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Iran blocks US-backed plan for Syrian military intervention in Lebanon

Al Mayadeen | August 13, 2026

Iran has thwarted a planned Syrian military intervention in Lebanon that was being prepared at the request of the United States, delivering a direct warning to Damascus that any Syrian military entry into Lebanese territory would be met with a regional response, according to Iranian sources cited by U News.

The Iranian warning included threats to stir up the Syrian–Iraqi border, open a confrontation line in Homs, support Alawite movements in the Syrian coastal region, and encourage the Kurds to return militarily to the outskirts of Aleppo.

The warning was not directed solely at Damascus; it also reached Ankara, Baghdad, Doha, and Riyadh, carrying the message that any Syrian adventure against Hezbollah in Lebanon would not remain confined to the Bekaa Valley but could turn into a broad regional confrontation within Syrian territory.

Iran succeeded in transforming any potential Syrian intervention in Lebanon from a military option that could be marketed to the US into a high-cost regional adventure, sources said. The Iranian warning, which reached Damascus through Turkish channels, included a threat of Iranian ballistic missile strikes that would begin from Damascus and include, in the first wave, more than 100 strategic targets, foremost among them the Syrian presidential palace.

The US-backed scenario: a three-pronged offensive into Lebanon

The scenario promoted by figures linked to the US embassy in Lebanon involves sending Syrian armed units from the Masnaa crossing toward Chtoura in the Lebanese Bekaa and on to the city of Zahle, simultaneously with mobilization from the eastern highlands toward the city of Baalbek.

The proposed scenario also includes declaring the city of Tripoli a Syrian zone of influence, with advancing forces benefiting from local environments, particularly in some Sunni-majority areas.

The presumed goal of the operation is to strike Hezbollah’s rocket infrastructure in the Bekaa and to create military and political pressure that would force the party to withdraw or accept new security arrangements.

Hezbollah prepared, treats potential Syrian operation as US-Israeli pressure

Iran’s warning has prompted regional parties to reassess the cost of the scenario, especially since Syria, emerging from deep military and political transformations, does not appear capable of enduring a new internal war.

Hezbollah is treating the information about a potential Syrian intervention extremely seriously and has taken precautionary measures in the Bekaa in anticipation of any possible Syrian incursion.

Hezbollah does not view the scenario as a separate Syrian operation, but rather as part of US–Israeli–regional pressure aimed at dismantling the structure of resistance in Lebanon from the east, following Israel’s failure to achieve a decisive result in the south.

Iraq’s rejection, UAE’s enthusiasm, and Saudi caution

Iraqi intelligence chief Hamid al-Shatri visited Damascus and informed Syrian officials of Baghdad’s rejection of any Syrian military expansion into Lebanese territory. Al-Shatri warned that Iraqi forces, primarily factions of the Popular Mobilization Forces, might enter Syrian territory if an intervention against Hezbollah occurred.

The Iraqi position added a further layer of deterrence to the Iranian warning, signalling that Damascus could face military pressure not only from within Syria but also from its eastern border.

The UAE is enthusiastic about funding any Syrian military operation in Lebanon, with officials quoted as ready to pay troop salaries as well as finance combat operations. This financial backing suggests that the UAE views the intervention as an opportunity to curtail Hezbollah’s influence in Lebanon, despite the broader regional risks that Iran has highlighted.

Qatar rejects Syrian intervention in Lebanon, while Saudi Arabia does not object to an intervention as long as it is within arrangements that weaken Hezbollah without igniting the region. The divergent positions among Gulf states underscore the complex calculations at play, with Riyadh appearing to balance its opposition to Hezbollah against the dangers of a wider conflict that Iran has explicitly threatened to unleash on Syrian soil.

August 13, 2026 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Wars for Israel | , , , , , , | Comments Off on Iran blocks US-backed plan for Syrian military intervention in Lebanon

Trump wants to talk to Hezbollah. Will they pick up the phone?

By Ali Rizk | Responsible Statecraft | August 13, 2026

For decades, U.S. policy in Lebanon has focused on the elimination of Hezbollah, or at least its military wing. But the Trump administration has taken this effort to new heights.

The State Department is sponsoring the first ever direct talks between Lebanon and Israel since the Madrid peace talks, with the disarmament of Hezbollah being a central objective of those talks.

