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War & Peace
End Trump Oil Embargo on Cuba With War Powers Vote, Coalition Urges House Democrats
“Cuba is suffering through a man-made economic and humanitarian catastrophe, caused in significant part by deliberate policy choices of the United States."
Sep 11, 2026
Dozens of advocacy groups this week urged House Democratic leaders to force a vote on an existing war powers resolution aimed at endingr President Donald Trump's unauthorized aggression toward Cuba, including his administration's deadly de facto US oil embargo.
“Cuba is suffering through a man-made economic and humanitarian catastrophe, caused in significant part by deliberate policy choices of the United States," 45 groups said in a letter dated September 9 to House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) and Foreign Affairs and Rules Committee Ranking Members Gregory Meeks (D-NY) and Jim McGovern (D-Mass.).
"Since January 2026, the Trump administration has imposed an oil blockade that has cut off the island from nearly all fuel imports, allowing only a single tanker to dock over the past seven months alongside minor US sales that are wholly insufficient to sustain the country’s economy and basic services," the letter continues.
"The consequences have been devastating and far-reaching, and the crisis is deepening," the groups stressed. "Cuba has endured at least six nationwide grid collapses this year—at times leaving over 9h million people without power, with outages stretching well beyond 20 hours in much of the country. Fuel shortages have stalled transportation, disrupted food and water supplies, and pushed a once-renowned universal healthcare system toward collapse and the rationing of care."
The groups behind the letter—which include American Friends Service Committee, Center for Economic and Policy Research, Demand Progress, Indivisible, National Nurses United, Pax Christi USA, RootsAction, United Church of Christ, and Win Without War—called for an immediate vote on Rep. Nydia Velázquez's (D-NY) Cuba War Powers Resolution, H.Con.Res. 106.
The privileged resolution—which can be called for a vote without approval from House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.)—would direct the removal of US armed forces from hostilities within or against Cuba absent congressional authorization. The measure targets the de facto US oil blockade on Cuba, which proponents argue amounts to unauthorized hostilities against Cuba.
Velázquez's resolution came amid the Trump administration's escalating aggression against Cuba, including threats to attack or even invade the island, economic strangulation including the oil embargo and decades-old blockade that critics said were causing the deaths of infants and sick people, and the US Department of Justice indictment of former Cuban President Raúl Castro for his alleged role in the 1996 shoot-down of planes operated by a hostile US-based counterrevolutionary group following repeated warnings that they had violated Cuban airspace.
In April, US senators voted 51-47—with Democratic Sen. John Fetterman of Pennsylvania joining all but two of his Republican colleagues, Sens. Susan Collins of Maine and Rand Paul of Kentucky—to block a war powers resolution introduced in March by Sens. Tim Kaine (D-Va.), Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), and Ruben Gallego (D-Ariz.).
"Despite falling short of the majority, this was among the strongest votes in congressional history against the use of blockades, and one of the most important stands Congress has taken against US economic sanctions toward Cuba in over six decades," the 45 groups said in their letter. "The House should take a similarly forceful action at this crucial moment."
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Son of 9/11 Victim Says 'Please Stop' Exploiting Tragedy to Spread Anti-Muslim Bigotry
"You do my dad's legacy and the legacy of all these victims no honor by using this tragedy to spread hate."
Sep 11, 2026
Twenty-five years after the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States that killed nearly 3,000 Americans and others and sparked a worldwide US-led war on terrorism that has left nearly one million people dead, some relatives of 9/11 victims pleaded that their grief must not be weaponized in the form of anti-Muslim bigotry.
Michael Massaroli Jr., whose father, Michael Massaroli, was killed in the attacks, made one such appeal during Friday’s 25th anniversary commemoration at the National September 11 Memorial at ground zero in Lower Manhattan.
"One parting thing I want to leave everyone with is that you do my dad's legacy and the legacy of all these victims no honor by using this tragedy to spread hate," Massaroli said. "We have seen a medley of people come up today of all races, all religions, all creeds, and this tragedy is just that—it's a tragedy."
"I've had to grow up and spend the past 25 years seeing people use it to hate on our Muslim brothers and sisters, to hate on people who don't look like them," he added. "And that's wrong. And that does no honor to the victims here. And I want to use the little platform I have to ask for that to please stop."
"My father Michael Massaroli...you do my dad's legacy and the legacy of all these victims no honor by using this tragedy to spread hate. We have seen a medley of people come up today, of all races, all religions, all creeds and this tragedy is just that, it's a tragedy. I've had… pic.twitter.com/xRtXgZZyYn
— CSPAN (@cspan) September 11, 2026
Massaroli wasn't the only one decrying Islamophobic exploitation of 9/11. Members of September 11th Families for Peaceful Tomorrows, including co-founder Colleen Kelly, have repeatedly denounced the violence and hatred perpetrated after the attacks.
On Friday, Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR) national executive director Nihad Awad recalled how "the trauma we all felt after the attacks was exploited to erode civil liberties, justify torture, normalize illegal discrimination, empower hate groups, and launch forever wars across the Middle East that killed thousands of American soldiers and hundreds of thousands of men, women, and children in numerous countries."
Recently, Democratic New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani—the first Muslim elected to lead the city—has been subjected to a wave of Islamophobic vitriol. Critics have invoked his religion and 9/11 in questioning whether he should participate in the city’s September 11 commemoration. Former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani and other Republicans have said that Mamdani should skip the ceremony, while broadly attacking Islam.
