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Israel Brings The War Rhetoric Towards Türkiye

After Being Defeated In Iran, Israel Targets Türkiye.

By Justin K.P. – The Dissident – June 22, 2026

The idea of Israel going to war with Türkiye- a NATO member- potentially triggering World War III seems insane.

And yet Israel is using their war rhetoric towards Türkiye.

The Israeli Foreign Ministry put out a post seemingly laying the groundwork for an Israeli war, claiming that “Hamas terrorists based in Turkey are directing attacks against Israelis, funding terrorism, and recruiting operatives. The network is exposed. The facts are clear.”

This is far from the first time Israel has used war rhetoric towards Türkiye.

Israel’s Minister of Diaspora Affairs Amichai Chikli recently said that Israel “will be at war with Syria sooner or later” in part because he called Syria “a Turkish protectorate”.

He also fabricated a new “radical Sunni axis of evil” which supposedly includes Pakistan, Turkey and Qatar.

Middle East Eye reported:

“What we are witnessing before our eyes is the rise of a new axis,” Chikli told 103FM radio on Wednesday, referring to Turkey, Qatar and Pakistan. He described this so-called alliance as “a radical Sunni axis of evil, more dangerous than anything we have seen before”.

While Chikli mentioned both Qatar and Pakistan in his interviews, he mainly focused on Turkey, branding Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s vision “an extremely dangerous combination for us”.

Other members of the ruling Israeli Likud party have similarly been declaring Türkiye “an enemy state”.

Middle East Eye noted, “Last week, Israeli lawmaker Ariel Kellner, also of Likud, called Turkey an ‘enemy state’, while Culture and Sports Minister Miki Zohar said last month that Israel’“must begin to treat Turkey as an enemy state,’ suggesting that Turkey would suffer heavy blows in a possible conflict with Israel.”

It added that “In February, former prime minister Naftali Bennett indicated that he sees Turkey as an enemy, with the opposition figure stating: ‘Turkey is the new Iran.’”

Perhaps the most concerning development is the fact that the Foundation for The Defence of Democracies (FDD), an Israeli lobby cutout that played a large role in the U.S. war on Iran, has begun publishing articles using similar rhetoric towards Türkiye.

FDD put out an article titled , “Turkey the new Iran? Ankara’s growing challenge to Western interests”.

The article attempted to label Türkiye as the “new Iran”, writing:

As Iran and its proxies take a beating from American and Israeli forces, observers are questioning whether Turkey is waiting in the wings to emerge as the region’s next “bogeyman.” The answer is likely yes, albeit in its own form.

Turkey is not Iran, but depicting Turkey as a nuisance or simply “complicated” only emboldens a maturing adversarial regime with an established track record of undermining its Western allies.

The article attempted to ratchet up hostilities between Türkiye and the United States, writing, “The real question is whether Turkey is actively undermining US, NATO, and regional security interests. There is little doubt that Ankara is doing just that, and doing so more brazenly with the passage of time.”

It also lamented that Türkiye is too supportive of the Palestinian resistance, writing “Hamas, as an Iranian proxy, has served Ankara’s interests in undermining Israel’s security interests, something which Turkey would like to see intact after the end of the current war.”

FDD has similarly put out articles pushing for the U.S. to put sanctions on Türkiye, saying that “Washington should pursue Global Magnitsky sanctions against targets in Turkey” and that “the United States should utilize Global Magnitsky authorities to target Turkish individuals responsible for human rights violations”.

It also called for the U.S. to designate “government officials” in Türkiye as “terrorist organizations” and wrote that “The United States should protect the international financial sector by recommending added scrutiny and screening to transactions involving Turkish financial institutions” and that “Washington should coordinate with the G7 to return Turkey to the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) ‘grey list’ until further improvements are seen in combating terrorism financing.”

The Carnegie Endowment for Peace documented that “FDD was the brainchild of a New York Times journalist-turned-Republican operative, Clifford May,” adding that “it arose out of an organization committed to burnishing Israel’s reputation in the United States. On April 24, 2001, three major pro-Israel donors incorporated an organization called EMET (Hebrew for ‘truth’). In an application to the Internal Revenue Service for tax-exempt status, May explained that the group ‘was to provide education to enhance Israel’s image in North America and the public’s understanding of issues affecting Israeli-Arab relations.’ But in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks, May broadened the group’s mission and changed its name to the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. As he explained in a supplement to the IRS, the group’s board of directors decided to focus on ‘develop[ing] educational materials on the eradication of terrorism everywhere in the world.’”

It added that, “FDD’s chief funders have been drawn almost entirely from American Jews who have a long history of funding pro-Israel organizations. They include Bernard Marcus, the co-founder of Home Depot, whiskey heirs Samuel and Edgar Bronfman, gambling mogul Sheldon Adelson, heiress Lynn Schusterman, Wall Street speculators Michael Steinhardt and Paul Singer, and Leonard Abramson, founder of U.S. Healthcare.”

Sima Vaknin-Gil, a former Israeli military intelligence officer, in the Al Jazeera documentary The Lobby, admitted that “We have FDD” and that “the foundation is ‘working on’ projects for Israel, including ‘data gathering, information analysis, working on activist organizations, money trail. This is something that only a country, with its resources, can do the best”.

