Middle East Press On: Turkey, Cyprus, NATO, Russia, FIFA, Gaza, Baghdad, Iran’s Militia Machine, The NDAA, US-Israel Military Fusion, Israel’s Waning, New Age Islam's Selection, 29 June 2026
By New Age Islam Edit Desk
29 June 2026
How Türkiye responds to unfolding plans in Cyprus, East Med
For the sake of good old NATO, we need to keep Russia in play
FIFA could not hide Gaza
The banker of Baghdad: How Tom Barrack plans to starve Iran’s militia machine
US seeks to reassure Gulf states over Iran deal
When Is It Too Late? The NDAA, US-Israel Military Fusion, and the Point of No Return
When the Shield Breaks: Israel’s Waning Immunity in Washington
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How Türkiye responds to unfolding plans in Cyprus, East Med
BY MESUT HAKKI CAŞIN
JUN 28, 2026
It appears that the Tel Aviv administration is attempting to forge a new network of alliances in tandem with the “endless war” it launched in the region, particularly in the wake of the genocide in Gaza. It is doing so by arming Greece and the Greek Cypriot administration to form a military alliance with them.
Using the war with Iran as a pretext and in serious violation of the Treaty of Lausanne, the Mitsotakis government in Greece deployed fighter jets, surface-to-air missile (SAM) batteries, unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) and anti-ship missiles on the Aegean Islands and in Cyprus. Furthermore, under a military agreement with France, which violates the London and Zurich Agreements, it allocated a military base for the French Navy.
The Greek Cypriot administration, on the other hand, has opened its bases to many countries, primarily Israel, against Türkiye. It has also signed a status of forces agreement (SOFA) with France, allowing the French military to permanently station itself on the island. Although the Greek Cypriots defend this as being for "humanitarian purposes," the agreement violates the guarantee treaty signed by Türkiye, Greece and the United Kingdom in 1960.
Most recently, the "3+1" mechanism, comprising Israel, Greece, the Greek Cypriot administration and the United States, has officially announced the establishment of the Eastern Mediterranean Energy Hub as a new institutional step in its strategy to bypass Türkiye.
In response to these developments, President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan stated, "Let no one seek adventure ... If the rights and interests of Türkiye and the Turkish Cypriots in the Eastern Mediterranean are threatened, our response will be very clear and firm."
French-Israeli-Greek alliance
Despite France being a country with no coastline in the Eastern Mediterranean, the Macron administration has been arming Greece and the Greek Cypriot administration against NATO member Türkiye. It is clear that the French government’s true motives include acquiring energy and military-political strategic interests in the Middle East, as well as maintaining access to markets for aircraft, warships and missile systems, and targeting alternative corridors to replace the lost African market.
The second and most significant wave of change, however, lies in Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s aggressive policy, driven by his adventurous slogan “Türkiye is the next target after Iran," which aims to expand the war’s front. It plans to do so specifically by forming an anti-Türkiye alliance corridor in the Mediterranean with the U.S., France, Greece and the Greek Cypriot administration, as part of the "encircling Türkiye" policy. This involves ramping up support for the Greek and Cypriot armies, including training exercises, weapons and ammunition and UAV systems, to the highest level, as well as intensifying efforts to establish military bases and purchase land in Cyprus.
On the surface, this covert plan aims to prevent Türkiye from exercising sovereignty and securing a share of the region’s abundant hydrocarbon resources in the Eastern Mediterranean’s maritime zones and airspace through the so-called "Seville Map," which was drawn up in violation of the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea and international maritime law.
On the military front, since the 2010s, under the direction of NATO's former Supreme Allied Commander Europe (SACEUR) James Stravridis, the “Blue Flag” joint naval and air military exercises were conducted with the participation of the U.S., Israel, certain NATO and EU member states, and Gulf region countries. These served to rehearse scenarios for a potential armed conflict in the region.
Türkiye's counter move
In response, Türkiye, through a calm and rational diplomatic maneuver, has established a dialogue framework with U.S. President Donald Trump regarding the Iran cease-fire. Simultaneously, it has established the "Türkiye-Egypt-Pakistan-Saudi Arabia" joint defense alliance corridor and its military exercises. Consequently, Türkiye has severed the Gulf leg of the "Blue Flag" scenario.
