Trump's new sanctions on Iran, IDF rampages in West Bank and Lebanon

• Firefighters and residents of south Lebanon have accused the Israeli military of lighting wildfires in the region, as forested areas burned down in blazes sparked by Israeli bombing. Environmental groups said the fires in recent weeks were part of a longstanding Israeli practice of targeting Lebanon’s natural environment. On Tuesday, the Israeli military dropped flares in a wooded area outside Khiam, in south Lebanon, sparking blazes. When firefighters attempted to extinguish the flames, a drone struck close by, forcing them to withdraw, said the head of the civil defence in the Nabatieh region, Hussein Fakih. “Most of our missions are now related to fires,” he said. “There are enormous areas of woodland that have burned, I don’t have the exact figures, but in the areas close to the [frontline], around 30-40% of the land has been affected by fires.”
• Iran’s top negotiator & Parliament Speaker, Ghalibaf, says Strait of Hormoz will remain closed until US abides by its MoU responsibilities. 

• Francesca Albanese, UN Special Rapporteur: Apartheid Israel doesn't just fake content to cover its crimes; it now pays to launder them through AI with the pro-IDF feeds of the fake think tank "Hanover Institute". Legacy media enabled this inganno (deception) for decades. Will @OpenAI, @perplexity_ai, @claudeai, etc, do the same?

• The Gaza Holocaust will continue: Jared Kushner, after meeting with Netanyahu, says that the US won't "restrict Israel's right to defend itself." He says that if Hamas doesn't disarm over the next 60 to 90 days it'll show "they're not genuine about peace," and it'll give Israel cover to "go and finish the job."
• Yanis Varoufakis: The transformation of Greece into an Israeli satellite is proceeding at breakneck speed. This bodes ill for the majority of Greeks, for peace in our region and for Europe and West Asia more broadly. It must be resisted.

• Israeli forces raided the grounds of a hospital in the city of Bethlehem in the southern occupied West Bank on Monday evening and assaulted patients and visitors, according to the Palestinian Health Ministry. In a statement, the ministry said that “Israeli forces raided the grounds of the Arab Society for Rehabilitation Hospital, terrorized patients and visitors and assaulted some of them.”  

• Former Israeli PM Naftali Bennett on Gaza: 'We will kick Qatar and Türkiye the hell out of Gaza and bring Egypt in instead. Anyone who allows Qatar and Türkiye to manage Gaza is preventing the disarmament of Hamas. Understand this basic point. You don’t have to be a genius. Egypt detests Hamas. It detests the Muslim Brotherhood. Deeply. If you bring Qatar and Türkiye in to manage the situation, they will strengthen Hamas. If you bring Egypt, together with Israel, in to manage the situation, we will eliminate Hamas.'

• Sovereignista on Mecca Defense Pact: Contradictions around Egypt expose rifts in the alliance. Just one day after the signing of the trilateral defense agreement in Mecca between Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and Pakistan, Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan stated that Egypt could become the next participant. Later, President Erdogan made a similar statement in an interview with journalists. However, media reports suggested the opposite. Two versions emerged: Egypt itself does not want to join the alliance and has adopted a wait-and-see position. Reasons? Egypt avoids military blocs to maintain freedom of maneuver. Membership could allegedly harm its relations with the UAE and the US. But most importantly, there is a conflict with the 1979 peace treaty with Israel, which prioritizes obligations to Tel Aviv. Saudi Arabia is opposed. The Kingdom fears that Egypt is too close to the UAE—Saudi Arabia’s main regional rival. The Saudis also see Turkey’s haste as an attempt to seize leadership in the alliance. What does this mean? There are serious disagreements among the participants of the Mecca Defense Pact: Turkey wants Egypt to give the alliance Arab and religious legitimacy. Egypt is the historical center of the Arab world, and Cairo hosts Al-Azhar University, the main spiritual center of Sunni Islam. Without Egypt, the alliance is a “club of wealthy monarchies”; with Egypt, it becomes the “voice of the entire Arab nation.” Additionally, Egypt opens markets for Turkey’s military industry. Saudi Arabia does not want Egypt because it itself claims leadership in the Arab world. In recent years, Riyadh has surpassed Egypt in financial and diplomatic power and does not want to share authority. Egypt’s inclusion, especially in alliance with Turkey and the UAE, would weaken Saudi influence. Riyadh believes that money and military power (Pakistan and Turkey) matter more than Egypt’s cultural authority. Egypt has not yet decided, weighing all the risks, the main one being the legal conflict with the Israeli peace treaty. 
• Thirteen students were arrested (amongst the many at the protest) after occupying OpenAI’s new D.C. lobbying office. During the protest, the lobbyists fled the building in shame. They didn’t want to face a group of young people who demand a brighter future, where our elections aren’t bought by the very company destroying our communities. If politicians say they’re speaking for us, they need to stop accepting bribes from OpenAI’s super PAC “Leading the Future.” It is on track to spend $200 million in the 2026 midterms. Students like these are leading the future, NOT power hungry greedy corporations and their congressional lackies.

