Europe was part of the infrastructure of US aggression against Iran: Deputy FM
Press TV – September 24, 2026
Iran’s Deputy Foreign Minister for Legal and International Affairs Kazem Gharibabadi has said NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte’s admission that some 5,000 sorties were flown from European bases in support of US military aggression against Iran proves that Europe formed part of the infrastructure of that aggression.
In a post on X on Thursday evening, Gharibabadi wrote that the NATO chief’s remarks demonstrated Europe’s role in enabling the illegal US campaign.
“Governments that placed their territory at the disposal of the United States cannot evade their responsibility,” he said. “This participation will not go unanswered.”
Rutte has repeatedly acknowledged that thousands of US military flights, between 4,000 and 5,000, departed from bases in Europe during the US-Israeli war of aggression against the Islamic Republic, which began on 28 February.
He described Europe as a “platform of power projection” without which Washington could not have conducted the operation.
Countries including Italy, Romania, the United Kingdom, France and Germany were cited in connection with the use of bases, airspace, tankers and logistics.
Iran has consistently described the US-Israeli assault as an unprovoked act of aggression in flagrant violation of the UN Charter and international law.
Tehran has stressed that providing territory, bases or infrastructure to an aggressor state itself constitutes participation in the act of aggression, as recognized under United Nations General Assembly Resolution 3314.
Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi separately warned European officials in New York of the severe and long-term consequences of facilitating and supporting US and Israeli war crimes, both in Gaza and against Iran. He noted that submitting to a bully never satisfies that bully.
Israeli election committee bars candidate from Knesset race over Gaza war opposition
MEMO | September 23, 2026
Israel’s Central Elections Committee on Wednesday decided to disqualify Knesset member Ofer Cassif from running on the Joint List in the upcoming parliamentary elections, Anadolu reports.
Cassif is known for his opposition to the policies of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government toward the Palestinian people, particularly Israel’s ongoing war in the Gaza Strip since 2023.
Israeli Channel 13 reported that the committee is holding sessions Wednesday and Thursday to discuss requests to bar several political parties from the Knesset elections and has decided to disqualify Cassif from running.
It said the decision was made following a request submitted by Netanyahu’s Likud party against Cassif, with the case to be referred to the Supreme Court, the country’s highest judicial body, for a ruling.
The channel quoted Cassif as saying: “The committee seeks not only to exclude Arab voices, but also to silence and exclude from the Knesset any voice that attempts to offer a real alternative to the rhetoric of wars and revenge.”
“Presenting my opposition to the government’s policies and the actions of its agents as support for the enemy, breach of loyalty and harm to the state is a blatant distortion of reality and a complete perversion of the spirit of democracy,” he said, noting that “opposition to crimes committed in the name of the state does not contradict its interests and does not strengthen its enemies.”
Israeli elections will be held amid a fragmented political landscape.
Netanyahu has led the current government since December 2022.
He faces corruption charges, while the International Criminal Court has issued an arrest warrant for him over charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity in the Gaza Strip.
French-Lebanese man files war crimes complaint over Israeli attacks
Al Mayadeen | September 23, 2026
Lawyers representing a French-Lebanese citizen have filed a complaint with France’s National Anti-Terrorism Prosecutor’s Office over Israeli war crimes involving the destruction of his home and olive trees in southern Lebanon.
The complainant, who lives in France and whose identity has not been disclosed, says his property was destroyed as part of “Israel’s” hostilities against Lebanon. His lawyers, William Bourdon and Nicolas Busin of Bourdon & Associés, filed the complaint on Tuesday.
“This is a French citizen asking the justice system of his own country to establish the full truth and deliver justice for the war crimes committed against him, in line with a broader context in southern Lebanon that appears to amount to ethnic cleansing,” Busin said on Tuesday at a conference on corruption and accountability in Beirut.
Complaint seeks accountability for destruction in southern Lebanon
Busin argued against the Israeli allegation that the complainant’s home in the south was destroyed due to links to the Resistance, stating that his client has no ties to the group and questioned “the complete absence of any military objective” in what happened to the property.
He described the incident as potentially involving “an act of destruction, damage or even theft”, which he said could constitute a war crime.
The complaint seeks to establish the facts, identify those responsible and pursue prosecution.
Busin also claimed that more than 6,000 French citizens serve in the Israeli military, arguing that French nationals should not be involved in war crimes in southern Lebanon.
The new complaint comes after at least two other cases were filed in France this year over Israeli crimes in Lebanon. In April, French-Lebanese artist Ali Cherri filed a complaint over an Israeli strike in Beirut that killed his parents. In June, another French-Lebanese man filed proceedings after several members of his family were killed in an Israeli strike on a residential building in Sour.