Second, in the Mediterranean, Türkiye has signed a joint agreement with Spain, a key member of NATO’s southern command, to produce the Hürjet fighter jet and continues negotiations for the fifth-generation Kaan fighter jet. The plan by Italy’s Leonardo company and the Italian Navy to integrate the Bayraktar TB3 UAV into the aircraft carrier Cavour through joint production demonstrates that the final word has not yet been spoken in the Mediterranean.
Furthermore, Türkiye has made extensive preparations for the 36th NATO summit to be held in Ankara, clearly demonstrating its commitment and political will to ensure the alliance emerges stronger in the face of new challenges.
Türkiye will emerge from the Ankara summit strengthened in diplomacy, military capabilities and prestige. NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte, referring to the Ankara summit to be held on July 7-8 and the alliance’s current state, praised Türkiye’s defense industry, stating that the summit could be even more important than The Hague and that Türkiye’s revolution in the defense industry would benefit all of NATO. He also made critical remarks, stating that new defense contracts worth tens of billions of dollars will be announced in Ankara.
In response to these developments in the Mediterranean, Türkiye has made it clear through the "Blue Homeland-26," "Efes-2026," "Sea Wolf," and, most recently, the Cyprus military exercises that it will never permit such a plan, responding with the participation of 20,000 military personnel, hundreds of ships and combat aircraft.
The Cyprus "Martyr Second Lieutenant Caner Gönyeli" military exercise is essentially a concrete expression of the political and military resolve mentioned above. It has been demonstrated that Türkiye, which possesses the longest coastline in the Mediterranean, and the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus (TRNC) possess the military and political resolve to respond instantly to the worst-case scenarios in the region and to thwart all conspiracies.
In this context, Türkiye has not only deployed six F-16 fighter jets, UAVs and new missile systems in Cyprus, but it has also explicitly declared that it will keep the "Anatolian gateway" to the Mediterranean open at all times.
Ultimately, Türkiye is aware of attempts to isolate it through the lifting of the U.S. arms embargo on the Greek Cypriot administration, the signing of illegal base agreements with France, Israeli aims to contain Türkiye in the Mediterranean and Aegean, and the trap underlying strategic propaganda and engineering activities behind the "withdraw Turkish troops from Cyprus" rhetoric, all through real-time intelligence, and it has made it crystal clear that it will not allow such an adventure to happen.
It is of vital importance to remind United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres and Special Representative Maria Angela Holguin that, aside from a two-state solution in Cyprus, any federation plans, which are merely a different version of the Annan Plan, will be futile. Unless the TRNC is legally recognized, the sanctions unjustly imposed on the TRNC for years are lifted, and political equality and sovereign status are recognized, all the efforts will be in vain.
In conclusion, the main point of this brief article is that, at the negotiating table, any initiative other than a two-state solution will be buried in the dusty pages of history.
https://www.dailysabah.com/opinion/op-ed/how-turkiye-responds-to-unfolding-plans-in-cyprus-east-med
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For the sake of good old NATO, we need to keep Russia in play
BY HAKKI ÖCAL
JUN 29, 2026
The NATO 2026 summit will be held on July 7-8 at the Beştepe Presidential Compound in Ankara, Türkiye. It will be the second time Türkiye will host a NATO summit. The first was in Istanbul in 2004.
As we all know, NATO summits bring together allied leaders to make decisions on important issues facing the alliance and NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte says they will unveil billions in defense deals.
Another point is that this year’s summit holds additional significance for Türkiye, as U.S. President Donald Trump stated that he will make Türkiye “extremely happy."
According to unconfirmed reports and the current weather trend on "planet Trump," the U.S. government is finally going to deliver the 116 18 F-35A CTOL fighter jets that Türkiye already paid for back in 2019. In other words, if Türkiye bought gold bullions for the $1.25 billion down payment it made then, it would have the whole Lockheed Martin Co. Inc. today.
According to confirmed reports, the Trump administration has also formally notified Congress of its intention to sell 80 jet engines worth more than $700 million to Türkiye, which will make the serial production of the Turkish Kaan warplanes possible.
But the more important issue than those already outmoded F-35s and jet engines Türkiye already manufactures itself is this: The U.S. is getting ready to deliver the reins of NATO to Türkiye.
Let’s put it this way: Trump is not only going to have his typical round of insulting European leaders next week in Ankara, but he is also going to carry out a wholesale restructuring of the transatlantic relationship. Acknowledging the terms that EU countries are willing to accept regarding the settlement of the debts they have owed the U.S. since the end of World War II, and accepting their refusal to increase their national defense budgets, he’ll call it quits. All that Oval Office claptrap was not for nothing.
