The media bent over backwards to avoid saying that the assassination attempt against former President Trump was an assassination attempt — not just in the moment but the next day when facts were clear.
There is no dispute about Hamas’ ability to survive, despite more than nine months of fighting against Israel. The occupation state has to admit that it has not achieved any of its goals.
More than 38,000 Palestinians have been killed, and almost 100,000 more have been wounded. Nevertheless, Hamas and the factions fighting alongside it remain steadfast, and even take the war to the so-called invincible army occasionally.
It has become clear that Benjamin Netanyahu’s stated objective of eliminating Hamas is pure vanity. Now we see statements from Israeli officials which are clearly intended to prepare the general public that this objective may not really be possible, even as Hamas and its allies have adopted a new strategy targeting Israeli forces inside Gaza, instead of launching rockets towards Israel.
The Israeli prime minister is trying to limit the threats of the Palestinian resistance factions through the ongoing military offensive against the Palestinians in Gaza. However, he faces major challenges in achieving his two main goals of “eradicating” the Islamic Resistance Movement and returning the Israelis held as prisoners in the enclave.
Time is no longer on Israel’s side.
International pressure is increasing for it to “limit its operations”. The longer that Hamas holds out, the more difficult it becomes for Israel to achieve its goals.
Nine months into its war, Israel has failed to destroy Hamas as a military and political force, and even if it has succeeded in killing key leaders who planned the 7 October cross-border incursion, battle-hardened replacements are emerging in their stead.
The resilience of the resistance groups reflects their effective use of guerrilla tactics, the extent of their arsenal and the regrouping of their fighters. Led by the Hamas military wing, Al-Qassam Brigades, the factions are engaged in confrontations that reflect a high level of preparation and implementation, despite the technological imbalance favouring the Israeli army. The objective of the resistance groups is to inflict losses on the Israeli war machine so that it pays the price for its brutal offensive which has targeted and killed so many innocent civilians and destroyed essential infrastructure in Gaza. If and when Israel realises the extent of its failures, it may open the way for an end to the war.
Hamas has had to cope with 18 years of siege imposed on the Gaza Strip, but has nevertheless been able to develop militarily. Its fighting capabilities have grown, with locally-produced weapons and munitions produced using technology provided by supporters. The movement’s strategic, operational and tactical options are hugely varied compared with those of its early days.
The steadfastness of the Palestinians in Gaza in the face of the bloody massacres of the Zionist entity, meanwhile, has attracted global attention and admiration. It is a mistake to think that the Palestinians can be defeated through military means; they may be bloodied, but they are unbowed. On many occasions throughout the 20th century societies retreated in the face of brutal crimes and terrorism, even though they knew themselves to be in the right, but what we are witnessing in Gaza is the steadfastness of an entire people.
It may not be clear who are the victors and who are the defeated, but what is clear is that Israel has not achieved its goals: Hamas still very much exists, and Israelis are still held as prisoners in Gaza.
The Gaza Strip has now become a thorn in the side of the Israeli occupation army. It is at a loss about what it can do. I am sure that the Gaza experience will — if it has not already — become a special case study for military academies around the world.
Palestinian steadfastness in Gaza and, increasingly, in the occupied West Bank and Jerusalem, is the password in the current phase of the struggle to end the Israeli occupation and establish an independent, sovereign Palestinian state in which Palestinians can live in safety.
The Palestinian resistance movement Hamas says Israel is using the US-provided internationally prohibited weapons against people in Gaza.
Hamas said in a statement on Monday that more than 320 martyrs and injured have reached hospitals in the past 48 hours with their bodies burned due to the use of internationally prohibited weapons by Israeli occupation forces.
The weapons used by the Israeli occupation forces have caused third-degree burns which thermal or chemical arms cause, Hamas said.
The group added that these “are unconventional, internationally banned weapons, mostly of American manufacture.”
“These weapons cause a chemical reaction with the skin, leading to the direct chemical erosion of tissues in the bodies of martyrs and the injured,” it added.
“They cause severe pain and deep physical damage, resulting in fatal burns within 27 hours or less. We have indeed lost many martyrs in this tragic manner,” the statement added.
Hamas said they strongly condemn the crimes against humanity committed by the Israeli occupation against civilians, children, and women.
“We call on all countries of the world to denounce these incendiary crimes against civilians and to pursue and prosecute the occupation in international courts,” it added.
