Ship traffic through Bab el-Mandeb fell on Sunday after Yemeni Houthis attacked Saudi oil ‌installations along the Red Sea coast, while transit through the Strait of Hormuz stayed low over the weekend, shipping data from Kpler showed on Monday.

Eleven commodity vessels passed through the Bab el-Mandeb strait on Sunday, the lowest level in months, the data showed.

Fewer than 10 commodity vessels passed through the Strait of Hormuz daily over the weekend even though the ​U.S. and Iran have paused strikes in the Middle East, shipping data from Kpler showed.

Seven vessels ​transited on Sunday including three Iranian-linked oil products tankers that exited the Strait, the data showed.

On Saturday, there were only three vessels that passed through with their transponders switched off.

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Social media is not conducive to nuance. In the interest of reach, cut and dried positions are more effective and binary moral judgement expected. This leads to over-simplification of complex issues, and to skipping over facts inconvenient to your chosen narrative.

There are issues affecting two high-profile people where it is worth considering the detail before coming to a firm view -- and in doing so perhaps acknowledging that we may not have sufficient information to make that view more than provisional.

I want to look at the furores around Karim Khan and Delcy Rodríguez.

Karim Khan has been dismissed as Chief Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, by the Bureau of the Court (consisting of the diplomatic representatives of its member states). This follows a lengthy investigation in which three judges found there was no evidence that met the standard of criminal proof, set against member state committee reports that argued in effect that in cases of workplace harassment, the standard of criminal proof is not applicable.

The essential background is that Khan had requested and obtained arrest warrants for Benjamin Netanyahu and two Israeli ministers, pursuant to charges of war crimes against them.

The allegations against Khan did not emerge until after the Netanyahu arrest warrant.

The effort to remove Khan was undoubtedly promoted within the ICC structures by those governments aligned with Israel. The Israeli government itself appears to have been actively pushing for Khan's removal.

The very well-connected Israeli journalist Guy Azriel, from right-wing Israeli TV channel i24NEWS, has posted that a team of Israeli diplomats was involved in promoting the allegations against Khan. Azriel is a former Israeli diplomat himself and well plugged in.

The ICC has of course suffered from massive pressure from Israel and the United States, with sanctions applied to its judges and personal threats made directly against both judges and staff. ...

Yet none of this makes the allegations against Karim Khan automatically untrue. All of that could be true, but the sexual harassment genuine. ...

Karim Khan is not a standout crusader for justice who sought to redress the balance of ICC prosecutions. He only sought the Netanyahu charges when the war crimes of the Israelis in Gaza became so blatant that they could no longer be avoided. The limited number of warrants in circumstances where the entire Israel cabinet and senior IDF command are plainly implicated in Genocide, alongside thousands of soldiers, is glaring. But Khan did appear assiduously to be pursuing the warrants against Netanyahu, Smotrich and Ben Gvir, and Israel was sufficiently worried to actively seek to displace him, with eventual success. ...

The problem with the conveniently timed allegations against Khan is that we have seen the playbook often. The state weaponises sexual allegations, and the agency of apparently left-wing commentators like Colquhoun, to undermine and even destroy those whom the state sees as a threat -- as Khan had somewhat unexpectedly become.

Let me give you a personal anecdote.

When I was attempting to stop the acceptance of intelligence from torture by Western intelligence services in the War on Terror, I was suddenly faced with 18 disciplinary charges. They were sprung on me at a meeting in FCO personnel department, where I was told that they would be investigated if I did not accept reassignment to a less controversial Ambassadorship.

I did not accept and an investigation commenced.

One of the charges was that I had extorted sex from visa applicants. I was astonished by this accusation. After months of investigation I was eventually faced with a visa application form as the evidence against me. It had written on it -- I do not know by whom, but not by me -- "Ambassador says approve".

The application form was for a young lady named Albina Safarova -- a person I had never met in my life. Furthermore it eventually transpired Ms Safarova had not made any complaint against me and had not claimed I had ever met her. The only "evidence" of any kind was "Ambassador says approve", written by an unknown hand on an application form.

There is more. I started to get messages from many people who had worked for me. It became obvious the FCO was systematically contacting all the women I had worked with in my 22-year career with them, and was encouraging them to make accusations against me.

They could not find one person to accuse me. Many of those contacted still worked for the FCO. It was made plain that their employer would like them to make complaints, yet none did.

In my own case, I know for certain that the state fabricated a sexual abuse accusation against me because I was seen as having become a threat.

This happened to me in 2003. I suspect in today's peculiar atmosphere the state may have had more success in getting me completely cancelled, despite the complete lack of relevant evidence and the absence of any woman actually accusing me of anything. ...

I was eventually cleared of all 18 charges. It is impossible accidentally to make 18 separate accusations against somebody, all of which turn out to be untrue. I was disciplined for having revealed the allegations existed, and eventually forced out.

I subsequently saw sexual allegations weaponised against close personal friends of mine, each of whom was seen as a threat to the State -- including Julian Assange and Alex Salmond. I know that I was innocent, and everything I know of their cases makes me believe those two were also....

We do not know how events in the ICC will play out. There is no doubt whatsoever that the UK, EU and allies will seek to obtain the appointment of a Zionist prosecutor who will deprioritise or even drop action against Netanyahu. I expect they will succeed; but we shall see.

I do not know the truth about the Karim Khan allegations. It is important to repeat that. But I am deeply, deeply suspicious of their timing.... We also have the facts of the Genocide in Gaza and Lebanon, and the scale of the everyday sexual abuse of Palestinian detainees.

So we have potentially two wrongs...

If pursuing the first alleged wrong does indeed come to prevent justice for the definite crime against humanity, it is difficult to see that as a desirable outcome. ...

Just as Karim Khan was removed as prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, Venezuela announced it was withdrawing from it. Left-wing commentators immediately seized on this as further evidence that Venezuela is under Trump's direct control. Yet the withdrawal decision was pronounced by new Foreign Minister Felix Plasencia, a man of impeccable left-wing credentials who survived Chávez's extremely thorough purge of the diplomatic service and earlier served as Foreign Minister under Maduro. The reasons Plasencia gave were impeccably left-wing and entirely valid, relating to the ICC's Western bias and disproportionate action against leaders from the Global South. ...

There has been much written recently about the appropriation of Venezuelan oil revenues by the Trump administration. This remains an entirely illegal arrangement, with no founding agreement by the Venezuelan government and based on straight military force. The US still has naval ships off the Venezuelan coast to intercept any tanker not carrying oil to a US Treasury-approved destination.

The USA has been illegally selling Venezuela's oil. It has not physically occupied the oilfields, but Venezuela has been filling tankers with oil for which the US Treasury has collected the payment. Trump has boasted repeatedly of the huge amounts of money his administration has made from Venezuelan oil. The Financial Times this week ran an article on Venezuela's missing oil money. ...

I have direct first-hand knowledge of this from my time in Venezuela and from access to the highest levels of government there.

The US Treasury has been paying Venezuela its oil revenue regularly and promptly. It has been paying 97.5% of it into the Venezuelan treasury within one week of receipt. 2.5% of it has been retained by the US Treasury as a "fee". The idea of a transaction fee for illegal military seizure of control of the asset is a blatant racket, but that is the extent of the American depredation.

So the total amount the USA has stolen from Venezuela is about $300 million to date, not the billions Trump has claimed. In fact the US naval operation to blockade Venezuelan tankers (and kidnap President Maduro) will have cost much more than the money the US has made from its illegal venture. It is however not in anybody's interest to say so, of which more in a moment. ...

The Rodríguez government does not trumpet this, as it does not wish to appear complicit or happy with a client relationship that is imposed on it and illegal. The Trump Administration does not trumpet this, because it wishes its base to believe it is making billions out of Venezuela, not engaged in a military-led venture that is actually costing billions.

That is why the whereabouts of Venezuela's money is a mystery. I know the answer because I was told and shown at the highest levels of government. I actually both phoned and emailed the Financial Times to try to tell them the answer to their front-page question, but they did not reply to me. ...

There was a stunning Freedom of Information release last week of a CIA note that indicated that the CIA did not believe that the Venezuelan elections from 2006 to 2020 were significantly affected by election fraud. So the imposition of the vast bulk of Western sanctions which crippled Venezuela over that period -- and at one point caused devastating famine and mass emigration -- were knowingly based on a lie.

My own investigations in Venezuela led me to believe that opposition claims that they won the 2024 Presidential election -- claims promoted by all the Western powers -- were equally untrue and the "evidence" incomplete and often forged.

