. Separate open-source lists also record Boeing 707 and 747 tankers destroyed at airfields between March and April.
An Israeli Air Force F-35I “Adir” stealth fighter jet shot down an Iranian YAK-130 aircraft over Tehran on March 4, as the EurAsian Times reported. On March 10, videos documenting the demolition of a Lockheed C-130 Hercules, a Lockheed P-3 Orion, and an Il-76 at Ayatollah Hashemi Rafsanjani Airport in Kerman, Iran, were released by CENTCOM.
Later that month, reports also surfaced of Iranian J-7 fighter jets and Bell 214 helicopters. In addition to these, several Iranian drones–deployed on a large scale–were shot down by US forces, although these were mainly one-way attack platforms.
Those drone losses are the hardest to count. Many were expendable one-way airframes, and neither side has published a reconciled total. Iran also claimed shootdowns of Israeli drones, including Heron and Hermes airframes, in early March; those claims are likewise unreconciled.
Iran has not released an official inventory of destroyed ships, but the sinking of IRIS Dena in the Indian Ocean became one of the starkest and most unforgettable symbols of the US war against Iran, especially since it was the first such sinking since World War Two.
Dena was a Moudge-class frigate, sunk on March 4 about 19 nautical miles off Galle, Sri Lanka, while returning from India’s International Fleet Review. The US said the Los Angeles-class submarine USS Charlotte fired two Mark 48 torpedoes and one hit. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth confirmed a US submarine carried out the strike.
Sri Lanka recovered 32 survivors; Iran later put the dead at 104. Some reports said the ship carried no operational armament because of the exercise, and that its Bell 212 was not aboard.
The accurate historical marker is narrower than “first sinking since World War Two”: first ship sunk by a US submarine since 1945, and first submarine sinking in combat since ARA General Belgrano in 1982. India and Sri Lanka both joined the search.
Furthermore, the US forces destroyed 17 Iranian warships, including a submarine, in the early days of the conflict, as the EurAsian Times reported at the time. These numbers likely climbed in the weeks leading up to the April 7 ceasefire and may have risen further after hostilities broke out in July 2026.
In fact, The Aviationist recently published photos of an F-35C that returned from the theatre bearing markings of three submarines, a surface combatant, a Shahed-type drone, an artillery piece, and several ground-based launchers.
Those markings record claimed engagements. They are not a confirmed naval order of battle.
Over the months, US forces have repeatedly endorsed destroying or damaging Iranian Navy and coastal targets, with Donald Trump alleging that the whole force had been wiped out.
Open-source reporting has suggested that a large portion of Iranian air defenses that are part of a meticulously built layered network, including the S-300, Bavar-373, Khorad-15, to name a few, were also destroyed in US and Israeli strikes. Additionally, both the US and Israel claimed to have destroyed several ballistic missile launchers in the initial days.
Israel said one early wave put more than 25 fighters against over 35 missile storage and launch sites around Tabriz and Kermanshah. Without a pre-war inventory or a public battle-damage assessment, none of these claims can be turned into a share of the force destroyed. Mobile launchers are the largest gap: a struck site is not proof the missile was in it.
That said, these figures are not fully confirmed, as Tehran has not officially published its losses.
Nonetheless, despite suffering major losses throughout the war, Iran has survived, dealing a blow to joint US-Israeli aspirations of completely destroying its ballistic missile or even the Nuclear program.
Contact the author at sakshi.tiwari13 (at) outlook.com
Yemen’s Houthis (Ansar Allah) have made battlefield gains in Taiz, halted a Saudi-backed advance near the Bab al-Mandab Strait and carried out repeated missile and drone attacks against Saudi Arabia over the past week.
Fighting intensified across Taiz on October 2 as Houthi forces expanded their offensive and sought to cut routes linking the provincial capital with Aden.
The Houthis continued their operations around Taiz while expanding attacks into Saudi Arabia on October 3. Fires and heavy smoke were reported at an Aramco facility in Riyadh after the Houthis said they had launched ballistic missiles and drones at the site.