French courts become avenue for Lebanese victims
French jurisdiction provides an avenue for French nationals and dual nationals seeking accountability for international crimes committed outside France. France has previously investigated war crimes and crimes against humanity committed abroad under universal-jurisdiction provisions.
The legal route has taken on greater significance amid the absence of a functioning international accountability mechanism for crimes committed in Lebanon. Lebanon is not a party to the Rome Statute and has not accepted the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court.
The issue has also become more contentious following the Lebanon-“Israel” framework agreement signed in June.
Article 13 raises concerns over legal accountability
Article 13 of the agreement commits the two sides to take measures including the cessation of “all hostile or adverse actions in international political or legal forums.”
The provision has generated controversy in Lebanon, with legal experts and political figures warning that its wording could restrict efforts to pursue “Israel” through international courts and other legal mechanisms. The Lebanese government has disputed interpretations that the provision amounts to abandoning Lebanon’s legal rights.
The controversy remains particularly significant as Lebanese victims continue pursuing cases abroad.
Busin said proceedings in France and other jurisdictions could eventually strengthen accountability efforts inside Lebanon.
“Proceedings that are being pursued today in France and in other jurisdictions could tomorrow also have a positive impact in Lebanon, where the demand for accountability is also very strong,” he told The National.
A broader legal campaign linked to Lebanon
The complaint is also connected to the wider legal work of Bourdon, a prominent French human rights lawyer who has pursued several cases involving corruption and financial crimes linked to Lebanon.
Bourdon has represented victims and civil-society groups seeking accountability following Lebanon’s 2019 financial collapse. Proceedings involving former Central Bank governor Riad Salameh resulted in asset freezes in Europe and an international arrest warrant, while separate French investigations have involved former Prime Minister Najib Mikati and Lebanese banking groups.
Paris prosecutors have also investigated financial wrongdoing involving French subsidiaries of SGBL Group and Bank Audi, as well as allegations involving banker Antoun Sehnaoui. The banks have denied wrongdoing, while those accused have denied or disputed the allegations.
For the latest complainant, however, the immediate objective is more direct: to establish responsibility for the destruction of his property and seek judicial accountability in France at a time when avenues for pursuing Israeli crimes in Lebanon remain heavily contested.
Leaked: Britain’s Sham Conviction Of Hashim Thaci
By Kit Klarenberg | Al Mayadeen | September 20, 2026
On September 16th, The Hague’s Kosovo Specialist Chambers found former Kosovo Liberation Army chief Hashim Thaci guilty of cruel treatment, arbitrary detention, torture and the murder of 96 people during the 1998/9 Kosovo War. The verdict stunned his supporters and detractors alike, but neither believe he will ultimately be convicted, with good reason. Thaci is but a sacrificial lamb, defendant in a purely symbolic show trial secretly orchestrated by British intelligence – who once considered the KLA leader their bosom ally.
Given this background, that Thaci ended up in The Hague at all seemed nothing short of miraculous. After being indicted in April 2020, he resigned as Kosovo’s President. A longstanding KLA high-ranker, Thaci was at the forefront of the group’s outreach to Western governments and intelligence agencies throughout the 1990s, as it waged ever-escalating guerrilla war on Yugoslav security forces. When NATO’s 78-day-long bombing of Belgrade erupted in March 1999 in support of the KLA, Thaci proclaimed himself prime minister of Kosovo’s “provisional government”.
Categorised as a “terrorist” entity by the US State Department, the KLA was known by Western governments to be an organised crime faction, funded by the drugs trade and states such as Saudi Arabia, with ties to extremist factions including Al Qaeda. This was no impediment to the CIA and MI6 providing the KLA with substantial financial and material support for years. Once NATO’s bombing was complete and Kosovo fell under alliance occupation, Thaci was instrumental in consolidating the group’s total takeover of the statelet.
As his criminal and political rivals were systematically executed, the KLA conducted a concomitant province-wide purge of non-Albanians, reducing Kosovo’s population by hundreds of thousands. As a Western diplomat told the Washington Post in June 1999, “Thaci’s ruthless tactics are legendary in the region.” Despite high-level cognisance of such tendencies, Thaci and his fellow KLA warlords were actively assisted in their reign of terror by occupying NATO KFOR and UNMIK forces. A Kosovo Albanian lamented in 2001:
“Instead of cracking down on the warlords, KFOR and UNMIK allowed them to divide Kosovo into different zones where these warlords generate enormous wealth.”
In July that year, the Washington Post reported how Kosovo’s UN-constructed courts were proving incapable of prosecuting KLA officials for atrocities committed in the wake of NATO’s occupation, let alone before the alliance’s arrival. A Swedish jurist serving as Kosovo’s “first Western judge” detailed “several cases in which UN and KFOR senior officials opposed or blocked prosecution” of KLA leaders. NATO and UN officials allegedly feared they “would put their lives at risk” by pursuing prosecutions of certain figures – including Thaci, presumably.
