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No route around Hormuz: Why West Asia’s pipeline alternatives fall short

The rush to bypass Hormuz leads back to the same problem: Every alternative route remains hostage to war, rival chokepoints, or political disputes.

By Hussein Askary | The Cradle | July 23, 2026

“The only alternative to the Strait of Hormuz is the Strait of Hormuz.”

This blunt assessment, offered by an Iraqi expert in a recent interview, captures the central weakness in the rush to revive old pipeline schemes and promote new ones across West Asia. Since Iran effectively closed the Strait of Hormuz after Israel and the US launched their second war against it in February 2026, the region has been flooded with proposals for alternative oil-export routes.

Washington has encouraged these plans, while several governments have presented dormant or unfinished pipelines as strategic solutions. Yet the closer one looks at geography, markets, costs, capacity, and security, the clearer it becomes that most of these projects cannot substitute for Hormuz.

Even if oil bypasses the strait, it still faces the rival chokepoint of Bab al-Mandab, where the Ansarallah-aligned armed forces have declared a maritime blockade against Saudi Arabia and attacked Saudi tankers.

These expensive detours will remain exposed unless security in the Persian Gulf itself improves. Until the war on Iran ends and an inclusive regional security architecture is established, Iranian and Yemeni missiles and drones can reach the pipelines and loading terminals built to evade them.

Asia still runs through Hormuz

The first reason is straightforward. The Strait of Hormuz is the natural outlet of the Gulf energy system. In 2024, oil flows through the strait averaged about 20 million barrels per day (bpd), roughly one-fifth of global petroleum liquids consumption. The International Energy Agency (IEA) describes it as one of the world’s most important oil transit chokepoints.

Most of this oil is not heading west. About 80 percent of the oil moving through Hormuz is destined for Asia, with China, India, Japan, South Korea, and other Asian economies as the principal buyers. The pattern is even clearer for liquefied natural gas (LNG).

The US Energy Information Administration estimated that 83 percent of LNG moving through Hormuz in 2024 went from Persian Gulf exporters to Asian markets, especially China, India, and South Korea.

This market reality matters because many proposed alternatives send oil away from its main customers. Pipelines to the Mediterranean, the Red Sea, or the Levant may appear useful on a map, but they often move Gulf crude farther from Asia rather than closer to it.

Commercially, building multibillion-dollar infrastructure to move oil westward, only to redirect it by sea toward Asian markets, is inefficient. If Hormuz is open, the direct route remains cheaper and faster. If it is closed by war, the underlying problem is not a lack of pipelines but the collapse of regional security.

Old routes, unresolved disputes

The older pipeline options illustrate the point. The Kirkuk–Baniyas pipeline once carried Iraqi oil across Syria to the Mediterranean. Built in the early 1950s, it had genuine strategic value in its time but has been largely inactive since it was damaged during the 2003 US-led invasion of Iraq. Washington is now backing efforts to revive the route, with US companies expected to play a role. Yet the project still requires extensive reconstruction and years of work before it can provide meaningful export capacity.

Estimates for a full restoration and expansion to around 700,000 bpd run as high as $8 billion. It cannot answer an immediate crisis in Hormuz, and if regional peace is restored before completion, the commercial case for reviving it weakens sharply.

The Iraq–Turkiye pipeline faces a different but equally serious problem: politics. The route through the Kurdistan region to Turkiye’s Mediterranean port of Ceyhan was repeatedly interrupted by disputes among Baghdad, the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG), Ankara, and international oil companies.

A 2023 arbitration ruling against Turkiye over unauthorized Kurdish exports led to a two-and-a-half-year shutdown. Flows resumed in September 2025, and exports have continued, but the route still depends on fragile agreements over contracts, payments, federal authority, and revenue sharing.

Its limited throughput and political vulnerability prevent it from becoming a structural replacement for a maritime passage that normally carries a vast share of the world’s seaborne oil.

The Iraqi pipeline in Saudi Arabia, known as IPSA, is another example of strategic nostalgia. Built in the 1980s during the Iran–Iraq war, it was designed to move Iraqi crude from the Basra region to the Red Sea.

It stopped operating after Iraq’s 1990 invasion of Kuwait, and Saudi Arabia expropriated it in 2001. Reopening the line would therefore require a Saudi–Iraqi political settlement over ownership and control, as well as a major technical assessment after decades of disuse. In other words, IPSA is not an available alternative; it is a diplomatic and engineering problem dressed up as a solution.

The proposed Basra–Aqaba pipeline is even more controversial. Its advertised purpose is to move Iraqi oil from southern Iraq to Jordan’s Red Sea port of Aqaba, bypassing Hormuz. Yet it has faced intense objections inside Iraq because of its projected cost, uncertain financing, and questionable strategic value.

Since much of Iraq’s crude is sold to Asian customers, sending it westward to Aqaba would add distance and complexity rather than solve the basic market problem. The pipeline would also move Iraqi exports closer to another zone of instability, including the Israeli military sphere and the wider Red Sea security environment.

A bypass route that merely exchanges one security risk for another is no solution. Iraq’s severe fiscal pressures also leave Baghdad poorly placed to finance such an expensive project, while international investors are unlikely to embrace it without strong political and security guarantees.

Bypasses within missile range

The existing Saudi and Emirati bypasses are more credible but still limited. Saudi Arabia’s East–West Pipeline, or Petroline, moves crude from the eastern oil region to Yanbu on the Red Sea. The UAE’s Abu Dhabi Crude Oil Pipeline carries oil from Habshan to Fujairah on the Gulf of Oman.

These systems reduce exposure to Hormuz for Saudi Arabia and the UAE and have become important national energy-security assets. But they cannot replace the strait for the region as a whole. They offer little to Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrain, Iran, or most Iraqi exports, and they do not solve the LNG problem, especially Qatar’s dependence on Hormuz.

The IEA estimates that only 3.5 to 5.5 million bpd of spare pipeline capacity is available to bypass the strait. Neither Yanbu nor Fujairah are immune from attack; regional conflict has already shown the vulnerability of ports, tankers, and energy infrastructure.