The Trump administration's immigration policies have also been called discriminatory against Muslims. CAIR said in a March report that it received a record 8,683 anti-Muslim and anti-Arab complaints in 2025, attributing part of the increase to the administration's immigration crackdown and its response to pro-Palestinian protests. The cases included immigration and travel discrimination, employment discrimination, and alleged targeting of Muslim and Arab communities.
“Today, bad actors are once again exploiting the 9/11 attacks to score political points, incite discrimination, and justify forever wars overseas," Awad said on Friday. "We cannot let these resurgent voices of division, hate, and violence succeed. We must instead embrace the spirit of unity that bonded all of us together 25 years ago and stand up for the universal value of human life, anywhere and everywhere."
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Exploiting Tragedy to Promote War, Hegseth Falsely Claims That Iran 'Cheered on 9/11'
"What haunts me," said one anti-war activist, "is how little accountability there has been for those who lied us into war—and how those same lies are now recycled to justify the attack on Iran."
Sep 11, 2026
Twenty-five years later, Republican politicians are still using 9/11 to justify war in the Middle East. And they're still lying shamelessly.
During remarks outside the Pentagon on Friday commemorating the 25th anniversary of the terrorist attack, President Donald Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth portrayed their deeply unpopular war in Iran as part of the lineage of the global War on Terror, which was marked by a pair of lengthy military engagements in Iraq and Afghanistan that cost well over $2 trillion and millions of lives.
Trump declared that he was prosecuting his new war with Iran to fulfill the "sacred oath" sworn in the names of the nearly 3,000 people whose lives were lost that day, that "we will never, ever forget."
Hegseth seems to have forgotten quite a lot. Attempting to draw a link between the ideology of the al-Qaeda hijackers who committed the attack and the current Iranian government, the defense secretary said, "Our warriors have fought an Islamic theocracy that has wished us death for nearly half a century, that cheered on 9/11."
However, the claim that Iran "cheered on 9/11" is at odds with the historical record of how the nation's government and people reacted.
On September 19, 2001, The Washington Post reported that:
Despite two decades of official hostility, the people and government of Iran have offered vivid messages of sympathy and condemnations of terrorism in the aftermath of last week's attacks on New York and Washington...
Hard-line conservative Iranians and moderate reformers, top government and religious officials, Friday prayer leaders, and citizens on the street have uniformly denounced the plane hijackings and suicide crashes of September 11. Some, including President Mohammad Khatami, have offered to join an international campaign against terrorism under certain circumstances, including United Nations sponsorship.
On the day of the attacks in 2001, Khatami issued a swift condemnation over Iranian state TV of what he called "the terrorist operations of hijacking and attacking public places in American cities, which have resulted in the death of a large number of defenseless American people."
Khatami later decried the attacks as “the ugliest form of terrorism ever seen." According to later congressional testimony by a State Department official, he also asked to visit ground zero to light a candle out of respect for the victims, a request that was denied by the administration of then-US President George W. Bush.
Days after the attacks, Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei—who was killed this past February during the opening salvo of the joint US-Israeli war against Iran—agreed at the time that “mass murder of human beings is condemned," though he also suggested that "expansionist" US foreign policy had played a role in provoking the attacks.
The US-funded Radio Free Europe reported that, far from celebrating in the streets, around 2,000 Iranians had gathered in Tehran for a candlelight vigil a week after the attacks, at which participants "chanted against terrorism and expressed their sympathy with America." Days earlier, the Post reported that about 50,000 spectators at a World Cup qualifying match in Tehran observed a minute of silence in recognition of the attacks.
Iran's support for the US following the attack also went beyond words. While still describing Iran as the world's leading "state sponsor of terrorism," a May 2002 State Department report emphasized Iran's cooperation with US operations against al-Qaeda and the Taliban.
This included offering search-and-rescue assistance for downed US air crews, diplomatic cooperation at the 2001 Bonn Conference to build Afghanistan's post-Taliban government, and promising border controls to prevent fleeing Taliban and al-Qaeda members from escaping.
Though Trump promised at the outset that it would last only a matter of weeks, his war with Iran has now lumbered into its sixth month with no sign of stopping. It has spilled out into a wider Middle Eastern conflict that has taken the lives of about 8,000 people, displaced millions, and wreaked financial chaos.
The war has included US attacks on civilians that have had a similar resonance with Iranians that 9/11 has for Americans, most infamously the bombing of an elementary school that killed at least 150 people, most of them children.
According to one economist's recent estimate, the war has conservatively cost the average American household about $1,200 over six months, combining the direct cost to taxpayers with the knock-on effects of spiking oil prices and broader inflation.
Though around two-thirds of Americans say they oppose the war and Congress has ordered Trump to bring it to an end, recent reports indicate that the administration is considering expanding it following this November's midterm elections.
Trump described the war as a grim necessity on Friday, in part to honor those who perished on September 11, 25 years earlier.
“That’s why we fight today," Trump said. "We don’t have a choice. There can only be victory. We fight hard. We fight to win.”
Medea Benjamin, the co-founder of the anti-war group CodePink, reflected earlier this week on how the tragedy is still being used to this day to justify endless wars overseas.
"What haunts me today is not only the devastation of the invasion, but how little accountability there has been for those who lied us into war—and how those same lies are now recycled to justify the attack on Iran," Benjamin said. "The War on Terror did not end."
"The same impunity that has shielded the architects of the global War on Terror," she added, "now emboldens the war criminals behind the genocide in Gaza and the Minab school massacre in Iran."
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Fresh Calls to End Iran War After Trump Reportedly Denies MBS Request to Bomb Houthis
"Imagine if we had just built on the JCPOA and created a stable Middle East through cooperation instead of these endless wars," said one observer.