‘Essentially Untouchable’
A leaked March 2019 British intelligence appraisal of “rule of law issues” in Kosovo is absolutely scathing, specifically naming the KLA’s enduring influence locally as a key problem castrating the would-be country’s laughable legal system. “In common with much of the rest of the Balkans, Kosovo has high levels of state capture; limited reconciliation between ethnic communities; and the system carries a heavy legacy of unresolved war crimes issues,” the study reported. Of particular concern to London:
“Close links between senior politicians and Albanian organised crime, born out of wartime connections that both funded and staffed [the KLA]… Kosovo’s rule of law institutions at both the national and local level are weak; lack expertise and strategic direction; and are politicised. The inability of local law and order institutions to combat high-level political corruption seriously undermines the state’s integrity. These negative influences appear to be increasing… Those in power, and their associates, are essentially untouchable.”
Moreover, “state capture furthers the economic interests of elite groups but increasingly is focused on preventing challenge through subverting rule of law.” Resultantly, “rule of law processes are not strengthened, but are subverted and circumscribed.” In other words, the effectively lawless mafia-dominated system constructed in ‘independent’ Kosovo with NATO and UN help post-NATO bombing endured untrammelled two decades later. The British highlighted “particular issues in the prosecutorial process – both the management of investigations and the creation of indictments.”
The execution of civil and criminal judgments in Kosovo was also cited as a “specific problem,” while sentencing was found to be “inconsistent” – “in particular in relation to corruption and serious crimes, sentencing can be very light.” It was extremely common for cases to be initiated against known criminals, then remain unresolved for years. Questions abounded over the “competence of judges and prosecutors” – “it is generally acknowledged that the quality of legal training at university is poor and… the Bar Exam sets a very low hurdle.”
Even then, Kosovo authorities “did not select the highest performing candidates, but often those with links to those in positions of influence.” Small wonder “public expectations of the rule of law sector” were found to be “very low” throughout the would-be country. Citizens not only had “no real experience of rule of law,” but there was “an ingrained lack of trust of rule of law systems” among the wider population. Yet, the British were determined to counter this perception – if only for public relations purposes.
At that time, London had been running a dedicated “rule of law portfolio” in Kosovo for several years. It consisted of “three separate strands.” They spanned “monitoring the judiciary” and Pristina’s “prosecutorial functions – trials, verdicts and the behaviour of judges and prosecutors in corruption and organised crime cases.” Four British-approved “Kosovan legal experts” were furthermore embedded “in key posts” in Pristina’s Ministry of Justice, and London took charge of “recruitment and appointment of judges and prosecutors.”
This covered “improved disciplinary procedures; performance appraisal; and ways of increasing accountability.” Along the way, “young judges and prosecutors” in Kosovo were mentored, enjoying “study visits” to Britain and unadvertised “support on real life cases.” In light of Thaci’s conviction, it’s striking the British embassy in Pristina professes to place a “strong emphasis on achieving results in the investigation and conviction of high profile individuals in corruption cases, and on making a visible impact in such cases”:
“The embassy has made a decision… to target more politically sensitive areas.”
In service of this objective, a dedicated Foreign Office project “to change the culture of the Kosovo justice system to one in which judges, prosecutors and others are willing to fearlessly challenge entrenched interests” was also quietly launched in 2018. Leaked files show the effort was outsourced to notorious British intelligence cutout Adam Smith International. Markedly, it operated until March 2020 – one month before Thaci was indicted by the Kosovo Specialist Chambers.
ASI was explicitly concerned with the “enforceability” of KSC prosecutions. Specifically founded in 2016 to prosecute high-profile war crimes cases against KLA officials, ASI acknowledged the KSC was of no concern to Kosovo Albanians. “Whilst senior politicians may be indicted by the Specialist Chambers… Kosovo’s young population aspires to follow its neighbours in making progress to stronger relations with Europe and prosperity at home, which promises to be a driver of reforms,” the cutout observed.
Nonetheless, ASI was tasked with helping the KSC appear to be serious about fulfilling its purview, due to growing concerns among ‘independent’ Pristina’s Western sponsors “about Kosovan capacity to process case volumes, to protect witness identities, and to handle complex cases,” combined with well-founded suspicions the KLA was insulated from prosecution. ASI consciously designed its legal ‘reform’ program “to fit this context of conflict legacies, competing stakeholders, political tensions and uncertain commitment to international standards”:
“Many former KLA leaders now hold positions of power and influence. Those involved in war crimes and organised crime are often the same people. Corruption often manifests itself through the connections between private companies and the political system, with award of public tenders being affected by political connections… However, the general desire of the Kosovo political leadership for closer ties with the EU offers rule of law projects valuable leverage to be used selectively.”
