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War & Peace
'Menace to the World': With Iran Talks Stalled, Trump Vows to Declare Strait of Hormuz a US Territory
"He absolutely needs to be impeached, removed, and locked up," said one progressive critic, calling the president "a completely unhinged lunatic."
Aug 14, 2026
In yet another remark that triggered alarm around the world, President Donald Trump said Friday that he planned to declare the Strait of Hormuz—which Iran has blockaded for much of the past five months over his and Israel's illegal war—a US territory.
Just two days after the latest inflation figures demonstrated, in the words of one expert, "Trump's catastrophic mismanagement of our economy," the president ignored the economic fallout from his war, which led Iran to restrict ship traffic through the strait, driving up fuel prices worldwide.
"We're bringing the prices way down," he told a Long Island crowd. Trump also said that "after we finish defeating Iran, which is being very badly defeated, pretty soon, I'll be declaring the Hormuz Strait a territory of the United States."
Some critics responded to clips of the comments on X by mocking Trump—an infamous liar. Congressman Ted Lieu (D-Calif.) quipped, "Awesome! And the Easter Bunny is real."
Ryan Costello, policy director at the National Iranian American Council, said that "this jingoism rings a bit hollow when most of the US bases near the strait have been essentially abandoned due to danger from Iranian missiles and drones."
Progressive political commentator Kyle Kulinski declared that "he absolutely needs to be impeached, removed, and locked up. He's a completely unhinged lunatic, and he's a sadistic violent menace to the world."
After high initial claims about lower prices, Trump admitted that gasoline has soared due to his war, but said: "For you to pay a tiny little bit more for your gasoline, just remember, you're doing it so that a very evil country cannot have a—a country, really it's the No. 1 state sponsor of terror in the world—we don't want to have them have a nuclear weapon. So, remember that when you have to pay a little bit more, you're at $4, it's OK. I'll never apologize. I did the right thing."
Trump's threat over the strait between the Persian Gulf and the Gulf of Oman came just before a monthlong ceasefire between the US and Iran is set to expire on Monday. A senior White House official told Politico that the situation is "static."
"It doesn't matter how close or how far we are," said the official, who has heard no mention of a potential extension of the ceasefire. "What matters is if Iran wants to come to the table and agree to a deal. Right now, they haven't done that."
The Associated Press reported Friday that "the Trump administration appears to be reaching out to a broader swath of countries that might be able to help pressure Tehran," and Ali Vaez, Iran project director at the International Crisis Group, told the outlet that "everyone is just urging both sides to stop this reckless game of chicken."
In addition to launching an illegal war on Iran in February, and invading Venezuela in January to abduct its president, Trump has made threats against various other nations during his second term, including Canada, Cuba, Colombia, Greenland, and Mexico. He's also threatened to seize the Panama Canal and killed hundreds of people by blowing up boats allegedly smuggling drugs.
This article has been updated with additional comment from President Donald Trump and Public Citizen.
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Despite Growing Alarm, Trump Says Record USS Lincoln Deployment ‘Not Nearly Long Enough’
“Countdown until this is used in an attack ad.”
Aug 14, 2026
President Donald Trump said on Friday that he wasn't concerned about reports of wretched conditions and possible suicide attempts by sailors aboard the USS Lincoln. He said their record-breaking deployment as part of his Iran War is "not nearly long enough."
Earlier this week, military publications detailed deteriorating mental health aboard the ship, where about 5,000 sailors and Marines have been deployed for more than 260 days and have gone roughly 200 days without returning to port.
Following earlier reports of food shortages, faulty plumbing, and grueling 12-16 hour workdays, the Military Times reported that multiple sailors have attempted to jump overboard.
The Navy has declined to say whether the incidents were suicide attempts and has said it has “not observed an increase in suicidal ideations or attempts aboard the ship."
Last week, more than 200 spouses and other family members met with senior Navy leaders in San Diego to raise concerns about conditions aboard the carrier, including sailors' mental health and risks of suicide and self-harm, according to Stars and Stripes.
The Navy did not fully detail how it was responding to family members’ concerns, though it said the ship had counselors, chaplains, medical professionals, and other support services. Family members also said officials told them additional mental health personnel were being sent.
As Democrats pressed the Pentagon for answers and oversight into conditions on the Lincoln, Trump was asked about the complaints as he prepared to board Air Force One on Friday.
"The family members of US service members are concerned about the conditions on the USS Lincoln," a reporter said.
"No, they're not," Trump interjected.
He noted that the ship was in the process of leaving its current Middle East deployment to be replaced with "a very similar ship," referring to the USS George Washington.
"Has the deployment gone on too long?" the reporter asked.
"No, no, no," Trump responded. "Not nearly long enough."
Democrats on the House Oversight Committee immediately seized on the remark, portraying it as another instance of Trump displaying callous disregard for soldiers "abandoned in a pointless war."
Trump has previously faced criticism for downplaying the harms Americans face as a result of his war in Iran. For those at home, he's emphasized that he was not worried "even a little bit" about the war's economic costs and has said it's "not possible" to take care of funding for daycare, Medicare, and Medicaid because "we’re fighting wars."
He's also been accused of disrespecting those who suffered and died in combat by using a photo of himself attending a fallen soldier’s dignified transfer in a political fundraising email and by claiming that four slain soldiers had endorsed his rationale to attack Iran and that their loved ones had begged him to "finish the job."
The administration has also been accused of underreporting the casualty numbers from the war, leading to calls for investigation from Democrats.
With midterm elections now less than three months away, Iran continues to be the least popular major war in modern history, with polls consistently showing that only around a third of Americans support it.
Responding to Trump's remarks about soldiers suffering aboard the Lincoln, Brian Finucane, senior adviser for the International Crisis Group's US program, said, "Countdown until this is used in an attack ad."
