Musk blocks Ukraine from using Starlink for deep strikes in Russia – Atlantic
RT | August 8, 2026
Elon Musk has refused to allow Ukraine to use his Starlink satellite internet service to guide drone strikes deep inside Russian territory, The Atlantic reported on Friday, citing two close allies of former Ukrainian Defense Minister Mikhail Fedorov.
According to the publication, Fedorov, a tech-savvy promoter of drone warfare who was sacked from his position last month, has since been working through back channels to appeal to Musk, but the billionaire has so far refused to relent.
“As of this moment, there is no positive decision,” a Fedorov ally was quoted as saying. “Elon keeps saying it’s time to make a deal,” the source added.
The Atlantic previously reported that during his visit to the US last month, Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky asked President Donald Trump to help influence his close ally Musk on the matter, but Trump remained noncommittal.
Musk began donating tens of thousands of Starlink terminals to Ukraine shortly after its conflict with Russia broke out in February 2022. However, he soon began clashing with Ukrainian officials as he urged them to focus on reaching a peace deal between Moscow and Kiev and repeatedly warned that the conflict could lead to “World War III.”
In 2023, the entrepreneur confirmed reports that he had rejected Ukraine’s request to use Starlink for attacks on Russia’s Black Sea Fleet and naval bases in Crimea. “If I had agreed to their request, then SpaceX would be explicitly complicit in a major act of war and conflict escalation,” he said at the time.
Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said last month that Musk should shut down Starlink in Ukraine altogether if he truly wanted “people to stop dying.”
Musk’s reported position represents a second major blow to Ukraine’s diplomatic efforts after Trump walked back an earlier promise to grant Kiev a license to produce Patriot air defense missiles and rebuffed a plea to deliver more interceptors. Zelensky and the Ukrainian military said this week that the country was struggling to fend off Russian strikes on Kiev and other cities.
Zelensky’s abrupt decision to sack Fedorov sparked street protests across Ukraine, with crowds and several prominent activists demanding his reinstatement. Zelensky responded to the public outrage by firing the country’s top commander, General Aleksandr Syrsky, with whom Fedorov had reportedly clashed over priorities and tactics.
Col Doug Macgregor: All Out War w/Iran Getting Unavoidable
Daniel Davis / Deep Dive – August 7, 2026
Former US negotiator: America faces major ‘strategic defeat’ as Iran tightens control over Hormuz
Press TV – August 7, 2026
Former US negotiator Aaron David Miller has acknowledged that the United States is “on the verge of suffering a really significant strategic defeat” if it is forced to accept Iran’s growing leverage and control over the Strait of Hormuz, one of the world’s most critical shipping lanes.
Speaking in an interview with Australia’s ABC network, Miller warned that emerging arrangements could compel Washington to give Iran the ability to control who and what passes through the waterway. Such an outcome, he emphasized, would constitute a major setback not only for the United States but also for its allied Arab states in the Persian Gulf.
Miller made the remarks while discussing reported negotiations between Iran and Oman on mechanisms to guarantee the safe passage of vessels through the Strait. Although he cautioned that it is still too early to declare a final deal, he made clear that any arrangement strengthening Tehran’s hand would represent a profound strategic loss for Washington.
“The (Persian) Gulf states need to decide whether or not they can acquiesce or even support such an accord. And then, once a text is made public, the administration is going to have to weigh in to see whether or not they’re able to accept. But, again, my confidence level here is not entirely as high these days,” he said.
Miller further observed that while the Persian Gulf states as a group hold limited influence over Trump, Saudi Arabia and the UAE wield considerable leverage thanks to the extensive business interests of the Trump family in the region.
He pointed out that the Trump administration, members of the president’s family, including son-in-law Jared Kushner, as well as Steve Witkoff and others have already benefited from hundreds of millions of dollars in investments linked to projects in the Persian Gulf, he added.
“Affinity Partners, which is Jared Kushner’s $2 billion hedge fund, was bankrolled by Mohammed bin Salman, the future king of Saudi Arabia,” Miller noted.
Miller warned that any US strike on Iran’s energy infrastructure would provoke a severe Iranian response with far-reaching consequences for global energy markets.
The full extent of the damage Iran could inflict on Persian Gulf oil facilities has not yet been seen, he said, and such an escalation could “drive oil prices well north of anything we’ve seen.”