It was under these highly politicised auspices ASI’s intimate ‘assistance’ to Kosovo’s criminal justice systems was provided, and Thaci’s KSC indictment drawn up. At every stage, the cutout coordinated closely with Foreign Office headquarters in London, producing “bi-weekly updates on notable [legal and judicial] developments” related to Kosovo, quarterly reviews “of trends within the institutional and political environment,” and “longer term ‘look forward’ reports anticipating events in the coming three months.”
ASI boasted how its “international advisers” were deployed to Kosovo “on rotations,” ensuring “continuous team presence” locally, with at least one staffer “always ‘on the ground’ and on call” for the Foreign Office. This would help the cutout “build and maintain relationships with direct Kosovan counterparts and wider stakeholders continuously,” and “monitor political dynamics to ensure that project decisions are politically-informed and conflict sensitive.” With such intensive behind-closed-door bonds between London and Pristina, the chances of serious prosecutions of KLA officials emerging remained scant.
Still, in order for Pristina to make “strides towards closer ties with Europe,” ASI understood the necessity of challenging mainstream conceptions of Kosovo as “a country formed through a conflict that shaped its political parties and legitimised their power, to one where rule of law has primacy and state institutions win public confidence by demonstrating their adherence to international standards for professionalism and transparency.” In this context, simply indicting Thaci became in and of itself substantial, regardless of the outcome, or his trial’s actual legitimacy.
It’s unsurprising Thaci and his supporters firmly believed his acquittal to be inevitable, and still do. The Foreign Office project managed by ASI drew upon a variety of “international subject matter experts”, among them several veteran British judges with experience elsewhere in the Balkans, including Albania and Macedonia. They were led by Jonathan Ratel, formerly head of Kosovo’s EU-funded Special Prosecution Office, and “deputy chief prosecutor”. In this capacity, Ratel personally rubbished widespread, EU-endorsed allegations of KLA involvement in organ trafficking.
Thaci’s trial didn’t explore the issue, he was acquitted of all crimes against humanity, and a right to appeal his 25-year sentence was clearly codified in the KSC’s judgement. Serbian leaders have condemned the ruling as too lenient. Thaci – dubbed Pristina’s “George Washington” by Joe Biden – remains held at The Hague. Meanwhile, KFOR has at last begun withdrawing from Kosovo, due to “an improved security situation” in the aspiring country – where, thanks to covert British judicial interventions, “those in power, and their associates, are essentially untouchable.”
US lawmaker blocks $2.8 billion weapons sale to Israel: Report
MEMO | September 19, 2026
A top Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, has placed a hold on a $2.8 billion weapons sale to Israel, The Hill reported on Friday.
Shaheen has voiced frustration that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has not addressed concerns raised by Democratic lawmakers over civilian deaths in Gaza, Israeli strikes in Syria, and growing violence against Palestinians by extremist Israeli occupiers in the West Bank.
The proposed weapons package includes 40,000 one-ton bombs. The Biden administration had previously withheld similar munitions due to concerns over their use in Gaza and the resulting civilian casualties.
Palestinian health officials estimate that around 70,000 Palestinians have been killed during the three-year war between Israel and Hamas since October 2023, though the figures do not distinguish between civilians and militants.
As the Senate Foreign Relations Committee’s top Democrat, Shaheen can place a hold on major arms sales while the State Department addresses lawmakers’ concerns. Semafor first reported that she imposed the hold in July.
Her House of Representatives counterpart, Rep. Gregory Meeks, also announced Wednesday that he had placed a hold on the sale, citing concerns about whether Netanyahu’s government would use US-supplied weapons in accordance with international humanitarian law and US law.
Asked by CNN about Meeks’ decision, Shaheen said: “All of us share concern about what Israel is doing … what they’re doing in Gaza, their bombing in places like Syria, and what that means for any peaceful solution in the Middle East.”
“Netanyahu needs to hear from America that we don’t like what he’s doing. We don’t like what’s happening in the West Bank where settler violence is killing Palestinians, sending them out of their homes, disrupting basic infrastructure. And the Netanyahu administration has basically done nothing to address that,” she added.
Iran Judiciary issues indictments against 159 US, Israeli officials for assassination of Leader, commanders

Red Crescent relief workers search among the debris of homes destroyed in US-Israeli strikes in Kermanshah, west Iran, on April 1, 2026. (Photo by Tasnim)
Press TV – September 19, 2026
Iran’s Judiciary has issued indictments against 159 senior US and Israeli political and military officials over the assassination of the martyred Leader, Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei, and military commanders, Judiciary spokesman Ali Kazemi says.
