Trump's Apparent Confusion: Who Are Friends of His and Who Are Friends of the West

by Guy Millière  •  July 22, 2026 at 5:00 am

• Shortly after signing the MOU, Trump expressed approval for Iran's continued production of ballistic missiles: "I'm saying that ⁠if other countries have ​them, it's a little bit ​unfair for them not to have some.... If ​Saudi Arabia and Qatar, and ​they all have some, I would ‌say ⁠in relative proportion, I think it's okay." No, it is not "okay." Qatar and Saudi Arabia do not go around shooting up their neighbors or vowing "Death to Israel" and "Death to America" every day.

• It would be naive not at least to consider the possibility that countries such as Qatar, Turkey, and Pakistan are all charmingly -- and often lavishly -- waiting Trump out, while positioning themselves for their versions of "best interests" the minute he leaves office.

• "Qatar is at the top of funding terrorism worldwide.... Even more than Iran," according to Udi Levy, a former senior official of Israel's Mossad spy agency who dealt with economic warfare against terrorist organizations.

• Turkey has been appearing as Trump's back-up "friend," and it now hopes that he will supply F-35 stealth fighter jets, even as it plans for a war with Israel and threatens Greece and Cyprus.

• The Republican Party is divided between the isolationist faction embodied by Vice President JD Vance and the majority who remember all too well that what starts in Sudetenland does not stay in Sudetenland, and who still see Israel, a fellow democracy, as a powerhouse of military and human intelligence essential for maintaining US influence in the Middle East.

• According to the New York Times, Vance talked Trump into this "deal" with Iran's terrorist regime, a situation worse than no deal, because one succumbs to the soothing illusion that you might actually have an enforceable agreement. It is the same trap that British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain walked into with Germany's Reich Chancellor Adolf Hitler in 1938, but by now we should know better. What the US should pursue is unconditional surrender -- "We win, they lose" -- as with Germany and Japan in World War II.

• Trump was offering Iran billions to "rebuild" -- it is not clear what, but likely its military and nuclear weapons program. Iran's frozen assets, therefore, were not to be used to repay the US, Israel or the Arab Gulf States for the damage Iran inflicted on them, but to rebuild Iran's nuclear program, which includes "thousands of uranium-enrichment centrifuges" hidden under Pickaxe Mountain. Iran was about to be rewarded for waging a 47-year war by getting repaid to continue it.

• Israel flatly announced that it would continue to defend itself – as well as defending Western civilization – despite Vance's unseemly and misplaced fulminations, which falsely portrayed Israel as the belligerent while ignoring Iran, the actual aggressor.

• The MOU contains not one word about the regime's violent crackdown on the Iranian people. According to Trump, 54,000 Iranian protestors were killed by Iran's security forces in January alone.... The Iranian people feel betrayed.

• Vance, who has never expressed friendly sentiments toward Israel nor supported the war on Iran, was given the task of negotiating with Iran. He has been trying to defend his indefensible MOU and slamming Israeli officials who, frozen out of the negotiations, had the nerve to express reservations about the abysmal results.

• Trump has claimed several times that "regime change" has already taken place in Iran. This is misleading and he knows it. The IRGC has always been part of the regime; it now holds the levers of power. The mullahs' regime has simply become the IRGC regime. The faces have changed but the same policies and institutions remain.

• Trump originally described Iran's current leaders as "less radical" and "very rational people" -- until, just hours after the electronic signature, the very official who had signed it, Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, went on television and called for "the liberation of Jerusalem."

• What Trump may be forgetting is that Americans love victory.

• It is to be hoped that now Trump will actually "finish the job" -- with regime change and without F-35 fighter jets to Turkey. Otherwise, the chance of any long-term peace in the Middle East is zero.

"Scum" would seem quite fitting to describe the current Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) leadership of the Islamic Republic of Iran, especially after Israel informed US President Donald J. Trump that Iran's leaders are planning to kill him. Pictured: Crowds gather for the funeral procession of Iran's late Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, in Mashhad, on July 9, 2026. (Photo by Wakil Kohsar/AFP via Getty Images)

"Scum" would seem quite fitting to describe the current Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) leadership of the Islamic Republic of Iran, especially after Israel informed US President Donald J. Trump that Iran's leaders are planning to kill him.

It is to be hoped that the US President might now kindly reconsider who his real friends are and who America's real friends are. A few of President Trump's "good friends" he has mentioned are the leaders of Qatar, Turkey, Russia and China. They might be friends of his; unfortunately, that does not mean they have at heart the best interests of America or the West. Their definitions of "best interests " may well consist of what they would like -- not necessarily what the Free World might like.

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The United Nations Has Run Out of Alibis

by Pierre Rehov  •  July 21, 2026 at 5:00 am

• For the United Nations, voting patterns, internal investigations and its own decisions this year no longer support the fiction of neutrality. An UNRWA school in Gaza sat above a Hamas tunnel shaft and three anti-tank positions, and its own principal was on the payroll of both institutions at once -- a fact that American investigators, not the UN, brought to light.

• The pattern is old: during the oil-for-food scandal, a mid-level program director faced US prosecution while the officials who managed the program from above kept their positions. When UN failures surface, line staff absorb the exposure. The people who set the policy rarely do.

• The arithmetic alone dismantles the pretense of balance. In 2025 the UN General Assembly (UNGA) adopted 15 resolutions targeting Israel, and only 11 addressing the rest of the planet combined -- a tally covering North Korea, Iran, Myanmar, Russia and the United States together. From 2015 through 2024, the total reached 173 resolutions against Israel, compared to 80 for all other member states combined.

• On November 20, 2025, the UNGA's Fourth Committee passed six resolutions condemning Israel while producing not a single resolution on Sudan, where fighting has killed more than 150,000 people and driven 12 million from their homes. The bloc that commands the UNGA's automatic majority sets these priorities; the scale of actual human suffering has nothing to do with it.

