Seyed M. Marandi: Plans for a U.S. Land Invasion of Iran; Yemen & Iran Enters the War?
Glenn Diesen | July 16, 2026
Glenn Diesen | July 16, 2026
Prof. John Mearsheimer discusses how to make sense of the U.S. going back to war against Iran, and Trump’s decision to deepen the U.S. involvement in the war against Russia. Prof. Mearsheimer is the R. Wendell Harrison Distinguished Service Professor in the Political Science Department at the University of Chicago
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Glenn Diesen | July 16, 2026

Press TV – July 16, 2026
Pro-Palestinian German journalist Anna Liedtke says Israeli prison guards rape detainees with the systemic intention to “break” their will.
Anna Liedtke, 25, who in September had set sail for the Gaza Strip with the Freedom Flotilla Coalition vessel Conscience, was raped by Israeli prison guards during detention.
“There is no reason for me to be ashamed,” Liedtke said, in her first interview about a legal case filed against the perpetrators.
“It’s clear they want to break our will and silence us, making this so traumatic that we will never talk about Palestine again,” she said in an interview with The Guardian. “Whenever we are silent, they will do it to another person.”
In the meantime, Liedtke’s lawyers have filed a complaint, demanding Israeli authorities investigate the case. Israeli law defines any kind of non-consensual penetration as rape.
Liedtke’s lawyer, Muna Haddad, said her client wanted justice, and that she also aims to raise awareness about the Israelis’ response.
“It is Anna’s wish to seek justice and exhaust all avenues to hold the perpetrators of these acts accountable. We also want to raise awareness and see how the Israeli system responds when faced with our demand to open an investigation,” Haddad said.
“Sexual violence and rape are recurring violations that have been perpetrated against Palestinian prisoners,” Haddad pointed out, noting that the West’s blind support for Tel Aviv has given the Israeli prison guards impunity for sexualized violence and rape against international solidarity activists, as well.
The complaint, sent to the Israeli attorney general, the Israel prison service’s legal adviser, the department for the investigation of prison guards, and the commander of Givon prison, was a challenge to a “culture of impunity” for abuse of prisoners by Israeli forces, Haddad said.
After Liedtke revealed the matter in late December, two other Freedom Flotilla members spoke of sexualized violence performed on them by Israeli prison guards.
Vincenzo Fullone, an Italian journalist, revealed that “on three separate occasions, I was ordered to enter a small, specially arranged room where I was completely stripped and subjected to invasive and painful anal searches… During the third search, the pain became unbearable and was compounded by mockery, verbal abuse – including the words, ‘Don’t you like it, Hamas whore?’ – and the photographing of my body.”
Australian activist Surya McEwen said he “was stripped naked and sexually assaulted by Israeli officers while being held hostage. One held a gun to my head, angrily threatening that he would kill me, while the other yanked and pulled on my genitals, perversely and almost gleefully.”
He said Israeli soldiers dislocated his arm, forcing him to kneel with other flotilla members while the notorious Israeli national security minister Itamar Ben-Gvir verbally abused them.
According to the Gaza-based Palestinian Center for Human Rights, Israeli forces employ sexualized violence against Palestinians.
The Center said that increasing systemic violence against Palestinians has continued for decades and includes “organized and systematic practice of sexual torture, including rape, forced stripping, forced filming, sexual assault using objects and dogs, in addition to deliberate psychological humiliation aimed at crushing human dignity and erasing individual identity entirely.”
Al Mayadeen| July 16, 2026
Sanaa’s Deputy Information Minister Mohammed Mansour told Al Mayadeen on Thursday that the positions laid out by Ansar Allah leader Sayyed Abdul-Malik al-Houthi effectively amount to a formal declaration that Yemen has decided to end the US-Saudi blockade imposed on it.
He said Yemen will see massive demonstrations tomorrow in response to Sayyed al-Houthi’s call, giving the Yemeni people a chance to make their position on lifting the Saudi blockade unmistakably clear.
“The Yemenis have grown tired of negotiations. Either the blockade is lifted in practice, or we move to break it by force,” he said.
Yemen moving toward confronting Saudi blockade militarily
Mansour told Al Mayadeen that Saudi Arabia bombed Sanaa International Airport just nine minutes before an Iranian aircraft was due to land. “By striking Sanaa International Airport, Saudi Arabia made clear that this blockade is its own doing, and that it has no intention of lifting it,” he said.
He added that Yemen is preparing, within days, to confront the Saudi economic blockade through military action. “If political channels fail to force Saudi Arabia to lift the economic blockade, we will confront it militarily,” he said.
He stressed that Yemen never raises a slogan it doesn’t have the means to back up. “Today, we have what it takes to dismantle this economic aggression,” he asserted.
On mediation, Mansour told Al Mayadeen, “We’ve grown tired of mediation, though we do appreciate Oman’s role, since it has not been party to the aggression against our country.”
“This is a matter between Yemen and Saudi Arabia,” he stressed.
He also said Saudi Arabia would do well to take note of Yemen’s positions on Palestine and reconsider the blockade it has imposed.
Yemen will not leave Hezbollah to face the enemy alone
Mansour also voiced regret over the Lebanese government’s stance toward the Lebanese Resistance, insisting that Hezbollah is an asset Lebanon cannot afford to squander.
He affirmed that no party within the Axis of Resistance will ever be left to face the enemy alone, and that Yemen will not abandon Hezbollah.
He recalled that the loudest voice in support of Yemen once belonged to the martyred Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, affirming that Yemen will never forget it.
Sayyed al-Houthi: Saudi escalation will be met in kind
Ansar Allah leader Sayyed Abdul-Malik al-Houthi said Thursday that Saudi Arabia’s aggression against Yemen has dragged on for years with no legal basis, framing it as an extension of Riyadh’s subservience to Washington and Tel Aviv.
In his weekly speech, Sayyed al-Houthi confirmed that “surrender is not an option in Yemen,” warning that if Saudi Arabia moves toward full-scale escalation, Yemen will respond in kind, “and blockade for blockade.”
