Trump has attacked Iran twice, both times amid nuclear negotiations and alongside Israel. The war has made it more likely that Iran will acquire nuclear weapons, and has undermined the cause of nuclear nonproliferation across the Middle East and beyond.
The Supreme Court’s decision to force Palestinian politician Sami Abu Shehadeh out of the upcoming Israeli elections is the latest sign that there is no place for Palestinian citizens of Israel in the ‘Jewish and democratic’ state.
After the Greens passed a motion declaring ‘Zionism is racism’, every establishment journalist is suddenly playing dumb about the most elementary of issues in international law
“I’m okay.” That was the last message I sent my mother before an Israeli strike hit us, a group of seven journalists reporting in southern Lebanon.
Three years ago, on 13 October 2023, my colleague Dylan Collins and I headed to the southern border of Lebanon to cover the situation following cross-border shelling between Israeli forces and Hezbollah. We spent the morning filming UN peacekeeping force patrols along the blue line dividing Lebanon and Israel. The atmosphere was calm and nothing suggested that the day was about to change and upend our lives. We went to a coffee shop near a UN post where journalists from different outlets had gathered and there we met our friend and Reuters colleague Issam Abdallah.
Around 4:50PM, we heard a bombardment in a nearby town so we moved to an exposed hill in Alma Al-Shaab, where Al-Jazeera journalists Carmen Joukhadar and Elie Brakhya were positioned. Together with colleagues from Reuters, we were a group of seven journalists, all wearing press vests, reporting next to a car marked “TV”. We were clearly identifiable as press and spent about an hour filming while an Israeli drone hovered above us. At 5:57 I finished filing my photos and sent a message to my mother to tell her I was okay. Seconds later, I found myself on the ground, bleeding and screaming for help. Dylan rushed over with a tourniquet, but before he even had the time to put it, another strike hit.
Everyone disappeared and I was left alone, unable to move and the heat of the flames creeping closer to my face. I was terrified of burning alive, so I started crawling away with the camera still hanging from my neck and its strap tightening around my neck with every move. Two weeks later, I woke up from an induced coma with one leg missing, the other severely damaged, and Issam dead.
Not an isolated attack
What followed was as horrific and brutal as the attack itself and it didn’t stop there. What happened to us was not an isolated incident — for three years I watched journalists being killed in Lebanon and Gaza by Israeli forces in ways that felt painfully familiar.
In October 2024, Israeli forces struck a compound in Hasbaya where journalists were staying and killed media workers Ghassan Najjar, Mohammed Reda and Wissam Kassem, while they slept.
Human Rights Watch found no evidence of military activity at the site and concluded that the strike was deliberate and should be investigated as war crime.
Then in April 2026, journalist Amal Khalil was killed in southern Lebanon after an Israeli strike hit the building where she had taken shelter with her colleague Zainab Faraj, leaving both women trapped under the rubble. Investigations found that Israeli forces repeatedly obstructed rescue efforts.
Since our attack, dozens of journalists have been killed in Lebanon, and nearly 200 journalists have been killed in Gaza by Israeli forces.
Many have been mired by Israel with the same false allegations that they were “terrorists.” The dead can’t defend themselves against such accusations, but I survived and I can speak about what happened to us.
In June 2026 in an interview on France 2, Israel’s ambassador to France described the 13 October attack as a “mistake” saying that we were not targeted because we were journalists, but because Israeli forces had mistaken us for “terrorists.” The evidence tells a different story.
Five independent investigations by Agence France-Presse, Amnesty, Human Rights Watch, Reuters, and UNIFIL found no indication of fighters or military activity at the site, and no cross-border exchange of fire for more than 40 minutes before we were struck with a 120mm tank shell.
These investigations matter because they establish with certainty evidence beyond my own personal account.
What remains unanswered is who gave the order, who fired the double-tap strike, and why no one has been held accountable. These are basic questions that can be answered by Israel if they were sought by EU member states.
Three years on, Issam’s family and the survivors of this attack deserve to know: Who gave the order?
Evidence alone cannot deliver justice, someone must be willing to act on it. In the face of this attack, including the targeting of four of its own citizens on Lebanese soil, the Lebanese government has failed us.
Neither Lebanon nor Israel are party to the Rome Statute, meaning that the International Criminal Court does not have jurisdiction to prosecute those responsible for the attack.
In 2024, Lebanon approved a special declaration that would have allowed the Court to investigate war crimes committed after 7 October 2023, only to later reverse its decision for political reasons.
And now, making our legal path even more complicated, in June 2026 Lebanon signed a new framework agreement with Israel whereby Clause 13 commits both sides to cease “all hostile and adverse actions in international and legal fora.”
EU urged to act
I have no hope left that we will ever get justice for what we lost, but I will not rest before I know the names and faces of those responsible.
Our case is the most documented instance of Israeli forces targeting the press on record. The October 13 targeted attack was perpetrated by Israeli forces on a group of journalists clearly identifiable as press.
If we cannot get answers in the face of such overwhelming evidence, what does it mean for the hundreds of journalists killed by Israeli fire throughout the region for which there is no such evidence?