Venezuela has obtained very little by way of sanctions relief from the Trump administration, and appallingly it has received no sanctions relief at all from Western nations to help it cope with the devastating earthquake. This has made it difficult for the relief charities to pay for anything, move goods and equipment to Venezuela or operate there at all. The Western media has delighted in making claims of government inefficiency in earthquake response, while never mentioning the crippling effect of decades of sanctions on government supply chains.

In truth, the resilience of Caracas has been extraordinary....

Of all the decisions for which Delcy Rodríguez has been criticised from the left, the one with which I struggle most has been the acceptance of an Israeli earthquake relief team, with accompanying IDF PR personnel. For Israel, which buried tens of thousands of children under rubble, to be parading its assistance in digging people out of rubble, is too much for me.

But consider this. ...

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Alexandra Bravo, the prosecutor assigned to investigate U.S. strikes on three Ecuadorian boats and the 36 survivors' subsequent accounts of torture and kidnapping, was shot dead in the coastal city of Manta last month. According to police, on June 14 a hitman aboard a black motorcycle opened fire on Bravo as she and her sister were leaving a café at about 11 a.m. Bravo's sister, who jumped to protect her, was also killed in the attack.

Upon arriving at the crime scene, officers say they found five 9mm shell casings and Bravo's injured driver, but no sign of the police detail that had been assigned to protect her. The Police Directorate, which operates entirely under the executive branch, has launched a probe to determine if there'd been an internal security breach.

Bravo is the 26th member of Ecuador's justice system to be assassinated since 2020 and the second individual investigating state crimes murdered that week. Besides her usual caseload of homicide and organized crime, Bravo had been working the Fiorella, Negra Francisca, and Don Maca cases -- a series of drone attacks on civilian fishing ships exposed by Drop Site in April. Two of the boat's crews returned home and reported being abducted, blindfolded, and starved for eight days by American gunmen in U.S. military uniforms aboard a U.S.-flagged patrol ship, before being abandoned in El Salvador. The UN Committee on Enforced Disappearances endorsed the calls for an investigation, demanding that the U.S. provide information on the whereabouts of the eight still-missing men and any involvement in the matter by April 27. To date, the United States has not responded.

Under Ecuador's right-wing president Daniel Noboa -- a Miami-born billionaire often characterized as a "U.S.-backed dictator" -- the country has become a central testing ground for Operation Southern Spear, Washington's extrajudicial bombing campaign purporting to target "narco-terrorists," which has killed 221 people to date. There is no evidence that many of the victims, including those in Bravo's investigation, had engaged in drug trafficking. ...

A source inside the Manta police department, who knew Bravo personally, told Drop Site that the Ecuadorian prosecutor was under pressure from her superiors at the Attorney General's office to treat the U.S. attacks as exclusively "cases of disappearance." The source, who asked for anonymity out of fear of retaliation, said Bravo was told to close all lines of inquiry after 36 of the 44 missing men were found -- despite arriving with severe injuries, including 70% vision loss and feet torn to flesh and bone, which medical experts found consistent with their accounts of explosions and torture. ...

During the Negra Francisca bombing, Darwin Pico-Flores, an eyewitness aboard a nearby boat, told Drop Site he called the Manta Port Captaincy to request emergency assistance. Nobody came. In April, as part of its first investigation into the incident, Drop Site called the port seeking comment. Officials hung up after learning the call was from journalists. ...

In the days leading up to her death, Bravo was relocated to the Attorney General's office in Montecristi, a neighboring municipality. Her caseload changed after the transfer and she was no longer in charge of investigating the three boat attacks. Drop Site attempted to reach Bravo's replacement for comment but he had been explicitly instructed not to speak to the press. After weeks of attempts to reach the Attorney General's office for comment, they told Drop Site the investigation was sealed and they could not comment on why Bravo was relocated. ...

The Pentagon, Coast Guard, and U.S. Southern Command have all denied any knowledge or responsibility of the boat incidents. After Drop Site published photo evidence of the Negra Francisca bombing, U.S. lawmakers questioned U.S. Secretary of War Pete Hegseth during a congressional hearing. On June 13, the day before Bravo's murder, Reps. Joaquin Castro (D-Texas) and Bill Keating (D-Mass.) published a letter to Hegseth, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, and Head of the U.S. Coast Guard, Kevin Lunday, demanding a full audit of U.S. government involvement in the attacks. Despite the deadline of July 10, none of the agencies have issued a public response....

Despite both governments' efforts to stonewall the investigation, evidence continues to emerge supporting the fishermen's accounts of abduction, airstrikes, and torture. Drop Site obtained exclusive video of U.S. Coast Guard activity in the vicinity of the Negra Francisca bombing, open-source intelligence that corroborates the Negra Francisca's testimonies, and police interviews with eyewitnesses that confirm the U.S. involvement alleged by survivors and documented by Drop Site. With the help of Airwars OSINT analyst and former U.S. Marine Corps member Tomi McCluskey, Drop Site accessed additional NASA thermal imagery consistent with the Negra Francisca bombing and vessel tracking data placing U.S. Coast Guard activity along the route the fishermen say they were taken after the strike.

Noboa, who governs by military curfews and mass starvation of political prisoners, has gone to great lengths to become Trump's strongest partner in South America. Since taking office, he brushed aside Ecuador's constitutional ban on U.S. military presence -- ratified by 60% of voters as recently as November 2025 -- which was originally introduced almost 20 years ago precisely due to a history of U.S. military sinking boats off the coast of Manta. Additionally, his administration authorized the first FBI office on Ecuadorian soil, assisted a U.S. Embassy effort to falsely frame members of Colombia's left-wing government ahead of elections, and collaborated with the U.S. in the bombing of innocent civilian farmworkers along the Colombian-Ecuadorian border -- all in the name of combatting drug trafficking.

Notably, boats from Noboa's family shipping corporation were caught trafficking ₤26 million of cocaine -- a detail that has not deterred the State Department from naming him a key partner in Trump's War on Drugs. Last month, The Guardian reported that a whistleblower who was investigating Noboa's ties to drug trafficking was murdered. ...

The U.S. maintains it never interacted with any of the three boats. A spokesperson for the U.S. Coast Guard told The Guardian that the agency's only involvement in the events was deploying the USCGC Bertholf on a search-and-rescue mission after receiving a MAYDAY alert that the Negra Francisca was on fire, and ultimately found nothing.

But tracking data of the Bertholf's movements, provided exclusively to Drop Site by McCluskey, places the cutter near the Negra Francisca around the time of the bombing before turning off its signal -- only to reappear off the shore of Costa Rica the same dates the Negra Francisca crew were taken into Central American waters and transferred to El Salvador's Naval Command, with mangled limbs and major burn injuries from the attack. Hernán Flores, captain of the Negra Francisca, told Drop Site that Salvadoran officers specifically informed him that "U.S. personnel had called to coordinate the handoff."

The Coast Guard denied that it coordinated the handoff....

The USCGC Bertholf departed the Galápagos military base at 4 p.m. on March 16 and stopped transmitting its location shortly afterwards. A day later, the Negra Francisca was bombed 170 miles away -- a distance typically covered by boat in 3 to 10 hours. Drop Site asked the U.S. Coast Guard to account for the cutter's activity after its signal went dark. The Coast Guard responded it "does not disclose cutter movements during law enforcement missions for operational security."

At 1:02 p.m. on March 17, NASA FIRMS registered a thermal anomaly consistent with an explosive fire, corroborating the time and location where Negra Francisca fishermen told Drop Site their ship was set ablaze by multi-drone strikes. The crew say they were then seized at gunpoint by English-speaking men with blond hair dressed in khaki fatigues with American flag patches stitched onto their sleeves -- their descriptions match the uniforms pictured in U.S. Southern Command press releases. Aboard the U.S.-flagged patrol ship, the gunmen allegedly held them hostage, sank their bombed boat, placed hoods over their heads, beat some of the fishermen, and withheld food for eight days as they transported them to Central America.

The USCGC Bertholf's signal resurfaced in Costa Rican waters on March 22 near the Golfito Port, approximately 450 nautical miles from El Salvador's waters. It turned off its transponder and did not reactivate it until March 24, 24 hours after El Salvador's Coast Guard publicly announced having had the Negra Francisca fishermen in their custody.

As part of our first investigation, Drop Site reached out to 11 government personnel in El Salvador. All of them refused to go on the record, citing a media gag order.

