Attention to the Unseen

The Guardian reports: Gulf states are going to have to reconfigure their trillion-dollar defences given the damage inflicted on their economies and the questionable continued value of US bases in the face of Iranian attack, according to a study by the International Institute for Strategic Studies. The report says that in the weeks before the 8 April ceasefire, 12 regional states, overwhelmingly in the Gulf, faced 4,670 Iranian one-way attack drones and more than 1,400 ballistic missiles. Nearly half were…

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CNBC reports: U.S. President Donald Trump has reiterated his claim that the Iran war will end “whenever I want it to,” but insists that Tehran cannot have a nuclear weapon. Speaking at a rally in Lubbock, Texas, Trump said “Somebody asked me before, ‘When will the war in Iran end?’ I said, ‘Whenever I want it to end.’” Trump said it “would be very quick, but we have to have an end properly,” with a “total statement” that Iran would…

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The Guardian reports: Benjamin Netanyahu has resorted to increasingly alarmist rhetoric and reportedly put pressure on Israel’s military to take action against Iran as his far-right coalition narrowly trails in the polls ahead of Tuesday’s close-run elections. The Israeli prime minister posted an AI-generated image of a nuclear mushroom cloud destroying Tel Aviv, telling Israeli voters to choose him or risk nuclear annihilation. “Anyone who cares about their own physical existence, that of their family, and their loved ones should…

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Azize Aslan writes: When I was seven years old, my family was forced to flee escalating violence. We left Bakur – a Kurdish region in what is currently southeastern Turkey – for a city further west, where we worked in Turkish fields, living in a tent until we could save up to rent a house on the city margins, in a neighbourhood with no electricity or road access. Those are some of my earliest memories of everyday violence against people…

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The New York Times reports: Inside the Trump administration, officials are expressing fears that Iran is in the “advanced stages” of planning attacks against U.S. officials. More than 6,000 miles away, the Iranians appear convinced that Israel and the United States are preparing to unleash their third major attack in 16 months, a final push to force Iran to surrender to U.S. demands. The conflict in the Middle East has entered a new phase in which a maelstrom of factors,…

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Reuters reports: Iran has ramped up efforts to target US personnel, and lethal plots by Tehran against American citizens have reached “advanced ​stages”, a senior intelligence official in the Trump administration warned in a memo seen ‌by Reuters. The alert from Director of National Intelligence Jay Clayton came after Washington scaled back staffing at its mission in Saudi Arabia earlier this week in response to intensified attacks by Iran-allied Houthi forces. Those attacks on one ​front of the nearly eight-month-old…

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Shane Harris writes: Donald Trump and Volodymyr Zelensky have never enjoyed a warm relationship, or even a stable one. But last week, it hit a new low. Trump called on the Ukrainian people to elect a new president, describing Zelensky as “more difficult to deal with” than Vladimir Putin. He accused Zelensky of prolonging Ukraine’s war with Russia. “He says he wants to settle, but he doesn’t,” Trump told Newsmax, without mentioning that it was Putin who started the war…

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The New York Times reports: The U.S. and Israeli militaries have developed specific plans for renewed strikes against Iran after the American midterm elections, according to U.S. officials and other people briefed on the deliberations. As planning for a short but intensive operation progresses, the U.S. and Israeli militaries have stepped up exercises, flying planes over Iraq to practice strike maneuvers. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth met with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Israel this week to discuss new strikes, U.S….

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CBS News reports: Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth quietly visited Israel on Monday and met with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, according to a senior U.S. military official who spoke to CBS News under condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly. A second source involved in the matter in Israel confirmed Tuesday morning that Netanyahu met Hegseth. The unannounced visit came just over a week before Netanyahu’s party faces elections. It also comes after President Trump floated resuming…

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Euronews reports: High Representative Kaja Kallas has sharply accused the United States of pressuring Ukraine to capitulate on terms exclusively favourable to Russian President Vladimir Putin, just as a new round of peace talks unfolded in Oslo, Norway. “American negotiators have been trying to push Ukraine into surrender for already almost two years, one and a half years now,” she told the European Parliament on Tuesday. “Why Ukraine hasn’t surrendered on Putin’s terms is because Europe has been supporting Ukraine.”…

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NBC News reports: President Donald Trump waived sweeping new sanctions against Russia passed by Congress, arguing in an executive order Friday that the move “is in the national interests of the United States.” Trump had signed the legislation, named for the late Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., just last month. The bill took aim at Russia’s largest buyers of oil and gas, allowing the president to impose tariffs on goods from those countries, which may include China and India. Passed with…

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Kyiv Independent reports: Russia has lost 1,562,970 troops in Ukraine since the beginning of its full-scale invasion on Feb. 24, 2022, the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine reported on Oct. 17. The number includes 1,950 casualties that Russian forces suffered over the past day. According to the report, Russia has also lost 12,415 tanks, 25,554 armored combat vehicles, 163,883 vehicles and fuel tanks, 51,266 artillery systems, 2,221 multiple-launch rocket systems, 1,710 air defense systems, 449 aircraft, 356…

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