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Ex-Pentagon official: US ‘intentionally targeting Iranian civilians’

Press TV – September 3, 2026

A former senior Pentagon official has said that the United States is deliberately killing civilians in Iran after a US missile strike hit a wedding ceremony in Hormozgan Province, which led to the martyrdom of five civilians, including a four-year-old child, and injured more than 70 others.

Wes J. Bryant, who served as the Pentagon’s chief of civilian harm assessments and now works as a war crimes analyst, told Al Jazeera on Thursday that the attack on the wedding in Kouhestak, Sirik County, exposes the real moral and legal standards of the War Department and the Trump administration.

“Is the US intentionally targeting civilians in Iran? It is,” Bryant said. He rejected US Central Command’s claim that American forces never attack civilians, arguing that Washington is “recklessly and negligently endangering and killing civilians” in its war against the Islamic Republic.

Bryant said every target location is recorded at multiple levels of the chain of command. Comparing Tuesday’s wedding massacre with the February US strike on the Shajareh Tayyebeh school in Minab, he said the US military would have been able “to report within hours” whether a school or a wedding had been hit. Washington has still not produced a transparent accounting of the Minab slaughter.

No sitting American official has condemned the Kouhestak attack. Vice President JD Vance said only that Washington was “investigating” the reports while declaring himself “extremely skeptical” of Iranian accounts. CENTCOM spokesman Captain Tim Hawkins repeated the stock line that the US military “never targets civilians, unlike the IRGC.” President Donald Trump described the same night’s bombardment as “large and powerful.”

The US military struck the wedding at the home of fisherman Ali Mallahi around 8 to 9:30 p.m. on Tuesday as families gathered for his daughter’s ceremony. Hormozgan authorities named the martyred as four-year-old Amir Ali Karimi, 16-year-old Mohammad Mallahi, 43-year-old Kolsoum Mallahi and Zarkhatoun Taheri. State television later said a fifth victim, a 22-year-old woman, died in hospital; nearly 70 others were wounded, most of them women and children.

Mallahi told state television that those inside were ordinary civilians. Videos from the scene showed a collapsed roof, blood-soaked carpets and guests being treated in Minab, the same city where US missiles destroyed a primary school on the first day of the US-Zionist war.

US senator calls for a full investigation and accountability of US strike

US Senator Chris Van Hollen wrote that Secretary of War Pete Hegseth treats civilian casualties as an afterthought, cuts personnel responsible for preventing them, & boasts that there will be “no stupid rules of engagement.”

“There must be a full investigation & accountability for this strike. And we must end this disastrous war now,” he added.

Defence experts identified munition fragments consistent with a US AGM-84K SLAM-ER cruise missile. The house stood more than 100 meters from a telecommunications tower also hit in the barrage.

Iran’s Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmaeil Baghaei called the strike a war crime and part of America’s “catalogue of atrocities” against the Iranian nation, linking it to earlier massacres in Minab, Lamerd and Qeshm.

Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf said a power that “picks targets like Satan and kills like Satan” is Satan. The Iranian Red Crescent wrote to the International Criminal Court demanding an independent investigation. Iran’s UN mission sent a formal letter to the secretary-general and the Security Council describing the bombing of a wedding as a grave breach of international humanitarian law.

IRGC Commander Ahmad Vahidi, in a message to the victims’ families on Thursday, said the blood of those killed in Kouhestak “will never go unanswered” and would “catch up with those who ordered and carried out this heinous crime.”

He said the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps and Iran’s armed forces would continue to guard the sanctity of the martyrs of the second and third US-Zionist-imposed wars, particularly the Battle of Hormuz.

Mourners buried the dead on Thursday in the coastal village, tossing petals over flag-draped coffins. Iran answered the latest US assault with missiles and drones against American bases in the region.

September 4, 2026 Posted by | War Crimes, Wars for Israel | , , | Comments Off on Ex-Pentagon official: US ‘intentionally targeting Iranian civilians’

Sanctioning a Ghost: Europe’s Empty Gesture Against Iran

By Larry C. Johnson | SONAR21 | September 3, 2026 

US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent announced today that the European Union has “officially joined” the American sanctions campaign against Iran — Operation Economic Outcast — and framed Tehran’s choice in the usual absolutes: complete global isolation and a subsistence economy, or a path back to normalcy. It made a commanding headline. It is a hollow one. You cannot embargo a trading partner you have already stopped trading with, and in economic substance that is precisely what Europe did years ago. Today it merely issued a press release about it.