In short, he will tell Europeans to do “what the hell they want,” expressing strong frustration. He will then rush and go back to the election centers in those states, which are primarily important for a Republican victory in 120 days. In his colossal self-trust and ennoblement of political and managerial abilities, he believes he can turn the tide around and make the Make America Great Again (MAGA) crowd understand that it is not Israel, Russia or China that he wants to make great, but the good-old U.S. of A! But still the apple of old and new conservatives’ eye, he cannot leave NATO flat-footed. So, he is supposed to make a departing bequest.
Again, according to unconfirmed reports and the current atmospheric circulations on plant Trump, he is going to recommend that Europeans pass the baton to Türkiye and President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.
If you pay attention to the words Trump said, speaking alongside Rutte, he emphasized Türkiye's status within the alliance, stating: “Look, he's (President Erdoğan) a member of NATO. Some people don't consider himself (a NATO member), but he really is. He's a strong member of NATO.”
Trump said he would not attend if any other country hosted the NATO summit, but, out of respect to Erdoğan, he is traveling to Ankara. Trump, on a roll, said, “People don't know how big Türkiye is in terms of the military despite the fact that Ankara maintaining a very strong force equipped with substantial American hardware.”
Too much praise heaped on Türkiye must have made the NATO secretary-general feel that the “other” Europeans also needed a little citing, so he said, “At the summit, leaders all continue to make NATO a stronger, fairer and more lethal alliance, ready to respond to the critical challenges to our security.”
Yeah, sure; they will. Won’t they? But the “boss” wants Türkiye to be the one to keep his seat warm. But the question, a hypothetical one though, is what sort of NATO will it be, if we are going to take NATO over.
Will it be pushing the idea of a European Army against the Russian Federation? Will it continue to drag the war in Ukraine against Russia, the owner of which had already taken a ride off into the sunset. Will NATO not get a word in edgewise against the genocidal regime in Israel? Will it allow individual members to carry on with their endless love of Zionism and unending moral obligation emanating from their genocide, i.e., the Holocaust, without even paying lip service to the memories of the killed and ethnically cleansed Muslims?
I am sure the Europeans are perfectly aware that neither their own war preparations nor Trump’s efforts to fan the nascent flames of the Europeans’ traditional “Russophobia” is going to prevent Türkiye and Russia from speaking to each other like two adult nations. Ankara sees Moscow as essential to any serious regional security discussion and knows Russia should be part of the diplomatic games played with a pragmatic approach.
Russian President Vladimir Putin is a modern, pragmatic world leader who can engage with any country that is willing to resolve any old or new issues with Moscow. As any serious statesperson would do, Putin gives assurances after assurances and counts reasons after reasons that Russia will not attack Germany. These genuine strategic arguments are not part of a broader information campaign. If you break down Putin's reasoning about Germany's concerns, you find out that Russia has long ago left the old Soviet concerns about NATO. But behind Germany’s motives are those old mindsets NATO had against the Soviets.
We also need to analyze what that mindset is about. Is it really NATO or European goons or simply Rutte working up his own concerns? NATO is melting down under Rutte’s watch. The U.S. is now seeking a new security architecture for Europe. That is enough to make Rutte stand on his head and bust not one but almost all the blood vessels on his forehead when he screams, “We are ready, Vladimir!”
Speaking at the Atlantic Council policy institute on the final day of his visit to Washington in advance of the summit in Ankara, addressing the Russian leader directly, Rutte said: “Vladimir, we will defend ourselves.”
The only problem is Tovarishch Vlad not listening because shouting at somebody is not the way to engage with them in a formal and respectful dialogue. Putin has been watching how the Europeans promise to invest billions in defense deals, but none of those materialize, and no European government ever implements those commitments. Western Europe has stopped talking to Russia; they have no idea what the New Russia is all about. Clinging to old illusions about the Soviets does not instill even an iota of fear in Ankara. The idead that “Uncle Stalin is going to gobble Anatolia and the Straits up” does not work on Türkiye anymore. Türkiye is not blinded by the destructive ideologies of the U.S. or EU and can chart its own political course.
