By David Miller | Tracking Power | October 23, 2026

What is it with anti-Zionist Jews claiming that Christians invented Zionism? The image above is from the beginning of a video by Zachary Foster where he makes the bold claim that “Zionism was a Christian idea”. He begins his story in the 1640s, saying “In the 1640s, you had this movement founded in England known as the Restorationist movement.”

His post got some pushback, which he describes here:

Many comments on this video go something like this:

“Another attempt to absolve them of their crimes”

“You are diminishing Jewish Zionism and its actions”

“hasbara propaganda”

He responds: “The 17th century Christian origins of Zionism have absolutely 0 political implications today. Doesn’t make Israel less genocidal. Doesn’t have an impact on the ICC arrest warrants for Netanyahu or Gallant. Doesn’t make Israel any less of an apartheid state. Doesn’t make Zionism any less racist or settler-colonialist. Doesn’t absolve Jewish institutions today of their complicit in apartheid and genocide. It’s just a curios [sic] point of history.”

It may be curious, but it’s also wrong. His argument echoes that of Ilan Pappé who, in his book Lobbying for Zionism, claimed the key figure in the invention of Zionism was Lord Shaftesbury in about 1839. Pappé was wrong about that, as I showed in my review of his book. Unfortunately, even though Foster manages to go back two hundred years further than Pappé, he is still incorrect.

Below is a (non-exhaustive) list of significant moments in the building of Jewish settlements in Palestine from 1211 to 1890, the year in which Nathan Birnbaum coined the term Zionism in his journal Selbstemanzipation, seven years before the First Zionist Congress in 1897. As one can see from the list, the development of settlements in Safed and Hebron long predated the 1640s. So the idea that Jews got the idea from Christians after the 1640s is false. Let’s start with an event celebrated in Zionist historiography, some four centuries before the 1640s.

1211 – The “Aliyah of the 300 Rabbis” – A notable group of hundreds of European rabbis was predominantly French-Ashkenazi and Provençal, though some sources say there were also English participants: the 16th-century chronicler Solomon ibn Verga wrote that “the Rabbis of France and England” went to Jerusalem, “more than three hundred” of them. Historians call this wave the Aliyah of the Tosafists. The key figures in this group, such as Rabbi Samson of Sens, were the leading giants of northern French and Rhenish (German) Jewish scholarship. While others came from Provence (southern France), and the Spanish scholar Nahmanides (also known as Ramban) followed half a century later, arriving in Acre in the summer of 1267, the linguistic and cultural core of that 1211 wave was French-Ashkenazi.

The fate of the Judeans

They settled in Jerusalem, which had been recaptured by Saladin in 1187. The 300 were, thus, among the first Jews to live in Jerusalem for more than a century after they had been banished in 1099 by the Crusaders. It’s worth noting that these Ashkenazi settlers had no connection to the ancient Judeans who had existed in “Judea” more than a millennium before. What’s more, it is suggested by Israeli academic Paul Wexler that the Jewish population before the 300 Rabbis arrived was not the original biblical Judeans either. Wexler, emeritus Professor of Linguistics at Tel Aviv University, argues that most Jewish groups, the Ashkenazim and Sephardim, including the Musta’arabim (Arab or Arabic-speaking Jews), are primarily the descendants of non-Jewish populations. We can note that the term Musta’arabim is preferable to, and older than, the propaganda term adopted by the Zionists to refer to supposedly “indigenous” Jews who spoke Arabic: the “Mizrahim”. The term came to prominence as a classification only after the creation of the Zionist colony and referred to “Eastern” or “Arab” Jews, though it included incoming settler colonists who spoke a variety of languages and were not all “Arab”, including Jews from Iraq, Morocco, Yemen, Iran, or Syria.

In the case of the Musta’arabim and other Arabic-speaking Jews, Wexler argues that they descend largely from Arab, Berber and other West Asian and North African converts to Judaism in the centuries up to about 1200 AD. Long before then, Hebrew had ceased to be a living language. The older view, which is still reflected in standard reference works, was that Aramaic began to supplant Hebrew as early as the 3rd or 4th century BC. The discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls overturned that view. After this the consensus became that Hebrew ceased to be spoken around the beginning of the third century AD, a few generations after the Bar Kokhba Revolt (132–135 AD, i.e. in the second century), in which the Judeans were defeated. Estimates differ, but it is generally agreed that Hebrew died out as a native tongue between the second and fourth centuries. Effectively then, on this account, the remaining “Judeans” were either killed or exiled and integrated into other populations.

Those Jews that later spoke Arabic were – says Wexler – converts who “relexified” Arabic with Hebrew words, as opposed to having switched from Hebrew to an Arabic form of the language. In his 1996 book, The Non-Jewish Origins of the Sephardic Jews, Wexler claims that Sephardic and North African/Middle Eastern Jewish communities are largely composed of converted Berbers and Arabs. He views the term Musta’arabi (”Arabised”) literally, suggesting an ethnic Arab substrate that took on a Jewish religious identity, rather than ethnically Judean populations taking on the Arabic language. So, by the time that Sephardic and Ashkenazi Jews came to settle in the Levant and replace or overwhelm the “Arab Jews”, there had been very few or – most likely – no “Judeans” living in the territory for perhaps a millennium.

Safed – the first major Jewish settlements in the Levant

Phase 1: The Medieval Trickle (Pre-1492)

Long before the mass expulsions from Spain and Portugal in the 1490s, individual Sephardic scholars, merchants, and pilgrims also made their way to Palestine.

1488 – The Arrival of Rabbi Obadiah of Bertinoro – This famous Italian commentator on the Mishnah arrived in Jerusalem shortly before Passover 1488, and his letters home describe the Jewish communities he found. Safed already had a functioning Jewish community, numbering some 300 families in 1481, and in Bertinoro’s time, as an Ashkenazi writer recorded a generation later, “the prayers were said according to the rite of the Mustarabim”. Naturally Zionists see the Musta’arabi as the living link to the biblical Israelites or Judeans at the time of Jesus. But even that tenuous connection is disputed, as we have seen.

Phase 2: The Great Influx (1492–1516)

The definitive arrival of the Sephardim as the dominant cultural force was triggered directly by the Spanish Expulsion of 1492, followed by the expulsions and forced conversions in Portugal in 1496–97.

1492–1498 (The First Wave): Tens of thousands of Jews were expelled from the Iberian Peninsula. Many fled to North Africa, Italy or the Ottoman Empire; relatively few at first entered the territories of the Mamluk Sultanate, which controlled Palestine at the time and was “quite inhospitable” to them. Even so, Spanish refugees began arriving in Safed towards the end of Mamluk rule, and the town, with its cooler climate, became a magnet for these refugees.

Before 1492, the tiny existing population of Safed and Hebron consisted of Musta’arabi Jews (Arabic-speaking Jews who had lived in West Asia and beyond for some centuries). Because the Iberian influx was so massive, the Sephardim culturally overwhelmed the existing Musta’arabi population and absorbed it into the Sephardic umbrella, something the small trickle of Ashkenazim could not have done. Within a generation, one observer noted, the Sephardim had “practically eliminated every other usage”. Even the genocidal Chabad cult agrees that the Arabic-speaking Jews were “overshadowed by and merged into” the Sephardim, effectively wiping out any claim that any of the Jews in the contemporary state of Israel are indigenous to the Levant.

So what did these Jews actually speak? Not Hebrew, which had long survived only as a liturgical and literary language, and not Aramaic, which had replaced it in Palestine but lasted only until the seventh century. After the Arab conquest the Jews of the region adopted Arabic, keeping only their religion and their alphabet: the Musta’arabim spoke Judeo-Arabic, their own Arabic written in Hebrew letters. Aramaic lived on only on the page, in the Talmud and in the Zohar, the classic text of Jewish mysticism, which was written in Aramaic long after anyone spoke it.

After 1492 that changed too. In the towns the Musta’arabim gradually adopted Judeo-Spanish along with the rest of Sephardic culture, though for some decades the Jews of the countryside remained Arabic speakers. Judeo-Spanish, also called Ladino or Judezmo, is at base Old Castilian written in Hebrew characters: the language of Toledo, not of Judea. (The claim that “Ladino” properly means only the language of Bible translations and prayers is one the Encyclopaedia Judaica finds “hardly tenable”.) Yiddish, the language of the Ashkenazim, came later and in smaller numbers: at the start of the 18th century only a few hundred Ashkenazim lived in the whole country, and Menachem Mendel’s party of 1777 were, in Michael Freund’s words, “Yiddish-speaking immigrants”.

1516 (The Ottoman Conquest): The Ottoman Empire conquered Palestine from the Mamluks, and the Sephardi element in Safed increased further. Ottoman rule was far more welcoming, and Safed experienced a massive boom in the 16th century: Turkish tax records show some 48 European families there in 1525, and 143 Portuguese-Jewish and 324 Spanish-Jewish households by 1555. While overwhelmingly Sephardic, the town also drew Ashkenazi scholars, who arrived to collaborate, publish, and practise, and in time formed a community of their own.

1522 (The Report of Rabbi Moses Basola): Rabbi Moses Basola visited Safed and found 300 Jewish families, made up of Sephardim, Musta’arabim, and Jews from the Maghreb.

