Trump threatens world on Iran economic sanctions

• Qatar government spokesperson reacts to US sanctions on Iran and says they are unilateral and says Qatar supports mediation efforts to resolve issues. Qatar seems to have reacted soft enough to not upset the US while also showing Iran that it’s pro-mediation and does not support the sanctions.

• Tasnim News: IRGC spokesperson says if the US does not accept Iran’s conditions, the Strait of Hormoz will under no circumstances be reopened. Strait of Hormoz belongs to Iran & Oman. Negotiations with Oman have reached outcomes accepted by both sides. In the negotiations, agreements were reached regarding each country’s share of the strait’s waters, as well as Iran’s and Oman’s respective shares of the revenues generated from it.
• NBC News: Iranian missile and drone attacks have caused "unprecedented damage" to US intelligence facilities and surveillance equipment in the Middle East. Sources say the scale of the destruction exceeds any damage previously inflicted on US intelligence agencies. They predict that repairs and restoration will cost billions of dollars. According to the outlet's sources, some of the affected US facilities are located in Iraq.

• USS George Washington aircraft carrier arrived in the US Central Command area of responsibility yesterday, the combatant command announced. The carrier, which was accompanied by cruiser USS Robert Smalls and destroyer USS Shoup, transited the Arabian Sea. It is not clear how close GW is to the Abraham Lincoln Carrier Strike Group. The George Washington Carrier Strike Group is expected to relieve the Abraham Lincoln Carrier Strike Group, but a Navy official could not say when USS Abraham Lincoln when it would head home. It could take a month or longer for Lincoln to travel back to the US West Coast. The GW CSG headed from the Indo-Pacific to CENTCOM  last week, after families and sailors raised concerns about the quality of life aboard Abe, which has gone 252 days without a port call. So far, Abe has been deployed for 272 days, according to USNI News carrier deployment database.

• Qatar’s LNG exports have fallen by 98%. According to Reuters, Qatar’s LNG exports have plunged sharply due to the closure of the Strait of Hormuz, with the decline reaching around 99%.  Qatar has so far lost approximately $24 billion in gas sales revenue.
• Colonial Israeli settlers blocked the road near the Karm Abu Salem crossing preventing trucks carrying humanitarian aid from reaching Gaza. The protest was held in opposition to plans to deploy an international stabilization force in Gaza and begin reconstruction efforts. The crossing is a key entry point for humanitarian supplies into the Strip, where aid access remains severely constrained. 

• When G20 finance ministers and central bank chiefs soon gather in North Carolina, US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent plans to push a broad agenda: stronger growth, more resilient supply chains, lower global imbalances and action on mounting sovereign debt. However, behind the official narrative lies a political demand – the US wants the G20 to help squeeze Iran, Reuters cites a senior Treasury official as saying.  Bessent will reportedly deliver a “strong statement” to G20 officials, warning that countries maintaining business ties with Iran could face secondary US sanctions. 

• The Israeli Ministry of Defense and Israeli defense companies have directed millions in unreported funding to US university research programs for weapons development, sponsoring research directly or serving as the pass-through entity for the funding, a Drop Site investigation has found. A sample of state and university audits, foreign-funding disclosures, and other institutional records identified millions of dollars in financial ties over the last two decades between the Israeli Ministry of Defense (MOD), Israeli weapons manufacturers, and American universities. Records dating from 2004 to 2025 point to a large number of schools that have had financial relationships with the Israeli MOD or Israeli weapons manufacturers, including Columbia, Cornell, Princeton, Harvard, Northwestern, Georgia Tech, Texas Tech, the University of Connecticut, the University of Tennessee, the University of Maryland, the University of Florida, the University of California at Berkeley, the University of Rhode Island, the University of New Mexico, the Washington University in St. Louis, and the State University of New York. 

• Stars & Stripes: More than 75,000 women are part of the Ukrainian armed forces as of early 2026, with about 5,500 in combat roles, according to the defense ministry. They account for less than 10% of active-duty personnel, but their numbers have increased by about 40% since before the war. They enlist by choice. The rise of drone warfare is making gender less of a factor on the battlefield.  