Kazemi said on Saturday that 92 of the accused are US nationals and 67 are Israeli, adding that the indictments had been issued and the cases referred to court.
He said a separate civil case, filed collectively by people in Tehran and concerning material, moral and punitive damages, is being heard after the jurisdiction of Iran’s courts to consider the lawsuit was established. A hearing date will be set soon, he added.
Regarding the cases involving martyred commanders, Kazemi said cases have been opened and investigated concerning 19 commanders. Indictments were ultimately issued against 97 US and Israeli officials, including 74 Americans and 23 Israelis.
The Judiciary spokesman said around 400 cases have been filed with Iranian courts as part of domestic and international legal proceedings, adding that one case involved more than 350,000 plaintiffs.
He said the purpose of the measures was to document claims and evidence, conduct judicial proceedings and issue well-founded rulings, allowing the pursuit of legal claims inside Iran and, if necessary, internationally.
On February 28, the US and Israel launched the second round of aggression against Iran, assassinating Ayatollah Khamenei and several high-ranking commanders and officials. The war, which lasted for 40 days, was met with Iran’s decisive military response.
Iran has vowed to legally pursue those behind the assassinations at domestic and international levels.
Earlier this month, Minister of Justice Amin Hossein Rahimi said the crimes committed during the US-Israeli war on Iran are being documented for lawsuits and judicial and legal follow-up at international forums.
House Votes to End Iran War for Third Time
By Kyle Anzalone | The Libertarian Institute | September 16, 2026
The House of Representatives passed a third War Powers Resolution calling on President Donald Trump to end unauthorized hostilities against Iran. The following day, House Speaker Mike Johnson canceled the chamber’s remaining votes and sent lawmakers home early for the midterm recess, delaying a potential vote on Congressman Thomas Massie’s articles of impeachment against Secretary of War Pete Hegseth.
The House passed H. Con. Res. 93 220-204 on Tuesday, with seven Republicans joining nearly all Democrats to pass the legislation. H. Con. Res. 93 directs President Donald Trump to end hostilities against Iran.
H. Con. Res. 93 invokes the War Powers Act to assert Congress’s power over war-making. President Donald Trump took the US to war against Iran earlier this year without any Congressional authorization.
Following the vote, Speaker Johnson announced the House would begin its midterm recess ahead of schedule. Massie responded to the news on X. “And there it is. Just as I predicted. They’re canceling Congress tomorrow to avoid the vote on IMPEACHING [Hegseth],” he wrote.
The Republican Congressman argues the impeachment of Hegseth is necessary as the US has been in an undeclared war with Iran for over 90 days.
“By engaging in hostilities in Iran for more than 90 days without congressional authorization, Secretary Hegseth is breaking the law and must be held accountable,” said Massie. “Secretary Hegseth’s constitutional violations extend beyond the illegal war in Iran. He is abusing the power of his office to ignore congressional war powers resolutions, to kidnap foreign leaders, and to intimidate critics of the Trump administration by retaliating against them for exercising free speech.”
He continued, “If we are to remain true to our oath to ‘support and defend the Constitution of the United States,’ Congress must not turn a blind eye to Secretary Hegseth’s unconstitutional and illegal actions.”
In addition to waging an undeclared war against Iran, under Hegseth, the US has also bombed vessels in the Caribbean Sea and Pacific Ocean, Nigeria, Yemen, and Venezuela without any approval from the Legislature.
NATO-backed Kosovo separatist ‘responsible for war crimes’
RT | September 16, 2026
The former leader of the NATO-backed Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) has been found responsible for war crimes committed by the militant group during its NATO-backed campaign to break away from Serbia in the 1990s.
Hasam Thaci, who served as the first president of the self-proclaimed Republic of Kosovo, has been found guilty of the murder of 96 political opponents and suspected Serbian collaborators, the verdict said. He was also convicted for the unlawful detention and torture of hundreds of people.
The 58-year-old Thaci and three other former KLA leaders tried in The Hague are widely regarded as heroes in Kosovo. Thaci’s defense argued that senior figures in the KLA could not control rank-and-file separatist fighters and thus could not be held responsible for crimes committed under their leadership. Lawyers described the group as lacking a strict military hierarchy during the 1998-99 conflict.
NATO’s bombing campaign targeting Serbia, which Washington and its European allies framed as a humanitarian intervention, ensured KLA’s victory. Belgrade does not recognize Kosovo as an independent state, having rejected the unilateral declaration passed by the breakaway entity’s parliament in 2008.
The US, the UK, France, Germany, and many other Western and European nations, however, officially recognize Kosovo’s independence. Camp Bondsteel, the headquarters of NATO-led Kosovo Force (KFOR), is the largest American military base in the Balkans.
