10K More U.S. Troops Deploy as Trump Weighs New Iran Strikes /Suliaman Ahmed
Daniel Davis / Deep Dive – October 3, 2026
Iran’s NPT debate moves beyond parliament
After two wars, Iranian lawmakers are pressing for an NPT exit. The argument now extends to whether a bomb would deter another attack.
By Fereshteh Sadeghi | The Cradle | October 2, 2026
After two rounds of US–Israeli attacks in the space of a year, pressure is mounting on Iran’s leadership to withdraw from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). Advocates say the treaty has failed to protect Iran’s civilian nuclear program or its scientists. Their opponents warn that withdrawal could provide Washington and Tel Aviv with a pretext for another assault. The argument now reaches well beyond the Majlis.
“A big decision in the offing” is one way to describe a motion that has sat with the Iranian parliament’s presidium for months. A group of lawmakers has now issued an open statement demanding that the Supreme National Security Council and Foreign Ministry begin the formal process of withdrawal from the NPT. They also want Tehran to end voluntary nuclear commitments beyond its treaty obligations.
The lawmakers argue that the NPT and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) have failed to safeguard Iran’s right to peaceful nuclear technology. They accuse the agency of allowing information obtained through inspections to reach Iran’s enemies, exposing nuclear facilities and scientists to attack.
Their statement follows years of dispute over the agency’s access to Iranian sites and the use of its findings by western governments. They invoke Article X of the treaty, which permits withdrawal when a state decides that extraordinary events have jeopardized its supreme interests. A withdrawal would require three months’ notice to other parties and the UN Security Council.
A motion awaiting debate
In the wake of that open statement, Isfahan lawmaker Hussein-Ali Haji-Deligani revealed he and his colleagues submitted legislation on Iran’s withdrawal from the NPT months ago, and it is up to parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf to put it to debate on the parliament floor. Heji-Delogani reiterated:
“Considering enemies’ wars against Iran on two occasions, the continuation of Iran’s membership in the NPT has no use, especially after the IAEA’s Board of Governors sent Iran’s dossier to the UN Security Council. Therefore, Iran should exit from the treaty to prevent further damage.”
Other lawmakers have turned their criticism on the parliamentary leadership. Tehran representative Kamran Ghazanfari blamed the presidium for keeping the motion off the floor, an accusation aimed principally at Ghalibaf.
Ghalibaf has aligned himself with Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian on several questions of state policy, drawing fire from former allies among the Principlists. The NPT dispute has become another point of contention between them.
Another parliamentarian, Mohammad-Reza Sabaghian, stated:
“We must use the courage that was shown and the right strategy to close the Strait of Hormuz in the discussion of withdrawing from the NPT. This is the second step that will lead to the failure of America’s plans.”
Mohsen Sani, a member of parliament’s national security commission, went further:
“In our opinion, the NPT no longer has any meaning or significance, whether we want to stay in it or leave it. When one of the NPT member states attacks another member (Iran), it means withdrawing from all these commitments and treaties that have existed in this regard. Recent pressures suggest that we should reconsider enrichment.”
The case for staying
The call for withdrawal has met resistance within Iran’s political establishment. Tehran lawmaker Mohammad Seraj sees no benefit in leaving. Unless Iran intends to build a bomb, he argues, the step would only damage its relations with friendly states.
Khorasan, a newspaper close to Ghalibaf, has criticized lawmakers for “radicalizing the political ambiance of the country and forcing the Islamic Republic to make such a sensitive decision,” describing it as “a gift to Trump.”
The outlet maintains that “any moves towards leaving the NPT give enough justification to Trump and Netanyahu for their future strikes against Iran while it alienates friends such as China and Russia who have always supported Iran’s legitimate right to a non-military nuclear program.”
Rouydad24, a news site with strong ties with the Reformist camp, lambasted lawmakers as “radicals” who “have returned with a controversial and costly prescription.”
The Reformist news site charges that “Pezeshkian’s critics have turned withdrawing from the NPT into a political slogan without considering it is a complicated matter economically, militarily and internationally.”
Where the decision rests
The debate has become a challenge for Pezeshkian, whose government has defended Iran’s continued place in the treaty. But the president is not the only voice in the room. Mohsen Rezaei, secretary of the Supreme National Security Council, has openly raised the possibility of withdrawal.
Rezaei said, “After the United States abandoned the post-war Islamabad Memorandum of Understanding, we reached the conclusion that we must change course. We have yet to take a decision on withdrawing from the treaty, because our withdrawal totally depends on Washington’s behavior.”
The senior general admits that the Islamic Republic is still committed to the late supreme leader Ali Khamenei’s religious prohibition on the use of nuclear weapons and has not changed its nuclear doctrine; however, “nobody can guarantee the future,” he elaborates.
Is Iran seeking a nuclear weapon?
In an exclusive interview with the Republican Party’s mouthpiece, Fox News, Pezeshkian flatly denied Iran is seeking an atomic bomb, adding that his country is even willing to dilute the 440-kilogram uranium stockpile purified at 60 percent and allow the IAEA’s nuclear inspectors to supervise Iran’s nuclear program.
Pezeshkian made those claims while the Islamic Republic does not allow international inspectors to visit its nuclear facilities, which were destroyed by the US and Israel during two wars in June 2025 and February-March 2026.
Pezeshkian’s assurance contrasts with Rezaei’s warning that the country’s future course cannot be guaranteed. Reports in Tehran that Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei has ruled out nuclear talks with Washington remain unconfirmed; they offer no basis for treating such a ban as settled policy.
A decision above the Majlis
Iran’s NPT membership has moved from a technical and legal question into a wider argument over deterrence after the attacks on its nuclear facilities. The parliamentary bill gives that argument a public stage, but lawmakers alone will not settle it.
The final decision would be made at the highest levels of the Islamic Republic’s political and security establishment. A vote in the Majlis could put a formal stamp on a course set elsewhere, as earlier nuclear legislation did.
