'Escalation is coming': Middle East on edge as new Israeli-US attack on Iran looms

Neither Iran nor the US feel the need to make concessions, risking a second round of war that is likely to devastate the Gulf

Sean Mathews

Published date: 23 October 2026

https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/escalation-coming-middle-east-edge-new-israeli-us-attack-iran-looms

US diplomats are preparing for embassy evacuations. Israeli fighter jets are conducting sorties on the Iranian border. The mood among Arab and US officials in the region who spoke to Middle East Eye is that it’s a question of when, not if, the US and Israel resume attacking Iran.

With Iran threatening to retaliate by bombing trillions of dollars’ worth of US-linked data centres and AI facilities in the Gulf, along with energy installations and airports, the stage seems set for round two of the war.

“An escalation is coming. Whether it’s before the US midterms or after is not relevant. The purpose of the escalation is,” Aaron David Miller, a former Middle East negotiator for Republican and Democratic US presidents, told MEE.

Direct fighting between the US and Iran largely stopped after the signing of a fragile ceasefire in April, but the two never implemented a 14-point Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) signed in June to advance a settlement.

The agreement was widely seen as giving Iran sweeping concessions that experts say the Trump administration simply cannot stomach.

“There is a foundational gap, galactic in scope, that can’t be bridged. The Iranians are not going to change their position on the Strait of Hormuz, the nuclear issue or the Houthis to the extent that Trump needs in order to spin a win,” Miller said.

Trump's emissaries are laying the ground for a return to fighting. 

“We are going to have to keep working at this to make sure there’s a regime change eventually,” Republican Senator Rick Scott, a key Trump ally, said in an interview with Fox on Thursday.

Mike Waltz, Trump's ambassador to the United Nations, told The Financial Times that the White House is ready for a prolonged conflict.

"The president and the US Navy can maintain this blockade [on Iranian ports] for the foreseeable future,” he said in an interview released on Friday. 

A war that started over what the US claimed to be strikes aimed at crippling Iran’s nuclear programme has drifted into an all-encompassing battle over who calls the shots in the Middle East.

For example, Iran wants to impose fees on vessels in the Strait of Hormuz. Iran and the US have conducted tit-for-tat strikes in the waterway. The US has imposed a blockade against Iran that is devastating its economy, while Iran is attacking vessels there, sending shipping rates soaring.

At least 27 ships have been attacked this month alone, the highest number since March.

The tensions between the two have also contributed to the collapse of a ceasefire in Yemen, where fighting between the Iran-aligned Houthis and Saudi-backed internationally recognised government is raging.

Experts say a return to war may be inevitable because the status quo suits neither the Trump administration nor Tehran, but neither side feels weak enough to make concessions.

'US watches oil volumes, Iran watches the price'

Iran and Trump are both watching the oil market and gleaning different lessons from it, Gregory Brew, an expert on energy and Iran at Eurasia Group, a geopolitical consultancy, told MEE.

This week, energy firm Kpler published data showing that Middle East oil and product exports reached pre-Iran war levels last week. Some experts cautioned that the data is skewed towards a burst in activity, but more oil is coming out of the region from US allies, while Iran’s exports are choked by the US blockade.

Saudi Arabia is exporting oil via the Red Sea, bypassing the Houthis, who control the Bab al-Mandab, with a pipeline to the Mediterranean. Meanwhile, Gulf states inside the Strait of Hormuz are using a shuttle service by which state-owned boats bring oil to larger tankers waiting in the Gulf of Oman. The US says its navy is escorting the vessels, but at a high cost.

The rise in volumes has not lowered the price. Brent, the international benchmark, is up a whopping 43 percent since the MoU was signed with Iran. Diesel prices are up around 35 percent, while gasoline is up less than 10 percent.

No one doubts that Iran’s economy is hurting. Inflation in September was up a staggering 90 percent, but Brew said that Iran’s rulers believe they can endure another round of fighting while the Trump administration will fold.

“If the US is watching volumes in Hormuz, the Iranians are watching price. And they are pretty confident they can withstand pressure over a longer period of time than Trump can,” Brew, at Eurasia Group, said.

“In a context where the US and Israel are bombing Iran again directly, we are certain to see more aggressive Iranian strikes on energy infrastructure. The US will also have fewer resources to manage this escort system,” he said.

"Energy prices will stay elevated," he added. 

'Devastating for the Gulf'

Before the US and Israel attacked Iran in February, there was a lobbying dash from some Gulf states to stop it. During the war, Saudi Arabia and the UAE joined the US in striking Iran, but then Riyadh pivoted to supporting mediation. Reuters reported that the UAE paid Iran to stop attacking it.

In round two, experts say, the Gulf will struggle to remain strategically relevant, although it will be on the front lines of Iran’s reprisals. The Gulf states faced thousands of drone and missile attacks from Iran after the US and Israel’s February attack.

“From the Gulf perspective, this is going to be devastating,” Abdullah Baabood, an Omani academic and international relations expert, said. “Already we see serious economic problems in the Gulf.”

Asharq Bloomberg reported Bahrain is expected to receive a bailout led by the UAE to shore up its collapsing foreign currency reserves. Qatar’s economy shrank 15 percent year-on-year. The IMF expects the UAE’s economy to shrink four percent. Saudi Arabia has had to cancel a prominent investment conference because of Houthi attacks.