Among the more gruesome claims related to the Kosovo conflict was that the KLA harvested organs from Serbian prisoners and sold them on the black market, which former Chief Prosecutor of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia Carla Del Ponte detailed in her 2008 memoir.
The allegations were further substantiated in a 2010 European Council report, which also implicated former Thaci subordinates in the trafficking of humans, drug and arms, as well as protection rackets and other organized crime. His government allegedly ensured impunity for those “mafia-like” networks, the document said.
The Serbian government accused the West of pursuing selective justice in the wake of the Balkan wars, allegedly focusing on Serbian suspects and overlooking crimes attributed to their opponents.
The Kosovo Specialist Chambers (KSC), where Thaci was tried, was set up in The Hague in 2016, after earlier cases failed in Kosovo due to alleged political interference and witness intimidation.
‘40,000 tons of bombs’: Report shows Trump planning ‘largest bomb transfer in modern US history’ to Israel
Press TV – September 15, 2026
The Trump administration is preparing a $2.8-billion package to provide the Israeli regime with 40,000 2,000-pound bombs, a report says.
The package includes 20,000 MK-84s, 20,000 BLU-117s, and 20,000 I-2000 penetrator warheads, The Washington Post reported on Tuesday, citing a US official.
Although described as a sale, it would be financed through the US Foreign Military Financing program, under which Washington provides the funds the regime uses to purchase American weapons.
‘Trump pressing Congress to rubber-stamp package’
The proposed transfer has been informally notified to congressional committees, with the Trump administration pressing congressional officials to approve it.
Remarking on the report, conservative commentator Tucker Carlson sharply criticized the planned transfer, focusing particularly on its unprecedented scale.
“This appears to be the largest transfer of conventional explosive ordnance from the United States in modern history,” Carlson wrote on X.
Carlson compared the proposed 40,000 tons of bombs with major US bombing operations during World War II, noting that the Eighth Air Force’s March 1945 raid on Berlin involved about 3,000 tons of bombs, while Operation Meetinghouse over Tokyo involved about 1,600 tons.
He argued that the scale of the proposed transfer had no historical precedent and questioned the military justification for deploying such weapons in the region.
“Nor is there a justification,” Carlson wrote, saying the transfer was such in scale that made one think that the Israeli regime was waging “World War Two.”
Carlson also argued that the weapons’ destructive power made their use in populated areas particularly consequential. He cited the MK-84’s ability to collapse buildings and create deep craters, and reminded that the regime had used hundreds of such bombs in Gaza.
‘Taxpayer-funded gift to Israel’
The commentator further characterized the transfer as a taxpayer-funded gift rather than a conventional arms sale, pointing to the Foreign Military Financing mechanism.
Sen. Chris Van Hollen said he intended to oppose the sale, arguing likewise that the administration was sending taxpayer-funded bombs, while Israeli forces continued to wage aggression in Gaza and Lebanon.
The administration has declined to comment specifically on the pending transaction.
The Andean Shadow Army
How Colombia became the world’s primary reservoir of mercenary manpower

José Niño Unfiltered| September 14, 2026
A few weeks ago Russians with Attitude, posted a blunt prediction after Abelardo de la Espriella won Colombia’s presidency in June.
“It was already bad under Gustavo Petro who didn’t do anything to stop it but at least verbally denounced the outflow of Colombian mercenaries. De la Espriella will likely actively support American-Ukrainian recruitment efforts. There’s already many thousands of them (with around 1,000 confirmed killed). I suspect flooding the Ukrainian army with Third World meat will be the focus of US strategy to solve Kiev’s manpower problems. It’s already the publicly declared Ukrainian strategy.”
Hot take aside, there’s considerable truth behind RWA’s commentary. Colombia now supplies more foreign fighters to Ukraine than any other nation on earth, and it did not arrive at that position overnight.
The International Federation for Human Rights estimates that 2,000 to 3,000 Colombians joined the Ukrainian army as contract soldiers. The Defense Post reported in November 2025 that Ukraine had signed roughly 2,000 Colombians on military contracts, citing the German daily Die Welt. Writing for the Atlantic Council in February 2026, Erin K. McFee noted that official figures do not exist and put Colombians at roughly 25 percent of all personnel drawn from the 65 countries that have joined Kiev’s ground forces. Petro pushed the number far higher, telling Colombians in May 2026 that 7,000 men were fighting and dying in a war that was not theirs.
Citing former Ukrainian economy minister Tymofiy Mylovanov, Petro wrote on X on May 5, 2026, in a post that translates as “There are 7,000 men from Colombia with military training, fighting in a foreign war and dying without cause in Ukraine. We do not want to export death. The mercenary is prohibited by law.”
