excerpts below- read at link

A recent classified assessment advised that prolonged large-scale operations in the Middle East risk weakening U.S. capabilities elsewhere.

Several U.S. military leaders have advised Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth that prolonging large-scale operations against Iran is unsustainable and risks weakening their ability to confront threats elsewhere, including the U.S. homeland, according to people familiar with a recent assessment prepared for the Pentagon chief.

The warnings — detailed for Hegseth by the heads of the Army, Navy and Air Force and the four-star commanders overseeing U.S. operations throughout Europe, Asia and Latin America — appear in the Aug. 14 edition of the Secretary of Defense Orders Book (SDOB), these people said. They described the assessment to The Washington Post on the condition of anonymity because the document is classified.

As President Donald Trump has pressured Tehran to reopen the Strait of Hormuz and accept several U.S. provisions for ending the stalemated conflict, he has been adamant that all options remain available to him — including further military action.

Consequently, U.S. Central Command, the headquarters responsible for prosecuting the Iran war, has kept a force of more than 50,000 troops on alert for months in case the president orders additional attacks.

The Aug. 14 orders book directs some troops deployed in the Middle East to remain there through September and some others into 2027, said those familiar with the document. The prospect of extending those forces further compelled military leaders to voice their concern, these people said.

Leaders of the U.S. European Command, the U.S. Pacific Command and the U.S. Southern Command, along with the Navy’s top admiral, responded with what is characterized in the SDOB as a “non-concur,” those familiar with the assessment said — meaning they disagree with the secretary’s order to extend their forces but will execute it nevertheless.

The geographic combatant commands overseeing U.S. operations in Europe, Asia and Latin America have had their ships, aircraft and other equipment pulled away to support the Iran conflict. This has limited their ability to conduct missions and ensure proper training, those familiar with the assessment said. The Navy, in particular, has had to stretch its capacity to keep

Army and Air Force leadership concurred with Hegseth’s desire to extend their deployed forces, but each emphasized that doing so would come with significant risk, these people said.
Overall, the tenor from the military leadership is that the ongoing Iran operation, having reached the six-month mark, has been “too much for too long,” said one person familiar with the assessment.

The military’s warning to Hegseth, which has not been previously reported, offers new insight into the administration’s dilemma as Trump seeks to end the conflict on terms favorable to the United States while Iran, cognizant of the war’s unpopularity with most Americans and its mounting toll on the U.S. arsenal, refuses to capitulate.

“Decisions regarding the scope and duration of specific force commitments to any Combatant Command are made based on the current threat assessment, strategic priorities established by the President, and the advice of the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and Combatant Commanders,” Sean Parnell, a spokesman for Hegseth, said in a statement to The Post.

The top military officials at European Command and Southern Command each cautioned Hegseth that lending their ships and surveillance aircraft to Central Command has degraded their ability to fulfill homeland-defense obligations, said those familiar with the assessment.

Adm. Samuel Paparo, the chief of Pacific Command, disagreed with the level of support he was ordered to continually provide, including an aircraft carrier strike group and naval destroyers, those familiar with the assessment said.

Adm. Daryl Caudle, the chief of Naval Operations, provided Hegseth with the dimmest picture, saying in the SDOB that the Navy cannot sustain its current level of support for the Iran conflict because there is no anticipated end date, those familiar with the assessment said.

Caudle conveyed to Hegseth that barely one-fourth of the Navy’s destroyer fleet is ready to deploy, a sharp decline from prewar levels, said those familiar with the assessment.
More broadly, the document says that the impact on ship maintenance, if demands imposed by the Iran operation continue unchanged, jeopardizes the fleet’s availability should other conflicts arise, people familiar with the assessment said.

The depletion of Patriot interceptors — as a result of the Iran war and previous donations to Ukraine — has limited the Trump administration’s ability to reescalate the war, as Tehran retains the ability to successfully target U.S. facilities throughout the Middle East

As The Post and others reported previously, Caine advised the White House before hostilities began that the U.S. lacked sufficient munitions — and support from allies — to conduct an extended large-scale campaign.

More recently, Gen. Alexus Grynkewich, the head of European Command, privately warned the Pentagon that he lacked adequate naval forces to shield Israel and the U.S. homeland from missile attacks, as The Post reported this month.

