Syria has begun destroying the remnants of a clandestine Assad–era chemical weapons program that it recovered in May, the first such destruction in a decade, a Syrian envoy and a UN representative said on Thursday.
Reuters reported in May that Syria‘s new leadership had located remnants of former Syrian President Bashar al-Assad‘s chemical weapons program, including raw materials and munitions similar to those used in deadly gas attacks during the country’s civil war.
Izumi Nakamitsu, the United Nations High Representative for Disarmament Affairs, told a Security Council briefing on Thursday that for the first time since 2014, the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons had verified the destruction of chemical munitions in Syria.
Following the May finding, Syria had found “one additional chemical weapons production facility, a newly discovered chemical used in the production of nerve agents, and empty chemical munitions. It also declared two chemical weapons storage facilities where the newly discovered facilities were being stored,” Nakamitsu said.
Last month, the OPCW deployed a team to Syria to verify the destruction of category three chemical weapons, referring to unfilled munitions and other equipment used to release chemical weapons. She said the team verified “the irreversible destruction of 42 aerial bombs” as part of that mission.
Syria‘s ambassador to the UN, Ibrahim Olabi, told the council that Syria was “protecting the world and the region through such work.”
But he heavily criticized Israel, saying that repeated Israeli attacks had impeded some search and destruction operations, and exposed the Syrian teams at work to risk.
“We cannot safeguard the security of the region if our security is exposed to attacks at the hands of Israel, and they are flouting the security of the region at large and they are breaching the conventions and treaties we have talked about,” said Olabi, whose Arabic remarks were translated at the council.
The Israeli military did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Olabi said Syria was preparing to hold the first court hearing of people suspected of involvement in the chemical weapons program.
Syrian authorities earlier this year took 18 suspects into custody for alleged involvement in Assad‘s chemical weapons program, including high-level military, political, and technical officials.
A woman walks on a street in Tehran, Iran, Sept. 2, 2026. Photo: Majid Asgaripour/WANA (West Asia News Agency) via REUTERS
IRAN — As the Trump administration continues to tighten the economic noose around Iran with US sanctions and a naval blockade, ordinary Iranians are bearing the most immediate cost — but largely blaming their own government for the country’s current financial crisis.
Many Iranian officials publicly insist that Washington’s latest pressure campaign to strangle the economy is ineffective and will fail. Yet in bazaars, pharmacies, and household budgets, the economic damage is no longer concealable.
In late August, the US dollar crossed 200,000 tomans on Iran’s open market — equivalent to more than two million rials — for the first time. The currency had weakened by more than seven percent in less than a week, reflecting growing anxiety over further US sanctions, restricted oil revenue, and Iran’s declining access to foreign currency.
On Wednesday, Iran’s rial fell to a new record low of about 2.2 million to the US dollar, collapsing from around 1 million rials to the dollar a year ago.
“We can’t afford basic necessities anymore; this government is unable to manage the economy,” a housewife from downtown Tehran told The Algemeiner.
For millions of Iranians, the rial’s collapse is not merely a financial headline. It means that salaries lose value before they are spent, savings accumulated for years can disappear within days, and imported necessities become increasingly unaffordable.
Shopkeepers struggle to replace stock because the price of the next shipment may be significantly higher than the last.
“Whenever the dollar goes up, the price of everything goes up; people can’t afford it anymore,” said a butcher shop owner.
Families respond by cutting meat, fruit, and other increasingly expensive items for their diets, while postponing medical treatment and abandoning purchases once considered routine.
Iran’s economic situation was already in shambles before the current conflict with the US and will likely further deteriorate in the coming weeks.
The US recently expanded secondary sanctions that target countries doing business with Iran, and its naval blockade continues to cut off Tehran’s main source of revenue: oil and gas exports.
According to commodity analytics firm Kpler, Iran loaded about 260,000 barrels of crude oil per day for export at its ports last month, a decline of more than 80% compared with 1.7 million barrels per day in August 2025.
