Tokyo protests demand Takaichi’s resignation over support for ‘Israel’
Al Mayadeen | October 19, 2026
Thousands of pro-Palestinian demonstrators gathered outside Japan’s National Diet in Tokyo, demanding Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi’s resignation over her government’s stance on Palestine and its alignment with US and Israeli military policies.
The protesters expressed solidarity with the Palestinian people and condemned the ongoing Israeli war on the Gaza Strip and aggression across West Asia.
Demonstrators criticized Japan’s refusal to recognize the State of Palestine, its failure to impose sanctions on “Israel,” and its continued purchases of weapons from Israeli companies.
Protesters oppose Japan’s military expansion
Participants also voiced opposition to the government’s plans to increase military spending, revise Article 9 of Japan’s Constitution, which renounces war, and ease restrictions on arms exports.
Speakers criticized military cooperation between Tokyo and “Israel”, particularly reports of plans to purchase Israeli-made drones.
Protesters argued that these drones had been developed and tested through operations involving the direct targeting and killing of Palestinians. They called on the Japanese government to end all military partnerships with the Israeli occupation.
Protestors demand closure of Israeli embassy
In September, over 100 pro-Palestine demonstrators gathered outside of the Israeli embassy in Tokyo and called for the expulsion of the newly appointed Israeli ambassador to Japan, Emmanuel Navon, and the closure of the embassy.
The protesters denounced the Israeli war on Gaza and criticized Tokyo’s and Tel Aviv’s military relationship.
Protesters carried Palestinian flags and banners condemning the Israeli aggression, while chanting slogans calling for freedom for Palestine and an end to the war.
The Network Against Japan Arms Trade (NAJAT), one of the main groups organizing the protest, stated that the demonstration was intended to formally convey its demands to the Japanese state.
NAJAT said the appointment of a new Israeli ambassador provided an opportunity to renew calls for his expulsion and urge Japan to take a stronger stance against “Israel.”
Protesters further called on Japanese authorities to arrest Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and demanded that the government close the Israeli embassy in Tokyo.
How Iran’s two-week retaliatory strikes exposed cracks in US military architecture in Persian Gulf
By Mohammad Molaei | Press TV | October 18, 2026
The two-week exchange of fire between the United States and Iran, triggered by Washington’s attempt to force open an illegal southern corridor through the Strait of Hormuz, represented the most consequential direct military confrontation between them since the 40-day war.
The Iranian response to the unprovoked and illegal American aggression was not a chaotic escalation but a methodical, layered military campaign that drew on years of doctrinal development, weapons investment, and operational planning.
The efforts of the Islamic Republic’s armed forces, spearheaded by the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) aerospace and naval branches, executed a decisive and swift response.
What unfolded was a layered operation with nine distinct but interlocking lines of effort. Each line reinforced the others. Infrastructure degradation reduced American operational tempo; area denial forced repositioning that compounded the effects of that degradation; extended-range precision strikes demonstrated that repositioning offered no sanctuary; ISR attrition blinded American targeting systems; terrorist suppression closed the land flank, while strikes on utility infrastructure imposed costs on host nations and denied services to American bases.
One can employ the open-source reporting, satellite imagery, and the observable pattern of strikes to examine each dimension of Iran’s military response in detail, and construct a coherent operational picture. It is getting exceedingly clear that the ceasefire period has very likely translated to a window for reconstitution and preparation in Iranian strategic calculus.
The primacy of solid-fuel tactical ballistic missiles
Iran’s decision to anchor its retaliatory campaign in solid-fuel tactical ballistic missiles was not accidental. It reflected a decade-long investment in a specific capability designed precisely for this kind of confrontation. Solid-fuel ballistic missiles offer decisive operational advantages over their liquid-fuel predecessors. They require no fueling time at the launch site, dramatically compressing the window between a launch order and missile departure.
This matters enormously in a sensitive environment where adversary assets, particularly MQ-9 Reaper drones and maritime patrol aircraft, are actively hunting for launch preparations.
A liquid-fuel missile requires a visible, time-consuming fueling sequence that creates a detectable signature. A solid-fuel missile can be transported, erected, and fired in a fraction of that time, often before a targeting solution can be developed and a strike authorized.
These missiles are road-mobile, launched from transporter-erector-launchers (TELs) that can disperse across Iran’s mountainous terrain, making pre-emptive targeting extremely difficult.
Having destroyed much of the air defense systems belonging to the US and its Arab allies using the older, less sophisticated liquid fuel missiles in previous wars, Iran’s strikes this time primarily relied on its tactical solid-fuel ballistic missile inventory, meaning the various variants of the Fateh family.
Simply put, the choice of solid-fuel systems reflected a calculated assessment of the adversary’s weakened interception capacity, an assessment that proved accurate.
The air defense inventory crisis
Perhaps the single most consequential factor shaping the operational environment was the state of US and allied air defense missile inventories.
The United States entered this round of military aggression with critically depleted stocks of its most capable interceptors. The Standard Missile-3 (SM-3) and Standard Missile-6 (SM-6), which arm Aegis-equipped destroyers and cruisers and provide the American Navy’s primary ballistic missile defense capability at sea, have been drawn down through a combination of expenditure in the Red Sea campaign against Yemen, the costly defense of Israel during two previous wars, and the simple reality that production rates have never kept pace with consumption.
The Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) system, which provides upper-tier defense against medium and intermediate-range ballistic missiles, is similarly constrained.
The decision not to employ Aegis and THAAD at full capacity was therefore a forced one. The United States simply could not spend its remaining meager inventory of SM-3 and THAAD interceptors against Iranian tactical ballistic missiles, which, while accurate and damaging, are not the only threats to American interests.
Doing so would have left the United States strategically exposed against another serious contingency in East Asia or Europe. The calculus was that American military bases had to absorb more hits to preserve the interceptors.
Moreover, the Patriot system, which bore the brunt of terminal-phase defense in recent weeks across the region, was in no better condition. Years of expenditure across Ukraine, the occupied territories, the Persian Gulf, and the Red Sea mission have drawn PAC-3 and PAC-3 MSE stocks to extremely low levels.
The Pentagon’s response was telling. Rather than accelerating full-capability PAC-3 MSE production, it has chosen to pursue the cheaper, less capable PAC-3ACE Cost Reduction Initiative variant. More revealing still were the recent PAC-2 GEM-T orders, an older interceptor not procured by the US in decades, signaling just how severely stocks had been exhausted.
That the world’s most sophisticated air defense enterprise was compelled to resurrect a 1990s-era design to sustain basic readiness is the starkest indicator of the American munitions crisis that Iranian planners appear to have understood, measured, and exploited with precision.
The situation among Persian Gulf states was equally dire. Saudi Arabia and the UAE had expended substantial portions of their Patriot PAC-3 interceptor stocks during years of Yemeni military missile and drone attacks, and entered the 40-day imposed war with depleted inventories. The situation is even direr in Kuwait and Bahrain, with the Persian Gulf microstates effectively running out of Patriots, being forced to solely rely on American-operated systems.
