Of course, the ethnic cleansing of Palestine is nothing new – far from it. The state of Israel’s very foundation depended on the deliberate forced migration of at least 750,000 Palestinians during the original Nakba of 1947-49. Since then, Israel has continually expelled and displaced Palestinian communities across and beyond historic Palestine – leading many to speak of an ongoing Nakba that has unfolded over nearly eight decades now.

Anne Irfan, A Short History of the Gaza Strip. Foreword by Muhammad Shehada. W. W. Norton. Now in paperback. CLICK HERE TO BUY.

Gaza has always had a central place within this process – unsurprisingly, given its demographics. The Strip absorbed at least 200,000 refugees from across Palestine during the original Nakba, more than trebling its population and leaving it as the only territory where refugees formed the majority. As a result, Gaza became key to the Palestinian struggle for the right of return, and a particular target for the Israeli military. From the early aftermath of the Nakba, Israeli politicians had covert and intensive conversations about depopulating and annexing the Strip. Leading Israeli statesmen and women, including David Ben-Gurion and Golda Meir, proclaimed from the outset that Gaza should be fully part of Israel.

When Israel occupied Gaza for the first time in 1956, it looked to put these ideas into action. Then Finance Minister Levi Eshkol allocated half a million US dollars to a pilot scheme that would fund the permanent emigration of 200 refugee families, on the condition they never return. The scheme didn’t get off the ground, because US intervention forced Israel to fully withdraw from Gaza in early 1957. But the idea did not go away. By the time Israel re-occupied Gaza a decade later – this time along with the West Bank – Eshkol had become Prime Minister and saw a chance to expand his earlier pilot scheme. And with the US adopting a decidedly more pro-Israel position by the late 1960s, he faced far fewer obstacles.

Just a week into the second occupation, the Israeli cabinet discussed expelling Gaza’s Palestinians to Jordan en masse, euphemistically describing the forced resettlement as “transfer.” The Israeli military, now in charge of Gaza, began bussing large groups of Palestinians to the Jordanian border and depositing them there; anyone who tried to cross back was shot on sight. As word spread that Palestinians from Gaza were being deported against their will, the Jordanian authorities instituted a blanket ban on their entry. Israel, undeterred, simply looked elsewhere.

In 1968, Israel set up so-called “emigration offices” in Gaza’s refugee camps. With tacit US approval, these offices worked to foment depopulation, offering Nakba refugees money and foreign passports if they agreed to permanently relocate abroad. Eshkol had originally considered Iraq as a possible receiving country, but in the end Paraguay was the main destination – although many Palestinians who travelled there under the Israeli scheme were deceived that they would be joining a fixed-term employment program in Brazil before returning to Gaza. On departure from Gaza, they had to forfeit their Palestinian ID cards.

The scheme continued after Eshkol’s sudden death in office in early 1969, but it had little success overall. Few Palestinians were willing to leave Gaza, even for the false promise of a work opportunity abroad. Having been expelled from their homes two decades earlier, and often still living in sight of their old villages, most refugees wanted to go in the opposite direction – back to the land that was now Israel, rather than further away from it. Recognizing this, Israel shifted its short-term focus to more local displacement, demolishing thousands of refugee homes in the 1970s and forcing residents to relocate elsewhere within Gaza or to Israeli-occupied Sinai.

If we fast forward to the present day, the parallels are striking. Since the beginning of the genocide in October 2023, the Israeli military has destroyed more than 90 percent of homes in Gaza and forcibly displaced virtually the entire population. With the Strip’s residential infrastructure now in tatters, the authorities are openly looking to permanently expel its population. In earlier decades these conversations took place covertly, with tacit US support, and were often denied publicly. Today, the subject has lost any stigma in either the Israeli or US political spheres. Thus the Trump administration has regularly and openly proposed that Gaza be ethnically cleansed, with its Palestinian population “transferred” en masse to Indonesia, Somalia, Sudan, Libya or the Democratic Republic of Congo. In one of several plans, Trump offered to pay $5,000 to every Palestinian who leaves “voluntarily.”

Nor is this just talk. Over the last year, a settler organization linked to the Israeli army’s so-called Voluntary Emigration Bureau has transferred hundreds of Palestinians out of Gaza. They are first bussed to southern Israel and then flown to a range of destinations, including Indonesia, South Africa and Malaysia. Some report being hoodwinked by a faux humanitarian agency offering emergency evacuation, and not knowing where they were going on departure.

As Americans and Israelis prepare to go to the polls, there has been strikingly little media coverage of these ongoing schemes. Yet with strong cross-party Israeli consensus against Palestinian sovereignty, it is more important than ever to pay close attention to these plans for Gaza – and to understand what’s happening before it’s too late.   

“Honestly, this goes further than a lot of poll data to show you that GOPs are cooked,” one journalist said of the Republican candidates claiming to oppose the president’s unpopular conflict before the midterms.

( Commondreams.org) – With US President Donald Trump’s approval rating tanking—largely due to his illegal war on Iran and the resulting economic fallout—Michigan’s Republican US Senate candidate, Mike Rogers, on Monday afternoon called for an end to the conflict, and his Democratic opponent, Abdul El-Sayed, wasted no time turning to the receipts.

Rogers posted a 75-second video on social media: He’s in a grocery store, noting the need to bring down food prices. He also says that “the war with Iran needs to end,” and in the meantime, the United States should impose a temporary embargo on exports of diesel—which has hit a record high of $6.51 per gallon.

El-Sayed responded with a pair of clips from the Republican’s previous interviews and wrote: “You’ve spent your entire campaign supporting the war in Iran. Liar, coward, fraud.”