Washington has also taken the unprecedented step of sanctioning individuals from outside the party whom it accuses of undermining the campaign against Hezbollah, including members of Lebanon’s state security apparatus. Meanwhile, the U.S. and Israel are engaged in an unprecedented financial crackdown on Hezbollah, as the New York Times reported this week.

Ironically, however, Donald Trump is also the first sitting American president to express a willingness to hold direct talks with the Lebanese Shiite movement.

“I would speak to Hezbollah. I speak to everybody. I’ll speak to people that a lot of people think I shouldn’t be speaking to, and things work out,” Trump told reporters during an oval office meeting with his Lebanese counterpart Joseph Aoun last month.

While it would be easy to dismiss these remarks as typical Trumpian grandstanding, there appears to be more to the story.

Multiple reports have recently emerged indicating that serious attempts have been made to open direct channels between Washington and Hezbollah.

According to the Middle East Eye, Trump told Beirut’s ambassador to Washington last May that he wanted to talk to the group in a bid to salvage a shaky ceasefire with Israel. The Lebanese presidency reportedly turned down the request over concerns that holding such talks would undermine Aoun by bypassing the Lebanese government.

That same report quotes senior Lebanese officials saying that both the Trump administration and some of its predecessors have attempted to open direct channels with Hezbollah, but the group rejected these advances.

Another recent report by the Lebanese daily Aljoumhouria revealed that senior Iraqi officials told a visiting Hezbollah delegation that Iraq was ready to sponsor and host direct talks between Washington and the Lebanese Shiite movement. The offer, the report noted, was made shortly before Iraqi Prime Minister Ali al-Zaidi’s recent visit to Washington, only to be turned down by Hezbollah.

Sources from within the Lebanese Shiite movement confirm that there has been a recent push to establish direct channels between the two sides. “The Americans have made several attempts through a number of intermediaries to engage directly with Hezbollah,” a Hezbollah source explained to RS. “It’s true that al-Zaidi pursued such efforts, but certainly not at our request.”

Interestingly, however, senior Hezbollah officials refused to clarify the group’s stance on the issue despite media reports that it had flatly rejected such offers. “Hezbollah wants to keep its stance concerning this issue out of the media, without giving any indication as to how it will respond to such initiatives,” a political official in the Lebanese Shiite movement told RS. “Our policy is to not reveal how we intend to approach this issue”.

This suggests that Hezbollah is not necessarily rejecting dialogue with Washington out of hand. Talks “will happen if there is an opportunity that presents itself,” said Muhanad Hage Ali, deputy director for research at the Carnegie Middle East Center in Beirut.

“But there will be an ambiguity because the organization basically tries to avoid acknowledging that they’re discussing anything with the ‘Great Satan,’” Hage Ali said, referencing a term Iran and its allies use to label the United States.

According to Hage Ali, who has authored numerous publications about Hezbollah, the group stands to benefit from such dialogue in more ways than one. “Direct contact between the U.S. and Hezbollah would eventually undermine the Lebanese government track,” he explained, in reference to the direct talks Lebanon’s government is holding with Israel. “This is useful for Hezbollah.”

Hezbollah could also use talks with Washington to make a deal under which any measures related to its weapons and military activities would be conditioned on amending Lebanon’s constitutional system to “grant Lebanese Shiites a bigger share of power,” Hage Ali said.

Still, it is difficult to see Hezbollah negotiating away its weapons absent an Israeli withdrawal from Lebanese territory and a genuine guarantee that Israel will permanently end military operations in Lebanon. This stems from the fact that the group was founded as a resistance movement against Israel back in the early 1980s, long before it became a political party in 1992.

Meanwhile there is little to suggest that Israel is willing to take any steps that would encourage Hezbollah to take a more flexible stance.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu reportedly told a recent cabinet meeting that he will not succumb to American demands to withdraw troops from Lebanon. Israel’s Foreign Ministry even published a map where parts of southern Lebanon appeared incorporated into Israel. The map, which Israel posted on X, stirred an uproar in Lebanon before it was taken down. (Israeli officials described the controversial map as the result of “an artificial intelligence error.”)

There is also the issue of Iran which has only doubled down on its support for its Lebanese ally. Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Mujtaba Khamenei has framed support for Hezbollah as a “strategic mandate” for the Islamic Republic, while underscoring that any deal with the United States is contingent on respecting Lebanon’s territorial integrity and an end to Israeli military operations in the country.