Hamas said it holds the US administration “fully responsible, both legally and morally, for supplying the Israeli occupation with these various types of internationally prohibited weapons.”
“We also hold the Israeli occupation responsible for the crimes and massacres it commits against civilians and displaced persons,” the resistance movement said.
“We call on the international community, all international and UN organizations, and all free countries of the world to pursue the Israeli occupation and pressure it to stop the genocide that the occupation army is committing to kill and destroy our Palestinian people,” it concluded.
Gaza Civil Defense Service has in several statements pointed to the “dissolution of victims corpses and their conversion into ashes.”
A Euro-Med Monitor report highlights that the Hague Conventions of 1899 and 1907, the Geneva Conventions of 1949, and international humanitarian law all forbid the use of thermal bombs against civilians in populated civilian areas.
“The Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court also classifies the use of thermal bombs as a war crime.”
Two weeks into the war, Gaza’s Health Ministry warned in a statement that “medical staff monitored the usage of unusual weapons that caused severe burns to the bodies of the martyrs and wounded.”
Analysts believe that the Gaza war is the latest laboratory for Israel’s arms industry as the regime is known to test its weapons on Palestinians in its offensives against the occupied nation.
At least 90 Palestinians mostly women and children were killed and almost 300 others were injured in the July 13 Israeli aerial assault on the densely-populated camp near Khan Younis.
Israel launched the war on Gaza on October 7 after Palestinian resistance groups carried out a surprise retaliatory operation into the occupied territories.
Concomitantly with the war, the regime has been enforcing a near-total siege on the coastal territory, which has reduced the flow of foodstuffs, medicine, electricity, and water into the Palestinian territory into a trickle.
So far during the military onslaught, the regime has killed at least 38,664 Gazans, most of them women, children, and adolescents. Another 89,097 Palestinians have sustained injuries as well.
Israel struck the southern and central Gaza Strip on Monday to put more pressure on Hamas, following a weekend strike targeting the group’s leadership, which killed scores of Palestinians who had sought shelter in a makeshift camp, Reuters reports.
Two days after the Israeli strike turned a crowded swathe of Mawasi near the Mediterranean coast into a charred wasteland littered with burning cars and mangled bodies, displaced survivors said they had no idea where they should go next.
“Those moments as the ground shook underneath my feet and the dust and sand rose to the sky and I saw dismembered bodies – was like nothing I have seen in my life,” said Aya Mohammad, 30, a market seller in Mawasi, reached by mobile text message. “Where to go is what everybody asks, and no one has the answer.”
Mawasi on the western outskirts of Khan Yunis has been sheltering hundreds of thousands of Palestinians who fled to the area after Israel declared it a safe zone. Israel said its strike there on Saturday targeted Hamas military commander, Mohammed Deif, an architect of the 7 October assault on Israeli towns and villages that triggered the Gaza war.
The military said it struck an open area, with several buildings and sheds, adding it was a compound run by Hamas and not a tented camp.
Palestinian officials say at least 90 people were killed on Saturday and many hundreds wounded. Reuters journalists at the scene filmed carnage, with residents carrying the wounded and dead amid flames and smoke.
Further south in Rafah, the main focus of Israel’s advance since May, residents reported renewed fighting on Monday. Israeli forces in western and central parts of the city blew up several homes, they said. Medical officials said they recovered 10 bodies of Palestinians killed by Israeli fire in eastern areas of the city, some of which had already begun to decompose.
The military also stepped up aerial and tank shelling in central Gaza in the Al-Bureij and Al-Maghazi historic Refugee Camps. Health officials said five Palestinians were killed in an Israeli air strike on a house in Maghazi Camp.
The Israeli military said the air forces struck dozens of Palestinian military targets across Gaza, killing many gunmen. It said forces killed gunmen in Rafah and central Gaza, sometimes in close combat.
A statement from the Al-Quds Brigade, the armed wing of the Islamic Jihad group, said its fighters were engaged in fierce battles in the Yabna camp in Rafah.
Later, on Monday, in Deir Al-Balah in the central Gaza Strip, where Israel has not yet invaded and hundreds of thousands have taken refuge, the municipality issued an urgent statement saying it was no longer able to provide 700,000 people in the area with drinking water after running out of fuel.
“We urge citizens to preserve what is left in their private tankers and we stress the need to maintain the spirit of cooperation and sharing,” the statement said.