Sayyed al-Houthi accused Riyadh of stalling and evading responsibility over the past several years, depriving Yemen’s people of their sovereign wealth and subjecting them to suffering under a severe blockade, and revealing that Saudi Arabia has cooperated with “Israel” against Yemen throughout that entire period.
“Saudi Arabia is reneging on all the obligations arising from the de-escalation phase, which are, above all, humanitarian obligations and inalienable rights of our people,” he said, accusing Riyadh of seeking to control every aspect of Yemenis’ lives, down to deciding who may travel abroad for medical treatment and who may not.
He added that no one, regardless of position or capacity, has the right to deprive the Yemeni people of their oil rights or freedom of movement.
He said Saudi Arabia wants Yemen’s people to remain trapped in an economic crisis, with betraying their homeland presented as their only means of earning money.
“Saudi Arabia should not imagine that this is a picnic,” he concluded. “It will be something else entirely.”
‘Israel’ aided Saudi interception efforts
Israeli aircraft assisted Saudi forces in their attempts to intercept Yemen’s retaliatory strike, which was launched in response to the Saudi bombardment of Sanaa Airport, a senior military source within the Yemeni Ministry of Defense revealed to Al Mayadeen.
According to the Yemeni source, the Israeli deployment consisted of specialized Gulfstream intelligence-gathering aircraft equipped for communications interception, wiretapping, and reconnaissance.
The aircraft took off from “Israel’s” Nevatim Airbase and operated primarily along a flight path over the Red Sea, where they actively participated in tracking and mapping the trajectories of incoming Yemeni missiles and drones, the source said.
By Robert Inlakesh | Palestine Chronicle | July 15, 2026
The US Trump administration sought to weaponize diplomacy once again against the Islamic Republic of Iran and implement a surprise attack strategy – this time, Tehran appears to have preempted the American-Israeli plot.
The Iran-US Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) officially died this week, but in reality it was terminated on June 26 with the Lebanon-Israel deal that Washington brokered. The reason why was simple: the United States decided to print on paper a new deal that violated the former by granting Israel de facto permission to maintain a belligerent occupation of southern Lebanese lands.
Throughout the month that the MoU technically held, the US committed various violations of a number of clauses of the agreement, including by direct threats from Donald Trump himself to assassinate the entire Iranian negotiating team. But the Lebanon issue was far more indicative of where things were heading than the limited skirmishes in the Persian Gulf and threats to commit war crimes.
Clause 1 of the MoU concerned the ensuring of the war’s termination on all fronts, with Lebanon being explicitly mentioned. Tehran made it clear that this meant a full withdrawal of Israeli occupation forces from southern Lebanon and the protection of Lebanese sovereignty.
Instead of implementing the clause, Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu coordinated a careful approach to the Lebanon war, one that would not result in a withdrawal or end to the war, while simultaneously being careful not to provoke any Iranian retaliatory strikes. Therefore, the US worked with Israel to develop a new conspiracy. This involved the use of the US-proxy regime in Beirut to stir division within Lebanon, an attempt to force the Lebanese army to clash with Hezbollah, combined with an initiative to pressure neighboring Syria to invade the Bekaa Valley region in order to take on Hezbollah.
Meanwhile, as this plot was developing, the Israelis returned to the pre-March 2 status quo more or less in Lebanon – Hezbollah froze its retaliatory operations, while Israel continued to blow up civilian homes, bomb on a lower scale, while maintaining its presence inside south Lebanon.
A US military advisory force is being deployed to Beirut in order to guide the Lebanese army on its newly agreed-upon mission to clash with Hezbollah, the stated goal of which is to disarm the movement. Speculation also has it that the US may even be considering deploying thousands of combat troops into Lebanon in order to help prop up the regime in Beirut if the situation goes sideways, although this assertion is yet to be fully substantiated.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) has been documenting the ongoing mobilization and military buildup along the Lebanese-Syria border, as Trump himself has repeatedly stated in public that he seeks to use Syria’s forces to invade Lebanon.
Hezbollah’s sudden silence and lack of operations indicate that it has been taking these threats very seriously. Fighting Israel alone has been a battle that it has proven capable of managing, but preparations to fight US-proxies inside Lebanon, the possible collapse of the Lebanese Army into warring factions, and combating a Syrian invasion all demand new defensive and even perhaps offensive preparations.
Iran, for its part, was clearly also coordinated more heavily with Yemen’s Ansarallah leadership. The Yemen front never fully opened during the war earlier this year. Tehran openly challenged Saudi Arabia’s blockade on Yemen, while Ansarallah was mobilizing its forces and declared that it would fight to break the blockade. When Riyadh took the decision to strike Sana’a International Airport, this reopened the Yemen-Saudi War for the first time since early 2022, collapsing the UN-brokered ceasefire.
Yemen’s role in the renewal of the regional war will add major pressure, especially as it holds the card to shut down the Bab Al-Mandab Strait, imposing a blockade in the Red Sea that will choke the global economy further than it has been under the pressure of the Strait of Hormuz blockade. Ansarallah’s capabilities have also significantly developed since 2022, meaning that they will be able to aid Iran in their war efforts against targets in the Arabian Peninsula.
If the US succeeds in pressuring Damascus to launch an assault on Lebanon, then Iraq’s Popular Mobilization Units (PMU) have already threatened to enter the fight on the ground. The PMU would likely seek to seize areas in eastern Syria, like Deir Ezzor, which would open up new supply lines inside Syrian territory and put enormous pressure on its forces.
A US-Israeli plot to collapse the Lebanese State in order to weaken Hezbollah is a major gamble to say the least, one which will inevitably lead to a rise in regional sectarianism. It is also very likely that Arab Gulf media will also act to portray the conflict as a new Sunni-Shia war, as they begin to take more active roles in support of the US-Israeli war effort.
Ultimately, it appears as if the Iranians are not taking any chances and are being proactive, which has been reflected in the scale of their strikes on US assets in the region, including a surprise attack that took out US ATACMS missiles in Kuwait earlier this week.