The trade Europe is threatening to withdraw barely exists

One number frames the entire affair. In 2025 the whole of the European Union traded about €3.7 billion in goods with Iran — roughly $4 billion — against Iran’s total foreign trade of some $182.6 billion. Europe therefore accounts for about 2 percent of Iran’s commerce. That is the sum of the leverage now being brandished: a rounding error dressed up as a thunderbolt.

And it is a hollow 2 percent, because the flow runs almost entirely one way. Europe still sells Iran a little machinery, chemicals, and pharmaceuticals — about €3 billion, or 4 to 5 percent of Iran’s import bill. It buys almost nothing back: EU imports from Iran were €0.76 billion, under 1 percent of Iran’s exports, since Europe no longer takes meaningful Iranian oil. Germany, Italy, and the Netherlands make up nearly two-thirds of even this remnant. Withdraw it in full and you bruise a few exporters in Stuttgart and Milan far more than you trouble the treasury in Tehran.

Europe’s leverage was spent years ago

The collapse Europe is now formalizing already happened, slowly, over more than a decade. EU–Iran trade topped €27 billion in 2011 and reached €20.7 billion in 2017, during the nuclear-deal window — a period when Europe genuinely was a major Iranian partner, on the order of 15 to 20 percent of Tehran’s trade. The 2018 US withdrawal began bleeding it out; the trend never reversed; a fresh EU sanctions package in January 2026 drained it further. By 2025 it stood at €3.7 billion. Europe dismantled its own bridge to Iran plank by plank across seven years, and Iran long since built new ones — to China above all, which takes the bulk of its oil, and to the UAE, Turkey, and Iraq for the rest. The marginal Iranian barrel is priced in Shandong, not Rotterdam. There is nothing left in Europe’s hand to take away.

Sanctioning from a sickbed

Here is what makes the gesture worse than empty: Europe is declaring economic war on Iran at the precise moment its own major economies can least afford one — and while they are being bled by the very war Europe is now underwriting.

The eurozone crawled through the first quarter of 2026 at 0.1 percent growth, its weakest in nearly a year, with the composite PMI stuck in contraction and energy inflation running near 11 percent. That last figure is the tell, because it is a direct transmission of this war: the Iran shock and the throttling of the Strait of Hormuz sent fuel prices surging into economies that, unlike the United States, import their energy. The European Central Bank has warned that a prolonged conflict could tip Germany and Italy into technical recession by year’s end.

The particulars are grim. Germany — Iran’s largest European trading partner, and thus the country with the most of that thin trade to forfeit — is also the continent’s biggest casualty. It has already endured two straight years of recession, its manufacturing base has shrunk some 15 percent from its 2017 peak in what economists now call outright deindustrialization, its automotive crown jewel is shedding tens of thousands of jobs, and unemployment sits at a twelve-year high. A recession in 2026 would be its fourth in four years, an outcome with no post-war precedent. France is paralyzed in parallel — a deficit near 5.1 percent of GDP, its fifth prime minister in two years, growth downgraded toward 0.4 percent. Italy limps along near 0.5 percent, its consumers acutely exposed to exactly the energy swings this war is producing.

So the tableau is this: a bloc whose largest economy is deindustrializing under an energy shock, whose second-largest is fiscally ungovernable, and whose third is one bad quarter from recession, has volunteered to prolong the conflict driving its energy bill — by forgoing a trickle of trade that costs Tehran almost nothing and its own exporters rather more. Germany torches a bridge it could use while standing in a house that also is burning.

The one caveat, and why it fails too

In fairness, Operation Economic Outcast was never really about Europe’s own thin trade with Iran. It is a secondary-sanctions weapon — the threat to bar any firm or nation dealing with Iran from the dollar system — and Europe’s theoretical value lies not in the goods it stops selling but in the financial and shipping chokepoints it controls: euro clearing, European banks, the reinsurance and protection-and-indemnity clubs that underwrite tankers. But that leverage aims at Iran’s trade with third countries, chiefly China — and Bessent has conspicuously declined to say whether Washington will actually sanction Chinese banks, because everyone understands what that would cost. Iran, meanwhile, has spent seven years rebuilding its commerce on Chinese banks, yuan settlement, barter, and a shadow tanker fleet engineered to be untouchable by European paperwork. The US naval blockade ostensibly has done more to choke Iranian exports this year than any designation list will. Europe adding its signature raises the compliance risk for the handful of European firms still tempted by Iran. It does essentially nothing to the Chinese refiners who are the actual market.

