Two Israeli female soldiers died by suicide this week, bringing the number of serving Israeli soldiers who have taken their own lives since the start of the year to 16, amid growing concern over rising suicide rates in the military since the war in the Gaza Strip began.
Haaretz reported on Tuesday that a female soldier from the Bardelas Battalion, deployed along the Egypt-Israel border, died by suicide on Tuesday morning at a military base in southern Israel.
The newspaper said she was found injured at the base and taken to hospital, where she was later pronounced dead.
In a separate incident, Haaretz reported that a female soldier serving in Israeli military intelligence died by suicide on Sunday at the Glilot military base near Ramat Hasharon in central Israel. The report said she held a classified position.
According to Haaretz, the Israeli military has opened investigations through the Military Police into the circumstances surrounding both incidents.
Data compiled by the newspaper showed that the number of serving Israeli soldiers who have died by suicide since the beginning of this year has risen to 16.
The report added that at least nine other soldiers, including regular and reserve personnel who had taken part in the war, also took their own lives while off duty.
According to an earlier Haaretz report, 22 serving Israeli soldiers died by suicide in 2025, marking the highest annual figure recorded by the Israeli military in the past 15 years.
The words ‘killed’, ‘injured’, ‘maimed’, and the like often lose a great part of their meaning when they are repeated so relentlessly.
Take, for example, a headline like: “13 Palestinians Killed in Gaza, Others Wounded.” Though many of us can still feel a deep sense of sadness over such a tragedy, the news itself becomes less shocking over time.
According to figures produced by the Palestinian Ministry of Health in Gaza, Israel has killed and wounded a total of over 250,000 Palestinians since the start of the genocide in 2023.
The tally is updated daily because the killing never stops.
On July 23, six Palestinians were killed in Gaza. A day earlier, 13 were killed, and the day before that, nine others were killed, and so on.
It is this “and so on” that makes us lose our sense, over time, of what these tragedies actually entail. These are innocent people who are burned alive in their tents, bombed in their cars, or killed while attempting to enjoy a brief moment of respite from the scorching heat on the beach.
Among the nine killed on July 21, an entire family, including four young children, was wiped out in a single strike. As reports of Israel’s daily harvest of Palestinian lives in Gaza multiply, journalists too often neglect to humanize those killed.
A photo circulating on social media showed three of those children: a boy wearing a T-shirt that read ‘Santa Monica Beach’; his bespectacled sister in a pink shirt, proudly holding a certificate of achievement from her school; and their youngest sister, posing gently.
These three represent every single Palestinian child killed since the start of this genocide. According to UN and international estimates, over 21,000 children have been killed in Gaza, with tens of thousands more maimed or buried under the rubble.
Though the daily routine of killing makes the tragedy feel less shocking for those merely hearing the numbers, it becomes infinitely more tragic for those who must bear it directly. In Gaza, not a single family has been spared the loss of loved ones, making the grief compound day after day.
There are no words to describe the collective pain of Gaza.
What makes the tragedy even more unbearable is that the entire world knows what has transpired and continues to transpire in Gaza, yet fails to do anything about it. We keep track of the numbers, we point to Israel’s barbarity, we decry the failure of international institutions, and we shake our heads in despair.
Yet the outcome remains unchanged: the death toll rises, and new statistics are generated daily to remind us of the magnitude of the crisis.
A July 23 joint report by the FAO, UNICEF, and the World Food Programme found that 1.4 million Palestinians in Gaza face acute food insecurity.
The report also warned that more than 74,000 children under five are expected to require urgent treatment for acute malnutrition over the coming year.
This report was released on the same day that Gaza health authorities updated the official death toll to over 73,311 Palestinians. That number is already higher now, as more have been killed since.
On that same day, Thameen Al-Kheetan of the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) stated that “no place in Gaza can be considered safe.”
That statement is true, of course, but it is also the most well-known fact in the world right now. No one is contesting it. And yet, no one acts: Israel keeps bombing, the US Congress continues assigning it more weapons, and the rest of the world tracks the death tally.
Meanwhile, Israel—which has seized control of even more territory in Gaza since the so-called ceasefire—is now constructing massive earth barriers stretching an estimated 23 kilometers across the Strip.
