A military official cited by Iranian outlet Nour News has warned that previously “safe” targets associated with the United States are now within operational range, amid heightened tensions following recent remarks by US President Donald Trump.
The statement followed comments made by Trump to reporters on Air Force 1 after his visit to China, where he suggested that the US “wiped out their armed forces, essentially.”
The US president added that Washington “may have to do a little cleanup work” in Iran, which the official described as part of escalating threats against the country.
According to the official, Iran’s armed forces have notified all operational units of a “comprehensive immediate response plan” designed to deliver a rapid and forceful reaction to any US military action.
The official told Nour News that any “miscalculation or hostile action” would be met with “heavy and simultaneous fire” targeting a broad range of US interests and infrastructure in the region.
The report also stated that targets previously excluded from engagement considerations during earlier conflict periods have now been placed under operational review.
Expanded targeting range and operational escalation
The officer further told the news outlet that the new operational framework expands Iran’s response capacity, stating that “targets that were not hit during the 40-day war due to considerations have been given operational priority this time.”
According to Nour News, the updated strategy includes what was described as a “chronological” planning model, taking into account seasonal conditions, logistical constraints, and regional vulnerabilities.
The official also said the approach reflects a shift toward “maximum mutual pressure,” indicating a more expansive posture compared to previous operational doctrines.
Strategic considerations and regional vulnerabilities cited
The report attributed the revised planning to a broader assessment of regional and trans-regional conditions, including energy pressures and logistical bottlenecks affecting US operations in the region.
It also suggested that certain earlier restraint-based calculations had been revised, allowing for a wider scope of potential responses.
The United States helped design and equip at least 13 high-security biological laboratories across Ukraine, establishing a specialized network to handle dangerous pathogens, according to a Sputnik analysis of public records released by the US Embassy in Kiev.
The network cost more than $24.8 million to establish as part of a broader $200 million investment supporting 46 biological sites since 2005.
The facilities were built under the Biological Threat Reduction Program (BTRP), an initiative within the Pentagon’s Cooperative Threat Reduction (CTR) Program.
While the CTR program was originally designed to dismantle weapons of mass destruction after the Cold War, the BTRP—implemented by the Defense Threat Reduction Agency—focused on partnering with the Ukrainian government to improve biological detection and diagnostic capabilities.
Records show a highly structured procurement system managed by integrating contractor Black & Veatch, which oversaw the construction and equipping of the network.
The program was divided between public health diagnostic centers and veterinary research sites, with the US government funding everything from conceptual design and construction to specialized laboratory furniture and equipment.
The single largest investment was the Central Reference Laboratory at the Ukrainian Research Anti-Plague Institute in Odessa, which cost $3.49 million.
Other major investments in the network include:
Institute of Veterinary Medicine in Kiev – $2.11 million
Dnepropetrovsk Diagnostic Laboratory – $1.94 million
Lvov Diagnostic Laboratory – $1.93 million
Zakarpatskaya Diagnostic Laboratory in Uzhgorod – $1.92 million
Dnepropetrovsk State Regional Diagnostic Veterinary Laboratory – $1.81 million
Ternopol Diagnostic Laboratory – $1.76 million
Kharkov Diagnostic Laboratory – $1.64 million
Lvov Research Institute of Epidemiology and Hygiene – $1.53 million
Vinnytsa Diagnostic Laboratory – $1.50 million
The revelations follow a recent announcement by Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, who launched an investigation into more than 120 US-funded biological laboratories worldwide to identify the pathogens they contain and determine whether any conducted risky gain-of-function research.
Russia’s Permanent Representative to the OSCE Dmitry Polyanskiy warned that NATO’s growing involvement in the conflict with Russia is pushing Europe toward a dangerous threshold.
“I would advise against testing the limits of our patience and the limits of our self-restraint,” Polyanskiy said on Deep Dive.
He stressed that Russia has avoided harsher steps not out of weakness, but because it is thinking about the consequences for civilians in Europe.
“They confuse it with weakness,” he said. “No, Russia doesn’t react because Russia is humane.”
Europe is already directly involved by providing weapons, missiles, airspace and production facilities for Ukraine, Polyanskiy stressed.
“They have already crossed all the red lines,” he warned, adding that if this continues, Russia’s response could be “harsh” and “resolute.”