A sanction is worth what it denies a target that the target cannot easily replace. By that measure Europe’s hand is all but empty: its direct trade with Iran has withered to roughly 2 percent of Tehran’s commerce, in goods Iran already sources from China, Turkey, and the Gulf, and the one channel where Europe might still matter points at a Beijing that Washington will not confront. What makes the move not merely futile but faintly self-destructive is that Europe is making it from a sickbed — its industrial engine stalling, its energy costs inflated by this very war — in order to prolong the fight that is inflating them. The announcement signals Western unity and puts the EU on the record. As a blow against Iran, it is a spent cartridge fired from a trembling hand.

September 4, 2026 Posted by | Economics, Wars for Israel | , , , | Comments Off on Sanctioning a Ghost: Europe’s Empty Gesture Against Iran

A proposal seeks to exploit Americans’ debt to force them into wars against Israel’s enemies

MEMO | September 3, 2026

The debt of Americans should be exploited to force them to fight in wars against Israel’s enemies, a Jerusalem Post commentator has argued, proposing that indebted young Americans be offered full debt forgiveness in exchange for military service.

Writing in the Israeli newspaper, security analyst AJ Jaff said a “federally administered debt-forgiveness enlistment program” that discharges Americans’ student loan, credit card and other debts after 24 or 36 months of service “would produce voluntary enlistment at scale”.

Jaff, described by the paper as “a senior strategic security strategist and analyst with 20 years of experience across corporate security, military, and geopolitical intelligence”, wrote that “the war with Iran will not be won through airstrikes” and that a ground invasion would require between 750,000 and 1.5 million American troops, against a current active US Army of 452,000.

The article proposed debt relief as the way to fill that gap. “The economics of the indebted American 20- and 30-something make this the most efficient conversion mechanism available,” said Jaff while explaining that “states generate the soldiers they need through the incentives that work on the population they have”.

The proposal has been condemned as confirmation that Israel expects Americans to fight and die in wars fought on its behalf. The Mises Institute, a US think tank, said the article amounted to a call for more Americans “to enlist – to die for Israel”, adding: “The whole point being to further subsidize the state of Israel.”

Users on social media described the proposal as an attempt “to exploit the crippling debt young Americans are carrying by offering them a chance at forgiveness if they’re willing to go die for Israel in the Persian Gulf.”

Responding to the plan, prominent American commentator Glenn Greenwald said: “ Israel pays scummy US politicians in both parties and DC vultures in the lobbying firms to ensure that Americans are forced to send billions to Israel. Then they argue that the debt of Americans should be exploited to force them to fight in wars against Israel’s enemies”.

The proposal to exploit the debt of Americans to fight wars against Israel’s enemies follows a string of remarks by senior Israeli officials suggesting they see US military power as a tool to be wielded on their behalf, while Israel itself stays out of the fighting. Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich told the Katif Conference for National Responsibility on 21 July that a US war against Iran fought without Israeli participation was “the best for us”, adding, “Israel has no interest in joining the campaign.”

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, meanwhile, boasted on Israel’s Channel 14 on 30 August that he had used “close to a thousand hours” on American television and his “influence in the United States” over almost 40 years to persuade Washington to take military action against Iran, saying, “It took a long time to bring the US in.” The US had launched military action against Iran on 28 February, an escalation Netanyahu had reportedly been pressing Washington to undertake for months.

September 3, 2026 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Militarism, Wars for Israel | , , , | Comments Off on A proposal seeks to exploit Americans’ debt to force them into wars against Israel’s enemies

Nearly half of US citizens say Washington’s post-9/11 wars ‘worth the cost’

The Cradle | September 3, 2026

Nearly half of US citizens believe the wars waged by Washington in Afghanistan, Iraq, and beyond after the 11 September 2001 attacks have been “worth it,” a YouGov poll published on 2 August shows.

The poll was commissioned ahead of the 25th anniversary of the attacks, which the US government used as a pretext to launch the so-called “War on Terror” that led to the deaths of nearly 5 million people.

Respondents were asked if fighting “against the threat of terrorism through military operations abroad” and introducing “increased security and surveillance inside of the United States … have been worth the cost.”

Forty-eight percent responded yes, while another 27 percent said they weren’t sure. The remaining 25 percent said no.

Support for this view was strongest among Republicans, with 71 percent responding yes.

When asked whether some people in the US government knew about the 11 September attacks beforehand but let the attacks happen anyway, 39 percent of respondents agreed, and the same number disagreed.

