The West vs. the Rest
How developing countries took control of climate negotiations and what that means for emission reduction.
By Robin Guenier | Climate Scepticism | December 8, 2025
The main reason why, despite countless scientific warnings about dangerous consequences, greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions continue to increase is rarely mentioned. Yet it’s been obvious for several years – at least to anyone willing to see it. It’s this: most countries outside Western Europe, North America and Australasia are either unconcerned about the impact of GHGs on the climate or don’t regard the issue as a priority, focusing instead for example on economic growth and energy security. Yet these countries, comprising about 84 percent of humanityi, are today the source of about 77 percent of emissions; 88 percent if the United States, which has now joined their ranks, is included.ii Therefore, unless they change their policies radically – and there’s no serious evidence of their so doing – there’s no realistic prospect of the implementation of the urgent and substantial cuts in GHG emissions called for by many Western scientists.
To understand how this has happened, I believe it’s useful to review the history of environmental negotiation by focusing in particular on six UN-sponsored conferences: Stockholm in 1972, Rio in 1992, Kyoto in 1997, Copenhagen in 2009, Paris in 2015 and Belém (Brazil) in 2025.
Stockholm 1972
In the 1940s, 1950s and 1960s many Western environmentalists were seriously concerned that technological development, economic growth and resource depletion risked irreversible damage to humanity and to the environment.iii Clearly a global problem, it was agreed that it had to be tackled by international, i.e. UN-sponsored, action.
The result was the UN Conference on the Human Environment held in Stockholm in 1972.iv From its outset it was recognised that, if the conference was to succeed, an immediate problem had to be solved: the perceived risk was almost exclusively a Western preoccupation, so how might poorer countries be persuaded to get involved?v
After all, technical and industrial development were essentially the basis of the West’s economic success and that was something the rest of the world was understandably anxious to emulate – not least to alleviate the desperate poverty of many hundreds of millions of people.vi The diplomatic manoeuvrings needed to resolve this seemingly irreconcilable conflict set the scene for what I will refer to as ‘the Stockholm Dilemma’ – i.e. the conflict between Western fears for the environment and poorer countries’ aspirations for economic growth. It was resolved, or more accurately deferred, at the time by the linguistic nightmare of the conference’s concluding Declaration which asserted that, although environmental damage was caused by Western economic growth, it was also caused by the poorer world’s lack of economic growth.vii
After 1972, Western environmental concerns were overshadowed by the struggle to deal with successive oil and economic crises.viii However two important European reports, the Brandt Report in 1980 and the Brundtland Report in 1987, dealt with the economic gulf between the West and the so-called Third World.ix In particular, Brundtland – echoing Stockholm – concluded that, because poverty causes environmental problems, the needs of the world’s poor should be given overriding priority; a principle to be enshrined in the climate agreement signed in Rio. The solution was the now familiar ‘sustainable development’.x
Rio 1992
Western environmental concerns were hugely re-energised in the late 1980s when the doctrine of dangerous (possibly catastrophic) global warming caused by mankind’s emissions of GHGs, especially carbon dioxide (CO2), burst onto the scene.xi As a result, the UN organised the landmark Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED) – the ‘Earth Summit’ held in Rio in 1992.xii It was the first of a long series of climate-related international conferences that led for example to the so-called ‘historic’ Paris Agreement in 2015.
A key outcome of the 1992 Earth Summit was the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). Adopted in 1992 and commonly known as ‘the Convention’, it’s an international treaty that came into force in 1994. It remains to this day the definitive legal authority regarding climate change.xiii Article 2 sets out its overall objective:
‘The ultimate objective of this Convention and any related legal instruments that the Conference of the Parties may adopt is to achieve … stabilization of greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere at a level that would prevent dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system.’
It’s an objective that’s failed. Far from being stabilised, after 1992 emissions accelerated and, by 2025, emissions had grown by over 65 per cent.xiv This is essentially because the Convention attempted to solve the Stockholm Dilemma by dividing the world into two blocs: Annex I countries (essentially the West and ex-Soviet Union countries – the ‘developed’ countries) and non-Annex I countries (the rest of the world – the ‘developing’ countries). This distinction has had huge and lasting consequences – arising in particular from the Convention’s Article 4.7:
‘The extent to which developing country Parties will effectively implement their commitments under the Convention … will take fully into account that economic and social development and poverty eradication are the first and overriding priorities of the developing country Parties.’xv [My emphasis]
In other words, developing countries were, in accordance with Brundtland’s conclusion, expressly authorised to give overriding priority to economic growth and poverty eradication – even if that meant increasing emissions. And that’s why the Annex I/non-Annex I bifurcation has plagued international climate negotiations ever since: for example, it’s the main reason for the Copenhagen debacle in 2009 and for the Paris failure in 2015 (see below).
Western countries had hoped – even expected – that the Rio bifurcation would in time be modified so that, in line with their development, major developing countries would eventually become members of the Annex I group.xvi But such hopes were dashed at the first post-Rio climate ‘Conference Of the Parties’ (COP) held in Berlin in 1995 (COP1) when it was agreed that there must be no new obligation imposed on any non-Annex I country.
This principle, ‘the Berlin Mandate’, meant that the bifurcation and its associated ‘common but differentiated responsibility’ principle were institutionalised as tenets of the Convention.xvii And, before the next climate conference in 1996 (COP2 in Geneva), G77+China made it clear that this should not be changed.xviii
Kyoto 1997
The impact of this was made harshly apparent at the next conference: COP3 in Kyoto in 1997. Kyoto was supposed to be critically important – the original hope had been that negotiations would result in all countries accepting commitments to reduce their GHG emissions. But, because the US decided that it wouldn’t accept obligations that didn’t apply to other major countriesxix and because of the Berlin Mandate, in the event the agreed Kyoto Protocol reduction obligations applied only to a few, largely Western, countries.xx As a result and because developing countries refused even to acknowledge that they might accept some future obligation, it was becoming obvious to some observers that the UN process was getting nowhere – somehow the developing countries had to be persuaded that emission reduction was in their best interests.
But how? The passage of 25 years hadn’t resolved the Stockholm Dilemma – difficult enough in 1972, the UNFCCC bifurcation and the Berlin Mandate had made it worse. Yet it was recognised that, without these, developing countries might simply refuse to be involved in climate negotiations, making the whole process meaningless – something the UN and Western countries were unwilling to contemplate. So, if Kyoto was a failure, it was arguably a necessary failure if there was to be any prospect of emission reduction in due course. And that was the story for the next twelve years: at successive COP conferences the major developing countries, ignoring increasingly dire climate warnings from Western scientists, refused to consider amending the UNFCCC bifurcation.
A result of that refusal was that many developing countries’ economies continued their spectacular growth, resulting in rising living standards and unprecedented poverty reduction.xxi But inevitably emissions also continued to grow: in just 12 years, from 1997 (Kyoto) to 2009 (Copenhagen) and despite 12 COPs, they increased by over 30%.xxii
Copenhagen 2009
In 2007 the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (the IPCC), a body that reports every seven years on the current physical scientific understanding of climate change, published its fourth report (AR4) – a report that intensified the West’s insistence that urgent and substantial emission cuts were essential.xxiii
A result was an ‘Action Plan’ agreed at the 2007 climate conference (COP13) in Bali.xxiv It set out how it was hoped all countries would come together at Copenhagen in 2009 (COP15) to agree a comprehensive and binding deal to take the necessary global action. Many observers regarded this as hugely significant: Ban Ki-moon, then UN Secretary General, speaking at Copenhagen said, ‘We have a chance – a real chance, here and now – to change the course of our history’’.xxv And, as always, dire warnings were issued about the consequences of failure: UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown for example warned that, if the conference failed to achieve a deal, ‘it will be irretrievably too late’.xxvi
There was one seemingly encouraging development at Bali: developing countries accepted for the first time that emission reduction by non-Annex I countries might at least be discussed – although they insisted that developed countries were not doing enough to meet their Kyoto obligations.xxvii But the key question of how far the developing countries might go at Copenhagen remained obscure – for example was it at least possible that the larger ‘emerging economies’ such as China and India and major OPEC countries such as Iran and Saudi Arabia might cease to be classified as ‘developing’? The EU and US not unreasonably thought that should happen, especially as it was by then obvious that, unless all major emitting countries, including therefore big developing economies, were involved, an emission cutting agreement would be neither credible nor effective. Some Western negotiators hoped that the bifurcation issue might at last be settled at Copenhagen.
But it wasn’t. In the event, developing countries refused to budge, insisting for example that developed countries’ historic responsibility for emissions was what mattered. As a result, the West was humiliatingly defeated, with the EU not even involved in the final negotiations between the US and the so-called BASIC countries (Brazil, South Africa, India and China).xxviii
One commentator noted:
‘There was a clear victor. Equally clearly, there was a side that lost more comprehensively than at any international conference in modern history where the outcome had not been decided beforehand by force of arms.’ xxix
The Copenhagen failure was a major setback for the West.xxx It was now established that, if the developing countries (including now powerful economies such as China, India, South Korea, Brazil, South Africa, Saudi Arabia and Iran) rejected a suggestion that their economic development be subject to emission control, that position would prevail. Yet by 2010 these countries were responsible for about 60% of global CO2 emissions xxxi; without them, major global emission cuts were clearly impossible.