Speaking amidst the rubble of his family home in Deir Al-Balah, Walid Thabet told how an Israeli strike earlier on Monday had killed members of his family. Rescue workers and neighbours sifted through the debris to search for survivors buried beneath the wrecked building.
“My mother, an elderly woman, was sitting with me upstairs. She went downstairs and after five minutes, I pulled her out from under the rubble. We also pulled my sister out from under the rubble, and my sister’s children, too,” said Thabet.
“Those who died are my mother, my sister, and my sister’s children. Children! One was two and a half years old, and the other two, I don’t know what happened to them. God willing, may God save them,” he added.
Talks
Saturday’s carnage in Mawasi, one of the deadliest Israeli strikes of the war, has overshadowed negotiations that both sides had previously described as the closest yet to a lasting ceasefire. A senior Hamas official said on Sunday the group had not walked out of the talks despite the Mawasi strike.
Israel says another senior commander was killed in the strike but it has not yet confirmed the fate of Deif. Hamas officials have denied Deif was killed.
The Gaza Health Ministry said at least 38,000 Palestinians have been killed in Israel’s military offensive since 7 October. It does not distinguish between combatants and non-combatants but officials say most of the dead throughout the war have been civilians.
Israel says it has lost 326 soldiers in Gaza and says at least a third of the Palestinian fatalities are fighters.
The war began after a Hamas-led attack inside Israel on 7 October, which killed 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and took more than 250 hostages to Gaza, according to Israeli authorities.
However, since then, it has been revealed by Haaretz that helicopters and tanks of the Israeli army had, in fact, killed many of the 1,139 soldiers and civilians claimed by Israel to have been killed by the Palestinian Resistance.
Citing a report by the United Nations Environment Programme, the UN Palestinian refugee agency, UNRWA, said in a post on X it would take 15 years to clear around 40 million tons of war rubble in Gaza. The effort would need 100+ trucks and cost over $500 million.
“Debris pose a deadly threat for people in the #GazaStrip as it can contain unexploded ordnance and harmful substances,” it added.
The German government secretly delivered a new aid package to Ukraine between late June and early July, the Bavarian daily Munchner Merkur reported on Monday. The paper called the shipment “huge,” adding that it was done in a clandestine manner and went “largely unnoticed.”
The package included 39 pieces of various heavy armor from the stocks of Germany’s military and of its defense enterprises, Merkur reported, after analyzing government data. Kiev received ten more Leopard 1A5 main battle tanks and 20 more Marder infantry fighting vehicles (IFVs), among other extra donations, the outlet said.
According to open data published by Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s cabinet, the total number of Leopard 1A5 tanks and Marder IFVs delivered to Ukraine has grown to 50 and 120 respectively.
Other heavy equipment included in the latest delivery involved various engineering and mine-clearing vehicles, according to the report. The package also included 55,000 155mm artillery rounds, according to the government data.
It also showed that Berlin plans to send, by an unspecified date, 85 more Leopard 1A5 tanks to Ukraine, as part of a joint project with Denmark. The future deliveries are also to include 20 additional Marder IFVs. Merkur reported that Berlin had planned to provide Ukraine with up to 80 Leopards by the end of 2023 but fell behind schedule as the nation’s defense industry struggled to find spare parts for the armor pieces.
According to Merkur, Kiev is still hoping to get enough German tanks to form a specialized brigade for offensive operations and has been “holding back” its remaining western tanks for months.
The Russian military has previously published numerous videos showing German tanks being destroyed with kamikaze drones or even captured by Russian soldiers after being abandoned by their crews.
The latest batch of weapons also included two ground-based IRIS-T air defense systems and three US-made HIMARS multiple rocket launchers. In May, German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius vowed Berlin would pay for the delivery of the US-made systems to Ukraine.
Germany has emerged as the second largest single military donor to Ukraine throughout the conflict, spending some €10.2 billion ($11.14 billion) on providing arms to Kiev between January 2022 and April 2024, according to the Kiel Institute for the World Economy. Berlin has said some €28 billion ($30.5 billion) has been made available to support Kiev now and in the coming years.
In June, Chancellor Scholz admitted that many Germans were unhappy with the nation’s military support of Ukraine, but he maintained that there was no alternative to arming Kiev. In July, Ukraine’s Vladimir Zelensky stated that his country would “never” have enough weapons.
NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg has ruled out the possibility of Poland intercepting Russian missiles over Ukrainian territory, insisting that the bloc does not want to become directly involved in the conflict with Moscow.
Kiev has urged NATO member Warsaw to use its air defense capabilities to protect western Ukraine without moving the systems away from Polish soil. The idea was floated in the context of a recent Polish-Ukrainian bilateral security agreement, and was reportedly discussed at last week’s NATO summit in Washington.
In an interview given on the sidelines of the event for Ukrainian state television, Stoltenberg said NATO’s position had not changed, and that the best that Kiev can expect is help in targeting Russian warplanes with weapon systems operated by Ukrainian forces.
The idea of NATO intercepting Russian missiles over Ukraine was previously rejected by member states, including Poland. Defense Minister Wladyslaw Kosiniak-Kamysz has said that Warsaw won’t engage Russian missiles without the backing of other members.
“If NATO does not make such a decision, Poland will not make it individually,” the minister stressed.
US national security adviser Jake Sullivan claimed that providing air defenses to Kiev is “by far and away the best method of stopping the Russian aerial attacks,” when asked about Poland’s stance last week.
Moscow has described the Ukraine conflict as part of a US-led proxy war, in which NATO nations are involved in every way except by directly fighting Russian forces on the battlefield. Being de facto parties to the hostilities means Western nations share responsibility for Ukrainian war crimes, Russian officials have argued.
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban has sent proposals to EU leaders on ways to resolve the Ukrainian conflict, newspaper Magyar Nemzet reported on Monday, citing the PM’s political adviser Balazs Orban. The proposals are said to be based on the results of the premier’s controversial peace mission earlier this month, during which he visited Ukraine, Russia, and China.
Orban provided EU leaders with a detailed account of his visits, and delivered Budapest’s action plan to their desks, Balazs Orban (no relation) told the newspaper.
The adviser described Budapest’s proposals as being “based on a realistic assessment of the situation” and on setting “realistic goals,” without elaborating further.
Balazs Orban claimed that there are “pro-war” political forces in the EU, and that the bloc is following the lead of the current US administration, which, he said, wants the conflict to continue.
”If Europe wants peace and wants to have a decisive say in the settlement of the war [in Ukraine] and the end of the bloodshed, then the change of course must be worked out and implemented now,” the adviser said.
Hungary is one of the few member states to criticize the bloc’s stance on the conflict. Budapest has refused to go along with Brussels and send weapons to Kiev. It has also stalled financial aid to Ukraine. Viktor Orban’s recent visit to Moscow was condemned by senior EU figures, with Brussels seeking to distance itself from Orban’s efforts.
According to the prime minister’s adviser, external mediators, such as China and Türkiye, could be vital to helping negotiate peace.
Hungary plans to use the six months of its rotating presidency of the, which began in July, to create conditions for peace talks. “If the union does not act now, it may not be able to act later,” Balazs Orban warned.
During his visit to Kiev, the Hungarian leader called on Ukraine’s Vladimir Zelensky to agree to a ceasefire with Russia, a proposal the latter rejected.
President Putin has repeatedly insisted that the hostilities can only end if Ukraine fulfills several of Russia’s demands – including legally binding guarantees that Kiev will not seek NATO membership, and the withdrawal of troops from the whole of Donbass, as well as the Zaporozhye and Kherson regions.
Kiev, along with its Western backers, have rejected the proposal, calling it an unacceptable ultimatum.
The Western public has little, if any, knowledge of the scale of losses in troops and equipment sustained by Ukraine since the beginning of the special military operation, international observers say.
The Western press is concealing information about the real state of affairs on the ground in Ukraine, including the mass destruction of NATO weapons provided to the Ukrainian military, and the loss of Ukrainian soldiers, Irish journalist and entrepreneur Chey Bowes wrote on X on July 15.
“Here, yesterday, another €150 million [$163.4 million] of German taxpayers’ money was vaporized in Dictator Zelensky’s Ukraine,” Bowes continued, attaching a video showing the elimination of the German-made IRIS-T anti-aircraft missile system (SAM).
“Russian Iskander missiles completely destroyed the entire complex consisting of an IRIS-T SAM launcher and its TRML-4D radar station – these are the high-tech systems Zelensky is so desperately begging the EUSA for,” the journalist pointed out.
According to Bowes, the reason “the Western media doesn’t want” the public to see this, is “to maintain your ignorance and, therefore, your complicity in the ‘Ukraine can win’ fantasy.”
