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Fico’s Two Red Lines: Russian Energy and the Next Ukraine Loan

By Adrian Korczyński – New Eastern Outlook – November 15, 2026

Slovakia, under the leadership of Robert Fico, is refusing to assume new financial obligations toward Ukraine and is defending existing energy contracts to safeguard its national interests.

On October 16, Robert Fico told fellow European leaders that Slovakia would not take part in another large loan for Kiev. Ten days later, his foreign minister was in Moscow discussing energy supplies and contracts threatened by the European Union’s withdrawal from Russian gas. The two decisions belong to the same economic argument.

Bratislava is refusing additional liabilities whose eventual cost it cannot establish, while defending established arrangements that supply its industry and households. With public debt increasing and manufacturers under pressure, Fico is drawing a line between cooperation that serves identifiable Slovak interests and commitments arising from wider European priorities.

That position has acquired fresh significance. On October 30, the European Commission proposed the use of the remaining €45 billion of its existing €90 billion Ukraine Support Loan, while its accompanying assessment identified an additional €67.9 billion financing gap for Ukraine in 2027. The original facility is still being paid out; the next financial demand is already on the table.

The Contract Brussels Cannot Make Disappear

On October 26, Foreign Minister Juraj Blanár met Sergey Lavrov in Moscow as Slovakia and Russia resumed their intergovernmental commission for economic cooperation. Oil deliveries through the Druzhba pipeline, gas contracts, nuclear energy and other activities not prohibited by sanctions were on the agenda.

The most immediate issue concerns SPP, Slovakia’s state gas company. Its agreement with Gazprom runs until 2034 and contains take-or-pay provisions. A buyer may owe payment for contracted gas even if it does not collect the full volume.

The EU’s regulation ending Russian gas imports, adopted in January, means that existing long-term pipeline contracts must cease by September 30, 2027, with a possible extension to November under specified conditions. For Bratislava, the regulation collides with an agreement that has another seven years to run.

Blanár warned that an adverse arbitration outcome might generate claims exceeding €10 billion and potentially reaching €16 billion. These are his estimates of a possible legal dispute, not an established debt. His concern is nevertheless understandable: Slovakia could be paying for replacement supplies while defending a claim arising from the old contract.

The economic argument extends beyond the legal risk. Existing pipeline infrastructure has value, particularly for a landlocked country with an energy-intensive industrial base. Switching suppliers can involve additional transport and infrastructure charges, as well as exposure to different market prices. Dismantling a functioning supply relationship has costs that cannot be abolished by political declaration.

Slovakia has already experienced the disruption of an established route. Transit of Russian gas through Ukraine ended in January 2025 when Kiev declined to renew the transit arrangement. Another interruption followed in early 2026 when oil stopped flowing through Druzhba after damage to infrastructure in Ukraine. Kiev attributed that damage to a Russian strike; Bratislava questioned the duration of the interruption. In February, Fico’s government released 250,000 tonnes of crude from emergency reserves to help the Slovnaft refinery continue operating.

For Slovakia, these disruptions had tangible economic consequences. The oil interruption forced Bratislava to draw on emergency stocks and arrange alternative crude supplies to protect refinery operations. Energy security had become an immediate industrial concern rather than an abstract argument about future relations with Russia.

An energy policy built around preserving alternative routes and existing contracts is therefore a practical choice for the Slovak government. Its Moscow diplomacy aims to retain bargaining room at a time when Brussels is narrowing the available options. Russia has indicated its willingness to fulfil existing supply agreements. Whether the contracts can operate under the new EU rules is now a separate question.

Domestic Industry Before New Obligations

Fico faces a difficult domestic balance sheet. The budget signed into law on October 28 envisages a 2027 deficit of 4.94% of GDP, compared with an estimated 4.37% this year. Slovakia’s fiscal council expects public debt to reach 65.9% of GDP next year and 70% in 2028 without further corrective measures.

The government’s choices contribute to that pressure. It has protected thirteenth pensions, energy assistance and social spending, while postponing some fiscal adjustment. The country’s fiscal watchdog has criticised this trajectory and warned that debt stabilisation is slipping further away.

But growing debt does not make additional international commitments less costly. It makes the need to examine them more urgent. Slovakia’s automotive sector, dependent on competitive energy prices and access to European markets, is already exposed to weak industrial conditions. Protecting its supply chains and limiting avoidable replacement costs are relevant to employment and future tax revenues.

Fico can be challenged on his domestic budget without pretending that a further Ukraine loan or the forced termination of existing energy contracts would improve it. The alternative to his refusal is another possible burden on a state that already has insufficient fiscal space.

His approach to Kiev reflects that calculation. Bratislava is willing to work on roads, education and electricity interconnections, projects that can provide usable infrastructure and measurable benefits. Fico has declined to accept another military-financing liability simply because the request comes from Ukraine.

The Ukrainian Bill Does Not End at €90 Billion

At the October European Council meeting, Fico said Zelensky had requested approximately €70 billion for 2027 and declared that Slovakia would not participate. No new EU loan of that size had been approved.

The existing €90 billion programme, agreed in December 2025, already provides for €60 billion in defence-related expenditure and €30 billion in budget support during 2026 and 2027. By October 30, €19.8 billion had been disbursed.

The Commission’s new proposal would allocate the programme’s remaining €45 billion for next year, directing €31.7 billion to Ukraine’s defence industrial capacity and up to €13.3 billion to its budget. This is the second annual portion of an authorised programme, rather than another €45 billion on top of it.

But the assessment accompanying the proposal identifies a further shortfall of €40.9 billion for defence and €27 billion for the Ukrainian budget in 2027, after accounting for the existing loan. That combined €67.9 billion remains a projection, and other donors or financing arrangements may cover part of it. The figures nevertheless expose the question facing European capitals. A two-year borrowing programme meant to stabilise Ukrainian financing has not prevented the emergence of another enormous requirement within the same timeframe.

The repayment design adds uncertainty. The EU borrows on markets and pays the interest; under ordinary conditions Ukraine repays principal when it receives reparations or another qualifying settlement from Russia. Separate repayment triggers apply to breaches of conditions. No one can specify when the ordinary repayment event will occur. The loan’s legal framework establishes these rules.

Slovakia, Hungary and Czechia secured protection against financial liabilities under this €90 billion mechanism. Bratislava intends to defend an equivalent exemption if another facility is negotiated. Fico is not preventing other governments from financing Kiev. He is declining to make their choice an automatic Slovak obligation.

Where the Next Bargain Will Be Fought

The question will also surface in negotiations over the EU’s budget for 2028–2034. Fico has warned that Slovakia’s demands concerning cohesion and agricultural funding should not be made conditional on participation in another Ukraine loan. No such condition has formally been imposed, but the risk he identifies concerns the political bargaining that accompanies a crowded European budget.

For Slovakia, cohesion funding builds roads and supports less developed regions; agricultural payments sustain an important part of the domestic economy. These programmes have a direct economic purpose inside the Union. Decisions about additional borrowing for Kiev should be taken separately, on their own terms.