In the Pacific, key U.S. allies have raised alarm that the Pentagon’s depletion of missiles and air defense interceptors leave them vulnerable to China. The Navy’s only dedicated aircraft carrier in the Pacific, a linchpin of the military’s plan to deter Beijing, was sent to the Middle East to relieve another carrier that has been deployed for more than 300 days.

As mentioned, just excerpts, read entirely at the link provided

Interesting author as well

John Rapley is a contributing columnist for The Globe and Mail. He is an author and academic whose books include Why Empires Fall and Twilight of the Money Gods.

Donald Trump said he’d blow up Kharg Island. He may have blown up the bond market instead.

The market has been a tinderbox for months, if not years. Government debt has been rising for decades but blasted off after the 2008 financial crisis, then reached hyper-speed during the pandemic. In consequence, the total global stock of government debt has risen fivefold since the turn of the millennium, with Western governments and China accounting for most of the increase

As a result, global investors are being asked to buy ever more bonds by governments that show no desire to reduce their borrowing habits.

Further kindling has been added through recent moves by AI ‘hyperscalers,’ which have burned through their cash reserves and so have started borrowing to fund their massive data-centre buildouts.

Thus, with the demand for global credit outstripping the supply, investors are in a position to demand better returns on their loans. With the pressure on interest rates consequently rising, all that is needed to ignite a credit fire would be a resurgence in inflation.

Enter Donald Trump. His war on Iran is starting to resemble one of those dark thrillers, when a supposedly carefree engagement enmeshes the main character in a toxic and destructive relationship from which there’s no escape.

Now, Mr. Trump is desperate to leave Iran; ( I disagree) but Iran has locked him in and refuses to give him the key.
On the face of it, the TACO trade – Trump Always Chickens Out – still operates: each time the President escalates U.S. actions, oil prices surge, and he backs down.

His problem is, the Iranians don’t reciprocate. The regime appears to have concluded (correctly) that negotiating with the U.S. is pointless, since Mr. Trump will break his word, (as he has on multiple occasions) and so it’s trying to establish facts on the ground to which Washington will have no choice but to accede

Specifically, Tehran is determined to control the Strait of Hormuz, where it has shown it can bring tanker traffic to a virtual standstill with the occasional drone strike. The U.S. has had some success escorting tankers out of the Strait, but the supply of oil from the region still falls short of global demand, causing prices to steadily rise.

This, in turn, is putting upward pressure on inflation. It’s not only gasoline prices that are rising but crucially, distillates such as diesel, which are critical to the transportation and farming sectors. Farmers have already seen costs increase because of the shortage of fertilizers (since so much of the world’s fertilizer supply is produced in the Gulf).

If the standoff continues without resolution, therefore, the risk is that inflation, already above target in most Western countries, will resume rising this autumn.

Rather than wait for the bad news to come, bond investors are starting to demand a higher rate of interest now, to compensate for the loss of their dollars’ buying power over time.

If next week’s inflation report comes in soft, bonds may get a breather. Nevertheless, for as long as the war continues, the paths of inflation and interest rates both look more likely to head uphill rather than down.

Although Iran has been devastated and its economy is in ruins, there is still little sign of the regime being anywhere near collapse. As a result, Mr. Trump is trapped between the Scylla of an inflation spike that could cause a recession and the Charybdis of a failure that would expose him to ridicule.

The world economy really needs this war to end. However, since Mr. Trump fears few things more than to be called a loser, don’t expect that to happen any time soon.

He’s already a loser IMO

A meeting between Russian President Vladimir Putin and US envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner to discuss the Ukraine conflict concluded in Moscow on Saturday.

Russian media outlets, including state news agency RIA, said Witkoff and Kushner departed the Kremlin after approximately three hours of negotiations.

Neither side immediately commented on the outcome of the meeting, which RIA said began at approximately 7.55 pm local time (1655GMT).

Russian presidential aide Yury Ushakov and presidential envoy Kirill Dmitriev also attended the meeting.

In remarks ahead of the meeting, Putin said the situation they must address is “certainly complex,” adding that Trump continues efforts to resolve the war despite entering a “difficult situation.”

“Today, we will discuss all its components, all aspects, and we, for our part, are ready to inform you of our view of the situation,” he said, describing the contacts as “always beneficial.”

Witkoff thanked Putin for agreeing to a three-day ceasefire while he and Kushner visit Moscow and Ukraine’s capital Kyiv.