FDD played a huge role in shaping American policy towards Iran at the behest of Israel.

Now, as Israel calls Türkiye an “enemy state”- the FDD has begun pushing Washington to place sanctions on the country and designate government officials as terrorists, laying the groundwork for a new Israeli war.

June 22, 2026 Posted by | Wars for Israel | , , , , , , | Comments Off on Israel Brings The War Rhetoric Towards Türkiye

After US-Iran deal, Israeli minister threatens war on Syria ‘sooner or later’

MEMO | June 18, 2026

Israeli Diaspora Affairs Minister Amichai Chikli threatened Thursday that Israel would wage war on Syria “sooner or later,” claiming that Syria and Turkiye pose a greater challenge to Israel than Iran, Anadolu reports.

“We will wage war on Syria, sooner or later, because it and Turkiye are far more worrying than Iran,” Chikli said in an interview with Israeli radio station 103FM, affiliated with Maariv newspaper.

The remarks by Chikli, a member of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s ruling Likud party, came hours after Iran and the US signed a memorandum of understanding aimed at ending war in all fronts, including Lebanon.

The Israeli minister has repeatedly criticized regional countries involved in diplomatic efforts to end ongoing conflicts.

On Wednesday, Chikli voiced opposition to what he called the “Qatar-Turkiye-Pakistan axis,” alleging that the three countries played a role in shaping the agreement between Washington and Tehran.

“The agreement taking shape is worrying, and what worries me least is the rehabilitation of the Iranian economy,” he said, referring to damage caused by the war and years of sanctions.

Chikli claimed that his primary concern was what he described as “the axis that shaped this agreement: Qatar, Turkiye and Pakistan.”

“What we see before our eyes is the rise of a new axis,” he said, describing it as “an extremely dangerous radical Sunni axis.”

Israel occupies territories in Palestine, Syria and Lebanon and is accused of committing genocide against Palestinians in the Gaza Strip. It continues its military campaign despite international calls and UN resolutions urging an end to the occupation and support for a two-state solution.

Pakistan and Qatar have played mediation roles between Washington and Tehran, while Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan welcomed the US-Iran memorandum of understanding, describing it as “an important development” for strengthening peace and stability in the region.

Since October 2023, Israel has launched several wars in the region, beginning with genocide in the Gaza Strip, in addition to two wars on Lebanon and Iran, strikes on Syria and Yemen, and a strike on Qatar.

Israel was established in 1948 on occupied Palestinian land, and it has occupied Palestinian land as well as territory in Lebanon and Syria for decades. It refuses to withdraw from those territories or allow the establishment of an independent Palestinian state as outlined in relevant UN resolutions.

June 18, 2026 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Timeless or most popular | , , , , , , | Comments Off on After US-Iran deal, Israeli minister threatens war on Syria ‘sooner or later’

Abraham Accords: Why Trump’s “mandatory” deal collapsed

By Salman Rafi Sheikh – New Eastern Outlook – June 8, 2026

Donald Trump’s attempt to tie an Iran peace settlement to a mandatory expansion of the Abraham Accords reveals a fundamental misunderstanding of how dramatically the Middle East has changed since the Gaza war and why old diplomatic formulas no longer work.

Donald Trump has a habit of mistaking the décor of diplomacy for its substance. His latest demand — that Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Pakistan, Turkey, and others must “mandatorily” join the Abraham Accords as a condition for any Iran peace settlement — is not bold dealmaking. It is a category error dressed up as statecraft, one that conflates a 2020 diplomatic triumph with the profoundly different geopolitical realities of 2026. The silence that reportedly greeted Trump on his conference call with regional leaders was not awkward; it was diagnostic.

The Middle East Trump Remembers Does Not Exist

The original Abraham Accords of 2020 were a very significant development for several reasons. They emerged from a specific regional calculus: Gulf states, quietly terrified of Iranian expansionism, had come to view Israel as a strategic asset rather than an ideological liability. The Palestinian issue, while never abandoned rhetorically, had receded to the background of realpolitik. The formula worked precisely because it did not require Israel to make concessions and because the public cost of signing was, at the time, manageable. That calculus has been demolished by the Gaza war.

A Washington Institute for Near East Policy survey published in August 2025 found that 99% of Saudi respondents viewed normalization with Israel as a negative step. For context, in 2020, 41% had considered the Abraham Accords a positive development for the region. By 2025, that figure had collapsed to 13%. This is not marginal drift; it is a tectonic shift in public sentiment that no Arab leader, not even an absolute monarch, can afford to ignore. Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman reportedly told US lawmakers in 2024 that his efforts to advance normalization had put his life at risk. That is not a man about to sign anything without ironclad political cover.

Saudi Arabia’s position is now unambiguous and unyielding: there will be no normalization without “an irreversible pathway” to Palestinian statehood. That pathway cannot be a vague promise or a roadmap but a concrete and verifiable process. Thus, Saudi Israeli normalization is not merely paused; it is contingent on developments in the Palestinian arena and shifts in how Israel is perceived regionally. Given the vastly changed regional scenario, Saudi efforts are geared less towards normalization with Israel than towards shaping a new regional agenda in which distancing from Israel serves both the Crown’s domestic legitimacy and its aspirations for broader Islamic leadership.