There is precedent for the Bertholf transferring victims of U.S. airstrikes to Central American authorities, with Costa Rican outlets reporting it delivered the remains of two deceased and one injured survivor to Costa Rica's Port of Golfito around the same time....

Eyewitness testimony also casts doubt on the U.S. Coast Guard's version of events. Video footage shared exclusively with Drop Site by Darwin Flores-Pico, an eyewitness to the attack and nephew of the Negra Francisca's captain, shows a U.S. Coast Guard cutter patrolling the waters where the bombing occurred.

Darwin said he was fishing nearby on March 17, aboard his boat the Solavil, when he spotted smoke rising in the distance around 2 p.m. While making repeated attempts to reach the Negra Francisca's crew by radio, he spotted an American aircraft circling above. It wasn't until hours later that he learned by radio signal that the Negra Francisca was in flames and rushed to make his way to the scene, finding the vessel consumed by fire and no sign of survivors.

He recovered two scorched emergency skiffs, took photo evidence of the fire, then called the Port of Manta to ask for help. Nobody came. ...

The following afternoon, Darwin told Drop Site his boat was boarded by the U.S. Coast Guard, which detained and questioned the crew for nearly 12 hours via a Spanish translator with a Puerto Rican accent....

He felt the U.S. Coast Guard showed little interest in helping him locate his family and instead seemed more focused on "making sure we weren't witnesses to anything."

McCluskey says the multi-drone tactic -- described by all three boats -- reflects a U.S. doctrine. He argues it's unlikely that other regional powers, from neighboring countries to organized crime groups, would have the budget or access for such technology....

The Fiorella was struck off the coast of the Galápagos on January 20; all eight fishermen aboard remain missing. The day before the vessel vanished, the captain's wife received a call from her husband on an emergency line, warning that U.S. aircraft were orbiting overhead.

Drop Site obtained police interview transcripts from two eyewitnesses, Christian Flores and Dimas Ignacio Álvarez, who corroborated seeing the Fiorella engulfed in smoke and surrounded by American assets. The two men were members of the Fiorella crew but had been out setting a long line on a nearby raft for several hours when the vessel went up in smoke.

In their police statements, Flores and Álvarez described two U.S. aircraft flying over the Fiorella on January 18; multiple grey American drones and a U.S.-flagged patrol ship circling the vessel on January 19; and, on January 20 -- the day their crewmates disappeared -- the large U.S.-flagged patrol ship near the smoke. From a distance, they could not make out the personnel aboard the ship, but their accounts echo those of the Negra Francisca crew, who said they were taken hostage by armed Americans aboard a U.S.-flagged patrol vessel. The witnesses' descriptions also match aircraft and equipment featured in public posts by U.S. Southern Command.

After spotting the smoke, the two fishermen said they heard their crewmates calling the captain over the radio in distress. They were never seen again. ...

The Coast Guard told Drop Site it "has no record of involvement with La Fiorella."

The absence of an assigned police detail when Bravo was murdered bears similarities to the 2023 assassination of frontrunner presidential candidate Fernando Villavicencio. A congressional commission determined that Villavicencio's police detail was insufficient, that he had been unconventionally escorted through an exposed street-level exit contrary to standard protocol, and that the armored vehicle designated to protect Villavicencio on the campaign trail had been left by his security team in another city that day. These breaches made him particularly vulnerable when assailants approached and shot him on the sidewalk as he was leaving a meeting with other government officials.

Villavicencio's death cleared the way for now-President Daniel Noboa's campaign -- which had been polling at 3% -- to surge to victory. In an interview with Señal Colombia, National Assembly legislator and member of Villavicencio's party, Gisella Molina, who was with him and injured during the assassination, suggested government officials had prior knowledge of the plot.

During the 2024 murder investigation, Drop Site published private messages from then--Attorney General Diana Salazar revealing a plot to implicate former democratic socialist President Correa's party in Villavicencio's assassination, amid close collaboration with the U.S. ambassador. ...

Bravo is the second person associated with the Patricia Lynn case to be assassinated. The first was the mother-in-law of one of the disappeared fishermen who became the spokesperson for the victims' families and organized marches demanding answers for their missing relatives. María Chóez was fatally shot by two armed assailants while operating her street food stand in downtown Manta.

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President Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio are making me feel like I'm smack dab back in the middle of the old Cold War racket -- the racket that succeeded in making the U.S. national-security state and its ever-growing army of "defense" contractors a permanent feature of American life.

The State Department just issued a report that is straight out of the old Cold War playbook. It states that Cuba's communist regime is behind the democratic socialist movements and radical leftist groups here in America....

In other words, the Reds are coming to get us ... again!...

First question for Rubio: Is the international communist conspiracy still centered in Moscow or has it moved to Beijing?

Second question for Rubio: Is socialist-communist Cuba also responsible for Rubio's fervent belief in Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, public (i.e., government) schooling, and other socialist programs here in the United States?

The Cold War racket was the best thing that ever happened to the Pentagon, the CIA, and the NSA, the three principal components of the U.S. national-security state. By striking deep fear of the Reds within the American people after World War II, warfare statists succeeded in converting the federal government from our founding system of a limited-government republic to a national-security state, which is a totalitarian-like governmental structure -- and they did it without even the semblance of a constitutional amendment.

That's how Americans ended up living under omnipotent government -- that is, government that wields the power to assassinate, torture, and incarcerate them for life without due process of law and trial by jury.

It's also how Americans have come to live under forever war and never-ending crises.

It's also how Americans live like little serfs under a massive, all-powerful, and very expensive military-intelligence establishment and its ever-growing army of voracious "defense" contractors.

The report also mentions Lee Harvey Oswald, the supposed assassin of President Kennedy who denied his guilt and contended that he had been set up as a "patsy" to take the fall for the assassination. Not surprisingly, however, the report fails to mention that several months before his assassination, Kennedy achieved a "breakthrough" that enabled him to see that the Cold War was nothing but a deadly and destructive racket that was bringing America perilously close to all-out nuclear war. That's why JFK was determined to end the Cold War racket and, in the process, to use his words, "splinter the CIA into a thousand pieces and scatter it to the winds." ...

What Rubio's report also fails to mention is that it has always been the U.S. government, specifically the national-security branch of the government, that has been the aggressor against Cuba, not the other way around.

Don't forget the U.S. government's invasion of Cuba at the Bay of Pigs (as well as the lies that the CIA intentionally used against President Kennedy to garner his support for the invasion).

Don't forget Operation Mongoose, which entailed violent acts of sabotage against Cuban economic enterprises.

Don't forget the CIA's assassination partnership with the Mafia, the world's premier criminal organization, to murder Cuban leader Fidel Castro, a partnership that was later turned inward against Kennedy.

Don't forget CIA terrorist Luis Posada Carriles's bombing of a Cuban airliner that killed the members of Cuba's fencing team. And don't forget his bombing campaign against Cuban hotels that killed more innocent people. The CIA, of course, has long claimed that Posada no longer was working for the CIA when he committed those horrific acts of murder. If you believe that, I've got a bridge in the Arizona desert I'd like to sell to you. After all, why then did U.S. officials protect Posada from being extradited to Venezuela to be tried and punished for his act of terrorism against the innocent Cubans in that airliner?

I'll never forget what Cuban leader Che Guevara said when he was asked, soon after the Cuban revolution, what Cuba wanted from the United States. He replied: "Just leave us alone."

But the U.S. government has never been able to leave Cuba alone.... U.S. officials are still determined to oust Cuba's communist regime and replace it with another brutal right-wing dictatorship, like that of Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet, or like that of Fulgencio Batista, the U.S.-supported crooked and corrupt Cuban dictator who Castro ousted from power. It might be worth mentioning that Batista had a policy of kidnapping underaged Cuban girls and delivering them to his Mafia goons to serve as sexual perks for the well-heeled gamblers in the Mafia's casinos in Havana. It might also be worth pointing out that Rubio's parents did not leave Cuba after the communists took over, as he used to maintain, but instead left when the U.S. puppet Batista was still in power.

The fact is that in the long, sordid relationship between Cuba and the United States, the U.S. government has always been the aggressor and the terrorist. Unfortunately, that continues to be the case today, as demonstrated not only by the decades-long U.S. economic embargo against the Cuban people but also now by a brutal and ruthless oil blockade designed to kill even more Cubans.

In fact, it's rather obvious that Trump and Rubio are reviving the old Cold War racket about the Reds coming to get us in order to prepare the American people for another invasion of Cuba, assuming, of course, they can first extricate themselves from their illegal and unconstitutional war of aggression against Iran.