Witkoff and Kushner arrived at Moscow’s Vnukovo Airport on Saturday, and are expected to visit Kyiv on Sunday for the first time.

Trump said on Friday that Kushner and Witkoff would travel to Moscow not with new ideas, but with a proposal aimed at ending the more than four-year war. “They’re bringing with them a proposal to end the war,” he said, but gave no details on the content of the proposal.

The US envoys last visited Moscow in late January.

Russia rejects British allegations of involvement in Leipzig Airport drone incident

Russia’s charge d’affaires in the UK Vasily Tsyganov rejected allegations of Russian involvement in a drone incident at Germany’s Leipzig Airport, the Russian Embassy in London said on Thursday.

Tsyganov was summoned to the British Foreign Office earlier in the day, where he was presented with a protest over what the British side described as Russia’s alleged involvement in the incident, the embassy said in a statement.

The Russian diplomat rejected the allegations, saying the British side had provided no convincing evidence, it said.

The exchange follows similar diplomatic tensions between Russia and Germany over the Aug. 4 Leipzig Airport incident.

BBC

Germany has said Russia was responsible for last month’s drone attack at Leipzig’s airport.

A drone carrying an explosive device was discovered at Leipzig/Halle Airport in eastern Germany, close to Ukrainian cargo planes, on 4 August.

It failed to explode as the detonator was apparently faulty, and investigators suspect a second drone collided with a cargo aircraft nearby. A third drone was reportedly found near the airport 10 days later.

On Tuesday, Germany officially blamed Russia for the attempted drone attack at Leipzig Airport near Ukrainian cargo planes and announced extensive sanctions against Moscow. The measures include closing the Russian Consulate General in Bonn by Sept. 18, ending a 2011 German-Russian agreement on cultural centers, and forcing the closure of the Russian House in Berlin. Germany also ordered staff and their families to leave the country as soon as possible

The Russian side also described the incident as a “coordinated provocation” aimed at increasing tensions in Europe and said such developments were in the interests of Kyiv and its supporters.

Unless I’m misunderstanding this incident, the drone incident took place a month ago and we’re just hearing/reading about it these last few days? Seems weird. Not credible. And please, if I’m mistaken let me know?

**This is absurd- Exploding pillows and airport chaos

A series of packages containing self-igniting neck massage pillows were sent across Europe by air and road. One exploded into flames inside a postal warehouse on the outskirts of Birmingham, another burst into flames in a lorry driving through Poland and a third caught fire shortly before being loaded onto a plane at Leipzig/Halle Airport.

Several men accused of involvement in that plot are currently on trial in Lithuania, where the national prosecutor said “socially vulnerable people” had been offered payment on Telegram or through criminal networks by people linked to Russia’s GRU military intelligence service.

“These hybrid actions can pursue different objectives,” he told The i Paper. “One may be a more concrete one in terms of disrupting military supply lines, but also at the same time, intimidating and polarising societies is always one of the objectives of hybrid warfare.”

As claimed by Lithuania- this modus operandi (a distinct pattern or method of operation that indicates or suggests the work of a single criminal in more than one crime) of “socially vulnerable people” being offered payments to commit crime just happens to be the same method used to make some really suspect attacks in Canada..

Toronto police link dozens of shootings to ‘multilayered’ gun-for-hire network

Young adults and teens are being recruited through apps like Telegram and paid to carry out attacks, officials say

The “attacks” in Canada were attributed to Iran by the US. With no evidence to support the claim. These attacks are, in my opinion, carried out to manage perceptions and push political agendas- They don’t make any sense in any other way. That’s pretty much admitted in the piece above.. But neither Russia or Iran benefit from this type of hybrid warfare- My opinion? Israel was a player in the synagogue shootings in Canada, intimidating and polarising Canadian society.

David Pugliese is an award-winning journalist covering Canadian Forces and military issues in Canada

A judge has ordered the release of federal records on an American initiative to settle Nazi war criminals in Canada after ruling there is no evidence that making the files public would harm relations between the two nations.

The records involve a U.S. program set up after the Second World War to secretly settle large numbers of Nazi war criminals in Canada, often with the support of Canadian officials.

The federal government declined to release the documents under the Access to Information law, claiming the records would harm U.S.-Canada relations at a time of ongoing tension.