Sep 11, 2026
Calls to halt the Iran War and avert yet another US bombing campaign in Yemen intensified Friday after President Donald Trump reportedly declined a request from Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman to launch airstrikes against Houthi forces amid their stunning advance toward a vital global shipping lane.
According to Axios' Barak Ravid, Mohammed bin Salman, who is also the Saudi prime minister, made two urgent calls to Trump on Thursday as Houthi forces captured the strategic Yemeni port city of Mocha and advanced toward the Bab el-Mandeb Strait, one of the world's most important maritime chokepoints. MBS reportedly pressed Trump to intervene militarily, but the president declined to order US attacks at this time.
"With Iran already disrupting traffic through the Strait of Hormuz, Houthi control of Bab el-Mandeb could give Tehran a powerful new point of leverage over the US and its Gulf allies," Ravid wrote.
However, he added that "US officials stressed the administration has no plans to intervene directly against the Houthis for now."
Understanding that Trump's apparent refusal of MBS' request could be temporary, opponents of a wider Middle East war are urging the US leader to refrain from any further strikes on Houthi targets.
Instead of attacking Yemen, Matt Duss, executive vice president at the Center for International Policy and a former foreign policy adviser to US Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), said on social media that a "better idea" would be to "end the war on Iran and remove US forces from the Middle East."
California-based Israeli academic Shaiel Ben-Ephraim said on social media that "Trump wisely decided not to get involved in the Yemeni civil war. Stop expanding all these wars."
"Imagine if we had just built on the JCPOA and created a stable Middle East through cooperation instead of these endless wars in Syria, Yemen, Iran, Iraq, Lebanon, and Gaza," he mused, referring to the Obama-era Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, the Iran nuclear deal unilaterally abandoned by Trump during his first term, despite Tehran's full compliance with its terms.
Drop Site News national security and foreign affairs reporter Murtaza Hussain called on the Gulf Arab states—which have borne the brunt of Iranian counterattacks—to circumvent the United States and negotiate an agreement with Tehran.
The Houthi victories give the group—officially called Ansar Allah—a commanding position near the Bab el-Mandeb Strait. The narrow waterway links the Red Sea to the Gulf of Aden and carries an estimated 12% of global goods, including approximately 4-5% of the world's total seaborne-traded oil and petroleum products.
Saudi Arabia launched Friday airstrikes on Mocha's airport, while the Houthis attacked targets including Saudi pipeline infrastructure used to circumvent the Strait of Hormuz. The Houthis said that maritime traffic would be safe except for Saudi vessels.
Oil prices surged more than 6% on Thursday, with both major benchmarks trading at over $100 a barrel amid the Houthi advances and continued instability stemming from Iran's effective closure of the Strait of Hormuz despite over six months of unsuccessful efforts by the US military and Trump administration to reopen the vital waterway, through which around one-fifth of the world's oil previously transited.
The average US price of a gallon of gasoline reached nearly $4.30 on Friday, a 37% increase from when Trump—who promised both no new wars and $2 gas—entered office in January 2025.
US forces have carried out airstrikes and ground raids on al-Qaeda and other militants in Yemen for decades. According to the UK-based casualty monitor Airwars, an estimated 445-643 Yemeni civilians have been killed by US forces since 2009.
Starting under then-President Barack Obama in 2014, the US provided arms and support to the Saudi-led coalition during Yemen's civil war. International experts attribute more than 150,000 Yemeni deaths to a US-backed, Saudi-led bombing campaign and blockade, which has fueled mass starvation and disease in the country of approximately 43 million people.
A report published Thursday documented more than 500 Yemeni civilian casualties caused by US attacks between December 2023 and May 2025. All but seven of 46 strikes covered by the report occurred during Trump's presidency, including massacres at the Ras Isa oil port and at a detention center for African migrants in Saada.
During Israel's war on Gaza, the US, Israel, and the United Kingdom carried out repeated airstrikes in response to Houthi attacks on commercial and military vessels in the Red Sea that the group said were intended to pressure Israel as it killed tens of thousands of Palestinians.
Responding to the latest developments, UK political commentator Bushra Shaikh said that "America went to war for Israel, seeking to dominate the Middle East."
"Now Trump is negotiating with Iran, Saudi Arabia is looking towards regional diplomacy, Pakistan says the Mecca Pact won't be used against Yemen, and the Ansar Allah Houthis retain leverage over Bab el-Mandeb," she continued.
Shaikh added: "The ultimate humiliation? America will come out of this war having failed to defeat Iran while pushing the very region it wanted to control towards strategic independence from Washington."
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On 25th Anniversary of 9/11 Attacks, Condemnation of Global 'War on Terror' That Has Killed Millions
"US officials who orchestrated post-9/11 abuses must also be held accountable, and their victims must receive meaningful remedy and reparation."
Sep 11, 2026
International human rights campaigners, United Nations experts, journalists, and anti-war activists marked the 25th anniversary of the September 11, 2001 attacks on the US by paying tributes to the thousands of lives lost on that day while condemning what followed: an unparalleled expansion of state surveillance, crackdowns on dissent, arbitrary detention, torture, and catastrophic wars that cost trillions of dollars and millions of lives.
Mourning the lasting impact of "those horrific acts of violence" perpetrated in the US a quarter-century ago, a group of more than 40 UN experts said in a joint statement on Friday that "we equally acknowledge the millions of other victims worldwide of terrorist attacks, excessive counter-terrorism responses, and conflicts in the name of countering terrorism."