Pakistan’s refusal is even more visceral. Defence Minister Khawaja Muhammad Asif flatly stated that joining the Abraham Accords “clashes with our fundamental ideologies,” and pointedly noted that Pakistani passports do not even carry Israel’s name as a valid travel destination. This position stretches back to Pakistan’s founder Muhammad Ali Jinnah’s explicit rejection of the UN partition of Palestine in 1947. The question of recognizing Israel, therefore, is not a negotiating posture; it is a constitutional identity. Qatar, meanwhile, which absorbed an Israeli airstrike as recently as last September, was never a realistic candidate.

Bundling Two Crises into One Catastrophe

There is a second, more immediate danger in Trump’s gambit: it actively threatens the Iran negotiations themselves. As even reports in the mainstream US media noted, the idea of a massive expansion of the Abraham Accords at a moment when the US has not yet secured the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz — let alone resolved Iran’s nuclear program — “seems almost absurd.” The Iran talks are already burdened with sticking points: Washington insists Iran must surrender its enriched uranium stockpile, while Tehran has insisted nuclear negotiations be deferred to later discussions and continues to demand sanctions relief and the release of frozen assets. Threading that needle is already the diplomatic equivalent of defusing a bomb blindfolded. Attaching an Israel-normalization condition to it hands Iran a ready-made argument for walking away or highlighting why the US cannot be trusted with any deal.

Not just Tehran, Iran’s neighbors — having watched Tehran survive American and Israeli airstrikes, endure a maritime blockade, and still inflict damage on global energy markets — are unlikely to respond positively to Trump’s appeal. There is a grudging, regionally shared respect for Iran’s resilience, and any demand that frames joining the Abraham Accords as a precondition will be read across the Islamic world not as American leverage but as American tone-deafness.

That said, Trump’s push might placate Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu, who has been deeply critical of US attempts to reach a peace agreement with Iran. If true, it means Trump is risking the entire Iran settlement — a genuinely consequential achievement — to manage Netanyahu’s domestic politics. That is a trade-off of staggering irresponsibility. And in a telling sign of how reality eventually wins, by Thursday this week, US sources confirmed that a tentative framework agreement with Iran was pending Trump’s approval, with the Abraham Accords entirely absent from it.

Where This Leads

Trump’s retreat from his “mandatory” demand has already begun. What comes next will reveal the structural fragility of his approach. A ceasefire framework with Iran, if finalized, will be celebrated as historic, and rightly so. But the moment that diplomatic high fades, the region it leaves behind will be considerably more resistant to the kind of top-down normalization that the Abraham Accords represented.

Instead, the explicit rejection of Trump’s demand shows that Israel now risks a form of diplomatic isolation it has not faced since before the Oslo era, as the binary division between a “moderate axis” including Israel and Gulf states gives way to more fluid alignments that no longer treat Iran as the primary regional threat and in which public identification with Israel is seen as illegitimate and potentially regime-threatening.

The harder question is whether the United States can build a durable Middle East architecture on the foundation of a deal that most of the region’s population views as illegitimate. Normalization imposed by American diktat, without justice for Palestinians and for the Iranians, will not hold. Agreements signed under duress — economic, diplomatic, or military — have a long history of unraveling, often at the worst possible moment. What the post-Gaza Middle East demands is not a grander version of the Abraham Accords. It demands a reckoning with why those accords, for all their genuine diplomatic ingenuity, failed to prevent the conditions that produced October 7 in the first place. Until Washington grasps that, its deal-making — however theatrical — will keep colliding with a region that has moved on.

Salman Rafi Sheikh is a research analyst of international relations and Pakistan’s foreign and domestic affairs.

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June 8, 2026 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Wars for Israel | , , , , , | Comments Off on Abraham Accords: Why Trump’s “mandatory” deal collapsed

‘Unacceptable’: Islamabad won’t normalize with Israel, defense minister says despite Trump’s push

Press TV – May 26, 2026

Pakistan’s Defense Minister Khawaja Asif has asserted opposition to his country’s normalizing relations with the Israeli regime after US President Donald Trump called on regional states to enter rapprochement deals with Tel Aviv.

Speaking to Pakistani broadcaster Samaa TV on Monday, Asif said Pakistan should not support agreements that conflict with the country’s “fundamental ideologies.”

Asif made the remarks after being asked about the possibility of Pakistan’s joining the so-called Abraham Accords – a set of Washington-facilitated détentes that have normalized relations between some regional countries and Tel Aviv – following reported pressure from Trump.

Questioning engagement with the regime, the Pakistani defense minister added, “How will you sit down with those people whose word cannot be trusted even for a single day?”

He also reiterated Islamabad’s longstanding position regarding the regime. “We have a very clear stance that this is not acceptable to us,” Asif said.

Referring to Pakistan’s passport policy, he added, “And secondly, on our passports, we are the only country whose passports don’t even include Israel’s name.”

