BRICS Draws Red Lines on Lebanon, Cuba, and Global Security

BRICS Draws Red Lines on Lebanon, Cuba, and Global Security

Sputnik

In their joint declaration, BRICS summit participants spoke out against unilateral sanctions that violate international law. 

BRICS also condemned the violation of Lebanon’s sovereignty and called on Israel to withdraw its troops from its territory, according to the declaration.

Other key points:

BRICS expressed deep concern over the US tightening unilateral blockade against Cuba and its adverse impact on the economy, energy supplies and humanitarian situation.

It reaffirmed its commitment to combating all forms of terrorism.

BRICS voiced alarm over deliberate attacks on peaceful facilities under IAEA safeguards.

The group stressed the need to strengthen energy security.

BRICS underscored the necessity of ensuring the peaceful use of space technologies.

Navy Evaluating Future At Key Middle East Base Following Iran War Damage: Acting Secretary

Navy Evaluating Future At Key Middle East Base Following Iran War Damage: Acting Secretary

Ryan Morgan

The U.S. Navy is evaluating what to do with its headquarters in the Middle East after the Bahrain-based installation sustained damage during recent months of fighting with Iran.

For years, the Navy has managed its Middle East fleet operations out of Naval Support Activity Bahrain. Iranian forces began targeting the base after U.S. and Israeli forces launched strikes on Iran on Feb. 28.

"They blew the hell out of Bahrain," acting Navy Secretary Hung Cao said in an interview with The Epoch Times on Sept. 9, as he concluded a visit to a shipyard in Philadelphia.

While open-source imagery had previously indicated the Bahrain naval base sustained damage, Cao's comment marked a direct and official acknowledgement of the ongoing conflict's impact on the facility.

Last month, following reports that the crew of the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln were facing strains after months supporting combat operations in the Middle East, the Navy told The Epoch Times that combat actions had disrupted traditional supply hubs in the region. Despite these disruptions, the service said the Lincoln's crew maintained continuous access to clean water, healthy meal options, and functional air conditioning.

At a Navy town hall event on Aug. 31, a sailor who had been displaced from NSA Bahrain asked Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Daryl Caudle whether she would see the return of personal belongings she left on the base. Caudle said the service was working on a plan to reunite personnel with their belongings but said the service doesn't plan to return to the base "anytime soon."

When asked whether the Navy would need to repair NSA Bahrain in order to sustain its forces in the region, Cao said, "I have a task force that's looking at that."

The Iran conflict has fueled discussion over the continued utility of U.S. military outposts in the region.

Jim Webb, a U.S. Marine infantry veteran and independent national security consultant, said Cao's latest comments suggest that the current U.S. force posture in the Middle East "is unsustainable without continuing to be under attack."

When asked whether the Navy would need to repair NSA Bahrain in order to sustain its forces in the region, Cao said, "I have a task force that's looking at that."

The Iran conflict has fueled discussion over the continued utility of U.S. military outposts in the region.

Jim Webb, a U.S. Marine infantry veteran and independent national security consultant, said Cao's latest comments suggest that the current U.S. force posture in the Middle East "is unsustainable without continuing to be under attack."

"I don't think there's any way, you know, in the short, medium, or potentially even long term, that we can adequately defend a place like NSA Bahrain, or let alone the rest of the logistics bases there," Webb told The Epoch Times.

Webb said keeping U.S. troops at bases in the region makes those troops "constant targets."

Why Israel’s existence is a theological crisis for fundamentalist Islam

Why Israel’s existence is a theological crisis for fundamentalist Islam

Ali Siadatan

Israel presents militant fundamentalist Islam with a problem that no alteration of borders can finally resolve.

Territory can be divided. Security arrangements can be negotiated. Competing national claims can, at least theoretically, be compromised. But Israel represents something larger than territory. It represents the restoration of the Jewish people to sovereignty in their ancestral land, the revival of Jerusalem as the capital of a Jewish commonwealth, and the reappearance of biblical history in the modern world.