The years following Copenhagen, from Cancún (COP16) in 2010 to Lima (COP20) in 2014, reinforced the West’s concerns as developing countries continued to insist they would not accept binding commitments to reduce their emissions.xxxii
Paris 2015
It was becoming obvious that, if there was to be any prospect of emission reduction, there had to be some fresh thinking. So the UN proposed a new methodology for the summit scheduled for 2015 in Paris (COP21): instead of an overall global reduction requirement, a new approach should be implemented whereby countries would individually determine how they would reduce their emissions and that this would be coupled with a periodic review by which each country’s reduction plans would be steadily scaled up by a ‘ratcheting’ mechanism – a critically important development.
But, when countries’ plans (then described as ‘Intended Nationally Determined Contributions’ (INDCs)) were submitted to the UNFCCC secretariat prior to Paris, it was clear that little had been achieved: hardly any developing countries had indicated any intention of making absolute emission cuts. Instead their INDCs spoke merely for example of reducing CO2 emission intensity in relation to GDP or of reducing the percentage of emissions from business-as-usual projections.xxxiii
It had been hoped that NDCs (as they became known) would be the vehicle whereby major emerging (‘developing’) economies would at last make emission reduction commitments. Yet they turned out to be a problem that undermined the Paris Agreement – see below. And, in any case, other provisions of the Agreement in effect exempted developing countries from any obligation, moral, legal or political, to reduce their emissions.xxxiv For example, the Agreement was described in its preamble as being pursuant to ‘the objective of the Convention [and] guided by its principles’ and further described in Article 2.1 as ‘enhancing the implementation of the Convention’. In other words, the developed/developing bifurcation remained intact and developing countries could continue to give overriding priority to economic development and poverty eradication. Moreover, under Article 4.4 of the Agreement, developing countries, in contrast to developed countries, were merely ‘encouraged to move over time towards economy-wide emission reduction or limitation targets’. Hardly an obligation to reduce their emissions.
It was not an outcome many wanted. For example, when ex UN Secretary General Kofi Annan was asked in early 2015 what he would expect to come out of the Paris summit, he replied:
‘Governments have to conclude a fair, universal and binding climate agreement, by which every country commits to reducing emissions of greenhouse gases.‘ xxxv
Western negotiators had intended that Paris should have a very different outcome from that achieved. Hence this 2014 statement by Ed Davey, then UK Secretary of State responsible for climate negotiations: ‘Next year in Paris in December … the world will come together to forge a deal on climate change that should, for the first time ever, include binding commitments to reduce emissions from all countries.’ xxxvi
But it didn’t happen. Developing country negotiators, led by China and India, ignored the West’s (in the event, feeble) demands. And Western negotiators, determined to avoid another Copenhagen-like debacle, didn’t press the issue. Hence the Paris agreement’s failure to achieve the West’s most basic aim: that powerful ‘emerging’ economies should be obliged to share in emission reduction.
The Stockholm Dilemma was still unresolved.
Might that change in the near future? Events since 2015 indicate that that’s most unlikely:
A major post-Paris example was a climate ‘action summit’ convened by UN Secretary General António Guterres for September 2019, calling for national plans to go carbon neutral by 2050 and new coal plants to be banned from 2020.xxxvii But, just before the summit, the environment ministers of the so-called ‘BRICS’ countries (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) effectively undermined it by reaffirming their commitment to ‘the successful implementation of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), its Kyoto Protocol and its Paris Agreement’. In other words, these five countries (the source of about 45 percent of emissions) were indicating that they continued to regard themselves, under the UNFCCC and Paris framework, as exempt from any binding reduction obligation.xxxviii As a result the summit was a failure.xxxix
So it was not surprising that COP25 (December 2019 in Madrid) made no real progress: it ended with no substantive agreement on emission reduction and was widely described as another failure.xl
Might that change – for example might major developing countries enhance their NDCs as required by the ‘ratchet’ provision of the Paris Agreement? The test would be the next UN conference (COP26) to be held in Glasgow in November 2021 – postponed from 2020 because of the COVID 19 crisis.xli
But COP26 failed that test. And that was despite it being rated by the Guardian in July 2021 as ‘one of the most important climate summits ever staged’, despite Alok Sharma (COP26’s president) stressing that leaving ‘Glasgow with a clear plan to limit global warming to 1.5C’ would ‘set the course of this decisive decade for our planet and future generations’ and despite Prince Charles (as he then was) giving another of his familiar warnings: ‘Quite literally, it is the last chance saloon. We must now translate fine words into still finer actions.’ xlii
That things were not looking good became apparent when several major emitters (e.g. Brazil, China, India, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Australia, Indonesia and Mexico) either failed to submit a new NDC in 2021 or submitted an updated NDC that was judged to lack any real increase in ambition, thereby failing to comply with the key Paris ‘ratchet’ requirement.xliii Yet the countries referred to above were in 2019 the source of over 40% of global emissions.xliv
COP26 itself got off to a bad start when China’s president Xi and Russia’s president Putin didn’t attend.xlv And the proceedings included various upsets – in particular a formal request made by a group of 22 nations known at the Like-Minded Developing Countries (LMDC), which included China, India and Saudi Arabia, made on 11 November 2021, that the entire section on the mitigation of climate change be removed from the draft COP26 text.xlvi It wasn’t wholly successful as COP26’s concluding text – the ‘Glasgow Climate Pact’ xlvii – did include an appeal for all countries to revisit and strengthen their 2030 emissions targets by the end of 2022. But that was essentially meaningless in practice as many major emitters had already failed to submit sufficiently strengthened NDCs (see above). In other words, COP26 ended with nothing of real importance being achieved.
All this confirmed yet again that developing countries, determined to grow their economies and improve the lives of their people, had no serous intention of cutting back on fossil fuels. But nonetheless the can was once again kicked down the road; this time to COP27 to be held in Sharm El-Sheikh, Egypt in 2022. And in the meantime events moved on much as before with most countries – even the US – increasing their reliance on fossil fuels (especially coal) and global CO2 emissions reaching their highest level ever.xlviii
And it was hardly a surprise therefore when COP27 turned out to be yet another conference that essentially achieved nothing, with one reviewer noting that key mitigation items — such as a 2025 global emissions peak or a phase-out of all fossil fuels — were dropped under pressure from ‘Saudi Arabia, Iran, Russia and other petro-states’.xlix Yet, far from giving up, the West now pinned its hopes on COP28 to be held in Dubai – the ‘first global stocktake’.
And the UN hoped that a ‘Climate Ambition Summit’ called by General Secretary António Guterres in September 2023 would boost the Conference’s prospects. But the absence of big emitters such as the US, China and India meant that the Summit turned out to be of little value.l
However the COP28 ‘stocktake’ – otherwise unremarkable – did include what many commentators thought was an important breakthrough.li In its paragraph 28, it said this:
‘The Conference of the Parties … calls on Parties to contribute to the following … Transitioning away from fossil fuels in energy systems, in a just, orderly and equitable manner, accelerating action in this critical decade, so as to achieve net zero by 2050 in keeping with the science.’
So, commentators said, there you have it: at long last we have an agreement (a ‘pledge’) to transition away from fossil fuels! But of course that wasn’t true. The reality was that Paragraph 28 also said that parties must ‘take account’ of the Paris Agreement and, as specifically confirmed further down in paragraph 38, the ‘stocktake’ reaffirmed Article 4.4 of that Agreement. In other words, developing countries, the source of 65% of global emissions, continued to be exempted from any obligation to cut their emissions.
Attention now moved to Baku, Azerbaijan – to COP29 held in November 2024. But this conference was concerned almost entirely with finance and made no serious progress on emission reduction. And in any case proceedings were overshadowed by Donald Trump’s re-election as US President – causing great uncertainty and concern about future global climate politics.
Such concern was justified: it was over 50 years since the 1972 UN Conference on the Human Environment and there was still no sign of a solution to the Stockholm Dilemma and now a resurgent Trump made one even less likely. Yet once again the circus moved on – this time to Belém in Brazil.
