Egyik 19

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United States
(Monday), Apr 06, 2026  What if Israel just won't stop? The Netanyahu government wants different things than the US. President Trump’s televised address on the war against Iran Wednesday provided no clear message about how or when he will end the war. Moreover, Trump said not one word about the role of his partner in aggression, Israel, in concluding the war. The United States could use its considerable leverage to pressure Israel to go along. But Trump has been even more deferential to Israel than previous administrations, as manifested during his first term in the multiple gifts he gave to the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Given that record, Trump would be better equipped than most previous presidents to overcome the domestic political considerations that have deterred presidents from pressuring Israel. There would be a Nixon-to-China quality to any such move by Trump. He also might be motivated by the war’s unpopularity among Americans and the open dissatisfaction among many in his own political base about the perceived role of Israel in getting the United States into the war. Alternatively, Trump - if still hesitant to pressure Israel - might extract the United States unilaterally from the war, thereby deflating much of the domestic opposition to the war, while simply not caring whether Israel continued to attack Iran. Such a laissez-faire posture would be consistent with Trump’s ’we broke it, you own it’ approach in pressing the European allies and Gulf states to assume responsibility for opening the Strait of Hormuz. Any such unilateral withdrawal would not involve a negotiated agreement with Iran. The Iranian regime - which has suffered some of its worst blows from Israeli, not American, fire - is unlikely to back away from its demand for a final and complete cessation of aggression and rejection of a mere partial or temporary ceasefire. The Israeli government wants Iran to be too weak to conduct a foreign policy appropriate for a nation of Iran’s size or to compete effectively with Israel for regional influence. It wants Iran to be loathed by, and isolated from, the rest of the world - including the United States, diverting attention from Israel’s own conduct and its malign effects on regional instability. Given these objectives, Israel’s aims in this war diverge significantly from Trump’s probable war objectives - shifting and uncertain though they may be - and certainly from U.S. interests. Any political change in Tehran that made Iran less loathsome and more cooperative with the United States would be a win for Trump, and for the United States. It would be a loss for Netanyahu’s government. An Israeli objective in Iran is not so much regime change as regime collapse. Pursuing that objective may imply continuing rather than ending the war. A fracturing of Iran and possible civil war there would be an even bigger mess for the Trump administration to deal with than it has now. But it would be acceptable to the Israeli government and consistent with Israeli objectives. The Israeli determination to keep Iran isolated has meant Israeli opposition to diplomacy with Iran. This determination underlies the Netanyahu government’s strident opposition to the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, the multilateral agreement in 2015 that closed all paths to a possible Iranian nuclear weapon. Israel’s opposition to U.S. diplomacy with Iran - already reflected in Israel’s killing of the Iranian leaders best positioned to negotiate an agreement - implies that it will balk at most any war-ending deal the Trump Administration might reach with Tehran. Netanyahu’s government could torpedo negotiations by escalating its military operations against Iran. This constitutes another Israeli incentive to continue the war. If Trump were to pressure the Israelis sufficiently for them not to subvert an impending peace agreement, then another part of Israel’s record comes into play, which is its tendency to violate such agreements whenever it is convenient for Israel to do so. Israel has done this twice in little over a year with ceasefire in March of last year, and continuing to this day a campaign of lethal assaults in violation of an agreement reached last October. Just as in Gaza, it would have no trouble claiming provocations from the enemy as a reason for breaking a ceasefire. Also as in Gaza, Israeli leaders might even welcome a break from offensive operations for rest and resupply of their forces before resuming the assault. Any move during the coming weeks toward peace and security in the Persian Gulf region would be a win for Trump, as well as being consistent with U.S. interests. The goal instead of Netanyahu’s government is to maintain an atmosphere of insecurity so that the strongest country militarily will be able to dominate a region characterized by failed and dysfunctional states alongside friendly autocracies. Israeli decisionmakers worry less than the United States must about implications of the war for broader U.S. equities, including the economic effects of turmoil in global energy markets and reduced U.S. readiness to meet security challenges in other regions. The complete cessation of aggression that Iran seeks includes Israel’s assault in Lebanon, from which Israel shows no sign of backing down. Israeli operations include not only the bombardment of Beirut but also what is shaping up as an indefinite Israeli occupation of southern Lebanon and expulsion of its Shia residents. In Lebanon, aggressive Israeli actions inevitably elicit violent responses from those who are threatened or targeted, which in turn provides Israel with the rationale for still more offensive military operations. Unending warfare has become second nature in Israel. Netanyahu has declared that Israel will live forever by the sword. Trump’s alliance with Netanyahu, which made it easy to start the war against Iran, will make it hard to end the war and to avoid renewals of it. Even where U.S. and Israeli war objectives most seem to coincide - with the degradation of Iran’s military capability to strike back - lie the seeds of more, not less, regional violence in the future, some of which may suck in the United States. (Source: Responsible Statecraft - U.S.)
by Pillar, a Non-resident Senior Fellow at the Center for Security Studies of Georgetown University and a non-resident fellow at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft. He is also an Associate Fellow of the Geneva Center for Security Policy.

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Romania
8 April 2026  ‘Political revenge’: Romanian broadcaster shut down after challenging election annulment Realitatea Plus, a Romanian news channel that repeatedly questioned the cancellation of last year’s presidential election has had its broadcasting licence revoked by the National Audiovisual Council (CNA) yesterday, after the station failed to pay 28 fines issued in 2024, totalling 605,000 lei (approximately €122,000). The operator, PHG Media-Invest SRL, had settled more recent penalties but not the older ones, triggering automatic revocation under audiovisual law. The privately owned channel’s supporters claim that it amounts to political censorship. Realitatea Plus had positioned itself as a staunchly sovereignist outlet, fiercely critical of Romania’s political establishment and vocal in its support for independent candidate Georgescu. The channel was paid substantial amounts by the leading opposition party, the Alliance for the Union of the Romanians, led by Simion, for electoral advertising and promotion. Supporters saw it as legitimate access to media for an anti-establishment party often sidelined elsewhere. The channel’s flagship programmes, including Culisele statului paralel hosted by Alexandrescu, openly referred to Georgescu as “the elected President” even after the Constitutional Court annulled the first round of the 2024 vote. On November 24, 2024, Georgescu – a little-known nationalist who campaigned almost entirely on TikTok with a “Romania first” message – stunned the country by topping the first-round poll. A run-off against centrist Lasconi was scheduled for December 8. Two days before voting, though, the Constitutional Court cancelled the entire process and ordered a full rerun. The court’s justification rested on declassified intelligence reports from Romania’s Supreme Council of National Defence (CSAT) and domestic security service, the SRI. These alleged a Russian ’hybrid aggression campaign’ involving co-ordinated TikTok accounts, influencers and disinformation designed to boost Georgescu. Officials pointed to similarities with Russian operations in Ukraine and claimed illegal campaign financing and algorithmic manipulation. Yet, as critics – including Realitatea Plus – immediately noted, the publicly released documents contained no concrete, verifiable evidence of Russian state involvement, vote tampering or direct funding of Georgescu’s campaign. The papers were described by one detailed analysis as briefing notes full of redactions, contradictions, vague assertions and circumstantial details that could equally describe ordinary digital marketing. Realitatea Plus’s coverage of the annulment – framing it as a ’coup d’état” and highlighting the absence of hard proof – earned it repeated sanctions from the CNA for alleged breaches of impartiality, balance and the dissemination of false information. The station was by some margin the most heavily fined broadcaster in 2024-25. Dozens of penalties linked directly to its Georgescu-focused output and alarmist reporting on the Romanian “deep state”. Yesterday the licence was withdrawn with immediate effect; the station says it will continue online and appeal. Ownership lies with businessman Păcuraru, whose media interests have long been associated with anti-establishment voices. The closure also affected sister station Gold FM for the same unpaid-fines reason. Supporters of Georgescu and the sovereignist Right, including AUR leader Simion, denounced the move as “a coup d’état” and an attack on free speech. Establishment voices and the CNA maintain it was simply the law being applied to a serial offender that had abandoned any pretence of editorial neutrality. Former prime minister Victor Ponta reacted with fierce criticism on the closure of the channel. ’As it stands, this looks like political revenge - and an undemocratic precedent that resembles Russia or Moldova!,’ Ponta said. “We shouldn’t celebrate the closure of a TV station we dislike - because it means that tomorrow, other TV stations, accounts, podcasts, etc., could be shut down, and we won’t have the right to criticise if we don’t do so now”. “And the people who watched that TV station will be even more dissatisfied with the country we live in and will feel even more persecuted by the ‘System’! (Source: Brussels Signal - Belgium)
by Deconinck

Russia
(Monday), ​06/04/2026 - 17:23  The Kremlin said today that while there was not yet conclusive evidence it was highly likely that proof would be found showing Ukraine had planted explosives found near a gas ​pipeline ‌in Serbia which carries Russian gas to Hungary. (Source: France 24)

Serbia
05.04.2026 16:21  In the Kanjiza region of Serbia, explosives and the necessary equipment to detonate them were found in two bags near the TurkStream natural gas pipeline. President Vucic assessed the incident as a potential sabotage attempt and announced that security forces have launched an investigation. Hungarian Prime Minister Orbán also stated that he would convene the defense council urgently. Russian President Putin stated on March 4 that Ukraine's attacks on energy infrastructures have harmed Europe and that there are plans to attack the TurkStream and Blue Stream natural gas pipelines in the Black Sea. Russian energy company Gazprom announced on April 2 that Ukraine had attacked the facility where shipments to the TurkStream natural gas pipeline are made. (Source: Haberler - Turkey)

Slovakia
04.04.2026  In a statement following a phone call with Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, Slovakian premier Robert Fico urges EU - and especially the European Commission - to reconsider Russian energy sanctions amid supply crisis, asks bloc to immediately resume talks with Russia and restore oil and gas supplies from all sources, including Moscow. Fico also called for efforts to restore flows through the Druzhba pipeline, which supplies Russian oil to Hungary and Slovakia. Both countries are currently exempt from certain EU sanctions on Russian oil due to limited alternative supply options. Fico and Orbán have accused Ukraine of delaying the resumption of deliveries through the pipeline for political reasons. (Source: Anadolu Agency -Turkey)

Ukraine
Sunday 05 April 2026 16:13 BST  The nature of warfare in Ukraine changes – from a spirited defence against the bloody turmoil of early 2022, to a relentless, grinding conflict in which few sent to the front expect to return. Two years ago in Sloviansk, a major in an infantry battalion spoke of how his commanding officer was taking bribes to give people time to go on leave, set a higher price for keeping them off the front line, and was selling the rations and other resources allocated to men who had deserted. Earlier this year, Ukraine’s defence minister, Fedorov, a Yale University management graduate, admitted that Ukraine has 2 million draft-dodgers and hundreds of thousands more who are absent without leave (awol). On top of the 2 million Ukrainians wanted for evading mobilisation, the Ukrainian prosecutor’s office says some 290,000 cases have been opened since 2022 against soldiers for abandoning their posts. "Some troops" have posted videos of their escape from the draft, or from service, across the Carpathian mountains to exile in neighbouring countries. 18- to 24-year-olds were allowed to leave the country last year, and hundreds of thousands chose to do so. Minister Fedorov revealed the scale of the conscription problem to parliament in January. Denys, 37, is dodging the draft. 'I saw everything that was happening – the injustice, plenty of people buying their way out, the untouchables, while others are shoved into a bus despite having illnesses'. A scheme to offer them incentives to join the armed forces, with huge sign-on benefits, has proved a failure, after local press reported high levels of casualties. Draft-dodgers in Ukraine risk being hunted down in the streets and sent to the most dangerous areas with little chance of returning. As a result, many live in hiding if they cannot flee, avoiding being in public at all for fear of being tossed into a vehicle if they are identified. (Source: Independent - United Kingdom)