1524 (The Leadership of Rabbi Jacob Berab): By this year Rabbi Jacob Berab, an eminent Spanish exile born near Toledo, was living in Safed, at least for periods. He became its leading rabbi and in 1538 tried to renew rabbinical ordination, cementing Sephardic administrative and halakhic (legal) dominance over the city just as the first small groups of Ashkenazim began trickling in.

1520s–1530s (Initial Influx): Small groups of Ashkenazi Jews arrived and, alongside the existing Sephardic (Spanish-descent) Jews, emerged as a distinct group among the Jews of Safed, later with their own congregation.

1550s (Scholarly Prominence): Renowned figures, including Rabbi Moses Alshech (a biblical commentator born in Adrianople to a Sephardic family, who studied under Joseph Caro and later sat on Caro’s court in Safed), became cornerstones of Safed’s legal and spiritual institutions.

1570 (The Lurianic Kabbalah Revolution): Rabbi Isaac Luria (known as the Ari), who was born in Jerusalem to an Ashkenazi father and a Sephardic mother, moved to Safed in 1569 or early 1570. Over a brief period before his death in 1572, his teachings revolutionised Jewish mysticism globally. He bridged both heritages and reshaped the liturgical customs of European Jewry: the Hasidic prayer rite, according to Chabad, follows his custom.

1577 (Printing in Safed): Eliezer ben Isaac Ashkenazi and his son Isaac of Prague left Lublin in 1573 and, after three years in Constantinople, set up a Hebrew printing press in Safed, issuing three books between 1577 and 1580. This technology helped carry Safed’s spiritual texts – including the works of Sephardic and Ashkenazi rabbis alike – to the global diaspora: the rapid spread of mysticism from Safed has been attributed to Hebrew printing in the Ottoman Empire.

Early 1600s (Institutional Growth): At the beginning of the 17th century Safed had 21 synagogues, 18 schools and 300 rabbinical scholars, and its community was split into four congregations: Ashkenazim, Portuguese Jews, Provençal Jews, and Italians. One of the synagogues associated with Luria, still known as the Ari Ashkenazi Synagogue, belongs to the Ashkenazim.

1740s–1770s (The Decline and Shift): An epidemic (1747) and a devastating earthquake (1759), which killed 2,000 people, among them 190 Jews, severely crippled the town; by 1764 only 50 Sephardi families remained. However, the community was revitalised from 1777 with the arrival of Ashkenazi Hasidic pioneers led by Menahem Mendel of Vitebsk.

Hebron: The Spanish Enclave Absorbs European Immigrants

Unlike Safed’s rapid expansion, Hebron was a smaller, more tightly knit community. Its Jewish Quarter was structurally re-founded in 1540, by the traditional dating, when Rabbi Malkiel Ashkenazi settled in the town and bought the walled courtyard in which Hebron’s Jews lived, although he is recorded as dying around 1620. He led a group of Sephardic Jews there and founded the Avraham Avinu Synagogue, the town’s oldest.

1540s–1590s (The Sephardic Foundation): The community was tiny: the Ottoman tax registers recorded no more than 20 Jewish households. It was consolidated around a single walled courtyard and the Avraham Avinu Synagogue, while Spanish exiles increasingly shaped its spiritual leadership. Malkiel Ashkenazi served as Hebron’s first rabbi, and the community treated his legal decisions and customs as binding for generations. Late in the century, kabbalists from Safed, including Elijah de Vidas, moved to the town.

1600s (Kabbalah and Amsterdam Money): Lurianic kabbalah and asceticism shaped Hebron’s religious life, and the Prague-born kabbalist Isaiah Horowitz, who led Jerusalem’s Ashkenazi community from 1621, recorded the customs of Hebron as laid down by Malkiel Ashkenazi. In 1659 the Amsterdam philanthropist Abraham Pereira established the yeshivah Hesed le-Avraham there, and distinguished rabbis lived in the town.

1700 – The Aliyah of Judah He-Hasid: A large group of Ashkenazi Jews from Europe, reportedly some 1,300 of whom about 500 died en route, set out with Rabbi Judah He-Hasid for Jerusalem, intending to settle there. He arrived on 14 October 1700 and died a few days later; several hundred of his followers reached the city.

1720s–1740s (Ashkenazi Newcomers): Hebron’s Jewish population rose somewhat after the breakdown of Jerusalem’s Jewish settlement in 1721, and with the arrival of Abraham Gershon of Kutow, the Baal Shem Tov’s brother-in-law, who visited in 1748. He related that the single Jewish courtyard was so crowded that his family could not join him there.

1738 (The Avraham Avinu Restoration): As the shared community expanded, the Avraham Avinu synagogue was restored; it was enlarged again in 1864.

1740s–1760s (Socio-Economic Collaboration): Hebron had sent emissaries of its own since the middle of the 17th century, and its emissaries (shadarim) now toured Europe. Between 1753 and 1758, for example, Rabbi Hayyim Joseph David Azulai toured Italy, Germany, Holland, France and England as emissary of the Hebron yeshivah. These emissaries raised charitable funds (Halukkah) to sustain the poor back in Hebron.

1770s (Pre-Modern Transition): By the late 18th century, the foundational groundwork was complete. This set the stage for the early 19th century, when, according to Chabad, a group of Chabad Hasidim founded Hebron’s Ashkenazi community.

After the 1760s many further settlement ventures were undertaken.

1777 – Menachem Mendel of Vitebsk: Led, with Avraham of Kalisk and Yisrael of Polotsk, a group of about 300 people, only some of them Hasidim, to the Land of Israel, aiming to establish a religious community, which was a significant precursor to organised settlement.

1788 – The Alter Rebbe (Rabbi Shneur Zalman of Liadi): While he remained in Europe to lead the Chabad movement, he was a fierce supporter of those who moved. He established a permanent fundraising system to support the settlers, which eventually evolved into the Colel Chabad (est. 1788), the oldest continuously operating charity in occupied Palestine. He was the author of the Jewish supremacist “bible” of the genocidal Chabad cult, the Tanya.

1816 or the 1820s – The Mitteler Rebbe (Rabbi Dovber Schneuri) – Accounts differ on when the second leader of Chabad sent his followers to Hebron. The Jewish community of Hebron traces Chabad’s roots there to 1816–1823, when a wave of Hasidim moved from Safed at his behest, and Steve Rodan’s Times of Israel blog dates Chabad’s arrival to 1816, when Hasidim directed by Dovber Schneuri relocated from Safed. Chabad’s own historian, Shalom Dov Ber Levin, records instead that the families who came in 1816–17 settled in Safed, Tiberias and Jerusalem, and that the Mitteler Rebbe directed them to Hebron in 1821–23, the move taking place between 1821 and 1826. Chabad’s world headquarters dates its history in the city to 1823.

1838 – Moritz Steinschneider – In 1838, along with two lifelong friends, Albert Löwy and Abraham Benisch, he set up a secret society among students at Vienna, called Die Einheit, to encourage Jewish colonisation in Palestine. Some two decades later, in 1860, Steinschneider coined the term “antisemitic”, mistakenly imagining that the scholar he was referring to thought Ashkenazi Jews were Semites and that he was a Judeosceptic. In reality he was a Judeophile. His two friends went on to play significant roles in the founding of the Zionist movement. Benisch later became the editor of the Jewish Chronicle. Together Benisch and Löwy founded and ran the Anglo-Jewish Association which bought them into contact with the largesse of the Rothschild family.

1839 – Rabbi Yehuda Alkalai published Darkhei No’am, a Hebrew grammar in whose introduction he called on Jews to prepare for redemption through devotion to Zion and material support for those already living in the Land of Israel. He developed these ideas in Shelom Yerushalayim (1840) and Minhat Yehuda (1843), arguing that the physical return of the Jews to Zion must precede the messianic redemption.

1840s – After the 1840 Damascus affair Alkalai’s writing grew more urgent, and a society he founded in Zemun for the Jewish return to the Land of Israel was active in several of Serbia’s Jewish communities.

1852 – Alkalai established the Society for the Settlement of Eretz Yisrael in London during a tour of Western Europe. While the society was short-lived and disbanded shortly after its creation, it served as a platform for Alkalai to publish his pamphlet, Mevaser Tov (Harbinger of Good Tidings), which called for an organised Jewish association to promote the “regaining of their fatherland”.

1860 – Association for the Colonisation of Palestine (Kolonisations-Verein für Palästina) – Alkalai was an active member of this group, established by Chaim Lorje in Frankfurt an der Oder. He worked alongside Rabbi Zvi Hirsch Kalischer to promote agricultural settlement in Palestine.

1860 – Sir Moses Montefiore (1784–1885): A British philanthropist who visited the “Holy Land” seven times (as far back as 1827), backing agricultural settlement and building residential areas in Jerusalem, such as Mishkenot Sha’ananim in 1860.

1871 – Kol Israel Haverim: On a visit to the Land of Israel, Alkalai founded this society for the settlement of “Eretz Yisrael”. He gave it the same name as the Hebrew translation of the Alliance Israélite Universelle, in an attempt to create a local branch dedicated to settlement. He settled in Jerusalem himself in 1874.

All of this happened before the invention of the term “Zionism” by Nathan Birnbaum in 1890. So, the next time you hear someone – Zionist or anti-Zionist – talk about the Christian origins of Zionism, feel free to disabuse them of this fanciful notion.

The Cradle | October 23, 2026

Cyprus hosted the leadership of the pro-Israel US lobbying group, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), in Nicosia on 21 October, pledging to deepen the island’s ties with Israel and the US.