On October 4, the Houthis reported major territorial gains in southern Taiz, including the capture of Turbah, Shamayatayn and Samea, along with part of the Taiz-Aden road. Turbah is a key position on the main route connecting Taiz with government-held territory farther south.
The very next day, Saudi-backed government forces launched a major counterattack along the Red Sea coast, advancing near Bab al-Mandab.
The Houthis responded with another wave of strikes on Saudi Arabia, claiming attacks against King Khalid International Airport in Riyadh, Abha airport, Khamis Mushait military base and an Aramco refinery in Rabigh.
On October 6, the Saudi-backed advance began to stall. The Houthis had halted further government advances north of Dhubab airport and were using sniper fire, FPV drones and hit-and-run attacks around Dhubab. Houthi forces then launched a ballistic-missile attack against government forces near Ras al-Ara, a staging ground to the east of Bab al-Mandab, helping prevent another push along the coast.
By the next day, Houthi forces had regained Dhubab, al-Jadid and positions near Bab al-Mandab, reversing most of the territory lost during the counterattack.
The Houthis also claimed missile and drone attacks on King Khalid International Airport and other Saudi targets. Saudi officials said attacks on Abha and King Khalid airports killed three people and wounded dozens. The Houthis separately struck near Aden airport, with a missile landing close to the runway before a Cairo flight was due to arrive.
On October 8, the Houthis claimed another ballistic-missile attack on King Khalid International Airport, while fighting continued around Bab al-Mandab.
Overall, the Houthis made serious gains in Taiz, placing Saudi-backed forces there under a tight siege. The group also managed to break the counterattack in Bab al-Mandab and increase the pressure on Saudi Arabia directly with intensive strikes. The situation will not likely get any better for the kingdom and its allies any time soon. Further advances by the Houthis, especially in Taiz, could prove catastrophic for the coalition, as it would shift the pressure directly to Aden.
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Pakistan has outrighty rejected a New York Times (NYT) report that claimed PAF fighter jets were involved in strikes against Houthis, calling the claim “fake and fabricated.”
“The claim in the above-referenced NYT report that Pakistan Air Force aircraft are being used against the Houthis is fake and fabricated,” Pakistan’s Information Ministry said.
In an X post, Pakistan’s Ministry of Information & Broadcasting wrote: Fact Check | Ministry of Information & Broadcasting NYT above referred story attributing employment of PAF aircraft against Houthis is fake and fabricated. International Media houses are again asked to avoid speculative reporting with regards to employment of Pakistan’s Military Forces under Makkah Joint Defence Agreement. Details of any employment, if necessary will be given by concerned authorities. Truth Prevails over Falsehood.
The report came days after Pakistan and Turkey agreed to deploy troops to Saudi Arabia under the Mecca Joint Defense Agreement.
File Image: JF-17 Jets
Earlier, a senior Pakistani military official, speaking on condition of anonymity, told NYT that Pakistan Air Force jets were being used in strikes against the Houthis.
Another Pakistani official said Islamabad’s role was aimed at degrading Houthi drone and missile threats through air support rather than a ground offensive in Yemen, the NYT claimed.
Col. David O. Smith, a former U.S. Army attaché in Pakistan and former Defense Intelligence Agency analyst, said he had no classified figures, but that the analyst consensus was about 8,000 Pakistani troops deployed in Saudi Arabia. He said the force included a Pakistan Air Force contingent and Army air-defense units, that they would likely help secure oil infrastructure, and that Pakistani soldiers were unlikely to fight the Houthis directly because Islamabad is trying to preserve its relationship with Iran.
Pakistan’s military spokesman, Lt. Gen. Ahmed Sharif Chaudhry, confirmed to CNN that Pakistani troops are already in Saudi Arabia and described any role as defensive, without saying whether they would operate across the border in Yemen.
Interestingly, Pakistan earlier furiously denied a social media buzz that claimed Pakistan had lost three JF-17 fighter jets due to a Houthi missile attack that targeted King Abdulaziz Air Base in Saudi Arabia.