Though it was never fair to begin with, even the original Trump Gaza plan never mentioned the building of interior borders, the theft of additional land, or the concentration of displaced Palestinians into tiny enclaves within an already small piece of land.
Israel’s long-term plan is not only to maintain permanent military control over Gaza, as top Israeli officials have declared, but also to prolong its torment indefinitely.
Even as I write this article, news reports indicate that four more Palestinians have just been killed. It is unlikely the number will remain that low; the Israeli army rarely kills in small numbers.
But even these small numbers represent human beings whose grief cannot be measured in statistics, summed up in official statements, or reduced to clichéd headlines.
Nor do survivors cling to the empty promise of international law prevailing over US-backed impunity. History has made Palestinians cynical. For generations, through every massacre and land theft since the 1948 Nakba, waiting for justice has yielded nothing but hollow promises and rising body counts.
The only difference between the past and the present is that today, we all know, see, and hear exactly what is happening in Gaza and across Palestine.
The very least we can do is refuse to turn our backs or reduce the genocide before our eyes to numbers.
If we allow that to happen, we become culpable, too: Israel does the killing, using American arms, while we sit by, counting the dead and shaking our heads at the sad state of the world.
Iran has demanded compensation from Ukraine over a deadly strike on a cargo ship after Kiev’s foreign minister initially claimed that “Iran has no standing to pretend to be a victim,” only to call Tehran a day later and assure it that the attack was unintentional and that Kiev did not seek escalation.
Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said on Tuesday that he had spoken with his Ukrainian counterpart, Andrey Sibiga, following the attack on the cargo ship Anna in the Caspian Sea last week.
“Was assured by Ukrainian FM that the attack on an Iranian ship was unintentional and Ukraine seeks no escalation,” Araghchi wrote on X. “Iran does not seek escalation either, but made clear any attack on our citizens or interests is unacceptable. There must be restitution for losses.”
Sibiga described the call as a “frank conversation” and said Kiev wanted to “avoid unnecessary escalation.” He maintained that Ukrainian operations were aimed at countering Russia and were “never intended to target civilian vessels or people,” while calling on Tehran to end its alleged support for Moscow.
The conciliatory language marked a sharp shift from Sibiga’s public response a day earlier, when he denounced Iran’s complaints as “unjustified and groundless” and referred to the Iranian government as “the regime in Teheran.”
“Iran has no standing to pretend to be a victim,” Sibiga wrote on Monday, accusing Tehran of supplying Russia with weapons and dismissing its references to the UN Charter as “absurd.” He also claimed that Iran was attempting to divert attention from Russian strikes on Ukrainian shipping in the Black Sea.
In recent weeks, the Russian military has escalated long-range strikes on port infrastructure and shipping targets in the Black Sea, seeking to disrupt the flow of military supplies and weapons to Ukraine. Multiple freighters, combat and auxiliary vessels, and various port installations have been struck, according to the Defense Ministry in Moscow.
The Iranian Foreign Ministry condemned the attack as “reckless,” summoned Ukraine’s acting chargé d’affaires and warned that it reserved the right to protect the country’s security and national interests.
Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky subsequently praised the “very strong results” of strikes on vessels he claimed were involved in transporting military cargo. Ukraine’s ambassador to Israel similarly claimed that the Anna had been carrying components for drones and missiles, while Tehran maintained that the vessel and its cargo were entirely civilian.
Before Tuesday’s call, Araghchi had accused Zelensky of attacking the commercial vessel “at Israel’s behest” and attempting to draw Europe deeper into the conflict. He warned that the killing of the Iranian sailor “cannot go unanswered.”
The incident involving the Iranian vessel comes amid growing accusations that Kiev is expanding its activities in the Middle East. Iraq’s national security adviser claimed this week that authorities had arrested several groups that confessed to carrying out attacks on behalf of Ukraine. Kiev rejected the allegations as “unfounded and unsubstantiated.”
The German government has confirmed that it dramatically escalated its military material support for the occupying Israeli regime, approving a surge in arms export licenses that includes the delivery of a highly classified, nuclear-capable submarine.
Germany approved nearly $913 million in arms export licenses to Israel during the first five months of 2026, exceeding the total value approved over the previous 20 months combined, according to a government response to a parliamentary inquiry.
The figures were disclosed in a written reply by the Federal Foreign Office to a question from the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party. The response stated that almost all of the approvals were granted in April and May.