• The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) supplies the starkest illustration. After October 7, the agency's own internal review found that nine employees may have taken part in the massacre -- a figure American investigators have since made look negligible.

• "The USAID Office of Inspector General (USAID OIG), a statutorily independent law enforcement and oversight entity, has referred for suspension/debarment consideration the names of 101 current or former staff at the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) for participation in the October 7, 2023, terrorist attacks and/or affiliation with the military wing (al-Qassam Brigades) of Hamas. Among the individuals referred were UNRWA school principals, teachers, security personnel, attendants, psychosocial counselors, and medical professionals..." — USAID, June 5, 2026.

• Groups tracking UNRWA's personnel put the true scale of Hamas penetration considerably higher, closer to 1,500 employees still drawing a UN salary.

• [T]he "Board of Peace," the body now overseeing Gaza's postwar administration, announced that UNRWA "has no place in the new Gaza" and described continued dependence on the agency as an obstacle to recovery rather than a form of relief.

• The UN's largest financial scandal, the oil-for-food program, saw then Iraqi President Saddam Hussein extract $1.8 billion in kickbacks starting in 1996, with help from more than 2,000 companies... The program's own director was later indicted in the United States for bribery; senior UN officials mostly walked away untouched.

• Sexual exploitation by peacekeepers followed an identical script, with nearly 2,000 allegations accumulated over 12 years and only a fraction of the accused ever serving prison time.

• The historical ledger is worse than the bureaucratic one. In 1994, UN representatives and peacekeepers watched as more than 800,000 people were murdered in Rwanda over roughly 100 days, while its own commander in the field begged for reinforcements and was refused.

• Rwanda, Bosnia, Haiti and Gaza share the same organizational reflex: investigate quietly, discipline the lowest-ranking staff available, and leave the people who set policy in place.

• UN Secretary-General António Guterres told the Security Council after October 7 that the Hamas attacks "did not happen in a vacuum," a formulation he has since echoed on UNRWA's failures -- careful language built to avoid naming the agency's own culpability.

• The United Nations was founded to make atrocities costly for those who commit or enable them. It has instead built a machine that absorbs those costs internally, so long as the people responsible sit inside the institution or represent the states that control its votes.

• The record speaks plainly enough on its own. What remains open is how much longer the rest of the world intends to keep paying for it.

An UNRWA school in Gaza sat above a Hamas tunnel shaft and three anti-tank positions, and its own principal was on the payroll of both institutions at once -- a fact that American investigators, not the UN, brought to light. Pictured: Israeli soldiers inspect the entrance to a Hamas terror tunnel directly outside an UNRWA compound in Gaza City, on February 8, 2024. (Photo by Jack Guez/AFP via Getty Images)

Institutions built to prevent atrocities eventually face the question of what they actually protect. For the United Nations, voting patterns, internal investigations and its own decisions this year no longer support the fiction of neutrality. An UNRWA school in Gaza sat above a Hamas tunnel shaft and three anti-tank positions, and its own principal was on the payroll of both institutions at once -- a fact that American investigators, not the UN, brought to light.

The pattern is old: during the oil-for-food scandal, a mid-level program director faced US prosecution while the officials who managed the program from above kept their positions. When UN failures surface, line staff absorb the exposure. The people who set the policy rarely do.

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A Dangerous Miscalculation: Underestimating American Resolve

by Lawrence Kadish  •  July 21, 2026 at 4:00 am

Imperial Japan during WW II offers one example of adversaries underestimating American resolve. Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto, who knew America well, reportedly feared that Pearl Harbor would "awaken a sleeping giant." His warning went unheeded by Tokyo. Pictured: Yamamoto in 1942. (Image source: National Museum of Taiwan History/Wikimedia Commons)

Published reports suggest that China is inundating its citizens with stories that America is on the decline, inferring that the rest of this century is China's for the taking.

It would be wise for China to read up on global history: those who have mistaken America's raucous domestic debates for weakness often find themselves shocked and defeated.

Time and again, adversaries have looked at the United States — loud, divided, seemingly distracted — and concluded that it lacked the stamina or strength for a prolonged fight. Time and again, they have been proven wrong — very wrong.

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Iran's War on the Arabs: Time for the Gulf to Stand with Israel

by Khaled Abu Toameh  •  July 20, 2026 at 5:00 am

• Over the past week, the Iranian regime has demonstrated once again that its ambitions extend far beyond destroying Israel.

• It is a war against the entire Middle East and, ultimately, against the United States and the West.

• Tehran then launched missiles and drones not only against US assets but also against infrastructure in Arab countries across the Gulf, in addition to Jordan, presumably so they would pressure US President Donald J. Trump to call off US firepower and return instead to waste-of-time negotiations for a waste-of-time "deal" that Iran would not honor in the first place.

• In reality, the negotiations have been worse than a waste of time... The negotiations actually caused harm. They gave the regime time to retrieve missiles it had hidden and to resume firing, with targeting assistance from China and Russia, on US forces and allies in the Gulf.

• Iranian regime ideology rejects peaceful coexistence and normalization between Arabs and Israelis -- as does the ideology of the Muslim Brotherhood, currently embodied by Qatar and Turkey.

• Taken together, these terrorist organizations form what Tehran proudly calls the "Axis of Resistance." It is, in reality, an axis of terrorism. Its purpose is not just to destroy Israel. Its objective is to spread Iran's revolutionary Shiite Islamist ideology, undermine moderate Arab governments, expel American influence from the Middle East, and ultimately wage jihad (holy war) against the West.

• The Arab states therefore have every reason to openly align themselves with the United States and Israel in confronting the Iranian threat.

• This is not about choosing sides in someone else's conflict. It is about defending their own sovereignty, their own interests, their own citizens, and their own future.

• The lesson of the past week: So long as the regime in Tehran remains committed to exporting its "Islamic Revolution" and maintaining its network of terrorist proxies, there can be no genuine security or stability in the Middle East.

