The United States Army has been forced by Iran’s resolute resistance to procure outdated PAC-2 Patriot missiles for the first time in decades, as its vaunted air defense stockpiles were severely depleted during its war of aggression against Tehran.
Raytheon RTX received a $441.6 million contract modification on April 30 for the production of Patriot Guidance Enhanced Missile-Tactical (GEM-T) interceptors, essentially upgraded versions of the older PAC-2 series, to support what Washington called Operation Epic Fury, twz.com reported on Thursday.
The rush order, funded by special fiscal 2026 appropriations outside normal budgeting, demands completion by September 30 and marks the first domestic US purchase of these missiles in over 30 years. Work is underway solely at Raytheon’s Chambersburg, Pennsylvania facility, the only US production line for the system.
The move comes after American forces expended an estimated 1,060 to 1,430 Patriot interceptors between late February and early April 2026 in a desperate attempt to counter Iran’s precision missile and drone strikes.
What began as a reckless imperialist assault aimed at crippling Iran’s defensive capabilities quickly exposed the fragility of US and allied air defenses.
Iranian forces, employing a sophisticated mix of ballistic missiles, cruise missiles, and low-cost drones, overwhelmed the expensive Western systems, forcing repeated high-cost intercepts that drained inventories at an unsustainable rate.
PAC-2 GEM-T missiles rely on blast-fragmentation warheads designed primarily for tactical ballistic missiles and aircraft. They are widely acknowledged as less capable than the more advanced PAC-3 variants, which use hit-to-kill technology for greater precision against modern threats. Yet the US Army has no choice: production of newer interceptors cannot keep pace with consumption, and existing PAC-3 stocks have been further strained by transfers to the Kiev regime, the Zionist entity, and Gulf monarchies.
This desperation underscores the strategic failure of Washington’s aggression. Iran’s resilient missile industry and asymmetric capabilities turned the tables, compelling the Pentagon to scramble for whatever interceptors it can obtain, even decades-old designs that were phased out of primary US inventories long ago.
Analysts note that each PAC-2 costs significantly less than a PAC-3 but offers diminished performance, highlighting how Iran’s cost-effective saturation tactics rendered America’s multi-million-dollar defenses economically and operationally bankrupt.
The contract’s urgency, with full funding obligated immediately and a compressed five-month delivery window, reveals the depth of the crisis.
US officials have long touted the Patriot as the “gold standard” of air defense, yet the reality of confronting a determined and technologically sovereign nation like Iran has laid bare its limitations.
Stockpiles were already pressured by prolonged support for proxy conflicts, but the direct confrontation with Iran’s armed forces accelerated the depletion beyond recovery through standard channels.
As the Islamic Republic continues to strengthen its deterrent posture, this procurement serves as an admission of vulnerability.
The United States, despite its vast military-industrial complex, finds itself recycling outdated hardware while Iran demonstrates the superiority of indigenous innovation and national resolve. The war machine that sought to impose its will has instead been forced to dig into the past, a telling indicator that aggression against Iran carries unsustainable costs.
R. James “Jim” Woolsey, a major Iraq and GWOT promoter and neoconservative Democrat, passed away Tuesday at 84.
Woolsey served briefly as CIA director but rose to much greater prominence as a consistent promoter on television and in the Wall Street Journal’s op-ed pages of both the Iraq War and the broader Global War on Terror, which he sometimes referred to as “World War IV.”
Indeed, immediately after the 9/11 attacks, Woolsey was ubiquitous in arguing that Iraqi President Saddam Hussein not only was linked to al-Qaeda but may very well have approved or helped plan the plot himself.
After being forced out of his CIA director role by President Bill Clinton in 1994, Woolsey moved increasingly to the right, as noted in a generally respectful obituary published by the New York Times Wednesday, joining with the Washington-based Likudist neoconservatives led by the “Dark Prince” himself, Richard Perle of the American Enterprise Institute (AEI).
Woolsey, an engaging if rather glib speaker who never seemed to run out of words, became a key part of what George Mason University anthropologist Janine Wedel identified as the “Neocon Core” in the years running up to and following the Iraq War and the GWOT. That included the promotion of confrontation with Syria and Iran as well as other states deemed hostile to Israel, and, hence, in their view, to the United States, as well.