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Amnesty, UN Office Condemn Israeli Settlers' Siege of Palestinian Homes in West Bank
"These criminal actions by the settlers, supported or acquiesced to by Israel, the occupying power, are making life unbearable for these Palestinian families, and are clearly aimed at forcing them to leave."
Aug 14, 2026
"The horrors unfolding in Qusra are far from an isolated incident," a leader at Amnesty International declared Friday as the Israel Defense Forces and police failed to remove Israeli settlers who have besieged Palestinian homes in the illegally occupied West Bank since Sunday.
Erika Guevara Rosas, Amnesty's senior director for research, advocacy, policy, and campaigns, said that the events in the village over the past week "reflect the relentless escalation and expansion of an accelerating and well-documented pattern of coordinated and strategic settler terror, enabled, backed, and funded by the state of Israel, with the aim of displacing Palestinians across the occupied West Bank."
"The three families under siege have been threatened, harassed, and attacked by Israeli settlers from nearby outposts for several months," she stressed. With settlers having cut off the water and electricity, residents are "running out of food, and lack access to basic necessities," she added, and local activists have been unable to deliver supplies.
The Amnesty statement followed similar condemnation from the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), which said Thursday that "these criminal actions by the settlers, supported or acquiesced to by Israel, the occupying power, are making life unbearable for these Palestinian families, and are clearly aimed at forcing them to leave their homes and land. Time is running out for these three families before they are forcibly displaced."
The Palestinian Ministry of Foreign Affairs also said Thursday that it "condemns in the strongest terms the dangerous escalation in settler terrorism," highlighting that the attack has involved "sabotage of electricity and water networks, shooting at houses, and attempts to burn children, in systematic assaults that can only be described as terroristic, aimed at the displacement and extermination of the Palestinian people."
The Israeli newspaper Haaretz reported Friday that "IDF and Border Police forces have attempted several times this week to evacuate the settlers, but they have remained at the site. The group initially put up a shade canopy there, despite the presence of soldiers. Border Police forces arrived at the site and dismantled the canopy, yet the settlers remained at a nearby location, waiting for the forces to leave."
Ziv Stahl, executive director of the Israeli rights group Yesh Din, told The Associated Press that "it's like a kids' game, like cat and mouse... It's clearly not a matter of capability but a matter of will."
Qusra resident Abdul Kareem Hassan similarly told Al Jazeera that "this is all a charade," and if the IDF "were serious, the whole operation would not take them one hour. We're talking about 20 settlers. If they would treat them the same way they treat Palestinians, they could finish in less than an hour."
IDF troops have long been accused of and documented not interfering with or even aiding in Israeli settler violence against Palestinians in the West Bank.
One of the besieged homes is owned by Palestinian-American Loui Ridi, who is based in Ohio. His brother and nephew are among those trapped.
US Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee said on social media Thursday that his embassy "has been VERY involved and the IDF and Israel police have gone at our request to remove the Israeli terrorists doing this. The actions of those doing this to this family’s home is criminal... Actions by those who carried out this horrific act of terror meant to intimidate and harass this family are disgusting. No excuse for such thuggish behavior."
Huckabee later shared a video from the scene, then claimed on Friday that Israeli "'settlers' are not the problem," and the violent ones are a "very small minority who do great damage to Palestinian families and to Israel." The ambassador also pointed to The Jerusalem Post's reporting on one settlement leader, Ysrael Ganz, condemning the outpost in Qusra.
Reuters reported that Ridi welcomed Huckabee's initial remarks but also said they were not enough. He told the news agency that "we need protection. We need supplies. We need to live freely in our house."
As Common Dreams reported Wednesday, Ramiz Alakbarov, the United Nations special coordinator for the Middle East peace process, told the UN Security Council the previous day that demolitions of civilian infrastructure, mass displacement of Palestinians, and illegal settlement expansion have brought the West Bank to a "breaking point."
While settler attacks were once concentrated in the Israeli-controlled Area C, Alakbarov said, settlers are increasingly behaving violently toward Palestinians in Areas A and B. Guevara Rosas noted that "the homes targeted in these attacks are located in Area B of the West Bank, supposedly under Palestinian administrative control and Israeli military control, according to the classification of the Oslo Accords."
"Yet Palestinian Red Crescent ambulances trying to deliver food and water to the homes were also attacked by settlers. Despite these violent attacks, Israeli forces allowed the settlers to remain [in] close proximity to the Palestinian families' homes," she said. Sources told Amnesty that for several hours on Thursday, the IDF forced two besieged families and six neighboring households to evacuate their homes.
Al Jazeera's Nida Ibrahim similarly reported that "Israeli soldiers initially tried to move the trapped families out of their homes while settlers remained camped outside. The families refused, not trusting that the Israeli soldiers would allow them back into their homes, and were eventually grouped together in one home."
Guevara Rosas argued that "for far too long, the world has ignored the immense, unfathomable suffering of Palestinians being uprooted and erased from land they have inhabited for generations. The international community must stop treating such incidents as ‘isolated’ and instead hold Israel accountable."
"Israel, as the occupying power, has a legal obligation to protect the Palestinian population under its control and not to stand by or worse, stand with settlers—while they lay siege to Palestinian homes and cut off families’ access to healthcare, electricity, and water for days on end" she continued.
"States must end any form of direct and indirect support for Israel's unlawful occupation of the occupied Palestinian territory and its brutal system of apartheid, including its illegal settlement enterprise," said the Amnesty leader, whose group has also joined advocates and experts around the world in denouncing Israel's ongoing violence against Palestinians in the Gaza Strip as genocide.
"This includes banning trade and investment that contribute to the maintenance of Israeli settlements, as well as ending any cooperation and assistance to entities and individuals involved in the settlement enterprise," Guevara Rosas said. "States should also show no further hesitation in imposing targeted sanctions on senior Israeli officials allegedly responsible for international crimes, including the crimes against humanity of apartheid, and forcible transfer of Palestinians in the unlawfully occupied West Bank."