"Too many governments have adopted unnecessary and disproportionate responses that have seriously undermined human rights, civil society, civic space, democracy, and the rule of law," the experts continued. "Wars of aggression. Unlawful occupations. Countless war crimes and crimes against humanity, and plausible allegations of genocide. Assassinations dressed up as 'targeted killings.' Torture disguised as 'interrogation.' Transboundary abductions, extraordinary renditions, and transnational repression. Secret detention and enforced disappearances. Unfair military trials and special courts, including at Guantanamo Bay. Toxic residues from conflicts have severely harmed human health."
The experts argued that global "wars on terror" launched by the US and other nations in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks have "have stretched foundational rules of international law beyond their breaking point," "counterproductively fueled terrorism," and "entrenched cycles of violence."
Many of those grave abuses continue in the present, the US-based Center for Constitutional Rights emphasized in a statement marking the anniversary of the 9/11 atrocities.
"In the 25 years since September 11, 2001, the sweeping political project the US government undertook in its aftermath has shaped, shattered, or ended millions of lives," the group said. "Exploiting fear and suffering, the Bush administration launched a limitless 'war on terror,' whose stated purpose was all pretext to impose its will on other countries, expand its power beyond constitutional bounds, and target vulnerable communities."
"Today, because of the lack of accountability for these gross abuses of human rights, Trump can use 'counterterrorism' to pursue his authoritarian program," said CCR.
Nick Turse, a senior reporter at The Intercept, argued the attacks coordinated by Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden in 2001 created a "swirl of toxic policies and governmental overreach" that "opened the door to something beyond bin Laden’s wildest dreams, the rise of an even more effective terrorist who has crippled the US in countless ways and sought to strangle the best of the country: President Donald Trump."
"Bin Laden’s attacks turned the US government into an engine for the destruction of America, inducing it to implement policies that have devastated the country and immiserated its people," Turse wrote in a column published Friday. "That includes unrestrained spending while cutting taxes on the rich, closer ties with despotic regimes, the sneak-and-peek warrants and roving wiretaps of the Patriot Act and other domestic surveillance programs, and the ruinous failed forever wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, and elsewhere."
Those wars, according to Brown University's Costs of War project, have cost the US federal government upwards of $8 trillion.
"The opportunity costs are staggering," the project noted. "Many of these funds could have been spent on public health or in sectors that create far more jobs than the defense sector, like education or green energy."
As for the human toll, the Costs of War project noted in a brief published last week that as of 2023, "an estimated 905,000-940,000 people—including US soldiers, allied security forces, civilians, and militants—have died due to war violence in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Syria (in the fight against the Islamic State), Yemen, and elsewhere. At least 408,749—432,093 of those who have died were civilians."
"Many other people have died indirectly as a result of the wars," the brief observed. "An estimated 3.6-3.8 million indirect deaths have occurred in post-9/11 war zones."
Scott Roehm, Amnesty International USA's chief human rights strategy officer, said Friday that the US government could have responded to the 9/11 attacks "by upholding human rights and the rule of law while pursuing justice and accountability for victims’ families."
"Instead, it embarked on a campaign of widespread abuses against Muslim, Brown, and Black communities, including arbitrary detentions and mass surveillance in the US; unlawful lethal air strikes abroad; enforced disappearances and torture in Iraq, Afghanistan and at CIA black sites; and the opening of the notorious Guantanamo Bay detention center," said Roehm. "The choice to engage in torture, then build prosecutions against those alleged to be most responsible for 9/11 on the back of torture-derived evidence, is largely why, 25 years later, there has been neither justice nor finality for victims’ families."
"The US government must end the last 25 years of abuses," Roehm added. "US officials who orchestrated post-9/11 abuses must also be held accountable, and their victims must receive meaningful remedy and reparation.”
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Israeli Documentary ‘NAZA’ Exposes 'System of Killing' in Gaza From Eyes of Secret Intelligence Unit
The directors of the film—which premiered at the Venice Film Festival—said they "felt the responsibility" to expose insider testimony about Israel's systematic mass killing of Palestinians.
Sep 10, 2026
A documentary film that premiered Thursday at the Venice Film Festival offers a rare inside account of Israel’s US-backed genocide in Gaza, with former members of a secret Israeli intelligence unit describing how they helped transform the mass killing of Palestinian civilians into a routine, bureaucratized affair.
NAZA, directed by Israeli filmmakers Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor, is based on interviews with 24 Israeli military and intelligence insiders, several of whom served in a secret unit that reported directly to the office of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
"We really are looking at... a system of killing, which is mass killing [and] relies on mass surveillance," Abraham told reporters in Venice on Thursday. "We felt the responsibility as Israelis to use our position... to bring insider testimony into how the system looks like from the inside... And this is the film that we made."
Szor said that "a lot of these things are also, it's important to say... known because they've been documented by journalists, Palestinian journalists, in Gaza. It's footage that has been out there."
"But I think that we felt that there is still some sort of an importance to take those testimonies and put it in a film in a way that, of course, first of all, it's different to hear," she added. "The people who designed and operated those systems talk about it in front of a camera."
According to the film, one former member bluntly said that the unit's mission was to “thwart peace.”
However, Abraham and Szor said their purpose was not to expose a handful of rogue soldiers, but to examine the machinery and policies behind the violence.
The documentary’s title refers to an Israeli military acronym used to quantify the civilians expected to be killed in an attack—a chilling bureaucratic shorthand for people often referred to as collateral damage, or, in the so-called "War on Terror" still being waged by the United States 25 years after the September 11, 2001 attacks, "bugsplat."
The film’s sources describe artificial intelligence-assisted targeting, mass surveillance, and the hacking of mobile phones to identify alleged Hamas operatives, sometimes despite the known presence of family members and other civilians.