“This is absolutely fake. No credible or official source has also reported any sort of damage to PAF JF-17s,” the Ministry of Information reportedly said in its statement. The “deliberate fabrication of damage to PAF aircraft and their alleged evacuation is only blatant Indian propaganda, part of Hindutva deceit and a deceptive mindset,” the Ministry said.
The Pakistani Air Force jets and support aircraft, including JF-17 jets, arrived in April 2026 under the Strategic Mutual Defense Agreement that Pakistan and Saudi Arabia signed in September 2025.
Meanwhile, Turkey’s foreign minister has rejected sending troops to Yemen, despite the “Mecca pact” with Saudi Arabia.
“This is a defense agreement,” said Hakan Fidan, adding: “If one of the countries is attacked, you support its defense. This is not an offensive agreement.” Turkey “will not send its troops to another country’s territory to launch an attack”, he emphasized.
Fidan said Turkish and Saudi military delegations would work together to assess what defensive measures might be needed, without giving details.
Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmaeil Baghaei has dismissed claims by US Secretary of State Marco Rubio that Tehran has repeatedly squandered chances for an agreement, saying the inversion of historical facts cannot erase Washington’s pattern of treaty-breaking from public memory.
Baghaei, responding to an IRNA question on Rubio’s assertion that “Iran has missed opportunities for an agreement multiple times,” stated on Wednesday, “The inversion of historical truths cannot remove the reality of America’s repeated breaches of commitment from the mind of public opinion.”
He pointed to Washington’s successive acts of bad faith, including its unilateral withdrawal from the nuclear deal on May 8, 2018, the sabotage of diplomatic tracks, military aggression against Iran while negotiations were underway, and the subsequent violation of the Islamabad Memorandum of Understanding Iran reached on June 18.
Baghaei held the United States responsible for the insecurity prevailing in the region and for the economic consequences felt in America and worldwide.
“Blame-shifting and contradictory statements cannot overshadow the demand of American and global public opinion that those responsible for the illegal war and the crimes committed be held to account,” he said.
On the latest developments in contacts with the United States, the spokesman said the Islamic Republic’s considerations and conditions for ending the imposed war on all fronts and restoring security to the Persian Gulf and the Strait of Hormuz have been set out explicitly and decisively.
The necessary response to the other side’s proposals will be conveyed through intermediaries. “The exchange of messages between Iran and the US is being conducted through intermediaries,” he added.
On diplomatic efforts related to regional peace and security, including commercial shipping in the Strait of Hormuz, Baghaei stressed that the security of navigation in the waterway matters more to the Islamic Republic of Iran than to any other party. Iran, in consultation with Oman as the other littoral state, has spared no effort to restore security to the Strait.
“The consultation process between Iran and Oman has proceeded successfully. In addition to agreeing on the geographical coordinates of safe two-way routes in the Strait of Hormuz, the two sides have reached an understanding on how the matter will be presented to the relevant international body, a step that will, God willing, be taken soon,” he said.
Asked about the possibility of a joint meeting involving Iran, Oman, and other Persian Gulf states, Baghaei said Iran will continue its efforts to strengthen trust and engagement among the region’s countries.
“Defenders of the homeland, in both the diplomatic arena and the field, stand shoulder to shoulder, resolute and steadfast in defending Iran’s sovereignty and securing the nation’s interests and security,” he concluded.
Indian refiners have cut back Russian crude purchases for November delivery, as rising competition from China pushes up prices at a time when buyers can tap alternative shipments from the Middle East.
Operation Dawn has opened a new chapter in Yemen’s long-running war, bringing the strategically vital Bab al-Mandeb Strait back to the centre of the conflict, as Iran, the United States, Pakistan and Türkiye are increasingly drawn into a wider struggle. On 4th October, Yemeni President Rashad al-Alimi said in a televised address, “Today, I announce […]
Israeli rifles seized en route to Brazil’s TCP drug faction – the same group that controls “Complexo de Israel.” Israel armed Medellín in the 80s. Coincidence?