• Until the Iranian regime abandons its expansionist ambitions or loses the capacity to pursue them, the Middle East will remain trapped in recurring cycles of violence. Until then, the Arab states would be wise to recognize that this is their fight as much as Israel's.

Over the past week, the Iranian regime has demonstrated once again that its ambitions extend far beyond destroying Israel. Tehran has launched an unprecedented campaign of missile and drone attacks against several Arab states, targeting critical infrastructure, ships, airports, oil facilities, power stations, desalination plants, ports and even residential neighborhoods. Pictured: Flames and smoke from an Iranian drone attack next to Dubai International Airport on March 16, 2026. (Photo by AFP via Getty Images)

For decades, governments of many Arab states have viewed Iran's aggression primarily through the prism of its conflict with Israel. That illusion has now been shattered.

Over the past week, the Iranian regime has demonstrated once again that its ambitions extend far beyond destroying Israel. Tehran has launched an unprecedented campaign of missile and drone attacks against several Arab states, targeting critical infrastructure, ships, airports, oil facilities, power stations, desalination plants, ports and even residential neighborhoods.

These attacks should remove any doubt: Iran's war is not only against Israel. It is a war against the entire Middle East and, ultimately, against the United States and the West.

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Trump Must Abandon His Dangerous Plan to Sell F-35s to Turkey

by Con Coughlin  •  July 19, 2026 at 5:00 am

• Trump's willingness to even consider lifting the F-35 ban is being seen in the context of his charm offensive to forge closer ties with Erdogan, an initiative the American leader has undertaken despite the Turkish leader's well-documented support for radical Islamist groups such as the Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas.

• Erdogan also seems to have initiated a charm offensive, most likely with at least a partial view to prying loose those F-35s.

• According to the report published by Israel's i24News, Kurdish militias were preparing to launch an attack on Iran with the aim of instigating a nationwide rebellion against the ayatollahs' tyrannical rule when the US halted the operation due to pressure from Erdogan.

• Apart from Erdogan's long-held support for the Islamist ideology espoused by the expansionist Muslim Brotherhood and its allies, the Turkish leader has also been accused of actively thwarting the Trump administration's attempts to disarm Hamas terrorists in Gaza as part of its peace initiative in the enclave.

• Efforts to pressure Hamas's terrorist leadership into fulfilling its disarmament obligations have, though, been stymied by the interventions of Turkey and Qatar, the Gulf state that also supports a variety of Islamist groups, which have actively used their influence to delay the disarmament process.

• Turkey's obstructive approach to the disarmament issue in Gaza follows a series of public statements in which Erdogan has explicitly stated that he regards Israel as a potential enemy, and that the two countries could soon find themselves involved in a direct military confrontation. With Turkey desperately jockeying to replace Iran as the region's dominant power, such a prospect cannot be dismissed lightly.

US President Donald Trump's willingness to even consider lifting the F-35 ban is being seen in the context of his charm offensive to forge closer ties with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, an initiative the American leader has undertaken despite the Turkish leader's well-documented support for radical Islamist groups such as the Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas. Pictured: Trump speaks with Erdogan during the NATO summit on July 7, 2026 in Ankara, Turkey. (Photo by Emrah Gurel/Pool/Getty Images)

US President Donald Trump must abandon his plans to sell Turkey highly sophisticated F-35 stealth fighters because of the deeply duplicitous conduct Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan displayed during efforts to end hostilities between the US and Iran.

Trump's willingness to even consider lifting the F-35 ban is being seen in the context of his charm offensive to forge closer ties with Erdogan, an initiative the American leader has undertaken despite the Turkish leader's well-documented support for radical Islamist groups such as the Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas.

Trump's courtship of Erdogan, moreover, is continuing despite concerns being raised about Turkey's duplicitous involvement in peace talks to end the Iran war. While, in public, Ankara has said its main objective is to end hostilities in the Gulf, it has also been working quietly behind the scenes to provide support for the beleaguered ayatollahs.

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Iran: Cashing Chips Won in War

by Amir Taheri  •  July 19, 2026 at 4:00 am

• Faced with such a foe... the worst thing to do is wound him but let him live.

• After almost half a century, it must now be clear to all that the Khomeinist regime is incapable of reforming itself unless it is for the worse.

• The negotiating process that, in the absence of grown-ups, that is to say professional diplomats from the US, produced the shambolic "memorandum of mis-understanding" is at a dead end. Those in Tehran who might want a deal don't have the power to do so. And those who have the power don't want a deal.

• The good news is that for the first time in almost half a century, the idea of regime change is gaining traction inside Iran, even within the regime's core support base.

• The "Iran problem" is a multifaceted challenge that cannot be met solely by bombing. It requires political spadework with elements within the regime and its peripheries that fear the loss of their wealth or even lives.

After almost half a century, it must now be clear to all that the Khomeinist regime is incapable of reforming itself unless it is for the worse. Pictured: Members of the Iranian security forces stand under a billboard of Iran's Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei on April 9, 2026 in Tehran, Iran. (Photo by Majid Saeedi/Getty Images)

After more than a year of war, albeit with on-and-off fighting spells, it is perhaps time for US President Donald Trump to take stock of what has happened so far as a guide to what he might do next.

But before he does that, he needs to ponder the key question: is this a war of choice or of necessity?

Wars of choice seldom produce the results desired by those who start them. One example was the US war in Vietnam, later expanded to Cambodia and Laos. Another was the 1956 British-led war against Egypt. The Soviet involvement in Afghanistan was another example of wars of choice, as was President Bill Clinton's decision to intervene in Somalia.

Currently the most glaring example is the war that Russian President Vladimir Putin started against Ukraine. In wars of choice, even if you emerge as victor, which is seldom the case, the reward you get is often less than the price you paid in blood and treasure.

