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President of Iran Masoud Pezeshkian at the plenary session of the 8th Summit of the Gas Exporting Countries Forum in Moscow, Russia on October 27, 2026. [Kirill Zykov / 8th GECF summit – Anadolu Agency]
Countries in the region are capable of ensuring their own security through cooperation without US involvement, said Iran’s president on Thursday, Anadolu reports.
Speaking at an event marking a local holiday, Masoud Pezeshkian addressed regional issues and called for closer cooperation among neighboring countries, according to a statement from the Iranian presidency.
“We are brothers with all the countries around us, and we are all Muslims. Therefore, we can help one another and ensure the security of our region,” he said.
“Regional countries do not need the US to come from the other side of the world under the pretext of providing security,” Pezeshkian said.
He also criticized Washington’s military spending and accused the US of committing violations while presenting its presence as necessary for regional security.
The remarks come amid continued tensions between Tehran and Washington following the start of the current conflict on Feb. 28, when the US and Israel launched attacks on Iran and Tehran responded by targeting Israel and what it said were US positions in Arab countries.
Washington and Tehran on June 18 signed a framework agreement and subsequently began negotiations, but the talks later collapsed over differences concerning freedom and security of navigation in the Strait of Hormuz, a key route for global energy and goods shipments.
Donald Trump calls for help from NATO allies in securing the Strait of Hormuz despite saying on 7 March 2026 that they don’t need people to join wars after they’ve already won. He’s challenged with the claim that he lies as much as the IDF.
UK Prime Minister Andy Burnham admits to blatently lying and engaging in deception to become leader of the UK Labour Party and Prime Minister. He asks who could possibly object to the IDF starving people to death, conducting forced marches like the Nazis did, bombing all Gaza’s hospitals and universities, mass-murdering journalists, healthworkers and starving people queuing for food, killing and raping prisoners and murdering children. He says they’ve got a genocide to do for Israel and to stop objectingEd Miliband says that he and the Labour Party are full of shit criminalising people holding signs as terrorists despite anything he says.
President Donald Trump’s first taxpayer-funded ad, which aired on September 23, 2026. (Screenshot from an ad posted by the White House)
The administration had allocated $20 million in public funds to pay for ads celebrating Trump weeks before the midterms.
Less than a week before Election Day, another federal judge on Wednesday blocked the Trump administration from using taxpayer funds to run ads promoting the president.
US district judge Loren AliKhan froze the White House Office of Management and Budget’s $20 million allocation to run the ads, saying the administration likely “used public dollars to unlawfully finance a national media campaign in the final weeks before the November 2026 elections.”
The ads, which stated that they were “paid for by the US government,” attacked Trump’s enemies as “Marxists,” celebrated his military operations in Iran and Venezuela, and promoted his personal declaration that his presidency marked the beginning of a “golden age of America.” Another ad that was reportedly prepared but never aired declared that “God made Trump.”
— Commentary Trump Daily Posts (@TrumpDailyPosts) May 19, 2024
Following public outcry over the ads, Trump promised that future ads would be paid for with money he raised for his super political action committee MAGA Inc.
“That promise went unfulfilled,” wrote AliKhan, an appointee of former President Joe Biden. “The ads continued to air with the ‘Paid for by the US government’ disclosure for at least another week.”
The US Department of Justice has also acknowledged that the ads continued to run hundreds of times after a court order issued on October 11 requiring them to be canceled.
Federal law prohibits using federal appropriations for “publicity or propaganda purposes within the United States not heretofore authorized by Congress.”
The DNC argued that the administration’s use of public funds illegally “deprives the DNC of a fair electoral process by adding public funds to the resources available to support Republican candidates.”
AliKhan agreed that there was “little doubt that defendants’ unlawful use of public funds makes it more difficult for the DNC to achieve its mission of ‘electing Democratic candidates in federal, state, and local elections across the country.’”