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Europe

Hungary
April 3, 2026 4:00 AM CET  Orbán’s government and the ruling Fidesz party are betting that Tisza would falter due to inexperience and won’t be able to rule. For Tisza to be able to govern, they would need to have some kind of coherent vision for the country, and they would need something resembling a coherent political community behind them. ’There is only one issue that unites them, they want to kick us out of power,’ Hungarian EU Affairs Minister Bóka told. ’That might or might not be enough to actually remove us from power, but it is definitely not enough to govern the country,’ he added. Viktor Orbán laid traps. The introduction of the “cardinal laws” on everything from the judiciary to the media was a key feature of Orbán’s 2011 constitutional overhaul, ensuring that many core policies would be extremely difficult for any future government to change. Cardinal laws that govern the judiciary, the media, the electoral system, public finances, family policy and the church - ’could only be changed’ if Magyar and his Tisza party could obtain an unlikely two-thirds super majority. ’Polls suggest’ he may secure only a simple majority. Orbán’s loyalists have decisive powers via a Constitutional Court. Fidesz has appointed all of its 15 justices, including a former Fidesz defense minister. The Curia, Hungary’s supreme court, is headed by Varga, who was appointed by the Fidesz-controlled parliament. Any laws a Magyar government attempts to pass could fall foul of the top courts. Additionally, Orbán’s lawmakers in December strengthened the veto power of President Sulyok, who was appointed in 2024 for a five-year term. The amendment to the constitution passed in December would make it almost impossible for a new parliament ’to impeach or remove’ the president. The president, meanwhile, can obstruct legislation by sending it back to parliament or by referring it to the Constitutional Court, which can deem it unconstitutional, potentially blowing up any ’reform efforts’. The need for a two-thirds majority for so many of ’crucial changes’ is shaping up to be the biggest single stumbling block to the success of any new government. Fidesz has filled other important supervisory roles with loyalists, including those of the state prosecutor, the ombudsman and media authorities which may exhibit a potential to block a non-Fidesz government. Fidesz has also embedded structural advantages in its concentration of media ownership. In 2018 it created the Central European Press and Media Foundation (KESMA), into which Orbán’s business allies helped fold hundreds of local, regional and national outlets that now broadcast the Fidesz narrative. Any attempt to reverse this would require - you guessed it - a two-thirds parliamentary majority. The country’s current leader has put loyalists in key public institutions. One of Orbán’s most ’lethal traps’ is the Budget Council. The body comprises three Fidesz loyalists, recently appointed for terms of between 6 and 12 years, who can veto the budget. For Magyar, the challenge would be finding a way to govern successfully without being maneuvered into an early election in a system designed to make him fail. A complex legal and political minefield. Magyar’s first challenge would be to craft a budget capable of funding his costly campaign promises, which include boosting public spending such as on healthcare. Fidesz has depleted the coffers, hitting 50 percent of its 2026 full-year deficit target by February after rolling out massive pre-election subsidies. ’Magyar would face similar problems trying to unfreeze €18 billion in frozen EU funds, as he would need to pass reforms demanded by Brussels ahead of an August deadline. On the campaign trail, Magyar has appeared confident he would be able to access at least part of this frozen pot’ by demonstrating credible anticorruption efforts. His success would depend in part on his largely untested negotiation skills and [on] some flexibility from the EU said Ráczová from the Eurasia Group consultancy. Yet he would be unable to change laws requiring a supermajority. Hungarian President Sulyok, who is close to Fidesz and will be in office until 2029, can call a snap election if the government can’t adopt a budget. The Budget Council and the president could only be removed’ with by a two-thirds parliamentary majority. Has been Orbán worst-scenario planning in case he’s defeated? Prime Minister Donald Tusk is facing problems in Poland with his efforts to advance reforms in the face of the veto power of the president, Nawrocki, who aligns with the nationalist conservative Law and Justice party. Magyar would have to contend with the hostility of Fidesz loyalists who hold important jobs in the bureaucracy, as they too can only be removed if two-thirds of lawmakers vote to ditch them. From opposition Orbán could also make life very difficult for Tisza in terms of day-to-day politics. Szelényi, a former Fidesz lawmaker, who quit the party when Orbán shifted its ideology from liberalism to national conservativism in the 1990s, said Orbán and Fidesz has a strong record as opposition brawlers. In 2006, Orbán initially accepted his defeat at the hands of the Hungarian Socialist Party, but within months that changed after Hungarians were outraged by a leaked private speech by Socialist leader Gyurcsány. In the speech, Gyurcsány admitted to having brazenly lied to win the election. Between 2006 and 2010 Fidesz took politics to the streets and harried the government with highly obstructionist tactics in the parliament, Szelényi told. It’s a playbook she believes Orbán could be tempted to repeat. (Source: Politico - U.S)

Apr 2, 2026 The country heads to the polls on April 12. Polling alone cannot tell the full story. The election is not only about a change of government; it is about the erosion of the regime’s social legitimacy. The government, as captured by Fidesz in particular, presents itself as the nation’s sole shield against foreign threats, moral contamination, and geopolitical danger. In the current campaign, the designated enemy is - by and large - Ukraine and specifically its accession to the EU. Those in Brussels who support Kyiv are portrayed as hostile to Hungary, and the Fidesz government positions itself as the protector of Hungarian lives against foreign adventurism. Zelensky and European Commission President der Leyen become convenient symbols in a morality play about peace, war, and national survival. The point is not coherence but fearmongering, reducing politics to the existential. A lead in public opinion matters less when the electoral battlefield is structurally tilted. State institutions, public money, regulatory authority, and government-affiliated media no longer function as neutral arbiters; they operate as instruments of Fidesz’s political survival. Though a Tisza win won’t be the silver bullet many hope it will be. 'Three possible scenarios emerge'. The biggest jolt to Hungary’s distorted system would be a Tisza supermajority, which could convert a relatively modest popular advantage into decisive institutional control. A Tisza victory without such a mandate might therefore produce paralysis, vetoes, and a struggle between electoral legitimacy and entrenched state power. This dynamic could also be reflected in the second possibility: a simple majority for the opposition that could prove almost unworkable. Lastly, it is possible that Tisza might win the most votes, but with Fidesz - together with the 'far-right' Our Homeland Movement - still able to assemble a parliamentary majority. A Magyar-led Hungary would move quickly to cooperate with the European Union, join the European Public Prosecutor’s Office, and try to unlock frozen funds. But on migration, energy, and even support for Ukraine, things would require more time. Years of anti-Ukrainian messaging and the opacity of Hungary’s relationship with Russian energy mean that a change of posture would be politically and administratively difficult in a short period of time. Tisza won’t be the rebirth of a coherent liberal or social-democratic alternative. Rather, it is the vessel into which nearly everyone opposed to Orbán is now pouring their hopes. Liberals and leftists may vote for it, not because the party reflects their ideological positions, but because it is the only plausible instrument of change. 'That is the biggest warning Hungary carries for Europe: When democratic institutions decay for long enough, elections cease to be contests between programs and become desperate referendums on whether political change is possible at all'. (Source: Carnegie Europe - with operation in Brussels, Belgium, headquartered in Washington, D.C.)
by Szelényi

April 1, 2026  In needs of allies? When Hungarians head to the polls on 12th April 2026, there will be more at stake than whether the country’s current Prime Minister, Viktor Orbán, wins another term. As a member of both the European Union (EU) and the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO), the next Hungarian government will have significant influence over a range of major, and closely connected geopolitical issues, especially Russia’s ongoing war in Ukraine and the future of the transatlantic alliance. Hungary is holding up the disbursement of an already agreed €90 billion loan to Ukraine over a dispute about the delivery of Russian oil via the Druzhba pipeline that crosses Ukraine. EU leaders have so far failed to release the funds because of the Hungarian veto, which Orbán has also turned into a key campaign issue. Could Orbán’s defeat mean progress on this specific issue? This potentially sets up a new battle between Budapest and Brussels, as the EU is firmly committed to ending Russian oil and gas imports. Nor would it be an end to divisions within the EU over how to support Ukraine. Orbán’s main challenger, Magyar, already stating that there is no short-term alternative to the continued imports of Russian oil, it would hardly shift the dial on the Hungarian dependence on Russian oil. And he is likely to uphold Hungary’s veto on Ukraine’s fast-track EU accession which is not only a Hungarian problem for the EU. Orbán’s stance on the loan to Ukraine has also been backed by the leaders of Slovakia (another Russian oil customer) and the Czech Republic, Robert Fico and Andrej Babiš respectively. Both have expressed similar EU- and Ukraine-sceptic views as Orbán, and are likely to continue acting as a thorn in the side of other EU member states and the institutions in Brussels that are more supportive of Ukraine. They also share Orbán’s framing of Ukraine as an economic burden and a security threat, which has been one of the dominant themes of the Hungarian election campaign. Orbán has received strong endorsements from US President Trump and his Secretary of State, Rubio, with the latter telling him that “your success is our success”. This underlines Orbán’s role in the broader global alliance of illiberal populists, ranging from Trump’s MAGA movement in the US to the ’far right’ parties the National Rally in France and the AfD in Germany, as well as the Hungarian Prime Minister’s Czech and Slovak allies. The concept of the West pushed by this alliance sits comfortably with Trump’s vision of a new world order, as articulated by Rubio at the Munich Security Conference earlier this year. European ’vision’ of a rules-based international order is now under threat from both Russia and the US. A win for Orbán would therefore clearly be as much ’a setback’ from that European ’perspective’ as it would be celebrated in the White House, as the endorsement of an illiberal Christian nationalist vision of the West. It would potentially boost other ideological allies of the Trump administration in upcoming elections elsewhere in Europe, such as in France and Poland next year (for which the Hungarian elections could be an important bellwether); as well as further fragment and disrupt what is left of the once solid Euro-Atlantic alliance. A win for Orbán will not necessarily spell the complete end of a liberal democratic model anchored in the EU. Yet the space within which this model can survive will be a shrinking one. The Hungarian elections crystallise both the fragility of the EU consensus on Ukraine and the rupture in the transatlantic alliance. They are a symptom of, and a catalyst for the further acceleration of the institutional remaking of the European security order, especially around the core of EU and NATO members that have come together in the ‘coalition of the willing’, a more effective counterweight to the undoing of the rules-based order and the unmaking of the West. "It would not preserve the liberal order that has already been eroded". 'It might anchor a new order that is less illiberal' than that envisaged by Orbán and his transatlantic and Eurasian supporters and allies. (Source: The Foreign Policy - U.S.)
by Sethi, who actively participates in forums and policy events in London which are hosted by Embassies and think tanks; Trigg (?); Wolff, a Professor of International Security in the Department of Political Science and International Studies, at the University of Birmingham, who has extensive expertise in the post-Soviet space

Austria
Thursday April 2, 2026 6:11 PM CET  No to war. Today, Austria announced it had banned U.S. military aircraft involved in the Iranian conflict from using its airspace, citing the country's neutrality law. Austria has been permanently neutral since 1955, when its parliament persuaded the Soviet Union to end its post-war occupation of the country by passing a constitutional act vowing to never join any military alliances, nor permit the establishment of any foreign military bases on her territory. A majority of Austrians remain committed to the principle of state neutrality and are in favor of keeping the country out of military alliances like NATO. Under Austrian law, all foreign military flights must apply for permission and declare their purpose before entering the country's airspace. Routine transit or training missions are eligible for approval on a case-by-case basis. Requests tied to active conflicts are rejected. There have indeed been requests and they were refused from the outset, Colonel Bauer, spokesperson for the Defense Ministry, told. Austria is the latest EU country to push back against the U.S.-led campaign. Spain, which has opposed the war since its outbreak, has similarly barred military aircraft involved in the conflict from using its airspace or the jointly-operated bases located within its territory. Italy has also refused permission for U.S. aircraft to land at the Sigonella air base in Sicily, with officials on Tuesday citing a lack of prior authorization for missions to the Middle East. (Source: Politico - U.S.)

Poland
April 3, 2026  This week, NATO member Poland rejected calls from the United States to deploy an MIM-104 Patriot air defense system, year introduced: 1984, to the Middle East, where it could be used to counter Iranian missiles and drones. Warsaw has said that the weapons are needed to deter Russian aggression in Europe. Poland operates two MIM-104 Patriot air defense system batteries, each consisting of 16 launchers. Warsaw had also ordered 200 specialized missiles from the United States in 2019, according to Politico, and most have already been delivered. More than 1,100 MIM-104 Patriot air defense systems have been produced for the US military. Another 200 have been exported to various allied and partner nations, including Germany, Israel, Japan, and South Korea. Price: Battery: $1 billion; missiles: ~$7 million each. Poland isn’t the only NATO member that has refused to support the ongoing Operation Epic Fury. Several other nations, including Spain, France, and Italy, have denied the use of their respective airspaces for combat operations. (Source: The National Interest - U.S.)

European Commission
10.57am, 1 Apr 2026  Speaking at yesterday’s informal conference of Energy Ministers, Jorgensen, the EU Commissioner for Energy has said Europeans ’should’ work from home and drive less to save fuel amid the ongoing conflict in the Middle East. He said that an ’energy advice package from the EU will be announced’ soon. He also ’encouraged’ member states to take action to lower fuel prices for citizens and households, including lowering fuel taxes and speeding up processes to complete renewable energy projects. "The International Energy Agency (IEA) has recommended a ten point plan, which includes work from home where possible, reduce highway speed limits by at least 10 kilometers, encourage public transport, alternate private car access to roads in large cities in different ways, increase car sharing and adopt efficient driving practices.” (Source: The Journal – Ireland)

Europe
1 April 2026  ‘The US can’t go it alone.’ Yes, it can. The most depressing aspect of the collapse of European will and political integrity has been in the failure of some of their leading responsible media outlets. Of course, we expect the traditional spigots of anti-American Billingsgate such as the Guardian with Blumenthal’s recent triumphant announcement the United States had been militarily defeated in Iran (having suffered eight combat fatalities while blasting that hideous regime halfway back to the Stone Age with minimum civilian casualties). But more shocking was the over-worthy Economist announcing that the war was a quagmire and stalemate and a terrible setback for the Trump administration. A moron who was never laid eyes even on a toy soldier can see that Iran is on the ropes and the United States and Israel can go on pummelling it into prehistoric insensibility at minimal personnel costs to themselves indefinitely. This is not a stalemate. Much more upsetting, since the Economist has essentially been a globalist dishcloth for the last ten years, is the Spectator, where Gray, who has moments of lucidity commenting on American affairs, declared in a cover story that Trump had failed. In the same edition, the magazine in its general editorial stated that the last hope for applying the necessary restraint of European savoir faire and worldliness on the lunatics in Washington was the commanding influence on Trump of King Charles. When the Economist and the Spectator are po-facedly publishing unutterable rubbish, it makes a formidable prima facie case that in the midst of their seventh consecutive failed government, a record of unbroken bipartisan incompetence without precedent in the more than two centuries of the office of prime minister starting with Walpole, the British elites are leading the distressed population in a race to the bottom. Britain and everything sensible in Britain and all of Britain’s tradition of intelligent government vital to the development of Western civilization is in freefall. The United States has no need of Europe as it only wishes it not to be in the hands of seriously hostile rivals, and Russia cannot even overcome Ukraine. But the West needs Europe at least as active and constant participants in the life of this planet. To that end we must with no hint of overconfidence, place our hopes in Reform (UK), the Alternative for Germany, the RN (France), and the Brothers of Italy, led, of course, by a woman. How did the Europe of Adenauer, de Gaulle, and Thatcher descend so quickly into this pitiful condition? Spineless leftist governments dependent upon extremist Muslim voters. (Source: Brussels Signal - Belgium)
by Black