PAC-3, the most capable variant of the Patriot system against ballistic missiles, has effectively been exhausted in several batteries. PAC-2, the older and less capable variant, is the only available option in certain areas against Iranian missiles, and even that missile is running low as well. The collective air defense architecture of the Persian Gulf states, which had appeared formidable on paper, has been effectively hollowed out.
Iranian operational planners were aware of these facts. The sequencing and volume of Iranian missile salvos during the exchange reflected a deliberate attempt to exploit the gap between what the defense could theoretically intercept and what it could actually intercept given real-world inventory constraints.
Iran’s multi-layered operational strategy
What distinguished Iran’s response from a simple missile barrage was its architectural coherence. Iranian planners did not merely fire missiles at American targets; they executed a phased, multi-domain retaliatory campaign with distinct operational objectives at each stage, each phase creating the conditions for the next.
The campaign can be understood as having five interlocking lines of effort: infrastructure degradation, area denial and operational displacement, precision strike at extended range, ISR and logistics attrition, and proxy terrorist force suppression.
Together, they constituted a campaign design far more sophisticated than most Western analysts had publicly credited Iran with possessing.
The overarching logic was one of progressive operational constriction. Rather than attempting to destroy US forces – an objective beyond Iran’s reach given American conventional superiority – the campaign aimed to degrade, displace, and exhaust them.
Each successful strike reduced American operational capacity; forced repositioning that consumed time and resources, and demonstrated to regional partners that proximity to American occupation forces carried real costs.
Infrastructure degradation
The first phase of the Iranian retaliatory campaign targeted the physical infrastructure of American military power in the Persian Gulf region. This was not indiscriminate bombardment. Satellite imagery and post-strike assessments revealed a pattern of targeting that prioritized specific high-value nodes: radar installations, fuel and ammunition storage facilities, maintenance hangars, and communications infrastructure.
Radar systems were a particular priority. The ability to detect, track, and target Iranian missiles and UAVs depends on a layered network of radar systems. By striking radar installations at air bases, Iran degraded the situational awareness that underpins both offensive operations and defensive intercepts. A radar that is destroyed or forced offline creates a coverage gap that cascades through the entire air defense architecture.
Before-and-after imagery of an AN/FPS-117 early warning radar installation at Ahmad al-Jaber Air Base, Kuwait, showing structural damage
Logistics infrastructure was targeted with equal deliberateness. Fuel depots, ammunition storage sites, and maintenance facilities at American bases around the Persian Gulf were struck with sufficient accuracy to cause meaningful operational disruption.
An air force that cannot fuel its aircraft, rearm them, or repair battle damage cannot sustain sortie rates. The targeting of logistics was a direct attack on the tempo of American air operations to derail the American aggression against Iranian sites and reduce the pressure on Iranian forces.
The accuracy of these strikes, achieved at ranges of several hundred kilometers, validated the operational utility of Iran’s solid-fuel ballistic missile force and demonstrated that the IRGC aerospace force had developed the targeting data, launch procedures, and quality control necessary to achieve consistent results against fixed infrastructure.
The anti-access/area denial campaign
The most strategically significant dimension of the Iranian retaliatory campaign was its systematic execution of an Anti-Access/Area Denial (A2/AD) strategy that progressively pushed American air operations out of the Persian Gulf and into increasingly distant and operationally constrained locations.
The logic of A2/AD in this context was straightforward. The closer American aircraft operate to Iran, the shorter their flight times, the larger their payloads, the less refueling they require, and the more sorties they can generate per day.
Conversely, every additional hundred kilometers of distance imposes compounding costs: greater tanker support, longer mission times, reduced payload, increased crew fatigue, and more complex coordination. By rendering the Persian Gulf operationally untenable for American air assets, Iran systematically degraded the offensive capacity of the aggressors.
The first displacement was from the Persian Gulf itself. Sustained missile and drone attacks against air bases made sustained operations from those locations unfeasible. The American response was to shift primary air operations to bases in Jordan – Al-Azraq and Muwaffaq Salti –which offered greater distance from Iranian missile systems.
Iran’s response was to extend its reach to Jordan. Multiple strikes against American bases, documented by US casualties and satellite imagery showing damaged hangars and destroyed aircraft, demonstrated that Iran had the capability to contest operations from that distance.
The retaliatory strikes destroyed American aircraft, damaged infrastructure, and forced the US war machine to reconsider the viability of Jordan as a primary operating location.
The second displacement was to the occupied territories. American air assets, including tanker aircraft critical to sustaining long-range strike operations, were pushed further west to Israeli military bases.
This displacement carried its own operational costs. The distance from Iranian targets increased further, and the concentration of American assets in the occupied territories created its own targeting opportunities for Iran, which has demonstrated both the willingness and capability to strike at extended ranges.
A particularly telling indicator of this displacement dynamic was the repositioning of the RQ-4 Global Hawk strategic reconnaissance aircraft, which had been operating from Al Dhafra in the UAE and from Jordanian facilities, to Sigonella Naval Air Station in Sicily.
The Global Hawk, with its long endurance and high-altitude sensors, is a critical ISR asset for tracking Iranian missile launches and providing targeting data. Its displacement to Sicily represented a dramatic reduction in persistent surveillance coverage over Iran and the Persian Gulf, with direct consequences for the effectiveness of American strike operations.
A qualitative leap in extended-range precision
One of the most significant revelations of the recent round of US aggression and Iran’s retaliation was the demonstrated accuracy of Iranian ballistic missiles at ranges exceeding 1,000 kilometers. Previous assessments of Iranian ballistic missile accuracy had generally been skeptical about the ability to achieve consistent precision at such distances. The strikes on Jordanian targets, located well over 1,000 kilometers from Iranian launch sites, completely shattered that skepticism.
The circular error probable (CEP) – the radius within which 50 percent of strikes fall – observed in the Jordanian strikes was dramatically smaller than what Iranian missiles had previously demonstrated at comparable ranges. Strikes that hit specific buildings, specific aircraft shelters, and specific sections of structures, rather than simply landing somewhere on a base, indicated a qualitative improvement in guidance accuracy that demands explanation.
Several hypotheses present themselves, and the evidence suggests that the answer likely involves a combination of all of them. First are technical improvements. Iran may have upgraded the terminal guidance systems on its Kheibarshekan, Haj Qasem, and Fattah variants, potentially incorporating improved inertial navigation, satnav receivers, or optical terminal seekers that allow the missile to better correct its trajectory in the final phase of flight.
Second are tactical improvements. Iranian launch crews may have refined their pre-launch survey procedures, improving the accuracy of the initial position fix that the missile’s inertial navigation system uses as its reference point. Third are software improvements, which mean updates to the missile’s flight control algorithms could improve trajectory optimization and reduce the accumulated errors that degrade accuracy over long distances.