A return to full-scale war this time around could trigger a series of conflicts that will spiral out of control and thus make any easy off-ramp impossible. The Global economic repercussions will be horrendous, as the only end to the war is total victory or total defeat. The US will be put in a position where it will be forced to withdraw from the region, while Israel is betting on the idea of Iran being significantly weakened as a result of the conflict’s continuation.
No side appears to be backing down, so unless the US suddenly decides to perform a 180-degree pivot in its approach, West Asia is about to erupt into total chaos.
– Robert Inlakesh is a journalist, writer, and documentary filmmaker. He focuses on the Middle East, specializing in Palestine. He contributed this article to The Palestine Chronicle.

By Dr Mustafa Fetouri| MEMO | July 16, 2026
In Kuwait alone—less than 150 kilometres across the Gulf from Iran—the United States maintains a major military hub of approximately 13,500 personnel spread across installations such as Camp Arifjan and Ali Al Salem Air Base. To its south, Saudi Arabia hosts roughly 2,700 U.S. troops, centered at Prince Sultan Air Base in Al Kharj. Elsewhere in the Gulf, every state hosts either a US military presence or provides access and defence cooperation under bilateral agreements: Qatar houses more than 10,000 personnel at CENTCOM’s sprawling forward headquarters at Al Udeid; Bahrain hosts around 9,000 personnel at the headquarters of the US Fifth Fleet; the UAE accommodates approximately 3,500 personnel at Al Dhafra while providing deep-water naval access at Jebel Ali; and Oman offers strategic port and airfield access under bilateral agreements, despite having no large permanent US troop presence.
Beyond the Gulf monarchies, Washington maintains approximately 2,500 troops in Iraq and around 900 in northeastern Syria under Operation Inherent Resolve. To Iran’s northwest, the US operates from Incirlik Air Base in Türkiye— a NATO logistics and intelligence hub too. Until its withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021, American forces also maintained a major military presence along Iran’s eastern frontier, supported for two decades by extensive supply routes and intelligence cooperation through Pakistan. Although the US lies nearly 10,000 kilometres from Iran, it has constructed an unparalleled regional military architecture of permanent bases, rotational deployments, naval facilities, pre-positioned equipment, access agreements, and security partnerships that stretches from the Eastern Mediterranean across the Gulf to the western Indian Ocean. Combined with the military capabilities of close allies—including Britain, France, and Türkiye—this network almost literally surrounding Iran from all sides. The common thread underpinning this posture has long been the protection of regional partners, the safeguarding of global energy routes, and the defence of US strategic interests.
Yet, this foundational premise has collapsed under the weight of the US-Israeli war on Iran, which has fundamentally transformed the entire regional security landscape. This “war of choice” has exposed how a security arrangement once marketed as an ironclad insurance policy has devolved into a primary strategic liability.
Rather than serving as an effective deterrent, large and static American military installations now act as strategic liability—drawing Iranian retaliatory strikes while denying host states true autonomy or the promised protective shield.
The Gulf states have discovered, at a heavy price, that they are trapped in an impossible paradox: their sovereign territory serves as a staging ground for military operations they were never consulted about—at least that is what they say publically –instantly transforming their critical infrastructure, oil facilities, and urban centers into high-priority targets. Compounding this vulnerability is the stark geopolitical reality that while Washington may eventually pivot away or withdraw—much as it did from Afghanistan—Iran is a permanent neighbour that is going nowhere.
Beyond the immediate threat of missile strikes, the presence of these US installations directly undermines the core national strategies of the Gulf monarchies. Mega-development projects and economic diversification plans—from Saudi Arabia’s Vision 2030 to Dubai’s global trade hubs—rely entirely on an image of absolute regional stability, investor confidence, and open maritime transit. By hosting forward US bases, host nations inadvertently tie their economic futures to Washington’s military posture, creating an environment of perpetual crisis. Furthermore, defending these expansive American footprints forces host militaries to consume their own finite air-defense interceptors and defense budgets to guard US assets rather than securing their own national borders.
At the same time, while almost all Gulf States have, at least publicly, refrained from taking direct offensive action against Iran to avoid total escalation, they recognise that they are already viewed as passive participants in the wider conflict.
Maintaining this precarious balancing act is becoming increasingly difficult against rising domestic anti-war sentiment, as public anger over regional devastation steadily erodes the host governments’ domestic credibility.
For Washington, this massive network of forward-deployed bases has produced a profound strategic paradox. What was designed to project uninhibited American power now ties US freedom of action to the political consent of cautious host nations. When host governments impose strict sovereignty restrictions—refusing permission for US forces to launch offensive sorties or intelligence missions against regional adversaries from their soil—the Pentagon finds its multi-billion-dollar installations functionally sidelined during critical military surges. Instead of providing seamless operational flexibility, these fixed, highly vulnerable outposts transform into costly “imperial entrapment” liabilities: requiring thousands of US troops, high-end missile defense batteries, and constant naval escort deployments simply to protect the bases themselves, rather than executing broader strategic objectives or enabling Washington’s long-sought pivot to the Indo-Pacific. With the conflict between the US and Iran reigniting, Trump is demanding that the Gulf states pay once again to protect the Strait of Hormuz—a vital transit route that never closed until the war was started by Trump, not Iran.
This strategic calculus becomes infinitely more complex when factoring in Israel’s role in the regional security outlook. In recent years, certain Gulf states—most notably the UAE—operated under the premise that normalization and closer security alignment with Israel via the Abraham Accords would yield a net security dividend. Yet, this belief was never shared across the Gulf; nations like Kuwait, Oman, and Saudi Arabia maintained a far more cautious, sceptical stance toward Tel Aviv. The outbreak of the US-Israeli war on Tehran on February 28 utterly shattered any illusion that an Israeli-linked security architecture could bring regional stability. Instead, it exposed deep internal fault lines among the entire region. Reaching a collective, long-term security understanding with Iran was already a formidable challenge; doing so now, in the wake of a devastating conflict that forced Gulf States into the crossfire, is immensely more complicated. Moving forward, no regional framework can hold if it relies on a anti-Tehran pact anchored in Washington and Tel Aviv while ignoring the permanent reality of Iranian geographic power.