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Iranian Regime's Insatiable Drive to Wipe Out Jews, Christians, Minorities: World Turns a Blind Eye

by Majid Rafizadeh  •  July 18, 2026 at 5:00 am

• The Islamic Republic of Iran, since its 1979 Islamic Revolution, has operated as a terrorist state, using the IRGC and proxies such as Hezbollah, Hamas, and the Houthis to advance its aims.

• No diplomatic deal or agreement has ever permanently halted these activities: the regime views such pacts as temporary opportunities for enrichment and rearmament.

• One rarely sees robust UN condemnations or widespread mainstream media outrage when Iranian attacks and plots against synagogues are carried out or disrupted. Yet, when Israel defends its citizens against attacks by Iran backed Hezbollah, the volume of criticism and calls for restraint are immediate and intense. This double standard emboldens terrorists and isolates the one democracy in the region, which actively counters a threat to Western civilization.

• The international system's bias against the tiny state of Israel that is fighting to defend these sanctimonious ingrates only undermines security, freedom and peace, and -- in ostentatious displays of cowardice, such as pleas to create a terrorist Palestinian state -- actually rewards Iran's aggression against the West by showing the terrorists that terrorism works.

• Governments need to close Iranian embassies where IRGC influence is suspected, expel connected diplomats, impose crippling sanctions that halt all trade, and fully cut economic ties. Iran's diplomatic missions have long served as hubs for intelligence and proxy coordination.

• Fully supporting U.S. and Israeli efforts against the regime is also crucial to neutralizing the threat.

• Symbolic measures -- bans and designations -- while welcome, urgently need to evolve into comprehensive isolation: severed diplomatic ties, airtight sanctions, and unwavering support for those on the front lines. Only by treating the Iranian regime and its proxies as the terrorist networks they are — without illusions of "moderation" — can the world curb their threat. Israel's defense is not merely self-preservation; it protects the principle that no nation can live under the shadow of genocidal intent.

The Islamic Republic of Iran, since its 1979 Islamic Revolution, has operated as a terrorist state, using the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and proxies such as Hezbollah, Hamas, and the Houthis to advance its aims. No diplomatic deal or agreement has ever permanently halted these activities: the regime views such pacts as temporary opportunities for enrichment and rearmament. Pictured: Iran's President Masoud Pezeshkian looks on as a 'Qasem Soleimani' missile is displayed during a military parade in Tehran, on September 21, 2024. (Photo by Atta Kenare/AFP via Getty Images)

Despite sanctions and military setbacks, Tehran's ideological commitment to the destruction of Israel, and targeting Jewish, Christian, Baha'i and other worldwide minority communities, remains a core pillar of its foreign policy and proxy strategies.

In Iran, far from being "just" rhetoric, this antagonism is daily seen in a pattern of terrorist operations, including plots against synagogues, Jewish sites, Christians, Baha'i and other "infidels," which exposes the regime's transnational reach.

When, however, anyone says that Iran is doing this, the so-called international community and United Nations are completely silent.

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'All Christians Must Die': The Extremist Persecution of Christians, April 2026

by Raymond Ibrahim  •  July 17, 2026 at 5:00 am

• Next "they took him into the house and cut off his hands while reciting Islamic scripture." Finally, they dumped him near a crossroads. A stranger found him and raised the alarm. His father, Lubega Issa, reportedly justified the attack: "That is what sharia [Islamic law] instructs us to do to those who deny the religion of Allah." — Morning Star News, April 17, 2026, Uganda.

• The Muslim assailants had "targeted Christians" after they "rejected the generous offer made to them by Islamic State, based on the just rulings of Islam." The "offer" was understood as a demand to convert to Islam or submit to dhimmi status and pay jizya (a subjugation and protection tax for non-Muslims).... Thousands were displaced. Less than a year earlier, [Islamic State Central Africa Province] had declared: "Let the Christians of Africa and their Crusader armies know that there is no security for you except by Islam or jizya." — Barnabas Aid, April 13, 2026, Democratic Republic of the Congo.

• Police claimed he had hanged himself with a scarf from a ceiling fan but Riyasat rejects the suicide narrative: "There were marks on several parts of his body." No complainant ever appeared for the alleged kidnapping, and none has come forward more than a week later, leading the family to conclude the charge was fabricated purely for extortion. The family has been denied a full post-mortem report. — Morning Star News, April 7, 2026, Pakistan.

• "Christians have no rights in Pakistan," said one. "We had no security. No police. No help." Despite a police station being only 10 minutes away, officers took an hour to respond, leaving the wounded Christians "helpless and abandoned under the open sky, lying severely wounded and soaked in their own blood." — x.com, April 5, 2026, Pakistan.

• According to an April 8 report, more than 3,809 crimes and offenses were recorded on church properties across the United Kingdom in 2025. This means that, on average, more than ten crimes were committed every day in churches and Christian places of worship last year. — Countryside Alliance.org, April 5, 2026, United Kingdom.

• On April 2, in a direct Easter threat, ISIS called on Muslims to set fire to churches and synagogues across the US and Europe. The Islamist terror group issued the propaganda in its weekly al-Naba newsletter. "It is incumbent upon Muslims everywhere... to rise up and set fire to the Jewish synagogues scattered across America, Europe, Russia, India, and elsewhere." — New York Post, April 2, 2026.

• On April 6, a 45-year-old Moroccan attacked three neighbors with an axe in Montefrío, Granada, because, according to him, he had "felt the call of Allah" and that "all Christians must die." — Gateway Hispanic.com, April 6, 2026, Spain.

• In a video published on Easter Monday, a Sydney preacher, Wissam Haddad, delivered a sermon mocking Christianity and preaching hate against Christians and Jews. He cited Hadiths to declare that Jews... and Christians... are destined for damnation.... "Their God's being killed and dies and they're celebrating. It's a Good Friday. Makes no sense." — Sky News Australia, April 8, 2026, Australia.