The Democratic super political action committee Senate Majority PAC also called out Rogers, writing in response to his ad: “No one’s buying this. You supported the war in Iran every step of the way. Rogers six months ago: ‘How anyone says [the war] is a bad idea, I don’t know what is.’”

Michigan Democratic Party spokesperson Joey Hannum similarly stressed that “Mike Rogers has been all-in on Trump’s Iran War from day one, repeatedly dismissed Michiganders’ pain as gas prices skyrocketed, and has vowed to hand Trump a blank check to keep this war going indefinitely.”

“Every time a Michigander fills up their gas tank, they’re paying the price for the Rogers-Trump war in Iran,” Hannum continued, as the average cost of gasoline stood at $4.48 a gallon. “Price Hike Mike promised he would give Trump the authority to keep his cost-raising war going, and Michiganders won’t forget it.”

Track AIPAC, which documents political spending by the American Israel Public Affairs Committee and related groups, responded to Rogers’ post with another clip of his previous comments on the war, which has dragged on for nearly seven months—with no end in sight—and killed thousands of people.

Journalists and pollsters highlighted that Rogers isn’t the only Republican running in the November midterms who is now calling for an end to the war, which polling has shown is deeply unpopular with the US public.

Republican Iowa Congresswoman Ashley Hinson—who has repeatedly voted against war powers resolutions intended to end the conflict in Iran—wrote on social media Monday morning that “Iowans are being squeezed and shouldn’t have to foot the bill at the pump or the checkout line for the war in Iran. We need to use every option at our disposal to provide some relief from high prices.”

“That includes suspending the gas tax, pausing diesel exports, unleashing E-15 everywhere we can, reinstating the $1/gallon biodiesel tax credit, and creating a diesel relief program to help our farmers and truckers being crushed by the high costs,” Hinson continued, adding that “the war needs to be brought to a successful and immediate end.”

In response, her Democratic opponent, Josh Turek, said that “it’s easy to send a tweet, but when you had the chance to vote to end this war, you chose not to. You voted seven times to continue it, including just last week. It’s time to actually end the forever wars and put Iowa and Iowans first. Glad you’re finally following my lead after waffling on the proposals I put forward last week to address the rising costs of the war in Iran.”

Ryan Costello, policy director at the National Iranian American Council, wrote to Hinson: “It’s good you’re calling for the Iran War to end, though you’ve also voted against six war powers resolutions directing an end to the war, including just six days ago. Will you vote for the next one, and commit to cut off funding for the backfiring war?”

Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) asked: “How dumb does she think voters are? If Hinson wins, then Republicans control the Senate. And they’ve pledged to Trump to kill any legislative effort to end the war as long as they keep power.”

Noting that “first Hinson, now Rogers” is claiming to want an end to the war, Punchbowl News senior congressional reporter Andrew Desiderio said that it “will be fascinating to see which way vulnerable R incumbents,” such as Sens. Jon Husted (Ohio) and Dan Sullivan (Alaska), “vote on the Iran war powers resolution expected to come up this week.”

Following Rogers’ post, longtime Capitol Hill journalist Jamie Dupree wrote: “Wow. The war in Iran + high gas/diesel costs must be killing Republicans in their internal polling.”

Zenith Research founding partner Adam Carlson posited: “The Republican strategy memo must have gone out this weekend. And the numbers must have been dire, particularly in the already tariff-battered Midwest.”

Talking Points Memo founder Josh Marshal suggested, “Honestly, this goes further than a lot of poll data to show you that GOPs are cooked.”

Republicans are trying to hang on to their slim majorities in both chambers of Congress for the latter half of Trump’s second term, and with the midterms less than two months away, The Cook Political Report currently ranks seven Senate seats as a “toss-up.” In addition to the contests in Iowa and Michigan, there is Sullivan’s race against former Democratic Congresswoman Mary Peltola in Alaska and Husted versus former Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown in Ohio.

There’s also former Democratic Maine Senate President Troy Jackson’s challenge to Republican Sen. Susan Collins, the race between Democratic New Hampshire Congressman Chris Pappas and former Republican Sen. John Sununu, and Texas’ contest between Democratic state Rep. James Talarico and Trump-backed state Attorney General Ken Paxton.

Via Commondreams.org

Licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).

(The Conversation) – Oil markets are in turmoil amid renewed tensions in the Middle East. Prices have risen past US$100 (A$140) a barrel for the first time since May.

The biggest trigger is the bombing of Saudi Arabia’s crucial East-West pipeline. The pipeline acted as a release valve for Saudi exports blocked from passing through the Strait of Hormuz.

Fuel prices are spiking. Unrest has quickly followed, with riots and protests from Syria to Portugal to Guatemala. Global oil stocks have fallen by 507 million barrels since the US-Iran war broke out in February as nations eat into their reserves.

But prices could have been a lot higher if it wasn’t for China. Demand in the world’s largest oil-consuming nation is set to fall for the third successive year. Earlier stockpiling and a rapid shift to electric vehicles are responsible.

Fewer routes for Gulf oil

The year’s first fuel crisis came after Iran blocked the vital Strait of Hormuz, disrupting shipments from nations such as Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and Qatar.

The new crisis may be different because it affects Saudi Arabia’s most important alternative export route – the 1,200km pipeline linking eastern oilfields to the Red Sea. It was built in the 1980s as a way to bypass Hormuz.

A series of drone strikes from September 10–11 damaged pumping stations, forcing the Saudi oil company, Aramco, to shut the pipeline as a precautionary measure. Aramco has reportedly told European refiners they will receive no crude oil next month.

