At least one sailor was killed and another injured in a Ukrainian strike on a cargo vessel in the Caspian Sea, the Iranian Foreign Ministry has said, denouncing the attack as an act of aggression and warning of potential retaliation.
The drone attack was publicized on Saturday by Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky, who bragged on X about achieving “very strong results with long‑range strikes in the Caspian Sea.” The strikes affected “vessels used in military cargo shipments involving Iran, as well as a warship,” Zelensky claimed on X.
Tehran responded to the incident later in the day, confirming its commercial vessel came under the “Ukrainian regime’s attack” in the landlocked waterway. The strike killed one sailor aboard the vessel and wounded another one, the Foreign Ministry said in a statement without providing any details on the extent of the damage sustained by the ship.
The ministry condemned the attack as an act of aggression that “risks further fueling and expanding the flames of war.” It urged other nations to take a “responsible stance toward this reckless action by the Ukrainian regime” and hold its leadership accountable.
“The Islamic Republic of Iran will not hesitate to protect its national interests and security. It is clear that the responsibility for the consequences of the Ukrainian regime leader’s adventurism will lie entirely with that regime, as well as its backers and instigators,” the ministry warned.
The ministry reiterated that “Iran has never intervened in the Russia-Ukraine conflict,” while arguing that Kiev’s actions show it has been “dangerously seeking to spread war and instability.” Ukraine has repeatedly accused Tehran of supporting Moscow in the hostilities, namely by supplying it with assorted drones and missiles.
While Moscow and Tehran have never attempted to hide their close cooperation, which is governed by bilateral agreements, both have dismissed the Ukrainian claims regarding large-scale arms shipments. While the Russian Geran-2 and the Iranian Shahed-136 UAVs do bear distinctive similarities, both, as well as analogous drones fielded by multiple countries, including the US in recent years, are inspired by the Dornier DAR drone developed in West Germany in the mid-1980s.
Kiev has actively tried to become involved in the Middle East conflict triggered by the US-Israeli attack on Iran earlier this year. The Ukrainian leadership has claimed to have secured deals with Gulf states to provide them with specialists and technology to counter Iranian drones and is hoping to secure additional anti-aircraft systems and munitions in exchange.
More than 200 Ukrainian military experts have been deployed to the Middle East under the deals, according to Zelensky. Ultimately, the group reportedly sustained personnel casualties and equipment damage in an Iranian strike on a depot in Dubai during the first wave of active hostilities in the region. Kiev has denied the incident took place.
In the occupied West Bank, the story often starts too late.
It starts when an Israeli settler is killed, injured, or frightened. It starts when Israeli officials speak, when the army enters Palestinian villages, and when headlines describe a “clash” or a “terror attack”. Suddenly, the settler becomes the victim, the Palestinian village becomes the threat, and the occupation disappears from the story.
But Nablus cannot be understood from the middle of the story.
For years, Palestinian villages around Nablus have lived under daily pressure: land seizures, settlement expansion, military raids, road closures, intimidation, and settler violence.
This is not a normal conflict between two equal communities. It is a system where one side expands with weapons, army protection, and state support, while the other side is expected to remain silent.
That is why the recent events of yesterday near Nablus cannot simply be called a “clash”. The word sounds neutral, but the reality is not neutral. A clash suggests two equal sides. But there is no equality between armed settlers living on occupied land and Palestinians living in villages surrounded by settlements, checkpoints, and military control.
Of course, individual settlers can suffer. Death is death. Fear is fear. No human pain should be mocked or ignored. But the pain of one incident cannot erase the larger reality. A settler can be a victim in one moment, while still being part of a wider system that causes fear, dispossession, and daily suffering for Palestinians.
This is the contradiction: the executioner becomes the victim only when the story is cut away from its history.
When the headline begins with Israeli pain, Palestinian pain becomes invisible. The settler becomes a civilian under attack. The Palestinian becomes a security threat. The settlement becomes a neighbourhood. The occupied village becomes a battlefield. The army becomes “protection”. Resistance becomes “terrorism”. And the occupation, which created this whole reality, disappears.
This is not by accident. This is how power protects itself.
The settlement movement has always tried to make its presence in the West Bank look normal. It wants the world to see settlers as ordinary residents, not as people living inside a political project built on occupied land. It wants attacks on Palestinians to look like isolated events, while every Palestinian reaction is used to say that Palestinians are violent and must be controlled.