The 2020 Strategic Action Law to Lift Sanctions, for example, obliged the government to expand nuclear activity and restrict inspections if sanctions relief did not materialize. It sharply constrained the Rouhani administration’s room for maneuver over the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) nuclear agreement. The precedent is relevant because a bill presented as a parliamentary initiative can become a lever for policy agreed across the state’s security institutions.
For now, proposals to leave the NPT and calls to build a bomb circulate side by side. That does not establish that either has been adopted. It does show how far positions once kept at the edges of public debate have entered the argument over Iran’s security.
Lawmaker Ahmad Bakhshayesh Ardestani has advocated building a nuclear weapon first and withdrawing from the NPT afterward, “because only in that case, it can guarantee deterrence against a renewed US-Israeli aggression.”
Even Khorasan, which warns against leaving the NPT now, does not rule out an exit. Its argument is that Iran should first build and test a nuclear weapon. Until then, it says, Tehran would bear the costs of a nuclear-armed state without possessing a nuclear deterrent.
The disagreement in Iran is no longer confined to whether the country should leave the treaty. It is also about when.
Houthis condemn Saudi claims of attack on Medina
RT | October 2, 2026
Yemen’s Houthis have denied targeting a power station in the city of Medina. A Saudi-led coalition earlier accused the militant group of targeting the facility supplying power to the Prophet’s Mosque – one of the holiest sites in the Muslim world.
A senior Houthi official branded the accusation a “lie” aimed at tarnishing the group’s image and reinforcing similar claims made by the coalition in the past.
On Thursday, the Saudi coalition’s spokesman, Major General Turki al-Maliki, accused the Yemeni militants of striking the Taibah electricity distribution station in Medina earlier this week in what he called a “cowardly terrorist act” and a part of an alleged broader campaign by the Houthis to “target the Two Holy Mosques.”
In mid-September, Saudi Arabia accused the Houthis of launching a drone towards the holy city of Mecca. The unmanned aerial vehicle was intercepted and destroyed, it added. The Yemeni movement’s leader, Abdel-Malik al-Houthi, dismissed that claim as a “heinous lie” in a televised address at the time, claiming Riyadh was “weaponizing lies” to advance its own agenda.
The developments have sparked concerns in Türkiye and Pakistan, which signed a joint defense agreement with Saudi Arabia in August. Speaking to the United Nations General Assembly last week, Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif called any “threat to the sanctity” of the Muslim holy cities of Mecca and Medina a “red line that must never be crossed.”
Ankara denounced this week’s alleged Medina attack. “Any attack targeting the sanctity, peace, and security of the Two Holy Mosques is an unacceptable affront directed at the shared sensitivities of the entire Islamic world,” the Turkish government spokesman, Burhanettin Duran, said on X on Friday. He vowed that Türkiye “will continue to stand by Saudi Arabia.”
The developments come amid the continued escalation between the Houthis and the Saudi-led coalition. Riyadh has backed Yemen’s internationally recognized government against the Houthis since intervening in the country’s civil war in 2015.
Large-scale fighting largely subsided after a UN-brokered truce in 2022, but the conflict erupted again this summer after an airport in the Houthi-controlled Yemeni capital of Sanaa was bombed to prevent a returning Houthi delegation that had flown to Iran from landing.
Fatuous False Flags
By Craig Murray | October 2, 2026
Rather than abandoning the plainly nuts Fairford narrative, Burnham and his government are doubling down on the claim it is an Iranian terror plot.
It remains quite possible the men were indeed fuel thieves, simply stealing fuel from farms. They appear to have been equipped for fuel theft and all they were carrying was petrol. It is worth a footnote that there is a very real history of US military personnel, and indeed British personnel, selling military fuel from bases. Stolen red diesel meant for HMS Bulwark fuelled fairground rides throughout England, which I think is rather lovely. But if the Fairford Five were fuel thieves, farms are more probable as the target.
We should pause here to acknowledge that USAF Fairford is falsely designated RAF Fairford, itself a propaganda lie, just like “RAF Lakenheath” or “RAF Mildenhall”. The UK is full of US military bases, on which US law applies. (My birth certificate gives my father’s occupation as “Clerk USAF”. He was employed at Mildenhall at the time).
It is a classic example of state propaganda that the petrol discovered in the Fairford vans was described by counter terror police as a potential accelerant for a bomb.
Well yes, petrol is that. It has however, rather more obvious uses too. The same technique was used at the height of the War on Terror propaganda in the Great Easter Bomb Plot, that never was. Police rounded up and arrested many young Muslims across the Manchester region, which was front-page news. They were all later released without charge.
But at the time of arrest the police announced they had found a potential bomb-making ingredient in a kitchen.
Well, they had. It was a bag of sugar. Sugar is indeed a potential bomb-making ingredient. Yet most of us have a bag in the kitchen. At least it did not take the police ten days to find the bag of sugar in the kitchen, unlike when they searched Charlie Rowley’s flat for a vial of novichok, and it took them ten days to “find” a bottle of perfume sitting on the kitchen counter.
For Fairford, on balance I think a false flag gone wrong is a little more likely than just fuel thieves. We know the men had no bombs and no guns, which makes the terrorist narrative rather hard for the government to sustain. But if they were patsies set up in a false flag, there would be plenty of things already on the base that go bang which could have been used to create the “terrorist incident” around them.
Two key points make me think this was a false flag. Firstly the lady farmer who called 999 was adamant there were more men that the five arrested and bailed. The others would have been the spycops – agents provocateurs – who would have been quietly spirited away from the scene. That also fits with the released information that it was one of the men who phoned in a warning about the “attack”.
It looks to me like a false flag spectacular had been planned, with US involvement as claimed by Trump and possibly Israeli knowledge as claimed by Netanyahu. This operation by the security services was viewed as over the pay grade of local police (who might be inconveniently honest) who were not in the picture. It all went horribly wrong for the government when an alert local farmer called the local police, and when a participant also called it in. That could have been one of the recruited “terrorists” who got cold feet, or one of the agents panicked they had lost contact with their line of command.