Last week, 7 ARAD-7 rifles of Israeli manufacture were seized by the Brazilian Federal Police at a transport company located in Niterói, Rio de Janeiro, while they were being prepared to be sent to drug traffickers of the Terceiro Comando Puro (TCP) organization. These are the same drug traffickers who control a territory called “Complexo de Israel,” which brings together the favelas Cidade Alta, Parada de Lucas, Vigário Geral, Cinco Bocas, and Pica-Pau.
Two years ago, we wrote here at the Strategic Culture Foundation an article about the danger of “narcopentecostalism” – the deep linkage between drug trafficking and neo-Pentecostalism in some favelas – pointing to this new phenomenon as a possible national security threat for Brazil, as well as a potential focus of activities aimed at destabilizing the social fabric and religious persecution. Indeed, in TCP territories, Catholic churches and Afro-Brazilian religious centers are closed and violently attacked.
Nevertheless, at the time we wrote that article, in July 2024, there were not yet enough material elements to incisively affirm the existence of a direct connection between narcopentecostalism and the State of Israel. TCP traffickers exalted the State of Israel, used Israeli patches and uniforms, but all of this was circumstantial and could be explained by mere adherence to evangelical discourse.
Now, however, we have more specific evidence to be able to return to the topic and raise concern about the possible link between Israel and one of Brazil’s main drug trafficking organizations.
After all, to date it is still not known how these modern Israeli rifles reached the logistical branch of an important Brazilian criminal organization, when this specific rifle is still uncommon among Brazilian police forces and nonexistent among the military.
The first objection that could be raised would be about Israel’s “interest” in arming or financing a criminal organization in Brazil. Well, it would not be the first time.
In the 1980s, 500 automatic weapons (including IMI Galil rifles and Uzi submachine guns) and 200,000 rounds of ammunition were found in a warehouse belonging to the Medellín Cartel, one of the largest drug trafficking organizations in Colombia. At the time, “independent investigations” concluded that the person responsible for the operation, the mercenary and retired Israeli military officer Yair Klein, had acted on his own. Klein himself, however, always stated that his activities in Colombia (which involved not only arms sales but also the training of paramilitary groups) had the knowledge and authorization of Israeli authorities.
Klein’s link to the Israeli state apparatus, demonstrating that he was not really an “independent agent,” is confirmed by the fact that when he was arrested in Sierra Leone in 1999 for selling weapons to insurgents of the Revolutionary United Front, the State of Israel intervened to secure his release, as well as refused all extradition requests.
Another interesting and recent piece of news involves Mexico, where authorities declared that 80% of the weapons found with soldiers of the drug cartels were of U.S. origin… and most of the remaining 20% were of Israeli origin. Indeed, Israel officially exported 24,000 automatic weapons between 2006 and 2018 to Mexico’s military and police institutions, and another 18,000 in more recent years. Note, however, that estimates from independent observatories suggest that Mexican cartels as a whole possess an arsenal of several hundred thousand automatic weapons. If something like 15-20% of these weapons are of Israeli origin, then we are talking about any number between 20,000 and 100,000 Israeli-origin weapons in the hands of the cartels. These are numbers that simply do not match the figures of official Israeli arms exports to Mexican security forces.
One last point that may draw attention is the recent attention the U.S. has given to Brazilian criminal organizations, with the PCC and CV groups categorized as terrorist groups by Donald Trump’s government. What draws attention is the fact that the TCP – the 3rd largest criminal organization in Brazil, with a presence in some other countries in the region, operations in several Brazilian states, and at least one verifiable link to an individual connected to Al-Qaeda’s financing network, not to mention an operational alliance with the PCC – was left out of the categorization.
Naturally, it could be a coincidence. But even so, it is an interesting coincidence that the neo-Pentecostal criminal organization apparently armed by Israel is exactly the one that was not categorized as terrorist by the White House.
TEL AVIV – Every Israeli election of the past decade has been sold as the last chance to save the country, and every one has ended in the same place: a long night of counting, followed by weeks of bargaining among men who swore they would never sit together. The vote on October 27 has a stronger […]
OPED by Rear Admiral Girish Kumar Garg, VSM (Retd)
The difficulty in ending the Iran war is not identifying the ingredients of peace. The nuclear issue, missiles, sanctions, regional armed groups, freedom of navigation, and Israel’s security concerns are all well known. The harder question is: how adversaries who deeply distrust each other can take the first step without believing that they are making themselves more vulnerable.
