Some restrictions are already in force. Ireland's prohibition on importing designated settlement goods took effect on September 15, followed by a Dutch ban on the import, purchase and sale of such goods on September 20. Other countries have announced plans or are considering additional restrictions.

These are not all components of one uniform import ban. The measures differ from country to country, and some remain proposals. The restrictions, in addition, do not generally prohibit all Israeli products: they target only goods originating in West Bank settlements where Jews live.

Nevertheless, the direction is clear. As European governments increase economic pressure on Israel, Palestinians working in businesses in the settlements lose their jobs.

According to a report by Israel's Ynet news website, Israeli industry representatives have already reported declining overseas orders and the cancellation of long-term distribution contracts. Industrial zones such as Barkan, Mishor Adumim, and Ariel, where Israeli-owned factories employ Palestinians from surrounding West Bank communities, are particularly vulnerable.

Avraham Novogrotcki, president of the Manufacturers Association of Israel, described the boycott of factories in the Israeli settlements as a measure that primarily harms Palestinian workers and their families.

"The boycott of factories in Judea and Samaria is a cynical measure that first and foremost harms Palestinian workers," Novogrotcki said.

"While various organizations present it as a moral step, in practice those paying the price are thousands of workers and their families who are losing a stable and dignified source of income. Instead of building economic bridges between Israelis and Palestinians, some are choosing to tear them down. Industry creates jobs, stability and hope, while the boycott creates exactly the opposite."

European politicians may see these restrictions as a statement of principle. For a Palestinian father who loses his job, however, the consequences will be measured in lost wages, unpaid bills, and difficulty supporting his family.

For many Palestinians, employment in Israel or Israeli businesses in the West Bank is an important source of income in the Palestinian Authority economy, where opportunities are limited.

The International Labor Organization (ILO) has documented the importance of this employment. In a 2017 report, the ILO said average wages earned by Palestinians working in Israel and Israeli West Bank settlements were more than twice those earned in the Palestinian Authority. It also reported that approximately one-quarter of the total wage income of Palestinians in the West Bank came from employment in Israel and Israeli settlements.

Earlier this year, the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics reported that about 48,000 Palestinians from the West Bank were employed in Israel and Israeli settlements in the first quarter of 2025. The number of workers in Israeli settlements reached 17,600 in the first quarter of 2026.

Do the Canadian and European governments imposing restrictions on Israeli settlements intend to offer these Palestinian workers comparable jobs? Have they established programs to help Palestinian businesses absorb thousands of displaced employees? Have they pledged funds to replace the incomes that may disappear as a result of their policies? Not a bit.

Their public announcements have concentrated on restricting trade from settlements. They have not set out a comprehensive replacement-employment plan for the Palestinians who could be affected.

There is a precedent for what can happen when an Israeli factory employing Palestinians closes due to a boycott.

SodaStream became a target of the international Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement because it operated a factory in the Mishor Adumim industrial zone.

In 2015, the company closed that factory and transferred production to a new plant in southern Israel. The relocation, together with subsequent disputes over work permits, resulted in hundreds of Palestinians losing their jobs.

In 2016, Reuters reported that approximately 500 Palestinian workers had lost their jobs after the factory's relocation. Nabil Basharat, a father of seven, said he had worked for SodaStream for six years and become a department manager. "I used to make $2,000 a month or more and today I have nothing," he said at the time.

Some BDS campaigners advocate economic isolation that goes well beyond the Israeli settlements. Their campaigns often present boycotts as an act of solidarity with Palestinians, yet the experience of Palestinian workers employed by targeted companies demonstrates that economic pressure falls on the very people they claim to support.

There is also a broader question about the relationship between employment and coexistence. In factories where Israelis and Palestinians work together, workers have practical reasons to cooperate: completing production, earning salaries, and keeping their businesses operating. These everyday relationships do not resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, but neither should they be dismissed as irrelevant.

Removing economic opportunities can deepen frustration and insecurity, and contribute to radicalization and violence. It is irresponsible to ignore the danger of leaving families without income while offering no realistic alternative.

Terrorist organizations exploit such grievances by portraying economic hardship as further proof that coexistence and cooperation have failed. The result is greater instability, not progress toward peace.

A political declaration from EU governments may win applause at home. A boycott campaign may satisfy European activists. Yet neither pays a Palestinian worker's bills or feeds his children.

The Europeans at the moment have their own problems with hostile minorities. To garner the votes of these "mostly peaceful protesters," many European leaders are apparently content to trample the Palestinians so long as the Jews can be punished for refusing to accept an openly genocidal bloc into their midst, as the Europeans so foolishly have done.

If European leaders genuinely want to improve Palestinian lives, they should measure their policies by their practical results. They should ask whether their restrictions will create new Palestinian jobs, expand Palestinian access to markets, strengthen independent businesses, or improve workers' rights. They should also explain what assistance will be available if factories close and employees are dismissed. Palestinians should not have to pay for Europe's anti-Israel campaigns and policies with their livelihoods.

© Gatestone Institute

Unfortunately, China's initiative looks suspect, and talks should not proceed until Beijing is ready to engage the United States meaningfully.

Washington has already begun "informal and preliminary" discussions with Beijing. President Donald Trump and Xi Jinping reportedly did not discuss the visits during their talks in Washington last month, but "further lower-level discussions" are expected before the two leaders meet again next month on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in China's Shenzhen.

China's proposal raised hopes in American policy circles for a broader agreement with Beijing about these weapons. As CNN reported, "The concept of allowing nuclear site visits could move the needle on the U.S. efforts to engage China on issues related to strategic stability and potentially serve as a building block for a trilateral agreement."

A "trilateral agreement" — a deal among the U.S., China, and Russia — was a goal of the first Trump administration and remains a goal to this day. Trump on October 19 publicly said a meeting among the three countries would be "a very positive thing for the world." He also hinted that such a meeting would occur next month in China.

China, at least up to this year, has also refused to discuss transparency measures and has never publicly confirmed the number of its weapons.

Beijing's secrecy has forced others to guess the size of its arsenal. The Pentagon in a November 2022 report forecast that China would quadruple nukes from about 400 then to 1,500 by 2035.

The 2035 estimate looks far too low. Whatever the number, everyone agrees that the Chinese regime is rapidly building its arsenal. As Adm. Charles Richard, then commander of U.S. Strategic Command, said in 2021, "We are witnessing a strategic breakout by China."

"I don't think I've seen anything more disturbing in my career than the Chinese ongoing expansion of their nuclear force," said then Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall in House testimony in March 2023.

"China is expanding its nuclear arsenal faster than any other country," the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute reported this June.

The Chinese regime appears no longer content with a "minimal deterrent" -- an arsenal only big enough to prevent an attack. With its rapid build-up, it is developing a "war-fighting" capability. With such a capability, threats to launch first strikes would be credible and Beijing would be able to intimidate adversaries. The ability to annihilate the United States could convince Washington not to defend, for instance, Taiwan. China has made these threats both in the last century and this one.

Is an agreement with China a good idea? "There is a near total lack of transparency in China's nuclear forces," noted Peter Huessy of the National Institute for Deterrence Studies and the Gold Institute for International Strategy in comments to Gatestone this month. "If the Trump administration can make progress here, that will help America's security."

Almost everybody would also like to see progress with China limiting nukes. "This is a very dangerous time, and there are very few guardrails in place on the U.S.-China nuclear relationship," Paul Dean, a former acting assistant secretary of state overseeing arms control, told CNN. "We don't need to wait for a crisis to start reducing nuclear risks."

As Dean, now at the Nuclear Threat Initiative, said, "the risks are very real right now."

They are especially real because China has almost certainly detonated fissile material secretly— and then sought to deceive the international community.

Beijing says it stopped testing nuclear weapons in 1996, but it has almost certainly been conducting secret detonations.

"Commercial surveillance satellites between 2020 and 2024 observed China dramatically expanding its nuclear weapons testing site at Lop Nur, to include the apparent drilling of new tunnels for the testing of nuclear devices underground," Richard Fisher of the International Assessment and Strategy Center told this author in late 2025. "In addition to preparing to resume underground nuclear testing, it is also very likely that China has proceeded with 'sub critical' nuclear testing and the testing of components of nuclear weapons that included fissile material that produced very low-yield explosions."

Fisher is not the only analyst who thinks the Chinese have been surreptitiously setting off nuclear devices. Huessy also assesses that both Russia and China have been conducting tests with fissile material for decades.

The U.S. intelligence community concurs. "After consultations with Director Ratcliffe and his team, they have confirmed to me that the CIA assesses that both Russia and China have conducted super-critical nuclear weapons tests in excess of the U.S. zero-yield standard," Tom Cotton, chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, stated in comments posted on X in November 2025.

Christopher Yeaw, U.S. assistant secretary of state for Arms Control and Nonproliferation, in a speech in June stated that there was "undeniable evidence" of Chinese yield-producing tests and that China has been "obfuscating nuclear explosions." He said that perhaps in the future China will be testing fissile material in the 100-kiloton range. The Trump administration reports that China detonated fissile material on June 22, 2020 at Lop Nor.

The U.S. charges that China used the "decoupling" technique — detonating a device in an underground chamber instead of solid rock — to disguise and muffle an explosion of fissile material. The U.S. National Nuclear Security Administration conducted a decoupling test to mimic the Chinese effort.

There is concern that, in light of the Chinese deception, Beijing's proposed reciprocal visits are little more than a public relations ploy.

As CNN reported, "skeptics noted that the Chinese may have floated the idea in an effort to create a positive atmosphere or to appear serious on the topic of nuclear arsenals." The skeptics include U.S. officials.

Until China comes clean on its detonations of fissile material, there is no point in talking. Beijing is brazenly lying and therefore refusing to engage with America in good faith.

© Gatestone Institute.

On September 15, 2020, US President Donald J. Trump hosted the signing of the Abraham Accords. The United Arab Emirates and Bahrain normalized relations with Israel; Morocco followed. Jared Kushner helped translate a strategic opening into diplomatic recognition, trade and security cooperation. Six years later, despite regional wars, those relationships endure. The Abraham Accords produced something more valuable than a ceremony: a measurable change in relations between states. That is the standard by which presidential advisers should be judged.

Kushner had a recognizable professional identity long before marrying Ivanka Trump in 2009. He was active in real estate and had acquired The New York Observer in 2006. He was not a trained diplomat, but his public record was identifiable.

What comparable record did Massad Boulos (Senior Advisor to the President for Arab and African Affairs) possess before his son married Tiffany Trump? He worked in business in Nigeria, maintained Lebanese political connections. None is evidence of experience ending civil wars. In 2024, journalistic investigations also questioned widely repeated descriptions of Boulos as a billionaire lawyer commanding a vast business empire; he and Trump's team disputed the criticism. Yet a more consequential question remains: Why was someone with no established record of resolving international conflicts entrusted with Sudan, Congo and Libya?

Consider Sudan. Its war between Abdel Fattah al-Burhan's regime-aligned Sudan Armed Forces (SAF) and Hemedti's Rapid Support Forces (RSF) has killed and displaced civilians on a staggering scale.

Washington sanctioned both commanders, accused the RSF of genocide and the SAF of committing war crimes, and determined that the regime's forces had used chemical weapons. Boulos has promoted a 90-day humanitarian ceasefire; no durable ceasefire has emerged.

The Sudan conflict also reaches far beyond the country's borders. Iranian-made drones have strengthened the SAF. In March 2026, Washington designated the SAF-allied Sudanese Muslim Brotherhood a Foreign Terrorist Organization due to its violence against civilians and the support it receives from Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.

Iran's support for Yemen's Houthis has already exposed how militants can threaten Red Sea shipping.

Does Boulos have a strategy to prevent Sudan's Red Sea coastline from becoming another arena of Iranian influence? The United States cannot afford an approach that treats every armed faction as an equally acceptable partner simply because each controls territory. Diplomacy must distinguish between temporary contacts and legitimizing forces that threaten long-term security.

Libya raises an equally serious question about the direction of American diplomacy. Boulos has pursued negotiations aimed at reconciling the rival authorities associated with Khalifa Haftar in eastern Libya and Abdul Hamid Dbeibah in Tripoli.

The reported American proposal envisages a power-sharing arrangement between the Haftar and Dbeibah families, alongside the unification of state institutions and opportunities for American investment in Libya's energy sector.

Washington, however, must confront a more fundamental question: How can a genuine national unity government emerge in Libya when one of the negotiating parties operates within a political environment deeply entangled with armed militias, Muslim Brotherhood-linked networks and hardline Islamist factions?

The influence of these networks in western Libya cannot simply be ignored. Dbeibah's administration has depended on shifting alliances with powerful armed groups, while political figures associated with the Muslim Brotherhood have maintained connections within Libya's fragmented power structure. Their relationships may be complicated and sometimes adversarial, but the underlying problem remains: Who would actually exercise power inside a supposedly unified Libyan government?

Politics

Donald Trump claims he is making progress in peace negotiations while Ukraine launches a massive drone attack on St. Petersburg

Andrés Ignacio Henríquez

Would Washington be helping establish a sovereign state with a unified national army, accountable institutions and civilian authority? Or would it be legitimizing an arrangement in which entrenched political families divide state resources while armed factions and Islamist networks retain influence behind the scenes?

A government of national unity cannot succeed if it merely unites the political elites while leaving the forces that divided the country untouched.

Trump has repeatedly confronted Iran and his administration has formally designated specific Muslim Brotherhood branches accused of supporting terrorism.

How, then, can his own representatives pursue deals that risk preserving the influence of armed Islamist networks while the president promises to confront them?

In Sudan, Yemen and Libya, American national security is too important for strategic ambiguity masquerading as balance.

Trump does not need an envoy whose chief asset is proximity to presidential power. He needs results consistent with his stated strategy: stronger allies, weaker terrorist networks, less Iranian influence and durable peace.

Kushner had the Abraham Accords. What will Boulos leave behind? The photograph should document a victory — not substitute for one.

© Gatestone Institute.

President Donald J. Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu played central roles in these developments. Their partnership combined America's diplomatic leverage and military power with Israel's intelligence capabilities and military operations.

The Middle East, nevertheless, remains far from stable. Hamas continues to resist disarmament, Iran remains a major threat, and Hezbollah's armed presence in Lebanon continues to undermine the authority of the Lebanese state. The future of Gaza, including who will govern it and who will control its weapons, stands unresolved.

The question is no longer simply what Washington and Jerusalem have achieved together. It is whether they can turn those achievements into lasting security.