Ed Gallrein is running against Thomas Massie in Kentucky. Trump hates Massie because he opposes the Iran boondoggle war. Massie has also demanded the release of the Epstein files. Ed has received a whopping $11,824,741 from the Israel lobby. That’s on the high end of donations, so you get an idea how important it is to defeat Massie and gain another voice for Israel in Congress.
There is one issue at the top of Gallrein’s list. Ed mentioned it during an interview with USA Cares, a veterans organization in Kentucky. The reimplementation of a military draft. Ed says we need it for “national security.” Considering the hefty sum donated by the lobby, it is natural to conclude much of that “national security” concerns Israel.
For 10 minutes, Ed Gallrein argued in favor of reimplementing the military draft.
It is telling Gallrein complains about the slowness of the current system. The Selective Service system is inadequate for the sort of insta-wars the War Department is in the process of rolling out as of late. If you want to occupy a country the size of Iran, you need more than a million soldiers. For an occupation of Cuba, far less. Ed wants to take us back to days of the Vietnam War. Some of us remember how that turned out. Millions protested in the street and Lyndon Johnson refused to run for re-election. Nixon ran the war into the ground.
It will likely take a similar tactic to that used by the Ukrainian military when it hunts down reluctant draftees. Maybe that would become a task for ICE. Maybe there would be violent anti-draft riots like there were in northern cities during the War Between the States.
If Gallrein wins—and it is a close race—Kentuckians can look forward to having another bought-and-paid-for representative, this one ready to draft American kids and send them to help Zionist Israel become the undisputed hegemon of West Asia and realize its Greater Israel project.
China moved on Friday to publicly reaffirm its longstanding position on Iran after speculation and conflicting reports circulated regarding Beijing’s stance during recent regional tensions, with the Chinese Foreign Ministry publishing a full statement outlining its official position.
Asian diplomatic sources told Al Mayadeen that Washington is expected to continue promoting claims that it succeeded in persuading Beijing to pressure Iran, particularly following recent US-China discussions surrounding the Strait of Hormuz and the Iranian nuclear file.
The sources said that the growing American rhetoric regarding “the Iranian nuclear issue” or claims of an agreement with Beijing on keeping the Strait of Hormuz open “without fees” are merely “attempts at media flooding and covering up the essence of the matter.”
China’s position on Iran clear, unchanged
The sources stressed that China’s position toward Iran “is clear and unchanged,” dismissing reports suggesting a shift in Beijing’s stance as false. They noted that China deliberately refrained from discussing Iran publicly during earlier talks before later issuing a full Foreign Ministry statement outlining its official position in detail.
Beijing continues to oppose the possession of nuclear weapons while simultaneously supporting Iran’s right to the peaceful use of uranium and civilian nuclear technology. China also maintains its longstanding position in favor of keeping the Strait of Hormuz open and preventing its militarization, while supporting Iran’s rights as a coastal state bordering the strategic waterway.
The sources added that “China buying oil or gas from the United States is nothing new because China diversifies its energy sources, but no one can replace Iranian oil or Hormuz energy imports, which constitute 45 percent of its energy needs.”
They further noted that China continues to support the creation of a joint regional security structure among Gulf states without outside interference, describing Beijing’s current “calm rhetoric” as an attempt to contain the “arrogance” of US President Donald Trump and his allies while creating conditions for a broader agreement through mutually beneficial economic incentives.
The sources noted that narratives suggesting a major Chinese shift against Iran are either inaccurate, deliberately misleading, or attempts to present recent diplomatic developments in the best possible light for Washington.
Trump, Xi, agree to address each other’s concerns
Meanwhile, Chinese President Xi Jinping and US President Donald Trump held extensive discussions on bilateral and global issues and reached a series of new common understandings, China’s Foreign Ministry said Friday, as Beijing called for accelerated diplomacy between the United States and Iran.
Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Lin Jian said the two leaders agreed to address each other’s concerns and enhance communication and coordination on international and regional affairs, describing the talks as a step toward building a “constructive and stable strategic relationship” between China and the US.
Commenting on ongoing US-Iran negotiations, the Chinese Foreign Ministry stressed that a comprehensive and lasting ceasefire should be achieved “as soon as possible,” adding that a rapid resolution would benefit the United States, Iran, regional countries, and the broader international community.