But the truth is simple: a system built on domination cannot bring security.
It can bring temporary control. It can create fear. It can silence people for a while. It can build walls, checkpoints, settler roads, and military zones. But it cannot bring peace. When land is taken, when homes are attacked, when settlers enter Palestinian villages, and when the army protects one side only, violence is not an accident. It becomes part of the system.
This does not mean every settler carries the same guilt. It does not mean every Israeli death should be dismissed. It means that individual suffering should not be used to hide collective power. The victimhood of the settler cannot be used to erase the long victimhood of the occupied.
Yet this is what often happens.
The Palestinian is asked to explain his anger. The settler is rarely asked to explain why he is there. The village is asked to condemn violence. The settlement is rarely asked to justify its existence. The occupied are told to stay calm, while the occupier calls control “security”.
That is why the phrase “when the executioner becomes the victim” matters. It is not a denial of human pain. It is a refusal to forget the political reality.
A settler killed in one incident may be a victim of that incident. But the settlement project remains a machine of dispossession. The grief of one Israeli family does not erase the daily fear of Palestinian families living beside armed settlers, checkpoints, and expanding settlements. One tragic day does not erase decades of occupation.
Nablus shows this clearly. The more Israel protects settlements, the more tension it creates. The more settlers expand, the more Palestinian space shrinks. The more Palestinian life is controlled, the more resistance becomes likely. Then, when violence erupts, Israel presents itself as surprised, as if it had no role in creating the conditions.
This is the oldest trick of domination: create the wound, then cry when the wound bleeds.
The question after Nablus is not only who fired first. That question matters, but it is not enough. The deeper question is: who built the reality where armed settlers, occupied villages, military raids, and daily humiliation became normal?
Who allowed settlers to move through Palestinian land with confidence, while Palestinians move through their own land with fear? Who turned settlements into protected facts, and villages into security zones? Who decided that Palestinian life could be restricted every day, then acted shocked when this reality produced violence?
Until these questions are answered, every incident will be treated as a beginning, when it is actually only another consequence.
When the executioner becomes the victim, the world must be careful. It must see human pain, but it must also see the political structure. It must mourn the dead, but it must not forget the system that keeps producing death.
Because the real tragedy is not only that people die. The real tragedy is that occupation creates the conditions for death, then asks the world to feel sorry when those conditions return to its own doorstep.
Beijing prohibited 14 EU companies from obtaining Chinese dual-use goods on 24 July, targeting Europe’s defense industry shortly after the EU included 14 Chinese and Hong Kong firms in its 21st sanctions package against Russia.
Announcing the measures with immediate effect, the Chinese Commerce Ministry called the bloc’s conduct “egregious” and demanded the EU “immediately correct its wrongdoing, eliminate the egregious impact, and safeguard the overall interests of China–EU relations with concrete actions.”
The restrictions cover dual-use items, goods, software, and technology with both civilian and military applications, including rare earth elements used to build drones and chips.
Parties outside China are also barred from transferring Chinese-origin dual-use goods to any listed entity, though exporters may request permission in exceptional cases or when a shipment is deemed “truly necessary.”
Rheinmetall leads the list, alongside Polish electronics producer Vigo Photonics, Italian electric motor manufacturer Lafert, French drone developer Cavok UAS, Czech truckmaker Tatra, Dutch naval engineering firm IHC Merwede, and several optics and laser companies.
Germany and France each have three entries, Italy and Poland each have two, and the Netherlands, the Czech Republic, Bulgaria, and Lithuania each have one.
China’s mission to the EU lodged a formal protest, voicing “strong dissatisfaction and firm opposition” to the measures and rejecting attempts by the bloc to place responsibility for the war in Ukraine on Beijing.
It added that China “firmly opposes the EU’s unwarranted listing and sanctioning of Chinese companies and citizens.”
The 21st package subjected 51 entities to tighter export curbs on dual-use goods and technologies over their support for Russia’s military and industrial complex.
Companies based in India, Turkiye, and the UAE were listed alongside those from mainland China and Hong Kong.
Brussels targeted small trade and logistics operators in port cities like Guangzhou, Shenzhen, and Dalian, while Beijing focused on Europe’s defense industry.