Immediately after the attacks, US officials blamed Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden.

Al-Qaeda was founded in the 1980s in Afghanistan. At the time, the CIA was arming and funding Islamic extremists known as “mujahideen” to fight the occupying Soviet Army.

The CIA later supported Al-Qaeda militants fighting in Bosnia, Kosovo, Chechnya, Iraq, and Syria, while claiming to be opposed to the group.

In 2024, the US helped install former Al-Qaeda in Iraq leader Ahmad al-Sharaa as president of Syria following the CIA’s 14-year covert war to topple the government of Bashar al-Assad.

When YouGov asked if Iraqi president Saddam Hussein was involved in the 11 September attacks, 38 percent agreed, while 34 percent disagreed.

Pro-Israel officials in the administration of former US president George W. Bush began pushing for an invasion of Iraq immediately after the attacks on the World Trade Center buildings in New York and the Pentagon in Washington, DC.

The US government and media launched a massive propaganda campaign to wrongly convince US citizens that former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein had collaborated with Al-Qaeda to carry out the attacks and that the Iraqi government possessed weapons of mass destruction that could threaten the US homeland.

Sixty-seven percent of respondents to the poll said that the amount of surveillance by the US government had been affected “a lot” by the 9/11 attacks.

In the immediate aftermath of 9/11, Bush signed the Patriot Act, which gave the US government sweeping powers to surveil US citizens, allowing the National Security Agency (NSA) to track their phone calls and movements.

When YouGov asked if “Muslims in the United States have been treated better, about the same, or worse than people of other religions,” 52 percent of respondents said Muslims have been treated worse.

Among Democrats, 71 percent agreed with the statement, while 28 percent of Republicans agreed.

After 9/11, many US citizens became hostile to Muslims, viewing them as “terrorists.”

A 2023 report from the Costs of War Project at Brown University estimated that 4.5 million people have died as a consequence of the US wars since the 9/11 attacks.

The US military carried out attacks in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, Syria, Libya, Somalia, and Yemen.

Of the 4.5 million deaths, roughly 900,000 were killed by direct violence. Roughly 3.6 million resulted from “indirect” deaths caused by the aftereffects of the wars.

September 3, 2026 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Deception, False Flag Terrorism, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Wars for Israel | , , | Comments Off on Nearly half of US citizens say Washington’s post-9/11 wars ‘worth the cost’

Europe enters winter with ‘dangerously low’ gas reserves amid Persian Gulf supply shock: Report

The Cradle | September 3, 2026

Europe is heading into winter with dangerously low natural gas reserves, Bloomberg reported on 3 September, amid high prices driven by the US-Israeli war on Iran and rising competition for supply in the global market.

According to the European Commission’s most recent update, gas storage levels in the EU are at 65 percent.

To meet its lowest storage target of 75 percent, Europe will need to purchase 100 terawatt-hours of gas before the end of the year, Bloomberg calculations show.

Such purchases would cost more than $8 billion at current prices, making stockpiling uneconomical.

Governments and utilities across Europe have delayed natural gas purchases in hopes that additional supply becomes available and prices fall in time to refill before winter.

Gas prices have doubled since February due to the US-Israeli war on Iran as the Strait of Hormuz remains effectively shut, disrupting exports of gas from Qatar, a major international supplier.

European countries have sought to build inventories ahead of each winter following natural gas shortages resulting from the Russia–Ukraine war that began in 2022.

Europe has deliberately sought to limit its own purchases of Russian gas in response to the war. Additionally, the Nord Stream 2 Pipeline, which supplied cheap gas from Russia to Germany, was destroyed in September 2022 under mysterious circumstances benefiting the US, Ukraine, and Poland.

US natural gas producers have benefited from both the destruction of Nord Stream and the closure of the Strait of Hormuz.

The US has become the world’s top exporter of natural gas after rushing to fill the gap in lost Qatari and Russian gas supplies by providing more expensive liquefied natural gas (LNG) shipped by tankers across the Atlantic and Pacific oceans to Europe and Asia.

Germany and other EU nations are not expected to suffer gas shortages this winter, as they can pay for the needed gas supplies despite the higher prices.

However, late European purchases at high prices could cause shortages and energy blackouts in poorer countries that lack the funds to compete to purchase the same LNG cargoes.

“The potential for a global ‘fight for fuel’ is there, particularly in a colder winter,” stated Go Katayama, principal insight analyst for LNG at maritime data tracking platform Kpler.