Ultimately, the fallout from the US-Israeli war on Iran exposes a fundamental reality that Washington and its regional allies can no longer ignore: the entire Middle Eastern security architecture must be fundamentally re-evaluated.
The core dilemma facing the region is that no collective security arrangement can ever be viable or effective if it seeks to exclude Iran—an indispensable, geographically permanent power armed with increasingly sophisticated offensive, defensive, and asymmetric capabilities.
Moving forward, any stable regional order must not only account for Tehran’s military leverage, but also accommodate its non-negotiable strategic demands. This includes addressing governance and transit rights over the vital Strait of Hormuz—through which one-fifth of global oil flows—and reaching a durable, pragmatic framework on its nuclear program. Regardless of the final outcome of ongoing US-Iran negotiations, the lesson for the Gulf is clear: true security cannot be built on an external garrison model that marginalizes the region’s principal indigenous power.
By Faezeh Firuzeh | Responsible Statecraft | July 16, 2026
Over the past week, the U.S. resumed heavy airstrikes on Iran, hitting over 300 targets in the first three nights alone, according to U.S. Central Command. The strikes killed more than 30 civilians and wounded more than 260, according to Iran’s Health Ministry. This U.S. bombing campaign came amid ongoing peace talks between Iran and the U.S. and while Iran held cross-border funeral processions for the late Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
At the NATO summit in Ankara on July 8, President Trump declared the ceasefire with Iran “over.” He called Iranian officials “scum,” “sick” and “vicious, violent people.” Such insults against Iranians are not new. Weeks earlier, this aggressive rhetoric and the renewed bombing campaign were foreshadowed by the U.S. and FIFA’s mistreatment of the Iranian football team. I witnessed the rehearsal firsthand.
The opening act came well before the tournament began. U.S. officials accused the Iranian national team of attempting to smuggle Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps operatives and barred at least eleven members of the delegation from entering the United States.
Iran’s football federation condemned the claims as “false, fabricated, and lacking any credibility.” However, the accusations played their part. By casting the Iranian football team’s attendance at the World Cup as an infiltration risk, the U.S. could frame every discriminatory action it took as a necessary safety measure.
With the premise set, the restrictions followed. The Trump administration would not allow the team to camp on U.S. soil, despite all their matches being in the United States. They were only permitted to be in the U.S. during narrow windows of time to play their matches and forced to leave immediately after. As a World Cup host, the U.S. did not extend hospitality, only hostility.
I had a front-row seat with the Iranian national football delegation during their World Cup stay — at their matches in Los Angeles and Seattle, in the Seattle hotel we shared, and at their base camp in Tijuana, Mexico, to which I traveled twice. Over days of conversations, members of the delegation came to know me. I had not set out to write about them. That came once I heard what the tournament had been like for them from the inside.
At the airport on the way to and from all three of their matches, captain Mehdi Taremi and assistant coach Saeed Alhoei were held for nearly 30 minutes and questioned. The constant detainments, security, and immigration checks made the 127 mile flight from Tijuana to Los Angeles — normally a short hop — take nearly five hours. The team, initially promised they could stay the night in Seattle given their 8 p.m. match, received an email from FIFA three days before their game saying that they were no longer permitted to stay and would have to leave immediately after the match
Driving back to my hotel at 1:30 a.m. that night — the same one the team had been booked into — I was startled to see their distinctive royal-blue bus on the highway: not parked for the night, but moving. After the post-game press conference, anti-doping testing, airport fingerprinting, and flight, they arrived back at their hotel in Tijuana at 4:40 a.m., only to eat a post-game meal near sunrise.
By refusing them hospitality, the U.S. effectively deprived Iran’s World Cup team of time to sleep and eat, even on a match day. Iran was never offered fair play or an equal chance.
Iran’s Alireza Jahanbakhsh put the team’s ask plainly: “To be honest, we don’t ask for much. We just ask for the same procedure for all the other 47 teams.” The answer came from the head of the White House’s World Cup task force, Andrew Giuliani, who told ABC News the players should thank the U.S. for “our hospitality.” After Iran was eliminated came the curtain call. The Secretary of Homeland Security Markwayne Mullin told reporters at a World Cup security briefing that he was “so happy,” that his department had “pulled their visas,” and that he “might’ve sung a song or two or maybe even danced a happy dance.”
On the same day Iran played its final match, the U.S. was bombing Iran. The players took the field while their own country was under American fire. When the players emerged from the plane in Tijuana, Mexico, at the start of the tournament, they were wearing pins reading “168” — a reminder to the world of the 168 Iranians, mostly children, who were killed on February 28, the opening day of the U.S.–Israeli war on Iran, at an all-girls’ school in Minab.
The treatment of Iran’s football team underscored the way wars are marketed to the public. Manufacturing an enemy and treating their people as a mortal danger is not realism, and does not bring security. Demonization and threat inflation are expensive habits. They foreclose possible avenues for pragmatic, effective diplomacy, and narrow the script until war looks like the only option. Even now, with no shortage of diplomats and mediators, Washington is attempting to bomb its way into negotiations. Trump said the strikes would “continue until I say it’s enough,” and threatened to bomb Iran’s bridges and power plants “next week” unless Tehran returns to the negotiating table.
The tactics used to promote the latest war on Iran, applied routinely, are a major reason Washington continues to talk itself into unwinnable and costly wars that the American people do not need. That fatal reflex didn’t end with the tournament. The World Cup was the rehearsal; bombing Iran is the show.
Faezeh Firuzeh is a Los Angeles–based writer and strategist whose work connects popular culture to foreign policy. Born in Iran, she was in the country during the 2025 U.S.–Israeli war. She previously served as managing director of the Rethinking Iran Initiative at Johns Hopkins SAIS and as a researcher at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft. She holds a master’s degree from the University of Chicago, where she studied social policy and global conflict.
Press TV – July 16, 2026
Iran’s ambassador to the United Nations in Geneva has called on the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights to unequivocally condemn ongoing US attacks on civilian infrastructure, warning that Washington’s renewed illegal war against the Islamic Republic is inflicting grave humanitarian and human rights consequences.