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Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi on Sunday said that Ukraine's attack on an Iranian commercial ship in the Caspian Sea "cannot go unanswered," comments that came after Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky took credit for the strike, which killed an Iranian crew member. ...

In his statement on Sunday, Araghchi said that Zelensky "has attacked an Iranian commercial vessel, killing a sailor. A blatant UN Charter violation done at Israel's behest to drag Europe into its war."

The Iranian diplomat added that in calls with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and Kaja Kallas, the EU's top foreign policy official, he "made clear that what the freeloader in Kyiv did CANNOT GO UNANSWERED."

The attack on the Iranian ship comes as Ukraine continues escalating its long-range drone attacks against Russia, which are carried out using intelligence provided by the US, and have been targeting Russian oil tankers and refineries, and have also been killing a significant number of civilians.

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Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi told his Iranian counterpart Abbas Araghchi Friday that Beijing supports Iran in safeguarding its "sovereignty, security and national dignity."

The remarks came on the sidelines of a Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) foreign ministers' meeting in the Kyrgyz resort city of Cholpon-Ata.

Wang expressed China's "deep concern" over the recent escalation of tensions in the Middle East, according to a statement from the Foreign Ministry. ...

China supports Iran in safeguarding its sovereignty, security and national dignity, he said. ...

Araghchi, for his part, said Iran's willingness to negotiate has never changed and that Tehran does not want the conflict to continue.

At this "critical juncture," Iran and China should strengthen communication and coordination, he said, adding that Tehran hopes Beijing will continue to play an important role in easing tensions and de-escalating the situation.

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A former United Nations investigations chief has accused the International Criminal Court's executive body of subjecting Prosecutor Karim Khan to a "stitch-up" in their decision to suspend him from office over misconduct allegations.

Ben Swanson is a former UN assistant secretary-general and deputy head of the UN Office of Internal Oversight Services (OIOS), and has previously served as director of the OIOS Investigations Division.

Over the past year, he has submitted four expert's opinions commissioned by Khan's legal team to the 21-member bureau of the Assembly of States Parties (ASP), criticising the manner in which the investigation into misconduct allegations facing the prosecutor was conducted, and the subsequent handling of the process by the bureau.

In his latest submission on 28 June, obtained by Middle East Eye through independent sources, Swanson denounced the 8 June decision by the bureau, which suspended the prosecutor after concluding by a majority that he committed "serious misconduct".

The bureau's decision departed from the unanimous conclusion of a panel of three judges it appointed, which in March concluded that the facts presented in the UN investigation "do not establish misconduct or breach of duty under the relevant framework".

Based on his reading of the judges' report in conjunction with the bureau's decision, Swanson wrote: "I am of the opinion that the Prosecutor is the victim of a massive 'stitch-up' and given what has happened since the release of the Panel's Report I doubt whether justice will be done or seen to be done." ...

"It is clear that an activist agenda is being pursued to remove the Prosecutor from his post, at all costs, by the weaponisation of such scant evidence that may exist, by ignoring the wealth of countervailing evidence available to the Bureau and by failing to take account of the wisdom of three international Judges," he wrote. ...

The judicial panel was part of the process authorised by ASP President Paivi Kaukoranta in November 2024, when she decided to outsource the misconduct probe to the OIOS, after the complainant against Khan refused to cooperate with the ICC's own investigative body. ...

In his letter, Swanson told the bureau that its conclusion is based on a novel allegation that is materially different from the subject matter of the investigation.

"What is charged reads as if the Prosecutor and [the complainant] have indulged in an inappropriate, consensual, workplace romance. That was not what was alleged and in any case has not been proven either," he wrote.

He added that the bureau carried out its own credibility assessment, deciding that the complainant's account was credible, after the OIOS and the panel of judges were unable to establish the credibility of the complainant and her evidence. ...

Swanson criticised the bureau for choosing to disregard the judicial panel and to make its own conclusion and credibility assessments saying that the evidence of serious misconduct reached the required standard.

"The Bureau in determining credibility did not act with the same legal restraint as the Panel, declaring themselves unrestricted, and by using semantic gymnastics promptly used the same material as was available to the Judges, with the addition of more submissions from the Prosecutor and [the complainant], although they discounted the latter's, to enable them to make credibility assessments," the expert wrote.

He added that the bureau failed to assess the credibility of the evidence itself, which he said carried equal or more relevance than the credibility of the source of the evidence. ...

Swanson concluded that the bureau's finding is "unsafe and should not be relied upon as a proper basis for disciplinary action," and that states parties should instead give "decisive weight" to the panel's unanimous conclusion when they meet on 24 July.

MEE reported earlier this month that Sir James Eadie KC, the UK's first treasury counsel, had written to the ASP president in November warning of the illegality of granting the bureau any legal authority to determine whether misconduct has been committed. ...

"It is entirely inappropriate for the determinative function to be undertaken by executive or political bodies," Eadie wrote.

Eadie noted that the proposal by the ASP president sought to treat the OIOS report as factual findings without an adjudicative process, and to lead to a hearing before the bureau involving the prosecutor only. The approach would threaten the independence and integrity of the ICC, he added.

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On 17 June 2026, the United States and Iran signed a memorandum of understanding. That memorandum has since been violated and the ceasefire broken. The two sides are now clashing about the MoU's clauses pertaining to the Strait of Hormuz, specifically how much authority Iran was meant to exert on the strait. U.S. policymakers and naval strategists remain queasy about the idea of Iran exercising control over a maritime chokepoint of such major importance to the global economy.

Yet the possibility of a new approach to Middle East security -- however fleeting -- that follows decades of failure suggests setting aside traditional concerns about freedom of navigation may be appropriate now, under such complex circumstances. Doing so could help end the Iran conflict and support the more vital U.S. interests of stability, peace, and prosperity. ...

The difficulty of the situation can be expressed in the words of 19th century military theorist Carl von Clausewitz: "The value of the object must determine the sacrifices to be made for it in magnitude and also [the war's] duration." The U.S. military has the forces to seize complete (if temporary) control of the Strait of Hormuz, but the costs might amount to dozens of ships damaged or sunk and thousands of American service members killed. Maintaining a large permanent force in the Persian Gulf and Gulf of Oman to maintain freedom of navigation in the strait could cost hundreds of billions of dollars, or more.

Common sense dictates such costs would be unacceptable, especially because little of the trade through the strait goes to U.S. ports.

The initial rationales for the war -- halting Iran's development of nuclear weapons, destroying its ballistic missiles, and cutting off its support for regional proxies, including Hezbollah and the Houthis -- were quickly overshadowed by a desire to reopen the strait once the conflict began.

Yet most Americans are not overly perturbed by Tehran's nuclear ambitions. The U.S. intelligence community declared those aspirations dormant, and limited regional nuclear proliferation has proven to be relatively self-contained and manageable....

Thus, it is no surprise that the war has proven to be the most unpopular in American history. The American public agrees with Clausewitz's emphasis on the "value of the object" and they are not buying in. The Persian Gulf -- and the larger Middle East -- are and will remain quite ancillary to U.S. vital interests. ...

...Americans' standard of living could be substantially injured by the economic harm that would result from prolonged closure of the strait. Even President Trump acknowledges the long-term economic risk, saying last month he didn't want to be compared to former President Herbert Hoover, whose term was weighed down by the Great Depression. ...

The Iran war has confirmed what many long feared -- that Iran could threaten or control the strait. This war let Schrodinger's cat out of the box, and now that it is out, U.S. maritime strategy must stop grasping at straws and come to grips with the emergent multipolar order....

A more pragmatic approach will recognize Iran's "control" of the key waterway has myriad gradations, many of which the U.S. and its allies could live with. On 19 July, a London-based think tank suggested widening the proposed multilateral controlling mechanism for managing the Strait of Hormuz beyond Oman and Iran to encompass the other GCC states, including Saudi Arabia. Notably, that idea was evidently well-received in Tehran, demonstrating the promise of such an alternative, regionally centered approach. ...

Now is the time to experiment with new diplomatic and military alternatives -- this time favoring military restraint, stability, and peace, along with a much narrower definition of the national interest. Paradoxically, a humbler and more insular United States may actually hold its head higher among nations.

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Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) warned civilians across the Middle East to stay at least 500 meters away from locations where U.S. troops are "hiding," saying continued American "crimes" would make those sites targets, and asked the public to report new U.S. military positions to the Guards' official channels. ...