Trump pushes for expansion of Abraham Accords

The remarks came as Trump called for more countries to follow the example of such states as the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain that have entered rapprochement deals with Tel Aviv.

He suggested that those countries join the “Abraham Accords” before conclusion of any agreement between Iran and the United States aimed at ending the cycle that has arisen out of Washington’s unprovoked aggression against the Islamic Republic.

Trump said expansion of the accords “should start with the immediate signing by Saudi Arabia and Qatar, and everybody else should follow suit.”

He also said that during discussions with leaders of Muslim and Arab countries, he stressed that “all of these Countries, at a minimum, simultaneously, [should] sign onto the Abraham Accords.”

He said “it should be mandatory” for those states to join the normalization deals “after all the work done by the United States to try and pull this very complex puzzle together.”

The US president did not clarify further, but observers commenting on his remarks said he was either trying to condition any agreement with Iran on realization of such détentes or portray a favorable picture of regional normalization with the occupying regime and Washington’s role in it.

Trump described the accords as beneficial for participating countries.

“The Abraham Accords have proven to be, for the Countries involved (The United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Morocco, Sudan, and Kazakhstan), a Financial, Economic, and Social BOOM, even during this time of Conflict and War, with the current Members never even suggesting leaving, or taking so much as even a pause,” he wrote.

Reports, including those provided by Francesca Albanese, UN special rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian territory, have shown how the countries in question, especially the UAE, have been deriving economic benefits from the normalization accords even as the Israeli regime would sustain its campaign of occupation and aggression against Palestinians, including its war of genocide on the Gaza Strip.

Palestinians and their supporters have vociferously denounced the accords, condemning their regional signatories for their betrayal of the Palestinian cause of confronting Israeli atrocities.

May 26, 2026 Posted by | Wars for Israel | , , , , , , , | Comments Off on ‘Unacceptable’: Islamabad won’t normalize with Israel, defense minister says despite Trump’s push

Sanctions Backfire: Why Pakistan Now Buys Chinese Weapons Instead of American Ones

Sputnik – 25.05.2026

Pakistan now receives up to 80% of its military imports from China — a striking reversal of the Cold War era, when the United States served as Islamabad’s primary arms supplier.
How and why did this happen? The key reason was US sanctions, retired Pakistan Air Force Captain Sultan M. Hali told Sputnik.

During Pakistan’s conflicts with India in 1965 and 1971, the United States imposed sanctions on both sides — but Pakistan was more affected since it relied heavily on Western equipment. China stepped in to help at that critical moment.

In the post-Cold War period, repeated US sanctions again disrupted Pakistan’s access to critical hardware.

Beijing, by contrast, offered technology transfer — a step Western suppliers rarely take, and when they do, it comes with a web of restrictive conditions.

Pakistan has now inducted a wide spectrum of Chinese systems, including fighter jets, air defense systems, early warning aircraft, frigates, and submarines.

May 25, 2026 Posted by | Timeless or most popular | , , , | Comments Off on Sanctions Backfire: Why Pakistan Now Buys Chinese Weapons Instead of American Ones

Trump demands Arab states normalize with Israel in exchange for Iran ceasefire: Report

Press TV – May 25, 2026

US President Donald Trump has told several Arab and Muslim leaders that he expects them to establish formal relations with Israel in exchange for a ceasefire deal with Iran to end the war, according to American officials.

Axios, citing the officials, said that Trump made the demand during a phone conversation on Saturday with leaders from Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Pakistan, Turkey, Egypt, Jordan, and Bahrain.

According to the same sources, all eight leaders expressed support for the potential agreement with Tehran during the call.

“We are with you on this deal,” one official was quoted as telling Trump, according to the report.

Another official familiar with the conversation said the US president indicated that he would next speak with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and hoped to bring him into a joint call with the same group of Arab and Muslim leaders in the future.

Trump also pushed those countries that have not yet joined the so-called Abraham Accords – a series of 2020 US-brokered normalization deals with Israel signed under the Trump administration – to do so and establish formal ties with the Tel Aviv regime, the officials added.

Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Pakistan currently maintain no official diplomatic relations with Israel.

One of the officials told Axios that there was “silence on the line” after Trump’s demand, prompting the president to joke and ask “if they are still there.”

The development comes as indirect talks between Tehran and Washington, mediated by Pakistan and facilitated by Qatar, continue based on the Islamic Republic’s 14-point proposal to reach a memorandum aimed at putting an end to the US-Israeli war on Iran.

Speaking in a televised interview on Saturday, Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmaeil Baghaei said Iran and the United States have edged closer to finalizing the 14-point memorandum to end the imposed war, halt American maritime aggression, and secure the release of Iran’s blocked assets.

He emphasized that Iran’s focus at this stage remains exclusively on ending the US-Israel war based on its proposal, which has been shuttled back and forth several times.

The criminal US-Israeli aggression against Iran began on February 28 with airstrikes that assassinated senior Iranian officials and commanders, including Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei.

Iranian Armed Forces responded by launching daily missile and drone operations targeting locations in the Israeli-occupied territories as well as US military bases and assets across the region.

Furthermore, Iran retaliated against the strikes by closing the Strait of Hormuz, which resulted in a significant increase in oil prices and its by-products.