In a letter on Thursday, Iran’s permanent representative to the UN Office and other international organizations in Geneva, Ali Bahraini, urged the UN rights chief to publicly denounce the attacks, saying the continuing US aggression against Iran is causing serious humanitarian and human rights harm.
Bahraini called on the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights to take a clear and unequivocal stance by condemning the widespread US strikes on Iran, particularly those targeting the country’s southern ports.
He said the attacks constitute a blatant violation of international law, stressing that they have killed large numbers of civilians and caused extensive damage to civilian infrastructure and other critical facilities across the country.
As examples, Bahraini cited the targeting of sections of the Tehran–Mashhad railway, a drinking water production facility in Dehloran, wheat storage silos in the cities of Hoveizeh and Dasht-e Azadegan, fishing vessels belonging to fishermen in southern Iran, missile strikes near Baqaei Hospital in Ahvaz, and the attack on Semnan Airport.
Elsewhere in the letter, the Iranian envoy expressed regret that the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights has yet to condemn the recent US attacks.
Bahraini warned that, at a time when the territorial integrity of a UN member state has been violated and civilians continue to suffer the consequences of the assaults, the absence of a clear, timely, and firm response could create the impression that human rights protection and the implementation of international law are being applied selectively.
The appeal comes amid renewed US military attacks on Iran, which have struck civilian areas and critical infrastructure alongside other targets.
Tehran has condemned the strikes as blatant violations of international law and the UN Charter, slamming Washington for escalating regional instability and endangering civilian lives through its continued military aggression.
The Cradle | July 16, 2026
International shipping companies are avoiding crossing the Strait of Hormuz through the US-controlled alternative corridor that runs along the Omani coastline due to fears of Iranian strikes, sources told Reuters on 16 July.
After a series of Iranian strikes on ships attempting to bypass the Iranian-designated shipping channels as mandated in the Iran–US memorandum of understanding (MoU), shipping companies are reassessing the safety and viability of US military escort through the strait.
“The US doesn’t seem to have any control over the situation,” one shipping source said, noting that their firm chose to avoid the strait altogether out of concern for crew safety as security conditions worsen.
“Iran’s continued ability to target ships sailing through the Omani route means the Trump administration’s proposed solution to keep ships moving is unlikely to work,” said Torbjorn Solvedt, principal West Asia analyst at risk intelligence firm Verisk Maplecroft.
Following the resumption of US attacks on Iran and the reimposition of the US blockade on Iranian ports and shipping routes, traffic through the Strait of Hormuz has collapsed to a near-complete halt.
Kpler data shows only seven vessels transited the Strait of Hormuz on the first day of the renewed US naval blockade, down from 13 the previous day.
Just prior to the reimposition of the US blockade, Kpler reported 21 monitored transits through the Strait of Hormuz on 14 July, with vessels favoring the Iranian-approved route as the Omani corridor saw no crossings at all.
The firm also verified three additional attacks off Oman, bringing the confirmed toll to 56 incidents and 17 seafarer deaths.
More than 200 non-Iranian vessels applied for Iranian transit permits and insurance coverage in the three weeks between the signing of the Iran-US MoU and the resumption of the war, according to figures released by the Persian Gulf Strait Authority (PGSA) on Tuesday.
The authority approved 79 percent of requests, with tankers making up the largest share at 41 percent, and China and India each accounting for roughly a fifth of outbound destinations – figures that cover Iran-approved crossings only, excluding the US-escorted Omani route.
The Cradle | July 16, 2026
Iranian negotiators sent a private warning to US Vice President JD Vance earlier this year, saying that US special envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner were “abusing” their roles in the talks to profit from financial markets, Drop Site News reported on 16 July.
The Iranian negotiators sent the warnings to Vance through an intermediary during the late June talks in Lake Lucerne in Switzerland, telling him the pair cared more about profiting from insider knowledge of the negotiations than reaching a deal to end the war on Iran.
The negotiators also said that Kushner had been repeatedly leaking details of the talks to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, with one US official telling Axios that Witkoff and Kushner “talk almost every day to Netanyahu” and the head of Mossad.
The Vance outreach came after Tehran had already tried to alert the White House to the pair’s conduct, presenting evidence that “individuals close to [US] President [Donald] Trump” were abusing the war on Iran and diplomatic developments to manipulate financial markets, while warning of Witkoff’s “overall destructive role in the previous negotiation.”
Financial analysts have observed a pattern since the war began in late February of speculative bets and unusually large positions in war-linked markets – oil futures, energy stocks, and prediction markets – often preceded by Trump announcements timed just before Monday trading opens in the US, fueling public suspicion of insider trading.
Iran calculated the profits from these manipulations at around $9 billion by June and formally demanded in writing that half of it, $4.5 billion, be allocated to Tehran.
The official said the exchanged texts “will ultimately become part of the historical record.”
Financial disclosure forms released on 3 July revealed that President Trump’s income soared past $2.2 billion last year, largely built on cryptocurrency ventures that his own administration was regulating.
The Wall Street Journal reported Trump made around $1 billion from crypto deals, including a UAE state-linked investment in World Liberty Financial and proceeds from his $TRUMP memecoin, which later crashed in value by 97 percent.
Trump and those close to him have also profited from massive, highly suspicious trading spikes in oil futures and stock indexes occurring just minutes before the president issued major market-moving announcements on social media about the US war on Iran.
Economists, lawmakers, and market analysts have raised alarms over insider trading, data leaks, and market manipulation coming from the White House.
Almost $1 billion in oil futures trades were executed in early May in the minutes before an Axios report revealed a US-Iran memorandum aimed at ending the war.
Market observers noted the White House’s wild swings between war and peace rhetoric appeared to be little more than a vehicle for insiders to profit through coordinated trading on Polymarket and traditional commodities exchanges
Meanwhile, the Financial Times (FT) reported that the president’s sons, Eric Trump and Donald Trump Jr., were behind a $1.04-billion investment network funneling money into sectors championed by the White House, including drone companies pursuing Pentagon contracts.