Türkiye is positioned as the leading intermediary between Moscow and Kyiv. After assuming the role Trump is said to bestow on it, Türkiye is going to make all Europeans appreciate the need to keep Putin in play. You cannot win if you don’t speak to your interlocutors.
https://www.dailysabah.com/opinion/columns/for-the-sake-of-good-old-nato-we-need-to-keep-russia-in-play
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FIFA could not hide Gaza
June 28, 2026
by Sayid Marcos Tenorio
The Palestinian national team did not qualify for the 2026 FIFA World Cup.
Yet Palestine became one of the tournament’s defining presence, not through goals or victories, but through the constant display of Palestinian flags in the stands, expressions of solidarity with Gaza, and chants that echoed across stadiums, host cities, and public viewing areas around the world.
This phenomenon went far beyond isolated gestures of support.
This was not unprecedented. During the 2022 World Cup in Qatar, the Palestinian flag became one of the tournament’s most visible symbols. At the time, many analysts attributed the phenomenon to the competition taking place in an Arab country. The 2026 tournament challenged that interpretation.
The recurrence of these demonstrations across stadiums in the United States, Canada, and Mexico suggests that public support for Palestine has evolved from a regional expression into a truly global movement.
This trend also reveals a widening gap between the positions of many Western governments and the views of large sectors of international public opinion. While the United States continues to provide political, military, and financial support to Israel, millions of people increasingly see Palestine as a symbol of the struggle for human rights, international justice, and the right of peoples to self-determination.
Football has once again demonstrated that it has never been politically neutral. Throughout history, World Cups have reflected ideological disputes, protests against racism, campaigns for human rights, and expressions of solidarity with peoples living under occupation or discrimination.
The insistence of sporting authorities on separating sport from politics stands in stark contrast to the reality in the stands, where supporters use the visibility of the tournament to express values and causes they regard as universal.
The 2026 World Cup also exposed FIFA’s double standard. While Iran competed under significant restrictions—including members of its coaching staff being denied entry visas to the United States and repeated obstacles stemming from political tensions between Washington and Tehran—FIFA remained largely silent in the face of the devastation in Gaza and the growing international accusations against Israel.
Perhaps the tournament’s most enduring legacy will be the emergence of a new form of people’s diplomacy, in which supporters, athletes, artists, and social movements increasingly shape the global narrative.
A single flag raised before television cameras can reach hundreds of millions of people, carrying a message that transcends borders, languages, and cultures.
Palestine may have been absent from the competition itself, but it was present in something no sporting statistic can measure: its capacity to mobilize consciences.
By transforming the stadiums into spaces of international solidarity, the 2026 FIFA World Cup demonstrated that, for millions of people, Gaza cannot be forgotten. In the struggle for global public opinion, Palestine achieved a victory that no scoreboard can record.
https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20260628-fifa-could-not-hide-gaza/
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The banker of Baghdad: How Tom Barrack plans to starve Iran’s militia machine
June 28, 2026
by Jasim Al-Azzawi
When President Donald Trump announced on 31 May that Tom Barrack would serve simultaneously as US Ambassador to Ankara, Special Presidential Envoy to Syria, and now Special Presidential Envoy to Iraq, the diplomatic community in Baghdad greeted the news with the mild interest one accords a routine reshuffling. They were wrong. Barrack is not arriving in the Iraqi capital with a briefing book and a handshake. He is arriving with a vault key — and the vault holds Baghdad’s oxygen.
Since 2003, Iraq’s hydrocarbon revenues have been deposited into a dedicated account at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. When Baghdad needs hard currency, the Treasury arranges for physical dollar banknotes — sometimes as much as $13 billion in a single year — to be flown on cargo planes from New Jersey to the Central Bank of Iraq. It is an arrangement born of post-invasion necessity, designed to shield Iraq’s new government from Saddam-era creditors and reparation claims. It has since become something else entirely: the master switch of Iraqi political economy, controlled from lower Manhattan.
In April, the Trump administration quietly demonstrated just how absolute that control is. The Treasury blocked a cargo-plane delivery of nearly $500 million in US banknotes — proceeds from Iraqi oil sales — and simultaneously suspended security cooperation programs with the Iraqi military. A senior Kurdish official, speaking to Fox News, offered the most frank assessment heard in months: “The dollar pause is the nuclear option in the Treasury Department’s arsenal, and the Americans have always been reluctant to leverage it.” Barrack’s appointment signals that the reluctance is over.