Outgoing AIPAC president Bernard Kaminetsky and his successor, Yehuda Neuberger, led the delegation to the presidential palace for talks with Cypriot President Nikos Christodoulides.

The talks focused on accelerating the 3+1 Mechanism, a partnership binding Cyprus, Greece, Israel, and the US to coordinate on energy, security, and infrastructure.

AIPAC, in return, pledged to keep championing Cypriot interests in Washington.

Meanwhile, pro-Israel lobbies have been embedding themselves inside the Cypriot and Greek parliaments, with Israel Allies Foundation (IAF) launching caucuses in both legislatures to bring lawmakers into line with Israel’s regional agenda.

IAF president Josh Reinstein unveiled the Cypriot caucus on 14 October after meeting Christodoulides, explicitly pitting the initiative against Ankara by branding Turkiye a “common enemy” of Israel and Cyprus.

Cyprus’s main left-wing opposition party condemned the MPs for turning parliament into a lobby for Israel amid its ongoing genocide in Gaza, while in Greece, one left-wing party warned that it would turn parliament into a tool for whitewashing war crimes.

Israel’s deepening ties with Greece and Cyprus have developed over the past decade into a strategic alignment that combines energy cooperation, military coordination, and shared opposition to Turkish maritime claims in the Eastern Mediterranean.

The US has encouraged the relationship through the 3+1 format, which brings Washington into the Israel–Greece–Cyprus trilateral partnership and frames it as a vehicle for regional stability, energy security, and cooperation among “like-minded” partners.

Through the arrangement, Israel gains a gateway to European markets through Greece and Cyprus, along with diplomatic backing in disputes over offshore gas fields.

Athens and Nicosia, in turn, receive Israeli military technology and a partner against Turkiye’s assertive stance on maritime zones, airspace, and the divided island of Cyprus.

Washington, meanwhile, sees the axis as part of a broader effort to anchor energy routes and security cooperation in the Eastern Mediterranean while reducing reliance on rival powers, even as the US courts Ankara with offers of F-35 sales and sanctions relief.

Israeli hostility toward Ankara, and its efforts to curb Turkish power, stem from fear that Washington’s growing dependence on Turkiye will erode Israel’s regional dominance.

Despite the friction, Turkiye continued to serve as a conduit for Azerbaijani crude to Israel through the Baku–Tbilisi–Ceyhan Pipeline (BTC) and Ceyhan Port, even after cutting direct trade in May 2024 and throughout Israel’s genocide of the Palestinians in Gaza.

Press TV – October 23, 2026

Iran has condemned “parasitic” military relations between the United States and Israel, citing the spending of $11 billion in American taxpayers’ money on missiles for the occupying regime over the past three years.

Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi made the remarks in an X post on Friday, saying the US has fired more interceptors to protect Israel than the usurping entity has.

“That is not a symbiotic relationship. It is a parasitic one,” he added.

He also attached to his post a table provided on social media by independent policy analyst Stephen Semler that showed the US had fired an estimated 609 ballistic missile interceptors to protect Israel against Iran’s retaliatory strikes between October 2023 and September 2026.

The figure, however, did not include the interceptors the US fired to protect its own military assets across West Asia in the face of Iran’s reprisal attacks.

Earlier, Semler had estimated that the US had fired approximately 1,800 Patriot missiles between February and September this year.

Estimates indicate that the illegal aggression against Iran has consumed up to 82 percent of pre-war US THAAD stockpiles and 61 percent of Patriot missile supplies.

Experts warn that the shrinking stockpile leaves the US vulnerable, noting that it would take years to replace the missiles used at the current build rate of 600 per year.

The US and the Israeli regime waged their first illegal war against Iran, which lasted 12 days, in June 2025. Their second aggression began on February 28, 2026, and came to a halt in early April after 40 days.

In both wars, Iran’s resistance and successful retaliatory operations forced the aggressors to accept a ceasefire.

Iran has also maintained a tight grip on the Strait of Hormuz since the early days of the second imposed war amid the US’s acts of mischief in the region.

By Finian Cunningham | Strategic Culture Foundation | October 23, 2026

There is a straightforward way to alleviate the social chaos sweeping Europe, as well as the war in Ukraine threatening to engulf the continent. It’s an easy fix – and it’s not shoving more white powder up Zelensky’s nose paid for by European taxpayers.

European leaders just have to find the resolve to stop fueling the war against Russia and engage in diplomacy with Moscow to establish an all-encompassing security architecture (as Russia had proposed back in December 2021). That, in turn, will salvage European nations from unsustainable debt driven by militarism and propping up a kleptocracy in Kiev, whose puppet leader is obviously degenerating from cocaine addiction.

Across Europe, cities are looking like battle zones with mass protests, public tensions, buildings burning, shops looted, riot police baton-charging crowds, and masked mobs running amok. France is bearing the brunt of street violence, but so too are Italy, Belgium, and others. Spain and Portugal are seeing their cities turned into tent camps in protests against a lack of affordable housing.

In the turmoil, it is easy to lose sight of the basic problem. People en masse are suffering from economic privation. Why can’t their individual and social needs be met in an efficient and effective manner? Why is there seemingly no money to fix broken societies?

Curfews are declared in Paris and cities across France while Italy moves to deploy soldiers in Milan to restore a semblance of order. Thousands of arrests have been made in recent days. Revolution is in the air, and so too is the sinister possibility of supposedly democratic governments flipping to become police-state dictatorships.

In this volatile, explosive situation, it is tempting to look for scapegoats.

French President Emmanuel Macron goes on national television to denounce “ultra-left groups” who he says are mindlessly trying to destroy France.

Even American President Donald Trump weighs in to claim that a once great nation (France) is being “conquered by immigrants, jihadists and communists.”

There were also predictable accusations in Western media that Russia is fomenting the unrest across Europe.

Another misdirection is to portray the European governments as cash-strapped and unable to deliver relief from the cost-of-living crisis and deteriorating public services. The governments and media tend to define the problem as one of balancing fiscal bookkeeping, overspending on social welfare, aging populations, or some other demographic factor.

European nations, we are told by pundits, are in massive debt and under pressure from bond markets to ramp up austerity by slashing public spending. The challenge for France and other governments is that they “no longer have the fiscal room to simply throw more money at these problems,” as one commentator put it.

Another commentator lamented that: “Hamstrung governments seem to have no answer to the public’s furious demands, making further discontent likely.”

In other words, we are told, “there is no alternative to austerity,” to paraphrase the late British leader Margaret Thatcher.

But that premise deceptively tells only part of the picture. The crucial part omitted is that the fiscal crunch of European governments is largely caused by the reckless funnelling of money to fuel the war in Ukraine and inordinately build up their own military forces. That wasteful misallocation of resources is “justified” by relentlessly and absurdly demonizing Russia as a “threat to Europe”. The news media play the role of amplifying the propaganda.

The media do not question, never mind expose, how Europe’s economies have been exhausted by a proxy war agenda against Russia that has involved cutting themselves off from Russian affordable energy, the lifeblood of industry, and on top of that racking up hundreds of billions in debt by propping up the endemically corrupt Kiev regime.

That regime is losing the war against Russia as it runs out of conscripts for the meat grinder. Yet, European governments are fixated on keeping the futile war going with ever more funding of the regime.

Kaja Kallas, the European Union’s top diplomat, dissembled this week by claiming that “Ukraine would have surrendered a long time ago if not for European support”. This is a tacit admission that the EU and Britain are fueling the war.

She also accused the Trump administration of forcing Ukraine into a surrender. In her soulless view, diplomacy and peace are sneered at as surrender.

European societies are deprived of financial resources for vital public services and infrastructure all in the fraudulent name of “defending” Ukraine in a war that has gone on for nearly five years. There is no end in sight if the European leaders have their way.

The European Union’s unelected bureaucracy has donated €90 billion to the Kiev regime for 2026 and 2027 alone, in addition to over €200 billion already allocated. This largesse is still not enough. The Zelensky dictatorship is calling for an extra €70 billion to be doled out, and the EU Russophobic elites are clamoring to oblige.

No wonder that European societies are visibly falling apart from underinvestment and widespread hardship from the soaring cost of living. The social implosion is a direct consequence of a policy of militarism and war, a policy that the Euro elites are running with impunity and unaccountability. That’s dictatorship by any definition.

The depiction of fiscally constrained and helpless European governments is an illusion. The constraint is not a natural condition of societies. It is the consequence of a deliberate, criminal policy of warmongering.

So spare us the scapegoating and misdirection. Spare us the curfews and calls for emergency police state powers to curb “hooligans and extremists.” That misdirection is playing into the hands of the ruling class, which has delegitimized itself by its sponsoring of war in Ukraine, its support for American aggression against Iran and Yemen, and its complicity in Israeli genocide in Gaza and Lebanon.

Contrary to the politicians and pundits claiming that there is “no easy fix” to the chaos erupting in Europe, there is. It is for the European governments to stop fueling the war in Ukraine and actually manage societies according to democratic needs.

However, that rational and feasible solution is probably out of reach under the prevailing political system. The elites in control of the system are incapable of overseeing any meaningful reform. They will not engage in diplomacy to find a peaceful settlement in Ukraine with Russia.

And so the outcome seems to be either they consolidate the emerging dictatorship and quash the legitimate social demands of the people, or the people will prevail by sweeping away the corrupt regimes that masquerade as “democratic”.