Israeli forces have operated under loosened rules of engagement that effectively permit the killing of an unlimited number of civilians when targeting even a single low-ranking Hamas member. The Israel Defense Forces utilizes cutting-edge AI technology to select targets at a far faster rate than humans alone could, and destroys them with weapons including 1,000- and 2,000-pound bombs—many supplied by the US.
The result has been the killing and wounding of more than 250,000 Palestinians since the Hamas-led attack of October 7, 2023. Most of the victims have been civilians, including more than 21,500 children killed and tens of thousands more disabled or wounded.
Netanyahu and former Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant are wanted by the International Criminal Court in The Hague for alleged crimes against humanity and war crimes in Gaza, including murder and forced starvation. Israel is facing an ongoing genocide case filed by South Africa at the International Court of Justice—also in The Hague—and formally supported by nearly 20 nations.
Abraham and Szor are best known internationally for co-directing with two others the film No Other Land, which chronicled ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from the illegally occupied West Bank by Israeli settlers and soldiers. The film won the 2025 Academy Award for best documentary feature. No Other Land co-director, co-writer, and producer Hamdan Ballal, who is Palestinian, was brutally attacked by Israeli settlers and violently detained by IDF troops in March 2025, as Common Dreams reported at the time.
NAZA—which reportedly received a 25-minute standing ovation at its Venice premiere—is the sole documentary among the films competing for the festival's famed Golden Lion. It joins a growing body of recent films about the Gaza genocide.
American Doctor, directed by Poh Si Teng, follows US physicians working inside Gaza hospitals amid Israel's deliberate destruction of the strip's medical and healthcare systems.
Last year's The Voice of Hind Rajab offered a harrowing mix of acted scenes and the actual 70-minute audio recording of a 5-year-old Palestinian girl's desperate final phone call to Palestine Red Crescent Society personnel amid an Israeli massacre of her family as they were trapped in a car under tank fire.
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Report Details 500+ Yemeni Civilian Casualties From 2023-25 US Airstrikes
"The so-called 'War on Terror' never ended in Yemen," said Costs of War Project director Stephanie Savell. "This report will allow people to hold the US government accountable for the deaths and destruction it has caused."
Sep 10, 2026
A report released Thursday examines the more than 500 Yemeni civilians its authors said were killed or wounded by US airstrikes in the Middle East nation during a recent 17-month period amid the open-ended so-called "War on Terror" that has left nearly one million people dead in around half a dozen nations over the past 25 years.
The report—authored by the Yemen-based group Mwatana for Human Rights and published by the Costs of War Project at Brown University's Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs—documents 46 US airstrikes that took place between December 2023 and May 2025 that caused at least 576 civilian casualties, including 213 deaths and 363 injuries. Among the casualties were at least 50 children and 25 women.
"The so-called 'War on Terror' never ended in Yemen," Costs of War Project director Stephanie Savell contended.
"It's important that we continue to account for the civilian lives lost, harmed, and disrupted in Yemen and other US war zones," she added. "This report will allow people to hold the US government accountable for the deaths and destruction it has caused in Yemen in support of the Israeli government's wars since 2023."
The overwhelming majority of the casualties covered by the publication occurred during President Donald Trump’s 2025 "Operation Rough Rider" campaign. Mwatana estimates that the operation killed 208 civilians and wounded 341, while the Pentagon has acknowledged a smaller toll of 153 killed and 243 wounded.
Seven of the 46 strikes took place between December of 2023 and January of 2025 during former President Joe Biden's "Operation Prosperity Guardian," a military campaign that came amid Houthi rebel attacks on shipping lanes in the Red Sea and the Bab al-Mandab Strait during Israel's genocidal war on Gaza.
Among the deadliest attacks covered by the report was the April 2025 bombardment of Ras Isa oil port ordered by Trump, in which US strikes killed scores of people and wounded more than 150 others. Human Rights Watch called the bombing an “apparent war crime,” saying the destruction of the civilian oil facility also threatened vital fuel supplies in a country already devastated by years of war and humanitarian crisis.
The campaign also included the April 28 bombing of a detention center in Saada while jailed African migrants were sleeping. Amnesty International has called for a war crimes investigation into that attack, in which scores of migrants were killed.
Mwatana researchers conducted site visits and 59 interviews with survivors, relatives, eyewitnesses, first responders, and other sources for the new report.
"The first strike hit while we were in deep sleep. I could not believe what I saw—30 of my fellow detainees died; their bodies were charred, and the smell of burned flesh filled the air," one 25-year-old Ethiopian survivor of the Saada attack recounted. "The place was crowded with bodies, while others were screaming and calling for help and rescue... we could do nothing for them."
In addition to physical harm, survivors described the deep psychological trauma suffered by victims. One mother said her 8-year-old son Taha "saw his father after he was hit by shrapnel—how he was bleeding, and how his intestines were coming out."
"His father was screaming: ‘Run… leave me and run before the American aircraft strikes again and finishes me off,'" she continued. "Taha still cannot sleep; when he does, he wakes up terrified. Whenever he hears thunder or any loud noise, he runs in fear, his whole body trembling."
Overall, US strikes covered by the report "hit civilian structures such as homes, shops, farms, residential neighborhoods, and infrastructure," the publication notes, adding that airstrikes "also caused severe damage to infrastructure and critical facilities, compounding the humanitarian suffering of local populations by striking essential service facilities, particularly in rural areas that already face acute shortages of clean water, electricity, and health services."