AIPAC eyes another push against El-Sayed after $32 million defeat in Michigan primary
Press TV – August 7, 2026
US pro-Israel lobbyists are considering spending millions on propaganda to boost the popularity of pro-Israel Republican Mike Rogers against Democrat Abdul El-Sayed in Michigan’s Senate race.
The American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) and other special-interest groups have already wasted tens of millions of dollars in a failed attempt to stop El-Sayed during Michigan’s Democratic Senate primary.
On Wednesday, El-Sayed defeated his rival Haley Stevens, who enjoyed overwhelming backing from AIPAC as well as the Democratic Party establishment.
Stevens, who openly described herself as a “proud pro-Israel Democrat,” had received substantial campaign funding from AIPAC in return for her support of the Israeli regime.
To secure the nomination, El-Sayed not only overcame Stevens, a four-term Democratic congresswoman, but also the full weight of pro-Israel groups and Michigan’s Democratic power brokers, including Governor Gretchen Whitmer, who had endorsed Stevens.
AIPAC reportedly spent $32 million trying to promote her.
El-Sayed’s victory stunned the US political system. If he wins the Senate seat, he will become the first Muslim to serve in the US Senate. Immediately after the primary, US President Donald Trump rushed to label him a “Communist loser who hates Jews and Israel.”
“[I]f we come through this, when we come through this, Inshallah, we’ll have taken $70 million on the chin and kept fighting back,” El-Sayed said after his win, referring to the massive spending deployed against him.
Senator Bernie Sanders called the result the “most extraordinary victory” in modern US politics.
The win carries special weight because El-Sayed prevailed in a statewide race in a swing state that voted for Trump less than two years ago, despite the flood of money and establishment endorsements lined up against him.
Pennsylvania progressive Representative Chris Rabb said the victory sends a clear message to the Democratic establishment: “The things that used to work are old and arcane and do not reach the types of people that will come out who won’t vote for normal traditional Democrats.” Rabb added that El-Sayed’s ability to expand the party’s voter base will help defeat Rogers in November.
El-Sayed’s campaign slogan is direct: “Money out of politics. Money in your pockets. Medicare for All.” He has consistently argued that taxpayers’ money currently wasted on wars should instead be used to support communities across the United States and Michigan.
His victory demonstrates that when a candidate runs on a clear anti-war platform and is prepared to confront special-interest groups like AIPAC, American voters will support them, said Michigan Democratic Representative Alabas Farhat.
El-Sayed, a former public health official, will now face Republican former congressman Mike Rogers, a close Trump ally, in the November midterm elections. AIPAC’s heavy involvement and the growing unpopularity of the Israeli regime among Americans over wars in West Asia have become central issues in the race.
“AIPAC can try dumping millions of dollars into propaganda, but at the end of the day, American voters don’t want our tax dollars to go toward bombing families abroad. We want to fund healthcare, not warfare,” said Iman Abid, political director of the US Campaign for Palestinian Rights Action.
Sally Howell, a history professor at the University of Michigan-Dearborn who has pioneered research on Arab-American and Muslim-American communities, described El-Sayed’s win as “genuine change” for Michigan.
“It tells us that voters are very frustrated with the establishment – the establishment in Washington and the establishment in the Democratic Party,” she said. “They want leaders who are going to bring change, not more of the same.”
Undeterred, AIPAC has already announced it will escalate its efforts and push for significantly higher campaign spending in a desperate bid to defeat El-Sayed in November.
“Our members remain determined to ensure that voters reject Dr El-Sayed and his radical anti-Israel agenda in November,” the group declared in a statement on Wednesday.
Yet social media commentator Russell Ellis, known as Jolly Good Ginger, observed that the more AIPAC pours into pro-Israel propaganda, the fewer votes it is likely to win. American voters across the country are showing they are fed up with the Israeli regime and its powerful lobby.
The Telegraph: ‘US and Israel Have Lost, Iran Has Won’ in Historic Strategic Reversal
Al-Manar | August 7, 2026
A leading British broadsheet has declared that the United States and ‘Israel’ have effectively lost their strategic confrontation with the Islamic Republic, asserting that Tehran has emerged from the prolonged standoff with its regional influence not merely intact, but substantially fortified.