But Federal Court judge Simon Fothergill concluded that claim was unsupported by any evidence. “A bald statement of ongoing ‘tensions’ between Canada and the United States is not a sufficient basis to refuse disclosure of very specific information related to efforts by the United States to resettle suspected Nazis and Nazi collaborators in Canada following World War II,” he wrote in a Sept. 1 ruling.

The decision to withhold the information was unreasonable and the records must now be disclosed, Fothergill concluded.

Similar information had already been released years ago by the Central Intelligence Agency, which ran the Nazi resettlement program, as well as the U.S. government.

After the war, U.S. intelligence agencies recruited Nazis and Nazi collaborators, many from eastern Europe, for their covert operations against the Soviet Union.

Fothergill noted in his ruling that the study written for the Deschênes Commission concluded “inadequate security screening led to many perpetrators of Nazi war crimes entering Canada.” He also pointed out the study concluded Canada was reluctant to prosecute such war criminals.

That “inadequate security screening” was intentional- same as in the US.

Canada has long been seen as a haven for Nazis and their collaborators, including large numbers of Waffen SS soldiers. There are a number of monuments in Canada to the Waffen SS. In addition, the Department of Canadian Heritage had to remove the names of several hundred alleged Nazi collaborators it planned to engrave on the Victims of Communism Memorial in Ottawa.

Robertson said he is hopeful the public will get a better understanding why the government had agreed to the Nazi resettlement program after the war. “This is a victory for all Canadians,” he said. “This is information that all Canadians deserve to have made accessible.”

Much of the renewed debate around Nazi war criminals and collaborators in Canada was prompted by a September 2023 event in which MPs of all parties gave two standing ovations to Yaroslav Hunka, a resident of North Bay, ON. Hunka was described by then-House of Commons Speaker Anthony Rota as a hero and he was thanked for his military service.

But news quickly emerged that Hunka had served in a Ukrainian Waffen SS unit which fought for the Nazis. Large numbers of soldiers from a Ukrainian Waffen SS division came to Canada after the war.

There are no allegations that Hunka took part in any war crimes.
Article content

The Polish government and Jewish groups have denounced the Ukraine SS unit for its role in killing civilians and its involvement in massacres during the Second World War. The division was also used by the Nazis to crush a national uprising in Slovakia, again prompting allegations of war crimes.

But some Ukrainian nationalists see the SS soldiers as heroes because they fought against the Soviet Union. The Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies at the University of Alberta in Edmonton continues to maintain eight endowments in the names of Ukrainian SS veterans.

U.S. Central Command launched a wave of strikes against Iran on Sept. 1, and President Donald Trump said forces are “prepared to do another one” as Iran launched retaliatory attacks Sept. 2.

Speaking in the Oval Office on Sept. 2, Trump said he ended the roughly month long pause in hostilities because of sea mines.

“They were trying to rebuild their radar systems and a missile system and … to build a rocket that drops mines,” ( Trump claims without evidence) Trump said at a White House event. “They were building it, it was almost finished, so we took it out. We saw that they were building it, we see everything that they’re doing.”

Iranian forces countered with ballistic missile attacks on U.S. forces in Jordan and on civilian ships transiting the Strait. A number of U.S. Air Force personnel and assets are stationed at the base in Jordan that has previously come under attack. (There are reports of US casualties- unconfirmed)

On Sept. 1, CENTCOM announced additional strikes on IRGC targets in retaliation for “attempted attacks by the IRGC against commercial shipping in the Strait of Hormuz and against American service members deployed to the region.” (no actual attacks just claims of attempts) The command indicated its targets included “air defense sites, radar systems, maritime assets and facilities, mine-laying capabilities, and communications sites.”

Trump called the U.S. strikes “a very heavy attack” that “took out all of the new equipment that they tried to build along the Strait of Hormuz: some defensive, some offensive.”

Iranian state media outlets alleged the strikes also hit a wedding party in a coastal town, but those claims remain unconfirmed.

These are confirmed, there is footage accessible all over the place. The US is playing fast and loose with the truth, as usual, by not confirming.

Iranian forces launched their latest retaliatory strikes Sept. 2. Officials and media outlets in the Middle East reported attempted strikes in Kuwait, Bahrain, Jordan, and Iraq. Saudi Arabia’s Foreign Ministry also said Iran targeted a Saudi tanker in the Strait of Hormuz and killed members of its crew.