The crisis pipelines cannot solve

This is why the alternative pipeline debate is misleading. It treats the closure of Hormuz as a logistical puzzle when it is primarily a political and security crisis. If the Persian Gulf remains militarized and unstable, no pipeline network can fully protect exports.

Pipelines cross vulnerable territory, depend on political agreements, and terminate at ports that can also be threatened. If Gulf security improves, however, Hormuz will almost certainly reopen because this serves the interests of producers and Asian consumers alike.

Once that happens, the commercial rationale for many alternative pipelines will fade. Why spend tens of billions of dollars duplicating a natural route with unmatched capacity and direct access to the main buyers?

The more honest conclusion is that alternative pipelines may offer limited resilience for individual states, but they are no strategic replacement for Hormuz. They are costly, slow, politically fragile, geographically inefficient, and in some cases obsolete before construction begins.

The answer to the crisis is a security arrangement that keeps the Persian Gulf open, prevents attacks on shipping, and restores normal trade through the strait.

Under such an arrangement, oil and LNG would continue to flow mainly to Asia by the most direct and economical route. Hormuz will remain indispensable, while the grand pipeline alternatives amount to expensive insurance policies against a crisis that only diplomacy and regional peace can resolve.

July 24, 2026 Posted by | Economics | , , , , , , , | Comments Off on No route around Hormuz: Why West Asia’s pipeline alternatives fall short

James Woolsey, influential neocon and Iraq War booster, dies at 84

In his heyday, the former CIA director was among America’s loudest voices pressing for military intervention abroad

By Jim Lobe | Responsible Statecraft | July 23, 2026

R. James “Jim” Woolsey, a major Iraq and GWOT promoter and neoconservative Democrat, passed away Tuesday at 84.

Woolsey served briefly as CIA director but rose to much greater prominence as a consistent promoter on television and in the Wall Street Journal’s op-ed pages of both the Iraq War and the broader Global War on Terror, which he sometimes referred to as “World War IV.”

Indeed, immediately after the 9/11 attacks, Woolsey was ubiquitous in arguing that Iraqi President Saddam Hussein not only was linked to al-Qaeda but may very well have approved or helped plan the plot himself.

After being forced out of his CIA director role by President Bill Clinton in 1994, Woolsey moved increasingly to the right, as noted in a generally respectful obituary published by the New York Times Wednesday, joining with the Washington-based Likudist neoconservatives led by the “Dark Prince” himself, Richard Perle of the American Enterprise Institute (AEI).

Woolsey, an engaging if rather glib speaker who never seemed to run out of words, became a key part of what George Mason University anthropologist Janine Wedel identified as the “Neocon Core” in the years running up to and following the Iraq War and the GWOT. That included the promotion of confrontation with Syria and Iran as well as other states deemed hostile to Israel, and, hence, in their view, to the United States, as well.

That 11-member core, according to Wedel, included men who would hold key posts under President George W. Bush, among them Bush’s future deputy defense secretary Paul Wolfowitz; his undersecretary of defense, Douglas Feith; his director for Near East policy on the National Security Council, Elliott Abrams; and Vice President Dick Cheney’s chief of staff and national security adviser, I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby.

All of these men served on a variety of overlapping boards of major Washington-based organizations and think tanks that aligned themselves with Israel’s right-wing Likud Party. Together, these groups acted as a remarkably effective media echo chamber after 9/11 and in the run-up to the Iraq invasion, particularly in spreading mis- or disinformation about Saddam’s alleged development of nuclear and other weapons of mass destruction programs and ties to al-Qaeda.

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In addition to Perle and the rest of AEI’s foreign policy wing staff, they included groups such as the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs (recently renamed the Jewish Institute for National Security of America, or JINSA); the Center for Security Policy (CSP); the more moderate Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP), a spin-off of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee; and the Project for the New American Century (PNAC), a letterhead organization that promoted U.S. global hegemony and regime change in Middle Eastern countries considered hostile to Israel.

Woolsey was involved in nearly all of the veritable galaxy of neoconservative front groups created to advocate for policies like invading Iraq. He held positions on the advisory and other boards of CSP, WINEP, and the Committee for the Liberation of Iraq. He also served as the chair of the Leadership Council of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD), which, for most of the past 20 years, effectively replaced AEI as the most prominent pro-Israel Washington think tank promoting war with Iran. Woolsey was also a co-founder of United Against a Nuclear Iran (UANI), an advocacy group closely tied to Israeli intelligence that has promoted comprehensive economic sanctions against Tehran since its founding in 2008.

Although Woolsey was not a signatory of PNAC’s 1997 charter, which was signed by a number of top Bush Jr. policymakers, including Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, he did sign on to nine of the group’s open letters, including an April 2002 statement that called for the administration “to accelerate plans for removing Saddam Hussein from power” and asserted that “Israel’s fight against terrorism is our fight.”

Woolsey also served as a member of the Pentagon’s Defense Policy Board, a civilian advisory body during the Bush administration initially chaired and organized by Perle. Just days after 9/11, Perle convened the Board and invited Ahmed Chalabi, head of the previously CIA-backed opposition Iraqi National Congress (INC) and a long-time Perle collaborator, to participate in its deliberations about Iraq as a possible target for U.S. military action and regime change. As a result of that meeting, Wolfowitz dispatched Woolsey — who, like Perle, had already declared on network television news that Hussein was likely to have been behind the attacks on the Twin Towers and the Pentagon — to gather evidence about Saddam’s alleged (but non-existent) ties to al-Qaeda and a previous 1993 bombing in the parking garage of the World Trade Center.

His mission — about which neither the State Department nor the CIA (which had several years before severed ties with Chalabi due to their assessment that he was completely unreliable) were informed — ended without acquiring the desired intelligence. Still, Woolsey, backed by the administration and the neoconservative network and echo chamber of which he had become an important part, continued to claim that Saddam and al-Qaeda worked together.

Chalabi’s INC nonetheless became the key source of disinformation about Iraq’s alleged weapons of mass destruction that was seized upon and promoted to the mass media by the Pentagon, the White House, and the neoconservative echo chamber, including Woolsey himself.


Jim Lobe is a Contributing Editor of Responsible Statecraft. He formerly served as chief of the Washington bureau of Inter Press Service from 1980 to 1985 and again from 1989 to 2015.

