English LCCC Newsbulletin For Lebanese, Lebanese Related, Global News &
Editorials
For October 08/2026
Compiled & Prepared by: Elias Bejjani
#elias_bejjani_news
The Bulletin's Link on the lccc Site
https://eliasbejjaninews.com/aaaanewsfor2026/english.october08.26.htm
News Bulletin Achieves Since 2006
Click Here to enter the LCCC Arabic/English news bulletins Achieves since 2006
Click On The Below Link To Join Elias Bejjaninews whatsapp group
https://chat.whatsapp.com/FPF0N7lE5S484LNaSm0MjW
اضغط على الرابط في أعلى للإنضمام لكروب Eliasbejjaninews whatsapp group
Elias Bejjani/Click on the below link to subscribe to my youtube channel
الياس بجاني/اضغط على الرابط في أسفل للإشتراك في موقعي ع اليوتيوب
https://www.youtube.com/@eliasbejjani8036
Bible Quotations For today
Ask and you will receive; seek and you will find; knock and the door
will be opened to you
Saint Luke 11/05-13/:”Jesus said to his disciples: “Suppose one of
you has a friend to whom he goes at midnight and says, ‘Friend, lend me three
loaves of bread, for a friend of mine has arrived at my house from a journey and
I have nothing to offer him,’ and he says in reply from within, ‘Do not bother
me; the door has already been locked and my children and I are already in bed. I
cannot get up to give you anything.’ I tell you, if he does not get up to give
him the loaves because of their friendship, he will get up to give him whatever
he needs because of his persistence. And I tell you, ask and you will receive;
seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone
who asks, receives; and the one who seeks, finds; and to the one who knocks, the
door will be opened. What father among you would hand his son a snake when he
asks for a fish? Or hand him a scorpion when he asks for an egg? If you then,
who are wicked, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will
the Father in heaven give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him?”
Titles For The English LCCC Lebanese & Lebanese Related News & Editorials
published on October 07-08/2026
A Critical Reading of Naim Qassem’s Speech: Between the Myth of
Steadfastness, the Doctrine of the Unity of Arenas, and the Futility of
Dialogue/Elias Bejjani/October 07, 2026
The Third Anniversary of the Jihadist and Barbaric Raid of October 7th/Elias
Bejjani/October 07, 2026
Liberating Lebanon from the Iranian Occupation and its Satanic Party/Elias
Bejjani/October 06/2026
Video & text Interview Link with Dr. Charles Chartouni/“The Hamas Attack Marked
the Beginning of Fundamental Geopolitical Changes”
Conversation with Samir Geagea: Video Link from WashingtonInstitute to an
interview with Dr. Samir Geagea:
Israeli military says it struck about 100,000 targets across region in 3 years
UN Peacekeeping Force Says Shots Fired at Post on Lebanon-Israel Border
Can a weakened Hezbollah still change the equation — or is it refusing to
acknowledge defeat?
US says Hezbollah will not recover or rebuild under Trump administration
Israeli army says it has hit 28,000 in Lebanon and Syria since October 7, 2023
South Lebanon: Latest developments
Saddi meets Aoun, says committed to continuing his ministerial responsibilities
A new route for Beirut and Tripoli? Lebanon moves closer to IMEC
Hezbollah gets $200 million from Iran to help displaced: Reuters
Lebanese army clashes with smugglers along Syria border — LBCI source
UN peacekeeping force says shots fired at post on Israel-Lebanon border
Syria foils smuggling attempt in Damascus countryside, near border with Lebanon
Salam says decisions of war and peace can't be taken outside state institutions
President Aoun receives UAE invitation to attend Abu Dhabi Sustainability Week
2027
Report: Lebanon to demand Israel withdrawal from towns in al-Shaqif vicinity
Hezbollah says Hamas' Oct. 7 attack a 'legitimate act of resistance'
Aoun warns of 'attempts to politicize and exaggerate economic situation'
Geagea says Hezbollah disarmament 'Lebanese necessity', Berri not helping
Lebanon poised to explode in protest yet again/Dr. Dania Koleilat Khatib/Arab
News/October 7, 2026
Titles For The Latest English LCCC Miscellaneous Reports And News
published on October 07-08/2026
AMCD Condemns Violence Against Syrian
Christians in Suqaylabiyah
Three years after Oct. 7, Israelis ask: What comes next?
Mourning, war and elections as Israel marks October 7
Vance says Iran must cut enrichment capacity for US deal
Explainer: The status of Iran’s uranium enrichment program
Trump says 'we don't think' Russian plague is bio-weapon
Iran has ‘lost complete control’ of Hormuz Strait, its economy is in ‘freefall’
Rubio says
Western civilisation is 'at an inflection point': Rubio
Pentagon chief visits carrier returning from tough Iran war deployment
UKMTO says tanker struck by multiple projectiles north of Qatar’s Madinat ash
Shamal
Iranian official says ‘illegal routes’ in Strait of Hormuz to soon be blocked
Three killed, 36 injured in attacks on Saudi airports
Pakistan rallies behind Saudi Arabia as Mecca Defense Alliance enters
operational phase
Houthis strike Aden airport as number of people displaced by latest Yemen
fighting tops 200,000
Yemeni airstrikes target Houthi weapons depots, military vehicles in Marib and
al-Jawf
Syria says northeast pipeline damaged in sabotage attack
Attacks on tankers in Hormuz hit highest of any week since start of Iran war,
sources say
Yemen's Houthis claim new attacks on Saudi Arabia as it's pulled deeper into
conflict
Russia says plague institute worker’s death does not risk an epidemic
France summons Iran ambassador over disinformation campaign on student protests
Titles For The Latest English LCCC
analysis & editorials from miscellaneous sources published
on October 07-08/2026
Get off the train quickly, Houthis!/Faisal J.Abbas/Arab News/October 6,
2026
Killing of 3-year-old Syrian girl renews scrutiny of domestic abuse
protections/ANAN TELLO/Arab News/October 7, 2026
In the Halls of the United Nations/Fuad Matar/Asharq Al Awsat/October 08/2026
On a New Spring for the Human Spirit/Emile Ameen/Asharq Al Awsat/October 08/2026
Gaddafi, or the Founding of the Libyan Ordeal/Hazem Saghieh/Asharq Al Awsat/October
08/2026
Region’s crises must not be allowed to merge/Dr. Abdellatif El-Menawy/Arab
News/October 7, 2026
Selected Face Book & X tweets on October 07/2026
Latest English LCCC Lebanese &
Lebanese Related News & Editorials published
on October 07-08/2026
A Critical Reading of Naim Qassem’s Speech: Between
the Myth of Steadfastness, the Doctrine of the Unity of Arenas, and the Futility
of Dialogue
Elias Bejjani/October 07, 2026
https://eliasbejjaninews.com/2026/10/158112/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KaAtQY_qzzY
Hezbollah Secretary-General Naim Qassem’s speech on October was not Speaking
About Lebanon, But About a Battlefield: Deconstructing the Doctrine of Wilayat
al-Faqih and the Myth of Steadfastness.
The speech was not the address of a Lebanese leader speaking to the Lebanese
people, nor was it a political speech aimed at addressing the crises of a
country suffering from collapse, occupation, poverty, and isolation. Rather, it
was, quite plainly, a declaration of ideological and political allegiance to the
Iranian project and a comprehensive defense of the doctrine of Wilayat al-Faqih,
an ideology that does not recognize Lebanon as a sovereign and independent
state, but instead views it as merely one “arena” within a broader transnational
project.
Anyone who listens carefully to the speech will quickly realize that it revolves
around two dangerous narratives: the myth of “steadfastness” and the doctrine of
the “Unity of Arenas.” These two concepts explain everything Hezbollah has done
since its founding and reveal its true position toward Lebanon, its identity,
and its future.
First: The Myth of “Steadfastness” and the Illusion that “Wars Come in Rounds”
Qassem repeatedly spoke about “legendary steadfastness” and insisted that “wars
unfold in rounds,” as though simply continuing a conflict constitutes victory.
In the normal national sense, steadfastness is a means to protect a people,
defend territory, preserve sovereignty, and achieve specific national
objectives. In the ideology of Wilayat al-Faqih, however, steadfastness is not a
means but an end in itself, even if it results in the destruction of cities and
villages, the displacement of populations, economic collapse, and the deaths of
thousands. Under this ideological framework, wars are not measured by their
tangible outcomes but by the continuation of what is deemed a “religious
obligation.” Defeat is never acknowledged as defeat, devastation is never
considered a loss, and human lives are treated as expendable fuel for an endless
project that recognizes neither borders nor national sovereignty.
This explains how Qassem can speak of a “legend of steadfastness” while southern
Lebanon, the Bekaa Valley, and Beirut’s southern suburbs have suffered immense
destruction. It explains how he can proclaim that “liberation is before our
eyes” while realities on the ground tell a very different story. This is not
national steadfastness. It is the denial of reality and the marketing of an
ideological illusion designed to keep Hezbollah’s support base captive to
slogans disconnected from Lebanon’s national interests.
Second: The “Unity of Arenas” and the Denial of Lebanon.
If the myth of steadfastness explains the continuity of Hezbollah’s project, the
doctrine of the “Unity of Arenas” reveals its true nature. The speech was not
about Lebanon. It was about Iraq and the Popular Mobilization Forces, Gaza and
the West Bank, Jerusalem, the United States, and the so-called struggle against
global arrogance. Lebanon was largely absent. This is the fundamental problem.
Hezbollah does not view Lebanon as the final homeland of its citizens but as one
battlefield among many within Iran’s regional project. Consequently, national
sovereignty occupies no meaningful place within its ideological framework.
In the worldview of Wilayat al-Faqih, nation-states are not the ultimate
reference point. The constitution, state institutions, and national interests
are subordinate to a transnational ideological mission. Lebanon thus becomes
merely a jihadist arena within a wider network stretching from Tehran to
Baghdad, Damascus, Sana’a, and Gaza. This explains why Hezbollah does not treat
Lebanon as a sovereign state with independent interests, but rather as one front
in a broader regional struggle. Today the arena may be Lebanon; tomorrow it may
be Iraq, Yemen, or any other location that serves the objectives of the project.
Third: The Six Pillars of Nasrallah’s Legacy
A Declaration of Separation from Lebanon
The true significance of Qassem’s speech lies not in his discussion of current
events, but in his summary of what he described as Hassan Nasrallah’s “legacy”
through six foundational themes.
These six themes effectively constitute an ideological charter proving that
Hezbollah’s ultimate reference point is not the Lebanese state.
1. “Authentic Muhammadan Islam”
Qassem spoke not about Lebanon, the constitution, citizenship, or statehood, but
about a religious-ideological project that presents itself as a comprehensive
authority over political, social, and cultural life.
2. Education Through Jihad and the Karbala Paradigm
Here the intention becomes unmistakable: transforming society into one of
permanent mobilization and perpetual martyrdom. Instead of building a state
based on knowledge, economic development, and prosperity, Hezbollah promotes a
culture of endless warfare and continuous sacrifice, tying Lebanon’s future to
the narratives of Karbala and Ashura.
3. Wilayat al-Faqih
This is the heart of the matter.
Qassem openly declared that authority extends from God to the Prophet, to the
Imams, and ultimately to the Supreme Jurist — the Iranian Supreme Leader. In
other words, Hezbollah’s highest authority is neither the Lebanese Constitution
nor the Lebanese State, but the Supreme Leader in Tehran. This is a direct
admission that Hezbollah’s ideological, political, and military decision-making
is linked to an authority outside Lebanon’s borders, rendering talk of
sovereignty and independence meaningless.
4. The Connection to the Mahdi
Hezbollah ties its political and military project to messianic expectations and
eschatological beliefs that transcend the logic of the modern state. The future
of an entire nation is thus linked not to constitutional institutions or
democratic choices but to a theological vision centered on the awaited Mahdi.
5. Islamic Unity
Although Qassem spoke of Islamic and national unity, experience has demonstrated
that such unity is conditional upon acceptance of Hezbollah’s project and
ideology. Those who oppose it are frequently branded as traitors, agents, or
enemies of the resistance.
6. Defense and Resistance
Even when discussing resistance, Qassem directly linked it to Ayatollah
Khomeini, Ayatollah Khamenei, and Qassem Soleimani. At no point did he identify
the Lebanese state as the source of legitimacy for this resistance. Instead, the
state appears secondary to, or dependent upon, Hezbollah’s armed project.
Fourth: Why Dialogue with Hezbollah Is a Political Illusion
After all of this, Qassem concludes by claiming that Hezbollah is prepared to
cooperate domestically within constitutional frameworks. But which constitution
is he referring to? How can one reconcile declared allegiance to Wilayat al-Faqih
with loyalty to a sovereign national state? How can meaningful national dialogue
take place with an organization whose ultimate authority lies outside Lebanon?
Dialogue presupposes common ground, shared national principles, and a collective
belief in the legitimacy of the state, its constitution, and its sovereignty.
The problem is that the project outlined by Qassem is built upon entirely
different foundations. It is a transnational ideological project that views
Lebanon as an arena rather than a homeland, weapons as a creed rather than a
defensive necessity, and external allegiance as a religious duty rather than a
political choice. For this reason, the repeated calls for “dialogue” and a
“defense strategy” have become little more than recycled slogans that have
produced no results over decades. The issue is neither technical nor
administrative; it is a clash between two fundamentally incompatible visions:
the vision of a free, sovereign, and independent Lebanese state, and the vision
of Lebanon as an Iranian-controlled arena governed by the doctrine of Wilayat
al-Faqih.
Conclusion
Naim Qassem’s speech was not a Lebanese national address. It was a renewed
declaration of the ideological identity of Hezbollah’s project — a project that
does not genuinely recognize Lebanon’s borders as final, the state as the sole
legitimate authority, or citizenship as the unifying identity of the people. The
“steadfastness” celebrated by Hezbollah is, in reality, the continued sacrifice
of Lebanese lives — particularly those of the Shiite community — in service of a
project that has little to do with Lebanon’s interests. States are not built on
the concept of battlefields and arenas. They are not built through perpetual
wars or loyalties that transcend national borders. History consistently
demonstrates that armed ideological organizations that place themselves above
the state and answer to external authorities do not build nations; they
undermine them.
Therefore, addressing the Hezbollah problem cannot be achieved by granting new
legitimacy to its weapons or by endlessly recycling failed dialogue initiatives.
It can only begin with a return to the Constitution, the rule of law, and the
exclusive right of the Lebanese state to bear arms and defend the nation, as the
sole legitimate authority entrusted with protecting Lebanon and its citizens.
The author, Elias Bejjani, is a Lebanese expatriate activist
Author’s Email: Phoenicia@hotmail.com
Author’s Website:
https://eliasbejjaninews.com
The Third Anniversary of the Jihadist and
Barbaric Raid of October 7th
Elias Bejjani/October 07, 2026
https://eliasbejjaninews.com/2026/10/158118/
On October 7th, we remember the black and bloody day that revealed the true face
of jihadist barbarism and of political Islam in both its Sunni and Shiite
branches, represented by Hamas, the Iranian mullah regime, and all of its
terrorist proxies, foremost among them the satanic Hezbollah.
Three years ago, on the morning of a holiday and a day of peace, jihadist Hamas
and its allies launched a savage terrorist raid unparalleled in its brutality in
our contemporary history. It was not an act of resistance, nor a military
operation, but an organized massacre targeting unarmed civilians in their homes,
at a music festival, and in the streets – children, women, and the elderly, who
were killed, their bodies mutilated, and kidnapped into the tunnels of Gaza as
hostages.
What happened on that day was not a victory, but a resounding moral and human
downfall for Sunni and Shiite political Islam. That barbaric raid sought to kill
the hope for peace and to plunge the entire region into a vortex of blood and
destruction, and the peoples of the region, first and foremost the Palestinians
themselves, have paid a heavy price for this insane jihadist adventure.
On this third anniversary, we stand in reverence for the souls of the innocent
victims, in solidarity with their families and with the hostages who are still
suffering, and in affirmation that savagery cannot make a cause, and that
terrorism can never be a path to freedom.
These words of ours are a cry against oblivion, a promise never to forget, and a
serious endeavor to prevent that barbaric raid from recurring in any country in
the world.
We raise our prayers for the repose of the victims’ souls and that their
families may be inspired with patience and solace.