However uncertain the head count, the body count is harder to dispute. Colombia’s Foreign Ministry gave El Tiempo figures published on June 9, 2026, and current through May, showing 670 Colombians missing and 173 dead across both sides. Of the dead, 140 died in Ukraine, and 130 of those bodies have already come home in coffins, while consular officials in Russia confirmed 33 more using information the Russian government supplied. Of the missing, Ukraine’s armed forces declared 446 lost in combat, families reported another 56, and the Moscow consulate logged 168. The ministry then undercut the totals, explaining in Spanish that Colombian citizens travel to conflict zones individually and without notifying Colombian authorities, so the available figures do not necessarily reflect the full scope of the phenomenon.
Independent estimates fill that gap and they run grim. Writing for the Atlantic Council, Erin K. McFee put Colombian deaths on Ukraine’s side at 300 to 550, citing El País. In a Kiev memorial park, Colombian flags now form a striking patch in a dense blanket of tributes to the fallen. Colombians have lost more men in Ukraine’s International Legion than any other foreign nationality, with Americans second at roughly 100 killed. McFee interviewed a Colombian veteran in Kiev in late 2025 who delivered a warning stripped of romance. “Tell Colombians not to go there, because more die than return.”
The dead accumulate in single afternoons as much as in slow attrition. On July 21, 2025, a Russian missile struck the dining hall of a training camp near Kropyvnytskyi at lunchtime. The New York Times reported that at least a dozen foreign volunteers died, among them citizens of the United States, Colombia, Taiwan and Denmark, and an anonymous American recruit from Florida described seeing at least 15 dead and more than 100 wounded. The unit hit was the International Legion run by Ukraine’s military intelligence, whose spokesman said official casualty figures would stay sealed until the investigation closed.
Colombians who leave the front face a second danger. On November 10, 2025, a court that Russia administers in Donetsk sentenced José Aarón Medina Aranda and Alexander Ante to 13 years each for fighting alongside Ukraine’s armed forces. The two had flown to Caracas on their way home to Popayán. Venezuela handed them to Russia instead.
The supply side explains what the demand side cannot. Colombia has fought drug cartels and guerrilla armies for more than 60 years, and that war produced the deepest pool of combat hardened veterans in the hemisphere. The Associated Press put annual retirements from Colombia’s armed forces at more than 10,000, a figure the Defense Ministry has given as roughly 10,600. Most leave in their late 30s or early 40s after 15 to 20 years fighting the FARC, the ELN, and the cartels, and Colombian law pushes most soldiers and noncommissioned officers out by 45.
Citing the Colombian daily La Patria, McFee reports that rank and file soldiers earn close to $400 a month on active duty, and that retirement often halves whatever they were making. Ukraine pays soldiers in combat operations from $3,000 to $5,000 a month, offers a potential $25,000 signing bonus, and promises families a $350,000 death benefit. At a December 2025 forum in Bogotá on the veteran exodus, convened by the Corioli Institute that McFee founded and directs, one participant described Ukraine as “the first real door that opens,” for economically troubled veterans.
That door has been swinging for decades. Plan Colombia poured American money and training into building one of the Western hemisphere’s largest professional militaries, and the graduates kept arriving faster than the domestic economy could absorb them. Erik Prince got there early. Blackwater affiliates had been placing retired Colombian soldiers in Iraq since 2004, and by 2010 Prince was building something larger. Late that November, a plane carrying dozens of Colombian men landed in Abu Dhabi, where an Emirati intelligence officer waved them through customs and an unmarked bus carried them 20 miles into the desert. They had entered the country posing as construction workers.
The New York Times reported that they were the first recruits for a battalion of 800 foreign troops Prince was assembling for the crown prince of Abu Dhabi, financed with $529 million from the Emirates. In 2015 the same two reporters found that Emirati money had sent roughly 450 Latin American fighters, hundreds of them Colombian, to fight the Houthis in Yemen. At around 1 a.m. on July 7, 2021, a team of just over two dozen mercenaries, most of them former Colombian soldiers, stormed Haitian President Jovenel Moïse’s home above Port-au-Prince and shot him dead. A Miami jury convicted four more plotters in May 2026. The 18 Colombians arrested in Haiti are still jailed without trial, and no one has established who ordered the hit.
The most recent destination is also the darkest. In May 2026 Human Rights Watch published an 83-page report by Joey Shea and Jean-Baptiste Gallopin, From Bogotá to El Fasher, documenting how the Abu Dhabi firm Global Security Services Group appears to have hired hundreds of Colombian contractors and routed them through Emirati military facilities to fight alongside the Rapid Support Forces. Investigators geolocated video of Spanish speaking contractors fighting in El Fasher, and six residents of the city said they saw men they believed were Colombian standing armed at the sites of the October 2025 mass killings and rapes that the UN fact finding mission called consistent with genocide.