The use of recruited patsies to carry out false flags is now better understood. I have been writing about it since before the Newburgh bomb plot which was a particularly egregious example. In the United States there has been more awareness of and reaction to agent provocateur incited plots than in the UK.
For anyone sceptical, here is a summary of Newburgh:
In May 2009 the FBI arrested four poor men from Newburgh, New York, and announced it had foiled a plot to bomb two synagogues in the Bronx and shoot down military planes at Stewart Air National Guard base. The plot, the targets, the inert bombs and the disabled Stinger missile were all supplied by the Bureau. The recruiter was Shahed Hussain, a Pakistani fraudster who had become an informant to avoid deportation after a driving-licence scam. Paid nearly $100,000, he spent more than a year fishing at a Newburgh mosque, posing as a wealthy Jaish-e-Mohammed agent, before latching onto James Cromitie, a Walmart stocker and petty drug dealer.
Hussain offered heavenly reward and as much as $250,000. Cromitie brought in three others: Onta Williams, David Williams and Laguerre Payen. Hussain drove them across a state line to inspect the fake weapons, which federalised the charges and carried a 25-year minimum. They were convicted in 2010.
The sentencing judge, Colleen McMahon, said she believed beyond a shadow of a doubt that there would have been no crime except that the government instigated it, planned it and brought it to fruition. In 2023 she ordered the release of three of them, calling it an FBI-orchestrated conspiracy and writing that the real lead conspirator was the United States. She freed Cromitie in 2024 on the same basis, describing him as a small-time grifter with no history of violence and Hussain as a villain who had lured him with promises of both heavenly and earthly rewards.
The Golders Green ambulances arson was a classic of this false flag genre. Four young Muslims were recruited, in this case online rather than in person, by someone they never saw who was almost certainly a Mossad agent. They were offered money to attack the ambulances, which they did. The attack is then blamed on Iran through a claim on a Telegram channel on behalf of an “Iranian organisation”, Harakat Ashab al-Yamin al-Islamia, which is a Mossad fabrication.
HAYI first became known to the world through simultaneous press releases on 16 March by five Israeli government outlets in Israel, US and UK (including BICOM) and an article by the Israeli front “Foundation for Defending Democracy”. The FDD’s Nick Stewart travels with Kushner and Witkoff as part of the US negotiating team on the Middle East.
There are numerous reasons for doubting the real existence of HAYI. None of its material is in Farsi. All of its “attacks” have been minor arson attacks on pointless targets that hurt nobody. The grammar, calligraphy and imagery of its materials are all wrong.
The UK state itself has now debunked some of the Mossad HAYI narrative. On 29 April, when Essa Suleiman stabbed three men, the entire media blocked out the first Muslim victim and claimed an antisemitic terrorist attack on the two in Golders Green. The HAYI Mossad run “Iranian” Telegram channel immediately put out a statement claiming responsibility for the attack. But yesterday police and prosecution were forced to drop the claim it was a terrorist attack at all. The stabbing of the Muslim is charged as attempted murder, though still ignored by the media. So “HAYI” claimed responsibility for a non-existent terrorist incident.
A false flag can be, but is not necessarily, the state planting a bomb and then blaming someone else. It can be more complex – the state recruiting people to plant bombs. Those people may believe they are genuinely part of an ideological campaign, or may just be doing it for money.
The opaque Starmer rent-boy arson plot, in which Ukrainian male models burnt property associated with Keir Starmer, remains unclear, largely because any discussion of what lay behind the attacks was banned by the judge in the trial. But the media, with government encouragement, continually relays the story that the arsonists were recruited online by a man known as “El Money”. An interesting twist here is that the media constantly refer to him as Russian-speaking. But the evidence in court is that he spoke both Russian and Ukrainian.
Almost all adult Ukrainians can speak Russian. The number of Russians who speak Ukrainian is very small. Yet El Money is now routinely portrayed as Russian.
Which brings us to the whole question of Russian “hybrid attacks”, where we are asked to believe the narrative of the security services of states whose leaders are openly promoting war with Russia, about desultory and mysterious attacks. The rather sorry Leipzig drone is a good example. We have a more recent claim of Russian arson from Estonia, a state which has instituted massive discrimination against the 29% of its population who speak Russian.
Not only has Estonia closed Russian schools, libraries, theatres, churches, cinemas and university courses, it even refuses passports to people born and bred in Estonia, whose parents were born and bred in Estonia, if they cannot speak Estonian. That is totally contrary to numerous UN, Council of Europe and OSCE instruments on protection of minority linguistic rights.
It is one thing to insist on language qualification for citizenship for new immigrants. Many countries do. It is quite another thing to deny citizenship to a native linguistic minority. Estonia was part of Russia from 1721 to 1919 and of the Soviet Union from 1941 to 1991. It has Russian speakers.
So I decline to believe the Estonian government on Russian “hybrid attacks”.
Which brings us to the amazing “FlyDubai” hijacking and the heroic plumber who knew how to rescue a plane from a death dive because he watched Air Crash Investigation.
There are real problems with this narrative. One is that the plane is said to have dived approximately 15,000 feet in about 30 seconds. This is said to be confirmed by independent flight trackers.
The force was so enormous that the rudder ripped off the plane.
Picture a dive of 500 feet – that is more than a 40 storey building – per second. Picture that. 500 feet in a second. Imagine yourself falling that fast. The forces would be enormous inside the cabin. Anybody not strapped in would be lifted right out of their seats and probably hit the ceiling. Many would be injured. Any unfastened object, including major ones like food trollies, would be hurled about with great force. Baggage lockers would come unlocked as the weight of the bags inside was hurled up. Remember this dive ripped the rudder off. It would be impossible for anyone not strapped into their chair to keep their footing or seat.
We have a great many videos from on board the plane but nothing like this is shown. No video shows this kind of extreme situation, and the cabin at the end of the flight is remarkably undisturbed.