The author, Elias Bejjani, is a Lebanese expatriate activist
Author’s Email: Phoenicia@hotmail.com
Author’s Website:
https://eliasbejjaninews.com
Liberating Lebanon from the Iranian Occupation and its
Satanic Party
Elias Bejjani/October 06/2026
https://eliasbejjaninews.com/2026/10/158110/
He is a charlatan, an agent, a dhimmi, an Iscariot, or a fool, who claims that
liberating Lebanon is possible through a cartoon state dominated by the Iranian
occupier Hezbollah, which controls the presidencies, ministers, and the owners
of party corporations.
Liberating Lebanon is only possible by placing it under Chapter VII, declaring
it a failed and rogue state, achieving full peace with the State of Israel, and
forever closing Lebanon as an arena for the lie and commerce of liberating
Palestine. And then, completely getting rid of the rotten political class, the
voracious feudal lords, and the owners of the so called political parties, the
brokers and merchants.
The author, Elias Bejjani, is a Lebanese expatriate activist
Author’s Email: Phoenicia@hotmail.com
Author’s Website:
https://eliasbejjaninews.com
Video & text Interview Link with Dr. Charles Chartouni/“The
Hamas Attack Marked the Beginning of Fundamental Geopolitical Changes”
Interview conducted by Eliana Yassin for Al-Siyassiyy YouTube
Channel
October 7, 2026
https://eliasbejjaninews.com/2026/10/158129/
Note/The transcription, drafting, titling, translation to
English and tabulation of the interview was done by Elias Bejjani with complete
freedom
Introduction
Dr. Charles Chartouni considers the October 7, 2023 Hamas attack to have been a
major geopolitical turning point that shattered the so-called “Axis of Arenas”
strategy established by Qassem Soleimani and Iran. According to him, the region
has entered a phase of open-ended conflict and the collapse of the old regional
order, while no clear alternative order has yet emerged. He argues that Israel
has reached a stage of profound disillusionment with political settlements and
has shifted toward the systematic dismantling of existing strategic equations.
He also believes that the United States is pursuing a long-term strategy of
attrition aimed at bringing about the eventual collapse of the Iranian regime,
and that coexistence with its regional proxies—Hezbollah, Hamas, and the Houthis—is
no longer considered acceptable. Regarding Lebanon, he describes the state as a
legal fiction operating under Hezbollah’s dominance and maintains that the
Lebanese Army lacks an independent institutional foundation.
Topics Covered in the Interview
October 7 as a Geopolitical Turning Point
The Hamas attack marked the beginning of fundamental geopolitical
transformations. It destroyed the dynamics of Iran’s “Axis of Arenas” strategy.
The region is witnessing the gradual collapse of Iran’s regional system across
Gaza, Palestine, Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, and Yemen.
The Future of the Region
The region will require an indeterminate period before its future contours
become clear. The destinies of Syria, Lebanon, Palestine, Gaza, and Yemen remain
unsettled and are still taking shape. The Middle East has entered an open
conflict environment.
Assessment of October 7
Dr. Chartouni rejects the slogan “Thank you, October 7,” describing the event as
a major tragedy for the Jewish people and a painful memory deeply embedded in
Jewish consciousness. He believes Israelis have entered a stage of complete
despair regarding negotiated settlements and have embarked on a systematic
effort to dismantle existing political and geographical equations.
Yemen and the Bab el-Mandeb Strait
He analyzes “Operation Dawn of Yemen” and the reopening of navigation through
the Bab el-Mandeb Strait, reportedly with Saudi participation. He links these
developments to the renewed momentum of American foreign policy following the
U.S. elections. He refers to documented meetings between Saudi and Israeli
intelligence services aimed at containing Houthi expansionism, citing reports
from newspapers such as The New York Times, The Washington Post, and Le Figaro.
In his view, Saudi Arabia experimented with a Saudi-Pakistani-Turkish alignment
before ultimately returning to cooperation with Israel and the United States
after recognizing the limitations of its previous approach.
The Saudi-Pakistani-Turkish Alignment and the United States
He argues that this alignment failed to generate a new strategic dynamic.
Iranian policy, in his view, remains centered on undermining stability within
and among states through Hezbollah, Hamas, the Houthis, Kataib Hezbollah in
Iraq, and attempts to influence the new Syrian order.
The American Position on Saudi Arabia and Yemen
Commenting on U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s remarks regarding a defense
agreement with Saudi Arabia, Dr. Chartouni interprets President Trump’s earlier
reluctance to assist Saudi Arabia as a process of measuring and limiting Saudi
influence. He stresses that challenging American influence carries significant
costs.
Iran’s Resilience and the Strategy of Attrition
Despite severe setbacks to its regional proxies and ongoing economic sanctions,
Iran remains resilient and continues to impose conditions on its adversaries.
According to Dr. Chartouni, Washington’s only viable strategy is a policy of
prolonged attrition—a long-term economic and financial war of exhaustion. He
cites former U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice in support of this
assessment and argues that the Iranian regime has entered its final phase.
U.S. Midterm Elections
He considers President Trump’s remarks about giving Americans $5,000 to have
been a joke rather than an attempt to buy votes. Even if Republicans suffer
setbacks in the midterm elections, he believes U.S. foreign policy will remain
largely unchanged because Trump is focused on securing a lasting legacy during
the remaining years of his presidency. He further argues that the Democratic
Party is no longer the party of John F. Kennedy and has evolved into a coalition
influenced by Islamist activists and the far left. He specifically mentions
figures such as Zohran Mamdani, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Rashida Tlaib, and
Ilhan Omar.
American Military Buildup in Israel and the Risk of Escalation
Dr. Chartouni discusses reports of approximately 3,000 additional U.S. troops
and military aircraft being deployed in support of Israel as a precaution
against possible escalation. He believes Iran is attempting to restore the
credibility of its regional intervention strategy through a major symbolic and
military demonstration marking three years since the outbreak of the war. This
could involve Hezbollah, remaining Hamas infrastructure in Gaza, the
Iraqi-Syrian border region, and Yemen. However, he argues that Iran’s capacity
for intervention is limited. In his assessment, the region is moving toward a
“Total War” scenario aimed at the comprehensive dismantling of Iran’s regional
system, while Tehran understands that neither Russia nor China is likely to
provide direct military support.
Lebanon, Hezbollah, and the Framework Agreement
Dr. Chartouni warns that if Hezbollah launches attacks against northern Israeli
communities, what remains of southern Lebanon and the Bekaa Valley could face
devastating consequences. He argues that coexistence with Hezbollah is no longer
viable. He strongly criticizes President Joseph Aoun and Prime Minister Nawaf
Salam, describing the executive authority as a “soap bubble” that squandered the
ceasefire opportunity. According to him, the government failed to contain
Hezbollah and instead allowed it to rebuild its capabilities, paving the way for
the 2026 war. He also argues that the framework agreement, which separated the
Lebanese file from the Iranian one, was never implemented because the Lebanese
authorities deferred to Hezbollah’s priorities rather than enforcing the
agreement’s provisions requiring the dismantling of its military presence in
southern Lebanon.
Criticism of the Lebanese State and Army
Dr. Chartouni describes Lebanon as a dysfunctional entity and a legal fiction
under Hezbollah’s domination. He accuses the Lebanese Army and its commander,
General Rodolphe Haykal, of lacking genuine independence and claims they operate
under Hezbollah and Iranian influence. He references figures such as Mohammad
Safa and Murshid Suleiman, noting that the latter attended a commemoration of
Hassan Nasrallah without facing any accountability. He also discusses
Hezbollah’s tunnel infrastructure in southern Lebanon, the billions of dollars
allegedly invested in it, and what he describes as the obstruction of land
registry offices to facilitate the acquisition of Christian-owned properties.
Furthermore, he argues that the Beirut Port explosion was a deliberate operation
intended to alter the geopolitical balance within the capital and facilitate
property acquisitions in neighborhoods such as Gemmayzeh and Mar Mikhael.
Conclusion and Outlook
Dr. Chartouni’s principal conclusion is that coexistence with Hezbollah belongs
to the past and that the dismantling of its political and military equations has
become inevitable. He describes the upcoming CENTCOM meeting in Florida,
scheduled for October 20 or 22, as the Lebanese state’s final opportunity to
demonstrate its viability. Otherwise, Lebanon risks further state fragmentation
and institutional collapse. He argues that the Lebanese authorities should have
taken advantage of Hezbollah’s weakened command structure to consolidate a
“Greater Beirut,” strengthen areas beyond Hezbollah’s control, and leave
Hezbollah-dominated territories to direct confrontation with Israel. He predicts
that Hezbollah Secretary-General Naim Qassem’s political future is limited and
nearing its end. Finally, he calls on Lebanon’s Shiite community to abandon
Hezbollah’s and Iran’s narrative and undertake an internal transformation led by
new elites. Otherwise, he believes a new war will once again reshape the
regional landscape and impose a new geopolitical reality.
رابط فيديو مقابلة باللغة الإنكليزية من موقع معهد واشنطن
مع د. سمير جعجع/شارك في الحلقة السفير دايفيد شنكر والكاتبة حنين غدار وأدارها
روبرت ساتلوف
Conversation with Samir Geagea: How to End Lebanon’s Cycle of War and Build a
Sovereign State
Video Link from WashingtonInstitute to an interview with Dr. Samir Geagea: How
to End Lebanon’s Cycle of War and Build a Sovereign State
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rULti3duFNQ
Streamed live on Oct 6, 2026
Three months after the signing of the Lebanon-Israel framework agreement,
progress toward implementing that breakthrough deal has slowed. But hope remains
that, with American support, the opportunity will not be lost to disarm and
dismantle Hezbollah, extend Lebanese government sovereignty throughout the
entire country, and finally end decades of conflict between the two nations.
To discuss how to take advantage of the opportunity to secure a hopeful future
for Lebanon, The Washington Institute is pleased to announce a virtual
conversation with Samir Geagea. An outspoken critic of Hezbollah and Iran’s
interference in his country, he is the leader of the predominantly Christian
"Lebanese Forces" party, which has the largest contingent in parliament.
Also participating in the conversation will be:
David Schenker, The Washington Institute’s Taube Senior Fellow, director of its
Rubin Program on Arab Politics, and former assistant secretary of state for Near
Eastern affairs during the first Trump administration.
Hanin Ghaddar, the Institute’s Friedmann Senior Fellow and coauthor (with Robert
Satloff and Ehud Yaari) of its 2025 report “A Roadmap for Israel-Lebanon Peace.”
Robert Satloff, the Institute’s Segal Executive Director and Howard P. Berkowitz
Chair in U.S. Middle East Policy.
Israeli military says it struck about 100,000 targets
across region in 3 years
Arab News/October 7, 2026
LONDON: The Israeli military said on Wednesday it had struck about 100,000
targets across Gaza, Lebanon, Syria, Iran and Yemen since the Hamas-led attack
on southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, releasing a report on the third anniversary
of the attack that is reported to have triggered the regional conflict. The
military said it struck approximately 65,000 targets in Gaza, 28,000 in Lebanon
and the Syrian Arab Republic combined, 4,500 in Iran and 80 in Yemen. The
figures could not be independently verified.The report also listed missile
launches toward Israel, recording 20,000 from Lebanon, 10,200 from Gaza, 1,200
from Iran, 90 from Yemen and 50 from Syria. Alongside those figures, the
military published a graphic identifying senior figures from armed groups and
Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps it said had been killed in Israeli
strikes.They included Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah and the head of its
executive council, Hashem Safieddine; Hamas political chief Yahya Sinwar and its
military commander, Mohammed Deif; and IRGC commander Hossein Salami and
aerospace chief Ali Hajizadeh. The report comes amid sustained criticism of
Israel’s military campaigns, with UN investigators, independent human rights
experts and aid groups accusing it of collective punishment and other violations
of international humanitarian law.In September, UN Secretary-General Antonio
Guterres accused Israel of the “collective punishment” of Palestinians and
“systematic destruction” in Gaza during his final address to the General
Assembly as secretary-general. Israel’s campaign in Gaza has killed at least
74,200 people, according to the local health authority, injured more than
175,068 others, and displaced some 1.9 million people — nearly 90 percent of the
population — multiple times. Guterres’ remarks echoed criticism raised earlier
in the war. In a joint submission to the US government dated March 19, 2024,
Human Rights Watch and Oxfam said Israeli authorities had “imposed collective
punishments on the civilian population,” deprived civilians of necessities and
used starvation as a weapon of war.
The groups cited restrictions on food, water, fuel, electricity and humanitarian
assistance imposed after the Hamas-led attack. Israel’s operations in Lebanon
have drawn similar scrutiny. In a July 23 statement, independent UN human rights
experts said Israel’s military actions violated international humanitarian law
and “may also amount to war crimes and crimes against humanity.” The experts
cited attacks on residential buildings, harm to health workers, displacement
orders and allegations of white phosphorus use over residential areas. They also
condemned rhetoric they said legitimized collective punishment or incited
violence. More recently, the UN Commission of Inquiry on Syria said on Sept. 8
that said Israeli violations of human rights and international humanitarian law
on Syrian territory “may amount to war crimes.” Its findings included civilian
detention, suspected cross-border transfers and military operations that
displaced residents in southern Syria.
UN Peacekeeping Force Says Shots Fired at Post on
Lebanon-Israel Border
Asharq Al Awsat/October 08/2026
The United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon said one of its posts was targeted
on Wednesday near the border with Israel by small-arms fire, but there were no
casualties. "This morning, several rounds of small arms fire impacted a UNIFIL
position near Kfar Shouba along the Blue Line in Sector East," the UN force said
in a statement, referring to the de facto border between Lebanon and Israel.The
blue helmets described the shooting as "unacceptable"."Such deliberate attacks
gravely endanger the lives of peacekeepers," it said, adding that it was
investigating the incident. Under US pressure, the UN Security Council decided
in August to fix December as the end of the mandate for UNIFIL, which has been
deployed since 1978. Last month, Lebanon's Prime Minister Nawaf Salam insisted
at the UN on the need to "avert the vacuum" that would be caused by withdrawing
the peacekeeping mission deployed in the country's south without a viable
replacement. UNIFIL currently has 7,500 blue helmets from around 50 countries.
Violence has decreased since a ceasefire following a memorandum of understanding
in the US-Iran war struck in June, while Lebanon and Israel concluded a
US-sponsored framework agreement later that month. The Lebanon-Israel deal
involves the disarmament of Hezbollah, a gradual withdrawal of Israeli forces
from Lebanon's south and the deployment of the Lebanese army to the region,
starting in test areas known as "pilot zones".
Can a weakened Hezbollah still change the equation — or is
it refusing to acknowledge defeat?
NAJIA HOUSSARI/Arab News/October 7, 2026
BEIRUT: Thursday marks three years since the first war between Hezbollah and
Israel sent shockwaves through southern Lebanon, after the group opened what it
called a support front for Gaza. A second war followed in March, when Hezbollah
again entered the conflict under the banner of supporting Iran. The result has
been an expansion of Israel’s occupation in southern Lebanon, where the latest
development has been the construction of a military road stretching from the
Safita Castle area on the southern outskirts of Yahmar Al-Shaqif to the Zawtar
Al-Sharqiyah riverbed along the Litani River. Yet Hezbollah Secretary-General
Sheikh Naim Qassem, addressing supporters on Tuesday night, appeared determined
to maintain the group’s existing rhetoric despite the scale of destruction that
has struck Lebanon — and Hezbollah’s own support base in particular.
“The liberation of the south is before our eyes,” Qassem said, insisting that
Israel would not be able to remain in southern Lebanon and that “the solution
begins with the enemy leaving humiliated, along with the American who supports
it.”He also praised what he described as the “legendary steadfastness” of the
resistance, Hezbollah’s military wing, which is now prohibited under decisions
taken by the Lebanese government. Qassem made little reference to the fate of
dozens of southern towns reduced to rubble or the residents who remain displaced
from their land.
Instead, responding to critics, he said: “Do not ask us what you are going to
do. We can only remain a resistance as long as this aggression continues. Do not
ask us for other solutions. We have nothing else to offer. War comes in
rounds.”Qassem also placed the issue of restricting weapons to the state
alongside questions including the economy, employment, coexistence and
depositors’ money, saying all should be discussed “within constitutional
frameworks.”His framing appeared to treat Hezbollah’s weapons as another
domestic political issue rather than one directly connected to state
sovereignty, the monopoly over arms and the authority to decide questions of war
and peace.The question is whether Hezbollah still has the ability to recover and
confront Israel — or whether it is refusing to acknowledge that the balance of
power has fundamentally changed.
And, more broadly, how does Lebanon escape the cycle in which it now finds
itself?