“The Gulf is hostage to a crisis that has no end,” Baabood said. “Qatar is trying to mediate. Oman has been pushed aside by Trump. The UAE, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia are very quiet. They just don’t know what to do. They can’t read Trump.”

“Other than Israel, no one has real interest in a serious continuation of the war,” Marwan Muasher, a former Jordanian foreign minister and vice president for studies at Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, told MEE.

The expectations of a return to war come against the backdrop of Israeli general elections next week. In his endorsement of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Trump raised the stakes of fresh strikes, saying he wanted help to “finish the job” against Iran “unless they change their ways rapidly”.

Experts say that given the war’s popularity in Israel, a return to fighting could help Netanyahu before the vote, or help him stay on as prime minister if the outcome of elections is indecisive.

Baabood said that no one doubts Israel and the US’s ability to “devastate” Iran’s infrastructure, but that the Islamic Republic can still do “significant” damage to the Gulf.

In an interview with Dropsite News this week, Major General Mohsen Rezaei, the secretary of Iran's Supreme National Security Council, left little doubt that Iran would attack Gulf energy sites if the US resumes the war. 

“If the US strategy is to prolong the war while using neighbouring countries’ energy infrastructure to offset the pressure arising from Hormuz and maintain the blockade of Iran, those governments should not assume they can participate in economic warfare against Iran without putting themselves at risk,” he said. 

Where is the pain for Donald Trump?

One of the key questions in a second round of fighting is how well the Gulf states can defend against Iranian attacks that may spike energy prices further.

A US Inspector General’s report in September said that the US faces "strategic inventory shortfalls” in key munitions. MEE reported in March that the US was already short of interceptors. That was before weeks of high-intensity fighting in the region. The Trump administration has repeatedly denied being short of munitions.

The Gulf states' vulnerability to Iranian drones has been crystallised by strikes from the Houthis on Saudi Arabia in recent weeks.

The kingdom is reeling under the weight of Houthi attacks which have repeatedly targeted its airports and high-profile energy sites. At least 21 people have been killed in Houthi attacks on Saudi airports since the start of October, including religious pilgrims, according to the kingdom’s authorities. An attack attributed to militias in Iraq aligned with Iran hit the kingdom’s East-West Pipeline in September.

"Continuing the war will only bring more difficulties to countries in the Gulf, and it’s clear it will not result in regime change in Iran. Meanwhile, Trump is suffering domestically because of rising fuel and food prices” in the US, Muasher told MEE. 

But Miller, now a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, said that Trump may feel less restraint than he is given credit for, particularly given his anger at Iran for stymying his plans for a quick victory earlier this year. 

“There is no cost-benefit analysis because Donald Trump is going to be OK. He may lose the House and maybe the Senate in midterms, but he will be OK. His family will be OK. He will build his presidential library,” Miller said.

“Trump's urgency to end this thing is not evident. There is no accountability. Where is the pain for Donald Trump?”

Iran bolsters defenses along Iraqi Kurdistan border amid threat of attacks by US-backed separatists

Iran is facing attacks from Kurdish and Baloch separatists fighting as part of Washington's effort to topple the government of the Islamic Republic

News Desk

OCT 22, 2026

https://thecradle.co/articles/iran-bolsters-defenses-along-iraqi-kurdistan-border-amid-threat-of-attacks-by-us-backed-separatists

Iran has deployed artillery and heavy weaponry to Kurdish areas in the west of the country amid growing fears of a renewed US-Israeli assault and ongoing attacks on Iranian security forces by Kurdish and Baloch separatist groups.

The Kurdistan Human Rights Network (KHRN) reported Wednesday that Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) has dispatched military convoys carrying heavy and semi-heavy weapons to several cities in the Kurdish region in Iran's northwest, including Sanandaj, Kamyaran, Sarvabad, Marivan, and Baneh.

An informed source told KHRN that “hundreds of IRGC special forces, believed to be members of the entity's Saberin Unit, have been dispatched over the past few weeks in military convoys to areas surrounding villages on the slopes of Mount Shaho in Kamyaran County.”

The military buildup comes amid reports that the US and Israel have drafted plans for a renewed assault on Iran's nuclear, energy, and defense infrastructure after the November midterm elections in a new bid to force Tehran to negotiate on less favorable terms.

The US continues to impose a naval blockade on Iran, straining the country's economy and harming its ability to export oil.

Washington has dispatched the USS Theodore Roosevelt carrier strike group, the USS Makin Island amphibious group, and some 9,000 additional troops to West Asia, US officials revealed on 1 October, reinforcing roughly 50,000 US troops already stationed across the region.

For its part, Iran continues to exert control over the Strait of Hormuz, limiting Gulf oil exports to world markets and driving up energy prices.

In addition to deploying heavy weapons, the IRGC has mobilized thousands of Kurdish fighters to the northwest regions to counter potential cross-border attacks by Kurdish opposition groups based in the Kurdish autonomous region of Iraq.

Numerous reports have emerged since the start of the war on Iran in February that the US and Israel wish to use Iranian Kurdish separatists as part of their broader effort at regime change in Tehran.

On Monday, the Kurdistan Free Life Party (PJAK), an Iranian Kurdish separatist group, announced that the IRGC had targeted its bases in the mountainous and forested areas of Marivan in Kurdistan Province the previous day with suicide drones, mortar shells, and heavy weapons.