As of 4 p.m. Eastern time and 11 p.m. in much of the Middle East, CENTCOM had not announced additional strikes. Trump told reporters that the U.S. is “prepared to do another one anytime we want.”

The US struck first, as mentioned yesterday and Iran responded. Bottom line

Trump contemplates using nukes against Iran

The tactical-nuclear controversy did not arise in a vacuum. The Pentagon has acknowledged that it is reviewing US nuclear strategy and seeking a broader range of options for regional conflicts. Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Elbridge Colby has spoken of providing more credible or “rational” nuclear choices. Adm Richard Correll, commander of US Strategic Command, has discussed an escalation spectrum that includes the possibility of a limited nuclear exchange.

US intelligence had not established that Tehran possessed a nuclear weapon or had made a final decision to build one.

Uranium enrichment, including Iran’s claimed right to peaceful enrichment under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, is not identical to manufacturing a bomb.

The danger is that Washington may now be considering nuclear means to accomplish objectives its conventional campaign failed to achieve. The term “tactical nuclear weapon” should not disguise that. “Tactical” describes an intended military role; it does not make the explosion humane, limited or reliably controllable. Such a weapon can still cause mass death, radiation exposure, environmental contamination and escalation beyond the region. Iran’s underground construction would then appear not as proof that war was necessary, but of why a weaker country believed concealment and hardening were essential to survival.

The first wartime nuclear detonation since Nagasaki would transform international security. It could erode the already fragile norm against nuclear use and encourage other nuclear-armed states to describe their weapons as practical instruments of conventional warfare.

I’m going to repeat those last two paragraphs below because that is some serious food for thought!!

The danger is that Washington may now be considering nuclear means to accomplish objectives its conventional campaign failed to achieve. The term “tactical nuclear weapon” should not disguise that. “Tactical” describes an intended military role; it does not make the explosion humane, limited or reliably controllable. Such a weapon can still cause mass death, radiation exposure, environmental contamination and escalation beyond the region. Iran’s underground construction would then appear not as proof that war was necessary, but of why a weaker country believed concealment and hardening were essential to survival.

The first wartime nuclear detonation since Nagasaki would transform international security. It could erode the already fragile norm against nuclear use and encourage other nuclear-armed states to describe their weapons as practical instruments of conventional warfare.

Hattip Chaos Cat

Related Content; from 2025 below

Some excerpts

The base at Abu al-Duhur had been dead for thirteen years. Wrecked in the Syrian war, out of service since 2012, its runways cratered and its hangars stripped, it sat in Idlib province about 60 kilometers from the Turkish border, useful to no air force. On the night of August 18 eight Israeli missiles fell on it. Israel said it had struck to stop Turkish troops from moving in.

Six days before the strike, Israel had gone to Washington with the same warning. Its intelligence, it said, indicated there might be Turkish movement into the airfield. The Americans took the warning and ran it down through their own agencies. Tom Barrack, Donald Trump’s ambassador to Ankara and his envoy for Syria, described what came back. “We all did our due diligence. We went back to our respective intelligence agencies. The answer we got is, no, that’s not happening.”

Then Barrack said the thing an envoy is not supposed to say in public about an ally. “One theory is they were just baiting Turkiye.” He called the strike aggressive and timed, and he named what it was timed to. Israel votes on October 27.

Israel’s defence minister, Israel Katz, called Barrack’s account “full of inaccuracies” and said the intelligence had been clear. Both cannot be true. Either Turkey was about to seize a derelict runway and the closest ally Israel has could not find the evidence, or it was not, and a NATO member’s base was bombed on a claim that dissolved the moment anyone checked it. The envoy who checked it settled the matter to his own satisfaction on a podcast, five days after the missiles landed, by guessing at the motive.

The motive was on a billboard before it was in the air. Along Tel Aviv’s main highway, above the traffic, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan had appeared beside Iran’s supreme leader, the head of Hezbollah and the mayor of New York, under a single line: “They want Netanyahu to lose. Don’t let them win.” Benjamin Netanyahu is the first sitting Israeli prime minister to be tried for corruption. His Likud has been falling in the polls. Trump has told him to wind down the wars on Iran and Lebanon that filled his last two years. A man who runs as the wall between his country and its enemies had run short of enemies he was still allowed to fight.