That Khamenei cast his country’s support for Hezbollah in strategic terms — and not merely as an ideological obligation — supports the notion that the Iranian leadership believes supporting the group has become a greater necessity in the wake of the recent conflicts, not least given how Israel has directly attacked Iran in these wars. In other words, rather than weakening the bonds between Tehran and Hezbollah, Israeli attacks on Iran have apparently strengthened these bonds, giving them a stronger strategic rationale.

Against this backdrop, it is far more plausible that, at least for now, Hezbollah is pinning its hopes on what comes out of a potential agreement between Washington and Tehran, as opposed to riskier paths like direct talks with the Trump administration.

“The objective behind the American attempts to establish direct channels with us is to remove Lebanon and Hezbollah specifically from the Islamabad talks,” explained the first Hezbollah source, referencing U.S.-Iran negotiations in Pakistan.

Holding talks with the United States as a separate track from Islamabad would place Hezbollah in a weaker position, he argued, while being part of a framework with Iran which “hold strong cards” means that any agreement reached “will have guarantees.”

Ali Rizk is a security analyst with a Masters Degree in Counterterrorism from Australia’s Macquarie University. Rizk is a contributor to the American Conservative, and his work has appeared in the National Interest, Middle East Eye, and the Australian Institute for International Affairs.

August 13, 2026 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Wars for Israel | , , , , , | Comments Off on Trump wants to talk to Hezbollah. Will they pick up the phone?

Israeli-occupied Golan Heights inseparable part of Syria, says Iranian Foreign Ministry

Press TV – August 13, 2026

The Iranian Ministry of Foreign Affairs has denounced the latest claims by Israeli officials over the occupied Golan Heights, emphasizing that the strategic region is an “inseparable” part of Syria.

The ministry, in a statement released on Thursday, vehemently condemned the rhetoric of criminal Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu that the Golan Heights, occupied by the Tel Aviv regime for almost 60 years, will remain part of Israel “for eternity”, and his fierce opposition to the establishment of a Palestinian state.

“Basically, the leader of the criminal gang and mafia ruling over the occupied Palestinian territories is not in a position to comment on the formation of an independent Palestinian state, because the Palestinian land belongs to the Palestinian people, and the racist illusions of the genocidal Zionist regime cannot change this reality,” the statement added.

It added that “the Golan Heights are an inseparable part of the territory of Syria, and the colonial ambitions of a usurping and occupying entity cannot change its legal and historical realities.”

The Iranian foreign ministry also condemned Colombia’s recent recognition of the Israeli regime’s sovereignty over the occupied Golan Heights, calling it a violation of the UN Charter and international law.

“Within this framework, the Colombian government’s recent decision to recognize the sovereignty of the Zionist regime over the occupied Golan Heights is completely rejected and condemned, and constitutes a clear violation of the fundamental principles of the Charter of the United Nations and international law concerning respect for the sovereignty and territorial integrity of states,” the statement also read.

It noted that such an action also conflicts with the recognized principle of international law prohibiting recognition of the effects of unlawful acts and entails international responsibility of the Colombian government.

While emphasizing the legal, moral and humanitarian obligation of all governments, particularly Muslim countries, to help Palestinians achieve their right to self-determination and freedom from the Zionist regime’s occupation, apartheid and colonialism, the Iranian Ministry of Foreign Affairs recalled the responsibility of the UN Security Council to stop the occupation and relentless aggression of the Zionist regime against occupied Palestine, Lebanon, Syria and other countries in the region.

The statement went on to note that the Palestinian issue remains the most important humanitarian and moral subject of the contemporary world, which began in 1948 with the creation of a fabricated entity in the historic land of Palestine and, through its cancerous expansion, has made the entire West Asia region and the world insecure.

“There is no doubt that the comprehensive support of the United States and certain Western countries, including Britain, France, Germany and Canada, for the genocidal Zionist regime has been the main factor behind its impunity and has led to the continuation and intensification of its expansionism and crimes in the region,” the statement pointed out.

The Islamic Republic of Iran, while reiterating its principled position in support of the legitimate struggle of the Palestinian people to liberate their land from occupation, strongly condemns any attempt to marginalize the Palestinian issue, the Iranian foreign ministry concluded.