Bangladesh and Pakistan are among those countries most vulnerable to shortages. Both countries suffered blackouts and factory closures after the natural gas crisis in 2022.

However, more expensive gas purchases will drive higher inflation in Europe and expand the risk of a long period of stagnation, sluggish growth, and de-industrialization.

September 3, 2026 Posted by | Economics, Russophobia, Wars for Israel | , , , | Comments Off on Europe enters winter with ‘dangerously low’ gas reserves amid Persian Gulf supply shock: Report

Iran Pledges to “Shatter US Foundations”

Daniel Davis / Deep Dive – September 2, 2026

September 2, 2026 Posted by | Militarism, Video, Wars for Israel | , , | Comments Off on Iran Pledges to “Shatter US Foundations”

US Navy stretched thin in West Asia as supply routes collapse: NYT

 Al Mayadeen| September 2, 2026

A New York Times investigation reveals that the US Navy’s problem in West Asia is no longer just about remaining missile stockpiles or the threat of Iranian strikes, but rather its ability to keep about 20 ships and 20,000 sailors and Marines in the region without a nearby and secure supply network.

According to the NYT, Iranian strikes have dismantled the Navy’s regional supply chain, putting pressure on the aircraft carriers, destroyers, and amphibious ships Washington has kept in the region indefinitely since launching its war on Iran.

Two carriers, the USS George HW Bush and the USS George Washington, are currently stationed in the region alongside 12 destroyers carrying about 3,700 personnel, together enforcing a blockade on Iranian ports. An amphibious ready group of three additional warships, carrying 5,000 Marines, rounds out the force to roughly 20 ships and 20,000 sailors and Marines total.

Feeding and fueling that many ships is a demanding task on its own, the NYT reports. The fleet needs more than 420,000 meals and around eight million gallons of fuel every week. A single carrier carries 5,000 crew members who eat up to four times a day, and although the carriers run on nuclear power, the aircraft and helicopters launching from them burn through millions of gallons of fuel weekly.

Bahrain strike broke the supply chain

The Navy built a network of regional supply depots over several decades to support this scale of operation. That network stopped functioning on February 28, the first day of the war, when Iran struck and destroyed a major Navy logistics base in Bahrain.

Every other regional port capable of servicing a carrier or supply ship now sits within range of Iranian missiles and drones, cutting the Navy off from them as well.

Diego Garcia, Singapore, and resupply at sea

With regional bases out of reach, supply ships must now sail to Diego Garcia, a small island in the Indian Ocean about 2,200 miles from where the fleet operates in the Gulf of Oman and the Arabian Sea. Singapore is the only other option, a 3,700-mile trip that routes ships through the crowded Strait of Malacca.

Those distances mean warships depend on resupply missions at sea roughly every five to six days, a process the NYT describes as dangerous for both vessels involved. A receiving ship and a supply ship must sail side by side for hours, matching course and speed to stay within about 150 feet of each other through shifting wind, waves, and current. Crews fire lines between the ships by rifle to rig steel cables, then send fuel and pallets of goods across on those lines while helicopters carry additional supplies, parts, and mail between the ships in nets.

Why the Navy can’t keep this up indefinitely

These deployments have no fixed end date. Ships stay in the region until the US president and war secretary order otherwise. But the NYT’s reporting shows that the fleet is running out of room to sustain that.

The Navy has 11 aircraft carriers total, four of which are already committed to the war on Iran, while several others sit in shipyards for repairs that will keep them out of service for years.

The USS Abraham Lincoln shows what that toll looks like in practice. It spent nearly its entire nine-month deployment at sea without a single port call, well beyond the roughly monthly stops carriers normally make so crews can rest.

The USS George Washington relieved the Lincoln on August 20, and the carrier docked in Thailand this week, where its crew will get a short break before the ship continues home to San Diego.

September 2, 2026 Posted by | Militarism, Wars for Israel | , , | Comments Off on US Navy stretched thin in West Asia as supply routes collapse: NYT

Hezbollah denies ties to alleged Syria-Lebanon ‘destabilization cell’

Al Mayadeen| September 2, 2026

Hezbollah’s Media Relations Office has categorically denied any connection to a security cell reportedly arrested on suspicion of seeking to destabilize Lebanon and Syria, dismissing the accusations as entirely baseless.

In a statement released Wednesday, the office stressed that Hezbollah has no connection whatsoever, direct or indirect, to any such cell or group. It said certain media outlets, which it accused of a pattern of leveling false accusations against the Resistance, had circulated the claims linking Hezbollah to the alleged cell.