• BBC: Britain's new Prime Minister Andy Burnham has said London will continue "to support Ukraine 100%", after Moscow warned of "consequences" following confirmation that British-made drones were used in recent Ukrainian strikes inside Russia. "We are not fair-weather friends, we will be there in Ukraine's hour of need and that won't change," he said. The Russian embassy in the UK earlier accused Britain of "deliberately opting for an escalation of the Ukraine crisis", saying "the deeper its involvement in the conflict... the higher the price it will pay".

• Washington Post: US debt has hit $40 trillion months earlier than expected. Faster borrowing — driven in part by lost revenue from invalidated tariffs and endless war$ — means the next debt-limit fight is also likely to arrive ahead of schedule.  

• With a over a trillion-dollar Pentagon budget, serving our troops rotten food and making them use moldy bathrooms is a choice, not an unavoidable hardship, as are the other decisions made during Pistol Pete Hegseth’s command of the most expensive military on the planet. A picture from aboard the moldy old USS George Washington, which recently underwent an incredibly expensive “complex overhaul” that took six years to finish.  

• Strategic Culture Foundation: There is a fundamental irony that American economists and strategists struggle to acknowledge openly: the dollar’s main enemy is not the BRICS, nor is it China, nor is it the renminbi. It is the foreign policy of the US itself. Every time Washington imposes financial sanctions - on Russia, Iran, North Korea, Venezuela, or hundreds of private entities - it reduces the dollar’s appeal as a neutral and reliable reserve currency. The dollar’s comparative advantage lay precisely in its apparent neutrality: everyone used it because no one expected Washington to prevent its use for legitimate trade purposes. That neutrality has been irreparably compromised. Trump, with his threat of 100 percent tariffs on countries that promote alternatives to the dollar, has made explicit a tension that had always been implicit: maintaining the dollar’s centrality now requires active coercion, no longer merely market forces.  

• Ukraine has derailed the planned August 20-21 visit of IAEA Director General Rafael Grossi to the Zaporozhye Nuclear Power Plant and the town of Energodar, the Russian Foreign Ministry said. All details had been previously worked out by the IAEA Secretariat and the Russian side. Russia provided the necessary security guarantees, which fully satisfied the Agency. However, Ukraine cynically threatened Grossi, explicitly stating that it could not vouch for his safety if he entered the Zaporozhye Nuclear Power Plant via Russian territory. The Ukrainian threats have once again exposed the true nature of the Kiev regime, the ministry emphasized.

• What is ‘Ukrainianism’?: Pot head Nazi (in video below) explains why the former Ukrainian relationship with Russia will cease to exist. The woman announces alliance with WW2 Ukrainian Nazi collaborator Stephan Bandera who lead the killing of tens of thousands of Jews, Poles, Russians and Gypsies alongside Hitler's forces. These current Nazis predominate in western Ukraine near the Poland border. They were used by the US-UK-EU to attack the Russian ethnic Ukrainians in the Donbass region of eastern Ukraine - alongside the Russian border. The attacks began soon after the Obama-Biden-Hillary Clinton-Victoria Nuland orchestrated coup d'état in Kev in 2014. This terrorism, directed by CIA and MI6, has lasted to the present times. It is why Russia eventually went into Ukraine in 2022 after trying years of diplomatic efforts which included the Minsk 1 & 2 agreements that would have ended the war and kept the Donbass as part of Ukraine. Under those agreements (that were never honored by Kiev and its western backers) those in the Donbass would still speak Russian and have local autonomy. But that was not good enough for the US-UK-EU that instead wanted the break-up of Russia and the stealing of the vast resource base of Russia. Thus the war continues.