The report also noted that Donald Trump Jr. serves as an advisor to Polymarket, where insider trading on US military action is reportedly rampant.
By Larry C. Johnson | SONAR21 | July 16, 2026
On Monday July 13, airstrikes hit the runway at Sanaa International Airport shortly after a Houthi delegation returned from the funeral in Iran for the late Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Yemen’s Defense Minister Gen. Taher al-Aqili said on X that the runway was struck to stop a plane carrying the Houthi delegation returning from Khamenei’s funeral. The IRG defense ministry said it had exhausted diplomatic efforts to persuade Iran and the Houthis to stay out of Yemeni airspace, that it would respond to hostile aircraft “by all available means,” and held Iran responsible.
However, Israel’s mouthpiece on Axios, Barak Ravid, citing two US officials, reported that Trump gave Saudi leader MBS his backing for the strike in a phone call last Friday — MBS asked for support for military action against the Houthis and received it. The White House declined to comment directly and the Saudi embassy didn’t respond.
The proximate cause is aviation, not ground war. About ten days ago a Mahan Air flight landed in Sanaa — the first Iran–Sanaa flights in over a decade — and picked up a Houthi delegation traveling to the funeral of former Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. Saudi Arabia blocked subsequent flights, fearing they’d be used to move weapons or Iranian military advisers to the Houthis. (Note the airport itself has been largely destroyed and out of action since Israeli strikes in May.)
Following the Saudi Attack on Sanaa, the Houthis retaliated by firing ballistic missiles and drones at Abha International Airport in Saudi Arabia’s southwestern Asir region — a mountainous area near the Yemeni border and a domestic summer destination. Saree claimed the strike. The Saudi-led coalition spokesman said air defenses “dealt with a threat from ballistic missiles” launched toward the southern region. No casualties reported.
This exchange marked the first Saudi Arabian attacks on the Houthis since the informal truce took effect in March 2022. I thought that the Saudis would retaliate on Tuesday or Wednesday for the Houthi strike on Monday … Thankfully, I was wrong. The Saudis did not follow up by launching new attacks at Houthi positions.
The Saudi attack was foolish and reckless. At present, the Saudis are able to export a bit of oil from Yanbu, a Saudi city that sits on the shores of the Red Sea. This attack on Yemen — albeit an airfield — carried the risk that the Houthis would attack the Saudi oil facility at Yanbu and close the Bab al Mandab Strait. Given the Saudi vulnerabilities if their operation in the Red Sea is suspended or closed, you would think that MBS government would be engaged in further confidence building exercises with Yemen. Nope!! The Saudis almost touched off a renewal of the war with the Houthis.
I don’t know who convinced MBS to put a full stop to further attacks on the Houthi-controlled portion of Yemen, but the Saudis have not attacked again. The Saudis are in no position financially to handle the simultaneous closure of the Strait of Hormuz and the Bab al Mandab strait. It appears that cooler heads in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia prevailed… for now at least.

By W.M. Peterson | Truth Blitzkrieg |
“Emanuel… has long been seen as a strong supporter of Israel within the Democratic party. His evolving position is unquestionably a reaction to increasing anti-Israel public sentiment, particularly on the American Left.” — Blaise Malley, Responsible Statecraft (Jul. 9, 2026)
After witnessing a nearly three-years-long holocaust perpetrated by the Israeli Defense Forces against women and children in Gaza, virtually the entire world is beginning to harbor feelings of revulsion towards the Zionist state and its leader Benjamin Netanyahu. Not since Israel’s founding in 1948 have Americans had a more negative view of their ‘gallant little democratic ally in the Middle East,’ to borrow a phrase from the late Dr. William Pierce. Gallup, the American multinational analytics company known for conducting public opinion polls, recently commented on the drastic shift in American sympathies vis a vis Israel/Palestine while analyzing polling data from the past few years:
“From 2001 to 2005, Israelis consistently held double-digit leads in Americans’ Middle East sympathies, with the gap averaging 43 points between 2001 and 2018. However, public opinion began narrowing in 2019, several years before the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attack on Israel and the subsequent war in Gaza. The cumulative effect of gradual changes in U.S. attitudes since then has led to the Israelis no longer being viewed more sympathetically.”
Not oblivious to the changing tides of public opinion, clever intriguers like Rahm Emanuel are right now hard at work levelling the land for the development of a centrist plantation upon which criticism of Netanyahu and aspects of his Likud regime — and US support for it — are tolerated in the hope of reclaiming the support of disillusioned voters by affixing a more palatable face to the pro-Israel cause. (Reuters/Ipsos polling shows Israel’s favorability rating at 22% among Democrats.)
On pp. 156-157 of his 2008 textbook Judaism Discovered, revisionist historian Michael Hoffman provides a crucial insight into the complex system of deceit known as Judaism:
“The Kabbalistic temple is supported by the pillar of chesed (mercy) and the pillar of gevurah (severity), both are required to support Judaism’s supremacy. These two seemingly opposing pillars offer two ways of relating to the world depending on the spirit of the age in which Judaism finds itself situated. Judaism’s Temple is the synthesis of these two forces. The Temple cannot be sustained only by presenting a lenient or merciful face, or only by severe or judgmental means. …’pairs’ produce the synthesis that is Judaism in all of its indissolubly connected, subterranean minutiae.”
Widely considered a contender for the 2028 Democratic presidential nomination, Emanuel recently travelled to Israel to deliver a speech to a packed hall at Tel Aviv University, addressing, among other topics, an end to unconditional US support for Israel. The Jewish Telegraph Agency reported that during the course of his speech — in which he referred to Israel as a “pariah” — Emanuel put forth a “proposal for U.S. sanctions targeting Israelis who attack Palestinian civilians and property, Israeli officials who voice support for that violence, and companies and banks that support ‘illegal settlements.”‘
The speech, titled “An Honest Conversation: The U.S.-Israel Relationship, Where it Stands Today and the Road Ahead,” is an obvious attempt by the prominent Democrat to repair the fractured Israel/Washington alliance, while rehabilitating his image as a “vocal Zionist” in anticipation of the 2028 presidential election. Some rather gullible commentators have already fallen for the ruse, like the Lebanese-Australian Mario Nawfal, who triumphantly tweeted:
“The era of unconditional U.S. support for Israel just ended. And Rahm Emanuel flew to Tel Aviv to say it to their faces. His speech is designed to land like a thunderclap, and the messenger guarantees it does. Emanuel is not a progressive activist. He’s a centrist.”