August 13, 2026 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Illegal Occupation, Timeless or most popular | , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Israeli-occupied Golan Heights inseparable part of Syria, says Iranian Foreign Ministry

The Mecca pact and the limits of a ‘Muslim NATO’

Divergent threats, US ties, and economic interests leave the collective-defense pact’s real purpose open to dispute.

By F.M. Shakil | The Cradle | August 13, 2026

The oil-rich Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, nuclear-armed Pakistan, and Turkiye, which commands NATO’s second-largest army, signed the Mecca Joint Defense Agreement on Friday, 7 August. The accord arrived as fighting again intensified in Yemen. Days later, the Ansarallah-aligned Yemeni armed forces (YAF) launched ballistic missiles at Marib and the Red Sea port of Mokha, the latest escalation against Saudi-backed forces.

Iran noted the turn toward regional security arrangements, saying it showed a growing recognition that security cannot be guaranteed by foreign powers. Foreign Ministry spokesperson Esmail Baghaei said the accord reflected a rapidly changing understanding of security across the region.

Pakistan welcomed the accord and said the Mecca agreement stipulates that an attack on any member will be treated as an attack on all. Islamabad described it as a major step toward stronger strategic relations, regional security, and cooperation in mutual defense.

Pakistan’s Deputy Prime Minister Ishaq Dar called the accord a defensive document that does not target any one country. Posting on X on 9 August, Dar said it remained open to any regional state willing to commit to its founding principles.

Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan went further, insisting that neither Iran nor any other country was the pact’s designated target. In an online discussion, he also expressed hope that Egypt would eventually join.

Veteran Pakistani diplomat Riffat Masood offered a narrower reading. In a discussion with Saudi-American researcher Dr Hamza al-Kanani, Pakistan’s former ambassador to Iran and Norway said the phrase “an attack on one is an attack on all” applies specifically to external threats.

“It does not have any regional implications, which means that this clause would apply whenever any country signing this agreement came under attack from Israel, the US, or any external force,” she claimed.

Masood added that the article does not cover intra-regional rivalries involving Iran or the YAF.

Egypt was conspicuous by its absence from the Mecca signing ceremony, despite taking part in months of foreign minister-level consultations with the grouping.

Cairo’s apparent disenchantment rests on the belief that the military agreement is driven more by political alignment than deployable defense capability. Egypt retains positive bilateral relations with the three signatories, but is wary of joining a Saudi-led bloc that could narrow its room for maneuver across the region.

“I expect more countries will join this alliance in the future. The alliance may expand beyond the military sphere to encompass economic and strategic dimensions in the future,” Sajjad Azhar, an Islamabad-based analyst, tells The Cradle.

Riyadh looks beyond Washington

Saudi Arabia’s security partnership with Washington dates to the closing years of World War II, when oil and strategic access became bound up with US protection. But Washington’s shift toward competition with China, coupled with its uneven responses to attacks on Persian Gulf partners, has pushed Riyadh to look for additional options.

The September 2019 attack on Abqaiq and Khurais, claimed by the YAF, temporarily knocked out around half of Saudi oil production. Washington did not retaliate militarily, despite US and Saudi accusations that Iran was responsible. For Riyadh, the episode exposed the limits of the US security umbrella.

The Hamas-led Operation Al-Aqsa Flood on 7 October 2023, and the regional war that followed added to Saudi concerns. Those concerns deepened after Israel’s September 2025 attack on Doha, which targeted Hamas negotiators in the capital of a US-allied Gulf state. Eight days later, Riyadh signed a bilateral defense pact with Pakistan.

The US-Israeli war on Iran launched on 28 February 2026 further exposed Arab states to retaliation without providing them with any clear say over Washington’s war aims. According to Azhar, the conflict reinforced the sense that reliance on a single external guarantor had become increasingly dangerous:

“The attacks launched by Tehran and its allies, including the Houthis [YAF] and Iraqi Shia armed organizations [PMU], against Saudi Arabia changed the situation. In this perspective, an end to recurring Iranian threats seems to have been the main strategic purpose behind the new alliance.”

Collective defense, undefined obligations

At the signing ceremony, the leaders of Saudi Arabia, Turkiye, and Pakistan displayed copies of the Mecca agreement, but its full provisions have not been made public. Beyond the collective-defense formula contained in the joint statement, analysts still lack details on command structures, activation procedures, force commitments, and the geographical reach of the pact.