There is also a problem with that flight-tracking data. As pointed out by this commercial pilot on CNN, a plane can’t easily slow down in mid-air. He is disbelieving of how quickly the flight trackers show the plane returning to normal speed. He is also deeply sceptical of the ability to control the plane after the rudder came off due to loss of hydraulic fluid, and of the chances of the airframe staying together. Now compare that to the lack of cabin tumult.
I have seen it argued that if you entered the dive very gently and carefully without sudden change of pitch, and exited it similarly smoothly, then you would avoid extreme G-forces and the cabin might be relatively undisturbed. Even if so, it is hard to imagine the kind of smooth transition into the dive in the circumstances we are told were occurring in the cockpit, with the co-pilot deliberately putting the plane in a death dive while fighting with the pilot.
The smooth transition out of the dive in the official story was achieved by a plumber who knew what to do from watching Air Crash Investigation. I don’t think I need to comment on that.
We will never find out the truth about FlyDubai. The plane diverted to Saudi Arabia. The copilot who is being painted as an Islamic extremist will be isolated there and tortured by the Saudis. Netanyahu has already said Israel will join the interrogation. Do not believe any confession or evidence from the co-pilot.
The plane was a Boeing, so the USA will join the initial investigation alongside UAE, Saudi Arabia and Israel. A more potent coalition of Zionist evil does not exist. We will certainly have faked flight data recorder and cockpit voice recorder evidence coming from that shower.
I do feel something has snapped in people’s willingness to believe official narratives. The Skripal narrative was even more crazy than any of these, but most people still trusted government. Thankfully that faith has been seriously shaken.
Are Europe’s Smallest Nations Dragging the Continent into War?
By Urs Maurer-Lambrou | Forum Geopolitica | October 1, 2026
Six million people. That is the total combined population of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania—fewer residents than live in greater London. Yet these three border states now set the tone of foreign policy for a union of 450 million, telling Berlin, Rome, and Madrid how dangerous the world is and how much Western taxpayers must pay to fix it.
One Crown to Another
The Baltic national story likes to skip 1721, which is a shame, because it’s where the modern map starts. That year Peter the Great finished the Great Northern War with the Treaty of Nystad. Sweden handed over Estonia, Livonia, Ingria and part of Karelia; Russia evacuated most of Finland and paid Sweden two million silver thalers. Historians still argue about what the money was for. Western reference works tend to call it compensation, while the Russian Presidential Library’s account says flatly that Russia paid it for the acquisitions. Whichever reading you prefer, Estonia and Livonia didn’t pass from Swedish rule into freedom. They passed from one crown to another. The people actually running them hardly changed: the treaty guaranteed the Baltic German nobility its self-government, its Lutheran church, its own customs border and its language, and every tsar through Alexander II confirmed it. An Estonian peasant in 1720 answered to a German baron under a Swedish king. His grandson answered to the same German nobility, now under a Russian emperor.
Lithuania got there differently, as half of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, absorbed in the partitions. Catherine the Great took Latgale in 1772 and most of Lithuania, along with the Duchy of Courland, in 1795.
The point isn’t the borders; plenty of European states are young. The point is the story. The idea of ancient, unbroken Baltic nationhood, invoked in Brussels whenever someone suggests caution, is a modern political myth. Independent statehood lasted about twenty years between the wars. The current stretch began in 1990–91.
Not One Inch
The next chapter opens in Moscow on 9 February 1990. The Berlin Wall had been down for three months. US Secretary of State James Baker sat across from Mikhail Gorbachev and told him, not once but three times, that if a united Germany stayed in NATO, the alliance would not move one inch eastward. Helmut Kohl said much the same the next day. It wasn’t a slip of the tongue. Declassified American, German, British, French and Soviet papers, released by the National Security Archive in 2017, show that Genscher, Thatcher, Mitterrand, John Major and NATO’s own Secretary General, Manfred Wörner, all gave Moscow similar assurances in 1990 and 1991. None of it went into a treaty.
That turned out to be very convenient. In 1990 NATO had 16 members. In 1999 it took in Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic. In 2004 it swallowed seven more countries in one go, among them Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, three former Soviet republics. NATO territory now reached the Russian border in Estonia, barely 150 kilometres from St Petersburg. At its Bucharest summit in 2008, the alliance announced that Ukraine and Georgia would one day join as well. Finland and Sweden followed after 2022. Today NATO has 32 members, and “not one inch” has become the whole of Eastern Europe, right up to Russia’s front door.
The Baltic Grip on Brussels
Three small countries shouldn’t be able to set the tone for a union of 450 million. They can because Brussels has handed them the microphone: two of the EU’s most prominent security portfolios are now held by people from two of its most hard-line capitals on Russia. Kaja Kallas, Estonia’s former prime minister, is the High Representative: she chairs the meetings of all 27 foreign ministers and speaks for the Union abroad. Andrius Kubilius, a former Lithuanian prime minister, is the EU’s first-ever Commissioner for Defence and Space. No voter anywhere in Europe chose either of them for those jobs.
Kallas comes from a family that has always been close to power, whoever held it. Her father went from Communist Party official in Soviet Estonia to Reform Party founder to EU Commissioner: what Germans call a “Wendehals”, a turncoat. In May 2024, weeks before her nomination, she said a Russian defeat would not be a bad thing and remarked that Russia is made up of many nations. Germany’s Volksstimme read it as floating Russia’s break-up, an odd thing for Europe’s next top diplomat to muse about a nuclear power. Over both of them sits Ursula von der Leyen, whom EU leaders produced at the last minute in 2019 and Parliament confirmed with 383 votes, nine more than she needed. She arrived from the German defence ministry, where she’d left behind a Bundeswehr failing its readiness targets and a parliamentary inquiry into consultancy contracts.