The most likely explanation is a combination of all three – a systematic program of improvement across the technical, procedural, and software dimensions of missile accuracy that had been underway for years and was now being demonstrated operationally for the first time at this range, following the experiences of the 40-day war.
The MQ-9 hunt
The MQ-9 Reaper drone occupied a central and uniquely vulnerable position in American military offensives against Iran. The Reaper is not merely a strike platform but the primary persistent ISR asset used to locate and track mobile Iranian missile launchers, particularly after the heavy attrition of similar Israeli military systems.
Without the MQ-9’s ability to loiter for extended periods, the capacity to find and destroy TELs before they fire, or to conduct battle damage assessment after strikes, is dramatically reduced.
Iran understood this dependency and targeted it systematically during this campaign. The campaign against MQ-9 assets operated on multiple levels. Ground-based air defense systems, which had previously demonstrated the ability to engage high-altitude targets, were used to engage Reapers operating over Iranian territory and adjacent areas.
But Iran also struck the ground infrastructure that supports MQ-9 operations: the maintenance facilities, fuel systems, satellite communication ground stations, and launch-and-recovery equipment that allow the aircraft to operate.
Western media reporting confirmed the destruction of a number of MQ-9 aircraft on the ground at Jordanian bases and, in a particularly striking detail, the destruction of some aircraft while still in their transport canisters before assembly.
This achievement indicates that Iran has developed targeting intelligence on the logistics chain supporting drone operations, not merely the operational bases themselves. Destroying aircraft before they are assembled and made operational is a force multiplication achievement. It eliminates capability before it can be employed, at a point when the aircraft is most vulnerable and least defended.
The cumulative effect of the MQ-9 campaign was a significant degradation of American persistent ISR coverage over Iran. This directly reduced the effectiveness of the hunt for mobile missile launchers, allowing Iranian TELs greater freedom of movement and survivability.
Suppressing proxy terrorist forces in Iraq
From the first day of the exchange, Iran conducted daily retaliatory strikes against armed terrorist groups in Iraq that had the capability and potential motivation to conduct land attacks against Iranian territory or to serve as a forward platform for American-directed operations.
This campaign was methodical and comprehensive, targeting personnel concentrations, weapons storage facilities, and command infrastructure.
Iran’s western flank, which includes the border with Iraq, represents a potential vulnerability. Armed terrorist groups in Iraq, some with historical ties to American intelligence, could in theory conduct cross-border raids, provide intelligence for American strikes, or serve as a distraction that forced Iran to divert defensive resources.
By striking these groups preemptively and continuously, Iran sought to exhaust their operational capacity before it could be brought to bear.
The daily rhythm of these retaliatory strikes was itself a message. It demonstrated that Iran had persistent targeting intelligence on these groups’ locations, that it was willing to expend munitions on this secondary campaign even while conducting the primary campaign against American forces, and that it intended to maintain pressure regardless of any ceasefire negotiations that might be underway.
The logic of reciprocity
Iran’s retaliatory strikes on electrical and water infrastructure in Kuwait represented a deliberate response that operated on two distinct logics simultaneously.
The first was reciprocity: Iran’s own civilian infrastructure had been targeted, and the strikes on Kuwaiti infrastructure were a direct signal that such targeting would not be absorbed without response to the aggressor and its facilitators.
The second was military utility. American forces in the Persian Gulf region depend on host nations’ electrical grids and water supplies for base operations. Infrastructure that serves both civilian and military purposes is, under the laws of armed conflict, a legitimate military target when the military use is substantial and the strike is proportionate.
The targeting of Kuwait’s infrastructure was also a message to Persian Gulf states more broadly. Kuwait, like Bahrain, the UAE, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar, hosts American military facilities and had provided varying degrees of support to American operations.
By demonstrating the ability and willingness to strike Kuwaiti infrastructure, Iran was communicating that the costs of hosting American forces were not abstract. They were concrete, immediate, and would be borne by the host nation as well as the American military.
The pillars of operational success
Iran’s two-week retaliatory campaign against American aggression and attempts to force open an illegal southern corridor through the Strait of Hormuz largely succeeded on every dimension that its operational planners had identified.
The exchange demonstrated that Iran had developed, over decades of institutional study and investment, a military capability genuinely capable of contesting American power projection in the Persian Gulf region, even after two high-intensity wars.
It demonstrated something relevant to the strategic environment of the region – that the costs of American military aggression in the Persian Gulf had increased substantially; that the infrastructure of American power projection was more vulnerable than pre-war assessments had suggested; and that Iran possessed both the capability and the operational sophistication to exploit those vulnerabilities in a systematic and disciplined manner.
The mother of all propaganda: Why the hype over US MOAB strike against Iran is nothing but theater
By Arman Shariati | Press TV | October 18, 2026
American media this week began circulating a carefully placed story, claiming that the US military has drafted strike options against Iran that include deployment of the GBU-43/B Massive Ordnance Air Blast Bomb, the weapon branded as the “Mother of All Bombs.”
CNN was the first to report it on October 15, followed immediately by a wave of amplification across the mainstream American and European media.
US President Donald Trump, appearing later on Newsmax in an interview, did not deny the story. He offered instead a characteristically garbled endorsement, describing the MOAB as “like a tiny nuclear bomb, but it’s not nuclear,” and adding that the US may have to “take a shot” at Pickaxe Mountain in Iran’s Karkas mountain range.
The narrative was set, and it deserves to be taken apart with facts.
The GBU-43/B is an enormous munition by conventional standards. It carries approximately 8,500 kilograms of high explosive in a casing that brings its total weight to around 9,800 kilograms, just under 10 tons. Stretched end to end, it measures just over nine meters.
It is GPS-guided and essentially designed to detonate above the ground.
The MOAB is a thermobaric, or fuel-air, weapon. This description explains precisely why the weapon is irrelevant to the current discussion. A thermobaric weapon does not carry all of its oxidizer within its casing the way a conventional explosive does.
Instead, on detonation, it disperses a fine aerosol of fuel particles or reactive material into the surrounding atmosphere. A secondary ignition then detonates this cloud together with the ambient oxygen in the air itself, producing a pressure wave of exceptional duration and reach.
The fireball essentially consumes the atmosphere around it. The result is a weapon optimized for destroying things on or just above the surface, such as personnel in the open, light structures, and cave mouths, across a wide area. What the MOAB does not and cannot do is drive energy downward through hundreds of meters of solid rock.
Trump’s description, “like a tiny nuclear bomb,” is not merely imprecise. It is exactly the kind of rhetorical inflation that makes the current hostile military campaign against the Islamic Republic of Iran intelligible as communication strategy rather than military planning.