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Russia
April 3, 2026  Russia can’t capitalize on the Iran war’s gas shock. Russia is possessing the largest proven natural gas reserves in the world. The question is whether it still has the export system that once turned gas abundance into power Russia’s annual natural gas production of approximately 663 billion cubic meters (bcm) - down roughly 7 percent from its prewar peak. What it no longer has is the same freedom to move them quickly, profitably, and at scale after four years of war. The sector adapted under stress - but by sacrificing optionality, flexibility, profitability, and much of the geopolitical leverage it once derived from scale and market centrality. Russia remains a Petrostate, but a more constrained, more stressed, and far less influential one. Russia maintained its production base. What it lost was the architecture needed to monetize that production on attractive terms: premium markets, redundant routes, commercially efficient liquified natural gas (LNG) logistics, and a buyer landscape that once feared losing Russian gas more than Russia feared losing buyers.   The crisis in the Strait of Hormuz made this structural trap externally visible, it exposed it. The trap was built before the first Iranian strike, and unless something radically changes the calculus, it will remain after the last one, too. The contrast with oil is instructive. The transport share in the final delivered cost is far higher for gas than for oil, when pipelines, liquefaction plants, regasification terminals, and specialized LNG carriers are involved. That makes gas trade more infrastructure-intensive, more route-specific. Since 2022, Russia diversified oil exports to India, China, and Turkey with relative speed, as oil is globally traded and tanker-based.    Gas does not behave that way. When a gas export system loses its core market, the problem is rebuilding an entire chain of physical and commercial infrastructure whose cost and rigidity are much higher than in oil. The last four years show not just that Russia lost volumes, but that it entered a different phase of gas statecraft: one defined by narrower export outlets, lower-quality monetization, and greater dependence on external political and commercial decisions. The sector has stabilized - but the arithmetic of this adaptation is stark: according to Gazprom and IEA data, the country lost roughly 134 bcm of gas sales to Europe - 124 bcm pipeline to Europe + 10 bcm LNG - one of the largest demand shocks ever absorbed by a major gas-exporting system.    Gained volumes: 58.8 bcm - 28.3 bcm China + 9 bcm Turkey + 6 bcm The Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) + 16.5 bcm Asia LNG). Net export loss: 90.2 bcm (37 percent of 2021 total). Yet total production did not implode - it fell from 715 bcm in 2021 to roughly 663 bcm in 2025, while domestic consumption rose from about 468 bcm to about 500 bcm, and new export outlets in China, Turkey, CIS and Asian LNG absorbed part of the remainder. Though the share of exports in total output fell from 34 to 24 percent, the system functions, production continues, domestic demand is met, and some exports are redirected. But what was preserved in volume was sacrificed in value. Resilience in physical terms has coexisted with degradation in strategic terms. Russia did not solve its gas crisis - it learned how to live with it. By 2025, direct deliveries to Europe outside the TurkStream corridor had effectively fallen to zero.    Nord Stream 1 was sabotaged and destroyed in September 2022. Three of Nord Stream’s four strings are physically destroyed. Nord Stream 2, already built but short of being certified, was frozen before the invasion and never entered service. Yamal-Europe ceased operations in May of 2022, political conditions allowing the functioning no longer exist. Transit through Ukraine ended in December 2024 and was not extended; it is politically inseparable from the war itself - as long as the war continues, there is no realistic basis for restoring that route. What remained is one narrow corridor: around 16–17 bcm via TurkStream Line 2, reaching Serbia, Hungary, and Austria through Turkey. That route is already operating near its physical limit. Even if some bilateral flows eventually resume, „the era of Russia as Europe’s central pipeline gas supplier is over’. Europe was the market that made Russian gas strategically powerful. It combined high netbacks, long-term contracts, large creditworthy buyers, dense infrastructure, and a degree of buyer dependence that gave Moscow real leverage. Losing Europe, meant losing the commercial and political center of gravity of the entire sector. Russian gas ’could return to Europe only as a constrained, politically contingent residual flow’ - not as the organizing backbone of the continent’s gas balance.    Central Asian markets partially absorbed some excess volumes. Uzbekistan became a buyer of approximately six bcm annually due to a decline in domestic production. Kazakhstan’s direct gas imports from Russia nearly tripled to about 3.8 bcm. Yet total CIS growth remained marginal relative to what Europe represented; it is a buffer, not a substitute. Turkey cannot fill the gap. The southern corridor has value, but not strategic scale. It has become a survival route rather than a platform for renewed influence - the last route standing, not the beginning of a new export model. It is close to full utilization. Turkey is actively diversifying its supply mix, and onward deliveries to Europe remain modest. Power of Siberia 1 delivered around 38.8 bcm to China in 2025 - a sizable increase from 10.5 bcm in 2021. The trajectory’s structural limits matter more than its headline growth as developed separate supply chain. It is fed solely by Eastern Siberian gas fields - Chayanda and Kovykta - which were never connected to the Western Siberian production base that supplied Europe; the pipeline did not redirect a single cubic meter of gas previously destined for European markets. In 2024, Power of Siberia 1 had reached its projected capacity. The Far Eastern route is an incremental addition scheduled to begin supplying roughly 10-12 bcm a year from 2027. Power of Siberia 2, with a projected capacity of 50 bcm from Western Siberian gas fields, it is the only pipeline project that could meaningfully reconnect Russia’s former European resource base to a major external market. The draft outline of China’s 15th Five-Year Plan was submitted to the National People’s Congress on March 5, 2026; lawmakers approved it on March 12. The plan mentioned the pipeline - but only in the language of ’advancing preparatory work’; a political signal, not a commercial commitment. The price gap between the two sides: China has pushed for terms much closer to Russian domestic rates. China is not competing for Russian gas. It is negotiating from a position of patience, alternatives, and leverage over the gas volumes that have nowhere else to go, deepening Russia’s dependency on a single buyer at structurally degraded prices. It is an adaptation, not a restoration of strategic influence, which creates a new form of dependence. The eastern pivot will not reproduce Europe.    Asia, at least for now, provide a substitute for the geopolitical and commercial position Russia once held in Europe. The pipeline, whose construction requires five years - and another five to reach workable volumes - cannot help Russia capitalize on the current Iran war. Power of Siberia 2 has mattered to China primarily as a form of strategic insurance rather than an urgent supply necessity. The Gulf shock makes Russia more useful to China as a hedge against prolonged disruption in the Middle East, but not more autonomous. It would make Russia more important to China, on China’s terms.    Russia’s total nameplate LNG capacity is about 50.8 million tonnes per annum (mtpa), but the three core export projects - Yamal LNG, Sakhalin-2, and Arctic LNG 2 - account for 48.8 mtpa of that total. Actual Russian LNG output in 2025 was about 32 metric tonnes (Mt). The gap is explained by sanctions and logistics. Arctic LNG 2, designed for around 19.8 mtpa, produced just 1.2 Mt in 2025 - around six percent of design capacity. The main constraint is the shortage of Arc-7 icebreaking LNG carriers, required for year-round Northern Sea Route navigation. The project requires a dedicated fleet of 21 such vessels, but due to sanctions, Russia cannot obtain them.    Chinese shipyards have the technical capability to build more Arc-7 carriers, but there are no publicly confirmed contracts as of early 2026. If China deepens its role not only as LNG buyer but also as technology provider or logistical enabler, Russia is externalizing more control over its own gas future. LNG was supposed to be Russia’s answer to the rigidity of pipelines. Instead, it has exposed a second layer of dependence. The problem is the lack of autonomous access to shipping, technology, finance, insurance, and commercial intermediation. Russia can still operate its inherited LNG capacity. The commercial base for Russian LNG remains unusually fragile. In 2025, Yamal LNG still sent about 76 percent of production to European terminals, generating around €7.2 billion in revenue. Russia’s most commercially successful LNG project remained deeply entangled with European infrastructure even after pipeline decoupling. Europe’s gradual tightening of restrictions on Russian LNG threatens volumes, the soft infrastructure of the trade: long-established offtake patterns, payment channels, transshipment services, shipping optimization, and the role of European companies in organizing commercial flows. The issue is not merely that Arctic LNG 2 is delayed. Russia’s envisioned LNG-based strategy for rebuilding flexibility has run into chokepoints that are external, specific, and hard to bypass. LNG has not become the great escape route from Russia’s post-2022 gas trap. Flexibility itself requires an ecosystem. If a broader political deal between Washington and Moscow were ever to produce selective sanctions relief, some US participation in Russian gas or LNG projects could re-enter the picture - speculative possibility, but it is no longer unthinkable amidst discussions around potential energy deals in the context of a wider Trump-Putin settlement track. Such a scenario would not restore the old model. It would mean a partial recapitalization of the sector through external technology, services, financing, and commercial support. Russia could recover some functionality, especially in LNG and gas processing. It would do so by accepting a more dependent and politically reversible form of recovery: more monetization, less agency.     One reason the Russian gas sector has not collapsed is that it has pushed a large share of its adjustment inward. More gas has been absorbed domestically - through industry, power generation, and broader internal demand. This has preserved production and reduced the need for technically damaging shut-ins in West Siberian fields, it allows the sector to function physically but at sharply lower profitability, as a stabilization mechanism, not a growth strategy. Gas sold inside Russia supports industrial activity and social stability, but it does not replicate the geopolitical weight of lost exports. Russia can still try to remonetize part of its gas base through deeper domestic processing: petrochemicals, fertilizers, ammonia, methanol, and power-intensive industrial production. The Iran war, which has highlighted vulnerabilities in fertilizer and maritime supply chains, only reinforces the strategic logic of such a move, which would require investment, equipment, technology, and market access - that remain uncertain.    Contrast between the apparent beneficiaries of the Iran war: The United States can convert a tighter market into additional LNG flows because it has spare commercial flexibility, expanding capacity, and global destination optionality; Russia, by contrast, can benefit from higher prices only at the margin. It cannot meaningfully scale exports in response, which is just a one-time revenue effect, not a strategic gain. Russia no longer has the export architecture, market access, or strategic flexibility needed to turn external turmoil into a major expansion of gas power. That is why Russia is unlikely to score a major strategic win from the Iran war. It no longer has the system that once allowed it to translate disruption elsewhere into leverage of its own. A more concrete answer than ’Russia was weakened’ is that Russia has maintained its core production capabilities, but it has lost optionality. Destroyed pipelines, a tanker bottleneck in LNG, and increasingly asymmetric bargaining positions are not temporary setbacks awaiting a diplomatic reset. They are structural traits of a sector that still produces gas but has far fewer advantageous ways to sell it. The crisis in the Strait of Hormuz only made the structural weaknesses visible to external observers. The Russian gas sector is therefore in a tight spot, because it is running out of attractive ways to monetize it. It has adapted to stress by becoming narrower, less flexible, less profitable, and more dependent on external political and commercial choices. Russia remains gas-rich - but increasingly route-poor, option-poor, and agency-poor. Postwar channels of partial recovery do exist: limited residual flows back to Europe, deeper Chinese participation in infrastructure and offtake, or greater monetization through petrochemicals and fertilizers. Each could ease pressure. The most accurate description of the sector today: not collapse, not resilience, but structural downgrade. The Iran war does not reverse that, it briefly illuminates it. (Source: The National Interest - U.S.)
by Dr. Mitrova, a research fellow at Columbia University’s Center on Global Energy Policy and director of the New Energy Advancement Hub. She was the executive director of the Energy Centre of the Moscow School of Management SKOLKOVO. From 2006 to 2011, she was also the head of research in the Oil and Gas Department in the Energy Research Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences. She specializes in Russian, Former Soviet Union, and global energy markets, including production, transportation, demand, energy policy, pricing, and market restructuring; Dmitrenko, a geopolitical analyst and researcher specializing in sustainable development, energy policy, and governance on the Eurasian continent, affiliated with Sciences Po Paris.