That 11-member core, according to Wedel, included men who would hold key posts under President George W. Bush, among them Bush’s future deputy defense secretary Paul Wolfowitz; his undersecretary of defense, Douglas Feith; his director for Near East policy on the National Security Council, Elliott Abrams; and Vice President Dick Cheney’s chief of staff and national security adviser, I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby.
All of these men served on a variety of overlapping boards of major Washington-based organizations and think tanks that aligned themselves with Israel’s right-wing Likud Party. Together, these groups acted as a remarkably effective media echo chamber after 9/11 and in the run-up to the Iraq invasion, particularly in spreading mis- or disinformation about Saddam’s alleged development of nuclear and other weapons of mass destruction programs and ties to al-Qaeda.
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Woolsey was involved in nearly all of the veritable galaxy of neoconservative front groups created to advocate for policies like invading Iraq. He held positions on the advisory and other boards of CSP, WINEP, and the Committee for the Liberation of Iraq. He also served as the chair of the Leadership Council of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD), which, for most of the past 20 years, effectively replaced AEI as the most prominent pro-Israel Washington think tank promoting war with Iran. Woolsey was also a co-founder of United Against a Nuclear Iran (UANI), an advocacy group closely tied to Israeli intelligence that has promoted comprehensive economic sanctions against Tehran since its founding in 2008.
Although Woolsey was not a signatory of PNAC’s 1997 charter, which was signed by a number of top Bush Jr. policymakers, including Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, he did sign on to nine of the group’s open letters, including an April 2002 statement that called for the administration “to accelerate plans for removing Saddam Hussein from power” and asserted that “Israel’s fight against terrorism is our fight.”
Woolsey also served as a member of the Pentagon’s Defense Policy Board, a civilian advisory body during the Bush administration initially chaired and organized by Perle. Just days after 9/11, Perle convened the Board and invited Ahmed Chalabi, head of the previously CIA-backed opposition Iraqi National Congress (INC) and a long-time Perle collaborator, to participate in its deliberations about Iraq as a possible target for U.S. military action and regime change. As a result of that meeting, Wolfowitz dispatched Woolsey — who, like Perle, had already declared on network television news that Hussein was likely to have been behind the attacks on the Twin Towers and the Pentagon — to gather evidence about Saddam’s alleged (but non-existent) ties to al-Qaeda and a previous 1993 bombing in the parking garage of the World Trade Center.
His mission — about which neither the State Department nor the CIA (which had several years before severed ties with Chalabi due to their assessment that he was completely unreliable) were informed — ended without acquiring the desired intelligence. Still, Woolsey, backed by the administration and the neoconservative network and echo chamber of which he had become an important part, continued to claim that Saddam and al-Qaeda worked together.
Chalabi’s INC nonetheless became the key source of disinformation about Iraq’s alleged weapons of mass destruction that was seized upon and promoted to the mass media by the Pentagon, the White House, and the neoconservative echo chamber, including Woolsey himself.
Jim Lobe is a Contributing Editor of Responsible Statecraft. He formerly served as chief of the Washington bureau of Inter Press Service from 1980 to 1985 and again from 1989 to 2015.
The U.K. government recommended a risky drug combination for COVID-19 patients in 2020, just 16 days after warning doctors to use the medications together only as a last resort, medical commentator John Campbell, Ph.D., said this week.
For years, Campbell has criticized the widespread use of midazolam and morphine and other palliative drugs to treat COVID-19 patients, questioning why so many patients appeared to receive drugs commonly associated with end-of-life care — even though they didn’t necessarily have a terminal illness.
But in his latest video, he said he had overlooked a key piece of the puzzle: The U.K. government itself had backed guidance recommending the combined use of opioids and benzodiazepines for certain COVID-19 patients — just days after warning that the drug combination could cause fatal respiratory depression.
Campbell, who said a former member of the British Parliament brought the issue to his attention, called the apparent reversal “a national scandal which is being ignored.” … Full article
The United States benefits from oil supply disruptions caused by the closure of the Strait of Hormuz, Craig Murray, a Scottish political activist and former UK ambassador to Uzbekistan, told Sputnik.
“The Americans are not unhappy with the disruption of oil supplies. They actually like the disruption of oil supplies because it benefits their own oil producers,” Murray said.
The blockade of the strait is not a big problem for the US, a net oil exporter, as the Americans do not get much oil from the Strait of Hormuz, the ex-diplomat said. It is a problem for China and India, which the US sees as competitors.