Fico has found cooperation with neighbours on the underlying industrial problem. On October 19, energy ministers from Slovakia, Poland, Hungary and Czechia agreed to press for lower electricity costs, more flexible industrial support and a stronger role for nuclear energy. Warsaw’s stance towards Moscow differs sharply from Bratislava’s, yet manufacturers across the region face many of the same competitive pressures.

Across the Atlantic, Washington has shown how national interests can shape sanctions policy. On October 9, the US Treasury authorised specified transactions involving Russian-origin diesel during a period of international fuel-market pressure. That exemption did not dismantle the broader sanctions system. It demonstrated that economic circumstances can justify targeted flexibility.

Fico wants comparable room to manoeuvre for Slovakia. A country with a tight budget, an exposed industrial sector and long-running energy contracts has reasons to scrutinise the costs of decisions taken in Brussels. It can preserve working relations with Kiev where they deliver benefits while refusing to finance further military requirements without a defined financial horizon.

The more European borrowing becomes a recurring answer to Ukraine’s projected deficits, the more important it is to establish who guarantees the debt, who services it and what happens if repayment never arrives. Meanwhile, Slovakia must keep its factories supplied and its budget functioning. Fico’s two red lines are being drawn around those obligations.

Adrian Korczyński, Independent Analyst & Observer on Central Europe and global policy research

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November 15, 2026 Posted by | Economics, Militarism | , | Comments Off on Fico’s Two Red Lines: Russian Energy and the Next Ukraine Loan

Your Shopping Bag Runs Through Hormuz

By Larry C. Johnson | SONAR21 | November 14, 2026 

Every morning the cable networks put up the price of Brent and a graphic of a tanker, and every evening the experts reassure us that the oil is still flowing, more or less. Crude is the scoreboard everyone watches. It is also the wrong scoreboard.

Iran has hit roughly fifty ships in and around the Strait of Hormuz since September 1, most of them tankers. Against a world fleet of more than 8,000 tankers, that is a rounding error. Washington’s reassurance machine will tell you exactly that. What it won’t tell you is that a good share of what moves through the strait isn’t crude at all. It’s the stuff the modern economy is actually made of: the feedstocks for plastics, the methanol for chemicals, the urea and ammonia for fertilizer. And those markets are far less forgiving than oil.

If you want to know what Iran’s tanker campaign really costs, stop looking at the gas pump. Look in your kitchen.

What actually comes out of the Gulf

Start with plastic. The Middle East is the world’s largest exporter of polyethylene, the most widely used plastic on the planet. In 2025 the region shipped 18.7 million tons out of global exports of 43.8 million tons, more than 40 percent of the world total. According to ICIS, about 84 percent of the region’s polyethylene capacity depends on the Strait of Hormuz to reach the sea. Polypropylene and ethylene glycol, the raw material for polyester and PET bottles, follow the same route.

Then the feedstocks. Before the war, nearly 1.2 million barrels a day of naphtha moved through Hormuz, meeting 60 to 70 percent of Asia’s import needs, according to S&P Global. Asia’s steam crackers turn that naphtha into ethylene and propylene, the building blocks of nearly every plastic you own. The Gulf also supplies most of the propane and butane that feed Asia’s other plastics plants.

Then the chemicals. The Middle East exported more than 17 million tons of methanol in 2025. Iran alone shipped well over 9 million tons, and roughly 70 percent of China’s methanol imports came from the region. And fertilizer: by CRU’s count, nearly a third of global urea exports, 44 percent of sulfur exports and almost a fifth of ammonia exports pass through or originate west of the strait.

That’s the cargo Iran is shooting at. Not just oil, but the raw material for packaging, textiles, car parts, medical supplies and the fertilizer that grows the world’s food.

Why plastic bleeds faster than oil

Crude has escape hatches. Saudi Arabia can push oil across the peninsula to Yanbu, and the UAE can pipe it to Fujairah. Governments keep strategic petroleum reserves for exactly this kind of emergency. Petrochemicals have none of that. There is no strategic polyethylene reserve. Nobody stockpiles methanol for national security. And the giant plants at Jubail, Ras Laffan and Ruwais sit on the Gulf coast, built to load ships, not pipelines. As one analyst put it to Argaam, most petrochemical products cannot be rerouted the way crude can.

The ships are also more fragile, financially speaking. A VLCC hauling two million barrels at today’s freight rates can swallow a war-risk premium of several million dollars and still make money. The smaller product tankers, chemical tankers and gas carriers that move naphtha, methanol and LPG earn far less per voyage. Brokers noticed back in June that clean tankers were being scared off by insurance costs that crude carriers shrugged off. Every Iranian strike pushes those premiums up again, and the smallest, least profitable ships are the first to stop coming.

The buyers can’t easily switch, either. Asia’s crackers were built around Gulf naphtha. Some can burn more LPG instead, but that flexibility is limited, and the LPG comes through the same strait. When the naphtha stops, the crackers cut rates or declare force majeure. S&P put it bluntly: naphtha has moved beyond economics, and availability is now the core concern.

The numbers show it. UN data comparing April 2026 with a year earlier show Middle East methanol exports down 80 percent, urea down 83 percent and ammonia down 75 percent. Even polypropylene, the least affected of the twelve commodities the UN tracked, fell 24 percent.

The September head fake

Washington had a good September, or thought it did. With the US Navy escorting traffic down a southern route along the Omani coast, Gulf oil flows through Hormuz recovered to more than 81 percent of prewar levels, according to Kpler. The victory laps were drafted.

Iran read the same numbers and responded the way it said it would. The International Maritime Organization counted 34 confirmed attacks on ships between September 28 and October 27. On a single Sunday in October, six commercial vessels were hit, the most in one day since the war began. By mid-October, just seven tankers crossed the strait in a day, fewer than half the weekly average. The IRGC now announces, with some relish, that tankers using routes it hasn’t approved keep “striking mines.”

Here’s the part that matters for petrochemicals. Iran doesn’t need to sink a single chemical tanker to choke the chemical trade. It only needs to make each transit risky enough that the owners of small, low-margin ships stay home. The crude may limp through under Navy escort. The naphtha, methanol and polymers ride on the ships least able to bear the risk.

Who gets the bill

Asia first. Japan, South Korea and India depend on imported Gulf feedstocks, and their crackers have spent the year cutting rates or declaring force majeure. China’s polyethylene output in April fell 8.2 percent from a year earlier because its naphtha-fed crackers couldn’t get enough feedstock. S&P Global Market Intelligence estimates the disruption has taken nearly 20 percent of global ethylene capacity and as much as 40 percent of Asian naphtha supply off the market. Europe, whose crackers also run on naphtha, is not far behind.

Then everyone else. Polyethylene prices nearly doubled between the end of February and April. Dow and Celanese raised prices. Plastic is in the packaging for your groceries, the dashboard of your car, the syringes at your hospital and the polyester in your shirt. When the price of the resin doubles, it doesn’t stay in the chemical industry. It works its way onto store shelves, quietly, a few cents at a time.