Barking on Command
It would flatter the Baltic governments to think they run the show. They don’t. They bark because it suits the people holding the leash. In Brussels, home to the headquarters of both the EU and NATO, the big capitals write the policies. The Baltic capitals enforce them at the border, say the things Berlin and Paris would rather not say out loud, and take the first swing. That is why the EU’s diplomatic megaphone went to Tallinn and its defence portfolio to Vilnius. Nobody appointed Kallas and Kubilius to calm things down.
Kaliningrad in 2022 showed how it works. Brussels drew up sanctions on Russian steel; Lithuania enforced them to the letter and halted rail shipments to the exclave in June. Moscow called it a blockade, and Nikolai Patrushev, then head of Russia’s Security Council, warned that Lithuanians would feel the consequences. Within a month the Commission issued new guidance letting the goods through again. Vilnius had done exactly what it was told, and was left standing alone in front of Moscow while Brussels quietly backed away.
Three years later it was Estonia’s turn. Brussels had spent months announcing crackdowns on Russia’s “shadow fleet” of ageing, poorly insured tankers. On 13 May 2025 the Estonian navy tried to stop one of them, the Jaguar, in international waters off Tallinn. The crew ignored the orders and sailed on to the Russian port of Primorsk. Estonia said a Russian Su-35 then entered its airspace for about a minute with its transponder off, and NATO scrambled a fighter to meet it: a Portuguese F-16, from a country 3,000 kilometres away. Nobody fired, this time.
Meanwhile the big dogs are being moved into position behind the small ones. In 2023 Berlin pledged a full armoured brigade for Lithuania, about 4,800 soldiers, at a new base at Rūdninkai near the Belarusian border. It formally began operating in 2025 and is due at full strength by 2027. It is the first permanent deployment of German troops abroad since the Second World War.
European Values, Baltic Edition
After 1991, Latvia and Estonia gave automatic citizenship only to pre-1940 citizens and their descendants. Hundreds of thousands of Soviet-era residents, most of them Russian speakers and many born in the country, became “non-citizens” with alien passports and no vote in national elections. Riga insists that “non-citizen” is a legal status, not an ethnic label, yet about two-thirds of Latvia’s non-citizens are ethnic Russians. UN and OSCE bodies criticized the system for years. At the start of 2026, non-citizens were still 8.7% of Latvia’s population, by the Latvian government’s own figures.
It has got tighter since 2022, not looser. Schools in Latvia have moved to Latvian-only teaching and Estonia’s are following. Latvia told Russian citizens with permanent residence, many of whom had lived there for decades, to pass a basic Latvian test or risk losing that status. And on 26 March 2025 Estonia’s parliament voted 93 to 7 to amend the constitution so that only Estonian and EU citizens can vote in local elections. On paper it covers all non-EU nationals. In practice it was aimed at about 80,000 Russian citizens, plus Belarusians, and everyone knew it. Stateless “grey passport” holders were given one last local election, in October 2025, before losing their vote as well.
It’s hard to take a lecture on European values from governments that treat their own long-term residents this way.
Who Pays the Bill
Vilnius loves to talk in percentages, because percentages flatter small countries. Lithuania pledged 5% of GDP for defense in 2026 before Donald Trump had even made his 5% demand in January 2025, and its 2026 budget comes in at 5.38%. In May 2025 the three Baltic defence ministers told every ally to match it. In June, at The Hague, NATO made 5% its target for 2035.
Forget the percentages. Look at the money. Lithuania’s entire 2026 defense budget is €4.79 billion. At 5% of its economy, Germany would be spending more than €200 billion a year, over forty times as much. Even the core 3.5%, before the extra 1.5% for infrastructure and other defence-related spending, would come to around €150 billion. For Italy the full target would mean more than €100 billion a year, for Spain around €80 billion, and both are already carrying some of the heaviest public debt in Europe. The Baltic states set the bar; the big economies get the bill.
Spain, at least, had the nerve to say no. Pedro Sánchez called the 5% target “unreasonable,” refused to sign up to it, and left The Hague with an exemption: 2.1% of GDP and not a cent more. Trump called Spain “a very low payer.”
Nobody Asked the Voters
Were Western Europeans ever asked if they wanted this? Only by pollsters. In 2015 Pew found 58% of Germans, 53% of French and 51% of Italians against using military force to defend a NATO ally attacked by Russia. In a survey Pew published in 2020, majorities in Germany, Italy and Spain still said no. Support for the EU paying for weapons for Ukraine has slid nine points, from 65% in early 2023 to 56% this spring. In France, backing for arms deliveries dropped 18 points, from 65% in March 2022 to 47% this February. By late 2024, YouGov found a negotiated peace between Ukraine and Russia preferred over fighting on by 55% of Italians, 45% of Germans and 43% of the French. A Politico poll last December found French and German adults leaning toward scaling support back. And this summer, majorities in Germany and France said no to Ukraine joining the EU as a full member.
That isn’t Germany, France, Italy or Spain itching for a wider war. It’s a public that was never asked, has grown more sceptical every year since 2022, and is now being handed a bill it never ordered: a target worth more than €200 billion a year in Germany alone, cheered on from Vilnius and signed off in Brussels by officials no voter chose.
When the Money Runs Out
The Hague deal has a review built in for 2029. My prediction: by then, Spain won’t be the only country saying no. The money ran out years ago; what’s being spent now is borrowed. Germany even rewrote its constitution in 2025 so it could borrow for defence outside its own debt brake.
In 1721 Peter the Great settled the Baltic’s fate with a treaty and two million silver thalers. Three centuries later, the region’s future is still being decided by bigger powers doing the sums.
So, are Europe’s smallest nations dragging the continent into war? Not on their own. They do the barking; Brussels holds the leash. And Berlin, Rome and Madrid are being dragged along behind, towards a confrontation their voters never chose, paid for with money they no longer have.
Maybe that is the one hopeful part. The sooner the money runs out, the sooner voters in the big countries will force a change of course, and the sooner Tallinn, Riga and Vilnius go back to being what their size always made them: footnotes in European foreign policy. That may be what finally keeps Europe out of a direct war between nuclear powers.