RT | October 23, 2026

Russia remains ready to negotiate a lasting settlement in Ukraine but will achieve its objectives regardless, Russian President Vladimir Putin told journalist Pavel Zarubin on Thursday. He also outright rejected “schizophrenic” claims in Western media that Moscow could be seeking a war with Europe.

Putin’s comments followed nearly three hours of talks with US envoy Steve Witkoff in St. Petersburg on Wednesday. Witkoff brought new peace talk proposals following his own discussions with Vladimir Zelensky, Finnish President Alexander Stubb, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen’s Chief of Staff Bjoern Siebert, and Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Store in Oslo.

The new diplomatic engagement comes after Putin’s October 9 agreement with US President Donald Trump on Russian diesel supplies, whereby Washington eased fuel export restrictions while engaging with Moscow on broader economic cooperation.

Lasting peace, rather than a temporary pause

Putin confirmed Russia’s readiness to resume trilateral contacts with the US and Ukraine, focusing on security arrangements for both countries after a final settlement. The goal is to achieve definitive peace agreements, rather than “a suspension of hostilities for some short period,” he stressed.

The Russian leader also stated that he agrees with Witkoff’s argument that such discussions would also need to address Europe’s wider security architecture.

Kremlin aide Yury Ushakov previously suggested the talks could resume around mid-November, potentially in Abu Dhabi.

Putin said an agreement was possible, but insisted that “all the goals of the special military operation will be achieved” one way or another.

Europe’s ‘political schizophrenia’

European claims that Russia poses a military threat and preparations for confrontation amount to “political schizophrenia,” Putin said, arguing that European populations do not want war with Russia and explicitly rejected suggestions that Moscow is preparing to attack them.

“We do not want, we are not preparing for any war with Europe,” he said.

Putin described inflicting a strategic defeat on Russia as unrealistic, expressing hope that its opponents would recognize that peaceful relations better serve their own populations.

‘Historic Russia’ and the territorial question

Asked about Zelensky’s recent comments to Fox News that he would be willing to give up 25% of his territories in order to freeze the conflict on the current battle lines, Putin rejected the premise.

“It is not their territory, it is the territory of historic Russia,” he said, citing residents’ votes for independence and subsequently for reunification with the Russian Federation.

He acknowledged that the issue remained disputed, but argued that describing these developments as Ukraine losing territory was inappropriate.

Fighting ‘to the last Ukrainian’

Putin called it “incomprehensible” that Kiev expects that “the entire world should pay them, fight for them, supply them with weapons, ammunition, equipment,” and stressed that Russia has no desire to fight Ukraine.

“If Ukraine’s current leadership wants to wage war, let them fight. But why do they think everyone should pay for it and supply them with weapons?” Putin questioned.

He noted that much of this desire for war can be attributed to foreign countries that want to fight against Russia in order to weaken it and have promised support to Kiev.

However, Putin stressed that these foreign entities are prepared to fight until “the last Ukrainian” and questioned whether Ukraine’s leadership similarly treats its citizens as expendable cannon fodder.

Putin accused Ukrainian authorities of rounding up men “like stray dogs” and forcibly sending them to the front, undermining motivation. He also argued that nationalist groups that carry out this so-called “busification” do not always bear the frontline burden themselves.

He recalled that, according to official figures, there have been half a million deserters in Ukraine and over 300,000 criminal cases opened, adding that the actual numbers could be significantly higher.

Shared history and missed opportunities

Putin said Moscow had sought a negotiated resolution with Kiev since 2014, including through the Minsk agreements intended to settle the Donbass conflict. He blamed Ukrainian authorities for repeatedly rejecting opportunities to reach an agreement before Russia’s military operation began in 2022.

He described Ukrainians as a people closely related to Russians, pointing to genetic research that has shown they are “one people.” However, he acknowledged that some wished to identify differently and said Russia accepted that reality.

“We are ready even now to negotiate and seek solutions to this difficult, complicated situation,” Putin said. “Everything can be agreed upon.”

Glenn Diesen | October 22, 2026

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A reported strike plan, paused only until after the midterms, exposes the limits of American strategic independence.

By Dr. Sara Neumann | MEMO | October 22, 2026

On October 21, the Financial Times reported that Benjamin Netanyahu had instructed his military to prepare a multi-day bombing campaign against Iran for the weekend of October 10—only for Donald Trump to block it until after the November 3 midterms . The operation would have targeted electricity plants, nuclear facilities, and regime sites, surpassing the intensity of the joint offensive launched in February. Trump’s opposition did not end the war. It rescheduled it.

That distinction is the entire story. The veto is being presented as proof that Washington can restrain Jerusalem. In reality, it is a demonstration of an alliance leash—a tether that permits tactical friction while leaving the strategic architecture of the war untouched. Trump can pull the leash to protect Republican seats. Netanyahu can pull it to protect Likud seats. Neither pull ends the war. Both manage the calendar.

The FT report is clear that the operation was not cancelled, only deferred. “There will either be a deal or an attack,” one person familiar with the matter said. US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth traveled to Israel on Monday to meet Netanyahu, and Israeli officials presented an updated target bank that included civilian infrastructure not struck earlier in the year. The machinery of escalation remains fully assembled. The only variable that changed was the date.

The strongest defense of the White House is that Trump’s veto proves American primacy. If Washington can tell Jerusalem no, the argument goes, the leash is in American hands. But this confuses a pause with a strategy. The veto covered only the period before November 3. It did not define war aims, set an end date, or require congressional authorization. It was a tactical deferral, not a strategic reversal.

The midterms themselves are a powerless-ballot exercise in war governance. Voters are being told the election is about affordability. They are not wrong. Gasoline has reached $4.28 a gallon, $1.20 higher than a year ago, and half of registered voters name the cost of living as their top concern . Trump’s approval sits at a record-low 31%. But neither party is offering a vote on whether the war should continue, expand, or end. The ballot ratifies a choice between managers of a war that was never put to a vote.

Congress has tried to assert itself. The House has passed war powers resolutions three times, and the Senate approved one on its tenth attempt—only for Republican senators to reverse course the next day after Trump berated them.

The cost of the conflict has reached at least $38 billion, with the Congressional Budget Office estimating an additional $3 billion for every month it continues. The stockpile of interceptor missiles is so depleted that rebuilding it could take five years. None of this has produced a binding vote to end the war. The legislature has rendered itself a spectator.

Netanyahu’s own calendar is just as cynical. Israel votes on October 27. Netanyahu has said a preemptive strike before the election would be “inconvenient”. Israeli commentators have reported that he fears a military campaign in the final stretch could cost Likud power. The alliance leash runs in both directions. Washington pulls it to protect Republican seats. Jerusalem pulls it to protect Likud seats. The war is paused not because either capital has decided it should end, but because both leaders have decided the timing is wrong for their own electoral survival.

For American voters, the question is not whether Trump can overrule Netanyahu on a given weekend. The question is who decides when the war ends, on what terms, and at what cost.

On the current trajectory, those decisions are being made in confidential channels between two executive offices, insulated from legislative oversight and electoral accountability. The ballot is powerless to alter the war’s direction because the war’s direction was never on the ballot.

The real test comes after both elections. If the deferral becomes a pathway to diplomacy, Trump’s veto will have meant something. If it becomes a pause before a new round of strikes—as the updated target bank suggests—then the only thing that changed was the calendar. Independence is not the ability to delay a war. It is the ability to end one on terms you can defend.

RT | October 22, 2026

The US-Israeli war on Iran has caused an “unprecedented” shock to global energy markets, removing some 3 billion barrels of oil supply, Saudi Aramco CEO Amin Nasser has warned.

The war launched in February effectively shut the Strait of Hormuz, a crucial oil and LNG artery, sending crude prices up roughly 50%. Despite Gulf exports recovering to a reported 80% of pre-war levels, renewed attacks on vessels have kept markets on edge, with Brent hitting a five-month high above $112 this week. Houthi attacks on Saudi energy infrastructure and shipping have compounded the crisis, threatening another vital trade chokepoint, the Red Sea’s Bab el-Mandeb Strait.

In an interview with Al Arabiya Business aired on Thursday, Nasser said the nearly eight-month crisis had deprived global markets of an estimated 3 billion barrels of oil.

“The impact of this crisis on energy markets is unprecedented,” he said. “We have lost around 3 billion barrels since it began. And bear in mind that the Gulf accounts for roughly 20% of global oil demand.”

The figure is equivalent to nearly a month of global oil consumption and reflects cumulative supply losses caused by disrupted shipping, reduced production and logistical bottlenecks.

With global oil inventories already below their five-year average when the war erupted, prices could have soared past $200 a barrel, Nasser warned. He credited emergency reserve releases, China’s sharp cut in seaborne oil imports and Saudi Aramco’s East-West pipeline, which bypasses Hormuz, with averting an even more severe price shock.

Nasser warned, however, that even an end to the crisis could bring fresh pressure on oil markets, as recovering consumption and a rush to replenish depleted reserves will likely fuel another demand surge.

“Once things return to normal, we expect additional demand of around 3 million barrels per day – about 2 million from consumption growth and another 1 million just to replenish the reserves countries have drawn down during the crisis,” he said, noting that the added demand could keep markets under strain long after shipping routes reopen.
Fresh escalation fears

Meanwhile, fears of another escalation are growing as US-Iran talks remain deadlocked. Reports on Wednesday claimed Washington was quietly pulling troops from bases in Jordan, Qatar and Kuwait, evacuating some diplomats and their families from Saudi Arabia and preparing similar withdrawals elsewhere. Similar precautions were taken ahead of the US-Israeli strikes on Iran on February 28.