“After all, you’re paying for it all,” the journalist remarked.
Ukraine has received almost 108 billion euro ($115.9 billion), including 39 billion euro ($41.8 billion) of military aid from the EU since February 2022. The US’ Ukraine expenditures have so far reached $175 billion, of which $107 billion directly aided the Kiev regime, with $34.2 billion being disbursed for budget needs, and another $69.8 billion spent on arms and military assistance.
On Sunday, the Russian Ministry of Defense released footage of the destruction of an IRIS-T launcher in the Dnepropetrovsk region. The air defense missile launcher, the TRML-4D radar station, and the crew operating the system were eliminated, per the ministry.
As of July 14, 551 air defense missile systems, including those supplied by NATO, have been destroyed since the beginning of the special military operation.
The ongoing upgrades to the US-Japan military cooperation signals new regional developments. In reality, however, this upgrade is a continuation of the US strategy in the Pacific to build military outposts so that China can be deterred and tackled. On the one hand, it is militarizing Japan. On the other hand, the sale of weapons keeps bringing money to the US military-industrial complex. Ultimately, this alliance will do little to serve the purpose of ‘containing’ China. Most of the equipment the US is providing is outdated, basically getting rid of the scrap. The modern equipment, on the other hand, is unreliable. Still, Trump’s arrival in the White House could change the dynamics of military cooperation, making things worse.
The Upgrades:
Following the announcements made during the Biden-Kishida summit in April regarding big upgrades to the US-Japan alliance, the upgrade has finally arrived. On the 3rd of July, the Pentagon announced that the US was going to upgrade “tactical aircraft laydown across multiple military installations in Japan”. This so-called “modernization plan” is worth US$ 10 billion that will “bolster regional deterrence, and strengthen peace and stability in the Indo-Pacific region”. According to the announcement, the US will replace 48 F-15C/D with 36 F-15EX fighters at Kadena Air Base. The US Air Force will also replace 36 F-16 aircraft with 48 F-35A aircraft at Misawa Air Base. Overall, the plan to “station the Joint Force’s most advanced tactical aircraft in Japan demonstrates the ironclad U.S. commitment to the defence of Japan and both countries’ shared vision of a free and open Indo-Pacific region”. In addition to these new deployments, NATO is also in the middle of releasing its new policy documents outlining its new lines of cooperation with countries like Japan, Australia, New Zealand, and South Korea. There seems to be momentum, but it will soon run into problems that it may not be able to recover from.
Can US-Japan-NATO Counter China?
While the F-15EX seems like a significant upgrade from the outdated F-15C/Ds, they are still no match against China’s growing fleet of stealth fighter jets. It means that were Japan to use these fighters in an offensive against China, they would prove useless since they lack stealth features and would be unable to penetrate a heavily guarded airspace.
While the deployment of F-35 jets does mark a significant upgrade, there are serious questions about its operational and logistic utility, compromising its ability to tackle China’s J-20s. In 2023, according to one estimate, China produced 100 J-20. If China can maintain the same rate, it will have 1,000 J-20s by 2035. The US has less than F-22s, and its F-35 programme continues to run into problems.
The 2023 Annual Report by the Director, Operational Test and Evaluation made some startling observations, saying,
“The F-35 program development cycle continues to experience delays due to immature and deficient Block 4 mission systems software and avionics stability problems with the new Technology Refresh 3 (TR-3) hardware going into Lot 15 production aircraft. As a result, deliveries of production Lot 15 aircraft in the TR-3 configuration are on hold until more testing can be completed and the avionics issues resolved. Additionally, these delays prevented the F-35 Joint Program Office (JPO) from adequately planning and programming for hardware modifications for OT of the upgraded hardware configuration”.
As a result of these delays and difficulties, only 32 out of 205 baseline DT flights were conducted. The US is now stationing the F-35s in Japan, which basically relies on the assumption that these delays will ultimately be resolved and that Washington will not have to move these F-35s to a different location to meet the recurring shortages. But the reality is that, as the report concludes, “The operational suitability of the F-35 fleet remains below Service expectations and requirements”, which means that, according to the report, out of 628 aircraft produced until now, a majority of them remain “unavailable” for active service throughout most of the year. In fact, 2023 had fewer available aircraft than 2022. What this ‘upgrade’ will do to Japan’s security is, therefore, not hard to imagine. In the end, other than creating a false sense of security, it might not add any value to Japan’s offensive and defensive capabilities, compromising the politics of ‘China containment’.