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Asia

Iran
05 April 2026  Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps said it destroyed two C-130 transport planes and two Black Hawk helicopters in southern Isfahan province. State media broadcast images of wreckage and described the operation as a response to a US attempt to recover a downed pilot. The claims came hours after US President Trump said an American officer had been rescued. “We have rescued the seriously wounded… crew member… from deep inside the mountains of Iran,” he wrote on Truth Social, adding the officer was safe and sound. US officials told that the mission involved hundreds of special forces and dozens of aircraft. Two transport planes used in the operation were later destroyed on the ground to avoid capture, according to US media reports. The rescue followed the downing of an F-15E fighter jet over Iran. Both crew members have now been recovered after a search that lasted more than 48 hours and involved combat in mountainous terrain. (Source: Helsinki Times - Finland)

04/04/2026 11:10 am  The Israeli military’s attacks focused primarily on the capital, Tehran, and targeted key components of Iran’s weapons program and air defense systems. The Air Force carried out waves of airstrikes targeting a strategic ballistic missile storage facility. It also targeted production, research, and development centers for advanced military equipment, to undermine Iran’s long-term military manufacturing capabilities. The offensive included the destruction of air defense batteries and radar sites. A vital Iranian Revolutionary Guard site, used as a storage facility for surface-to-air missiles designed to target fighter jets was destroyed. Tel Aviv emphasized that targeting research and production facilities aims to disrupt the Iranian military’s supply chain and innovation capabilities. (Source: Voice of Emirates - Dubai)

(Saturday), April 04, 2026  Iran's state media IRIB today claimed in a post on the US social media company X that the UAE has entered the ongoing war against Iran. It said that the destruction of a Chinese WingLoong-2 drone on April 1, which it said is only in the possession of Saudi Arabia and the UAE, and the interception of an Emirati Mirage 2000 fighter jet over Iran's Jask Island on March 22 constitute evidence of the UAE’s participation in the war. (Source: Anadolu Agency – Turkey)

Apr 3, 2026 13:13 IST  Today the state-run Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting quoted the Khatam al-Anbiya Central Headquarters as saying that Iran's air defence systems shot down an F-35 fighter jet, the second such claim since the conflict began on February 28. It targeted an aircraft belonging to a squadron linked to Royal Air Force Lakenheath, United Kingdom. The Iranian military officials said that the pilot may have been killed after the jet exploded on impact in Central Iran. (Source: India Today)

(Thursday), Apr 2, 2026  Iranian officials describe a major blow to Iran’s scientific and medical infrastructure: US-Israeli strikes have hit Tehran’s Pasteur Institute, pillar of Iran’s public health system. The facility sustained extensive damage. It was „the oldest and most prestigious research and public health center in Iran and the entire Middle East,” Foreign Ministry spokesperson Baqaei said on X. It is a barbaric assault on basic human core values, he added. Neither the United States nor Israel has assumed responsibility for the strike as of this writing. The institution traces its roots to earlier public health efforts in Iran, when foreign and local physicians worked to contain recurring outbreaks of cholera, plague and other infectious diseases, laying the groundwork for a more institutionalized response to epidemics. The institute emerged after World War I amid widespread famine and epidemics that underscored the urgent need for a modern public health infrastructur, and formally established in the early 1920s in cooperation with the Paris-based Pasteur Institute, a leading global center for infectious disease research, microbiology and vaccine development, Following the 1979 Islamic Revolution, the institute continued to operate under the state-run health system, playing a central role in Iran’s expanding public health network, including vaccine production, infectious disease control programs, and the development of diagnostic laboratories. Nasr, an Iranian-American professor of international affairs and Middle East studies at Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies, described the institute as “an icon of Iran’s health care system, a symbol of modern Iran.” ’Destroying it could have no other purpose than assaulting Iran’s history, erasing the history of its modernization and development - take Iranians back to the Stone Age,’ he posted on X. The reported strike comes amid broader destruction linked to the conflict. More than 113,000 civilian sites, including homes, schools and commercial facilities, have been damaged in US-Israeli attacks, according to figures released by Iran’s Red Crescent and carried by state media. At least 3,519 people have been killed since the war erupted, including 1,598 civilians and at least 244 children, according to the US-based rights group HRANA. (Source: AI-Monitor - based in Washington, DC, U.S.)

Apr 2, 2026 22:24 IST  A highway bridge linking Iran’s capital Tehran to the western city of Karaj was hit by air strikes, Fars News reported. A video shared by Trump showed the bridge - of what he said was the biggest bridge in Iran - erupting in a burst of fire and thick smoke after an airstrike earlier in the day. No country has officially claimed responsibility so far. Iran's Foreign Minister Araghchi said that attacks on civilian structures, including unfinished bridges, will not compel Iranians to surrender. (Source: India Today)

Israel
04/06/26 AT 4:19 PM EDT  Russia provided Iran with a list of over 50 Israeli energy infrastructure targets as part of the countries' cooperation during the war, according to a new report. The Jerusalem Post detailed that the list consists of 55 critical locations and could have allowed Tehran to launch precision missile strikes against Israel's energy grid. The list was divided into three categories: Critical production facilities; Major urban and industrial energy hubs and Local infrastructure. Assessing that Israel doesn't import electricity from other countries, damaging some key components of the grid could result in a prolonged collapse and mass blackouts. Russia has also provided Iran with information to attack U.S. forces in the Middle East, according to reports from early in the war. President Trump, however, dismissed the effort, saying it's not helping them much. Asked if the development would harm U.S.-Russia relations, he replied "they'd say we do it against them." Israel has been hitting Iranian infrastructure since the beginning of the war, most recently targeting steel and petrochemical plants. Today the country attacked the South Pars petrochemical plant at Asaluyeh. Defense Minister Katz described the facility as the largest one in the country and responsible for 50% of the country's petrochemical production. Trump has also given Tehran a deadline to reach a deal to end the war or face attacks to its power plants and bridges. He renewed his threats today afternoon, telling press ’we have a plan, because of the power of our military, where every bridge in Iran will be decimated by 12 o'clock tomorrow night, where every power plant in Iran will be out of business - burning, exploding, and never to be used again.’ So far Iran has rejected all proposals. Today it presented one of its own with 10 clauses, including an end to conflicts in the region, protocol for safe passage through the Strait of Hormuz, the lifting of sanctions and reconstruction. Trump rejected that proposal as well. (Source: International Business Times – headquarters in New York City, U.S.)

Lebanon
06/04/2026 6:23 am  The Lebanese Ministry of Public Health revealed: the total number of victims of the Israeli aggression since March 2 has risen to 1,461 dead and 4,430 injured, amid international warnings of a collapse of the health and service systems as the war machine continues. (Source: Voice of Emierates - Dubai)

03:23, 06/04/2026, Monday  Lebanon’s Hezbollah struck a naval vessel in the eastern Mediterranean using a cruise missile, believing it to be an Israeli warship. Israeli Channel 14 claimed the damaged ship was British and added that the cruise missile caused damage to the vessel, but it continued its mission. Hezbollah said it targeted the vessel around midnight between Saturday and Sunday 68 nautical miles off Lebanon’s coast as it prepared to attack Lebanese territory. No official confirmation from Israel or Britain has been issued. Since March 2, when Hezbollah launched a cross-border operation, Israel has responded with airstrikes and a ground offensive in southern Lebanon. These actions have continued despite a ceasefire that had been in place since November 2024. As a key regional power with interests in the eastern Mediterranean, Türkiye views the intensifying naval and ground clashes with growing concern, warning that unchecked escalation between Hezbollah and Israel could destabilize the entire Levant. Türkiye also maintains dialogue channels with both Lebanese and Israeli authorities, emphasizing the need to protect civilian populations and prevent a wider conflict that could spill over its southern borders. (Source: Yeni Şafak / Anadolu Agency = Turkey)

Qatar
April 02, 2026  Qatar operates early-warning radiation monitoring system by air, land, and sea. Qatar’s Ministry of Environment and Climate Change says all radiation levels remain within normal and safe limits. (Source: Anadolu Agency - Turkey)

Syria
18:31, Thu, Apr 2, 2026  A detention camp for tens of thousands of people linked to the isis group has been largely emptied due to the shocking number of escapes. Syrian government official Qassem, the Syrian foreign ministry's representative for al Hol camp administration told al Hol camp in northeastern Syria is almost empty after the state took control of the site. ’Families escaped while we were present because the camp is large and the smuggling routes are very varied’, he said. ’Lots of people had already escaped before Syrian forces took charge, as guards left and the gates were open’. ’Officials also found evidence of people using forged documents and identification cards of people who'd already left’, he added. The isis terror group has called on Muslims ’to set fire to churches and synagogues around the world. The group's propaganda reportedly called for attacks in the US, Europe, Russia, UAE, Syria, Tunisia, and Morocco during the Easter holidays ’in response’ to the closure of al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem. The terrorists also reportedly called for attacks during the Jewish holiday of Passover, which began yesterday and ends next Thursday. Israel closed the al-Aqsa Mosque - which previously remained open since 1967 - in late February, with authorities extending the closure until mid-April. Israel declared a nationwide state of emergency and prohibited mass gatherings, including at holy sites. (Source: Express - United Kingdom)

Yemen
08:34-1 April 2026  Yemeni maritime official Aifan, acting director of maritime affairs in Mukalla in eastern Yemen said ports along the Arabian Sea are capable of becoming global logistics hubs, citing their competitive advantages and capacity to handle various types of commercial vessels, particularly container ships and general cargo vessels, as well as dry and liquid bulk carriers. The Port of Mukalla is distinguished by its ability to receive all types of vessels, he said. He also described Saudi Arabia’s experience in developing the maritime transport and ports sector as successful at both regional and global levels, expressing hope that Yemeni ports would benefit from this experience, as well as from Saudi support for infrastructure projects in the country. Aifan said the Port of Qana in Shabwa governorate has significant potential to become a successful commercial port, particularly in terms of its geographic location, depth, hinterland and the capacity of its berths and yards. Amri, Yemen’s transport minister, recently announced a roadmap focused on turning technical and economic studies into tangible projects, particularly regarding the ports in Hadramout, Shabwa and the Socotra archipelago, in addition to the expansion project of the Port of Mukalla, which is considered a key pillar of Yemen’s maritime activity. Aifan also referred to a previous study he conducted on the Port of Aden and its strategic importance, noting that the port possesses global competitive advantages in cargo handling. The port’s geographical location links East and West, and ships need no more than four nautical miles to change direction and reach the pilot station. It is also naturally protected from waves and from the northeast and southwest monsoon winds, enabling it to operate year-round without interruption. It lies just 105 nautical miles from the Bab el-Mandeb Strait, through which around 21,000 ships pass annually. (Source: Asharq Al-Awsat - headquartered in London, England, owned by a member of the Saudi royal family)

East-Southeast Asia
April 3, 2026 15:46 JST  U.S. President Trump concluded a televised address. Speaking about the war with Iran, he said that the ’core strategic objectives are near completion,’ and made opaque remarks suggesting that the Strait of Hormuz, a key bottleneck in the global energy crisis, would ’open up naturally." He stopped short of any clear reference to a ceasefire, which the world had been hoping for. Asian stock markets, struggling to digest Trump's remarks, lost direction, while crude oil prices rose. With the Strait of Hormuz effectively closed, Southeast Asian countries have begun rolling out emergency measures to cope with this energy crisis, which is a man-made one - the result of leaders choosing to wage war. The only real solution is the return of peace to the Middle East. But after the U.S. president's speech, the timing of that outcome has become even more uncertain. The impact is now being felt in people's daily lives. In Indonesia, the government announced measures to reduce oil consumption, including a remote work policy. In Myanmar, too, energy shortages are deepening economic uncertainty. In Vietnam, the government has urged citizens to limit the use of private vehicles. Many Asian airlines have announced plans for hefty fuel surcharges. Transportation is becoming increasingly constrained, raising the risk that the world could once again be pushed into conditions reminiscent of the COVID-19 pandemic. The last time oil prices hit record highs was in 2008. At the time, the surge was driven by structural factors, notably booming demand from fast-growing Asian economies. In response, a wave of green tech startups emerged, helping to fuel the rise of electric vehicle makers such as Tesla, and there was a growing sense that innovation could overcome the energy crisis. That fundamental shift toward green technology has since stalled amid the Trump administration's rollback of environmental regulations. In the current gridlock, the only defensive measure available to energy-hungry emerging economies in Asia is to urge their citizens to conserve. (Source: Nikkei - Japan)
byTanaka

Southwest Asia
Fri, April 3, 2026 at 12:33 PM GMT+2  Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) said yesterday that it had hit a data center linked to Oracle in Dubai. IRGC reportedly targets data centers belonging to American companies in the Middle East, reports The Times of India, potentially causing massive damages. The government of Dubai was quick to deny the report, according to Gulf News. An Amazon facility in Bahrain was also targeted, according to NDTV, which cites the Tasnim news agency. Oracle has cloud and artificial intelligence contracts with the U.S. Department of Defense, and its chairman, Ellison, has longstanding ties with Israel, which were among the factors cited in the accusations. In addition, the IRGC targeted American aluminum and steel industries in Bahrain and the UAE, as well as Rafael arms factories in Israel. Bahrain's Ministry of Interior confirmed that an Iranian strike has set 'a facility of a company' on fire. That company is said to be Batelco, the country's largest telecommunications company that hosts infrastructure for Amazon Web Services. The risks for American companies that have AI infrastructure in the Middle East are exceptionally high. Hitting AI data centers equipped with hardware that is worth billions causes dramatical financial damage. Furthermore, it potentially causes severe damage to American companies. An Nvidia NVL72 GB300 system can cost as much as $6 million, so a data center hosting 50,000 Blackwell processors houses hardware worth $4.16 billion. This estimate excludes networking, storage, racks, power delivery, cooling, building shell, and deployment, so even if supporting infrastructure adds 50% on top of that (which is a conservative estimate), we are talking about a data center that costs $6.24 billion. For now, we do not know for sure whether any AI data centers belonging to AWS or Oracle were hit by Iran's IRGC. An investigation by Bellingcat published yesterday suggests that not all attacks are intercepted, official damage reports may not fully reflect actual impacts, so some incidents are minimized, mischaracterized, or even not publicly acknowledged. (Source: Yahoo - U.S.)