Cui Hongjian, a former diplomat who heads European studies at Beijing Foreign Studies University, told the South China Morning Post (SCMP) that the disparity does not make the response any less reciprocal from Beijing’s perspective, noting that successive EU packages have named far more Chinese firms overall than China has named in return.
“Since this whole episode arose from the Russia-Ukraine war, I think it’s understandable that China is now pointing its retaliation at Rheinmetall,” Cui said. “From Beijing’s point of view, if it’s going to retaliate, the retaliation has to bite.”
European Union leaders imposed yet another raft of sanctions on the Russian Federation this week. This is the 21st package of political and economic strictures that the 27-nation bloc has deployed against Russia over the past four years.
The EU sanctimoniously claims that the measures are a demonstration of rebuke for Russia’s alleged unprovoked aggression and invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
This pretense of European principle is farcical.
Anyone who has objectively studied the Ukraine conflict knows that the United States and its European NATO partners incited the war by orchestrating the violent coup in Kiev in 2014, followed by the deliberate weaponizing of the NeoNazi regime that the Western imperialists covertly directed for a geopolitical confrontation with Russia. That many people aren’t aware of that history is largely due to the brainwashing propaganda of the Western media.
The EU’s sanctions policy is therefore properly understood as economic warfare, and as supplementary to a larger military strategy to defeat Russia. It is part of “Total War,” as a former French finance minister clumsily admitted in March, 2022.
While the NATO-armed Ukrainian regime steps up long-range air strikes deep in Russia in an attempt to damage oil and gas infrastructure and the Russian economy, the EU’s sanctions are aimed at achieving the same objective.
This has nothing to do with using trade and financial measures to show political and moral support for Ukraine as an alleged victim of Russian aggression. It is all about maximising confrontation with Russia to defeat it.
The use of unilateral sanctions is illegal under international law and expressly prohibited by the United Nations Charter. They constitute a form of criminal aggression. The EU is in criminal violation of international law, as is the U.S., which also blatantly wields sanctions to intimidate other nations, currently 30, including Russia, China, Iran and Cuba.
In any case, the EU’s policy meets the definition of insanity, as manifested by repeating a futile action multiple times and expecting a different result.
Russia is arguably the most sanctioned country in the world given the 21 rounds that the EU has fired and the hundreds of banks and other businesses that it has targeted. Yet Russia’s economy has not buckled, as desired.
Even more insanely, it is the European economies that have suffered grievously from the self-imposed exclusion of trade and business with Russia, particularly the loss of affordable energy supplies. The EU is rapidly deindustrializing due to soaring economic costs. Germany, once the economic powerhouse of Europe, is crippled as it imports more expensive American fuel in place of the traditional Russian supplies which historically underpinned Europe’s industries.
European citizens – a combined population of 500 million – are hit with a calamitous cost-of-living crisis that in large measure is caused by the sanctions policy of their political leaders. These so-called leaders are decimating their own economies and societies.
The bankruptcy is political and moral. The strains are showing within EU member nations, as seen from the wrangling and watering down of the latest round of sanctions. Several countries were clamoring for exemptions to limit damage to their national interests.
Greece wanted waivers on restrictions over its international shipping of Russian oil and gas. Germany and Portugal wanted exemptions from sanctions on Russian fisheries. Austria, Bulgaria, France, and Italy also appealed for curbing prohibitions to protect their various interests.
As Euronewsheadlined: “Chaotic sanctions negotiations expose cracks in EU front versus Russia.”
The outlet reported that the collective policy is starting to harm national interests, which is leading to infighting among the EU members.
“It’s getting more and more difficult to find common ground. We saw that this week,” said one diplomat about the fractious negotiations.
Another diplomat commented: “The [European] Commission [the EU’s executive branch] is running out of options for what to include. It has to become more creative, and every package is more complex and takes longer to negotiate.”
In other words, the policymakers in Brussels are insolvent from failing political ideas over their illegal sanctions. They are also politically bankrupt because these elitist, Russophobic officials are making European citizens suffer severe economic consequences without any democratic mandate. They are imposing a ruinous policy like a dictatorship, one that is aggravating tensions and hostilities towards all-out war.
European elites have caused two world wars already over the past century; they seem to be driving a third one.
But here is the kicker: this insane policy is a total fraud. It is bereft of any supposed righteousness or avowed concern for Ukraine and the defense of democracy.