She added that "it is imperative that states demonstrate unequivocal resolve by increasing protective measures for Palestinian communities at risk of displacement and using all their diplomatic and political leverage to secure the return of forcibly displaced Palestinians to their homes. Failure to act would further embolden Israel and state-backed Israeli settlers to continue their unlawful and violent actions against Palestinians, who are left unprotected and without any recourse to justice."
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‘Waiting to Die’: Gaza Cancer Patients Dying at More Than Double the Pre-War Rate as Israel Blocks Treatment
"I am dying. There isn't a feeling for me to even feel."
Aug 14, 2026
Israel is causing a wave of preventable cancer deaths in Gaza, leaving an estimated 17,000 people with no avenue for treatment.
As Reuters reported on Thursday, Israel has destroyed the only specialized cancer hospital in the strip and is preventing Palestinians from seeking treatment outside the exclave.
The result: Doctors say that cancer patients in Gaza are dying at between double and triple the rate they were before Israel began its genocidal war there. Israel's restrictions on aid entering Gaza have made chemotherapy and other forms of treatment inaccessible.
33-year-old Khuloud Abu Sahmoud, a mother of two with ovarian cancer who spoke with Reuters, has been waiting to exit Gaza for nearly a year to receive treatment.
According to Middle East Eye, she is one of at least 4,000 cancer patients in Gaza who have been issued medical referrals to leave the strip but who have been stuck waiting for final permission from Israeli authorities.
In the meantime, her cancer has metastasized to her lungs and bones.
"I am dying. There isn't a feeling for me to even feel," Sahmoud told Middle East Eye. "Every day my disease progresses."
She said that her fingernails have all fallen out and she has been left "just waiting to die."
"The border crossing for me is the only lifeline. The only vein for me to be saved, to receive treatment abroad," she said. "I haven't taken any treatment for three months. I'm living on painkillers."
She said she made her request to travel in October 2025 after a ceasefire was reached between Israel and Hamas, which was supposed to allow for aid to flow freely into Gaza and for people to leave.
"There has been no response to any appeal so far," Sahmoud said. "We haven't received any calls."
The Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT), the Israeli military authority responsible for administering civilian matters in Gaza, has denied that it is blocking Palestinians from receiving treatment, with a spokesperson stating that permission to travel is "wholly dependent on the receiving country's request.”
But the agency's own medical evacuation procedure requires that every patient leaving Gaza undergoes Israeli security screening and “will not be approved if there are security reasons that prevent their passage.”
Israel has also imposed strict numerical restrictions on the number of people allowed to leave through the Rafah crossing, the main exit point from the strip.
Palestinian health officials said only about 11,000 people in total—not just cancer patients—have been allowed to exit since the crossing reopened in February, an average of about 55-60 people per calendar day. This is fewer than half the number who were expected to leave following the ceasefire.
According to Reuters, "a further 20,000 patients, including 5,000 with cancer, are registered for treatment abroad but not yet permitted to leave."
All of the 36 hospitals and most primary healthcare facilities in Gaza have sustained damage from Israeli attacks, with only around half even partially functioning, according to the World Health Organization. As of the ceasefire, WHO reported that more than 1,700 Palestinian healthcare workers, including doctors, nurses, and paramedics, have been killed.
"Since the genocidal war on the Gaza Strip, among the most severely affected groups by this extermination are oncology and cancer patients," said Mohammed Abu Selmia, the director of Al-Shifa Hospital, which has been repeatedly raided, besieged, and damaged, and has just recently restarted oncology services.
Selmia said this is because of the restrictions on the entry of chemotherapy treatments and Israel's destruction of diagnostic equipment, including MRI facilities.
"This group is suffering immensely," he said. "Recently, we have been recording a significant number of deaths ranging from three to five daily because patients are not receiving the chemotherapy needed to save their lives."
The official death toll from Israel's military campaign in Gaza since October 2023 sits at 73,389, according to the Gaza Ministry of Health. But this only includes violent deaths from the war itself.
Independent analyses have suggested that the true death toll is much higher when factoring in those who have perished due to disease and starvation as a result of Israel's attacks on medical facilities, civilian infrastructure, and restrictions on aid.
Another cancer patient, Elham al-Skafi, said, "They stopped giving me chemotherapy because it is not available in Gaza."
"I come in to get nutritional fluids, just so I can stay on my feet, and blood transfusions," she said. "That is what is currently available. This is what I take."
She said she's had a transfer referral for over a year and a half now to leave the country for treatment.
"I am sitting and waiting," she said. "If the crossings were open, I would have left."
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Mysterious Attacks on Ecuadoran Fishing Boats Carried Out by Covert CIA Operation: Report
“It begs the question about why you would need to do this. What would be the purpose of the secrecy?” said a former US government official.
Aug 13, 2026
The Washington Post reported on Thursday that recent mysterious attacks on Ecuadoran fishing boats were carried out as part of a covert CIA operation.
According to the Post, the strikes on the fishing boats, which took place in multiple instances near the Galápagos Islands earlier this year, are separate from the US Department of Defense's bombing campaign against purported drug-trafficking boats that was launched in September 2025 and has so far killed at least 220 people.
Survivors of a boat attack that occurred in March told the Post they remember coming under fire from small quadcopter drones that either dropped munitions on their vessels or directly crashed into them.
After being shipwrecked, the survivors said they were picked up by a nearby vessel, where they were taken aboard, and "hooded and cuffed by armed men, and transported to El Salvador—only to be returned later without explanation to Ecuador."
The Post noted that "no evidence has publicly emerged that the crew members were involved in drug trafficking," adding that "the Galápagos Islands have increasingly become a hub for drug traffickers, where local fishermen are known to pick up jobs delivering gas to smugglers heading to the United States."
Some former US officials with experience working in Latin America told the Post that they were bewildered about the need for a covert CIA boat strike campaign given that the Trump administration has openly boasted about its other attacks on vessels, which many human rights groups and international law experts have called acts of murder.