Bilal Abdullah, an MP from the Progressive Socialist Party’s parliamentary bloc,
said Hezbollah had a responsibility to conduct a serious reassessment. “The
evaluation must take into account regional and international developments and
carefully examine everything that has happened over the past three years,”
Abdullah told Arab News.He said Hezbollah should facilitate the rebuilding of
the state, the extension of its authority throughout Lebanese territory and
efforts to strengthen Beirut’s negotiating position in order to recover occupied
land, return displaced residents to their villages and begin reconstruction.“The
country needs political stability,” Abdullah said. “Everyone understands
Israel’s aggressive and expansionist plans, but the time has come to return to
the state and address the crises facing the country, particularly the social and
economic ones.”Former MP Fadi Karam described Qassem’s latest speech as
“detached from rationality.” “I agree with Sheikh Naim Qassem that war comes in
rounds,” Karam told Arab News. “But he should recognize the danger and avoid the
final round. Previous rounds destroyed Hezbollah’s foundations, and the final
round could destroy Hezbollah itself.” Karam said he wished the group would
instead focus on easing the suffering of its own supporters. “Unfortunately,
closed ideologies can live only in denial and at some point lose the ability to
act rationally,” he said. Karam also argued that Hezbollah’s attempt to treat
its weapons as simply one domestic issue among many was intended to distract
from the central question of bringing all arms under state authority.
“Creating secondary issues will not produce solutions as long as state
sovereignty has not been achieved,” he said. “The fundamental issue is weapons
and their exclusive control by the state. Until that is resolved, the other
problems cannot be properly addressed.”
Karam said Hezbollah was attempting to exploit the political breathing space
created by the Israeli and US election cycles.Legal and political researcher Dr.
Ali Murad told Arab News that Hezbollah understood a political era had ended and
that regional power balances had changed.“It is impossible to assume that these
balances can be altered in Hezbollah’s favor in the foreseeable future — and
perhaps for a long time,” he said. “If Hezbollah insists on maintaining its
military option, then it is choosing a suicidal course. Israel wants it to make
that choice and has the ability to achieve military results.”
Murad said Hezbollah should now be carrying out a critical reassessment of its
choices, not in terms of how to continue fighting but of how it views the
conflict itself. Its priorities, he said, should be southern Lebanon, the return
of its residents and reconstruction.“Otherwise, one can say that Hezbollah’s
secretary-general is detached from reality,” he added. Murad said he believed
Hezbollah understood that its current options were limited and that Qassem’s
rhetoric was primarily intended to mobilize the group’s supporters while buying
time in the hope of regional changes. “Hezbollah’s rhetoric is an attempt to
satisfy its supporters,” he said. “But believing that it still convinces the
broader public is mistaken. People are no longer persuaded by everything it
says.”A Lebanese official source told Arab News that Lebanon was now “outside
the radar” of major regional and international priorities. The relevant Lebanese
authorities, the source said, had received no indication of when a new round of
direct Lebanese-Israeli negotiations might take place, either at the political
or military level. “There are military developments in the region, and there are
Israeli and American elections,” the source said. “Inside Lebanon, meanwhile,
there are no channels of communication between the state and Hezbollah.”
US says Hezbollah will not recover or rebuild under Trump
administration
LBCI/October 7, 2026
U.S. State Department spokesman Tommy Pigott said Hezbollah is using anonymous
sources to promote what he described as false reports of an influx of cash from
Iran, insisting that the group does not have access to the funds it claims.
“Hezbollah has every reason to float stories like this through anonymous
sources. It can claim whatever it wants, but the money is not there,” Pigott
said. Pigott said Hezbollah has been “decimated” and accused the group of
causing suffering for hundreds of thousands of Lebanese. He said Hezbollah was
now attempting to “save face” by promoting what he called “fake stories” about
cash transfers from Iran. “Iran’s oil exports are blockaded, its currency is in
freefall, and the regime is looking behind its shoulder,” Pigott said.He added
that the United States would continue to target Hezbollah’s finances through
sanctions while supporting the Lebanese government’s efforts to rebuild the
south. “Hezbollah has brought nothing but misery to Lebanon and the people it
claims to represent,” Pigott said, adding that the group started a war on behalf
of Tehran that resulted in billions of dollars in damage.
“Even if this consolation payment were real, it would not be enough,” he said.
Pigott concluded that under the Trump administration, “Hezbollah will never
recover or rebuild its terrorist infrastructure.”
Israeli army says it has hit 28,000 in Lebanon and Syria
since October 7, 2023
Naharnet/October 7, 2026
The Israeli military said Wednesday that its forces have struck nearly 100,000
targets across the region, including 28,000 in Lebanon and Syria, since October
7, 2023.
According to the report, 20,000 rocket launches have been fired toward Israeli
territory from Lebanon over the same period.
South Lebanon: Latest developments
Naharnet/October 7, 2026
Israeli artillery shelled overnight into Wednesday the southern villages of Wadi
Zebqine, Kfartebnit, Nabatieh al-Fawqa, and Arnoun, while strikes targeted Wadi
Slouqi.
On Wednesday, the Israeli military said its forces have struck 28,000 targets in
Lebanon and Syria, since October 7, 2023.
Saddi meets Aoun, says committed to continuing his
ministerial responsibilities
Naharnet/October 7, 2026
Minister of Energy and Water Joe Saddi on Wednesday informed President Joseph
Aoun of the reasons that led him to announce his boycott of Cabinet sessions.
During the meeting at the Baabda Palace, Saddi emphasized "his commitment to
continue assuming his ministerial responsibilities," expressing his hope that
these reasons will be addressed. Saddi, who was named by the Lebanese Forces,
announced Tuesday his boycott of Cabinet sessions until the government takes the
“needed decisions” in the thorny electricity file.
A new route for Beirut and Tripoli? Lebanon moves closer to
IMEC
LBCI/October 7, 2026
The ports of Beirut and Tripoli have joined the IMEC Ports Club, a network that
brings together ports interested in becoming part of the India-Middle
East-Europe Economic Corridor. IMEC was originally launched through an agreement
between eight major partners: India, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, the
United States, France, Germany, Italy and the European Union. The corridor is
designed to connect India to the Gulf, then by land through Saudi Arabia and
Jordan to Haifa, before continuing by sea to Europe. Lebanon was not originally
part of the route. For Lebanon, the focus is on Beirut and Tripoli and efforts
to bring the two ports into the network. But IMEC is not just about ports. It
also requires roads, railways, digital infrastructure and data exchange, as well
as logistical and customs connectivity. Ultimately, the final role will depend
on the country's readiness. Geography and geopolitical changes are creating an
opportunity for Lebanon. There is also another factor: The original route toward
Haifa still requires railway connections and faces infrastructure challenges,
difficult terrain, and high costs.
In any case, Lebanon is now closer to the route. But if it is delayed, the map
could eventually be finalized without it.
Hezbollah gets $200 million from Iran to help displaced: Reuters
LBCI/October 7, 2026
Hezbollah has received $200 million from Iran to help Lebanese displaced by this
year’s war with Israel, two people with direct knowledge of the transfer said,
the first significant aid from the group to supporters who bore the brunt of
the conflict. Hezbollah received the cash last month despite a tightening U.S.
economic chokehold on Iran and increasing difficulties in getting funds to
Tehran's Lebanese ally, said the people. Intermediaries who moved the money
charged a 20% fee, reflecting the risks of dealing with the group, they said.
One said this was four times the normal fee. Asked for comment, a Hezbollah
official said an amount had been secured and a plan for distributing it would be
announced in the coming days, without elaborating on the source of the funds.
Hezbollah would use the funds to pay an initial $3,000 per family, and priority
will go to those whose villages have been destroyed or are inaccessible due to
Israeli occupation, the sources said. These number around 50,000 families, one
of the sources said. Iran has maintained financial support to Hezbollah through
years of crippling U.S. sanctions: it transferred $1 billion to the group in the
first 10 months of 2025, according to the U.S. Treasury Department. Iran had
promised Hezbollah more funding after Tehran signed an interim deal with
Washington in June that allowed Iran to sell its oil, Reuters reported at the
time. That agreement collapsed in July. The two sources provided no details on
how the money got to Lebanon. One of them said it was increasingly difficult for
Hezbollah to move funds via financial companies that once processed such
transfers. Such firms based in Iraq and Dubai were no longer an option, and
they were also now under pressure in Turkey, this source said. Hezbollah’s foes
believed money was currently the group’s “oxygen,” the source added. Despite the
difficulties securing funding, the group had not stopped paying its fighters and
the family members of those killed in combat, this source said. Reuters
Lebanese army clashes with smugglers along Syria border —
LBCI source
LBCI/October 7, 2026
A military source told LBCI that clashes along the Lebanese-Syrian border
erupted between the Lebanese army and a group of smugglers in the mountainous
area of Arsal.
The clashes took place as the group was allegedly carrying out a smuggling
operation from Syria into Lebanon, the source said. No injuries were reported.
The army also arrested one individual who was allegedly involved in the
smuggling operation.
UN peacekeeping force says shots fired at post on
Israel-Lebanon border
AFP/October 7, 2026
BEIRUT: The United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon said one of its posts was
targeted on Wednesday near the border with Israel by small-arms fire, but there
were no casualties. “This morning, several rounds of small arms fire impacted a
UNIFIL position near Kfar Shouba along the Blue Line in Sector East,” the UN
force said in a statement, referring to the de facto border between Israel and
Lebanon.The blue helmets described the shooting as “unacceptable.”“Such
deliberate attacks gravely endanger the lives of peacekeepers,” it said, adding
that it was investigating the incident. Under US pressure, the UN Security
Council decided in August to fix December as the end of the mandate for UNIFIL,
which has been deployed since 1978. Last month, Lebanon’s Prime Minister Nawaf
Salam insisted at the UN on the need to “avert the vacuum” that would be caused
by withdrawing the peacekeeping mission deployed in the country’s south without
a viable replacement. UNIFIL currently has 7,500 blue helmets from around 50
countries. Violence has decreased since a ceasefire following a memorandum of
understanding in the US-Iran war struck in June, while Lebanon and Israel
concluded a US-sponsored framework agreement later that month. The
Israel-Lebanon deal involves the disarmament of Hezbollah, a gradual withdrawal
of Israeli forces from Lebanon’s south and the deployment of the Lebanese army
to the region, starting in test areas known as “pilot zones.”
Syria foils smuggling attempt in Damascus countryside, near
border with Lebanon
Arab News/October 7, 2026
LONDON: The Syrian Arab Republic said on Wednesday it had foiled a smuggling
attempt along the Lebanese border in the Damascus countryside, seizing two
vehicles and their cargo after an exchange of gunfire. The smugglers opened fire
on a patrol in the Jurd Al-Maarra area of Yabroud, prompting Syria’s border
guards to return fire, the Defense Ministry’s media and communications
department told the Syrian Arab News Agency. Border guards arrested one
smuggler, while the others fled toward Lebanese territory, the department said.
The ministry did not specify what the vehicles were carrying.
Since the fall of longtime President Bashar Assad in late 2024, Lebanon and
Syria have worked to curb smuggling across their shared border of 330 km,
including the trafficking in weapons and the drug captagon.
Salam says decisions of war and peace can't be taken
outside state institutions
Naharnet/October 7, 2026
Prime Minister Nawaf Salam said Wednesday that the Taif Agreement “focused on
the importance of extending state authority over all of its territory using its
own inherent forces,” stressing that this is “the baseline without which no true
state can emerge.”
“Taif did not separate political reform from the restoration of state authority,
the dissolution of militias, and the restriction of legitimate force exclusively
to state institutions," said Salam at a ceremony marking the centenary of the
Lebanese constitution.
"Popular sovereignty has no meaning if sources of authority proliferate outside
the institutions that represent the people. A state of law has no meaning if the
law does not apply to everyone, and state sovereignty remains incomplete if
sovereign decisions -- such as decisions of war, peace and national security --
are taken outside its constitutional institutions," the premier added. "Did we
actually implement Taif, or did we only implement the parts that redistributed
power while postponing what was supposed to develop the state? We enshrined
parity between Christians and Muslims, yet we never established the Senate; we
declared that abolishing political sectarianism is a national goal, but we never
set out a practical path to achieve it; and we spoke of decentralization, yet it
remained a postponed project," Salam lamented.
President Aoun receives UAE invitation to attend Abu
Dhabi Sustainability Week 2027
LBCI/October 7, 2026
President Joseph Aoun received a letter from UAE President Sheikh Mohamed bin
Zayed Al Nahyan inviting him to attend Abu Dhabi Sustainability Week in January
2027. The letter was delivered by UAE Ambassador to Lebanon Fahad Salem Al
Kaabi.Aoun was invited to attend the opening ceremony of Abu Dhabi
Sustainability Week and the Zayed Sustainability Prize awards ceremony, as well
as participate in the Abu Dhabi Sustainability Week Summit and deliver a speech.
The events are scheduled for January 12 and 13, 2027.
Report: Lebanon to demand Israel withdrawal from towns in al-Shaqif vicinity
Naharnet/October 7, 2026
The Lebanese military delegation to the talks with Israel will carry a package
of proposals that are not limited to establishing a ceasefire and stopping
hostilities but extend to releasing Lebanese captives held by Israel and
discussing the formation of an international force with U.N. Security Council’s
backing to replace the UNIFIL peacekeeping forces immediately upon the
expiration of their mandate at the end of this year, a ministerial source
directly involved in the negotiations said. The ministerial source also told
Asharq al-Awsat newspaper that Prime Minister Nawaf Salam’s participation in the
U.N. General Assembly meetings enabled him to rally support for Lebanon's
viewpoint calling for deploying an international force to replace UNIFIL. The
source confirmed that the military delegation will propose an Israeli withdrawal
from the towns located in the vicinity of Beaufort (al-Shaqif) Castle, allowing
the Lebanese Army to deploy there, especially since Israel had previously
requested including these towns within the army's deployment zone south of the
Litani River. The source, however, clarified that this request came prior to the
latest Israel-Hezbollah war. The source added that the Israeli army's continued
bulldozing of towns along the so-called Yellow Line and its systematic
destruction of remaining homes will be on the agenda of the Florida meeting,
particularly given that “there is no justification for turning the area south of
the Litani into scorched earth, or for continuing to destroy its towns after the
Israeli army announced it had completed the destruction of Hezbollah's
infrastructure in this region.” The same source expressed that merely
reinforcing the Lebanese Army's deployment would strengthen the government's
position and weaken the arguments Hezbollah uses to retain its weapons. He
questioned: "Where lies the interest in keeping Lebanon on the waiting list and
suspending the implementation of the agreement until after the elections in
Israel, and later the midterm elections in the United States?"
Hezbollah says Hamas' Oct. 7 attack a 'legitimate act of resistance'
Naharnet/October 7, 2026
The October 7, 2023, attack by Hamas on Israel “shook the world and served as a
reminder of the Palestinian cause,” Hezbollah said Wednesday in a statement
marking three years since the operation, describing the action as “courageous,
qualitative, natural, justified, and a legitimate act of resistance given the
scale of injustice.”Hezbollah added that the attack delivered a major shock
whose results should be measured by values, laws, and its impact on politics,
rather than by “the balance of power, superiority, and the excessive use of
violence,” which culminated “the genocide of women and children.”The statement
highlighted that people around the world rose up and demonstrated in support of
human values and Palestinian rights after the operation, noting that capitals
and universities across the West witnessed marches condemning genocide and
crimes against humanity. According to Hezbollah, the operation disrupted the
region surrounding Palestine because it went against what it described as the
"defeatist normalization path" that regional regimes were leading in line with
“the will of Israel and its international supporters.”Hezbollah added that the
past three years -- during which world news and images were filled with "Zionist
and American savagery and barbarism" -- have failed to “resolve the
confrontation regarding Gaza and its political and legal future in favor of
Israel and its allies.”Hezbollah also argued that the narrative of those
opposing or expressing reservations about the attack has not prevailed, despite
what it called "lamentations and elegies" over the destruction and human and
material losses, which it held Israel responsible for causing. It stated that
“Israel, despite the savagery and genocide, has been unable to eliminate Hamas,
other resistance factions, or the people of Gaza, nor has it achieved peace, a
temporary truce, or stability.”Hezbollah concluded that Israel will remain
unable to leverage its successes into a stable strategic position due to “the
resilience and stubbornness of the resistance, as well as the belief of its
people in the justice and worthiness of their cause despite the sacrifices
required.”