One of the most consequential developments was the US-backed Gaza ceasefire agreement reached in October 2025. The agreement ended the period of large-scale fighting and led to the return of all the remaining living Israeli hostages held by Hamas.

For the families who endured months of uncertainty and suffering, the return of their loved ones was an enormous achievement. It also demonstrated the potential of American diplomatic pressure, regional mediation, and Israeli military pressure to produce results that years of negotiations had failed to secure.

Trump's 20-point plan subsequently provided a framework for a different future for Gaza. It envisioned an end to Hamas's rule, the disarmament of armed factions, a transitional Palestinian administration, an International Stabilization Force (ISF), and reconstruction.

In January 2026, the Board of Peace was formally launched, with Trump as its chairman. Its mandate was to help oversee the transition and create the conditions for Gaza to be governed without the political or military domination of the terrorist group Hamas.

There has been progress in building the institutional framework. The National Committee for the Administration of Gaza has been established, preparations have been made to recruit and train Palestinian police, and the international community has developed a roadmap for disarmament.

The most difficult tasks, however, remain unfinished.

A report submitted by the Board of Peace to the UN Security Council in May acknowledged that negotiations over the implementation roadmap had not been finalized. The proposed ISF was still preparing for deployment, while the disarmament of Hamas and other armed terrorist factions remains a central obstacle.

Hamas has suffered substantial military loses, but as a political and armed force, it has not disappeared. Its continued presence raises a fundamental question: Can Gaza really have a new beginning while the organization that launched the October 7, 2023 massacre retains the ability to obstruct the transition and launch more massacres -- not just of Israelis but of its own citizens and other neighbors?

The answer will determine whether the ceasefire becomes the foundation of a lasting settlement or merely an interval before another round of fighting.

The other historic development was the military confrontation with Iran in June 2025.

Israel, on June 13, 2025, launched Operation Rising Lion, striking Iranian nuclear infrastructure, missile production facilities, air defenses, military headquarters, and senior military commanders. On June 22, the United States struck three Iranian nuclear facilities at Fordow, Natanz, and Isfahan.

The operations demonstrated a level of US-Israeli military coordination with massive implications for regional security. They inflicted damage on important elements of Iran's military and nuclear infrastructure and demonstrated that Iran's geographical distance and extensive defensive preparations could not guarantee the protection of its most sensitive facilities.

The main challenge is still to prevent Iran from restoring the capabilities that made it such a serious threat to Israel and other countries in the region. This objective requires sustained intelligence cooperation, effective monitoring, credible deterrence, and a clear response to attempts to rebuild prohibited or threatening capabilities.

The challenge extends beyond Gaza and Iran.

Hezbollah's decision to build an extensive military infrastructure outside the authority of the Lebanese state has contributed to decades of instability along Israel's northern border. Hezbollah's relationship with Iran was what gave the country the means of projecting military power beyond its own territory.

Efforts to strengthen the Lebanese state's authority and dismantle Hezbollah's independent military capabilities -- as well as those of Iran's other terrorist proxies, Hamas and the Houthis -- remain essential to any durable regional settlement.

A Lebanon in which the rightful government exercises unobstructed control over the country's armed forces and territory would be in the interests of both Lebanese citizens and their neighbors.

The same principle applies to Gaza. Civilian institutions cannot function effectively when an armed faction retains the power to threaten and overrule them.

The Trump-Netanyahu partnership has also operated against the background of the Abraham Accords, which established diplomatic relations between Israel and several Arab states during Trump's first administration. These agreements remain an important foundation for the possibility of broader regional cooperation.

Trump and Netanyahu have helped bring about long-sought-after changes in the regional balance of power. Military success and diplomatic breakthroughs, however, are not ends in themselves. Their significance ultimately depends on what follows.

The opportunity is significant, but it is not guaranteed. The achievements of recent months could be weakened, or even reversed, if the remaining challenges are left unresolved.

A ceasefire without disarmament, a transitional administration without operational authority, and military victories without a strategy for the future will leave the region exposed to endless instability.

The task ahead is therefore clear: turn the gains already made into a strategic reality in which Palestinians in Gaza can live under civilian government rather than an armed factional rule; in which Israel's security is strengthened, and in which Iran and its Middle Eastern allies can no longer threaten its own people or the region in any way.

© Gatestone Institute.

He was right. Sweden's center-right Sweden Democrats government indeed lost the elections by a razor-thin margin – reportedly just 50,000 votes – corresponding to just three seats in parliament.

The next government will almost certainly be a socialist one. [1]

"Voters who, or whose parents, grew up outside Europe overwhelmingly favoured the Left," Brussels Signal wrote in its analysis of an exit poll by SVT, Sweden's national public broadcaster:

"The Social Democrats received 38 per cent of their votes, the Left Party 21 per cent, the Greens 7 per cent and the Centre Party 4 per cent. Together, these parties accounted for 70 per cent, against 27 per cent for the four parties of the outgoing right-wing bloc."

The tiny socialist majority was won through heavy voter mobilization within immigrant communities, which tipped the balance. Turnout rose around 3 points to 67.5% in the almost exclusively urban districts, where mainly Muslim immigrants live.

"This election has in part been about voter mobilisation, which is unusual in Sweden," noted to Gustav Karreskog Rehbinder, founder of AI analysis firm Vera Policy, which broke down the election results for Reuters.

According to Fredrik Karrholm, a member of the Swedish parliament and the author of Gangster Violence:

"A poll by the respected Novus institute before the election found that of Muslim respondents, around 80 per cent intended to vote for either the Social Democrats or the Left party.

"In some districts with large immigrant populations, the results are striking. For example, in Rosengård Centrum in Malmö, the Social Democrats and Left Party together received, according to the preliminary count, 95.2 per cent of the vote...

"This pattern predates the present government...

"During the last parliamentary term, around 200,000 people were given citizenship under rules that imposed very few demands on applicants – not even a requirement to speak or write Swedish. The majority of those granted citizenship were from outside Europe....

"Immigration to Sweden has not only brought crime, social problems and unemployment – now the government that was successfully starting to solve these problems has been voted out because of immigration itself."

For a brief moment, it had seemed as if Sweden was finally beginning to turn things around. In 2022, Sweden voted in a center-right government that ruled with the parliamentary backing of the Sweden Democrats – a first in Swedish politics. This government sought to implement the most restrictive overhauls of Swedish asylum and immigration policies in Swedish history with crackdowns on asylum and migrant flows, while making it harder for immigrants to acquire permanent residence and Swedish citizenship.

After decades of lawlessness, the center-right government, now voted out, had also sought to crack down on crime by finally openly linking migration to gang violence, parallel societies, and integration failures.

The results were dramatic: In December 2025, Reuters reported:

"The number of shootings in Sweden has more than halved since hitting a peak in 2022, reflecting new policing approaches introduced by the right-wing government, which is readying for parliamentary elections next year. Shooting incidents fell to 147 so far this year, a 63% decrease compared to 2022 when there were 390 shootings and a 49% decrease compared to 2024, according to a Reuters analysis of official figures."

The government also began to scrutinize the detrimental effects of Islam in Sweden, including the launch of a government investigation into the Islamist infiltration of Swedish society. This past spring, the government announced that it would be dropping the entire concept of "Islamophobia."

Sweden, in short, had been on the road to becoming Swedish again – but if the election results lead to a new socialist government, that will no longer happen: The Left Party alone is deeply infiltrated by Islamists and terrorist supporters, with several of its politicians caught celebrating the October 7, 2023 Hamas invasion of Israel, with some handing out candy on the streets to mark their joy at the massacres of Israelis. In addition, several candidates were found to have shared content praising or expressing support for designated terrorist organizations, including Hamas, Hezbollah, the PFLP and Al-Qaeda, while multiple candidates shared classic antisemitic tropes, Holocaust denial and homophobia.

These revelations, all dug up by the Swedish press, forced the Left Party to remove at least 33 of its most extremist candidates, an astounding number.

Many other radicals within the party kept their parliamentary seats, including MPs Ilona Szatmári Waldau and Samuel Gonzalez Westling, who sent open letters of support to Palestinian terrorists held in Israeli prisons for serious offenses, such as ordering suicide bombings and torturing and murdering an Israeli soldier. In October 2025, the party's top leadership, including party leader Nooshi Dadgostar, hosted two visiting Palestinians from the Fatah Revolutionary Council inside the Swedish Parliament. The two guests were known for having publicly praised terrorist acts and spreading Jew-hatred.

If you think any of this harmed the party, you would be wrong: The scandals actually served to boost it: they gained the party six new seats in the election.

There is a name for what just happened in Sweden: Ballot box jihad. It is an Islamist tactic, favored by the Muslim Brotherhood.

"In the Middle East, democracy and elections are various means to one end: the establishment of a decidedly undemocratic form of law — Islamic, or Sharia Law," Raymond Ibrahim wrote about the Egyptian elections in 2012, which, for a brief moment, brought the Muslim Brotherhood to power.

"An Egyptian cleric, Dr. Talat Zahran, proclaimed that it is 'obligatory to cheat at elections, a beautiful thing' -- meaning that voting is a tool, an instrument, the only value of which is to empower Sharia. Another cleric, Hazim Shuman... issued a fatwa that likened voting for Islamist candidates to a 'jihad,' or a holy war, adding that paradise awaits whoever is 'martyred' during the electoral campaign."

The same tactic applies to the Islamist project of nonviolent conquest of the West. The late spiritual leader of the Muslim Brotherhood, Yusuf al-Qaradawi, speaking in Qatar in 2007, said that "Islam will conquer Europe without resorting to the sword or fighting. The conquest will be through da'wah [proselytizing] and ideology."

Ballot box jihad is part of achieving this conquest. Sameh Egyptson, an Egyptian-Swedish academic, writer and expert on political Islam, has been warning about Islamist infiltration of the political system for years. He has recently cautioned, among other things, against clan voting as an erosion of democracy. Clan voting is when extended families and even entire ethnic communities vote collectively as a bloc for the same candidate or party. Although clan voting as such is not illegal in Sweden, two newly elected Muslim candidates from the Left Party are already suspected of electoral fraud, including bribing or unduly influencing voters to vote for them and pre-marking their own names on ballots.

This outcome is possibly what many socialists have been planning all along: To stay in power forever by importing new voters from the Third World.

Sweden is a warning, not only to the rest of Europe but to the Western world at large.

[1] Sweden's new government will likely consist of the Social Democrats (99 seats), Sweden's Communist party, which changed its name to the Left Party (Vänsterpartiet) in 1990 (30 seats), the radical Green Party (22 seats) and the more centrist Center Party (25 seats).

© Gatestone Institute

On September 25, addressing Russian journalists, he said that every proposal for settling the four-and-a-half-year war remained on the table, then attached the condition that empties the offer of content. "We are ready for talks and to wrap them up as soon as possible, but on conditions acceptable for the Russian people," Putin said. Moscow would first assess what served its own interests.

He added that Russia had been prepared to resume talks after its parliamentary elections, that Ukrainian drone attacks on Moscow had changed the calculation, and that Kyiv would have to be "made to feel" Russian retaliation before anything else could be discussed.

US President Donald J. Trump would do well to read that statement as a description of Putin's method. A leader preparing to end a war does not reserve for himself both the calendar of diplomacy and unrestricted freedom of fire. Putin, in a single appearance, claimed both, In doing so, he put negotiation where the Kremlin has always kept it, among the instruments of his war.

The confirmation came within five days. On September 30, Russia launched its heaviest combined attack on Ukraine's energy system in months. Seven people were killed, among them a 14-year-old in Vyshhorod, north of the capital. The Ukrainian military counted 285 drones incoming, along with ballistic missiles. Emergency power cuts were imposed in Kyiv and three surrounding regions for the first time since the spring, and water pressure fell across the city.

The Russian Defense Ministry announced the strikes on Ukraine's energy facilities without embarrassment. On October 3, hours after another drone attack on a Dnipro crossing, in a city of three million people heading into winter, the Russian Foreign Ministry told foreign nationals and diplomatic staff to leave Ukraine and promised that the strikes on Kyiv and other cities would continue systematically. Putin had said earlier in the week that Ukraine was paying the price for its attacks on Russia and would go on paying it. Kyiv's mayor now speaks of a capital that must put itself on a war footing.

Putin's interest in negotiations seems real, but deserves to be taken only for what it buys him. An open negotiation process allows Putin time to ready harsher attacks for the winter. Like Iran's regime, it gives the appearance of cooperation without actual cooperation, and puts Ukraine under pressure to suspend its long-range strikes on refineries and ports that are doing genuine damage to Russia's revenues.

The Kremlin has made the argument in public. On September 17, the day after the US House of Representatives sent Trump legislation targeting Russia's energy and defense industries, and its shadow fleet of tankers, and authorizing tariffs of up to 100% on buyers of Russian oil, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov warned that additional American sanctions would complicate the search for a settlement.

Trump signed the bill on September 18, and three days later, the Kremlin spokesman repeated the warning. Washington was asked to hold its fire for the sake of diplomacy; then, in early October, Russia returned to bombing Kyiv's bridges six times in an apparent attempt to cut the capital city in two and sever its supply routes.

The so-called energy truce also showed how the asymmetry works in practice. On September 14, Trump announced that Ukraine and Russia had each agreed to stop hitting the other's energy targets. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky answered within hours that Ukraine was not convinced that Russia would abide by any agreement and that Kyiv would halt its own strikes once its partners could guarantee that Moscow had stopped attacking Ukraine's electric grid. Moscow never confirmed the arrangement, and 16 days later Ukraine's grid was burning.

None of that should have surprised anyone who had read what three sources close to the Kremlin described in July: Putin rebuked advisers proposing a ceasefire along the existing front, regards capturing the rest of the Donbas as a matter of principle, and is likely to escalate. Peskov's reply at the time was that Russia was ready for a peaceful resolution but had "enough capability to act independently and continue the special military operation." The conjunction "but" did the same work in July as it did on September 25.

None of this argues against talking to Putin. Great powers negotiate with adversaries because they are adversaries, and Trump is well-intended in seeking an end to the war that has become Europe's bloodiest since 1945, drained allied treasuries, killed or wounded roughly 1.4 million Russians and more than half a million Ukrainians, and raised the risk of a widening confrontation. The error would be to read Putin's presence at the negotiating table as a decision to stop the war. In 1994, Russia signed the Budapest Memorandum, assuring Ukraine that if it gave up its nuclear weapons, Russia would not attack it. Ukraine, tragically, kept its part of the bargain.