July 23, 2026 Posted by | Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Timeless or most popular, Wars for Israel | , | Comments Off on James Woolsey, influential neocon and Iraq War booster, dies at 84

Preparing for Regional Escalation: Iran Appears to Be Pre-Empting the US’ Attack Strategy

By Robert Inlakesh | Palestine Chronicle | July 15, 2026

The US Trump administration sought to weaponize diplomacy once again against the Islamic Republic of Iran and implement a surprise attack strategy – this time, Tehran appears to have preempted the American-Israeli plot.

The Iran-US Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) officially died this week, but in reality it was terminated on June 26 with the Lebanon-Israel deal that Washington brokered. The reason why was simple: the United States decided to print on paper a new deal that violated the former by granting Israel de facto permission to maintain a belligerent occupation of southern Lebanese lands.

Throughout the month that the MoU technically held, the US committed various violations of a number of clauses of the agreement, including by direct threats from Donald Trump himself to assassinate the entire Iranian negotiating team. But the Lebanon issue was far more indicative of where things were heading than the limited skirmishes in the Persian Gulf and threats to commit war crimes.

Clause 1 of the MoU concerned the ensuring of the war’s termination on all fronts, with Lebanon being explicitly mentioned. Tehran made it clear that this meant a full withdrawal of Israeli occupation forces from southern Lebanon and the protection of Lebanese sovereignty.

Instead of implementing the clause, Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu coordinated a careful approach to the Lebanon war, one that would not result in a withdrawal or end to the war, while simultaneously being careful not to provoke any Iranian retaliatory strikes. Therefore, the US worked with Israel to develop a new conspiracy. This involved the use of the US-proxy regime in Beirut to stir division within Lebanon, an attempt to force the Lebanese army to clash with Hezbollah, combined with an initiative to pressure neighboring Syria to invade the Bekaa Valley region in order to take on Hezbollah.

Meanwhile, as this plot was developing, the Israelis returned to the pre-March 2 status quo more or less in Lebanon – Hezbollah froze its retaliatory operations, while Israel continued to blow up civilian homes, bomb on a lower scale, while maintaining its presence inside south Lebanon.

A US military advisory force is being deployed to Beirut in order to guide the Lebanese army on its newly agreed-upon mission to clash with Hezbollah, the stated goal of which is to disarm the movement. Speculation also has it that the US may even be considering deploying thousands of combat troops into Lebanon in order to help prop up the regime in Beirut if the situation goes sideways, although this assertion is yet to be fully substantiated.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) has been documenting the ongoing mobilization and military buildup along the Lebanese-Syria border, as Trump himself has repeatedly stated in public that he seeks to use Syria’s forces to invade Lebanon.

Hezbollah’s sudden silence and lack of operations indicate that it has been taking these threats very seriously. Fighting Israel alone has been a battle that it has proven capable of managing, but preparations to fight US-proxies inside Lebanon, the possible collapse of the Lebanese Army into warring factions, and combating a Syrian invasion all demand new defensive and even perhaps offensive preparations.

Iran, for its part, was clearly also coordinated more heavily with Yemen’s Ansarallah leadership. The Yemen front never fully opened during the war earlier this year. Tehran openly challenged Saudi Arabia’s blockade on Yemen, while Ansarallah was mobilizing its forces and declared that it would fight to break the blockade. When Riyadh took the decision to strike Sana’a International Airport, this reopened the Yemen-Saudi War for the first time since early 2022, collapsing the UN-brokered ceasefire.

Yemen’s role in the renewal of the regional war will add major pressure, especially as it holds the card to shut down the Bab Al-Mandab Strait, imposing a blockade in the Red Sea that will choke the global economy further than it has been under the pressure of the Strait of Hormuz blockade. Ansarallah’s capabilities have also significantly developed since 2022, meaning that they will be able to aid Iran in their war efforts against targets in the Arabian Peninsula.

If the US succeeds in pressuring Damascus to launch an assault on Lebanon, then Iraq’s Popular Mobilization Units (PMU) have already threatened to enter the fight on the ground. The PMU would likely seek to seize areas in eastern Syria, like Deir Ezzor, which would open up new supply lines inside Syrian territory and put enormous pressure on its forces.

A US-Israeli plot to collapse the Lebanese State in order to weaken Hezbollah is a major gamble to say the least, one which will inevitably lead to a rise in regional sectarianism. It is also very likely that Arab Gulf media will also act to portray the conflict as a new Sunni-Shia war, as they begin to take more active roles in support of the US-Israeli war effort.

Ultimately, it appears as if the Iranians are not taking any chances and are being proactive, which has been reflected in the scale of their strikes on US assets in the region, including a surprise attack that took out US ATACMS missiles in Kuwait earlier this week.

A return to full-scale war this time around could trigger a series of conflicts that will spiral out of control and thus make any easy off-ramp impossible. The Global economic repercussions will be horrendous, as the only end to the war is total victory or total defeat. The US will be put in a position where it will be forced to withdraw from the region, while Israel is betting on the idea of Iran being significantly weakened as a result of the conflict’s continuation.

No side appears to be backing down, so unless the US suddenly decides to perform a 180-degree pivot in its approach, West Asia is about to erupt into total chaos.


Robert Inlakesh is a journalist, writer, and documentary filmmaker. He focuses on the Middle East, specializing in Palestine. He contributed this article to The Palestine Chronicle.

July 16, 2026 Posted by | Aletho News | , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Preparing for Regional Escalation: Iran Appears to Be Pre-Empting the US’ Attack Strategy

The monopoly of arms: Why the doctrine is enforced only where resistance exists

By Sondoss Al Asaad | Al Mayadeen | July 15, 2026

For decades, the slogan of “restricting arms to the state” has been presented as a universal principle of sovereignty and state-building. Yet a closer geopolitical examination reveals a striking inconsistency: the doctrine is aggressively promoted in countries like Lebanon and Iraq, while it is largely absent from discussions in surrounding countries such as Syria, Libya, or other fragmented states where multiple armed actors continue to exist.

This selective application raises an uncomfortable question: Is the objective truly the consolidation of state authority, or is the slogan primarily employed where armed movements challenge Israeli military superiority and American hegemony?