On Wednesday, the IRGC targeted PJAK bases near Mount Harir in the Iraqi Kurdistan region with Hadid-110 drones.

Iran is also facing attacks from Baloch separatist groups in Sistan-Baluchistan Province in the country's southeast.  

Iranian security forces clashed with members of the Jaish al-Adl group in Zahedan County on 13 October, killing several militants following the launch of an operation in the area.

The day before, gunmen attacked a police station in Sistan and Baluchistan province, resulting in heavy fighting.

Days earlier, over a dozen Iranian military and law enforcement personnel were killed in a series of attacks in the province, which borders Pakistan and Afghanistan and is populated mainly by Iran's ethnic Baloch and Sunni Muslim communities. 

Jaish al-Adl was heavily involved in the violent attacks against security forces during the Mossad-backed riots early this year.

Another militant Baloch group, the People's Fighters Front (PFF), has claimed responsibility for recent attacks that took place in Nikshahr, Nusratabad, and Jalaq.

PFF forces attacked a police headquarters using mines, RPG rockets, and various weapons, according to Haalvsh, a monitoring group. Many of these separatist groups are said to receive direct backing from the US as well as from Israel.

The War Tehran Believes Is Coming

Iran believes the U.S. and Israel may strike before the midterms. Top security official Gen. Mohsen Rezaei tells Drop Site Iran has new targets in its sights.

Jeremy Scahill, Peiman Salehi, and Ryan Grim

https://www.dropsitenews.com/p/iran-war-israel-netanyahu-trump-hormuz-mohsen-rezaei

The U.S. and Israel are preparing to resume attacks on Iran, according to senior Iranian officials and a U.S. official, and may even launch operations before next week’s Israeli elections. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is fighting for his political life, and the Israeli press is rife with reports that he is looking for a way to exploit the Iran standoff to his advantage. In the U.S., President Donald Trump’s approval ratings are at historic lows, and the midterm elections are less than two weeks away.

Iran’s top security official, Gen. Mohsen Rezaei, the Secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council and personal representative of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei, told Drop Site that, in the event of an attack, Iran still has capacity to continue launching missiles and drones at various U.S. assets across the region in retaliation and that it would expand its range of targets.

“If the question is whether Iran still has the ability to continue missile and drone operations, the answer is yes,” Rezaei said in an exclusive written interview. “The United States has valuable assets in the region. In the event of war, cables, data centers and artificial intelligence facilities could also come within range. If the conflict begins again, we will have a broader plan.”

“Everyone must understand that action against Iran carries a cost,” he added. “If diplomacy can bring about that understanding, we prefer diplomacy. But if the war continues, Iran has the tools it needs to keep responding.”

A senior Iranian official told Drop Site that Tehran’s current internal intelligence assessment indicates a high likelihood that large-scale bombing may even begin before Tuesday’s Israeli elections. “Trump has sat on Iran’s proposed package for ending the war, and negotiations have stalled,” said the official, who is not authorized to speak publicly. “Contrary to the show he is putting on, Trump has no clear or actionable plan for [ending] the war with Iran. This has been the cause of a diplomatic deadlock.” He warned that Iran should not be underestimated, claiming, “Should another war against Iran begin, given our knowledge of the patterns of American force deployment in the countries of the region, their casualty figures will be ten times higher.”

The White House denied it was planning to strike Iran in the next two weeks. “The United States will not be attacking Iran at any time prior to the midterm elections,” White House Principal Deputy Press Secretary Anna Kelly said in a statement to Drop Site.

Tehran believes Israel would be tasked with firing the first shots, the senior Iranian official said, aimed at “destroying Iran’s newly deployed air defense systems, in order to open the path for American bombers.” The U.S., he said, would likely focus on attacking Iran’s southern defense systems along the Strait of Hormuz and potentially attempt to seize one of the islands off the Iranian mainland after heavy bombing. Trump, he said, is continuing his quest for a notable action that he can use to proclaim victory, adding that Iran believes he may seek to launch a “token” attack on one of Iran’s underground nuclear sites, such as Pickaxe Mountain, and subsequently portray it as a definitive blow. “Trump is flat-out lying about Iran’s nuclear program,” the official said.

A U.S. official confirmed to Drop Site that military assets are being moved rapidly into place in preparation for an expected green light from Trump. Among the American officials pushing for renewed attacks is U.S. Central Command chief Gen. Bradley Cooper, the official said. “CENTCOM is putting all the pieces into place to renew major combat operations,” added the official, who is not authorized to discuss war plans. He was skeptical the war would resume before the Israeli elections, but conceded, “We did start Epic Fury without all our assets in place.”

The USS Theodore Roosevelt carrier and the 13th Marine Expeditionary Unit are heading to the Middle East, bringing approximately 10,000 additional sailors and Marines to the region. The Roosevelt, which departed Japan on Monday, could reach the region by the end of next week ahead of its initially expected deployment slated for late November. It will join the USS George H.W. Bush and USS George Washington, both currently in the Arabian Sea.

While the U.S. official said the likelihood of new U.S.-Israeli attacks was high, he acknowledged that Trump has gone to the brink of military action and pulled back more times than is publicly known. “Trump has backed off major combat operations against Iran or the Houthis seven times since July,” the U.S. official said, referring to Ansarallah, who launched a major offensive against Saudi-backed groups in Yemen. “At the last minute, he calls it off.”