This is where the European Union must act. The EU has repeatedly said that journalists must not be attacked and that violations of international law must be met with accountability. Today, we demand actions not just words and statements. The EU must demand that Israel provide a full account of the 13 October attack, including who ordered, authorized and carried out the strikes.
For me, this is not an abstract question of foreign policy. Issam was my friend. I survived that attack with one leg missing. I know what it means when the people responsible for an attack are allowed to remain unnamed and unaccountable.
I am asking the EU not simply to stand with journalists in words, but to stand with us in action.
The EU has political, diplomatic, and legal leverage. It should use it. If Israel refuses to fully explain what occurred and disclose those responsible for killing and maiming journalists who were visibly identifiable as press, EU member states should use every available mechanism to pursue accountability, including further targeted sanctions or suspending trade with Israel.
I refuse to believe that a military with advanced surveillance could have simply mistaken us for fighters and attacked us in a double-tap strike, a tactic repeatedly used by Israel in this war. But, if that’s truly what happened, then Israel must still answer for how such incompetence and failure was possible.
For now, justice evades us, but the truth of who gave the order is within reach and we must demand it.
Zia Yusuf, Reform UK’s home affairs spokesperson, has said he does not agree with his colleague Suella Braverman’s assertion that black people cannot be English.
Asked about her views in an interview on Sky News, Yusuf said:
In my view Ashley Cole is the best English fullback in history, and I won’t take any other position. So in my view, Ashley Cole is English. I think the argument that he’s not English doesn’t hold water with me.
Nasser Hussain, who I grew up watching when I went to the cricket, the idea that those people aren’t English is an alien concept to me.
I would respectfully disagree with people, who make the opposite argument.
To say I’m English is to take a ‘laissez-faire, anything-goes’ attitude to ethnicity, citizenship and identity. It also denies me my Asian heritage. The liberals (many of them in today’s Conservative party) take this cosmopolitan approach to Englishness. They’re terrified of being called racist so they say that anyone, as long as they’re born here, can be English.
I take the conservative approach. Englishness is an ethnicity. There have been English people for centuries and we need to recognise this more if we are to start taking a more muscular approach to citizenship and nationality. And no, it’s not racist to say this.
More than 70,000 killed; even more wounded; destruction without end: Ten Israeli soldiers told Der Spiegel about their feelings of revenge, orders to shoot and “collateral damage.”
Settler violence turns West Bank harvest into a nightmare ■ More Israeli testimony implicates IDF for massive civilian casualties ■ Israel's detention, torture of Syrians ■ More
Kyiv just cleared the important roadblock for Budapest, which stood between Kyiv and EU membership talks. Ukraine’s parliament has passed a bill on schooling in minority languages, meant to finally lift Hungary’s block on the country’s path toward EU membership, with 266 of the 450 lawmakers voting in favor, UNIAN reports.
Hungary has been the lone EU member blocking the opening of four of Ukraine’s negotiating clusters, stages of the membership process, over how Kyiv treats the Hungarian minority in Ukraine's Zakarpattia region. Roughly 80,000 ethnic Hungarians live in it, and Budapest had tied Ukraine’s entire EU course to their language rights.
Lawmakers have instructed the parliament’s speaker to sign the law without delay and send it to President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
What the law changes in schools
The bill keeps Ukrainian as the main language of education, but guarantees classes in minority languages where they exist. Minorities may study in the official languages of EU member states alongside Ukrainian, and pupils may use their language in other forms of communication on school grounds.
A school can gain the status of a national-minority institution if more than half of its pupils study in that minority language, provided that language is an official EU language. Parents of at least two-thirds of a minority class can also ask the school to expand the list of subjects taught in Ukrainian.
The dispute dates back years
Ukraine’s 2017 education law and 2019 language law narrowed minority-language schooling and required more Ukrainian in secondary grades, which then-Hungarian leader Viktor Orban treated as an attack on the Hungarians of Zakarpattia, blocking Kyiv’s NATO and EU steps for years, EUalive reports. Kyiv’s position was that the laws applied to all minorities and excluded Russian.
Hungary’s newer government, in office since spring 2026, inherited the veto. Budapest lifted it on the first cluster, which the EU opened in June, Ukraine’s first since gaining candidate status in 2022, but made the rest conditional on this law.
With the bill passed, Hungary is set to allow the EU to open two more clusters, on the internal market and competitiveness, at a Council meeting in Luxembourg on 13 October. Kyiv aims to open all its clusters by year’s end.
Montenegro and Albania will hold separate accession conferences on 12 and 13 October as the European Commission introduces proposals for stronger safeguards against democratic backsliding, linking the next phase of EU enlargement to reforms within the Union itself.
Montenegro and Albania are preparing for another round of European Union accession negotiations this week, with meetings in Luxembourg scheduled to advance their membership bids as Brussels considers substantial changes to the conditions under which future countries will join the bloc.
Montenegro’s 29th accession conference will take place on Monday, 12 October, followed by Albania’s tenth conference on Tuesday. The meetings come less than a week after the European Commission presented a package of proposals intended to prepare the EU for enlargement while strengthening its ability to respond to breaches of democratic standards by newly admitted members.