Political philosopher Carl Schmitt argues that sovereignty ultimately belongs to whoever decides the exception.

Modern geopolitical practice appears to confirm his observation. The international order invokes legal principles selectively, depending on whether they reinforce or undermine prevailing strategic interests. The debate over arms, therefore, is not merely legal; it is profoundly political.

The Lebanese case illustrates this contradiction with exceptional clarity.

Following the November 2024 ceasefire, “Hezbollah withdrew from the north of the Litani River and ‘accepted’ that decisions regarding war and peace would rest exclusively with the Lebanese state and its armed forces”. The expectation promoted by Western capitals was that this would allegedly strengthen Lebanese sovereignty and reduce tensions.

The reality unfolded differently; the Israeli enemy, unable to establish a lasting foothold inside southern Lebanese villages during sixty-six days of warfare, achieved after the ceasefire what military operations had failed to accomplish. It maintained positions inside Lebanese territory, continued near-daily airstrikes across Lebanon, and expanded targeted assassinations while facing little meaningful deterrence.

The sequence of events inevitably fuelled a renewed domestic debate. If sovereignty means that only the state possesses weapons, what happens when the state itself lacks the capacity to prevent violations of its own borders?

This dilemma reflects what Thomas Hobbes identified centuries ago as the fundamental purpose of political authority: providing security.

The legitimacy of the state rests not merely on possessing legal authority but on its ability to protect those living under its jurisdiction. When that capacity weakens, alternative security arrangements inevitably emerge.

The issue extends beyond Lebanon; In Iraq, international pressure consistently emphasizes integrating or dismantling armed resistance groups under the banner of state monopoly over force. Yet comparable urgency is rarely directed toward states where numerous militias continue to operate without challenging Israeli strategic dominance.

Syria offers another revealing comparison. Multiple foreign militaries, including American, Turkish, and Israeli forces, remain active on Syrian territory alongside various local armed factions.

Libya remains fragmented among competing military authorities and militias. Yet the international discourse seldom revolves around an immediate imperative to monopolize arms before broader political settlements are achieved.

Such inconsistencies have led many observers to conclude that the slogan itself is not universally applied but strategically deployed.

French philosopher Michel Foucault argued that power operates through discourse by defining what becomes accepted as common sense.

The phrase “arms outside the state” has increasingly become one such discourse. It transforms a complex security equation into a simplified legal formula while avoiding a more difficult question: Can sovereignty exist when a state cannot defend its territory?

July 15, 2026 Posted by | Progressive Hypocrite, Wars for Israel | , , , , | Comments Off on The monopoly of arms: Why the doctrine is enforced only where resistance exists

Million-strong crowds fill Najaf streets for Khamenei funeral as Iraq declares public holiday

MEMO | July 8, 2026

Million-strong crowds filled the streets of Iraq’s holy city of Najaf on Wednesday as funeral ceremonies for Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, began. His coffin will be taken to Karbala before returning to Iran for burial in Mashhad, bringing to an end a week-long farewell.

Iranian leaders sought to reflect Khamenei’s status during the ceremonies. He led the Islamic Republic for nearly four decades before being killed in US-Israeli strikes on his residence in Tehran on 28 February, attacks that marked the start of the Middle East war.

Khamenei’s funeral in Iraq coincided with renewed tensions between Iran and the United States over the strategic Strait of Hormuz, which was a major flashpoint during the regional conflict.

The US military said it had carried out strikes on more than 80 Iranian targets in response to attacks on three ships in the Strait of Hormuz that Washington blamed on Tehran. In response, Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps said it had targeted dozens of US military facilities in Bahrain and Kuwait.

Khamenei’s coffin arrived at Najaf International Airport late on Tuesday, where it was received by Iraqi officials, including Prime Minister Ali Al-Zaidi and other political and military figures.

Iraq declared Wednesday a public holiday to allow citizens to take part in the funeral ceremonies before the coffin returns to Iran for the final burial in Mashhad.

July 8, 2026 Posted by | Wars for Israel | , , , | Comments Off on Million-strong crowds fill Najaf streets for Khamenei funeral as Iraq declares public holiday

Explainer: Which foreign delegations attended the funeral of martyred Leader of the Islamic Revolution?

Press TV – July 4, 2026

The funeral ceremony for the martyred Leader of the Islamic Revolution, Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei, brought together one of the largest gatherings of foreign dignitaries in Iran in recent decades, with representatives from across Asia, Africa, Europe, the Americas, and major international organizations attending the event in Tehran.

The delegations included presidents, prime ministers, parliamentary speakers, foreign ministers, senior government officials, political leaders, and representatives of religious organizations and resistance movements, underscoring the broad international participation in the ceremony.

Asia

Asia accounted for the largest share of official delegations.

From West Asia, Iraq sent one of the largest delegations, including Kurdistan Region President Nechirvan Barzani, Parliament Speaker Mahmoud al-Mashhadani, senior officials, and representatives of the Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF).

Saudi Arabia was represented by Deputy Foreign Minister Waleed Al-Khuraiji, while Oman sent the chairman of its State Council and Qatar was represented by Parliament Speaker Hassan bin Abdullah Al Ghanim.

Shia community representatives also attended from Bahrain and several other Persian Gulf countries.

Lebanon dispatched Defense Minister Michel Menassa alongside senior delegations from Hezbollah and the Amal Movement.

Yemen was represented by Vice President Mahmoud al-Junaid and an Ansarullah delegation.

Palestinian groups also attended, including senior Hamas leaders and Islamic Jihad Secretary-General Ziyad al-Nakhalah.

From the wider Asian region, Pakistan sent one of the highest-level foreign delegations, headed by Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif and Army Chief Field Marshal Syed Asim Munir. The delegation also included the Senate speaker, senior government officials, and religious leaders.

Afghanistan was represented by delegations from the Taliban administration and the Afghan resistance.

India sent a special government envoy at the deputy foreign minister level.

China was represented by He Wei, Vice Chairman of the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress.

Tajik President Emomali Rahmon attended the ceremony in person, while Armenia was represented by Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan. Georgia sent President Mikheil Kavelashvili along with a Muslim delegation.

