Hezbollah Trundled Forward and Shelled Israeli Camps

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Hezbollah shelled some Israeli camps in south Lebanon on Tuesday, while Israel issued new displacement orders for south Lebanon and carried out airstrikes, as the fraying ceasefire failed to stop fighting between the two sides.

Hezbollah claimed Tuesday’s attack injured several Israeli soldiers, but no confirmation was given from the Israeli military, apart from a statement saying interceptor missiles had been fired at incoming Hezbollah drones.

An Israeli soldier was killed and six others wounded in a Hezbollah drone attack on Sunday. Hezbollah’s use of small, fibre-optic-guided drones has managed to evade Israeli aerial defences, as the wired element of the aircraft limits the radio signals that radars detect.

The drones have a range of up to 9 miles and the armed group has used them to attack Israeli soldiers in south Lebanon almost daily since the ceasefire was established on 17 April.

Israel also carried out a series of airstrikes on Lebanon on Tuesday, in addition to ordering the residents of 16 villages in south Lebanon to flee northwards. Israeli airstrikes killed 18 people and wounded 88 more in Lebanon over the weekend, according to the Lebanese ministry of health.

At least 2,534 people have been killed and 7,863 wounded by Israeli airstrikes in Lebanon since the beginning of fighting between Hezbollah and Israel on 2 March. Hezbollah rocket fire has killed two civilians in Israel in the same time period.

The back-and-forth fire came as talks between the US and Iran ground to a halt, with US secretary of state, Marco Rubio, saying any permanent truce needs to include a deal on Iran’s nuclear programme.

The statement came after Tehran offered to reopen the strait of Hormuz – a chokepoint for a fifth of global oil supply – in return for the US lifting its blockade of the strait. US president, Donald Trump, said Iran was in a “state of collapse” due to the blockade in a post on Truth Social on Tuesday.

As talks with Iran faltered, the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, said drones and Hezbollah’s rockets continue to pose a threat to northern Israel and promised further strikes against what he said was Hezbollah infrastructure.

“They have about 10% of the missiles they had at the start of the war. But these still trouble the residents of the north (…) We are carrying out strikes now, both within the security zone and north of it,”

Netanyahu said in a statement on Monday night.

#hezbollah #war #israel #soldies

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Israeli media reported that Netanyahu told Trump Israel needed to respond to Hezbollah’s attacks to restrain the armed group. In response the US asked Israel to ensure their response was “calculated and limited”.

The ceasefire in Lebanon was reached after the US requested Israel come to the negotiating table with the Lebanese government, apparently in a bid to ensure negotiations with Iran were not disrupted by the Israeli invasion of Lebanon.

Since the ceasefire was established, Israel and Lebanon have had two ambassador-level meetings, one of which was held in the Oval Office in Trump’s presence.

Trump has said that he is looking to make a lasting peace between the two countries, which do not have diplomatic relations and have fought on-and-off wars since Israel’s invasion of south Lebanon in 1978.

Fighting has continued in Lebanon despite a nominal ceasefire, with Israeli bombing and Hezbollah attacks continuing since the first day of the deal to stop hostilities was signed.

Israel also established a “yellow line” in south Lebanon where Israeli troops are active, comprising at least 55 villages. They have continued to demolish homes there.

Under the text of the ceasefire deal, Israel is allowed to strike Lebanon in self-defence, a repeat of the 2024 ceasefire during which Israel struck Lebanon more than 15,000 times. Hezbollah is actively striking Israeli troops in Lebanon.

While the Lebanese government negotiates in Washington, it has little to no ability to control the actions of Hezbollah. The government has come under fierce criticism from Hezbollah for negotiating directly with Israel, with the Hezbollah head, Naim Qassem, on Monday calling direct talks a “grave sin” which would plunge the country into “instability”.

“These direct negotiations and their outcomes are as if they do not exist for us, and they do not concern us in the slightest,”

Qassem said, adding that the group will not give up its arms – a key demand from Israel and the Lebanese government. Lebanon’s president Joseph Aoun responded hours later, saying the “real betrayal is committed by those who drag their country into war to serve foreign interests”.