“It begs the question about why you would need to do this,” one former official said. “What would be the purpose of the secrecy?”
The covert boat strikes were also reported on Wednesday by The New York Times, which presented evidence that they originated in the US without naming their specific source.
Amnesty International last month raised suspicions of US involvement in the January disappearance of Ecuadoran fishing boat called Fiorella.
Amnesty's investigation of the Fiorella's disappearance found that the vessel, in the days before its disappearance, was "allegedly subjected to sustained monitoring by aircraft, patrol boats, and drones bearing United States markings," as the boat's captain sent "daily satellite messages to his family expressing his growing concern about the surveillance."
The ship vanished on January 20.
Two crew members who had departed the ship earlier in the day on a skiff to lay out fishing lines reported seeing "a large column of smoke in the distance in the direction of the Fiorella, but were unable to determine with certainty whether it was from a fire on board," wrote Amnesty.
The two crew members aboard the skiff are the only confirmed survivors of the incident, as the eight other men aboard the Fiorella are still missing.
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Imploring Latin America to Quit ICC, Hegseth Suggests 'Fake' Court Could Target US Over Boat Murders
One critic said he hopes the Hague-based tribunal will investigate the Trump administration's "illegal, unproven, expensive, destructive, and pointless boat strikes."
Aug 13, 2026
US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth on Wednesday urged Latin American governments to quit the International Criminal Court, accusing the Hague-based tribunal of plotting to prosecute American and allied military personnel while defending the Trump administration’s increasingly aggressive—and, experts say, illegal—campaign against alleged drug traffickers.
"We are working together, we are building together, and we are training together," Hegseth said during a speech in Panama at a gathering of the Americas Counter Cartel Coalition (ACCC), a group of mostly right-wing regional governments. "We are killing terrorists. And we're defeating the failed and toxic ideologies of radical socialism and communism."
"Now, speaking of socialism, make no doubt about it, the international left, along with their enabling left-wing media, is plotting to unlawfully assert International Criminal Court jurisdiction over US and partner military personnel and operations," Hegseth asserted, offering no evidence or explanation to support his claim.
Legal experts, including former US military Judge Advocate General Corps attorneys, have argued that aspects of the Trump administration's bombings of boats allegedly smuggling drugs in the Caribbean Sea and Pacific Ocean—particularly Hegseth's alleged order to "kill everybody" and follow-up attacks targeting survivors—may constitute unlawful extrajudicial killings and war crimes. More than 220 people have been killed in at least 66 such strikes over the past 11 months, with survivors, victims' relatives, and regional governments claiming at least some of those killed were fishers with no narco-trafficking ties.
Hegseth has also been accused of promoting war crimes in the illegal US-Israeli war of choice on Iran by vowing that US forces would not be bound by "stupid rules of engagement," threatening to destroy critical Iranian civilian infrastructure like power plants and bridges, and by boasting that US forces were delivering "death and destruction from the sky all day long" as airstrikes killed hundreds of civilians, including 156 students and staff massacred at an elementary school in Minab on February 28.
"To be clear, there is no legitimate basis for the ICC's lawless power grab that they will entertain anywhere they can in the world," Hegseth said in Panama. "Our efforts in this effort are 100% lawful under the laws of armed conflict. It's striking that this so-called court and other globalist bodies undermine our efforts but do nothing to hold real terrorists and real tyrants accountable. And that's why the ICC poses a threat to your national sovereignty, your constitutional mandates, and the national interests of your people—just as it does ours."
"That's why I strongly encourage every ACCC member to leave the ICC, and reject their attempts to rob your governments and your courts of your sovereignty," he added. "I know as a soldier, I swore an oath to the Constitution, not some fake and illegitimate international court."
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Trump's assault on the ICC, which began during his first administration, has escalated during his second term. In February 2025, the president issued an executive order declaring a national emergency over the ICC and authorizing sanctions against court personnel involved in investigations concerning the United States and Israel—two of whose leaders are fugitives from the tribunal.
In November 2024, the ICC issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant for alleged crimes against humanity and war crimes in Gaza, including murder and forced starvation. The court also ordered the arrest of three Hamas leaders for the same categories of crimes allegedly committed during and after the October 7, 2023 attack on Israel, but Israeli forces extrajudicially assassinated all three of the men.
The warrants for the Israeli leaders incensed the Trump administration, which responded with sanctions and threats.
Last month, Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced a "campaign to dismantle" the ICC, promising to “teach” the court "the full meaning of American resolve." The State Department, meanwhile, said the campaign would seek to “systematically disable” the tribunal’s ability to operate or target US personnel.
The US is not a party to the Rome Statute governing the ICC. However, the treaty states that individuals from nonsignatory nations can be held liable for crimes committed in the territory of a member state, a situation applicable in Palestine, which is an ICC member, while Israel is not.
US disdain and animosity toward the ICC long predates Trump's presidencies. During the administration of George W. Bush, the US passed the American Service Members’ Protection Act—also known as the Hague Invasion Act—which authorizes the president to use “all means necessary and appropriate,” including military intervention, to secure the release of American or allied personnel held by or on behalf of the ICC.
The Trump administration is seeking to persuade countries to abandon the ICC.
Chad and Venezuela—where Trump ordered a January invasion to abduct President Nicolás Maduro and his wife—have announced plans to withdraw, with Chad saying its decision followed a call from a senior US diplomat. The ICC’s Assembly of States Parties has urged both countries to reverse course, warning that the departures threaten the global fight against impunity. The two nations join Burkina Faso, Mali, and Niger, which also initiated ICC withdrawals in 2026.
Only Burundi and the Philippines have actually completed withdrawals from the Rome Statute. Hungary, meanwhile, reversed its planned departure this year after voters ousted longtime right-wing Prime Minister Viktor Orbán.