And then there is food. Urea, ammonia and sulfur are not plastics, but they ride the same strait and suffer the same insurance math. Farmers who pay more for fertilizer either pass it on or plant less. Either way, you pay.

In fairness, there is one winner. American petrochemical producers, sitting on cheap shale gas along the Gulf Coast, have enjoyed a windfall as buyers scramble for resin that doesn’t pass through Hormuz. So if you were wondering who benefits from this war, check the quarterly earnings in Houston.

Two years, if everything goes right

Don’t take my word for how long the hangover lasts. Take the word of the man who runs the world’s biggest oil company. Speaking in London on October 5, Aramco chief executive Amin Nasser said the world entered this crisis with almost 10 billion barrels of oil in storage and has since lost nearly 3 billion barrels of supply, roughly half of what would normally have moved through Hormuz. Less than 6 billion barrels of commercial inventory remain, he said, and most of that is not practically available. His verdict: “Until Hormuz fully re-opens and confidence returns, the crude reality is that pressure at both ends of the barrel will intensify. Even then, replenishing inventories while meeting demand could take up to two years.” He repeated the warning in Riyadh a week later.

Note the conditions. Two years starts only after the strait fully reopens, and only if confidence returns. Every Iranian strike since then has pushed that starting gun further back.

And Nasser was talking about crude, the commodity with all the advantages. Crude has strategic reserves to draw on, a 7-million-barrel-a-day East-West pipeline to Yanbu and a Saudi upstream that Nasser says remains fully intact. Petrochemicals have none of those cushions. There is no strategic reserve of naphtha or methanol to refill. The plants that make them sit on the Gulf coast with no pipeline around the strait. If the best-protected product in the Gulf needs two years to get back to normal after the shooting stops, you can do the math on polyethylene yourself.

Except that the escape hatch is now under fire too. The East-West pipeline is carrying about 4 million barrels a day of Saudi crude to Yanbu, roughly 4 percent of global supply, and it is the main reason Saudi Arabia has avoided the fate of its neighbors. The Houthis know it. On Thursday they claimed strikes on a pumping station along the pipeline, the oil facility at Yanbu and an Aramco building in Riyadh. On Friday they claimed another pumping station, along with Riyadh’s King Khalid International Airport. My sources tell me pumping station 11 was destroyed. Riyadh, as usual, has confirmed nothing.

This is not the first time. In September, attacks on the pipeline set fires at three pumping stations, and Saudi Arabia shut down the entire line as a precaution before rigging bypasses. The pipeline has 13 pumping stations, and every one taken out cuts how much crude reaches the Red Sea. So the one alternative route Nasser was counting on, the one he said kept Brent from hitting $200, is being taken apart one station at a time. Two years was the optimistic case. It assumed the bypass would hold.

The math Washington skipped

The planners who started this war modeled oil. They had the SPR, the escort plan and the pipeline workarounds. What they apparently didn’t model was that the Persian Gulf is also one of the world’s great chemical plants, and that its output has no pipeline, no reserve and no Navy escort sized to protect a fleet of small, uninsurable ships.

Iran figured that out. Its tanker campaign doesn’t have to win at sea. It only has to keep the strait dangerous enough, long enough, for the world to run short of the things that are made from what passes through it. Each strike resets the insurance clock and keeps the small ships away for another month.

So the next time someone in Washington tells you the oil is still flowing, ask them about the naphtha, the methanol and the polyethylene. Then go look at the price of a pack of diapers. That’s where this war is being lost.

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November 14, 2026 Posted by | Economics, Wars for Israel | , , | Comments Off on Your Shopping Bag Runs Through Hormuz

EU risks investor exodus over Russian assets – Euroclear chief

RT | November 13, 2026

The EU risks driving investors and their money out of Europe over plans to use frozen Russian assets to fund Ukraine, Euroclear CEO Valerie Urbain has warned.

The bloc has frozen around €210 billion ($232 billion) in Russian central bank assets since 2022, most of it held at Belgian-based Euroclear. While the EU has already diverted profits from the funds to Ukraine, it has stopped short of seizing the assets outright over legal concerns. Moscow has condemned both measures as theft.

In an interview with Belgian newspaper Le Soir published on Friday, Urbain said previous debates over the assets had already unsettled international investors.

“I have noticed that many investors followed last year’s debates and are now wondering whether Europe is still capable of respecting the rule of law,” she said.

Urbain warned of a “reputational risk” that could lead to “some deposits leaving Europe,” stressing that investor confidence depends on legal certainty and the protection of assets.

She also rejected proposals to transfer the frozen funds to the EU or another entity without accounting for Euroclear’s obligations.

“You cannot simply ‘transfer’ the assets and forget about the liabilities. That would create an enormous imbalance and lead to Euroclear’s bankruptcy,” she said.

Urbain explained that Russian securities had matured into cash under sanctions, leaving Euroclear liable to repay Moscow around €185 billion – more than 80% of its balance sheet. Transferring both assets and liabilities would still carry legal risks, she added.

Belgium has repeatedly resisted confiscation proposals. Last month, Prime Minister Bart De Wever said he did not expect the European Commission to revive the plan, although individual member states could still push for it. EU leaders instead agreed last December to borrow €90 billion jointly to support Ukraine.

In May, a Moscow court awarded the Russian central bank around €200 billion in damages in a lawsuit against Euroclear. Earlier this month, Belgian newspaper L’Echo reported that the bank had sought a court order to seize documents from Euroclear’s Brussels headquarters over alleged coordination with EU institutions on sanctions.

Urbain also warned of possible retaliation, including the confiscation of Euroclear assets in Russia and countries friendly to Moscow.

The European Central Bank and International Monetary Fund have previously raised concerns that seizing Russian assets could undermine financial stability and confidence in the euro.

Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) issued a similar warning in September, saying confiscation would damage Europe’s standing among major investors, including China, India, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Singapore.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has accused Western nations of “outright robbery,” declaring that trust in them has been “completely lost.”

November 13, 2026 Posted by | Economics, Progressive Hypocrite | , , , , , , | Comments Off on EU risks investor exodus over Russian assets – Euroclear chief

Moscow, Kabul Planning to Sign Intergovernmental Agreement on Trade – Official

Sputnik – 11.11.2026

MOSCOW – Russia and Afghanistan plan to sign a large-scale intergovernmental agreement on trade and economic cooperation, Rustam Khabibullin, head of the Russian Business Center in Afghanistan, told Sputnik.

“An agreement on trade and economic cooperation between the government of the Russian Federation and the government of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan is being prepared for signing. Russian Deputy Prime Minister Alexei Overchuk and Afghan Deputy Prime Minister Abdul Ghani Baradar are expected to sign the agreement [during Overchuk’s upcoming visit],” Khabibullin said.

He noted that the agreement provides for cooperation in trade, energy, transport, healthcare, agriculture, and information technology.