The MOAB has been used in combat once. On April 13, 2017, during Trump’s first term, a single GBU-43/B was dropped on a tunnel complex in Nangarhar province in eastern Afghanistan, claiming to target the ISIS (Daesh) Khorasan infrastructure.
The US administration at the time announced that the strike had killed approximately 90 ISIS-K militants. The actual battle damage assessment remained classified. What was confirmed is that a very large explosion occurred in a mountainous area of eastern Afghanistan.
The strategic effect on ISIS-K’s operational capacity in the region was, at best, ambiguous. The organization has continued to carry out attacks in the months and years that followed. That one strike, against an unprotected tunnel network in soft ground, in an area with no air defense, delivered by a slow cargo aircraft operating in uncontested airspace, is the entire operational history of this weapon.
The target reportedly under consideration is Kuh-e Kolang Gaz La, internationally known as the Pickaxe Mountain, in the Karkas range of central Iran. The facility buried beneath it reportedly sits under more than 100 meters of hard granite.
To suggest that an air-burst weapon, however large, could threaten such a target is to misunderstand the physics of the problem at the most elementary level.
The United States possesses a weapon actually designed for this task, namely the GBU-57/B Massive Ordnance Penetrator; a 13,600-kilogram bomb built specifically to drive through reinforced concrete and hardened rock before detonating.
The MOP was used against Iranian nuclear sites on June 22, 2025, during the 12-day imposed war. Its effectiveness against the deepest and most hardened of those facilities, particularly the Fordow Fuel Enrichment Plant, remains a matter of genuine debate.
If the weapon engineered for penetration cannot be confirmed to have neutralized Fordow, a target much less protected than Pickaxe Mountain, then the notion that an air-burst weapon detonating above the mountain surface would accomplish anything beyond scorching rock is not a serious military proposition.
Even setting aside hardened underground targets, the MOAB offers no material advantage against any conventional surface target that cannot be achieved more efficiently and with far less operational risk by using multiple precision-guided JDAMs delivered from fighter aircraft operating at standoff ranges.
The MOAB does not expand the target set. It does not add capability. It adds spectacle.
There is a further operational reality that receives almost no attention in the current American media narrative. The GBU-43/B is confirmed to be deliverable only by the C-130 family of cargo aircraft. Flying such a platform into contested Iranian airspace is not a minor planning consideration and introduces significant operational difficulties.
The United States lost two MC-130J Commando IIs during its wars of aggression against Iran. The idea of routing another slow cargo aircraft into that same environment in order to drop a weapon that cannot reach the target it is supposedly meant to destroy compounds the absurdity.
What the current MOAB narrative resembles most closely is not a serious military planning process. It resembles the late-war German doctrine of the Wunderwaffe, the wonder weapon.
Under mounting pressure, facing an unwinnable strategic position, Nazi Germany’s leadership turned to announcements of extraordinary new weapons that would change the course of the war. The V-1 and V-2 generated genuine fear and caused real casualties.
They did not alter the strategic outcome by a single day. The function of the wonder weapon is not primarily military. It is political. It tells a domestic audience and a wavering alliance that there are still options, that new instruments of power remain available, that the situation is not as bad as it looks.When strategy fails, spectacle fills the gap.
The Trump administration is conducting a war that did not emerge from American strategic interests. It entered the war of aggression to further Israeli goals and expansionist ambitions, has absorbed significant losses and embarrassments, and now approaches midterm elections with a public that has not been offered a clear account of what victory looks like.
In that very context, the MOAB story makes complete sense as an information management campaign, to paint a picture of a strong American military, when the truth is something else.
There is one more thing worth stating plainly. Even if the MOAB is used, even if a C-130 penetrates Iranian airspace, releases the weapon over Pickaxe Mountain, and produces the largest conventional explosion seen in the region, Iran will be compelled to respond.
Not because the strike will have damaged anything of military significance. A major attack that fails to achieve its stated objective does not end a war. It resets the escalation clock. Tehran’s hand will be forced, and it will answer with something commensurate in visibility, and Iran has demonstrated repeatedly that it possesses the means and the will to do exactly that.
The MOAB is a very large bomb, but it is particularly good at the thing it is now being asked to symbolize. What it is, in the current context, is a prop, useful for an interview, useful for a news campaign, and essentially useless for anything happening 100 meters below the surface of a granite mountain in central Iran.
Arman Shariati is a Tehran-based military analyst and researcher.
Iran says it possesses technology behind US 14-ton GBU bunker-buster
Al Mayadeen | October 18, 2026
Iran has obtained the technology behind a US-made 14-ton GBU bomb and now possesses samples of the weapon, Brigadier General Mohammad Reza Naqdi, senior advisor to the Commander-in-Chief of the Islamic Revolution Guard Corps (IRGC), stated.
Speaking during the “Fedayeen for Iran” military exercise in Sari, Naqdi said Iranian forces acquired some of the bombs after they failed to detonate during the 12-day war, allowing local forces to seize them and study their technology.
“We should recall that during the 12-day war, 14-ton bombs were dropped,” Naqdi said, adding that “the failure of some of the 14-ton bombs to explode enabled the local forces to seize them.”
“Today, Iran possesses samples of these bombs alongside the manufacturing country,” he asserted, adding that Iranian forces have analyzed all the technologies associated with the US 14-ton bomb and now possess its technology in full.
What is the GBU?
The weapon Naqdi referred to is a GBU, or Guided Bomb Unit, a designation used by the US military for a broad family of air-dropped precision-guided bombs.
GBUs use guidance systems to direct their warheads toward designated targets, with different variants ranging from conventional precision bombs to much heavier bunker-busting weapons.
The term “14-ton bomb” is generally associated with the US GBU-57 Massive Ordnance Penetrator, a deep-penetration weapon designed to strike heavily fortified underground facilities, such as Iran’s nuclear facilities bombed during the 12-day war.
The GBU-57 is one of the largest conventional bombs in the US arsenal and is designed to penetrate deeply buried and hardened targets before detonating. Its deployment requires specialized heavy aircraft.
Iran has heavy fighter jet at hand
Earlier, Iranian Defense Minister Mehrdad Akhlaghi announced Sunday that a heavy Iranian fighter jet will take its first flight next year.
Naqdi also warned that Iran’s response to any renewed US aggression would extend to infrastructure and energy investments belonging to those involved in attacks against Iran in the region.
“In the event of any mistake, the investments related to the infrastructure and energy of the aggressors in the region will be within the operational targeting circle,” he said.
Responding to US threats involving the use of weapons such as the “Mother of All Bombs,” Naqdi said Iran’s Armed Forces have demonstrated advanced missile and deterrence capabilities capable of delivering a decisive response to any aggression.
Iran advances domestic defense production
The emphasis on domestic defense production forms part of Iran’s broader strategy of military self-reliance.
Iranian officials have repeatedly linked the development of indigenous defense capabilities to the need to maintain national security and deterrence without relying on foreign suppliers.