Hegseth’s Panama appearance coincided with Colombia becoming the ACCC’s 19th member, as new right-wing President Abelardo de la Espriella requested joint US-Colombian military operations against drug cartels and trafficking.
The alignment marks a sharp turn from the government of former leftist President Gustavo Petro, which repeatedly criticized Trump administration boat strikes and supported the South African-led genocide case against Israel currently before the International Court of Justice, also in The Hague.
Such cooperation has led to US intervention in Ecuador's war on drugs. US and Ecuadorian forces are carrying out Operation Total Extermination, a joint counternarcotics operation beset by allegations of human rights violations, including arbitrary detention, torture, and destruction of civilian property.
Responding to reporting, University of Virginia researcher and doctoral student Joseph Bouchard wrote on X that the "ICC may investigate the US's illegal, unproven, expensive, destructive, and pointless boat strikes."
"They should, and hopefully hold these criminals accountable," he asserted. "They are killing hundreds of fishermen for no reason beyond cruelty."
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US, Turkish Officials Suspect 'Plot' That Led to Trump Plane Switch Was Israeli Ruse
A former top US intelligence official said the reliance on apparently faulty Israeli intelligence was "a great example of how we got into the war with Iran."
Aug 13, 2026
US and Turkish officials are reportedly suspicious that the supposed Iranian assassination plot that led President Donald Trump to make an elaborate escape from Ankara using a catering truck last month may have been a fabrication by Israeli intelligence.
Earlier this week, it was reported that Trump had to be secreted onto a nondescript plane to leave a NATO summit on July 8 after Israel passed an intelligence report to the CIA warning that Iran had planned to launch a missile at Air Force One. But new reporting indicates that neither Turkish nor American officials found the evidence all that compelling.
The alleged threat came at a highly volatile time, as the "memorandum of understanding" between the US and Iran to end nearly five months of war was on the verge of collapse, in part thanks to Israel's attempts to undermine it.
As Middle East Eye reported on Tuesday, Turkish officials suggested that the intelligence report was “probably a ruse by [Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu’s government to portray itself as protecting Trump, derail negotiations with Iran, and undermine Trump’s apparently close relationship with [Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan].”
Turkey tightened security after US officials informed it of the plot. But after examining the details of the scheme—which purportedly involved using shoulder-fired missiles to attack Trump’s plane within a kilometer of the runway—they said they found the intelligence report highly implausible.
“Of course, we took the report very seriously and tried to assist our American counterparts as much as possible,” one person familiar with the matter said. “Yet it was very clear to us that there was no way this report was true.”
It turns out that it wasn't just Turkish officials who felt this way. The Washington Post on Wednesday cited a senior US official who said that the CIA analysts who'd received the report from Israel "did not view the intelligence as compelling and conveyed that skepticism to Trump administration officials."
Another official said the report was “Israeli-derived, not US-generated, and viewed as low confidence.” The Secret Service acted on the report anyway out of an abundance of caution.
Nevertheless, the Post indicated that there was a striking amount of doubt among US intelligence officials about the motives of one of the country's top allies, whom they suggest passed the information along to nudge Washington toward Israel's own foreign policy objectives:
Some US intelligence officials saw Israel’s sharing of the warning about threats to Trump’s life as designed less to inform than to influence the president’s decision-making and US policy in the region, a current and a former US official said. Israel views Iran as by far its most urgent near-term threat.
But it views Turkey as a medium- to long-term threat and is anxious about warming ties between Washington and Ankara, bolstered by the personal rapport between Trump and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, the current official said.
It “fit a broader pattern of Israeli intelligence reporting that some officials see as designed as much to shape presidential decision-making as to inform it,” the former official familiar with the matter said.
Iranian leaders have denied any attempt to assassinate Trump. As they try to push him to admit defeat in the war the US and Israel started in February and accept a series of harsh surrender terms, they are having a laugh at his reaction to what they say was a fabricated plot.
Abbas Araghchi, Iran's foreign minister, portrayed it as part of a larger pattern of the US having been misled by faulty Israeli intelligence.
Netanyahu was notably one of the driving forces behind Trump’s mistaken belief that an operation to topple the Iranian government would be quick and painless.
"The US has long miscalculated due to intelligence failures," Araghchi wrote Thursday on social media. "Case in point: The war on Iran. Now, an even bigger miscalculation on the Strait of Hormuz."
"Worse than fake news is fake intelligence," he said. "Be careful."
Joe Kent, the former director of the US National Counterterrorism Center, who resigned in March after accusing Trump of being manipulated into starting the war by false reports that Iran posed an imminent threat, said that “the story of Trump secretly switching airplanes is actually a great example of how we got into the war with Iran... ‘Israeli-derived, not US-generated, and viewed as low confidence’ by our own intelligence agencies.”
"It’s smart to take all threats seriously," Kent said. "But if you’re basing a decision about going to war on information from a liaison intel service or an 'ally,' it’s important to remember they are most certainly providing that information to influence us as well as inform us."
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With Oral History Project, Journalists Remember 'Fearless' Colleagues Killed by Israeli Forces in Gaza
"He never wavered for a single moment from carrying out his mission, reporting the news, delivering the truth, and exposing the atrocities of the Israeli genocide in the Gaza Strip," said one journalist of Al Jazeera correspondent Anas al-Sharif.
Aug 13, 2026
Just over a year after six journalists—Anas al-Sharif, Mohammed Qraiqea, Ibrahim Zaher, Mohammed Noufal, Mohammed al-Khalidi, and Moamen Aliwa—were assassinated in an Israeli strike on their tent outside Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City, a collective of media workers on Wednesday set out to ensure that all 270 Palestinian reporters who have been killed while covering Israel's nearly three-year assault on the exclave are remembered by the world.