To understand what Barrack is up against, one must first understand the architecture of Iran’s position in Iraq, because it is not a foreign occupation in any conventional sense. It is an inside job. The Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF), an umbrella of some 238,000 fighters drawing $3.6 billion in annual state funding, was enshrined into Iraqi law in 2016 under Law No. 40. Its most powerful components — Kataib Hezbollah, Asa’ib Ahl al-Haq, Harakat Hezbollah al-Nujaba — were IRGC-Quds Force proxy formations long before they were absorbed into the Iraqi state payroll. In Tehran’s strategic calculus, the PMF is the Hezbollah model, replicated on a state budget.
The money trail, painstakingly documented by the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, is damning: the state-owned Rafidain Bank, a downstream distributor of oil revenues held at the New York Fed, was disbursing dollar-converted wages directly to PMF militia fighters until mid-2025. When US Treasury pressure forced Rafidain from processing those payrolls, the PMF simply migrated its salary mechanism to a smaller state-owned lender, Al-Nahrain Islamic Bank — shifting the problem rather than solving it. Worse, multiple Treasury sanctions between 2024 and 2026 traced diverted Iraqi dollar-auction proceeds through fronts linked to IRGC financiers and networks procuring components for Shahed drones and Iranian ballistic missiles. Washington, in the most literal sense, has been subsidizing its own adversaries.
In Tehran, IRGC commanders have understood precisely what is at stake. According to reporting by Critical Threats, senior IRGC officials briefed President Masoud Pezeshkian that US and Israeli military pressure on Iran had paradoxically unified the population behind the regime, framing the entire confrontation, Iraq included, as a civilizational struggle rather than a policy dispute. That framing serves a purpose: it raises the psychological cost of compliance for PMF factions, as it can be recast as ideological betrayal. In this sense, the IRGC’s most effective weapon in Iraq is not a drone — it is a narrative.
Barrack is no career diplomat, and that is almost certainly the point. He is a private equity dealmaker who described Iraq, in an unguarded moment, as a “failed political experiment” — and Lebanon as “a farce.” Translated into policy, those are not insults but diagnostics: Washington no longer views Iraq as a political negotiating partner to be flattered, but as a malfunctioning security file to be restructured. His instrument of choice is the one he knows best — leverage. And the leverage is staggering. Oil export revenues fund an estimated 90 percent of the Iraqi government budget. A prolonged dollar shortage would not merely inconvenience Baghdad’s ministries; it would ignite inflation, destabilize the Iraqi dinar, and hollow out the very state salaries that keep the PMF nominally loyal to Baghdad rather than exclusively to Tehran.
There are early signs the strategy is drawing blood — or at least a strategic retreat. In late May and early June 2026, Muqtada al-Sadr dissolved his Saraya al-Salam militia, and Asa’ib Ahl al-Haq and Kataib Imam Ali announced they would hand their weapons over to state control. Barrack’s response on X was carefully calibrated — congratulatory but conditional. He told Iraqi Prime Minister Ali Falih al-Zaidi that the move represents the “nascent foundation for renewed Iraqi self-governance” — and then added the pointed rider: “Prime Minister Al Zaidi’s confidence is well-placed, for this marks only the beginning.” The subtext was unmistakable: the dollar tap remains in American hands.
But the hardest cases remain unmoved. Kataib Hezbollah and Harakat Hezbollah al-Nujaba — the formations most directly under IRGC command — have declined to disarm. The Middle East Forum has warned that what appears to be a militia shake-up may in fact be an Iranian adaptation: superficial compliance by manageable factions, preservation of the core command-and-control network. On 17 April, the Treasury designated seven senior commanders across four Iran-backed groups for attacks on US personnel — a signal that financial and kinetic pressure will run in parallel. The US conducted 138 strikes inside Iraq in April alone, killing 73 PMF members.
Tom Barrack enters Iraq carrying three portfolios — Ankara, Damascus, Baghdad — and one overarching thesis: that the architecture of Iranian influence in Iraq runs on American dollars, and that architecture can be disassembled the same way it was built, through the banking system. Lebanon took decades and a catastrophic financial collapse before Hezbollah’s model showed its limits. Iraq, with its oil revenues hostage to a New York account number, may face a compressed timeline. The barista who once claimed he was merely “bringing temperatures down and logic back together” in Kurdistan oil negotiations has a different mandate now. He holds the purse. And in Baghdad, the purse is the power.
https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20260628-the-banker-of-baghdad-how-tom-barrack-plans-to-starve-irans-militia-machine/
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US seeks to reassure Gulf states over Iran deal
CON COUGHLIN
June 28, 2026
While US President Donald Trump has indulged in his usual hyperbole to describe the US-Iran deal as achieving “everything we set out to accomplish,” Gulf leaders are far more circumspect about the likely implications, especially what it means for freedom of navigation through the Strait of Hormuz and Iran’s nuclear ambitions.