The moves follow US President Donald Trump’s rejection last month of Tehran’s proposal to reopen Hormuz in exchange for lifting the US blockade of Iranian ports, easing oil export restrictions, unfreezing Iranian assets and ending regional hostilities, including Israeli operations in Gaza and Lebanon.

Washington and Israel have since reportedly discussed another major offensive, potentially soon after the November 3 US midterms. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has also openly threatened fresh strikes on Iran, even without US backing.

By Larry C. Johnson | SONAR21 | October 22, 2026 

Earlier this month, Aramco’s chief executive, Amin Nasser, assured the markets that “our system is intact” and that Saudi Arabia could restore its full 12 million barrels a day of capacity within days. It is a comforting message, and Washington, European capitals and oil traders have every reason to want to believe it. It is not true.

Karl Miller has just completed a 37-slide operating assessment of Saudi Arabia’s energy system, covering everything from the oil fields to the fuel depots, as of October 20. I have read it closely. It is the most careful accounting of this damage I have seen, and it is careful in a way that should worry anyone counting on Saudi oil this winter. Miller does not count Houthi boasts, social-media videos or plumes of smoke as damage. He separates confirmed hits from claims, and he refuses to add up the design capacity of every facility that was struck as if it were all offline at once. Even with all of that discipline, the picture is grim.

A quarter of Saudi production is gone

Start with the headline number. In February, before the war, Saudi Arabia produced about 10.88 million barrels of crude a day. In September it was still producing 2.51 million barrels a day less, a drop of 23 percent. In August the shortfall was 4.64 million barrels a day, when output sank to about 6.24 million. From March through September, the Kingdom produced more than 800 million fewer barrels than it would have at its February rate. That is roughly eight days of total world oil consumption that never came out of the ground.

Aramco’s own books say the same thing. In the company’s reported figures, its liquids production fell from 10.56 million barrels a day in the first quarter to 7.57 million in the second, a 28 percent collapse in a single quarter. Natural gas and ethane fell nearly 6 percent. A company whose system was intact does not report numbers like that.

Exports followed production down. In one consistent tracking series, Saudi crude exports fell from 7.27 million barrels a day in February to 3.70 million in August, a 49 percent drop. They recovered to 5.62 million in September, but that is still 23 percent below the pre-war level.

The damage runs through the whole chain

The reason the recovery keeps stalling is that the damage is not in one place. It runs from the wellhead to the gas station.

At the front end, the Abqaiq complex, the plant that conditions most of Saudi Arabia’s light crude before it can be shipped or refined, sustained physical damage in July. In March, some 2 to 2.5 million barrels a day were curtailed across the offshore Safaniya, Marjan, Zuluf and Abu Safa fields. In April, Khurais and Manifa each lost 300,000 barrels a day.

In the middle, five of the Kingdom’s major refineries have been damaged or shut down. Ras Tanura, at 550,000 barrels a day the largest domestic refinery, burned and was shut in March. SATORP in Jubail lost three units in April, restarted at half capacity and was still running at only about 70 percent in May. SAMREF in Yanbu was hit in March. The Riyadh refinery caught fire on October 3. Jazan, a 400,000-barrel-a-day plant designed to turn out 250,000 barrels a day of ultra-low-sulfur diesel, shut down on July 27 after its power plant and tank farm were hit, and Ansar Allah attacks in August and September disrupted every attempt to restart it. Satellite imagery now shows tank damage at Petro Rabigh as well. The Juaymah gas-liquids plant, which feeds Saudi Arabia’s LPG exports, has suffered fires.

At the back end, the system for storing and moving fuel is being picked apart. Imagery of the Abha bulk plant from September 13 shows six tanks apparently destroyed and eight more damaged. A depot near Riyadh’s airport burned on September 19. Jazan’s tank clusters have been hit repeatedly.

And the East-West Pipeline, Saudi Arabia’s only way to move crude to the Red Sea and around a closed Strait of Hormuz, has been hit again and again. In April, 700,000 barrels a day of pumping capacity was knocked out. In September, repeated attacks took out three pumping stations and halted the line until a low-rate restart on September 22. On October 4 and 5, another pumping station near Khurais was reported badly damaged. The energy minister now says the line is running at 5.8 million barrels a day, against a rated 7 million. Even Miller notes that no one outside Aramco is metering the actual flow.

Why repairs don’t stick

Miller’s most important insight is that this is a system, and systems fail at their weakest link. Jazan is the clearest example. Fixing the crude units does no good if the gasification and power plant that run the refinery is still damaged, and fixing the power plant does no good if there are no tanks to put the diesel in. A refinery can be “restarted” on paper and still produce nothing useful. The same logic runs upstream. An oil field with every well intact still has to shut in if the processing plant or pumping station downstream of it is broken.

Every time Aramco gets one link repaired, another one gets hit. That is why restart announcements keep failing to show up in the production numbers.

Saudi Arabia is running out of fuel to sell

The most alarming numbers in Miller’s report are about refined products. By July, the latest month with complete data, Saudi refinery output was down 534,000 barrels a day from February, nearly 18 percent. Diesel output fell 21 percent. Diesel exports fell 47 percent, from 848,000 barrels a day to 446,000. Gasoline exports fell 40 percent.

The Saudis have been covering the gap by draining their tanks. Diesel stocks fell from 25.6 million barrels in February to 16.6 million in July, down 35 percent. Gasoline stocks fell by the same proportion. The world’s largest oil exporter more than doubled its imports of fuel oil, and it is burning more than twice as much crude directly in its power plants as it did in February. Some of that is the summer air-conditioning load, but it is not the behavior of a country with fuel to spare.

Lower stocks mean less cushion for the next attack. And there will be a next attack.

The trap Riyadh is in

Miller’s report spells out one more danger that I have not seen discussed anywhere else. If Saudi Arabia’s export outlets close, its oil has nowhere to go but its own refineries, its own power plants and its storage tanks. In July, domestic refineries and direct burning absorbed about 3.04 million barrels a day. Once the storage is full, that is roughly the ceiling on what Saudi Arabia could keep producing. Close Ras Tanura and Yanbu at the same time, and the Kingdom would have to shut in most of its oil fields. That is exactly the scenario Ansar Allah’s campaign against the pipeline, the Red Sea and the Gulf terminals is built to produce.

Why this matters to everyone else

The rest of the world is already living with the consequences. Saudi diesel exports are down by about 400,000 barrels a day, at the same moment Hormuz is restricted and Russian refineries are under drone attack. The International Energy Agency says the global diesel shortage will last well into 2027. Brent is above $100. Europe, which depends on imported diesel, is already rioting over the cost of living, and winter has not started.

Miller makes no claim that every barrel of lost output was blown up by a Houthi missile, and he is careful to say so. Some of the decline reflects shipping, security and commercial decisions. But the point is that it doesn’t matter to a trucker in Lyon or a farmer in Lombardy whether a barrel was lost to a missile, a closed sea lane or a refinery that has no power. It is gone either way.

So when Aramco says its system is intact, ask what the production figures, the export figures and the fuel stocks say. They say Saudi Arabia is producing a quarter less oil than it did in February, exporting half as much diesel, and drawing down its reserves to keep the lights on. Any new American or Israeli campaign against Iran will land on a Saudi energy system that has no slack left to absorb it.

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Video interviews

By Philip Giraldi • Unz Review • October 21, 2026

If one were seeking to create something like a modern-day folk tale based on current realities and having the theme of “good versus evil” there are any number of real-life narratives available that could be exploited to invite speculation on actual environments that might have served as models for the fiction. I have found much of the bizarre and blood-soaked evil relationship between the United States and Israel, which serves no US interest at all, to be one such arrangement in which two countries have through their own behavior become the most hated in the world. They have successfully established an odd partnership based largely on a common view of which other nations they hate and would like to destroy.

One must consider the monstrous joined-at-the-hip relationship between Washington and Tel Aviv, which is likely soon to become a true military and policy partnership by act of Congress. It will leverage the already existing ability of tiny Israel to manipulate and dominate the large and powerful United States. And there is also something else that should be reckoned with in the arrangement, and that is melding of the desire of the two countries to dominate not only their neighbors but also far beyond that. One can cite the aberrations in behavior that reveal how neither government wants to get along with other nations except in those rare cases where America and the Jewish state are accepted and even honored in spite of not being bound by any rules, decency or even democratic norms.

A prime example of how the completely murderous pathology that guides both President Donald Trump and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that has come to dominate the relationship surfaced last week when Trump endorsed Netanyahu in the upcoming Israeli election. It was a case of two completely evil men finding common ground to congratulate themselves and advance their respective careers, which nearly all of the rest of the world would like to terminate!

Both men are in trouble with their respective electorates in large part because their obsession with endlessly killing anyone annoying be it in the Caribbean or Gaza, has become suspect, largely because the killing is without any actual objective and no real good comes out of the process. This is particularly true for voters in the US who have suffered the bullying by Israel and its domestic Lobby and also bear the tax burden and shortages that are the only fruit that falls from the trees of the conflicts. In Israel the equation is somewhat different as 90% of the Jewish voters want to eradicate even more Muslims and Christians and fully support a new Prime Minister who will kill even more of the vermin.