"Given Yemen’s economic deterioration and the catastrophic humanitarian situation produced by the armed conflict that has been ongoing since September 2014, it is likely that the US strikes expanded the cycle of poverty in Yemen by increasing unemployment and multiplying the number of households that lost breadwinners and sources of income," the report adds.
Hundreds of thousands of Yemenis have died during the civil war that began in 2014, with international experts attributing more than 150,000 Yemeni deaths to a US-backed, Saudi-led bombing campaign and blockade. According to the UK-based casualty monitor Airwars, an estimated 445-643 Yemeni civilians have been killed by US forces during the George W. Bush, Obama, Trump, and Biden administrations.
The Costs of War Project says that in the first two decades following the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States, "between 363,939 and 387,072 civilians were killed by multiple warring parties in post-9/11 war zones, including 12,690 civilians in Yemen."
Mwatana for Human Rights chair Radhya Al-Mutawakel said Thursday that "the losses caused by US airstrikes against civilians cannot be regarded as temporary harm that ends when military operations cease. Civilians who have lost loved ones, homes, or sources of income continue to bear the consequences of these attacks, amid economic and humanitarian conditions that do not provide them with even the minimum capacity to recover.”
"Protecting civilians is not limited to avoiding killing or injuring them; it also includes respecting civilian objects and livelihoods," Al-Mutawakel added. "The United States must assume its legal and moral responsibility to recognize the civilian victims of its military operations in Yemen, provide them with redress and reparation, and hold accountable those responsible for the violations inflicted upon them.”
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Chaos Unleashed by Trump's Iran War Escalates as Houthis Seize Key Port City in Yemen
The increased fighting is putting even more pressure on global energy markets, with the price of Brent crude topping $107 per barrel during Thursday trading.
Sep 10, 2026
Houthi fighters on Thursday took control of a key port city on the west coast of Yemen, putting them in a stronger position to disrupt commercial shipping—and to potentially send oil prices rocketing even higher.
According to Reuters, the Houthis seized the city of Mocha from Saudi-backed forces before moving toward the Hanish Islands, located to the northeast.
Reuters further reported that Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps provided the Houthi fighters with weapons and guidance ahead of their successful assault.
The Houthis' seizure of more territory along the Red Sea gives the militant group a greater ability to launch attacks on vessels trying to transport oil through the Bab el-Mandeb Strait.
Petroleum exporters in the region have had to rely more heavily on the Bab el-Mandeb Strait ever since Iran shut down shipping traffic in the Strait of Hormuz in retaliation for President Donald Trump's illegal war of choice, which he launched in February without authorization from Congress.
Restricting shipments through both straits would put even greater pressure on global oil markets, which have already been under strain since the start of the Iran War.
A Thursday report from Bloomberg noted that Saudi Arabia, whose ships have been targets of Houthi attacks, revealed that its oil output has dropped to 6.24 million barrels per a day, its lowest level of oil production since 1990.
The price of Brent crude topped $107 during Thursday trading, a 6% increase from the day before. Data released Thursday by the American Automobile Association showed that the average price of gas in the US has reached $4.28 per gallon while the average price of diesel has reached a record high of $5.98 per gallon.
Fawaz Gerges, professor at the London School of Economics, said in an interview with The New York Times that the Houthis, despite receiving assistance from Iran, have their own distinct goals and see Trump's illegal war as a "golden opportunity" to make advances against Yemen's Saudi-backed government.
Additionally, said Gerges, "Iran directly and indirectly benefits from what the Houthis have been doing," since "all-out war could have major implications for the global energy supply."
Brett Erickson, managing partner at Obsidian Risk Advisors, wrote in a social media post that Iran and the Houthis have all the incentive in the world to keep the pressure on global petroleum shipping.
"Brent Crude just spiked over $107 per barrel," Erickson wrote. "Just a mere month ago, it was trading at $85. That’s a 25.9% increase in a month. And with no off-ramp for Trump until at least the midterms are over, we’re looking at a long period of elevated oil prices now."
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'A Serious and Alarming Threat': US Bombing, Blockade Deepen Iran Medical Crisis
"The most serious risk is premature death," said one physician.
Sep 09, 2026
A senior Iranian health official on Tuesday accused the United States of deliberately targeting Iran's medical infrastructure amid a worsening shortage of critical medicines as President Donald Trump's illegal US-Israeli war of choice against Iran drags on.
Iran's pharmaceutical system is straining under US bombing, blockade, and sanctions that have severely disrupted trade and transportation in the Middle East nation of around 90 million people. Iranian officials say shortages of roughly 800 medicines—including dozens of essential drugs—are affecting the treatment of cancer and other serious illnesses.
“The enemy has identified medicine as one of the sensitive areas of the country, and is trying to denigrate and portray Iran’s conditions as unfavorable by releasing content in the press and social media," Deputy Health Minister Mahdi Pirsalehi, who also heads Iran's Food and Drug Administration, told Al Jazeera.
Pirsalehi has said that more than 50 factories and pharmacies have been damaged or destroyed by US and Israeli bombing during the six-month war. The attacks have exacerbated existing shortages.
One gastroenterologist and university professor in Tehran, who spoke to Al Jazeera on condition of anonymity, sounded the alarm on what she called a "staggering" rise in drug prices—including for domestically produced generic medications—caused in significant part by the US naval blockade.
“Reports that rotavirus vaccine imports have been halted because of the maritime blockade—and that influenza vaccines may soon face the same problem—represent a serious and alarming threat to nationwide efforts to prevent vaccine-preventable communicable diseases,” she said.