Aoun warns of 'attempts to politicize and exaggerate
economic situation'
Naharnet/October 7, 2026
President Joseph Aoun on Wednesday warned that “there are attempts to politicize
and exaggerate the economic situation for political ends.”There is “talk about a
rise in the U.S. dollar exchange rate and crises similar to what occurred in
2019 -- all aimed at creating confusion and marginalizing efforts to revive
Lebanon, which is something that cannot be allowed," Aoun added. He accordingly
called for "cooperation in facing the economic crises from which the entire
world is suffering," pointing to the measures being taken by the Central Bank
and the Ministry of Finance "to maintain monetary stability."
He also stressed that "decades of corruption and mismanagement cannot be erased
in a short period, but work is underway to combat corruption, transit to digital
governance, and improve the state of public administrations and official
institutions."
Geagea says Hezbollah disarmament 'Lebanese necessity',
Berri not helping
Naharnet/October 7, 2026
Lebanese Forces leader Samir Geagea has called for the immediate disarmament of
Hezbollah, rejecting that the government is acting under international pressure.
"Many people think that the Lebanese government has to dismantle Hezbollah
because the U.S., the Arabs, and Israel are asking for it," Geagea said Tuesday.
"This is false. Dismantling Hezbollah is a Lebanese necessity and a priority for
the Lebanese population before anyone else.""We had to dismantle Hezbollah
before this war, before the framework agreement, but we are rather late," Geagea
said, claiming that "75% of the people of Lebanon want Hezbollah to be
dismantled." Geagea emphasized that state sovereignty cannot exist alongside a
separate, armed group. "You cannot have a state, a real state, with a military
organization that confiscates strategic decisions and war and peace decisions,"
he said. Geagea added that Speaker Nabih Berri "has not been playing a
constructive role" and "has been hindering the amendments necessary to have
elections for the last year."
Lebanon poised to explode in protest yet again
Dr. Dania Koleilat Khatib/Arab News/October 7, 2026
The Lebanese are very upset. On all fronts, the country is failing. On the
security front, the negotiations are stalling. Israel is continuing its
systematic destruction of the south. There is often no electricity. The price of
gas has increased, as have the rates for private generators. The economic
situation is worse than ever. Discontent has reached an all-time high. Are we
close to witnessing another October 2019 moment?Seven years ago, protests spread
throughout the country. While the trigger was the WhatsApp tax, the root causes
that pushed people to take to the streets were high unemployment, a lack of
services and corruption. It was an organic, spontaneous movement. Initially, the
political class was worried, especially as the problem came along with the
banking crash that several experts had been expecting. Protesters started
organizing. The protests that happened in 2019 were a continuation of previous
movements that started in 2015 as a result of the closure of landfill dumps. The
trash disposal crisis led to a movement called “You Stink.” This sparked a civic
movement. The movement that started as a protest against the lack of trash
disposal developed to ask for accountability, but it fizzled out when it became
politicized.
The 2019 protests were another episode of public discontent amid awareness that
the current political class cannot deliver good governance. However, like in
2015, the mass protest movement fizzled out. It disappeared but the
repercussions were grave: lost deposits, the collapse of the national currency
and a crashing economy.
There has been no formal investigation into the financial crisis. All the
lawsuits against the banks are still locked up in drawers
In the seven years since 2019, there has not been any real account of what
happened, explaining why the crisis happened and why the national currency
collapsed. There is still no accountability. What is the official story? Where
did the depositors’ money go? Seven years on and still there is no solution. The
problem still has not been tackled. Since the 2019 financial crisis, the country
has faced one catastrophe after another: COVID-19, the Beirut port explosion,
etc. There has been no formal investigation into the financial crisis. All the
lawsuits against the banks are still locked up in drawers. Even for those who
raised lawsuits and won, the banks have appealed and the cases are stuck in the
court system. The government still has not offered any solution or road map.
They talk about a law restructuring the banks but there is no tangible solution.
The bank restructuring law is being appealed by President Joseph Aoun,
apparently for sectarian reasons. He is challenging Article 3 of the draft law
in front of the Constitutional Council. The reason for his opposition is that
this law would remove the powers of the central bank governor, who is a Maronite
Christian, and give it to a central council that is composed of different
factions. The Maronites consider this as being another Christian position that
is being stripped of its powers. They refer to the presidency, which has been
stripped of its executive power.
Again, we go back to the power play between the different factions. Which
faction gets a bigger share of the composition of power? However, this struggle
to maximize the power and privileges of each faction does not cater to the
average citizen’s basic needs.
People’s salaries are being eaten up primarily by the devaluation of the
Lebanese pound and by inflation. So, on the pretext of keeping the sectarian
balance, there is no accountability for the depositors’ losses. The bank
restructuring law is also linked to the proposed financial gap law, which
indicates who is responsible and who will bear the cost. Is it the banks, the
central bank, the state or the depositors? Everything is up in the air.
The Iran war has added another element in the mix. Israel is decimating the
south of the country, displacing more than 1 million people. The state is
incapable of handling the crisis properly. People are still residing in tents on
the street. In addition to the direct cost of Israel’s war on Lebanon, the
closure of the Strait of Hormuz and the spike in energy prices has further
increased inflation. People’s salaries are being eaten up primarily by the
devaluation of the Lebanese pound and by inflation.
In the meantime, the government, which has no viable comprehensive plan for the
country, is increasing taxes on energy. The public sector is now closed on
Fridays as people cannot afford to commute. Government departments work only
four days a week. Workers’ unions are mobilizing as the minimum wage is
unacceptable and living conditions are unbearable. The unions are threatening
strikes. The situation is about to explode, as in 2019. However, the political
class is playing its final card to prevent the situation from exploding:
sectarianism. The divisions in society are so grave that collective action is
difficult. Strikes were planned but the General Labor Union and the Land
Transport Union decided to postpone action and give the government a chance to
review and respond to their demands. They received some perks from the
government but no real solution to the current crisis. The economic situation
and living conditions are today far worse than they were in 2019. To add to
that, there is the crisis in the south, where a large chunk of the country has
been leveled and hundreds of thousands of people displaced. The situation is
bound to explode the same way it did seven years ago. The question is: Will mass
protest this time lead to real change or will it fizzle out like in 2015 and
2019, with the corrupt political class and the mafia continuing to control the
country?
**Dr. Dania Koleilat Khatib is a specialist in US-Arab relations with a focus on
lobbying. She is co-founder of the Research Center for Cooperation and Peace
Building, a Lebanese nongovernmental organization focused on Track II.
The Latest English LCCC
Miscellaneous Reports And News published
on October 07-08/2026
AMCD Condemns Violence Against Syrian
Christians in Suqaylabiyah
October 6, 2026
Church service in Suqaylabiyah, March 2026
The American Mideast Coalition for Democracy strongly condemns the recent
violence perpetrated against Christians in the central Syrian town of
Suqaylabiyah. Reports indicate that young men from the neighboring Sunni village
of Qalaat Al Madiq opened fire on unarmed civilians injuring many and destroying
several shops.Suqaylabiyah residents are complaining that the Syrian security
forces did too little to protect them and simply ordered everyone to stay
indoors after the shooting stopped. Reports received by AMCD indicate this is
the third time Suqaylabiyah has been attacked in recent months and that the
Syrian government is not doing enough to protect Christians from these attacks.
“Attacks on Christians are escalating all over the world,” began AMCD co-chair,
John Hajjar, “And the response by many governments, including the new government
in Syria, is to arrest and prosecute those Christians who fight back. Naturally,
this only exacerbates the problem as Christians do not feel they can rely on the
security services to protect them.”“We have to do everything we can to bring
attention to the persecution of Christians,” continued AMCD co-chair, Tom Harb.
“For too long Christians have been persecuted to the point of being driven out
of their native lands in the Middle East so that now, they exist only in small
and often isolated towns and villages which are increasingly vulnerable to these
kinds of attacks.”AMCD stands with our persecuted Christian brethren in the
Middle East, Africa, and even Europe, where church vandalism is at an all-time
high. We call on governments throughout the world to take serious steps to
protect their churches from vandalism and arson and their Christian citizens
from violence. We demand that the al-Sharaa government disarm and prosecute the
jihadist groups operating in Syria, hold the Suqaylabiyah attackers accountable,
and guarantee the safety of all of Syria’s minorities. The international
community must make continued engagement with Damascus conditional on real
protection for these communities.
Three years after Oct. 7, Israelis ask:
What comes next?
LBCI/October 07/2026
At exactly 6:29 a.m. three years ago, Hamas launched its attack on southern
Israel.
At the time, Israelis woke up to images of the border fence separating them from
the Gaza Strip being breached, and Hamas fighters inside their towns and
communities. Today, as Israel marks the anniversary, the scene has changed. At
the same time, the noise of demonstrations and protests in several locations
overshadowed everything else. President Isaac Herzog’s candle-lighting ceremony
marking the anniversary did not change the reality on the ground. Families of
those killed and those held captive filled television screens, while hundreds
observed a minute of silence outside the Knesset. Dozens also protested outside
the homes of ministers and officials, despite police arresting a number of them.
The demand was the same: the establishment of an official commission of inquiry
into the events of Oct. 7.
Mourning, war and elections as Israel marks October 7
Associated Press/October 07/2026
Israelis gathered on Wednesday to commemorate the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas-led attack
that killed 1,200 people, saw 251 taken hostage, and sparked a devastating war
in Gaza that has left much of the territory in ruins and its 2 million people
living in dire conditions. In southern Israel, families mourned at
intersections, bomb shelters, and the site of a music festival that the
militants overran three years ago in the deadliest attack against Israel. It is
the first anniversary that all the hostages are home, marking a new stage of
grief. For Palestinians, the anniversary brings another day of life of misery
and difficulties after an Israeli retaliatory campaign in Gaza that has killed
tens of thousands of people. Most of the population of about 2 million people
lives in vast, squalid tent camps, with large parts of the strip's cities
reduced to rubble. More than half the territory remains in the hands of the
Israeli military. Despite a ceasefire deal reached nearly a year ago, Israeli
strikes continue almost daily. For the region, the day highlights a startling
transformation over the past three years. Israeli troops occupy a large chunk of
southern Lebanon in their conflict with the Hezbollah militant group, which
began firing on Israel in 2023 in support of Hamas. Iran and the United States
are locked in a confrontation that has seen attacks across Gulf Arab countries
and has shaken the global economy — a conflict that Israel helped launch and
that the Gaza war paved the way for, even if they weren't directly connected.
Families mourn at the Nova Festival site
In Reim, the town where the music festival was underway on the day of the
attack, families gathered around photos of their killed relatives. They hugged
at 6:29 a.m. — the exact time the first rockets were launched three years ago —
as booms from explosions in nearby Gaza were heard. Anya Davitashili, who lost
her 25-year-old son, Sean, said she comes to the site every Saturday because
it's where she feels closest to him. "I have a video of him dancing here that
ends at 6:29 in the morning, it's in front of my eyes all the time," she said.
"Every morning, you wake up and there is just endless missing."
Hundreds of people came to pay their respects to the more than 350 people killed
in and around the festival site.
A released hostage marks his first Oct. 7
Elkana Bohbot, 37, is marking the anniversary in Israel for the first time,
after being released from 738 days of captivity last year. For most of that
time, he said, he was held 50 meters (165 feet) underground in a dark, damp
tunnel. Bohbot, who was abducted from the festival, was kept in a small cell
with other hostages, given very little food, and allowed to bathe only every few
weeks, he said. His captors forced him to take part in several propaganda
videos, including one where he acts out a fake call to his family. In the 11
months since his release, Bohbot has undergone physical and emotional
rehabilitation. In August, his wife, Rivka, gave birth to a daughter, fulfilling
a promise that Bohbot made to himself in the tunnels to give his 5-year-old son,
Reem, a sibling. The newborn Michele is "not a symbol for my people, she is more
of a symbol for the enemy," Bohbot told The Associated Press. "So this child is
the message for you that we were here, and we will always be here forever."
In Gaza, Palestinians struggle to recover
No events are expected on Wednesday in Gaza, where Israel's offensive has
devastated the territory and displaced around 90% of its population, often
multiple times. Restrictions on the entry of goods and aid have contributed to a
severe hunger crisis.
More than 74,000 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza, according to the
territory's Health Ministry, which does not distinguish between civilians and
militants in its figures but says around half were women and children. The
numbers from the ministry, part of the Hamas-run government, are seen as
generally reliable by U.N. agencies and independent experts. While a ceasefire
that took effect on Oct. 10 has halted the heaviest fighting, Israeli strikes
have continued, targeting what Israel says are Hamas militants. Since the
ceasefire, 1,460 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza, according to the
ministry. Seven Israeli soldiers have been killed in that period. Hamas
portrayed the Oct. 7 attack as a response to decades of Israeli military
occupation, land seizures and settlement construction. But the Palestinians'
dream of an independent state appears even more distant. The anniversary comes
to a radically altered Middle East. A contentious election in Israel at the end
of the month hangs over this year's anniversary. The government's official
memorial services took place on Oct. 5, closer to the Hebrew calendar's
anniversary of the attack. The separate commemorations reflected deep divisions
over Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, his handling of the war and his
reluctance to launch an official inquiry into failings of the day. Former Prime
Minister Naftali Bennett, who is hoping to unseat Netanyahu in Israel's upcoming
elections, looked at the photos of the dead in Reim and spoke with sobbing
family members. Gadi Eisenkot, the head of the opposition Yashar! party, met
with families at a bomb shelter in southern Israel where many were killed as
they tried to flee. The attack set in motion a cascade of events that led to
wars across the Middle East as Israel confronted Hamas, Hezbollah and their
backer Iran. Israel has seized swaths of territory in Syria and Lebanon, where
more than 300,000 Lebanese remain displaced. The United States joined Israel in
attacking Iran's military and nuclear program in two rounds, battering Iran and
upending global markets far from the battlefield. Violence has also risen across
the Israeli-occupied West Bank, where Israel's far-right government has
emboldened extremist settlers who have attacked Palestinians and destroyed their
property.
Vance says Iran must cut enrichment capacity for US deal
FAIRBANKS, Alaska/The Arab Weekly/October 08/2026
US Vice President JD Vance said in an exclusive interview with Reuters that Iran
must make a “meaningful” reduction in its nuclear enrichment capacity to
satisfy US demands and end the countries’ seven-month war, even as Washington
was unsure how Tehran makes decisions in negotiations.
Vance, a longtime skeptic of US involvement in foreign wars, has taken a leading
role in negotiating a settlement to the conflict and brokered a provisional
peace agreement in June that quickly fell apart. The war has jolted global
energy markets and become a political liability for President Donald Trump and
fellow Republicans ahead of November midterm elections. Speaking on Monday after
a campaign trip in Alaska, Vance said any agreement would require Iran to reduce
its nuclear enrichment capacity, rather than offer assurances of future nuclear
drawdowns. “If you don’t want a nuclear weapon, then why do you need 60 percent
enriched fuel? And if you want to show commitment to not building a nuclear
weapon, don’t build highly enriched fuel. That’s a very basic threshold issue,”
Vance said. “I think if they want to show a commitment to not building a nuclear
weapon, they would do something meaningful on their enrichment capacity.”Iran
and the US have exchanged proposals in recent weeks aimed at ending the war and
reopening the Strait of Hormuz, a vital global energy shipping route. Trump
rejected Tehran’s latest offer and has warned that military operations could
intensify after the midterms. Vance said the US remained open to an agreement
but would require concrete Iranian nuclear concessions. “We’re not going to
trade words for actions,” Vance said. Unclear how Iran makes decisions.
Complicating matters, Vance said Washington is uncertain who makes decisions in
Tehran.
Vance said the US was in talks with Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian and
Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi. But it was unclear how much authority they
wield within Iran’s power structure, he said, after joint US-Israeli strikes at
the start of the war killed Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.“One of the
things we picked up on is it’s not totally clear how their country makes
decisions,” Vance said. Separately, Trump said on Tuesday his “biggest problem”
is no one knows who is running Iran. Iran’s Foreign Ministry spokesperson said
on Sunday that US officials are well aware of who their Iranian counterparts are
and how Iran’s decision-making system works. “The problem is actually the
opposite: it lies in the contradictory positions and mixed messaging from US
officials,” Esmaeil Baghaei told a weekly press conference.
Vance said he has held personal conversations with field commanders to gauge
battlefield conditions. He dismissed concerns over critical munitions shortages
and added that while Iranian troops are periodically able to strike commercial
ships in the Strait of Hormuz, they are largely unable to prevent energy exports
through the waterway. Vance declined to say if he was leading peace talks,
though he is frequently cited as the White House’s top negotiator. “We’re
certainly involved,” he said. “Ultimately, the president of the United States is
driving things. The war, and its $3 billion monthly price tag, has become a key
issue on the campaign trail. Higher energy prices have put Trump and Republicans
on the defensive in competitive states that will decide control of Congress.