Belém 2025
In the months running up to COP30 its prospects already looked dismal, despite the conference being dubbed ‘the implementation COP’. This was because, despite the Paris Agreement requirement, hardly any significant countries submitted updated NDCs either by February 2025, or even by the extended date at the end of September.lii To make matters even worse, few leaders of major economies turned up for the scheduled pre-COP leaders’ meeting: for example no one came from the United States, China, India, Russia, Indonesia, Japan, Saudi Arabia, Australia, Canada, South Korea, Türkiye or South Korea. Nonetheless Brazil’s President Lula announced that ‘COP30 will be the COP of truth’.liii
However over 56,000 delegates did turn up at the conference – the third largest number at any COP. And Brazil’s environment minister Marina Silva urged countries to have the ‘courage’ to address a fossil-fuel phaseout, and to work towards a roadmap for ending dependence on fossil fuels.liv It was a requirement echoed by about 80 countries which insisted via a letter to the COP President signed by 29 countries (including the UK, France, Spain and various small countries) that, unless the Conference outcome included a legally binding agreement to a ‘roadmap’ for a global transition away from fossil fuels, they would block the planned deal.lv
Unsurprisingly however negotiators from the majority of countries – not just the Arab oil producers as some commentators suggested, but also major countries such as India, China, Indonesia and other developing countries whose economies and peoples’ welfare depend on fossil fuels – showed no interest in the idea and the COP President simply ignored it. Humiliatingly the objectors climbed down. And the words ‘fossil fuels’ were not even included in the finally agreed text.lvi
This astute comment on the failure of COP30 was made by Li Shuo of the Asia Society (described as ‘a long-time observer of climate politics’):
‘This partly reflects the power shift in the real world, the emerging power of the BASIC and BRICs countries, and the decline of the European Union’.lvii
So once again a COP made no progress at all towards meeting the UNFCCC’s 1992 call for the ‘stabilization of greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere’. It’s therefore hardly surprising that many commentators have queried whether there’s really any reason at all for continuing to hold all these huge and essentially pointless conferences.lviii
And it’s not only the Belém debacle that illustrates this. Far from it: nothing that’s happening today justifies any realistic hope that fossil fuels are on their way out. For example, major developing countries, especially India, China and in Southeast Asia, are focusing on coal to bolster economic growth and upgrade national security.lix And overall global emissions are still increasing. The early 2020 emission reductions caused by Covid 19 lockdowns were short-lived: as countries emerged from the pandemic determined to strengthen their economies, emission increases have continued.lx
The harsh reality – confirmed time and time again – is that nothing has really changed since the West’s comprehensive defeat at COP15 in Copenhagen in 2009. The truth is that most countries do not share the West’s preoccupation with climate change. Nor is there any prospect of that view changing for the foreseeable future.
Conclusion
At the time of the Rio Earth Summit in 1992 the West’s emissions were 41 percent of the annual global total – today (without the US) they’re only 9 percent. Thus it’s clearly impossible for what’s left of the West to satisfy many scientists’ calls for an urgent and substantial (about 50%) global emission reduction. That can only happen if all the other major countries completely change their climate policies. And that’s obviously not going to happen.
Yet, despite that clear message from the past thirty or more years of climate negotiation history, it’s a key reality that’s still being overlooked by many in the West: in particular by net zero supporters; by the mainstream media; by many scientific publications; by all climate ‘activists’; by many respected academic and scientific organisations; by politicians, governmental and non-governmental organisations; and by celebrities and social media. And by the United Nations.
It’s quite remarkable that there are still so many Western observers who seem not to have noticed that, over the past fifty years, the nature of the climate debate has radically changed as a result of major global political and economic developments. What’s happened is that what was once the so-called Third World has for a long time been powerful enough to ignore the West and take charge of environmental negotiation – a process that started with the ‘Berlin Mandate’ at COP1 in 1994 (see above). And the increasingly meaningless distinction between the ‘developing’ world and the ‘developed’ world, introduced by the UN in 1992 as a way of persuading poorer countries to get involved in climate negotiation, has paradoxically become the reason why progress on GHG reduction has become virtually impossible.
It’s surely obvious by now that the Stockholm Dilemma will never be resolved. And that there’s nothing the West (or more accurately the EU, the UK, Australia and a few smaller countries) can do about it.
Notes and references
i See https://srv1.worldometers.info/world-population/population-by-region/?utm_source=chatgpt.com
ii See https://edgar.jrc.ec.europa.eu/report_2025?vis=ghgtot#emissions_table
iii See for example Fairfield Osborn’s book The Plundered Planet (1948), William Vogt’s Road to Survival (1948), Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring (1962), the dire predictions in the Club of Rome report, Limits to Growth (1968) and, in particular, Barbara Ward’s report, Only One Earth (1972). Several of today’s environmentalists share the view that economic growth causes environmental degradation. See for example Less is More: How Degrowth Will Save The World (2021) by Jason Hickel.
iv Maurice Strong, a Canadian businessman-turned-diplomat, organised the Conference and was its Secretary General, having first commissioned Limits to Growth (see Note 3) that established much of its intellectual groundwork. He is widely seen as a pioneer of international environmental concern and of institutionalising it within the United Nations.
v At the time these countries were commonly referred to as ‘underdeveloped’ or, preferably, as ‘developing’. The ‘Third World’ was a standard label used for countries outside the Western or Soviet blocs.
vi Franz Fanon’s book The Wretched of the Earth (1961) was very influential in intellectual circles in the West at this time. Indian PM Indira Gandhi’s keynote speech at the Conference sets out the dilemma clearly: http://tiny.cc/dl6lqz. The speech is epitomised by this comment: ‘The environment cannot be improved in conditions of poverty.’
vii See Part One, chapter I (especially ‘proclamation’ 4) of this UN report on the conference: http://un-documents.net/aconf48-14r1.pdf.
viii See for example: https://www.federalreservehistory.org/essays/oil-shock-of-1978-79.
ix For Brundtland, see Our Common Future: http://www.un-documents.net/our-common-future.pdf.
x ibid – see paragraphs 27, 28 and 29 which do little to clarify the meaning of this rather vague concept.
xi Heralded in particular by James Hansen’s address the US Congress in 1988: https://www.sealevel.info/1988_Hansen_Senate_Testimony.html?utm_source=chatgpt.com
xii Described as the largest environmental conference ever held, the Summit’s outcome is outlined here: https://www.sustainable-environment.org.uk/Action/Earth_Summit.php
xiii For the full text of the UNFCCC see: https://unfccc.int/resource/docs/convkp/conveng.pdf
xiv See Note 1 above.
xv The omitted words are concerned with a different, but arguably equally important, issue: finance and technology transfer from developed to developing countries.
xvi See Article 4.2 (f) of the UNFCCC, under which parties might review ‘available information with a view to taking decisions regarding such amendments to the lists in Annexes I and II as may be appropriate, with the approval of the Party concerned’.
xvii See Article 2 (b) here: https://unfccc.int/resource/docs/cop1/07a01.pdf?utm_source=chatgpt.com
xviii This report provides some interesting background re non-Annex I parties’ determination: https://unfccc.int/resource/docs/1996/agbm/05.pdf?utm_source=chatgpt.com
xix See the Byrd-Hagel resolution adopted unanimously by the US Senate in June 1997: https://www.congress.gov/bill/105th-congress/senate-resolution/98/text It stated that the US would not sign a protocol putting limits on Annex I countries unless it imposed specific, timetabled commitments on non-Annex I countries.
xx For the text of the Kyoto Protocol see: https://unfccc.int/resource/docs/convkp/kpeng.pdf. Note in particular how Article 10’s provision that it did not introduce ‘any new commitments for Parties not included in Annex I’ ensured that developing countries were not bound by the Protocol’s emission reduction obligations.
xxi Note for example how China was responsible for an astonishing reduction in poverty from the 1980s to the early 2000s: https://ourworldindata.org/data-insights/extreme-poverty-in-china-has-been-almost-eliminated-first-in-urban-then-in-rural-regions?utm_source=chatgpt.com
xxii See Note 1 above.
xxiii See for example: https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar4/syr/
xxiv The Bali Action Plan can be seen here: https://www.preventionweb.net/files/8376_BaliE.pdf?startDownload=true
xxv See the UN Secretary-General’s extraordinary speech in Copenhagen just before COP15: https://unfccc.int/files/meetings/cop_15/statements/application/pdf/speech_opening_hls_cop15_ban_ki_moon.pdf
xxvi The full extract: ‘If we do not reach a deal at this time, let us be in no doubt: once the damage from unchecked emissions growth is done, no retrospective global agreement in some future period can undo that choice. By then it will be irretrievably too late.’ See https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2009/oct/19/gordon-brown-copenhagen-climate-talks
xxvii In particular those confirmed by section 1(b)(i) of the Bali Action Plan – see Note 24 above.
xxviii See this overall review of the outcome: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/8426835.stm.
xxix Rupert Darwall: The Age of Global Warming, 310
xxx The ‘Copenhagen Accord’ was an attempt by some countries to rescue something from this debacle: https://unfccc.int/resource/docs/2009/cop15/eng/l07.pdf. A non-binding document (the Conference only ‘took note’ of it) it stated for example that global temperature should not rise more than 2ºC above pre-industrial levels – although it didn’t specify a date for this.
xxxi See Note 1 above.
xxxii See for example this report on the 2014 conference in Lima: http://tiny.cc/w4zv001
xxxiii For example, China’s INDC said only that it planned to ‘achieve the peaking of carbon dioxide emissions around 2030’ (no mention of the level of such ‘peak’ or of what will happen thereafter) and to ‘lower carbon dioxide emissions per unit of GDP by 60% to 65% from the 2005 level’. And South Korea merely said that it ‘plans to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions by 37% from the business-as-usual (BAU,850.6 MtCO2eq) level by 2030 across all economic sectors’, i.e. emissions will continue to increase but not by as much as they might have done.