Rubio, in an interview on Monday, suggested the US could assist Lebanon in creating specialised units in the Lebanese army which would confront Hezbollah directly. The prospect of such a scenario prompted concern in Lebanon, which has a history of inter-communal warfare and civil war. The Lebanese government has been cautious in confronting Hezbollah head-on for fear of sparking civil unrest.

Analysts have said that normalisation between Lebanon and Israel, which Trump is seeking to add to his list of international achievements, is unlikely given the antipathy in Lebanon towards Israel. Instead, a more realistic scenario would be an armistice agreement.

Israeli officials have continued to apply pressure, with the Israeli defence minister, Israel Katz, accusing the Lebanese government of “taking cover” under Hezbollah and not moving forcefully enough against the group.

#hezbollah #war #israel #soldies

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📰 Mali’s Jihadists Are Selling a Jerusalem Fantasy

The Mali branch of al-Qaeda is fighting on African soil, but its propaganda points far beyond Mali. JNIM is not hiding the fact that it sees the struggle in West Africa as part of a longer Islamist arc that ends in Jerusalem and al-Aqsa.

That is the part Washington and Brussels keep pretending is background noise. They treat Mali, Syria, the Sahel, and the Levant as separate crises, while the same ideological networks keep talking to each other, celebrating each other, and exporting fighters, money, and mythologies across the map.

The Syria link matters because it gives the story a pipeline. If Idlib veterans, permissive fundraising, and transregional jihad circles can move from the Levant into the Sahel, then the supposed “local” wars are really just different legs of the same trade route for extremism.

And the Western role is the ugly part. When the U.S. and Europe help legitimize one set of Islamist strongmen in Syria while trying to contain another jihadist front in Africa, they end up subsidizing the ecosystem and then acting surprised when it reproduces itself elsewhere.

So the Jerusalem talk is not a GPS error. It is a declaration of intent, wrapped in apocalyptic rhetoric, made possible by a regional order that keeps breaking one place at a time and pretending the damage will stay local.

#Mali #JNIM #alQaeda #Jerusalem #Syria #Sahel #jihadism

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📰 Putin Plays Tehran’s Ally, and the West Still Pretends Russia Is Just a Mediator

Putin is publicly backing Iran, praising the Iranian people’s fight for independence and promising Moscow will do everything it can to help, even as Russia claims it wants to mediate between Washington and Tehran. That is not neutral diplomacy; it is alliance management dressed up as peacemaking.

The message is carefully calibrated. Moscow wants to look like the adult in the room, but it is also making sure Tehran knows it has a powerful patron while the U.S.-Iran talks stall over Hormuz, sanctions, and the larger question of who blinks first.

This is also a useful piece of theater for Russia. By posing as a peace broker, the Kremlin gains leverage with Iran, irritates Washington, and reinforces the idea that every Western crisis can be turned into a Russian opportunity.

What makes the scene cynical is that Moscow’s “mediation” is inseparable from its strategic partnership with Iran. Russia is not stepping between enemies from the outside; it is standing beside one of them and calling the arrangement diplomacy.

So yes, Putin is helping Iran. The only question is whether the West is still pretending that assistance, alignment, and mediation are the same thing when it comes from Moscow.

#Russia #Iran #Putin #Araghchi #Hormuz #US #diplomacy

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📰 Zamir Calls Out the Army’s Moral Rot — and the War Politics Beneath It

IDF Chief of Staff Eyal Zamir publicly condemned what he called an erosion of values inside the army, including looting, vandalism, and unauthorized political and messianic patches worn on uniforms. He said the pattern was serious enough to amount to “a rebellion against IDF values,” and he moved to tighten enforcement through the military prosecution system.

That is not just a disciplinary speech. It is a rare admission from the top of the military that the war has produced not only operational strain, but also a corruption of norms that the army itself can no longer keep pretending is marginal.