Vance has sought to temper criticism of Trump’s handling of the conflict,
telling voters they should not let that issue keep them from backing Republicans
in next month’s elections. In Alaska, Vance rallied for Republican Senator Dan
Sullivan, who is locked in a tight reelection battle with Democratic challenger
Mary Peltola. Trump carried Alaska by 13 percentage points in 2024, but rising
everyday costs have put the state in play. Before speaking with Reuters, Vance
focused much of his speech on affordability concerns, especially around energy.
Alaska’s remote locale makes consumer goods more expensive, and energy
production is a key industry. Rally attendees roared when Sullivan nearly
introduced Vance as the president of the US, rather than the vice president.
Vance is seen as a leading Republican contender to succeed Trump in the White
House. Vance said afterward that he had not decided whether to seek the
presidency in 2028.“I’m inherently a procrastinator,” he said. “I really haven’t
thought about it much.”
Explainer: The status of Iran’s uranium enrichment program
Reuters/07 October/2026
US Vice President JD Vance told Reuters on Monday Iran must make a “meaningful”
reduction in its uranium enrichment capacity to satisfy US demands and end the
countries’ seven-month war.While it is not clear what exactly he meant, below is
a summary of what is known, and not, about the current status of Iran’s uranium
enrichment program, which is at the heart of its nuclear infrastructure. What
did Iran have before the US and Israel bombed? Israel launched airstrikes on
Iran’s nuclear facilities on June 13 of last year, soon followed by the United
States. In a 12-day campaign, they destroyed or badly damaged the three
uranium-enrichment facilities that were known to be operating in Iran at the
time.They argued that Iran was getting too close to being able to produce a
nuclear weapon, but the UN nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy
Agency, said it had no credible indication of a coordinated weapons program.Iran
was, however, enriching uranium to up to 60 percent purity, a short step from
the roughly 90 percent of weapons grade. The IAEA, which had access to all
Iran’s declared nuclear sites, including its enrichment plants, until the
US-Israeli bombing campaign, estimates Iran had 440.9 kg of uranium enriched to
up to 60 percent when the first bombs fell.That is enough, if enriched further,
for 10 nuclear weapons, according to an IAEA yardstick. Iran also had stocks of
uranium enriched to lower levels. No other country has enriched uranium to such
a high level without producing nuclear weapons. The US and its European allies
say there is no civil justification. The IAEA said the enrichment level and
quantity produced were of serious concern.
What remains?
Iran has not told the IAEA how much of its enriched uranium survived the attacks
or informed it of its whereabouts. It has also not let IAEA inspectors return to
the bombed sites since they were attacked. Of the three enrichment plants, the
only above-ground one, at the sprawling Natanz nuclear facility, was destroyed,
the IAEA has said. The other two, at Natanz and Fordow, were at least badly
damaged and are widely believed to be out of action. The day before Israel
attacked, Iran informed the IAEA it was opening a new enrichment plant at
Isfahan, which diplomats say is in a network of tunnels there that appears
largely unscathed from US bombing. The IAEA says it does not know the status of
that plant or whether it contains nuclear material.While some of Iran’s enriched
uranium will have been destroyed in the US-Israeli strikes, IAEA chief Rafael
Grossi said in March his agency believes “a bit more than 200 kg” of Iran’s
uranium enriched to up to 60 percent remains in the tunnel complex at Isfahan,
with some also still at Natanz.
Where does that leave Iran’s enrichment capacity?
Not even Iran’s arch-foe Israel alleges Iran is currently enriching uranium. How
long it would need to restart is an open question, but as long as a significant
portion of its 60 percent stock remains, it could in principle enrich to weapons
grade with relatively little effort and few machines known as centrifuges.
A 2015 deal between Iran and major powers gave the IAEA extra inspection powers,
including oversight of the number of centrifuges and parts for them.US President
Donald Trump’s withdrawal from that deal in 2018 prompted its collapse and the
IAEA lost track of those machines. Their current number and whereabouts is
unknown. Then how can Iran reduce its capacity? Given that Iran is not currently
known to be enriching, any reduction is likely to be compared to its previous
capacity, which was significant. A reduction could refer to purity, output or
the number of enrichment sites.
Trump says 'we don't think' Russian plague is bio-weapon
LBCI/October 07/2026
U.S. President Donald Trump said Wednesday that the death of a Russian plague
laboratory worker did not appear to be linked to a biological weapon. "We don't
think so. We're going to find out soon enough, but we don't think so," Trump
told reporters in the Oval Office when asked if a "bio-weapon" was involved.
Russia warned earlier against "false" information as reports emerged of a second
suspected case. The U.S. and U.N. have urged Russia to be more transparent.
Trump said Russia insisted it had the situation under control, but added that
not much information was coming out. "If you listen to them, it's under control.
But you know, people have said that before about other things," Trump said of
Moscow's response. Referring to China's initial response to the Covid pandemic,
Trump added: "Well, China didn't say much, and Russia is not saying much either.
But they do say they have it very much under control."Trump reiterated that he
has a phone call scheduled with Russian President Vladimir Putin on the issue,
but would not say when. "Today is Vladimir Putin's birthday," Trump added. AFP
Iran has ‘lost complete control’ of Hormuz Strait, its
economy is in ‘freefall’ Rubio says
Al Arabiya English/Published: 07 October/2026
Iran has “lost complete control” of the Strait of Hormuz, US Secretary of State
Marco Rubio said Wednesday, adding that Tehran’s economy was “in total and
complete freefall.”“The Straits of Hormuz are open. There’s almost as much oil
flowing out now as there was before this conflict began. So they’ve lost
complete control of the Straits,” Rubio told reporters during a visit to Athens.
Speaking in a joint news conference with his Greek counterpart, George
Gerapetritis, Rubio reiterated that Iran cannot have a nuclear weapon, adding
that the issue was that simple. He also said that it failed to take advantage of
multiple opportunities to reach an agreement with the US on its nuclear program,
while adding that Iran was far less powerful today than it was before and that
it is facing “crippling sanctions.”Rubio argued that as a result of “crippling
sanctions,” the Iranian economy was “about to reach a place few countries in the
world have been.”Every dollar received by the “radical Shia clerics” is spent on
Hezbollah and Hamas, he said. “Iran cannot have a nuclear weapon, simple,
period, end of story,” Rubio said. “And anything they agree to that would be
acceptable to the United States has to be something that ensures that Iran will
never have a nuclear weapon.”He argued that what Iran “was trying to do was
build up a conventional capability so massive that they would become
untouchable.”With AFP
Western civilisation is 'at an inflection point': Rubio
LBCI/October 07/2026
Western civilisation is at a crossroads as it faces multiple threats, U.S.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio said in Athens Wednesday, calling for a
rebuilding of alliances and for Europe to "awaken from its long slumber.""We are
at an inflection point... not only in the history of my nation but an inflection
point in the whole of our civilisation," Rubio said in a speech beneath the
Acropolis. AFP
Pentagon chief visits carrier returning from tough Iran war deployment
AFP/07 October/2026
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth on Wednesday hailed the USS Abraham Lincoln’s
crew while visiting the ship as it returned from a lengthy, difficult Iran war
deployment in which multiple service members in the carrier strike group
attempted suicide. The massive nuclear-powered warship left California in
November 2025 for duty in the South China Sea and was rerouted to the Middle
East before US-Israeli attacks on Iran that began in late February, staying at
sea until a Thailand port call in early September. “What the USS Abraham Lincoln
carrier strike group did, no other carrier strike group has ever done,” Hegseth
said in remarks to service members on the ship while it was at sea in the
Pacific. “Ten thousand sorties, 23,000 combat flight hours, almost 4,000 combat
sorties,” he said, later announcing the award of a presidential unit citation to
the strike group for “extraordinary heroism against enemy forces.” But the
lengthy deployment took a toll on US military personnel on the Lincoln and
accompanying warships. In August, military families and lawmakers sounded the
alarm about issues including reported suicide attempts and food shortages aboard
the carrier. Those claims were dismissed by President Donald Trump at the time,
while Hegseth insisted the situation had been “misrepresented.”On Wednesday,
Hegseth took aim at press coverage of the carrier, saying: “There were a few
folks in the media who tried to turn the USS Abraham Lincoln into some sort of a
symbol -- a symbol of dysfunction, or a symbol of low morale, or a symbol of a
failed mission.”“It’s the exact opposite,” he said. “The only reaction the
American people and the American media should have is pride.”Last month, the
Trump administration acknowledged in a letter to a lawmaker that there had been
eight suicide attempts by US service members who were part of the Lincoln
carrier strike group but none of those people. The letter from Acting Navy
Secretary Hung Cao provided details on some of the suicide attempts. He said a
sailor assigned to an air wing “went overboard from the ship in early August”
and was quickly recovered, while another sailor “attempted to go overboard in
March and was stopped by his shipmates.”The letter also said that while food
supplies on the carrier were “adequate,” limited resupply options during combat
led the “number of main entree options” to be reduced from “two to one for a
short time.”
UKMTO says tanker struck by multiple projectiles north of Qatar’s Madinat ash
Shamal
Reuters/08 October/2026
A tanker was struck by multiple projectiles in an incident 51 nautical miles
north of Qatar’s Madinat ash Shamal, with casualties reported, the United
Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations agency said on Wednesday.
Iranian official says ‘illegal routes’ in Strait of Hormuz to soon be blocked
Reuters/October 7, 2026
DUBAI: Transit routes in the Strait of Hormuz deemed illegal by Iran will soon
be closed, an adviser to the Revolutionary Guards’ Commander told the
semi-official Fars News Agency on Wednesday, referring to the southern pathway
hugging Oman’s coast.
Mohammadreza Naqdi said these “few routes” had been created by blasting and
damaging some of the rocky passages in the strategic waterway and were used by
“small boats smuggling oil and transferring it to tankers,” challenging the
narrative that Gulf oil exports are regaining pre-war levels. “The Strait of
Hormuz is closed, and the armed forces of the Islamic Republic of Iran have full
control over it. This situation will continue until Iran’s legitimate demands
are met,” he added. A seven-day moving average for crude exports from the
region was 18.3 million barrels per day on September 30, provisional data
from Kpler showed, with volumes topping pre-war levels on 14 days in
September. That included Gulf oil sent via Hormuz, the Red Sea, and from
terminals and ship-to-ship transfers in the Gulf of Oman. The IRGC has
consistently denied that seaborne crude flows in the strait are rebounding
thanks to US Navy help, with another IRGC adviser Majid Mirahmadi saying on
Thursday that a daily average of 10 ships transit the waterway against an
average of 125 before the war which started on February 28, when the US and
Israel killed Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in a Tehran airstrike.
Despite growing oil flows in September, Iranian attacks on tankers and
logistical constraints have persisted and call into question whether higher
flows can be sustained durably.
Three killed, 36 injured in attacks on Saudi airports
Al Arabiya English/07 October/2026
Three people were killed and 36 others injured in two attacks targeting airports
in Riyadh and Abha, Saudi Arabia’s General Authority of Civil Aviation (GACA)
said on Wednesday. GACA said Abha International Airport and King Khalid
International Airport in Riyadh were targeted in separate attacks on Tuesday and
Wednesday, prompting aviation authorities and other relevant agencies to
activate established emergency procedures. At Abha airport, two residents – a
Moroccan woman and an Algerian woman – were killed, while 28 Saudi citizens and
residents were injured, with their conditions ranging from minor to serious. At
King Khalid International Airport, a Sudanese resident was killed and eight
others were injured. Those injured in Riyadh included five Saudi citizens, two
Egyptian residents and one Pakistani resident, with their injuries also ranging
from minor to serious. All those injured in the two attacks were immediately
taken to hospitals for medical treatment, GACA said. The attacks also caused
material damage, the authority added, without providing further details on the
extent of the damage. GACA said it was working in coordination with relevant
security authorities to assess the damage and take necessary measures to ensure
the safety of passengers and airport employees and maintain the security and
safety of Saudi Arabia’s civil aviation system.
Pakistan rallies behind Saudi Arabia as Mecca Defense Alliance enters
operational phase
Kaswar Klasra, Al Arabiya English/07 October/2026
Pakistan’s political divide has been temporarily overshadowed by a display of
solidarity with Saudi Arabia, as politicians, civil society voices and members
of the public rally behind Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif’s government and
Pakistan’s armed forces over the Kingdom’s confrontation with the Houthis.
That domestic alignment gives the October 5 meeting of the Mecca Defense
Alliance in Riyadh an added significance. Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and Turkey
agreed to move immediately toward implementing their collective-defense
commitments, including measures for the rapid deployment of agreed military
forces and capabilities inside Saudi Arabia.The decision comes as Saudi-backed
Yemeni forces push against Houthi positions along the Red Sea coast, creating
the first major security test for the alliance since it was established in
August. “The landmark October 5 meeting officially transitions the Mecca Defense
Alliance from political intent to an operational collective-defense framework,”
Dr. Yerzhan Dosmukhamedov, an independent policy analyst based in London and a
former senior Kazakh diplomat who served as Deputy Chief of Mission in Germany
and as Chief of Staff to the Vice President of Kazakhstan, told Al Arabiya
English.The committee also appointed retired Pakistani Lieutenant General Nauman
Mahmood as the alliance’s first secretary-general for a three-year term. “By
uniting Saudi Arabia’s strategic leadership, Turkey’s cutting-edge military
technology, and Pakistan’s elite combat experience under Secretary-General Lt.
Gen. (Retd) Nauman Mahmood, this historic trilateral bloc establishes a
formidable shield for the region. Together, these major Islamic powers usher in
a powerful new era of unified security, regional stability, and mutual
strength,” the analyst said.
The three countries said they would take measures to provide agreed military
forces and capabilities and ensure their rapid deployment in Saudi Arabia under
approved arrangements and national legislation.
For Riyadh, the timing is critical. Houthi drones and missiles have demonstrated
how a relatively inexpensive arsenal can threaten Saudi cities, airports,
military installations, energy infrastructure and other strategic facilities.
Saudi-backed Yemeni forces have launched Operation “Dawn of Yemen”, advancing
toward areas around Mokha, Dhubab and the Bab al-Mandeb corridor. Yemeni
government forces have reported gains around the strategic waterway, while the
Houthis have responded with missile and drone attacks against targets in Saudi
Arabia. Bab al-Mandeb connects the Red Sea with the Gulf of Aden and is a
crucial passage for global shipping. Prolonged disruption could increase freight
and insurance costs and force vessels to take longer routes around Africa. The
strategic danger becomes greater because of continuing tensions around the
Strait of Hormuz. A prolonged crisis affecting both waterways could disrupt
energy supplies, raise transport costs and put additional pressure on Asian
importers, European consumers and global supply chains. Pakistan’s support for
Riyadh is rooted in a defense relationship that predates the Makkah alliance.
Pakistani military personnel have served in Saudi Arabia for decades, while the
two countries strengthened their security relationship through a Strategic
Mutual Defense Agreement signed in 2025.
Pakistan’s delegation at the Riyadh meeting included Deputy Prime Minister and
Foreign Minister Ishaq Dar, Defense Minister Khawaja Asif and Chief of Army
Staff and Chief of Defense Forces Field Marshal Asim Munir. Asif has said
Pakistan is ready to provide whatever assistance Saudi Arabia requires while
emphasizing the defensive nature of the cooperation. He has also indicated that
Pakistani and Turkish forces currently have a presence in the theatre, while
Saudi forces are conducting combat operations. Ijaz ul Haq, a member of
Pakistan’s parliament and former federal minister, said the new arrangement
builds on decades of defense cooperation between Islamabad and Riyadh.
“Pakistan’s role recently in the trilateral Mecca Pact between Saudi Arabia,
Turkey and Pakistan has been as a central player in this deal making,” Haq told
Al Arabiya English. “Saudi Pakistan defense pact has been in place since early
1980s with active participation of two brigades in Tabouk. After this pact we
have moved one step further in strengthening our participation to safeguard the
borders against any aggressive act against any one of the countries in the
pact.”The current political support in Pakistan goes beyond the government.
Opposition figures, political commentators and sections of the public have
publicly backed stronger support for Saudi Arabia. Given the intensity of
Pakistan’s domestic political divisions, the breadth of this response is
unusual. Turkey contributes another major component to the alliance. Its defense
industry has developed capabilities in drones, surveillance, electronic warfare
and precision systems. Pakistan brings extensive military experience and
established defense capabilities, while Saudi Arabia provides strategic depth,
financial resources and geographic importance.