The New York War Crimes collective, a project of Writers Against the War on Gaza (WAWOG), said it initially aimed to gather remembrances of al-Sharif, a 28-year-old Al Jazeera correspondent who was born in Jabalia refugee camp and started his career as a volunteer for Al-Shamal Media Network before becoming internationally known for his "ceaseless coverage" of Israel's US-backed assault on Gaza.
The responses the collective got, said the organizers, "transformed the project. Anas, his colleagues told us, would not have wanted to be remembered as a singular hero, but as a servant of the Palestinian cause."
"So, over the course of the following year, we gathered spoken testimonies from fellow journalists, photographers, cameramen, journalism professors, students, and workers across the media sector in Gaza," reads the website for the project, titled A Living Record. "Each contributor was asked to record a personal remembrance of one or more martyrs, to tell a small part of the history that, as [journalist] Samira Nassar says, should be written in gold."
A number of journalists spoke to WAWOG about al-Sharif, who reported from northern Gaza while the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) were heavily restricting humanitarian aid there as they waged intense attacks there on refugee camps and other civilian infrastructure.
"All the journalists were in awe—really in awe—of him," said Isra al-Madallal. "Just the fact that he was in the north while all the other journalists were in the south was enough to make everyone keep asking, 'How are you? Where are you? What are you doing? What is happening? May God keep you steadfast.' And the starvation—that was something that they lived through together, something intense."
Another colleague, Doaa Shaheen, said Al-Sharif served as "the voice of Jabalia, the voice of the north as a whole; he never left
"He never wavered for a single moment from carrying out his mission, reporting the news, delivering the truth, and exposing the atrocities of the Israeli genocide in the Gaza Strip," said Shaheen, adding that when her fellow Jabalia camp native was killed she thought: "So that’s it? He’s been martyred? So where is Anas’ voice?"
Freelance journalist Baraa Lafi remembered Mariam Abu Dagga, a visual journalist who extensively documented how children were being affected by Israel's attacks, which have been called a genocide by leading human rights groups and Holocaust scholars. She photographed overwhelmed hospitals as medical workers struggled to care for sick and injured Palestinians, as well as documenting the impact of Israel's blockade on humanitarian aid.
Lafi was wounded in the Israeli double-tap strike on Nasser Hospital that killed Abu Dagga, as well as Moaz Abu Taha, Hussam al-Masri, Ahmad Abu Aziz, and Mohammad Salama, just weeks after Al-Sharif and his colleagues were killed.
"As a journalist, Mariam was brave. Braver than many men," said Lafi. "Everyone could see that. Mariam in the field was not unassuming and timid—no. She was fearless. She ran toward the fire, she was first on the scene. If she saw an injured child in distress, she would stop and comfort them. If she saw someone upset, she would stop and stay by their side. If Mariam saw a mother searching for her children—whether during famine or bombardment—she would stop filming and stay by her side, going with her from hospital to hospital to help her find them."
WAWOG collected remembrances from several reporters of "journalists as a collective," with Bisan Owda, who won the Peabody Award in 2024 for her coverage of the war on social media, saying that despite Israel's slaughter of more than 73,000 Palestinians and decimation of the exclave's civilian infrastructure, "there’s still goodness here, in this small place, in the ground underneath us, in those who fight the evil spreading through the rest of the world. To me, those are the people and journalists of Gaza."
"To me, these individuals were daring enough to dream, to believe that we can make a difference," said Owda. "We are brave. We are the ones who have the courage to document with our cameras, to change the narrative, change our current conditions, and to draw attention to our people’s oppression. To change what is happening. You are dealing with the bravest people on the face of the Earth. They are the ones spreading the truth to combat every false narrative in the world."
As The Living Record was published Wednesday, protesters rallied outside The New York Times headquarters in New York City to demand accountability for the killing of journalists in Gaza, while Drop Site News correspondent Mohamed Awad was detained by Israeli forces in Ramallah, the West Bank.
WAWOG said that in the fall, as the third anniversary of Israel's assault on Gaza approaches, it plans to publish more eulogies of Gaza journalists who have been killed in the exclave.
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Doctors Without Borders Accuses Israel of 'Deliberate Effort to Make Existence Itself Impossible' in Gaza
"What we are witnessing in Gaza is not a series of isolated shortages, it is a policy of attrition by design."
Aug 13, 2026
The renowned humanitarian group Doctors Without Borders said Wednesday that the Israeli government is still restricting the entry of engine oil and generator parts to the Gaza Strip, imperiling life-saving hospital functions and other essential services in the decimated territory.
Doctors Without Borders, known internationally as Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), noted that Gaza's remaining healthcare system relies "almost entirely" on generators, "with most electricity cut by Israeli authorities and much of the electrical infrastructure destroyed." The group said that in some Gaza facilities, its teams barely have sufficient engine oil to last a month and have been forced to "buy engine oil at the local market at exorbitant prices."
Filipe Ribeiro, MSF's head of mission in Palestine, said that "what we are witnessing in Gaza is not a series of isolated shortages, it is a policy of attrition by design."
"For more than two years, we have observed Israel's policies restricting the entry of supplies," said Ribeiro. "These policies do not merely delay aid; they dismantle the very systems people rely on to survive."
Israel's continued restriction of supplies comes as the country's military, which is armed by the United States, keeps up its deadly bombing of the strip despite a purported ceasefire deal that took effect in October 2025. Israeli attacks have killed more than 1,200 people in Gaza since the start of the ceasefire agreement. The Israeli government, headed by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, has rejected a US-backed plan for Hamas disarmament in exchange for Israeli withdrawal from Gaza.
Earlier this week, a group of United Nations experts condemned Israel's recent "strikes on hospitals and shelters, the killing of police officers and UN-contracted staff, attacks on fishers, and abductions and abuses by armed groups reportedly collaborating with the Israeli military, as well as the killing of humanitarian workers, who through their work protecting and promoting fundamental human rights, are human rights defenders."
"These restrictions have become increasingly far-reaching, also preventing the entry of routine items ranging from ointments for skin diseases to rubber seals needed for medical sterilization equipment."