“This large-scale agreement will cover all areas of the economy, including logistics, trade, investment, and simplified business visas. This will be a unique agreement,” Khabibullin added.

November 12, 2026 Posted by | Economics | , | Comments Off on Moscow, Kabul Planning to Sign Intergovernmental Agreement on Trade – Official

US-Israeli war on Iran cost Persian Gulf states nearly $1T in damage, lost growth: Report

The Cradle | November 11, 2026

The US-Israeli war on Iran has cost Persian Gulf states more than $200 billion in physical damage and will erase $790 billion in expected growth by 2030, according to a report by insurance firm Allianz Trade published on 9 November.

“Physical damage across the region is assessed just above $200bn, mostly concentrated in Hormuz-locked economies, especially in energy infrastructure,” the report states.

Iran’s retaliatory strikes on US assets also hit host-country airports, seaports, landmarks and more than 80 energy facilities—mostly in Kuwait, Qatar and Bahrain. About a third of the facilities were heavily damaged.

Tourism and real estate have also taken a hit, and the report expects both sectors to grow more slowly in the years ahead.

The report says the $790 billion is the output Gulf economies are expected to lose from 2026 to 2030 compared with pre-war growth forecasts—equivalent to 5.9 percent of GDP over the five-year period.

Gulf states are expected to offset some of the losses by redirecting about $120 billion from their sovereign wealth funds into domestic investments through 2030, leaving less money to invest abroad.

Surplus earnings generated from their trade and overseas holdings are expected to fall by half.

Gulf spending has also been forced to shift away from mega-projects toward resilience and security, and domestic infrastructure and defense outlays are set to reach $380–400 billion by 2030, opening up roughly $160 billion in opportunities for private and foreign investors, the Allianz report noted.

Saudi Aramco reported last week that its third-quarter net profit rose 34.6 percent, despite restricted access to Hormuz and Bab al-Mandab, driven by higher oil prices.

However, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) projects that Riyadh’s economy will contract by 3.3 percent this year, a five-point downgrade from its July forecast.

In mid-October, IMF regional director Jihad Azour warned that the Gulf’s oil-producing economies will not return to their pre-war growth path in the medium term, as the war has left lasting damage across several sectors.

Azour said the region initially avoided an energy crisis by using reserves, stockpiles, non-Gulf supplies, and alternative shipping routes. Those buffers are nearly depleted, making a prolonged war the region’s biggest economic threat.

November 11, 2026 Posted by | Economics, Wars for Israel | | Comments Off on US-Israeli war on Iran cost Persian Gulf states nearly $1T in damage, lost growth: Report

Europe, US face higher heating bills amid Iran war fallout

Al Mayadeen| November 11, 2026

Europe is paying a heavy price for the US war on Iran. Natural gas prices have risen almost 200% since February and topped €100 per megawatt-hour at the end of October, the highest level in four years.

The European Commission estimates the continent’s energy import bill has grown by more than €127 billion since the war began, and gas storage is running well below normal ahead of winter, with Germany’s stocks possibly running empty by March.

Bloomberg reported that diesel prices have hit a record, kerosene has nearly doubled, and German power prices already exceed even the 2022 average for the start of winter. The effective closure of the Strait of Hormuz has exposed how dependent the continent remains on global energy markets, leaving governments, industries, and households in their second major energy crisis in under five years.

Storage falls short before winter

Gas storage stands at about 15 percentage points below its recent average and far from the EU’s 90% target.

Under a scenario developed by the European Network of Transmission System Operators for Gas, a cold winter combined with tight global LNG supplies would leave stocks barely 10% full by the end of winter. Even then, Europe would need to cut energy demand by 15%.

Weather models point to a mostly mild winter, helped by a potentially record El Niño, but the British forecaster MetDesk warned that a disrupted polar vortex could bring a colder spell to northern Europe in December. Cold in Asia would also intensify competition for LNG cargoes and push prices higher.

The pressure would not end with winter. The International Energy Agency cautioned that refilling record-low reserves next summer could keep markets tight well into next year, and contracts for summer 2027 already trade above those for the following winter.

Russian LNG ban, a shifting dependency

A full EU ban on Russian LNG takes effect on January 1 and will remove around 15% of the bloc’s supplies, roughly one cargo every two days according to Bloomberg’s calculations. Energy Commissioner Dan Jorgensen insisted the ban stands, leaving member states to buy replacement cargoes on international markets at a premium.

Much of that replacement comes from the United States, and Swedish Energy Minister Ebba Busch said Europe is “just switching our dependency.”

US President Donald Trump threatened earlier this year to ban diesel exports, which would have endangered half of Europe’s imports, and any deal to reopen Hormuz would take up to six months to feed through to European diesel prices.

Governments struggle to cushion the blow

EU governments have more than tripled their emergency spending since June to nearly €35 billion, according to the Bruegel think tank, with Spain accounting for a third. Bruegel said much of the support is poorly targeted and even encourages fossil fuel consumption.

France, after spending an estimated €70 billion after the 2022 shock, is now limiting aid to those in greatest need, a shift Budget Minister David Amiel described as cutting spending instead of raising it.

Italy, which imports about three-quarters of its energy, saw inflation reach 5.6% in October. Truckers blocked roads around Naples and the Messina port for five days until Rome allocated over €100 million in diesel tax credits and about €70 million for agriculture and fisheries.

Rome is also negotiating with the Commission to cap the gas price used in power generation, and it clashed with Berlin over Germany’s slow storage filling, which it said drove panic buying.

Poland, where a fifth of this year’s budget goes to defense, has little room to respond. State Secretary for Energy Wojciech Wrochna said Europe is not doing enough and warned the situation leaves “space for populists to win the elections.”

The Commission has pushed responsibility back to national capitals, unlike in 2022 when Brussels rushed through emergency legislation.

Politics, industry feel the strain

Protests over living costs have spread from Berlin to Milan and Paris. More than half of Europeans are set to vote within the next year.

In France, where presidential elections come in April, National Rally leader Marine Le Pen leads first-round polls and proposes cutting VAT on fuel and energy at a cost her party puts near €11 billion. Far-left candidate Jean-Luc Mélenchon calls for price caps and limits on refiners’ margins.

The chemical industry warns of lasting damage. Norwegian chemical company Yara International expects its energy costs to rise by $450 million year on year between October and December if gas prices stay high, and Greece’s Metlen Energy & Metals said further closures are hard to rule out without looser state aid rules.

Kahla Porzellan, a Thuringian porcelain maker that survived both world wars, will shut down by the end of the year and lay off 100 workers. Monthly gas bills reached as much as €180,000, or 70% of operating costs.

US households also face higher bills

American households face the strain too, with home heating costs projected to rise more than 7% on average this winter, The New York Times reported, citing the National Energy Assistance Directors Association.

Households that heat with oil, almost five million nationwide and mostly in the Northeast and Alaska, could pay up to 70% more than last winter, or about $2,977 for the season. Electric heating is set to climb about 6% to $1,215, and propane about 5% to $1,350.