A more cynical person might ask: If Rahm Emanuel cares so deeply about the plight of Palestinian civilians and ending unconditional foreign aid to Israel, why has he failed to raise either of these issues until now, when Netanyahu’s government is losing the support of the entire world? 1 The answer resides in the fact that Emanuel is a dyed-in-the-wool Zionist who doesn’t actually care about the aforementioned issues. Rather, his lofty political ambitions within the Democratic Party coupled with historically low support for Israel, has made it necessary for Emanuel to present himself as the light square of leniency juxtaposed with Netanyahu’s dark square of severity on the checkered floor of the Jewish Temple.
Rahm Israel Emanuel was born in Chicago, Illinois in 1959 to Dr. Benjamin Emanuel and Marsha Smulevitz. He attended Rabbi Solomon Goldman’s Anshe Emet Day School, a private Jewish school, until 1968, when the family moved to Wilmette, Illinois, whereupon he was enrolled in public school and graduated from New Trier West High School in 1977. 2 Throughout his youth, Rahm would attend annual summer camps in Israel –including the summer following the 1967 Six-Day War — which no doubt amplified the already passionate ethnic sentiments inherited via his family’s close ties to Israel and political activism.
Emanuel’s father, Benjamin Auerbach, was a pediatrician born in Jerusalem in 1927. His parents, having fled to Palestine from Odessa in 1905, changed the family name to Emanuel in honor of Benjamin’s older brother Emanuel Auerbach, who died after being struck by a bullet fragment during a conflict between Jews, Arabs and police during the British occupation of Palestine in 1933. No doubt influenced by this event, Benjamin would later be persuaded by his cousin to join the underground Zionist terror organization Irgun to, in his own words, “sabotage the British Empire, to send letters with bombs in them to England.” 3 Emanuel was operating as a weapons smuggler for the Irgun (a forerunner of Netanyahu’s Likud Party) when the group bombed the King David Hotel, Britain’s administrative headquarters, in 1946, and was very much involved in supplying weapons to Menachem Begin’s militants during Israel’s War of Independence in 1948.
In 1953, Benjamin immigrated to Chicago where he met his wife Marsha Smulevitz, an X-ray technician at Mount Sinai Hospital and an activist in the Civil Rights Movement. Between 1957 and 1961, the couple had three sons, Ezekiel, Rahm and Ari, who have all achieved high levels of success in their respective careers. 4 After Benjamin’s death, Rahm remembered his father as the quintessential Israeli:
“There was no sweetness. No softness around the edges. It’s how Israelis are. This was a guy who said he loved you by calling you a schmuck and hitting you in the back of the head. A lot of people call you a schmuck, but not a lot of people say it with a hit, then say ‘I love you.’ That’s who he was.”

Emanuel became involved in politics in the early 1980s while enrolled at Northwestern University, where he earned a master’s degree in speech and communication. His first job in politics — as spokesman for the Illinois Public Action Council — brought him into contact with an ambitious Jew named David Axelrod, and the pair became close friends two years later while working on the victorious Senate campaign of Paul Simon. The success of the Simon campaign helped launch the political careers of Axelrod and Emanuel who would both one day occupy key positions within the administration of President Obama.
In early 1991, Emanuel volunteered for a short stint in the IDF as part of Israel’s Sar-el program, where he worked as a tank mechanic at one of Israel’s northern bases during the Gulf War. He relocated to Little Rock, Arkansas upon his return to the United States to serve as the chief fundraiser for Governor Bill Clinton’s presidential campaign, helping to raise over $120 million for the degenerate 42nd President of the United States. Clinton would appoint the crafty dual-loyalist political director of the new administration following his election victory in November 1992, before reassigning him the position of Deputy Communications Director and Senior Advisor to the President for Policy and Strategy, from where Emanuel was instrumental in the destruction of nearly one million US jobs as the primary architect of the infamous North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA).

After the Clinton administration came to an end, Emanuel went to work at the Chicago office of the investment firm Dresdner Kleinwort Wasserstein where he mysteriously made $16 million in two years before deciding to run for Congress in 2002. He was elected and represented Illinois’s 5th district from 2003 – 2009, burnishing his reputation as a pro-Israel hardliner almost immediately upon taking office by signing a letter to then-President George W. Bush defending the Jewish state’s controversial policy of assassinating Palestinian leaders and criticizing Bush for being insufficiently supportive of Israel! For many years afterwards, he defended Bush’s decision to invade Iraq, even after joining the Obama administration and criticizing certain aspects of the war.
When Barack Obama was elected the 44th President of the United States he plucked Rahm Emanuel and David Axelrod out of the Chicago political cesspit to accompany him to the White House as his Chief of Staff and Senior Advisor, respectively. Just days after Obama’s election, Benjamin Emanuel caused a commotion when he boasted to a reporter from Israeli newspaper Ma’ariv that his son was now in a position to influence the newly elected president’s stance towards Israel: “Obviously, he’ll influence the president to be pro-Israel. Why wouldn’t he? What is he, an Arab? He’s not going to be mopping floors at the White House.”
The younger Emanuel left his post as White House Chief of Staff towards the end of 2010 to run for mayor of Chicago. He received overwhelming support from Jewish and LGBT voters and ultimately raised over $10 million dollars, in part through large contributions from people like Steven Spielberg and Donald Trump, close friends of his brother Ari Emanuel. Emanuel’s controversy-plagued two terms as Mayor of Chicago earned him the sobriquet “Mayor 1%” for his economic policies favoring the wealthy, and by the time the “attack dog, policy wonk, committed Jew” was out of office in 2019, Chicago was a financial basket case with a surging murder rate driven by gang-related violence.