The Minsk agreements of September 2014 and February 2015 produced ceasefires, monitoring missions and years of communiqués signed under French and German sponsorship. The heavy weapons, however, were never fully withdrawn and the political provisions were never implemented. In February 2022, Putin declared the agreements void, recognized separatist entities within Ukraine and invaded. Eight years of playing at process had cost Putin nothing and had given him time, which is what diplomacy without enforceable consequences reliably gives an aggressor.

A further development calls for serious caution. According to reporting published on October 3, the American-Russian discussions have widened to include a redolent multibillion-dollar sale of the international assets, refineries, oil fields and gas stations of Russia's Lukoil, which are currently under American sanctions. Putin raised the transaction himself at the Kremlin on September 5, in his meeting with US envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, as proof that Russians could again do business with the United States!

The sale would need the approval of both governments; nothing has yet been concluded. The Trump administration says it is negotiating terms that would secure a substantial upfront payment for the United States. So, commercial "normalization" was placed on the table during the same weeks as the bombardment intensified. If sanctions relief, restraint on Ukrainian operations and restored relations with Washington can all be obtained by keeping talks alive, then for Moscow, prolonging talks is the perfect course, and a settlement can remain one meeting away indefinitely.

Trump's record as a negotiator was built on leverage; declarations never seem to have impressed him. Money, however, apparently has, such as Saudi and Qatari "investments" in America and a $400 million presidential "flying palace" jet gifted to him by Qatar.

The Abraham Accords came out of a hard reading of interests. Iran's regime, once it faced American force in place of American concern, behaved differently.

Russian, Iranian, Chinese, North Korean and Palestinian conduct should be rewarded only after sustained changes in behavior. Sanctions relief should follow only after a verified halt in escalation or hostilities. Any restraint asked of Ukraine over Russian refineries should follow only after Russia stops targeting Ukrainian bridges, apartment buildings, hospitals and power plants. The Lukoil transaction can wait until after hostilities have measurably declined. Such a policy is neither hostile to Russia nor favorable to war.

Ceasefires can exist just for press statements that protect no one and for talks that supply one side with time, money and freedom of action to lengthen the fighting. Putin likely counts on Western impatience, on US presidents who want breakthroughs and on publics who want images of the war off their screens. The law Trump signed on September 18 gives him the means to raise the price of delay. The weeks since Putin's statement supply the reason to use it.

Until Russian strikes on Ukraine stop, Putin's offers to talk remain just part of his plan for his war.

© Gatestone Institute

What we also mark is the launch of a war by Hamas whose strategic purpose was to destabilize the Middle East — which was edging towards peaceful co-existence — while filming their October 7th atrocities. Their purpose evidently was to remind the world that they are committed to the total destruction of Israel "by any means necessary."

Make no mistake. It is a war. As in any war, unfortunately, civilians will lose their lives.

As Israel was responding with deadly force against Hamas and its allies, Hamas' collaborators around the world hijacked the word "genocide" to charge that the Israelis are engaged in a methodical and calculated program of extermination. It is beyond irony that the people who were subjected to industrial-scale murder as a formal policy by the Third Reich should now be accused of such a crime. In a world where Jew-hatred thrives as a bacillus, such libels exist.

A generation — holding high Palestinian banners that speak of their ignorance of history, of the roots of conflict, and their refusal to acknowledge Israel's right to exist — now marches on college campuses. These protestors may be able to spell "genocide" but their understanding of that word is defined by the agents of Hamas. These protestors are nothing more than dupes, many of whom would be executed by Hamas in Gaza for being infidels and for their progressive self-identity.

The Holocaust tore apart but strengthened the Jewish soul. Never again will Jews allow their enemies to commit acts of murder and unspeakable violence upon their people and not be targeted for retribution. In the war initiated by Hamas, Israel is within its rights to target the agents, soldiers, and commanders of this terrorist organization. Civilians will, unfortunately, be caught in the violence. And Hamas cynically uses those casualties while they deny food, medical assistance and honest governance to the very population they purport to represent.

The Israelis know their history. Self-defense is within the DNA of every Jew who will confront hatred with the steely resolve required in a world where an error in strategic judgment can lead to disaster. "Never again" is not a slogan. It is a sworn oath to posterity and to future generations of Jews.

© Gatestone Institute.

The Muslim Brotherhood grasped the possibilities long before Washington did. Its activists have operated in the US since at least the late 1950s; by 1991, one of them had committed the strategy to paper. This memorandum, written by Mohamed Akram and later entered into evidence by federal prosecutors in the Holy Land Foundation terrorism-financing trial, described the movement's work in North America as a "civilization-jihadist process" aimed at "destroying Western civilization from within." It attached a list of the organizations then considered friends of the movement. The method it laid out was institutional, incremental and on its face, lawful.

Not every American Muslim, of course, is an extremist; the overwhelming majority practice their faith peacefully, ask nothing of their neighbors and want for their children what every other American family wants.

Millions of Muslims have no interest in seeing political Islam govern anyone, and many may have even crossed an ocean to escape it. The organizations that claim to speak in their name are another matter, and their central achievement has been to make the two indistinguishable, so that a political network registers as a whole population.

The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) illustrates the mechanism. Founded in 1994, it presents itself as "America's largest Muslim civil rights organization." Its co-founder and national executive director, Nihad Awad, previously worked with the Islamic Association for Palestine, one of the groups named in the 1991 memorandum. Federal prosecutors listed CAIR as an unindicted co-conspirator in the 2007 Holy Land Foundation case. The United Arab Emirates, an Islamic state that wisely treats the Muslim Brotherhood as an existential threat, placed CAIR on its list of terrorist organizations in 2014, a designation the Obama administration's State Department publicly rejected within days.

CAIR is also politically fluent. Its affiliate CAIR Action intervenes openly in elections. After Zohran Mamdani won New York's Democratic mayoral primary, it publicly pressed Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and the House of Representatives Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries to endorse him. Influence in a democracy operates this way, in daylight, through the ordinary instruments of pressure politics.

Washington has finally begun to respond. Executive Order 14362, "Designation of Certain Muslim Brotherhood Chapters as Foreign Terrorist Organizations and Specially Designated Global Terrorists," signed in November 2025, opened the process. On January 13, 2026, the State Department designated the Lebanese Muslim Brotherhood a Foreign Terrorist Organization while the Treasury Department listed the Egyptian and Jordanian branches as Specially Designated Global Terrorists for having provided material support to Hamas. On July 23, Treasury sanctioned a senior Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood official based in London along with two sham charities that had channeled money to Hamas's military wing. These were the first designations of national Muslim Brotherhood chapters in American history.

US Senator Ted Cruz spent years making the case and reintroduced his Muslim Brotherhood Terrorist Designation Act in 2025.

Naming the Muslim Brotherhood abroad while leaving political Islam unexamined at home addressed half a problem. No president can personally audit every organization, adviser or intermediary orbiting his administration. Networks built over 60 years are dismantled by people who understand how the machinery works, and this machinery now extends well beyond explicitly Islamic organizations. Its most valuable American partner today is the radical left.

The left-Islamist alliance might look incongruous only from a distance. Progressives and Islamists disagree profoundly about religion, sexuality, women and individual liberty, and elections have made those disagreements affordable. Progressive politicians require organized constituencies, Islamist and anti-Israel activist networks require access to mainstream power, and hostility to Israel supplies the bridge. Ideological incompatibility matters less than arithmetic.

The progressives think that the Islamists will boost them to power, and the Islamists think the progressives will boost them to power.

US Representative Ilhan Omar demonstrated how quickly the boundaries could move. Her repeated controversies over Israel cost her nothing inside progressive politics and eventually made her one of its emblems. US Representative Rashida Tlaib traveled a similar road from activism into Congress. Positions once considered politically fatal turned out to be assets within carefully assembled constituencies.

Mamdani then dispelled any illusion that the new movement was confined to a few congressional districts. He supported BDS (boycott, divestment and sanctions against Israel), helped to establish a Students for Justice in Palestine chapter at Bowdoin College, and became the first political endorsement in the history of US Campaign for Palestinian Rights Action. He now governs the city with the largest Jewish population in the world.

Michigan is the next laboratory. On August 4, Abdul El-Sayed, who claims to be a physician but has never had a medical license, won the Democrat Senate nomination over establishment-backed Representative Haley Stevens by roughly one point.

According to WFMD radio:

"Abdul El-Sayed has made his supposed medical credentials a centerpiece of his campaign, but the truth is he never held a medical license, never did his residency, never passed his boards, and never practiced medicine independently," campaign spokesperson [for State Senator Mallory McMorrow (D-Michigan) Michigan] Jackson Boaz told Fox News Digital. "If Michigan voters can't trust El-Sayed to be honest about something that is so central to his entire rationale for running, how can they trust him to be honest about what he'd do as a United States Senator?"

US Senator Bernie Sanders, US Representatives Tlaib and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and the Working Families Party backed El-Sayed, who campaigned against military aid to Israel. Within days, the machinery of unity engaged.

The defeated Stevens offered her support. Michigan's Governor Gretchen Whitmer and US Senator Chuck Schumer, after opposing the nominee, fell in behind him, and former President Barack Obama telephoned to offer advice. El-Sayed called that conversation warm and inspiring while saying he hoped the former president would campaign for him this autumn.

The political pattern for the country is that the radical "left" has no need to convert the Democratic Party. They are already there, having proven that they can deliver votes in Michigan, Minnesota and New York. Once those votes are seen as necessary, yesterday's radicals become today's coalition partners in a constituency that is organized, concentrated and situated where elections are close.

Money underwrites these projects, both political and cultural. Federal disclosure data records $7.7 billion flowing from Qatar to American universities since 1986, more than from any other country, with more than $1.1 billion arriving in 2025 alone -- roughly a fifth of all foreign funding that year. And that is just what we know about -- it was reported. The Institute for the Study of Global Antisemitism and Policy places the real total far higher across five decades and calls it a deliberate effort to seed Muslim Brotherhood thinking inside American institutions. Qatar spent years hosting senior Hamas leaders while accumulating extraordinary standing in Western universities, media and diplomacy. Influence among elites never arrives as a suitcase with instructions. It arrives as endowed chairs, research partnerships, satellite campuses and eventually dependency and submission to requests.

While countries in the West are always nonchalantly accused of imperialism and colonization, how come no one ever mentions the Islamic imperialism and colonization of Christian Byzantium – now Turkey – let alone the entire Ottoman Empire?

How come no one ever mentions the Islamic colonization of the Coptic Christian country of Egypt, or of northern Cyprus in 1974? Or the formerly Buddhist countries of southeast Asia, such as the Maldives, Malaysia, or Indonesia?

The Islamic colonization now underway in Europe and the United States carries no racial or demographic content. A Muslim family settling in Detroit colonizes nothing, any more than an Italian family arriving in New York a century ago. The territory being taken is ideological: it changes hands whenever a political movement discovers that open institutions can be used more profitably than if they were attacked, or whenever foreign money purchases standing inside institutions that form the next generation of American elites, or whenever two movements with incompatible values find they can trade access for votes.

For now, at least, America's position remains far stronger than Europe's. The Muslim Brotherhood has been named and sanctioned, Marco Rubio's State Department has begun converting old warnings into policy, and many American Muslims who fled from religious authoritarianism abroad may be reluctant to watch it follow them across the Atlantic. The instruments of self-defense are also intact, if largely unused. US Section 117 disclosure of gifts to educational institutions is enforced only in bursts of periodic embarrassment. It should be routine. The Foreign Agents Registration Act reaches those acting for foreign principals, yet in February 2025 the Justice Department narrowed criminal enforcement to conduct resembling traditional espionage and disbanded the FBI unit that investigated foreign influence. An administration willing to designate Muslim Brotherhood chapters abroad has quietly retired the main statutory tool for detecting foreign influence at home.

Americans may not notice it right away, or now, but one day, unless actions are taken as soon as possible to prevent it, they may wake up one morning to find themselves under Islamic rule.

The process is arithmetic: small concessions, each too minor to be worth a fight, accumulating across institutions, phrases and political territory until reversing the situation would demand a confrontation no one wishes to have. Europe crossed this threshold without even noticing it. America has not.

The interval, however, in which recognizing the problem still costs less than reversing it is not indefinite.

© Gatestone Institute

A recent interview with Palestinian journalist and photographer Motaz Azaiza should make anyone who has accepted that claim without question think again.

Azaiza is hardly an obscure figure. His images from Gaza reached millions of people around the world. He was named one of TIME magazine's "100 Most Influential People," received international awards, and became one of the most recognizable Palestinian voices documenting the Gaza war.

That is what makes his recent revelations so important.

Azaiza revealed details about how journalists operated under Hamas rule. He described an environment in which journalists were pressured to suppress criticism of Hamas and, in some cases, to stop filming when Palestinians expressed anger toward the terrorist group.

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These are not allegations coming from an Israeli government official or a pro-Israel advocacy organization. They are admissions by a Palestinian journalist who became internationally famous for documenting the war.

Azaiza described a WhatsApp group called "SMART" that was managed by a Hamas-affiliated media official connected to the Rafah border crossing between the Gaza Strip and Egypt. Such structures ensure that content circulated among press workers aligns with approved messaging before reaching wider audiences.

Perhaps even more revealing was his description of what happened when Palestinians themselves criticized Hamas. Azaiza described a scene in which people emerging from an ambulance shouted criticism at Hamas ("May God take revenge on Hamas"), and onlookers or Hamas members actively forced him to turn off his camera.

What does that mean?

When Palestinians blamed Israel, the cameras kept rolling. When Palestinians blamed Hamas, the cameras were turned off.

Azaiza said that Hamas enforces a selective narrative – claiming victory or ownership over military acts while deflecting internal blame or civilian grievances – making it difficult for independent media to show the raw, unfiltered reality on the ground. He acknowledged that stepping outside this framework exposes journalists to intense backlash, including organized online campaigns, accusations of treason, and physical intimidation inside Gaza.

International audiences have often been told that the images coming out of the Gaza Strip represented an unfiltered record of Palestinian suffering.

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Azaiza's account, however, suggests that the picture was considerably more complicated: journalists were operating inside a political environment in which criticism of Hamas could carry consequences.