This increase marks a sharp rise in German arms export approvals to Israel, despite repeated statements by Berlin expressing concern over the humanitarian consequences of Israel’s military genocidal war in the besieged Gaza Strip.
More than 60% of the total value of the approved export licenses is allocated to a single, unnamed “major maritime project,” according to the government.
Defense analysts said the project is likely to involve a submarine built by German shipbuilder TKMS. The most probable candidate is the INS Drakon, a Dolphin II-class submarine capable of carrying nuclear weapons.
The submarine completed sea trials last year at TKMS’s shipyard in Kiel on Germany’s Baltic coast. German media reported that it was formally delivered to the Israeli Navy last week. The vessel has an estimated value of about $548 million.
According to defense reports, the INS Drakon may be equipped with a vertical launch system (VLS), allowing it to fire cruise or ballistic missiles. If confirmed, Israel would become only the second entity after South Korea known to operate a conventionally powered, air-independent propulsion submarine fitted with a VLS.
During sea trials, the submarine’s sail was covered with tarpaulins and fiberglass panels, preventing outside observers from identifying its weapons configuration.
Military analysts say submarines of this class could provide the occupying Israeli regime with a sea-based second-strike nuclear capability.
In May, TKMS signed a memorandum of understanding with Israeli company Elbit Systems on future cooperation.
Johannes Mutschler, a defense analyst, said some officials within the German government viewed exports of certain weapons to Israel as problematic in light of “numerous and credible reports” pointing to Israeli war crimes during the genocidal war on the besieged Gaza Strip. However, he noted that those concerns had not resulted in a broader policy restricting arms exports to Israel.
Germany remains one of the world’s largest arms exporters to the occupied Israeli entity. According to the Ministry for Economic Affairs’ Arms Export Report published in mid-July, Berlin approved export licenses worth $15.8 billion during the first half of 2026, more than four times the amount approved during the same period a year earlier. Ukraine remained the largest recipient of German arms exports.
Germany’s defense industry has expanded rapidly in recent years as the government has increased military spending following the Russia-Ukraine war.
Germany’s lethal arms exports to the occupied territories have seen a tenfold increase after Israel launched its war on Gaza on October 7, 2023, making Berlin not only complicit but an active participant in the genocide unfolding in the besieged Palestinian territory.
Under the shadow of the genocidal war in Gaza, Israel has accelerated its annexation drive in the West Bank. The occupied West Bank has been under Israeli military occupation since 1967.
On the afternoon of February 28, as the first dark clouds of joint Israeli-American military aggression gathered over Iran, a sports hall in the small southern city of Lamerd – a place that had once echoed with the squeak of sneakers and the thrill of competition – was transformed into a scene of unspeakable carnage.
Two American Increment One Precision Strike Missiles (PrSMs), fitted with fragmentation warheads, tore through the facility while a women’s volleyball team was actively training inside. The gruesome and deliberate attack claimed many civilian lives, including dozens of children, and left scores more wounded and maimed.
In a grim parallel to the earlier attack on the Shajareh Tayyebeh Elementary School in Minab, the US war machine initially refused to acknowledge its culpability in both incidents, due to massive global outcry, particularly in Minab.
Instead, American officials went so far as to formally and cynically attribute the tragedy IN BOTH to an alleged malfunction of an Iranian Hoveyzeh cruise missile, a brazen attempt to absolve themselves of yet another unforgivable war crime.
The official American position attributed the civilian deaths in Lamerd to an Iranian Hoveyzeh cruise missile – a KH-55 derivative that bears no resemblance whatsoever to an American PrSM, differing fundamentally in shape, flight trajectory, and terminal dive profile.
This assertion proved deeply peculiar, particularly after Iranian media published CCTV footage showing impact patterns unmistakably consistent with PrSM fragmentation warheads, alongside visuals clearly depicting a ballistic projectile descending in a manner entirely characteristic of the American weapon system.
Identifying the probable staging ground for this attack and others like it proved to be a matter of straightforward deduction. The United States employs the tracked M270 Multiple Launch Rocket System (MLRS) and the wheeled M142 High Mobility Artillery Rocket System (HIMARS) to deploy two distinct families of short-range tactical ballistic missiles: the newer PrSM and the older MGM-140 Army Tactical Missile System (ATACMS), with maximum ranges of 500 and 300 kilometers, respectively.