Note that ‘Intended Nationally Determined Contributions’ (INDCs) are referred to as ‘Nationally Determined Contributions’ (NDCs) in Articles 3 and 4 of in the Paris Agreement – see Note 34 below. All NDCs submitted to the UNFCCC secretariat can be found here: https://unfccc.int/NDCREG
xxxiv The full text of the Paris Agreement can be found here: https://unfccc.int/files/meetings/paris_nov_2015/application/pdf/paris_agreement_english_.pdf
xxxv From an interview with the Observer in May 2025. Annan’s other comments are also interesting: https://www.kofiannanfoundation.org/publication/we-must-challenge-climate-change-sceptics/
xxxvi See the Ministerial Forward here: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/360596/hmg_paris_2015.pdf
xxxvii https://climateaction.unfccc.int/Events/ClimateActionSummit
xxxviii My note was an extract from a press release by the PRC’s Ministry of Ecology and Environment: https://english.mee.gov.cn/News_service/news_release/201908/t20190829_730517.shtml?utm_source=chatgpt.com
xxxix https://populationmatters.org/news/2019/09/un-climate-action-summit-fails-to-deliver-climate-action/
xl http://tiny.cc/zg0w001 The official summary noted how countries such as China — speaking for the bloc including Brazil, India, South Africa — repeatedly called for developed countries to meet financial commitments: http://tiny.cc/3h0w001
xli https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-climatechange-idUSKBN21J6QC/
xlii http://tiny.cc/js1w001, http://tiny.cc/dv1w001 and http://tiny.cc/zs1w001
xliii https://ca1-clm.edcdn.com/assets/brief_-_countries_with_no_or_insignificant_ndc_updates_2.pdf?utm_source=chatgpt.com
xliv See Note 1 above.
xlv http://tiny.cc/w22w001 and http://tiny.cc/w22w001
xlvi https://kyma.com/cnn-world/2021/11/11/china-and-india-among-22-nations-calling-for-key-section-on-emissions-be-ditched-from-cop26-agreement/?utm_source=chatgpt.com
xlvii The Glasgow Climate Pact can be found here: https://unfccc.int/sites/default/files/resource/cop26_auv_2f_cover_decision.pdf
xlviii See Note 1 above.
xlix See observations here: http://tiny.cc/q52w001
l The Guardian’s view: http://tiny.cc/872w001
li https://unfccc.int/sites/default/files/resource/cma2023_L17_adv.pdf
liii President Lula’s comment can be found here: http://tiny.cc/ja2w001 A prescient observation – although not perhaps in the way he intended.
lv This Guardian article notes how the 29 objectors’ demands were ignored: http://tiny.cc/ei2w001.
lvi https://unfccc.int/sites/default/files/resource/cma2025_L24_adv.pdf
lvii Under ‘EU had a bad COP’ here: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cp84m16mdm1o
lviii For example the Guardian is unhappy: http://tiny.cc/ux2w001
lix See this https://www.cfact.org/2025/11/20/coal-is-still-a-fuel-of-choice-in-the-global-south/ and this https://www.instituteforenergyresearch.org/fossil-fuels/coal/coal-is-still-king-globally/
lx See Note 1 above.
“Real men go to Tehran” — The Zion-Con fantasy of regime change in Iran
By Junaid S. Ahmad | MEMO | January 16, 2026
“Anyone can go to Baghdad. Real men go to Tehran.”
It is difficult to imagine a sentence that more perfectly distils the arrested adolescence of American neoconservatism. Equal parts locker-room bravado and imperial hallucination, the phrase belongs to the same intellectual ecosystem as Rambo sequels, Tom Clancy paperbacks, and the enduring belief that history naturally submits to men armed with air superiority and a television-ready talking point.
The slogan has circulated for decades among Washington’s most aggressively incurious minds. Iraq was merely the appetizer. Tehran was always the entrée — the Everest of regime change, the final boss in a video game played by men who have never once paid the price of defeat.
Iran is not different merely because of its size, its population, or its terrain — though the Zagros Mountains are far less forgiving than the streets of Fallujah. Iran is different because it has refused, stubbornly and at enormous cost, to internalise the post–Cold War catechism: accept American primacy, subcontract your sovereignty, and call the arrangement “integration into the international order.”
For the ‘Zion-Cons’ — Zionist neoconservatives — this refusal is not simply strategic defiance. It is psychological heresy.
The theology of regime change
Neoconservatism is not a foreign-policy framework. It is a belief system. Like all theologies, it comes equipped with sacred texts, sanctioned demons, and end-times fantasies. Iran occupies a unique place in this cosmology: simultaneously an ideological abomination and a geopolitical temptation too intoxicating to abandon.
The Islamic Republic represents everything neocon thought cannot tolerate — an independent regional power immune to Western legitimacy rituals, rooted in a civilizational memory more than a millennium older than Washington itself. That it is also openly hostile to Israel, and persistently aligned with Palestinian resistance, elevates Iran from problem to obsession.
This obsession is always framed as concern. Concern for democracy. Concern for women’s rights. Concern for regional stability. Yet the concern follows a suspiciously selective pattern. It spikes when Iranian women protest. It flattens when women in Gaza are buried beneath concrete and shrapnel. It demands sanctions in the name of “helping the Iranian people” while celebrating the annihilation of Iran’s middle class as a strategic achievement.
This is not hypocrisy. It is architecture.
Sanctions are not a failed alternative to regime change; they are its slow-motion variant. When bombing proves politically inconvenient, starvation becomes policy. When diplomacy threatens stabilisation, diplomacy must be sabotaged. Engagement is dangerous precisely because it works. The objective is not reform. The objective is obliteration.
Israel’s strategic mirage
For Israel’s security establishment, Iran is the final unresolved obstacle in a region otherwise disciplined into submission. Egypt neutralised. Syria pulverised. Iraq shattered and held together with duct tape. Lebanon perpetually destabilised. Only Iran remains intact and intolerably autonomous.
The idea that Israel’s posture toward Iran has ever been defensive borders on parody. The fear is not that Iran will strike tomorrow; it is that Iran will exist coherently ten years from now.
This explains the fixation on Iran’s air defences, its scientists, its infrastructure. The logic is brutally simple: a state that cannot defend itself cannot act independently. A state that cannot act independently can eventually be wrecked, partitioned, and remade.
But here the fantasy collides with reality. Iran is not Syria. It is not Libya. It is not Iraq circa 2003 — hollowed out by sanctions and ruled by a dictatorship so despised that collapse felt like relief. Iran, like all societies, contains fractures and rivalries. But fragmented societies do not automatically disintegrate. Quite often — especially under existential threat — they consolidate. External assault does not reliably dissolve states. Sometimes it forges them.
The opposition mirage
Every regime-change project requires a hero. In Iran’s case, while ritualistic nods are made toward protesters with genuine grievances, the starring role is awkwardly reserved for an exile aristocracy whose Twitter/X followings vastly exceed their domestic relevance.
Reza Pahlavi is marketed like a Silicon Valley prototype: sleek, Western-approved, and permanently “almost ready.” His appeal thrives in think tanks, donor salons, and Israeli conference halls. Inside Iran, his name provokes neither mass devotion nor visceral hatred — just indifference at best, uncontrollable laughter at worst.
This is the core contradiction of Washington’s Iran policy: regime change without revolution; installation without legitimacy; democracy without the inconvenience of mass politics.
The resulting strategy is perversely elegant in its cynicism — wait for collapse while ensuring no alternative survives long enough to govern.
Civil war option
What follows regime collapse? Zion-Con discourse treats the question like a software update users will sort out later. Something, it is assumed, will emerge. Something manageable. Something vaguely liberal.
History offers no such reassurance
Iran’s disintegration would not yield a liberal republic — and it is not meant to. It would yield precisely what Zion-Cons privately welcome: centrifugal violence, ethnic fragmentation, militia economies, refugee flows that would make Syria look like a rehearsal dinner. Kurdish separatism. Baloch insurgency. Nuclear insecurity. The scenario reads less like a transition plan than a controlled demolition spiralling out of control.
For Washington and Tel Aviv, this is not a deterrent. It is an acceptable – perhaps even desirable – outcome. A broken Iran is preferable to a strong one, even if the shards cut indiscriminately.
The masculinity problem
“Real men go to Tehran” is not merely rhetoric. It is theatre. It reflects a masculinity crisis at the heart of American empire — a compulsion to prove relevance through violence because legitimacy has evaporated.
Short wars. Clean optics. Cinematic strikes. The problem with Iran is that it refuses to follow the script. There is no “Mission Accomplished” banner waiting in the Persian Gulf. There is only attrition, retaliation, and the dawning realisation that power is not a substitute for strategy.
The endgame nobody admits
The scarcely concealed truth is that regime change in Iran is not primarily about Iran. It is about preserving Zionist hegemony in the region. An Iran that survives sanctions, absorbs pressure, and refuses submission is contagious. It teaches others that defiance is survivable.
That lesson is intolerable
So, the fantasy endures. The slogans recycle. The men who went to Baghdad insist they are wiser now — just before deliberately repeating the same catastrophe, only on a grander scale.
But Tehran is not a sequel. It is a reckoning. And this time, the audience will not be so forgiving.
US Sending Troops to Middle East Over Trump’s Threats Against Iran – Reports
Sputnik – 16.01.2026
WASHINGTON – The United States is sending troops to the Middle East over the consideration of potential strikes on Iran by President Donald Trump, Fox News reported on Thursday, citing military sources.
At least one US aircraft carrier is moving toward the region amid the growing tensions, the report said.
“US military assets are preparing to move to the Middle East, likely to include at least one aircraft carrier and additional missile defense systems that will operate from air, land and sea,” Fox News’ Chief National Security Correspondent Jennifer Griffin said on air.
However, it is unknown whether it is USS Abraham Lincoln, which is currently operating in the South China Sea, or one of the two carriers that left US bases earlier this week, the report added.