He openly acknowledged that initially he struggled with whether to publish material showing Palestinians criticizing Hamas. He said he had never seen a Gaza journalist publish such material. He also disclosed that he grew up supporting Hamas and that Hamas's ideology and the culture of "resistance" were part of his childhood environment.

This is a remarkable admission. It helps explain why the outside world has heard relatively little from Gaza about Hamas's responsibility for the suffering of Palestinians under its rule. It also raises an obvious question: How much of the story coming out of Gaza has been shaped not only by what journalists saw but also by what they believed they were permitted to show?

Journalism conducted under intimidation cannot automatically be treated as independent journalism. The distinction is especially important because foreign news organizations have frequently depended on Gaza-based journalists, photographers, translators, and "fixers" for information that they could not obtain themselves.

If the Palestinian journalists are operating under pressure from Hamas, the implications extend far beyond Palestinian media. The influence can reach international media organizations that use their material.

A foreign correspondent or editor sitting in a newsroom thousands of miles from Gaza may believe he or she is receiving a credible eyewitness account from an independent local journalist. If the local journalist is subject to Hamas pressure, self-censorship or organized monitoring, the foreign outlet may unknowingly become dependent on a narrative that has already been filtered.

This is how an Islamist terrorist group can influence the international information environment without having to control every foreign newspaper or television station.

Azaiza's revelations are also significant because of what he said about the Hamas-led October 7, 2023 massacre in Israel. He said that he filmed Israeli hostages being beaten by Palestinian crowds after they were kidnapped to the Gaza Strip. He said he chose not to publish the footage because he feared that publication could allow Israel to identify the people involved.

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This raises an uncomfortable question for the international media: How much footage from October 7 and its aftermath was never published because Palestinian journalists feared the consequences of showing what happened? Furthermore, it raises an even broader question about the distinction between documenting history and protecting a political narrative.

Azaiza's account should therefore prompt media organizations that used his work – and the work of other Gaza-based journalists as well as journalists covering other terrorist entities and their sponsors – to examine their own reporting practices. Who supplied the information? Who was present when it was gathered? What material was not published? Were journalists pressured? Were interviews conducted freely? Were Palestinians allowed to criticize Hamas on camera? Most importantly, did international media organizations independently verify claims coming from a territory controlled by a terrorist organization?

These questions matter not only because of the Gaza war but also because of the credibility of journalism itself. Azaiza's account offers a possible explanation for one of the most striking features of the coverage from Gaza: the extraordinary visibility of Palestinian suffering accompanied by comparatively little visibility of Palestinian anger toward Hamas.

Azaiza's interview is ultimately a warning about the dangers of accepting any side's narrative without scrutiny. He is telling us that there was another reality behind the camera – a reality in which criticism of Hamas could disappear from the screen, journalists could face intimidation, and a Hamas-linked network could help manage the narrative. That should not be dismissed as a minor footnote. It should be a wake-up call.

Palestinian political analyst Ahmed Fouad Alkhatib commented on September 18:

"Motaz Azaiza, a Gazan journalist evacuated during the war and someone who has personally attacked me, is finally saying the blunt truth. Gaza‑based 'journalists,' whether tied to Al-Jazeera, Hamas, foreign outlets, or social media, systematically self‑censored and hid anti‑Hamas sentiments inside the Strip. Their mission was to maintain a narrative centered solely on Israel and to erase any dissent, criticism of Hamas, or diversity in Palestinian views. Azaiza describes how he struggled with supposed 'journalists' who shut off their cameras whenever Gazans condemned Hamas or tried to hold it responsible for the catastrophe it brought upon them, from October 7 to the ruinous 'resistance' mythology that followed. So to anyone repeating the line that Gaza had 'more journalists killed than WWII and Vietnam combined,' think carefully about who and what you are calling a journalist in territory fully controlled by a violent extremist organization responsible for severe harm and repression."

Azaiza's interview proves something important: that the process by which information emerged from Gaza was not as independent as many people assumed. The situation has not changed, because most Gazans continue to live under Hamas rule. The question is no longer simply what the cameras show. It is also what they do not show.

©Gatestone Institute

Cao's story is not one of an active prisoner awaiting release — he already served his full seven-year sentence for "organizing illegal border crossings;" he walked out of a Chinese prison in March 2024.

His actual offense, as human rights observers — including the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention — have noted, was building schools and delivering aid to impoverished children along the China-Myanmar border. Since his release, however, Chinese authorities have withheld his passport under a footnote in China's Passport Law, a provision that allows the government to withhold a released prisoner's travel documents for up to three years. Cao has now waited over two and a half years.

Now Cao is facing a diagnosis of late-stage prostate cancer with a spinal tumor. For him, continued delay would potentially be fatal, far from his loved ones and the focused medial aid he deserves.

There is recent precedent for exactly this kind of humanitarian gesture. A previous pastor, Jin Mingri, had a similar case raised with Xi during Trump's earlier visit to Beijing; Jin was subsequently released and reunited with his family in the United States. This outcome demonstrated that acts of diplomacy on behalf of individuals have the means to build goodwill – and the Cao case comes at a time when both governments seek to find areas of common ground.

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For Xi, issuing Cao's passport creates nothing but good will. Cao has already served his sentence in full (although why he was prosecuted and jailed for humanitarian assistance speaks to other issues). He certainly poses no legal or security issues for China. And he is an extremely sick man who should be reunited with his family before any more time passes.

What does China stand to gain? A meaningful signal at a highly-watched bilateral meeting that Beijing can act with humanity and decency despite strategic competition with Washington.

Trump would surely welcome such a sign, demonstrating that his face-to-face meetings with China's leader can create events that go beyond trade agreements and diplomatic dinners.

An ailing American citizen should be allowed to come home. It would be an act of clemency consistent with China's own laws, taken by a confident government secure enough to show mercy to a dying man. Xi has an easy opening to make that point with the president of the United States. He should take it.

© Gatestone Institute

Whether Hadar is correct or not, a friend mentioned in June that "the world is all out of control."

In our out-of-control world, the pace of change is accelerating. As Vladimir Lenin reportedly said, "There are decades when nothing happens, and there are weeks when decades happen."

In this period of rapid change, Hadar admits there are regional wars but finds them "a symptom of disorder rather than a step toward global war."

<cite class="c-detail__cite__title">"The danger in over-diagnosing 'World War III' isn't just inaccuracy," Hadar argues. "It's that the framing tends to produce the very policies—maximalist commitments, reflexive military posturing, treating every regional dispute as an existential test of resolve—that make the smaller fires harder to put out."</cite>

This reasonable-sounding view misses a bigger point. By not adopting resolute approaches, the United States and partners have allowed bad actors to bring the world closer to global conflict.

Russian President Vladimir Putin, for instance, almost certainly perceived American and Western indecision in early 2022 — President Joe Biden said he might tolerate a "minor incursion" into Ukraine — as a green light for a full-scale invasion.

If Biden had instead made the invasion "an existential test of resolve," he probably would have stared down the Russian leader. Instead, his feeble approach opened the door to a long-running war.

Ukraine matters, far more than most realize. As Gregory Copley, president of the International Strategic Studies Association, told Gatestone in December 2023, there are no more "regional wars" because "all of them have some degree of involvement by the great powers."

In Ukraine, for instance, China has provided across-the-board support for Russia.

<cite class="c-detail__cite__title">Xi Jinping has fully backed Putin because the Chinese leader has evidently taken two pages from Mao Zedong's "peasant movement" playbook.</cite>

First, Xi is apparently trying to "encircle the cities from the countryside." Today, the Chinese leader considers places like Ukraine to be countryside and America the most important city. Mao prevailed with that countryside-cities strategy in 1949 against the superior forces of Chiang Kai-shek's Nationalists.

Second, Xi has been busy disrupting the world. "Great chaos under Heaven achieves great order under Heaven," wrote Mao Zedong in 1966 in a letter to his wife, Jiang Qing, referring to his goal of establishing worldwide Chinese rule. Xi, throughout this century, has been making references to the imperial era notion that Chinese leaders not only had the right to rule tianxia —"all under Heaven"— but had the obligation to do so.

America has to confront the Chinese state wherever the Chinese state confronts the world. Every fight — Xi Jinping is now waging proxy wars on three continents — has therefore become critical if not part of an existential struggle.

<cite class="c-detail__cite__title">"A genuine world war requires great powers choosing direct confrontation with each other," Hadar writes. "What we have instead is several great and middle powers each pursuing narrower, more transactional aims, occasionally colliding, usually not on purpose."</cite>

It's true that China and Russia have not chosen to fight the United States directly since the Korean War, but they are getting close, in both Ukraine and Iran. Both conflicts now are proxy contests.

"World wars are often recognizable with certainty only after interconnected crises have become one conflict," David Maxwell, vice president of the Center for Asia Pacific Strategy, wrote to me this month. "Separate wars need not begin as a coordinated global struggle."

Maxwell is right: In the late 1930s separate wars merged into what we now call World War II.

<cite class="c-detail__cite__title">As he notes, "The question may therefore be not whether World War III is imminent but how many simultaneous regional wars can occur before the distinction between regional conflict and world war loses strategic meaning."</cite>

Today, both Russia and China have motives to fight to the end, Russia because it is losing badly in Ukraine and China because it faces internal crises that can end Communist Party rule.

The risk now is that a desperate Putin or an insecure Xi could use his most powerful weapons as he fights what becomes history's last war.

© Gatestone Institute

On May 8, Muslim Fulani gunmen killed 13 Christians in a pre-dawn attack on the community of Ngbra Zongo in Plateau State. "The attack has left dozens of other Christians injured, hundreds of others displaced," a spokesperson for the community related. Three pregnant women were among the dead.

One resident, Lawrence Zongo, noted that the gunmen "moved from one house to another attacking the Christian victims in their homes." The same area has seen repeated assaults on Christian communities. On April 26 in the Rim area, Fulani militia killed pastor Ayuba Choji, his wife, and two children. Church leaders referred to them "martyrs whose lives were claimed by the ongoing genocide against Christians in Nigeria."

According to a May 20 report, a Christian mathematics teacher, Michael Oyedokun, was beheaded after Islamic terrorists attacked two secondary schools in Oyo State and kidnapped dozens of teachers and students. A video of the slaughter was later released. The coordinated assault targeted schools in predominantly Christian communities, with an estimated 39 pupils and seven teachers abducted.

On May 23, gunmen attacked an overnight prayer vigil at a church in Elerin village, Kwara State, killing three Christians and kidnapping 15 others. The assailants opened fire on worshippers before abducting members of the congregation and fleeing into nearby bushland.

On May 31, Fulani Muslim gunmen attacked the predominantly Christian village of Gwomjang in Plateau State, killing eight Christians—four men and four women—and wounding at least 15. The assault began in the evening, shortly after church services had ended, as residents were returning home. According to eyewitnesses, the attackers opened fire on civilians, then fled.

<u>Democratic Republic of Congo: </u>On May 13, Muslim militants from the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF), an Islamic rebel group affiliated with ISIS, attacked Christians in Biakato, killing 21, and burning homes. A survivor recalled:

"The rebels came during the night and started tying people. Then they began killing many Christians who were crying to Jesus Christ. I had hidden myself under the bed. After that, I started hearing loud pangas (large knives) on Christian bodies and the cries of many people crying for help."

On May 19, the same terrorist group killed at least 17 Christians in Mambasa villages, as the region was also grappling with a fierce Ebola outbreak, compounding the humanitarian crisis.

On May 30, the same Islamic terror group killed at least seven more Christians in an overnight attack on the Ngadi neighborhood of Beni. The victims were prevented from escaping, then executed. One survivor recalled,

"They woke us up and, with an Islamic shout—'Allahu Akbar'—the shooting started, and people began to be slaughtered like animals. In the midst of the chaos, I managed to escape the camp. ... We are Pygmies. We do not know anything about politics, but they are killing us."

<u>Kenya:</u> According to a May 1 report, armed Muslim Somali herders stormed Kwa Kamari in Mwingi North, Kitui County, killing seven Christian farmers and burning their homes. One person was left in critical condition. A witness recalled: "It was noise at first, men chanting in Arabic, then gunshots, then shouting, then people running."

A community farmer said: "These people are driving us from our own homes and farms. They kill mercilessly, leaving families turning to prayer, not knowing their fate."

According to a May 5 report, Somali terrorists, as they moved through grazing routes along local farmland, randomly shot and killed 14-year-old Christian James Mutemi. "No parent should go through this," a church leader said. The boy's mother said:

"He was my only hope. Since my husband passed away last year, he was the one I was looking up to. He was my firstborn. Now I am left with only one child, and I don't know how I will move forward. Please remember us in prayer."

The report adds:

"While Kenya is a predominantly Christian country, they often face persecution in the east, where Somali Muslims are intolerant of those who profess faith in Christ."

<u>Pakistan:</u> According to a May 27 report, Silas, an 18-year-old Christian, succumbed to gunshot wounds a few days after Muslim men opened fire on him and another Christian youth. Pastor Imran Amanat condemned the killing, warning,

"Christians in Pakistan continue to live in fear. Violence, harassment, and discrimination against minorities must not be ignored."

Community members described the shooting as "another painful example of the insecurity faced by Christians" and criticized what they saw as an inadequate response from authorities.

<u>Ukraine:</u> According to a May 23 report, the day after Easter Sunday (Orthodox calendar) a Christian was attacked "by two other men of another faith," after greeting those around him with the traditional Easter proclamation, "Christ is risen!" According to one report, the greeting "provoked the anger of a 19-year-old visitor of a different faith." An argument followed, during which the man "decided to kill his Christian adversary" by repeatedly stabbing him in the neck and abdomen. The attackers fled only after "assuring that their adversary was no longer alive." The victim survived the assault—barely. Prosecutors requested, and the court ordered, that the two suspects be held in pretrial detention without the possibility of bail. If convicted, they face life imprisonment. A pixelated image of the two bearded suspects suggests possible Middle Eastern and/or Chechnyan origins.

<u>Afghanistan:</u> According to a May 1 report:

"Being known as a Christian in Taliban-controlled Afghanistan brings lethal danger... The Taliban reportedly searched door to door and through smartphones, hunting for any signs of Christian conversion.... In reality, there are still believers. But they live completely underground... [Christian worship] survives in silence and fear..... Even in Western countries, the struggle does not fully end... When other Afghans realize someone is not Muslim, reactions can change instantly... Many never fully feel safe, even after reaching the West. Being an Afghan Christian is not just a religious identity. It is a condition of constant caution... Even outside Afghanistan, the fear does not disappear."