Hormuz remains a bottleneck. Oil tankers and commodity vessel numbers remain low. Before the war, the passage carried a fifth of the world’s oil and gas.

Producers have not been caught unprepared. Oil traders are increasingly using the Omani port of Sohar as a partial workaround, as the port sits outside the narrowest Hormuz choke point. Aramco will use Sohar to ship roughly 60 million barrels over September and October.

My analysis of vessel-tracking data from the London Stock Exchange Group shows China-bound crude oil shipments from Sohar rose more than tenfold between February and August.

Refined fuels such as diesel are also facing shortages due to the Russia-Ukraine war.

Ukraine is increasingly targeting Russian oil refineries, striking at least 21 times in August alone. Many are offline. Russian petrol production is down 20% and diesel almost 30% from a year ago.

China is buying less oil – and cutting demand

Prices could have gone much higher this year if China hadn’t stopped buying oil. China was arguably the country most exposed to the crisis, relying on the Middle East for about half of its oil imports. Yet instead of competing in the market, it drew on its vast stockpiles of oil accumulated before the war broke out.

Oil market disruption in the Middle East removed about five million barrels a day from the market. But expert estimates suggest China cut its imports by up to four million barrels a day.

China’s role goes beyond buying. Beijing reportedly asked Tehran to stop further attacks on Saudi infrastructure. Beijing has leverage, as Chinese buyers took more than 80% of Iran’s seaborne exports in 2025.

Chinese leaders have long seen oil dependence as a vulnerability. To wean off foreign oil, leaders bet heavily on electric vehicles. Almost two-thirds of new cars sold in China are now battery-electric or hybrids.

Chinese refining giant Sinopec forecasts demand will fall 3.9% in 2026. China’s oil consumption may have peaked in 2025.

Declining demand isn’t a wartime blip. China’s economy grew about 20% between 2021 and 2025, while transport fuel use stayed flat due to a rapid shift to electric cars, high-speed rail and trucks running on natural gas or, increasingly, batteries.

China’s shrinking appetite and the Gulf state success at re-routing their exports are keeping a cap on oil prices. But this could change.

There’s great uncertainty about what the future holds. RBC Capital Markets warns Brent could pass US$120 by year’s end, while Goldman Sachs forecasts prices around US$55 a barrel by late 2027.

How could Australia learn from this?

For Australia, the new Middle East crisis is yet another warning about dependency on imported fuel – especially diesel.

Import-dependent Australia remains highly exposed, as experts have warned. Diesel is already approaching A$3 a litre in some areas. While passenger vehicles are electrifying, trucks, mining and farming machinery remain overwhelmingly dependent on diesel.

As of September 9, petrol in Australia’s five largest cities cost 39 cents a litre more than before the Iran war and diesel 77 cents higher. Analysts warn fuel prices are likely to increase another 20 to 30 cents a litre.

Photo by Michael Förtsch on Unsplash

The government’s plan to boost diesel reserves should help in the short term, though more storage capacity closer to major regional users will be necessary.

But the end goal has to be reducing dependence on diesel. Fuel storage buys us time to make that possible.

Longer term, Australia should look to China’s pragmatic approach. China is electrifying transport wherever practical to cut demand for fuel. Where impractical, China is increasingly turning to natural gas.

This approach could work in Australia, one of the world’s largest exporters of liquefied natural gas. Gas could replace diesel for long-distance freight, mining and remote power generation. Over time, electric options will emerge for some of these – but gas will likely still have a role.

Lurion De Mello, Senior Lecturer in Finance, Macquarie University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

It is important not to lose sight of the fact that Trump’s decision to launch an assault on Iran was based on false information and miscalculations derived from Mossad’s reports. From the viewpoint of Israeli officials like Netanyahu or intelligence chief David Barnea, it was envisaged that adopting decapitation strategy against Iran would be helpful. They thought that if they assassinated Iran’s Supreme Leader and a number of military and political figures in Tehran, then the Islamic regime would collapse within a few days and there would be political turmoil and unrest and civil war in Iran and the Iranian people would stand against the government and overthrow it. That way, Iran would be eliminated from power equations of the Middle East and Israel would become the uncontested hegemon of the region.

However their predictions soon turned out to be wrong, based on three different levels of analysis. On the national level of analysis, Iran showed remarkable resilience as it absorbed the invaders’ surprising first strike, maintained its survivable second strike retaliatory capability and started to react militarily as swiftly as possible. Iran proved that its political system was so robust and well established that it showed no signs of collapse and malfunction. With the outbreak of war, the Iranians became more united and a new supreme leader was elected within a few days so that no observer could see any signs of power vacuum inside the country. In spite of suffering a lot in terms of military losses and the economy, it was crystal clear that Iran could survive into the future.

On the regional level of analysis we witnessed a transition from the notion of a “weak Iran”, which was prevalent among the politicians all over the Middle East and was deeply embedded in their mindset, to the notion of a “formidable Iran”. Iran managed to expand the scope and the scale of war and make it a regional one, as its previous supreme leader had warned it would do if attacked. It is noteworthy that Iran’s response to the invasion was contrary to its neighbors’ expectations. They thought that Iran would behave in predictable ways and would react moderately and discreetly, but Iran enhanced the tension level on an unprecedented scale and went up the escalation ladder by targeting the US military bases and some of the energy infrastructure throughout the region. Therefore, Iran’s regional rivals soon discovered that Tehran plays a pivotal role in determining the future of the Middle East and that they cannot ensure their security to the detriment of Iran.