Observe what a brain dead Trump has to say about his good buddy Netanyahu in a shared phone call in which they first exchanged pledges that they would soon “finish the job,” the “job” in question being the “extermination” of Iran and most particularly its government. Bibi told Trump “Donald, we have a job to finish. You said it, and we’ll finish it together. We’ll finish it, and no one else will do it.” Bibi explained later how “I have spoken about this with President Trump more than once, including the day before yesterday… Finishing the job means bringing down the terrorist regime in Iran. It is the head of this poisonous octopus. You cut it off, and it will fall. We will also have peace with Lebanon. We must complete the elimination of the Iranian regime — that is the primary objective.”

Trump then responded in kind, telling Netanyahu that “You’re a warrior, and you’ve been treated unfairly by your country and from some others … but you’re a great warrior, and we will prove that. We will prove that very soon. I think you’re terrific, Bibi … You’re the man I want by my side, Bibi.” On Truth Social Trump later elaborated how “Bibi Netanyahu has been a Great Warrior Prime Minister and an even greater Partner for Peace in combatting the Islamic Republic of Iran.” He is “Strong, Brave, and Brilliant, the kind of Partner that the United States of America is demanding of Israel, a Country for which it has done so much.”

Clearly Netanyahu wants to get reelected to stay out of jail for corruption, apart from anything else, and he knows that unconditional support from the United States is essential to achieve that end and keep the wars in Lebanon, Syria and Iran going. What the two monsters were pledging was the total destruction of a nation of 90 million people that prior to the war initiated by Israel and the US had not threatened in any way either nation. That means it was per the Geneva Convention a war crime and besides which it is a violation of the War Powers Act and the US Constitution that Trump had sworn to support. Israel was admittedly the driving force behind the war against Iran, which has done huge damage to the world economy, because it saw the country as a political-military competitor in the Middle East region and Netanyahu was able to convince a stupid and willfully ignorant Trump that the war would be over in a week or two, a walk-over.

In a move that is being interpreted as an additional American support for Netanyahu in the upcoming election, US Secretary of War Pete Hegseth made an unannounced visit to Israel on Monday and met with the Prime Minister. The talks reportedly took place at the Ovda Air Base in southern Israel, where US refueling planes and fighter jets are deployed. Hegseth also met with some US troops. As Netanyahu and President Trump have discussed the possibility of restarting the full-scale bombing campaign against Iran the appearance and timing of the Hegseth visit, as he is the strongest supporter of resuming strikes on Iran within the administration, suggests that the war will soon be resuming.

Beyond the depressing likelihood that the war against Iran will soon start up again, there is the language employed by Trump, which as usual is inane. So Bibi is a “great warrior”? That comes from a draft dodger who avoided US military service in 1968 not for any moral reason but because it was inconvenient for him so his father arranged for a Jewish doctor to fake the records for a medical deferment. Trump had “bone spurs,” a condition largely unheard of in the real world before Trump came up with it on paper. And now the draft dodger is praising a “great warrior” who sends his men and women out to shoot three year olds as part of a regime that has been killing children systematically and without any consequences since the conflict with Gaza began.

And, unfortunately, the bad news is still coming. There is no doubt Trump has been the most servile president in US history when it comes to his constant supporting Israel even when it carries out genocide and kills American citizens. Trump has never failed to obey Netanyahu, but, it must be observed, he has only done slightly more so than Biden and the Democrats did when they preceded him in office. So one should have doubts that a possible change-over in the US Congress and Senate, where Israeli flags can be seen flying in some of the offices, is going to make much difference when it comes to the United States “standing with our best friend and closest ally Israel.”

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Philip M. Giraldi, Ph.D., is Executive Director of the Council for the National Interest, a 501(c)3 tax deductible educational foundation (Federal ID Number #52-1739023) that seeks a more interests-based U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. Website is https://councilforthenationalinterest.org address is P.O. Box 2157, Purcellville VA 20134 and its email is inform@cnionline.org.

Press TV – October 22, 2026

Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmaeil Baghaei says the United States’ negotiating behavior, marked by coercion and one-sided demands, rather than Iran’s religious beliefs, makes rational negotiations impossible.

In a post on his X account on Thursday, Baghaei questioned the relevance of Iranians’ “religious beliefs” to Washington’s failure to honor its diplomatic commitments and its addiction to force and pressure.

He said faith does not preclude rationality, noting that genuine diplomacy requires more than imposing terms on the other side.

“Faith does not preclude ‘rationality’, just as secularism does not guarantee wisdom,” he wrote, adding that Washington’s negotiating behavior amounted to “one-sided dictation rather than genuine diplomacy.”

He said Iran’s “religious beliefs” are not an obstacle to “rational negotiations”; rather, Washington’s reliance on “one-sided dictation” instead of genuine dialogue is what makes such talks impossible.

Baghaei emphasized that the United States cannot expect a lasting agreement while demanding concessions without reciprocity, dictating terms and disregarding the other side’s legitimate interests.

The spokesperson urged the US to stop making ideologically driven assumptions about Iranians’ religious beliefs and instead understand Iran’s strategic interests and legitimate security concerns.

“And above all, instead of accusing others, address your own record of broken promises,” he pointed out.

Baghaei’s remarks come as tensions between the United States and Iran have remained unresolved through negotiations and dialogue over the past several months.

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Tuesday that it is extremely difficult to reach an agreement with Iran, claiming that Iranian leaders do not know how to negotiate and are controlled by “radical Shia clerics”, who would be driven by their theology.

Reports that the US military has drawn up plans for renewed strikes against Iran, potentially targeting the country’s energy infrastructure and peaceful nuclear sites with the GBU-43/B Massive Ordnance Air Blast (MOAB), dubbed the “Mother of All Bombs,” underscore the threat of further US aggression against the Islamic Republic.

The latest threats come amid Washington’s repeated violations of the Islamabad Memorandum of Understanding (MoU), reached after 40 days of US-Israeli aggression against Iran.

The war began on February 28, 2026, while Tehran and Washington were engaged in negotiations over Iran’s peaceful nuclear program.

The attacks were launched after three rounds of indirect negotiations in Muscat, Oman, and Geneva, Switzerland, with technical talks scheduled to begin in Vienna, Austria.

Iran swiftly retaliated with barrages of missiles and drones targeting the Israeli-occupied territories, as well as US bases and interests across the region.

Daniel Davis / Deep Dive – October 21, 2026

Al Mayadeen | October 22, 2026

A senior security official in Tehran said Iran would consider US political targets, along with the infrastructure of countries participating in a new war, legitimate targets if another round of broad war includes assassinations of officials and the massacring of civilians, Fars News Agency reported late on Wednesday.

The official said Iran has communicated this to its operational ranks.

The official explained that Iran takes a US and Israeli attack as a given and regards American diplomatic gestures as lacking credibility, a view that intensified after US Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s October 7 speech in Athens, which Tehran sees as giving the war a historical and civilizational cover.

The official said Iranian leaders and elites have reached the unprecedented conclusion that US Middle East policy is directed from Tel Aviv and that “Israel” will not allow a diplomatic solution, because for Trump, “Israel” comes first.

Iran says it is already at war

The official said Iran already considers itself at war with the United States, and sees the US economic and naval blockade and the restrictions on air traffic as a continuation of the military aggression that began on February 28. There is strong pressure across Iranian society for decisive action to break the blockade on the basis of legitimate defense, the official emphasized.

Washington reinstated its naval blockade of Iranian ports on July 14, after collapsing an interim truce and attacking areas across southwestern Iran.

Iran asked the UN Security Council on Wednesday to condemn the blockade and demand it be lifted. Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said Sunday that Tehran’s seven-day plan to reopen the Strait of Hormuz remains on the table. Iran hinges the reopening of the Strait on a ceasefire across all fronts, a US sanctions waiver on oil sales, and a release of $12 billion in frozen assets.

Trump want to ‘finish the job’

The warning followed US President Donald Trump’s Truth Social post on Sunday in which he said Iran has been “systematically destroyed” and that unless it changes course the United States will “soon finish the job.”

The same post gave Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu his “Complete and Total Endorsement” for “Israel’s” October 27 election. Trump called Netanyahu a “Great Warrior Prime Minister” in the war on Iran and wrote that if “Israel” chooses any other leader, America would have to do the work itself, which he is not inclined to do.

Netanyahu answered with a video and a post thanking “my friend Donald.” He directed part of his message to American voters, saying gas prices would fall once Iran’s government “disappears,” but only under Trump. US midterm elections are on November 3. Trump had declined for months to endorse Netanyahu, and US Vice President JD Vance declined to join him, saying he is focused on American races.

Araghchi replied on X that “last time you wanted to ‘finish the job,’ Iran emerged even stronger,” adding that Tehran has “unfinished jobs too.”

Israeli jets fly to the Iranian border

On Wednesday, Axios reported that dozens of Israeli Air Force jets, with refueling aircraft, flew more than 800 miles on Monday, violating Syrian and Iraqi airspace, as far as the Iranian border before turning back. “Israel” told Washington it was a “power projection” training exercise, which is said was meant to deter Iran ahead of the elections

US officials said “Israel” knew Iranian air defenses would detect the jets, and some said they had the impression “Israel” hoped Iran would fire on them, providing a justification for strikes. Other US and Israeli officials called the sortie unusual only in scale.