Dr Muqtedar Khan, a US-based analyst and professor at the University of Delaware, tells The Cradle that the pact rests on two pillars: a collective-defense commitment and joint deterrence and defense cooperation. The first treats an armed attack against one of the three states as an attack against all three.

“This sets up a mutual-defense duty that is similar to NATO’s Article 5, but the details about how quickly and strongly they will respond are mostly unclear,” he says. The second pillar, he adds, resembles the bilateral Strategic Mutual Defense Agreement signed by Saudi Arabia and Pakistan last year.

Khan says the Mecca accord marks an important step in the region’s security evolution, showing how middle powers are seeking greater autonomy and a wider range of partnerships instead of relying almost entirely on the US:

“While it is premature to label it a fully fledged ‘Muslim NATO,’ the pact creates a new framework for collective deterrence and defense cooperation among three of the most consequential Sunni-majority states.”

Its durability and effectiveness, he says, will ultimately depend on how the parties define an “attack,” what each is prepared to do when the commitment is tested, and whether other countries join.

“For now, it functions as both a political signal of reduced dependence on external patrons and a practical platform for deeper military collaboration,” Khan says.

A pact made with Washington’s blessing? 

Washington’s public response to the Mecca Joint Defense Agreement has been notably restrained.

For some observers, the pact signals that US partners want to diversify their security arrangements after a succession of regional crises exposed the limits of depending on one external guarantor.

Others argue that, if the agreement produces stronger missile defense, maritime patrols, and a wider sharing of regional security burdens, it could advance Washington’s stated goals rather than threaten them.

The pact may therefore loosen exclusive dependence on the US without displacing the vast American military architecture already embedded in the region.

Retired Pakistani diplomat Abdul Basit, who served as high commissioner to India and as Foreign Office spokesperson, argued in a television interview that the trilateral agreement had Washington’s backing.

“Without US consent, these three regional actors could not succeed in creating a trilateral defense mechanism that challenges the US’s hegemonic security apparatus in the region,” he argued.

Other analysts likewise see an implicit US role in the creation of a large regional force whose likely purpose is not confrontation with Israel but containment of Iranian influence.

Imtiaz Gul, executive director of the Islamabad-based Center for Research and Security Studies (CRSS), tells The Cradle that Washington’s lack of opposition suggests the coalition was formed with at least tacit US approval and a clear assurance that it would not be directed against Israel:

“This alliance doesn’t significantly deter Iran from attacking US bases in Saudi Arabia. Iran is not attacking these countries but only hitting the US bases wherever they exist. As long as these bases remain there, Iran will continue targeting them in one way or another.”

Three states, three threat maps

The pact is also burdened by conflicting threat perceptions. Pakistan and Turkiye are unlikely to enter a direct clash with Israel while maintaining close strategic ties with Washington. This has fed suspicions that the bloc was established with US backing precisely because it does not challenge the regional red lines enforced by Washington.

Gul says the alliance is no uncomplicated marriage. Its central ambiguity remains unresolved: is it primarily a political declaration, or does it impose binding military obligations on its members?

“The three countries have different threat assessments and priorities. Pakistan’s focus is mostly on India and Afghanistan, but Turkiye or Saudi Arabia will not build deterrence for Israel or India due to their strategic and commercial interests. For Saudi Arabia, the emphasis is on maintaining stability in the Gulf area and promoting economic diversification. Turkiye is seeking to sell its military hardware, even though it has obligations as a NATO member.”

Pakistan and Turkiye also stand to gain financially from the pact as both manage strained economies. Turkiye has found a lucrative regional market for drones and aircraft, while Pakistan secures badly needed Saudi financing.

In August 2023, Saudi Arabia signed a record $3 billion deal with the Turkish defense firm Baykar to procure Bayraktar Akinci unmanned combat aerial vehicles (drones).

Saudi Arabia also committed a fresh $3 billion support package to Pakistan. The funding came in addition to $5 billion in Saudi deposits previously placed with Pakistan and extended through 2028. The new support helped Islamabad repay roughly $3.5 billion owed to the UAE later that month.

“The public relations advantages for Pakistan are evident, but only time will reveal whether the alliance will yield any financial benefits that trickle down to the poor masses,” Gul remarks.

For now, the Mecca pact’s signatories have announced collective defense without revealing who would command it, which threats would activate it, or what each capital would actually risk for the others.

Until those questions are answered, the Mecca pact remains more a declaration of intent than a functioning military alliance.