President Donald Trump has been presented with military options and favors any action being “swift and decisive,” while avoiding a wider regional war, according to the report.
Iranian state media, cited by Fox News, issued a warning to Washington: “You hit. We hit.”
Report: Kurdish Fighters Have Been Entering Iran From Iraq and Clashing With the IRGC
By Dave DeCamp | The Libertarian Institute | January 14, 2026
Turkish intelligence has warned Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) that Kurdish fighters have been entering Iran from Iraq amid protests inside Iran, Reuters reported on Wednesday.
An unnamed senior Iranian official speaking to the outlet said that the IRGC has been clashing with armed Kurdish fighters dispatched from both Iraq and Turkey. The Kurdistan Freedom Party, or PAK, a Kurdish Iranian separatist group mainly based in Iraq, has been claiming that its armed wing has been conducting operations against Iranian forces.
On Tuesday, the PAK claimed its forces launched an attack on an IRGC base in western Iran. The Reuters report and claims of Kurdish attacks come as Tehran is accusing the US and Israel of arming “terorrists” inside Iran who have attacked Iranian security forces.
The US has a significant presence in Iraqi Kurdistan, including a military base and an $800 million consulate compound that it opened in December. The Israeli Mossad is also known for having a presence in the area, and Iran claimed that it attacked a Mossad base in Iraqi Kurdistan in 2024.
The Mossad has a long history of covert operations inside Iran, and a Farsi-language X account affiliated with the Israeli spy agency suggested it had operatives on the ground in Iran when the protests first broke out. “Let’s come out to the streets together. The time has come. We are with you. Not just from afar and verbally. We are with you in the field as well,” the account said on December 29.
Israel’s Channel 14 has reported that “foreign actors” have armed protesters in Iran and said that’s the reason why hundreds of Iranian security personnel have been killed.
“We reported tonight on Channel 14: foreign actors are arming the protesters in Iran with live firearms, which is the reason for the hundreds of regime personnel killed,” Channel 14 reporter Tamir Morag wrote on X on Tuesday. “Everyone is free to guess who is behind it.”
The Coming War on Iran: What Has Really Been Happening?
By Robert Inlakesh | The Palestine Chronicle | January 13, 2026
The unrest inside Iran was effectively brought to a halt by the authorities, culminating in mass pro-government demonstrations in the millions across the country. Yet, the specter of a US-Israeli regime change operation continues to lie in the wake.
If you have been following the course of the protests/riots inside Iran on social media or in the corporate press, the impression given since the beginning of the year has been that Tehran is on the verge of collapse. Countless false claims were issued regarding the fall of entire cities, the collapse of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), a massacre of peaceful protesters and even that Ayatollah Khamenei was seeking to escape to Moscow.
Evidently, the reality on the ground couldn’t have been more opposite of what the pro-regime change news outlets and social media influence operations have been portraying. Therefore, to understand what is happening, it is important to understand what truly transpired.
The Road to another Regime Change War
Ever since the conclusion of the 12-Day War between Iran and Israel last June, foreign policy hawks have made it abundantly clear that another round of fighting was only a matter of time. In fact, on July 7, 2025, Axios News reported that Israeli officials were already seeking a green-light, from the US President for them to attack Iran again.
Influential pro-Israeli Washington-based think tanks – such as the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD), Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP), and the Atlantic Council – all agreed that another round would be necessary, yet argued in different ways that the next round would have to result in the closure of the conflict for the foreseeable future.
The reasoning behind this was clear: if the next round was to mirror the 12-Day War, then another round would again become an inevitability. This scenario would mean that every 6-12 months, the conflict would go from Cold to Hot, a predicament that would actually heavily favour Iran.
If Tehran manages to keep repeating a similar series of rounds to what we saw in June of 2025, the Israelis will be at an enormous disadvantage. Not only does Israel have a smaller territory in which to operate, making taking out vital infrastructure easier, but it cannot produce weapons and rebuild at the rate Iran can. For example, the air defence munitions it depleted last year have still not been fully replenished, and many of the sites struck in Tel Aviv remain in ruins.
Iran, on the other hand, has been able to mass-produce ballistic missiles and drones. Western publicly released estimates greatly vary, but often indicate that the Iranians have replenished their arsenals, whereas the indications coming from Iran itself appear to suggest that they have superseded what they previously possessed, both in quantity and quality.
The US and Israel, nevertheless, have clearly been threatening to attack Iran once again for months, using varying excuses about why. Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu has recently been complaining about Iran’s missile program, which quickly became a talking point of the Trump administration, too.
Yet, the moment to attack Iran clearly hadn’t presented itself. There were simply too many variables, too many unknowns, and too many doubts for them to commit any action. We also saw this when it came to Israeli threats against Hezbollah in Lebanon. Even got to the point late last year that Hezbollah’s Secretary General, Naim Qassem, publicly stated that Israel is just bluffing and that although something may happen in the new year, he essentially told the Israelis to shut up and just attack if they were set on doing so.
Why didn’t Israel attack Lebanon? Perhaps the biggest reason why they didn’t is because of Iran and the fear of how far such a war could go. The Israelis attempted assassinations and ramped up their air attacks as a means of attempting to draw a retaliatory strike from Hezbollah, but this failed. Instead, the option left on the table was full-scale war or no war at all.
Then came the pivot to Iran, at least in terms of public propaganda and ramping up rhetoric.
Riots In Iran as A Prelude to War
On December 28, the Israelis spotted a new opportunity. Protests erupted throughout cities across Iran, as mainly shopkeepers took to the streets in order to express their outrage at government mismanagement amidst the ongoing sanctions-induced economic crisis.
To be clear, these protests were totally organic and genuine; they had the backing of major Unions inside the country, and the Iranian government appeared to be quickly engaging with them in order to reach concessions. There was no violence at these protests initially. Even when suspected agent provocateurs had attempted to chant for regime change, shopkeeper protesters had forced them out of their crowds.
By December 29, former Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett then posted a video on social media, in which he claimed that Israel was standing with the Iranians “rising up” against their government. Bear in mind that when this address was issued, the situation in Iran was in fact relatively calm, and the widespread riots had not yet taken place.
However, on social media, old videos and AI-generated clips were suddenly spread like wildfire, in a clearly coordinated campaign led by the Israelis and their Iranian opposition allies.
Almost out of nowhere, rioters began to spring up in small groups, primarily in the West of Iran. Some of these rioters carried weapons, but most just committed vandalism and burned down cars or shops. At this point, the protests over the economic crisis began to reduce, to be replaced by anti-government protests. Despite the violence and escalating rhetoric, the authorities in Tehran made sure to distinguish between rioters and legitimate protesters, not bringing down full force against them.
Then came the first day of the New Year, when the violence suddenly exploded. Iranian opposition channels began claiming cities had fallen, which never happened; they claimed millions were rising against the government, which also was not the case. On January 1, two Iranian police officers were murdered, and rioters even executed a young man who belonged to the Basij paramilitary force in the country.
The day after saw all the major Unions condemn the violent rioters, as Israel’s official Persian-language account posted AI-generated images depicting Iran’s police forces hosing down peaceful protesters. Again, the riots escalated and more members of the security forces were murdered, as rioters committed arson attacks.
All of this ended up coming to a head on January 8, as the riots escalated dramatically and this led to Iran shutting down the internet across the country as it took the gloves off and sent its IRGC forces in to stabilise the situation.
The largest recorded anti-government protests, as one called for by the Shah’s son from the comfort of California, numbered no more than in the tens of thousands. It is estimated that at their peak, there were around 40,000 that showed up.
The footage that began emerging from the streets of Tehran and elsewhere was nothing short of shocking, mass destruction and arson against public transit, the burning of mosques, attacks on schools, medical clinics, shops, homes and streets left in ruins as dumpsters were overturned and set alight, along with all the vehicles in sight.
In total, Iran claims that over 100 members of its security forces were murdered, 350 Mosques were set ablaze and 150 ambulances were damaged or destroyed. Civilians were also brutally murdered by the rioters, reportedly including a three-year-old child and a nurse who was burned to death; multiple police officers were also burned alive.
Without needing to go any further, there is copious evidence of armed militants firing on security forces and mass violence committed against civilian infrastructure. What started as a totally normal and organic series of protests was hijacked and turned into an Israeli-backed riot campaign. This was not comparable to the likes of the 2022 or 2009 unrest, which were evidently taken advantage of by Iran’s enemies, but had support from a sizable portion of the population nonetheless.
In the end, it appeared that by January 12, when millions of Iranians came to the streets across the country in solidarity with their government and against the rioters, the Israeli-backed operation had failed.
Yet, the US government had begun to ramp up its direct threats of intervention as the riots died down. Leaving the question open as to when the next round of American strikes would occur, following Donald Trump’s decision to bomb Iran last year.
The real question is whether these riots were a desperate and failed regime change attempt in and of themselves, or this was simply a prelude to what’s coming next. If the Israelis were truly betting on these riots equalling regime change, then perhaps the calculation is for the US to attack in order to revive the riots on the ground.
Alternatively, the instability was only for the purpose of setting up a larger attack, which would mean a much larger war could have been planned. In order for the US and Israel to achieve their desired outcome, that being either regime change or a massive blow that will end the war between Israel and Iran for the foreseeable future, they will likely go after Iran’s infrastructure.