“The court just delivered a victory for the rule of law and for American taxpayers,” DNC chair Ken Martin said following the ruling on Wednesday. “Trump and his administration can no longer misuse Americans’ hard-earned dollars to run political ads while working families can’t even afford to pay for their gas and groceries.”
Martin added that “Trump’s illegal and desperate attempt to save his cratering approval ratings ahead of the midterm elections only underscores how out of touch he is with the American people, who will hold him and Republicans accountable for their destructive agenda at the ballot box next week.”
Donald Trump calls for help from NATO allies in securing the Strait of Hormuz despite saying on 7 March 2026 that they don’t need people to join wars after they’ve already won. He’s challenged with the claim that he lies as much as the IDF.Climate science denier Donald Trump confirms that he knows nothing about democracy and that more liquid gold is being secured according to his policy of global privateering (armed extortion).
Orcas discuss Donald Trump and the killer apes’ concept of democracy. Front Orca warns that Trump is crashing his country’s economy and that everything he does he does for the fantastically wealthy.
US President Donald Trump arrives for a campaign rally at the Menard Memorial Sports Center on October 13, 2026 in Wasilla, Alaska. (Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images)
Long Island residents who are considering choosing Republican candidates for Congress should consider what kind of country they are voting for.
On Long Island there are four contested races for the House of Representatives. Two are currently held by Democrats and two by Republicans. The outcome on Long Island could well determine which party has a majority in the House. If you vote Republican for the Senate and House of Representatives, you are voting against congressional roadblocks on Trump.
If you vote Republican this is the kind of country you are voting for.
In a campaign speech in Port Huron, Michigan, Donald Trump accused the Democratic nominee for Senate Dr. Abdul El-Sayed of being a terrorist and claimed that if El-Sayed and the Democrats win, “they will open the floodgates and invite hordes of jihadis to our shores, creating a nightmare of violence and terror until you cannot even have a Christmas.” Trump also told American Jews that “any Jewish person that supports this guy should be ashamed of themselves.”
Meanwhile the Trump crime family and its allies are using the United States government to enrich themselves, often betraying the interests of the country.
In Ohio, Vivek Ramaswamy, the biotech billionaire Republican candidate for governor, ran a campaign ad attacking Democratic candidate Dr. Amy Acton featuring Acton’s estranged mother calling her a liar. Acton has had no contact with her mother since she was 12 years old and was raped by her stepfather who fled the state to avoid prosecution. Acton’s mother abandoned her children and left the state with him. Current Republican Gov. Mike DeWine described the ad as “deeply, deeply troubling” and called on Ramaswamy to take down the ad, but he refused. Donald Trump accused politicians who condemn the ad of whining, said he would run an ad like that, and advised Ramaswamy to stick with it. No Long Island Republican officeholders or candidates, including Nassau County Executive Bruce Blakeman who is running for governor, has publicly condemned Ramaswamy or the ad.
On the same day that Trump Justice Department Homeland Security agents invaded the Washington DC home of congressional Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.), at a rally in Ohio, Trump insulted Somali immigrants, calling them “low-IQ people” and claiming they “don’t have pants to wear.” Trump also celebrated removing protected status from thousands of Haitians who sought refuge in the United States.
Meanwhile the Trump crime family and its allies are using the United States government to enrich themselves, often betraying the interests of the country. The website Center for American Progress has an update counter showing Trump and sons raking in almost $3 billion from shady deals, including almost $2.5 billion from cryptocurrency. The family has profited from new foreign luxury real estate and golf developments; Ivanka Trump’s husband’s investment firm negotiated a $2 billion investment from Saudi Arabia; Melania Trump received a $40 million payout from Amazon for a documentary project; the president secured an immunity deal from the Internal Revenue Service for past due taxes; and the president claims as his own a $400 million Boeing 747 jet “gifted” by Qatar to the United States
In 2022 Eric, Don Jr., Ivanka, and Donald Trump were sued by New York State for fraud.