“So if they are damaged, that is good from the American perspective,” he added.
Murray compared the Hormuz blockade with the 2022 bombing of the Nord Stream pipeline, which carried Russian natural gas to Germany and on to other EU countries.
“It did huge damage to Germany and European economies, and the Americans were quite happy. For them, closing the Strait of Hormuz is like blowing up Nord Stream: it damages industrial competitors and energy-exporting competitors,” Murray said.
The US has renewed strikes against Iran since July 8, claiming they are in response to Iran interfering with commercial shipping in the Strait of Hormuz. US President Donald Trump suggested on July 13 that the US could become a “guardian” of the strait in exchange for a 20% fee on cargo shipped through the waterway.
Iran’s foreign ministry has strongly condemned the British government’s decision to allow the US to use UK military bases and facilities to prepare and facilitate military strikes against Iran, declaring the move a violation of the UN Charter and international law.
“British policymakers, fully aware that US military strikes against Iran – which began with the participation of the Zionist regime and are still ongoing – constitute a clear act of aggression and a gross violation of the fundamental principles of the UN Charter and peremptory norms of international law, have decided to join these actions,” the ministry said in a statement Thursday.
The decision, the ministry said, is “clearly contrary to the fundamental principles and rules of the Charter of the United Nations and international law” and, under paragraph (f) of Article 3 of UN General Assembly Resolution 3314 on the Definition of Aggression, “constitutes an act of aggression against the Islamic Republic of Iran”.
The foreign ministry sharply criticized Britain’s role as a permanent member of the UN Security Council.
“The UK government, both as a state and as a permanent member of the UN Security Council, instead of fulfilling its legal and moral responsibilities to condemn the military aggression and war crimes of the United States and the Zionist regime against Iran, has stepped onto the path of aligning with the aggressors and has degraded its position to that of an accomplice in their war against the Iranian nation.”
“This decision,” the ministry added, “further undermines London’s claims about supporting the rule of law, human rights, and international peace and security.”
The statement drew explicit parallels with Britain’s long history of intervention in Iranian affairs.
It listed “the coup of August 19, 1953; full-scale support for Saddam Hussein’s regime during the imposed war; the imposition of illegal sanctions under the pretext of the nuclear issue; complicity with the United States in the so-called ‘snapback’ mechanism; and the designation of the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC).”
“The Islamic Republic of Iran is determined to defend its national sovereignty, territorial integrity, national interests, and national security against any aggression,” the ministry emphasized.
“Any party that in any way participates in the military aggression against Iran will be responsible for the consequences and repercussions of its own decision.”
According to a report from Bloomberg, the new British prime minister has agreed to allow the United States to use UK territory to continue its aggressive strikes against Iran.
The report said Andy Burnham has permitted the US to use British military bases for “defensive strikes” against Iran – meaning that UK bases such as RAF Fairford and the Diego Garcia naval base in the Indian Ocean will likely be used in the current round of US aggressive strikes.
The report added that former prime minister Keir Starmer, in his final hours at 10 Downing Street, chaired a government meeting on Britain’s policy following seven days of renewed US bombardment of Iran.
Sources revealed that ministers at the meeting decided to continue the existing policy of using UK bases to counter missiles from Iran and facilities used to target the Strait of Hormuz.
Burnham was briefed on the decision and appears to have agreed to it, despite the risk of angering anti-war Labour Party supporters, the report said.
Some Labour MPs, as well as members of the Green Party and Liberal Democrats, have argued that US use of the bases makes Britain complicit in war crimes.
American media outlets themselves are beginning to admit that the US is concealing its casualties in the current war of aggression against Iran. Although US officials insist that the number of American soldiers killed and wounded is minimal, there is strong evidence that the actual figures are far higher than what is officially reported. This suggests that Washington is facing serious difficulties in the conflict and is being forced to hide losses to prevent public outrage.
A recent article published by The New York Times revealed the existence of Pentagon guidelines to omit the true number of US casualties in the conflict with Iran. The article cites several sources familiar with the matter, showing how the figures officially released by the US government appear unrealistic. According to the newspaper, frequent Iranian attacks on US helicopters, fighter jets, and bases suggest a significantly higher number of casualties than the mere 17 confirmed by Washington so far.