Given these systems’ limited reach and the considerable operational threat posed by Iran-allied resistance groups throughout Iraq, it became increasingly evident that the Arab monarchies of the Persian Gulf had consented to allow American forces to utilize their territory as launch pads for aggression against Iran and its civilian population.
Liability for the strikes
In the weeks following the initial wave of US-Israeli military aggression against Iran, a substantial body of open-source evidence accumulated, enabling one to reconstruct the operational architecture behind the attacks with reasonable confidence.
Satellite imagery reviewed by independent researchers, munitions debris documented by Iranian media and corroborated by third-party analysts, and flight-path data derived from publicly accessible tracking sources collectively point to forward launch positions in Kuwait and Bahrain as the points of origin for a series of ballistic missile strikes against Iranian territory.
The ATACMS and the longer-range PrSM are neither cruise missiles nor air-launched munitions. They are ground-launched ballistic systems that demand substantial fixed or semi-fixed infrastructure, pre-positioned logistics, and complete host-nation cooperation – or at minimum, tacit acquiescence.
In practical terms, this arrangement extends far beyond granting overflight rights to American aircraft. The deployment of American artillery regiments fielding short-range ballistic missiles on Kuwaiti and Bahraini soil is not incidental but structural. Such weaponry would have served no purpose other than to strike at Iranian territory.
Diplomatically, Tehran delivered an explicit and time-bound demand to both Manama and Kuwait City: cease facilitating the war of aggression, expel the American military forces and their assets, or face the consequences.
The initial response from Bahrain and Kuwait was, in a word, silence – punctuated by formulaic statements affirming their alliance commitments while declining to confirm or deny the operational details that open-source evidence had already established.
It was not a neutral posture but represented a conscious and controversial choice to take sides in an active war, which carries inevitable consequences.
Lamerd sports hall attack
The denial and what came after
Both Kuwait and Bahrain moved quickly to deny the reports. Official statements from Kuwait City and Manama dismissed the open-source evidence as fabricated or misattributed, with Kuwaiti officials characterizing the satellite imagery and debris documentation as part of an Iranian information operation.
Bahraini authorities declined to comment on specific operational details, citing security considerations. The denials were categorical yet they did not survive the end of active hostilities.
In the weeks following the cessation of the initial combat phase, a more complete evidentiary picture emerged, placing Kuwait at the epicenter of the ballistic missile campaign against Iran.
CENTCOM released declassified strike footage confirming ground-launched ballistic operations, footage that independent analysts cross-referenced with geographic markers consistent with Kuwaiti territory.
The release, framed by US officials as a demonstration of operational effectiveness, had the unintended secondary effect of directly contradicting the categorical denials issued by Kuwait. More damaging still was the subsequent discovery of expended ATACMS canisters in the Kuwaiti desert, physical evidence that no official statement could plausibly explain away. The canisters confirmed not only the presence of the launch systems but also the scale and intensity of their operational use.
Kuwait’s role as the operational hub
With the resumption of active combat operations in recent weeks, following American attempts to establish an illegal maritime corridor in the Omani section of the Strait of Hormuz in brazen violation of the memorandum of understanding signed between the two sides, Kuwait’s role has intensified considerably.
The frequency of ballistic missile launches from Kuwaiti territory has increased markedly, a pattern fully consistent with Western reporting indicating that US PrSM stocks have been effectively depleted.
With PrSM availability now severely constrained, the operational burden of American ballistic missile attacks has shifted entirely back to the older ATACMS platform, and Kuwait has emerged as the primary launch hub for that capability.
The geographic logic is self-evident. Kuwait’s proximity to western Iran, and particularly to the southern province of Khuzestan, renders it the most efficient forward position for strikes targeting the military, economic, and energy infrastructure concentrated in that region.
Khuzestan is home to a substantial share of Iran’s oil production, refining capacity, and petrochemical industry, and has consequently emerged as a principal focal point of American military aggression. The volume of launches emanating from Kuwait reflects that strategic prioritization with unmistakable clarity.
The Incriminating Lights
The Arab monarchies of the Persian Gulf have made every possible effort to suppress citizen documentation of military activity, imposing social media restrictions and punitive measures to limit the spread of footage that might complicate official denials.