In such a scenario, expect the kitchen sink to be thrown at Iran. Armed terrorist militia insurgencies, airstrikes, agents on the ground, and more riot activity. In particular, attacks on the electrical grid, water, oil, agriculture, and everything that makes the economy function. In other words, an attempt to achieve regime change this way, or to simply make war so costly that Iran won’t seek it for some time afterwards. Perhaps the goal could be to weaken Iran to a degree where it would negotiate on US terms, yet this is highly unlikely.
Iran dealt with these threats by issuing its own, doubling down and adopting an ultra-aggressive posture. What comes next could go many ways, so we are left to wait and see.
– 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.
US Cargo Planes Have Flooded the Persian Gulf Since the First of December
By Larry C. Johnson | SONAR | January 13, 2026
In December 2025 and January 2026 (through early/mid-January), open-source intelligence (OSINT) and flight-tracking data indicate a significant surge in US military transport aircraft (primarily heavy lifters like C-17 Globemaster III and C-5M Galaxy) flying to or toward US bases in the Persian Gulf, such as Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar, with reports consistently describing “dozens” of such movements.
Al Udeid Air Base (also known as Abu Nakhlah Airport) is the largest U.S. military installation in the Middle East, located in the desert approximately 20–35 km (12–22 miles) southwest of Doha, Qatar. It serves as a critical strategic hub for U.S. and allied operations in the region. Al Udeid is the headquarters for the forward element of US Central Command (CENTCOM), US Air Forces Central Command (AFCENT), and the Combined Air Operations Center (CAOC) — which commands and controls airpower across a 21-nation area from Northeast Africa to Central Asia. It also hosts elements of the US Special Operations Command Central and allies like the Royal Air Force (RAF)’s No. 83 Expeditionary Air Group.
Al Udeid is just the tip of the iceberg as far as the US presence in the Persian Gulf is concerned. Here are the other bases:
Naval Support Activity Bahrain (Bahrain, in Manama):
Headquarters for the US Navy’s Fifth Fleet (NAVCENT), responsible for maritime operations in the Persian Gulf, Red Sea, Arabian Sea, and parts of the Indian Ocean.
Hosts ~9,000 personnel (military and civilians).
Key for naval presence, including ships, patrol craft, and support for regional security.
Camp Arifjan (Kuwait, near Kuwait City)
Forward headquarters for US Army Central (ARCENT).
Major logistics, supply, and command hub for ground forces and prepositioned equipment.
Ali Al Salem Air Base (Kuwait, ~40 km from the Iraqi border)
Known as “The Rock”; supports airlift, refueling, transport, and expeditionary air operations (home to the 386th Air Expeditionary Wing).
Camp Buehring (Kuwait, near the Iraq border)
Staging post for Army units deploying to Iraq/Syria and training/operations support.
Al Dhafra Air Base (United Arab Emirates, south of Abu Dhabi)
Shared with UAE Air Force; critical US Air Force hub for reconnaissance, intelligence, fighter operations (e.g., F-22 Raptors), and missions against threats like ISIS.
Prince Sultan Air Base (Saudi Arabia) — Hosts US fighter jets and air defense; reactivated for regional deterrence.
Multiple reports from OSINT sources, flight trackers (e.g., FlightRadar24), and media outlets (including Israeli, European, and international sources) describe dozens of heavy transport aircraft (C-17s and C-5s) departing from US bases, the UK (e.g., RAF Mildenhall), and Germany, heading eastward to Persian Gulf hubs. This activity ramped up notably in early January 2026, with ongoing reports of C-17s, C-5s, and related support aircraft (including tankers like KC-135 and KC-46) en route.
The movements are most likely preparations for an attack on Iran (e.g., protests, air defense boosts), and analysts note similarities to prior buildups. No exact daily or total count is publicly confirmed by the Pentagon, but the scale is described as a “major redeployment” or “heavy airlift,” often in the range of dozens (20–50+ individual aircraft movements, though some may be round-trips or rotations).
In my last piece I listed the deployment of a US carrier task force as a possible indicator of an impending US military attack on Iran. I may be wrong. The surge of US military cargo planes over the last 40 days suggests that the US may opt for an air campaign and is deploying air defense systems to all of the bases listed above in preparation for such an attack. I believe that US planners believe they can knock out Iranian missile sites and, with a bevy of Patriot and THAAD air defense systems, defeat any Iranian retaliation.
All of the information I’ve presented above comes from open source intelligence (OSINT). If I can read it so can the Iranians, the Russians and the Chinese. Would you be shocked to learn that the Russians and the Chinese have satellite systems that are collecting intelligence on these bases as well and passing that information to Iran? Iran will know the location of the US air defense systems.
Based on the Iranian response to the surprise attack on June 13, I expect Iran will initially flood the US bases with drones and older missiles that will drain the US anti-missile defense systems… The US does not have an unlimited supply of Patriot missiles. If Iran has swallowed it pride and has accepted a robust supply of Russian and Chinese air defense units, then it has a better chance of surviving a US attack intended to neutralize Iran’s ability to launch ballistic missiles, which are stored in a number of underground bunkers scattered around Iran.
I still think that the first move by the US will be a cyber attack on Iran’s military command and control system. However, Iran has a robust cyber capability as well and would likely respond in kind to any such attack. Trump will receive a full briefing from Pete Hegseth’s War Department today (Tuesday) and a decision on the US courses of action is likely to follow.
I discussed these issues today with Judge Napolitano and Danny Davis. We also analyzed the war in Ukraine.
Iran’s Mass Protests /Patrick Henningsen & Lt Col Daniel Davis
Daniel Davis / Deep Dive – January 12, 2026
Inside Israel’s Support For Reza Pahlavi
Israel Wants The Son Of Iran’s Former Shah In Power After A Regime Change War
The Dissident | January 10, 2026
Recently, Reza Pahlavi, the son of the former U.S./Israeli backs Shah of Iran- who was installed after the U.S. backed a coup against Iran’s democratically elected president Mohammad Mosaddegh in 1953, and overthrown in the Iranian Revolution in 1979- has been encouraging increasingly violent protests with the goal of regime change in Iran.
Pahlavi, who lives in Washington, has been cheering on pro-regime change protests saying in a message to protestors , “I am certain that by making our street presence more targeted, and at the same time cutting off the financial lifelines, we will completely bring the Islamic Republic and its worn-out and fragile repression apparatus to its knees”.
He went on to call for protestors to seize cities in Iran with the eventual goal of regime change, saying, “In this regard, I invite workers and employees in key sectors of the economy – especially transportation, oil, gas, and energy – to begin a nationwide strike. I also ask all of you today and tomorrow, Saturday and Sunday (January 10 and 11), from 6 p.m., to come to the streets with flags, images, and national symbols and claim public spaces as your own. Our goal is no longer merely to come to the streets; the goal is to prepare for seizing the centers of cities and holding them” adding, “I, too, am preparing to return to the homeland so that at the time of our national revolution’s victory, I can be beside you, the great nation of Iran. I believe that day is very near. Long live Iran”.
What is not as well known is that Reza Pahlavi is deeply connected to Israel, and that Israeli intelligence has run propaganda campaigns in an attempt to promote Pahlavi, who they want to prop up after enacting regime change in Iran.
In 2023, Reza Pahlavi made an official visit to Israel, at the behest of its then Intelligence Minister, Gila Gamlie, where he met with Benjamin Netanyahu and Israeli President Isaac Herzog.
During the visit, he called for Iran to move towards Israel and away from supporting Palestinian resistance. As Forward noted, “In April 2023, Pahlavi traveled to Israel, where he met with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and President Isaac Herzog, and paid a visit to the Western Wall, where he said he prayed ‘for the day when the good people of Iran and Israel can renew our historic friendship.’ He even consulted Israeli water management scientists, whom he dubbed the ‘best experts in the field,’ to help him develop a plan of action for Iran’s water crisis, which has also been a major point of contention for protestors.”
The Likud-connected Jerusalem Centre for Security and Foreign Affairs wrote at the time of the visit, “The main message of his visit was the possibility and urgency of peace between the two ancient nations of Israel and Iran. However, this will not happen unless the Iranian people can succeed in overthrowing the Islamic Republic, the common enemy that cements the relationship between a majority of Iranians and Israel.”
In other words, Israel wants regime change in Iran and to install Reza Pahlavi, so it can continue it’s ethnic cleansing plan in Gaza and the West Bank and further greater Israel expansion, without facing any roadblocks from Iran, and to cut off a supporter of resistance to Israeli expansion.
During the visit, Reza Pahlavi promised to further this Israeli goal if he were installed in power, saying, “The biblical relationship we have with Israel was long before it became a state”.
Following the visit, Israeli intelligence launched a propaganda campaign online, designed to promote Reza Pahlavi and support for him being installed into power in Iran.
The Israeli newspaper Haaretz reported that following the visit, “a large-scale digital influence campaign in Persian was underway, operated out of Israel and funded by a private entity that receives government support,” adding, “The campaign promotes Pahlavi’s public image and amplifies calls for restoring the monarchy. The campaign relies on ‘avatars,’ fake online personas posing as Iranian citizens on social media.”
Haaretz went on to report:
According to five sources with direct knowledge of the project, native Persian speakers were recruited for the operation. Three of the sources confirmed the connection between the project and this specific campaign, and said they witnessed the network advancing pro-Pahlavi messaging.