There is a widely held view among Arab Gulf leaders that the deal broadly favors Iran and there are concerns that the excessive concessions Trump made to secure the deal will ultimately help strengthen Tehran and reshape the region’s security balance and oil flows.
The most immediate concern for Gulf leaders is the future status of the Strait of Hormuz. Trump insisted that, as part of the deal negotiated with Iran, the vital supply route would be fully reopened after both Iran and the US agreed to lift their respective blockades. But Iran has said it retains the right to charge fees for commercial shipping passing through the strait to recuperate the cost to rebuild what the US and other involved players destroyed during their war on the country.
In an attempt to reassure Washington’s Gulf allies, Trump said tolls on ships sailing in the Strait of Hormuz would be a red line issue for the US in the negotiations with Iran, which are due to take place while the current 60-day ceasefire remains in place. And in the first visit by an American Cabinet member to the Gulf since the US launched the war against Iran in February, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio sought to assure Gulf officials that the proposed deal was not overly favorable to Iran while visiting the UAE, Kuwait and Bahrain.
“We’re not going to do anything that undermines the security of our allies, our long-standing allies in the region,” he told reporters in Kuwait. Speaking in Kuwait City, Rubio insisted the agreement was “going to be completely aligned with our partners in the Gulf … If Iran wants to make a good, real deal, the United States is open to it. If they’re not, then of course the president has options,” Rubio told reporters, adding that negotiators were likely to meet again in Switzerland before the end of the month.
The other area of major concern for Gulf leaders regards Iran’s nuclear ambitions and the fate of the estimated 400 kg of weapons-grade enriched uranium that Tehran acquired prior to the outbreak of hostilities. While Trump continues to insist that Iran, as part of the memorandum, has agreed to dilute the strength of the uranium and agree to nuclear inspections, Iran continues to insist that it has so far not made any concessions in the negotiations to date.
This has led to a very public dispute between the US and Iran over the issue of UN nuclear inspectors for the International Atomic Energy Agency visiting sites in the country. Last week, following talks in Switzerland with Iran’s chief negotiator, US Vice President J.D. Vance said Iran had “agreed to invite IAEA inspectors back into their country.” But the next day, an Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman said there had been “no detailed discussions” and that Iran had no plans to grant IAEA inspectors access to nuclear facilities, which were bombed by the US during a 12-day war between Israel and Iran in June 2025.
Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister Kazem Gharibabadi later wrote on X that access to Iran’s damaged nuclear facilities and its nuclear materials would only be addressed within the framework of a final agreement with the US and after practical steps had been taken to lift all sanctions. “Media noise cannot be used to impose facts on the ground,” he added.
Rafael Grossi, the head of the IAEA, attempted to play down the dispute, insisting that the nuclear watchdog will carry out inspections in Iran under the country’s preliminary peace agreement with the US.
“The inspections will indeed take place,” Grossi told reporters in Japan. “We will be working on the modalities — dates, procedures, places — very soon.” The agreement “explicitly” said that the dilution of Iran’s highly enriched uranium would be carried out under IAEA supervision, he added.
“There’s a war of words here. Some say ‘yes,’ others say ‘no,’” he added. “I can understand political statements. They are part of the reality. But the main thing is that there has been a memorandum of understanding signed by both presidents,” Grossi said. “It says explicitly that the nuclear activities that are going to be carried out, with regard to nuclear material and facilities, will be supervised by the IAEA, in bold letters. This is going to happen.”
Nevertheless, with both the US and Iran continuing to dispute the likely outcome of any final agreement, it is clear that much work remains to be done before either side can say with any confidence that the conflict has finally been resolved.
https://www.arabnews.com/node/2648898
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When Is It Too Late? The NDAA, US-Israel Military Fusion, and the Point of No Return
June 28, 2026
By Michael Leonardi
We are long past the moment when we could pretend the warning signs were not there.
Just as climate scientists have spent decades warning of tipping points — the irreversible collapse of ice sheets, the die-off of coral reefs, the sudden release of methane from thawing permafrost — a different kind of catastrophe has been building in plain sight. This one is political, constitutional, and strategic. And like climate change, it has been enabled by denial, short-term thinking, and the capture of power by entrenched interests.