It is not just The New York Times; other Western newspapers are also suggesting something similar. In an interview with CNN, an unidentified official stated that many wounded personnel are not included in official casualty lists – which are documented by the Defense Casualty Analysis System (DCAS), a US national database. The official noted that it sometimes takes days or even weeks for a wounded soldier to be officially reported as a casualty. During this period, injuries can worsen and soldiers may die, leading to further delays in listing the death in the database. All of this slows down the casualty counting process.
However, it is not just delays that prevent the truth about casualties from coming to light; there is a deliberate US strategy to block the sharing of information on the subject. Commenting on the matter, Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell told reporters that revealing casualty figures in real time is analogous to providing data directly to the enemy – which is why the US withholds such data and will continue to do so.
Parnell maintains, however, that the data is merely withheld for a certain period before being released. He asserts that the US is not actually concealing the numbers but delaying their disclosure to prevent Iran from accessing the data in real-time – as this could potentially give the Persian country a military advantage in its strategic planning, allowing Tehran to assess which attacks were most effective and which targets should be struck in new operations.
Parnell also stated that simply sharing war data without “contextualizing” it is a way of spreading panic and distress among American citizens. According to him, figures must be selected carefully and released gradually to prevent the population from falling into unnecessary despair.
“Providing real-time information on non-fatal casualties to the media is the same as providing that information directly to our adversaries (…) [There are] baseless and malicious accusations of hiding injury numbers (…) Claims of concealment are fabrications meant to further distress the American people in the wake of three service members killed in action (…) Cherry-picking raw numbers without context paints a deliberately misleading and incomplete picture,” he said.
While Washington confirms only 17 deaths, Iranian authorities report at least 427 American casualties – including both dead and wounded. The discrepancy in the figures is vast and indicates that one side is lying. Although one might assume Iran is exaggerating its numbers to lower American morale, it is highly doubtful that only 17 Americans died, given the frequency and intensity of Iranian bombardments against military bases in the Persian Gulf and Jordan, as well as attacks on American ships in the Strait of Hormuz.
So, while the number of American casualties may be lower than 427, it is very clear that more than 17 Americans have already died in this war. The US is concealing the actual figures, and American officials merely attempt to justify their lies with rhetoric about “avoiding panic” and “not aiding the enemy.” But the real reason is simple: the Americans are desperate because they have realized that Iran’s military power is extremely efficient and capable of inflicting significant damage on US infrastructure in the Middle East. Revealing this would further increase the war’s unpopularity among American citizens, so authorities are doing whatever they can to hide the truth.
However, lying so blatantly will only further erode the American people’s trust in their own government. It seems obvious that more than 17 Americans have already died in this war. In a society with such easy access to information – where the monopoly of the official press is increasingly being challenged by the impact of social media – lying is never a safe option. Americans have the means to verify the figures for themselves, and they certainly will.
Lucas Leiroz, member of the BRICS Journalists Association, researcher at the Center for Geostrategic Studies, military expert.
Ian Proud discusses why the anti-Russian sanctions will not work, and also how the war will likely end. As a former British diplomat, Proud performed a number of roles, including the Economic Counsellor at the UK’s embassy in Moscow between 2014 and 2019.
Italy’s Corriere della Sera was ordered to pay compensation to a sociology professor that it defamed as a “Putinist” after a court determined that the pro-Russia influence network he supposedly belonged to never existed.
In a Tuesday ruling, a court in Milan found that the newspaper had defamed Professor Alessandro Orsini by referring to him as a member of “Putin’s Network in Italy.” Corriere della Sera, a mainstream broadsheet paper, was ordered to pay €27,500 in compensation to Orsini.
“Publishing and allowing the publication of an article that attributes to Orsini the status of a member of an organized network of pro-Putin supporters aimed at propaganda and counter-information… constitutes conduct damaging to his personal and professional image and reputation,” the judge noted in the ruling.
Published in 2022, the defamatory article listed Orsini – then a professor at Luiss University in Rome – as a member of a “complex and diverse” network aimed at “attacking pro-Kiev politicians” and “undermining government decisions” it deemed favorable to Kiev. According to the newspaper, the group was under investigation by the Italian parliament’s intelligence committee (COPASIR), which allegedly determined it was “activated at key moments” to spread pro-Russia propaganda during the Russia-Ukraine conflict.