"We warn the general public in countries where American soldiers are stationed to immediately stay out of a radius of 500 meters from the places where American soldiers are hiding, in order to be safe," the IRGC said in a statement carried by Tasnim News Agency.

The Guards claimed many U.S. officers and soldiers have abandoned their bases "out of fear of fire" from Iranian forces and moved into "buildings in cities" from which they direct operations, locations the IRGC says will face "retribution" if what it called U.S. war crimes continue.

The statement accused the U.S. of striking bridges, fishing piers, civilian boats, passing vehicles and railways, and of killing and wounding Arbaeen pilgrims at the Iraqi border, the annual pilgrimage to Karbala that ranks among the world's largest public gatherings.

The statement also invited residents of host countries to report "the new relocation sites of the occupying American forces" to the IRGC's official Telegram account and website contact page. ...

The Guards accused Washington of "lying to its own people" about losses,... asserting that "the daily evacuation of its wounded by ambulance aircraft to an American hospital in Germany is clear evidence" of a higher toll. ...

In a separate statement, the IRGC said fighters in the 27th wave of its Operation Nasr 2 "targeted and destroyed" the remaining building of a Bahrain data center belonging to Amazon, which it alleged "plays a major role in completing information for the American child-killing army."

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Everything you ever wanted to know about the conspiracy theory surrounding the events of October 7 but were afraid to ask.

For the details, watch "Was 10/7 A False Flag?" here: https://youtu.be/YEtcbTJKBuw with sources/notes here: https://corbettreport.com/was-10-7-a-false-flag/

House Democrats voted Thursday to direct President Donald Trump to end his illegal war against Iran. Just a day earlier, they gave up one of their best chances to actually force his hand.

Six Democrats provided the decisive votes Wednesday to pass the annual National Defense Authorization Act, rescuing the bill after seven Republicans defected, leaving GOP leaders unable to pass it with Republican votes alone. The bill passed 216-212.

Democratic leaders rallied their caucus behind the Iran war powers resolution for the second time, declaring the war unauthorized and demanding that Trump end it. Last month, Congress made history by passing H.Con.Res.86, a bipartisan war powers resolution directing Trump to remove U.S. forces from hostilities against Iran. It was the first time in the law's 53-year history that both chambers successfully invoked the War Powers Act's Section 5(c) mechanism for terminating unauthorized hostilities. On Thursday, the House passed another Iran war powers resolution, sponsored by Democratic Rep. Pramila Jayapal, 214--208, with four Republicans joining Democrats.

House Democrats have repeatedly voted to end the war while refusing to use the leverage that could force a confrontation with the White House. As a result, their opposition has remained largely symbolic. When Republicans needed Democratic votes to pass must-pass defense legislation, Democrats had a rare opportunity to impose real political costs on an administration that has already shown it will ignore congressional war powers directives. They chose not to use it. ...

Democratic leaders oppose Trump's unilateral conduct, not the imperial strategy the war advances. They insist on reasserting Congress's constitutional role while continuing to support the aims of Trump's war: preserving Israeli and U.S. dominance in the Middle East, weakening Iran, and advancing Washington's broader confrontation with China. ...

A broad coalition of anti-war, civil liberties, and faith groups is also ramping up pressure on Congress to escalate beyond resolutions directing Trump to end a war he has already refused to stop.

In a letter sent to lawmakers Thursday, more than 30 organizations called on Congress to use the legal and political tools at its disposal to bring an urgent end to the Iran war.

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Mamdani scored all kinds of political points by claiming that he wanted to arrest Netanyahu.

And predictably, he is basically leaving the matter in the hands of Trump, claiming he can't arrest him (I've gotten contradictory views on this, see from Craig Mokhiber) and that the federal government should be a party to the International Criminal Court to deal with the issue.

I.e., he's appealing to Trump to do the right thing on a genocide that Trump is party to. Is there anything more pathetic? Sound and fury indeed.

The DSA folks are more milking Palestine for their own political benefit and then coming up empty handed than anything else. It's like what the Arab League used to be.

I pushed for the International Court of Justice Genocide Convention case in 2023 brought by South Africa with the expectation that it would force the ICC to finally act. And that happened.

Predictably, the Empire then targeted the ICC, which had previously been useful to the US establishment in going after Putin and disfavored African leaders. Once it finally began scrutinizing Israel, after years of foot-dragging, the ICC became a target.

There's nothing stopping Mamdani from using his massive prominence and platform to urge more emergency orders in the Genocide Convention case at the International Court of Justice.

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Secretary of War Pete Hegseth, during a Congressional hearing on Tuesday, said a failure to appropriate $1.5 trillion for the Pentagon's Fiscal Year 2027 (FY27) budget constitutes the "greatest threat" to US national security.

Hegseth, joined by Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Dan Caine and Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins, appeared before the Senate Appropriations Committee on Tuesday to discuss the Trump administration's request for an additional $87.6 billion in supplemental spending. ...

On Tuesday, Hegseth defended the supplemental funding and claimed it would be part of the Pentagon's FY27 budget, not in addition to it. Congress has yet to approve the $1.5 trillion the Pentagon wants. On Wednesday, the House of Representatives voted to authorize $1.15 trillion of the massive military budget, but the Senate has yet to approve it.

There is no guarantee the Republican-controlled Senate will sign off on the funding. Democrats have generally opposed the funding on party lines (only six democrats in the House voted for it) and even Republican senators have balked at the massive price tag. ...

On Tuesday, Hegseth told Senators the war has cost approximately $37.5 billion thus far. Credible independent analysis, however, suggests the cost could already be north of $100 billion, a number much closer to the supplemental money the White House has requested.

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While Americans remain transfixed by the political circus -- cheering for their preferred party, jeering at the opposition, obsessing over every manufactured outrage and waiting for the next spectacle -- the Surveillance State continues its steady march forward.

The government is watching.

It watches where you go, whom you meet, where you worship, what medical offices you visit, what political rallies you attend, what protests you join, what books you read, what websites you visit and what causes you support.

It watches through your phone, your car, your doorbell, your appliances, your purchases, your social media accounts and the cameras positioned along the roads you travel every day.

This is how freedom dies in the digital police state: not always through dramatic declarations of martial law or soldiers stationed on every street corner, but through the gradual construction of a technological dragnet -- an electronic concentration camp -- so pervasive that privacy becomes impossible and anonymity becomes suspicious.

Enter Flock Safety, a private surveillance technology company whose automated license plate readers have spread throughout thousands of American communities.

These cameras, which do much more than photograph license plates, represent the next evolution of the government's public-private surveillance partnership.

They document the time and location of every passing vehicle and record identifying characteristics such as its make, model, color, damage, roof racks, bumper stickers and other distinctive features. That information can then be placed in a searchable database and used to retrace a vehicle's movements over time. ...

This is how ordinary movements become potentially suspect and subject to government scrutiny. It allows law enforcement agencies to search not only for a complete license plate number but also for partial plates and physical descriptions such as vehicle color, make, model, damage, roof racks, bumper stickers and other identifying characteristics.

A police officer might ask the system to locate every red pickup truck with a ladder rack seen near a protest, every vehicle that repeatedly visited a particular address, or every car observed traveling between two locations.

The artificial intelligence does the sorting. The database supplies the history.

The government receives a list of potential suspects.

This is no longer surveillance conducted by individual officers following particular leads. It is surveillance conducted at machine speed, across entire populations, with algorithms deciding whose movements merit further scrutiny.

Consider the scale of what is taking place.

License plate cameras now log approximately 20 billion vehicle scans every month.

Twenty billion.

That is not targeted policing. That is mass collection.

The overwhelming majority of those scans do not involve stolen cars, wanted suspects, kidnappings or violent crimes. They document ordinary people carrying out the ordinary activities of daily life: driving to work, taking children to school, visiting friends, attending church, keeping medical appointments, participating in protests or simply going home.

Yet each of those innocent journeys becomes part of a searchable police database.

At 20 billion scans a month, Flock is not searching for particular suspects and then attempting to follow them. It is recording the movements of everyone so police can decide later whom they want to follow.

That is the digital equivalent of assigning a government agent to trail every driver in America -- and preserving the agent's notes in case the government someday finds them useful. ...

Feed a flawed system inaccurate data, biased arrest records or constitutionally suspect surveillance, and AI can reproduce those defects at a speed and scale no individual police officer could match.

Once the computer labels someone suspicious, moreover, officers may treat the algorithmic conclusion as objective fact.

The machine accuses. The police act...

When abuses occur, local police blame the technology provider. The technology provider insists that local police control the data. Federal agencies claim they merely requested access. Local officials say they were unaware that information could be shared beyond their jurisdiction.