For Islamic movements that understand history as the progressive triumph of Islam, this restoration is not merely a political setback. It is a theological contradiction.

The problem was never simply that Jews lived in the Middle East. Jews lived throughout the Islamic world for centuries. The deeper problem is that Jews have become sovereign. They possess political power, command armies, govern Muslims and exercise authority in Jerusalem. A people formerly subordinated under Muslim rule has established an independent state in territory once governed by successive Islamic empires.

Israel therefore presents a unique theological challenge. Fundamentalist Islamic thought sees in the Jewish state an unbelieving people whose national restoration advances an entirely different account of history.

Fundamentalist movements insist that Islam’s authoritative sources should govern political life and that Islamic claims over land, sovereignty and sacred space cannot be permanently surrendered. These movements speak to a potential constituency numbering in the hundreds of millions.

For all practical purposes, therefore, the conflict cannot be understood without examining the war that Islam believes it is fighting against Israel.

The overturning of the Dhimmi order

Under Islamic rule, Jews were classified as dhimmis. Although the term is commonly translated as “protected people,” that protection existed within a system of legally enforced subordination. Jews were permitted to survive as a religious community on the condition that they accepted Muslim supremacy, paid the jizya (a tax on non-Muslims), and submitted to restrictions that distinguished them from Muslims and marked their inferior position.

The severity of those restrictions varied by ruler and period, but the hierarchy itself remained. Jews could live under Islamic authority; they were not supposed to possess authority over Muslims. They could be tolerated as a subordinate religious community; they were not supposed to become an independent political and military power.

Zionism overturned this order.

The establishment of Israel did not simply bring Jews back into the Middle East. It brought them back as rulers. The former dhimmi became sovereign. Jews commanded armies, governed Muslims, defeated surrounding Islamic powers and ultimately took political control of Jerusalem.

For fundamentalist Islamic thought, this reversal represents more than a military or territorial loss. It is an inversion of the divinely established hierarchy. The problem is not primarily the presence of Jews. The problem is Jewish power: Jews governing themselves, Jews ruling Muslims and Jews exercising sovereignty over territory that had entered the Islamic realm.

Israel is therefore uniquely offensive to this theological order. It does not merely exist outside Islamic authority. Its existence publicly overturns the Islamic order.

The humiliation of repeated defeat also matters. Islam presents itself not merely as one religion among others but as Allah’s final revelation—the true faith destined to prevail. How, then, can a Muslim world of nearly two billion people, possessing enormous territories, armies, wealth and natural resources, repeatedly fail to defeat one small Jewish nation? More fundamentally, how can the possessors of the 'true faith' be defeated by a people whose earlier revelation Islam claims to have superseded?

Israel’s survival therefore becomes a theological accusation. If Islam possesses the final truth and the sanction of Allah, why does Jewish sovereignty survive, strengthen and repeatedly defeat those seeking its destruction? Every Israeli victory deepens the contradiction between the expected triumph of Islam and the observable course of history.

The Jewish state appears to proclaim a different ending to history—one in which Jewish restoration, Jerusalem and the promises of the Hebrew Bible point not toward a restored Caliphate but toward the coming Messianic Kingdom.

More...

Saudi Arabia tells Trump now is the time for military action

Saudi Arabia tells Trump now is the time for military action as Iran-backed Houthis advance

Efrat Lachter

Saudi Arabia is urging Washington to take direct military action against Iran-backed Houthis, Fox News Digital learned after the terrorist group seized key positions along Yemen’s Bab al-Mandab Strait on Friday.

The dramatic strengthening of Houthi's positioning along the coastline of Yemen is in one of the world's most important shipping choke points — a narrow passage that links the Red Sea with the Gulf of Aden, which has been used as a bypass as the Iran war continues to severely disrupt shipping, especially of oil, through the Strait of Hormuz.