August 13, 2026 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism | , , , , , , | Comments Off on The Mecca pact and the limits of a ‘Muslim NATO’

The Caspian Sea: America’s New Eurasian Containment Arena

By Salman Rafi Sheikh – New Eastern Outlook – August 13, 2026

The Caspian Sea — for thirty years a backwater of great-power politics — has quietly become a battlespace, and most of the world is still treating it as a footnote.

In late July, Iranian officials confirmed that a US strike had damaged the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ Seyyed al-Shuhada naval facility in Zibakenar, in Iran’s Caspian province of Gilan — the first time in the current war that Washington has reached into Iran’s Caspian coastline. Days earlier, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky announced that Kyiv’s drones had struck several vessels in the Caspian more than 1,000 kilometers from Ukrainian-held territory, including a ship reportedly ferrying military cargo from Iran toward Russia. Iran, however, said one of the vessels hit was carrying iron ore from Astrakhan to the Iranian port of Anzali and summoned Ukraine’s chargé d’affaires in protest.

Neither strike, on its own, would rewrite anyone’s map. Together, they are a signal. For the first time, the US and US-backed Ukraine have demonstrated that they have the will and the reach to hit targets on a sea that geography, more than strategy, had long kept insulated from direct confrontation. The Caspian’s basin states — Russia, Iran, Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan and Azerbaijan — built an entire diplomatic architecture, including a 2018 legal convention on the sea’s status, around the premise that outside militaries would stay out. That premise no longer holds.

What is emerging is not a contest for territory in the traditional sense. It is a contest over connectivity: over the ports, rail lines, pipelines, and shipping lanes that allow Russia, Iran, and, at one remove, China to function as an integrated economic and strategic space rather than three isolated, sanctioned, or otherwise constrained powers. Call it America’s New Eurasian Containment: a strategy that treats infrastructure, not territory, as the terrain worth contesting.

Severing the Connective Tissue

The clearest evidence of this shift sits not on the Caspian’s water but on its shores, in two projects Washington has spent the past year reshaping.

The first is the International North-South Transport Corridor, a roughly 7,200-kilometer multimodal freight route agreed upon by Russia, Iran, and India in 2000 that links the Indian Ocean, through Iran, across the Caspian, to Russian rail networks and on to Europe. Long stalled by under-investment, the corridor has become a priority for Moscow since 2022, precisely because it offers a way around Western sanctions. Its central artery is the Caspian crossing between the Iranian port of Bandar-e Anzali and the Russian port of Astrakhan. More importantly, it is the same stretch of water where Ukrainian drones struck in July and where Israeli forces had already hit Iranian naval and port assets at Anzali back in March, according to regional shipping trackers. A degraded, contested Caspian corridor is a direct blow to the one overland route that lets Moscow and Tehran trade around US and European sanctions. These attacks are, therefore, not about the US war on Iran; they are about reshaping the very geography of trade passing through the Eurasian landscape.

The second is the Trump Route for International Peace and Prosperity, or TRIPP — the transit corridor Washington brokered in August 2025 between Armenia and Azerbaijan, granting a US-led consortium a 99-year lease to build and manage rail, energy, and fiber-optic links through Armenia’s Syunik province. The deal ended a decades-old territorial dispute, but its geopolitical function is narrower and sharper. It places Iran’s only land border with Armenia under American-supervised transit control, cutting off Tehran’s most direct overland access into the South Caucasus and, by extension, into a region Russia has treated as its own backyard since the Soviet collapse. Whatever the deal’s stated humanitarian purpose, it functions as a wedge driven into Eurasian connective tissue.

Neither project was designed with the other in mind. But together with the Caspian strikes, they describe a single logic: deny Russia and Iran the infrastructure that lets their January 2025 Comprehensive Strategic Partnership — a 20-year treaty covering defense, energy, finance, and counterterrorism cooperation — translate into real economic integration rather than a document signed in Moscow. China, meanwhile, watches from the margins. Beijing has no naval presence on the Caspian and is not a party to any of these strikes or corridors, but its own westward trade ambitions run through the same chokepoints, i.e., the Middle Corridor via the South Caucasus, and Iranian ports as a Belt and Road terminus. A Washington-controlled TRIPP and a contested Caspian complicate China’s overland options as a side effect, even if Beijing was never the intended target.