Türkiye dispatched Vice President Cevdet Yılmaz, together with political and party representatives.

Turkmenistan was represented by Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedow, Chairman of the People’s Council and National Leader.

Among other participants were Azerbaijan’s parliament speaker, Kazakhstan’s foreign minister; the parliamentary speakers of Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Bangladesh, and Sri Lanka; Thailand’s deputy prime minister; Malaysia’s agriculture minister; Myanmar’s special envoy; and official delegations from South Korea and North Korea.

Africa

Several African governments were represented by ministerial- or cabinet-level delegations.

Egypt sent its Senate speaker.

South Africa, Burkina Faso, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Namibia, Tanzania, and Tunisia all sent official representatives.

Nigeria and Senegal also dispatched delegations to participate in the funeral ceremonies.

Europe and the Americas

Russia sent Dmitry Medvedev, Deputy Chairman of the Russian Security Council, as President Vladimir Putin’s special representative.

Belarus was represented by its parliament speaker, while Serbia sent its communications minister. Bulgaria also dispatched parliamentary and political representatives.

Germany was represented by members of the country’s Shia community.

From Latin America, Cuba sent its higher education minister as a special representative, while Nicaragua was represented by Foreign Minister Valdrack Jaentschke.

International organizations

The ceremony also drew senior representatives of several international organizations.

The Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) was represented by Secretary-General Nurlan Yermekbayev, while the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) sent Deputy Secretary-General Tariq Ali Bakheet.

The D-8 Organization for Economic Cooperation and the Economic Cooperation Organization (ECO) were represented by their respective secretaries-general.

July 4, 2026 Posted by | Solidarity and Activism | , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Explainer: Which foreign delegations attended the funeral of martyred Leader of the Islamic Revolution?

Iraq sets Sept. 30 deadline for resistance groups to hand over arms amid US pressure

Press TV – June 29, 2026

Iraq has set a late-September deadline for resistance groups to hand over their weapons to the state, as Washington pressures Prime Minister Ali al-Zaidi to expedite the disarmament of anti-American factions.

“The end of next September will be the ultimate date for the surrender of weapons,” stated government spokesperson Haider al-Aboudi during a press conference on Monday.

He added, “Simultaneously, the [US-led] international coalition will withdraw.”

Under Zaidi’s leadership, the Iraqi government has initiated a renewed effort to disarm armed groups and limit weapon possession to state control. The initiative receives substantial support from Washington, which has long advocated for the disarmament of such groups, many of which are part of the anti-American Resistance in Iraq coalition.

Zaidi, who has received robust backing from the US since assuming office in May, is scheduled to visit Washington in mid-July.

Earlier in June, he met with US envoy to Iraq Tom Barrack, where both emphasized the necessity of ensuring “the complete disarmament and disbandment” of non-state armed groups.

The disarmament process is also expected to coincides with the withdrawal of the US-led coalition purportedly formed to fight against the Daesh Takfiri terrorist group from Iraq, as per an agreement between Washington and Baghdad.

Since the establishment of Iraq’s new cabinet, several resistance factions have expressed their willingness to surrender their weapons and integrate into the state security apparatus.

The Iraqi government’s deadline comes at the same time as a significant anti-corruption purge initiated by Zaidi, resulting in the arrest of at least 67 high-ranking officials and lawmakers. Among those arrested was Muthanna al-Samarrai, a prominent Sunni politician and leader of the Azm Alliance.

“This anti-corruption narrative is distinct from its predecessors, and safeguarding public funds is a duty that remains unaffected by individuals or circumstances,” Aboudi emphasized, asserting that the anti-corruption campaign “will not cease.”

June 29, 2026 Posted by | Aletho News | , | Comments Off on Iraq sets Sept. 30 deadline for resistance groups to hand over arms amid US pressure

Old Iraq war architects rise up to wag finger at Trump’s Iran deal

Who asked for Doug Feith’s opinion anyway?

By Jim Lobe | Responsible Statecraft | June 18, 2026

Assume, for the sake of argument, that you think the U.S.-Iran Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) just signed by President Donald Trump in Versailles is a disaster for both the United States and especially for Israel. Who would you want to be in the forefront of the campaign to persuade American public opinion that it should be abandoned or killed off altogether?

There are any number of candidates, but I, for one, would NOT choose anyone who bore major responsibility for the debacles in Afghanistan and Iraq.

So, it was with great surprise that I found today that Douglas Feith, a key architect of both disasters ab initio, emerged from near-total obscurity at the hardline neoconservative Hudson Institute to publish an op-ed in the Washington Post assailing Vice President J.D. Vance (and indirectly Trump) for dangerous naivete in dealing with Iran.

I don’t want to get into his argument, which asserts that democracies can never trust “bad actors” like Iran to comply with their undertakings (an ironic point given the history of Iran’s compliance with and Washington’s unilateral abandonment of the 2015 JCPOA). You can read it yourself.

But to illustrate why I was so surprised that it was Feith, who hasn’t published an op-ed in the Post, the New York Times, or the Wall Street Journal since 2016, taking a public role in what will be a major PR campaign to kill the deal I will do what we strongly discourage on RS : I’ll quote from AI.

I asked Microsoft’s Co-Pilot’s the following question:

“Why is Douglas Feith the last person opponents of Trump’s deal with Iran would want to publish an op-ed on the deal’s alleged weaknesses?”

The answer:

“Because Feith is widely associated with the flawed intelligence, strategic misjudgments, and disastrous outcomes of the Iraq War, his criticism of any Iran policy risks undermining the anti-deal position by linking it to the same neoconservative thinking that produced the Iraq debacle. His involvement makes opponents look less credible, not more.”

I couldn’t have put it better or more succinctly, and, while Co-Pilot offered to elaborate at length, I’ll cite my own abbreviated list of why Feith is such a terrible messenger.

Feith, who served as undersecretary of defense for policy, the third-ranking post in the Pentagon, during President George W. Bush’s first term, was a long-time protégé of Richard Perle, the “Dark Prince” and the dean and impresario of hardline, Washington-based neoconservatives dating back to the early 1970’s. Feith followed Perle from his first job after law school in Sen. Henry “Scoop” Jackson’s office, which served as the hatchery of Washington-based neoconservatives in the 1970s, through Perle’s service as a senior Pentagon official during the administration of Ronald Reagan in the 1980s.