EU draws up contingency plans for possible Merz exit
Al Mayadeen | October 2, 2026
The European Union has begun assessing contingency scenarios in case German Chancellor Friedrich Merz leaves office or becomes increasingly focused on domestic political difficulties, Politico Europe reported Friday, citing diplomats and European officials.
According to the report, governments in two European countries have held internal discussions on how a possible end to Merz’s chancellorship could affect EU policymaking.
The discussions reportedly reflect growing concern in Brussels over political instability in Germany following major electoral setbacks for Merz’s governing conservatives and renewed tensions within the coalition.
Recent regional elections have weakened Merz politically. Reuters reported that the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) suffered its worst-ever result in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania in September, failing to clear the threshold to enter the state parliament, while the Alternative for Germany (AfD) made further gains.
Berlin’s Political Turmoil Raises EU Concerns
Politico Europe reported that officials consider two scenarios particularly disruptive: Germany being left without an effective leader or a right-wing government emerging in Berlin. However, the report said both scenarios are viewed as unlikely in the short term.
Under Germany’s constitutional system, a chancellor cannot simply be replaced by a successor appointed by the governing party. The Bundestag elects the chancellor, meaning any leadership change would require the necessary parliamentary majority.
For Brussels, the political uncertainty matters because Germany remains the EU’s largest economy and a central actor in negotiations over major bloc-wide policies.
Reuters reported Thursday that Merz is facing growing domestic pressure, while speculation about possible successors has emerged within the CDU. Merz has nevertheless rejected calls to step aside and continues to pursue his government’s policy agenda.
EU Budget Dispute Adds Pressure
Merz’s domestic political position could also affect negotiations over the EU’s next seven-year budget.
According to Politico Europe, Germany is part of a group of member states, including the Netherlands, Sweden, Denmark, Austria, and Finland, seeking substantial reductions to the proposed long-term EU budget. The report said officials believe domestic political pressure could encourage Berlin to take a tougher negotiating position in Brussels.
The budget dispute comes as EU governments debate competing priorities, including defense, industrial investment, infrastructure, and support for Ukraine.
Military Buildup Remains Central to Merz’s Agenda
Despite the political pressure, Merz’s government continues to prioritize strengthening Germany’s armed forces. Reuters reported that Berlin’s debt-financed investment drive is supporting both infrastructure and military expansion, while the government has committed hundreds of billions of euros to rebuilding the armed forces.
Merz has also reaffirmed Germany’s support for Ukraine and called for stronger European military capabilities, while accusing Russia of conducting hybrid attacks against Europe. Moscow has rejected such accusations.
Any change in Berlin’s political leadership would therefore carry implications beyond Germany, potentially affecting EU budget negotiations, defense policy, relations with Russia, and the bloc’s wider strategic direction.
G7 caves to US blackmail, announces ‘massive’ release of diesel reserves
The Cradle | October 2, 2026
G7 states will release up to 100 million barrels of emergency oil and diesel stocks over the next four months, French President Emmanuel Macron announced on 2 October, bowing to US pressure to tame diesel prices driven to record highs by the war on Iran.
The release will be coordinated by the International Energy Agency (IEA), and comes the same day as European Commission spokesperson Anna-Kaisa Itkonen said the EU “fully” rejected US threats to halt diesel exports unless Europe drew down more of its reserves.
“We fully reject any ban on diesel. A ban would not be beneficial to anyone. It would undermine our trust in the United States as a reliable partner,” she said.
She added that the EU Oil Coordination Group, due to meet on 15 October, could convene sooner if necessary.
Macron, who currently chairs the G7, had also spoken out against any export ban in a call with US President Donald Trump earlier that day, with his office saying he urged G7 states to act together “without export restrictions.”
The diplomatic scramble followed a push a day earlier from US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, who urged European states to speed up delivery on their existing reserve commitments.
“American farmers, truckers, and businesses should not be left carrying the burden of a global diesel shortage,” he wrote on social media.
Trump threatened the diesel export ban earlier this week, a move EU trade chief Maros Sefcovic warned would have “dramatic consequences for our economic performance.”
The US has threatened to starve France and Germany of diesel unless they release their emergency diesel stocks, with a European source saying Washington is pressing the EU to hand over 120 million barrels within six months.
China has also suspended refined fuel exports for October to rebuild its own depleted reserves, according to Reuters, further tightening a global market already strained by the US war on Iran.
Europe’s reliance on US fuel, which deepened after it banned Russian imports and the US-Israeli war on Iran cut supplies from West Asia, has cost the bloc more than $113 billion in extra energy payments this year, without it receiving “one extra molecule of gas or oil,” according to European Energy Commissioner Dan Jorgensen.
Meanwhile, Washington is also lending energy companies another 40 million barrels from its Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR).
The reserve has already fallen to its lowest level since 1982, and releasing the full amount would drag it below the minimum set under federal law.
Reporting of the RAF Fairford arrests blows the idea of a ‘free press’ out of the water
When the establishment media jettisons even the semblance of critical distance from the state
By Jonathan Cook | September 30, 2026
It’s easy to forget that the western media – the so-called “free press” – likes to distinguish itself from media in authoritarian regimes on the basis that, unlike them, it asks critical questions of the powerful, reports facts objectively, and formulates its analyses dispassionately.
They do propaganda, we do news – or so the western media argues.
The feverish coverage since five men were arrested in the early hours of Sunday morning close to RAF Fairford in the UK is blowing a very big hole in that claim.
Here are the known facts so far.
Three white vans, bearing the logo of a genuine fuel transit company, were spotted by a local farmer on the road outside her property as she returned from a party. Police arrived promptly and arrested the men, who were all British nationals in their twenties.
On Tuesday, it emerged that one of the arrested men actually called the police earlier – seemingly the reason officers were on the scene so quickly.
Although the men were initially arrested on explosives charges, no “viable” explosives were found. Although they were arrested on terrorism charges, which allow for 14 days of detention, they were released on bail under normal criminal laws in less than two days.