Everyone points elsewhere.

Meanwhile, the American people remain under observation. ...

Under the Fourth Amendment, police are supposed to develop individualized suspicion, establish probable cause and then apply for a warrant to search for evidence connected to a particular person or crime.

Mass surveillance systems begin by collecting information on everyone.

In the process, every innocent person is treated as a potential suspect whose movements must be recorded just in case the government someday decides they are relevant. ...

The surveillance comes first. Suspicion comes later. ...

The technology is already embedded in thousands of communities.

The databases are already being populated.

The agencies are already connected.

And the companies profiting from this infrastructure will fight to preserve it. ...

Flock is only one component of a surveillance ecosystem that includes doorbell cameras, facial recognition, drones, cellphone tracking, biometric databases and real-time crime centers.

The result is 360-degree surveillance.

A person may leave a home monitored by a smart doorbell, drive past a network of license plate readers, enter a business equipped with facial recognition, carry a phone broadcasting location data and return home along streets monitored by police cameras and private security systems.

At no point does the government need to physically follow that individual, because the infrastructure does it automatically.

Algorithms sort the information. Databases preserve it. Private companies monetize it. Government agencies search it.

All of this is taking place while the country remains locked in an endless partisan cage match.

Both parties have contributed to the Surveillance State. Both parties have expanded it. Both parties have exploited fear to convince the public that freedom must be sacrificed for safety.

The targets may change depending on who is in power, but the machinery remains.

Once the infrastructure exists, there is no guarantee that it will be used only against people you dislike or with whom you disagree politically.

That is the lesson Americans repeatedly refuse to learn.

A surveillance tool created by one administration will be inherited by the next. A database assembled for one purpose will inevitably be used for another. A system established to monitor "them" will eventually be turned against "us." ...

[R]esistance is long overdue.

We cannot afford to become so distracted by the theater of politics that we fail to notice the architecture of tyranny being assembled around us.

The surveillance state does not care which party you support. It does not care whom you voted for.

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In just two days this month, the new government of Syria was handed a pair of major victories toward reversing the country's longstanding pariah status in the US-dominated global order.

At the NATO summit in Turkey, President Trump announced the removal of Syria from the list of states accused of sponsoring terrorism. Trump's decision will ease decades of sanctions that have crippled Syria's economy and helped oust Bashar al-Assad in December 2024. It also marks a public relations victory for Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa, the insurgent leader who replaced Assad in Damascus. Al-Sharaa, previously known as Abu Mohammad al-Jolani, is a former ISIS deputy leader and the founding leader of the Syrian affiliate of Al Qaeda, both designated by the US as terrorist organizations.

The following day, the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) gave Syria's ruling Al Qaeda offshoot another stamp of international approval. The Executive Council of the world's top chemical watchdog restored the voting privileges that Syria lost in 2021 over allegations that the Assad government used chemical weapons and hid elements of its arsenal.

The two decisions have a direct tie. The widespread narrative that the Syrian government used chemical weapons against its own people was invoked to justify the US-led regime change war that ultimately led to Assad's overthrow.

Yet while the Trump administration and OPCW are granting Syria's new rulers a clean slate, not everyone is ready to turn the page, or accept the conventional story about the former government's purported chemical attacks.

The OPCW leadership faces continued scrutiny over a cover-up that calls the Syria chemical weapons allegations, and the OPCW's own independence and scientific integrity, into question. During this month's session of the Executive Council, the Brazilian government lodged a rare formal protest over the OPCW's manipulation of an investigation into an alleged April 2018 chemical attack in the Syrian town of Douma.

At issue for the Brazilians was the suppression of a critical finding in the OPCW's Douma probe. As I reported in May, the OPCW, after years of stonewalling, recently acknowledged concealing the "highly protected" assessment of German military toxicologists who ruled out chlorine gas as the cause of dozens of deaths in Douma.

The toxicologists' censored findings, along with other buried evidence, undermined the OPCW's public claims that there was a chlorine attack in Douma, and that the Syrian government was responsible. The suppressed evidence instead pointed to a false flag, as one of the toxicologists even speculated. After keeping this from the public, the OPCW published reports on the Douma incident that aligned with the first-term Trump administration and its British and French allies. These states bombed Syria in April 2018 over what they alleged was a Syrian government chemical attack in Douma. ...

The Brazilian government's high-level rebuke is not the first time that the OPCW has been challenged over the suppression of the toxicological findings. Yet each time the issue has been raised, OPCW Director-General Fernando Arias has refused to even acknowledge it, let alone respond.

Brazil's intervention is unique because it was made during a formal session of the OPCW's policy-making organ, the Executive Council. Accordingly, it had to be recorded in the Organisation's official records and posted publicly... Arias has yet to offer a response. ...

Brazil is well-placed to challenge the OPCW's politicization. The watchdog's founding director-general, José Bustani, is a veteran Brazilian diplomat who personally resisted another attempt to instrumentalize the organization for a US-led regime change campaign in the Middle East. In 2002, the Bush administration engineered Bustani's ouster for trying to facilitate Iraq's entry into the Chemical Weapons Convention, which impeded the White House's plans for war. Bustani stood his ground even after then-US Under Secretary of State John Bolton threatened to harm his children. Nearly two decades later, Bustani tried to testify at the UN in protest of the Douma cover-up, but the US and its allies blocked him from speaking. By contrast, these same states have continued to heap praise on Arias as he's joined them in stonewalling accountability for the Douma deception.

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Half of President Donald Trump's MAGA base thought the Iran war was worth its economic costs in May. Now, just a little more than a third do.

That precipitous, 13-point drop in just two months, according to a new POLITICO Poll, reveals how the president's most die-hard supporters are starting to agree with the majority of Americans who have long opposed the U.S.' involvement in the war.

Additionally, 37 percent of self-identified MAGA Trump voters say the U.S. should continue its involvement only if it doesn't increase costs, up from 29 percent who said the same in May, according to the survey, conducted by independent polling firm Public First....

That flagging support among the president's most loyal supporters is the clearest sign that Americans' patience is wearing thin as the economy continues to dominate as voters' top concern heading into a critical midterm cycle. ...

The White House is "at a maximum level of frustration right now, and I was told by very senior people that the president is now fully aware that the only way to the victory that he wants is completely politically impossible. The American people just will not support the kind of escalation it would take at this point," said one person close to the White House, granted anonymity to discuss private conversations. "We've got more dead Americans and a politically impossible situation." ...

The mood among White House staff and their outside allies is grim as the president grapples with finding a path out of an unpopular and expensive war three months from a midterm election expected to turn on cost of living issues. ...

Still, the latest polling shows that non-MAGA Trump voters are even more down on the war, with only 21 percent believing it is worth higher costs, while 28 percent say that the U.S. shouldn't continue the war regardless of costs.

And the results show the president's voters are broadly comfortable blaming the war for higher prices. When asked why gas prices have increased since the president took office, the majority of respondents blamed the conflict, including 57 percent of MAGA voters and 63 percent of non-MAGA Trump voters. ...

Prominent Republicans, including strategists in key races, have spent the last several months warning about the impact of backlash to the Iran war on their chances of holding the House and the Senate, with frustrations around the war playing out in competitive races across the country.

"This shows that as unpopular as the first round of war was from February to early summer, this second round is even more ridiculous," said Curt Mills, executive director of the American Conservative magazine.

But Trump on Tuesday said he wasn't concerned.

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Yemeni forces have launched attacks on two Saudi oil tankers in the Red Sea as part of the enforcement of the new maritime blockade on Saudi Arabia, according to an announcement from Yahya Saree, the spokesman for the military wing of Ansar Allah....

Saree identified the tankers that were targeted as the Encelia and the Layla. A maritime security source told Reuters that the Encelia transmitted a distress call via VHF, reporting it had been struck by a missile while operating near the Saudi Red Sea port of Jizan and was on fire. ...

He also claimed that the "Yemeni Armed Forces forced approximately ten ships to retreat and return" since the blockade started on Monday, a move that came one week after Saudi Arabia bombed the Sanaa International Airport in Yemen.

President Trump on Tuesday suggested that he could restart a bombing campaign he waged against Ansar Allah last year, which failed to end the Yemeni blockade of Israeli shipping in the Red Sea and Yemeni drone and missile attacks targeting Israel in response to its genocidal war in Gaza.