In 1996, the two men worked with several others who would later serve in the Bush II administration in a “study group” that produced the notorious “Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm” paper for incoming Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Among other things, the memo called for Netanyahu to take steps that would ensure Israeli control of the occupied Palestinian territories in part by working for regime change in Syria and “removing Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq.”

But Feith is best known for his Pentagon service under George W. Bush, and, as Co-Pilot noted, his roles in the invasions and occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq. Gen. Tommy Franks, the CENTCOM commander in both campaigns found working with Feith particularly frustrating, complaining at one point to Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward, “I have to deal with the fucking stupidest guy on the face of the earth almost every day.”

Part of that frustration was due to Feith’s clear determination to shape or search for or even possibly invent intelligence that would justify the invasion and occupation of Iraq and rally public opinion behind that enterprise. Indeed, Feith created offices in the Pentagon, most notoriously the Counter Terrorism Evaluation Unit, whose job was to collect and disseminate any information that might suggest a cooperative relationship between Saddam Hussein’s regime and Al-Qaeda despite the judgments by the U.S. intelligence community that such a relationship did not exist.

As part of his efforts to shape the intelligence, he and his team worked with Ahmad Chalabi’s Iraqi National Congress which provided “informants” who concocted evidence of alleged advances by Saddam’s alleged nuclear weapons program that also did not actually exist.

Even more damaging was the Office of Special Plans (OSP), which was charged with planning the occupation after the invasion, plans which included “de-Baathification,” a program long promoted by Chalabi, Perle, and other neoconservatives, that virtually overnight created the largely Sunni insurgency and that eventually resulted in a bloody sectarian civil war that not only devastated the country, but exhausted the occupation forces.

Besides his work with the OSP, Feith was also responsible for establishing the short-lived Office of Strategic Influence, which was closed down after creating a furor in Congress because of its purported aim of “providing news items, possibly even false ones, to foreign media organizations as part of an effort to influence public sentiment and policy makers.”

But those examples are really just some of the most salient examples. “Undersecretary of Defense for Fiascos,” as Slate once described him, may have been a more appropriate title.

Six months into Bush’s second term, he was out, but, unlike his nominal boss, Deputy Secretary of State Paul Wolfowitz, he didn’t get a consolation prize like the presidency of the World Bank. He retreated to write his 800+-page memoir in which he made what most critics described as a lame attempt at evading responsibility for the most disastrous “war of choice” in U.S. history.

It may be significant that the word “Iraq” did not appear once in Feith’s new attempt at a comeback.


Jim Lobe is a Contributing Editor of Responsible Statecraft. He formerly served as chief of the Washington bureau of Inter Press Service from 1980 to 1985 and again from 1989 to 2015.

June 20, 2026 Posted by | Timeless or most popular, Wars for Israel | , , , , | Comments Off on Old Iraq war architects rise up to wag finger at Trump’s Iran deal

Why Iran’s Retaliation for Israel’s Attack on Beirut is a Regional Game Changer

By Robert Inlakesh | The Palestine Chronicle | June 10, 2026

Iran’s ballistic missile response to Israel’s attack on Beirut is a game-changer for the power dynamics of West Asian politics. The ‘Unity of Squares’ concept has officially led to a NATO-style defense pact developing between the members of the Iranian-led Axis of Resistance.

When Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu threatened to strike the southern suburbs of Beirut last Monday, the immediate threat issued by the leadership in Tehran forced him to take a step back. Ultimately, the US and Israel would delay the implementation of the decision to attack the Lebanese Capital, then suffering an overwhelming response that outperformed expectations.

The first detail to consider here is that the mere threat of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) launching strikes on Israeli targets forced Tel Aviv and Washington to take a step back, meaning that both de facto admitted that Tehran maintains deterrence power. Then came the Israeli strike on the southern suburbs this Sunday, which was extremely limited and nothing of the nature of what Netanyahu had originally advertised.

A weak strike on Beirut’s southern suburbs, which had no actual impact on Hezbollah whatsoever, indicates that the US-Israeli alliance acted in order to save face, seeking to test Iran’s resolve, but also to leave space for it to retreat from all-out war.

Following Iran’s missile waves, which struck Ramat David Airbase – according to satellite imagery evidence – the Israelis decided to launch an attack on Iran. Although they did target at least three radar sites and a petrochemical company, amongst other targets, it was clear that the Israeli attack was lackluster; designed primarily to give them the veneer of having risen to confront the IRGC. No Iranians were killed in the Israeli attack, and the majority of the sites hit were previously struck during the 40-day war earlier this year.

It was clear that the IRGC had prepared for the Israeli counter-strike, not only unleashing an attack of its own on Israeli companies and military sites in response but also coordinating its retaliatory action with Yemen’s Ansarallah.

As the Israelis were playing catch-up, the Iranians were implementing a carefully calibrated phase two of their promised retaliation to Israel’s attack on Beirut– that being the inclusion of new fronts. The IRGC had previously warned Tel Aviv that the war would expand to other fronts; the Yemeni Armed Forces achieved precisely this.

Ansarallah has declared that the Bab al-Mandab Strait is now closed to Israeli shipping, returning to the equation imposed in support of Gaza until October of 2025, when the ceasefire was signed. Yemen then went a step further and vowed to totally close Bab al-Mandab, should the war escalate further. This would represent an enormous economic blow to the global economy, considering the ongoing closure of the Strait of Hormuz.

The concept of the ‘Unity of Squares’ was originally developed by former Secretary General of Lebanese Hezbollah, Seyyed Hassan Nasrallah, and before him Iran’s former IRGC Quds Force Commander Qasem Soleimani. In essence, it was the idea of linking all of the fronts of the Axis of Resistance so that none would stand alone. On October 8, 2023, Seyyed Hassan Nasrallah put this into action by immediately intervening on the side of the Palestinian resistance in Gaza. Soon thereafter, Ansarallah would follow, and to a lesser extent, the Islamic Resistance in Iraq.