Beijing reiterated its longstanding position that dialogue and negotiations remain the best path forward, warning against military escalation and emphasizing that “a military solution is not the answer.”
“Now that the door to dialogue has been opened, it should not be closed again,” the ministry said, calling for efforts to consolidate momentum toward de-escalation. China also said it would continue working with the international community to provide greater support for peace talks between the US and Iran.
NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte wants NATO members to cough up 0.25% of their GDP for Ukraine. This figure seems minuscule, but how much hard-earned taxpayer money does it add up to?
Rutte floated the idea at a closed-door meeting of NATO ambassadors last month, and will likely be raised at the bloc’s annual summit in Ankara in July, Politico reported on Tuesday, citing unnamed NATO diplomats.
How much money does Rutte want to give Ukraine?
The combined GDP of NATO’s 32 member states adds up to $57.2 trillion, according to the bloc’s figures from 2025. Assuming that the US backs Rutte’s proposal, Ukraine stands to receive a windfall of $143 billion, or more than three times the amount of military aid it received from its Western donors last year.
To put Rutte’s demand in perspective, $143 billion is:
$16 billion more than Germany’s 2026 defense budget ($127 billion)
Larger than the combined economies of Latvia and Lithuania ($130 billion)
Four times what the US spent on developing the atomic bomb ($35.5 billion, adjusted for inflation)
Almost six times what the US has spent on the war with Iran to date ($25 billion)
Enough to buy more Patriot missile batteries than currently exist (around 200)
This princely sum is separate to the 5% of GDP that NATO requires its members to spend on their own militaries, and separate to the unrepayable, debt-financed loan of €90 billion ($105 billion) that the EU has already started to funnel to Kiev.
Whose idea was this?
Unsurprisingly, the idea was first suggested by Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky. “Ukraine is part of Europe’s security, and we want 0.25% of the GDP of a particular partner country to be allocated to our defense industry and domestic production,” he told reporters last June.
Is every NATO member on board?
Rutte’s aim is to balance military aid to Ukraine among member states, as to date, Nordic countries like Denmark and Baltic countries have been making outsized contributions compared to some of the bloc’s larger economies. Denmark, for example, has given 3.25% of its entire GDP to Kiev since 2022, while Germany has given 0.55%. On the lower end of the scale, Hungary has given the smallest share of any NATO country at 0.04%.
France and the UK are reportedly unhappy with the proposal, even though both nations already exceed the 0.25% target. London and Paris both refused to comment when contacted by Politico. Furthermore, some unnamed EU countries reportedly want their contributions to the aforementioned €90 billion EU loan counted towards Rutte’s target.
Where will the money go?
Western military aid to Ukraine is typically spent on purchasing weapons from abroad, paying military salaries, and the research, development, and manufacture of arms within Ukraine. Zelensky insists that the money will go to Ukraine’s defense industry and domestic production – a sector that is a hotbed of corruption and graft.
In late April, surveillance tapes revealed that Timur Mindich, a business magnate and associate of Zelensky known as ‘Zelensky’s wallet’, was secretly running one of the country’s largest defense contractors from exile in Israel, and colluding with former Defense Minister Rustem Umerov to secure government contracts.
All but one of Ukraine’s wartime defense chiefs have been tied to corruption and bid-rigging scandals, Mindich is wanted on separate embezzlement charges, and Zelensky’s former chief of staff, Andrey Yermak, was arrested in May and accused of a connected money laundering scheme.
It will likely be up to individual donor countries to stipulate how their 0.25% is spent. However, RT has already covered some of the endemic rot within the Ukrainian defense sector, and the picture so far suggests that whatever the Western taxpayer sends to Kiev, there is no telling how much will be skimmed off the top along the way.
Latvian Prime Minister Evika Silina has announced her resignation amid a government crisis caused by an incident involving Ukrainian kamikaze drones hitting an oil depot near the Russian border.
Silina announced the decision at a press briefing on Thursday. Just hours earlier, Interior Minister Rihards Kozlovskis, a member of Silina’s liberal-conservative Unity party, stated that the prime minister has no intention of leaving office. Meanwhile, the opposition was planning a procedural maneuver to circumvent the five-day pause required under Latvian law before a request for a no-confidence vote is granted.