On April 8, forty days into the war, a Pakistan-brokered temporary ceasefire between Iran and the US took effect.

Negotiations ensued in the Pakistani capital, Islamabad, but stopped short of an agreement amid Washington’s maximalist demands and insistence on unreasonable positions.

May 25, 2026 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Wars for Israel | , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Trump demands Arab states normalize with Israel in exchange for Iran ceasefire: Report

Are we on the verge of a US-Iran deal?

China is emerging as the silent, indispensable diplomatic power in the region

By Trita Parsi | May 22, 2026

Nothing is confirmed and finalized yet, and the spoilers should not be underestimated, but lots of activity points in the direction of a deal.

A few things stand out:

1. The role of China in the background is essential. Without having its fingerprints on the deal, and by that, avoiding any responsibility if it fails, China is emerging as the silent, indispensable diplomatic power in the region. (While Pakistan’s Asim Munir is traveling to Tehran, the Pakistani Prime Minister will be departing for Beijing shortly)

2. The regional involvement in the mediation is astounding: Pakistan, Qatar, Egypt, Turkey, Saudi and Oman are all or have all been playing an instrumental role in moving things forward. If a deal is reached, it will have regional buy-in (save from Israel and the UAE) at levels far beyond the JCPOA.

3. Regional diplomats and intel folks have been shuttling in and out of Tehran for weeks now. Qatar’s role, in particular, is noteworthy.

4. Europe’s absence is noticeable but not felt, as its irrelevance is becoming normalized.

5. More ships have been passing through the Strait of Hormuz. Whether these were mainly tankers going to China, and whether China paid a fee, is unclear at this point. But it is noteworthy that the ships are passing through both the Iranian AND the American “blockades.”

6. Though some distance remains to reaching a deal, my own conversation with folks on both sides has left me slightly more optimistic, primarily because of the flexibility I am detecting on the Iranian side regarding the stockpile (despite the Reuters story from yesterday). Ideas that were categorically rejected two weeks ago are now being genuinely considered.

7. If a deal is secured, Trump will face a lot of criticism from the Blob and the pro-Israel crowd in DC, but he will be in a very good position to sell the deal to the American public, whose concerns are very different from those of the Blob…

May 22, 2026 Posted by | Economics, Wars for Israel | , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Are we on the verge of a US-Iran deal?

Aafia Siddiqui and Pakistan’s bargain with American gulags

By Junaid S. Ahmad | MEMO | May 14, 2026

The Pakistani security state possesses an almost supernatural ability to discover “sovereignty” whenever cameras are rolling in Washington and to lose it entirely the moment the name Aafia Siddiqui is mentioned.

Apparently, the Field Marshal can help broker ceasefires, whisper into the ears of presidents, posture as a grand strategist of West Asian stability, and market Pakistan as the indispensable hinge of global diplomacy — yet cannot perform the infinitesimally smaller task of demanding the return of a Pakistani woman whose suffering has become one of the ugliest symbols of the War on Terror.

How extraordinary. A nuclear state that can allegedly influence the architecture of regional conflict suddenly develops the political helplessness of a hostage whenever Aafia enters the conversation. But this silence is not weakness. It is guilt.

Because Aafia Siddiqui is not merely a prisoner. She is evidence. Living evidence. Evidence of what Pakistan’s military establishment became during the War on Terror: a comprador security apparatus that rented out sovereignty to Washington in exchange for dollars, weapons, diplomatic indulgence, and the right to rule Pakistan without accountability.

The Pakistani security state did not merely cooperate with America’s post-9/11 imperial machinery; it became one of its most enthusiastic subcontractors.

Entire populations were surveilled, dissidents disappeared, torture outsourced, and citizens quietly transformed into bargaining chips in a grotesque marketplace of empire.

And hovering over this entire era is Aafia’s name — inconvenient, radioactive, impossible to bury completely.

That is why the establishment treats her like a political corpse that refuses to stay buried. To seriously campaign for her release would require reopening the darkest archives of Pakistan’s collaboration with American power. It would force questions about who handed whom over, who facilitated what, who remained silent, and who converted Pakistan into a logistics depot for the Pentagon’s civilizational psychosis after 9/11.

Far easier, then, to wrap the entire thing in patriotic theatre. More military parades. More speeches about dignity. More absurd chest-thumping from men whose understanding of sovereignty begins and ends with securing another meeting in Washington.

And what of Washington itself?

The same American national security class that spent two decades speaking the language of “freedom” while operating black sites, torture chambers, indefinite detentions, drone massacres, and legal black holes across the Muslim world now expects history to forget.

These people vaporized villages, normalized torture with bureaucratic calm, and transformed cruelty into administrative procedure. The War on Terror was not merely a military campaign; it was a moral collapse masquerading as policy sophistication. Entire careers in Washington were built on the suffering of nameless Muslims imprisoned, disappeared, or obliterated in countries most Americans could not locate on a map.

Aafia Siddiqui became one more body fed into that machine.

But perhaps the most nauseating silence of all has come from Pakistan’s self-described liberals — that exquisitely performative class forever eager to sermonise about human rights provided the victims are ideologically fashionable, geopolitically convenient, or capable of earning approving nods from Western think tanks.