In a pointed analysis, The Telegraph argues that the maximum-pressure campaign championed by former President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to either topple or incapacitate Iran’s regime is concluding in a clear reversal of fortunes. The newspaper points to a prospective Omani-brokered arrangement concerning the strategic Strait of Hormuz as tangible evidence that Tehran has outlasted the offensive and consolidated its geopolitical foothold.
More critically, the publication frames this moment as a potential historical inflection point, signaling an accelerating decline in U.S. global supremacy. “Peace agreements ultimately reflect the results of battles on the ground,” the paper observed, adding that Washington’s efforts to reshape those battlefield realities have demonstrably fallen short. In a stark concluding assessment, The Telegraph suggested that the protracted confrontation with Iran may one day be recorded among history’s most profound strategic miscalculations.
Echoing that somber prognosis, the Financial Times has cautioned that a renewed escalation under Trump does not portend a decisive U.S. victory. Instead, the newspaper warns that intensifying hostilities are likely to cast a long shadow over his second term, imposing heavy economic, political, and diplomatic costs on an administration already navigating treacherous waters.
With high-stakes midterm congressional elections looming in the autumn, the FT suggests the White House faces a precarious balancing act one where the perceived geopolitical dividends of confrontation are becoming increasingly overshadowed by domestic blowback and deepening international isolation.
Taken together, the dual assessments from both publications paint a portrait of a conflict whose outcomes, far from securing American interests, may instead accelerate a structural shift in global power dynamics a transition for which Washington appears ill-prepared to counter.
British trade union leaders urge PM to stop UK support for illegal US-Israeli war on Iran
Press TV – August 7, 2026
British trade union leaders have urged UK Prime Minister Andy Burnham to stop rendering support to the United States and Israel in their illegal war on Iran, demanding he reverse his decision to allow the use of UK bases for aggression against Iran.
In an open letter to the PM run by the media on Friday, leaders of ten British trade unions, representing more than 2.3 million workers, urged Burnham to stop rendering support to the illegal US-Israeli war on Iran, and instead focus on the nation’s cost of living crisis.
“[T]he US and Israel’s devastating, illegal war on Iran is deepening the cost of living crisis faced by our members and the British public,” the open letter to Burnham stated, pointing out in continuation that the disruption caused by the war is worsening the cost of living crisis in the UK.
“Disruption to the world’s food and energy supplies is hurting communities here in Britain and having a catastrophic impact in the global south,” it said.
British trade union leaders said they were encouraged by the new Labour government’s focus on the cost of living crisis, but voiced deep concern over any authorization granted to the US to use its bases against Iran.
“We are encouraged by the new government’s focus on the cost of living and the measures it is taking to make life more affordable. However, we are deeply concerned that the same government has authorized US air strikes to be conducted from bases on British territories as part of the war against Iran,” the representative of the large group of British laborers said in the letter to the UK Labour Party prime minister.
They called on Burnham to put pressure on US President Donald Trump to bring the US-Israeli war on Iran to a quick end.
Burnham, right after he took office last month, allowed the use of RAF Fairford in Gloucestershire and the Indian Ocean territory of Diego Garcia to assist the US in the illegal war of aggression against Iran.
On July 21, Burnham approved the continued use of British military bases by the United States for military aggression against Iran, maintaining a policy established under his predecessor, Keir Starmer.
Burnham’s approval of ongoing contribution to American aggression against the Islamic Republic came after another hostile decision by the British government to designate the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) under Britain’s so-called “State Threats legislation.”
Late last month, Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi warned the UK against contributing support to the aggressors waging war against the Islamic Republic.
Iran’s top diplomat issued the warning in a direct telephone call to his British counterpart Ed Miliband on July 31.
Mossad shakes up top ranks after failed Iran regime-change scheme
Al Mayadeen | August 6, 2026
The head of the Mossad dismissed two senior officials from the agency, the head of its Intelligence Directorate and the head of its Iran Division, following the failure of an operational plan designed to facilitate regime change in Iran, Israeli Channel 12 reported.
According to the channel, the Mossad chief’s decision was based on the assessment that the officials who formulated the operational concept and oversaw its development should be held accountable for its failure. The two dismissed officials were reportedly directly involved in the intelligence planning, development, and operationalization of the strategy, which was presented to US President Donald Trump.
The channel added that the plan hinged on establishing cooperation with groups from ethnic minority communities inside Iran to generate conditions for regime change and facilitate the installation of a new Iranian leadership. However, the operation was never translated into action on the ground.