The office said attempts by these outlets to implicate Hezbollah in security-related cases, relying on unnamed sources, are part of a disinformation campaign aimed at tarnishing the group’s image, sowing discord, and undermining security and stability in Lebanon.

It asserted that the reports are part of a broader effort to malign the Resistance through unverified claims attributed to anonymous sources.

A recurring pattern

The denial follows months of similar accusations against Hezbollah from Syrian officials since the fall of the al-Assad government.

In July, Hezbollah rejected claims tying it to an attempt to smuggle weapons and missiles across the Syrian-Iraqi border, after Syrian authorities said they had intercepted a shipment concealed inside a fuel tanker arriving from Iraq. Also in April and May, the group denied allegations linking it to a cell accused of plotting to assassinate a religious figure.

Hezbollah has affirmed on each occasion that it maintains no activity, connection, or presence inside Syrian territory. The group has said the repetition of such claims raises serious questions and points to parties seeking to inflame tension between the Syrian and Lebanese peoples.

Hezbollah has also pointed to similar fabricated allegations emerging from Bahrain and Kuwait, warning of a foreign plot aimed at stoking tensions between Arab nations and the Axis of Resistance and destabilizing the wider region.

The group has consistently framed the recurring accusations as a coordinated effort tied to the broader Zionist-American agenda in the region, arguing that the timing and pattern of the claims serve to isolate the Resistance and strain relations between Lebanon and Syria at a sensitive political juncture.

September 2, 2026 Posted by | Deception, Wars for Israel | , , , | Comments Off on Hezbollah denies ties to alleged Syria-Lebanon ‘destabilization cell’

SCO leaders sign Bishkek Declaration against ‘western unilateralism’

The Eurasian bloc condemned the US war on Iran as Washington widens secondary sanctions on Tehran’s trading partners

The Cradle | September 1, 2026

Leaders of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) adopted the  Bishkek Declaration on 1 September, marking the organization’s 25th anniversary and setting out a joint position on West Asia, global security, and economic cooperation.

The 10-member Eurasian bloc used the anniversary text to press for a “representative, democratic, and equitable multipolar world order,” rejecting bloc-based and confrontational approaches to international affairs.

Member states opposed unilateral coercive measures, such as banking restrictions, asset freezes, and secondary sanctions on third-country firms, that contradict the UN Charter and World Trade Organization (WTO) rules. They also condemned the unlimited buildup of global missile defense systems, calling attempts to secure one state at the expense of others unacceptable.

The declaration reiterated the bloc’s condemnation of the unprovoked US-Israeli attacks on Iranian territory, which have stretched on for 6 months and caused significant economic damage and disruption to global energy and shipping markets.

Member states called the attacks a violation of international law and the UN Charter that created “serious risks to international peace, security and stability.”

On Palestine, the declaration stated that a comprehensive and just settlement of the Palestinian question is the only possible route to peace and stability in the region.

Member states committed to expanding the use of national currencies in mutual settlements and backed reforms of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank to increase developing-country representation.

The declaration noted progress toward establishing an SCO Development Bank during Kyrgyzstan’s chairmanship, with leaders also supporting Iran’s expedited entry into the SCO Interbank Consortium.

Eight of the 10 SCO member states – Belarus, Iran, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Pakistan, Russia, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan – reaffirmed support for China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), while India declined to join the statement.

Chinese President Xi Jinping called on members to build “universal security” and prevent external interference in the internal affairs of states.

Meeting Russian President Vladimir Putin on the sidelines, Xi said unpredictability in the international situation had risen sharply and that Beijing was ready to work with Moscow to advance a multipolar order and reform of global governance.

Putin told the summit that national currencies now account for more than 98 percent of Russia’s trade payments with SCO partners, and named expanded intra-bloc trade as a priority.

Kyrgyz President Sadyr Japarov opened the meeting, saying member states account for over 40 percent of the world’s population and about a quarter of global GDP, and that the organization had grown from a border security mechanism into a global actor.

The summit convened six months into the US war on Iran, and four and a half years into the war in Ukraine, with Washington also pursuing trade disputes with China and India, and threatening to impose secondary sanctions on any country or company trading with Tehran.

Beijing, the main purchaser of Iranian crude, said it would firmly defend its interests.