For years, many treated Aafia’s case with embarrassment, discomfort, or outright contempt, as though opposing torture and indefinite imprisonment required ideological preconditions.

Their politics, so brave on social media and so submissive before Western power, collapsed entirely when confronted with a Muslim woman brutalised by the American security state.

One quickly discovers that many liberals denounce authoritarianism only when it is not backed, funded, or sanctified by Washington.

And this is why the current spectacle surrounding Pakistan’s supposed geopolitical “importance” feels so hollow.

If Islamabad truly possesses the leverage its propagandists endlessly advertise, then securing the return of Aafia Siddiqui should be diplomatically trivial. The fact that nothing happens exposes the fraud.

This entire performance — the summits, the strategic dialogues, the pompous headlines about mediation and influence — increasingly resembles what it has always been: choreography for a dependent elite desperate to appear powerful before a domestic audience it profoundly despises.

Because genuine sovereignty does not tremble before memory. Yet Aafia’s name continues to haunt Pakistan’s rulers precisely because it resurrects memories they cannot control: the years of submission, the moral prostitution of the War on Terror, the generals who sold obedience as patriotism, the politicians who marketed humiliation as pragmatism, and the intellectual class that watched much of it unfold with cowardly
silence.

Empires eventually decline. Press conferences disappear. Generals retire into gated compounds. But evidence remains.

May 14, 2026 Posted by | Deception, Timeless or most popular | , , | Comments Off on Aafia Siddiqui and Pakistan’s bargain with American gulags

Iraq, Pakistan ink Hormuz safe passage deals with Iran: Report

The Cradle | May 13, 2026

Iraq and Pakistan have reached separate arrangements with Iran to move crude oil and liquefied natural gas (LNG) through the Strait of Hormuz under Tehran’s new system for controlled passage through the strategic waterway, Reuters reported on 12 May.

The deals come as the US-Israeli war on Iran has sharply reduced energy exports from the Gulf, a region that normally supplies 20 percent of the world’s crude oil and LNG.

Claudio Steuer of the Oxford Institute for Energy Studies told Reuters that “Iran has shifted from blocking Hormuz to controlling access to it … Hormuz is no longer a neutral transit route, it is a controlled corridor.”

Under this new framework, Iraq secured safe passage for two very large crude carriers, each carrying about 2 million barrels of crude, through the strait on Sunday.

An Iraqi oil ministry official said Baghdad is now seeking Iranian approval for additional shipments, as oil revenue makes up 95 percent of the Iraqi budget.

“Iraq is a close ally of Iran, and any deterioration in Iraq’s economy would also damage Iran’s economic interests in the country,” the official said.

In a separate arrangement, two tankers carrying Qatari LNG are heading to Pakistan after Islamabad reached an agreement with Tehran, according to two industry sources cited by Reuters.

The sources said neither Iraq nor Pakistan made direct payments to Iran or the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) for the transits.

Industry sources said Tehran is formalizing control over the strait by asking Baghdad to submit documents for each tanker, including destination, shipping details, ownership, and cargo specifications.

A Pakistani source told Reuters that the process has not been smooth, saying, “The IRGC sometimes changes the goalposts, so it is hard to keep things on track, but we are working through it.”

Amid the chokehold of the US–Iran double blockade, maritime activity through the vital Strait of Hormuz has withered to a mere five percent of its normal capacity, staggering global economies and energy markets.

The blockade has pushed Pakistan to open six overland routes for Iran-bound cargo, giving Tehran an alternative land corridor as the US blockade disrupts maritime trade through the Gulf.

A military correspondent for The Cradle reported that Pakistan issued the “Transit of Goods through Territory of Pakistan Order 2026” on 25 April, designating Karachi Port, Port Qasim, and Gwadar Deep-Sea Port to receive cargo bound for Iran and Central Asia through the Taftan border crossing.

The move could help clear around 3,000 Iranian containers stranded in Karachi after restrictions on ships traveling to and from Iran left food and consumer goods stuck at Pakistani ports.

Former Pakistani information minister Mushahid Hussain Syed said the new corridor gained importance after “the US Navy’s blockade of the Strait of Hormuz since 13 April,” but stressed that Islamabad sees the arrangement as a commercial decision rather than a direct escalation with Washington.

“The unfair blockade has left thousands of Iranian containers stuck at Karachi ports, which has made it harder for people in Iran to get consumer goods,” Syed told The Cradle.

May 13, 2026 Posted by | Aletho News | , , , , | Comments Off on Iraq, Pakistan ink Hormuz safe passage deals with Iran: Report

UAE deports tens of thousands of Pakistanis, seizes their savings amid war on Iran: Report

Press TV – May 5, 2026

Authorities in the UAE are conducting a sweeping deportation campaign targeting tens of thousands of Pakistani workers, freezing their bank accounts and stripping them of their life savings amid growing regional fallout from the US-Israeli aggression on Iran.

While initial reports from New Lines Magazine placed the number of expelled individuals at 15,000, Pakistani sources recently confirmed to Press TV that the deportations are continuing at a rapid pace and now affect tens of thousands of workers.