Meanwhile, Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian said last week that Iran’s overall exports and imports had fallen by between 25% and 35%, with imports plummeting even more sharply than exports.
With the official unemployment rate at 9.1% and the average monthly salary reportedly well below what’s needed for basic household expenditures, the country is facing the possibility of total economic collapse.
“I think it could be within weeks or months — and the economy doesn’t have to collapse; we just have to have the regime come to their senses,” US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent told reporters on Monday when asked how long it would take for the Iranian economy to collapse.
US sanctions are officially designed to deprive the Islamic Republic of the money it spends on its nuclear and missile programs, military operations, regional terrorist proxies, and human rights abuses inside Iran.
The US Treasury says its campaign has targeted Iranian oil exports, shadow banking networks, cryptocurrency channels, and the vessels used to evade sanctions, arguing these measures have prevented Tehran from accessing tens of billions of dollars in revenue.
But in an economy where the state and institutions connected to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) dominate major industries, pressure imposed at the top doesn’t remain there. Reduced oil income limits the supply of foreign currency. Banking restrictions complicate trade. Importers pass their higher costs to the retailers, who then pass them to consumers. Powerful institutions may possess the connections and resources necessary to evade restrictions, but an employee paid in rials has no comparable protection.
“Twenty years ago, we were able to purchase daily necessities, but now the situation is horrible; we can’t even afford bread,” said Amir, a factory worker.
American sanctions contain formal exemptions for food, pharmaceuticals, and medical equipment. However, humanitarian exemptions do not automatically create functioning payment and transportation channels.
A pharmacy worker in the capital said patients were increasingly asking for cheaper alternatives or leaving the store without their prescriptions.
“People come in with a doctor’s prescription, but when they hear the price, they ask what they can remove,” she said. The problem, she added, was not always an absence of medicine, but the inability of patients to afford it after repeated currency declines.
In the southern city of Shiraz, a salaried office employee said his family had stopped buying meat regularly and was postponing repairs to their apartment. “Our income arrives once a month, but prices change every week,” he said.
A university student in Isfahan described a different kind of pressure. “My parents worked so I could study and have a better life,” he said. “Now they tell me to find any job I can, even though they know my salary will not be enough for our basic needs.” He said many young people were considering emigration, while others felt trapped by the cost of leaving.
This crisis is also reshaping public opinion. Many Iranians blame the regime for sacrificing the country’s economic future to preserve its expansive regional ambitions and ideological confrontation with the United States. According to interviews conducted by The Algemeiner, they believe Tehran could have reduced the economic pressure through serious negotiations with the US but has instead continued policies that prolong sanctions and international isolation.
At the same time, resources which Iranians widely believe should support jobs, health care, infrastructure, and public welfare continue to be directed toward military programs, security institutions, and conflicts across the Middle East that Iranians consider unnecessary.
“I don’t want my country’s money spent on proxy groups and regional conflicts,” a merchant from Isfahan said. “Our government has failed terribly to manage the impact of sanctions and tackle corruption at home.”
Iran supports a wide range of militias and internationally designated terrorist groups across the Middle East, including but not limited to Hamas in Gaza, Hezbollah in Lebanon, the Houthis in Yemen, and various militant organizations in Iraq and elsewhere.
For many Iranians, the collapsing rial is therefore more than a consequence of US sanctions; it is evidence of a government that has chosen confrontation over economic stability.
As living standards decline, frustration over prices and unemployment has increasingly developed into broader political anger, with citizens questioning why they must bear the cost of decisions they neither made nor benefitted from.
Maddie Ali, a former schoolteacher, is now a freelance contributor to The Algemeiner based in Iran. In addition to her academic work, she has been involved in civic activity in her hometown, including participating in and helping organize local protests alongside friends and family. Her name has been changed to protect her identity.
Americans overwhelmingly reject hardline anti-Israel pundits Hasan Piker and Candace Owens and believe neither major political party should collaborate with them, according to a new poll by Harvard-Harris.