Netanyahu, who is behind in the polls, claimed Wednesday without evidence that Iran was actively working on the development of a nuclear weapon and said he had ordered the Israeli military to prepare for preemptive action. “The Iranian regime still has not learned its lesson. Mojtaba Khamenei decided to follow in his father’s footsteps. He has taken off the safety, and Iran is once again trying to develop its weapons of death,” Netanyahu said. “There is only one way to remove this threat once and for all, to topple the regime in Iran, and that is my directive to the IDF, the Mossad and the security agencies.”

Analysts say that Trump is continuing to pursue an elusive clean victory narrative, while Netanyahu understands this may be his last chance at continuing the war he has agitated for his entire political career.

“This is Netanyahu’s last chance to do so. And he’s not going to leave until he turns every stone to be able to achieve it. Particularly knowing that either his career is going to end or the United States is going to go in a direction in which this no longer will be an option,” said Trita Parsi, a leading Iran expert and the executive Vice President of the Quincy Institute. “Trump, I suspect, has already made a decision that he’s going to go to war,” he added. “The Israelis have been very successful playing to his psychology, which is that he’s willing to take massive risks as long as he has the belief that it can get him a victory so that he avoids accepting defeat, which is so crucial for him. But it is a massive miscalculation that will make the situation 100 times worse.”

The intersection of Trump’s and Netanyahu’s political interests increases the chances that the war will resume, argues former senior U.S. Iran negotiator Robert Malley. “Netanyahu may want a longer campaign with broader objectives. Trump may want something shorter that he could quickly get out of. The overlap between the two might well be an intensive campaign that doesn’t last too long,” said Malley, a key figure in brokering the 2015 Iran nuclear deal. “President Trump may want a victory lap and an exit ramp. But as has been proven time and time again, the exit is not decided by him alone,” said Malley, who currently directs the Middle East Program at the International Crisis Group. “There is every reason to believe the Iranians are preparing all kinds of steps, whether by them or by their regional partners, whether in or out of theater, to ensure that however much he wants a victory lap and an exit ramp, he is deprived of both.”

Gen. Rezaei is one of the most prominent military figures in modern Iranian history. A former commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, he was tapped to serve as the top military advisor to Khamenei in August. His comments are often viewed as reflecting the consensus at the top of Iran’s power structure. He told Drop Site that despite U.S. claims to have “obliterated” or “decimated” Iran’s military infrastructure, Iran spent decades preparing for a broader war waged by the U.S.

“Iran has invested for years in building redundancy into these capabilities: dispersed production, underground facilities, different launch systems and the ability to repair damage and replace losses,” Rezaei told Drop Site. “More importantly, you should not assess our capacity solely by asking how many missiles remain in storage. In a prolonged war, the central question is whether a country can sustain a continuous cycle of production, deployment and response. We have shown that, even months after the war began, we can still impose costs on the other side.”

Rezaei also indicated that Tehran would deploy new capabilities in its retaliatory response. “We did not deploy all our capabilities in the previous stages. We brought more capabilities into operation in proportion to the intensity of the war, and we are also prepared for the next stage,” Rezaei said.

During the war, Iran carried out at least 135 drone and missile strikes on 84 critical infrastructure sites across seven countries—Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Iraq, Qatar, Kuwait, Oman, and Bahrain, according to a Reuters investigation. While Gulf governments repeatedly attributed the damage to falling debris from intercepted Iranian missiles and drones, the investigation found evidence of deliberate, precision strikes targeting critical equipment. The attacks demonstrated “precision, targeting expertise, and patience,” Ryan Stevens, a former U.S. Marine Corps special operations airstrike coordinator, told Reuters.

Echoing Rezaei’s warning about communications infrastructure, Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps spokesperson, Hossein Mohebi, also threatened to target internet cables passing through the Strait of Hormuz if the U.S. launched renewed attacks. Mohebi further warned Monday that another U.S. military operation would trigger a global energy crisis. “If America takes a new action—even a limited one—the world will face a serious energy crisis,” he told the Tehran Times.

Rezaei did not rule out targeting energy infrastructure in Gulf states as a retaliatory measure. “If the U.S. strategy is to prolong the war while using neighboring countries’ energy infrastructure to offset the pressure arising from Hormuz and maintain the blockade of Iran, those governments should not assume they can participate in economic warfare against Iran without putting themselves at risk,” he said. “The message is not that Iran wants to destroy the Persian Gulf’s energy system. The message is that there can be no arrangement in which Iran’s economic lifelines come under attack while the economic architecture enabling those attacks is considered untouched and immune.”

The senior Iranian official said Trump’s approach to Iran has been focused on short-term objectives that are often disconnected from geopolitical realities or core U.S. interests, likening him to a day trader. “The wartime secrecy surrounding military operations has given him and his family exclusive and extraordinary access to information regarding forthcoming actions and the state of the markets—access that benefits only those closest to him,” he said. “Perpetuating the current situation will carry strategic consequences, not least that the energy markets will not find calm for the next three years. The continuation of this war has shifted the dynamics of relations in Iran’s favor, as the littoral states of the Persian Gulf are rapidly redefining their relationship with Iran, having become convinced that the U.S. military is incapable of defending its own bases, this at a time when those same states had expected America to defend their countries.”