The hypocrisy is glaringly exposed by the European Union’s indifference to war crimes that the United States and the Israeli regime are perpetrating on a massive scale.
As former European Members of Parliament Mick Wallace and Clare Daly pointed out this week, the EU leadership has said nothing about the United States waging a war of aggression against Iran now in its fifth month. Thousands of Iranians have been killed by American and Israeli bombing, and U.S. President Donald Trump is repeatedly making genocidal threats to destroy the nation, diabolically hinting at the use of nuclear weapons.
On the other side of the world, as Wallace and Daly also note, thousands of children in Cuba are being starved to death under a maximum blockade on the island country by Washington. The EU has made not the slightest criticism of the U.S., never mind any condemnation of this barbarism.
This week, as European elites were drawing up their 21st round of dubious sanctions on Russia, the same officials declined to issue any sanctions against the Israeli regime for its ongoing genocide against Palestinians, a genocide enabled by the U.S. and, it has to be said, by European countries trading with Israel.
The double standard of the EU leadership is not just idiotic duplicity. It is proof of its political and moral bankruptcy and systemic fraud. There was a time when some European politicians would speak out to oppose U.S. wars and crimes. Not anymore. The entire European political class is putrid from corruption and complicity.
On so many levels, the EU sanctions on Russia are self-defeating. The ultimate defeat is the fatal corrosion of its own institutions and abject lack of authority. European politicians are delegitimizing themselves and their claim to govern. People of Europe and around the world can see what the EU has become: an elitist warmongering project that is sacrificing its own citizens.
Iran’s Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmaeil Baghaei has dismissed European Union claims of concern for human rights in Iran as “sheer hypocrisy,” criticizing remarks by EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas regarding what she described as “human rights concerns” in the country.
Baghaei questioned how the EU’s professed commitment to human rights could be reconciled with its provision of logistical and technical support for deadly attacks “deliberately targeting the Iranian people, including civilians and vital national infrastructure,” according to the statement.
The spokesman noted that the EU has refrained from condemning “the most obvious war crimes” and has not expressed any sympathy for Iranian children killed by US and Israeli bombs and missiles, “the execution of which has been made possible by European logistical and technical support.”
Baghaei concluded by saying that this stance “is not just a loss of credibility, but a trivialization of evil and the most obvious form of hypocrisy.”
European Union announces new sanctions on Iran
On July 24, 2026, the European Union imposed new restrictive measures on five Iranian judges and a leading figure of an Iranian cyber group, citing alleged “serious human rights violations”.
The sanctioned judges serve on Iran’s regional courts in addition to Nima Salehi, founder of the Ashiyane cyber group, which the bloc said cooperates closely with Iran’s Cyber Police (FATA) and the Islamic Revolution Guard Corps (IRGC). The EU accused the group of carrying out cyberattacks against domestic opponents and foreign institutions.
The new designations bring the EU’s Iran human rights sanctions regime to 269 individuals and 53 entities. The measures include asset freezes, travel bans within the EU, and a prohibition on providing funds or economic resources to those listed.
This comes amid continued US aggression on Iran, which has killed hundreds of civilians and targeted significant civilian infrastructure including bridges and desalination plants.
US attacks 16 cities in Iran in 13th consecutive night of aggression
The United States launched a new wave of attacks on Iran, marking the 13th consecutive night of US attacks, according to US Central Command (CENTCOM). The campaign, which Washington said aims to target Iranian military capabilities and threats to commercial shipping, began at 6:45 pm Eastern Time.
Iranian media reported explosions in multiple locations throughout the country. Local officials confirmed strikes in Bandar Abbas, Jask Port, Konarak Port, Ahvaz, Omidiyeh, Andimeshk, Khorramabad, Anarak, Nain, Borujerd, Taft, Shirkuh, Firuzabad, near Khondab in Markazi Province, and on Qeshm Island. Al Mayadeen’s correspondent reported that the US attacked 16 Iranian cities in total.
In Hormozgan Province, the deputy governor for political and security affairs said several civilians were injured during the attack on Bandar Abbas Port. IRNA reported power outages affecting parts of the port following the strikes, with provincial emergency officials later stating electricity would be restored within an hour. Iranian state television reported that air defenses were activated in Tehran as explosions were heard elsewhere.
The Khuzestan Province Council reported that four people were killed and five others were injured in attacks targeting the vicinity of Ahvaz.