Yet those efforts have proven increasingly ineffective. As the war has persisted, a steady and growing stream of video and photographic evidence has emerged from Kuwait, captured by residents documenting ballistic missile launches occurring with near-nightly regularity.
The imagery, showing missile contrails ascending over Kuwait and tracking northeast across or alongside Iraqi airspace before continuing toward Iranian territory, circulates widely across platforms such as Telegram.
Multiple photographs and video footage taken from different vantage points confirm the flight paths, the frequency, and the unmistakable signature of ground-launched ballistic systems operating from Kuwaiti soil with undeniable clarity.
The nightly launches have become, in a grim sense, a matter of public record, documented by ordinary Kuwaiti and Iraqi residents whose smartphones have captured what governments continue to officially deny.
The chasm between the official position and the visible reality has widened to a point where it functions less as a credible denial and more as a formal fiction, maintained by all parties for reasons of diplomatic convenience.
The Iranian counter-strike record
Iran has not absorbed this campaign passively. In the weeks following the intensification of launches from Kuwaiti territory, Iranian forces have conducted retaliatory strikes targeting the American military’s forward launch infrastructure.
A growing evidentiary record of these strikes, assembled from open-source footage, presents an intriguing visual signature involving what appear to be large secondary explosions following initial impact, characterized by the bright, fast-burning combustion profile associated with solid-propellant missile fuel.
The secondary detonations visible in circulating clips are inconsistent with conventional munitions storage and consistent with the ignition of solid rocket propellant – of the type utilized in ATACMS – either from fueled launcher vehicles or from stockpiled rounds awaiting deployment.
Several clips show fires burning after initial impact, with the characteristic white-orange flame column that propellant combustion produces distinguishing these events unmistakably from the black smoke of fuel or ordnance fires.
Survival and the limits of alignment
Small states make difficult choices under duress, caught precariously between a powerful patron’s operational requirements and a large neighbor’s legitimate security concerns.
Experts acknowledge that the constraints on Bahraini and Kuwaiti sovereignty, stemming from their profound dependence on the United States, are genuine and substantial.
But, they insist that acknowledgment of constraint is not the same as absolution from responsibility. Governments bear an obligation to their populations that supersedes alliance loyalties, an obligation to assess, without illusion, the risks that their choices are generating.
The current posture of the Persian Gulf states hosting American military bases and providing a launch pad for ballistic missile operations against Iran is deeply problematic.
It reflects, as per analysts, a perilous combination of structural dependency, institutional inertia, and a dangerous underestimation of Iranian anger, resolve, and military capability.
As one military expert told the Press TV website, these micro-states are not positioned to absorb the consequences of a sustained Iranian retaliatory campaign.
“Their small land masses, concentrated infrastructure, and limited strategic depth render them acutely vulnerable in ways that their larger patron is not. By gambling their national survival on the assumption that Iranian red lines are empty, and that US protection is everlasting, they are making a remarkably poor bet, one that history has rarely rewarded,” he noted.
Kiev is targeting civilian infrastructure in Russia in an attempt to provoke Moscow into responding in kind so that Ukraine can “play the victim,” knowing Western media will largely ignore attacks on Russian civilians, former Pentagon senior security policy analyst Michael Maloof has told RT.
Thursday marked the third Ukrainian strike on warehouses belonging to Russia’s largest e-commerce retailer, Wildberries in an escalation of Kiev’s campaign against Russian civilian infrastructure. Ukraine has claimed the company supports Russian military logistics, an allegation denied by both Moscow and Wildberries itself. In a separate attack the same day, Ukrainian forces also struck storage facilities at a poultry farm near St. Petersburg.
Speaking to RT on Friday, Maloof described the attacks as a deliberate “terrorist” strategy.
“They’re doing it purposely in order to lure Russia to start hitting civilian targets… thereby knowing that the Western press will take that information and run with it,” he said.
“And that’s all that you’ll ever hear. You never hear about the attacks in Russia on civilian targets… And so I think the Ukrainians are just trying to play victim once again.”
Maloof dismissed Kiev’s assertion that Wildberries – an online marketplace comparable to Amazon – is a legitimate military target.
“It’s ridiculous. It’s absurd in the extreme.”
He argued that Ukraine expects most Western media outlets not to scrutinize its claims or “see the fraud” behind the justification for attacking the company.