Military action can change the battlefield, but it cannot by itself create a durable political settlement. The longer the conflict continues, the greater the danger that military calculations become disconnected from the strategic objective.
The answer may not lie in one grand bargain, but in a sequence of reciprocal bargains, each limited in scope, independently verifiable and linked to the next. The objective should not be to create trust between Iran, Israel and the United States. That is unrealistic in the foreseeable future.
The objective should be to create a system that can function despite the absence of trust.
The broad issues are already clear. Iran wants recognition of its sovereignty, sanctions relief, and protection from military attack.
Israel wants assurance that Iran cannot acquire a nuclear weapon and that Iranian-supported groups cannot threaten its population. The United States wants to prevent nuclear proliferation, protect regional stability and avoid another open-ended war.
These objectives are not necessarily irreconcilable. The difficulty lies in sequencing them.
Iran fears that surrendering strategic capabilities before receiving meaningful concessions will leave it exposed. Israel fears that sanctions relief before Iranian capabilities are constrained will simply give Tehran resources to rebuild. Washington fears that concessions without Iranian compliance could be interpreted as weakness.
This is the classic security dilemma: each side sees its own actions as defensive while viewing the other’s actions as a threat that must be countered.
A successful peace process must therefore address not only what is negotiated, but how concessions are exchanged.
Replace the Grand Bargain with Reciprocal Bargains
The first step could be a time-bound Strategic Pause, perhaps lasting 30 days. During this period, the parties would freeze specified offensive operations, avoid attacks on civilian infrastructure and commercial shipping, and suspend actions that materially escalate the confrontation.
Compliance would need independent monitoring. More importantly, neither side should have to make a leap of faith. Each concession should trigger a corresponding concession by the other side.
A verified Iranian reduction in a specified category of nuclear activity could trigger suspension of particular sanctions. A verified reduction in attacks by regional armed groups could trigger defined relaxation of maritime or economic pressure. A verified violation would automatically suspend the corresponding benefit.
The settlement would therefore be built incrementally, with each step creating the conditions for the next.
Address Israel’s Security Dilemma
No settlement can succeed if it ignores Israel’s fundamental security concerns. From Israel’s perspective, Iran’s nuclear program is only one part of the threat. Iranian support for Hezbollah, Hamas and the Houthis has created a network of armed actors capable of imposing military pressure on Israel and disrupting regional security.
The practical approach would be to negotiate capabilities and behavior rather than political allegiance.
Iran could progressively restrict the transfer of specified advanced weapons, particularly long-range missiles, precision-strike systems and sophisticated drones, and commit to preventing attacks that deliberately target civilians or expand the conflict beyond agreed limits. In return, Iran would receive progressively stronger security assurances against direct attack.
The exchange is straightforward in principle: Iran reduces the forward military pressure it generates through its regional partners, while its security becomes less dependent on maintaining that forward deterrence.
For Israel, the benefit would be reduced military pressure on its territory. For Iran, the benefit would be a reduced perceived need to maintain an extensive regional deterrence architecture.
Hezbollah, Hamas & Houthis Need Different Solutions
These three groups should not be treated as one problem.
For Hezbollah, the central issue is Lebanon’s sovereignty and the presence of a heavily armed non-state actor on Israel’s northern frontier. A settlement should strengthen the Lebanese state’s authority and provide for a phased reduction or relocation of heavy weapons from sensitive areas. The immediate objective need not be the disappearance of Hezbollah as a political organization, but preventing any non-state actor from initiating a major interstate conflict without the Lebanese state’s consent.
Hamas presents a different challenge because it is inseparable from the unresolved Palestinian question. Requiring Hamas simply to disappear is unlikely to be realistic. A more viable pathway would involve Hamas relinquishing governance in Gaza, progressively reducing heavy weapons and transferring administration and security responsibilities to a legitimate Palestinian structure supported by the international community.