A Frontier Without a Front Line

The danger in this strategy is precisely that it has no clean edges. Containment during the Cold War had defined lines — the Fulda Gap, the Elbe, the 38th parallel — and a doctrine that most parties understood. Infrastructure containment has none of that. A drone strike on a cargo ship, an airstrike on a naval depot, and a 99-year land lease branded with a president’s name: each is individually deniable, incremental, and justifiable in its own narrow terms, even as the cumulative effect reshapes the strategic map of an entire region. That ambiguity is a feature for Washington, which can advance the strategy without ever declaring it. But it is also a source of volatility because affected countries are left to infer intent from actions rather than respond to a stated policy. And, inferences, in a region this armed and this aggrieved, tend toward worst-case assumptions.

The more durable question is what happens once the corridors themselves become targets, not just prizes. Pipelines, rail lines, and undersea cables may now be legitimate objects of great-power coercion. If so, the Caspian will not be the last “peripheral” space pulled into contested geography. The Arctic shipping lanes, the Malacca chokepoint, and the fibre-optic seabed of the Indian Ocean are all candidates for the same treatment. In this environment, the states that thrive will not be the ones with the largest militaries. They will be the ones that make their infrastructure redundant, diversified, and defensible: multiple routes, multiple partners, no single artery whose loss is fatal. Iran and Russia have bet heavily on a small number of chokepoints. Their partnership may keep deepening going forward. But the deeper it goes, the more attacks it will face and endure.

Salman Rafi Sheikh, research analyst of international relations and Pakistan’s foreign and domestic affairs

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August 13, 2026 Posted by | Economics, Militarism, Wars for Israel | , , , | Comments Off on The Caspian Sea: America’s New Eurasian Containment Arena

US Spent $533 Million on Shell Factory That Produced Zero Usable Shells — Reports

Sputnik – 13.08.2026

A US Army-funded artillery plant near Dallas, built to produce 155mm shells for Ukraine, never produced a single usable shell, ProPublica reported.

Workers described robots catching fire, machines smashing into equipment, steel cracking beyond repair and giant presses needing to be beaten with a sledgehammer just to function.

“It was just a bunch of guys taking turns going at the machine with a sledgehammer every night,” one former employee said.

The Army halted work on two of the plant’s three production lines in 2025 after General Dynamics missed multiple deadlines.

The company was still awarded billions in new contracts.

The US keeps pouring money into its proxy war machine — and sometimes the machine cannot even make the shells.

Russia has repeatedly warned that such weapons deliveries only prolong the conflict.

August 13, 2026 Posted by | Militarism | | Comments Off on US Spent $533 Million on Shell Factory That Produced Zero Usable Shells — Reports

Israel Fabricated Iranian Assassination Threat Against Trump In Attempt To Ramp Up Iran War

The CIA Has Accused Israel Of Fabricating Iranian Assassination Threat

By Justin K.P. | The Dissident | August 13, 2026

Last month, “intelligence” was relayed by Israel that Iran was supposedly planning on assassinating Trump, which resulted in him “secretly flying out of Turkey in an alternate military aircraft”.

But the claims of an Iranian assassination attempt against Trump relayed by Israel were deemed to be bogus even by U.S. intelligence.

The Washington Post reported that “The assassination threat was relayed by the Israeli government to the CIA, where analysts did not view the intelligence as compelling and conveyed that skepticism to Trump administration officials”.

The article added, “Another official called the reports of threats against Trump’s life ‘Israeli-derived, not U.S.-generated, and viewed as low confidence.’”

The article added, “Some U.S. intelligence officials saw Israel’s sharing of the warning about threats to Trump’s life as designed less to inform than to influence the president’s decision-making and U.S. policy in the region, a current and a former U.S. official said” with the report quoting one official saying it “fit a broader pattern of Israeli intelligence reporting that some officials see as designed as much to shape presidential decision-making as to inform it”.

Indeed, fabricated claims of Iran planning to assassinate Donald Trump seem to have been Israel’s most successful deception deployed to get Trump to carry out its preferred policy on Iran.

Journalists Max Blumenthal and Ken Silva have documented how the FBI recruited Pakistani national Asif Merchant to take part in a sting operation supposedly surrounding an Iranian plot to assassinate Donald Trump, in what Ken Silvia called “at the very least… a highly controlled FBI sting operation that never posed a threat to Trump” if not “a case totally fabricated by the undercover agents”.