According to MSF, Israel's sustained attacks and obstruction of supplies "extend far beyond hospitals."
"Without engine oil, all transport services could stop, including much-needed water trucks during the peak of summer heat, ambulances, buses transporting medical staff to work, and trucks delivering humanitarian supplies," the group said. "Bakeries and flour mills also rely on generators, meaning food production could also be affected."
MSF characterized Israel's continued obstruction of engine oil and spare generator parts as "one piece of a larger pattern of structural violence imposed by Israeli authorities to intentionally restrict access to vital services and supplies as part of the ongoing genocide against Palestinians in Gaza."
"These restrictions have become increasingly far-reaching, also preventing the entry of routine items ranging from ointments for skin diseases to rubber seals needed for medical sterilization equipment," the group said. "The shortages now impact virtually every aspect of life in Gaza, leaving hospitals and humanitarian organizations without basic supplies."
Ribeiro said in a statement that "the items change, but the logic remains the same: reducing people to conditions in which life becomes untenable, and dignity is systematically stripped away through the denial of the most ordinary, most essential goods."
"This is not bureaucracy," he added. "It is a deliberate effort to make existence itself impossible."
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Mysterious Attacks on Ecuadorian Fishers Raise Fears of Expanded US Boat Bombings
“It would be one thing if the US didn’t have an overt maritime strike campaign, but they do, and they’re posting snuff films of boats going up in flames regularly,” said one expert.
Aug 12, 2026
An investigation published Wednesday by The New York Times has raised fresh questions about who attacked three Ecuadorian fishing vessels in the Pacific Ocean earlier this year—but for fishers and their families in the South American nation, the mystery is hardly new.
According to the Times, Ecuadorian fishers aboard the Fiorella, Negra Francisca Duarte II, and Don Maca were separately attacked by what witnesses called unidentified "gringos" using drones. Survivors said they "came under attack by English-speaking assailants wearing matching uniforms with American flag patches, but without any clear insignia to link them to an official government force."
International rights groups have called for an investigation after the Fiorella and its crew of eight disappeared in January amid Operation Southern Spear, President Donald Trump's largely ineffective campaign of extrajudicial strikes on boats that the US administration claims, without evidence, were smuggling drugs.
By the Pentagon's own admission, more than 220 people have been killed in at least 66 such strikes since last September. The US military says no civilians were killed in the strikes, a claim that anonymous government officials called "a fucking joke" and "a total whitewash."
This is a very worrying story. Ecuadorian fishermen are being attacked and killed, and the perpetrators seem to be either the U.S. military engaged in clandestine operations or an American mercenary company working for Bukele or another Central American country.
[image or embed]
— Aaron Reichlin-Melnick (@reichlinmelnick.bsky.social) August 12, 2026 at 7:12 AM
Government officials in countries including Colombia and Venezuela, as well as victims' relatives, have contradicted the US claim. The families of two Trinidadian men killed in one strike earlier this year filed wrongful death lawsuits against the United States. Relatives of a Colombian slain in another US strike also filed a complaint at the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights.
Some of the Ecuadorian fishers featured in the new Times piece say they were seized and interrogated by the attackers before being handed over to the Salvadoran navy, which conducts long-range maritime patrols and counternarcotics operations in the Eastern Pacific and occasionally intercepts vessels.
The new Times report says that a maritime patrol aircraft based at a military facility in El Salvador repeatedly flew toward and tracked the Ecuadorian fishing boats in the days before they were attacked or disappeared. An analysis of flight data found that the aircraft's course appeared to follow the vessels over several days.
Yet the aircraft was not listed among Pentagon operational aircraft. According to the Times, it was registered to a private company whose address was a UPS store mailbox in Virginia, deepening the mystery over who was operating it—and for whom.
“It would be one thing if the US didn’t have an overt maritime strike campaign, but they do, and they’re posting snuff films of boats going up in flames regularly," Brian Finucane, a former State Department lawyer who specializes in the laws of war, told the Times.
"And that’s what makes this even more squirrelly," added Finucane, now a senior adviser in the US Program at the International Crisis Group. “Who are these people that are operating, and under what authority? And they are using a UPS store as their company address? Come on.”
The Pentagon has denied involvement, claiming that US Southern Command (SOUTHCOM) did not know about the attacks or have a role in them. But the new findings raise the possibility that the attacks could have involved a private military contractor or another force operating in coordination with Washington's expanding anti-drug campaign.
“Who are these people that are operating, and under what authority? And they are using a UPS store as their company address?"
In addition to the boat bombing campaign—which the Pentagon has replaced with the newly created Joint Task Force Western Hemisphere—SOUTHCOM has launched Operation Total Extermination, a joint counternarcotics operation with Ecuadorian forces involving the deployment of US ground troops into the Andean nation.
In one operation in the campaign, Ecuadorian soldiers raided and destroyed a dairy farm in San Martín, Sucumbíos, on March 3. Ecuador claimed the site was a traffickers’ camp, but investigations by The New York Times and, later, Human Rights Watch found substantial evidence that it was a working cattle and dairy farm with no credible evidence of a criminal connection. HRW said four workers at the farm were detained and tortured by Ecuadorian forces, and that the broader operation was carried out with US assistance.
The Times investigation published Wednesday followed months of reporting by Ecuadorian and international media and human rights groups, including HRW, on the three fishing vessels and their crews.
In April, Primicias reported growing fear among fishermen in Manabí, Ecuador's major fishing province, where crews said they had been intercepted and attacked at sea. Fishers from the Don Maca and Negra Francisca Duarte II separately described being surrounded by drones and subsequently detained by what they believed were US personnel.
Don Maca's crew told El Universo that drones bombed their boat without warning on March 26. Fishers aboard said they escaped in small boats, approached a foreign vessel for help, and were instead handcuffed and hooded before eventually being transferred to Salvadoran authorities.