According to Maloof, the broader campaign against Russian energy, food and other civilian infrastructure is aimed primarily at shaping public opinion abroad and securing continued Western financial support.
“It’s propagandistic purposes” designed to win “billions of euros” to continue the conflict, he said.
Maloof added that Ukraine’s European backers are fully aware that civilian sites are being targeted but choose to overlook it.
“They’re using Ukraine for their purposes: ultimately to attack Russia themselves,” he said. “All of this is instigated by the Europeans.”
UN experts have called for an independent investigation into the bombing of a primary school in the southern Iranian city of Minab that killed 168 children and teachers, saying the attack highlights serious violations of international law during war of aggression by the United States and Israel.
In a statement released on Friday, the experts said the school was struck twice during school hours on Feb. 28, 2026, and that there was no indication it was being used for military purposes.
“The school was clearly identifiable as a civilian educational facility and that they had received no information indicating it was being used for military purposes,” the statement read.
Five months later, they said, neither the United States nor Israel had made public the findings of any investigation into the deadly attack, raising questions about the transparency of any inquiry.
“Five months following the school bombing in Minab, the US and Israel have not made any findings public, raising valid questions regarding the impartiality, effectiveness and transparency of any investigation that may be underway,” the experts said. “Justice delayed is justice denied.”
The experts further stated that the Minab school attack illustrated as a broader failure by the United States and Israel to protect civilians during armed conflict, particularly women and children.
“Characterizing civilian deaths as a mistake does not diminish States’ obligations under international humanitarian law and international human rights law, nor does it preclude individual criminal responsibility where violations have occurred,” they said.
“Victims and their families are entitled to truth, justice and effective reparations.”
They voiced grave concern over serious violations of international law arising from US and Israeli war of aggression in Iran since Feb. 28, 2026.
The independent experts called for prompt, independent, impartial and transparent investigations into civilian casualties and damage to civilian infrastructure, including attacks on schools, hospitals and other protected sites.
“International law prohibits the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any State,” the experts said. “The prohibition of the threat or use of force is a cornerstone of the international legal order.”
The US-Israeli war of aggression against Iran between Feb. 28 and early April killed at least 3,375 civilians, including nearly 500 women, and wounded more than 33,000 others, noted the experts.
The experts also said they had received credible reports that Iranian civilians may have been exposed to internationally prohibited and banned hazardous substances, with potentially serious health consequences, particularly for women, girls and pregnant women.
The experts also expressed concern over the latest round of US aggression against Iran despite a memorandum of understanding (MoU) intended to end the war.
The experts urged United States to adhere to the principles of distinction and precaution under international humanitarian law and to protect civilians and civilian infrastructure on land and at sea. They also warned against attacks on civilian population centers, desalination plants and electricity networks.
The US-Israeli acts of aggression in June 2025 and again since February 2026 have deliberately targeted civilians, civilian infrastructure and critical facilities in violation of international law and international humanitarian law.
After weeks of sporadic incidents, the US military launched a fresh wave of large-scale attacks on Iranian soil two weeks ago, targeting military and civilian sites mainly in southern provinces. The attacks have so far destroyed several infrastructure sites, such as bridges and water desalination plants, and killed over 50 Iranians.
Senior Iranian officials have warned that ongoing US attacks threaten regional stability, freedom of navigation, and the security of the Persian Gulf and the Strait of Hormuz.
Ukrainian forces have hit Wildberries warehouses in multiple Russian cities for several day. Ukraine’s official line says the facilities were used to store dual-use goods: body armor, military uniforms, fiber optics.
Plausible? Hardly.
The very same items are freely sold on Amazon, Temu, AliExpress, and other Western and Chinese platforms across Europe. Neither the EU, nor NATO, nor Ukraine itself treats those sales as legitimate military targets.
So what’s really going on?
Striking Wildberries’ warehouses means hitting ordinary local workers: people unloading trucks, stacking shelves, earning a paycheck. That’s not a military operation, but terrorist attack aimed at civilians.
This isn’t just about Russia, either. The marketplace supports hundreds of thousands of sellers from Armenia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Uzbekistan. They use Wildberries’ infrastructure to move goods across borders: clothing from Kazakhstan to Armenia, for example. These strikes don’t just hurt Russians, but hit entrepreneurs and businesses across a dozen countries.