Turkey filled the gap, and filled it safely. Iran could be bombed toward collapse. Turkey cannot. It holds NATO’s second-largest army, its president has a warm line to the American one, (disagree) and a quarrel with it can be conducted in airstrikes on other people’s territory and in warnings traded through the press, at no risk of a war that reaches Israeli cities. The opposition read the timing on sight. Yair Lapid, who backed the strike, ridiculed the noise around it: “if you struck, stay quiet.” Ehud Barak wrote that the whole escalation smelled of a plan to fight the election on a war footing.

More related content from 2025

A year before the strike, a committee Netanyahu had appointed under his former acting national security adviser, Jacob Nagel, told him to prepare for direct war with Turkey. The Syrian threat, the report said, “could evolve into something even more dangerous than the Iranian threat.” It urged raising the defense budget by up to 15 billion shekels a year and buying the long-range aircraft such a war would require. After October 7 Israel had already traded deterrence for prevention: not to wait for a threat and answer it, but to destroy it before it forms. Abu al-Duhur was that rule carried out on concrete. Hit the runway while it is still only a runway, before Turkish soldiers arrive and turn it into a piece of NATO. The rehearsal was on the record too. In the spring of 2025 Turkish teams had surveyed the airfields at T4, Palmyra and Hama for a deeper presence, and Israel had struck each in turn.

The legal cover was being drafted while the fires were still out at Abu al-Duhur. Two days after the strike a former Israeli official, Shay Gal, wrote in the Adelson-owned daily Israel Hayom that Turkish soldiers in Syria would be, in plain terms, targets. Article 5 of the NATO treaty, he argued, “protects Turkish territory; Turkish troops do not carry that territory with them” onto Syrian ground. Israel had acted, he wrote, “before Turkish military depth matured.” The paper is owned by Miriam Adelson, the largest single donor to the American president. An opinion column in such a place is not a fringe position tossed into the void. It is a balloon released over friendly airspace to see who salutes.

The two designs for Syria cannot both hold on the same soil. Turkey wants a single Syrian state under Ahmed al-Sharaa, its Kurdish militias folded into a national army, its refugees sent home, its northern border shut. Israel wants Syria kept weak and split, its minorities shielded from Damascus, its south left open to Israeli entry. The foreign minister in Jerusalem has been clear that Turkish radar and air defense and aircraft would close skies that Israeli jets now cross at will, and would make a future strike on Iran harder to fly. Al-Sharaa, pressed from both sides, takes Turkish training and reconstruction while quietly thinning the Turkish-shaped units inside his own army, unwilling to become anyone’s client. Syria is not where the rivalry is happening. Syria is what it is over. The place it is most likely to tear is the Kurdish seam, where a force armed by Washington is being pushed into a state that Turkey wants it dissolved by, and that Israel would sooner see it armed against.

That Turkey is not Iran is the danger, not the reassurance. It carries NATO’s second army, a new mutual-defense pact with Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, and a president nearer to Trump than any in years. To bomb a base that Turkey backs is to strike at the rim of the alliance that underwrites Western security, and the alliance has no agreed answer for the morning after. The shield may bring the collision on rather than hold it off. If NATO membership tempts Ankara to push a little deeper into Syria, trusting that Israel will not risk hitting a protected army, and if that trust pushes Israel to strike sooner, before the protection attaches, the deterrent has turned into its opposite. Washington sees it. Barrack has spent weeks trying to build a channel among Israel, Turkey and Syria so that jets do not meet by accident. Israel does not want the channel. A formal mechanism, its officials fear, would set into intelligence-sharing and bind their hands, taking from them the freedom to strike whenever they alone decide a threat is forming.

Netanyahu once ran precisely such a channel with Vladimir Putin, to keep Israeli and Russian pilots from firing on each other over Syria, and it held for close to a decade. It worked because both sides wanted it to. This time one side is bombing empty runways two months before an election and filing the result under deterrence.