Iranian officials have said repeatedly that Iran will not back away from its red lines in any negotiations, consistently pointing to Tehran’s acceptance of the June 17 Memorandum of Understanding, which was swiftly violated by the U.S., leading to a breakdown in the diplomatic process in early July.

Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said he presented a “Seven-Day Plan” to the U.S. through mediators at last month’s UN General Assembly, outlining steps for an end to the war and the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz. “Under this proposal, the U.S. would not be expected to do anything that it has not already agreed to,” Araghchi wrote in an op-ed for the Financial Times on Wednesday. He said the framework’s steps and outcome were clear: “The Strait would reopen on Day 6, with the resumption of talks for a final deal commencing on Day 7.” Araghchi claimed in an interview with Iraqi television that the U.S. had accepted the seven-day proposal but requested the addition of a “few more clauses,” adding that diplomatic contacts through mediators remain ongoing.

“As President Trump stated, Iran is in very bad condition, both economically and militarily, and the blockade will remain in full force and effect, with oil flowing in record numbers of barrels through the Hormuz Strait,” Kelly told Drop Site in a statement.

Rezaei told Drop Site that Iran’s negotiating strategy has evolved as a result of Trump’s unreliability. “We will not return to our previous approach to diplomacy, but we will not abandon diplomacy either. We have presented seven new conditions through intermediaries. Until those conditions are fulfilled, Iran will neither reopen the strait nor return to negotiations,” Rezaei said. “The first memorandum failed because the commitments were implemented in the wrong order. We opened the strait and maritime traffic resumed, but the other side’s political and economic commitments were not implemented in a way that could sustain the agreement. Once the United States obtained what it immediately needed, the balance of leverage shifted. That experience matters to us.

“If Washington honors its commitments, there is a path to reopening the Strait of Hormuz and continuing diplomacy,” he continued. “But Iran will not first give up the leverage that brought the other side to the negotiating table and then wait to see whether its promises are fulfilled.”

Parsi said that Iran is not eager to resume the war but has recognized that the diplomatic track has been treated by the U.S. as an ultimatum operation masquerading as negotiations. “Their conclusion—based on extensive experience with Trump now—is that he simply won’t back off unless his policy is reaching a cost to him that is intolerable. And that it’s not concessions or face-saving exits that will get Trump to back off, but simply that the policy becomes too costly.”

Attacks on ships in and around the Strait of Hormuz have surged to a record high in recent weeks, with more than two dozen vessels reporting attacks so far in October, according to data released Friday by the UK Maritime Trade Operations agency. The agency said the actual number was likely far higher, as the “majority of vessels attacked” were refusing to report incidents.

The IRGC reported further attacks over the weekend and into Tuesday, including a supertanker carrying two million barrels of oil struck Saturday, another tanker hit Sunday, and two tankers that it said caught fire Tuesday after striking naval mines south of the Strait. Iran says it is targeting vessels violating its maritime restrictions or using unauthorized shipping routes.

“Over the past two or three months, we have struck an average of five vessels belonging to these smugglers every night,” Rezaei said. “Smuggling is taking place along the southern edge of the strait at enormous cost and with considerable risk. Trump then says the Strait of Hormuz is open.”

Despite the escalating attacks, oil exports from the Middle East appear to have rebounded past prewar levels, primarily through tanker-to-tanker transfers in the Gulf of Oman, and expanded use of Saudi and Emirati pipelines bypassing the Strait of Hormuz. However, oil prices remain high, hovering well above $100 per barrel of Brent crude amid fears of the ongoing attacks and diminishing U.S. fuel stockpiles. “The current price of oil reflects the reality,” Rezaei said.

“The management of Hormuz is a national asset for us, and this is not simply about collecting tolls. The main issue is security,” he continued. “Charges can also be collected for security, insurance and environmental costs, but the importance of managing the strait goes far beyond the revenue it generates,” he said. “We will continue managing it to maintain peace and security in the region, and we will not back down from this position.”

The senior Iranian official said that the standoff over the Strait of Hormuz “has become the new pretext—the nuclear issue, previously, was a lie upon which the war was launched—for the United States to prolong the war.” Trump, he charged, “has fallen into the trap of prolonging what was advertised as the shortest of wars.” A “war of attrition,” he said, “will work to Iran’s advantage and to America’s detriment.”

The war has had a devastating impact on Iran’s economy. As part of its escalation over the summer, the U.S. reimposed a blockade on Iran’s southern ports and launched a new campaign of sanctions dubbed Operation Economic Outcast. The Iranian rial subsequently collapsed, falling to record lows, making imports dramatically more expensive and imposing even more scarcity on people in Iran.

“Iran will suffer from a prolonged blockade; anyone who says otherwise is not being realistic. Families will bear the costs, investment will suffer, and sustaining some sectors of the economy will become more difficult. But economic pain and strategic collapse are not the same thing,” Rezaei said. “Washington has repeatedly made the mistake of assuming that, if it can make life inside Iran difficult enough, Iran’s political system will consequently accept America’s strategic demands. These are two different calculations.”

“Our goal is not to make it to 2029. Our goal is to end the war on terms that reduce the likelihood of another war.”