That process would need reconstruction and a credible political horizon for Palestinians. Otherwise, disarmament could simply create a vacuum for another armed movement.
The Houthis should be addressed through a separate Red Sea security arrangement. Iran could restrict the transfer of specified missile, drone, and maritime-strike capabilities, while a Yemeni political process provides the Houthis with a legitimate political future.
The objective would be to separate Yemen’s internal conflict from the wider Iran-Israel confrontation and restore freedom of commercial navigation.
A fighter loyal to the Houthi authorities, brandishes his weapon during a rally to recruit more fighters, in Sanaa on September 10, 2026. The country relapsed into war in July after years of calm, drawn into the regional conflict triggered by the US-Israeli offensive against Iran that began at the end of February. (Photo by Mohammed HUWAIS / AFP)
Turn sanctions into an instrument for peace
Sanctions relief should also be redesigned. Iran is unlikely to make major concessions today in exchange for benefits that may arrive years later.
A Peace Escrow Mechanism could address this problem. Sanctions would be suspended in stages rather than simply lifted. Oil revenues, access to frozen funds, and selected financial channels could be released automatically when independent monitors verify specified Iranian actions.
The same principle would operate in reverse. If commitments are violated, the corresponding benefits would automatically pause.
Iran would therefore not have to trust that sanctions relief will eventually materialize; the economic benefit would be directly linked to verified compliance. At the same time, the United States and its partners would retain leverage until Iran demonstrated its commitments.
Sanctions would cease to be merely punishment or bargaining leverage and become an instrument for implementing the settlement.
Make Hormuz The First Test
The Strait of Hormuz offers an immediate opportunity for confidence-building because its security affects the entire international community.
Iran could provide a verifiable commitment to the safe passage of commercial shipping, while the United States and its partners could suspend specified maritime pressure measures during the Strategic Pause. An independent mechanism could investigate incidents and determine responsibility.
If commercial vessels can move safely while military forces exercise restraint, it would demonstrate that reciprocal commitments can work even when the parties remain deeply hostile.
That lesson could then be applied to the nuclear program, missiles and regional armed groups.
Peace Through Managed Distrust
The central mistake would be to expect trust to precede the agreement. Trust is more likely to result from repeated compliance.
The settlement should therefore rest on four principles: reciprocity, verification, gradualism and automaticity. Every concession should have a corresponding benefit; important commitments should be independently verifiable; major concessions should be broken into manageable stages; and agreed rewards or penalties should operate automatically rather than depend on renewed political bargaining.
This approach also gives each government a politically defensible narrative. Iran can present the process as an exchange of specific military concessions for tangible economic and security benefits rather than capitulation. Israel can demonstrate that its security concerns are being addressed through enforceable restrictions rather than political assurances. The United States can retain leverage while reducing the risk of another prolonged regional war.
Motorists drive past a large billboard pledging revenge against US President Donald Trump along Jomhouri Street in central Tehran on July 27, 2026. Iran’s foreign ministry said on July 27 that the US was not involved in recent talks with Oman over the administration of the strategic Strait of Hormuz. Traffic through the vital global shipping route has been under Iranian control since the outbreak of war with Israel and the United States on February 28. (Photo by AFP) /
Most importantly, the framework recognizes a basic reality of international politics: peace does not always begin with trust. Sometimes it begins with managing distrust.
The parties do not have to agree on history, ideology or regional ambitions. They need only agree that certain actions are too dangerous to continue and that restraint can produce tangible benefits.
A durable peace is therefore unlikely to emerge from one dramatic handshake or a single comprehensive treaty. It is more likely to emerge from a chain of smaller agreements in which each side discovers, step by step, that restraint produces greater security than escalation.
The real diplomatic breakthrough would not be an agreement that ends all disagreements. It would be an agreement that makes continued disagreement less dangerous, more predictable and progressively less dependent on the use of force.
The ultimate test of diplomacy will not be whether Iran, Israel and the United States learn to trust one another. It will be whether they can construct a system in which they do not need to trust one another to stop fighting.