Israel had long bragged that its assassination of Nasrallah had broken this Unity of Squares dynamic, because Hezbollah was forced into accepting a less-than-favorable ceasefire in late 2024. It was because of Nasrallah’s refusal to abandon Gaza “no matter where it takes the region”, that Tel Aviv had decided to kill him. Therefore, it is accurate to say that the former Hezbollah leader quite literally gave his life for Gaza.

Benjamin Netanyahu’s quest to achieve “total victory” in his 7-front war has not proven successful, but one major step towards that was managing to break the idea of the Unity of Squares. Through Iran’s actions this Sunday, that “success” was just undone.

The IRGC has also recently been insisting that Gaza be included in their ceasefire agreement, something that a number of statements released by Hamas also appear to be indicating will be the case. If the Islamic Republic does impose its will on the US-Israeli alliance by setting in stone the equation that an attack on one is an attack on all, the Unity of Squares equation will be imposed fully, as it was originally intended. In the past, it was never fully implemented because of Iran’s absence as a front that could easily open.

The implications of this equation coming to life are that the Iranian-led Axis will undoubtedly be the most powerful alliance in the region. Not because they necessarily possess the most firepower and capabilities, but because they will together be able to cut off key international chokepoints, while battering their adversaries in a way that can achieve strategic deterrence.

It should be noted that this is a direct result of the US-Israeli failure in their war of aggression to achieve any of their goals. Instead of weakening Tehran, their reckless aggression and arrogance may have just undone the tactical victories they previously achieved, pushing Iran into the position that many previously argued it should have assumed sooner after October 7, 2023. Unless Tel Aviv and Washington find a way to reverse this, this will represent a major historic shift in regional power dynamics.


Robert Inlakesh is a journalist, writer, and documentary filmmaker. He focuses on the Middle East, specializing in Palestine.

June 10, 2026 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Solidarity and Activism | , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Why Iran’s Retaliation for Israel’s Attack on Beirut is a Regional Game Changer

Iran denies attacking Saudi Arabia, warns of Israeli false-flag

The Cradle | June 8, 2026

Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmail Baghaei denied reports alleging that Iran targeted Saudi Arabia on 8 June, cautioning that such claims could be linked to potential “false-flag operations” conducted in Iran’s name.

Baghaei stressed that Tehran publicly takes responsibility for any military action it carries out and noted that no statement had been issued by Iran confirming the reported incident.

He further said Iran has repeatedly warned about the possibility of false-flag operations, claiming that Israel and other actors have previously carried out similar actions, including during the most recent US-Israeli war on the Islamic Republic.

His comments came after missile alert sirens were activated in the Saudi city of Al-Kharj, home to Prince Sultan Air Base, a facility long used by US forces, just hours after Israel launched renewed strikes against Iran on Monday morning.

Since the US-Israeli war on Iran began in late February, Tehran has frequently argued that many of the strikes blamed on its forces were actually “false-flag” operations staged by its enemies, designed to draw Gulf states further into the war.

On 4 June, Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) dismissed reports that it targeted the terminal at Kuwait International Airport, saying the alleged visual evidence was a “crude fabrication.”

While acknowledging midnight strikes on regional US bases, Iranian officials noted that footage of the airport explosion was recorded in daylight.

In April, the IRGC accused Israel of being behind the strike on a Kuwaiti desalination plant to incite regional tensions further.

This followed a similar denial regarding a 30 March attack on a Kuwaiti power facility, which Tehran also blamed on Israel.

On 4 April, the IRGC further rejected claims that it struck the US Embassy in Riyadh in the opening days of the war, asserting the drone attack was “certainly carried out by Zionists.”

Iran’s Foreign Ministry said on 15 March that the US and Israel were using “Lucas” drones – modeled after the cheap and effective Iranian Shahed – to conduct false-flag operations and attribute them to Tehran.

The IRGC military headquarters, Khatam al-Anbiya, stated that such “deceptions” included attacks in Turkiye and Iraq.

Earlier in March, Iranian military sources described a drone strike on the Ras Tanura refinery in Saudi Arabia as an Israeli false flag designed to distract from strikes inside Iran and draw the Gulf states into further hostilities against the Islamic Republic.

Tucker Carlson also claimed in March that Saudi Arabia and Qatar had detained Israeli agents who were planning bombings in their countries.

June 8, 2026 Posted by | False Flag Terrorism | , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Iran denies attacking Saudi Arabia, warns of Israeli false-flag

Trump and Netanyahu: The odd couple

By Jamal Kanj | MEMO | June 5, 2026

“He’ll do whatever I want him to do,” Donald Trump declared recently about Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

The statement may be one of the most revealing statements Trump has ever made—not for what it says about Netanyahu, but for what it reveals about Trump’s psychology. It was intended as a display of strength. Instead, it exposed the opposite.

Trump has built a political persona around hyperbole, self-aggrandizement, and declarations of superiority to cover up for an oversized inferiority complex, he only knows its extent. When he insists that Netanyahu is acting at his command, he is projecting an authority he does not possess. The louder the boast, the more apparent the insecurity beneath it.

If there is one lesson since the election of Trump, it is that Netanyahu, not Trump, has consistently dictated the pace of America’s wars in the Middle East. Trump may occupy the White House, issue ultimatums, and proclaim himself the master negotiator, but the facts on the ground tell a different story. Again and again, Netanyahu acts, and Trump adjusts.

For years, Netanyahu worked relentlessly to pull the U. S. into another made-for-Israel war, this time against Iran. Successive administrations, despite their deference to Israel, stopped short of falling for the scheme. Trump, however, proved far more susceptible to the influence of his Israel-first donors and to Netanyahu’s chicanery. Yet he continues to portray himself as the one calling the shots.

This week, Trump proudly recounted a phone call in which he supposedly instructed Netanyahu to halt a planned Israeli attack on Beirut. It took little time after Trump’s statement for Israel’s defense minister to announce that military operations “will continue under all circumstances.” True to that pledge, Israel launched fresh attacks on hospitals and villages in southern Lebanon, killing and wounding civilians despite the so-called Trump’s war cessation.