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<u>Pakistan: </u>The Muslim Abduction, Rape, and Forced Conversion of Christian Girls

On May 6, a court rejected the official government birth record of Sonia Tariq, a Christian girl who was abducted as a minor, pressured to convert to Islam, and forced into marriage. Although Sonia claimed she was 20, had converted voluntarily, and did not wish to return to her Christian family, Supreme Court attorney, Saqib Jillani, said those statements were made under duress, and that Sonia was only 13 when she began working at a Lahore beauty parlor, where she was pressured to embrace Islam. After she disappeared on Nov. 7, 2024, her father initially reported her missing. "A few days later," said Jillani, "Nadeem named Sonia's Muslim co-worker, Ayesha Akram, her father Akram Barkat and another person, Zulfiqar Dogar, accusing them of abducting her for sexual exploitation under the guise of Islamic conversion and marriage." Sonia's father said police repeatedly refused to help recover her:

"They kept telling me that she had converted to Islam and married of her own free will. They did not show us any evidence of her marriage but kept pressuring me to stop searching for her. It is quite clear that she is under their influence and pressure, which is why she insists on staying with them."

According to a May 11 report, another Christian girl, 16-year-old Jia Liaqat, disappeared from her family home in Punjab while her parents were working in a Muslim landowner's fields. "We immediately filed a First Information Report (FIR) regarding Jia's abduction with the Burewala Police Station the same day," her father Liaqat Masih of the Anglican Church of Pakistan, said, "but the police did not make any effort to trace her whereabouts." On April 8 the family received a WhatsApp call from a Muslim man identifying himself as Sohail Riaz, based in Dubai. He claimed Jia was in his custody and warned them against pursuing the case. Masih said Riaz had contacted her through social media and "groomed her for sexual exploitation under the guise of marriage."

Police later informed the family that she had been converted to Islam and entered into an online Nikah (Islamic marriage) with Riaz on April 15. After the family complained about police inaction, the officers grew hostile. On May 4 Jia appeared before a magistrate without her family present and stated she was an adult who had converted to Islam and married Riaz of her own free will. The suspects were released. "There's no justice for the poor in our country, especially for those belonging to minority communities," Masih said:

"My daughter is a minor and cannot legally marry, but neither the police nor the court felt the need to verify her age. Every day we worry about what will happen to her if we cannot rescue her from the custody of her abductors."

On May 12, "a married Muslim abducted a 14-year-old [Christian] girl... forcibly converted her to Islam and married her, exploiting her medical and mental health vulnerabilities to sexually abuse." Nisha Bibi's father, Abbas Masih of a local Brethren church, said CCTV showed her leaving with a middle-aged man later identified as 41-year-old married Muslim Arshad Habib, who already had three wives and children from those marriages. "My daughter's medical condition made her an easy target," Masih said. Police later presented documents claiming Nisha had converted to Islam and married Habib three days later. "We were shocked to see an alleged conversion certificate and marriage documents presented as proof that my daughter willingly converted and married the accused," Masih said. "These documents appear to have been fabricated to shield him from criminal prosecution." The family's lawyer, Zunara Patrick, said a purported magistrate statement claimed that the 14-year-old Nisha was actually 18, had converted and married voluntarily, and sought protection from her family. Patrick rejected it as fraudulent:

"These actions indicate a deliberate pattern of targeting vulnerable young women for sexual exploitation. In this case, the accused appears to have used religious conversion and marriage as a cover to avoid prosecution."

Muslim Attacks on Converts to Christianity

<u>Somalia: </u>On May 28, four Muslim relatives severely beat a 22-year-old Somali Christian woman, Sofia Ahmed, for leaving Islam and embracing Christianity. Sofia was attacked at her home after her uncle repeatedly questioned her about her faith. When he returned with three other male relatives and again demanded to know if she had converted to Christianity, Ahmed said, "I kept quiet," at which point they immediately jumped her. According to the report:

"The relatives beat her with sticks and struck her nose with a sharp object... The attack drew the attention of neighbors who came in large numbers, seized the assailants and called police. Officers arrived and arrested the four men, but Ahmed's Muslim parents intervened and persuaded police to release them..."

According to a local Christian leader,

"Family members later advocated for the release of the suspects, believing the actions were justified because of Ahmed's decision to leave Islam and embrace Christianity."

Sofia underwent two surgeries and, last reported, was still hospitalized.

<u>Uganda: </u>On May 2, Muslim in-laws of a recent convert to Christianity lured him to their home and beat him unconscious. Ochora Awali, a 28-year-old father of one, was last reported as still receiving hospital treatment for serious head injuries. Awali converted to Christianity on December 31 during a prayer gathering. After his conversion, his wife left with their child to live with her parents. On May 2 his brother-in-law, Werikhe Aramanzan, called claiming the child was critically ill. "He pretended to be crying on the phone so that I could believe the situation was serious," Awali said. The concerned father rushed to the home with his church pastor. Upon arrival the in-laws told him to enter alone:

"They started asking me why I left Islam and joined Christianity. They accused me of bringing shame to the family and spoiling their daughter."

Before he could fully respond, several relatives attacked him. "One jumped on me and started boxing me, while others entered with sticks and beat me badly," Awali said. The beating left him unconscious. The pastor fled for help. When Awali regained consciousness, he was in a clinic, crying in pain, unsure who had brought him there or where his friend was.

A May 21 report disclosed that two Christian converts were finally released after spending nearly two years in prison "following their decision to leave Islam and embrace Christianity." Their imprisonment had begun after relatives and other members of the Muslim community falsely connected them to a criminal case in order to punish them for abandoning Islam. Their case highlights how imprisonment, legal harassment, and pressure from families and local communities can be used against those who embrace Christianity. Rather than abandoning their new faith, the converts remained steadfast throughout their incarceration.

Muslim Attacks on Christian Churches

<u>Mozambique: </u>On April 30, jihadists affiliated with the Islamic State torched the historic Catholic church of St. Louis of Montfort in Meza. The terrorists set fire to the church, parish buildings, and countless homes. Archbishop Antonio Juliasse described it as "a terrifying scene, houses and infrastructure destroyed, a historic parish reduced to rubble." Captured Christians were also "forced to listen to the jihadists' proclamations of hatred." Over the last nine years, more than 300 Christians have been killed, continued the archbishop, adding, "most of them with their throats slit," and "at least 117 churches and chapels destroyed, 23 of them in 2025 alone.

<u>Nigeria:</u> According to a May 20 report, armed Fulani herders ransacked and partially burned the Catholic Church of Saint James the Greater in Adu, Taraba State. They "attacked the church, causing significant damage: broken windows, vandalized parish buildings, and the priest's residence was damaged." The assault was described as "precise and coordinated," matching a security warning issued four days earlier.

<u>Syria:</u> According to a May 13 statement from the Syriac Orthodox Archdiocese of Aleppo, a potential disaster was narrowly averted in the Muslim majority nation, when a suspicious object fell from a hearse transporting the body of a parishioner to St. Ephrem the Syrian Cathedral for a funeral. What fell was described as "a small, strange object, wrapped in a black bag and securely sealed with clear tape." After the hearse arrived, police and security forces were summoned, closed the road, and called in a bomb squad, suspecting it "might be an explosive device."

<u>Indonesia: </u>According to a May 4 report, the Toraja Church congregation in Sungai Keledang was blocked from constructing a house of worship despite completing all administrative and technical requirements in 2025, including recommendations from the Interfaith Harmony Forum and the Ministry of Religious Affairs. Local government withheld the building permit due to opposition from local community groups, who held banners that read, "We, all Muslims, strongly reject the establishment of a church/prayer house or any activities in our neighborhood." Rev. Hendra Kusuma of the National Alliance for Freedom of Religion and Belief said:

"If every church that meets the requirements is denied a permit due to pressure from rejection, how long will the church receive its rights and justice?"

Pastor Meliasni Panggalo said:

"Our services are held outdoors, next to, under the pastorate. The congregation desperately needs a permanent church building so that worship services are not disturbed by the weather."

On Sunday, May 24, Muslims again disrupted Christian worship when members of the Islamic Jihad Front (FJI) and other local Muslims forced a Christian church to halt its Sunday service in Yogyakarta. The mob entered the church, shouted "Allahu Akbar," and threatened worshippers, while police just looked on, prompting the congregation to flee. One Muslim member of the mob warned,

"If the police weren't there, you wouldn't be standing here forever. If the police leave you for more than 24 hours, I will burn this church down."

A church member recalled, "Suddenly, they entered the building, wearing FJI T-shirts and jackets. They forced us to stop the service. There were many children and elderly people in the church, and the atmosphere was very tense."

According to a May 15 report, construction of the Indonesian Pentecostal Church (GPI) in Tanjung Senang Village, Bandar Lampung, Indonesia, has been blocked for 22 years since plans began in 2004, when the building under construction was torched. No one was ever arrested.

<u>Azerbaijan: </u>According to a May 5 report, authorities completely demolished the Holy Mother of God Cathedral (the main Armenian Apostolic cathedral) and St. Hakob Church in Stepanakert, Artsakh (Nagorno-Karabakh). Satellite imagery has confirmed both Christian sites were razed to the ground, leaving only paved or cleared ground. The cathedral, consecrated only in 2019, had been the city's primary place of worship. The demolition followed the 2023 Azerbaijani military takeover that forced more than 120,000 Armenian Christians to flee. Armenian sources described it as part of a deliberate campaign to erase Christian Armenian spiritual presence and historical memory from the region.

<u>Pakistan: </u>A May 22 report noted that police, despite a Supreme Court order on March 31 to do so, as well as vast video and photo evidence, failed to arrest most suspects in Muslim mob attacks on dozens of churches and Christian homes in Jaranwala, Punjab, on August 16, 2023. The violence erupted after two Christians were accused of desecrating the Koran and insulting Islam's prophet—allegations a court later ruled were fabricated after a personal dispute. Rev. Khalid Mukhtar, whose parish house was destroyed, said:

"Despite providing police with video and photographic evidence identifying many of those involved, there has been no meaningful progress in arrests. We have met senior police officials several times since the ruling, but their assurances have not translated into concrete action."

Police and intelligence reports estimated more than 5,000 Muslims participated in the rioting, arson, and church attacks. Nearly 400 were initially arrested, but most later received bail, acquittal, or discharge. Of 336 suspects charged, only one remains in prison.

<u>France: </u>On May 4, vandals decapitated a statue of the Virgin Mary holding the infant Jesus in Poleymieux-au-Mont-d'Or, near Lyon. The heads of both figures were smashed, removed, and found at the base of the monument. Mayor Corinne Cardona condemned the attack as "absolutely scandalous and appalling." Local residents also reacted with shock and anger over the desecration.

On May 25, intruders vandalized the Church of Saint-Pierre-ès-Liens in Mérens, damaging statues, scattering liturgical objects across the floor, and breaking at least one stained-glass window. The church remains an active place of Catholic worship, regularly used for baptisms, marriages, funerals, and Mass. Discussing the daily desecration of churches in France, the Tribune Chrétienne asked:

"How many more churches must be desecrated before the nation fully grasps the gravity of these acts? For when a statue of Christ or the Virgin Mary is broken, when a consecrated place is deliberately vandalized, it is not merely stone, wood, or glass that is being attacked. It is a memory, a faith, and a civilization that some seem intent on trampling."

Italy: According to a May 11 report,

"Following similar incidents in Frosinone – involving a statue of the Virgin Mary and one of Padre Pio – in another town in Lazio, two Christian statues located in oratories were found decapitated in mid-April. CCTV footage implicates a woman, her head covered with a hood, wearing glasses."

© Gatestone Institute

The regime is a dictatorship, oriented long-term. What Iran is doing now is preparing for the post-Trump era — as in the series of arrangements and agreements with Oman for the Strait of Hormuz — control over roughly one-fifth of the world's oil transit outside U.S. or Western control. Recent joint meetings of the Hormuz Committee and frameworks for temporary corridors, mine-clearing, and permanent management reveal that — no surprise — Iran is seeking lasting influence over the waterway, "service fees" of a few million dollars per tanker, day after day, as well as geopolitical leverage over oil-dependent countries, even in the West.

Some of the revenue Iran earns would also flow to its proxies — Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis, and other militias. Without another leader as willing as Trump to confront Tehran directly, the regime will extract concessions, dictate terms, and attain hegemonic power in the region.

The Oman negotiations are planning for the period after Trump. Pressure might ease, and Iran could resume holding energy markets hostage — extracting further concessions while expanding its terror network

Iran's regime appears to believe it can survive the economic sanctions. It already has. It weathered multiple rounds of United Nations Security Council sanctions, not merely unilateral US measures, and endured an eight-year war with Iraq. The regime only has to wait out two small remaining years of this administration before it can resume doing anything it wants.

Iran, with the help of its allies, Russia and China (here, here and here), has been using pauses in the action to rebuild its military capabilities. Russia has been helping Iran develop supersonic cruise missiles, as well as having shipped explosives, ammunition, and drone components to restock arsenals depleted in recent fighting. Ballistic-missile reconstitution has already surprised observers with its speed. Iran, Russia and China are clearly planning to hold the world hostage in a broader challenge to the existing order.

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Economic sanctions, including stringent secondary sanctions, as outlined by US Secretary of the Treasury Scott Bessent, need to be tightly enforced, especially against Russia and China, countries that are enabling Iran. Pressure also needs to be applied to Gulf states and other neighboring countries, including Iraq, to halt talks and arrangements that strengthen Tehran's hand.

Above all, Iran's current leadership cannot stay. If this regime is allowed to remain in power, the world after Trump will not be the same. The United States would do itself a great service to resume working closely with Israel. Israel understands how to target and transform adversaries' leadership structures. The present Iranian leadership is anti-American, anti-Semitic, and anti-Iranian — reportedly slaughtering 100,000 of its own people this year alone.

There is no realistic path for Iran to become a constructive, peaceful country while its current leadership remains. Totally removing this leadership is essential. If it stays, there will be no lasting peace, security, or good life for democracies or the West

Bring the regime down, or it will keep pulling the world under its Islamist rule.

© Gatestone Institute

In July 2026, Israel's Channel 12 News aired a report warning that Hamas terrorists, including high-ranking members of the organization's Al-Qassam Brigades, now live in Antwerp -- some of whom, according to local Gazans opposed to Hamas, are receiving Belgian citizenship.