Since then, Benjamin Netanyahu has repeated baseless claims of Iran trying to assassinate Trump in an attempt to get him to go to war with Iran.

In June of 2025, Benjamin Netanyahu baselessly claimed that Iran was behind the assassination attempts against Trump by Thomas Crooks in Butler, Pennsylvania, and by Ryan Routh at Mar-a-Lago, claiming that Iran “tried to assassinate President Trump twice”.

This deception seems to have influenced Trump’s decision to bomb Iran for Israel in June of last year, with the White House tweeting “I was the hunted- now I’m the hunter” in reference to the bombing.

Fabricated claims of Iran trying to assassinate Trump were also a large part of Israel’s campaign to get Trump to enter a full-scale war on Iran this year.

According to Reuters, before the bombing, “Netanyahu, ‌determined to move forward with an operation he had urged for decades, argued that there might never be a better chance to kill Khamenei and to avenge previous Iranian efforts to assassinate Trump”.

It was also a key talking point of the late Neo-con Zionist senator Lindsay Graham, who joined Benjamin Netanyahu is lobbying Trump for the war.

According to the Wall Street Journal, “Graham likened Iran’s leader to Adolf Hitler and told Trump that Iran was in a historically weak position. They talked about the regime’s efforts to assassinate Trump in 2024. ‘If you think Trump forgets stuff, you’d be mistaken,’ Graham said.”

Yet again, Israel has fabricated claims of Iran trying to assassinate Trump in an attempt to get him to ramp up the Iran war.

August 13, 2026 Posted by | False Flag Terrorism, Wars for Israel | , , , | Comments Off on Israel Fabricated Iranian Assassination Threat Against Trump In Attempt To Ramp Up Iran War

Misleading intelligence is worse than fake news: Araghchi warns US

Al Mayadeen | August 13, 2026

Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi has warned US officials that misleading intelligence can be more dangerous than false news, pointing to Washington’s record of strategic miscalculations.

In an English-language post, Araghchi called on US officials to “beware,” arguing that intelligence failures have repeatedly contributed to major US miscalculations.

He said the United States has “long made miscalculations due to shortcomings in intelligence,” citing the war on Iran as a prominent example.

Araghchi also identified the Strait of Hormuz as “an even bigger miscalculation”; he argued that Washington was making a major mistake in thinking that it can control the key waterway.

Araghchi warns Washington over intelligence failures

Araghchi’s warning comes amid continued scrutiny of intelligence assessments surrounding the US-Israeli war on Iran.

The Iranian foreign minister’s argument centers on the consequences of intelligence failures when they become the basis for military and foreign-policy decisions.

An inaccurate assessment can extend beyond the intelligence community, shaping decisions over military operations, diplomatic pressure, sanctions, and escalation.

The warning also comes as questions have emerged in Washington over intelligence supplied by “Israel”.

Israeli intelligence raises questions in Washington

According to a report by The Washington Post, cited in the source material, the Israeli government informed the CIA about an alleged threat to assassinate US President Donald Trump in Turkey.

The newspaper reported that US analysts did not find the information convincing. American intelligence officials were also reportedly skeptical of Israeli information concerning an alleged Iranian threat.

A US official cited by the newspaper reportedly said that reports concerning threats to Trump’s life originated with “Israel” rather than US intelligence and described them as “low credibility.”

US intelligence officials reportedly told The Washington Post that “the Israeli warning was aimed at influencing US policy in the region,” raising questions over whether the warning was primarily intended to protect Trump or influence Washington’s regional calculations.

Hormuz becomes a central point of confrontation

Araghchi’s warning also directly addressed the Strait of Hormuz, as Tehran’s ability to leverage its geographic control of the vital waterway continues to undermine trust in Washington’s war plans.

Iran has emphasized its authority over the strategic waterway and maintains that its reopening depends on the United States fulfilling Iranian conditions.

The strait’s importance extends far beyond the immediate confrontation. It is a critical maritime passage for global energy supplies, making developments surrounding it consequential for regional security and international markets.

For Iran, control over the waterway represents a significant strategic lever as US military pressure continues. For Washington, efforts to compel its reopening carry broader geopolitical and economic implications.

August 13, 2026 Posted by | Deception, Wars for Israel | , , | Comments Off on Misleading intelligence is worse than fake news: Araghchi warns US