Two days later, on Wednesday June 3rd, Lebanese and Israeli delegations meeting in Washington announced another ceasefire. The third such extension since last April. One day after reaching the agreement, Israel resumed strikes on ​South Lebanon and said it would neither withdraw nor  allow Lebanese civilians back to their homes in the south.

It is almost certain, when the Lebanese resistance eventually counters the repeated Israeli violations, Trump—as he has done before—will condemn the retaliation rather than the provocation. To save face and avoid appearing weak before Netanyahu, he will once again blame the Lebanese side while ignoring the Israeli occupation and military actions that triggered the response.

The same pattern is evident in the negotiations with Iran. For months, Trump’s stated objective was to prevent Iran from developing a nuclear weapon—a framework which aligns with Tehran’s declared position. But nuclear-armed Israel, which never signed the Non-Proliferation Treaty that Iran did, has different goals entirely. Netanyahu’s government will not be satisfied with anything short of the destruction of knowledge and the reduction of Iran to a failed state, precisely the fate that befell Iraq and Libya after both countries agreed to surrender their nuclear ambitions.

For Israel, a negotiated agreement between the U.S. and Iran, may be far less desirable than the continuation of regional turmoil. For its objective is the preservation of a strategic environment that sustains military and geopolitical dominance. Zionism has long viewed the emergence of democratic, technologically advanced, and self-reliant neighboring states as a threat. Fragmentation and disorder in surrounding countries serve that objective by limiting the rise of independent regional powers that could one day, potentially challenge Israeli primacy. In this case, Israel may be unique among nations: it derives strategic advantage not from a stable and prosperous region, but from entropy, and has built a regional doctrine whose success depends on propagating chaos.

The cost to ordinary Americans is tangible, and personal. They feel it every time they fuel their cars, pay inflated prices for goods, or watch Congress cut healthcare or financial student aid for Americans in order to finance another military aid package for Israel.

Americans are not only financing Israel’s wars through tax dollars and weapons transfers. They are also paying what amounts to an Israeli surcharge tax at the pump.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has been trying for weeks to assure consumers that gas will hover around $3 a gallon between June and September, as if it is acceptable for Americans to pay elevated prices until Netanyahu deigns to approve a ceasefire, especially when Trump boasts that America is a net oil exporter.

Gaza is another front in Israel’s endless wars. Trump personally signed the ceasefire agreement in Sharm el-Sheikh in October 2025, chirping “we have peace in the Middle East.” He had since watched in silence as Israel systematically dismantled every commitment it had made. During the “ceasefire,” it maintained a starvation diet blockade, murdered more than 800 and wounded thousands.

Under Phase One of the agreement, Israeli forces were required to withdraw to approximately 53 percent of Gaza. Phase two stipulated further withdrawal. Instead, Netanyahu ordered the seizure of an additional 32 percent, increasing total Israeli military occupation to 70 percent of the besieged territory, confining 2.3 million Palestinians to 30 percent, or roughly 50,000 human beings per each square mile of rubble.

On all fronts, Trump did not merely follow Netanyahu’s lead. He enabled it, funded it, armed it, and defended it diplomatically. Then, standing before television cameras, he attempted to compensate for this reality by insisting that he was the one in control.

To that end, and following recent Republican primary elections, lame-duck Republican members of Congress have already begun treating the Trump administration as a lame-duck presidency, long before the midterm elections. The recent congressional vote to limit presidential war powers is a telling sign that Trump’s political capital is eroding far sooner than expected.

Nevertheless, Americans may be witnessing a historic inflection point in the decades-long power of Israel-first Zionist influence over American political life. It is clear the political landscape is shifting, and the assumptions that long governed Washington’s relationship with Israel no longer appear as immutable as they once did. From growing dissent within the Democratic Party—and among Republican influencers—to deepening unease across the Washington Beltway, genuine cracks are appearing in a system that for generations treated Israel as a sacred cow. Eight decades of unquestioned manipulation and political leverage over American leaders is now facing resistance from constituencies that were once among its most reliable friends.

Hence, no amount of presidential bravado or social-media posturing can obscure what has become undeniable: under Donald Trump, American foreign policy has served Netanyahu’s Israel-first agenda, not America’s. And when the history of this era is written, this odd couple may be remembered for ushering in the sunset of Israel-first Zionist dominance over the U.S. government.

June 5, 2026 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Timeless or most popular, Wars for Israel | , , , , , , | Comments Off on Trump and Netanyahu: The odd couple

Kata’ib Hezbollah warns Jordan over allowing US-Israeli reconnaissance missions against Iraq

Press TV – May 19, 2026

The Kata’ib Hezbollah resistance movement has warned the Amman government against ongoing reconnaissance missions launched by the United States and Israel from Jordanian soil against Iraqi resistance fighters, particularly the Popular Mobilization Units (PMU).

“In the wake of unfolding developments across the region and US-Israeli actions against Iraq’s security and stability, the enemies are aggressively seeking to escalate tensions against the (Iraqi) resistance front and the PMU,” Abu Mujahid al-Assaf, the security chief of the group, said in a statement on Monday evening.

He warned that the patience of heroic resistance fighters in the face of blatant Israeli violations of ceasefire agreements and recurrent acts of aggression against Iraq’s national sovereignty is about to run out.

Assaf noted that the bulk of US and Israeli surveillance missions are being launched from Jordan, warning that this serves as a prelude for attacks against Iraq.

The Jordanian government, therefore, is strongly advised to take lessons from missile and drone operations conducted in retaliation for the US-Israeli war of aggression against Iran, as “patience is starting to run out,” the senior Kata’ib Hezbollah official emphasized.

He further said that the US and Israel, based on received information, are preparing for a fresh round of strikes against commanders of Iraqi resistance groups and the PMU, commonly known by its Arabic name Hashd al-Sha’abi.

Assaf warned Washington and Tel Aviv against any strikes on Iraq, stressing that the response to such a folly would be comprehensive, and the United States would have to shoulder responsibility for all serious repercussions in such a case.

The remarks come as US military aircraft have been scrambling over the past few days to transfer personnel and munitions from one military installation to another across Iraq.

May 19, 2026 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Wars for Israel | , , , , | Comments Off on Kata’ib Hezbollah warns Jordan over allowing US-Israeli reconnaissance missions against Iraq