For Montenegro, the immediate objective is to continue closing negotiating chapters after years of institutional and legal reforms. Albania’s meeting has a more precisely defined agenda: the provisional closure of Chapter 20, covering enterprise and industrial policy.
Both countries have made progress towards membership, but the Commission’s latest proposals indicate that the terms of accession could become more demanding as the EU considers admitting several new members.
Montenegro moves towards the final negotiating stage
Montenegro is widely regarded as the most advanced candidate among the Western Balkan countries.
Accession negotiations began in 2012, and all 33 negotiating chapters have been opened. Progress towards closure has accelerated as the government seeks to complete the process and secure an accession treaty.
At the end of 2025, Montenegro provisionally closed five chapters covering services, capital movements, company law, agriculture and fisheries.
As EU Today reported following that conference, the agreements brought the number of provisionally closed chapters to twelve at that stage, while the EU continued to emphasise the importance of judicial reform and sustained implementation.
The Commission has identified Montenegro as a country capable of concluding accession negotiations by the end of 2026, provided sufficient progress is maintained.
That objective does not mean membership would follow automatically. A completed negotiation must still lead to an accession treaty, which requires approval by all existing member states and ratification under their constitutional procedures.
Outstanding questions include the independence of the judiciary, enforcement of anti-corruption legislation and the capacity of state institutions to apply EU law consistently.
Albania advances in industrial policy negotiations
Albania’s accession process has also gained momentum, supported by renewed EU interest in incorporating the Western Balkans into European political and economic structures.
The chapter concerns the legal and institutional environment in which businesses operate, including industrial competitiveness, entrepreneurship and policies supporting small and medium-sized enterprises.
Provisional closure would represent further progress in Albania’s alignment with EU legislation and policy, although it would not constitute a final agreement on accession.
As with Montenegro, the negotiating framework requires sustained progress on the fundamentals of membership, notably judicial independence, fundamental rights, corruption and organised crime.
The Commission argues that enlargement can be accommodated within the existing treaties, but that the EU will need additional safeguards and improvements to decision-making.
Among the most consequential proposals is the possibility of suspending a new member state’s voting rights in the Council if it commits serious breaches of the Union’s fundamental values or the principle of sincere cooperation.
Such provisions would be incorporated into future accession arrangements, making some membership conditions enforceable after a country has joined.
The proposal reflects concerns that the EU’s existing mechanisms for responding to democratic backsliding can be slow and politically difficult to apply.
The Commission’s October package develops that argument into a broader programme of institutional preparation.
Enlargement beyond the Western Balkans
The debate extends to Ukraine and Moldova, whose membership applications have acquired greater strategic importance following Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
The Commission is examining how candidate countries can progressively participate in EU policies and programmes before obtaining full membership.
These arrangements could include greater integration in energy, transport, defence and selected areas of the single market, subject to the implementation of relevant reforms.
Brussels is also considering transitional arrangements affecting agricultural support, financial transfers and sensitive sectors of the economy.
The political challenge is to provide candidate countries with credible membership prospects while reassuring existing members that enlargement will not weaken common decision-making or create unsustainable budget commitments.
For Montenegro and Albania, the October conferences therefore take place at a pivotal point in the accession process.
Both governments are moving through the technical stages of membership negotiations while the EU is still determining how its next enlargement will operate.
The outcome will depend not only on their progress towards meeting accession conditions, but also on whether the existing 27 member states can agree on the institutional changes required for a larger Union.
The EU’s annual rule of law report, tackling advancements in corruption and fundamental rights, shares overly optimistic improvement that is far from the reality on the ground, a civil liberties group revealed.
Presented on a sweltering Friday in July, the EU commission’s 2026 rule of law report failed to avoid scrutiny, with NGO Civil Liberties Union for Europe (Liberties) observing a gap between professed achievements in member states and the reality of a significant lack of implementation of Brussels’ recommendations.
“This year’s Report shows continued positive progress across many Member States. And that is precisely why our Rule of Law Report matters. It has become a reference point, helping to shape national debates and drive reforms across our Union,” EU Commission president Ursula von der Leyen said back then in a statement.
But of all recommendations in the July report, Liberties’ Gap analysis report revealed that only four percent had been fully implemented, while 54 percent show limited to no progress.
“The Commission’s Rule of Law Report has the potential to be one of the EU’s strongest tools for preventing democratic backsliding,” said Kersty McCourt, Liberties’ rule of law expert. “But when recommendations are repeatedly issued without being implemented, and new threats are not identified early enough, the system loses its power”.
The report, published on Monday (12 October) and shared in advance with EUobserver, found that almost all recommendations issued in 2026 were regurgitations of those given in previous years, with only seven new recommendations being introduced this year.
The commission’s annual report “fails to unpack why some problems remain so entrenched,” Liberties said.
In its own study, the Berlin-based NGO suggested the reasons for slow movement to be bound from a lack of willingness from member states, a vacuum in the EU’s enforcement mechanisms, or issues becoming “so entrenched that progress is effectively impossible.”
This reduces the function of the report as a warning system for identifying early signs of democratic backsliding, since recommendations on emerging issues remain unaddressed and even if are formally adopted, often don’t translate into effective implementation.