The focus on precision, missile range, and warhead development also reflects the importance Iranian military planners place on technological advancement as a component of deterrence.
Larry Johnson’s Latest Presentation to the UN Security Council
By Larry C. Johnson | SONAR21 | October 14, 2026
I am back in NYC at the invitation of the Russian delegation to the United Nations. Unlike my previous appearance before the full UN Security Council, this was an Arria session. An Arria-formula meeting is an informal meeting called by one or more Security Council members to hear from people who normally can’t address the Council. These include NGOs, civil-society figures, experts, victims and witnesses, and non-state actors. It isn’t a formal Council meeting and has no basis in the Council’s rules of procedure.
All fifteen members of the Security Council were represented. Their response was quite revealing (I will reveal that below). Here was my statement:
Chair, Excellencies, distinguished delegates, thank you for the opportunity to address you.
My name is Larry Johnson. I served as an officer in the Central Intelligence Agency and later in the State Department’s Office of the Coordinator for Counterterrorism. I spent more than two decades working with United States Military Special Operations Forces. I come to this Council not as a spokesman for any government, but as someone who has spent a career studying how wars are fought and how civilians suffer in them and how hostilities are accompanied by disinformation campaigns.
For more than four years this Council has heard that Russia is waging a war against Ukraine and is targeting civilians. You do not need to come to the Security Council to hear this narrative, it is all over media and internet. I ask you to test that claim against the evidence.
Today we heard horrific stories of civilians targeted, of prisoners of war being tortured, and civilians held against their will by Ukrainian armed forces.
Ask yourselves a couple of questions: why are the civilians dying in Russia from drone attacks discounted and why are the civilians that were killed in Ukraine before February 2022 ignored? Based on my experience, the crisis in Ukraine has been accompanied by a sophisticated disinformation campaign designed to place all blame on Russia while exonerating Ukraine.
Begin with the scale of the fighting. By the Ukrainian government’s own figures, Russia has fired well over approximately two and a half million tons of munitions. This includes one hundred thousand glide bombs, attack drones, missiles and millions of artillery rounds since February 2022.
Now consider the human toll. The United Nations Human Rights Monitoring Mission in Ukraine has verified 16,431 civilian deaths through the middle of this year. Every one of those deaths is a tragedy, and I do not minimize any of them. However, the ratio of civilian deaths to munitions expended is extraordinarily low for a war of this intensity.
Compare those numbers with what the United States did in the Second World War, a war my country rightly regarded as just. Allied bombers dropped some 2.7 million tons of bombs on Europe and killed between half a million and three-quarters of a million civilians in Europe.
In the Pacific, the United States dropped about 160,000 tons of bombs on the Japanese home islands. In all, American air attacks on Japan killed somewhere between 330,000 and half a million civilians.
Put the figures side by side. In total, the United States killed somewhere between half a million and more than a million civilians in the Second World War. The verified toll in Ukraine, after more than four years, is a small fraction of that.
These numbers do not happen by accident. The record of Russia in Ukraine is consistent with a policy of not targeting civilians. These facts contradict the claim that Russia is waging a campaign of extermination against Ukraine’s civilian population.
The same standard must apply to Ukraine.
The killing of civilians in this conflict did not begin in February 2022. From 2014 through 2021, the OHCHR recorded at least 3,404 civilian deaths in the Donbass. From 2018 through 2021, the OHCHR found that 81 percent of civilian casualties from Ukrainian shelling, small-arms fire and drone attacks occurred in areas held by the Donetsk and Luhansk authorities. Those victims are forgotten by the world media and by the United Nations. Few call for any investigation or accountability.
Since February 2022, according to figures the Russian Foreign Ministry presented to the Human Rights Council last month, Ukrainian strikes have killed more than 9,000 civilians in the territories under Russian control and wounded more than 25,500. This Council has rarely discussed those victims. They deserve the same attention and the same investigation as every civilian killed on the other side of the line.
Today we heard some of the circumstances of their deaths. I hope that the United Nations will include those numbers in their reports in order to give an unbiased record of events…. At least 12,404 civilians have been killed by Ukrainian Armed Forces since 2014.
Thus, we come to the simple fact that the number of civilians killed on both sides of the front line are not that different even if we take numbers offered by OHCHR at their face value –12,404 compared to 16,431. And I know that the Government of Russia strongly challenges them, citing in particular the questionable OHCHR claim that Russia was responsible for Bucha.
Why is the focus exclusively on Russia while we hear nothing about Ukrainian Armed Forces committing crimes against civilians?
I am not asking this Council to excuse any unlawful act. Where a strike violates the principles of distinction, proportionality and precaution, it should be investigated, whoever carries it out. I am asking the Council to apply a single standard. The nations that sit in judgment of Russia should measure Russia’s conduct against the evidence and against their own history, not against a narrative.
False accusations and biased reports are not the most effective way to protect civilians in Ukraine. The key to protecting civilians is a negotiated end to this war. I urge the members of this Council to put their full weight behind that goal.
Thank you.
The biggest shock came from the US representative. Unlike my previous appearance before the Security Council when the US representative was aggressive and dismissive of my remarks, the guy sitting in the US chair today spoke as if the US had no role whatsoever in the war raging between Russia and Ukraine. He was quite subdued. A complete change in tone and attitude. This told me there is a definite change in the US policy towards Russia.
The Europeans on the other hand were out of their fucking minds. The representatives of Denmark, Latvia, France and Greece were aggressive and rude. They are boiling for a fight. The purpose of the meeting was to present evidence of Ukrainian attacks on civilians in territory now occupied by Russia. Instead of dealing with the facts, the European Lilliputians howled at the Russians.
Even the British representative took a low key approach. That also was surprising. The remaining eight members of the Security Council made measured, neutral remarks. My commentary was in support of Rodion Miroshnik, the Russian Ambassador tasked with investigating attacks on civilians. Rodion is a good man and an honest investigator. All in all, a fascinating day.
The Downfall of a Manufactured Icon
The Political Obituary of Zelensky’s Presidency
By Glenn Diesen | October 16, 2026
President Trump has, over the past days, lashed out against President Zelensky, calling for elections in Ukraine and arguing that Zelensky should have accepted a deal two years ago, when the terms were more favourable. The media has also reported that the US may cut its intelligence-sharing arrangements, which is significant, as this is a proxy war and Ukraine could not fight Russia without US support. How can we analyse this shift in rhetoric from the American president? The immediate significance cannot yet be determined, given Trump’s history of shifting positions. However, if we take a step back, this scolding of Zelensky represents a wider trend: a manufactured democratic icon falling apart.
What Does Trump Aim to Achieve?
The significance and consequences of this new tirade against Zelensky cannot yet be determined, as Trump did something similar during the renowned Trump–Zelensky confrontation in the Oval Office on February 28, 2025.