The rapid advance on Friday triggered urgent discussions at the highest levels in Riyadh and Washington, and a source familiar with the matter tells Fox News Digital that Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman urged President Donald Trump to take military action against the Houthis.

The Houthis reached the strategic island of Mayyun, also known as Perim, after Yemeni government forces withdrew and also took the mainland coastal town of Dhubab, four Yemeni government sources told Reuters on Friday.

Fox News Digital independently confirmed key elements of an Axios report with a source familiar with the matter, who said the crown prince spoke with Trump a few times over the past 24 hours about the escalating situation in Yemen.

The U.S. does not want to take direct military action for now, but Trump told bin Salman that Washington would assist Saudi Arabia with intelligence and targeting support, according to the source.

The source also confirmed that U.S. Central Command commander Adm. Brad Cooper traveled to Saudi Arabia for coordination talks.

The White House did not respond to Fox News Digital’s request for comment on the calls or whether additional U.S. military action is under consideration.

A Saudi official told Fox News Digital on background that the kingdom "will continue to support the internationally recognized government in Yemen in its effort to promote peace, unity and stability across the country and is working closely with its partners, including the United States, to ensure freedom of navigation in the Arabian Gulf and Red Sea."

"The Kingdom will also take every necessary measure to ensure that its own citizens and residents are safe and its borders are secure," the official added.

The convergence raises the prospect of simultaneous pressure on two of the world’s most consequential maritime arteries: Iran disrupting traffic through Hormuz while its Houthi allies strengthen their position around Bab al-Mandab.

Behnam Ben Taleblu, senior director of the Iran program at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, told Fox News Digital that the shift reflects Tehran’s effort to recover leverage as pressure around Hormuz changes.

"Trump’s success in pushing back on Iran’s maritime threat in the Strait of Hormuz and Persian Gulf has made the regime lose the maritime leverage it had, and now it is looking to double down on the Houthis who have proven to be able to impact Red Sea shipping and the Bab al-Mandab Strait in the past," Ben Taleblu said.

"As Tehran loses leverage in the Strait of Hormuz, it is trying to wield a knife and a handshake at once: diplomacy with Arab states and a knife in the back via the Houthi offensive," he added.

The latest advance follows the Houthis’ capture Thursday of the strategic Red Sea port of Mocha, which was previously held by forces aligned with Yemen’s internationally recognized government.

Former U.S. special envoy for Yemen Timothy Lenderking said Friday that the Houthis had spent the years since the 2022 U.N.-brokered truce rebuilding their military strength and are now exploiting the broader Iran conflict to increase pressure on Saudi Arabia.

Speaking during an on-the-record Middle East Institute virtual briefing, Lenderking said the April 2022 truce largely put Yemen’s civil war on pause but also "did allow the Houthis to regroup, retrain, refit, restock."

Lenderking traced the latest round of escalation in part to Iranian Mahan Air flights into Sanaa earlier this summer, which he said brought personnel and equipment intended to support the Houthi war effort, adding that the personnel were from Iran and were "probably IRGC members."

New risk for US consumers as Iran-backed attacks threaten a second major oil chokepoint

Iran-backed Houthi rebels struck Saudi Arabia with dozens of ballistic missiles and drones Tuesday, hitting multiple energy targets, including the facilities of the world's largest oil company.

The attacks on Aramco, the state-owned national oil company of Saudi Arabia that produces 10 million barrels of oil per day, threaten to tighten pressure on a second critical oil route as the Middle East war continues to restrict shipping through the Strait of Hormuz.

Aramco notably supplies roughly 10% of the world's total oil demand. And attacks on its facilities raise the risk of higher oil, shipping and transportation costs that could hit U.S. consumers in coming months — just in time for the 2026 midterm elections.