On April 6, a 45-year-old Moroccan attacked three neighbors with an axe in Montefrío, Spain, because, according to him, he had "felt the call of Allah" and that "all Christians must die." Pictured: Montefrío, which is located near Granada, Spain. (Image source: iStock/Getty Images)

The following are among the murders and abuses Muslims inflicted on Christians throughout the month of April 2026.

The Muslim Abduction, Rape, and Forced Conversion of Christian Girls in Pakistan

On April 11, two Muslims raped a 25-year-old Christian woman, leaving her in critical condition. The survivor, a daily-wage laborer, was picking lemons in a citrus orchard for local contractor Faizan Mehboob Rehmani (also known as Kaka) when the assault occurred. "Kaka may have thought I was an easy target because I am a Christian," she said from her hospital bed. "They have destroyed my life. I want the police and courts to ensure they are punished." According to her:

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The Iran-Backed 'Decisive Campaign' To Destroy Israel and the West

by Khaled Abu Toameh  •  July 16, 2026 at 5:00 am

• The documents, recovered by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) in the Gaza Strip and published by the Amit Terrorism and Intelligence Research Institute, reveal that Hamas had meticulously planned the October 7 massacre more than a year before it was carried out. They also expose Sinwar's unwavering commitment to Hamas's founding objective: the destruction of Israel through mass murder and conquest.

• The operational planning was astonishingly detailed. Sinwar envisioned breaching the border simultaneously at 25 locations using approximately 2,500 terrorists in the opening assault.

• Sinwar estimated that approximately 10,000 "well-trained fighters" would eventually be required to carry out the operation successfully. Each Israeli community was assigned specific assault teams. Military bases were designated for destruction. Strategic road junctions were mapped and allocated to specialized units. Every aspect of the operation had been carefully calculated.

• These were not defensive plans. They were invasion plans.

• Perhaps the most disturbing revelation concerns Sinwar's own understanding of the consequences of his actions. He fully anticipated that Israel would respond with overwhelming force. "The enemy will not hesitate to use all the means and weapons at its disposal," he wrote. "It may even use a nuclear bomb."

• Despite this extraordinary assessment, Sinwar concluded that the invasion should proceed because "this campaign is a battle of life or death."

• He deliberately chose to launch the attack because advancing Hamas's ideological objective – the destruction of Israel – was more important to him than the lives of the Palestinians under his rule.

• This is perhaps the clearest evidence yet that Hamas has never been a national liberation movement primarily concerned with improving the lives of Palestinians. Rather, it is an Islamist terrorist organization prepared to sacrifice its own people in the pursuit of its ideological war against Israel.

• The lesson from these documents is that Hamas remains committed to the same objectives that guided its founders nearly four decades ago: eliminating Israel through violence and replacing it with an Islamist state.

• Hamas is but one component of a broader Iranian strategy aimed at undermining American influence and destabilizing pro-Western Arab governments throughout the region, apparently to drive US forces out of the region, thereby leaving the run of the Middle East, unimpeded, to the ruthless Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps now ruling Iran.

• The October 7 massacre was not an aberration. It was the realization of a strategy, reportedly conceived seven years in advance. Preventing another October 7 requires more than temporary ceasefires or diplomatic initiatives. It requires ensuring that Hamas can never again function as either a military force or a political authority.

• Anything less invites more catastrophes, as we have seen for 47 years, from Iran's attacks on Israel, Arab neighbors, brutalized citizens, the United States, and the West.

Perhaps the most disturbing revelation of recently published internal Hamas documents concerns its late leader Yahya Sinwar's own understanding of the consequences of his actions. He fully anticipated that Israel would respond to the October 7 massacre with overwhelming force. "The enemy will not hesitate to use all the means and weapons at its disposal," he wrote. "It may even use a nuclear bomb." He deliberately chose to launch the attack because advancing Hamas's ideological objective – the destruction of Israel – was more important to him than the lives of the Palestinians under his rule. Pictured: Sinwar (2nd R) and the late Ismail Haniyeh (L), on March 27, 2017 in Gaza City. (Photo by Mahmud Hams/AFP via Getty Images)

Many Western politicians, diplomats, academics and media commentators have argued that the Iran-backed Hamas terrorist group launched its October 7, 2023 invasion of Israel because of the Israeli "blockade" on the Gaza Strip, from the necessity by Israel to prevent Hamas from smuggling in weapons with the sole purpose of destroying its Jewish neighbor.

Others claimed that economic hardship and humanitarian conditions had driven Hamas to carry out the deadliest attack against Jews since the Holocaust. Some argued that Hamas had by then evolved into a pragmatic movement interested in governing the Gaza Strip and finally willing to coexist with Israel.

Recently disclosed documents handwritten by the late Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar have irrefutably demolished these claims.

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Who Decides Childhood in Pakistan: Parliament, Shariah, or the Courts?

by Nasir Saeed  •  July 16, 2026 at 4:00 am

• Who has the constitutional authority to decide when childhood ends in Pakistan? That question lies at the heart of one of the country's most significant constitutional challenges, now before the Federal Shariat Court.

• Yet from its inception, the legislation contained an important limitation. Although it criminalised the conduct of those responsible for child marriages, it did not expressly declare such marriages void.

• Parents have frequently relied upon birth certificates, school records and National Database and Registration Authority (NADRA) records demonstrating that their daughters were minors under Pakistani law. Respondents, by contrast, have relied upon conversion certificates, marriage documents and statements recorded before magistrates in which the girls declared that they had converted to Islam and married voluntarily. In one widely reported case, a 13-year-old Christian girl was allegedly abducted and forcibly converted, and her marriage certificate recorded her age as eighteen.

• What distinguishes the present challenges from earlier ones is that the Federal Shariat Court has already ruled on this exact question—twice.

• Supporters of legislative reform argued that child-protection laws should establish a single, objective legal definition of childhood applicable to every child, irrespective of religion, gender or social background.