The first hypothesis is that Trump’s comments could reflect a wider strategic shift away from Zelensky in an effort to further outsource the war to the Europeans. Washington seemed to believe that escalation could bring an end to the war by putting pressure on Moscow, and Marco Rubio previously expressed optimism about this outcome in relation to the 40-day campaign of deep strikes against civilian infrastructure in Russia, intended to make civil society feel the war. The opposite happened, as the Russian public now sees the existential threat posed by what is accurately considered a NATO proxy war. As Russia has responded with a powerful escalation, including a naval blockade and powerful attacks against Ukrainian logistics and energy infrastructure, Trump may simply recognise that the strategy has failed and that the Ukraine war is entering its endgame. This may be why it is time for the US to extricate itself from the war, either by ending it or handing it over to the Europeans.
The second hypothesis is that Trump’s comments merely represent a knee-jerk reaction to Zelensky’s tactless comments about the US–Russia deal on diesel. The failed Iran war has put immense pressure on Trump to stabilise energy prices and appear to be in control ahead of the midterm elections in the US. Trump’s entire presidency is based on the premise that weak American leadership over the years has led to the relative decline of the US and that, as a strong leader, he is the solution to making America great again. What much of the world interprets as crude and unilateral behaviour in breach of existing norms and agreements is, for Trump, a sign of strength: the ability to act independently in the service of national interests. A proxy like Zelensky can only stay in power and fight Russia with US support, and having him lash out against Trump thus required a powerful response, which also serves as a warning shot to anyone else who thinks they can challenge Trump’s authority.
The third hypothesis is that this is merely a swing strategy designed to keep all sides uncertain, thereby strengthening the US in negotiations. Zelensky and European leaders are told that US military and financial support can disappear at any time, while Russia also has an incentive to make concessions before the US changes course again. Making all sides fear the alternative is not possible if they believe that the US is locked into a position, rather than having the ability to manoeuvre between the different sides. The willingness of the US to pressure all sides also strengthens its role as a mediator, which is an awkward position, given that the US has been the main actor in instigating and prolonging this war since 2014.
The Manufacture of a Democratic Icon
If we take a step back and assess this development in a wider context, we see a trend in which President Zelensky’s image as a PR project is gradually collapsing. Zelensky began his political career on a peace platform. He advocated respecting language rights in eastern Ukraine and pursuing peace with Russia. In 2019, he won the presidential election with 73% of the vote on such a peace platform, promising to implement the Minsk Agreement, open dialogue with Donbas, and make peace with Russia. Western NGOs outlined red lines against most of Zelensky’s election platform, and far-right militias funded by the US very openly threatened Zelensky’s life if he were to deliver on his election promises. Eventually, Zelensky fell in line and betrayed his own democratic mandate.
When Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, media coverage of Ukraine and Zelensky was transformed overnight. Through language and imagery, Vogue magazine and other publications presented Zelensky as the besieged underdog standing up for democracy and freedom. Zelensky went from governing a hub of corruption to becoming a leader of the free world and a beacon of democracy. The far-right groups that wear fascist insignia and follow the ideas of fascist movements from the Second World War were whitewashed as reformed freedom fighters. The suppression of language rights, political opposition, the media, and the Orthodox Church was defended as necessary to protect Ukraine’s democracy from a Russian hybrid war. Narratives about Ukraine winning the war and suffering low casualty rates were defended in the West to maintain public support for the war. The brutal conscription practices and ‘busification’ of Ukrainians were ignored and even dismissed as an effort to delegitimise Zelensky at the behest of the Russians. Zelensky was the new Churchill fighting Putin as the new Hitler, and in this struggle between good and evil, any critical coverage of Zelensky was quickly smeared as propaganda.
The Incremental Fall of Zelensky
Gradually, the image of Zelensky has begun to fall apart. Authoritarianism, corruption, fascist groups, ‘busification’, high casualty rates, and other issues began to tear away at the manufactured image of the beloved democratic leader. When domestic opposition emerged from former Ukrainian Defence Minister Mykhailo Federov, the Italians could protect Zelensky’s position by hiring Federov as an adviser in Italy. Zelensky is also needed by the West to sell the narrative that they “stand with Ukraine”. While polling demonstrates that most Ukrainians want a negotiated settlement, how can the Europeans justify their boycott of diplomacy and instead push for deporting Ukrainian refugees, lowering the conscription age, conscripting women, or other measures to keep the war going? With Zelensky repeating the talking points of his Western handlers, the proxy war to the last Ukrainian can be sold to the Western public as “supporting Ukraine”.
Trump himself bears some responsibility. When he initially criticised NATO expansion as the source of the war and criticised Zelensky, it may have been a negotiation tactic. However, he broke with the NATO narrative of an “unprovoked” Russian invasion and the Churchillian worship of Zelensky. While the success of his negotiation tactics remains uncertain, we can see that by breaking the consensus around the narrative, he opened a door through which many were able to walk through and criticize Zelensky. In a war between good and evil, peace is achieved through military force, while diplomacy is appeasement. As the manufactured icon of Zelensky falls apart, the entire narrative of the proxy war collapses. Soon, we may even see the decriminalisation of diplomacy.
The post-mortem of the Zelensky presidency and the manufacturing of his image is a tragedy. Zelensky ran on a peace platform and was captured by those who sought to use Ukraine as a proxy to weaken Russia. On March 27, 2022, before the UK and US sabotaged the Istanbul peace agreement, Zelensky stated the following in an interview with The Economist: “There are those in the West who don’t mind a long war because it would mean exhausting Russia, even if this means the demise of Ukraine and comes at the cost of Ukrainian lives.” As Zelensky falls, there may be another chance for peace.
This article was initially published by Prof. Glenn Diesen in Die Weltwoche: “Zerfall einer fabrizierten Ikone”
Estonia making movies and games to encourage war against Russia
By Lucas Leiroz | October 14, 2026
In the Baltic states, the atmosphere of “preparing for war” against the Russian Federation continues to intensify. Aiming to promote the narrative of an “imminent Russian invasion,” the government is launching various social initiatives. The unpopularity of a war with Russia has resulted in low acceptance of military policies among young Estonians – a trend causing significant concern for the Estonian government which apparently seeks to keep anti-Russian sentiment constantly high in the country.
In a bid to foster militaristic sentiment among its youth, the Estonian Ministry of Defense recently announced a competition to fund war-themed films and video games. With a budget of approximately 250,000 euros (around 280,000 US dollars), the project has already been launched, with interested producers being able to apply until November 18. Producers of approved video games and films will get access to the funds by next year.
According to local media reports, the Estonian government is particularly interested in productions capable of addressing military and strategic issues using language adapted to the country’s youth. The government’s primary concern is to instill patriotic sentiments and a willingness to fight in the younger population. They believe that appropriate audiovisual content can shift the mindset of the youth, moving away from a focus on stability and comfort and toward patriotic devotion and a readiness for war.