The Trump Factor
Former US President Donald Trump’s return to the White House next year is already making Washington’s European allies extremely uneasy. Whereas Trump has thus far signalled that his administration will ideally continue to follow the Biden administration’s policy towards Japan and China, Trump has also assured his voters of the continuation of his “America First” and “Make America Great Again” policies, which also involve, among other things, military disengagements.
Therefore, the existing rhetoric of reassurance notwithstanding, Trump’s politics and/or his geopolitical vision has not seen any change in the recent past. Reports in the US media indicate that “a second Trump administration is likely to be far more disruptive for Asia than the first one was”. What it implies is that, with Trump forcing the US military footprint to reduce worldwide, countries like Japan will need to find ways to become self-reliant. So, instead of depending upon the actual supply and availability of otherwise “unavailable” fifth-generation jets, Tokyo will need to develop an alternative, more reliable strategy – a strategy that should not exclude the possibility of dialogue with China to sort out any existing issues without any external interference.
In fact, since Trump is likely to target China and push the US away from Japan’s military build-up, he is likely to antagonise both states. There is, therefore, an incentive for both Asian giants to collaborate and find peace.
Salman Rafi Sheikh is a research analyst of International Relations and Pakistan’s foreign and domestic affairs.
Special Counsel Jack Smith’s prosecution of former US President Donald Trump over the alleged mishandling of classified documents has been thrown out, on grounds that Smith’s appointment was not legal.
Smith was appointed by Attorney General Merrick Garland to investigate Trump for supposedly keeping classified documents at his Florida home after leaving the White House, as well as probing an alleged conspiracy to overturn the 2020 election.
“None of the statutes cited as legal authority for the appointment gives the attorney general broad inferior-officer appointing power or bestows upon him the right to appoint a federal officer with the kind of prosecutorial power wielded by Special Counsel Smith,” Judge Aileen Cannon wrote.
The “strained statutory arguments, appeals to inconsistent history, or reliance on out-of-circuit authority” by Smith have not persuaded the court otherwise, Cannon added.
The FBI raided Trump’s residence in Mar-a-Lago, Florida in August 2022, confiscating several boxes of documents. According to the Washington Post, some of the materials related to US nuclear secrets, Iran’s missile program, and Washington’s intelligence activities in China.
A federal grand jury in Miami, Florida indicted Trump for mishandling the documents in September 2023. Trump pleaded not guilty and argued that he had done nothing wrong, since he was the ultimate declassification authority.
Court documents unsealed in May this year showed that the Department of Justice had authorized the use of “deadly force when necessary” during the raid.
President Joe Biden also faced an investigation over taking classified documents with him after leaving the White House in 2017. As Barack Obama’s vice president, he did not actually have the authority to possess the files. However, Special Counsel Robert Hur said in February that he would not prosecute the case, as a Washington jury would probably not convict Biden as he seemed like an “elderly man with a poor memory.”
Last month, the US Supreme Court affirmed that presidents had absolute immunity from prosecution for any official actions, that they were still liable for unofficial conduct, but that courts could not speculate about motivation when making that determination.
Smith’s other case against Trump in the Washington, DC federal court remains open for now.
Business Insider reported that NATO had never faced an adversary of Russia’s calibre after World War II, and it would have been difficult for the alliance to establish air superiority over Russian forces. The warning comes as experts have explained the sombre reality that the F-16 fighter jets, a key aircraft in many NATO air force fleets, provided to Kiev will not be a “magic bullet” that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and his Western allies expect them to be.
“Russia could challenge NATO’s historical air dominance,” reported the media on July 13 after explaining that this is a change from the scenario that emerged after the Cold War when the West had a clear advantage. “Russia would be a very different opponent. It has the territory and industry to build and field massive and sophisticated air defenses that an opponent may struggle to destroy.”
“The US and its allies, even with fleets of fifth-generation stealth fighter jets, likely would find it difficult to establish the same level of air dominance they’ve largely had since the end of World War II,” the New York-based outlet said.
According to experts cited by the portal, Western aviation has never had the experience of combating air defence systems at a level similar to that of Russia’s. During the conflict in Ukraine, the Russian military proved that it could establish extremely difficult air defence areas for the enemy with powerful radars, electronic warfare systems and missiles.