But the alliance is not yet a fully integrated military command, and its
credibility will depend on compatible procedures, intelligence networks,
air-defense coordination, joint exercises and rapid-response mechanisms.
A deeper military role could strengthen deterrence against the Houthis but could
also increase the risk of retaliation against Saudi targets and maritime
infrastructure. The alliance will therefore have to balance military readiness
with efforts to prevent the Yemen conflict from becoming a broader regional war.
Diplomacy remains part of that calculation. Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan
has said political and diplomatic options were discussed alongside military
measures. Pakistan has also maintained channels with Iran, which has advocated
dialogue with the Houthis.
The political dimension may prove almost as important as the military one.
Pakistan’s leaders are signaling that Saudi security is being treated as a
national strategic interest, not simply as an issue for the government of the
day. That message matters in Riyadh because the alliance requires sustained
political backing as its commitments become more concrete amid intense regional
uncertainty and growing strategic pressure now. For Saudi Arabia, the Pakistani
response offers reassurance at a moment when the Kingdom is confronting threats
on multiple fronts. It also demonstrates that the alliance has a constituency
beyond defense ministries and military headquarters, giving the emerging
security arrangement a broader political base. The October 5 meeting
nevertheless represents a major change. Saudi Arabia now has two powerful
partners preparing to coordinate defense capabilities around the Kingdom, while
Pakistan and Turkey are assuming greater responsibility for Saudi security. Its
success will depend not simply on troop numbers but on intelligence sharing, air
defense, command coordination, maritime security and political discipline. The
Makkah Defense Alliance has therefore crossed an important threshold. It is
moving beyond a political declaration toward an operational security structure,
while Pakistan’s unusual domestic unity has given the alliance an important
political foundation. If Riyadh, Islamabad and Ankara can combine military
readiness with diplomatic restraint, the alliance could become a durable element
of regional security. If escalation overtakes diplomacy, however, the same
framework could draw all three members deeper into a conflict already reshaping
the security map of the Middle East.
Houthis strike Aden airport as number of people displaced by latest Yemen
fighting tops 200,000
Saeed Al-Batati/Arab News/October 7, 2026
AL-MUKALLA: Iran-backed Houthis in Yemen on Wednesday fired missiles and drones
at Aden International Airport, in the southern city that is the seat of the
country’s internationally recognized government, as fighting raged across
several fronts in western Yemen. The attack, the first on the airport in years,
came as the UN’s migration agency said the number of people displaced since the
latest round of violence began in August had surpassed 200,000.The Ministry of
Transport in Aden said the Houthis fired two ballistic missiles and several
drones at the airport, with the missiles hitting close to the tarmac just
minutes before a Yemenia Airways flight was due to land. The ministry strongly
condemned the attack, which it said could have endangered dozens of passengers
aboard incoming flights, as well as airport staff and travelers in the terminal
awaiting the departure of a flight to Jeddah. Yemeni government officials
diverted Yemenia flights from Cairo bound for Aden to Jeddah, and two aircraft
were moved from the airport to a safer location amid fears they might be
targeted as Houthi drones hovered over the city, the ministry said. “It is a
blatant attack on a vital civilian facility that ought to be a safe space for
travelers and staff, not a scene of fear and intimidation,” the ministry said.
Government officials also condemned the attack and called for civilian
facilities to be kept out of the conflict so they could continue to serve people
across the country, including those in Houthi-controlled areas. Mustafa Noaman,
Yemen’s vice minister of foreign affairs and expatriates, accused the Houthis of
using their weapons to target one of the country’s few remaining departure
points for students, people in need of medical care and other travelers. “The
Houthi militias do not hesitate to use their diabolical arsenal of missiles and
drones to destroy everything Yemenis have built and struggled for over decades,”
he said. The attack on the airport came as fighting between Yemeni government
forces and the Houthis intensified in areas close to Bab Al-Mandab Strait, on
the outskirts of Taiz city, and in contested districts west of Taiz.
The Giants Brigades, a pro-government militia, said forces stationed at Thubab
airfield on the Red Sea coast, near Bab Al-Mandab, had repelled a Houthi
assault, forcing the attackers to retreat and abandon two military vehicles.
Since the launch by the government on Monday of a large-scale “Dawn of Yemen”
counteroffensive against the Houthis, the Giants Brigades have secured the main
road that links Thubab district, the closest part of the mainland to Bab Al-Mandab,
with Mokha, marking the first major military gain for government forces after
months of setbacks along the country’s western coast. Repeated Houthi attempts
to reopen the road, seize Thubab airfield or break the siege on their forces
there have failed amid heavy air support from the Coalition to Restore
Legitimacy in Yemen.
Meanwhile, the Nation’s Shield Forces, a military reserve unit under the command
of Rashad Al-Alimi, the head of Yemen's Presidential Leadership Council,
announced on Tuesday the launch of an operation targeting the Houthis in Al-Wazi’iyah
district, west of Taiz, as part of the wider “Dawn of Yemen” campaign.The forces
later said they had seized what they described as the highest mountain peak in
Jabal Habashi, west of Taiz, as well as a chain of elevated positions
overlooking Al-Mansoura in Al-Wazi’iyah.Yemeni army officers said the aim of the
operation was to capture a large chain of mountains overlooking the Red Sea
coast. Expelling the Houthis from their positions there, they said, would allow
government troops to advance along the coast toward Mokha.Elsewhere in Taiz, the
Yemeni army said on Wednesday that fighting had intensified across several
fronts, including the southern countryside, Jabal Habashi district in the west,
and positions on the outskirts of Taiz city.The last remaining road linking Taiz
with government-held areas was recently blocked by fighting, effectively leaving
the city under siege by the Houthis. Residents said the prices of essential
goods and fuel had started to rise because of the blockade, and thousands of
displaced persons were increasingly in desperate need of humanitarian
assistance. “The displaced people’s most urgent needs are food, water and
cooking gas,” an aid worker, who asked not to be named, told Arab News. “They
are no longer concerned about shelter; they just want something to eat, even if
they have to sleep in the open.”With fighting intensifying and explosions
rocking the city, residents and displaced people feared they would become
trapped or be forced to flee again if the Houthi forces advanced.“The displaced
people have already fled war zones and they are afraid of being targeted by the
Houthis if they approach,” the aid worker said. The UN’s International
Organization for Migration said on Wednesday that the number of persons
displaced since the start of the latest escalation had risen to 201,217, up from
about 145,000 at the end of September and 76,000 in mid-September.Taiz is the
governorate worst affected by the latest fighting, accounting for 57 percent of
the total number of displaced persons, the agency said. “People are running for
their lives and finding nowhere safe to go,” the organization’s director
general, Amy Pope, said in a statement.
Yemeni airstrikes target Houthi weapons depots, military
vehicles in Marib and al-Jawf
Al Arabiya English/07 October/2026
Yemeni warplanes carried out a series of airstrikes early Wednesday targeting
weapons depots, military vehicles and troop carriers belonging to the Houthi
militia in northern Marib province and western al-Jawf province.Field sources
told Al Arabiya that aircraft belonging to the Yemeni Armed Forces carried out
five strikes on ballistic missile storage facilities, a launch site and
concealed weapons depots at Mas military camp and the surrounding area on the
northern outskirts of Marib. The sources also said airstrikes targeted military
vehicles and a troop carrier at the al-Jawf junction as they were traveling from
the capital, Sanaa, to reinforce Houthi front lines in al-Jawf. Other strikes
targeted trenches and gatherings of Houthi fighters in the al-Khasf and al-Aqsha
areas of the desert between Marib and al-Jawf provinces. Meanwhile, heavy
fighting is continuing between Yemeni government forces and the Houthi militia
in al-Wazi’iyah district, southwest of Taiz, as government forces advance and
take control of several strategic highlands. Clashes have been concentrated in
the al-Mansoura and al-Sharira areas and around Mount Numan, following the
capture of al-Kafir mountains and other strategic heights overlooking Houthi
positions. Drones also struck a Houthi position in al-Wazi’iyah. The forces also
carried out a number of ambushes targeting Houthi fighters and military
vehicles, killing and wounding dozens of militia members, according to the
report. Five military patrol vehicles were seized, while another vehicle that
had allegedly been used to target residential neighborhoods was destroyed. On
the al-Silw front, southeast of Taiz, 12 Houthi fighters were killed and dozens
more wounded during heavy clashes after government forces repelled a Houthi
attack on their positions. The developments came as the Houthi militia deployed
significant military reinforcements to the southern and western fronts of Taiz.
The reinforcements included more than 30 military patrol vehicles carrying
fighters toward the al-Silw, Jabal Habashi and Hayfan fronts.
Syria says northeast pipeline damaged in sabotage attack
afp/October 7, 2026
DAMASCUS: Syria’s state petroleum company said on Wednesday that an oil pipeline
in the country’s northeast was damaged in a “sabotage attack,” the third such
incident in recent weeks.Years of civil war before the fall of longtime ruler
Bashar Assad in late 2024 devastated Syria’s oil, gas and electricity sectors,
with the country becoming heavily reliant on imports to meet its needs. In a
statement, the Syrian Petroleum Company said the pipeline near “the Tal Hamis
area in Al-Hasakah Governorate was subjected to a sabotage attack at 6:00 am on
Wednesday, October 7, resulting in damage to the pipeline.”
It added that maintenance crews were working to “isolate the damaged section and
begin repair and maintenance work.”The company said authorities arrested the
alleged perpetrators and referred them to the judiciary. On September 29,
sabotage targeting a gas pipeline in eastern Syria caused an explosion,
according to state news agency SANA.And in early October, an explosion at a gas
pipeline near the capital Damascus took three power stations offline. The
incidents come after demonstrations last month over rising fuel prices, which
authorities linked to price hikes caused by the Middle East war.
Attacks on tankers in Hormuz hit highest of any week since
start of Iran war, sources say
Reuters/07 October/2026
Attacks on tankers sailing through the Strait of Hormuz hit their highest last
week of any week since the Iran war began, according to maritime security
sources tracking incidents, amid a bigger export push by Gulf producers.
Attacks, attempted attacks and harassment activity including drone overflights,
surveillance and hailing using VHF radio by Iran’s Revolutionary Guards (IRGC)
have persisted in the strait, the US Navy-led Joint Maritime Information Center
(JMIC) said in a note on Sunday. “These actions continue to demonstrate Iran’s
intent to assert presence along key transit lanes and maintain pressure on
transiting vessels,” the JMIC said. In the week of September 28-October 5, there
had been at least 12 attacks on oil, liquefied natural gas and liquefied
petroleum gas tankers around the strait, according to data from three maritime
security sources who analysed incidents based on information received from the
area. That was the highest number of attacks in a single week since the US war
with Iran began on February 28, the sources said.Separate data collated by the
UN’s shipping agency, the International Maritime Organization (IMO), showed nine
incidents involving vessels in the same week.The UN body tends to take longer to
verify and officially record incidents, maritime sources say. The closest week
in terms of comparable incidents was the week of July 13 when there were eight
incidents, separate IMO data showed. Gulf oil exporters topped pre-war levels
for about half of September, shipping data showed on Monday, though attacks on
tankers and logistical constraints cloud the outlook for sustained higher flows.
India’s foreign ministry said on Tuesday that 12 crew members were injured after
an unknown projectile struck Panama-flagged oil tanker On Peace while it was
passing through the strait.
Yemen's Houthis claim new attacks on Saudi Arabia as it's pulled deeper into
conflict
Associated Press/October 07/2026
Iran-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen claimed new attacks on airports and military
facilities in neighboring Saudi Arabia on Wednesday as the kingdom is pulled
deeper into the latest front in the Iran war, which also threatens a crucial
shipping alternative to the Strait of Hormuz. As the Saudi capital is targeted
again, new cage-like fences have been erected this week around fuel tanks and
other equipment of the Saudi state-run Aramco oil company near the Riyadh
airport. The kingdom, the world's top oil exporter, has seen oil and military
assets targeted in recent days. The Houthis' military spokesperson, Brig. Gen.
Yahya Saree, said on social media that the rebels launched ballistic missiles
and drones against King Khalid International Airport in Riyadh. The spokesperson
for the Saudi-led coalition fighting the Houthis, Maj. Gen. Turki al-Malki, said
they intercepted a ballistic missile north of Riyadh. Flights were briefly
disrupted, according to Flightradar24. Now Saudi Arabia and allied Yemeni forces
have launched a major ground and air offensive against the Houthis aiming to
retake territory that the rebels seized a month ago along Yemen's western Red
Sea coast and on the Bab el-Mandeb Strait. Those positions gave the Houthis
better surveillance as they pursue a blockade of Saudi-linked shipping. On
Monday, officials said forces of the Saudi-led coalition recaptured several key
areas around the strait, through which about 12% of global trade
transits.Houthis also push for strategic areas inside Yemen
"The Houthis believe that they can maximize Saudi economic costs and compel
Saudi Arabia to surrender to Houthi demands by striking civilian infrastructure,
such as oil facilities and airports," the Institute for the Study of War, a
Washington-based think tank, wrote in an analysis. The Houthi spokesperson said
they also targeted Abha airport in Saudi Arabia, a frequent target of rebel
drones and missiles. The rebels also claimed to hit an air base in the city of
Khamis Mushait and two military bases in Najran and Asir. All are in the
southwest, near the Yemeni border. Inside Yemen, fighting has centered in and
around the crucial town of Dhubab, some 54 kilometers (33.5 miles) south of the
port city of Mokha that the rebels seized last month, according to both the
Houthis and Yemen's internationally recognized government.
Clashes were also reported in Waziayah district in southwestern Taiz province,
which links Yemen's highlands to the Red Sea and overlooks roads to the Bab
el-Mandeb Strait.
Al-Malki has vowed "full operational support" to Yemeni government forces until
the Houthis are "eliminated." The coalition has said 100 fighter jets were
providing support. Another aim is to liberate Sanaa, Yemen's rebel-controlled
capital. The offensive began after the rebels seized Turbah town on a main road
linking the provincial capital of Taiz, Yemen's third-largest city, with Aden,
the seat of the internationally recognized government. Officials have said U.S.
support has included intelligence sharing, target identification and planning.
The escalation has revived Yemen's civil war after a four-year ceasefire. Almost
1,000 people have been killed in the latest fighting, with over 200,000
displaced, according to the United Nations. Cholera and malnutrition cases are
increasing, access to trauma care is more difficult and some hospitals have
shortages of surgical and other supplies, the World Health Organization said
this week. Houthi missiles target the airport in the coastal city of Aden The
Houthis also said they launched a missile strike early Wednesday against Aden.
An Associated Press journalist heard explosions around 2 a.m. The rebels hit a
military camp close to the city's airport with ballistic missiles, Saree said.
Security authorities in Aden said the Houthis targeted the airport with two
missiles, with no casualties. The airport is close to the seat of government.
"The targeting of this vital civilian facility represents a direct threat to the
safety of civilians, passengers, employees and flight crews," the Aden police
said in a statement. One missile hit close to the runway just before the
scheduled landing of a flight from Cairo, the Human Rights Ministry said. Flight
603, operated by Yemen's flagship airline, landed safely in Aden at 3:30 a.m.,
according to the flight tracking platform FlightAware. The ministry said the
missile hit as other passengers were waiting to board their flight to the Saudi
coastal city of Jeddah.
Russia says plague institute worker’s death does not risk an epidemic
Reuters/07 October/2026
Russia’s health regulator said on Wednesday there were no risks of an epidemic
breaking out in Siberia after a plague institute worker there died, as the World
Health Organization pressed Moscow for more information about her cause of
death. Russian authorities say the 28-year-old laboratory worker died on Friday
from pneumonia of an as-yet unestablished origin, in a case that has prompted
international concern, including from US President Donald Trump, and which saw
around 200 people initially placed in quarantine. Rospotrebnadzor, Russia’s
health watchdog, said in a statement it was winding down precautionary measures
it had put in place after concluding there was no risk of an epidemic and that
it had shared its latest information with the WHO. No cases of plague had been
detected among anyone who had come into contact with the deceased worker, Darya
Shipilova, it said, and 90 percent of those placed in quarantine had been
released after nearly 5,000 lab tests had failed to detect any dangerous
pathogens. It said Shipilova had been vaccinated and had therefore been “immune
to the dangerous infections with which she worked.” It did not say though what
had caused the pneumonia which killed her or how she fell ill. Tedros Adhanom
Ghebreyesus, the director general of the WHO in Geneva, said in a statement on X
earlier on Wednesday that his organization needed more information from Russia
to understand what had happened. “WHO has requested further information to
clarify the cause of the severe pneumonia, the pathogen that prompted the public
health measures, and media reports of a second employee with pneumonia of
undetermined cause,” he said. “Timely, complete and transparent information
sharing under the International Health Regulations is essential to clarify
conflicting reports and enable an accurate assessment of potential public health
risks.”The Kremlin said Russia had properly informed the WHO about the incident
in line with established procedures. When asked about the WHO’s request to
respond to reports about a second person in Siberia allegedly falling ill,
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov urged caution when it came to using media
reports as a reference for what was happening. “There is a great deal of media
coverage, and the vast majority of what the media are reporting about this
situation is false information,” said Peskov. He advised the media and others to
rely on information provided by the health regulator. It did not immediately
respond to a Reuters comment request on Wednesday about the WHO’s questions.