The stunt took place on the day US War Secretary Pete Hegseth met Netanyahu at Ovda Airbase. Meanwhile, Netanyahu and Security Minister Israel Katz made new threats, with Katz saying “If Iran attacks Israel, Iran will burn!”

Axios reported last week that Trump and Netanyahu discussed in early October a major new aggression against Iran before the Israeli and US elections. A US official said Trump told Netanyahu to “go ahead and get ready,” though he made no commitment.

Additionally, the US State Department has prepared to order some personnel and family members to leave US embassies across the Gulf, Reuters reported, which would include all personnel at the mission in Saudi Arabia.

More ships targeted in Hormuz

On the other hand, Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) Navy has stepped up its operations on ships in and around the strait, which have violated its navigation rules.

On October 9, it said any vessel using an unauthorized route would be pursued and “punished” anywhere in the region. On Sunday, six commercial vessels were struck in and around the strait, the most in a single day since the war began.

On October 12, the IRGC said it had hit a third tanker in two days for navigating without its tracking system and ignoring warnings. Tankers have since caught fire after hitting mines on unauthorized routes. Ships on a non-compliance list kept by Iran’s Gulf Strait Authority now number about 100.

The Cradle | October 21, 2026

Iraq shut the strategic Sheeb border crossing with Iran on 21 October, sources told western media outlets, framing the move as a result of intensified US pressure on Baghdad to strangle the Islamic Republic.

An Iraqi source told AFP that the crossing was shut “until further notice.” Two other sources said Washington is pressuring Baghdad to close more border crossings.

Iranian judiciary-linked website Mizan reported that the shutting of the crossing came “following a decision by the Iraqi prime minister’s office.”

According to other sources, the US wants Iraq to close all its border crossings with Iran.

“The US Treasury Department raised this with Prime Minister Ali al-Zaidi when he was in New York. All border crossings will be closed except for one crossing in federal territory and one crossing in the Kurdistan region. The US has asked all countries bordering Iran to do the same.”

Disruptions have also taken place on the border with Pakistan.

“Regarding Pakistan, yes, there have been disruptions to border exchanges with some neighboring countries,” Iranian Interior Ministry spokesperson Ali Zeinivand said on 21 October.

Reuters also reported on the closure of the Sheeb crossing.

The closure took place “to review security and install detection ‌equipment to stop the smuggling of prohibited materials,” the British outlet cites an Iraqi border official as saying.

Sheeb will be closed to ​passengers, vehicles and commercial trucks “until further notice,” the source added.

Valiollah Hayati, a security ⁠official from Iran’s southwestern Khuzestan, confirmed the closure and said consultations to resume operations were ongoing. Tehran has said Iraq failed to provide any formal notice prior to the sudden closure of the Sheeb crossing.

Separately, the UAE-based Al-Ain outlet reported, citing Iraqi government sources, that Iraq’s premier informed leaders of the Shia-led Coordination Framework, during a 19 October meeting, that Washington had demanded the closures.

“The US is pressuring Baghdad to close its border crossings with Iran,” an Iraqi source said.

Al-Ain further reported that Zaidi has stressed Iraq’s need to maintain a balanced position, adding that Baghdad rejected the US call for all crossings to be closed.

Washington then “proposed keeping only two crossings open, one in the north and the other in the central region – the Mehran crossing, which connects Iraq’s Wasit province with Iran’s Ilam province,” the Emirati report went on to say.

Baghdad reportedly rejected this as well, the outlet states, adding that US envoy Tom Barrack told the Iraqi prime minister that “this step falls within the policy of economic pressure on Iran.”

Zaidi was reportedly informed that the US will resume its war on Iran. “Iraq cannot become involved in this war, and its repercussions will affect the political system and the state,” the Iraqi source told Al-Ain.

The report states more crossings could be closed in the coming days.

The latest closure follows Iraq’s temporary shutdown of the Shalamcheh crossing in September, after Saudi Arabia alleged that drones launched from Iraqi territory targeted the kingdom.

It also coincides with US-imposed restrictions on Iranian flights to Iraqi airports.

Press TV – October 21, 2026

A senior commander of the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) has warned that Iran could target undersea Internet cables passing through the Strait of Hormuz if the country’s infrastructure is attacked.

Brigadier General Yadollah Javani, political deputy to the IRGC chief commander, made the remarks in an interview with Iran’s Arabic-language Al-Alam television news network on Wednesday.

Addressing the possibility of strikes against undersea Internet infrastructure, Javani said Iran would use its full capabilities if the country’s own infrastructure came under attack.

“The United States and its allies have substantial investments,” he said, adding that their assets could become targets if they damaged Iranian infrastructure.

Undersea fiber-optic cables carry a substantial share of global international data traffic, making them important components of the world’s communications networks. Damage to such infrastructure could disrupt connectivity and affect businesses and services that depend on international data links.

Javani also said Iran performed well during “a period of strong defense,” while the United States and Israel suffered a defeat they had not anticipated.

He added that, because Iran’s enemies would find it difficult to accept defeat, Tehran would pursue a more calculated and, in some cases, offensive approach.

Javani went on to say that the shift is intended to strengthen Iran’s deterrence and prevent the United States from considering another attack.

He further said that Iran’s military capabilities for offensive operations against the United States, European countries, Israel, and countries supporting Washington have become evident.

The general also stated that US military bases in the region have been destroyed and that facilities located farther away could also be targeted.

Javani’s remarks come amid heightened tensions between Iran, the United States, and Israel, with Iranian officials repeatedly warning that any renewed aggression against Iran would carry serious consequences for US interests across the region.

RT | October 20, 2026

Acting Serbian President Ana Brnabic has accused the European Parliament of breaking its own ethics rules and sending a team of political operators to Serbia “with already formed conclusions” about how they want this weekend’s election to end.

Former Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic is running in parliamentary elections this Sunday, after vacating the presidency last month. Vucic’s coalition, led by his SNS party, is competing against the Student List – an electoral faction put together by the organizers of anti-government protests raging in Serbia since 2024.

European Parliament elections observers are due to arrive in Belgrade on Thursday. However, in a letter to Parliament President Roberta Metsola on Tuesday, Brnabic accused the team of political bias, pointing out that some of its members have openly expressed “extremely negative judgments about the authorities in Serbia [and] expectations for their removal.”

Lead EU observer Andreas Schieder monitored parliamentary elections in Serbia in 2023, and signed off on the official result, before accusing Vucic’s party of fraud and vote-buying. Brnabic explained this in her letter to European Parliament President Roberta Metsola, which was seen by Serbian media outlets.

The appointment of Schieder, an Austrian Social Democrat, violates the UN’s Declaration of Principles for International Election Observation, she continued. This document, to which all EU delegations are beholden, states that observers must be “free from any political, economic or other conflicts of interest.”

In June, Schieder publicly backed the student protest movement and accused Vucic of leading Serbia into an “authoritarian downward spiral.”

Speaking to Austria’s APA news agency on Tuesday, Schieder described Brnabic’s letter as “unprecedented attack on the European Parliament’s election-observation mission.”

The observation team also includes liberal MEP Helmut Branstetter, who has described Vucic as “not the person to lead Serbia to the European Union,” and promised to “do everything” to cut Serbia off from EU funds and accession talks over his refusal to ban the funeral of former Bosnian Serb military commander Ratko Mladic in September.

Two Croatian MEPs are members of the mission. Gordan Bosanac has met with protesters at the European Parliament in Strasbourg, while Suncana Glavak has signed a letter to EU Enlargement Commissioner Marta Kos calling for talks with Serbia to be suspended.

“All of the above indicates that the European Parliament sent an observation mission to Serbia that already has predetermined political positions, and that the goal of such an assessment of the elections and electoral conditions is to directly help one of the participants in the elections,” Brnabic wrote in her letter. “It is clear that their goal is not to impartially observe the elections, but to participate politically in them.”

Recurring protests have dogged Vucic since 2024, when the deaths of 16 people in a railway station disaster in Novi Sad sparked nationwide discontent. More than two decades earlier, the US successfully fomented mass protests that forced Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic out of power, and Vucic has accused the EU and Western NGOs of attempting to run the same playbook against his government.

Last month, Vucic described MEPs who traveled to Novi Sad to support the protests as “scum that cannot rule even in their own countries,” who have “come to demolish Serbia from the outside.”

The Cradle – October 20, 2026

US special envoy Tom Barrack conceded that a “ground kinetic” battle in Yemen by the US “seems fruitless” during a talk at the Global Security Forum in Qatar on 20 October.

“I think the president’s been clear that he supports Saudi Arabia and the backing that they need logistically he will supply. But America getting involved in a ground kinetic battle somewhere else seems fruitless.”

Barrack is Washington’s ambassador to Turkiye and special presidential envoy for Syria and Iraq.

He admitted that military force has failed in Yemen and that Riyadh is in a “very difficult position.”

“These kinetic reactions have never worked. It doesn’t work. It’s probably not likely that it’s going to work,” he said.

Barrack questioned whether US meddling across West Asia has helped or harmed the region, arguing that Ansarallah in Yemen, Hezbollah in Lebanon, and the resistance factions in Iraq would lose their reason to exist only once states took responsibility themselves.

He pressed for talks between Riyadh, Sanaa, and regional mediators, urging regional capitals to build their own alliances instead of leaning on Washington.

He went further, admitting that the US has had a hand in 23 regime changes across the region, none of which achieved their aims.