Liberties observed this to be evident in the example of Nordic countries, which have grown to be exempt from scrutiny due to their traditionally strong reputations.
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Human Rights Watch: “The outside world may be under a dangerous illusion that life in Gaza is returning to normal, but reality tells a very different story”
One year since the ceasefire agreement, more than 1,400 people have been killed by Israeli forces in Gaza, nearly two million still need shelter, not a single hospital is fully functioning, and 1.4 million face crisis-level hunger.
Two Ukrainian defense-tech firms, The Fourth Law and Odd Systems, have joined forces to mass-produce thermal imaging sensors in Europe and the US, The Fourth Law told Militarnyi. The goal is to wean Western militaries off foreign suppliers, chiefly China, for the core part of every thermal camera.
Amid Russia's daily attacks, Ukrainian drone makers have been shifting production to allied countries. Linza and Zoom drones are now built in Germany, and another top manufacturer has taken its technology to Canada and Finland. Sensor plants would move a core component west, not just finished drones.
A Western answer to Chinese sensors
The project, called Project Foundation, will build long-wave infrared sensors, known as microbolometers. These chips register heat, so a camera can pick out a person or vehicle at night or through smoke. The aim, The Fourth Law said, is to "ensure the sovereignty of Western countries in the field of thermal imaging technology."
Plants in Europe and the US from 2027
The project will run two sites, First Foundation in Europe and Second Foundation in the US, from a headquarters in Eindhoven, a Dutch semiconductor hub. Mass production is due to start in 2027. Within three years, the partners want to quadruple Europe's output of these sensors and double America's.
Why Europe's supply isn't enough
Ukraine's front line burns through sensors faster than Europe can make them. "Europe currently produces less than 500,000 such sensors per year, while Ukraine consumes this amount in about five months," Odd Systems co-founder Yaroslav Azhniuk said in February, when he first announced plans for a plant able to make one million sensors a year. European sensors cost about five times as much as Chinese ones and are hard to buy at all, because Europeans need them too, he added.
Factories working for Ukraine abroad have already become sabotage targets. In March, an arson attack in Pardubice, Czechia, destroyed nearly all the production capacity of a plant making drones and thermal sights for Ukraine's army. Czech investigators are looking into a possible Russian trail behind the attack.
The Norwegian Nobel committee said Pillay, who is serving as a judge at the international court of justice (ICJ), has “shown that legal measures can help prevent acts of war and violence”.
EU governments were allowed to water down targets in their post-Covid pandemic recovery plans after they had already asked Brussels for the money, the European Court of Auditors (ECA) said on Thursday (8 October).
Of 20 milestones and targets the auditors examined, 13 were amended after the member state had already submitted its payment request. In nine of those cases, the change itself was requested after the payment application had already been made.
The revised targets were “aligned with actual achieved outputs, which made the payment possible,” the auditors wrote in their annual report on the 2025 EU budget.
Rewriting measures
Ireland, for example, asked for a payment in December 2024. But in January 2025 it requested to cut the target for ICT graduates down from 12,450 to 10,900, citing a high administrative burden.
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Depuis plusieurs années, nos dirigeants politiques, refusant d’accepter leur perte de puissance, recourent dans l’arène internationale à des faux et à des mensonges répétés. Petit à petit, ils perdent de l’influence, mais à force de jouer, ils provoquent les conditions nécessaires pour débuter une Troisième Guerre mondiale. Elle ne surviendra pas par erreur, ni par hasard, elle sera le fruit de leur obstination.
par Thierry Meyssan
Nous savons tous que, si les guerres se déclenchent lorsque des évènements particuliers surviennent, elles ont des causes profondes, bien distinctes. Il s’agit généralement de conflits de territoire ou d’influence. La Troisième Guerre mondiale pourrait être déclenchée par une escarmouche en Ukraine ou au Moyen-Orient, mais elle aura pour véritable cause un affrontement entre deux visions de l’ordre du monde : d’un côté, la grande majorité des États, réunis autour de la Russie et de la Chine, souhaite respecter le droit international, tandis que, de l’autre, « l’Occident politique », soucieux de ne rien perdre de ce qu’ils ont gagné en écrasant les peuples du Sud, préfère s’en remettre aux « règles » qu’ils ont imaginées au G7.
Cela fait huit ans, que Sergueï Lavrov, ministre russe des Affaires étrangères, a mis en évidence ce choix. Huit ans que « l’Occident politique » le poursuit comme si de rien n’était.