United States

(Monday), Apr 06, 2026  What if Israel just won't stop? The Netanyahu government wants different things than the US. President Trump’s televised address on the war against Iran Wednesday provided no clear message about how or when he will end the war. Moreover, Trump said not one word about the role of his partner in aggression, Israel, in concluding the war. The United States could use its considerable leverage to pressure Israel to go along. But Trump has been even more deferential to Israel than previous administrations, as manifested during his first term in the multiple gifts he gave to the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Given that record, Trump would be better equipped than most previous presidents to overcome the domestic political considerations that have deterred presidents from pressuring Israel. There would be a Nixon-to-China quality to any such move by Trump. He also might be motivated by the war’s unpopularity among Americans and the open dissatisfaction among many in his own political base about the perceived role of Israel in getting the United States into the war. Alternatively, Trump - if still hesitant to pressure Israel - might extract the United States unilaterally from the war, thereby deflating much of the domestic opposition to the war, while simply not caring whether Israel continued to attack Iran. Such a laissez-faire posture would be consistent with Trump’s ’we broke it, you own it’ approach in pressing the European allies and Gulf states to assume responsibility for opening the Strait of Hormuz. Any such unilateral withdrawal would not involve a negotiated agreement with Iran. The Iranian regime - which has suffered some of its worst blows from Israeli, not American, fire - is unlikely to back away from its demand for a final and complete cessation of aggression and rejection of a mere partial or temporary ceasefire. The Israeli government wants Iran to be too weak to conduct a foreign policy appropriate for a nation of Iran’s size or to compete effectively with Israel for regional influence. It wants Iran to be loathed by, and isolated from, the rest of the world - including the United States, diverting attention from Israel’s own conduct and its malign effects on regional instability. Given these objectives, Israel’s aims in this war diverge significantly from Trump’s probable war objectives - shifting and uncertain though they may be - and certainly from U.S. interests. Any political change in Tehran that made Iran less loathsome and more cooperative with the United States would be a win for Trump, and for the United States. It would be a loss for Netanyahu’s government. An Israeli objective in Iran is not so much regime change as regime collapse. Pursuing that objective may imply continuing rather than ending the war. A fracturing of Iran and possible civil war there would be an even bigger mess for the Trump administration to deal with than it has now. But it would be acceptable to the Israeli government and consistent with Israeli objectives. The Israeli determination to keep Iran isolated has meant Israeli opposition to diplomacy with Iran. This determination underlies the Netanyahu government’s strident opposition to the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, the multilateral agreement in 2015 that closed all paths to a possible Iranian nuclear weapon. Israel’s opposition to U.S. diplomacy with Iran - already reflected in Israel’s killing of the Iranian leaders best positioned to negotiate an agreement - implies that it will balk at most any war-ending deal the Trump Administration might reach with Tehran. Netanyahu’s government could torpedo negotiations by escalating its military operations against Iran. This constitutes another Israeli incentive to continue the war. If Trump were to pressure the Israelis sufficiently for them not to subvert an impending peace agreement, then another part of Israel’s record comes into play, which is its tendency to violate such agreements whenever it is convenient for Israel to do so. Israel has done this twice in little over a year with ceasefire in March of last year, and continuing to this day a campaign of lethal assaults in violation of an agreement reached last October. Just as in Gaza, it would have no trouble claiming provocations from the enemy as a reason for breaking a ceasefire. Also as in Gaza, Israeli leaders might even welcome a break from offensive operations for rest and resupply of their forces before resuming the assault. Any move during the coming weeks toward peace and security in the Persian Gulf region would be a win for Trump, as well as being consistent with U.S. interests. The goal instead of Netanyahu’s government is to maintain an atmosphere of insecurity so that the strongest country militarily will be able to dominate a region characterized by failed and dysfunctional states alongside friendly autocracies. Israeli decisionmakers worry less than the United States must about implications of the war for broader U.S. equities, including the economic effects of turmoil in global energy markets and reduced U.S. readiness to meet security challenges in other regions. The complete cessation of aggression that Iran seeks includes Israel’s assault in Lebanon, from which Israel shows no sign of backing down. Israeli operations include not only the bombardment of Beirut but also what is shaping up as an indefinite Israeli occupation of southern Lebanon and expulsion of its Shia residents. In Lebanon, aggressive Israeli actions inevitably elicit violent responses from those who are threatened or targeted, which in turn provides Israel with the rationale for still more offensive military operations. Unending warfare has become second nature in Israel. Netanyahu has declared that Israel will live forever by the sword. Trump’s alliance with Netanyahu, which made it easy to start the war against Iran, will make it hard to end the war and to avoid renewals of it. Even where U.S. and Israeli war objectives most seem to coincide - with the degradation of Iran’s military capability to strike back - lie the seeds of more, not less, regional violence in the future, some of which may suck in the United States. (Source: Responsible Statecraft - U.S.)
by Pillar, a Non-resident Senior Fellow at the Center for Security Studies of Georgetown University and a non-resident fellow at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft. He is also an Associate Fellow of the Geneva Center for Security Policy.

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United States
(Saturday), April 4, 2026 @ 6:03 PM  Planet Labs, a major satellite company that supplies images to customers including major news outlets, announced today that it is indefinitely restricting access to satellite imagery over all of Iran and much of the surrounding conflict zone - Gulf states and ’other active conflict zones in the region’ - citing a request from the U.S. government. The company also said it is extending publication delays for imagery and data collected since March 9. The change is a major tightening of access to a type of material that has become central to modern war coverage. Multiple affected media outlets said it could significantly hamper journalists, researchers and independent analysts trying to document the Iran war. The new policy sharply reduces one of the few widely available tools used by news organizations to verify strikes, assess damage and track military developments in areas that are difficult or dangerous to reach. The move goes beyond a narrower restriction Planet put in place in March, when it began delaying the release of imagery from Iran by 14 days. At the time, the company said the delay was intended to prevent images from being used by adversarial actors while still preserving some level of transparency. Planet's decision also appears to reflect a broader shift among satellite data providers as the conflict intensifies. Other imagery companies have recently imposed new delays or tighter controls on access to data from the Middle East, though not all have said those measures stemmed from a direct request by the U.S. government. (Source: TheWrap - U.S.)

(Saturday), April 4, 2026 8:52 a.m.  You reap what you sow. President Trump told reporters on Wednesday of his disgust with NATO over its failure ’to help the United States’ reopen the Strait of Hormuz. He added that he was absolutely considering taking the United States out of the alliance. Members of the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations ranked the creation of NATO as the sixth best decision in U.S. foreign policy history. All thirty-two NATO members now meet the 2 percent of GDP defense pledge made at the 2014 Wales Summit, nine NATO countries besides the United States currently spend more than 2.5 percent, and 'six spend more than 3 percent'. Trump’s current threat to withdraw from NATO reflects the refusal of many NATO countries to assist with Operation Epic Fury. From the start NATO has been a defensive alliance. It has never been based on the idea that its members are obligated to join any military operation another member might launch. Despite not having consulted NATO members on the wisdom of attacking Iran in the first place, Trump was surprised they were not willing to follow his lead. This week’s events have shown the costs of Trump’s ally-bashing. The decisions of Britain, France, Italy, and Spain to limit or bar the U.S. military’s use of bases on their soil, is the culmination of the anger that has built up over the past year. Trump told a British newspaper on Wednesday: “I was never swayed by NATO. I always knew they were a paper tiger, and Putin knows that too, by the way.” In 2023, Congress prohibited the president from terminating U.S. membership in NATO without first getting two-thirds support of the Senate or the approval of both houses of Congress. No such congressional support is likely forthcoming. ’However, the 2023 law may not be constitutional. It is a bedrock legal principle that Congress cannot claim powers through statute that the Constitution denies it. And the courts have never settled whether the president has an independent authority to terminate treaties.’ Trump doesn’t need to formally withdraw the United States from NATO to cripple it. He can accomplish the same result by saying he will not honor U.S. alliance obligations. Trump blamed Ukraine for Russia’s aggression, hiked tariffs, threatened to seize Greenland, talked of Europe’s civilizational erasure, praised ’far-right’ European leaders, and dismissed the losses Europe suffered in Afghanistan and Iraq. Europe has domestic politics. The Trump administration, is deeply unpopular across the continent. Governments cooperate with Washington at their peril. The ability of the United States to project power abroad, as well as its ability to protect itself at home, has long rested on the willingness of NATO allies to provide bases, overflight permission, and intelligence cooperation. Abandoning those advantages, which is what withdrawing from NATO would mean, ’would leave the United States far weaker and more vulnerable than it should be’. The Chicago Council on Global Affairs has been asking Americans how they view NATO for more than half a century. Its most recent poll found that three-quarters of Americans want either to keep the current U.S. commitment to NATO or to increase it. Nearly six-in-ten Americans believe that NATO makes the United States safer. That number drops to 43 percent for Republicans. NATO marks its seventy-seventh anniversary today. You don’t know what you got til it’s gone. (Source: Council on Foreign Relations - U.S.)
By Lindsay, the Mary and David Boies distinguished senior fellow in U.S. foreign policy at the CFR.

April 3, 2026, Friday // 09:39  Kellogg, who previously served as US President Trump’s Special Envoy for Ukraine, has raised the possibility of reshaping existing security structures, including moving beyond NATO, speaking in an interview on Fox News. He openly questioned the current alliance framework and suggested that alternative military partnerships could be formed. Kellogg argued that Washington may consider invoking Article 13 of the NATO treaty, a provision that allows a member state to withdraw after giving formal notice and observing a one-year transition period. He outlined a potential model in which new alliances could bring together countries prepared to take a more active military role. Among those he mentioned were Japan, Australia, and selected European states such as 'Germany and Poland, alongside Ukraine'. (Source: Novinite - Bulgaria)

April 2, 2026 / 8:13 PM EDT  Defense Secretary Hegseth has asked Army Chief of Staff Gen. George to step down and take immediate retirement. Two other Army officers were removed from their roles: Gen. Hodne, who led the Army's Transformation and Training Command, and Maj. Gen. Green, who headed the Army's Chaplain Corps. George previously served as the senior military assistant to Defense Secretary Austin from 2021 to 2022, during the Biden administration, after decades of service. According to his biography on the Army's website, George received his commission as an infantry officer from West Point in 1988 and deployed during Operation Desert Shield, Desert Storm in the first Gulf War, Operation Iraqi Freedom and Operation Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan. Before serving as Army chief of staff, he was vice chief of staff of the Army from 2022 to 2023. The Army chief of staff typically serves a four-year term. George was nominated for the position by President Biden and confirmed by the Senate in 2023. The current vice chief of staff of the Army, Gen. LaNeve, who was formerly Hegseth's military aide, will be acting Army chief of staff. He previously served as the commanding general of the Army's 82nd Airborne Division from 2022 to 2023. Chief Pentagon spokesperson Parnell said LaNeve is a battle-tested leader with decades of operational experience and is completely trusted by Secretary Hegseth to carry out the vision of this administration without fault. (Source: CBS News - U.S.)

04/02/26 4:17 PM ET  Vice President Vance will head to Hungary next week to hold bilateral meetings with Prime Minister Viktor Orbán and give remarks on the partnership between the U.S. and Hungary. Second lady Usha will be traveling with the vice president when he goes from April 7-8. The trip comes just days before Hungary’s election. President Trump endorsed Orbán in a lengthy social media post last month, calling him “highly respected [and a] truly strong and powerful leader with a proven track record of delivering phenomenal results.” “He fights tirelessly for, and loves, his Great Country and People, just like I do for the United States of America,” the president wrote. “Viktor works hard to Protect Hungary, Grow the Economy, Create Jobs, Promote Trade, Stop Illegal Immigration, and Ensure LAW AND ORDER!” Trump said he and Orbán have “reached new heights of cooperation and spectacular achievement” during his second term. Orbán has been the leader of Hungary for two decades. The Hungarian prime minister traveled to Washington in November, and the conversation mostly surrounded Orbán’s request to continue getting oil from Russia after the U.S. placed sanctions on exports. But it was also something of a lovefest, with the leaders trading compliments back and forth. “What we need is a golden age,” Orbán said at the time. “To open a golden age of the United States-Hungary relationship.” Secretary of State Rubio visited Budapest last month where he spoke about the two countries’ relations. (Source: The Hill - U.S.)

South America

Ecuador
April 1, 2026 / 4:35 PM EDT  American commandos in recent days joined Ecuadorian troops in a joint mission, aimed at dismantling a suspected criminal hub operated by an alleged narco-terrorist organization along the country's coast. The American forces worked in advisory roles. The operation, dubbed Lanza Marina, focused on a compound believed to serve as a staging ground for high-speed boats linked to Los Choneros, an Ecuadorian criminal organization. Last year, Los Choneros had been designated as a Foreign Terrorist Organization and Specially Designated Global Terrorists. Beyond the country's borders, Los Choneros has forged ties with powerful transnational networks, including Mexico's Sinaloa cartel and criminal groups from Albania, enabling it to play a role in global drug trafficking routes. The National Counter Terrorism Center assesses that the organization has approximately 12,000 members and while it primarily operates in Manabi, Ecuador, they also have a presence in at least 10 other Ecuadorian provinces as well as Colombia and Peru. (Source: CBS News - U.S.)