Iran’s IRGC announced that its forces intercepted and destroyed a US Tomahawk cruise missile over Kahnuj in Kerman Province. According to Fars News Agency, the IRGC commander in Kahnuj said the missile was detected and destroyed while still in the city’s airspace.
Iranian news agency Fars reported, citing satellite imagery, that the United States has evacuated two military bases in the UAE and Qatar.
According to the agency, US forces evacuated Al Dhafra Air Base in the UAE and Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar.
Fars said satellite images from Sentinel-2, dated July 24, 2026, showed the evacuation of the US military base in the UAE. The agency said five US military aircraft had been stationed at Al Dhafra three days earlier, while the satellite images showed that they had since been evacuated.
US reportedly evacuates Al Dhafra Air Base
Al Dhafra Air Base is located south of Abu Dhabi and hosts the US Air Force’s 380th Air Expeditionary Wing. It is considered a key strategic hub for reconnaissance, aerial refueling, and air defense operations, as well as a major center supporting military operations in the region and providing intelligence coverage across West Asia.
Fars also reported that satellite images showed Washington had fully evacuated Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar.
Al Udeid Air Base is located west of Doha and is considered the largest US military base in West Asia. It hosts the forward headquarters of US Central Command (CENTCOM) and the 379th Air Expeditionary Wing.
The two bases played a key role in US military operations during the latest US aggression against Iran, which began on February 28 and resumed more than three weeks ago.
Destruction of fighter jets at Azraq base and acknowledgment of casualties
The developments coincided with the release earlier on Sunday of additional satellite images documenting the destruction of a military aircraft hangar inside Muwaffaq Salti Air Base, also known as Azraq Air Base, in Jordan, which hosts US forces.
Earlier today, the IRGC conducted a simultaneous missile and drone strike against the US base in Azraq, Jordan, targeting fighter shelters and a large parking ramp, according to the IRGC’s Public Relations Office.
In a statement, the IRGC reported that the operation was carried out in the early morning hours as part of the 20th wave of Operation Nasr 2. The strike was launched in response to the US aggression the previous night, the statement said.
“With a crushing and simultaneous missile and drone attack on the fighter shelters and a large parking ramp at the American base in Azraq, Jordan,” the IRGC said, “at least two American fighter jets and three American aircraft were completely destroyed while inflicting major damage on a number of others.”
The strikes came shortly after a series of successive attacks launched by Iranian armed forces against US bases in the region, including Muwaffaq Salti Air Base, where the US side acknowledged the deaths of two American soldiers and the loss of another.
Earlier, US network Fox News reported that at least 13 American soldiers had been injured as a result of recent Iranian attacks targeting US bases in Kuwait, Bahrain, and Jordan.
Damage in Erbil and fires at a Kuwaiti power station
As part of the simultaneous Iranian attacks, footage circulated showing a fire breaking out at a Kuwaiti power station following an Iranian strike.
Additional footage and satellite images also showed the extent of damage inflicted on the US military base in the city of Erbil, the capital of Iraq’s Kurdistan Region, after it was targeted by Iranian missile strikes.
In this context, media outlets reported that US officials acknowledged that Iran’s missile capabilities had undergone significant qualitative development, enabling them to effectively bypass US interception and defense systems deployed across the region.
The officials explained that Tehran now possesses advanced missiles capable of traveling at extremely high speeds and maneuvering during the final phase of their trajectory before striking their designated targets.
It is worth noting that Tehran maintains that it harbors no hostility toward the peoples of the region, stressing that its strikes are aimed at US bases in response to repeated US aggression on Iranian territory that has killed and wounded civilians, including women and children.
The FBI manufactured plots to convince Trump that Iran sought to kill him, while Israel and its administration allies exploited the president’s deepest fears to keep him on the war path.
“I got him before he got me,” an ebullient President Donald Trump remarked to a reporter when asked about his motives for authorizing the killing of Iran’s Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, on February 28, 2026.
With his off-the-cuff remark, Trump revealed that anxiety about his own assassination at the hands of Iranian agents influenced his decision to initiate a US-Israeli regime change war that has already resulted in American casualties, the bombings of schools and hospitals inside Iran, devastating Iranian retaliatory strikes on US military bases and embassies, and a spiraling global economic crisis. … continue
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