It has also emerged that the men had several empty “barrels” in their vans, plus one that contained what police described disturbingly as an “accelerant”.
Actually, that was simply a reference to petrol. The stuff that goes into vehicles to make them accelerate.
British prime minister Andy Burnham held a rare national emergency Cobra meeting over the incident.
Meanwhile, the Trump administration got involved because RAF Fairford, despite its name, is in reality a US air base from which American planes are waging an illegal war of aggression against Iran, with the UK’s blessing.
US Secretary of state Marco Rubio has said the incident “clearly involves the hands of a foreign actor”. When asked whether Iran was that actor, Trump replied: “It might be.” He added: “I know the answer… I can be very specific, but I’d rather not say.”
According to a report in the New York Times, “American and British intelligence services worked with Israel and Western countries to discover the threats against US bases, including ones in Germany.” [my emphasis]
Despite these sparse facts, the British media have uniformly rushed to a single conclusion: that this was almost certainly part of an Iranian terror plot to target the US airbase and its planes. The only room for debate allowed is whether the five men were witting or unwitting actors in that plot.
As the Guardian reported in its Wednesday edition, referring to this as a “complex investigation”: “An Iranian link to the bizarre events in the Gloucestershire countryside over the weekend is seen as increasingly likely.”
As context, let us note the following: that British and US officials have every interest in trying to hype this incident as an Iranian “terror plot”, whatever the actual evidence suggests.
Why? Because the US is waging an illegal war on Iran, and the UK is allowing it to do so from British soil. Under the rules of war, Iran has every right to attack RAF Fairford.
If the British state and billionaire-owned media were actually serving as a truly “free press”, they would be offering the context that RAF Fairford is a legitimate military target and that any attack on it by Iran would not constitute terrorism.
Of course, none have done so.
Instead, they have loyally regurgitated the British and US security services spin of a “terror plot” – based on no tangible evidence at all – that paints Britain and the US as the victims of a sinister and unwarranted act of Iranian aggression.
But context aside, an objective, sceptical media – a “free press” – would be reserving judgment on what had happened. It would be asking difficult questions. It would be offering plausible counter-narratives.
Again, none of this is happening. In the British media, there has been a lemming-like rush towards accepting uncritically the very conclusions that best serve British and US state interests.
The constant highlighting of a terrorism connection to the arrested men – for which there is no apparent evidence – is precisely the kind of coverage you would expect from state media in an authoritarian regime. This is about whipping up a public mood of fear, not about transparent fact-finding.
Notably, unlike the British media, the New York Times report does allow for another possibility, even if it instantly ignores it and then joins the British media in treating what evidence there is as proof of an Iranian terror plot.
The Times opens with a question: “The potential ambiguities – were the men Iranian operatives, petty gas thieves, or both? – added to the confusion surrounding the arrests that the authorities have yet to fully explain.”
“Petty gas thieves”! Men in vans with empty barrels close to a farm in the middle of the night. Is it possible they could simply be criminals?!
In fact, this conjecture has been all over social media since the first reports of the men being arrested surfaced. As new details have emerged, those suspicions have only grown.
And yet Britain’s “free press” has uniformly ignored this counter-theory in favour of the US and British security services’ narrative.
Doubtless, British journalists covering this incident would call the idea that this was simply a criminal group caught in the act unhelpful “speculation”.
But how is their no-more-plausible, and possibly less plausible, theory that this was an Iranian terror plot not equally speculation – if in their case, speculation that happens to be extremely helpful to the British and US security establishments?
There are other theories we could posit too, given the known facts. Israel, which originally pushed for the illegal and disastrous war on Iran, has been looking for a way to persuade the Trump administration to return to a full-scale bombing campaign.
US increasing Middle East military buildup – AP
RT | October 2, 2026
Washington is sending more warships and troops to the Middle East as US President Donald Trump is considering the resumption of large-scale strikes against Iran after the midterms, AP has reported.
Trump told reporters on Thursday that he has “to make a decision: either Iran signs a very fair deal, or it won’t exist any longer.” In a Time magazine interview published the same day, he said that new attacks on the Islamic Republic were “possible” after the US election on November 3, but declined to reveal any further details.
In its article on Thursday, AP said that a third aircraft carrier and some 9,000 additional service members, including 7,000 sailors and 2,000 marines, are currently on their way to the area of the conflict with Iran.
It would increase the US military presence in the Middle East to more than 20,000, which is “an unusually high number,” it stressed.
The forces on the move include the USS Theodore Roosevelt carrier strike group, with the cruiser USS Chosin and the USS Makin Island amphibious readiness group, which includes the USS John P. Murtha and USS Anchorage amphibious landing ships, an unnamed American official told the agency.
With the USS George H.W. Bush and the USS George Washington already being deployed, three US aircraft carriers could be in the Middle East simultaneously as early as the end of October, according to the source.
Washington last had as many carriers in the region in April at the height of the American-Israeli missile exchanges with Iran. Before that, it happened back in 2003.
Axios reported on Friday, citing a US official, that it wasn’t yet clear if the USS Theodore Roosevelt would join the two carriers or replace one of them.
Washington also sent two additional Patriot missile batteries to protect oil and gas facilities in Saudi Arabia and Qatar in recent weeks, according to Axios. It was done to make it easier to get permission from Riyadh to use Saudi airspace for possible strikes on Iran, the outlet explained.
When asked by Time if the conflict with Tehran would harm the Republican Party’s chances in the midterms, Trump first acknowledged that “it’s possible,” but then said that “it should help, because Iran will not have a nuclear weapon.”
A poll by AP-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research, which was published on Thursday, suggested that some 70% of Americans disapprove of the war with Iran.
After the initial US-Israeli attack on the Islamic Republic in late February, Trump claimed that the conflict will be over in a few weeks, but it’s still ongoing, with the diplomatic process remaining in a stalemate.