• The central constitutional question is whether elected legislatures possess the authority to establish a uniform statutory definition of childhood for the purposes of marriage, when judicial interpretations of Muslim personal law have historically attached legal significance to puberty instead.

• Supporters of the recent legislation therefore argue that legislatures have not attempted to redefine Islamic doctrine. Instead, they contend that the State is exercising its constitutional authority to regulate marriage in order to protect children and advance the public interest. From this perspective, establishing eighteen as the minimum legal age of marriage represents a regulatory safeguard rather than a departure from Islamic principles—a view the Federal Shariat Court has itself endorsed twice, in 2021 and 2023.

• The Court's judgment will therefore define more than the legality of a single provincial ordinance—it will clarify the constitutional relationship between legislative authority, judicial interpretations of Muslim personal law and the supervisory jurisdiction of the Federal Shariat Court, and whether the Court's own recent precedent will hold.

• Pakistan's international obligations also provide important context..... Pakistan has undertaken obligations to protect children from harmful practices and to ensure that marriage is entered into only with the free and full consent of both parties.

Who has the constitutional authority to decide when childhood ends in Pakistan? That question lies at the heart of one of the country's most significant constitutional challenges, now before the Federal Shariat Court (pictured). Photo by Aamir Qureshi/ AFP via Getty Images.

A constitutional challenge now before Pakistan's Federal Shariat Court will determine far more than the minimum legal age of marriage. At stake is whether Parliament's statutory definition of childhood — or judicial interpretations of Muslim personal law, rooted in classical Islamic jurisprudence — will provide the principal legal framework through which Pakistan protects children from early marriage. The Court's judgment could reshape child protection law and have profound consequences for Christian and Hindu underage girls whose cases have exposed the tension between legislation and judicial precedent.

"All citizens are equal before law and are entitled to equal protection of law." — Article 25, Constitution of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan

Who Decides When Childhood Ends?

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'This Is Not Off to a Good Start': Trump's 'Board of Peace,' Double-Standards, the UN, and the Kurds
A Conversation with Joël Rubinfeld – Part III

by Grégoire Canlorbe  •  July 15, 2026 at 5:00 am

• The Kurds are a valiant people who have repeatedly stood by the West. This was evident in the role of the Peshmerga in the fight against the Islamic State. Whenever they were called upon, they answered. Then, every time the crisis had passed, they were abandoned again to their fate.

• In that respect, Trump is doing nothing different from his predecessors: no one cares about the Kurds unless they are needed.

• Senator John Fetterman (D-PA) has called Iran "a 47-year-old war crime." Those who invoke international law to denounce the ongoing war against the regime of the mullahs are, in fact, pleading for the survival of a regime that has crushed its people for 47 years.

• International law, a noble concept in itself, is today being perverted — serving as a shield for some of the worst executioners on the planet. Have the West's useful idiots of the Islamic Republic of Iran already forgotten the tens of thousands of unarmed Iranian citizens massacred by their own horrific government in just two days, on January 8 and 9?

• When one looks at the composition of the Board of Peace — with countries such as Turkey or Qatar — one thinks: this is not off to a good start. The risk is that it will reproduce the same problems as before.

• If tomorrow the "Board of Peace" shifts to a system in which each country has equal weight, why would the whole operation not fall back into the same structural bias as the UN — the one that favors dictatorships and authoritarian regimes?

• Sadly, this "Board of Peace" does not seem to solve the underlying problem we face at the UN: it risks merely shifting it elsewhere without correcting it.

• When you see Jewish graves desecrated, Jewish artists, intellectuals, athletes and businesses boycotted, incitement to violence against Jews, demonstrations where thousands chant for the destruction of the Jewish state or glorify the "martyrs" Sinwar and Nasrallah — and where leading political figures join these marches — you realize there is a serious problem in my country....

• No one has said: "From now on, baptisms must be performed by lifeguards," or "this sacrament should be taken away from priests." It is easy to see how absurd this would be.

• What this dispute actually highlights is the disproportionate response of the Belgian judicial system when it comes to Jews.

• [W]hen it comes to antisemitism — explicit, documented, undeniable — the response is most often inadequate or nonexistent. On October 7, 2024, exactly one year after the October 7 jihad, pro-Palestinian demonstration took place in Brussels, in the heart of the capital. From the stage, a speaker intoned in Arabic: "O Allah, burn the Jews" — and the crowd responded in unison, "Ameen." We filed a complaint with the Brussels public prosecutor's office, together with video evidence. To this day, there has been no response—not even an acknowledgment of receipt.

• One can discuss complex and nuanced cases, where intention and context may be debated. But when statements are as explicit as "Jews forbidden," "Burn the Jews," "I feel like plunging a knife into the throat of every Jew," or "Jews are real psychopaths, serial killers," a judge—even a novice—should, without question, condemn such remarks as violations of Belgium's 1981 law against racism and xenophobia.

• That is where the contrast becomes unacceptable: a complaint filed by an alleged antisemite triggers an investigation, while antisemitic acts and statements themselves go unpunished.

• We are not in 1933. But there are echoes that recall the darker chapters of history: antisemitic agitation in the streets, attacks on religious practices, physical assaults on Jews, political and media incitement, boycotts of Jewish figures and businesses, the need for Jews to conceal their identity, and the failure of the justice system to protect them.

"International law, a noble concept in itself, is today being perverted — serving as a shield for some of the worst executioners on the planet. Have the West's useful idiots of the Islamic Republic of Iran already forgotten the tens of thousands of unarmed Iranian citizens massacred by their own horrific government in just two days, on January 8 and 9?" — Joël Rubinfeld. Pictured: Rubinfeld (center) at a march against antisemitism in Brussels on December 10, 2023. (Photo by Simon Wohlfahrt/AFP via Getty Images)

Joël Rubinfeld is a founding member and president of the Belgian League Against Antisemitism and president of the Jewish Coalition for Kurdistan. He was president of the Coordinating Committee of Jewish Organizations in Belgium, vice-president of the European Jewish Congress, and co-chairman of the European Jewish Parliament.