Le 28 septembre 2018, à la tribune de la 73° session de l’assemblée générale des Nations unies [1], il posa ce constat : « nous assistons tous à une collision de deux tendances opposées. D’une part, nous voyons le renforcement des principes polycentriques de l’ordre mondial, le développement constant de nouveaux centres de croissance économique, l’aspiration des peuples à préserver la souveraineté et à choisir des modèles de développement qui sont cohérents avec leurs identités nationales, culturelles et religieuses. D’autre part, nous voyons le désir de plusieurs États occidentaux de conserver leur statut autoproclamé de “leaders mondiaux” et de ralentir le processus objectif irréversible d’établissement de la multipolarité. »
Il poursuivait : « Nous observons l’offensive du révisionnisme belliqueux contre le droit international moderne. Les attaques ont été lancées contre les principes fondamentaux du règlement du Moyen-Orient, le Plan d’action global conjoint sur le programme nucléaire iranien, les engagements dans le cadre de l’Organisation mondiale du commerce, l’accord multilatéral sur le climat et beaucoup d’autres. »
Et plus loin : « Il est révélateur que les attaques agressives contre les institutions d’information s’accompagnent de tentatives de “privatiser” les structures de secrétariat [de l’ONU] et de leur accorder les mêmes droits qu’aux organes intergouvernementaux dans l’espoir de les manipuler plus tard. »
Il est difficile d’imaginer que certains puissent s’accrocher à leurs privilèges indus au point de provoquer une apocalypse. Et pourtant…
Toujours en 2018, après le retrait unilatéral des États-Unis de l’accord sur le nucléaire iranien (JCPoA), trois anciens empires européens, l’Allemagne, la France et le Royaume-Uni (E3), ont d’abord souhaité compenser le retrait US puis, vu leur incapacité à violer les règles de leur suzerain, ont affirmé que les sanctions antérieures contre l’Iran s’appliquaient encore.
Ils avaient pourtant voté la résolution 2231 du Conseil de sécurité [2] qui y a mis fin.
Commence alors une longue période durant laquelle l’Allemagne, la France et le Royaume-Uni (E3), faisant preuve d’une constante mauvaise foi, ont, à de nombreuses reprises, tenté de réimposer les sanctions contre l’Iran antérieures au JCPoA. Ces trois États ont prétendu qu’ils pouvaient revenir en arrière car l’Iran ne respectait plus ses engagements en ignorant que ce sont les États-Unis les premiers qui n’ont pas respecté les leurs.
Les échanges de lettres entre les différents négociateurs du JCPoA se sont intensifiés. Cependant, jamais les E3 n’ont accepté de reconnaître, ainsi que l’exigeaient les deux autres, la Chine et la Russie, que le traité ne permettait pas de revenir en arrière sans examen du non-respect par les États-Unis de ses engagements.
C’est bien là le cœur du problème : « l’Occident politique » refuse de reconnaitre ses torts et tente de maintenir les situations où il disposait d’un avantage.
Le 19 septembre 2025, conscients qu’ils ne pouvaient pas appliquer seuls les fameuses « sanctions », les E3 ont demandé au Conseil de sécurité de les rétablir. La Chine et la Russie leur ont opposé leur veto et ont proposé de relancer les négociations du JCPoA. Mais les anciens empires européens ont préféré corrompre des fonctionnaires internationaux. Ces derniers ont publié deux faux comptes-rendus de la réunion du Conseil, afin de faire accroire que le rejet de la proposition sino-russe suffisait à rétablir les sanctions [3]. Pis : contre l’avis du Conseil, le secrétaire général a publié des instructions les rétablissant [4]. La remarque de Sergueï Lavrov, en 2018, sur la « privatisation » des Nations unies se trouvait vérifiée.
Ne croyez pas que les choses en soient restées là.
Le Royaume-Uni a repris les « sanctions » contre l’Iran, en janvier, puis les États-Unis, fin mars 2026. Ces décisions ont été mal interprétées par la presse qui y a simplement vu un épisode de l’actuelle guerre du Golfe alors qu’il s’agissait de la reprise de ce que les États-Unis n’avaient pas osé faire lorsqu’ils se sont retirés unilatéralement du JCPoA, puis les E3.
Rappelons que le terme de « sanction » ne peut, en droit international, que désigner une décision prise par le Conseil de sécurité après un débat contradictoire. Ce à quoi nous assistons sont des « mesures coercitives unilatérales », adoptées sans débat contradictoire et violant la Charte des Nations unies.
Le président allemand, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, a qualifié la guerre israélo-états-unienne contre l’Iran, le 22 mai 2026, « d’évitable ». Il a déploré le retrait unilatéral des États-Unis du JCPoA, disant : « Il aurait été préférable de maintenir cet accord. Les conséquences que nous constatons aujourd’hui ne se seraient pas produites. » Pour conclure : « Cette guerre est inutile ».
Ce faisant, Frank-Walter Steinmeier manifeste sa conscience de la responsabilité franco-britanno-germanique dans l’actuelle guerre du golfe. Bien que, simultanément, il manifeste la même supériorité que ses complices en parlant de guerre « évitable » ou « inutile », deux qualificatifs qui n’ont pas leur place en droit international.
Il y a trois semaines, le 17 septembre 2026, les E3 ont convoqué une réunion du Conseil de sécurité sur « la non-prolifération ». Ils ont, à nouveau, tenté de faire rétablir les sanctions contre l’Iran et se sont heurtés à nouveau aux vétos chinois et russe [5]. La presse occidentale ne s’en est pas fait l’écho, elle aurait dû reconnaître la mauvaise foi de ses gouvernements.
Faire usage de faux documents, mentir effrontément et veiller à camoufler ses fautes, c’est rendre la guerre possible.