Netanyahu Says He Discussed ‘Eliminating’ the Iranian Government With Trump

by Dave DeCamp | October 20, 2026

https://news.antiwar.com/2026/10/20/netanyahu-says-he-discussed-eliminating-the-iranian-government-with-trump/

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Tuesday that Israel was “committed” to “eliminating” the Iranian government and that he spoke about the idea in his recent conversation with President Trump.

According to The Times of Israel, Netanyahu made the comments at the Tel Hai University in Kiryat Shmona near Israel’s border with Lebanon. “I am committed to finishing the job,” he said, referring to Israel’s war in Lebanon.

“Finishing the job means bringing down the terrorist regime in Iran. It is the head of this poisonous octopus. You cut it off, and it will fall. We will also have peace with Lebanon,” he said. “We must complete the elimination of the Iranian regime — that is the primary objective. I have spoken about this with President Trump more than once, including the day before yesterday.”

A day earlier, Netanyahu released part of a phone call he had with President Trump on Sunday, where he thanked the US leader for endorsing him in the upcoming Israeli elections. In Trump’s endorsement message, he suggested that the US may have to “finish the job” against Iran without the help of Israel if Netanyahu doesn’t remain prime minister.

In his conversation with Trump, Netanyahu said that the US and Israel have a “job to finish,” and his comments on Tuesday suggest that means regime change.

US Secretary of War Pete Hegseth made an unannounced visit to Israel on Monday and met with Netanyahu. The US and Israel have been coordinating closely in the lead-up to the Israeli elections and the US midterm elections, and according to recent reporting from Axios, they have been discussing the possibility of resuming the full-scale bombing campaign against Iran.

Netanyahu map shows RSF 'friendly' to Israel and UAE, backing for separatist movements

Israeli leader broke the Middle East into competing blocks in new security presentation showing Ethiopia and Greece as 'friendly' states

MEE staff

Published date: 19 October 2026

https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/netanyahu-map-shows-rsf-friendly-israel-and-uae-backing-separatist-movements

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu unveiled a map of the wider Middle East showing his country and the UAE aligned with a paramilitary in Sudan, accused of committing genocide, and separatists in Libya, Yemen and Somaliland.

The map, which carried the logo of Germany's Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung Institute, will not surprise regional watchers, but it could prove awkward for some of Israel’s regional partners and cement suspicions among Arab states.

Israel and the UAE were shown as part of a “Hexagon Alliance”. The map showed Greece, Ethiopia and parts of India aligned with them. But it also showed a swath of southwestern Sudan as friendly to the UAE and Israel.

The Rapid Support Forces (RSF) control southwestern Sudan. United Nations experts and dozens of media reports, including from Middle East Eye, have revealed extensive Emirati support for the Sudanese paramilitary, which is led by former Janjaweed leader Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo and has been widely accused of committing genocide in Darfur. The UAE has officially denied backing the RSF.

The map was part of Netanyahu’s unveiling on Sunday of a new security doctrine that emphasises preemptive strikes and the establishment of "buffer zones" on Israel’s borders.

“The War of Redemption necessitated an upgrade of fundamental principles within the traditional national security doctrine, among them: giving priority to prevention and offense over containment and defense, including launching preemptive strikes to thwart evolving threats; strengthening home front defense against new threats; cementing Israel's status as a regional power,” Netanyahu’s office said in a statement on Sunday.

“Opportunities have been created for forging new alliances in our region and beyond,” the statement added.

'Sunni Diamond Alliance'

The map Netanyahu shared shows Israel aligned with secessionist groups while framing its oldest Arab treaty partners as countries not considered friendly to Israel. The map did not show Egypt and Jordan as aligned with Israel.

Instead, it marked Egypt as part of a “Sunni diamond alliance” with Pakistan, Turkey, and Saudi Arabia; it showed Jordan, whose peace treaty with Israel dates back to 1994, as “friendly” to the alliance.

Netanyahu’s public presentation is likely to raise concerns among critics about Israel’s support for secessionist groups and the partition of fragile states. He showed a government in eastern Libya controlled by Khalifa Haftar to be aligned with Israel. 

Yemen's Southern Transitional Council, a UAE-backed separatist movement that dissolved in January 2026 and re-emerged as the Transitional Council of South Arabia, was also shown on the map as being friendly towards Israel and the UAE

Israel became the first country to recognise Somaliland earlier this year. Somaliland is a breakaway republic of Somalia where Israel and the UAE have been expanding their military presence, according to multiple media reports.

Netanyahu’s map showed how Israel sees its security as part of a broader region extending well beyond the Arab world.

He showed Greece and Ethiopia as “friendly” states. The latter is on the verge of a full-scale war with Eritrea, where Israel has long coveted a Red Sea military base, MEE has reported.

Netanyahu's map also reaffirmed the longstanding ties between Hezbollah, the Houthis and Iran as part of an "Axis of Resistance". 

The Israel Lobby’s Changing Fortunes

A follow-up to Mearsheimer and Walt shows a project in flux.

Scott McConnell

Oct 17, 2026

https://www.theamericanconservative.com/the-israel-lobbys-changing-fortunes/

A natural question to ask about Eli Clifton and Ian Lustick’s Israel’s Lobby is how it differs from the magisterial work of similar name published by John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt nearly 20 years ago. Certainly its entry into the American debate is less dramatic: Mearsheimer and Walt’s work had behind it the force of taboo-breaking, taking on a subject which had been more whispered about than debated for two generations. Despite a massive campaign to denigrate their work by the lobby’s many allies in the mainstream media (I believe The American Conservative was the only American print publication to give it a positive review), Mearsheimer and Walt’s book became not only a best-seller but a genuine international publishing sensation. 