"Little Gaza," as the neighborhood in northern Antwerp is called in the report, has a large population of Gazans from Khan Younis, a major Hamas stronghold. Hamas-linked residents there traffic in illegal narcotics, run shops and restaurants, and send the proceeds to Hamas in Gaza, according to the interviewed Gazans, who only dared speak anonymously out of fear of revenge from local Hamas supporters.

"You feel as if you are visiting Palestine", one Arab said. The local baker, who sells only Gazan specialties, agreed that walking on that street was like "walking in Khan Younis."

According to the Channel 12 report:

"In little Gaza in the heart of Antwerp you get the scent of the Strip, literally. From restaurants... to shops and supermarkets, most business owners come from Khan Younis. The names of the stores also reflect the character of the immigrants here: From 'Haifa market' on the way to 'Rafah Market', and, of course, 'Al Quds....'

"Some people here in the street support Hamas, they are also from Gaza. Others say it's a terrorist organization. But no one dares to say that out loud, because they know that this terrorist organization can get anybody through their people, who are also here...voices against Hamas are only a whisper in Gaza because of fear from the threats of the terrorist organization. But the strange thing is that they are also afraid here in Antwerp, in Belgium, in Europe..."

The journalist, an Israeli, asked a Gazan whether he personally knew anyone from Hamas living in Antwerp. The man responded:

"The man who investigated me when I was in Israel is in Antwerp...and now has a Belgian citizenship. He was even a leader in Hamas in the regiment of Din Al-Qassam... he collects money.... all these businesses they [Hamas] opened here. Donations are collected through banks. They have businesses here, they have drugs."

"They send money to Hamas and support them," said another local Gazan. He mentioned fundraisers for the children of Gaza as one way to drive donations.

"Europe should wake up. If they remain silent it will be destroyed from within. It is almost already destroyed. If Europe does not wake up and prosecute these people... these people are not only Hamas. These people are against freedom, against democracy, against secularism, they are against the basic principles of the country they live in."

Belgian politicians, however, do not appear particularly bothered by this increasing political, cultural and demographic threat. After the report was issued, Belgian federal MP Sam van Rooy, who also serves as a representative in the Antwerp City Council for the Vlaams Belang party, requested a city council emergency session, but could not find enough votes to get one.

According to Van Rooy:

"This particularly worrying report shows that Hamas members and terrorists not only live in Antwerp and operate shops and restaurants, but also sponsor Hamas in Gaza and threaten opponents of Hamas," They have no place in our city and must be tracked down, detained, and deported."

No meeting was held; no other party found it necessary.

This indifference to the security of the local Christian and Jewish communities, the city and country at large, is particularly jarring after documentation exposed that Hamas was planning an October 7-style mass attack against Jewish and Israeli targets in Europe, scheduled to coincide with the second anniversary of the October 7, 2023 atrocities.

Already in February 2024, Belgium's Minister of Justice Paul Van Tigchelt confirmed that Belgian authorities are fully cognizant of Hamas' activities in the country. He implicitly made it quite clear that no one could care less. "So far, we know that Hamas is active in Belgium through various companies. The activities (...) focus on lobbying and fundraising," he remarked at the time.

Hamas, in fact, has much more than shops and restaurants in Belgium. It has front companies operating next to the European Commission and the EU Council.

Perhaps one might argue that the Belgian government, which has shown itself to be extremely anti-Israel, does not care that Hamas raises funds in the country: the victims are "only" Israelis and Jews. So far.

Europe's status, however, has changed. German Federal Prosecutor General Jens Rommel – whose office has been arranging the arrests of nine of the Hamas suspects behind the European October 7 terrorist plot – warned in June that Europe no longer mainly serves as a place where terrorist organizations generate funds to finance their terrorism.

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"Rather, Germany and other European countries are now increasingly being viewed as operational areas for possible attacks. This becomes particularly evident in the case of Hamas. To prepare attacks in Europe, their foreign operatives, sympathizers, or individuals connected to organized crime acquire and smuggle weapons. They often hold European citizenship, or residence permits within the Schengen Area, allowing them to move freely. They are highly mobile and extensively networked, and some possess significant financial resources."

In Belgium, however, such concerns seem to play no role whatsoever. In 2024, the country received half of all Palestinian asylum applications submitted in the entire EU. In that year alone, 3,281 Palestinians were granted formal refugee status by Belgium.

A Hamas terrorist from Khan Yunis, Mohannad al-Khatib, who participated in the October 7, 2023 massacre but calls himself as a freelance journalist, was able freely to enter Belgium to claim asylum there. Belgian authorities were only alerted to his terrorist background because the Antwerp-based Jewish Information and Documentation Center (JID) compiled information about him appearing in footage inside or near Israeli territory during the Hamas invasion.

Ralph Pais, vice-chair of JID, said:

"It is incomprehensible that volunteers and citizens could identify this man through open sources, while our security services apparently never noticed him. The material clearly shows that he filmed the violence, applauded it, and openly expresses support for Hamas, rocket attacks, and martyrdom.

"Anyone in Europe who wants to protect synagogues, schools, churches, metros, or events has every interest in ensuring that terrorists do not enter unnoticed. This is not a Jewish problem, but a European problem. We demand full transparency about how such individuals gained access to Europe, and immediate security checks by the competent authorities."

Although Al-Khatib's application was ultimately rejected by Belgium, he remained in the country -- where he apparently continues to live -- and is free to travel throughout the EU. Nobody cares.

Twice already, Hamas has thanked Belgium for its support. Perhaps Belgium and other countries that align with and harbor terrorist groups should be viewed as security threats to Europe?

© Gatestone Institute

Some of these concerns are real. There seem to be four separate main questions: Can the projects still be financed? Do businesses still want the technology? Can enough electricity be supplied? And will low-cost competitors destroy the economics of the market?

1. Financing: tighter credit is not the same as no credit

Private credit means lending provided by investment funds and other non-bank institutions rather than by traditional banks or public bond markets, which have helped finance some data centers and other large projects. When investors in those funds become more cautious, lending slows and borrowing costs rise.

That slowdown matters, but it does not follow that AI investment stops. The largest buyers of computing infrastructure include Amazon, Microsoft, Google and Meta. These companies are often called "hyperscalers" because they operate enormous cloud-computing networks and data centers. They generate substantial cash, issue corporate bonds and borrow from major banks. Private credit is one source of money for the sector, but not its only source.

For example, in 2025, Amazon generated $139.5 billion in operating cash flow and spent $128.3 billion in cash capital expenditure, mainly on technology infrastructure. It finished the year with approximately $123 billion in cash, cash equivalents, and marketable securities. Amazon also received $25 billion from short- and long-term debt issuance during the year.

Private credit is significant, but it is not the whole corporate financing market. The US Federal Reserve estimated that private-credit loans stood at approximately $1.4 trillion in the second half of 2025. That represented about 10% of total debt owed by US nonfinancial corporations.

A period of tighter financing therefore changes who can build, how quickly projects proceed, and what return investors demand. Weaker developers are forced to delay or cancel plans. Stronger companies pay more, use their own cash and spread construction over a longer period. That is a repricing of risk: investors seeing greater uncertainty demand better terms.

Large infrastructure booms have often developed in this uneven way. Railways, electricity and telecommunications networks all passed through phases of enthusiasm, overbuilding, financial stress and consolidation. The failures were real, but the underlying networks continued to expand.

2. Business demand: experimentation is becoming more selective

Companies have spent heavily on AI pilots: small-scale tests designed to discover whether a system can improve a real business task. Many of these tests have been disappointments. Costs were higher than expected, employees did not always adopt the tools, and some firms lacked the clean, well-organized data needed to make the systems useful.

These growing pains do not mean that businesses have rejected AI. They mean that they are becoming more selective. In the first stage of a new technology, companies often buy quickly because they fear being left behind. In the second stage, they compare results, cancel weak projects and concentrate money on the applications that work. This process can look like a retreat even when long-term adoption is continuing.

In a January 2025 Deloitte survey, more than two-thirds of respondents expected 30% or fewer of their generative AI experiments to be fully scaled during the following three to six months. At the same time, 74% said their most advanced initiative was meeting or exceeding return on investment (ROI) expectations.

A separate 2025 Deloitte survey of 1,854 executives in Europe and the Middle East found that a typical AI use case generally took two to four years to produce satisfactory ROI. Only 6% reported achieving payback in under one year, compared with an expected payback period of approximately seven to twelve months for conventional technology investments.

When electric power was being developed, for instance, early factories often replaced a single steam engine with a single electric motor but kept the old factory layout. Productivity improved only modestly. Larger gains came later, when factories were redesigned around smaller motors placed throughout the building. The technology created its full value only after organizations changed the way they worked (see Paul A. David, The Dynamo and the Computer: An Historical Perspective on the Modern Productivity Paradox, American Economic Review, May 1990, Vol. 80, No. 2, pp. 355–361.)

AI shall probably follow a similar path. A chatbot added to an unchanged process may save little time. A redesigned process in which AI sorts documents, prepares a first draft, checks records and passes unusual cases to a human may produce much larger gains. The important question is therefore not whether every early experiment succeeds, but whether companies continue to find tasks worth redesigning around the technology.

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3. Electricity: a serious constraint, but not a fixed wall

AI systems run in data centers filled with specialized computer chips. These facilities require large amounts of electricity, cooling equipment and, in many cases, water. In regions where the power grid is already congested, a new data center may wait years for a connection. This is one of the strongest arguments against unlimited short-term growth.

The International Energy Agency estimates that data centers consumed approximately 485 terawatt-hours of electricity in 2025, after demand increased by 17% in a single year. Electricity use by AI-focused data centers grew even faster—by approximately 50%. The IEA expects total data center consumption to reach about 950 TWh by 2030, roughly double the 2025 level and equivalent to approximately 3% of global electricity demand.

The pressure is much greater in the United States. Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory's June 2026 update estimates that data centers could account for 11.8% of total US electricity consumption by 2030 in its central estimate. Its scenario range is 9.5% to 15.3%.

Based on a location-specific analysis of announced projects, the IEA estimates that grid constraints could delay approximately 20% of the global data-center capacity planned for construction by 2030. Several jurisdictions have already restricted or paused new connections while system operators process connection backlogs

Yet an electricity shortage is not an absolute ban. It is a constraint that changes prices and behavior. Technology companies are signing long-term contracts with power producers, building facilities near available generation, improving cooling systems and designing chips that perform more calculations for each unit of electricity.

China has been investing heavily for years in nuclear fusion technology -- a resource the United States would do well urgently to adopt as a 21st-century "Manhattan Project" if it wants to make sure that China does not ultimately win the AI race for global preeminence. Nuclear fusion energy produces a massive supply of clean, inexpensive energy, and the United States is blessed with three large bodies of water around it for an unlimited supply. Without significant government investment in developing nuclear fusion, by relying only on private firms to supply their own electricity and nuclear fission reactors, the West seriously risks being left behind. The sooner the US government prioritizes developing nuclear fusion, the sooner it will be commercially available -- preferably before China dominates the market first.

Some companies are also rolling out small modular fission reactors. These are nuclear reactors designed to be factory-manufactured in small, identical units, unlike traditional nuclear power plants custom-constructed on-site. Many designs still face regulatory and commercial obstacles.

The practical response in the short term, unfortunately, looks as if it will be less dramatic: more power plants, stronger transmission lines, better storage, improved efficiency and a shift of some computing work to places and times where electricity is available. These other solutions are slow and costly. A committed rush is needed toward developing the energy of the future: fusion.

4. Low-cost and open models: competition changes the market

The final concern is competition from cheaper AI systems, such as those developed in China, which acquires most of its technological knowledge through theft. The West, especially the United States, urgently needs to discontinue making its innovations and capital available to China if it wants to remain the world's preeminent superpower. Some of these systems are open models -- AI systems whose technical components, such as their software code or weighting parameters, are made available for others to inspect, modify or run themselves. The exact degree of openness varies from one model to another.

These systems clearly reduce the price of common AI tasks and put pressure on companies that charge high prices for general-purpose services. They also reduce the revenue earned from basic applications such as summarizing text, drafting routine messages or answering standard questions.

Cheaper and open models are already changing the economics of the AI market. Stanford's AI Index estimates that the cost of querying a model performing at approximately GPT-3.5 level fell from $20 per million tokens in November 2022 to $0.07 by October 2024 — a decline of more than 280 times (In AI, a token is a small unit of text that a model reads or generates.) Price competition has continued. In July 2026, China's DeepSeek charged $0.14 per million input tokens and $0.28 per million output tokens for its V4 Flash model. OpenAI's frontier GPT-5.6 Sol model was listed at $5 and $30 respectively. The models are not directly equivalent, but the difference illustrates the pressure that inexpensive competitors place on premium prices for routine AI services.

The capability gap has also narrowed. According to Stanford's 2026 AI Index, Chinese and American models traded positions near the top of performance rankings during 2025. DeepSeek-R1 briefly matched the leading American model in February 2025, and by March 2026 the best American model led the best Chinese model by only 2.7 percent. Competition is consequently shifting away from nationality and toward cost, reliability and performance on particular tasks.

Cheaper models, however, do not remove all value from more advanced systems. A frontier model, at or near the highest current level of capability, still retains advantages in difficult reasoning, reliability, security, specialized business support and integration with large organizations. Companies in healthcare, finance, defense, or other regulated industries pay more for audit trails, data protection and contractual guarantees.

A real-life example is Morgan Stanley Wealth Management. Rather than using the cheapest available chatbot, the financial services company worked with OpenAI to develop an internal GPT-4 assistant for its financial advisers. The system searches Morgan Stanley's approved knowledge base and provides answers with links to the original source documents. Morgan Stanley also introduced daily testing to detect unreliable or non-compliant answers, kept its proprietary information subject to zero-data-retention arrangements, and required advisers to review AI-generated material before using it with clients. The technology was also integrated into existing business systems: its meeting assistant can produce client notes and draft follow-up messages that are transferred into the company's customer-relationship-management system.

For Morgan Stanley, the value of the advanced system therefore lies not simply in its ability to generate text. A cheaper model might also summarize an investment report, but an inaccurate, insecure or untraceable answer could expose the company to regulatory penalties, financial losses and damage to client trust. The company is consequently willing to pay more for reliability, source traceability, data protection, human oversight and integration with its internal systems. This illustrates why organizations in finance, healthcare, defense, and other regulated industries may continue purchasing premium AI services even when much cheaper models are available.