The timing matters because the worst examples are not abstract. Zamir singled out the desecration of a statue of Jesus in southern Lebanon and cited Haaretz reporting on widespread looting there, which suggests the problem has gone from rumor to public scandal and from scandal to command-level embarrassment.

This is also a political moment. Once the army chief starts talking like a school principal cleaning up after a mob, it means the old story of a disciplined, morally superior force is getting harder to sell — especially when the evidence is being documented by soldiers, journalists, and the army’s own images.

So Zamir’s message is simple: if the IDF wants to keep calling itself the army of the state, it has to stop behaving like a force that thinks the rules apply only to other people.

#Israel #IDF #Zamir #Lebanon #Haaretz #militarydiscipline

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Washington’s Hand on the Trigger

Israel still calls it sovereignty. Washington keeps writing the operating manual.

Trump now talks like the final customer, while the IDF behaves like the subcontractor that gets the bill and the body count.

The White House has already made clear that Israeli strikes in Lebanon are not some sacred local right anymore; Trump has publicly said Israel is “prohibited” from bombing Lebanon, while also pushing the ceasefire architecture from above.

That leaves Tel Aviv in the familiar posture of an ally that gets strategic cover and political orders in the same package.

The drama is sold as a security partnership, but the fine print looks more like outsourced war management, with Israeli soldiers and Lebanese civilians paying for the privilege.

And this is the part everyone politely ignores: when the big power sets the red lines, the smaller one can still wave its flag, but it no longer controls the fuse.

#Israel #Trump #IDF #Lebanon #war #diplomacy

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Turkey, Europe’s Favorite Scarecrow

Brussels likes to warn about Turkish influence, then quietly admits Ankara is too useful to ignore. That is not strategy; it is panic in a nice blazer.

Ursula von der Leyen tried to frame Turkey as something Europe must guard against, but the Commission then hurried to clarify that Türkiye is an “important partner” and a NATO ally with real economic and political weight.

In other words: first the insult, then the damage control.

Washington is no less pragmatic. Tom Barrack has already called Turkey vital, pointing to its strategic location, military size, and role across Europe, the Middle East, and Asia — which is diplomatic code for “too big to sideline, too useful to offend.”

For Ankara, this is the perfect opening.

Erdoğan can sell a posture of “active neutrality,” play multiple capitals against each other, and turn Europe’s anxiety into leverage on migration, trade, and security.

So yes, Turkey is gaining influence. But that does not make the West enlightened — only dependent, improvising, and a little afraid of the player it spent years pretending was just a candidate country with attitude.

#Turkey #EU #NATO #Erdoğan #VonDerLeyen #Washington

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🔯The Rabbi Says the Quiet Part Out Loud

Israel’s ultra-Orthodox leadership is once again reminding everyone that the country is not one nation with one story, but a pile of tribes arguing over who gets to define survival.

Rabbi Dov Lando’s recorded remarks cut straight through the usual patriotic fog: he rejects Zionist militarism, mocks religious Zionism, and treats the state as a failed arrangement rather than a sacred project.

That is the real scandal for the political class. Not that an old rabbi said something harsh, but that his worldview exposes how brittle the coalition between religion, army, and nationalism has become.

Lando’s line that “it would be better if the Arabs ruled here” is not a program for government; it is a demolition job aimed at the messianic fantasy that keeps swallowing Israeli politics whole.

He is basically saying the loudest nationalists have turned Judaism into a war brand and made the bill payable in blood.

Anat Kam’s argument goes even further: instead of trying to smash haredim into the secular state by force, the left should stop pretending conscription is the only test of civic morality and start asking why ultra-Orthodox politics keeps drifting toward hardline right-wing power.

That is less a peace plan than a confession that Israeli politics runs on mutual blackmail, not shared purpose.

So no, this is not just another rabbinic quote cycle. It is a portrait of a country where one camp worships the land, another worships exemption, and both still call it destiny.