Though it wasn’t obvious at the time, Mearsheimer and Walt’s book appeared at a moment when there was still a clear open path towards a moderate future, sanctioned by a strong international consensus. This was true both for the American-Israeli relationship (they urged that America treat Israel like a normal country, while maintaining a moral commitment to defend it) and the Israeli–Palestinian conflict (they favored a two-state solution). The Iraq War, pushed relentlessly by Benjamin Netanhayu and other Israeli officials, and in great part the project of small group of passionately pro-Israel neoconservatives in American journalism and government, was already in the rearview mirror. The two authors cheered the birth of new liberal Zionist institutions like J Street, created to encourage United States support for a more moderate Israel at peace with its neighbors. 

Clifton and Lustick’s impressive follow-up does not, to say the least,  arrive at such a propitious time. Lustick is an accomplished Ivy-League political scientist who has produced important work on how ethnically driven conflicts can be managed or resolved. Clifton is a Quincy Institute co-founder and journalist who belongs to the cohort of American millennials who grew up when it was no longer outlandish to question the moral correctness of Zionism. Their book arrives as an erratic American president has started, at Israel’s behest, a war against the largest and most highly educated country in the Mideast, and oscillates between uttering threats of genocide and claims that the war is already won. On the home front it has become almost shockingly commonplace for entertainers and college students alike to shout slogans that call implicitly or explicitly for the destruction of Israel, something unimaginable 20 years ago.  Meanwhile Israel, in response to the Hamas attack of October 7, 2023, has conducted a brutal campaign against Gaza’s defenseless civilians that is often described as a genocide and is indisputably a project of ethnic cleansing. Israel’s lobby today is both similar and quite different from the one Walt and Mearsheimer described. Is it stronger or weaker? Some of both certainly, and while it may be weaker overall, it is clearly dangerous the way all wounded creatures are. 

Of the many elements which have changed since 2007, three stand out. The main institutions of the lobby, always wealthy relative to their opponents and competitors, are far richer. Israel itself has changed. Its commitment to peace with the Palestinians, if in the past more advertised than actual, has been completely submerged; no Israeli leader of consequence even pretends to want a settlement with the people who inhabit the land Israel now controls, and the country’s policy of seeking outright military domination of its entire region, though challenged by many Israeli former officials and scholars, faces no substantial political opposition. And finally, in a point emphasized by Clifton and Lustick, its lobby has more or less abandoned efforts to explain or justify Israeli policies, to convince Americans of their necessity and appropriateness. Instead increasingly Israel’s supporters in the United States seek to conflate any opposition to Israel and American support for it with antisemitism. 

That is to say, to challenge seriously  Washington’s special relationship with Israel is presented as a major moral failing, the kind of mark which would place one beyond the pale of respectable discourse. And while these three developments make Israel as influential as ever in  Washington and particularly within the Trump administration, its actual popularity among voters, particularly among Democrats and the young of both parties, has sunk like a stone.  

In a key section, the authors document how in the last generation America has seen  the greater concentration of wealth in the hands of the super-rich. The percentage share of national wealth held by the top 0.1 percent rose by two-thirds. Meanwhile, two court decisions from 2010 have made it much easier for billionaires to buy national policies to their liking. 

As pro-Israel think tank and advocacy money rose, so did Israel-related campaign and advocacy group contributions. When Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission was decided in 2010, no one anticipated it would weigh critically on American Mideast policy. The decision struck down limitations on campaign spending by unions and corporations, and in conjunction with the consequences of the SpeechNow.org v. FEC decision, opened the gates for increased spending by the super rich. Individual campaign spending limitations, $1,000 until 2003, later raised to roughly $3,000, suddenly became almost irrelevant as ultra wealthy individual donors began to dispense virtually unlimited funds to support or oppose  candidates through so-called superPACs. 

In principle this enhanced capacity of billionaires to buy policies of their choosing was available to anyone; in practice those passionate about supporting Israel used it the most effectively. Sheldon and Miriam Adelson, virtually unknown before 2012, became the most important donors in the Republican Party. They spent more than $100 million on mostly losing candidates in 2012, but “forced the relatively niche issue of Israel into the Republican primary and general election discourse and normalized the idea of political megadonors across party lines, no longer restricted by campaign finance laws, largely underwriting campaigns.” 

It wasn’t just the Adelsons of course; scores of Israel-First billionaires joined them with more power to shape American policy than ever before. As Clifton and Lustick put it, “These donors form the backbone of an Israel First movement which crosses party lines…. The donors are funding both the election of politicians as well as shaping the world view of these same elected officials, creating an echo chamber of pro-Israel talking points and policy recommendations for politicians already indebted to pro-Israel donors.” To give a sense of the rising volume of the echo chamber, the authors track the exponential rise in the budgets of pro-Israel advocacy groups. AIPAC had $19.5 million in assets in 2000, nine times that amount in 2023. Similar advances were made by the Washington Institute for Mideast Policy and the Jewish Institute for National Security of America. The Foundation for Defense of Democracies, the most influential Beltway group pushing for war with Iran, increased its revenues 16-fold from 2011 to 2022. 