Computing has repeatedly gone through this pattern. A technical layer becomes cheaper and more widely available, while value moves to another layer: specialized software, trusted services, proprietary data, distribution or integration. Competition can reduce profit margins without reducing total demand for computing.

What the critics get right

None of this means that every AI company is safe or that every data center will earn an acceptable return. AI chips quickly become obsolete. A data center built around today's equipment may face a much more efficient rival within a few years. Depreciation — the accounting process by which the cost of an asset is spread over its useful life — may therefore underestimate how quickly some equipment loses economic value.

Demand can also grow while profits remain disappointing. Airlines, telecommunications firms and car manufacturers have all served large markets without consistently earning exceptional returns. AI could become essential to the economy while many investors still lose money.

A correction, as in other sectors, is therefore likely in parts of the industry. It will eliminate weak projects and force stronger companies to improve. What is less convincing is the claim that such a correction would reverse the broader adoption of AI.

A better conclusion

The debate is often framed too simply: cornucopia or bust. Companies with strong finances will continue investing when weaker borrowers cannot. Higher electricity prices encourage efficiency and new power supply. Cheaper models expand access and create new uses, as they reduce prices. More demanding customers push suppliers to prove that their products create measurable value.

The next phase of AI will be less euphoric and more selective. Capital will move away from fashionable projects and towards systems that save time, reduce errors, increase output or create products that customers will pay for. Some business models will fail. Some investors will suffer heavy losses. All of this is not only consistent with the history of the adoption of new technologies by a capitalist system, but it is also, quite frankly, healthy.

The emergence of cheap AI from China is obviously questionable, when one recognizes that the theft of intellectual property remains the Chinese economic model, and that any Chinese "enterprise" is never more than one of the thousand sides of the Chinese Communist Party.

Now take a break and ask yourself how many times you've used AI today, and the tools that themselves use AI. The question no longer makes sense: AI is everywhere, permanent; it has already expanded the possibilities of our world. Corrections will come, capital will be reallocated, and some business models will fail; that is the ordinary price of progress. What will not reverse is the deeper shift already under way: the permanent embedding of advanced computation into the productive core of life. To mistake the inevitable turbulence of a build-out phase for the end of the cycle is to stare at the finger while Elon Musk is pointing at Mars.

© Gatestone Institute.

AI demands a level of electricity that no other technology in history has ever required. Training a single AI model can consume as much power as thousands of homes use in a year, and the data centers being built to run AI on a global scale are being sized in gigawatts, not megawatts. It is staggering.

Every proposed fix to this problem — more efficient computer chips, smarter cooling of data centers, building nuclear fission reactors — does not solve the underlying arithmetic of supply and demand. Only fusion power offers a path that matches the scale and safety to feed AI's enormous appetite for electricity.

Solar panels and wind turbines, by their very nature, generate electricity intermittently and cannot provide anywhere near the scale of power required. AI data centers need a constant, round-the-clock power supply that cannot wait for the sun to rise or the wind to pick up. Battery storage at the scale needed does not yet exist and is not even close to existing. Nuclear fission is the closest fit today, but the large reactors take a decade or more to permit and build, face enormous capital costs, and create radioactive waste. Existing nuclear power stations either cannot meet the need or need massive modernization.

Nuclear fusion solves each of these constraints in a way nothing else does. Its fuel is essentially hydrogen, of which we, surrounded by two large oceans, have unlimited quantities. Fusion produces no long-lived radioactive waste and carries none of the risks that make fission reactors politically difficult. Building fusion reactors near the data centers that need them would avoid the transmission bottlenecks that already afflict America's electrical grid system.

As China doubles down on AI, with its capability of creating enormous advances in areas that range from defense to medicine, we need to invest in a power source that will allow the United States not only to build what it needs but actually to win the AI competition. It is not a race we can afford to lose.

Fusion is not yet commercially available, but it can be if public and private dollars are devoted to achieving the strategic goal of powering America's 21st century future. No surprise that Trump Media & Technology Group last year announced a $6 billion merger with nuclear fusion developer TAE Technologies, because their executives recognize the needed pathway forward.

The reality is we have no alternative to harnessing fusion power if we are to remain the world's superpower founded on the principles of freedom and democracy.

© Gatestone Institute

The original American and Israeli war aim was the regime's unconditional surrender and strategic defeat — crippling its military capacity, eliminating key leadership layers, and forcing genuine surrender on nuclear, missile, and regional aggression issues. Tehran has since redirected the fight onto the Strait of Hormuz. For the remaining time of Trump's presidency, the regime plans to play a familiar game of opening and closing the waterway, dangling intermittent negotiations, employing intermediaries, walking up to the table and then walking away. Before anyone notices, two years will have passed.

This is a regime that prolonged its war with Iraq for eight grisly years; it knows how to extend conflict. Because Iran's leaders do not care about the suffering of their own people — evident in ongoing executions, suppression of protests, and indifference to economic pain — it will absorb sanctions, oil revenue losses, and hardship that would collapse most governments. Selling oil or not selling oil is secondary. The only priority is surviving Trump.

Control of the Strait— through which roughly one-fifth of the world's traded oil normally passes — has become Iran's "golden weapon," eclipsing even the nuclear file as the central bargaining chip. Iranian officials have repeatedly stated that the waterway will not return to its pre-war status as an open international passage. Iran's regime evidently plans to control who passes, under what conditions, and to impose fees or "navigational services" the minute Trump leaves office.

Negotiations open and close; memoranda of understanding are signed and then violated; attacks on shipping resume when leverage needs refreshing. The regime has turned a military confrontation aimed at its own survival into a prolonged contest over a global energy chokepoint.

It took nearly five decades for a U.S. president to emerge who was willing to take decisive military action against the Islamic Republic. Tehran calculates — correctly — that another leader with the determination of President Trump is unlikely to appear soon again. Perhaps the regime counts on the possibility of a Democrat-controlled Congress after the midterm elections this November, which the regime seems to will have no political appetite for sustained pressure.

The wealth that Iran would obtain by extorting global energy markets would reinvigorate its support for proxy militias and terrorist groups, and, above all -- with continuing help from China, Russia, and North Korea -- the regime's ultimate insurance policy: its nuclear program, which is now reportedly tucked under Pickaxe Mountain.

Are free nations prepared to accept an expansionist revolutionary theocracy that wholly rejects Western norms and violates freedom of navigation as the permanent gatekeeper of a key maritime shipping chokepoint? Probably.

Iran could eventually arm its proxies with nuclear capabilities and proliferate the regime's longstanding practice of targeted assassinations -- since 1979, littered with the elimination of dissidents, political opponents, and foreigners. Even family members and close associates have not been spared. A triumphant, wealthier, and eventually nuclear-armed Iran would go on a full-scale campaign of revenge against Americans, Israelis, and Iranian opposition figures.

That is the peril of leaving the job half-finished. Trump's campaign has already inflicted severe damage. Allowing the regime to stay in place to continue developing nuclear weapons and asserting control over the Strait of Hormuz and Bab al-Mandab at the mouth of the Red Sea would squander that advantage.

The necessary objective is unconditional surrender, not some bogus deal.

This outcome will likely require systematically removing successive layers of hardline leadership until the structure collapses. New hardliners installed in the military and security apparatus who seek revenge need to be neutralized. The regime cannot be permitted to recover.

The global order of freedom of navigation that has underpinned Western democracies and open commerce would be permanently altered. The only responsible response is to deny the regime the opportunity. Continue the economic pressure, resume the military pressure, remove every layer of leadership, support those inside and outside Iran ready to end the theocracy's rule, and refuse any outcome short of complete unconditional surrender. With anything less, Trump will go down in history as having ushered in a far more dangerous world.

© Gatestone Institute.

China, the world's largest importer of crude oil, exerts great leverage over markets, but The Economist is nonetheless wrong.

The "Great Oil Power" is the United States of America. The U.S. has been the world's largest producer of crude oil for eight straight years, from 2018 through 2025.

Moreover, the U.S. will almost certainly retain that crown indefinitely. Last year, the U.S. produced 13.6 million barrels of oil and lease condensate per day.

The country in second place was not even close. Russia produced 9.9 million barrels per day, and thanks to Ukraine's punishing attacks on refineries, Russia's production will almost certainly decline this year. Last month, the International Energy Agency dropped its 2026 forecast of Russian output to 8.9 million barrels per day and its 2027 forecast to 8.8 million.

The US, by contrast, is forecast to produce 13.7 million barrels per day this year and 14.2 million next year.

And where was China in the rankings last year? Sixth place, with 4.3 million barrels per day.

The other half of oil dominance is refining capacity. The Economist calls China the world's second-largest oil refiner, which by implication means that publication believes the U.S. is the largest.

Many rankings, however, give China a narrow lead in refining capacity over the US.

Economy

Commercial crude oil inventories surge following a sharp rise in imports

Carlos Dominguez

In view of all this, why did the Economist proclaim China the world's dominant oil power? Because of its ability to influence prices. The publication points out that oil prices did not climb as much as analysts had feared during this year's Iran war because Beijing was able to both depress demand inside China and draw upon its petroleum reserve, believed to be the world's largest.

"The Iran war has shown that, in practice, China can singlehandedly stabilize the global oil market over a period of many months," the Economist wrote. "Leaders of the increasingly fractious oil cartel can only dream of doing the same." Buyers, unlike producers, cannot form an OPEC-like group, but, according to the magazine, China's "central planners can act unilaterally on the orders of one man, President Xi Jinping."

As a result, an oil-trading boss, in comments to the Economist, called China "the new OPEC."

There were, it seems, other factors reducing Chinese demand, such as a faltering economy. China's economy is not growing anywhere near the 4.3% pace reported for this year's second calendar quarter. Furthermore, China was able to control prices by purchasing sanctioned oil at large discounts from Iran and Russia.

In any event, China can set oil prices only in the American-led international system. "In his first term, President Trump embraced a pro-energy policy to take advantage of recent advances in American oil and gas production," KT McFarland, deputy national security advisor then, told me. "American energy companies developed new engineering, mapping, and drilling techniques. We could now discover and extract abundant amounts of oil and natural gas cheaper, cleaner, faster, safer, and more reliably than other suppliers."

Trump knew he not only could make America energy independent, he also realized that by selling oil and gas, he could influence others.

America reversed a slump and began increasing oil output in 2008, but it was Trump who saw the significance and raced to high production levels. It is no coincidence that in the middle of his first term, America became the world's No. 1 energy producer.

Not surprisingly, Trump returned to his first-term energy policy just hours after taking the oath of office the second time. On the first day back in the Oval Office, the 47th president issued an executive order declaring a "national energy emergency."

Demand for energy will only increase. "The U.S. now controls the world's light switch," Bass said this month, "and it will continue to control the switch for the indefinite future because Trump believes in drilling, fracking, and refining to the max." That, Bass said, "will give America enormous leverage over the world."

China will continue to be influential in oil markets, but it will always be working within the context of an American world. After all, the reason China had to cut demand was the American attack on Iran and the blockades of the Strait of Hormuz imposed on April 13 and July 14.

If the United States had imposed the blockade at the beginning of hostilities on February 28 and had not decided to lift it in June, China might not have had the ability to keep a lid on energy prices during that period.

Let us, nevertheless, assume that Chinese officials in fact have the pricing power the Economist believes they possess. That means they can raise energy prices at any time, perhaps at a moment intended to target, say, the US.

It is way past time, therefore, to undermine China's pricing power. Trump can do that in many ways, but they all begin with making sure that the Chinese no longer continue to take sanctioned oil from, among others, Iran. When the U.S. is determined to use its vast power over energy, there is no way that Beijing can manage oil prices.

© Gatestone Institute

For decades, successive US administrations settled for temporary freezes that enabled Iran to build its war machine. Trump, instead, ordered decisive military action that significantly damaged Iran's military capabilities: navy, ballistic missile infrastructure, air defenses, and nuclear program. This achievement is beyond dispute and should be the starting point of any serious discussion.

Yet, countries that present themselves as friends of the United States — or even as friends of Trump — such as Turkey, Qatar, and Pakistan, have repeatedly stepped in at exactly the moments when Iran's regime found itself under maximum pressure and have made themselves supposed mediators.

Most recently, after Trump warned that Iran would face what he described as the largest military strike since World War II, officials from regional capitals once again urged him to pause and pursue talks and deals instead. It is a pattern: just as Iran's military capabilities are being crushed, external voices intervene to abort the process.

The Iranian regime, which chants "Death to America" and "Death to Israel," has killed hundreds of Americans and Jews. It does not chant "Death to Qatar," "Death to Turkey," or "Death to Pakistan," or systematically target their citizens the way it targets Americans and Jews. The Islamic Republic of Iran and its proxies have, however, been targeting their neighbors' civilian infrastructure. Perhaps to these countries, a "deal," even a bad one, sounds as if it might free them of Iranian threats without any cost. Their security calculations have to be quite different from ours: Why not just sit back and let America and Israel do all the heavy lifting?

The problem, of course, as the US has seen again and again, like Charlie Brown's football, is that any deal signed with Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) would only postpone its threats to the oil and gas infrastructure of neighboring countries.

A second, more strategic concern is whether Turkey, Qatar and Pakistan are interested in simply charming Trump into letting them wait him out. After he is safely out of office, they can then resume their Muslim Brotherhood-inspired expansion of Islam from better locations, such as right on Israel's border with the Gaza Strip.

Quite a few governments in the region have long histories of support for Islamist networks. Lavish promises of money, public statements of friendship and private promises of eventual participation in broader peace frameworks, such as the Abraham Accords, could serve as temporary assurances while the clock runs down.

Oddly, Iran has attacked or threatened Gulf states. Yet these same states smile, continue friendly and diplomatic contacts, host Iranian officials, and facilitate negotiations. Why would countries under direct attack maintain casual dialogue and invite the aggressor's leaders? The rational response would be to cut ties, demand accountability, or join efforts to neutralize the threat. It might be important at least to ask whether quiet understandings exist behind closed doors — assurances of future consideration if the current American pressure can be diluted or delayed.

On the face of it, countries that decline to take a clear stand against a regime that relentlessly projects its power abroad and executes its own people on an industrial scale are not acting as pure partners of American interests, or even their own.

Trump has made clear that he seeks genuine peace in the Middle East and broader participation in frameworks that normalize relations with Israel. Promises to join those frameworks are welcome — if they are real. The shower of "poison pill" conditions put forth, however, signals that they are not. They appear to function mainly as devices to postpone a decisive resolution of the Iranian threat. Regional media and political cultures in some of these countries still carry strong anti-American and anti-Israel currents.