Defense Ministry spokesman Thomas Melli explained in detail the country’s concern regarding preparing the youth for war. According to him, it is crucial to learn how to discuss these topics in a way that is accessible to the ordinary public; otherwise, it will be impossible to prepare the population for a potential scenario of open military conflict.
Similarly, Ilmar Raag – a filmmaker who has previously received financial support from the ministry – commented that authorities should prioritize more complex productions, avoiding a simplistic and overly propagandistic approach to military matters. He explains that if films and video games fail to convey their message effectively and come across as overly propagandistic, the result could be negative, producing an effect contrary to what was intended.
“Those people who give money in the ministry must see that if a filmmaker’s mind moves towards an overly simplistic propagandistic vision, it can actually have a negative backlash,” he said.
In fact, Raag’s concern is quite significant. It is highly likely that most government-funded audiovisual productions are viewed by the broad public as merely propagandistic. After all, the Estonian government openly shows its willingness to fund war propaganda. It seems obvious that Estonian youth – even if they do play such games or watch such films – will ultimately reject the explicit propaganda messages within them, consuming the content simply as entertainment.
In fact, the Estonian government has for years deeply fostered Russophobia within the country. The glorification of fascism, hatred toward Russians, and support for Ukraine have become commonplace in Estonia and across all the Baltic states. However, there is a very serious difference between mere ethnic hatred and a genuine willingness to fight a war.
Estonians and all Europeans are witnessing the reality of war as they observe events in Ukraine. A real armed conflict is far more difficult than it appears in theory. Few people are truly willing to fight a war. Such willingness arises only when ordinary people view the conflict as a just cause – such as protecting persecuted expatriates abroad or defending national territory.
Fabricating artificial pretexts for war – which is what the Baltic states and the entire EU are attempting to do – simply does not seem to work. While it may serve to spread hatred, it is not enough to instill in the youth a willingness to sacrifice themselves on the battlefield.
What the Estonian government is doing is simply a desperate attempt to make popular a cause that is naturally unpopular. Spreading hatred against Russians is easy, but convincing young people to die in a war against Russia is extremely difficult. And state-funded movies or video games won’t change that reality.
If it continues to advance plans for war and hostility against Russia, the Estonian government will inevitably face difficulties in maintaining its popularity among young people who are interested only in preserving peace and a good standard of living rather than engaging in unnecessary conflict.
Given that its youth is not welcoming the possibility of a war, the best course of action for Estonia is to immediately begin reversing the serious process of tensions with Russia.
Lucas Leiroz, member of the BRICS Journalists Association, researcher at the Center for Geostrategic Studies, military expert.
You can follow Lucas on X (formerly Twitter) and Telegram.
Iran security chief says powers greater than US tried to conquer Iran but ended in ‘dustbin of history’
Press TV – October 11, 2026
Secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, Major General Mohsen Rezaei, says powers greater than the US have tried to conquer Iran but ultimately ended up in the “dustbin of history.”
During an exclusive interview with Press TV on Saturday, Rezaei said the “US suffered repeated defeats in its confrontation with Iran and has consequently turned to economic warfare out of desperation.”
Iran, rather than the US, would determine when the confrontation ends, he said, stressing that Tehran would continue its resistance until its rightful demands are met.
Addressing the presence of US forces in the region, Rezaei told Press TV that the withdrawal of US forces from Iraq reflected Washington’s failure to impose its military agenda on the region, describing it as a vindication of Iran’s resistance to American military presence in West Asia.
Rezaei further said that more than “30 million Iranians have registered in ‘Janfada’ (Sacrifice for Iran) Campaign to take up arms in the event of US aggression.”
On diplomacy, the official said “Tehran would not return to its previous diplomatic norms,” while stressing that “Iran would never abandon diplomacy altogether.”
The senior official warned that, if Washington launched another act of aggression against Iran, American assets could be targeted, including key data systems and artificial intelligence sensors.
Rezaei also identified Washington and its regional allies as the root of the problem surrounding the Strait of Hormuz.
Iran closed the Strait of Hormuz in response to the latest round of US-Israeli aggression, preventing US and allied ships from navigating the strategic waterway.
The move resulted in a significant increase in oil and energy prices across the globe, especially in the US, forcing Washington and the International Energy Agency (IEA) to release their strategic resources several times.
Following the signing of the Islamabad Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) between Iran and the US in June, Tehran opened the Strait of Hormuz, but after the US violated the MoU by blockading Iranian ports, Iran’s Armed Forces closed the maritime corridor once again.
Europe’s mounting social chaos… chickens coming home to roost for proxy war against Russia
Strategic Culture Foundation | October 9, 2026
The European Union is witnessing a full-blown social revolt. Governing political parties and their economic policies are held in open contempt as public protests and strikes escalate across multiple countries.
Protests, mass marches, and industrial strikes are spreading across the EU in France, Belgium, Spain, Italy, Germany, Ireland, Portugal, and other countries. The grievances are various, from students and teachers over woeful education services, to healthcare professionals and transportation workers denouncing crumby wages and pension cuts.
But at the core is a warmongering, dehumanizing system of capitalist inequality.
Unbearable living costs for basic needs, from food to housing, are driving millions onto the streets in desperation and anger at the lack of adequate political response to their concerns. As one French student said: “Too young to be listened to, old enough to be tear-gassed.”
The entire political system is being brought into disrepute for its dysfunction and indifference towards meeting rudimentary human needs. Then, infuriating all the more, are lies from the elite rulers and their propaganda media about “national defense and threat of war from Russia.”
In Spain this week, an 87-year-old frail woman known as Maricarmen died in hospital after she was evicted from her Madrid home because she could not pay the extortionate rent increase. Her plight has come to galvanize a nationwide protest against Spain’s housing crisis, a crisis that is repeated across every European country. Protesters shouted furiously that the pitiful old woman was “murdered by the state and corporations.”
In France, the brutality of police against student protests has shocked the nation and the world. Nearly 7,000 young people have been arrested, as riot police tear gas and shoot at largely peaceful rallies. Students gathering at the Place de la Bastille in Paris and other cities vow that they will not back down. One student had his hand blown off by a police stun grenade while another teenager lost an eye from a rubber bullet fired at close range.
The Place de la Bastille is where the French Revolution manifested in 1798 against a hated aristocracy amid abject misery. Today, the tensions are boiling towards another momentous rebellion, this time inspiring again similar movements across Europe.
These protests and the inhumane suffering that underlie them are channeling uprisings all over the EU.
There is a palpable sense that populations en masse have had enough of decades of inequality and chronic deprivation inflicted by capitalist policies that enrich a few and are enforced by governments slavishly serving the interests of capital over the needs of the citizen majority.
Western media reports talk about “cash-strapped” governments under pressure from bond markets to reduce record debt levels while workers, students and pensioners demand more public investment and relief from economic hardship.