According to the sources, the campaign included fake accounts on platforms such as X and Instagram and used artificial intelligence tools to help disseminate key narratives, craft its messages, and generate content.
The report added, “While Pahlavi declares that he’s not running for any position, in recent years a social media campaign has been calling for the monarchy’s restoration, with Reza on the throne. According to the sources, part of this effort is based on a network of fake accounts originating in Israel.”
Similarly, before the current unrest in Iran, Israeli intelligence used social media in an attempt to foment violent riots that would lead to regime change in Iran.
The University of Toronto’s Citizen Lab uncovered another social media campaign in Persian operated through Israeli intelligence, which “advanced a narrative of regime change in Iran”.
During the Israel/American bombing of Iran in June of the last year, the Israeli accounts, were, “sharing images and videos of alleged civil unrest and instability in Iran”, “published a series of posts highlighting the alleged economic upheaval in Iran after the first few rounds of bombings” and “told followers to head to ATMs to withdraw money, emphasized that the Islamic Republic was ‘stealing our money to escape with its officials,’ and urged followers to rise up against the regime.”
They also, “urged followers to get on their balconies at 8 p.m. each evening and shout ‘Death to Khamenei’” and “appeared to make another push to trigger unrest by questioning the ceasefire”.
Along with this, the Israeli bot accounts shared “several instances of videos edited and shared to mislead viewers about protest activity occurring in Iran” and shared fake news headline that claimed, “Officials flee the country; High-ranking officials leave Iran one after another”.
After the bombing, the Israeli bot accounts, “pivoted to content related to the country’s ongoing water and energy crisis” in an attempt to, “escalate these tensions by creating and sharing content related to these issues”.
The report noted that the bot network is “still consistently posting about both the water crisis and energy shortage, in a likely attempt to continue to escalate tensions between Iranian citizens and their government.”
During the current protests, which began as peaceful protests around Iran’s mismanagement of the economy, but were taken over by a violent regime change element, Israeli and American officials have openly boasted that there are Mossad agents on the ground, attempting to push the protests in a pro-regime change direction.
Israel’s Heritage Minister Amichai Eliyahu boasted that, “we have some of our people operating there (in Iran) right now”, while a Mossad linked X account claimed that the Mossad was, “with you in the field as well” to Iranian protestors and the former CIA director and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo wrote , “Happy New Year to every Iranian in the streets. Also, to every Mossad agent walking beside them.”
Israel’s puppet, Reza Pahlavi, cheering on regime change riots in Iran, needs to be seen as a part of Israel’s broader plan- enacted after the 2023 visit, to install him after carrying out its longtime goal of regime change.
Somaliland and the ‘Greater Israel’ project
By Robert Inlakesh | Al Mayadeen | January 7, 2026
More than a simple recognition of Somaliland, “Israel” is hatching a scheme alongside its Emirati allies aimed at a regional expansion agenda. For the so-called “Greater Israel” vision to come alive, dominance must be secured not only across West Asia and North Africa, but also throughout the Horn of Africa.
The recent decision by the occupying entity in “Tel Aviv” to recognize Somaliland as a State has triggered outrage across Africa and much of the Islamic World, while drawing condemnations from most Arab capitals, with the notable exception of Abu Dhabi.
For the most part, analysts have pointed to “Israel’s” desire to use Somaliland as a staging ground for aggression against Yemen as a primary motivation behind the move. Some have further noted that officials of the Zionist regime have expressed interest in ethnically cleansing Gaza’s people and forcibly transferring them to Somaliland. While these factors evidently inform Israeli decision-making, they do not exhaust its strategic calculus; yet the conspiracy goes much deeper.
On November 24, 2025, the influential Israeli think-tank Institute for National Security Studies (INSS) released a report detailing both the benefits and drawbacks of recognizing Somaliland. While the report acknowledged multiple strategic incentives for such a move, it ultimately advised against proceeding before the United States had done so.
The INSS had advocated against the move, hedging that such a declaration would further isolate “Israel” within the framework of the so-called “Abraham Accords”, triggering backlash on the international stage regarding the issue of Palestinian statehood.
So what changed since the Israeli think tank report?
Understanding the Israeli thinking here, such a move would not be made if they saw it as a net negative. Instead, the recognition was offered in a very public and brazen manner. In order to make sense, we therefore have to look at the broader picture.
To begin with, the normalization drive [“Abraham Accords”] has clearly stalled, at least in terms of any major developments in this regard. The last country to enter into the fold of the broader Trump administration-led normalization movement was Kazakhstan. For context, Astana already normalized ties with the Zionist regime back in 1992.
Although US President Donald Trump announced Kazakhstan’s declaration as a development of great significance, the move was clearly seen as a weak attempt at keeping the normalization project alive amid the conspicuous absence of Saudi Arabia. In parallel, an increasingly desperate Israeli entity has launched what it calls the “Isaac Accords”, a separate normalization project with Latin American nations that are client regimes of the US.
In other words, the Israelis were not actually in a position where they necessarily viewed recognition of Somaliland as an impediment to their normalization agenda. In fact, through projecting power in the Horn of Africa, they may even see it as an advancement of this project, especially given that some 6 million people who identify as belonging ethnically to Somaliland are Muslims.
Another element of the move is to assert their dominance and to lash out internationally over the wave of recognition, last September, for the state of Palestine.
In addition, the elephant in the room here is that the Israelis are currently pursuing a joint agenda with the United Arab Emirates, particularly in both the Horn of Africa and Northern Africa. This alliance seeks to co-opt sectarian movements, separatist groups, and to weaponize warlords in order to reshape the continent as a whole.
The Emirati and Israeli agendas are one in this regard. They are inseparable and connected on almost every conceivable level, this is to the point that the de facto head of intelligence operations for the UAE has long been a man named Mohammed Dahlan, well known for his alleged involvement with Mossad and the CIA; particularly in Africa.
The UAE’s proxy in Yemen, the Southern Transitional Council (STC), seized the Hadhramaut and al-Mahra provinces from Saudi-backed forces in early December, bringing around 80% of Yemen’s oil resources under their control. The STC’s militants have even been trained by “Israel”. The UAE’s move, which would not have come without Zionist backing, now threatens the stability of the Arabian Peninsula and triggered major backlash from Riyadh.
While “Israel” is reportedly seeking to build up a military presence near the strategically located port of Berbera in Somalia’s Somaliland, the UAE began constructing the Berbera airbase as early as 2017, securing access to it for a period of 25 years. Similarly, the UAE–Israeli alliance has extended to the establishment of a joint military presence on Yemen’s strategically located island of Socotra.
It is speculated that the Emirati-backed STC, in southern Yemen, may launch an offensive aimed at capturing the Ansar Allah-controlled port city of Hodeidah, likely receiving Israeli aerial support. The coastline of Somaliland lies only 300 to 500 kilometers from Ansar Allah-controlled lands, making such an air campaign much more manageable than launching strikes from occupied Palestine.
Furthermore, turning to “Israel’s” agenda in Somalia itself, it is clear that this is a calculated move that targets Türkiye. Ankara maintains enormous influence in Somalia and remains a strong proponent of the “One Somalia” agenda. Therefore, at a time of heightened regional tensions, especially in Syria, where both Turkish and Israeli forces are seeking to carve out zones of influence and establish red lines, “Tel Aviv’s” move appears to be another attempt to land a strategic blow on Ankara.
Together, the Emiratis and Israelis are adamant about combating the Muslim Brotherhood and any Islamic governments or groups that voice their concerns for the Palestinians, which is why they are lobbying Western governments so hard on these issues and running non-stop propaganda campaigns against so-called “radical Islam”.
In reality, the Israeli-UAE-backed militias in Yemen are riddled with al-Qaeda-linked fighters and hardline Takfiri Salafists. The STC’s toughest fighting force, known as the Southern Giants Brigades, is reportedly led by the core of experienced militants who are former al-Qaeda fighters. In Gaza, meanwhile, the UAE and the Zionist Entity are also backing five separate proxy militias with alleged links to ISIS.
The Emiratis and Israelis are huge fans of these Salafist militants, who are totally obedient to them and adopt a mass Takfir doctrine that they use to justify the mass slaughter of Muslims. This was the same exact strategy adopted inside Syria by the Zionists, using Wahhabi extremists to do their bidding, while dividing the Muslim World and paving the way for their expansionist agenda.
If the Zionist Entity is to achieve “Greater Israel”, the common misconception is that they wish to directly occupy the entire region between the River Nile and the Euphrates. According to the Zionist vision, they would rule as an empire instead, whereby they enter into formal alliances with countries broken up into ethno-regimes and sectarian rump States. Divide and conquer.
So, dividing Somalia, in order to help the Emirati proxy-militias secure a southern Yemeni State, is precisely in line with the Zionist agenda. They will attempt to rule these territories through proxy support, using their puppets to destroy the Palestinian cause. In the case of Somaliland, if they are to succeed, they would also certainly attempt to ethnically cleanse the population of Gaza there. In other words, Somaliland recognition isn’t a small, isolated move; it is a piece being strategically positioned on their wider chessboard.