Asked whether Democrats should “embrace or reject people like Hasan Piker who have said things like America deserved 9/11,” a striking 72% of Democrats said he should be rejected, compared with just 28% who supported embracing him. Republicans were even more opposed, with 79% rejecting him, as did 80% of independents. Overall, 77% of respondents opted to reject him, and 23% wanted to embrace him.
Owens received similarly decisive opposition. Asked whether Republicans should embrace or reject “people like Candace Owens who have said things like the Jews are behind everything,” 73% of Republicans said she should be rejected. Democrats and independents were even more emphatic, with 76% in each group also saying she should be rejected. Overall, 75% of respondents opted to reject her, and 25% wanted to embrace her.
Though the stalwart progressive Piker and far-right Owens have little in common politically, the two commentators have made their opposition to Israel a central feature of their public persona, oftentimes launching lengthy tirades against the Jewish state and spreading conspiracy theories against the nation.
The results offer a striking indication that the most prominent anti-Israel personalities on both ends of the US political spectrum do not necessarily represent mainstream American opinion.
Piker wields substantial influence over young members of the American left, with his online streams often going viral and serving as launching pads for political discussion. He is credited with helping to ideologically mold scores of young Democrats. Despite his divisive persona and controversies, Piker has seen his profile ascend in recent years, scoring a variety of favorable profiles in newspapers and magazines.
Piker has accused Israel of committing “genocide” against the Palestinians on the regular basis. He has also called Orthodox Jews “inbred” and compared Israel to Nazi Germany. He has further stated that anyone who maintains any semblance of a positive opinion of Israel should be marginalized from polite society and showered praise on terrorist groups such as Hamas and Hezbollah, touting them as “resistance” forces against Israel.
Last month, Piker drew outrage after he stated that Jewish institutions that express support for Israel cause antisemitism in the United States and suggested that their continued backing of the Jewish state would result in someone” going to come around and take action, not against the State of Israel, mind you, but against American Jews.”
Owens, a popular podcaster and conspiracy theorist, was fired by the Daily Wire in 2024. Although neither Owens nor the Daily Wire have given an official reason for her departure from the outlet, it is widely believed that her flirtation with antisemitic conspiracies served as the motive for her ouster.
Like Piker, Owens maintains a substantial audience, and some outlets have referred to her as the most popular podcaster in the world. Since launching her solo podcast, Owens has used her sizable platform to launch vicious and unsubstantiated conspiracies against Israel and Jews globally.
On X/Twitter, Owens accused Israel of committing a “genocide” against Palestinians as revenge for the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas-led invasion of and massacre across southern Israel. She has also compared Jews with “Marxists” and said they want to “rewrite history.”
The conservative firebrand has also slandered Judaism as a “pedophile-centric religion that believes in demons … [and] child sacrifice” and suggested that people refrain from criticizing Israel out of fear of their own safety, saying, “Do you think it’s normal … that basically, every person who speaks about Israel has to basically say a statement that … ‘you know, I don’t want to get killed?’”
However, despite their massive online presence, neither figure receives anything approaching majority support from either the Republican or Democratic Party.
For Israel and its American supporters, the findings provide an important counterpoint to the highly visible anti-Israel activism that dominates portions of social media and political discourse. Online prominence does not necessarily translate into broad public legitimacy.
Beyond Piker and Owens, the poll also shows that Americans still favor Israel over the Hamas terrorist group despite the Jewish state’s declining support in the US.
In sum, 70% of American voters indicated support for Israel over Hamas in the ongoing Gaza war. However, the poll found a striking difference with younger voters, with 54% of those between 18 to 24 stating that they support Hamas.
Some observers have speculated that the fragmented media landscape, in which young people increasingly receive news from algorithmically manipulative social media sites such as TikTok and Instagram, have influenced younger generations with a distorted view of Israel.
The poll also found that 74% of Americans believe Israel has a right to exist as the homeland of the Jewish people. Support is again considerably weaker among the youngest voters, with roughly half of 18-to-24-year-olds agreeing and half disagreeing.