“Runaway inflation, poverty, and inadequate access to essential food groups among vulnerable populations, including infants, children, and pregnant women, signal the onset and spread of malnutrition,” she added, warning of the risk “of both communicable and noncommunicable diseases, creating a vicious cycle in which malnutrition develops and progressively worsens."
For ordinary Iranians, empty pharmacy shelves, delayed treatments, and prohibitively expensive prescription drugs have become the new normal.
One Iranian pharmaceutical company recently announced price increases for scores of drugs, including a 543% rise in the price of the Alzheimer's medication donepezil, a 308% higher cost for the antibiotic clarithromycin, and a 135% spike in acetaminophen and diphenhydramine syrups, according to reporting by Tasnim News Agency.
Dr. Hassan Nayeb Hashem told Deutsche Welle last month that "for many specific diseases, there is effectively no substitute" for prescribed drugs.
"If the medicine becomes inaccessible, patients can develop complications much sooner," he said. "The most serious risk is premature death."
One patient requiring testing for an abdominal and pelvic mass recently told Iran International that CT and MRI scans now cost over $100, even with Social Security insurance—the equivalent of a month's pay for many Iranians.
“How are we supposed to pay these costs with such meager incomes?” they asked.
A 33-year-old man said the exorbitant cost of dental treatment has left him without half of his teeth.
“I feel like I’m 60,” he said. “The bitter part is that this humiliating way of life has become normal for me.”
Another Iranian said they feared what would happen if anyone in their family got sick this winter.
“We’re stressed about where we would get the money for treatment," they said, "if God forbid we or our children even catch a cold."
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As Netanyahu Threatens Libel Suit, Haaretz ‘Stands By Its Reporting’ on 10/7 Attack
"As always when a story really hits home, Netanyahu threatens to sue," said one researcher.
Sep 09, 2026
The Israeli newspaper Haaretz did not appear alarmed by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's threat on Wednesday to sue the outlet over its new reporting that Netanyahu was explicitly warned about the Hamas-led October 7, 2023 attack that killed more than 1,200 Israelis and led to the Israel Defense Forces' destruction of Gaza.
After Netanyahu sent a "warning letter" saying he would file a libel lawsuit against Haaretz and journalists Shlomi Eldar and Ruth Yuval over their Tuesday report, the newspaper said simply in a post on social media, "Haaretz stands by its reporting."
The newspaper based its reporting on accounts from three senior foreign sources, reporting that in September 2023, now-deceased Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar had told an intermediary trusted by both Hamas and Israeli intelligence agencies that an "earthquake" would be coming to Israel.
The warning reportedly came after Sinwar had grown frustrated with deadlocked talks over an exchange of Israeli and Palestinian prisoners.
Sinwar told the intermediary to convey a message to the United Arab Emirates, with whom Netanyahu had developed close ties, "that I am preparing the mother of all surprises. A terrifying operation. Something extraordinary."
UAE President Mohammed bin Zayed then gave a warning to Netanyahu in a 45-minute phone call weeks before the attack, according to Haaretz.
Netanyahu lashed out at the newspaper in a social media post, saying the reporters "fabricated a false story against the prime minister that never happened and was never created."
"The Prime Minister's Office, the National Security Council, and the military secretary meticulously reviewed the prime minister's call log for those days—and found no trace of it whatsoever," said Netanyahu, who is behind his top opponent, former military chief of staff Gadi Eisenkot, in polls ahead of legislative elections set for October 27.
Netanyahu's official social media account also confirmed he had instructed his lawyers to file the libel lawsuit. He blamed security officials for failing to alert him to the October 7 attack early enough after it had begun, repeating a recent claim that they feared he would launch an aggressive response to the attack and set off a war.
"If, instead of fearing a miscalculation, they had instructed the IDF, the Shin Bet, and the standby units to preempt the blow, and if they had updated Prime Minister Netanyahu in time, the terrible massacre could have been prevented," said Netanyahu's official account.
Netanyahu has been attempting to account for his actions on October 7 recently, releasing his full schedule from the day of the attacks last week. The log showed he did not speak to IDF officials until several hours after the attack began.
Researcher Shaiel Ben-Ephraim compared Netanyahu's threat to sue Haaretz to his angry response earlier this year to a report by New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof, which included testimony from 14 Palestinians who said they had been sexually assaulted in Israeli prisons or during attacks by the IDF or Israeli settlers.
Netanyahu claimed the Times' reporting was "blood libel" as he threatened to take legal action in May. Thus far, he has not followed through on the threat.
"This will likely end up just like the time he threatened to sue The New York Times," said Ben-Ephraim, "and didn't because every word was true."
On Tuesday, four Israeli opposition leaders called for an independent commission to investigate the October 7 attacks, citing a "series" of revelations about Netanyahu's actions and reported inaction ahead of the assault.
“Netanyahu and his partners in the October 7 government are unfit to continue in office,” they wrote. “We will work in coordination and with the required responsibility to prevent them from leading to another disaster.”
The prime minister has long resisted calls for an independent investigation, agreeing earlier this year only to a proposal in which half of the commission's members would be selected by Netanyahu's own government, in violation of Israeli law—a suggestion that one opposition leader, Yair Lapid, called a "shameful farce" that was meant to "help the prime minister duck responsibility."
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Amnesty Says US-Israeli Attacks With Indiscriminate Weapons in Tehran May Have Been War Crimes
"The use of explosive weapons with wide-area effects in the vicinity of concentrations of civilians has foreseeably indiscriminate effects and as such is prohibited under international humanitarian law."
Sep 08, 2026
The recent resumption of US airstrikes in Iran, including on a wedding party where at least 25 civilians were killed last week, made Amnesty International's Tuesday report on previous suspected US-Israeli attacks in Tehran in the early days of the war all the more urgent, said the organization as it pointed to new evidence of potential war crimes by the American and Israeli militaries in the densely populated Iranian capital.