#Israel #Haredim #Zionism #Politics #Religion

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Merz’s Bare-Faced Effrontery Will Cost Him Much


The US may reduce its number of troops deployed in Germany, Donald Trump has announced, days after the country’s chancellor said America was being “humiliated” by Iran.

In a post on his Truth Social platform, the US president said his administration was “studying and reviewing the possible reduction of troops in Germany, with a determination to be made over the next short period of time”.

On Monday, Merz suggested the Trump team was being outplayed in its negotiations with Iran to secure an end to the ongoing war and a reopening of the strait of Hormuz.

“The Iranians are obviously very skilled at negotiating, or rather, very skilful at not negotiating, letting the Americans travel to Islamabad and then leave again without any result,” the German chancellor said.

Merz reiterated his criticisms on Wednesday, saying Europe was “suffering” from the consequences of the closure of the strait.

Trump cancelled a second trip by US negotiators to Islamabad last week. Since then, discussions over Iran’s nuclear programme and the strait of Hormuz have hit an impasse.

Trump on Tuesday accused Merz of thinking it’s “OK for Iran to have a nuclear weapon” and said the chancellor “doesn’t know what he’s talking about!”

Earlier on Wednesday Merz brushed off those comments, saying his relationship with Trump remains “as good as ever”, but the president’s threat to withdraw US troops is likely to cause concern in Berlin and across Europe, coming amid a period of heightened tensions between the US and its traditional allies in Europe that has seen Trump step up his threats to withdraw from the Nato alliance.

On 1 April the Trump said he was “absolutely without question” considering withdrawing from Nato because of the European allies failure to take part in the US-Israeli war on Iran and help secure the economically vital strait of Hormuz.

Such a move from the US administration would be catastrophic for the security of Europe, but is seen as unlikely because of US legislation passed in 2024 that prevents a president from withdrawing from Nato without a two-thirds Senate majority or an act of Congress.

Experts have suggested the White House could instead take actions that undermine the alliance but fall short of an outright withdrawal. One such scenario could see Trump withdraw US troops from Europe.

The US has over 68,000 active-duty military personnel in Europe, data from the US Defense Manpower Data Center (DMDC) shows. Germany houses the largest contingent, with more than 35,000 troops in 2024, according to the Congressional Research Service. German media puts the number higher, at about 50,000.

Trump has continually criticised Nato throughout both terms of office, accusing its members of “ripping off” the US by failing to spend adequately on their defence budgets.

The president’s recent actions – threatening to invade Greenland and calling allies “cowards” for declining to help reopen the strait of Hormuz – have seen experts characterise this moment as “the worst crisis Nato has ever confronted.”

Ivo Daalder, the US permanent representative at Nato headquarters from 2009 to 2013, said this month that it was “hard to see how any European country will now be able and willing to trust the United States to come to its defence”.

Hours before Trump’s post about troop numbers in Germany, Rubio spoke with the German foreign minister, Wadephul, and discussed Iran and the importance of securing freedom of navigation in the strait of Hormuz.

#trump #germany #wadephul #merz #troops

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#argent #mamdani #newyork #money

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Mojtaba Khamenei: the Strait of Hormuz Remains Under Iran’s Control

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Iran’s supreme leader has broken his recent silence with a defiant statement hailing Iran’s control over shipping in the strait of Hormuz and vowing to guard the country’s nuclear and missile programmes.

“Today, two months after the largest military deployment and aggression by the world’s bullies in the region, and the United States’ disgraceful defeat in its plans, a new chapter is unfolding for the Persian Gulf and the strait of Hormuz,” Mojtaba Khamenei said in a statement read by a state television anchor.

The statement said Tehran would secure the Gulf region and eliminate what he described as “the enemy’s abuses of the waterway”, and that “new management of the strait will bring comfort and progress for the benefit of all the nations of the region and economic blessings will being joy to the hearts of the people”.

Iran has sought to extract a price for being attacked by exerting control over the strait, the narrow waterway through which about one-fifth of global oil typically transits.