Hamas, Iran, and Hezbollah ranked as the three least favorably viewed countries or groups among 36 included in the survey. Israel itself received a much more divided assessment, with 38% favorable and 37% unfavorable. Despite the deluge of anti-Israel rhetoric popular online, the survey indicates that Americans have not totally turned against the Jewish state. However, Israel is perceived much less favorably than in previous years, especially among younger Americans.
The findings also show significant American support for attempting to rein in Iran, the world’s foremost state sponsor of terrorist groups. A striking 72% of respondents indicated the United States should leverage force, sanctions and blockades if Iran refuses to release control of the Strait of Hormuz, while only 28 percent favor allowing Iran to control the strategic waterway.
The Harvard Harris survey of 2,100 registered voters, conducted late last month, has a margin of error of 2.1 percentage points.
Liberty is the mental equivalent of the air we breathe. Try to imagine the state of a body with no oxygen; that’s the state of a psyche without freedom. You cannot improve your mental health in a vacuum. Under dictatorship, psychotherapy (like all health care) is under control of the government; and mental health is defined as thinking according to how the Party wants you to think. Under freedom, your mental health is your own responsibility; and how you define mental health is largely up to you (and objective reality). As liberty diminishes, so does the possibility of the sanity and inner serenity that defines sanity. Self-esteem is out the window as your life revolves around service to the state — i.e., to your rulers.
The bigger and more powerful our government becomes, the more insane the people become. As liberty progressively diminishes in the United States, is it any wonder the psyche starves and the emotional wellness of the population deteriorates?
Democracy invites despotism. When understood as majority rule, democracy means that fifty-one of every hundred citizens can have their way with the other forty-nine.
“But I want to keep my possessions, weapons, and children.” Too bad, the majority have decided to redistribute your property to those lazy bums over there, disarm you before you can do anything about it, and indoctrinate your children in public schools, so that they learn to resent you and love the State.
Democracy is dangerous without guardrails. Unless a society has a strong sense of moral virtue that fosters personal discipline, duty, and honor, base selfishness becomes the driving motivation behind all political action. Unless certain constitutional protections exist to safeguard each individual’s inviolable rights, democratic majorities devour those rights whenever expedient.
This should surprise no-one. Political philosophers such as Hobbes and Locke described humans’ pre-government “state of nature” as a chaotic, violent clash of self-interest. Adam Smith’s “invisible hand” regards self-interest as the engine of free markets. Consequently, it is easy to understand why forms of democracy that are unshackled from both moral and constitutional restraints prompt a society to descend back into a state of nature in which humanity’s worst impulses are again indulged.
When Western leaders speak adoringly of “our democracy,” citizens should prepare to guard their freedoms. My goodness, there is nothing inherently virtuous about democracy. North Korea’s Kim Jong Un runs the most repressive regime on the planet, but his country is known officially as the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea! China’s Xi Jinping is the general secretary of the oppressive Chinese Communist Party, but his nation remains officially the People’s Republic of China! Dictatorships around the globe claim to govern in the name of the people.
One might think that the blurry line between democracy and despotism would make Western leaders wary of singing democracy’s praises. Defenses of majoritarianism embrace the notion that the votes of a hundred people will lead to a more prudent outcome than we could reasonably expect from the decision-making of a single person. But that doesn’t make any sense. Would you rather live in a kingdom with a benevolent king or in a democracy filled with rapists, thieves, and murderers? If there is a 50/50 chance that any single dictator is good or bad, would there not be a 50/50 chance that a majority of citizens are good or bad, too? If one communist would take everything you have, wouldn’t fifty communists do the same thing? Democracy is a coin toss. It is the veneer of legitimacy that makes authoritarianism look shiny and sparkly. That hardly feels like something worth celebrating.
Democracy is just a process. It shouldn’t be idolized for its own sake. It can lead to just or unjust outcomes depending upon the moral virtue, shared culture, and general wisdom of the voters. Aside from these cultural attributes of a society, there is nothing more essential to a nation’s long-term peace and happiness than the recognition of and protections for inviolable, natural, God-given rights.