Global

April 04, 2026 11:55 IST  It was a set paradigm that modern wars would be short and decisive yet intense. Till 1999, India’s War Wastage Reserves (WWR) - the reserve of ammunition to meet the requirements of intense war or a full-scale war for the Armed Forces - was maintained for 40 days which was cut to 20 and then to 10 days. But after the border row with China escalated, in 2020, the WWR was again raised to 15 days. And now, in Iran, it is already the third time in just four years that this paradigm is being seriously questioned globally. The idea of modern wars to be short-lived, but decisive, stems from the concept of Revolution in Military Affairs or RMA which gained currency in the 1990s leading to its adoption in most modern militaries. RMA rested on three basic assumptions. First, with military technology making huge strides, there would be precision targeting yet with devastating effect and minimal collateral damage which would all lead to yielding fast decisions like victories or defeats. Second, the US demonstrated its vast technological superiority in the Gulf war in 1991 leading strategists to believe that this was to be the dominating trend in all future conflicts. Third, with network centric warfare becoming the norm, the process of decision-making would be faster leading to more effective war-fighting. This, in turn, would lead to faster decisions in wars. When Russia mounted a military foray into Ukraine on February 24, 2022, President Putin called it a special forces operation - which implied a tactical mission in the mistaken understanding that it would be a short affair of the military superpower Russia. But later the Russia-Ukraine war has transformed itself into a Russia versus western powers conflict that is still ongoing. When Israel launched a ground assault on Gaza, 20 days after a blitzkrieg attack by Hamas militants from the narrow Gaza Strip into Israel on October 7, 2023, there was a belief that Israel, with its ultra sophisticated weaponry and very professional military would make short shrift of Gaza - a 365 sq km big corridor that was home to about 23 lakh * people. Despite widespread destruction and loss of people on both sides, the conflict is yet to see its logical end. When US President Trump and Israeli PM Netanyahu decided to embark on a military campaign in Iran on February 28, the expectation was that it would be completed in just a week or so. It has now lasted for more than a month. It is more indicative of a protracted engagement. These wars have laid bare the fact that modern military strategies have been based on wrong assumptions. Preconceived finite wars ’are now becoming forever wars’; recent global conflicts like Russia-Ukraine, Israel-Gaza, and potential US-Iran engagements are proving to be protracted rather than short and decisive. (Source: The Week – India)
By Baruah
* lakh: 100 000

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Europe

Romania
31.03.2026  Romania’s American military bases could be at risk amid rising tensions between the US and Iran, a former Romanian chief of staff, retired Gen. Danila warned today. 'I wouldn't say that Romania doesn't have a problem, because there are American bases in Romania, and the Iranians said from the beginning that the American bases are the object - or identify these bases as targets for them', he said. The warning follows a message from Iran indicating it would respond politically and legally if Romania allows the US to use its bases for operations against Tehran. (Source: Anadolu Agency - Turkey)

European Commission
31/03/2026 - 20:58 GMT+2  If Viktor Orbán is re-elected and maintains his veto on the €90 billion loan for Ukraine, 'the EU should take a second look at the idea of using the Russian assets', Kallas said today while visiting Kyiv. Hungarian PM Orbán has blocked the financial lifeline over a dispute with Kyiv regarding the Druzhba oil pipeline, which has been non-operational since late January. His veto has featured prominently in his bruising re-election campaign. Plan A was the use of frozen assets, Kallas said in Kyiv. But Belgium resisted the proposal, warning of legal pitfalls, financial repercussions and reputation damage for the eurozone. Germany, Poland, the Nordics and the Baltics 'enthusiastically backed the plan'. France, Italy, Malta and Bulgaria also voiced strong concerns. The political debate stretched from September until December last year and ultimately collapsed. As an alternative, EU leaders agreed to provide Ukraine with a €90 billion loan based on common borrowing. Hungary, Slovakia and the Czech Republic secured an opt-out from the scheme. The €90 billion loan was on the verge of its final approval in February when Orbán abruptly vetoed the deal, demanding an immediate resumption of oil supplies through the Soviet-era Druzhba pipeline as a non-negotiable condition. "No oil, no money," Orbán said earlier this month. The European Commission has offered to organise an inspection of Druzhba and pay for repairs with EU funds. But 'the experts have been waiting for over two weeks to visit the site'. (Source: Euronews - based in Lyon, France)

31/03/2026 - 14:05 GMT+2  In May last year, a broad coalition of nations endorsed the creation of a special tribunal to prosecute the crime of aggression, which targets the political representatives ultimately responsible for launching the full-scale invasion. The tribunal has been designed under the auspices of the Council of Europe, the human rights organisation based in Strasbourg. About ten countries have expressed their intention to join the agreement that underpins the initiative, with Ukraine, Estonia, Lithuania and Luxembourg having completed the parliamentary procedures. In November, a 28-point plan was drafted by US and Russian officials that envisioned a blanket amnesty for war criminals. The draft has since then been turned into a 20-point plan. Negotiations remain stuck over territorial questions. Last week, High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, a vice-president of the European Commission, Kallas ’urged Washington to avoid falling into the trap of the Russian playbook’. Kallas now 'gathered some of the bloc's foreign ministers in Kyiv', ’except Hungary’, to commemorate four years of the Bucha massacre. Russia must be held accountable for what it has done to Ukraine, Kallas said while visiting the memorial site. The ’exclusion’ of Hungary comes amid a bitter dispute between Budapest and Ukraine over the paralysed Druzhba oil pipeline. (Source: Euronews - based in Lyon, France)

European Union
March 31, 2026 11:58 CET  Two things those in Brussels have known for years: The EU capital is known as the leaky city for a reason; There are - and always have been - limits to what diplomats will share among the 27 member states. Much of the chatter around Brussels in recent days has been about Hungary. First came a piece in The Washington Post that claimed the country's combative foreign minister, Szijjártó, made regular phone calls to his Russian counterpart, Lavrov, during the breaks of the EU's monthly EU Foreign Affairs Council. Then private phone conversations between a Politico journalist and an EU official were leaked online. The discussions centered on Hungarian-Ukrainian relations and the Hungarian ’investigative journalist’ Panyi, who has often broken stories about links between the ruling Fidesz party and Moscow. Last week, the Hungarian government charged Panyi with spying on behalf of Ukraine. Hungary's foreign minister then confirmed that he not only speaks to Russian colleagues before and after EU meetings but also to counterparts from Israel, Serbia, Turkey, and the United States. National ministers from the member states attend various council meetings in Brussels, and sometimes Luxembourg, on a monthly basis - in Szijjártó's case, it was the Foreign Affairs Council. All the ministers are usually in the room with a small team of aides from their capitals, along with a few of their country's officials based in Brussels. There are also officials from the EU's councils and European Commission. Then there are several translators. All in all, including the ministers, there could be around 100 people in the room, all with cell phones. It shouldn't, therefore, come as a surprise that some of these people are in touch with others outside the meeting room, often in their own capitals. It also shouldn't come as a surprise that some of these meeting attendees are in touch with foreign capitals and scoop-hungry journalists. With so many people in the room, most ministers are briefed beforehand and told to be selective about what they share. Often, they resort to simply reading pre-agreed lines and only veer off-script if absolutely necessary. In Brussels, the unwritten rule is to exchange sensitive information during bilateral meetings with trusted counterparts on the sidelines, rather than committing anything important to paper. After all, documents in the EU capital have a habit of ending up in the hands of the media - or worse. The European officials were a little shocked at the brazenness of doing passing on information to Moscow ’directly from a council meeting’. Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk's post on X confirmed that, for years, he had limited himself from speaking too much at meetings in Brussels. The EU summits between heads of government - the likes of which Tusk has attended many times in his years as prime minister and president of the European Council - are far less leaky and more secretive than ministerial meetings. There, the leaders tend not to bring their phones into the meeting room. And there are usually a few council officials who relay sanitized information from the room to national delegations. In turn, these leak versions that suit them best in their home countries. This is the Brussels version of the Telephone game. So what about all the documents? Legislative proposals are shared widely as all capitals need to decide on them at some point in the process. Many of these files are publicly available, so there are no secrets to truly pass on. Some documents, though, are far more restricted - for example, sanctions packages targeting countries such as Belarus, Russia, and Iran. These files shouldn't be liberally passed around, but they often end up in the hands of journalists, lobbyists, and others within hours of the European Commission sharing the documents with EU capitals. It is the way Brussels operates: The system is leaky and many hands are involved, so blame is always passed around, but no one is rarely found out. There are regular discussions on an ambassadorial level about leaks, but, in the end, ’there is usually an acceptance that a system in which documents must circulate among many people - including in the member states themselves - can never be completely leak-proof.’ Most politicians and officials are well aware of how a tactical, well-timed leak can sometimes benefit them. More of a concern is when internal briefing notes are passed around - documents drawn up from closed-door meetings at various levels, usually by diplomats from member states and often containing sensitive political and security information. Diplomats usually write these briefing notes for their colleagues back home. It's more than possible the leaks are coming from the various capitals rather than Brussels. Not everything is shared with everyone in the EU. On issues involving Turkey, for example, Greece and Cyprus are sometimes not briefed by member states; on military matters, which are mostly handled by NATO, some of the neutral states do not participate. In fact, the truly sensitive stuff in Brussels is just shared in various informal groupings of like-minded states that shift from topic to topic. None of that is going to change with the latest revelations about the leaks. Much of the focus in Brussels this week will be on how to combat energy prices as the Iran conflict rumbles on. EU energy ministers will have an informal meeting online today, and a day later the European Commission will present certain emergency measures member states can take such as subsidizing electricity bills and allowing more flexibility for state aid rules to help energy companies. (Source: RFERL - U.S.)
by Jozwiak, the Europe editor for RFE/RL in Prague, focusing on coverage of the European Union and NATO. He previously worked as RFE/RL’s Brussels correspondent. He has reported from most European capitals, as well as Central Asia.

Norway
31 March 2026 - 11:49  When Russia revised its Marine Doctrine in 2022, it included the possible use of civilian fishing vessels in wartime scenarios. The manoeuvres of Russian fishing vessels in northern Norwegian waters are blurring the line between seeking shelter from bad weather and potential intelligence-gathering. Russian vessels have sought shelter in Norwegian fjords more than 230 times since 2022 until March this year. Ten vessels remained sheltered for between five and ten days - longer than the duration of the adverse weather. Of the 222 permissions granted during the four-year period, 51 were issued between 26 February and 21 March 2022. Most were in waters around Akkarfjord and Hammerfest, though some were also granted in fjords stretching from Lyngen in the west to Porsanger in the east. This came only weeks after the Russian Northern Fleet had closed off a huge area across the Barents Sea for a surprise drill involving the strategic nuclear forces. It is a well-known fact that Russia, in case of a escalating global conflict, may want to conduct sea denial and maritime interdiction operations for the entire Barents Sea including west of the maritime border with Norway. “We clearly see that some Russian vessels, including fishing vessels, have the capacity to map subsea activity,” Øksenvåg, head of the fisheries section of the Norwegian Coast Guard said. Despite these concerns and warnings, nearly all - if not all - Russian vessels that request shelter are approved. 115 Russian fishing vessels were granted permission to operate in Norwegian waters in 2026. Military officials emphasise that all vessels seeking shelter are thoroughly background-checked and that any area granted for shelter is pre-cleared. Less than two weeks ago, a group of trawlers from northern Russia lined up in Lyngen, north of Tromsø, during a period of strong winds - coinciding with the withdrawal of troops following NATO’s Cold Response exercise. Further north, in the Fisheries Protection Zone around Svalbard, EU and Norwegian sanctions do not apply, companies such as Murman Seafood are therefore still 'permitted' to fish. This winter, one of the company’s trawlers - Melkart-5 - showed highly unusual navigation practices in the immediate vicinity of a subsea cable in the Norwegian North Sea, in Isfjorden, crossing one of two fibre-optic links connecting Svalbard to mainland Norway multiple times, immediately before it was severely damaged. (Source: The Barents Observer - Norway)

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Europe

Hungary
Tuesday 31 March 2026 16:10 BST  PM Victor Orbán has always sought to keep Hungary out of the Ukraine-Russia war and protect its interests. ’This underscores EU unease that Hungary is undermining bloc efforts to aid Ukraine’. Mr Orbán and the FIDESZ-KDNP party faces his toughest election in 16 years on 12 April. Days before the pivotal election, a leaked audio has surfaced, recording of Hungary's foreign minister discussing EU sanctions with his Russian counterpart. Released by Warsaw-based Vsquare.org on Tuesday, the clip allegedly captures an August 2024 call between Hungarian Foreign Minister Szijjártó and Russia's Lavrov. ’A Vsquare representative told Reuters the outlet independently verified the audio recording using sources in more than one country and with the help of external audio experts’. According to the recording published by Vsquare, Lavrov called Szijjártó to remind him of a promise to help remove the sister of a Russian businessman from the EU's sanctions list. In the English-language audio, Szijjártó responds that Hungary and Slovakia would submit a proposal the following week to remove the woman from the list. The leak follows PM Viktor Orbán's recent investigation order into alleged wiretapping of Mr Szijjártó. Mr Szijjártó did not deny that the call with Lavrov took place and acknowledged that his conversations had been ’intercepted’. Vsquare also reported on a separate call, for which it did not provide audio, in which Szijjártó allegedly told Russia's Deputy Energy Minister Sorokin that he was working to repeal EU sanctions targeting Russia's shadow fleet of oil tankers. Szijjártó, on Facebook, called the wiretapping a huge scandal. It is a huge scandal ... that foreign secret services were continuously wiretapping my phone calls and that these foreign secret services have now made these phone calls public one and a half weeks before the Hungarian parliamentary election, he said in a video on his Facebook page. Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico told a news conference removing someone from an EU sanctions list requires the agreement of all 27 member states. "So you cannot accuse anyone of being a Russian agent; then you must accuse all 27 member states of being Russian agents if they have reached a decision," he said. PM Orbán has fostered warm ties with President Putin maintaining Hungary’s heavy reliance on Russian oil and gas. The adversary, Magyar and Tisza party ’leads’ most independent polls significantly. Mr Orbán maintains his aim to keep Hungary out of the war and protect its interests. (Source: Independent - United Kingdom)
by ’Komuves

31/03/2026 - 15:28 GMT+2  A group of 'investigative journalists' today released a recording of a phone call between Hungarian Foreign Minister Szijjártó and his Russian counterpart, Lavrov. The European Union severed political ties with Russia following its invasion of Ukraine in 2022 and has urged member states to gradually phase out Russian fossil fuels. Hungary and Slovakia have maintained regular high-level contacts with Russian officials and continue to import significant volumes of Russian energy. Following the publication of the recording, Szijjártó downplayed the incident and accused foreign intelligence services of tapping his phone. ’It has been known for some time that foreign secret services - with the active participation of Hungarian journalists - have been intercepting my phone conversations. Today, the eavesdroppers made another great 'discovery': they proved that I say the same thing in public as on the phone. Nice work!" he wrote. The minister added that his government had never agreed to sanction entities critical to Hungary’s energy security and had opposed listing individuals when sanctions served no clear purpose. “We will continue to adhere to this approach in the future,” he said. In the recording, Lavrov also told Szijjártó that the Hungarian minister has been receiving extensive coverage in Russian media. "Did I say something wrong?" Szijjártó asked. "No. They were just saying that you are pragmatically fighting for the interests of your country," Lavrov replied. (Source: Euronews - based in Lyon, France)
by ’Zsiros