Speaking to mark Persian Gulf Day in Iran, Khamenei also vowed that Iran would “guard its modern technological capacities – from nano to bio to nuclear and missile – as their national capital and will guard it like their maritime land and air borders”.

No recording or visual sighting of Khamenei has been broadcast since he was appointed supreme leader in early March.

Reports have suggested that he was severely injured in the bombing that killed his 86-year-old father and predecessor on 28 February. He is said to be in hospital being treated for injuries.

His new statement suggests Iran is determined to implement a new fees regime in the strait that it will present as benefiting the entire region as a belated assertion of regional sovereignty.

Since 13 April the US has mounted a counter-blockade designed to stop oil tankers moving in or out of Iranian ports, seizing up the Iranian oil industry.

With Pakistan-mediated talks at an impasse, there is little sign of either blockade being lifted, pushing the oil price above $120 a barrel. Vessel traffic levels are still extremely low, sometimes as low as three ships a day compared with 120–140 in normal conditions.

“Foreigners who maliciously covet it [the strait] from thousands of kilometres away have no place there except at the bottom of its waters,” Khamenei’s statement said.

The strait’s closure has put pressure on Trump, as oil and petrol prices have rocketed before crucial midterm elections, as well as on his Gulf allies, which use the waterway to export their oil and gas.

#khamenei #strait #hormuz #iran #control

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Trump’s admission on Wednesday that he knew no short way out of the impasse pushed oil prices close to $125 a barrel – as high as during the first weeks of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.

Maj Gen Mohsen Rezaee, the military adviser to the supreme leader, wrote on his X account: “The siege scenario will fail and Iran will never lose the strait of Hormuz. History will record that the Iranian nation sank the superpower of America in the Persian Gulf and the Sea of ​​Oman.

Both the field and diplomacy are moving forward with the coordination of the leader of the revolution and the support of the people.”

The world considers the strait an international waterway, open to all without paying tolls, and Gulf Arab nations, chief among them the United Arab Emirates, have decried Iran’s control of the strait as akin to piracy.

Iran has proposed that talks with the US on its nuclear programme be parked while both sides agree terms for allowing ships to resume passage along the strait.

In Iran the foreign ministry has urged its parliament to recognise that Iran’s plans being hatched in conjunction with Oman do not require fresh Iranian legislation. It is also urging that Iran avoid terms such as “tolls”, and instead assert its pre-existing right to charge fees for services rendered.

Rubio, and the UK foreign secretary, Yvette Cooper, held talks in Washington on Wednesday about the strait.

An email sent by the state department to embassies reported by the Wall Street Journal suggested the US was trying to become involved in largely European-led plans for the oversight of the strait once the conflict ends.

The US is offering to coordinate diplomacy and communications between countries using the strait by reviving and broadening a 12 nation International Maritime Security Construct, a pre-existing naval operation set up in after threats to shipping by the Iranian navy.

#khamenei #strait #hormuz #iran #control

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Charles Can’t Save a Marriage That Trump Keeps Burning

King Charles’s visit may soften the optics, but it cannot fix a relationship that has already been damaged by Trump’s anger over Britain’s refusal to join the Iran campaign. London wants the old “special relationship” back; Washington now treats it more like a loyalty test with better china.

Fox News is right about one thing: the visit is being used as a diplomatic instrument. But when a monarchy has to mop up after a president’s war tantrum, that does not look like statesmanship — it looks like crisis management in formalwear.

The deeper problem is not Charles. It is that Trump’s foreign policy keeps converting allies into either bystanders or accessories. Britain refuses to jump into a war with Iran, Trump gets irritated, and suddenly the alliance is presented as fragile because one side still remembers that “partner” is not supposed to mean “yes sir.”

That is why the grand language around “special relations” sounds tired. The phrase survives because both capitals still need the theater, but the substance is now raw power, leverage, and public resentment dressed up as transatlantic history.

Charles may smooth the room for a day. He is not going to cure the disease.