During the Constitutional Convention, there was significant debate among the Founding Fathers about the need for a Bill of Rights explicitly defending the inalienable liberties of American citizens. Since the text of the Constitution clearly limits the delegated powers of each branch of government, some Founders resisted the inclusion of a Bill of Rights because they feared that later generations might incorrectly interpret Americans’ inviolable freedoms to include only those rights specifically listed. Other delegates feared that, without a Bill of Rights, later generations might incorrectly reimagine the Constitution’s limited delegation of powers to include additional authorities that directly infringe upon Americans’ personal rights. Both fears proved prescient.
In order to clearly state their intentions to maximize the size of Americans’ personal liberty and to minimize the powers of the federal government, the Founding Fathers gave us the Ninth and Tenth Amendments as part of the Bill of Rights:
Ninth Amendment: “The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.”
Tenth Amendment: “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.”
Taken together, these two amendments provide a redundancy within the U.S. Constitution that is meant to preserve human liberty. First, the text of the Constitution restricts the authority of the federal government to a small number of specifically delegated powers. Second, the Bill of Rights repeats the framers’ intent to reserve all other powers for the people or their individual state governments.
With this understanding in mind, a reasonable person should ask: How is it possible that the federal government is now so large and powerful that it encroaches upon nearly every aspect of our private lives? How is it possible that tens of millions of Americans either work directly for government agencies or receive taxpayer dollars in some form? How is it possible that there are too many administrative agencies, committees, and bureaucratic groups for any one person to name? How is it possible that three federal branches with a small number of delegated authorities have been replaced with a growing number of government programs with seemingly unlimited authorities?
The answer to each of these questions is the same: The generations between the Founding Fathers and our own progressively traded freedom for democracy. In the name of the people, lawmakers, presidents, and judges ignored the plain text of the Constitution — including the Ninth and Tenth Amendments of the Bill of Rights — to steal our inalienable rights and liberties.
In order to reject democracy’s despotism, the American people will have to demand their rights and liberties back.
We have a moral imperative to place the needs of the world above… our own survival”
In every election cycle there is a speech that throws the stakes into painful clarity.
In the 2026 election cycle, at least for Jews, that speech came from Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel, the last Jewish Democrat holdout in the state, who had skipped the party’s convention because she didn’t feel safe, but unlike Mallory McMorrow, who had also faced threats because of her Jewish daughter, and Haley Stevens, hadn’t gotten on board with the Abdul El-Sayed campaign and the alliance of Marxists and Islamists taking over her party.
But addressing an event for Michigan Jewish Democrats, Nessel made her best case in a speech that will last long past this cycle because of the nakedness of its horrifying argument.
“We have a moral imperative to place the needs of the world above even our own self-interest and, yes, even our own survival,” Nessel told Jewish Democrats. Those “needs of the world” required Jews to vote for Democrats, including presumably El-Sayed, who had made excuses for a Muslim terrorist attack against Jewish children in the preschool of a Michigan Temple.
Longtime Fox News anchor Maria Bartiromo is out at the network.
“We thank Maria for her work over the last 12 1/2 years and wish her all the best on her next chapter,” a spokesperson said in a brief statement.
Bartiromo joined the network in 2014 after becoming a star at CNBC. At Fox Business and the Fox News Channel, she hosted “Mornings with Maria” and other shows bearing her name. The network is rebranding those shows and will have a rotating cast of anchors host them.
Bartiromo, like many other Fox News hosts, has been a staunch supporter of President Trump. Following his loss to Joe Biden in the 2020 presidential election, Bartiromo helped spread unfounded theories of conspiracy fraud.
Her on-air comments — and those of guests she invited on her show — featured prominently in a defamation case against Fox brought by the voting technology company Dominion Voting Systems. Fox settled the case for more than $787 million just as the trial was about to begin.
Bartiromo also features heavily in a second multibillion dollar defamation suit filed by a voting software company against Fox News over its statements in the 2020 vote. Until Thursday, Bartiromo was the only individual defendant still working at the network.