The association’s executive director, Mark Wolfe, said uncertainty over global oil supplies makes prices hard to predict and urged states to prepare for them to stay high. Heating oil is close to diesel, whose supplies have tightened after refinery shutdowns in West Asia.

Data from the Energy Information Administration in April showed that as many as one in six US households had fallen behind on gas and electricity bills.

November 11, 2026 Posted by | Economics, Russophobia, Wars for Israel | , | Comments Off on Europe, US face higher heating bills amid Iran war fallout

New attack on Iran could devastate ‘Israel’, IOF general warns

Al Mayadeen | November 8, 2026

US President Donald Trump’s second term has exposed a reality starkly at odds with his promises to end crises and “achieve world peace,” as wars continue and economic difficulties deepen, Israeli reserve Major General Yitzhak Brik said.

In an article published by the Israeli newspaper Maariv, Brik noted that the West Asia region remains engulfed in an ongoing war, amid fears that the confrontation could spread to other parts of the world. Meanwhile, the global economy is deteriorating rather than experiencing the prosperity Trump had promised.

Brik argued that the outcome of the US midterm elections, in which Republicans lost control of Congress, reflected the extent of public dissatisfaction with Trump’s policies and declining confidence in his ability to resolve the crises he had pledged to address.

According to Brik, the US president is now facing consequential decisions over the war on Iran, amid sharp divisions within his administration and the absence of a unified strategy for dealing with the evolving confrontation.

US divided over war

Brik further stated that disagreements within the White House revolve around two principal options: escalating military attacks on Iran in an attempt to achieve a decisive outcome through force, or maintaining economic pressure while pursuing an agreement that could bring the war to an end and prevent further escalation.

However, military and political calculations are not the only factors shaping Trump’s decisions, the Israeli general said. He suggested that the US president’s sense of “humiliation” over Iran’s treatment of him could drive him to launch an attack out of a desire for revenge rather than on the basis of strategic assessments.

He warned that a military decision motivated by such considerations could have grave consequences for the entire region, particularly if “Israel” joined any new offensive.

A catastrophe for ‘Israel’

Brik stressed that another aerial assault on Iran, potentially involving “Israel”, could rapidly trigger a full-scale regional war in which “Israel” would find itself at the center.

He acknowledged that the damage “Israel” could sustain in such a confrontation would be “enormous and unbearable,” noting that some of the damage it suffered during previous rounds of fighting had already become irreparable.

Brik called on the “sensible and responsible” figures within the US administration to dissuade Trump from ordering another attack, warning that further escalation could open the door to a confrontation extending far beyond the current war.

He argued that the expectation that airstrikes alone could secure a decisive military victory over Iran rests on unrealistic assumptions. Without a ground intervention, he said, aerial operations cannot topple the Iranian government or prevent Iran from becoming a “nuclear state”.

Citing the outcome of previous attacks, Brik maintained that they had failed to achieve their strategic objectives, producing little more than temporary destruction while strengthening Tehran’s determination to continue developing its capabilities.

What are the costs of war?

In outlining the options available to Washington, Brik argued that addressing Iran’s nuclear program would require one of two principal courses of action, neither of which could produce results without imposing a substantial cost.

The first option would involve a large-scale ground operation inside Iranian territory, directly targeting nuclear facilities with substantial troop deployments, extensive air support, and the use of technological and intelligence capabilities.

Brik believed this option could potentially deliver a decisive military defeat to the Iranian government and neutralize its nuclear facilities. He acknowledged, however, that it would require a massive operation resulting in heavy casualties among US forces.

The second option would involve economically exhausting Iran through stringent sanctions and a prolonged blockade, backed by the full participation of Western countries, with the aim of isolating the Iranian economy from global markets.

He specified that this approach would require preventing Iran from exporting oil, gas, and other products, while restricting the entry of raw materials and weapons through land crossings, thereby subjecting Tehran to sustained economic pressure.

Brik acknowledged that this option had a lower likelihood of success than a ground military campaign and would require prolonged patience, international discipline, and broad Western commitment.

At the same time, Brik rejected reliance on a “middle-ground solution” based on repeating aerial attacks, arguing that such an approach would neither halt Iran’s nuclear program nor achieve a decisive military outcome. Instead, it could drag “Israel” into a regional war in which it would pay a heavy price.

Brik concluded his article by urging decision-makers to abandon their reliance on political promises and displays of air power, warning that military decisions driven by revenge, without adequately assessing their consequences, could aggravate the crisis rather than resolve it.

November 8, 2026 Posted by | Economics, Militarism, Wars for Israel | , , , , | Comments Off on New attack on Iran could devastate ‘Israel’, IOF general warns

Would President Vance really ditch Israel?

By Tarik Cyril Amar | RT | November 6, 2026

Never hesitate to state the obvious: Everyone with eyes to see is recognizing that the US midterm elections have been sensational. The Democrats have achieved a stupendous – “historic” according to the Financial Times – triumph; the Republicans have suffered a crushing, Stalingrad-scale rout.

Let’s focus on the rout: This is the moment when, on the same day, a New York Times front page main headline promises to explain the GOP’s “historic collapse” while Tucker Carlson starts his show with a wry “well, that was a disaster” (adding that he really means “disaster,” as in the sinking of the Lusitania, not rain at a wedding party).

You may suspect both America’s paper of liberal Centrism and the former Fox host turned MAGA dissident of bias or, at least, Schadenfreude. Yet bias is simply irrelevant in this case, where, for once, the facts really do speak for themselves: The great, enormous, humungous GOP midterm catastrophe is quantifiably worse than the 2006 drubbing the party received for George W. Bush’s Iraq War insanity or the “shellacking” – in his own words – voters administered to Barack Obama and his Democrats in 2010. As the staid Economist has summed up the Republican fiasco, this is “not a normal midterm swing against a sitting president, but the biggest wave-election since the aftermath of Watergate more than 50 years ago.”

What is even clearer than that the Republicans have been devastated is that one man in particular has taken a stunning hit: US President Donald Trump. He may insist that he was not on the ballot as much as he likes. No one is fooled. Of course, he was, if not officially – as no president ever is during midterms – then all the more in reality. This was, the Wall Street Journal has noted correctly, “one of the most decisive repudiations of a president in modern history.”

The causes of this “blue tsunami” will keep commentators and, later, historians busy. Here, let’s just note two things: They go beyond the key issues of “affordability,” a typical US euphemism for mass impoverishment and the “Iran War,” in effect another euphemism, standing for a US defeat much worse than Vietnam, incurred for no real reason other than to please genocidal Israel. In particular, the spike in gasoline prices resulting, most of all, directly from this perfectly avoidable war and defeat has delivered a gut punch to Trump’s party.

But also recall that US voters, as we know from polls, are angry as well about such things as the tariff wars that made their lives more expensive even before the Iran War, the blatant rapacity of the Trump clan and their cronies, and the shooting of US citizens in brutal ICE crackdowns.