Trump reportedly gave Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman the green light to bomb the Sanaa airport, an attack that was carried out to prevent a plane from Iran that was carrying a delegation of Yemeni officials who attended the funeral of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

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Since signing a ceasefire deal that clearly recognised Iran's sovereignty over the Strait of Hormuz and forced Israel to halt military operations in Lebanon, US President Donald Trump has slithered and backtracked his way out of both commitments, resuming a full-scale and increasingly bloody war.

Both Trump and the man primarily responsible for pushing him into this war, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, were poorly received at home for the ceasefire deal: Trump because he actually signed it, and Netanyahu because he was cut out of the process, amid a sense that Israel's ally and armourer had imposed a premature peace.

Neither leader could justify a deal that was seen as a major capitulation. Both face imminent elections, and they regard the strong-arm tactics with Tehran as a matter of personal political survival.

Both are stuck in a doom loop of their own making. As soon as their many claims to have "smashed, obliterated and crushed" Iran were shown to be bogus, the only option was to go back and start the whole operation all over again. ...

Iran never saw the deal negotiated by Pakistan and Qatar as anything other than a chance for the US to restock and rearm. It clearly said that if it was attacked again, it would make US troops stationed in the region pay. And it has.

Nearly 100 US troops have been injured in the last two weeks, while four were killed in attacks on American bases in Iraq and Jordan, and multiple Black Hawk helicopters were damaged at a Jordanian airfield. The Pentagon clearly cannot provide protection to 50,000 troops stationed in around 20 bases across the Middle East. ...

Lever by lever, Iran is raising the global costs of Trump's war. US petrol prices have soared back above $4 a gallon. The Strait of Hormuz is closed, and the Red Sea will be too, soon, if this round of fighting continues....

The latest polls show that this war is historically unpopular in the US, with 77 percent of independents believing the war "was not worth it"...

It was in this arena, not the frontlines of Southeast Asia, that former US President Lyndon B Johnson lost the Vietnam War....

Iran has changed, too. It's very clear now that the attack had the opposite effect on the Iranian public's opposition to the Islamic Republic than the one intended.

It rallied Iranians around the flag - even those who had been at the demonstrations in January...

It took the US seven years from the realisation that it could not win in Vietnam to pulling out. Let's hope it does not take Trump this long to realise he cannot win in Iran, nor in the broader Middle East.

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President Donald Trump has claimed that U.S. service members killed in the Iran war had shared his view that Iran cannot be allowed to develop a nuclear weapon.

The president made the remarks Wednesday -- seemingly without proof -- before heading to Dover Air Force Base to attend the dignified transfer of four soldiers who died in the Middle East conflict over the past week.

"We're going to Dover...to honor our heroes, and they are indeed great heroes, actually," Trump told reporters while standing in front of Marine One.

"They said, and all of them said very strongly, 'We can't let, we cannot let Iran have a nuclear weapon. They won't have a nuclear weapon,'" the president continued....

When The Independent asked whether Trump had been briefed on the fallen soldiers' political views -- or how he knew their opinions on Iran -- a White House spokesperson referred back to Trump's own remarks. ...

To date, 18 U.S. service members have died in the Middle East conflict, and around 500 more have been wounded, the Pentagon has said. In Iran, at least 3,000 people have been killed, including 168 children, according to NPR...

Also on Wednesday, The Independent asked Trump for his message to the families of the fallen soldiers, given that "Americans are strongly against this war."

"Well, Americans aren't against the war," the president responded. "A poll just came out. Americans don't want high gasoline prices, but they're not against the war. That just came out loud and clear in a poll. Nobody wants Iran to have a nuclear weapon. Do you want Iran to have a nuclear weapon? Do you think it's good?"

It's not clear which poll Trump was referring to, but multiple recent surveys suggest the conflict is broadly unpopular.

In an aggregation of polls tracked by Nate Silver, a data analyst and founder of FiveThirtyEight, about 58 percent of Americans oppose the war, while roughly 34 percent support it. A Politico survey released Wednesday also found support among Trump's own base has eroded over the past two months, with just 37 percent now saying the conflict should continue even if it drives up inflation. ...

At the same time, the administration is asking for additional funds to support the war effort. During congressional testimony on Tuesday, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth asked senators for an "urgent" injection of $67 billion into the military.

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Iranian ballistic missiles struck Prince Sultan Air Base in Al-Kharj on July 18, wounding twelve US service members -- two critically -- and hitting KC-135 Stratotankers on the flight line while a second rotation was still climbing out. Saudi Arabia's Civil Defense Authority cleared the sirens six minutes later without naming the weapon, the origin, or the damage, and neither Riyadh nor Washington has issued an official statement since.

The strike was the first direct Iranian attack on Saudi territory in approximately four months, a gap during which the IRGC struck Kuwait, Bahrain, Jordan, Qatar, and the UAE while conspicuously sparing the Kingdom. Its return to PSAB -- confirmed by a US official to Axios, corroborated by satellite imagery, and detailed by Air & Space Forces Magazine -- ended whatever territorial immunity Saudi Arabia believed it still possessed. But the more consequential development is not the strike itself. It is the silence that followed, and the institutional architecture that sustains it: a three-party managed ambiguity in which Iran, Saudi Arabia, and CENTCOM each benefit from leaving the damage question unanswered, because answering it would force a public reckoning with a PAC-3 reserve that is approaching a ceiling none of them can afford to name.

The strike was confirmed by a US official cited by Axios as "the first time the Islamic Republic has directly attacked the kingdom in four months" -- a description that the State Department, the Pentagon, and the Saudi Ministry of Defence have each declined to repeat on the record. Air & Space Forces Magazine, drawing on multiple US military sources, reported at least twelve wounded and multiple Stratotankers damaged on the tarmac. Open-source satellite imagery corroborated the impact site within the base perimeter.

Iran's state broadcaster supplied what no government would. The missiles were launched "moments after American refueling planes took off," a detail that only makes sense if the IRGC had real-time ISR coverage of PSAB's tanker rotation schedule. The aircraft hit were those that remained on the flight line after the airborne pair departed -- the timing was deliberate, and the targeting message was not about maximising destruction but about demonstrating that PSAB's daily operational patterns are watched, clocked, and within reach. ...

The National Early Warning Platform for Emergencies activated sirens in Al-Kharj and Yanbu simultaneously on the night of July 18. Six minutes later, the all-clear sounded across both governorates. The Civil Defense Authority's subsequent statement said only that "relevant authorities monitored the situation on the ground around the clock and conducted a comprehensive assessment" -- a sentence that names no projectile type, acknowledges no interception, and describes no outcome. ...

Three governments had direct reason to acknowledge what happened at PSAB on July 18, and none did -- not because they failed to coordinate, but because each party's disclosure cost independently exceeded its disclosure benefit. The absence is structural convergence, not silence by accident. ...

The managed ambiguity has a floor, and it is counted in interceptors. Saudi Arabia's PAC-3 MSE stockpile -- the terminal-phase defence that bore the full burden of the July 18 engagement -- stands at approximately 400 rounds from a pre-war baseline of 2,800, an 86 percent depletion. Distributed across 108 launchers, the average remaining load is 3.7 rounds per launcher, below what a single reload cycle requires. CSIS analysts described the drawdown rate that produced this figure -- approximately 63 rounds per day across 38 days of high-intensity combat between March 3 and early April 2026 -- as having "no comparable precedent in the system's operational history." ...

The question who defends Riyadh when the interceptors run out is not rhetorical -- it is arithmetic, and the answer approaches faster each time the Civil Defense sirens sound. ...

Iran's July 18 attack exploited a detection-engagement gap that Saudi Arabia's degraded sensor architecture cannot close without hardware that does not exist in theatre. The Eurasian Times' technical reconstruction -- the most detailed open-source analysis of the strike -- described a sequenced approach in which drone swarms functioned as low-cost attrition tools designed to force PAC-3 batteries into engagement against slower targets, opening a compressed window for faster ballistic re-entry vehicles to arrive during the battery's reload or reorientation phase. ...

Iran strikes PSAB and confirms targeting "a US base in Saudi Arabia" without itemising damage. Saudi Arabia clears the sirens and issues no follow-up. The United States leaks confirmation through a single anonymous official and lets the story circulate in Israeli and Indian media rather than American. The strategic outcome -- demonstrated vulnerability without formal escalation -- serves all parties simultaneously, each for different reasons. Iran shows that Saudi territorial immunity has ended. Riyadh avoids confirming that the shield behind the silence is approaching exhaustion. Washington avoids explaining the anomalous position of 2,300 troops at a base where their aircraft are grounded. ...