In the aftermath of Iran’s war, it seems that the security structure and architecture of the region have undergone a renaissance and the regional circumstances are changing dramatically. Iran’s neighbors have come to the conclusion that they can no longer outsource their security to transregional actors like the USA. The Mecca Joint Defense Agreement, which was recently signed between Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Pakistan, is indicative of the fact that they have lost faith in the American security umbrella, and they are willing to create new regional security arrangements based on hedging strategy. Given the current situation of the Middle East it can be argued that Iran should be regarded as one of the security pillars of the region and there can be no new security architecture without taking Iran’s interests and considerations into account.

White House photo. Public Domain. via Picryl .

Finally, on the systemic level of analysis, Iran proved that it has a significant capacity for making decisions with far-reaching global consequences. When it started to use the Strait of Hormuz as a geopolitical and geo-economic leverage over the great powers, Iran was powerful enough to stand firm in the face of two nuclear armies of the world and showed their frailties and vulnerabilities by utilizing methods of asymmetrical warfare. The fact that all of Trump’s efforts to reopen Hormuz and to make Iran capitulate were to no avail signaled America’s helplessness and declining status in the world. Now it seems that the President has no other choice than to make concession to Iran, which can be conceived as a major humiliating defeat.

The Israeli-US war on Iran showed once again that the death knell of US global hegemony has been sounded and a new multipolar world system is on the rise within which medium-sized regional actors such as Iran can play pivotal determining roles. Trump should have listend to Morgenthau’s advice!

( Middle East Monitor ) – For decades, the architects of foreign policy in Washington and Tel Aviv operated under a remarkably persistent yet fundamentally flawed conviction. They assumed that overwhelming military supremacy could permanently dictate regional architecture and bludgeon sovereign actors into compliance. Yet, a dispassionate reading of history consistently demonstrates that when imperial ambition detaches entirely from political reality, aggressive intervention produces the exact opposite of its intended design. Today, this systemic failure exposes itself across the Middle East’s two most critical maritime arteries. Rather than diminishing the strategic reach of adversaries or safeguarding unhindered global commerce, months of relentless military escalation cemented a deeply uncomfortable reality. Washington’s coercive calculus simultaneously handed control of both the Strait of Hormuz and the Bab Al-Mandeb strait directly to its opponents. The attempt to project power merely highlighted its modern limitations.

To fully comprehend this historic strategic reversal, observers must critically examine the foundational miscalculations that have long governed Western approaches to the Gulf. For years, successive US administrations pursued an unyielding campaign of economic strangulation and maximum pressure. Policymakers operated under the naive assumption that financial isolation and constant naval posturing would inevitably force Tehran to capitulate. Instead, this maximum pressure framework rapidly accelerated indigenous defence resilience. It drove the development of advanced domestic capabilities and decisively fortified Iranian leverage across the Strait of Hormuz, a narrow waterway through which a vast share of global petroleum consistently flows. The core premise that economic warfare and kinetic intimidation could somehow fabricate a compliant, pro-Western political landscape proved entirely bankrupt.

Military force possesses an undeniable capacity to demolish infrastructure, assassinate leaders and inflict widespread civilian suffering, but it remains utterly incapable of generating sustainable, legitimate political order.

Washington’s inability to grasp this distinction guarantees that every attempt to impose external will only deepens the region’s resistance to foreign presence. When this initial containment framework inevitably began to fray, Washington and its regional partners simply doubled down on militarisation. They foolishly opted to extend the theatre of confrontation southward into the Red Sea. Here, the strategic miscalculation metastasised into a global crisis. The absolute desire to maintain control blinded them to the shifting dynamics of regional deterrence.

Ansarallah’s highly calculated campaigns and decisive manoeuvres, most notably epitomised by its strategic posture around Perim Island at the very gateway of the Bab Al-Mandeb strait, shattered the long-held myth of Western naval invulnerability. Decades of destructive foreign intervention in Yemen, heavily backed by Western arms, intelligence and diplomatic cover, failed entirely to crush the movement. Instead of pacifying the country, the relentless bombardment forged a battle-hardened, heavily armed administration that currently dominates one of the world’s most critical maritime bottlenecks.

By attempting to police regional waters through unilateral, brute force, Western capitals inadvertently catalysed a two-front geopolitical leverage point that effectively upends centuries of unchallenged Western maritime hegemony.

The profoundly interconnected nature of these waterways means that pressure applied in one region invariably activates corresponding counter-pressures in another. By squeezing vital trade routes and attempting to blockade sovereign economic actors, Washington and Tel Aviv provoked a highly synchronised, region-wide defensive reaction. Today, roughly 12 per cent of all global commerce traversing the Bab Al-Mandeb strait and the Red Sea faces continuous, calculated disruption. This unprecedented pressure forces international shipping lanes to divert widely around the Cape of Good Hope, which massively inflates global supply chain costs and delays vital shipments. The economic reverberations reach far beyond the immediate conflict zones, affecting consumers and industries worldwide.

US Navy Photo by Jonathan Clay. Public Domain. Via Picryl

Western naval coalitions, hastily assembled and deployed to patrol these waters, publicly demonstrate their own severe operational limits. They currently burn through millions of dollars on high-tech interceptors while entirely failing to secure safe passage for commercial vessels tied to Israeli supply chains or allied interests. The asymmetry of this conflict remains glaring; armed forces launch multimillion-dollar Western missiles to intercept vastly cheaper, locally manufactured drones and projectiles. This mathematical equation proves unsustainable for the US Department of Defence over the long term. Consequently, the current US administration finds itself hopelessly trapped in a geopolitical cul-de-sac, defined by two deeply unpalatable choices.