Catholic scholar Dr. E. Michael Jones often points out that “existence calls forth a new essence.” In explaining the maxim, Jones has cited the story of the Pilgrims, who landed on the shores of Massachusetts Bay as Calvinists before being mugged by the reality of the frontier, leading to the Halfway Covenant and a continuous modification of their Calvinist essence as Western expansion progressed. There’s no question that on some level a similar process is taking place today with Jews who are facing the uncomfortable realities of a post-October 7th world, though the authenticity of Rahm Emanuel’s conversion is called into question by the fundamental principles of the Orthodox Jewish religion to which he and his family are dedicated devotees. 5
In his book The Talmud Tested (first published as The Old Paths in 1854), Irish Hebraist and missionary Alexander McCaul devotes a number of pages to analyzing a section of the Talmud called Hilchoth Accum, part of which captures the duplicity found throughout Jewish teaching:
“The poor of the idolators (non-Jews) are to be fed with the poor of Israel for the sake of the ways of peace. They are also permitted to have part of the gleaning, the forgotten sheaf, and the corner of the field, for the sake of the ways of the peace. It is also lawful to ask after their health, even on their feast-day, for the sake of the ways of the peace; but never to return the salutation, nor to enter the house of an idolator on the day of his festival to salute him. If he be met in the street, he is to be saluted in a low tone of voice, and with a heavy head. But all these things are said only of the time that Israel is in captivity among the nations, or that the hand of the idolators is strong upon Israel. But when the hand of Israel is strong upon them, we are forbidden to suffer an idolator among us, even so much as to sojourn incidentally, or to pass from place to place with merchandise.” [Italics in original]
Commenting on the passage, Dr. McCaul states
“… the reader may now judge whether the words, ‘For the sake of the ways of peace,’ can be interpreted as… ‘for the good of society.’ If so, then ‘the good of society’ is to be consulted only whilst the Jews are in captivity, and the Gentiles have got the power: but as soon as the Jews get the power, ‘the good of society’ may safely be disregarded. The meaning plainly is, that in the present position of affairs it is advisable to keep the peace between Jews and Gentiles, inasmuch as the Gentiles are at present the strongest.”
The outrage towards Israel felt by millions of Americans on both sides of the political divide since the Gaza ‘War’ began in October 2023, has made it necessary for any aspiring candidate for higher office to publicly adopt a more measured tone on Israel/Palestine and US support for the genocidal regime. Because Rahm Emanuel and the Jewish oligarchs have yet to achieve complete mastery over the United States, certain concessions must be made “for the sake of the ways of the peace.”
The concept of ‘pairs’ is foundational in Judaism and is expressed through several traditional ideas and customs. During the Second Temple period (170 BC – 30 AD) there were five successive pairs of rabbis whose role it was to preserve and transmit the Oral Law that would one day be committed to writing as the Talmud. These pairs are known in Hebrew as zugot, the most famous of which are Hillel and Shammai, who laid the framework for rabbinic debate with their opposing schools of thought. Michael Hoffman, in his book Judaism’s Strange Gods, describes the pair within the context of mystical Judaism:
“Hillel serves his purpose within the rabbinic semiotic by acting as poster boy for the Kabbalistic pillar of chesed. But the rule of Shammai, the pillar of gevurah, also forms a significant part of the reality of Orthodox Judaism… In truth they are complimentary, as the mystical Kabbalah compliments the bureaucratic Talmud, thesis and antithesis; yin and yang — the “zugot” who symbolize the subterranean synthesis that is Judaism in its indissolubly interconnected esoteric reconciliation of apparent opposites.”
When considering Rahm Emanuel’s Zionist pedigree and professional trajectory, it’s fair to wonder whether some variation of the ancient ‘opposing pairs’ theater is being performed right now with Benjamin Netanyahu.6 A July 6 article in Politico hints at this theme while pondering Emanuel’s presidential prospects:
“Emanuel’s presidential ambitions so far are defined by two pillars. One is the essential plausibility of his resume… There’s no one in the gathering field who has such a diverse range of experiences and personal associations, or moves as confidently or as restlessly in policy debates. The other pillar is the essential implausibility, amid prevailing political currents, of his nascent candidacy: He is an establishment centrist who is deeply mistrusted by many of the more left-leaning, insurgent and increasingly Israel-skeptical activists who reasonably believe their energy will power the party’s next generation.
Netanyahu is a useful foil, and a potential bridge between the two pillars. Emanuel can accurately tell younger Democrats: Trust me, I have been at this fight longer than you have, and I have the enemies to show for it.”

Notes:
RT | July 16, 2026
China has vowed to protect its companies from proposed US tariffs targeting buyers of Russian energy, warning Washington that economic coercion and unilateral sanctions would ultimately backfire.
Speaking on Wednesday, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Lin Jian responded to legislation introduced in the US Senate that would authorize tariffs of up to 100% on imports from the largest purchasers of Russian oil and natural gas, including China.
“China firmly opposes unilateral sanctions that have no basis in international law or authorization of the UN Security Council, and will take necessary measures to firmly defend the legitimate rights and interests of Chinese businesses and citizens,” Lin said.
“Practicing double standards and resorting to coercion and pressuring will eventually prove to be self-defeating,” he added.
The revised sanctions bill was introduced on Tuesday by the US Senate. It is an update to legislation originally proposed by the late Russia hawk Senator Lindsey Graham, who died of heart complications on Saturday.
If enacted, the measure would authorize US President Donald Trump to impose tariffs of up to 100% on goods imported from the five largest buyers of Russian oil and gas. China and India would be among the countries most heavily affected.
The proposal comes less than two months after Washington and Beijing signed a trade framework designed to ease months of tariff tensions following a trade war in which the US imposed duties of up to 145% on Chinese imports, while China responded with tariffs of up to 125% on American goods.
During the dispute, Beijing also restricted exports of rare earth minerals critical to US high-tech and defense industries, disrupting supply chains and forcing some American manufacturers to suspend production.