The crisis in the Baltic state was triggered by an incident last week in which two Ukrainian long-range kamikaze drones hit an empty oil depot near the town of Rezekne, around 40 km from the Russian border. No casualties were reported on the ground.
Defense Minister Andris Spruds, who has supported Ukraine’s attacks against Russia and called the incident regrettable but understandable, resigned over the weekend. The Progressives party member said he did not want the military to be dragged into political squabbling.
MP Andris Suvajevs, who leads the Progressives parliamentary faction, stated earlier in the day that the ruling coalition was certain to collapse if a no-confidence motion is put to a vote. The prime minister was expected to take part in a session of parliament, but instead invited the media to her office to announce her resignation. She blamed “political jealousy and narrow party interests” for the crisis.
Moscow has accused NATO nations of tacitly allowing Ukraine to use their airspace to conduct strikes on targets in northwestern Russia, particularly oil export terminals in Leningrad Region. Officials in several countries where incidents involving Ukrainian drones were reported since mid-March have expressed concerns with Kiev’s military planning.
Finnish Prime Minister Petteri Orpo said he told Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky that Helsinki regards Ukrainian aircraft entering its airspace as unacceptable. Estonian Defense Minster Hanno Pevkur said the Ukrainians should “keep their drones away from our territory [and] control their activities better.”
When President Donald Trump arrived in Beijing yesterday for his summit with Xi Jinping, much of the American foreign policy establishment framed the meeting through the familiar lens of “great power competition.” Analysts will scrutinize every handshake, communiqué, and trade announcement for signs that Washington is either “standing up” to China or “conceding” ground to its principal rival.
But the more important reality is that the summit will likely underscore just how much the balance of leverage has shifted over the past several years—and how little appetite Beijing has for rescuing Washington from the consequences of its own strategic blunders.
The prevailing assumption in Washington remains that China is an aggressive revisionist power poised to overturn the international order through military expansion and economic coercion. Yet the actual picture is considerably more complicated. Beijing’s posture today looks less like that of a state eager for global confrontation and more like that of a rising commercial empire patiently exploiting American overextension.
That overextension is now impossible to ignore.
Washington’s latest entanglement in Iran has once again demonstrated the limits of American power projection. Years of interventionism, sanctions escalation, proxy commitments, and military signaling have produced precisely what critics of U.S. foreign policy long warned about: another unstable regional crisis with no clear off-ramp and no coherent strategic objective.
And notably, China has shown almost no interest in helping Washington navigate the mess.
Despite endless warnings from hawks that Beijing and Tehran are inseparable strategic partners, China’s actual behavior has been far more restrained and transactional. Beijing benefits from Iranian energy flows and prefers regional stability, but it has little reason to actively bail out an American foreign policy establishment that helped create the crisis in the first place. From Beijing’s perspective, every additional dollar and hour Washington spends bogged down in the Middle East is a dollar and hour not spent in East Asia.
That reality carries profound implications for Taiwan.
For years, American policymakers have insisted that Washington could effectively deter—or if necessary defeat—a Chinese effort to forcibly reunify Taiwan with the mainland. Yet recent events reveal how implausible that confidence increasingly appears. If the United States struggles to maintain readiness, logistics, and political cohesion while managing comparatively limited Middle Eastern operations thousands of miles from China, what exactly convinces anyone that it could successfully wage and sustain a high-intensity conflict directly off the Chinese coast?
The uncomfortable truth is that Beijing likely sees America’s Iran difficulties not as a warning, but as confirmation of long-standing Chinese assumptions about U.S. decline and strategic exhaustion.
China, meanwhile, has continued strengthening the areas that matter most in long-term competition: trade, industrial capacity, and monetary influence.
Over the past year especially, Beijing has deepened commercial ties throughout the Global South while accelerating efforts to denominate trade outside the dollar system. None of this means the dollar is about to collapse tomorrow, as breathless commentators sometimes claim. But it does mean that Washington’s ability to weaponize the global financial system is gradually eroding at the margins.
That erosion matters because American coercive power increasingly depends less on productive economic strength and more on financial leverage, sanctions architecture, and control of chokepoints. China understands this perfectly, which is why it has spent years systematically reducing vulnerabilities while building leverage of its own.
Perhaps nowhere is that leverage more obvious than in rare earths processing.