That is a misleading partial portrayal of the problem. Omitted is the crucial backdrop that European governments are directing vast economic resources towards militarism and the proxy war in Ukraine against Russia. That is what is causing the “cash-strapped governments.” In other words, their declared fiscal straits are a policy choice, not some mysterious dilemma.
The social crisis sweeping across Europe is also seen in the United States and other Western-aligned nations. The background is a failed economic system that no longer provides a modicum of acceptable living conditions. The problem has been decades in the making from growing inequality and diminishing political representation. Today it is even questionable if Western states are democracies, controlled as they are by corporate oligarchies.
Nevertheless, the social crisis that is unfolding across Europe has been intensified and amplified by European political rulers operating in a relentless war mode against Russia.
The European Union has pumped hundreds of billions of euros into Ukraine over the past four years to prop up a NeoNazi regime run by a corrupt dictatorship – all for the objective of defeating Russia. The EU leaders – many of them unelected, like Ursula von der Leyen, Kaja Kallas and António Costa – are driven by an obsessive Russophobia. But that is only part of the explanation.
Other elected leaders and parties like France’s Macron and Germany’s Merz are also despised for their elitism and delusions of grandeur. Merz declares that he wants to make Germany the strongest military in Europe, in total tin-ear deafness to his nation’s economic and social problems and the sinister historical connotations of resurrecting Nazi Germany. Meanwhile, as his government suffers electoral defeat after defeat, European elites deprecate German voters as being blind because they dare to choose parties that are opposed to war with Russia.
There are many grounds for the Europe-wide contempt of ruling parties. Inequality, poverty, unemployment, soaring living costs, declining wages, deteriorating public services. Uncontrolled immigration amid the pressure on inadequate public resources is another cause for grievance. Europe’s complicity in the Israeli genocidal war on Palestinians, and Europe’s complicity in Trump’s aggression towards Iran, Yemen, Cuba, and so on, are other factors.
However, the bogus narrative that governments are “cash-strapped” is a cause for immense public disgust. There are plenty of economic resources to meet public needs. It’s a question of those resources not being permitted to create just and humane societies under the prevailing capitalist system with its priority of enriching a tiny elite class.
The conditions of “tight budgets” and “austerity for the masses” are created by deliberate policies of militarism and fuelling a proxy war in Ukraine.
European “leaders” and their NATO lobbyists like Mark Rutte demand hundreds of billions of euros to boost military industries while at the same time calling for draconian cuts in public spending and social welfare in order to pay for this reckless militarism. The EU is “lending” an additional €90 billion over the next two years alone just to prop up the corrupt regime in Kiev so that it can keep fighting a futile war with Russia. The perverse priority is driven by the military-industrial complex and its corporate investors. It is also driven by an ideological, propagandized mindset that demonizes Russia as an enemy. President Putin and other Russian voices have repeatedly stated that they do not want war with Europe. They say the conflict in Ukraine has root causes that can be resolved through diplomatic engagement. Why are European politicians implacably opposed to peace?
A major factor is covering for internal political and economic failure of the European system. The EU’s economies, as with those in the U.S. and other Western states, are bankrupt dystopias in terms of delivering on social and democratic needs. The failure has been compounded by the costs of war in Ukraine.
That failure is criminal and fatal for the politicians and governments who have overseen the policies. Thus, the political class, including the propaganda news media, cannot admit their criminal policies.
In the face of their own internal contradictions, the European political elites are seeking a solution by externalizing Russia as an enemy. This is the same modus operandi that European rulers have used for the past century and more, unleashing two world wars as a result.
These criminal politicians and their dysfunctional economic system are again pushing war as their escape plan for survival at the expense of millions of lives and at the risk of starting a third world war, one that this time around could involve catastrophic nuclear nemesis.
It is damning of virtually every European government, including primarily the British, that there are no calls for diplomacy and political settlement with Russia. They are committed to waging war on Russia to absolve themselves from the social devastation they are responsible for.
One positive thing, though, is that increasing numbers of people can see through the chicanery and lies. A German student placard summed it up: “We won’t fight your wars… Education not bombs!”
A day of reckoning is imminent. Criminal political leaders and their warmongering system are exposed like never before and in a way that demands total revolt as a proper solution. The consequences are not to be externalized this time. Chickens are coming home to roost, as Malcom X once said.
US-Russia Diesel Deal Becomes Massive Defeat for Ukraine
Sputnik – 10.10.2026
The recent phone conversation between Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump, and the diesel deal they struck, are the most important events in the US-Russia relations since the summit in Anchorage, Dmitry Suslov, deputy director of the Center for European and International Studies at Russia’s Higher School of Economics, tells Sputnik.
The diesel deal marks an important shift in the US’ stance on the Ukrainian conflict. “Until now, the Trump administration maintained that any sanctions removal and any practical cooperation with Russia, including cooperation on energy, is only possible after the Ukrainian conflict is resolved or after a ceasefire is achieved. And now we see that the Trump administration deviated from this stance.”
“The sanctions are waived for a long time, until April 7, and the US will commence mass importing of Russian diesel unrelated to the resolution of the conflict in Ukraine.”
The diesel deal is not related in any way to the energy and port ceasefire that Volodymyr Zelensky and his EU backers desperately seek, which is highlighted by Zelensky’s hysterical reaction to this agreement.
The deal may be the beginning of a broader pressure campaign by the Trump administration on the Ukrainian regime, to ensure that Ukraine agrees to Russia’s conditions for ceasefire.
Given the anonymous US officials warnings that the US may halt intelligence support to Ukraine if the latter continues hitting Russian oil refineries, it appears that the Trump administration is becoming increasingly upset with Zelensky.
“We are witnessing the confirmation of Western media reports about Trump being angry at Zelensky whom he asked six times to halt strikes against Russian refineries, only for Zelensky to refuse him each time. And now Trump makes this diesel deal with Vladimir Putin.”
The Trump administration apparently realized that Zelensky’s long-range strikes campaign against Russia backfired. “It drastically improved Russia’s situation and damaged Ukraine’s resilience due to the scale of Russia’s retaliation”.
Suslov also suggests that Zelensky seems to be banking on US Democrats winning the midterms, thus turning Trump into a ‘lame duck.’
However, even though Zelensky may feel himself safe hurling insults at Trump, it may have serious consequences as the POTUS will still be in charge of matters such as further arms sales to Ukraine.
“So if Zelensky enters into a serious clinch with him, Trump will be making such decisions not in Zelensky’s favo
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Only a Beginning… Charles Malik’s vision of an emergent Pax Judaica
By David Miller | Tracking Power | November 12, 2026
In August 1949, three months after Israel joined the United Nations, Lebanon’s envoy in Washington sent his government a long report. Charles Malik, no firebrand, had signed the UN Charter and helped draft the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. His Report on the Present Situation lay largely unread until Dar An-Nahar printed it in 2002. … continue
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