Donald Trump calls for help from NATO allies in securing the Strait of Hormuz despite saying on 7 March 2026 that they don’t need people to join wars after they’ve already won. He’s challenged with the claim that he lies as much as the IDF.
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Commercial vessels and oil tankers sit anchored in the waters off Bandar Abbas in southern Iran’s Hormozgan Province on September 9, 2026. [Fatemeh Bahrami – Anadolu Agency]
An oil tanker caught fire after striking naval mines east of the Strait of Hormuz, the Iranian Navy said Tuesday, Anadolu reports.
In a statement carried by Iran’s official IRNA news agency, the Navy said the tanker had switched off its tracking systems and was attempting to pass through a “restricted and unsafe” area when it hit the mines.
The vessel sustained damage and caught fire following the incident, according to the statement.
The Navy did not provide details on the tanker’s identity, flag, crew or possible casualties.
It said the Strait of Hormuz remained “unsafe and closed” to vessels attempting to pass through without coordination.
The Navy added that ships seeking safe passage must coordinate with Iran’s armed forces.
The incident comes amid diplomatic efforts to end the conflict involving Iran and the US, with regional countries seeking to facilitate negotiations and reduce tensions.
Turkiye, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and Iran have also maintained diplomatic contacts on regional security, including discussions aimed at easing tensions and supporting efforts toward a lasting settlement.
Washington and Tehran signed a memorandum of understanding in June and began negotiations that later collapsed over disagreements concerning navigation through the Strait of Hormuz, a strategic passage for energy supplies and goods.
Donald Trump calls for help from NATO allies in securing the Strait of Hormuz despite saying on 7 March 2026 that they don’t need people to join wars after they’ve already won. He’s challenged with the claim that he lies as much as the IDF.
UK Prime Minister Andy Burnham admits to blatently lying and engaging in deception to become leader of the UK Labour Party and Prime Minister. He asks who could possibly object to the IDF starving people to death, conducting forced marches like the Nazis did, bombing all Gaza’s hospitals and universities, mass-murdering journalists, healthworkers and starving people queuing for food, killing and raping prisoners and murdering children. He says they’ve got a genocide to do for Israel and to stop objectingEd Miliband says that he and the Labour Party are full of shit criminalising people holding signs as terrorists despite anything he says.
This work by Middle East Monitor is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
Likud Party leader and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu delivers a speech to supporters at the Likud campaign headquarters following the release of exit polls and initial results of the general election in Jerusalem on October 28, 2026. [Saeed Qaq – Anadolu Agency]
The prospect of seeing the architect of Israel’s genocide of the Palestinian people, Benjamin Netanyahu, ousted from political office would be a small, albeit completely pyrrhic, ‘victory’. This is a politician who has spent the past three years justifying industrial-scale levels of civilian slaughter, the enforced starvation of an entire civilian population and the complete levelling of the Gaza Strip. He has been the public face of Israel on the global stage for the best part of 20 years, rubbing shoulders with world leaders and garnering support for the expansion of Israel’s settler colonial mission in historic Palestine.
As something of a political cockroach, he has managed to survive various high-profile scandals. These include criminal proceedings brought against him on charges of bribery, fraud and breach of trust, and a (largely symbolic) arrest warrant issued by the International Criminal Court, one that he and leaders in the West have completely ignored. Nevertheless, it seems that Netanyahu has become increasingly awakened to the fact that his time may well be running out. He turned to his X account to post an AI-generated image of a nuclear bomb hitting downtown Tel Aviv in an ever so subtle effort to stir up feelings of existential dread amongst an Israeli public who have fully drunk the anti-Iranian Kool-Aid.
Waiting in the wings to take over could be former Israeli army chief of staff Gadi Eisenkot. He is a man said to be fervently against Palestinian statehood and fully committed to the destruction of Hamas. His ‘achievements’ include the creation of the ‘Dahiya Doctrine’, a policy born of the 2006 Lebanon war that promotes the use of extraordinary and excessive military force against civilians and civilian infrastructure.