The region's states have practiced sophisticated diplomacy, layered alliances, and strategic ambiguity for centuries. Surface smiles and public pledges have often coexisted with different calculations conducted out of view. The United States correctly requires that policy rest on American interests alone, not on the preferences of mediators whose threat perception and long-term goals might well diverge from Washington's.

The Iranian regime's core ideology – like that of the Muslim Brotherhood, followed by others in the region — includes the destruction of both America and Israel. No version of this ideology is compatible with American security.

America's clear national interest is the total surrender of the Iranian regime's capacity to threaten anyone: its neighbors, Israel, the United States, and its own people. Any country that resists this outcome is, by definition, prioritizing other agendas. These might include jockeying for regional influence, Islamist or anti-Israel orientations, or a desire to preserve some weakened form of the Iranian regime until political circumstances in Washington change. America should no more want the IRGC continuing to rule Iran than it would have wanted the Nazi Party to continue ruling Germany.

America must above all refuse to be drawn into the endless rope-a-dope games of the region. The first and overriding mission remains the one Trump first initiated: Unconditional surrender, as with Japan and Germany in World War II. Only then can one begin to talk about rebuilding, not before. America First means just that.

Americans want a winner, not some fake deal that will be broken again before breakfast.

© JNS.

"Today, the Commission is trying to take control. That's not in line with the [EU] treaty," <span>said </span>Charles Michel, former president of the European Council and Belgium's former prime minister, in a recent interview. "There is a super-authoritarian governance," he added.

The European Commission was never meant to have any power beyond what its EU member states granted it. Michel, however, noted that the EU, by using the covid pandemic, the war in Ukraine, and other crises, has expanded its authority into areas that were always intended to remain in the hands of member states.

Fabrice Leggeri, who from 2015 to 2022 served as executive director of Frontex, the EU Border and Coast Guard Agency, has also become extremely critical of the EU, and the European Commission in particular. According to Leggeri, however, Sweden's Ylva Johanssen, who served as European Commissioner for Home Affairs from 2019 to 2024, undermined the agency's ability to fight illegal migration:

"The first time I met her [Johanssen] in October 2019, Frontex was preparing to equip itself with small arms and uniforms mandated by European lawmakers. When I explained to her that we needed more time to achieve our goal because of the legal problems regarding weapons and uniforms, she interrupted me and said:

<cite class="c-detail__cite__title">"Don't worry. You don't need guns and uniforms because migrants come in search of love. Europe is an ageing continent, so whether you like it or not, it is your job to welcome migrants."
</cite>

Leggeri, after facing continued pushback from the Commission for doing the job that he was hired to do, resigned in 2022.

"I realised that... there was a huge political gap between me and the Commission. My concept of the mission was to establish a law enforcement authority to help nation state authorities protect their borders, not to be an NGO or a humanitarian agency."

Today, Leggeri is a Member of the European Parliament for France's Rassemblement Nationale party (RN), headed by Jordan Bardella. When Leggeri informed Bardella and former party leader Marine Le Pen about what really goes on inside the European Commission:

<cite class="c-detail__cite__title">"Le Pen and Bardella told me that what I had told them was so serious and so bad that they could not even have imagined it. When you are outside... the system, you cannot even imagine what is going on inside."</cite><span class="c-detail__cite__author">Fabrice Leggeri</span>

Von der Leyen -still under investigation for alleged wrongdoing in the acquisition of covid vaccines in the European Union, Pfizergate- would reportedly like even more power. She has been pushing to abolish EU unanimity rules. Currently, they ensure that in sensitive policy areas -such as questions of the EU's Common Foreign and Security Policy, finances and taxation, EU membership eligibility and negotiations with potential member states, issues pertaining to justice and home affairs, citizenship and more- every EU member state has a veto right. Von der Leyen wants to change that to just a majority decision, and declared in her 2025 "state of the union" speech:

"It is time to break free from the shackles of unanimity. I believe we should move to qualified majority voting in certain areas, for example, in foreign policy."

After the election defeat of Hungary's Viktor Orbán in April, von der Leyen again pushed her agenda: "I think moving to qualified majority voting in foreign policy is an important way to avoid systemic blockages as we've seen in the past," she said, referring to Orbán's frequent use of Hungary's veto when he was prime minister. "And we should use the momentum now really to move forward on that topic."

The Middle East Forum's Jose Lev Alvarez described how Orbán, one of Israel's staunchest supporters in the EU, leveraged his country's veto:

"Budapest used its veto power—enabled by the unanimity requirement in European Union foreign policy—to block joint statements condemning Israeli operations in Gaza, sanctions packages aimed at harming communities in the West Bank, and calls for unilateral ceasefires. Diplomatic records show Orbán's government successfully intervened on at least six major Israel-related initiatives between late 2023 and early 2025."

Former President and Prime Minister of the Czech Republic Václav Klaus -who suffered through decades of Soviet-imposed communism in Czechoslovakia and knows better than anyone what the dangers of totalitarianism are- warned in a 2009 address to the European Parliament about what others are discovering only now:

"The present decision-making system of the European Union is different from a classic parliamentary democracy, tested and proven by history. In a normal parliamentary system, part of the MPs support the government and part support the opposition. In the European Parliament, this arrangement has been missing..."

<cite class="c-detail__cite__title">"Here, only one single alternative is being promoted, and those who dare think about a different option are labelled as enemies of European integration. </cite>

"Not so long ago, in our part of Europe we lived in a political system that permitted no alternatives and therefore also no parliamentary opposition. It was through this experience that we learned the bitter lesson that with no opposition, there is no freedom. That is why political alternatives must exist", he said.

At the time, the Atlantic Council trashed Klaus's sharp-eyed comparison of the EU to the Soviet Union as "truly bizarre."

© Gatestone Institute

The petition – which blames the Israeli doctors for alleged bias and omits any mention of Hamas' war crimes – was amplified in June by once-respected UK medical journal The Lancet, clearly crossing the line between professional medical publication and blatant propaganda.

Far from providing medical evidence or reflecting professional ethics, the petition, as echoed by The Lancet, recycles political slogans and ancient blood libels, accusing Israel of "genocide" and the destruction of Gaza's health system. Of course, there is no mention of the overwhelming evidence of Hamas's systematic militarization of hospitals and other civilian medical facilities – all actual war crimes.

In promoting this campaign, The Lancet copied the accusations of fringe activist NGOs including the People's Health Movement (PHM), Doctors for Gaza (Artsen voor Gaza), and the "Health Advisory Council" of the so-called Jewish Voice for Peace. Even a cursory review makes clear that the petition touted by this ostensible medical journal is not remotely about medical ethics. Instead, it's one more part of the heinous effort to isolate and delegitimize Israeli institutions in the wake of Hamas's October 7 massacre. In essence, this is another front of Hamas's war against the people and institutions of the Jewish state.

By parroting these NGOs and violating fundamental requirements for a scientific journal, The Lancet does not make even a minimal attempt to examine their credibility and embrace of terror. For example, PHM's newly-appointed global coordinator, Aziz Rhali, publicly celebrated October 7 as "Victory Day," and participated in mob violence supporting "Palestinian resistance" immediately afterward. He has also expressed support for Hezbollah, and its late leader, arch-terrorist Hassan Nasrallah.

Unsurprisingly, this isn't the first time journal editor Richard Horton has used The Lancet to publish anti-Israel propaganda. From 2001 to 2014, a majority of the publication's output regarding Israeli and Palestinian issues – 58.3% of its 264 items – took the form of political commentary rather than medical research. This culminated in the 2014 publication of a notorious "Open Letter for the People of Gaza," a propaganda screed whose hate-filled co-authors (doctors) had emailed colleagues a message entitled "CNN Goldman Sachs & the Zio Matrix" that promoted a video featuring white supremacist Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke among other antisemitic materials.

After calls for Horton's removal gained high visibility, he embarked on an Israel apology tour and vowed change. He even published a special edition on Israeli medical advances. But following Hamas' October 7 atrocities, he regressed to his old poisonous ways, culminating in last month's NGO-led boycott petition. The articles repeating accusations of "war crimes" including "genocide" have no legal or factual basis, and were obviously fabricated to divert attention from Hamas's mass slaughter. Doing its part in this theater of the absurd, The Lancet dismisses any mention of Hamas's responsibility for Gaza's medical plight as mere Israeli claims, despite extensive documentation.

Additionally, neither this medical journal nor the NGOs leading the petition have ever asked any other civilian medical associations to condemn their home states' military operations. The list includes Russia, China, Iran, Turkey, Sudan, and other actual violators of human rights and international law. The petition's premise is thus a glaring double standard.

The consequences of this trajectory extend well beyond Israel. As politics increasingly overtakes scientific institutions, physicians and researchers are pressured to conform to ideological and immoral litmus tests unrelated to medicine. As a result, academic journals, professional associations, and humanitarian organizations risk becoming seen by serious medical professionals as simply another form of mass manipulation.

With Horton and The Lancet again at the forefront of a hate directed at Israeli doctors, and under the thin facade of scientific publishing, an effective response is necessary that will get the attention of the journal's Dutch publisher, Elsevier. At its core, The Lancet is a business like any other, and when readers stop reading, subscribers pull their subscriptions, top researchers stop submitting articles, and advertisers go elsewhere, the leadership change will follow.

© Gatestone Institute.

The answer, of course, is that Israel is a convenient scapegoat -- one that is in no position to complain or to sever ties with those claimed allies who constantly abandon it in pursuit of their own ambitions. Israel is obviously seen by major Western powers as a rather insignificant nation, one that can be bullied and manipulated into compliance.

Israel is indeed small, in land area, population and economic power. It does not have natural resources, except for some gas. In the scheme of things, it is not viewed as a major player in world events nor of having much political influence. For the sake of its future, it is seen as desperate to make allies and friends in an alien world – one that largely despises it for succeeding. Israel is thus a nation in a world hostile to its existence, and to Jews in general.

Israel is continually falsely accused -- often by countries committing enormous war crimes -- of being a "settler-colonialist" nation, of practicing apartheid, and of genocide against Palestinians. It is excoriated in the United Nations, in European parliaments, by the international media, and by so-called human rights groups. None of the allegations against it are true. They cannot even be substantiated with facts or evidence. Not that this matters much to those determined to express their Jew-hate, even if under the guise of "social justice" or other fatuous constructs.

History provides the context for this unfair perception. In 1948, as a start-up nation-state in a largely desert region, with no known oil or gas reserves, low on money and military power, and with few nations keen to see the Jewish people re-established in their ancestral homeland, Israel did not have much to bargain with.

Yet, despite all odds – political, military, economic – and with a few people, the tiny state survived, albeit facing countless moments of critical danger. It was betrayed even before the start by Britain, which, at the 1921 Cairo Conference, divided the territory of the Mandate for Palestine in two: 22% for the Jews and 78% for the Hashemite kingdom of King Abdullah (now Jordan).

Shortly thereafter, and despite provisions of the Mandate for Palestine, the British sharply restricted Jewish immigration to the remaining territory before, during, and even after the horrific events of the Nazi-era, thereby denying them freedom and safety in their own land.

When Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser ordered the nationalization of the Suez Canal in 1956, Britain and France persuaded Israel to attack Egypt in order to open the restricted canal, the Straits of Tiran and Gulf of Aqaba. Israel successfully carried out its operation and, in five days, occupied the Sinai Peninsula. Under pressure, however, from the US and USSR, the British, without notifying Israel, declared a cease-fire just as Israel and allied forces were on their way to achieve total control of all of the Suez Canal and Sinai regions.

Israel had to withdraw without meeting all its objectives -- solely due to political pressures outside its control. Nasser's Egypt therefore emerged victorious. This was the last time Israel joined Western powers in battle until 70 years later, when Israel partnered with the US in the still-unfinished Iran campaign.

Upon suspension of the hostilities with Iran, Israel immediately became target of the blame, falsely accused of "dragging'' the US into a war with Iran. Vice-President JD Vance has been quick to criticize Israel repeatedly, notwithstanding its crucial involvement in the successes of the operation. According to Jonathan Tobin:

"[Vance] warned them that they had no recourse but to accept whatever Trump did because 'Donald J. Trump is the only head of state in the entire world who is sympathetic to the nation of Israel at this moment in time, and he happens to be the head of state of the world's superpower.'"

It is a blessing that we have all had a chance to see who he is now, along with his disastrous Islamabad Memorandum of Understanding with Iran, rather than just before a possible run for president in 2028.

Trump seems desperate to present a successfully concluded diplomatic agreement to the world and display his mastery of the "art of the deal" – in reality, as the Iranian regime never complies with agreements, any deal with the current leaders of the Islamic Republic (the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps) will be a very bad deal for the US, Israel, and the region. Perhaps he hopes for that elusive Nobel Peace Prize to which he believes he is entitled -- or perhaps he is genuinely trying to work out his next moves so that Iran, as he repeats, "cannot have a nuclear weapon."

Now that Iran's negotiators seem to believe they hold the upper hand, given their attempts to restrict shipping through the Strait of Hormuz, it has become clear that Iran intends to cause as much chaos as possible.

While Israel was not officially consulted over the negotiations and terms of the non-binding MOU, the United States, through the superb diplomacy of Secretary of State Marco Rubio, quietly concluded an exceptional, binding framework deal between Israel and Lebanon, with the goal of restoring the sovereignty of Lebanon under its government by ridding the country of Iran's most powerful terrorist proxy, Hezbollah.

Israel is a sovereign nation, entitled to defend its borders and people without permission from anyone.

Any stalemate that ensues between the US and Iran will nevertheless likely be falsely blamed on Israel, especially if there is a failure in any US "peace deal" with Iran.

The question of what may happen to Israel in the future does not seem to be of major concern to anyone else. After all, Jews have always had to fight their own battles. This is their destiny, for the people of Israel are to be "a people dwelling alone, not reckoned among the nations" (Numbers 23:9).

Yesterday, Trump met with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Washington, DC. It will be interesting to see what these two undauntable leaders are cooking up.

In its short history, Israel has shown itself to be beyond heroic in defending civilization and the West. Netanyahu has duly earned the title "the Churchill of the Middle East." Israel's cowardly detractors, some of whom refused even to let the US use their airbases for strikes against Iran, whose ballistic missiles threaten them, should take the back seat they deserve and pipe down. It is time for the disparagement to stop.

© Gatestone Institute.