March 31, 2026 11:58 CET  In Brussels most are waiting for possibly the most consequential elections in Europe this year as Hungary goes to the polls on April 12. With so much EU policy - notably related to support for Ukraine - becoming part of the Hungarian election campaign, there is a sense in the EU capital that things will only start to move once the elections are over, ’no matter’ if Fidesz' Viktor Orbán manages to prolong his 16-years-reign or if his rival and Tisza party wins. Nearly all officials both from EU institutions and EU member states openly admit ’they would prefer a Tisza victory’. EU-Ukrainian relations will likely ’improve’ with Magyar in power. There is an expectation in Brussels that the 90-billion-euro ’loan’ to Ukraine blocked by Orbán due to the lack of Russian oil supplies via the Druzhba pipeline, will be approved in April. A European Commission team of experts is ’currently’ (since 17 March) in Ukraine. ’They haven't yet gained access to the damaged pipeline’. There is hope in the EU that the infrastructure will soon be fixed, the oil will start flowing to Central Europe, and ’the loan’ will subsequently be waved through. ’Politicking both in Budapest and Kyiv prevents any moves before April 12’. The EU's 20th sanctions package on Russia, first meant to be approved on February 22, is also expected to be approved after the election. ’The initial proposal, which included a maritime services ban related to Russian petroleum products that would prohibit EU-based companies from providing services to any vessel transporting these products from Russian ports’, is likely to be watered down or removed altogether due to spiraling energy costs in the wake of the Iran conflict. 'If Tisza wins, however, there will be an urge in Brussels to test some of the previous sanctions proposals that Hungarian up till now has rejected. 'These include ’sanctions on Russian nuclear energy’, which other EU countries that still cooperate with Russia's Rosatom are likely to veto. More symbolically, there is also an expectation in Brussels that more foreign policy statements will be signed off by all 27 EU member states going forward. The EU has in recent years had to put out statements just in the name of the EU foreign policy chief after Hungary vetoed common texts, for example, condemned Belarus's sham presidential election in 2025, welcomed the ICC arrest warrant for Putin, and commemorated the anniversary of the death of Russian opposition leader Navalny. ’A potential Magyar government’ might be more inclined to approve individual sanctions on Russian Patriarch Kirill or people heading various Russian sports organizations and federations as „the current Orbán government has maintained a policy to veto any potential blacklistings of religious and sports-related individuals”. New attempts to sanction violent Israeli settlers on the West Bank, vetoed by Budapest since 2024, and an attempt from 2025 to blacklist leading figures in the ruling Georgian dream party, also shot down by the Hungarians, ’might be resuscitated with a Tisza government’ even though other EU member states such as the Czech Republic and Slovakia might take over the veto button at least when it comes to Tbilisi. With all sanction decisions needing unanimity, including rollovers, Brussels will be keen to see whether 'a potential' new Hungarian government would de-list individuals ahead of every renewal period. The sitting Fidesz government has been known for leveraging its green light for extensions to successfully de-list Russian oligarchs such as, for example, Kantor. It does appear, however, that Slovakia has become just as well-versed in this game, although it remains to be seen if Bratislava will do so without Budapest's backing. Magyar is not a fan of a ’quick’ EU accession for Ukraine. The process must be merit-based and hence take time. He would ’most probably be OK’ with the opening of talks with Ukraine (and Moldova, which is paired with Kyiv) soon. There is hope in Brussels that three vetoes would be reversed if ’someone new’ is in charge in Hungary: Vetoes on 6.6 billion euros' worth of lethal aid from the bloc's European’Peace’ Facility (EPF) slated for Kyiv; The possibility of sharing satellite images with Ukraine from the EU's Satellite Center (SatCen); and revising the mandates of the two EU missions to Ukraine, European Union Advisory Mission for Civilian Security Sector Reform (2022–) /EUAM/ and European Union Military Assistance Mission /EUMAM/, to include them in future European security guarantees for Kyiv. There are quite a few issues related to Ukraine that are trickier to solve if Fidesz remains in power. While Orbán has made many harsh statements about Ukraine and Zelenskyy, especially in recent months, he is expected to mellow somewhat, if he wins and allow some of his vetoes to be lifted. Some accession chapter negotiations to be opened some time in the future, it is far from certain. Orbán has made it clear he doesn't see Ukraine as a future EU member and has vetoed the start of Kyiv's accession talks since 2024. A Fidesz government has made it a central point not to support Ukraine militarily in any way. (Source: RFERL - U.S.)

(31 March 2026)  Hungary heads toward an April 12 parliamentary election. U.S. conservatives have long pointed to Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán as proof that a Western leader can crack down on immigration, defy global institutions and wage war on woke liberalism – and still win elections. But after 16 years in power, Europe’s champion of illiberal democracy could be voted out of office. Defeat for Orbán would reverberate well beyond Hungary, casting doubt on the durability of a political system that some on the American right have touted as a blueprint for reshaping Western democracy. It would also come as slowing for some of Europe’s ’far-right’ parties, with Trump’s unpopularity increasingly seen as a liability among European voters. Opinion polls show Orbán and his Fidesz party face the toughest electoral challenge since returning to power in 2010. ’In most independent surveys, they trail' the center-right Tisza party, led by Magyar, 45. While he vows to tackle corruption and democratic backsliding, blaming both on Orbán’s long rule, Magyar’s rallies focus on bread and butter concerns such as low wages, rising food prices and deteriorating public services. Orbán, 62, has depicted Magyar as a risky bet who will bow to the European Union and drag the country into the Ukraine war. Pro- Orbán campaign posters reinforce that message, branding Fidesz as The Safe Choice. High-profile backing from Washington – including Trump’s endorsement and a planned visit by Vice President Vance on April 7-8 – ’is unlikely to shift the outcome’. Under the Obama administration, Washington repeatedly warned that Orbán’s government was eroding democratic norms, including judicial independence. That criticism largely faded once Trump began his first term. Orbán was the first European leader to endorse Trump during his 2016 presidential bid. Trump has praised Orbán as “a truly strong and powerful leader.” Hungary under Orbán has moved closer to him, including by joining his “Board of Peace,” an initiative that challenges the United Nations’ traditional role. Conferences in Budapest have drawn conservative figures from across the U.S. to study his political playbook. Orbán has repeatedly defied the European Union bloc most notably by opposing Ukraine’s bid for membership and maintaining close ties with Russia. His opponent, Magyar, has vowed to ’re anchor’ Hungary in the West. On his Truth Social platform, Trump has credited Orbán with helping the U.S. and Hungary reach “new heights of cooperation and spectacular achievement.” Trump counted Orbán as a “close partner, respected leader, and a winner for the people of Hungary – a great ally to the United States,” White House spokesperson Wales said in an email to Reuters. But the Trump administration has not given Orbán the kind of economic backing extended to another ally, President Milei of Argentina. Secretary of State Rubio, during a visit to Budapest on February 16, made only vague promises of finding ways to provide assistance if Hungary’s economy was struggling. Vance’s planned visit, days before the vote, highlights Orbán’s place in a Trump aligned global conservative network, a role underscored in March by two Budapest conferences attended by right wing politicians and activists from around the world. At a March 21 gathering of CPAC Hungary – an offshoot of the Conservative Political Action Conference, a prominent annual forum of U.S. conservatives – attendees included Argentina’s Milei, Weidel of Germany’s ’far-right’ Alternative for Germany, and two Republican congressmen, Fulcher of Idaho and Harris of Maryland. The conference was closed to Reuters and other traditional media. Harris warned of vandals seeking to destroy Christian values and urged Hungarians to throw the vandals out and shut the gate, adding that the future of Western, Christian, free civilization depends on it. Harris told Reuters Orbán’s leadership led the way for the victory of many right-of-center leaders in Europe. ’Of course, that put a political target on him.’ Two days after CPAC Hungary, Orbán hosted leaders of at least 10 European ’far-right’ parties, including France’s Le Pen and Wilders of the Netherlands. Their alliance, Patriots for Europe - founded by Orbán and allies in 2024 - is now the third largest group in the European Parliament. Billboards in Budapest remain dominated by Fidesz today. Changes in election law under Orbán have also allowed his party to win supermajorities ’with less than 50% of votes’. Kiszelly, a pro-Orbán analyst, said his conservative contacts in the U.S. were unfazed by Orbán’s ’polling troubles’, arguing that Trump’s 2024 victory had taught them not to trust surveys. He said Orbán appeared to be trailing only because of pro opposition pollsters, pointing instead to polling by McLaughlin & Associates, a U.S. firm known for its work with Trump and other conservative politicians, that showed Orbán’s Fidesz leading the rival Tisza party by six points. Kiszelly said such a margin would allow Fidesz to retain power outright or govern with the ’far right’ Our Homeland party. “The opposition has no chance,” he said. ’Most polls, however, suggest otherwise’. (Source: MSN - U.S. / Reuters - United Kingdom)
by 'Komuves and Marshall

March 31, 2026 4:00 AM CET  In final stretch of Hungarian election race. The campaign has been characterized by allegations from two camps. Kyiv dominates campaign, Ukraine is front and center in the race, with Orbán pushing hard to seize on popular antipathy toward Hungary’s neighbor. The government claims Kyiv is trying to destabilize the economy by halting Russian oil supplies via the Druzhba pipeline. Hungarian authorities also seized a convoy transporting cash and gold from a bank in Austria to a Ukrainian bank in Kyiv, with senior Hungarian government officials suggesting the funds could have been used to finance the opposition’s campaign against Orbán, the EU leader who has repeatedly blocked EU attempts to support Ukraine. Orbán is doubling down on attempts to cast Magyar and his opposition Tisza party as pro-Ukrainian, warning that an opposition victory would drag Hungary into a war with Russia and divert funds to a profoundly corrupt Kyiv, while simultaneously accusing Ukraine of trying to unseat him. Two weeks ago, the authorities raided the homes of two IT specialists working for Tisza, accusing them of acting as spies on behalf of Ukraine. ’Ukraine has interfered in Hungary’s elections with money, pressure and agents. We understand their interests, but we will never accept foreign interference in Hungary’s future,” Orbán said on Sunday. Magyar denies the allegations, says Orbán - with the help of Russia - has used the power of the state to undermine Tisza from within. ’We have reason to believe that the Hungarian intelligence services, in cooperation with Eastern powers, deployed … originally military-grade spyware on TISZA’s systems and network,”’ Magyar wrote on X March 26. He accuses Orbán’s government of ’outright treason’ for its snug relations with President Putin’s Russia, which he says a new administration will investigate. Orbán’s international spokesman, Kovács, dismissed Magyar’s accusations, saying the government’s contacts with Russia were routine diplomacy. Yesterday, he insisted the investigation into alleged Ukrainian infiltration of Tisza was ongoing and free from political pressure. “Their ongoing job is to protect Hungarian national interests,” Kovács said of the investigators. He did not rule out new revelations before the election. As ’the polls continue to suggest’ that the opposition Tisza Party could win, analysts warn that ’both Tisza and the ruling Fidesz ’may clash after election night and challenge the result’. A documentary ’by independent journalists’ called The Price of a Vote, aired March 26, alleged widespread vote-buying and pressure on voting in rural communities. Kovács, Orbán’s international spokesperson, dismissed the allegations and called the documentary an anti-Fidesz political weapon. The Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe’s electoral observation mission on Friday published a report flagging concerns that Hungary’s media landscape is fueling pro-government messaging. Independent and critical outlets operate alongside a much larger pro-government media sector, the report read. Kovács dismissed the OSCE’s concerns, calling its warnings of government influence over the media a political opinion and casting doubt on the credibility of its findings. An organization closely linked to Fidesz, the Civic Cooperation Forum, has called on U.S. President Trump’s Board of Peace, which promotes global conflict resolution, to deploy an election observation mission ahead of the April 12 vote. A conservative Polish think tank yesterday announced a coalition of 100 international observers from 10 EU and non-EU countries under the banner “Liberty Coalition for a Free and Fair Election.” The coalition is co-led by the president of the Edmund Burke Foundation, which regularly organizes National Conservatism Conferences in Brussels and Washington. Previous guests of those summits include U.K. right-wing political leader Farage, French ’far-right’ essayist and politician Zemmour, American conservative political activist Carlson - and Viktor Orbán himself. Orbán’s political director, Orbán, welcomed the new mission: Independent eyes help ensure the outcome speaks for itself, he said. (Source: Politico - U.S.)