More content from 2025

For a generation the region was arranged on the belief that Israel stood at its center, wired to Washington, its supremacy the fixed point the Abrahamic accords and all that followed were built around. That belief is coming apart. The strike on Abu al-Duhur was not the confident act of a power sure of its place. It was the nervous act of one no longer sure of it, a country cratering a dead airbase to prove a dominance that a NATO member’s drones and export ledgers are quietly taking away. The threat the missiles answered could not be found by the ally sent to look for it. What could be found was the billboard, the trial, the sinking polls, the rival in an Istanbul cell, the constitution still to be rewritten in Ankara, the engines Netanyahu wants Turkey never to hold. Two men who need the same war moved a step nearer to it, on land that belongs to neither, over a runway no one was using.

NATO will NOT back Turkey in a battle with Israel

NATO does NOT back Turkey as Ukraine attacks it’s ships.

Turkey has long been targeted by Usrael for destabilization and balkanization- so while the anti war piece is interesting, I disagree completely with the premise NATO will side with Turkey as Israel escalates. And Israel will escalate.

No more bailouts: BoE chief says banks won’t be saved by taxpayers

Mark Carney

But of course they will! I explained all this to you in 2013. You, the taxpayer are the same creditor that will bail out the bank via the bail in.

RT

New rules are being proposed that will force creditors,

not taxpayers,to carry the losses of banks deemed “too big to fail.”

The plans come after Western taxpayers were asked to pay trillions of dollars to bail out banks in the 2008 financial crisis.
The new global rules will force creditors to bear banks’ losses, ensuring that taxpayers’ money should never be used again to bail out banks.

Who are those creditors ? YOU! The depositor of savings. Who has to be paid back in cash on demand. That makes your deposit a bank liability

From the 2013 post-

What are bank liabilites?

Those, my friend, are the deposits that are yours and mine.
Our deposits, our savings, are liabilities to the banks. Our deposits have to be paid to us, on demand. Hence they are bank liabilities. Our governments are conspiring to convert our savings, our assets, into bank assets. They will in exchange issue us all worthless stocks.
This is not a sweet deal. This is not a necessary action. This is collusion of government and bankers to plunder the people on a global scale

RT (one article featured in the 2014 piece)

Anthony Browne, of the British Bankers’ Association, welcomed the proposals.
“The banking industry strongly supports this work, which is a really important step in ending ‘too big to fail’ and ensuring that never again will taxpayers have to step in to bail out banks,” he said, as quoted by the UK media.

What a lie. Because we are taxpayers and bank liabilities-The banks have plundered one way, it caused an outrage, so they rebranded their plunder.

It was revealed in 2011 by the Guardian that since 2007 the UK government had spent £1.162 trillion at various points on bailing out the banks.
One of the banks bailed out by the taxpayer was RBS, which despite also being hit by a number of other scandals, rewarded its top bankers £500 million in bonuses last year.

 As we are all aware, should be all aware, nothing changed for the banksters! Because they are calling the shots.

Wanna better understanding of this plot to plunder?

Read the posts from 2013. Get active. Get off your lazy asses. Don’t let these thieves steal your hard earned wealth. Tell your friends. Tell your family- Shine a light on this info.

Pt.1: Giving Canadians and everyone, everywhere a Cypriot Style Haircut- “to the wood”

Pt.2: Giving Canadians and everyone,everywhere, a Cypriot Style Haircut- “to the wood”

Today at 12 p.m. ET, U.S. forces began striking Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) targets in Iran. The strikes follow recent attempted attacks by the IRGC against commercial shipping in the Strait of Hormuz and against American service members deployed to the region.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent began the week vowing an “economic onslaught” against Iran and its trading partners in a fresh bid to end the war. By the week’s end, countries with ties to Tehran had so far shrugged off the threat and analysts were left underwhelmed by the US actions.

China, which buys 90% of Iran’s oil, issued a defiant warning to Washington rather than back down. Iranian bank branches remained open in Dubai. At one Bank Melli branch in Abu Dhabi, staff were busy typing away and one employee explained that they were still open for business.

As mentioned previously

Commercial flights also continued between Iran and Turkey as well as Iran and the United Arab Emirates, which had promised last week to sever all trade and financial transactions with Tehran. Routes flying to Thailand and Azerbaijan, as well as multiple destinations in both Russia and China, remained unaffected.

As the week came to a close, the US announced plans to sanction the UAE-based branches of Egypt’s Banque Misr. That fell well below expectations after Bessent’s warning that the world would see “a major announcement of a financial institution being sanctioned by the end of this week.”