Not to speak of bulldozing part of the White House in a quixotic quest for the biggest, blingest ballroom of them all. Most of all, perhaps, there is a deep background noise of resentment at a president who seems to make a point out of displaying how little he cares. About his countrymen and about his own promises of no more wars and putting America first, and not Israel.

And now? That is, of course, the most important and most urgent question of this moment. Rumors are swirling: The (political) heads of Secretary of War (On Behalf of Israel) Pete Hegseth and Trump’s chief of staff and single most important adviser Susie Wiles are said to be on the chopping block, for instance.

In this volatile dog-eats-panicked-dog world, one man seems to have made up his mind rapidly. Vice President J. D. Vance, former vehement Trump critic, then devoted Trump convert, has had another moment of revelation and rebirth. With the battle scarcely over and lost, he has addressed the public via X to, in essence, put as much distance between himself and his losing boss as he possibly can while, perhaps, keeping his job.

In a long post, Vance has outlined his theory of why the GOP was crushed. Unusually rich in detail about polling, turnout, and voter movements from one camp (the GOP) into the other (the Democrats), the gist of the post is one clear if implicit message: It’s Trump who is to blame.

Because that’s what you are saying when you say, as Vance does, that the key issue that lost the election was the war against Iran. If you add, as Vance also does, that voters wanted not only an end to that war but also a “focus on cost of living/inflation,” putting America truly first, and a “change of our relationship to Israel,” the point gets only clearer. The Wall Street Journal is right: This was a “stunning repudiation” of Trump.

For while Trump is by no means the only one to blame for the perverse American dependency on and support of a hyper-aggressive and genocidal midget state (that would be virtually the whole US establishment), he has made himself the single most prominent epitome of this national syndrome. And that makes him the single most convenient fall guy, too.

There’s no reason to pity Trump for being stabbed in the back by his very own Brutus. It was always clear that Vance is, to put it mildly, highly flexible in his positions and values as well as unscrupulous. His burning ambition is, if anything, even more obvious: Hire a Vance, don’t complain when he’ll kick and stab you when you’re down.

The Iranian leadership has made no secret of being highly unimpressed by Vance’s latest self-update. “Losing gambler energy, can’t walk away from the table. Boss is prepping the next war phase while America teeters on an Israel-First cliff. Skip the TED talk. Why not say this to your boss?” That was the response of Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, speaker of Iran’s parliament.

Tehran has every reason to be harsh as well as skeptical. But for the rest of us, it makes sense not to dismiss Vance’s sally so quickly. His motives are certain to be selfish. The fact that he was launched by one of America’s most devious and power-hungry oligarchs, Antichrist-obsessive Peter Thiel, makes his CV even less appealing. But we still have to ask what he may have in mind with his “break” with Trump.

Clearly, Vance is positioning himself for a potential run for the presidency. But what would be his agenda if he ran and won? Skeptics see a massive psyop: Vance will only pretend to offer MAGA cleansed of Trumpian contaminations, in other words, to really put America and Americans first, and cut Israel loose. In reality, they predict, his aim is to betray his potential voters no less than Trump has. Trust neither Vance nor his friend and MAGA rebel Tucker Carlson, the skeptics warn, because they will, in the end, sell out to Zionism and give you the same old, same old again.

There is no compelling reason to rule out such a scenario. Yet there is no reason to find it inevitable either. It is equally possible that Vance – out of opportunism, not because of the conscience he does not have – could really stand for a great right-wing turn away from Israel. Not because Israel is genocidal and all-purpose criminal, but because being tied to it is becoming far too politically costly.

This possibility should not be dismissed out of hand. For two reasons: First, being Israel’s tool in the Middle East has really produced catastrophe for the US and its establishment. And second, until now – or perhaps recently – supporting Israel come-what-may has been a vile bipartisan consensus. To break it down entirely will require great changes both among Democrats and Republicans.

US politics is exceptionally dark and often outright evil. But the geopolitics and the domestic calculus of the long decades of America’s “Israel First” obsession could shift even in that world of darkness. For Israel’s victims, the Palestinians, Syrians, Lebanese, Yemenis, Iranians, and many others, it won’t matter why exactly the US will finally stop propping up their tormenters. A realistic commitment to their liberation must focus first of all on getting the US out of the Middle East. Under what regime at home it will make that retreat may matter. Or not.

Tarik Cyril Amar is a historian from Germany working at Koç University, Istanbul, on Russia, Ukraine, and Eastern Europe, the history of World War II, the cultural Cold War, and the politics of memory.

November 6, 2026 Posted by | Economics, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, War Crimes, Wars for Israel | , , , , , | Comments Off on Would President Vance really ditch Israel?

GOP’s Crushing Midterm Loss Could Reshape US Political Landscape – Analyst

Sputnik – 05.11.2026

The Republicans suffered one of their worst defeats in decades, driven by the US administration’s catastrophic decision to unleash aggression against Iran, says Dmitry Suslov, deputy director of the Center for European and International Studies at Russia’s Higher School of Economics, speaking to Sputnik.

He warns that the GOP’s midterm fiasco will have serious political blowback, chiefly by weakening Trump’s standing at home and abroad.

Domestically, the US is certainly in for an extremely fierce political struggle, Suslov cautions.

  • The US could be plunged into a series of never-ending government shutdowns, especially next year
  • A budget crisis could blow up as investigators launch probes into every corner of GOP activity
  • Secretary of War Pete Hegseth will “undoubtedly face impeachment proceedings,” and his future remains uncertain

Suslov suggests that US foreign policy as a whole will not change, though the Democrats will most likely try to throw a wrench in the works by passing bills to tie Trump’s hands.

When it comes to the Ukraine conflict, the GOP’s painful midterm rout will have far-reaching implications, the expert points out.

  • Ukraine and Europe will now see Trump as “a lame duck,” and Zelensky will undoubtedly grow ever more insolent, relying on Democrat backing
  • Trump’s ability to apply coercive measures on Ukraine will be far more limited
  • For Russia, a Democrat win spells rapidly fading hopes for better ties with the US once the Ukraine conflict ends — and a growing threat of fresh sanctions

That leaves Russia with no incentive to make concessions on Ukraine in exchange for future US economic cooperation — now appearing to be an increasingly remote prospect, Suslov concludes.

November 5, 2026 Posted by | Economics, Russophobia | , , , | Comments Off on GOP’s Crushing Midterm Loss Could Reshape US Political Landscape – Analyst

Did Israel lose the midterms?

Trump is paying a heavy price for joining Benjamin Netanyahu’s war on Iran

RT | November 4, 2026

The view from Washington is clear: President Donald Trump’s decision to wage war on Iran cost the Republican Party the midterm elections. RT looks at how Benjamin Netanyahu’s war became Trump’s problem and whether Israel will bear any costs.

The Republican Party suffered an unequivocal wipeout in Tuesday’s midterm elections, handing Democrats their largest House majority since Bill Clinton entered the White House in 1993, along with a majority of at least ten seats in the Senate. Democrats flipped Senate seats in Texas, South Carolina, North Carolina, Kansas, Iowa, Ohio, and Maine, while Trump-backed gubernatorial candidates Vivek Ramaswamy and Greg Abbott lost in Ohio and Texas respectively – states Trump won comfortably in 2024.