A few days ago I shared some cursory thoughts about Lindsay Clancy and her murder trial. What immediately shocked me was the sheer number of medications that she was on. As a former mental health professional, as someone with a mental health condition myself who has experienced issues with meds, I was absolutely floored by all the drugs that Clancy was taking. What I was thinking most was about the very significant probability of drug interactions that would have possibly clouded her senses, including her moral judgement.
Intrigued, I looked into the case further. One friend alluded that he couldn’t believe I had been unaware of this trial going on. What can I say? I’ve been very busy lately: everything from starting a new job to getting a new car, to the past few days when I’ve been working on a horror story (that will absolutely outrage some people if it ever gets published). And I’m not really all that much a fan of sensationalism, something the Lindsay Clancy murder trial seems rife with.
But I took a harder look at the case. And now, what do I think?
Lindsay Clancy needs to be found guilty and sent to prison for the rest of her life.
There are three possibilities that I see going on with her. There is the notion that she suffered from post-partum psychosis, on which her defense is hanging their chances on. There is the possibility of a condition like bipolar disorder. And then there is the possibility that she is a full-blown psychopath: something that there is no cure for and it could perhaps be said there is no hope either.
Folks, mental illness can distort thought. It certainly has to me, too many times since the onset of manic depression in the winter of 2000. It suppress inhibitions. I’ve written about it in my book, how being manic led to me doing some horrible things because of an outraged libido that could not be satisfied. I did other things too, that I am not proud of.
But there was always a choice. Unfortunately I chose wrong, more times than I can count.
There remained moral choice though. And that is where Lindsay Clancy went horribly wrong and deviated straight into pure evil.
Clancy, apparently, researched ways on how to kill her children. She planned this. Clancy spent an inordinate amount of time looking at methods of ending her children’s lives. That is something that mental illness can never bring about. Can mental illness lead to murder? Yes, when passions go out of control. But to premeditate the harming of others? That takes free will. She had every opportunity to pull away. If she was going through psychiatric issues she could have addressed those. But she didn’t. If she truly has a mental illness she spent far more time indulging her dark fantasies than she did in doing her damndest to stave off the dark thoughts bedeviling her.
I don’t believe that mental illness, including post-partum psychosis, can be used as a viable excuse of what Lindsay Clancy did. She maintained enough reason to spend time studying how to kill her own children. That alone invalidates her defense.
Which leaves us with psychopathy. Something almost entirely removed from the concept of transitional mental illness. A complete disregard for others. A detachment from moral restraint that makes anything justifiable in the eyes of the psychopath.
There is no real treatment for such a person. There is no “getting better” for a psychopath. Thankfully true psychopathy is a rare condition. And not all psychopaths are necessarily evil. It’s been suggested that psychopathy is a trait that can be found in many among the executive business community. It might make them exceedingly cutthroat in their dealings but there seems to be at least some realization that bad things will happen if they go too far.
That isn’t common among psychopaths however. But I’m digressing.
What Lindsay Clancy did in murdering her children involved either a chosen course of action in researching how to kill her offspring and she’s trying to hang that on a temporary mental condition. Or she is a psychopath who did what she did without feeling moral compunction.
However it is, she does not need to be given the opportunity to ever again be a free woman. She chose her actions. Or she has no restraining morality at all. One or the other.
The jury needs to find her guilty. Send her to prison for the rest of her life. Not just to hold her accountable for her temporal sins, but as a service to society as a whole. She is too dangerous to treat with overbearing kindness that does not adequately address the severity of her crimes.
If there is no justice in this case, then there will not be true justice in a lot of other situations that will come about.
I originally expressed the belief that Clancy might not have possessed enough sense to keep from murdering her children. I see now that I was wrong in that assessment. She did what she did of her own volition.
And I hope that the jury in her trial will do the right thing and make damned sure that she never sees an iota of freedom again. Ever.