One contractor told Human Rights Watch he trained RSF recruits near Nyala and that many of them were young children. The Treasury Department had already sanctioned the Colombian recruiter A4SI on December 9, 2025, finding that the firm ran campaigns through its website, group chats and town halls to fill slots for drone operators, snipers and translators.
UN experts have put only a rough number on the whole enterprise. After visiting Colombia from March 16 to 27, 2026, the Working Group on the use of mercenaries reported that more than 10,000 Colombians have been “recruited into armed conflicts worldwide, both through legal and irregular means,” many of them former soldiers, police and veterans, and many offered between $2,000 and $6,000 a month. Its preliminary findings are blunter about the limits of that count.
Working Group member Joana de Deus Pereira told reporters in Bogotá that proliferating conflicts had raised demand and Colombians were filling it, naming the escalation in the Middle East, the war in Sudan, and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Chairperson Michelle Small said foreign buyers seek out former Colombian personnel, and warned that deceptive contracts, where firms pay far less than advertised or write outright fake ones, can amount to labor exploitation and human trafficking.
Petro met the crisis with a statute, though its reach remains uncertain. The House approved the bill in December 2025 by 94 to 17, and Petro signed Law 2569 on March 17, 2026, adopting the 1989 convention against mercenary recruitment. Colombia has not actually ratified it yet. The Constitutional Court must review the law first, which is why the UN experts urged Bogotá to hurry. Whether it bites is another question.
The next administration inherited the law and a very different set of priorities. De la Espriella took office in August promising to rebuild security ties with Washington, which largely frayed under his predecessor. He will also look to stay in Washington’s good graces by towing a pro-Zionist line.
Part of this rapprochement will likely also involve Colombia reactivating its mercenary pipelines in the Russo-Ukrainian theater, as Washington increasingly leans on proxy forces and covert operations in what is beginning to look like a pyrrhic victory for Russian forces.
The brief, defiant interlude of the Petro administration has been decisively shut down, and Colombia has been reset to its default setting as a loyal vassal state of the Judeo-American empire. Under Abelardo de la Espriella, Bogotá will remain the premier supplier of disposable infantry for Washington’s global destabilization schemes from Kiev to the Middle East.
Ultimately, Bogotá’s most lethal and dependable global export is neither coffee nor cocaine, but the expendable blood of veterans marching straight from one meat grinder into the next.
Haaretz Editorial Board Acknowledges The Truth: Israeli ‘Consensus’ Is Pro-Genocide
By Justin K.P. | The Dissident | September 14, 2026
Haaretz, one of Israel’s largest newspapers, published an article on the new film ‘NAZA’, which features multiple IDF terrorists admitting to committing genocide in Gaza, titled “Israelis Must Finally Confront What Israel Has Done in Gaza”.
By the title, one would assume the paper is claiming that regular Israeli citizens are unaware of the genocidal crimes its government committed in Gaza and need to confront that fact.
But within the article, the editorial board acknowledges the truth: the overwhelming majority of Jewish Israelis know full well about the genocide unleashed in Gaza and fully support it.
“The Israeli consensus largely maintains,” the paper wrote, “that there are no innocents in Gaza, and therefore no such thing as collateral damage”.
In other words, the “Israeli consensus” is that slaughtering Gaza’s civilian population, including women and children, is justified (i.e. support for genocide).
The fact that the vast majority of Jewish Israelis hold openly genocidal views towards Palestinians is documented in opinion polls.
Opinion polls in Israel have shown that 75 percent of Israeli Jews agree with the openly genocidal slogan that “there are no innocents in Gaza”.
84 percent of Jewish Israelis have given the IDF an “excellent or very good grade regarding the moral conduct of the army” in Gaza, and 79 percent say “they are ‘not so troubled’ or ‘not troubled at all’ by the reports of famine and suffering among the Palestinian population in Gaza”.
Another poll found that 82 percent of Jewish Israelis “supported the forced expulsion of Gaza’s population to other countries” and 52 percent “he expulsion of Israel’s Arab citizens”.
47 percent even agreed with the idea of “killing all of the inhabitants” of “an enemy city”.
There is not a crime committed in Gaza that Israeli officials have not boasted about in Hebrew, from Israeli president Isaac Herzog openly stating that “It’s an entire nation out there that is responsible. It’s not true this rhetoric about civilians not aware not involved. It’s absolutely not true. … and we will fight until we break their backbone” to Science and Technology Minister Gila Gamliel boasting that the Israeli plan is to “make the Gaza Strip uninhabitable until the population leaves, and the same thing will happen in the West Bank” to Likud lawmaker Hanoch Milwidsky openly endorsing rape against Palestinian prisoners.
The truth, finally acknowledged by Harretz, is that the Jewish Israeli public knows full well about the Genocide unfolding in Gaza and has cheered it on from day one.