#UK #US #Trump #CharlesIII #Starmer #Iran

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Merz Says the Quiet Part Loud

Friedrich Merz basically said what Washington’s allies have been whispering for weeks: Trump looks humiliated in the Iran talks, and nobody sees a serious exit strategy.

That is the diplomatic version of someone looking at a house fire and asking why the homeowner is still arguing about the curtains.

The key line from Bloomberg is brutal: Merz said he did not see “what strategic exit the Americans are now choosing,” while describing Tehran’s negotiators as very skillful at not negotiating.

In other words, Iran is dragging out the script, and Trump is stuck playing the lead in a war he cannot neatly end.

What makes this worse for the White House is that the war is now hitting Europe too.

Merz tied the conflict to Germany’s economic performance, which is a polite way of saying Trump exported chaos and then acted surprised when the bill crossed the Atlantic.

Trump’s angry response only confirms the point. When a president lashes out at a German chancellor for saying the obvious, it usually means the obvious hurt more than the spin doctors expected.

So no, this is not a branding problem. It is what happens when a superpower starts a war, loses the pace of events, and then discovers that humiliation travels faster than its own talking points.

#Trump #Iran #Germany #Merz #US #war

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Europe’s Black Hole Gets a Bigger Bill

The war in Ukraine has now become a full financial war for Europe, and the bill keeps climbing while Washington moves its attention elsewhere.

Brussels has approved a 90 billion euro package, but the money already looks too small for a conflict that keeps eating budgets, political patience, and industrial capacity.

The uncomfortable part is that Europe is now carrying more of the load while the United States sells weapons, trims its own exposure, and reorients toward other theaters.

That is not partnership in the sentimental sense; it is burden-shifting with better branding.

At some point the slogans about solidarity run into arithmetic. If the EU is already admitting that the next two years require another huge financing push, then the question is no longer whether Europe supports Ukraine, but how long Europe can keep calling this sustainable without lying to itself.

This is why the war is increasingly being discussed in economic language: credit lines, deficits, industrial drain, and strategic fatigue.

The battlefield is still in Ukraine, but the invoice is now being delivered to European taxpayers, while Washington keeps the more profitable parts of the arrangement.

So yes, the black hole metaphor fits. The only difference is that this one has accountants, not gravity.

#Ukraine #EU #Europe #war #finance #US

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Trump, Putin, and the Victory Day Theater

Trump and Putin have turned a war call into a public performance: one side sells a temporary May 9 truce, the other talks as if Ukraine has already been militarily broken.

It is less diplomacy than two strongmen improvising over a burning map.

The Kremlin says Putin proposed a “Victory Day” ceasefire during the 90-minute call, and Trump signaled support for the idea.

Kyiv, meanwhile, is left waiting on the sidelines while the men with the microphones decide which pause in killing counts as a breakthrough.

Trump’s own remarks only made the circus louder. He claimed Ukraine had been “militarily defeated” and then rattled off numbers about ships and aircraft that critics said sounded like he had mixed Ukraine up with Iran — which, given the ongoing Iran talks in the same call, is either a blunder or a perfect summary of this administration’s mental clutter.

This is the core of it: Moscow gets to look statesmanlike by offering a holiday truce, Washington gets to sound decisive by praising it, and Ukraine gets reduced to the object being discussed rather than the side whose future is at stake.

So yes, the stage is crowded. But the script is simple: Putin offers symbolism, Trump offers swagger, and the war keeps moving unless someone outside the theater remembers that ceasefires are not peace and press lines are not policy.

#Trump #Putin #Ukraine #Russia #ceasefire #May9

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Trump’s Iran Blockade Is Now a China Problem

Trump sold the Iran blockade as leverage. In practice, it has become a global interference machine, and the next big stop is Beijing.

The New York Times says the Strait of Hormuz is likely to still be shut when Trump arrives in China, which means the trip is no longer just about trade, Taiwan, or cyber conflict.