What do these warehouses really hold? Mostly clothes, shoes, home goods, and beauty products, which are bought primarily by women with children.
This isn’t an ammunition depot and surely not a big-tech data center. Ukraine’s rhetoric is wearing thin: and the pretext is getting harder to sell.
Conveniently, though, it fits the narrative of Ukraine’s new commander-in-chief, Mykhailo Drapaty, who recently told an interviewer that Russians “have no right to exist as a nation.”
Former Indian Foreign Secretary Kanwal Sibal says the US attack on the Iranian frigate IRIS Dena near Sri Lanka demonstrated Washington’s disregard for India’s sensitivities, warning that the war with Iran has expanded beyond West Asia into India’s immediate maritime neighborhood.
“The sinking of the Iranian frigate IRIS Dena by a US submarine in the Indian Ocean has brought the widening conflict with Iran into India’s immediate maritime neighborhood. This is no longer a distant West Asian crisis,” Sibal wrote on X on Friday.
Sibal said the circumstances gave the incident both moral and diplomatic significance for New Delhi.
“That fact gives the episode a moral and diplomatic dimension that cannot simply be ignored. The United States has shown scant regard for Indian sensitivities in carrying out this action so close to our shores,” he said.
Warning that the consequences extend beyond the immediate attack, Sibal said the war between major powers will inevitably spread beyond West Asia into regions vital to India’s interests.
“The larger issue is the progressive spread of the conflict beyond West Asia. Escalation between major powers does not remain geographically contained. It inevitably spills into regions that are vital to India’s security and economic interests,” he wrote.
He added: “Stability in the Indian Ocean, freedom of navigation, and uninterrupted energy flows are not abstract concerns for India. They are core national interests. Any sustained disruption in these waters will have direct and serious consequences for us.”
Sibal said New Delhi now faces the challenge of preserving its strategic autonomy while balancing ties with both Washington and Tehran.
“India now faces the difficult task of preserving its strategic autonomy while managing relations with both Washington and Tehran. Conflicts between other powers that reach our maritime neighborhood leave us with fewer good options and greater exposure,” he wrote.
“The central question is how India protects its interests when the wars of others begin to unfold in its own extended neighborhood. This is no longer a hypothetical problem. It has arrived.”
Sibal also criticized the Indian government following the sinking of the IRIS Dena, writing that, “If India had not invited the Iranian warship to participate in the exercise, it would not have been in that area.”
Referring to the Milan 2026 multinational naval exercise, he said, “Participating ships were not allowed to carry any ammunition,” adding that the Iranian frigate “was unarmed at the time.”
He also said that “the US submarine attack appears to have been planned in advance because Washington was aware of the Iranian warship’s participation in the exercise.”
The IRIS Dena was returning from the Milan 2026 multinational naval exercise, hosted by the Indian Navy with the participation of 72 countries, when it was attacked by a US submarine in the Indian Ocean near Sri Lanka.
Sri Lankan authorities said 32 Iranian sailors were rescued, while the fate of 140 others remained unknown. Iranian media reported that 80 sailors were killed in the attack.
The U.K. government recommended a risky drug combination for COVID-19 patients in 2020, just 16 days after warning doctors to use the medications together only as a last resort, medical commentator John Campbell, Ph.D., said this week.
For years, Campbell has criticized the widespread use of midazolam and morphine and other palliative drugs to treat COVID-19 patients, questioning why so many patients appeared to receive drugs commonly associated with end-of-life care — even though they didn’t necessarily have a terminal illness.
But in his latest video, he said he had overlooked a key piece of the puzzle: The U.K. government itself had backed guidance recommending the combined use of opioids and benzodiazepines for certain COVID-19 patients — just days after warning that the drug combination could cause fatal respiratory depression.
Campbell, who said a former member of the British Parliament brought the issue to his attention, called the apparent reversal “a national scandal which is being ignored.” … Full article
Iran’s foreign ministry has strongly condemned the British government’s decision to allow the US to use UK military bases and facilities to prepare and facilitate military strikes against Iran, declaring the move a violation of the UN Charter and international law.
“British policymakers, fully aware that US military strikes against Iran – which began with the participation of the Zionist regime and are still ongoing – constitute a clear act of aggression and a gross violation of the fundamental principles of the UN Charter and peremptory norms of international law, have decided to join these actions,” the ministry said in a statement Thursday.