However, COPASIR’s president admitted at the time that the committee had “never conducted its own investigations into alleged influencers.” Italy’s undersecretary for intelligence services, Franco Gabrielli, added that “the names given by the newspaper do not appear in any type of investigation.”
During the trial, Corriere della Sera claimed it had received “other and different information” from confidential sources to back its story but was unable to prove this in court.
The judge noted that, not only had the newspaper failed to prove that Orsini participated in an organized propaganda network, but it was unable to prove that the network even existed in the first place.
As a result of the Corriere della Sera article, Orsini lost his position at Luiss University and was dropped as a contributor by Italian broadcaster RAI.
Orsini has been a persistent critic of Italy’s support for Ukraine. In early 2022, he accused Prime Minister Mario Draghi of “total subordination to America,” while blasting the West for “doing nothing for peace.”
“We must be open to recognizing the independence of Donbass and lifting sanctions,” he said in an appearance on RAI. “Draghi must say he’s no longer sending weapons to Zelensky.”
A senior Iranian military source has warned that any attack by the United States on Iranian bridges or power plants will face a devastating response targeting multiple infrastructure and energy facilities across the region where America has interests.
The warning came after US President Donald Trump threatened to destroy one Iranian bridge or power plant for each Iranian attack on a ship in the Strait of Hormuz.
“From this point forward, any time the Islamic Republic of Iran shoots at a ship in the Strait of Hormuz, whether it be by Missile, Rocket, Drone, or any other device or weapon, the United States will bomb and destroy ONE BRIDGE OR POWER PLANT,” Trump wrote on social media.
In response, the Iranian military source told Tasnim News Agency that Tehran has an “iron will” in exercising its sovereignty over the strategic waterway and will never allow the Strait to once again become a threat against Iran.
The military source said vessels transiting the Strait of Hormuz will only be safe if they coordinate with Iran and operate under Iran’s arrangements.
“If the Americans target a bridge or power plant in Iran, Iran will in turn strike infrastructure and bridges in the region, including energy facilities in which America has interests.”
The source said the Americans should have become fully convinced over the past ten days that Iran can strike wherever it deems necessary, warning that any gamble by Trump would once again lead to his humiliation.
Trump escalates threats as war costs mount
Trump’s latest threat came as the war enters its fifth month, with the Pentagon confirming that the conflict has already cost Washington $37.5 billion.
The United States has launched 11 consecutive nights of strikes against Iran, targeting military sites to “further degrade Iran’s ability to threaten commercial shipping in the Strait of Hormuz.”
Fighting over the Strait has led to the collapse of a preliminary deal between the United States and Iran, and Tehran has re-imposed its blockade on the strategic waterway for oil and gas shipments, firing on vessels that seek to transit without coordination.
The blockade has rattled markets and sent oil prices climbing, adding to the pressure on Trump to find an off-ramp to a war that has hit Americans’ pocketbooks heading into closely-fought midterm elections.
Brent Crude, the global benchmark, briefly topped $95 a barrel for the first time in six weeks on Wednesday.
Despite the pressure, Trump has so far resisted calls for a swift end to the war.
“We’re not finished at all… we’re not leaving right now,” he said on Tuesday.
The threats came as Tehran continued offensive operations against American assets in the US-allied Persian Gulf states.
The Iranian military said it targeted assets in Kuwait and Bahrain, including air defence systems, radar installations and administrative buildings. Iran’s IRGC also said it had targeted US bases in Jordan.
Four weeks ago, Pakistan looked like one of the biggest winners of the U.S.-Iran war.
Its army chief, Field Marshal Asim Munir, shuttled between Washington, Tehran and Gulf capitals for months. As part of his efforts, Pakistan hosted the first face-to-face U.S.-Iran talks in years and helped broker the Islamabad memorandum of understanding that Vice President JD Vance signed in June, thanking Munir and calling him one of the “very, very important people” in his life.
Islamabad hired a Washington lobbying firm to convert that goodwill into defense cooperation and minerals investment, and Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif spoke of a “sun of progress and prosperity” for Pakistan’s chronically stressed economy after the MoU between the U.S.and Iran brought an end to major military operations.
Pakistan’s fortunes have since reversed. Fighting between Washington and Tehran has resumed, and Islamabad’s dual goals of being Iran’s trusted interlocutor and the Arab Gulf states’ security guarantor are once again at odds.