“The Russians could attempt a surprising and impactful opening attack,” the article warned. “For example, the Russians could target vulnerabilities like satellites to try to disrupt the space-based communications and navigation NATO airpower depends upon.”
The worry that Russia could establish air superiority over NATO, particularly over the bloc’s 30 European members, became a more serious consideration after Russian forces methodically obliterated Ukraine’s air force. Russia so impressively dismantled the Ukrainian air force that the Kiev regime is desperately seeking F-16 fighter jets from Western allies to replenish its fleet, even though experts are saying that the aircraft is now obsolete and unlikely to survive the conflict.
“As soon as the Ukrainians encountered Russian-controlled air space, the F-16’s value would diminish markedly, as would its likelihood of survival,” Harrison Kass wrote for the National Interest. “In a conflict with a great power, China for example, the F-16 would remain on the backbench.”
This is a telling revelation considering the US still uses over 900 F-16s, NATO members, including Turkey, Greece, Poland, and Romania, use hundreds more, as well as US non-NATO allies Israel, Taiwan and South Korea. In effect, the F-16 would be rendered almost useless against Russia given that the Eastern European country’s military is ranked second, one above China, according to the 2024 PowerIndex.
Kass warns Kiev that the good performance of the F-16 fighter jets in Iraq and Afghanistan does not say anything about their capabilities against Russian air defences.
After stressing that “the F-16 fighting falcon era is coming to a rapid end,” Kass concludes that the US-made fighter jet “will not offer a magic bullet for Zelensky” and will merely “buy a little more time.”
Russian President Vladimir Putin has warned that the F-16s supplied to Kiev will be destroyed just like other Western military equipment. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov also warned that their appearance in Ukraine will not change anything on the front and that they will be destroyed in the same way as other types of weapons.
Nonetheless, in 2023, several NATO states agreed to supply the Ukrainian armed forces with the fighter jets and launched training programs for Ukrainian pilots. On July 10, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said that the US and its allies are “underway” in sending the promised F-16 fighter jets to Ukraine.
As Europe and the US are not interested in a viable, pragmatic, and lasting peace agreement in Ukraine which recognises Russian interests in the region and establishes a lasting solution, they are actively prolonging the fighting despite not only the humanitarian consequences but even the weakening of their own military. Whilst NATO members are distracted with training Ukrainian pilots to use fighter jets that are effectively obsolete in any combat with a great power, Russia, as Business Insider has acknowledged, has successfully challenged the air dominance NATO largely enjoyed since the start of the Cold War despite the introduction of fifth-generation fighter jets.
Ahmed Adel is a Cairo-based geopolitics and political economy researcher.
When you think about oil there is probably one thing that immediately comes to mind: motor oil for your car or lawn mower. And, when you hear about natural gas, you may think about heating your home, cooking, or even electric power generation.
But, there are many other uses for these hydrocarbons than what meets the eye. Petrochemicals derived from oil and natural gas make the manufacturing of over 6,000 everyday products and high-tech devices possible.
Major petrochemicals—including ethylene, propylene, acetylene, benzene, and toluene, as well as natural gas constituents like methane, propane, and ethane—are the feedstock chemicals for the production of many of the items we use and depend on every day.
Modern life relies on the availability of these products that are made in the United States and across the globe. We zero in on some of these common household and commercial products below. The list may surprise you!
In retrospect it can be seen that the 1967 war, the Six Days War, was the turning point in the relationship between the Zionist state of Israel and the Jews of the world (the majority of Jews who prefer to live not in Israel but as citizens of many other nations). Until the 1967 war, and with the exception of a minority of who were politically active, most non-Israeli Jews did not have – how can I put it? – a great empathy with Zionism’s child. Israel was there and, in the sub-consciousness, a refuge of last resort; but the Jewish nationalism it represented had not generated the overtly enthusiastic support of the Jews of the world. The Jews of Israel were in their chosen place and the Jews of the world were in their chosen places. There was not, so to speak, a great feeling of togetherness. At a point David Ben-Gurion, Israel’s founding father and first prime minister, was so disillusioned by the indifference of world Jewry that he went public with his criticism – not enough Jews were coming to live in Israel.
So how and why did the 1967 war transform the relationship between the Jews of the world and Israel? … continue
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The word “alleged” is deemed to occur before the word “fraud.” Since the rule of law still applies. To peasants, at least.
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