The expulsions target Shia Muslims or individuals who have publicly expressed solidarity with Tehran following the recent US-Israeli aggression against Iran.

Those targeted are being expelled without formal charges or legal recourse. The systematic removals involve sudden arrests, phone confiscations, and transfers between various detention facilities before the workers are forced onto flights back to Pakistan.

Crucially, deportees are being sent back “without being given the opportunity to withdraw their funds” from Emirati banks, according to a Shia cleric cited by New Lines Magazine.

This sudden seizure of assets has left many families in financial ruin, stripping workers—some of whom spent decades contributing to the Emirati economy—of their entire life savings.

Mohammad Amin Shaheedi, chief of Ummat-e-Wahida Pakistan, told the magazine that following the outbreak of the war, the UAE government launched “what appears to be an organized campaign to deport Shia individuals from the country.”

The US-Israeli aggression began on February 28 with airstrikes that assassinated senior Iranian officials and commanders, including Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei. In response, Iranian armed forces launched daily missile and drone operations targeting locations in the Israeli-occupied territories and US military bases and assets, including those in the UAE.

The ensuing war sparked immense public solidarity with Iran across the region, particularly in Pakistan.

Sources indicate the UAE’s mass expulsions are deeply tied to Islamabad’s clear stance against the Israeli regime’s aggression on Iran and Lebanon, as well as Pakistan’s prominent role as a mediator.

On April 8, forty days into the war, a Pakistan-brokered temporary ceasefire between Iran and the US finally took effect. However, subsequent peace negotiations in Islamabad ultimately stalled amid Washington’s maximalist demands and insistence on unreasonable positions.

May 5, 2026 Posted by | Full Spectrum Dominance, Wars for Israel | , , , , , | Comments Off on UAE deports tens of thousands of Pakistanis, seizes their savings amid war on Iran: Report

Iran replaces UAE ports with Pakistan corridor to break US blockade

Al Mayadeen | May 3, 2026

Pakistan has officially authorised the transit of goods into Iran through its territory and ports, positioning Karachi, Port Qasim, and Gwadar as key logistical gateways for Iranian trade while Washington’s maritime blockade attempts to strangle the Islamic Republic’s access to global commerce, Tasnim News Agency reported.

Islamabad’s Ministry of Commerce issued the Transit of Goods through Territory of Pakistan Order 2026 on April 25, bringing it into immediate effect. The order, which activates a bilateral road transport agreement signed with Tehran in 2008 but never previously used, opens six overland routes linking Pakistan’s three main ports to two Iranian border crossings, Gabd and Taftan, through Balochistan.

The announcement coincided with Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi’s visit to Islamabad for talks with Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif. The Gwadar-Gabd corridor, the shortest of the designated routes, reduces travel time to the Iranian border to between two and three hours and is projected to cut transport costs by 45 to 55 percent compared with routing cargo through Karachi, according to Pakistani officials.

The move marks a significant shift away from the UAE ports Iran had long relied upon for regional trade access, most notably Jebel Ali.

Ports with room to grow

Pakistan’s ports bring substantial existing capacity to the arrangement. Karachi and Port Qasim together handle approximately 42 million tonnes of cargo annually, with room to absorb significant additional volume.

Since the war began, Karachi alone handled approximately 75 percent of cargo rerouted toward Pakistan, according to industry data. Gwadar, operated by China Overseas Port Holding Company as the anchor of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), sits roughly 170 kilometres east of Iran’s Chabahar port, making it the most geographically proximate of the three to Iranian territory.

Tasnim framed the new arrangement in terms that extend well beyond immediate wartime logistics. The Pakistan-Iran transit corridor is expected to evolve into a strategic link connecting South Asia with Eurasia through integration with the $60 billion CPEC and China’s broader Belt and Road Initiative, an architecture originally designed to reduce China’s dependence on the Strait of Malacca by shortcutting energy transport routes through Pakistan to Xinjiang.

Blockade tightens, Tehran holds its position

US President Donald Trump announced a maritime blockade on Iran on April 13, with US forces intercepting vessels across Iranian coastal waters. Iranian officials have since warned that its continuation risks undermining ongoing negotiations.

Officials in Tehran have insisted that the blockade is a sign of US weakness, maintaining that Iran retains untapped leverage while highlighting domestic cohesion in the face of mounting external pressure.

A senior Iranian security source told Press TV that ongoing US “maritime piracy and bullying,” carried out under the guise of a blockade, would soon be met with an “unprecedented and tangible military response.”

May 3, 2026 Posted by | Economics, Wars for Israel | , , , | Comments Off on Iran replaces UAE ports with Pakistan corridor to break US blockade

US blockade crumbles as Iran turns to overland routes

Press TV – April 30, 2026

As the US intensifies its inhuman sanctions and seeks to stifle Iran’s economy through an illegal naval blockade, Tehran has made strategic adjustments.

Pakistan formally activated a new transit corridor through Iran on Friday, announcing that the inaugural shipment including frozen meat bound for Tashkent, Uzbekistan had been dispatched via the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) and Iranian overland routes.