All of this is a dramatic about-turn from 2024, when Trump and the GOP won a decisive mandate after promising to lower costs and keep the US out of foreign wars.

Did Israel cost Trump the elections?

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu visited the White House five times between Trump’s inauguration and the start of ‘Operation Epic Fury’ this February. The Israeli leader consulted Trump’s closest neoconservative allies, among them the late Senator Lindsey Graham, for advice on how to persuade Trump into war with Iran, and when the war began, an army of pro-Israel podcasters and influencers reassured Trump’s base that it would be easily won and would have no impact on the midterms.

“I think in the midterms this will be kind of a mild footnote,” conservative journalist Will Chamberlain predicted in April, two months into the war. “Whatever happens in the midterms, it doesn’t appear that Iran’s going to drive anything one way or another,” pro-Israel radio host Mark Levin told podcast host Ben Shapiro in September.

Shapiro, who like Levin has spent years lobbying for war with Iran, claimed that Trump’s unpopularity in the run-up to the elections was “not because of this stuff.”

Trump entered the war with no clear victory conditions or exit plan and, according to Secretary of State Marco Rubio, at the direct behest of Israel. Although the war is the least popular American military adventure since Vietnam, Pew Research ranked foreign policy the sixth-most important issue among midterm voters, with the economy in first place. Trump and the GOP could likely have survived an unpopular war had the closure of the Strait of Hormuz not driven gasoline prices to record highs, undermining his campaign trail promises to reverse the sky-high costs of the Biden years.

What’s the view on the right?

To many in Trump’s original MAGA base, the war was a catastrophic unforced error that directly cost the Republicans the elections. “Trump launched an unpopular and pointless war. Gas prices are too high. People can’t afford groceries. Trump abandoned the American First message. This is why Republicans are getting crushed. It’s very simple,” podcast host Matt Walsh wrote on X.

“Tonight is a massacre because of Iran,” right-wing influencer Scott Greer posted, adding that “denying that is pure cope.”

“President Trump, and it’s hard to even understand why, continues to do whatever Netanyahu tells him to do,” former Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene told RT. “We will continue to see this war go on.”

The pro-Israel right has shirked responsibility for the loss. “The vast majority of us are utterly unaffected by that war,” Levin said on election night. “If we lose… it’s not because of the Iran war.” Neoconservative influencer Joel Berry blamed the loss not on Trump’s war or high gas prices, but on “a sophisticated foreign demoralization campaign” that drew attention to these issues, and on Republicans going “socialist on economics and soft on abortion.”

In Tehran, the prognosis is [dis]similar. “I think the war of aggression against Iran played the key role in Trump’s defeat,” University of Tehran professor Mohammad Marandi told RT. “The Iranian resistance and resilience and steadfastness against Trump and Netanyahu and the Zionist lobby… it has turned the tide against Trump.”

“While there is a uniparty of sorts [in Washington],” Marandi continued, “ordinary people felt that this is the only way that they could make their views known. It was a bad defeat for Trump and for Zionism.”

Did Israel lose its bet?

In pressuring Trump into attacking Iran, Netanyahu succeeded where he had failed with George W. Bush, Barack Obama, and Joe Biden. Trump, the Israeli prime minister remarked last year, “is the greatest friend that Israel has ever had in the White House. No American president has ever done more for Israel. And it’s not even close.” 

Pro-Israel donors spent around $123 million on Trump’s 2024 campaign, with Israeli-American megadonor Miriam Adelson coughing up the lion’s share at $106 million, according to Federal Election Commission filings.

Since then, Trump has purged anti-Israel voices – including Greene, Rep. Thomas Massie, former National Counterterrorism Center Director Joe Kent, and a host of formerly loyal media allies including Tucker Carlson and Alex Jones – from his MAGA movement, and given Netanyahu the war he wanted for decades, but at a cost to West Jerusalem.

American sympathy for Israel vis-a-vis the Palestinians is at an all-time low, more than half of all Americans want military aid to Israel cut off or decreased, and 71% of Americans told Ipsos in April that they want nothing to do with Israel’s various Middle Eastern conflicts. Tens of millions of dollars in donations from the US’ powerful Israel lobby failed to prevent candidates such as Senators-elect Abdul el-Sayed in Michigan and Representatives-elect Darializa Avila Chevalier in New York, Adam Hamawy in New Jersey, and Donavan McKinney in Michigan from winning on an explicitly anti-Israel message.

A Democrat-dominated Congress may be slightly less compliant to Netanyahu’s demands, but regardless of whether the GOP won or lost on Tuesday, the Israeli leader is currently fighting to form a coalition after losing his majority in last week’s parliamentary elections, and may not be in power in January.

A graphic showing AIPAC's donations to member of the US House of Representatives, compiled by ChamberLight

A graphic showing AIPAC’s donations to member of the US House of Representatives, compiled by ChamberLight

Moreover, the Israel lobby remains a potent force in American politics, and its influence transcends party lines. Hakeem Jeffries, who will assume speakership in January, is among the 354 of 433 sitting members of the House who have received funding from AIPAC, while el-Sayed will be the only Senator not to have taken money from AIPAC or another pro-Israel group such as J Street or the Republican Jewish Coalition.

AIPAC spent $120 million on this year’s midterms, and 245 of 267 candidates – 92% – backed by the group won their races on Tuesday, according to data from ‘Who Funds my Rep?’

“It doesn’t matter whether it’s the Democratic Party or the Republican Party,” Marandi told RT. “Both parties are utterly corrupt and bound to the ‘Epstein Class’, as I would call it. The issue isn’t so much who replaces whom, but that the mood among ordinary Americans has shifted. If the elites don’t take this into account, they will get into trouble.”

Did Iran win the elections? 

Whether or not Iran benefits from the Republican loss depends largely on what Trump does next. The midterms may have rendered Trump a lame duck and dealt the GOP a generational defeat, but the president still retains the power to wage war, and that’s exactly what some of his most vocal ‘Israel-first’ allies want him to do.

There is “nothing to lose now,” pro-Israel influencer Laura Loomer wrote on X. “Time for President Trump to deal with Iran once and for all. Just do it.”

“Trump still has time to topple the [Iranian] regime and be remembered as one of the greatest US presidents,” Israeli analyst Dr. Eli David posted.

Trump has strongly suggested that he could restart the war after the midterms, telling supporters at a rally last week that “you’ll see Iran in a couple of weeks.” Speaking to Fox News on Wednesday, the president said that “in a short period of time, we have to do something large” against Iran, and that this would likely involve a “heavy hit.”

Should Trump go down this route, he is on a clear countdown timer. The new, Democrat-controlled Congress will be sworn in on January 3. Although Democrats have voted on several resolutions this year aimed at preventing Trump from waging war against Iran, these have all been destined to fail with Republicans in charge of both houses of Congress. Now, voters expect even their AIPAC-funded Senators and Representatives to follow through and rein in Trump’s war powers.