Whilst there can be no doubt that the Zionist project of expansion and the associated erasure of Palestinians have been moving at warp speed since 2023, those who are watching the Israeli elections from afar (including many in the activist community) and hoping for change would do well to adopt a longer gaze.
It has never really mattered who is in charge in Israel. The policies that undergird decades of relentless genocide and ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians have, over the years, largely remained the same. Political commentators euphemistically throw around terms like ‘hawk’ and ‘dove’ to provide the illusion that there is even the slightest possibility an Israeli leader is remotely interested in ‘peace’. But the terms are meaningless, and as with everything in the region, Israeli leaders’ actions speak louder than hollow words.
Take, for example, the tenure of Yitzhak Rabin: winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, architect of the ‘break their bones’ policy (sounds peaceful, right?) and the person responsible for signing the Oslo Accords. Under his watch, Palestine continued to be subjected to the scourge of relentless settlement expansion and the house demolitions that went with it. ‘Peace’ for Rabin was far removed from ending the occupation. Instead, it meant managing and containing the Palestinian population and their legitimate demands for self-determination, whilst subscribing to a ‘peace’ plan that outsourced responsibility for the occupation to a subservient Palestinian Authority and willing accomplices in the West.
Then there is the chameleonic Shimon Peres, a man who enjoyed adulation amongst many in the West. They would do well to google the Qana massacre in southern Lebanon, an abhorrent act of barbarity that he once famously said he was at ‘peace’ with (no pun intended). See also Ehud Olmert, who, whilst being relatively outspoken against the ongoing genocide in Gaza (not using that language, of course), oversaw the targeted assassination of Palestinian leaders, the 2006 war in Lebanon and the continued expansion of illegal Israeli settlements. Former Prime Minister Ehud Barak was threatened with arrest whilst visiting the UK in 2009 over allegations of war crimes committed in Gaza while he was defence minister. Others, including Naftali Bennett and Yair Lapid, have made it very clear that they have little to no interest in making ‘peace’ with Palestinians, nor even in countenancing the notion that there would ever be a Palestinian state.
What should be abundantly clear, therefore, is that for Palestinians, as Elaine Bradley and I have previously argued, the passing of time can be mapped on to a series of failed ‘peace’ processes, from Madrid to Oslo to Wye River to Camp David. The consistent theme has been the creeping erasure of Palestine and a doubling down of the West’s support for Israel’s expansive settler colonial aims.
I don’t say any of this whimsically, but those who are advocating for Palestine must be far more critical in their analysis than simply hoping for change based on the possible downfall of Netanyahu.
If you are committed to Palestinian liberation, you must shun any false ‘hope’ that comes with the appointment of a new political leader in Israel. It is a mirage and an unhelpful distraction. No matter who is in charge, without a fundamental reckoning with the racist ideology that undergirds the Zionist state-building project and a full dismantling of the architectures of militarisation and apartheid, things will continue along the same path. Our role, therefore, is not to place any false hope in a change of leadership inside Israel, but to double down on our efforts to ensure we do all at our disposal to support inevitable Palestinian liberation.
The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Monitor.
Donald Trump calls for help from NATO allies in securing the Strait of Hormuz despite saying on 7 March 2026 that they don’t need people to join wars after they’ve already won. He’s challenged with the claim that he lies as much as the IDF.
UK Prime Minister Andy Burnham admits to blatently lying and engaging in deception to become leader of the UK Labour Party and Prime Minister. He asks who could possibly object to the IDF starving people to death, conducting forced marches like the Nazis did, bombing all Gaza’s hospitals and universities, mass-murdering journalists, healthworkers and starving people queuing for food, killing and raping prisoners and murdering children. He says they’ve got a genocide to do for Israel and to stop objectingEd Miliband says that he and the Labour Party are full of shit criminalising people holding signs as terrorists despite anything he says.