Constatant qu’ils ne pouvaient plus progresser aux Nations unies, les États-Unis et les E3 les ont contournées. Ils ont activé la Proliferation Security Intitiative (PSI), un réseau étatique, créé en 2003 par le président George W. Bush, sur les conseils de John Bolton [6]. Celui-ci a trouvé une quarantaine d’États — dont les E3 — pour signer, le 2 octobre 2026, une déclaration absurde [7] : elle réaffirme que Téhéran ne remplit pas ses engagements du JCPoA, sans dire qu’il en est dispensé depuis le retrait unilatéral des États-Unis. Puis, elle pose que ce manquement justifie l’opération Economic Outcast (« Paria économique »), que Washington vient de lancer contre Téhéran.
Par cette opération, le secrétariat au Trésor tente d’affamer le peuple iranien. La Chine et la Russie ont déjà dit qu’ils s’y opposeraient. Les signataires, au contraire, annoncent qu’ils l’appliqueront.
Certes, seuls un gros tiers des États qu’ils avaient sollicités ont signé ce texte. C’est déjà bien assez pour faire une guerre.
Pour la première fois dans un texte de ce type, les auteurs affirment, sans rire, leur « adhésion à l’ensemble du droit international et des cadres pertinents, y compris les résolutions du Conseil de sécurité ». Oui, vous avez bien lu, c’est au nom de la résolution 2231 et de la réunion du conseil du 17 septembre dernier que les signataires feront le contraire de ce qui a été décidé collectivement.
Comme nos dirigeants ont conscience de jouer avec le feu, ce texte est absent de leurs sites officiels. Il faut aller sur celui de la Proliferation Security Intitiative (PSI) pour le trouver.
À l’évidence, à force de faux et d’usage de faux, à force de mensonges et de menaces, nous provoquerons, sans le vouloir, la Troisième Guerre mondiale qui nous emportera.
[1] « Remarks by Sergey Lavrov to the 73rd Session of the United Nations General Assembly », par Sergueï Lavrov, Réseau Voltaire, 28 septembre 2018.
[2] « Résolution 2231 », adoptée le 20 juillet 2015.
[3] « Le Conseil de sécurité s’oppose au maintien de l’allégement des sanctions de l’ONU contre l’Iran » et « Nucléaire iranien : le Conseil de sécurité entérine le retour aux sanctions de l’ONU contre l’Iran en rejetant une prorogation de la résolution 2231 de 2015 », Nations unies.
[4] « Le secrétariat général rétablit les sanctions contre l’Iran », ONU (secrétariat général), Réseau Voltaire, 27 septembre 2025.
[5] « Compte-rendu de la réunion du 17 septembre 2026 », Conseil de sécurité des Nations unies.
[6] « John Bolton et le désarmement par la guerre », Réseau Voltaire, 30 novembre 2004.
[7] « Déclaration commune à l’occasion de l’anniversaire du rétablissement des restrictions des Nations Unies imposées à l’Iran et liées à ce pays », Réseau Voltaire, 2 octobre 2026.
Benjamin Netanyahu likes to translate Israel’s grief into American. At the United Nations last month, he took the dead of October 7 and multiplied them by the ratio of America’s population to Israel’s. The 1,200 Israelis killed that day, he said, were “equal to 40,000 innocent Americans slaughtered in less than 24 hours. That’s 16 times 9/11.”
Per-capita comparisons are a perfectly legitimate tool. A small country feels a massacre more than a large one, and Americans should understand what October 7 meant to Israelis. But a method is only honest if you’re willing to apply it to everyone. So let’s apply Netanyahu’s method to the people his army has been killing for three years.
Gaza had about 2.2 million people before the war. The United States has about 341 million, roughly 155 times as many. Take a conservative figure of 75,000 Palestinians killed in Gaza, slightly above the Gaza Health Ministry’s latest count of more than 73,000. Multiply it by Netanyahu’s own logic, and you get about 11.6 million Americans.
Eleven point six million. That is roughly the population of Ohio. It is more than ten times the number of Americans killed in every war the United States has ever fought, from the Revolution to Afghanistan. It is about 15 times America’s deaths in the Civil War, the bloodiest conflict in the nation’s history.
Measured in the unit Netanyahu chose, it is about 3,900 September 11ths.
Run the numbers in Israel’s own terms and the result is the same. Seventy-five thousand dead in a population of 2.2 million is the equivalent of about 340,000 Israelis. Netanyahu built a speech, a war and a foreign policy on 1,200. Imagine what he would say about 340,000.
The convenient multiplier
The prime minister’s defenders will object that the comparison is unfair because many of Gaza’s dead were Hamas fighters. Fine. Subtract every combatant the Israeli military claims to have killed, and apply the multiplier to what remains. Even 50,000 dead becomes nearly 8 million Americans, about 2,600 9/11s. You can argue over every death in the ledger, and the result is still measured in millions.
Netanyahu’s arithmetic has problems even on its own terms. Forty thousand Americans divided by the 2,977 who died on September 11 comes to about 13.4 9/11s, not 16. When the rhetoric needs a bigger number, it seems, the calculator rounds up.
But the real problem isn’t the rounding. It’s the selectivity. Netanyahu’s multiplier is designed to work in one direction only. It enlarges Israeli dead into an American catastrophe so that American audiences will feel what Israelis felt. Applied to Palestinians, it produces numbers so large they would make any American audience ask what, exactly, it has been paying for. That is why he never applies it to them.