On one hand, Washington could choose to escalate toward a much wider, open-ended regional war. This reckless prospect risks catastrophic economic fallout and terminal military overextension. The appetite for another endless war barely exists among the domestic public, yet the political establishment pushes dangerously close to the precipice. On comedy, policymakers can accept the humbling, inevitable reality of diminished hegemony, acknowledging that regional adversaries now command permanent, unassailable leverage points across both ends of the Middle East energy corridor. Both options essentially confirm the total collapse of Washington’s original strategic objectives. The frantic drive to preserve global primacy merely accelerated its inevitable decline.

Ultimately, the unfolding crisis from Hormuz to Bab Al-Mandeb highlights the terminal structural decay of contemporary Western foreign policy. Short-sighted political calculations and unconditional alignment with aggressive, expansionist regional agendas drive a militarism that actively dismantles stability rather than securing it.

As long as Washington and Tel Aviv continue to prioritise kinetic dominance over diplomatic parity, justice and respect for regional sovereignty, they remain prisoners of their own making. They must now watch helplessly as the maritime arteries of global trade slip permanently from their imperial grasp.

The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Monitor or Informed Comment.

Jenny Williams is an independent American journalist and writer focusing on foreign policy, human rights and conflict. She aims to bring clarity to complex security debates and to foreground the domestic consequences of overseas engagement. Contact: jennywilliams9696[at]gmail.com | Twitter: @Jenny9Williams

via Middle East Monitor

Unless otherwise stated in the article above, this work by Middle East Monitor is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License

 Adam Coogle, deputy Middle East and North Africa director at Human Rights Watch, said:

“The UK, France, and Canada’s decision to ban trade with Israel’s illegal settlements is a welcome, long-overdue step and a measure of compliance with international law. It signals that a growing number of governments stand ready to accompany statements of condemnation with concrete measures as Israeli authorities intensify their ethnic cleansing, apartheid, and other grave abuses in the West Bank.

Photo by Jayson Boesman on Unsplash

Other governments and institutions, including notably the European Union as Israel’s main trading partner, should follow suit. They should also suspend preferential trade arrangements with Israel, halt arms transfers, protect the International Criminal Court, and pursue accountability for Israel’s ongoing atrocity crimes across the Occupied Palestinian Territory.”

The Arab world’s contribution to global scientific and technological development also remains below its potential. Although UNESCO reports that scientific publications from Arab states increased by 64 percent between 2015 and 2019, research-and-development spending remains comparatively low, and much of the region continues to depend heavily on imported technology.

These political and developmental weaknesses cannot be explained by domestic authoritarianism alone. External powers have profoundly shaped state-society relations in the Middle East.

Colonialism, military intervention, foreign-sponsored coups, economic dependence, and patron-client security relationships have influenced both the distribution of political power and the capacity of states to pursue independent national development.

The Persian Gulf monarchies’ longstanding military dependence on the United States represents

perhaps the clearest contemporary example.

From the Sykes-Picot Agreement and Balfour Declaration through the Cold War and the Arab-Israeli wars, outside powers repeatedly shaped the regional order. After the 1990–91 Persian Gulf War, the expansion of American military bases further institutionalized the security relationship between Washington and the Gulf Cooperation Council states.

The post-Cold War period did not bring an end to external military intervention. The United States has intervened militarily in Iraq, Libya, Syria, Somalia and Yemen, among other countries, while Israel has repeatedly conducted major military operations in Lebanon and Gaza. The Military Intervention Project at Tufts University identifies almost 400 U.S. military interventions since 1776, with more than one-quarter occurring after the end of the Cold War.

The Iran War Changes the Equation

The ongoing U.S.-Israeli war against Iran exposes the limitations of the regional security system more dramatically than previous conflicts.

For decades, Washington’s Arab allies relied on American military superiority as the ultimate guarantee against external threats. Iran’s ability during the present war to impose substantial costs on American military installations has complicated that assumption.

A recent Pentagon inspector-general assessment found that Iranian strikes damaged or destroyed hundreds of structures at U.S. facilities across the Middle East and destroyed numerous American aircraft and drones. Meanwhile, the Congressional Budget Office estimated that direct

U.S. Defense Department costs had already exceeded $38 billion by August 2026, with potentially billions more being spent each month if the conflict continues.

The lesson for the Persian Gulf Arab states is not that Iran poses no threat. Tehran has supported armed non-state organizations, including Hezbollah, Hamas, and the Houthis, and Arab governments have legitimate concerns about Iranian power and regional ambitions.

But treating Iran exclusively as an enemy has not produced regional security either.

Iran is a large state of roughly 90 million people occupying one side of the Persian Gulf and possessing substantial military capabilities, energy resources, and geopolitical influence. No durable Persian Gulf security system can simply exclude it.

The war therefore creates an opportunity for the Gulf Arab states to reconsider their overwhelming security dependence on the United States and move toward a regional system in which neighboring states assume greater responsibility for their own collective security.

There are already signs of movement in this direction. At the 166th ministerial session of the Arab League Council in September 2026, Egyptian Foreign Minister Badr Abdelatty called for comprehensive Arab security arrangements involving greater defense coordination, crisis-response mechanisms, and implementation procedures. He proposed building on the 1950 Arab Treaty of Joint Defence while respecting the sovereignty of individual Arab states.

That proposal is important. But an exclusively Arab security architecture is insufficient.

From Arab Security to Regional Security

What the Persian Gulf ultimately requires is a regional, rather than merely Arab, security arrangement incorporating both the Gulf Cooperation Council states and Iran.