• Read Part I: 'Israel, the Dreyfus of Nations'
• Read Part II: 'There Is a Serious Problem in My Country'

Canlorbe: In your view, is Trump's Board of Peace a viable alternative to the UN, one that could also put an end to the unfair, demonizing treatment of Israel?

Rubinfeld: When I look at the composition of the "Board of Peace," I am skeptical.

What is paradoxical is that the founding idea of the UN is fascinating: to bring everyone to the table and try to resolve conflicts through diplomacy. In principle, it is even admirable and carried promise.

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Do the Math: Why Europe May Not Pull Through

by Drieu Godefridi  •  July 14, 2026 at 5:00 am

• In 2024, 15% of live births in the EU were to a mother who was not a citizen of an EU country. This figure exceeds 20% in Germany, Spain, Portugal, Luxembourg and others.

• Assimilation of immigrants has not taken place.... When one imports the Third World, one becomes the Third World.

• Under the influence of green ideology and European policy commitments such as the Green Deal and carbon taxes, Europe has voluntarily sabotaged its energy markets.

• In the coming years, we may see electoral victories in national elections by parties that are tougher on immigration and more skeptical of the forced energy transition. These victories are already under way in several countries. But what will such parties actually be able to do when faced with millions of additional retirees to finance from a shrinking contribution base? Or debt commitments already contracted? Or European rules that prohibit many solutions?

• The answer is simple: they will be forced, like the others, to increase the economic pressure on those who still work and save – through income taxes, wealth taxes, inheritance taxes, miscellaneous levies and creeping inflation.

• These new "right wing" parties might also, one hopes, fast-track simplifying paperwork, eliminating unnecessary regulations, lowering taxes and providing incentives for economic growth.

• [T]he Roman West was not conquered: it slowly mutated from within into a mosaic of Romano-barbarian kingdoms. Classical civilization died, replaced by something else.

• Europe as we have known it — that civilization from which America was born — at this point does not look as if it will pull through. It is giving way to something else: a society more fragmented, poorer, more dependent on the government, less free, and less European. Then surrounding plausible powers will not resist the temptation to come for the spoils...

Europe as we have known it — that civilization from which America was born — at this point does not look as if it will pull through. It is giving way to something else: a society more fragmented, poorer, more dependent on the government, less free, and less European. (Image source iStock)

Europe as we have known it for centuries — a civilization founded on a native majority population, a common culture, industrial prosperity, and a certain idea of liberty and property — appears destined to disappear.

This will happen not in some spectacular cataclysm, but through a slow, inexorable erosion, made inevitable by structural trends now too powerful to be reversed in the time it would take to stop it.

Even if, in the years ahead, several European countries bring to power so-called "right-wing" coalitions that have never yet governed, this can no longer substantially alter Europe's collective destiny. The problem is no longer merely political; it is demographic, energetic, economic, and institutional. These four processes interlock and reinforce one another in a sinister yet terribly efficient mechanism.

1. The Collapse of the Native Demographic Base

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The Great Palestinian Election Scam

by Khaled Abu Toameh  •  July 13, 2026 at 5:00 am

• Western governments and donors will undoubtedly welcome the announcement [of presidential elections] as a sign that Abbas is finally responding to long-standing demands for reform. They should not.

• Holding elections for the sake of holding elections is not reform. Elections alone do not create democracy, end corruption, or establish accountability.

• Elections by themselves, as Natan Sharansky and Ron Dermer emphasize in A Case for Democracy, do not signify a democracy. There first need to be functioning institutions of democracy — freedom of speech, freedom of the press, separation of religion and state, freedom from religion, an independent judiciary, separation of powers, equal justice under the law, due process, and so on — and then, at the end of these processes that actually embody democracy, after they are up and running, an election can be held that represents a democracy. Otherwise, as can be seen in Russia, Iran and other dictatorships, elections are not signs of reform, at all but just choreographed burlesques.

• The Palestinians desperately need transparent institutions, an independent judiciary, a free press, functioning checks and balances, and leaders who answer to the public rather than rule indefinitely by presidential decree.

• None of that exists under the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank or Hamas in the Gaza Strip.

• The Palestinian parliament, known as the Palestinian Legislative Council (PLC), has been effectively defunct since Hamas violently seized control of the Gaza Strip in 2007, and Abbas formally dissolved it in 2018.

• "[T]he clearest evidence of the slide to authoritarianism has been the decision taken by the party that lost the 2006 elections, Fatah, to dissolve the PLC in 2018. The inevitable outcome of the suspension of the PLC meetings has been the transfer of its legislative and oversight functions to the executive authority represented by the president. Since 2007, President Abbas issued more laws by decree than those ever issued by the PLC during its entire life since the first election in 1996. Most of these laws were not urgent, as required by the Basic Law, and many of them violated the terms of that law. In the absence of a parliament, the president gave himself the power to rule by decree without accountability or oversight." — Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research (PCPSR), January 2021.

• The latest poll conducted by the PCPSR found that 80% of Palestinians want [PA President Mahmoud Abbas] to leave office.

• If Abbas and the Fatah leadership determine which candidates may participate, the outcome will be largely predetermined before the first ballot is cast.

• Fatah remains firmly under the control of the same leadership, the same political culture, and the same patronage networks. Some names changed, but the system remained unchanged. Same old politics, decorated with a few new faces, including Abbas's son, Yasser.

• For ordinary Palestinians, the choice remains essentially between Fatah and Hamas. There is no viable third force capable of competing nationally, and both movements have spent years suppressing independent political voices.

• Public opinion surveys over the past two years have repeatedly shown that Hamas... enjoys greater support than Mahmoud Abbas's Fatah faction.