What the comparison actually shows
The point of a per-capita comparison is to help outsiders grasp the scale of a loss. Netanyahu wants Americans to imagine 40,000 of their countrymen murdered in a day, and to understand everything Israel has done since as the natural response. Very well. Ask Americans to imagine 11.6 million of their countrymen dead, in a territory sealed off from escape, and to call it self-defense.
No American president would describe 11.6 million American dead as a proportionate response to anything. No American would accept that the dead deserved it because some of them were armed. And no one who has run the numbers can accept the premise of Netanyahu’s arithmetic, which is that Israeli lives scale up and Palestinian lives do not.
The method is Netanyahu’s. So is the answer it produces: by his own measure, the catastrophe in Gaza is about 290 times larger than the one he asks the world to remember.
At least 30 people have been killed and 18 injured after Russian forces struck two passenger buses in Kramatorsk, eastern Ukraine, on Thursday morning, according to updated figures released by Ukrainian prosecutors. The attack comes amid continuing Russian strikes on Ukrainian cities.
Russian forces attacked Kramatorsk, in Ukraine’s Donetsk region, at approximately 10am local time on 8 October, hitting an area where two scheduled passenger buses were carrying civilians.
According to preliminary findings from Ukrainian investigators, Russian forces may have used a UMPB D-30SN guided aerial munition. The precise weapon and circumstances of the attack remain under investigation.
Passenger buses caught in Russian bombardment
The two buses were operating regular passenger services when the strike occurred. Ukrainian authorities said passengers were on board, although detailed information about the victims, including their ages and identities, has not yet been released.
Photographs published by the regional prosecutor’s office show the aftermath of the attack, including severely damaged passenger vehicles. Emergency personnel and law enforcement officers were dispatched to assist the wounded, recover victims and document evidence.
The strike raises questions about the selection of the target and precautions taken to protect civilians. Under international humanitarian law, civilian vehicles and their passengers are protected from deliberate attack unless a vehicle becomes a military objective under the applicable legal rules.
The circumstances of Thursday’s strike, including whether the buses were directly targeted or struck during an attack on another location, have not yet been independently established.
Kramatorsk under increasing pressure
Kramatorsk remains one of Ukraine’s principal administrative and logistical centres in the part of Donetsk region still controlled by Kyiv. The city has faced repeated Russian bombardments as Moscow continues its military campaign to capture the remaining Ukrainian-held territory in Donetsk.
Its transport infrastructure serves residents who have remained despite years of fighting, including those travelling between neighbouring communities and those attempting to leave the region.
Regional officials have repeatedly urged residents to evacuate to safer areas of Ukraine as Russian bombardments continue. However, civilians remain in Kramatorsk and surrounding settlements, where everyday services, including public transport, continue to operate despite the danger.
Guided bombs and civilian protection
Russian forces have used guided aerial bombs against Ukrainian-controlled settlements near the front line. Such weapons can be released from aircraft at distances that reduce Russian pilots’ exposure to Ukrainian air defences.
The UMPB D-30SN, provisionally identified in the Kramatorsk attack, is a guided munition designed to reach targets beyond the immediate position of the launching aircraft. Its suspected use against an area containing occupied passenger buses will form part of the investigation.
Investigators will need to establish the intended target, the weapon used and the information available to those who planned and carried out the strike. These findings are relevant to determining whether the attack violated the laws of war.
Investigators examine civilian deaths
The Donetsk Regional Prosecutor’s Office is collecting evidence concerning the bombardment, including the type of munition used and the circumstances in which the buses were struck.
Establishing whether the vehicles were deliberately targeted, or whether the attack resulted from an indiscriminate or disproportionate strike, will be central to any assessment under international humanitarian law.
The identities of the victims and the full extent of the damage have yet to be established publicly. As of the updated figures issued by Ukrainian prosecutors on 8 October, 30 people were reported killed and 18 injured.
France’s schools are burning, police officers are being injured, barricades are appearing outside classrooms and teenagers are being drawn into confrontations that have travelled a very considerable distance from complaints about absent teachers and dilapidated buildings.
Hovering over this combustible mixture is Jean-Luc Mélenchon. The leader of La France Insoumise (LFI) insists that his movement neither controls nor directs France’s extraordinary wave of student protest. He has now explicitly advocated non-violent methods. That defence deserves to be recorded.
But it does not dispose of an uncomfortable political question: who benefits when legitimate teenage frustration is transformed into a wider revolt against the French state?
For Mélenchon, the answer is potentially obvious. The disturbances began with genuine grievances. Pupils complained about teacher shortages, overcrowding, poor facilities and the pressures of the French education system. The original protests in Créteil appear to have been spontaneous rather than the creation of a political party. That distinction matters. France’s teenagers should not collectively be caricatured as revolutionaries simply because some demonstrations subsequently descended into violence.
But what followed was something quite different. Schools were attacked and fires started. Cars were torched. Explosive fireworks and other projectiles were directed at police. By October 1st, Reuters reported hundreds of arrests and incidents of arson in several French cities. French intelligence agencies, according to a source close to the prime minister cited by Reuters, told a government crisis meeting that hard-left politicians had played a role in initiating the spreading protests. LFI emphatically denied the allegation.