September 1, 2026 Posted by | Wars for Israel | , , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on SCO leaders sign Bishkek Declaration against ‘western unilateralism’

EU surrenders sovereignty to US coercion, becomes accessory to economic terrorism: Iran FM spokesman

Press TV – August 31, 2026

The European Union has surrendered its sovereignty, laws, values and ethics to American coercion and turned itself into an accessory to Washington’s lawless economic war against Iran, Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmaeil Baghaei has said.

In a statement posted on his official X account on Monday night, Baghaei pointed to the EU’s own Blocking Statute, which prohibits European operators from complying with extraterritorial laws of third countries and treats such measures as contrary to international law.

“How, then, can the Union now support the most predatory and unlawful unilateral coercive measures against Iran?” he asked.

Baghaei contrasted today’s posture with 1996, when the EU resolved to act independently in defense of its sovereignty against the American sanctions regime and adopted the Blocking Statute.

“Today it has become an accessory to Washington’s lawless conduct,” he said.

The Union’s endorsement of America’s unlawful economic war constitutes a grave violation of international law, the spokesman added. Every EU member state will be held accountable for the consequences of its contribution to this wrongful act.

“The European Union cannot endorse Washington’s economic terrorism against Iran while claiming to seek de-escalation and regional stability. The two positions are mutually exclusive,” Baghaei stated. “This irresponsible stance is evidence of the EU’s moral decay and political incompetence.”

Iranian officials have repeatedly described US secondary sanctions and naval blockade measures as economic terrorism and a violation of the UN Charter’s principles of sovereign equality.

Tehran has long maintained that Europe’s failure to enforce its own Blocking Statute against Washington’s extraterritorial dictates exposes the gap between Brussels’ rhetoric on a rules-based order and its actual conduct.

The statement comes as the Islamic Republic continues to reject any attempt to impose terms of settlement through coercion and insists that the only viable path out of the current crisis is a return by the United States to the commitments it signed in the Islamabad Memorandum of Understanding.

The Islamabad MoU, brokered with Pakistani mediation and signed in June, provided for an immediate halt to military operations, the lifting of the US naval blockade, Iranian arrangements for the Strait of Hormuz, a path toward sanctions relief, and a $300 billion reconstruction framework.

However, the US violated the deal by conducting deadly aerial assaults on Iran and imposing a naval blockade of the country.

Pakistan had previously played a pivotal role in securing the April 8 ceasefire that brought an end to the 40-day criminal US-Israeli aggression against Iran.

September 1, 2026 Posted by | Economics, Wars for Israel | , , | Comments Off on EU surrenders sovereignty to US coercion, becomes accessory to economic terrorism: Iran FM spokesman

Washington sanctions regime reaches its breaking point

By Samuel Geddes | Al Mayadeen | September 1, 2026

Trump’s desperate bid to crush Iran’s economy without military escalation places the US’ sanctions regime against Iran, Russia, China and all its other adversaries at existential risk.

So far, 2026 has been the most sobering year in living memory for the American self-image. Having at long last achieved the war against Tehran that has been sought since 1979, the Washington establishment is confronted not with the Islamic Republic’s collapse but its solidification.

Far from regaining its unquestioned dominion over the Persian Gulf region, it must now accept perpetual management by Tehran of the most critical waterway on Earth, or else face a global economic calamity. Instead of weakening Iranian leverage, the US-Israeli aggression has magnified it exponentially, needlessly handing it a level of global power and influence undreamt of in the more than five centuries of the Western world’s dominance.

As the administration flails ahead of the midterms and the imminent exhaustion of the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, which cushioned the true magnitude of the energy shock, it is soon to witness yet another previously unchallenged instrument of its power vaporize alongside its dwindling munitions stocks. That instrument is its economic sanctions policy.

This week ushered in the so-called “Operation Economic Outcast”, through which Washington hopes to throttle every avenue of economic contact between Iran and the outside world. Announced by the hapless Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, who, along with his bemusement at the rising price of oil in response to the US’ actions, is also contending with the failure of the naval blockade of Iran’s southern coast, which has still not caused either Tehran’s collapse or capitulation. By switching back to tactics of blunt economic coercion, the Trump administration signaled an unprecedented escalation in the intensity of its secondary sanctions policy, namely that any company or state engaging in economic activity of any kind with Iran will share in its exclusion from the economic and financial system underpinned by the US dollar.

This threat, in addition to being levelled against regional and small-to-medium-sized economic partners of the Islamic Republic, is also explicitly aimed at China and Russia. In its desperation to force Iranian submission, Washington is escalating the war to the level of global economic blackmail, including against its only near-peer economy and potential challenger. Even Bessent, by his own admission, acknowledged that actual imposition of such sanctions would “blow up” the global financial system.