There are precedents for adversarial states negotiating institutional frameworks around shared interests. In August 2018, after two decades of negotiations, Azerbaijan, Iran, Kazakhstan, Russia, and Turkmenistan signed the Convention on the Legal Status of the Caspian Sea. The agreement did not resolve every dispute among the five governments, but it demonstrated that states with conflicting interests could nevertheless construct rules governing security, sovereignty, resources, and economic cooperation.

The same logic should apply to the Persian Gulf.

The GCC states and Iran share an overwhelming interest in avoiding perpetual warfare. China, Russia, India, Pakistan, Europe, and the United States likewise have enormous stakes in the stability of Gulf energy production and international shipping.

The institutional challenge is therefore to transform these overlapping interests into a security framework capable of restraining individual states—including Iran—from threatening their neighbors while simultaneously reducing incentives for external military domination.

In a 2013 study coauthored with Stephen Hill, I proposed a three-tiered diplomatic approach toward U.S.-Iranian rapprochement and the eventual establishment of a Persian Gulf Security Alliance (PGSA). The basic logic of that proposal remains relevant.

A PGSA could bring together Iran, the GCC states, and the United States around common security interests. China, Russia, India, and Pakistan could participate in negotiated roles as well. Their inclusion would help prevent such an organization from becoming—or being perceived as—another Western military alliance directed against Iran, China, or Russia.

Such an arrangement would not require Gulf states to trust Iran, nor Iran to trust the United States. Successful security institutions rarely begin with trust. They create procedures through which states possessing competing interests can communicate, negotiate, monitor commitments, and gradually reduce the danger of miscalculation.

The Persian Gulf at a Crossroads

The strategic environment of West Asia has changed dramatically since October 2023 and even more sharply since the outbreak of direct warfare involving Iran.

Iran cannot realistically be removed from the regional balance of power. Tehran considers recognition of its sovereignty, its civilian nuclear program, its missile capabilities, and an end to what it views as a continuing American-Western policy of coercion to be fundamental national-security issues. Washington and the Arab Gulf states, meanwhile, have their own security concerns about Iran that any negotiated regional architecture would have to address.

Doha, Qatar. © 2018 Juan Cole.

A regional security organization would also serve American interests. As Washington increasingly focuses strategic resources on competition with China and Russia, participation in an inclusive Persian Gulf arrangement could preserve an American role in regional security without requiring perpetual military primacy or exclusive reliance on bilateral patron-client relationships.

For the Arab Gulf states, the stakes are even greater.

They face the difficult transition from oil-dependent rentier economies, pressures for more responsive governance, dependence on foreign labor, limited domestic industrial and agricultural capacity, rapidly growing technological demands, and the transformative—and still uncertain—effects of artificial intelligence.

Perpetual regional warfare makes confronting these challenges vastly more difficult.

The current war should therefore be understood not simply as another episode in the long confrontation between Iran, Israel, and the United States. It should force a larger reconsideration of the political and security architecture of the Persian Gulf.

For decades, Gulf security has rested primarily on American military power and bilateral protection arrangements. The present conflict demonstrates the vulnerabilities of that system.

The alternative is neither Iranian domination nor American withdrawal. It is the gradual construction of a regional security framework in which Arab states, Iran, and major international stakeholders accept institutional restraints and recognize that their long-term security is ultimately interdependent.

The Persian Gulf states are at a crossroads. Another generation of militarization, intervention, and regional confrontation is possible. But so is a different security order built around diplomacy, regional responsibility, and negotiated coexistence.

The latter will be difficult to construct.

The alternative may prove considerably more costly.

(The Conversation) – The dormant conflict in Yemen has erupted once more, with the Houthi rebel group seizing control of the Red Sea port city of Mocha and a number of islands from Yemeni government forces in recent weeks. This has given the Houthis a foothold close to the Bab al-Mandab Strait, a key trade gateway linking Asia and Europe.

The advance of the Houthis has alarmed Yemen’s northern neighbour, Saudi Arabia, for three main reasons. First, the Houthis’ drive down the coast constitutes a military setback for the Saudis and the pro-government forces they have long supported militarily and financially in Yemen.

Second, the Saudis have become more reliant than ever on access to Bab al-Mandab to export their oil since the effective closure of the Strait of Hormuz following the outbreak of war between the US, Israel and Iran in February 2026. Control of Yemen’s western coast would allow the Houthis to further restrict Saudi Arabia’s energy exports.

And third, the Houthis are closely allied with Iran. This means Tehran now has the possible means to control two of the most important maritime chokepoints for the transit of global oil supplies. The Bab al-Mandab Strait was carrying roughly 7% of global oil supplies by June.

How did we get here?

The renewed hostilities bring to an end a ceasefire in the Yemeni conflict that had been in place since 2022. The Houthis, in origin a movement that emerged in the 1990s to protect the interests of Yemen’s substantial Zaydi Shia Muslim population, had previously engaged in armed conflict with the longtime Yemeni president, Ali Abdullah Saleh.

In the aftermath of Saleh’s forced resignation in 2012, which followed popular mobilisation against his autocratic rule, the country entered a period of instability. During this period, the Houthis moved from their stronghold in the north of the country to take control of the capital, Sana’a, in 2014.

Unwilling to see its southern neighbour come under the control of forces allied to Iran, Saudi Arabia launched an all-out war in March 2015. The objective was to restore the internationally recognised government of Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi, Saleh’s one-time deputy who had succeeded him in office, to power.