The attacks hit the southern Saudi Arabian cities of Jazan, Najran, Abha and Khamis Mushait, wounding 73 people and sparking fires at energy facilities and utilities that temporarily forced some operations to stop, according to Saudi officials. The Jazan site includes a refinery capable of processing roughly 400,000 barrels of crude per day, according to the Associated Press.

Tuesday's strikes land at a particularly vulnerable moment for global energy markets. With oil flows through the Strait of Hormuz sharply reduced, Saudi Arabia has redirected more crude toward the Red Sea — increasing the importance of the Bab el-Mandeb, where the Houthis have already threatened and attacked Saudi-linked shipping.

The Energy Information Administration estimates that just 4.9 million barrels of oil and petroleum liquids moved through Hormuz per day in the second quarter of 2026, down from 21.6 million barrels per day before the conflict. Before the conflict 20% of the world's oil moved through the consequential waterway.

Traffic through the Bab el-Mandeb, meanwhile, averaged 8.1 million barrels per day during the quarter as Saudi Arabia redirected more crude to bypass Hormuz amid ongoing conflict.

That creates a potentially costly vulnerability: renewed Houthi attacks on Saudi energy infrastructure or commercial vessels could put pressure on two crucial oil routes at once, raising the risk of higher crude, shipping and transportation costs that could eventually reach U.S. consumers.

Houthi military spokesman Yahya Saree claimed responsibility for Tuesday’s strikes, saying the group had used "dozens of ballistic missiles and drones" against Aramco facilities, the Jazan industrial zone and a Saudi air base, according to Xinhua.

Live Updates: Saudi pipeline struck by drone launched from Iraq, Israel-Lebanon talks to continue in Washington

Live Updates: Saudi pipeline struck by drone launched from Iraq, Israel-Lebanon talks to continue in Washington

JP

Iraqi Prime Minister Ali Faleh al-Zaidi has agreed to an Iranian request for a joint investigation into the discovery of drone launch platforms near the Iraqi-Iranian border, the prime minister's office said on Saturday.

The investigation will examine the circumstances surrounding the discovery of the platforms near the border area, the statement said, after it was used to launch attacks on the Saudi Arabia East-West pipeline.

Bahrain says no Hormuz talks with Iran until diplomatic ties resume

ByREUTERS

Bahrain said it will not attend any meeting with Iran to discuss the Strait of Hormuz until diplomatic ties between the two countries are restored, according to state media.

US limits times tankers can sail through Hormuz in response to increased Iranian attacks

ByREUTERS

The US has asked tankers traveling through the Strait of Hormuz to sail only at specific times to guarantee military protection after Iran stepped up attacks on ships traveling at night, the Financial Times reported on Saturday.

Washington has been offering air-based defense since May to ships wanting to sail via a route hugging the Omani coast on the strait's southern side. That period during which ships would be protected was cut down to two specific time slots daily around the start of September, the FT reported, citing emails sent by the US naval co-ordination center to maritime advisers.

Aoun claims no negotiations between Israel, Lebanon are in progress - report

Lebanese President claimed that there are no negotiations with Israel

ByJERUSALEM POST STAFF

Lebanese President Joseph Aoun reportedly claimed that no negotiations between Israel and Lebanon are currently in progress during a Saturday visit to the southern Lebanese city of Nabatiya, according to Saudi state-owned outlet Al Hadath.

Iraqi military commander dismissed following drone attack on Saudi Arabia originating from Iraq

Later on Saturday, Iraq ordered the closure of the Shalamcheh border crossing between Iraq and Iran as a precautionary measure after the drone attacks, two security sources told Reuters.

Iraq's Prime Minister Ali al-Zaidi dismissed one of the country's military commanders following a drone attack on a critical Saudi pipeline that originated from Iraqi territory, his office said in an X/Twitter post on Saturday.

"His Excellency (al-Zaidi) ordered the dismissal of the Operations Commander from his position, following confirmation that the attacks targeting the brothers in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia were launched from one of the sites within the province," the post read.

Go to the full article > >