Some Western media outlets have reported — citing unnamed “Russian media” — that
a second person in Siberia had died, saying they had died of plague. Reuters was
unable to find any such stories in Russian media or any evidence that a second
person in Siberia had died although some bloggers on social media were making —
without evidence — such assertions. Contacted by Reuters, the WHO said it had
nothing further to add on the matter beyond what Tedros — who was due to give a
press conference later on Wednesday — had already posted on X. Tedros’ call for
more information echoed that of US Secretary of State Marco Rubio who has also
said Moscow needs to share more information about the incident. Pneumonia, a
lung infection, can have a variety of causes including plague as well as other
bacterial infections or viral respiratory diseases, such as flu or COVID-19.
France summons Iran ambassador over disinformation campaign on student protests
Reuters/07 October/2026
e summoned Iran’s ambassador on Wednesday over what foreign ministry
spokesperson Pascal Confavreux described as an Iranian disinformation campaign
targeting France’s secondary school student protest movement. The envoy was told
of the “absolutely unacceptable” nature of false content disseminated online by
official Iranian foreign ministry accounts, Confavreux said in a statement,
adding that Tehran’s October 6 summons of the French ambassador was baseless.
“These undignified provocations must cease,” he said. Iran on Tuesday summoned
France’s envoy in Tehran over the ongoing student protests, accusing Paris of
the “violent treatment” of demonstrators and of extensive human rights
violations, according to Iranian state media.
The Latest LCCC analysis &
editorials from miscellaneous sources published on October 07-08/2026
Get off the train quickly, Houthis!
Faisal J.Abbas/Arab News/October 6, 2026
There is a compelling Japanese proverb that contains timeless wisdom for those
who have lost their way: “If you get on the wrong train, get off at the nearest
station. The longer you stay on, the more expensive the return trip will be.”
This counsel could not be more applicable today than to the Houthi militia and
its leadership. For years, the militia has acted as a reckless regional proxy,
overthrowing the legitimate government of Yemen and launching drone and missile
strikes targeting Saudi civilian and energy infrastructure and the holy sites.
Yet, despite this history of hostility, Saudi Arabia has consistently chosen the
path of peace over the devastation of war. The Kingdom’s enduring strategic
patience is evident even in our broader regional approach; despite deep
geopolitical friction, Riyadh maintains active diplomatic channels and direct
calls between foreign ministers with Tehran, holding onto the hope of a stable,
structured agreement.
For a long time, that same diplomatic patience was extended to the Houthis.
However, the militia foolishly mistook Saudi forbearance for incapacity. Since
the early days of Operation Epic Fury, Riyadh signaled with absolute clarity
that Yemen’s stability, Red Sea security and freedom of navigation were
unalterable red lines. We urged the Houthis not to intervene or exploit broader
regional conflicts, keeping our powder dry for that precise reason.
Since the early days of Operation Epic Fury, Riyadh signaled with absolute
clarity that Yemen’s stability, Red Sea security and freedom of navigation were
unalterable red lines.
While the militia celebrated early tactical expansions, thinking they had
outmaneuvered their neighbors, the reality was far more calculated. As the
Houthis were stretching themselves thin, Riyadh utilized that period of
restraint wisely: strategizing, training the Yemeni armed forces, gathering deep
intelligence and cementing ironclad alliances. The fruit of this strategic
preparation was realized in the activation of the Makkah Joint Defense Agreement
alongside Turkiye and Pakistan. Meanwhile, the Houthis thoroughly bankrupted
their own standing in the court of public opinion by targeting civilian energy
infrastructure and the holy cities. The dramatic events of the last 72 hours
have served as a severe eye-opener. In a swift, coordinated counteroffensive,
the Saudi-backed legitimate Yemeni government moved decisively “from preparation
to action,” reclaiming the vital port city of Mokha and restoring sovereign
control over the critical Bab Al-Mandab Strait. Backed by overwhelming coalition
airpower, the Houthis have suffered catastrophic losses on the ground and will
continue to do so if they persist on this path. As the Houthis were stretching
themselves thin, Riyadh utilized that period of restraint wisely. The Yemeni
government has zero incentive to back down now. I bet the Houthis look back with
bitter regret at 2024, wishing they had ignored their warmongering foreign
advisers and fully committed to the UN-brokered peace road map when it was first
laid out. The math is simple: the quicker the Houthis come to the negotiating
table, the less they will have to surrender, especially with the odds, global
public opinion, and international support for the war all against them. It
sounds logical but then again common sense is not so common with ideologues.
However, logical people will see that stepping back is the only way to spare the
Yemeni people from further manufactured misery and protect the global economy
from volatile energy shocks. It is time for the Houthis to get off the train
before the return ticket becomes entirely too expensive for them to afford.
*Faisal J. Abbas is the Editor-in-Chief of Arab News. X: @FaisalJAbbas
Killing of 3-year-old Syrian girl renews scrutiny of
domestic abuse protections
ANAN TELLO/Arab News/October 7, 2026
LONDON: Before 3-year-old Jannat Al-Afis was killed in the Syrian Arab
Republic’s Deir Ezzor governorate, relatives say there had been warnings about
the danger she faced at home. Her father had previously been detained after a
complaint that he abused her, then released, a relative told Syrian media. Other
reports said he regained custody through a court order despite allegations of
earlier abuse.
On Sept. 27, authorities said, he beat her to death.
A medical examination found that Jannat died from a shattered skull, Syrian
state media reported. Internal security forces in Deir Ezzor said they arrested
her father and that preliminary findings indicated he was under the influence of
drugs. The killing has sparked outrage across Syria and raised questions about
whether authorities missed opportunities to protect her. It has also exposed a
broader concern: What happens to women and children who report violence but
remain in the homes where they face danger?
For Hiba Ezzideen, head of the Syrian women’s rights organization Equity &
Empowerment-EE, cases such as Jannat’s expose a critical question about whether
Syria’s existing system can protect women and girls before violence escalates.
“There are provisions within Syrian law that can be applied in cases of assault,
threats, homicide and abuse, as well as specific protections for children,”
Ezzideen told Arab News. “There are also institutions and services working on
family and child protection.”
But, she said, “Syria does not yet have a comprehensive domestic violence law in
force.”
“The main gap,” Ezzideen said, “is between the existence of legal provisions and
having a complete, accessible protection mechanism in practice.”That gap can
become especially dangerous after abuse is reported. “When a woman or girl
reports violence, the response cannot stop at receiving the complaint,” Ezzideen
said, stressing the need for an immediate assessment of the danger and a clear
safety plan. “This is particularly important when the person at risk is a child
and the alleged perpetrator is a parent or caregiver.”
Faten Derki, a Damascus-based lawyer and writer, said the problem extends beyond
whether victims have somewhere to seek help. “The fundamental problem is not
always the absence of a door to knock on,” she told Arab News. “Rather, the
question is: what happens to a woman after she knocks on it?” In Jannat’s case,
accounts of earlier abuse have drawn scrutiny to the decisions preceding her
death, although key details remain unverified. Abboud Saleh Al-Afis, a cousin of
the girl’s father, told Syria TV that the father “had previously been detained
following a complaint concerning his abuse of Jannat, then released.”Syria TV
said it could not independently verify the circumstances or duration of the
detention, identify the authority that ordered his release or establish the
reasons for the decision. Other media reports said Jannat had been living with
her paternal uncle before her father regained custody through a court order,
despite complaints and medical reports documenting earlier abuse.
The website 963+, citing local media, also reported that a court had ordered her
return. Those reports did not include a copy of the order or the medical records
they cited.
Jannat’s death has also renewed scrutiny of her mother’s death, which media
accounts said had been recorded as a suicide. Those accounts differ over when
and how she died.
In a Sept. 28 report, Ahwal Media, citing the Sweida Documentation and Media
Center, said her mother died about a year earlier following a fire. It reported
doubts about the circumstances and calls from activists to reopen the
investigation, but provided no official documents establishing how the death had
been recorded.A family relative, meanwhile, told Syria TV that Jannat’s mother
died about four months earlier and had been abused by her husband. The
conflicting accounts and unanswered questions surrounding both deaths underscore
the gap Derki described between seeking help and securing lasting protection.
Women and girls experiencing abuse can turn to authorities, protection and
community centers, and humanitarian organizations offering psychological, legal
and health care support, she said. Helplines and some safe shelters are also
available. But filing a complaint does not necessarily remove the danger.
“Reporting violence does not resolve the problem if she then returns to the same
home and remains under the control of the person perpetrating the violence,
without alternative accommodation, ongoing protection or an income that provides
a basic level of stability,” Derki said. “We therefore need to move beyond
simply responding to incidents of violence after they occur towards a
comprehensive protection system that begins at the first sign of danger and does
not end when a complaint is filed.”That need extends well beyond a single
household. A UN Protection Cluster report released in late September estimated
that 8.6 million people in Syria, including 7.3 million women and girls, needed
gender-based violence prevention and response services during the first half of
2026.
Displacement, returns, economic deterioration, insecurity and limited access to
essential services continued to heighten risks, the report said. Yet access to
lifesaving services remained restricted by funding shortages, insecurity,
movement restrictions, distance, a lack of confidential services and shortages
of trained staff and female providers.At least 60 gender-based violence service
delivery points were reported closed in 2025 and 2026. The existence of
services, Ezzideen said, does not necessarily mean those at risk can use them.
“Access to these services is not yet equal everywhere,” she said. “A service may
exist, but a woman still needs to know about it, be able to reach it safely, and
have confidence that reporting will actually improve her safety.”Those barriers
can be particularly severe for women in areas with few specialized services,
women with disabilities, women without independent incomes and girls whose
movements and communications are controlled by relatives, she said. Even where
services are available, Derki said, fear and financial dependence can prevent
victims from reaching them. “Sometimes, a woman is asked: ‘Why don’t you leave
the house?’ Yet the real question is: ‘Where will you go if you leave?’”
Without an independent income or alternative housing, a woman with children may
face a choice between an abusive home and an uncertain future, she said.
She may also fear losing custody of her children, retaliation, social stigma or
pressure from relatives. In some cases, Derki said, “reaching a protection
service without the abuser’s knowledge may be impossible.” Fear of retaliation
is a “major barrier,” Ezzideen said. “A survivor may be afraid that reporting
the violence could increase the danger, particularly if the alleged perpetrator
returns to the household and there is no protection plan or follow-up.”“Women
and girls may be encouraged to remain silent to protect the family’s reputation,
preserve the marriage, or resolve the issue privately,” Ezzideen said. “We need
to move away from treating violence inside the home as a private family matter.
It is a protection and rights issue.”For women unable to begin legal
proceedings, confidential advice can be a first step toward understanding their
options, Derki said.
“Making information about services widely available and ensuring women trust
that their information will remain private is essential.”Children living with
domestic violence also need support in their own right, Derki said. “As for
children, they should not be seen merely as witnesses to the violence inflicted
on their mothers,” she said. “A child living in a violent environment also needs
protection, care and specialized intervention.” Effective protection, she said,
requires safe accommodation, legal assistance, psychological support and
temporary financial help, and not simply encouragement to report abuse. “We
cannot, therefore, ask a woman to be brave enough to report abuse and then leave
her to face the consequences alone,” Derki said. Ezzideen said that for girls,
the obstacles can be even greater because the person accused of harming them may
control nearly every aspect of their lives. “For girls, the situation can be
even more difficult because the person harming them may also control their
housing, food, education, transportation, telephone and contact with the outside
world,” Ezzideen said.That reality, she said, means a protection system cannot
rely solely on victims finding a way to escape or seek help themselves.
“The central principle is that protection cannot depend entirely on whether a
woman or girl is able to escape or report the violence herself,” Ezzideen said.
“The protection system must be capable of reaching the person at risk.”There is
an opportunity for change. Ezzideen noted that a draft law on protection from
domestic violence is being developed in Syria. “This is an important opportunity
to strengthen the system,” she said. For advocates, however, the lesson from
cases such as Jannat’s is that protection ultimately depends not only on laws or
on a victim managing to report abuse, but on what happens next — whether
authorities can recognize danger, intervene and ensure that those who ask for
help are not returned to it.
In the Halls of the United Nations
Fuad Matar/Asharq Al Awsat/October 08/2026
Since its establishment by international agreement in 1945 as a forum for the
leaders of member states, the United Nations General Assembly has witnessed
numerous memorable events and incidents that have remained etched in public
memory. It is the venue where heads of state, or their representatives, deliver
speeches outlining their visions and objections. In this regard, one recalls the
action taken by Nikita Khrushchev during the fifteenth session of the General
Assembly in September 1960, when he startled participants by removing one of his
shoes and banging it on the podium. The Soviet “shoe protest” came in response
to remarks by the Philippine delegate criticizing Soviet policy. This occurred
even though that UN session was intended to help mend relations between the
Western and Eastern blocs, or more specifically between the camp of freedom and
capitalism and the camp of one-party rule. Cuban leader Fidel Castro, meanwhile,
tested the patience of delegates at the same session by speaking from the UN
podium for nearly four hours, delivering an extended Marxist critique of the
Western bloc, far too lengthy to recount here.
The United Nations was not created so that every head of state could vent
personal grievances against rivals. Rather, its purpose was to provide a
platform for initiatives that foster consensus and promote peace. Yet Castro
delivered a speech that sounded more suited to a mass political rally than to a
gathering representing the world's nations. Everyone also remembers what Colonel
Muammar Gaddafi did when he made his first appearance at the UN podium. He
delivered remarks that diminished any sense of caution that others might have
felt toward him and, like Castro in exceeding the allotted speaking time of
fifteen minutes, spoke for an hour and a half. His speech contained rhetoric
that did little to enhance Libya’s standing within the international community.
Some of his arguments might even have received consideration had he not
committed the inappropriate act of tearing up a copy of the United Nations
Charter before the audience, a scene broadcast around the world and accompanied
by widespread criticism of his behavior. In contrast, the international
community welcomed Yasser Arafat’s appearance before the General Assembly in
1974. He spoke briefly but meaningfully, expressing hope for a positive outcome
when he told the assembly:“I have come bearing an olive branch in one hand and a
freedom fighter’s gun in the other. Do not let the olive branch fall from my
hand.”
Arafat’s appeal, however, did not achieve the hoped-for results. Today, Saudi
Foreign Minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan speaks from the UN podium with words
that shed an objective light on the challenges confronting nations around the
globe. He argues that many crises “do not stem from a lack of resources and
opportunities as much as from a lack of commitment to the principles agreed upon
by the international community.”He adds that efforts to restore security and
stability in the region and build sustainable relations among its states cannot
be based on domination or exploitation of crises, but rather on mutual respect,
shared interests, good neighborliness, respect for state sovereignty, and full
adherence to international law and humanitarian law.It is also worth noting that
annual sessions of the General Assembly have often seen delegations walk out
during the speeches of leaders with whom they have deep disagreements. Such was
the case at the current session when the US delegation left the hall during the
speech of Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian. Yet the most striking walkout
occurred when Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu took the podium.
Seventy-seven heads of delegation reportedly left the chamber. In his speech,
Netanyahu appeared to take pride in the war of destruction, starvation, and
devastation that he has waged, and continues to wage, in Gaza, the West Bank,
and Lebanon. These are merely reflections on a UN session held amid the thunder
of exchanged missiles and the persistence of seemingly unending obstinacy. The
recollection of incidents stretching back half a century serves to underscore a
simple point: the General Assembly is a forum for those who seek to address the
world's problems through meaningful discourse.
On a New Spring for the Human Spirit
Emile Ameen/Asharq Al Awsat/October 08/2026
Does humanity need a genuine awakening, one carrying within it hope, renewal,
and a rising from the ashes of hatred and the legacy of enmity?