That dispute should not obscure what is visible. LFI politicians have been remarkably eager to place themselves alongside the protesters. MPs Clémence Guetté and Louis Boyard appeared at the original Créteil mobilisation; Boyard turned his intervention into a TikTok video reportedly watched 1.5 million times. Other LFI representatives have similarly appeared around demonstrations. Le Monde describes the party as closely following protests and notes that this proximity simultaneously strengthens LFI’s relationship with young voters and leaves it associated with the movement when violence erupts.
Where Mélenchon’s political opportunism deserves scrutiny.
France is heading towards the 2027 presidential election. Younger voters are potentially one of Mélenchon’s greatest political assets, but also one of his greatest organisational problems: sympathy does not automatically become votes when younger citizens disproportionately abstain.
Recent polling reported by Le Monde put Mélenchon above 40 per cent among 18-to-24-year-olds in some presidential scenarios. LFI coordinator Manuel Bompard has openly acknowledged the opportunity, saying the movement has enormous room for growth among young people.
One hardly requires Machiavelli to understand the calculation. A generation of teenagers that believes itself ignored by government is politically interesting. A generation persuaded that it is being oppressed by government is considerably more useful.
The transformation is crucial. The original argument concerned teachers, classrooms and school buildings. The developing political narrative encompasses police violence, racism, inequality, Palestine, the far right and hostility towards the political establishment.
Mélenchon did not invent all these causes, nor is there evidence that he commands the young protesters like troops. But LFI understands political insurgency extremely well. Its political vocabulary depends upon conflict between ordinary citizens and an allegedly discredited establishment.
A spontaneous youth rebellion therefore offers almost perfect terrain. Mélenchon initially called upon supporters to “interpose” themselves against what he described as police savagery. Only as images of burning schools, vandalism and violent confrontation became increasingly politically toxic did he place greater emphasis upon non-violence, telling supporters that setting things on fire undermined their cause.
Perhaps that was sincere. But it also illustrates the danger of playing political games with youthful anger. It is relatively easy to tell teenagers that authority is their enemy, the far-left have sung this tune since the 1960’s. It is considerably harder, however, to regain control when confrontation develops its own momentum.
For years, public discussion of “political violence” has often been dominated by the threat from the extreme right. That threat is real and should never be minimised. Indeed, British Prevent statistics for the year ending September 2025 provide an important corrective to anyone claiming that extremism as a whole is overwhelmingly left-wing: 2,103 referrals concerned extreme-right ideology, compared with only 32 categorised as left-wing extremism.
But terrorism statistics and street politics are not the same thing. Europe also has a long-established tradition of violence emerging from anarchist, autonomist and revolutionary-left protest cultures: black-bloc tactics, attacks on police, destruction of property, arson and attempts to turn demonstrations into confrontations with the state. The current French disturbances make it legitimate to ask whether this form of political violence receives the same sustained political scrutiny as violence associated with the extreme right.
In Britain, too, claims of ideological double standards should be examined rather than assumed. Violence and intimidation occurring around demonstrations should be judged according to conduct, not according to whether those responsible march beneath banners fashionable on the Left or Right.
The correct principle is remarkably uncomplicated: political violence is political violence.
Throwing an explosive firework at a policeman does not become morally superior because the person throwing it considers himself anti-fascist. Burning a school does not become progressive because the person holding the match claims to oppose inequality. Intimidation does not become activism merely because its perpetrator believes his politics virtuous.
Nor, conversely, should peaceful demonstrators be branded extremists because violent individuals attach themselves to their cause.
This is a particularly important point in France because there is evidence that radical groups have attached themselves to genuine student grievances. Education Minister Édouard Geffray has distinguished protesting pupils from violent “ultra-left” elements. Former environment minister Delphine Batho, herself once a school-student union leader, has warned of the movement being taken over by the far left and urged pupils to preserve their independence.
Those pupils would do well to heed the warning. Their complaints may be legitimate. They have every democratic right to demonstrate. And allegations of disproportionate police violence must themselves be investigated: teenagers have suffered serious injuries and France has opened internal investigations into police actions.
Young people should ask themselves who is standing behind them — and why?
Mélenchon wants political change. He wants young voters mobilised. LFI wants to convert social discontent into an electoral force capable of reshaping France.
There is nothing inherently illegitimate about that ambition. Every political party attempts to convert public dissatisfaction into votes. The troubling point comes when politicians discover that confrontation itself is electorally useful.
The French government undoubtedly has incentives of its own to emphasise LFI involvement. By presenting the crisis primarily as an extremist public-order problem, ministers can divert attention from the failings in schools that produced the original demonstrations.
But that does not absolve Mélenchon. A responsible politician confronted by angry teenagers should attempt to reduce the temperature while addressing their grievances. An opportunist sees an emerging political constituency.
The danger for France is that its young people cease being participants in a legitimate argument about education and become raw material in somebody else’s struggle for power.
Once that happens, the classroom has ceased to be the issue, and barricades become the political objective.
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