As its American lobby has grown richer, Israel too has changed considerably. Until the last 15 years, most Israeli leaders at least paid lip-service to making a durable peace with the Palestinians, and some believed peace as necessary for Israel’s own flourishing. But no Israeli prime minister since Ehud Olmert has breathed a word about trying to accommodate Palestinian national aspirations. The authors consider this a profound shift; Israel, they claim with a borrowed phrase from an Israeli political scientist, has become a “crazy state,” increasingly dismissive of the legitimate interests and opinions of other countries. 

Along the way they  provide an unexpected, quite complimentary digression about  Vladimir Jabotinsky, an early right-wing Zionist leader and popularizer of the so-called Iron Wall strategy; its point was to win battles so forcefully as make Arabs realize they had no hope of destroying Israel and would have to accept it in the region. But such acceptance by Arabs was actually a goal, and a corollary of the Iron Wall doctrine was that Israel should not go out of its way to kill Arab civilians. Many times ignored, such scruples did exist in principle. 

Today they do not. Replacing them is a near hysteric view of Palestinian resistance. As Clifton and Lustick put it, “Palestinian resistance was understood as illegitimate, evidence of intransigence, and often as akin to Nazi antisemitism.” This justified a ramp-up in the brutality of Israeli tactics, as Palestinian enmity came to be understood as “pathological and ineradicable” and such Israeli measures as mass imprisonment, breaking the bones of protesting children, and torture of prisoners became commonplace.

This transformation in Israel had a parallel shift in the lobby’s accelerating efforts to police Israel-related discourse in the United States. In the early 2000s, the former Soviet dissident and right wing Israeli politician Natan Sharansky began to push the idea of a “new antisemitism” which would include any statement which “demonized” or “delegitimized” Israel or held it to a “double standard.” Activists following his lead soon persuaded a minor organization, the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance, to adopt a definition of antisemitism incorporating these notions, and then pressed governments and institutions to embrace the “widely accepted” IHRA working definition. In a campaign that unfolded over years, Israel advocates eventually got the Obama State Department to incorporate the definition in an annual report. By 2018 the Trump Department of Education had adopted it, and would eventually use it as a weapon to punish pro-Palestinian academics and students at American universities. The authors provide a detailed account of the new definition’s rise and codification, a fascinating window into the nuts and bolts and high stakes of what might at first glance have seemed a somewhat niche academic debate. 

Despite these efforts, the lobby has clearly become less able to police the American discourse than it was 20 or 40 years ago. Israel’s poll numbers are bad, particularly among younger Americans. The lobby hopes that by gaining control of such internet platforms as TikTok, such opinion shifts can be reversed. (Oracle’s CEO is quoted in a hacked email telling an Israeli leader, “We have to embed the love and respect for Israel in American culture.”) It is difficult to see that happening; a great part of pro-Israeli argument now increasingly rests on such claims as “God Gave Us This Land,” which is likely to be less persuasive to a diverse and fairly secular America than snappy catchphrases popular in the 1950s like “a land without a people for a people without a land.” 

Meanwhile, in genuinely stunning political developments, candidates far more anti-Zionist than Walt and Mearsheimer have been able to win major elections in New York City and potentially in Michigan. 

At the same time, the last several months have been a very cold shower for people who thought the Israel lobby was no longer an extremely consequential voice when Washington decided matters of war and peace. No one seriously expected that President Donald Trump would try to deliver a peace settlement between Israelis and Palestinians, which he clearly had no real interest in, and which relatively few Palestinians or Israelis seemed ready for. But it was also assumed that assuring, with American military might, Israel’s  complete dominance of the Mideast was not part of an America First agenda. Trump had displayed a great deal of bravado in 2015, mocking the Adelsons’ lavish support of Marco Rubio while boasting that he didn’t need their money. In 2024, it turned out that he did. 

The man who had famously denounced the Iraq war in a Republican debate and campaigned explicitly against more stupid wars would, in office a second time, turn to Benjamin Netanyahu as his most consequential foreign policy advisor and satisfy the yearnings for an American war against Iran which Netanyahu—and all the voices in the Israel lobby echo chamber—had sought for a generation. It is this unexpected and calamitous development, this demonstration that even an America First candidate could be maneuvered into a costly war by Israel and its lobby, that has rendered the more extreme slogans of the anti-Israel left—“Free Palestine” etc.—less noxious than they seemed a  generation ago. 

Clifton and Lustick have written an important, extremely well-researched book, which tries to capture in motion a vast and complex phenomenon which is very much in flux, and whose fortunes are changing nearly month to month. They are to some degree men of the left, and some of their formulations—putting “woke” in scare quotes or describing the AfD, the German anti-immigration party that is one of the largest antiwar parties in Europe,  as “Nazi adjacent”—will seem lazy, at best, to most TAC readers. And perhaps a less progressive treatment would have noted the irony of both the lobby and the Trump administration borrowing heavily from tropes of the woke era in their efforts to portray Jewish college students as made to “feel uncomfortable” and “unsafe” by student protests against Israeli brutalities. 

But it cannot be denied that it is the American Left, not the Right, that has taken the lead in trying to free the United States from, as the authors call it in their book’s subtitle, “the grip of a foreign power.”  For that  it, and the authors, deserve commendation.