The channel quoted security sources as saying that relations between the Mossad chief and the dismissed officials had been strained from the outset and that their departures were agreed upon.
Nevertheless, the timing of the dismissals was not coincidental, the sources said, given that the two officials had played leading roles in developing the operational plan that ultimately failed, according to the Israeli account.
The US-Israeli aggression on Iran was reportedly built in part around a Mossad assessment that Israeli strikes, assassinations and armed riots would trigger a “popular uprising and ultimately topple the Iranian government.”
However, months into the war, the anticipated regime change has failed to materialize, while US and Israeli intelligence assessments indicate that Iran’s government remains intact.
The plan reportedly faced skepticism from US military commanders and Israeli intelligence officials even before the aggression began. A parallel strategy involving Kurdish armed groups also faltered after opposition from the US, Turkey, Iraq and Kurdish leaders, raising questions over the assumptions underpinning the campaign.
Iran, Oman Strait of Hormuz Deal Will Ban US and Israeli Ships
By Kyle Anzalone | The Libertarian Institute | August 6, 2026
Iranian state media reports that a deal with Oman to regulate traffic through the Strait of Hormuz is nearly completed.
Fars News reported that details of the deal include, “Vessels belonging to the United States, the Zionist regime, and other hostile countries will be prohibited from passing through the Strait of Hormuz.”
“Cargo related to the Zionist regime, both military and civilian, will not be allowed to pass through this area.” The Fars report continues, “Vessels or cargoes that are involved in actions against the Resistance Front will also be subject to the ban.”
It adds that other countries that have taken part in the war against Iran will be banned from using the Strait until reparations are paid.
After the US and Israel started an aggressive war against Iran in February, the IRGC seized control over the Strait of Hormuz. Washington has demanded Tehran return the critical waterway to its prewar status. However, Iranian officials say Tehran will retain control over the Strait after the war is settled.
Iran says the current negotiations with Oman do not include the US. Tehran and Muscat plan to split the revenue from the service fees generated from the Strait.
Prof John Mearsheimer: Drones Can’t Deliver Ukraine Victory
Daniel Davis / Deep Dive – August 6, 2026
‘We want them too’: Trump rebuffs Zelensky’s request for missiles
RT | August 7, 2026
President Donald Trump has dismissed Ukraine’s plea for more Patriot anti-air missiles following widespread reports that US interceptor stockpiles have been significantly depleted by the war with Iran.
Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky has warned that his country is running out of Western-supplied interceptors to fend off Russian strikes. On Wednesday, Ukrainian forces failed to intercept a single missile during an overnight barrage on Kiev.
“The United States knows exactly what we need and that this is not about something abstract,” Zelensky said in a video address on Thursday.
Asked by a reporter in the Oval Office later that day about Ukraine’s request, Trump replied: “Well, I mean, we want missiles too.” He added that his predecessor, Joe Biden, provided Kiev with $300 billion worth of ammunition “free of charge,” at the expense of US stockpiles.
“When I left [the presidency in 2021], it was full. And he gave a lot of it away. And now we are rebuilding it,” Trump said. He added, however, that the stockpiles were “in good shape” and bragged about an “unlimited supply” of weapons.
“We are not involved [in the Ukraine conflict]. We are separated by an ocean,” Trump said in response to a question about Russian strikes on Ukraine.
Last week, Trump denied that he had agreed to grant Ukraine a license to produce Patriots, backtracking on a statement he made several weeks earlier following a meeting with Zelensky.
Multiple news outlets have reported in recent months that the Pentagon is grappling with shortages of both interceptors and precision-strike munitions. CNN cited sources this week as saying that the US has exhausted nearly 80% of the interceptors available for its THAAD missile defense system compared with pre-war levels.
Trump reportedly clashed over the issue with War Secretary Pete Hegseth, who, according to media reports, denied misleading the president about depleted stockpiles. Both Trump and Hegseth have publicly denied the shortages and scolded the media for spreading “fake news.”
Russia has intensified its bombardment of Kiev and Ukraine’s Black Sea ports in recent weeks following strikes on Russian cargo ships, energy facilities, and warehouses belonging to Wildberries, Russia’s equivalent of Amazon. Moscow has said its campaign is focused on military and dual-use sites, including factories and drone-parts storage facilities, as well as ships transporting military equipment.
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