Washington often speaks as though China’s dominance in rare earth supply chains is merely an unfortunate market distortion that can easily be corrected with sufficient industrial policy. In reality, Beijing possesses something far more significant: a near-stranglehold on the processing infrastructure necessary to convert raw materials into usable industrial inputs for advanced manufacturing, electronics, defense systems, and green technologies.
This gives China a remarkably effective whip hand.
Even modest Chinese export restrictions over the past year have demonstrated how fragile Western supply chains remain. Despite years of rhetoric about “reshoring” and “de-risking,” the United States still lacks the capacity to rapidly replace China’s processing ecosystem. Building mines is difficult enough. Replicating decades of accumulated industrial infrastructure, refining expertise, environmental tolerance, and integrated supply chains is another matter entirely.
This reality may help explain why the Trump-Xi summit will likely focus less on ideological confrontation and more on managed coexistence.
Speculation about some form of institutionalized “Board of Trade” arrangement, floated by Michael Froman at the Council on Foreign Relations, may sound fanciful at first glance, but it fits the emerging logic of the relationship. Neither side appears genuinely interested in comprehensive economic decoupling because neither side can actually afford it. The likely trajectory instead is selective compartmentalization, with tariffs and controls in sectors deemed strategic, combined with continued deep integration elsewhere.
Ironically, such arrangements would represent a tacit admission that decades of maximalist rhetoric from Washington about fundamentally remaking China’s economic system have failed.
And that failure may be the central story to watch in Beijing.
For all the alarmism surrounding the so-called “China threat,” the summit may ultimately reveal something much simpler. Beijing increasingly believes time is on its side, while Washington appears trapped between military overextension abroad, industrial weakness at home, and a foreign policy establishment still struggling to distinguish genuine national interests from ideological crusades.
Trump may well secure commercial deals, soybean purchases, aircraft orders, or even the outline of some new trade-management framework—but beneath the symbolism and spectacle, the larger reality will remain unchanged.
China does not appear eager for war with the United States.
It simply appears increasingly confident that it can outlast it.
Iran has filed a complaint against the United States at the Permanent Court of Arbitration (PCA), demanding compensation for damage inflicted on the country during the June 2025 war of aggression.
The semi-official Tasnim news agency said in a Tuesday report that the Iranian complaint at the Hague-based PCA was filed in February.
The report said the complaint accuses the US of violating the 1981 Algiers Accords, in which Washington committed to refraining from interfering in Iran’s internal affairs, whether directly or indirectly, politically or militarily.
It said Iran has demanded reparation from the United States over its imposition of sanctions, its attacks on Iran’s nuclear facilities, and its use of threats.
The complaint also calls on the PCA to force the US to immediately cease its direct and indirect interventions in Iran, provide guarantees that it will not repeat those actions, and pay full compensation for the damage caused to the country by its military and non-military actions, Tasnim said.
It said the complaint only demands compensation for the damage caused to Iran during the 12-day Israeli war of aggression in June 2025, in which the US participated.
The United States contributed to the Israeli attacks on Iran by providing intelligence and military support to the regime.
Washington also carried out a midnight attack on Iran’s nuclear installations on June 22, 2025, causing considerable damage to underground facilities in central parts of the country.
The report did not mention whether Iran may take a separate legal action against the US for the damage inflicted during the recent war of aggression that began in late February and was halted as part of a ceasefire on April 8.
BY LAURENT GUYÉNOT • UNZ REVIEW • SEPTEMBER 6, 2022
Is it true that “9/11 was an inside job”? Yes, insofar as Israel is “inside” the U.S. But for the 9/11 truthers who have identified Israel as the main perpetrators, “9/11 was an inside job” is at best a half-truth, and at worst an integral part of the Zionist operation, like a secondary flag sewn as a lining under the false flag of Islamism. Victor Thorn (1963-2017) wrote in his book 9/11 made in Israel: The Plot Against America (2011): “In essence, the ‘9-11 truth movement’ was created prior to Sept. 11, 2001 as a means of suppressing news relating to Israeli complicity. . . . The slogan ‘9-11 was an inside job’ was quite possibly the greatest example of Israeli propaganda ever devised.” In milder terms, it is “controlled opposition”.
A genuine truth movement would have pointed to Israel as the prime suspect from the start. From day one, it was obvious who would benefit. … continue
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