President Donald Trump declared the deal was “over” in early July, after which the U.S. struck civilian and military targets in Iran. Iran, for its part, declared on July 18 through its deputy foreign minister, Kazem Gharibabadi, that it was “suspending all obligations” under the framework. The war has since widened into exactly the kind of multi-front regional conflict Pakistan spent the spring trying to prevent.
The clearest new exposure for Pakistan is in Saudi Arabia, where Iran struck Prince Sultan Air Base at al-Kharj — its first direct hit on Saudi territory since March — just days after the Houthis, Iran’s Yemeni ally, fired missiles on the kingdom, hitting Abha airport in the country’s south. That escalation occurred after Saudi-allied forces hit Sanaa airport in Yemen to prevent the landing of an Iranian airliner; the U.S. Treasury alleged without providing evidence that the plane is linked to Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corp. The strikes effectively enforced Riyadh’s airspace veto over the Houthi-controlled capital.
Pakistan signed a mutual defense pact with Riyadh last year. It deployed fighter jets and thousands of troops to the kingdom after earlier Iranian strikes on Saudi energy infrastructure. More recently, Islamabad has reportedly communicated to Tehran directly that attacks on Saudi Arabia will be treated as attacks on Pakistan itself. Sharif’s own statement in the aftermath called the Houthi strikes on Saudi Arabia a violation of the kingdom’s sovereignty that Pakistan “strongly condemns,” pledging “unwavering support” for Riyadh’s security.
The tone is notable given that Pakistan’s parliament explicitly refused to get entangled in Yemen over a decade ago. In April 2015, faced with a nearly identical Saudi request to join the Saudi-led coalition against the Houthis, Pakistan’s National Assembly voted unanimously to “maintain neutrality.” Islamabad’s calculus has not changed. If anything, recent events have sharpened Pakistan’s desire to broker a lasting peace.
Pakistan is home to the world’s second-largest Shia population after Iran, and the killing of Iran’s supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, in February set off deadly unrest in Karachi and Islamabad; Munir himself had to intervene to calm a wave of processions and pledges of allegiance to the new supreme leader across Shia neighborhoods.
Significantly, Munir and Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif attended Khamenei’s funeral in July, and Sharif posted after that “the late Supreme Leader’s wisdom, leadership and profound influence on Iran and the wider region will be remembered for generations” — a demonstration of the fine line Pakistan’s leadership has to walk, one no doubt delivered with a domestic audience in mind as much as an Iranian one.
That fine line becomes impossible to walk when a defense pact, triggered by Saudi-Houthi fighting or by further Iranian strikes on Saudi Arabia, would ask Pakistan to do the exact thing its parliament explicitly refused a decade ago: take a military side against a Houthi-Iran axis, and do so at a moment when its domestic Shia politics is highly combustible
Kuwait is now reportedly asking for the same kind of commitment that Saudi Arabia already has. Reutersreported last week that Islamabad is in early-stage talks with Kuwait — which has absorbed repeated Iranian strikes on its infrastructure in recent days — over an expanded defense agreement that would include “thousands of Pakistani troops on the ground, fighter jets, drones, an air defence system, and other defence-related facilities,” according to an anonymous Pakistani government official cited in the report.
Another anonymous Pakistani security official said the country “cannot consider a deployment of combat troops at this stage.” That hesitation suggests that stacking multiple defense commitments across Gulf states in Iran’s crosshairs makes Islamabad’s balancing act much harder to sustain. Each new pact narrows the room to claim neutrality the next time Tehran calls.
During this war, Pakistan discovered what happens when Gulf partners doubt its ability to balance between Tehran and the Arab Gulf states. The United Arab Emirates recalled a $3.5 billion loan in April and quietly began deporting Pakistani Shia workers by the thousands. The move was widely read as retaliation for Islamabad’s perceived tilt toward Tehran during the mediation. Saudi Arabia stepped in with $3 billion to cover the gap, but the lesson was clear: Pakistan’s neutrality satisfies no one fully, and the cost of disappointing any single Gulf patron is measured in the billions of dollars.