• Under these circumstances, new elections could once again hand victory to Hamas. Such an outcome would strengthen an Iran-backed terrorist group that openly seeks Israel's destruction, rejects peace, and continues to advocate armed jihad (holy war).

• Democracy cannot exist when the ruling faction controls the rules, the institutions, and the political playing field.

• Power is concentrated in a small inner circle. There is no functioning parliament. There is no meaningful separation of powers. There is little room for genuine public debate. Journalists operate under constant pressure and fear. Political appointments often depend more on personal loyalty than merit.

• The question is not whether Palestinians should vote. The question is whether the conditions for free and meaningful elections exist. As long as Hamas remains an armed terrorist group with substantial public support, and as long as Fatah continues to monopolize Palestinian political life, elections are more likely to reproduce the current crisis than resolve it.

• Palestinians need institutional reform. They need independent courts. They need financial transparency. They need anti-corruption mechanisms. They need genuine freedom of expression. They need political pluralism. They need peaceful transfers of power.

• Only after these foundations are established can elections produce meaningful change. Otherwise, elections merely provide democratic decoration for an undemocratic system.

• Western governments should therefore resist the temptation to celebrate Abbas's latest decree as evidence of reform and democratic progress. His decree should be viewed for what it most likely is: another political maneuver designed to preserve international legitimacy and secure continued Western financial support, rather than a sincere effort to bring democracy to the Palestinian people.

The question is not whether Palestinians should vote. The question is whether the conditions for free and meaningful elections exist. As long as Hamas remains an armed terrorist group with substantial public support, and as long as Fatah continues to monopolize Palestinian political life, elections are more likely to reproduce the current crisis than resolve it. The Palestinian parliament, known as the Palestinian Legislative Council (PLC), has been effectively defunct since Hamas violently seized control of the Gaza Strip in 2007, and Abbas formally dissolved it in 2018. Pictured: The PLC building in Ramallah on January 28, 2006, three days after its last election. (Photo by Zharan Hammad/Getty Images)

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas has once again announced legislative and presidential elections, presenting the move as evidence of democratic renewal. According to a presidential decree issued on July 9, legislative elections are scheduled for November 28, 2026, while presidential elections are to follow during the first quarter of 2027. The decree calls on Palestinians in the West Bank, Gaza Strip and Jerusalem to participate in "free and direct" elections aimed at strengthening democracy.

Western governments and donors will undoubtedly welcome the announcement as a sign that Abbas is finally responding to long-standing demands for reform. They should not.

Holding elections for the sake of holding elections is not reform. Elections alone do not create democracy, end corruption, or establish accountability.

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After the Fireworks: The Fusion Energy That Will Define America's Next Century

by Lawrence Kadish  •  July 13, 2026 at 4:00 am

As we start to pursue our second 250^th era, this would be a good time to recognize that energy security is national security. Securing energy abundance through nuclear fusion will be a strategic precondition for global leadership in the coming decades. (Image source: OpenAI)

The fireworks have faded. The paradegoers have gone home. The red, white and blue bunting will be taken down by the end of the month.

The 250^th anniversary of our nation's founding has come and gone. What now?

This historic milestone should not be viewed as a celebration to conclude by July 5^th but as the opening of a national conversation about what America intends to become in the decades and centuries to come. But make no mistake: that future will be determined, in part, by energy.

Every American era has been an energy story. Water wheels powered the first mills of the young republic. Coal fueled the railroads and factories of the Gilded Age. Oil powered America's twentieth-century dominance. Electrification transformed daily life for millions of Americans, and our reliable energy grid became the invisible force behind our nation's extraordinary quality of life.

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After Khamenei, Nothing Has Changed - But It Might

by Pierre Rehov  •  July 12, 2026 at 5:00 am

• Iran, in exchange, reaffirmed that it would not develop nuclear weapons and agreed to leave its nuclear program exactly as it stands -- meaning with its nuclear installations and centrifuges to enrich uranium safely under Pickaxe Mountain.

• The last four months were the exhaustion of a method rather than a failure of nerve. The Trump method flattered the adversary, let him believe he had won, dragged him to the table under threat of force, changed course without warning and staged unpredictability as strategy. All that might work remarkably well in the West, where leaders answer to electorates, markets and quarterly reports. It presupposes, however, an interlocutor who counts costs the way Washington counts costs.

• The Islamic Republic counts by another arithmetic....

• A power such as the US that cries wolf on Tuesday and extends the deadline on Thursday teaches a system such as Iran's exactly one lesson: that the wolf does not exist. Iran's rulers read the American desire for a deal, especially before a midterm election, as weakness, which by that arithmetic it was. Trump, who kept repeating that he wanted a deal -- in that way raising the price for one -- seemed genuinely trying to test ways not to destroy more of Iran. Last week, he gave up on that.

• After Khamenei, nothing has changed in Iran, where the doctrine, the gallows and the wager on Western fatigue are those of February. What finally changed, last week, is Washington.

After the death of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, nothing has changed in Iran, where the doctrine, the gallows and the wager on Western fatigue are those of February. What finally changed, last week, is Washington. Pictured: People gather beneath a billboard of Ali Khamenei and his son and successor, Mojtaba Khamenei, during the third day of the elder Khamenei's funeral on July 6, 2026 in Tehran, Iran. (Photo by Majid Saeedi/Getty Images)

The West has long nurtured the conviction that a regime dies with its ruler. On February 28, American and Israeli aircraft, in a joint operation prepared over months, killed Iran's Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei together with the chief of staff of the armed forces, the commander of the Revolutionary Guard Corps, the defense minister and Khamenei's closest adviser, thereby erasing the command structure of the Islamic Republic in a single morning. US President Donald Trump promised to "annihilate their navy" and level Iran's missile industry.

Across the West, and among Iranians whose January uprising had been drowned in blood only weeks earlier, an immense hope took hold. The theocracy, at last, seemed gone.

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