The country designated six transit routes, including multiple key corridors connecting ports and border points inside Pakistan, forming a wide network for overland trade into Iran in a bid to bypass the maritime trade routes in the Persian Gulf.

The order, which took effect on April 25, aims to ease the logjam at Karachi Port and Port Qasim, where more than 3,000 Iran-bound containers have been stuck due to the ongoing US naval blockade of Iranian ports.

By using the new corridor, officials estimate travel time to the Iranian border will drop from 18 hours to just three hours, which in turn will lower logistics costs for regional traders.

The designated routes create a land bridge between Pakistan’s deep-sea ports and the Iranian border, offering a lifeline for third-country goods that would otherwise be vulnerable to US naval piracy at sea.

For China, the world’s largest oil importer and the destination for an estimated 90 percent of Iran’s crude exports before the current war, the opening of overland alternatives carries acute strategic significance.

With the US Navy enforcing an illegal cordon at the mouth of the Gulf of Oman since April 13, the maritime route that once carried one-fifth of global petroleum has been hijacked by an armed naval raid and subjected to systematic plunder.

The blockade’s primary target has always been as much about Beijing as Tehran. China purchases roughly 13 to 15 percent of its crude oil imports from Iran, volumes that before the war exceeded 1.38 million barrels per day.

Iranian crude, often trans-shipped through Malaysia and other intermediaries, feeds China’s independent “teapot” refineries and helps underpin Beijing’s energy security.

The Trump administration has made no secret of its intent to sever this flow. On April 23, Washington imposed sanctions on Hengli Petrochemical’s Dalian refinery, one of China’s largest independent processors, with 400,000 barrels per day capacity, alongside roughly 40 shipping companies and tankers involved in Iranian oil transport.

In a draconian announcement, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent warned that the US would constrict “the network of vessels, intermediaries and buyers Iran relies on to move its oil to global markets”.

Yet even as the American piracy tightens, the physical blockade is showing gaps. Satellite imagery and tracking data have revealed that several Iranian-flagged vessels under sanctions had sailed out of the Persian Gulf.

While tankers maneuver, Iran’s top diplomat has been building the political architecture for overland alternatives. Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi embarked on a high-stakes tour on April 23, travelling twice to Pakistan for consultations and to coordinate the corridor activation before heading to Oman and finally to Russia.

In Islamabad, the discussions reportedly focused on key issues, the details of which are not specified. But the tangible outcome was the corridor itself.

Pakistan’s new transit routes, connecting Gwadar, Karachi and Port Qasim to the border crossings of Gabd and Taftan, provide Iran with immediate access to CPEC’s road and rail infrastructure.

Gwadar was built with Chinese loans and Chinese labor precisely as a hedge against maritime chokepoints. Now, with the Sea of Oman effectively closed, goods moving overland from Iran to Gwadar can connect to Chinese markets via the CPEC network, bypassing the US Navy entirely.

On April 27, Araghchi met with President Vladimir Putin in St Petersburg for talks lasting more than 90 minutes. The Iranian foreign minister described the discussions as covering “all issues, both in bilateral relations and regional issues, as well as the issue of war and aggression by the US and Zionist regimes”.

According to media reports, the Russian president said Moscow “will do what it can to support the interests of Iran and other regional countries and help bring peace to West Asia as soon as possible”.

He added that “not only Russia, but now the whole world is admiring the Iranian people for their resistance against America”.

While Russia and Iran signed framework agreements on the International North-South Transport Corridor years ago, the current crisis has given those plans new urgency.

Araghchi used the St Petersburg meeting to reaffirm that Tehran views its relationship with Moscow as a “strategic partnership” that will continue “with greater strength and breadth”.

For China, Russia’s role is complementary. The INSTC offers a route from Mumbai to Moscow via Iranian rail links, a path that, if fully operationalized, would give Chinese goods another overland alternative to maritime shipping.

More immediately, Russia’s diplomatic cover complicates any US effort to pressure Pakistan or other neighbors into closing their borders to Iranian trade.

The central question for Washington is whether maritime piracy can achieve what missiles and airstrikes failed to deliver. After the US-Israeli strikes on Iran on February 28, it became clear that bombing alone would not bring down the country to its knees.

The blockade represents a shift to economic suffocation aiming to squeeze Iran’s oil revenues. But the strategy carries costs. Global oil prices remain elevated near $120 per barrel, stoking inflationary pressures across the US, Europe and beyond.

More fundamentally, the blockade’s success depends on land routes remaining closed. Pakistan’s activation of the transit corridor, Russia’s support, and China’s quiet integration of Gwadar into its supply chain collectively suggest that Tehran is building an overland escape hatch that the US Navy cannot interdict under any circumstance.

“Whenever there are sanctions or blockades, there will also be workarounds, whether informal channels or other flexible arrangements,” Wang Yiwei, director of Renmin University’s Institute of International Affairs, told The Straits Times. “The key question we should be asking is: can this blockade actually be sustained?”

For now, the answer appears uncertain but with each new overland corridor, Iran is proving impossible to seal and China unlikely to be starved.

April 30, 2026 Posted by | Economics, Wars for Israel | , , , , | Comments Off on US blockade crumbles as Iran turns to overland routes

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