OPED By Admiral (R) Girish Kumar Garg
This is an Opinion Article. Views Personal of the Author
The writer is a retired Rear Admiral and was the Naval Officer-in-Charge (A&N Islands)
TEHRAN, Oct. 08 (MNA) – Yemen's armed forces announced they downed a Turkish-made, Saudi-owned armed reconnaissance drone of the Bayraktar Akinci type in the skies over Taiz province.
How Iraq’s energy sovereignty can be measured and achieved? How do the geography and sanctions matter? What is the U.S.’ impact in this area? And who determines Iraq’s energy choices? Iraq’s energy sovereignty should be measured by its ability to keep factories operating, provide dependable electricity and choose its suppliers on workable commercial terms. Yet, […]
After hesitating for weeks amid a deteriorating security situation in the Red Sea, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, and Türkiye (Turkey) have finally agreed to activate “deterrence measures” under the mutual security agreement, the Makkah (Mecca) Pact.’
Under the agreement, Pakistan and Türkiye have agreed to “rapidly deploy forces” in Saudi Arabia to counter the attacks by Yemen’s Houthi rebels.
This is the first time that the ‘Mecca Pact,’ signed in August, has been invoked.
“The committee agreed to activate collective deterrence measures, within the framework of the Alliance, in response to the attacks and all those responsible for them,” Khalid bin Salman, Saudi Arabia’s defense minister, said.
The ‘Mecca Pact’ has a mutual defense clause, similar to NATO’s Article 5, that an armed attack against one country would be considered an attack on all three.
Under the agreement, Ankara could deploy its soldiers in the southern Arabian peninsula for the first time in over a century.
The last time Turkish soldiers served in Yemen was in 1919 under Ottoman rule. After the Ottomans’ defeat in the First World War, Ankara agreed to surrender garrisons outside Anatolia under the Armistice of Mudros.
After the Armistice, signed between the Ottomans and Allied nations in 1918, Ottoman garrisons in Yemen surrendered to the British forces one by one.
Therefore, activating the Mecca Pact could see Turkish forces return to the southern Arabian Peninsula after more than a century.
In fact, while the Mecca Pact was signed only in 2026, Turkey has been waiting for an opportunity to return to Yemen for over a decade.
The Mecca Pact was signed in August 2026.
In 2015, when Saudi Arabia intervened militarily in Yemen against the Houthi rebels for the first time, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said that “Depending on the course of events, we may consider providing logistical support.”
However, Ankara should not celebrate too soon, as history holds a sobering lesson for the Turks.
The mighty Ottoman Empire once ruled across the three continents of Asia, Africa, and Europe; controlled three of Islam’s holiest sites, including Mecca, Medina, and Jerusalem; and controlled a huge territory in the European lands of the Balkans and southern Europe.
Ottomans, however, could never fully subjugate the Zaidi tribesmen of Yemen, the historical ancestors of today’s Houthi rebels.
Yemen, in fact, was frequently called the “graveyard of Anatolia” or the “graveyard of Ottoman soldiers”.
Yemen – The Graveyard of Turks (Ottomans)
Victoria Clark, in Yemen: Dancing on the Heads of Snakes (2010), writes that by the 1890s Yemen was already “renowned as the ‘graveyard of the Turks'” during Ahmed Feyzi Pasha’s campaigns.
She also quoted an Ottoman official: “Yemen has become now the graveyard of Muslims and money.”
Turkish journalist and author Mustafa Balbay titled his book ‘Türkler Mezarlığı Yemen,’ which means “Cemetery of the Turks”.
In fact, describing Yemen as a “graveyard of Turkish soldiers” is a recurring theme in Ottoman (Turkish) historical memory.
Yemen Türküsü is a famous Turkish folk song that serves as a tragic lament for Ottoman soldiers who marched off to fight in Yemen during World War I and never returned.
Another Turkish folk song remembers the difficulties faced by Ottoman soldiers in Yemen and pays homage to Turks who went to Yemen but never returned.
“There are no clouds in the sky, what is this smoke?
There is no death in the neighborhood, what is this commotion?
These lands of Yemen are so treacherous
Oh, Yemen, its rose is a meadow
Why do those who leave not return?”