“As the war passes the six-month mark, the public actions taken by the Treasury Department this week do not match the hype,” said Alex Zerden, a former US Treasury official and founder of Capitol Peak Strategies.
“Operation Economic Outcast is a continuation of 47 years of restrictive economic measures against Iran but does not provide a clearer theory of economic or military victory in this current campaign,” Zerden said.
The Treasury Department didn’t respond to a request for comment on Friday.
Bessent’s threats — and the collective global shrug so far — underscore the Trump administration’s main conundrum as it seeks to sanction Iran into meeting its demands.

Any effective sanctions campaign would need to hit China, a move that risks sparking retaliation and potentially massive global economic fallout. Anything less would add to Iran’s economic pain but not enough to budge its strategic calculus.

US credibility is also at stake. Bessent repeatedly compared the US response to the historic 1944 D-Day landings in Normandy, France — a coordinated land and air invasion aimed at toppling the Nazi regime. But the US acted unilaterally with its latest move, pressuring other countries rather than working with them, and Bessent openly acknowledged that going too fast and too hard risked tanking the global financial system.

Further muddying the picture, Bessent also said the US was engaged in “quiet diplomacy” to get its way. US officials turned to counterparts in the UK asking for a statement of support, according to people familiar with the matter.
The Treasury chief is also expected to speak with fellow finance ministers this weekend at a Group of 20 gathering in Asheville, North Carolina. One of the biggest questions attendees will likely have for Bessent is whether the US is willing to hit a Chinese financial institution, according to Josh Lipsky, chair of international economics at the Atlantic Council.

The UAE, a key US strategic ally, said earlier this month it would cut financial ties with Iran. But some flight and banking links with Tehran appear to continue, and the UAE’s government described its move in a statement to Bloomberg News as a “sovereign decision reflecting its strategic assessment of the national interest and the requirements of regional security.”

Asked on Thursday which countries the US had approached so far, President Donald Trump responded, “about Iran? There’s not a lot to speak to. We don’t want to speak to them. We’re not looking to meet or anything.”

“You can’t unleash meaningful economic warfare on Iran while ignoring the one country that absorbs 90% of its oil exports,” said Leland Miller, the CEO of China Beige Book data platform and a commissioner on the US-China Economic and Security Review Commission, which advises the US Congress.

In the meantime, the US appears no closer to ending the war that Trump launched alongside Israel in late February. Iran has endured decades of harsh sanctions and has recently faced a full US Navy blockade of its ports that has dried up oil exports.

Officials in nations that have traditionally had strong economic links with Iran have not heard much from the US this week. Turkey has not received any formal guidance from the US on the restrictions and how they apply to Iran, according to people familiar with the matter. But they believe they’ll have adequate time to discuss and implement requirements once they are informed, they said.
The response from Pakistan indicated that even countries with close ties to the US are feeling little immediate pressure from the new campaign, at least so far.

While Islamabad has won praise from Trump for its mediation efforts to end the war, there was no indication that its overland trade with the Islamic Republic — such as in rice and mangoes — had slowed down. Pakistan’s Foreign Ministry spokesman Tahir Andrabi told reporters this week that the country “is not obliged” to respond to unilateral sanctions.
“The idea Iran can be knocked out with this is risible — it’s not going to move the needle,” said Stephen Fallon, principal adviser at DBM Consulting. “It’s not possible to get a completely airtight seal on this thing. There are too many actors, and it’s too rewarding for the people involved.”

Turkish Minute

Turkey summoned Ukraine’s ambassador on Saturday over attacks this week on a Turkish vessel and a second ship sent to tow it in the Black Sea, the Turkish Foreign Ministry said.

The attacks took place on Wednesday and Thursday, the ministry told Agence France-Presse.

“During the meeting, Turkey warned about the absolute need to ensure the safety of people, of assets, of navigation and of the environment in the Black Sea,” the ministry said in a statement.

The Turkish container ship Lider Bordo Mavi was hit on Wednesday off Russia’s Black Sea coast. The Lider Kocatepe, which was sent to tow the cargo vessel, was also targeted the next day, the ministry said.

The ministry did not say whether anyone was killed or injured.

Turkey, a NATO member that maintains ties with both Kyiv and Moscow, has not joined Western sanctions against Russia.

Long term readers here will understand Turkey was always going to be targeted and their NATO “allies” were going to stand aside. Silently.