Amnesty analyzed US-Israeli airstrikes on three residential neighborhoods—Resalat, Niloufar, and Javadieh—between March 1-13, in which the coalition used "explosive weapons with wide-area effects," killing at least 41 civilians and damaging multiple homes, a school, businesses, and other civilian infrastructure.
“Amid the resumption of US strikes in Iran and renewed threats by US President Donald Trump to target civilian infrastructure, it is imperative that the US and Israel end all unlawful attacks and strictly comply with international humanitarian law, including by taking all feasible precautions to avoid, and in any event minimize, incidental loss of civilian life, injury to civilians, and damage to civilian objects during the planning and execution of military operations," said Agnès Callamard, secretary general of Amnesty International.
The group noted that military infrastructure and police stations—which could be considered legitimate military targets in Iran, as the police forces are part of the broader armed forces there—were struck in the attacks in question. Israel and the US have not publicly claimed responsibility for the three specific attacks, but they announced strikes against Iranian "regime" targets in Tehran at the time of the airstrikes.
Amnesty emphasized that even if military and police buildings were the primary targets, "a large presence of civilians was clearly foreseeable" when the US and Israel evidently carried out the attacks in the three neighborhoods, which "resulted in devastating and yet entirely predictable consequences for civilians."
International law demands that warring parties do not carry out "indiscriminate or disproportionate attacks" that could harm civilians across the surrounding area, said the group.
Military leaders, said Amnesty, are also obligated to "choose weapon types and attack methods that reduce the risk of harming civilians and destroying civilian objects."
"The use of explosive weapons with wide-area effects in the vicinity of concentrations of civilians has foreseeably indiscriminate effects and as such is prohibited under international humanitarian law," the group stated. "Additionally, an attacking party remains at all times bound by the principle of proportionality, weighing the concrete and direct military advantage anticipated from an attack against the expected harm to civilians and civilian objects, including the reverberating humanitarian consequences resulting from the attack."
"Launching indiscriminate attacks that kill or injure civilians and disproportionate attacks are war crimes," said Amnesty.
The group analyzed satellite imagery and verified 60 videos of the three attacks, as well as reviewing public statements from officials in the US, Israel, and Iran to reach the determination that US and Israeli forces had potentially committed war crimes in the Tehran neighborhoods—a possibility the group said must be independently investigation.
In Niloufar, where at least 20 civilians were killed on March 1, eyewitness accounts described two explosions at around 9:00 pm local time, when restaurants and other businesses were open in the bustling neighborhood.
The attack directly struck a police station, but residential buildings and businesses were also struck.
A shop owner told Etemad Online that "before the attack… dozens of people were sitting in front of the cafés in the square. All the shops were open... When the police station was struck, those who were sitting on the pavement in front of the cafés were killed."
"The whole street was full of blood," they added. "I saw one person whose chest had been pierced by broken glass. Many children, women, and young people were killed here that night."
Callamard said that "the civilian death toll, the scale of destruction, the timing of the attacks, the impact on nearby civilian structures, and the lack of effective advance warnings point to alarming failures by the US-Israeli coalition to abide by the obligations to take all feasible precautions to minimize civilian harm and spare civilian objects."
At least 16 people were killed in Resalat on March 9, in an attack that heavily damaged a building belonging to the Basij battalion of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), as well as three buildings adjacent to the facility. Amnesty International confirmed that at least one of the buildings, known as Number 12, was a residence.
Satellite imagery from March 6, 2026 (left) shows the Basij facility and nearby buildings in the Resalat neighborhood. On March 21, 2026 (right), imagery shows four distinct buildings with heavy damage and destruction. (Photo by ©Planet Labs PBC)
Twelve members of the same family were killed when Number 12 was struck, and an informed source identified as Payam told Amnesty that "there were no military people, no special individuals, no one connected to the government, no important person" in the building.
"Everyone living [in Number 12] was ordinary civilians," he said. "The whole building was families.”
The husband of a 26-year-old woman who was killed in the attack told Etemad Online that the scene of the bombing was "so horrific that they will never leave my mind. Body parts were found separately... A hand had been thrown to the entrance of the road or onto the roof of a house."
The attack in Javadieh, a densely populated low-income neighborhood in Tehran, took place on March 13 and killed at least five civilians, with a police station on Ghorbani Street a possible target.
"The destruction and damage extended well beyond the police station, and affected homes, businesses, and other civilian structures across the surrounding neighborhood," said Amnesty. "State media reported that several nearby residential buildings were also destroyed and many others severely damaged."
Videos verified by Amnesty show the impact of the blast extending up to more than 50 meters (164 feet) away from the police station. A restaurant, bakery, and motorcycle shop were all damaged, as well as a number of residential buildings.
Amnesty called on the US, Israel, and Iran to coordinate inquiries by the International Humanitarian Fact-Finding Commission regarding allegations of "serious violations of international humanitarian law by all parties."
Tens of thousands of US and Israeli attacks on Iran have killed at least 1,469 civilians, including hundreds of children. Israel has also killed at least 4,333 people in Lebanon since early March, in retaliation for Hezbollah's strikes in response to the assault on Iran. In retaliatory strikes across the region, Iran has killed at least 50 people civilians, according to Amnesty.
“The US/Israeli strikes in Tehran investigated by Amnesty International may constitute indiscriminate attacks and amount to war crimes," said Callamard. "They must be the object of independent, impartial, effective, and transparent investigations."
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