In addition to threatening every state that engages in any way with the Iranian economy, the Trump administration has, at “Israel’s” encouragement, also taken to the idea of imposing a total land blockade as well. This would require strong-arming systemically important regional actors such as Turkey, Iraq and Pakistan into sacrificing their own natural economic ties with their neighbor, to achieve the objectives of the very foreign power that has thrown their economic present and future into chaos.

Before the so-called “Economic D-Day” was even launched, Beijing called Trump and Bessent’s bluffs, assuring that any US sanctions against entities facilitating Chinese-Iranian exchange would trigger “all necessary measures” in response. The effects of increasing Chinese-US decoupling, the accumulating poison of the US tariff war against the rest of the world and now the apparent collapse of the North American economic bloc (formerly NAFTA), leave Washington in no position to incur the true costs of such retaliation, let alone the simultaneous countersanctions from the likes of Russia, Turkey, India, Pakistan and any other country that depends more on the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz than on trade with the US.

Neither are the Iranians anywhere near as bereft of economic weapons of their own, certainly not in comparison to the first Trump administration’s economic strangulation. Tehran has correctly greeted the US economic campaign as the desperate gamble that it is- and met it with an ultimatum of its own: that any participating state in this economic siege will be treated as an enemy.

Trump may believe that the US’ relative lesser exposure to the Strait gives him some sort of leverage. In fact, for the majority of states in the world whose economies run in whole or part due to the 20 percent of oil and natural gas, 30 percent of industrial helium, 40 percent of sulfur and 50 percent of fertilizer inputs that annually transit Hormuz, this reality gives them far more reason to accommodate the Islamic Republic than to join Washington and Tel-Aviv’s attempts to bring it to its knees.

This stunning level of economic hubris, if acted upon, will either fail and demonstrate the economic limits of US power along with those of its military, or it will succeed and split the globe into separate economic world-systems. Like almost every gambit of this unhinged presidency, success would be more damaging than failure. Washington will have so antagonized even its closest partners that whatever remains of the “global economy” centered around the Dollar will be very much less than “global” in its scope, compared to the parallel world economy its hostility will have birthed through sheer obstinate stupidity.

September 1, 2026 Posted by | Economics, Wars for Israel | , , , | Comments Off on Washington sanctions regime reaches its breaking point

Economy will withstand US sanctions, Iran Central Bank governor says

Al Mayadeen| September 1, 2026

Claims suggesting Iran is heading toward an economic collapse are unfounded, said the Governor of the Central Bank of Iran, Abdolnaser Hemmati, on Tuesday, stressing that the country’s economic system continues to operate robustly despite new sanctions imposed by its adversaries every week.

Hemmati said Iran’s collection of its foreign-currency receivables remains ongoing and that its resources continue to flow, alongside domestic reserves. He added that Iran has financial resources whose details cannot be disclosed, noting that the Central Bank is fully prepared to inject $2 billion in foreign currency into the market.

In a message addressed to US President Donald Trump, Hemmati said, “I say to Trump: Iran has enough foreign-currency reserves”.

Regarding developments in the foreign-exchange market, the Central Bank governor said conditions in the currency market would stabilize in the coming period, attributing the recent rise in exchange rates more to psychological warfare than to underlying economic factors.

US economic pressure fails

This comes after the United States announced “Operation Economic Outcast” earlier this week as part of its campaign to isolate Iran economically. The US Treasury has described the initiative as an effort to target Iran’s financial links and pressure foreign entities conducting business with Tehran.

The sanctions, like previous packages aimed at choking Iran economically, have evidently failed. Chinese refiners are still importing about 1.2 million barrels of Iranian oil a day this year, a figure barely below last year’s pace.

Real volumes could be higher, since ships carrying Iranian crude have gotten better at avoiding detection. Meanwhile, The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) revealed that Iranian commercial and financial activity continues across Dubai despite Washington’s push to sharply restrict Tehran’s access to regional markets and financial networks.

According to the newspaper, Iranian banks, airlines, restaurants, and businesses remain active in the United Arab Emirates.

At one Bank Melli branch in Dubai’s old city, around a dozen tellers were continuing to serve Farsi-speaking customers, according to the report. Employees said they had received no instructions ordering the branch to cease operations. “We put our trust in God on what happens next,” an Iranian bank employee said.

September 1, 2026 Posted by | Economics, Wars for Israel | , , | Comments Off on Economy will withstand US sanctions, Iran Central Bank governor says

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