The decision, the ministry said, is “clearly contrary to the fundamental principles and rules of the Charter of the United Nations and international law” and, under paragraph (f) of Article 3 of UN General Assembly Resolution 3314 on the Definition of Aggression, “constitutes an act of aggression against the Islamic Republic of Iran”.
The foreign ministry sharply criticized Britain’s role as a permanent member of the UN Security Council.
“The UK government, both as a state and as a permanent member of the UN Security Council, instead of fulfilling its legal and moral responsibilities to condemn the military aggression and war crimes of the United States and the Zionist regime against Iran, has stepped onto the path of aligning with the aggressors and has degraded its position to that of an accomplice in their war against the Iranian nation.”
“This decision,” the ministry added, “further undermines London’s claims about supporting the rule of law, human rights, and international peace and security.”
The statement drew explicit parallels with Britain’s long history of intervention in Iranian affairs.
It listed “the coup of August 19, 1953; full-scale support for Saddam Hussein’s regime during the imposed war; the imposition of illegal sanctions under the pretext of the nuclear issue; complicity with the United States in the so-called ‘snapback’ mechanism; and the designation of the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC).”
“The Islamic Republic of Iran is determined to defend its national sovereignty, territorial integrity, national interests, and national security against any aggression,” the ministry emphasized.
“Any party that in any way participates in the military aggression against Iran will be responsible for the consequences and repercussions of its own decision.”
According to a report from Bloomberg, the new British prime minister has agreed to allow the United States to use UK territory to continue its aggressive strikes against Iran.
The report said Andy Burnham has permitted the US to use British military bases for “defensive strikes” against Iran – meaning that UK bases such as RAF Fairford and the Diego Garcia naval base in the Indian Ocean will likely be used in the current round of US aggressive strikes.
The report added that former prime minister Keir Starmer, in his final hours at 10 Downing Street, chaired a government meeting on Britain’s policy following seven days of renewed US bombardment of Iran.
Sources revealed that ministers at the meeting decided to continue the existing policy of using UK bases to counter missiles from Iran and facilities used to target the Strait of Hormuz.
Burnham was briefed on the decision and appears to have agreed to it, despite the risk of angering anti-war Labour Party supporters, the report said.
Some Labour MPs, as well as members of the Green Party and Liberal Democrats, have argued that US use of the bases makes Britain complicit in war crimes.
Statements from the US that it might bomb Iran’s nuclear facilities violate international law, Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmail Baghaei said on Wednesday.
“The repeated US attacks and threats against Iran’s peaceful nuclear facilities not only constitute a flagrant violation of the core principles of the UN Charter, international law, and the relevant resolutions of the IAEA Board of Governors, General Conference, and UN Security Council, but also reveal the United States’ deep-rooted enmity toward Iran’s scientific progress and technological development,” Baghaei wrote on X.
Iran does not conduct any nuclear activities in the area of the Kuh-e Kolang Gaz La Mountain, otherwise known as “Pickaxe,” which the United States wants to strike, the diplomat said, adding that the relevant remarks are just an excuse for more aggression.
On July 21, US President Donald Trump threatened to attack Iran’s Pickaxe Mountain, where, per Israeli intelligence assessments, a fortified nuclear enrichment facility is located.
The US has been conducting strikes against Iran since July 8, in violation of the provisions of the memorandum of understanding signed on June 17.
By Martin Jay | Strategic Culture Foundation | November 27, 2025
It is a long-debated subject. Whether it is the U.S. which controls Israel or the other way around. In the 70s, under President Nixon, many analysts firmly believed, despite the JFK assassination, that it was still the U.S. who called the shots and used Israel as a useful tool in the Middle East to keep a rowdy group of Arab states in check and subservient to America’s interests. But it is in recent years where we have to see if Israel has done that effectively and meticulously in America’s interests, given that most analysts agree that Israel and the U.S. are both preparing for war with Iran.
Given that Israel’s main task was to keep the region in order to serve America’s hegemony and its energy needs, one has to ask isn’t it a failure of both U.S. foreign policy and of Israel that a war with Iran is seen as a solution to America’s failing hegemony? And doesn’t this tail wagging the dog scenario show itself in the clear light once and for all? … continue
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