The fighting persisted for several years, but an effective stalemate was reached early on. While attempts to negotiate a lasting agreement to end the war failed, all sides agreed on a ceasefire in April 2022. The ceasefire lapsed in October of that year but both sides largely refrained from major escalatory actions and the level of conflict remained low.

Hopes for a more substantial deal between the warring parties were briefly raised in March 2023. That month saw China broker a rapprochement between Iran and Saudi Arabia, restoring diplomatic relations between the two countries after their 2016 suspension.

But in a clear assertion of its independence from Iran, Houthi leadership expressly rejected the notion that normalisation of relations between the two regional powers should lead to a deal between the Houthis and Saudi Arabia.

The prospects of a long-term deal to end the conflict were dealt a further blow by the Houthi response to Israel’s military campaign in the Gaza Strip, which followed the deadly Hamas-led attack on southern Israel on in October 2023.

Shortly after that war began, Houthi fighters fired several missiles and drones at an Israeli ship in the Red Sea. The US Navy also shot down Houthi-launched missiles and drones heading towards Israeli territory, in what was the first US action in defence of Israel since the start of the conflict in Gaza.

There was further escalation in January 2024, when the Houthis staged a large-scale attack on several US Navy vessels in the Red Sea. This was followed by US and UK airstrikes against Houthi targets. In May 2025, the US and the Houthis agreed a ceasefire which was mediated by Oman.

The relative peace that followed came undone in July 2026. On July 13, the Saudis attacked Sana’a International Airport in order to prevent a plane carrying the Houthi delegation to the funeral of Iran’s slain supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, from landing. The Yemeni government and Saudi Arabia claimed the flight represented a violation of Yemen’s sovereignty.

The Houthis launched missile attacks on airports in the south of Saudi Arabia in response, while also declaring the imposition of a strict maritime embargo against Saudi vessels. On Telegram, Houthi official Yahya Saree announced an end to what he called the “de-escalation phase” of the conflict.

Photo of Sanaa, Yemen, by Aziza Mohammed: https://www.pexels.com/photo/traditional-yemeni-architecture-in-sana-a-30870621/

The recent rapid advance of the Houthis along Yemen’s western coast has focused attention on the group’s potential to disrupt global oil supplies even further. However, the offensive also has major implications for Yemen itself.

It constitutes a major setback for the Saudi-backed forces in Yemen, which are far more diverse than is commonly assumed. These forces include those under the control of Tareq Saleh, nephew of the fallen autocrat, as well as southern groups with aspirations for autonomy and other tribal and local forces.

The advance also represents a challenge for the Houthis themselves. They now control a swathe of new territory, and with it a larger population. There are questions regarding the capacity of the Houthis to withstand the inevitable attempts to dislodge it from its new position.

Earlier in the conflict, in 2015, the Houthis won control of areas in the south such as Aden, Abyan and Lahj. But they were soon pushed back by government forces and resistance fighters, and forced to relinquish their control of these areas.

Recent reports suggest that the Saudi crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, has requested that the US launch airstrikes against the Houthis. The invitation was apparently declined, but is unlikely to be the final word in the seemingly endless conflict between Riyadh and its antagonists in its southern neighbour.

Vincent Durac, Associate Professor, School Of Politics & International Relations, University College Dublin

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Jeb Lund / Truthdig
Contributor

(Reprinted with Truthdig’s permission.)

( Truthdig ) – As a kid, I knew three things about the guy who owned my favorite NFL team. He was short, from Ohio, and he was a good owner because he spent money. After 40 years of further review, that stands as the ideal total knowledge about a sports owner. And while the sprint toward the opposite informational state belongs to our entire age, New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft stands out for his dedication to revealing how the sausage gets made.

A few years ago, 90% of Kraft’s obituary would have been about owning the NFL’s greatest dynasty. By now, artfully gritted-teeth quotes from players traded too early have been cut to make room for the Florida hand job excursion, the Epstein lawyer who made it go away and his extortion of an Ivy League university to do public relations for a genocide. But for a handy guide to how the consent gets manufactured, how the actors take cover and why you leave it to the pros, you couldn’t do better than Robert Kraft.  

It all starts at Macklemore.

The name might as well be “Fleek Cronut brought to you by Dat Boi” for most people these days, but it wouldn’t be a surprise if Robert Kraft made a note of the rapper’s May 2024 release, “Hinds Hall,” which addressed both the takeover of Columbia University’s Hamilton Hall by student protestors of the Gaza genocide and the Israel Defense Force’s killing of a 5-year-old girl. Kraft most definitely noticed when Macklemore took to a stage at MetLife Stadium, at a stop on a tour making its way to Kraft’s own Gillette Stadium, to let “the people all the way in Gaza to the occupied West Bank know that we have not forgotten about them. I say, ‘Free Palestine.’ I say ‘Free Lebanon.’” 

Principals’ accounts differ as to what came next, but allegedly, Kraft leaned on Ed Sheeran — alleged pal to Macklemore and tour headliner — letting him know that he was banning him from performing at Gillette, and threatening that other NFL owners would follow, unless Sheeran turfed him from the tour. 

Sheeran, who appears to both physically and morally consist of mashed potatoes, complied and booted Macklemore off to Mackle less again. Unfortunately, a paste bag from Suffolk appearing to decide who gets to say what and where about national autonomy didn’t sit especially well with Sheeran’s Irish support acts, who promptly quit the tour in solidarity. Instead, Sheeran chose to try to post through it and deflect blame by disclaiming political messaging and pleading impotence in the face of tour promoters’ interests. Both were lies. 