Trump told Time that he rejected Iran’s latest peace proposal, made during the UN General Assembly last week, because “things that I wouldn’t have approved a year ago I wouldn’t have today.”
In September, Iranian Parliament speaker and top negotiator Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf warned that further aggressive actions by the US will be met with “faster, heavier and more painful” retaliation by Tehran.
“The Americans have surely understood that the era of proportionate responses has come to an end and our recent strikes against aggressor bases were only a start,” Ghalibaf said.
Flydubai scenario: Netanyahu’s plot to drag US to war with Iran, stay in power
Press TV – October 1, 2026
The Flydubai plane incident appears to have been part of a scenario concocted by Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu and UAE President Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan.
Its aim, observer say, is to divert attention from the growing scandal over Netanyahu’s handling of the October 7 Hamas operation, shore up his position ahead of Israel’s October 27 election and create a pretext for a new confrontation with Iran.
The scenario unfolded days after Netanyahu’s reported secret visit to Abu Dhabi, where he met bin Zayed amid mounting political pressure over allegations that the UAE leader had warned him in advance of an impending Hamas operation.
According to the account, the purpose of the arrangement was to manufacture a dramatic security incident involving an Israeli-heavy Flydubai flight, portray it as a terrorist attack, introduce an Iranian connection into the narrative and use the resulting alarm to reinforce Netanyahu’s security credentials and build support for renewed military action against Tehran.
The Flydubai Boeing 737, carrying 174 passengers, most of them Israeli settlers, made an emergency landing in Saudi Arabia on Wednesday following what was described as a violent confrontation between the pilot and co-pilot in the cockpit.
Netanyahu and his war minister, Israel Katz, immediately characterized the incident as a “terrorist” attack. Netanyahu subsequently compared it to the September 11 attacks, claimed the Omani co-pilot had undergone “radical indoctrination” and suggested that Iran could have been involved.
Yet no public evidence has established an ideologically-motivated attack or an Iranian connection.
Indeed, early Israeli media reports offered entirely different explanations, including a personal dispute or an attempted suicide by the co-pilot. Israel’s Channel 12 reported on Thursday that the Saudi investigation had found no indication of terrorism at that stage.
The timing, however, gave the episode a clear political value for Netanyahu.
Israeli media have reported that Netanyahu is under pressure ahead of the October 27 election, while the controversy surrounding the October 7 Hamas operation continues to raise questions about his regime’s warnings and preparedness.
Haaretz reported on September 9 that bin Zayed had spoken to Netanyahu roughly 10 days before the October 7 operation and warned him of a threat from then-Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar, who was reportedly preparing a “huge surprise.”
Bin Zayed had also previously alerted Israel’s Shin Bet intelligence agency, according to the report.
Netanyahu’s reported secret visit to Abu Dhabi therefore assumed particular significance. Israeli media reports said the purpose of the visit was to ask bin Zayed to deny reports that he had warned Netanyahu about the looming Hamas threat.
Against this backdrop, the alleged Flydubai scenario provided Netanyahu with an opportunity to shift the political narrative from questions over the October 7 failures to a new story about “terrorism”, Iranian threats and the need for renewed confrontation.
Netanyahu repeatedly raised the possibility of an Iranian connection despite acknowledging that Israel had received no specific intelligence warning about the flight and that investigators had found no evidence linking Tehran to the incident.
He told CNN that he had spoken with US President Donald Trump about the incident and its wider implications for global aviation. Trump separately confirmed that the two had discussed the matter at length.
The objective, according to the account, was not simply to generate domestic political headlines. By bringing Iran into the story, Netanyahu could potentially create a new security crisis capable of drawing Washington into another confrontation with Tehran.
Analysts have nevertheless warned against making such a connection.
Dani Citrinowicz, an Iran affairs researcher at Israel’s so-called Institute for Security Studies, warned against linking the incident to Iran.
According to Maariv, he said there was a difference between preparing for possible scenarios and creating the impression that another war was imminent.
He warned that if Tehran concluded Israel was preparing an attack, it could take pre-emptive action, which Israel might then interpret as confirmation of its original assessment, producing a cycle of escalation.
Citrinowicz described the situation as “playing with fire” and warned that statements by Israeli officials could become a “self-fulfilling prophecy.”
Other analysts have reportedly described the attempt to connect the incident to Iran as sounding like “a Hollywood screenplay.”
Flydubai itself has urged against premature speculation until the investigation is completed and suspended flights between Dubai and Tel Aviv while the investigation continued.
The Netanyahu-bin Zayed arrangement therefore presents the incident not as an isolated aviation crisis, but as a politically constructed scenario with three interconnected objectives: diverting attention from the October 7 scandal, strengthening Netanyahu’s position ahead of the election and creating a new pretext for confrontation with Iran.
Netanyahu has said Israel will determine within days whether the co-pilot had links to Iran, adding, “We will get to the bottom of it.”
The central question surrounding the episode, therefore, is not what happened inside the cockpit, but the deliberate construction of a security narrative around the flight designed in advance to transform an unexplained aviation incident into a potential pretext for a new war with Iran.
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Sam Husseini: The entire US establishment helped lie their way into the Iraq war
By Slava Zilber | American Herald Tribune | October 14, 2019
Sam Husseini is a senior analyst with the Institute for Public Accuracy, independent journalist and contributor to The Nation and FAIR.
Slava Zilber: Sam, three years ago, you appeared on Talk Nation Radio with David Swanson and spoke about the case of the GCHQ whistleblower Katharine Gun. You pointed out that the people involved in the spying on the UN and the people authorizing the Iraq War were not held accountable:
“Virtually everybody who went along with the war, whether it is Kerry or Clinton, of course, the Bush administration themselves has falsified their own records in terms of why, what they did, when they did, why they did it, to the extent that they’ve been scrutinised at all.”
You also address it in a recent article. And recently, Joe Biden has been lying about his position on the Iraq War. How can such an important issue escape meaningful scrutiny? … continue
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