Pakistan, the Gulf, and the high cost of Zionist alignment
By Junaid S. Ahmad | MEMO | January 6, 2026
Geopolitics is most dangerous not when it erupts, but when it reorganises quietly — when the ground shifts beneath familiar alliances while elites continue to speak the language of yesterday. The Gulf today is in precisely such a moment. What once masqueraded as a coherent bloc has fractured into rival power models, incompatible strategic visions, and diverging relationships to empire, Israel, and popular legitimacy. And Pakistan, true to form, is responding not with strategic intelligence but with institutional reflex — confusing obedience with balance and habit with foresight.
The rift between Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates is no longer a matter of speculation or diplomatic gossip. It is an open contradiction — political, military, and infrastructural. Yemen has exposed it. Israel has radicalised it. The United States, particularly under Trumpism, has weaponised it. And Pakistan’s ruling elite — military and civilian alike — has chosen to drift toward the most toxic pole of this fracture while reassuring itself that it is merely being “pragmatic.” It is not. It is being complicit.
Two Gulf projects, one moral abyss
Saudi Arabia and the UAE are still lazily grouped together by analysts who mistake shared authoritarianism for shared strategy. This is intellectual malpractice. The two monarchies are pursuing fundamentally different regional projects.
Saudi Arabia’s current posture — hardly virtuous, often cynical, and deeply reactionary — nevertheless reflects a begrudging recognition of reality. After years of disastrous interventionism, Riyadh wants consolidation. It wants borders quieted, fires contained, and regional fragmentation slowed. Its outreach to Iran, cautious engagement with the
Houthis, and growing hostility to separatist militias are not gestures of enlightenment but acts of self-preservation. Endless chaos undermines Saudi ambitions at home.
The Emirati project is the opposite — and far more dangerous. Abu Dhabi does not seek order through states; it seeks domination through fragments. Ports, islands, militias, mercenaries, logistics corridors, surveillance hubs — these are its tools. Sovereignty is irrelevant. Fragmentation is not a failure; it is a business model.
If Saudi Arabia is a reactionary status-quo power, the UAE is a hyperactive destabiliser — an empire of nodes, happy to burn regions so long as trade flows and leverage compounds.
Yemen: Where the lie finally died
Yemen is where the fiction of Gulf unity collapsed beyond repair. What began as a joint intervention has devolved into a struggle over whether Yemen will exist at all as a state. The House of Saud — bloodied, embarrassed, and exposed — now insists on a unified Yemeni authority capable of enforcing borders and agreements. The UAE has invested
instead in carving out a southern enclave: separatist militias, port control, island bases, and economic chokeholds.
For Riyadh, this is existential. A fragmented Yemen exports instability directly into Saudi territory and sabotages any negotiated settlement with the Houthis. For Abu Dhabi, fragmentation is leverage — control of chokepoints matters more than Yemen’s survival as a polity.
That Saudi Arabia has now openly bombed weapons shipments linked to UAE-backed forces and issued public warnings is extraordinary. Gulf disputes are traditionally smothered in silence. When they go kinetic and public, it signals not a spat but a structural rupture. Pakistan’s establishment sees this — and chooses denial.
Israel: The cancer at the core
To understand the Emirati recklessness, one must confront the real axis around which it revolves: Apartheid, genocidal Israel.
The Abraham Accords were not peace agreements; they were an integration pact into Zionist regional supremacy. Israel does not merely occupy Palestine; it exports a model — militarised impunity, surveillance capitalism, permanent war dressed as security. The UAE did not normalize with Israel reluctantly. It embraced Israel as a force multiplier.
Israel provides Abu Dhabi with access to Washington’s coercive machinery, advanced surveillance, cyberwarfare, and a propaganda ecosystem that converts mass death into “stability.” In return, the UAE provides geography, ports, islands, mercenaries, and political insulation — doing Israel’s dirty work where Tel Aviv prefers not to appear.
Sudan. Somaliland. Socotra. Cyprus. The Red Sea. These are not isolated projects; they are components of a Zionist–Emirati expansion strategy designed to insulate Israel from economic pressure and accountability while strangling any resistance corridor before it matures.
Israel is the disease. The UAE is its most enthusiastic carrier.
Pakistan’s elite: Zionism in uniform and suits
Pakistan’s tragedy is not that it lacks options. It is that its ruling elite lacks dignity.
Rather than reassess its position amid this fracture, Pakistan’s military–civilian elite clings to the rhetoric of “balance” while deepening structural entanglement with the Emirati–Israeli axis. Ports, airports, logistics terminals, military-linked corporations — these are not neutral investments. They are instruments of alignment.
Pakistan’s generals and their civilian accessories imagine they are playing geopolitics. In reality, they are being used as infrastructure — cheap, deniable, disposable. Their behaviour is not naïveté. It is covert Zionism: collaboration without confession, obedience without ideological honesty. They mouth solidarity with Palestine while embedding Pakistan’s economy and security apparatus deeper into a regional order built to protect Israel from consequences. This is not pragmatism. It is moral and strategic bankruptcy.
Venezuela: When empire drops the mask
The illusion that empire prefers subtlety should have died long ago. Venezuela put the lie to it.
When sanctions failed and proxy pressure proved insufficient, the United States escalated —directly. US special forces were involved in a scandalous operation that culminated in the kidnapping of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro. This was not deniable proxy warfare. It was naked imperial contempt for sovereignty.
And what happens if Washington’s decapitation move fails at complete regime change in Caracas? Silence. Zero accountability. Empire simply moves on.
This is the future Pakistan’s elite is courting. When alignment fails to deliver stability, the costs will not be borne by Washington, Tel Aviv, or Abu Dhabi. They will be borne by Pakistan. Empire does not protect collaborators. It discards them.
Saudi Arabia: A lesser evil, still an evil
Saudi Arabia deserves no absolution. The House of Saud remains a reactionary monarchy, structurally hostile to popular sovereignty and deeply entangled with empire. Its version of “stability” is still oppression — merely quieter than the Emirati inferno.
Yet the difference matters. Saudi Arabia understands that Zionist expansionism generates perpetual instability. The UAE celebrates it. Riyadh conceals its servitude; Abu Dhabi flaunts it.
Pakistan’s elite has chosen to tilt slightly more towards the louder master.
Trumpism: Empire without shame
Hovering over this landscape is Trumpism — the ideological nakedness of empire. Trump dispenses with liberal hypocrisy entirely. Loyalty is transactional. Morality is a joke. Strongmen are preferred to institutions. Israel is sacred. Everyone else is expendable.
The UAE fits this worldview perfectly: ruthless, efficient, unburdened by public opinion. Pakistan’s rulers mistake proximity to this axis for relevance. In truth, it entrenches their subordination.
When things go wrong — as they inevitably will — Trumpism will shrug. Pakistan will bleed.
The reckoning Pakistan is avoiding
The Gulf is not merely fracturing; it is sorting. States will be forced to choose — between sovereignty and fragmentation, between justice and normalisation, between dignity and managed submission.
Pakistan’s establishment has already chosen. It just lacks the courage to admit it. History will not judge Pakistan for failing to be the Mafia Don of West Asia. It will judge it for failing to recognise a moral and strategic crossroads when it stood directly upon it.
The UAE will continue to burn regions in service of Zionism. Israel will continue its genocidal project. The United States will continue to kidnap, sanction, and discard. Saudi Arabia will continue to pretend restraint equals virtue.
And Pakistan — unless it breaks from habit — will continue confusing servitude for strategy.
Real Counter to US Nabbing Maduro: Quit Buying American Arms
Sputnik – 06.01.2026
On January 3, the US launched a massive attack on Venezuela, capturing Maduro and his wife and taking them to New York. US President Donald Trump announced that Maduro and Flores would face trial for allegedly being involved in “narco-terrorism” and posing a threat, including to the US.
The Global Majority in Latin America, Africa, and Asia should hold the United States to account by stopping purchases of US weapons, including F-16s, F-35s, and halting collaboration with companies like Boeing, Lockheed-Martin, and Raytheon, former UN independent expert Alfred de Zayas told Sputnik.
“US businesses are vulnerable,” he explained.
De Zayas was shocked by “the brazenness” of the US kidnapping Nicolas Maduro, which comes “in total impunity, and I do not see the ‘good guys’—Canada, the UK, the Europeans—coming out in defense of Venezuela and international law,” the ex-UN expert stressed.
He condemned the abduction of Maduro as a US “assault on civilization” and “retrogression in the idea of international peace and security.”
De Zayas pointed to an array of precedents pertaining to the US “assault on international law,” including the fact that George H.W. Bush bombed Panama in 1989 and “had President Noriega arrested and subjected to a show trial.”
Also, Bill Clinton bombed Yugoslavia in 1999, destroying the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade, while George W. Bush and the Coalition of the Willing invaded Iraq in 2003, which led to the death of about one million Iraqis.
Additionally, Barack Obama orchestrated the 2014 coup against Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych, the expert recalled.
“No one was ever held accountable” for these actions, de Zayas concluded.
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15 Saudi ‘hijackers’ were CIA agents working for US: Scholar
Press TV – April 13, 2016
Fifteen of the 9/11 “hijackers” from Saudi Arabia were CIA agents working for the United States government, which was seeking to destroy the Middle East for Israel and to double the American military budget, says Dr. Kevin Barrett, an American academic who has been studying the events of 9/11 since late 2003…. continue
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