“If Trump chooses to attack Iran now,” Marandi told RT, “Democrats and some Republicans will be under some pressure to stand up to Trump, whether their funders like it or not.”

Tehran is not holding out hope for a course correction in Washington, but Tuesday’s election taught both parties a lesson that will reverberate for years to come: picking a fight with Iran is economically unviable, domestically unpopular, and political suicide for whoever is in the White House.

The bottom line

Trump and the GOP paid the ultimate price for agreeing to fight Benjamin Netanyahu’s war, with only the most die-hard Israel-firsters in the Republican camp suggesting that anything else was to blame for the shellacking the party received on Tuesday.

For Israel, the results are less clear. Netanyahu, or whoever succeeds him, may never get another American president as amenable as Trump. However, the Israelis still have a powerful lobby in Washington that will get to work on the new Congress, just as it has done for decades, to make extricating the US from the Iran war as difficult as possible.

November 4, 2026 Posted by | Economics, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Wars for Israel | , , , , , | Comments Off on Did Israel lose the midterms?

How Iran defeated Trump’s Israel First GOP

By Max Blumenthal | The Grayzone | November 4, 2026

Trump launched a failed war on Iran for Israel last February, as his NSC director and Secretary of State Marco Rubio admitted. Now, the war has come home.

Iran’s control over the Strait of Hormuz became a vice grip around the neck of Trump and the GOP, especially in the heartland, where diesel prices are 70% higher than a year ago, and farmers have been forced to leave crops in the ground. 74% of Americans told pollsters the failed Iran war was a crucial or major factor in their vote tonight, and over 60% said they were voting against the Republicans because of it.

Democrats won senate races in Kansas and Nebraska, agro producer states where Republicans always roll to victory like a big wheel through a corn field. They also flipped a seat in Iowa, which Trump won by 12 points in 2024, giving them control of the senate.

A Democrat has taken the seat of Lindsey Graham, the late neocon who advised Netanyahu on how to manipulate Trump into the war, resoundingly defeating his sister in South Carolina. In this deep red Southern bastion, a Democrat has not won a senate race since the days of Fritz Hollings, a now-extinct brand of conservative populist who opposed the Gulf war and railed against the neocons.

Trump’s promise of $15 billion in aid to farmers getting hammered by surging diesel costs failed to stop the bleeding. And it’s now another cost of the war.

The GOP strategy of hanging Hasan Piker and his pro-Palestine politics like an albatross around the neck of Democrats was also doomed from the start, as most swing state voters had never heard of the podcaster. Worse, the ploy reminded them how fanatically Israel-centric the Republicans had become under Trump. The Democrats had much more success weaponizing Jeffrey Epstein as a symbol of Trump’s corruption whose ghost subtly invoked malign Israeli influence over the US government.

Hours before polls closed, Trump issued a desperate pledge to end $4 billion in annual aid to Israel. He seemed determined to repeat the con he pulled off in Dearborn, MI at the end of 2024, where he promised to end the Gaza genocide that Biden and Harris backed. Later that night, after the Democrats took the Senate, Trump gave up any pretense of independence and declared: “If people ever got tired of me in the US, I’ll move to Israel and become prime minister.”

Where the “special relationship” with Israel was once a matter of bipartisan unity among party elites, it’s become a polarizing wedge issue and a poison pill for any president. Trump was expected to launch a third assault on Iran immediately after the midterms, but his inner circle is now positioned in a circular firing line, with the neocons who served as Netanyahu’s proxies – Mark Levine, Mark Dubowitz, Ben Shapiro et al – blaming everyone but themselves for the Blue Wave, while pleading to remain in Trump’s good graces.

Tomorrow, Zionist forces will pull back and retrench. Schumer, Jeffries and presidential prospects like Josh Shapiro will become their next line of defense, and possibly their last reliable one in a party whose base is now passionate about ending America’s attachment to Israel.

November 4, 2026 Posted by | Economics, Wars for Israel | , | Comments Off on How Iran defeated Trump’s Israel First GOP

Ghalibaf warns US government not to betray voters who rejected war

Al Mayadeen| November 4, 2026

Americans rejected war at the ballot box, Iranian Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf said on Wednesday, warning Washington that any attempt to defy that verdict would meet a forceful Iranian response.

Writing on X after Democrats won the Senate in Tuesday’s midterm elections, Ghalibaf said voters moved by “conscience or the cost of living” had said “NO TO WAR,” a message he stressed Iran endorses. Should the US government betray its own public’s will to serve “international paymasters and blackmailers,” he cautioned, it would discover that Iran’s refusal “comes with a Nightmare.”

Trump, for his part, acknowledged that the war on Iran had weighed on Republicans. “Iran was a piece of it,” he told The Wall Street Journal on Tuesday night when asked whether the war had shaped the outcome.

He nonetheless stood by his decision to launch the aggression. “I did the right thing. I would have done it again,” he said. He argued that soaring fuel prices, a consequence of the war, had hurt his party more than the war itself and rejected the idea that the losses were a verdict on his presidency. “The biggest issue is that I wasn’t on the ballot,” he insisted.

Democrats take Congress

The Associated Press called the Senate for Democrats late Tuesday. They gained seven seats, many in states Trump carried comfortably in 2024.

James Talarico defeated Trump-backed Ken Paxton in Texas, giving the party its first Senate win there since 1988, and Adam Hamilton became the first Democrat elected to the Senate from Kansas since 1932. Democrats also flipped seats in North Carolina, South Carolina, Ohio, Iowa and Maine, where Troy Jackson unseated Susan Collins.

Democrats later secured the House as well. AP’s latest count puts them at 220 seats to Republicans’ 128, past the 218 needed for a majority, with 25 seats gained so far.

Counting continues in several races.

War, prices drove the vote

According to the NBC News Exit Poll, about 74% of voters described the US war on Iran as a crucial or major factor in their congressional vote.

In the same poll, 79% said inflation was causing hardship for their families, and 62% held Trump responsible for high prices. His approval rating stood at 38%, the lowest for a sitting president on Election Day since 2008.

Voters felt the war most directly at the pump. Gas averaged $4.16 a gallon on Monday, up from $2.98 before the war began.

Trump has nonetheless left the door open to renewed escalation. Hours before polls closed, he told the Financial Times that the US had no immediate plans to bomb Iran but was “locked and loaded if we need to go.”

His remarks came as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu hinted at an attack later this week. Reports also said Washington had told Gulf states to prepare for a short, intense campaign after the vote.

Since the US and “Israel” launched the aggression on February 28, the war has cost the US military at least $47.1 billion, according to a CENTCOM estimate that excludes extensive damage to US bases. The Pentagon has admitted to at least 21 US soldiers killed.

November 4, 2026 Posted by | Economics, Militarism, Wars for Israel | , , | Comments Off on Ghalibaf warns US government not to betray voters who rejected war

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