Ayşe Hür, in her article “The largest Ottoman cemetery: Yemen,” recounts that the Ottoman rule in Yemen was fiercely opposed by Zaydis, the ancestors of Houthi rebels.
According to the Zaydis, the Ottomans were ‘turbaned infidels’.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan (R) passes next to a Turkish soldier wearing an Ottoman uniform during a third-anniversary commemoration rally at Ataturk International Airport in Istanbul on July 15, 2019. Turkey commemorates, on July 15, 2019, the third anniversary of a coup attempt which was followed by a series of purges in the public sector and changes to boost the Turkish President’s powers. (Photo by Ozan KOSE / AFP)
In his work titled “My Lament,” Ahmet İzzet (Furgaç) Pasha, who was sent to Yemen in early 20th century to supress a Zaydi revolt against the Ottomans described the period of Ottoman struggle in Yemen (1635-1840) in following words: “After a century of conflict in Jabal, with internal revolts and constant wars against the Zaydi imams, which continued until the year 1045 AH (1635), the entire Yemen region fell under the rule of the Zaydi imams due to the siege and pressure exerted on Haydar Pasha, who was forgotten and left in Jabal by the central government.”
Ottoman sources do not specify how many people died in the wars with the Zaydis during these 100 years, merely stating that “thousands of people died.”
“Going to Yemen and not returning” has been the fate of Ottoman soldiers since the 16th century, Ayşe Hür wrote in her article.
In the article titled “The Situation in Yemen” in the 15th issue of the Ottoman Newspaper dated 1316 (1900), it was stated: “As a result of Ahmet Fevzi Pasha’s wrong policies, approximately 4,000 soldiers died every year.”
Ayşe Hür also quoted an Ottoman official in her article who said that 1,30,000 Ottoman soldiers were buried in the Hijaz and Yemen between 1871 and 1894.
Marshal Galip, who served as a captain in Yemen in the 19th century, wrote: “Since I worked under the General Staff, all the general staff records passed through my hands. In these records, I noticed a wide and terrible gap between the new soldiers joining the army and those who were replaced or disabled… Yemen was a permanent war zone at that time.
“I compared the number of those who joined their factions or were mobilized en masse and sent away due to rebellions with the number of those who survived and returned to their homeland. The conclusion I reached was this: In the 22 years that had passed, a total of 130,000 Anatolian youths had been buried in the deserts of Hejaz and Yemen.”
In 2011, then-Turkish President Abdullah Gül renovated and inaugurated a Turkish Memorial Cemetery (Yemen-Türk Şehitliği) in Sanaa to commemorate the Ottoman soldiers who died in Yemeni campaigns.
Just one year later, in 2012, Houthi rebels demolished part of the memorial.
For centuries, the memorial has symbolized the Ottoman presence in Yemen. The deliberate attack on this memorial serves as a reminder of how the Houthis recall Ottoman campaigns in Yemen.
The damaged memorial for Turkish Martyrs in Yemen in the Yemeni capital Sanaa.
It was also a clear message to Ankara that they would not accept any Turkish involvement in Yemen.
Writing in Politics Today, Ahd Yaseen Al-Tamimi said: “History textbooks, which were adopted after 1962, presented a positive view of the Ottoman Empire and its rule over Yemen. Nevertheless, this did not prevent Zaydi supporters from maintaining their strict and extremist position on the Ottoman Empire.”
Of course, Turkey is a strong military power, and its influence extends in Yemen as well.
It has achieved remarkable military success in Syria, Libya, and in combating Kurdish insurgents in Iraq. Its military support to Azerbaijan was perhaps the deciding factor in its war against Armenia.
However, Yemen is a different ballgame altogether.
And if history is anything to go by, then Yemen, often described as a “graveyard of the Ottomans,” could once again become a quagmire for Turkey.
Sumit Ahlawat has over a decade of experience in news media. He has worked with Press Trust of India, Times Now, Zee News, Economic Times, and Microsoft News. He holds a Master’s Degree in International Media and Modern History from the University of Sheffield, UK.
He can be reached at ahlawat.sumit85 (at) gmail.com
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