If we cast an eye over the world and its history, it appears at first glance
that the banner of war and violence, of repression and injustice, and of moral
dissolution besides, is the one that prevails. Today the tears shed in the
twentieth century, with two world wars that claimed tens of millions of victims,
do not appear to have paved the way for this spirit, and hope has become the
longing wait for the good sower, in the phrase of the celebrated French poet
Charles Péguy. Sadly, the world's present features suggest a sealed darkness,
shattered dreams, and endings for the historical human consciousness- a world
with no shared human project worthy of humanity's dignity as the middle of the
twenty-first century approaches, where a global enslavement of many forms
prevails, returning humanity to the age of the law of the jungle. Have the
predictions of the English philosopher Thomas Hobbes about man been realized,
about how he turns into a wolf to his fellow man?When international law is
absent, and individualism and self-love drive each person by way of his own
interests and his own strength, human life appears brutish and short and full of
fear, and wars necessarily follow, as people's relations with one another come
to resemble the relation of the predatory wolf to its prey.Three decades and
more ago, the American journalist and geopolitical analyst Robert Kaplan gave us
his provocative article "The Coming Anarchy" in The Atlantic Monthly. That was
in 1994, after the fall of the Soviet Union, when the West was considered the
absolute victor. Kaplan set before our eyes a map of a divided world, in which
he foresaw the emergence of an antagonistic human duality: a developed,
technologically stable world surrounded by walls and security barriers, against
a developing world living in chaos, poverty, and continuous civil wars.
Fifteen years after Kaplan's article, the French writer of Lebanese origin Amin
Maalouf gave us his masterpiece Disordered World, which he would follow with his
vision in The Wreck of Civilizations. In the first he insists that a debased
modernity and an unhallowed selfishness wallowing in the mire of absolute
self-interest will lead the world to perdition. In the second he portrays the
condition of human beings in our own day as sailors in a single boat, half of
them rowing eastward and the other half pulling their oars westward, with the
result that they will never reach the shore of safety when the storm comes.
Day after day, the "worship of the golden calf" proves useless. Indeed, making
money and the scramble for wealth the measure of every claim to respect and the
basis of every authority and every hierarchy tears the fabric of human society
apart- which is exactly what we see happening now.
Rescuing the world from the pit of perdition requires a new culture whose aim is
to build together, on foundations of agreement about facts. This can be achieved
only through a culture of encounter, a readiness to think well of the other, and
the restoration of kindness among human beings.
Our world appears to need paths of peace that lead to the healing of wounds
rather than the deepening of hostility, which calls for caravans of peacemakers
ready to begin the work of healing and of coming together.
In these days, as we stand on the threshold of fears of a wide conflict breaking
out between Russia and NATO that may yet turn into a world war, we must remember
what the German philosopher Immanuel Kant stressed in 1786, in his essay
Conjectural Beginning of Human History: that the greatest evil afflicting
civilized peoples arises from war- not in the sense of present or past war, but
in the sense of the perpetual preparation for war to come.
Hence the pressing need for an architecture of global peace, one that allows
nations to coexist and peoples to meet while preserving their particular
identities, and at the same time without those identities becoming a point of
departure for conflict and turning into deadly identities. A peace that gathers
the many in a shared search for higher and nobler values from which everyone
benefits, across the world and its continents, and on into outer space- which,
the narrator tells us, has become a playing field for armament, and that is
another story.Our world ought to unite to face the dangers, especially now that
it has become a single globalized family needing an international generosity of
spirit with room for everyone, and creative partnerships that build rather than
demolish, that reconcile rather than divide.
A humanity closed in on itself, by land and sea, in corridors and straits, is a
wretched, defeated humanity. And there are stirring moments in the annals of
history where it is not right to ask who won and who lost, who holds power and
who lacks it; the deeper question becomes whether human beings can go on living
together on the surface of the blue planet. The arteries of human civilization
need new, pure blood to restore to the human spirit its new spring.
Gaddafi, or the Founding of the Libyan Ordeal
Hazem Saghieh/Asharq Al Awsat/October 08/2026
Like the famous Syrian "player," Libya's master of the "Jamahiriya" sowed the
seeds of collapse during his phase of claimed greatness. Today Libya is
geographically and institutionally divided. Its promised elections were never
held, the UN-sponsored agreement among its parties has to be put to test, and
its oil wealth has been sapped by the contest between its two authorities.
Moreoever, the forces of the east attacked Tripoli in 2019, and a year later a
government of national unity was formed, only for a parallel government soon to
emerge.
The unity of the country that was punished with the 1969 coup of Muammar
Gaddafi, then a Nasserist officer, could not be taken for granted. On top of the
immeasurable violence the Italians inflicted on the Libyans, Libya was
administered as three units: Tripolitania in the west, Cyrenaica in the east,
and Fezzan in the south. In 1934 it was nominally unified as "Italian Libya."
This does not mean the Italians "partitioned" the country, for its unity in the
Ottoman era was fragile and superficial, and its administrative arrangements
varied from region to region. Tripolitania, closely tied to Tunisia and Malta,
developed into a Mediterranean trading city; closely tied to Egypt and the
stronghold of the Sanusiyya Cyrenaica, grew as an agrarian region; Fezzan, which
borders Algeria, Niger, and Chad, was left to networks of desert tribes and
their caravans. At the end of the Second World War, Tripolitania and Cyrenaica
were in British hands, and the French took over Fezzan.
From the moment the country was independent as unified kingdom under Idris al-Sanusi
in 1951, the weight of its fragmentation has been pressing down on the
countnry’s chest.
Between independence and 1963, it had two capitals, Tripoli and Benghazi in
Cyrenaica. In 1963, with the abolition of the federal system and the
reinforcement of centralization- and to avoid "Tripoli's dominance-" Bayda, also
in Cyrenaica, was chosen as the seat of government. The matter was settled in
Tripoli's favor only after the 1969 coup. This deepened Cyrenaican resentments-
traditionally Sanusi sympathizers, they accused Gaddafi’s regime of
concentrating power and wealth in Tripoli more than the previous regime had been
accused of concentrating them in Cyrenaica.
Sanusi was genuinely keen on forging national loyalty that would bridge the gap,
but he took contradictory and somewhat experimental approaches to doing so. At
first, he recognized the differences constitutionally, and each province enjoyed
a measure of local legislation. In 1963, however, he favored centralization over
the federal formula, and the discovery of oil in 1959 drove him to centralize
the management of its resources and its development policy.
Oil revenues were actually used to build infrastructure, hospitals, schools,
universities, and state services; enormous leaps were also made in education.
The social transformation that oil secured, however, was not accompanied by the
development of institutions or a political society. "Political" actors were thus
confined to local and tribal leaders, and the parliament that had been
established at independence was never paired with a competitive party system. In
the climate of Nasserism, Libya was subjected to campaigns of accusation for
having concluded military agreements with Britain and the United States in 1953
and 1954, when it depended on Western aid and its oil had not yet been
discovered. That campaign was taken up by youthful cohorts and officers, Gaddafi
among them, who removed a regime that had neither foreclosed possible avenues of
reform nor shut the door firmly in their face. The new power remained
exclusively in the hands of Gaddafi, who behaved as a demigod and considered
parties a form of dictatorship, even as he expanded the "People's Committees" in
1973 as a formula for direct rule, before moving to the "Great Jamahiriya" in
1977. Society was sterilized- rendered a barren plain with nothing but the
leader, his drivel, his peacockery, and his cosmetic surgeries. Repression was
the regime's law: killing, torture, disappearance, and detention. The Abu Salim
prison massacre of 1996, in which 1,200 prisoners were killed, was one of the
peaks of its coercive conduct. On top of an economy that recorded the highest
levels of dependence on oil rent, Gaddafi squandered much of the revenue on
backing armed militias and "national liberation movements."
In the 1970s and 1980s he waged a foolish war with Chad and aggravated tensions
with the United States and the European states. In 1986 Libya, accused of
sponsoring terrorism, was struck by American air raids, before becoming subject,
after the Lockerbie crisis of 1988, to sanctions that lasted seven years.
In 2003, however, a settlement of the Lockerbie crime was imposed on Gaddafi,
under which $2.7 billion was paid in compensation to the victims. Late that year
he abandoned the weapons of mass destruction program he had sponsored, fearing a
fate like Saddam's. While his relations with the Western states thawed, his
relations with his own people steadily aggravated. In early 2011, revolution did
indeed break out in Benghazi, morphing into a popular revolution laced with
civil war. With NATO's intervention, Gaddafi, after 42 years of absolute rule,
was killed late that year.
What was built was a highly centralized regime that saw in the slightest sign of
difference a threat to unity, even as the east-west and desert-coast
sensitivities swelled, if out of sight. The desert south in particular, home to
Tuareg, Tebu, and other ethnic groups, never ceased complaining of
marginalization by the north.The regime, for its part, was known for demolishing
institutions far more than for building them, and it rested on networks of
loyalty secured by bribery with oil revenues, especially among the Qadhadhfa,
the Magarha, and the Warfalla tribes. This explains how its fall came hand in
hand with the rise of armed local networks, the division of the state, and the
emergence of the two rival authorities, amid a flood of militias and foreign
interventions in a bleak Libyan landscape.
Region’s crises must not be allowed to merge
Dr. Abdellatif El-Menawy/Arab News/October 7, 2026
For years, the dispute over the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam was presented as
a contest between two countries: Egypt, fearful for the security of its most
vital water source, and Ethiopia, determined to exercise what it calls its
sovereign right to development. That frame is now breaking down. The Nile
dispute is becoming entangled with the security of the Horn of Africa, the war
inside Ethiopia, relations with Eritrea and Sudan, and the argument over access
to the Red Sea.
The shift is visible in the language of the two governments. President Abdel
Fattah El-Sisi last month said Egypt was still allowing diplomacy and peaceful
solutions to work but that this would not come at the expense of the country’s
existence or the welfare of its people. The statement was deliberately stark. It
was not a declaration of military action but it moved the warning to the
presidential level and made clear that Cairo regards water security as a
national red line.
The diplomatic temperature rose further after Ethiopia accused Egypt, Sudan and
Eritrea of supporting an armed opposition alliance. All three denied the
allegation. Ethiopia and Eritrea severed diplomatic relations, while Cairo and
Addis Ababa expelled diplomats in a tit-for-tat move. Egypt’s foreign minister
said Cairo had no role in Ethiopia’s internal conflict and rejected attempts to
shift responsibility for domestic crises onto outside governments. The African
Union called for restraint and dialogue.
The temperature rose after Ethiopia accused Egypt, Sudan and Eritrea of
supporting an armed opposition alliance
That sequence matters because it connects the Nile dispute to a conflict that is
not about water. Once accusations of backing armed groups are exchanged, every
regional meeting and military movement can be interpreted through a more
dangerous lens. The risk is not simply a breakdown in negotiations over the dam
— it is that separate crises begin reinforcing one another. Egypt’s response has
been to widen the diplomatic frame. On Sunday, the leaders of Egypt, Sudan,
Eritrea and Somalia met in El-Alamein and issued a joint declaration. On the
Nile, they reaffirmed the principles of international law, including avoiding
harm, prior notification and consultation, and rejected unilateral measures that
could affect the existing water uses of Egypt and Sudan. They also agreed to
establish a follow-up mechanism and hold periodic consultations.
This is a significant change in Egypt’s approach. Cairo is no longer relying
only on direct appeals to Addis Ababa. It is trying to build a regional network
in which water, trade, security and the stability of the Red Sea are treated as
connected interests. The declaration also states that governance of the Red Sea
belongs to its littoral states — a position that touches a separate and
increasingly contentious question, since landlocked Ethiopia has repeatedly
argued that access to the sea is vital to its future.
The summit should not be mistaken for a treaty or a military alliance. Its
declaration does not bind Ethiopia and it does not create an enforcement
mechanism. Nor does it establish a general legal veto for downstream states over
every development project upstream. Its importance is political: It shows that
Egypt is seeking partners, common language and regular coordination instead of
allowing Ethiopia to define the argument as a bilateral contest between
development and historical rights.
Addis Ababa’s response came the next day. Ethiopia’s Foreign Ministry said that
any discussion of the Blue Nile and the Red Sea must take account of Ethiopia’s
geographic realities and legitimate national interests. It invoked the river’s
Ethiopian origins and contribution to Nile flows, rejected what it called
coercive pressure and destabilization, and said the country was ready to defend
its sovereignty and core interests while calling for dialogue and good
neighborliness.
The Nile question should be distinct from Ethiopia’s demand for sea access: one
cannot be used as leverage against the other
Where, then, is the situation heading? The likeliest near-term path is a harder
diplomatic standoff: sharper public statements, reciprocal expulsions, competing
regional partnerships and little progress on binding rules for the dam. The
danger is not that war over the Nile is inevitable. It is that the Ethiopian
conflict and the Red Sea dispute could create a wider security crisis in which
the dam becomes one more source of suspicion and pressure.
Egypt is right to move beyond a narrow bilateral exchange. But regional
diplomacy will matter only if it produces sustained coordination and practical
proposals. The follow-up mechanism should not remain a line in a communique. It
could support shared technical data, advance notification of new projects,
agreed procedures during droughts and floods, and regular communication between
the Nile states. It should also keep the Nile question distinct from Ethiopia’s
demand for sea access: one cannot be used as leverage against the other. Cairo’s
strongest position is not to oppose Ethiopia’s development but to insist that
development on a shared river must be conducted with transparency, consultation
and rules that protect all those downstream. That argument is more persuasive
internationally than claims of ownership or blanket vetoes and it leaves room
for Ethiopia to benefit from cooperation. The new regional approach gives Egypt
greater diplomatic weight. Its test will be whether it can turn that weight into
a workable framework without becoming an anti-Ethiopian bloc. The next phase
will be shaped not by the warnings alone but by whether the governments involved
can prevent separate disputes from merging — and replace mutual suspicion with
verifiable rules for managing a river they cannot afford to share irresponsibly.
Dr. Abdellatif El-Menawy has covered conflicts worldwide. He is the author of
“The Copts: An Investigation into the Rift between Muslims and Copts in Egypt.”
X: @ALMenawy
Selected Face Book & X tweets
on October
07/2026
Pia Kjærsgaard
Today marks the three-year anniversary of the horrific massacre of innocent
Israelis🇮🇱 The worst crime against the Israeli people since the Holocaust. We
remember the innocent victims today and honor their memory 🇮🇱
Chris Stoffer
7 October 2023: a day I will never forget. More than 1200 innocent people
murdered. More than 250 innocent people taken hostage. Today we pause to
remember the victims and their loved ones. In solidarity with the Jewish people
in Israel and in the Netherlands.
Czech Ministry of Foreign Affairs
Three years ago today, on 7 October 2023, Hamas carried out a brutal terrorist
attack against Israel, killing innocent people. What is truly disturbing is that
we are now seeing attempts to turn terrorists into victims and victims into
villains.
Matthias
Today, on this 7th of October, I stand firmly at the side of the Jewish people.
I have seen the images of the massacre. Anyone who has seen them cannot stand at
the side of Hamas. Nor at the side of those who, in Gaza, joyfully welcomed the
jeeps carrying the abducted. A mother who cheers while a young Jewish girl lies
blood-soaked on the truck bed. Well knowing what comes next. How heartless and
indoctrinated must one be for that? And then to whine
about one's own victims when, with this barbaric massacre, one has enraged the
strongest military power in the Middle East—it’s almost grotesque. As if one
hadn’t known what the consequences of this slaughter of Jewish civilians would
be. How stupid must one actually be? And how stupid
must so many people in this world actually be, those who take the side of the
aggressor and accuse Israel?
I also condemn the newly emerging antisemitism in this country, carried by the
left. And I accuse a government that does nothing
about it. I never thought I would have to witness this again.
Tom Harb
On the 3rd anniversary of the October 7 massacre, two heroes stand out:
@netanyahu, who crushed terrorist/Jihadist strongholds across the Middle East
and into Iran in order to protect the State of Israel, and @realDonaldTrump ,
who destroyed most of Iran’s arsenal capabilities while working hand-in-hand
with Israel. Together they pursue peace among the nations, expanding the Abraham
Accords. If the nations of the Middle East and the broader Muslim world grasp
this historic opening, the region can experience a genuine transformation,
unlocking economic opportunity and prosperity for generations. The path forward
is moderate Islam that respects multiple ethnicities and ensures they are fully
self-represented. The choice is theirs.