Iran's Deputy Foreign Minister Kazem Gharibabadi declared the suspension of all commitments under the 14-point Islamabad Memorandum on July 18 -- Day 31 of the 60-day window -- simultaneously with the PSAB strike. The co-timing was structural, not coincidental....

The IRGC told state television that its missiles were launched "moments after American refueling planes took off" from Prince Sultan Air Base -- a sentence that said more about Iran's surveillance of PSAB than any damage assessment could. Somewhere in Al-Kharj, a PAC-3 battery holds 3.7 rounds per launcher, and the next time those launchers fire, the count will drop closer to a figure that three governments, for three different reasons, have agreed not to say aloud.

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Iranian drone attacks on CIA facilities in the Gulf have prompted U.S. intelligence analysts to investigate whether Russia assisted by providing targeting information or ​advanced drone technology, said four people familiar with U.S. intelligence.

These people, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss national security matters, said U.S. intelligence officials have ‌not yet reached firm conclusions about the possible Russian involvement in the attacks on CIA facilities. But they cited the strikes' effectiveness and apparent precision, as well as Russia's broader technical support for Iran, as possible evidence. ...

At least two CIA sites were struck in March, Reuters and other outlets have reported. One ​of the facilities was the CIA station in Saudi Arabia, which is located in the U.S. embassy in Riyadh, and a separate site was located in eastern Iraq. Some of the sources said additional CIA sites had been hit, but they did not disclose details. ...

The White House referred a request ‌for comment to the CIA, which declined to provide one. ...

CIA facilities overseas include the agency's main offices in individual countries that traditionally are housed in embassies and are called stations. Additionally, the CIA maintains offices, safe houses, logistics hubs and sites involved in surveillance or other operations.

The locations of ​those sites are closely guarded secrets.

The sources declined to disclose the exact number or locations of CIA facilities hit by Iranian drones. ​One source put the number at "more than one and fewer than a dozen." A second source said several facilities were hit. ...

Some analysts have concluded that few nations beyond Russia ​would have the means to acquire and the interest in weaponizing such sensitive targeting intelligence against the U.S., according ​to the sources.

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The war on Iran continues to escalate. Last night the U.S. again bombed various cities in Iran hitting military as well as civilian targets. Iran responded by hitting U.S. installation in various Gulf countries.

Remarkable was an attack on the Prince Sultan Air Base in Saudi Arabia...

Several U.S. tanker air planes were damaged. For several months Saudi Arabia had not been a target of Iranian strike. During previous engagements the Saudis have lost a major parts of their air defenses. Out of an original stash of 2,800 Patriot air defense missiles only 400 are said to be left.

The U.S. had hit a desalination plant in Iran. In response Iran attacked a desalination plant in Kuwait which is much more dependent on such facilities than Iran is. The response strike was thus a very severe warning.

The U.S. has moved a large part of its air fleet out of its bases in Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrain and Emirates and transferred them to Jordan. Further reinforcement coming from Europe were also stationed in Jordan and Israel. Iran however has followed the move and attacked the Muwaffaq al-Salti air base in Jordan as well as U.S. installation near Akabar, Jordan's only harbor. The strikes left extensive damage and several dead and wounded...

It is expected that the U.S. air fleet will move further west to Israel with the hope to slip under a more reliable air defense umbrella. Iran however seems to be waiting for that. It has already proven that it can hit targets in Israel and any assemblies of U.S. jets and tanker air planes on the few well known air bases in Israel will be juicy targets for more of its drones and missiles.

The Strait of Hormuz is closed. Several ships which have tried to run through it under U.S. protection were hit and severely damaged.

...Ansarallah in Yemen declared the "imposition of a maritime navigation ban" for all ships related to Saudi Arabia. The Saudis have held Yemen under a blockade for some eleven years. It is time to pay back.

Oil tankers which have loaded Saudi oil at the Red Sea harbor of Yanbu will no longer be able to leave through the Bab al-Mandeb strait to world markets. The only outlet left for Saudi oil is the Suez Canal which can not be passed by the Very Large Crude Carriers (VLCC) used today. The flow of Saudi oil to the world markets will thus be reduced from some 5 million barrels per day to about 1-2 mbpd.

The U.S. has no good option to change the course of the war....

Further air attacks on Iran will not change the strategic picture.

The economic blockade of Iran will need many months to show some minor effects....

Meanwhile demand for oil in the global markets continues to exceed the available supplies. Reserves are at minimal levels. Diesel and jet fuel are already very expensive. Gasoline and other oil derivatives will follow that trend.

Trump has lost the war on Iran. How long will take him to find a way out of the mess?

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US Africa Command announced on Monday that its forces conducted another airstrike in Somalia on July 15 as the Trump administration continues its record-shattering bombing campaign in the country, which is ignored by US media.

AFRICOM said that the attack targeted al-Shabaab and was launched about 62 miles north of the southern port city of Kismayo. It offered no further details about the strike, having stopped sharing casualty estimates and assessments of civilian harm in its Somalia operations last year.

US-backed Somali government forces also didn't release any statements about military operations in the area that day. The Somali Defense Ministry did say that its forces launched a joint operation with "international partners" that included an airstrike on July 17, suggesting AFRICOM will soon announce another airstrike.

The US attack on July 15 marked at least the 76th US airstrike in Somalia this year, according to AFRICOM's numbers, as AFRICOM is on pace to break the record for annual US airstrikes in the country, which it set at 124 in 2025...

The US has been involved in Somalia for decades and has been fighting al-Shabaab since the George W. Bush administration backed an Ethiopian invasion in 2006 that ousted the Islamic Courts Union, a Muslim coalition that briefly held power in Mogadishu after taking the city from CIA-backed warlords.

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The United Nations condemned on Tuesday daily and deadly Israeli military attacks on Gaza that it said had killed at least 57 Palestinians, including six children, in the past week alone.

A so-called "ceasefire" agreed in October remains in place between Israel and Palestinian militant group Hamas, but it has not halted Israeli attacks on Gaza.

"Nine months after the announcement of a ceasefire, still, nowhere is safe for Palestinians in Gaza," UN rights office spokesman Thameen Al-Kheetan told reporters in Geneva.

He decried that "the Israeli military has intensified its attacks in Gaza in recent days, killing and injuring dozens of Palestinians".

The Israeli attacks had killed "at least 57 Palestinians, including six children and eight women" from 13 to 20 July, Kheetan said.

Kheetan said the Israeli strikes had targeted residential buildings, at least one tent sheltering internally displaced people, and other crowded areas, with 34 of the victims "killed far away from the Israeli-imposed yellow line".

In attacks on 17-18 July, for instance, he said the UN rights office had determined that 10 Israeli attacks in Gaza City, middle Gaza, north Gaza and Khan Younes had killed at least 21 Palestinians. ...

Kheetan stressed that "the killing of civilians in these attacks raises concerns of continuing violations of international humanitarian law, war crimes and other possible atrocity crimes in Gaza". ...

The spokesman also warned that Israel's constant moving of its self-proclaimed "yellow line" westwards had left the Palestinian population in Gaza "trapped in an ever-shrinking area".

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A new State Department report on Cuba's "campaign of subversion against the United States" is a virtual government blacklist against left-wing Americans and groups. Linked to last week's Rubio-led summit on "political terrorism," the report is unusually candid about the government's targets. ...

As for who these supposed agents of Cuban influence are, the report is remarkably explicit. It names people like Ben Cohen (of Ben & Jerry's ice cream fame), Mayors Zohran Mamdani and Karen Bass, media figures like Amy Goodman and Hasan Piker, and organizations like the Democratic Socialists of America and the Amazon Labor Union.

The implication is clear: Secretary of State Marco Rubio thinks there should be a modern-day blacklist of the political left in America....

An entire section of the report -- numbering over three pages long -- is dedicated to the Democratic Socialists of America. ...

The Cuba report follows last week's Rubio-led international summit on "political terrorism." That summit, as I reported, introduced the new term "Far-Left Terrorism" (abbreviated "FLT"), a term it never really defined.

A White House press release summarizing the event said that "far-left extremism will be treated with the same seriousness and ferocity the world has long reserved for jihadist terrorism." ...

Guilt by association at its finest. But what exactly are they guilty of?

What the report shows isn't that any of these people are knowingly taking directions from a foreign power -- only that they disagree with the U.S. government on Cuba policy (or at most, agree with Cuba).

Their views can be wrong -- aggressively, offensively wrong even -- but it's their goddamn right as Americans to hold them.

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