El Universo also separately reported a strikingly similar account from the crew of the Negra Francisca Duarte II. Captain Hernán Flores said a drone struck the boat on March 17, setting it ablaze and forcing all 16 fishermen into the water. When they approached a nearby blue vessel seeking assistance, Flores said, armed foreign personnel pointed weapons at them, bound them, and covered their heads.
In the case of the Fiorella, Primicias and El Universo reported that two fishers who had separated from the boat in a smaller vessel saw a drone circling above shortly before they spotted smoke on the horizon. Fiorella and those aboard it have never been found.
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At UN Security Council, Officials Say Israeli Settler Violence Has Brought West Bank to 'Breaking Point'
"Settler violence has reached unprecedented levels," said a coordinator for the Middle East peace process. "Many incidents occurred in the presence of Israeli forces."
Aug 12, 2026
Home demolitions by Israeli forces; attacks on healthcare infrastructure, homes, and schools; mass displacement of Palestinians; and the expansion of illegal settlements across the West Bank have brought the occupied Palestinian territory to "the breaking point," said a top humanitarian official at the United Nations Security Council Tuesday, calling for a "coordinated international effort" to end the violent Israeli occupation.
At a meeting on the situation in the territory, Ramiz Alakbarov, the UN special coordinator for the Middle East peace process, addressed the council as families in the town of Qusra, northern Nablus, were facing days of attacks by Israeli settlers.
That violence exemplified what the Israeli human rights group B'Tselem called an escalating "ethnic cleansing" operation that Israel's military allows.
As B'Tselem said Wednesday, settlers had established an illegal outpost in the yards of two Palestinian families' homes, “forcing the families out and taking over their homes," and the US-backed Israel Defense Forces (IDF) had done nothing to protect the Palestinian residents.
“Israeli ethnic cleansing in the West Bank is accelerating and expanding in full view of everyone,” Yuli Novak, president of B'Tselem, told Anadolu Agency, adding that the settlers' seizure of the Palestinian homes was “not an isolated incident."
Breaking the Silence, an organization run by former IDF members who oppose the occupation, explained how settlers, with the backing of the military, essentially blockade individual homes as a method of driving Palestinians out.
"Violent settlers may do the 'dirty work' of daily terror against Palestinian men, women, and children, but neither this terror nor ethnic cleansing would be possible without the army’s support," said the group. "Village after village, house after house. It keeps happening because it is policy."
At the Security Council meeting, Alakbarov said Israeli forces have killed 76 Palestinians, including 18 children, in the West Bank in 2026 so far, while children make up nearly half of the 3,800 Palestinians who have been displaced by settler attacks, demolitions, and evictions.
"One hundred and twenty-seven Palestinian communities have experienced full or partial displacement since January 2023, including 47 that have been entirely displaced, affecting more than 6,390 Palestinians," said Alakbarov. "Settler violence has reached unprecedented levels. So far this year the UN has documented more than 1,430 incidents involving Israeli settlers that resulted in casualties, property damage, or both, affecting approximately 260 Palestinian communities. Many incidents occurred in the presence of Israeli forces."
As Alakbarov spoke Tuesday, the World Health Organization warned that the West Bank has also seen an uptick in violence against healthcare infrastructure, with Israeli carrying out 83 attacks on healthcare transport such as ambulances and 11 attacks on medical centers and facilities, injuring at least 33 people and killing four. July saw a surge in healthcare attacks—a hallmark of Israel's assault on Gaza that began in 2023—with 37 strikes on infrastructure.
Settler attacks were once mainly concentrated in Area C, which comprises about 60% of the West Bank and is under Israeli control.
But Alakbarov said settlers are increasingly waging violence against Palestinians in Areas A and B, which are under the administration of the Palestinian Authority.
“The future of the region is at stake,” the UN permanent observer for the state of Palestine, Riyad Mansour, told the Security Council. “International will cannot bow before the colonial whims of the Israeli government.”
Israeli officials in recent months have advanced and approved about 12,360 housing units in settlements across the West Bank this year, with the Security Cabinet signing off on 13 new settlements in the central part of the territory last month. The move further isolates East Jerusalem, which Palestinians consider the capital of a future Palestinian state, from the rest of the West Bank.
Last year Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu also signed an agreement to develop 3,400 new units in the E1 settlement, which would also cut off access to East Jerusalem. The prime minister said as he approved the deal, "There will be no Palestinian state."
The approvals of more settlement housing this year and the escalation in IDF-sanctioned violence against Palestinian communities across the West Bank "are interconnected steps, not isolated developments,” Alakbarov said Tuesday.
"The situation in the West Bank must be treated as an emergency requiring urgent action," he said. "The concern is not only the continued expansion of settlements, but the speed and systematic manner in which new facts are being created on the ground. New outposts are established, often with state support, and can be retroactively authorized or incorporated into the wider settlement system. From these outposts, settler violence and intimidation have driven the displacement of Palestinian communities."
He added that the spread of settler outposts in agricultural and grazing areas is "deeply troubling."
"Requiring only a small number of settlers, they enable control over vast areas of land," said Alakbarov. "Israeli monitoring organizations report that agricultural and pastoral outposts now exercise effective control over close to 20% of the West Bank."
Israeli forces also arrested 23 Palestinians on Tuesday, including two children, days after a large-scale operation at Qalandia refugee camp resulted in the detentions of more than 60 people.
Hannah Sulieman, deputy executive director of the UN Children's Fund (UNICEF), emphasized that 355 Palestinian children are currently being detained in Israeli military prisons—"the highest number in eight years."
The arrests and the violence mean that for children and their families in the West Bank, "the fundamental spaces of childhood—the home, the classroom, the street, the community—are becoming increasingly unsafe," said Sulieman.
“Children in the West Bank have the same rights as children everywhere,” she said. "To live, to learn, to be protected, and to imagine a future beyond violence and fear."
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