• “The West has for centuries sought to create new flashpoints along Russia’s borders. Its preferred tactic is to work through others, drawing nations with historical ties to Russia into confrontation with Moscow,” Russian Security Council Deputy Chairman Dmitry Medvedev said in an interview with Yuzhnaya Ossetia newspaper.
• Canada will impose tariffs of up to 50% on about 700 U.S. products starting Sept. 8, retaliating after trade talks collapsed and the US raised tariffs on Canadian goods. Steel and aluminum will face 50% tariffs, while cars remain at 25%. The measures cover roughly $20 billion in US imports.
• At one stage in the current US administration JD Vance was held out as possibly one with some sense. That is fast disappearing with comments such as this: US Vice President JD Vance says Canada would be vulnerable to foreign invasion without Washington’s protection, as the two countries are locked in trade tensions.
• The Ukrainian Nazis attacked a bus traveling from Lisichansk to Stakhanov in Lugansk People’s Republic of Russia, carrying 15 people, Leonid Pasechnik, head of the LPR, announced. As a result 9 people were killed. 

• Italy has secretly coordinated a new package of military assistance for Kiev. While officially Rome announced only the supply of generators, according to Repubblica, Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni's government agreed weeks ago on a large-scale arms package.
• Euronews: France is pushing to limit Ukraine's ability to buy non-European military equipment with EU loan money, seeking to steer the €60 billion defence portion of the EU's €90 billion support package toward European and French producers. France has a clear commercial interest: its Franco-Italian SAMP/T system is Europe's closest alternative to the US Patriot 'missile defense' system.

• Elon Musk becomes the latest Nazi decorated by the Zelensky regime. In honoring Musk, a committed ideological fascist and a leading promoter of the global far-right movement, the Zelensky regime is once again exposing the fraud of those who claim that Ukraine is fighting for "democracy."
• The Ukrainian Nazis struck the Donetsk City shopping and entertainment centre in Donetsk People's Republic in Russia. The terrorist attack was carried out with British-French Storm Shadow/SCALP-EG long-range air-launched cruise missiles. The number of casualties from the strike has risen to eight, including a child and a teenager. 

• Havana, Cuba: Organizations and social movements from across the Americas, meeting in Havana August 15–17 under the Campaign for a Zone of Peace in Our Americas, issued a Declaration of a Zone of Peace centered on the defense of Cuba. They denounced the tightened US economic, commercial, financial, and energy blockade, executive orders extending its extraterritorial reach, and an open regime-change operation against the island. Cuba is living through one of the most difficult periods in history. The declaration also marks 12 years since CELAC proclaimed the region a Zone of Peace. Three priorities were agreed upon: Defend Cuba and its revolution against imperialist war; Expel foreign military bases and occupation troops; Fight for the liberation of all occupied territories and for self-determination across the Caribbean.
• Matt Bivens, M.D. on busifikatsiya: Among the men hiding from the Ukraine [proxy war on Russia] include not just those who fled Ukraine, but the millions who couldn’t or wouldn’t. Those men lie low. Many of them loathe the CIA-backed, right-wing, ethno-nationalist dictatorship that rules their country now. All of them watch fearfully for the unmarked cars with tinted windows, the SUVs, vans and buses, that prowl the streets of nearly every town, filled with men ready to jump out, tackle them, and frogmarch them off to war. There’s a slang term in Ukrainian for being snatched off of the street by the military: busifikatsiya, or “bus-ification”. It captures the idea of being violently shoved into a bus and driven off to a likely death. Citizen resistance doesn’t always fail. Occasionally, Ukrainian crowds have managed to flip over busifikatsiya vehicles, or to otherwise help a young man wriggle free and run away. In sadder cases, men have jumped off bridges or out of third-floor windows to their deaths rather than be conscripted; or, upon arrival to the recruitment centers, have slit their wrists or hung themselves with their belts; or have stabbed to death the doctor who just medically cleared them for service.  Democrats and Republicans [in the US] nevertheless want Ukrainians to sacrifice their teenagers. “I can confirm it: American politicians from both parties are putting pressure on President Zelensky to explain why there is no mobilization of those aged 18-25 in Ukraine,” wrote Serhiy Leshchenko, an advisor to the president’s chief of staff. “If we simply mobilize all young men aged 18-25,” says Leshchenko, “we will destroy the very future of our state, an entire generation.”