President Donald Trump is privately discussing with senior aides whether to declare the U.S. war with Iran over, even as the Pentagon extends troop deployments into 2027 and the conflict continues to disrupt shipping through the Strait of Hormuz, The Wall Street Journal reported.
The apparent contradiction underscores the uncertainty surrounding the administration’s strategy.
Trump has told advisers he favors declaring an end to the war and believes the combination of economic pressure and U.S. military dominance has put Washington in a winning position.
The Journal reported that Trump has argued Iran’s economy is collapsing and that U.S. forces have achieved “almost total control” of the Strait of Hormuz.
Yet the Pentagon is preparing for the possibility that the fighting and military standoff will continue well into next year.
War Secretary Pete Hegseth, who initially promised a quick and decisive campaign, is quietly extending deployments, the Journal reported.
About 50,000 U.S. troops remain in the region, while the military deployment includes 19 warships, air defense units, fighter squadrons, and paratroopers. The prolonged deployment is already creating strain on service members, their families, and military maintenance schedules.
The debate over whether the United States has truly “won” is particularly visible in the Strait of Hormuz.
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has argued that oil flows are approaching prewar levels. In an interview published Wednesday, Bessent said at least 10 million barrels a day were moving through the strait and suggested that one recent day may have reached 15 million to 17 million barrels.
He compared that with roughly 20 million barrels a day before the war.
But shipping data paint a more complicated picture. Reuters reported that only six commodity vessels passed through Hormuz on Wednesday, while preliminary data earlier in the week showed just five vessels on Monday. Those figures remain far below normal commercial traffic.
Other maritime data show traffic has increased from the extreme lows reached during the conflict but remains well below prewar levels.
The distinction matters because some vessels are believed to be using a U.S.-backed southern route through waters near Oman, while others are avoiding the strait altogether.
Iran has continued threatening and, in some cases, attacking commercial shipping. The attacks could become more dangerous if Tehran receives improved intelligence, targeting assistance, or other military support from Russia or China, although the extent of any such assistance remains uncertain.
Oil markets also reflect that uncertainty. Brent crude fell sharply after the June U.S.-Iran memorandum of understanding raised hopes that the conflict could wind down, reaching about $69 a barrel in early July. But after the arrangement broke down and attacks resumed, prices climbed, with Brent reaching about $105 on July 23.
By Thursday, Brent remained around $95 a barrel despite a modest daily decline.
For Trump, that leaves a difficult political and military calculation: Washington can argue that it controls the waterway and has devastated Iran’s economy, while the continuing troop deployment, limited commercial traffic, and elevated oil prices suggest the war is far from behaving like a conflict that has simply ended.
Tucker Carlson praised Dr. Abdul El-Sayed, the Democratic Senate nominee in Michigan, calling the candidate’s agenda “literally Trumpian.”
El-Sayed prevailed in last month’s Democratic primary over Rep. Haley Stevens, despite being outspent nine-to-one, thanks in large part to more than $30 million in ad buys from the American Israel Public Affairs Committee. He has pledged to oppose continued U.S. aid to Israel.
El-Sayed’s Republican opponent is former Rep. Mike Rogers, who chaired the House Intelligence Committee and has been a fervent supporter of Israel. Given Americans’ increasingly negative views of Israel, Rogers’ campaign is reportedly concerned about AIPAC spending money on its behalf.
On Wednesday’s Tucker Carlson Show, the host spoke with Saagar Enjeti, co-host of Breaking Points, where the two discussed, among other topics, the race in Michigan.
“I wouldn’t vote for Mike Rogers at gunpoint,” Carlson stated.
Enjeti responded by noting that Rogers lost a Senate race to Democrat Elissa Slotkin in 2024, despite Donald Trump carrying Michigan that year.
“And so that’s the candidate,” Enjeti said. “A literal loser who lost when Donald Trump won the state, just to show you how much of a headwind he had at his back.”
“He’s basically a tool of Israel and the intelligence agencies, Carlson replied. “How would you run someone like that? I don’t– it doesn’t even make sense…”
by Reuters and Algemeiner Staff
THE ARTFUL DILETTANTE 