Economic self-preservation has been Pakistan’s primary motive for steering mediation and ending a war that has hobbled the economies of its creditors and choked the trade routes that power its own electric grid. Pakistan is on its 25th International Monetary Fund program; more than half of its tax revenue is put towards servicing its debts. It had barely stabilized its inflation before the Strait of Hormuz’s closure sent rates back into double digits.
In March, as the war’s first phase disrupted energy flows out of Hormuz, Islamabad ordered a two-week school closure and imposed a four-day work week to conserve fuel — measures the government has now indicated it may need to revive.
A parallel disruption to the Red Sea, like the blockade of Saudi Arabia declared by the Houthis Monday, would be highly disruptive to Pakistan’s energy security, and by extension, its economy. While Pakistan imports the overwhelming majority of its fuel from the Gulf, the closing of another critical chokepoint would simultaneously tighten global tanker capacity and insurance costs everywhere, pushing the same spot-market prices Pakistan is already struggling to afford even higher.
It would also add further pressure on Pakistan’s defense commitments to Saudi Arabia, given that Riyadh will not tolerate such a closure. In a recent statement, Riyadh pledged to deal with “Houthi threats against transiting vessels… firmly and swiftly.” The stakes for Saudi Arabia are high: Since the Strait of Hormuz was blocked, Saudi Arabia has relied on its East-West pipeline to divert roughly 5 million barrels per day of crude to the Red Sea Port of Yanbu — its only viable export outlet while Hormuz is all but closed.
None of this means Pakistan’s mediation was a mistake, or that its diplomatic capital has evaporated. Kuwait’s foreign minister still thanked Pakistan last week for its “constructive and mediatory role,” and Islamabad remains one of the few channels through which Washington and Tehran would resume talks, when the time comes. But the specific bet Pakistan made — that ending the war would allow it to bank the goodwill through commerce and financial aid — has not yet paid off.
Instead, the restart of the war has brought Saudi Arabia back into Iran’s crosshairs. At the same time, the Saudi-Houthi front has reopened, the Strait of Hormuz has been closed again, and a blockade of Saudi-linked ships on the Red Sea has been formally declared.
Each of these factors adds immense pressure on Pakistan, which now has every reason to double down on diplomacy, lest it be drawn in as a combatant.
Elfadil Ibrahim is a writer and analyst covering the politics of the Middle East and Africa, with a special focus on Sudan. His work has been featured in The Guardian, Al Jazeera, The New Arab, Open Democracy and other outlets.
The coming days and weeks will see Trump lower himself in the acid bath of what analysts call the ‘escalation trap’. Many analysts comment that he has already fallen on his sword in the Iran war, as his fantasy of bringing Tehran to its knees – served up by Israel’s PM Netanyahu – has proved to be the greatest deception in U.S.-Israeli relations since the birth of the entity in 1948. He has, to many, lost the war, which was really the essence of him signing the MOU on June 17th, agreeing in principle to all of the points of unconditional surrender, making Iran a bigger, bolder regional power which now controls the Straits of Hormuz and is revered by the GCC elites like never before.
Yet his own lack of diplomatic verve both with Western leaders, NATO and above all Benjamin Netanyahu made his signature worthless, and his only recourse was to continue the war, to at least make it look like he is still relevant.
But this gambit, which is foolish on so many levels – not least of all because the U.S. is very low on military hardware used up between February 28th and April 7th – is more reckless than he understands and will soon destroy him.
Just recently, GCC countries’ elites frantically called him to tell him to stop bombing Iran’s civilian infrastructure, as, unbeknown to him, the capability of Iran to completely wipe off the surface of the map the same infrastructure in the Gulf countries is within arms’ reach. It is one thing to have your U.S. air base bombed, but quite another for your schools, hospitals, bridges, power plants and water facilities to be blown up with a handful of hypersonic missiles. And it is hard to imagine how those elites would rebuild their countries if Iran chose to retaliate in such a fashion.
The call seems to have done the job. But Trump is a mercurial man-child who understands little and only cares about nursing his ego, and so there is no telling what he might do in the future if pushed, or if he simply fails to take the warning seriously.
And yet, whichever route he chooses, it all ends badly for him, and the Iranians are taking the time to remove entirely the U.S. presence in the region. If Trump persists in hitting their infrastructure, one move which Iran is mulling is destroying the oil shipments presently coming out of the UAE and Saudi Arabia outside of the Persian Gulf – in other words, oil which the Saudis send via pipeline to the Red Sea and oil which is sent to Fujairah port, currently being expanded. The 7 million barrels of oil each day which together these two countries export could easily be stopped by Iran, and so it is hard to see what strategy Trump thinks he has with his bombing, other than he believes that this will soften the Iranians up for coming back to the MOU.