The latest National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) moving through Congress represents one of those tipping points. In provisions that have received far too little public scrutiny, the bill begins the formal fusion of critical elements of the US and Israeli militaries: shared command structures, integrated technology development, aligned intelligence architectures, and interlocking supply chains.
What was once a close alliance is being quietly transformed into something far more dangerous — a de facto merged military apparatus.
This is the political equivalent of passing 2°C. The feedback loops are strengthening. Once these structures are locked in, unwinding them will require a political effort on the scale of dismantling the entire military-industrial complex.
The Constitutional Surrender
These NDAA provisions do not simply increase aid or coordination. They create mechanisms for the “consolidation” and “alignment” of US and Israeli military planning, technology, and operations across multiple federal agencies. This is the architecture of irreversible entanglement.
The Constitution never envisioned — and does not permit — the quiet merger of American military sovereignty with that of any foreign power. Congress’s power to declare war and appropriate funds, and the President’s role as Commander-in-Chief, are being steadily undermined by institutional arrangements that treat Israel as something closer to a co-equal military partner than an ally.
This is how republics erode: not through dramatic coups, but through the slow surrender of decision-making authority dressed up as strategic necessity.
Meanwhile, Israel continues its genocidal campaign in Gaza (now with over 70,000 dead) and expands aggression into Lebanon. Rather than applying any restraint, the US political class is locking future generations into even deeper complicity.
Window Dressing in New York
Even as this fusion advances, we are treated to the spectacle of “progressive” wins in places like New York elections — a little window dressing to make the system appear responsive.
These occasional victories provide the illusion of democratic vitality while the deeper machinery of power cements a profound forfeiture of sovereignty.
The empire continues its march, largely undisturbed by the occasional progressive headline.
The European Crackdown and the Assault on International Law
This forfeiture is mirrored and reinforced across the Atlantic. Europe, which once pretended to uphold certain standards of human rights and free speech, is undergoing a sweeping clampdown on pro-Palestinian voices. In Britain, Palestine Action activists face terrorism charges for non-violent direct action against arms factories. In Denmark, student encampments have been violently cleared and organizers prosecuted. In Germany, Jewish anti-Zionist voices are smeared and marginalized, as the state codifies Israel as the very embodiment of “Semitism” — a grotesque adulteration of the term that turns criticism of a genocidal state into a punishable thought crime.
In Italy, persecution of activists continues, with draconian laws designed to criminalize dissent and any meaningful criticism of Israel. Palestinian activists remain imprisoned under harsh conditions.
At the heart of this repression is the ongoing assault on UN Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese. The US government has imposed sanctions on her for her principled and unflinching reporting on Israeli crimes — an abhorrent affront to international law and a naked display of colonial impunity. These sanctions, currently held up in court, reveal the true face of Western “justice”: kangaroo courts more interested in protecting the crimes of empire than in upholding international law or delivering real accountability.
Recent UN reports have laid bare the horror in even starker terms. In late June 2026, the UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry concluded that Israeli authorities and security forces have deliberately targeted Palestinian children, resulting in genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes in Gaza, alongside war crimes in the West Bank.
Another UN report documented systemic sexual violence, including rape and gang rape, against Palestinian detainees. Rather than face accountability, Israel responded with its typical monstrous strategy: viciously attacking the United Nations, its commissioners, and investigators — smearing them as “tools of Hamas” and seeking to delegitimize any institution that dares document its crimes.
The broader pattern is unmistakable: the systematic delegitimization of international law and institutions like the United Nations, paired with Israel’s continued complete and total impunity. While the ICJ and ICC issue rulings and arrest warrants, Western powers ensure they remain unenforced. This is not the rule of law — it is the law of the strongest, enforced by those who profit from the carnage.
When Is It Too Late?
As former Congressman Dennis Kucinich warned in Antiwar.com, these NDAA provisions represent nothing less than “the surrender of American sovereignty on the eve of America’s 250th anniversary.”
We are rapidly approaching a point of no return. The feedback loops are already strengthening: the Israel lobby’s stranglehold on both major parties, the massive profits flowing to defense contractors, and a national security state that treats criticism of this relationship as a greater threat than the moral and strategic disaster it has created.
Just as climate denial delayed meaningful action until tipping points became visible and irreversible, political denial about the costs of total allegiance to Israel has brought us to this dangerous threshold. Each new layer of military, technological, and intelligence integration makes genuine independence harder to reclaim.