For one, Sheeran does not mind taking political stances when they result in praise. For another, he has sold 200 million records in 15 years. In adjusted dollars, two of his previous three tours rank in the top 10 highest grossing of all time. He is an industry unto himself and — this is critical — the reason the tour exists. When discussing an artist tour of this stature, the politics permitted are typically the way they are for the same reason the merchandise is typically in triple digits, the ticket prices are in four, and 2,000 seats disappeared onto the secondary market before even going on sale: Because the artist is fine with it that way — and, probably for no greater reasons than avarice, accounting or basic convenience, likes making this amount of money this way.

Kraft, meanwhile, provided the funniest of explanations, claiming,

“This decision is not about diminishing the suffering of innocent Palestinians or denying anyone the right to advocate on their behalf. But that advocacy should not come at the expense of the Jewish community or obscure the responsibility of Hamas … whose horrific actions have caused immeasurable suffering for Palestinians and Israelis alike.”

Macklemore, “Hind’s Hall”

[This post contains video, click to play]

Like all its other uses in the discourse, Kraft’s framing about mandating both perspectives is just the exit to bigotry it always has been, a baked-in permission to continue in your conduct without criticism. Since hearing from all perspectives and all wounded parties will be untenable in a concert milieu, there’s no choice but to jettison the Palestine guy, which is already the desired outcome. We certainly know Kraft’s commitment to viewpoint diversity doesn’t extend to offsetting moments of American triumphalism with recognition of its victims, because, positive and meaningless murmurings about opportunities aside, he had nothing to say about obvious league collusion not to sign free-agent quarterback Colin Kaepernick in 2017. 

Sportswriters knew at the time that Kaepernick’s unemployment amounted to privileged vengeance for kneeling during the national anthem to protest unpunished police killings of Black people. He went visibly off brand in a way that offended the bottom line and the racist sensibilities of an ownership class at perpetual war with its significantly Black labor pool and terrified of labor solidarity of any kind. Kaepernick himself seems to have zero doubt that the same aristocratic privilege to define the permissible is at work again. Fans should have had all removed forever by the end of 2017, after NFL ownership preferred instead to start CJ Beathard, Tyrod Taylor, Nathan Peterman, Trevor Siemian, Brock Osweiler, Paxton Lynch, DeShone Kizer, Brett Hundley, Mike Glennon, Mitch Trubisky and Josh McCown. If you do not follow the NFL, simply think of a sport, craft or skill you’re passionate about, and picture 11 people terrible at it.

Kraft’s explanation for his treatment of Macklemore is also significantly undercut by his other prior political commitments. In addition to effusive praise from Benjamin Netanyahu, Kraft’s relationship with Israel included taking Patriots players on the oorah version of the Birthright tour. He is years into withholding his annual donations to Columbia University in an attempt to extort more punitive treatment of pro-Palestinian voices and activism on campus. He also maintains a massive antisemitism “command center” inside his football stadium.

No, really, for years, Robert Kraft has been regularly bombarding his mind via a private FBI situation room-sized Ludovico Technique of constantly updating antisemitic tweets. Not only is Twitter (now X) a cesspit, and not only does sustained exposure to it push people rightward, but he is deliberately exposing himself to a curated stream of its worst cultivated parts. If being a billionaire is already fundamentally deranging, Robert Kraft is on the same level of the Sanity Index as making foul-mouthed female promiscuity your existential dread, bolting a set of Meta glasses to your face every day and streaming a loop of Pornhub’s Sasha Grey channel, then running home screaming about how now all grass is as flesh.

The lesson, again, is that people over-indexed for good fortune in one respect are not automatically granted proficiency at anything else or immunity from becoming a lunatic about it. The New York Jets are enduring proof to all who watch that money and idiocy can become intergenerational trusts, and just being an NFL owner is proof of someone with an unhealthy relationship to power. (That Kraft could discreetly rent any porn star or escort in the world without noticing the cost but is into cheap hand jobs from people who stand a higher likelihood of not being citizens suggests his is even more abnormally developed.) It’s hard to conclude anything else from trying to blackmail a university over insufficiently repressing people critical of the genocide you can’t support hard enough. 

Robert Kraft meets then Secretary of State John Kerry at the White House. Detail. State Department photo. Public Domain. Via Picryl

As is the case with all his aristocratic peers, the biggest threat to Robert Kraft’s world view is himself. Doing goodwill outreach for a state conducting a genocide is his choice, as is likening its critics to antisemites, as is being chummy with the biggest fascist in American history. No amount of rapper-shaming or making a video wall out of his permission structure for Islamophobia can paper over those holes in his likability and credibility. The fundamental threat, then, is other people noticing. 

The world that artists like Macklemore and activists like him make terrifyingly possible is one in which the victims of Robert Kraft’s preferences are identifiable to everyday people. If not the hope of the better world that exists, they can at least incarnate proof that this one isn’t it. That’s half a step from cries of injustice and just another away from blame. Silencing the first part makes it seem dangerously correct and likelier that the next two steps are set in motion.

If nothing else, this is why you trust the pros. You don’t put billionaires on the ramparts beneath the Overton Window; that’s a gig for people who know when to deploy “both sides” when shutting down one. That same week, ESPN, the network that used to go by the tag line “Embrace Debate,” aired 10 minutes of Ted Cruz on “College Gameday” stumping for a bill that will roll back compensation rights for college athletes that were only recently won after a century of generating billions for what historian Taylor Branch called a plantation system. His arguments ran completely unopposed. Sure, the fans booed the entire time, but here’s the important part Robert Kraft should take to heart: They were just booing Ted Cruz.