What Trump doesn’t understand is that the hardliners in the Iranian government never believed he was serious about the MOU and saw it as a ruse to buy time before continuing with a bombing campaign. Now that they have been proved right, any return to an MOU will be much harder on Trump, as the demands from Tehran will be higher than the first time around.
Top of that list will be Lebanon, and this is where Trump’s problems start, as the position that he will be in if an MOU 2.0 is put together will be very weak, while Netanyahu’s will be very strong. Bibi is never going to pull Israel’s troops out of Lebanon, and so a peace deal will be impossible, leading Trump to only one recourse: the mother of all maddest ideas, which is the land invasion of Iran – which he might be thinking about around November when the weather is cooler. But the U.S. doesn’t have either the number of men required, the stockpile of weapons, or even, frankly, the competence to carry out such a remarkably risky venture. The casualties would be incredibly high, and Trump would go down in history as the egghead U.S. president who fell into Israel’s trap and got the ultimate lesson from Iran. The humiliation Jimmy Carter had to endure after a failed rescue mission of U.S. embassy workers in Iran in 1980 will pale into insignificance in comparison to what the Iranians have lined up for Trump.
Trump’s problem is credibility. No world leaders respect him nor trust him, and this is a major factor now with the Iranians, who simply consider Trump to be a clown at best or a dangerous, insecure child at worst – ready to burn the family house down just to get the attention that he craves. Nothing he says is taken seriously, as Tehran knows all along that Trump is always creating distractions while he is listening to his generals’ latest crackpot ideas about invasion. While Trump panics, Iran moves at a painfully slow, measured pace – confident about itself, its history and its destiny. Iran thinks long term and about how the world will judge it, also keeping in mind negotiating with the next U.S. administration. As an ancient civilisation, they are used to thinking in terms of decades and centuries. Trump only thinks about this week’s coverage in the Wall Street Journal or New York Times. His gate-crashing of the World Cup and having the president of FIFA actually manhandle him out of the Spanish team’s photo shoot must have been very embarrassing for many Americans.
Statements from the US that it might bomb Iran’s nuclear facilities violate international law, Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmail Baghaei said on Wednesday.
“The repeated US attacks and threats against Iran’s peaceful nuclear facilities not only constitute a flagrant violation of the core principles of the UN Charter, international law, and the relevant resolutions of the IAEA Board of Governors, General Conference, and UN Security Council, but also reveal the United States’ deep-rooted enmity toward Iran’s scientific progress and technological development,” Baghaei wrote on X.
Iran does not conduct any nuclear activities in the area of the Kuh-e Kolang Gaz La Mountain, otherwise known as “Pickaxe,” which the United States wants to strike, the diplomat said, adding that the relevant remarks are just an excuse for more aggression.
On July 21, US President Donald Trump threatened to attack Iran’s Pickaxe Mountain, where, per Israeli intelligence assessments, a fortified nuclear enrichment facility is located.
The US has been conducting strikes against Iran since July 8, in violation of the provisions of the memorandum of understanding signed on June 17.
The drug-induced nipple secretions of trans women are as good as mothers’ breast milk for babies, the University of Sussex Hospitals NHS Trust claimed in a letter to campaigners made public in a report by British think tank the Policy Exchange on Sunday.
The healthcare trust’s medical director, Rachel James, argued that the off-label prescription drug cocktail men transitioning to female take in order to produce milk was “similar to the natural hormones which encourage lactation to develop when the baby is newly born.”
“The evidence which is available demonstrates that the milk is comparable to that produced following the birth of a baby,” James wrote in the letter, sent to Children of Transitioners last August.
Biological men who wish to lactate must first take hormones to grow milk glands and then take high doses of either domperidone or metoclopramide to stimulate milk production. Neither drug is approved for this use, though they are occasionally prescribed off-label to biological women who have trouble lactating.
However, domperidone’s own manufacturer, Janssen, warns patients the drug “may cause unwanted side effects affecting the heart in a breastfed baby” and “should be used during breastfeeding only if your physician considers this clearly necessary.” … continue
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