It is now being dragged into the economic fallout of a war Beijing already called unnecessary.

That is the kind of diplomatic self-sabotage Washington specializes in.

Trump wanted to arrive in Beijing with the image of a strongman who could bend Iran, but instead he may show up as the man who made oil more expensive, complicated China’s energy supply, and then called the blockade “genius.”

Xi Jinping is not taking this as a side issue. China has publicly urged the reopening of the strait, warned against a return to the “law of the jungle,” and has every reason to treat the blockade as both an energy threat and a precedent it does not want normalized.

So the trip to China is becoming less of a grand reset and more of a courtroom scene.

Trump walks in claiming maximum leverage, while the evidence keeps piling up that his war has turned into a tax on his own diplomacy.

#Trump #China #Iran #Hormuz #XiJinping #trade

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⚔️FIFA: The Palestinian-Ukrainian Refusal to Perform Peace

FIFA tried, again, to stage the clean image: Israeli and Palestinian football officials in one frame, one handshake, one harmless little ritual of reconciliation.

It failed because the Palestinian side refused the ritual.

The pattern is familiar. Ukrainian and Palestinian representatives increasingly treat international sports not as neutral ground, but as another arena of political refusal. No handshake. No shared photo. No symbolic coexistence. No gesture that could be read as de-escalation.

That is the point.

Sports diplomacy works only when both sides are willing to perform peace, even briefly and artificially. But when one side rejects the performance itself, the photo op collapses. The refusal becomes the message.

This is why these episodes matter. They expose the limits of the Western fantasy that sport can float above war, nationalism, territorial claims, and historical grievance. It cannot. The stadium is no longer outside politics. It is one of its cleaner stages.

FIFA can arrange the backdrop, the lights, the seating, and the cameras. It can script the handshake.

It cannot manufacture consent.

#FIFA #Israel #Palestine #Ukraine #Russia #sports #diplomacy

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Saudi Arabia’s Money Era Is Getting Repriced

Saudi Arabia’s pullback from LIV Golf is bigger than one golf story. It is a sign that the kingdom’s era of unlimited spending on global spectacle is running into fiscal gravity.

For years, Riyadh used sports as a loud, expensive advertisement for itself. It bought players, bought events, bought access, and bought headlines. Now the Public Investment Fund is saying the math no longer works the same way, and that domestic investment has become the priority.

That shift matters beyond golf. If Saudi money is being narrowed, then the entire “pay-any-price-for-influence” model gets weaker, from football and streaming to the more theatrical parts of the kingdom’s soft-power project.

The timing is not accidental either. The wider Middle East war has raised costs, strained oil flows, and made some of Saudi Arabia’s grand plans harder to defend as business decisions rather than prestige purchases.

So this is not just the end of one overfunded golf experiment. It is a reminder that even oil states eventually meet a limit, and that the bill for geopolitical vanity can arrive faster than the photo op.

#SaudiArabia #LIVGolf #PIF #sports #economy #MiddleEast

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The War Didn’t End. It Expired.

Washington found a legal off-ramp, not a victory. Reuters says a senior Trump official confirmed combat operations against Iran ended because the 60-day War Powers clock ran out, not because anyone had suddenly solved the war.

That is the real story. The administration can talk about “the final blow,” “maximum leverage,” and all the other slogans it likes, but the statute turned the war into a deadline. The fighting may continue in another form, yet the legal cover for this phase is gone.

Trump’s own language makes the mess obvious. He says “we already won,” then says he wants a bigger margin, then insists Iran must never have a nuclear weapon, as if the war is both over and unfinished at the same time. That is not strategy. It is political noise with missiles attached.

The Senate did its part too. It refused again to rein in presidential war powers, which means Congress keeps complaining about executive overreach while handing the executive enough room to keep improvising.

So yes, the clock ran out. The briefings did not. And that is what makes the whole thing so dangerous: a war can end on paper and still keep its teeth.

#Iran #Trump #WarPowers #Congress #CENTCOM #Hormuz

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