He declined to say whether the US-Israeli war on Iran launched on 28 February was a mistake, while conceding that it had unleashed unintended consequences across the region.

The admission comes as the Saudi-led coalition presses on with airstrikes on Yemen, drawing retaliatory missile and drone strikes by the Yemeni Armed Forces (YAF) on the kingdom.

Riyadh has turned to its defense partners under the Mecca pact, including Pakistan and Turkiye, after Washington declined its requests for direct US intervention against Yemen.

Barrack’s remarks follow Washington’s failed bid to subdue Yemen by military force, with more than 1,000 US airstrikes between March 2024 and April 2025 unable to halt Yemeni naval operations waged in support of Gaza, forcing the US into an Omani-brokered ceasefire with Sanaa in May 2025.

The campaign cost Washington $1 billion in its first three weeks alone, as Yemeni forces downed 17 MQ-9 Reaper drones and the US lost two F-18 fighter jets.

Ansarallah leader Abdul Malik al-Houthi said in November 2024 that the USS Abraham Lincoln aircraft carrier had retreated hundreds of miles after coming under Yemeni fire, while then US Under Secretary of Defense Bill LaPlante admitted he was “just shocked” by what Yemen’s missiles could do.

Europe fared no better, with Rear Admiral Vasileios Gryparis, commander of the EU’s Operation Aspides, telling Bloomberg in June 2024 that his Red Sea fleet needed to more than double in size and that US–UK strikes on Yemen were “not contributing to the solution,” after France withdrew one of his frigates citing the threat level.

 

Al Mayadeen | October 20, 2026

Ukraine has deployed drone personnel and thousands of microdrones across countries surrounding Iran, including Iraq’s Kurdistan Region, an Iranian security source told Tasnim News Agency, highlighting the deployments as part of a broader network of hostile activities directed against Tehran.

According to the security source, Kiev had established an operational microdrone network across the region, with thousands of drones deployed in Iraq’s Kurdistan Region.

The source withheld the names of the countries hosting Ukrainian personnel and equipment, stating that the information remained confidential and would be disclosed in due course.

Tehran preparing appropriate response

The Iranian security source further said Tehran considers Ukraine’s activities part of the broader hostile actions pursued by Europe and NATO against Iran, adding that Iranian authorities are fully aware of Kiev’s operations.

Tehran, according to the source, is considering an appropriate response to the deployments, which it stressed as a security threat.

Describing the operation as a “failed attempt and an embarrassment” for Ukraine, the source stressed that Iran remains aware of Kiev’s activities and their implications for regional security.

The bigger picture

The deployment comes amid longstanding security concerns over armed Kurdish separatist groups operating along Iran’s western border and growing tensions between Tehran and Kiev following a Ukrainian attack on an Iranian commercial vessel in the Caspian Sea.

Baghdad, Tehran, and the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) signed a security agreement in March 2023 requiring Iranian Kurdish separatist groups to disarm and relocate away from the Iraq-Iran border.

The agreement also obliges Iraqi authorities to prevent the groups from using Iraqi territory to launch military operations against Iran. While Baghdad and the KRG have fulfilled their obligations, sources told Al Mayadeen that four or five Iranian separatist groups continue to defy the agreement and carry out provocations along the border.

The remaining groups have continued their activities despite guarantees offered by the KRG, with Al Mayadeen Plus reporting in September that they had refused to leave their positions.

Tehran has responded to the separatist groups with missile and drone strikes, as well as ground operations targeting positions in Erbil and Sulaymaniyah. In July, Iranian strikes martyred nine members of the Komala Party. Iran is also building a security wall extending more than 250 kilometers along its border with the Kurdistan Region.

These security concerns have unfolded alongside a deterioration in relations between Iran and Ukraine. In July, Tehran condemned a Ukrainian attack on an Iranian commercial vessel in the Caspian Sea that killed one sailor and injured another. Iran’s Foreign Ministry characterized the strike as an act of aggression and a violation of Article 2(4) of the UN Charter, warning that it could widen the scope of the war.

Press TV – October 20, 2026

Iran’s Ambassador and Deputy Permanent Representative to the UN has urged the world body’s Security Council to hold an emergency meeting and condemn threats by the United States and the Israeli regime against the Islamic Republic’s territory and critical infrastructure.

Gholamhossein Darzi made the remarks in a letter dated Monday and addressed to UN Secretary-General António Guterres and the president of the Security Council.

The letter cited recent US media reports that the White House and the US Department of War had prepared fresh military options, including the possible use of the GBU-43/B, known as the Massive Ordnance Air Blast (MOAB) or so-called “Mother of All Bombs,” against Iran.

Darzi noted that US President Donald Trump had discussed the weapon in a televised interview and threatened further attacks.

The diplomat also cited remarks by Israeli minister for military affairs Israel Katz that the regime was prepared to attack the Islamic Republic and would target “all energy targets” in any renewed aggression.

The letter also pointed out how Katz had threatened to return Iran to the “Stone Age”, besides claiming that the United States and the regime had dropped a total of 35,000 bombs on Iran and that their military campaign was not over.

Darzi further denounced Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu for openly declaring an intention to launch another unprovoked war against the Islamic Republic, adding that the silence and explicit support of certain Security Council members had emboldened him.

He called for immediate action against “brazen existential threats” issued by Trump and renewed Israeli threats of military aggression.

“These unabated threats, in the context of the U.S.-Israeli wars of aggression launched on 13 June 2025 and 28 February 2026 against Iran, and the deliberate attacks against Iranian civilians and critical infrastructure, pose a grave risk of further violation of international law with catastrophic humanitarian and environmental consequences, and serious threats to regional and international peace and security,” he wrote.

The diplomat argued that threats to destroy Iran’s civilian and energy infrastructure could cause severe and potentially long-term humanitarian and environmental damage.

He also condemned Washington and Tel Aviv for disregarding obligations under the four Geneva Conventions of 1949 and customary international humanitarian law.

Darzi requested an emergency Security Council meeting, unequivocal condemnation of threats against Iran’s civilian infrastructure, and accountability and full reparation for damage resulting from Washington’s and Tel Aviv’s internationally wrongful acts.

“The Security Council cannot remain silent in the face of explicit threats of renewed aggression and the destruction of essential civilian infrastructure,” he stated.

The letter, meanwhile, reaffirmed Iran’s right to self-defense under Article 51 of the UN Charter.

He warned that the United States and the Israeli regime would bear responsibility for the consequences of further aggression, including “the risk of unpredictable and uncontrollable escalation.”

Al Mayadeen | October 20, 2026

Tehran no longer views Pakistani and Qatari mediation as yielding tangible results, Iranian sources told Al Mayadeen on Tuesday, as a Russian initiative coordinated with China proposes joint management of the Strait of Hormuz with Iran.

Iranian sources told Al Mayadeen that Tehran has come to view Pakistani and Qatari mediation as ineffective in delivering tangible results, citing Islamabad and Doha’s limited ability to influence the US position. This has prompted Iran to explore alternative channels for mediation.

In this context, Iranian international affairs expert Mehdi Khan Alizadeh told Al Mayadeen that a new Russian diplomatic move could pave the way for Moscow to assume a more substantive mediating role, amid coordination between Russia and the United States. He pointed to a Russian initiative developed in cooperation with China that proposes joint management of maritime traffic through the Strait of Hormuz with Iran.

Alizadeh explained that the initiative concerns the Strait of Hormuz and Gulf security. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov’s visit to Tehran addressed these issues, while Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian is expected to visit Moscow again, reflecting continued efforts surrounding the Russian proposal.

Regarding Tehran’s immediate priorities, Alizadeh stressed that ending the war takes precedence over the nuclear issue. He said this position follows a decision by the Leader of the Islamic Revolution and the Islamic Republic, Sayyed Mojtaba Khamenei, adding that Iran’s current focus is on securing a ceasefire, while the nuclear file is not presently among its priorities.

These developments coincide with US President Donald Trump’s remarks about “providing a framework for Russia to communicate with Iran,” potentially intersecting with Moscow’s diplomatic efforts.

Lavrov visits Tehran for first time since start of war

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov arrived in Tehran on Monday for his first visit since the start of the war on Iran, as Moscow seeks to play a mediating role.

Lavrov said Moscow’s efforts “aim to prevent the return of a full-scale war.”

Meanwhile, Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian told Lavrov that the establishment of US military bases in regional countries has offered, and will continue to offer, no benefit to the region beyond increasing tensions and undermining security.

During his meeting with Lavrov, Pezeshkian said US interference and divisive policies had led to the emergence of disputes across the region.

He stressed that there are no fundamental disagreements between Iran and regional countries, affirming Tehran’s readiness to address existing challenges through dialogue and mutual understanding.

Pezeshkian also said Iran shares common ground with countries across the region and has consistently sought to develop relations with them on the basis of brotherly engagement and mutual cooperation.

Araghchi, Lavrov reject military action, call for stability in Gulf

Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi, for his part, said during a joint press conference with Lavrov that Tehran and Moscow agree that military action is not the solution. He added that relations between the two countries contribute to strengthening regional stability.

Araghchi said he had hosted Lavrov in Tehran for “important discussions” covering several issues spanning Europe and West Asia, including Lebanon, Palestine, Ukraine, and Yemen.

The talks also focused on expanding economic and nuclear cooperation between the two countries. Araghchi underscored that ties between Iran and Russia have never been closer or more collaborative than they are today.