The American people must demand that Congress reject these provisions. We must insist on reclaiming sovereignty over our own foreign policy and military decisions. Unconditional support for Israel’s wars is not strength — it is surrender.
Because, in regard to both climate change and geopolitics, the question is no longer abstract:
https://www.palestinechronicle.com/when-is-it-too-late-the-ndaa-us-israel-military-fusion-and-the-point-of-no-return/
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When the Shield Breaks: Israel’s Waning Immunity in Washington
June 28, 2026
By Iqbal Jassat
Does it make sense to argue that support for a genocidal regime is limited to an expression of religious ideals espoused by Zionism, and not to the terrorism it undertakes?
This type of faulty logic by front-line allies of Israel, especially within civil society where they operate as “Friends/Supporters of Israel” or various other guises under the umbrella of Zionist organizations, must be called out and challenged as deceitful.
Indeed, the hollowness of such deceptive spin is being exposed and countered as illustrated by growing trends across all sectors of public opinion.
Not confined to street protests or boycott and sanctions campaigns by civil rights movements, to the shock and horror of Zionist lobbyists, reservation and disdain of Israel’s ongoing unlawful behavior carries the seal of the US Presidency.
Dramatic cracks in US/Israel relations playing out in real time in full view of the world provide encouraging signs that rejection of Israel’s impunity emanates from the highest office in America.
It has begun – belatedly so, and with force that has the potential to remove the shield of protection the Zionist regime enjoyed for decades under successive US administrations.
A paradigm shift with colossal negative consequences for Israel if Trump and his team do not buckle under the weight of blackmail and dirty tricks, the settler colonial regime is known for.
“Donald Trump Has Fulfilled My Dream: For Israel to Pay for Its Actions” is the title of Gideon Levy’s latest op-ed in Haaretz, in which he is hopeful that his dream will come true.
“Sometimes dreams do come true. For years, other dinosaurs and I dreamed about international pressure and sanctions as the last way out of the mess. I knew that Israelis would never wake up one morning and say, let’s put an end to all this – to the occupation, to apartheid, to controlling another people – because it’s ugly.
“I knew it simply wouldn’t happen. I thought that what worked wonders against the first apartheid regime, the one in South Africa – sanctions, ostracism and international boycotts that led to its downfall – would also work well against the second apartheid regime, the one practiced in Israel”, writes Levy.
He dreamed about the moment in which Israelis would be forced to recognize that it was impossible to continue this way, with unbelievable arrogance toward the United States and with blatant disregard of the entire world, without paying a price.
“That moment is now dawning. Not a liberal president, but rather the most benighted of all American presidents, is preaching morality to Israel as if he were René Cassin, the French Jewish jurist who co-authored the Universal Declaration of Human Rights”.
JD Vance, the vice president, who is more conservative than the commander-in-chief, is issuing unprecedented warnings.
Along with Trump, the critique both are expressing points to the huge distance between the US and Israel.
“There’s no need to flatten a whole building because a Hezbollah militant might be inside; it’s not smart to assail the US president, Israel’s last friend in the world; Syria would do a better job in Lebanon than Israel; two-thirds of the arms and ammunition protecting Israel are made in and paid for by the US: the voice of reason from Washington”.
According to INSS, which describes itself as “the most valued independent think tank influencing Israel’s long-term national security policy”, one of the foundations of the special relationship between Israel and the United States in recent decades has been broad public sympathy toward Israel, which translated into near-unreserved support within the American political system.
It explains that though this support remained stable and balanced between rising Republican backing and declining support among Democrats, it is no longer the case.
“Since the beginning of the war in Gaza, however, American public support has eroded, a process that gained further momentum during the war in Iran, partly due to the perception that Israel drew the United States into a campaign that many Americans believe does not serve US interests and that has proved costly for the American public”.
The erosion of Israel’s favorable standing in American public opinion is confirmed by a poll by the Pew Research Center, which it conducted during the recent war on Iran, which found that 60% of Americans view Israel unfavorably compared to 53% in 2025 and 42% in 2022.
To be in bed or in step with a regime perpetrating the worst forms of human rights violations, including ethnic cleansing and genocide, is no longer fashionable.
One therefore has no choice but to agree with Levy’s sentiments.
https://www.palestinechronicle.com/when-the-shield-breaks-israels-waning-immunity-in-washington/
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