Italy
31 March 2026  German magistrates created an international alert in early March, as part of an investigation into alleged close ties between Italian political circles and German antifa groups, some of which are accused of involvement in violent attacks. The German inquiry centres on the network known as Antifa Ost or Hammerbande (Hammer Gang/Banda del martello), which is based in Leipzig. German authorities, including the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV), classify that network as a violent left-wing extremist group involved in targeted aggressions against individuals and environments perceived as neo-Nazi or far-right. Salis is cited in the report of the German investigation into the Hammerbande group. Salis was suspected of being involved in the notorious German 'Hammer Gang', accused of attacking politicians in Hungary with hammers last year. The same network is referenced in Hungarian investigations into events in Budapest in February 2023 * during the “Day of Honour” commemoration. In those Budapest incidents, Hungarian prosecutors accused Salis of participating in coordinated assaults on several people accused of being associated with the hard-right gathering. The attacks allegedly involved weapons, including a hammer, and caused injuries. Hungarian authorities described them as part of actions linked to militants from Italy and Germany, with investigative lines converging on Antifa Ost as the most radical component. Salis faced charges including attempted assault and membership of an extreme left-wing criminal organisation. She was facing a potential 20-year custodial sentence in Hungary. She spent over 15 months in pre-trial detention in Hungary before her election to the European Parliament in June 2024 granted her immunity and led to her release. Italian police, responding to a request from German authorities, questioned Italian MEP Salis in her Rome hotel room as she travelled to a No Kings demonstration on 28 March 2026. The Italian police questioned her about her travel to Rome and plans for the demonstration that afternoon and whether she possessed any potentially dangerous objects. The interaction lasted around one hour. No arrest or charges resulted from the check. The European Parliament has repeatedly voted to permit Salis to retain her immunity, shielding her from prosecution in Hungary. In November 2025, the US Department of State was designating Antifa Ost, along with other far-left networks including the Federazione Anarchica Informale/Fronte Rivoluzionario Internazionale (FAI/FRI), as Specially Designated Global Terrorists (SDGT). /Source: Brussels Signal - Belgium/
* See: video (Source: X - U.S.)
Since 10 Jun 2024: 2,7 million views

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Asia

Iran
March 31, 2026 11:41 CET  Explosions. Fires lit up the night sky in the Iranian city of Isfahan which is home to the Badr military air base. The US reportedly used a large number of bunker-busting bombs overnight on March 30-3l. (Source: RFERL)
Video

31/03/2026 1:04 pm  Iranian air defense forces announced today that they shot down a US MQ-9 drone flying over the city of Isfahan. This move represents a new escalation in the ongoing tensions between Tehran and Washington. The Iranian military spokesman indicated that the drone was conducting a reconnaissance mission. (Source: Voice of Emirates - Dubai, United Arab Emirates)

March 30, 2026  Instead of an immediate collapse, the decapitation of the Iranian regime appears to have produced an unpredictable constellation of second-order effects. The February 28 decapitation strike convinced Iran’s remaining leadership that this is an existential war - not a limited confrontation like the Twelve-Day War. At the very least, it physically eliminated Iran’s few pragmatic leaders who in the past favored restraint. It thus handed over power to the hardliners of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. The war appears to have paralyzed Iran’s domestic opposition, whose adherents may despise the regime but - unlike the U.S. and Israel - do not want to see their country break up into ethnic statelets. Today’s ruling Principalists in Iran are largely provincial in origin, domestically rooted, and lack the international ties that once offered pathways of exit. They do not hold dual citizenships, do not maintain foreign residences, few of them possess the linguistic or social capital to relocate abroad. They have no viable exit. For them, defeat is not exile - it is annihilation. Under such conditions, the expectation is not capitulation, but resistance to the very end.    Starting in 2001, the campaigns in Afghanistan and Iraq offered Iranian war planners a prolonged and unusually comprehensive vantage point from which to study the American way of war in their immediate neighborhood. The Iranians analyzed these methods, learned from them, and internalized their logic into their own asymmetric warfare doctrine, now put into operation. It channels the state’s military, civilian, economic, and informational assets into a multi-domain, protracted insurgency campaign designed to inflict maximum pain on its enemies. It rests on its asymmetric patience - its capacity to endure more physical and emotional torment than its Western or Western-backed opponents - refined skill during the 'War of Holy Defense' (1980-1988), the deadliest conventional war ever fought in the developing world. The then-newly formed Islamic Republic suffered over 500,000 casualties - many of those due to exposure to chemical warfare - but managed to bring Hussein’s Western-backed Iraq into a standstill and force it into a truce. To do so, they even resorted to so-called human wave assaults. That was largely how the Basij, the Iranian regime’s paramilitary ’street gangs’ that continue to operate in modern-day Iran, were initially formed.    On March 28, the Telegram channel belonging to the Iranian Supreme Leader Khamenei issued an infographic titled The Path to Defeating the Enemy in the Economic War, first developed in 2014 by the late Supreme Leader Khamenei. The goal of the economy of resistance is to prevent the destruction of the Islamic Republic and the Westernization of Iranian society. With crucial help by China and Russia, Iran has largely managed to insulate its economy from the global economic system that is now reeling under Iran’s asymmetric attacks. Controlling the flow of traffic in the Arabian Gulf through the Strait of Hormuz is the center of gravity of Iran’s economy of resistance doctrine. The Iranian regime has managed to transform its conflict with the U.S. and Israel from a regional skirmish into an international war with potentially epoch-defining ramifications for the global financial system. Tehran is therefore highly unlikely to surrender the Strait back to its Gulf Cooperation Council neighbors without expressed guarantees for the regime’s survival. It is exceedingly difficult to see how the control of the Strait could be wrestled away from Iran using naval military assets. During the peak of the Red Sea crisis, even the most advanced navy destroyers were overwhelmed by a land-based assailant that is able to launch a saturation attack against them with drones or other projectiles. These warships can defend themselves, until they run out of ammunition and are forced to return to port in order to rearm. Analyses of Iranian targeting reveal Tehran’s central tactical goal to disable enemy radar installations and refueling aircraft needed to support American and Israeli fighter jets for long-range air operations. The regime has placed most of its strategic military components deep inside Iran. There is little doubt that Moscow began providing Tehran real-time targeting data about American and Israeli military and civilian assets at the very onset of the war. Moscow and Beijing also begun supplying Iran with drones and rocket fuel, according to Western intelligence. So long as the Iranian regime remains in control domestically, it will never run out of drones, which they can use to attack ships sailing through the Strait of Hormuz. For the foreseeable future, therefore, Iranian authorities will continue to force ships sailing through the Strait of Hormuz to pay a toll in order to sail through unharmed. Many ships have complied by paying as much as Chinese ¥14 million (U.S. $2 million) in exchange for an official certificate from the Iranian authorities. By showing this certificate to their marine insurer they keep their insurance costs manageable and stay in business. Without such a certificate no insurance firm in the world will agree to insure a ship going through the Strait of Hormuz at a reasonable price. And, unlike the stock market, maritime insurance firms such as Lloyds of London do not get swayed by U.S. President Trump’s posts on TruthSocial. They will wait until they see tangible proof before lowering insurance costs. The entirely rational Russian and Chinese assistance to Iran undoubtedly frustrates American and Israeli war planners. The Kremlin 'has emerged as one of the primary beneficiaries' of the Iran war, as the surging oil prices and the lifting of American sanctions on Russian oil exports have helped reinvigorate Russia’s long-suffering economy. China has also seen an extensive array of American carrier strike groups and highly sophisticated air defense systems vacate the Indo-Pacific region for the Middle East. China has stockpiled enough oil for over 200 days, after which time it can secure oil via land from both Iran and Russia. In contrast, a prolonged energy standoff in the Arabian Gulf has the potential to push the economies of its regional rivals - including Korea, Japan, the Philippines, and Thailand, to the brink. Beijing therefore will do its best to ensure that a protracted and inconclusive conflict in Iran continues.    Victory in this war will not belong to the side that can inflict the most pain, but rather to the side that can endure the most pain for the longest time. Iran’s demonstrated asymmetric patience places it in a dominant position over the neurotic and anxiety-ridden markets, to which the Trump administration is extremely attune. The Iranian regime is also far better-placed to endure this conflict than the demanding and perpetually impatient American voter, to whom Trump promised in 2024 that “starting on day 1, we will end inflation and make America affordable again” Even the Israelis, who are markedly more stoic than the Americans, cannot necessarily be counted to continue to support this war for very long. They will soon be entering their second month of nightly air raids, with massive disruptions in daily life and a desperately strained war economy. The White House is clearly weighing the possibility of using a ground force as a means of putting added economic and military pressure on Tehran.   Much has been made of the 5,000 U.S. Marines, as well as a host of stand-by global-response elements of the U.S. Army’s 82nd Airborne Division, who are on their way to the Gulf. There are reports that these forces could move in on Kharg island and occupy the sea port that Iran uses to distribute up to 90 percent of its oil exports via tankers. Other reports claim that U.S. ground forces could occupy Iranian coastal regions around the Strait of Hormuz, in an effort to prevent Iran from launching missiles and drones against cargo ships. Such plans are unlikely to materialize. Numbers associated with these reports seem inadequate to occupy Kharg or the coastline around the Strait of Hormuz for more than a few days and require substantial support in the form of near-complete air dominance, persistent surveillance capabilities, as well as a multitude of naval assets for force protection and adequate resupply. It is far more likely that these troops will be used for short-term raids aimed at destroying or disabling key Iranian military or civilian installations. These operations may or may not prove successful. They are also likely to face rates of attrition that the U.S. has not seen since the peak period of the Iraqi insurgency. Another possible option is for the U.S. and Israel to leave the Iranian regime in place and attempt instead to defang it by covertly extracting its strategic uranium stockpiles. This would require the use of highly specialized Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) elements trained in the covert extraction of weapons of mass destruction. Which does the precise whereabouts be of these stockpiles? Providing that such intelligence can be acquired, that the stockpiles are not scattered in too many disparate locations, and that the uranium is physically possible to extract safely, a covert expeditionary force is conceivable. Alternatively, the JSOC extraction force would need to be supported by elements of the 82nd Airborne Division, possibly the Ranger Regiment, as well as perhaps multiple Delta Force squadrons. This could end up resembling a small military campaign. Once again, the possibility of high attrition rates would need to be carefully weighed.   The strategic reality is now stark. The U.S. and Israel are no longer dictating the tempo of this war - they are reacting to it. A wounded but resilient Iranian regime has seized the initiative, and no external actor - certainly not NATO - is coming to reverse that fact. What remains are narrowing choices, each more costly than the last: escalation, attrition, or strategic compromise. None promise clean outcomes. All carry risk. This war will spill into markets, into supply chains, into households. What comes next will be messy, violent, expensive. (Source: Intelnews - U.S.)
by Fitsanakis

March 30, 2026  The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) announced yesterday that Iran’s heavy water production plant in Khondab is no longer operational, following damage sustained amid U.S.-Israeli strikes on Iran. In a post on X, the UN nuclear watchdog stated that the facility currently does not contain any declared nuclear material. IAEA Director General Grossi underscored the gravity of the situation yesterday, stating that “nuclear facilities should never be targeted, nor should their physical integrity be compromised.” (Source: SANA - Syria)

05:45, 29 Mar 2026  Iran signed the Biological Weapons Convention (BWC) in 1973, banning the development, production and stockpiling of biological weapons. Since 1979, the US has continued to raise the alarm that the country has accelerated offensive research. All signatories are called upon to submit an annual report, but this requirement is not a legal commitment. Each report includes data on research centres and laboratories, national biological defence programmes, outbreaks of infectious diseases, details on policies for publishing results of biological research, a declaration of all laws and regulations, and vaccine production sites. Iran has done so twice – once in 2016 and then in 2021. 'Turning to chemical or biological as its missile supply dwindles is a real risk that the West is blind to'. Iran carnage could spiral into chemical and biological warfare from weaponised botox clinics to leaks from DIY labs. But it is feared an accidental deadly leak from a lab or nuclear infrastructure could also be sparked as the US and Israel continue to trade blows with the 'rogue' nation. De Bretton-Gordon, former commander of the Army’s Chemical, Biological, Radiological and Nuclear Regiment warned Iran is known to have chemical capability – having used it during its war against Iraq in the 1980s. 'The Russians are advising them [Iran] and giving them a lot of intelligence and you only have to look to Ukraine and how Russia has used chemical weapons', he told. 'When I was with the Peshmerga [security forces of the Kurdistan Region] as their chemical weapons advisor in the fight against isis and the Iranian militias in between 2015 and 2017, the Iranian militias used nerve agents and chlorine against us. So one must assume that they still have that capability'. MacIntyre, a professor of global biosecurity at the University of New South Wales, said Iran 'could be plotting to create temporary labs in enemy nations to develop biological weapons undetected' – ready to be released at any chosen time. 'The clandestine labs discovered in the US in Reedley and Las Vegas as well as recent examples of smuggling biological materials indicate how easy a Trojan Horse attack would be'. The biggest risk is that we fail to recognise a serious epidemic as having an unnatural origin, MacIntyre said. In health and medicine, we are not taught about biowarfare, and 'epidemics, when they occur, are assumed to be natural'. Legitimate medical and scientific studies can very quickly be used for dual purpose. A pharmaceutical facility inside Iran that is making botox for their medical use can very quickly be ramped up to be making huge quantities of something that is highly toxic. There are two manufacturers of the neurotoxin – most commonly used cosmetically for facial wrinkles and medically for migraines. Derived from the botulinum toxin, one of the most poisonous substances known, a large dose could kill tens of thousands of people. Illegal botox supplies linked to illegal cosmetic clinics means there is a blackmarket in botox already, which could be exploited. Physical disruption to labs is possible during conflict, which may then result in biocontainment breaches and epidemics. (Source: The U.S. Sun)

29/03/2026 - 11:45  Iran’s Revolutionary Guards have threatened to target U.S. university campuses in the Middle East unless Washington formally condemns the strikes on two Iranian universities. Iran has also continued attacks on major infrastructure in Gulf countries, recently hitting aluminum plants in Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates that it claims are linked to the US military. (Source: France 24)

11:06-29 March 2026  The war-outcome future of Iran’s regional allies, particularly Hezbollah in Lebanon and armed factions in Iraq: Scenarios. At present, diplomatic solution scenario appears unlikely. The United States is demanding concessions that Iran had previously rejected, while Tehran is putting forward conditions that are seen as difficult to meet. Among these are demands related to control over key maritime routes and broader regional security arrangements. Iran has also linked any potential ceasefire to developments on the Lebanese front, suggesting an effort to maintain influence there. A diplomatic resolution would raise critical questions about Hezbollah’s future, including the status of its weapons, its fighters and its role within Lebanon’s political system. If current situation persists, a prolonged war of attrition is seen as a scenario that could work in Iran’s favor. Time and economic resources, particularly oil revenues, could allow Tehran to sustain the conflict while gradually wearing down its adversaries. This scenario could lead to deeper instability across the region, particularly in Gulf states, while exacerbating internal tensions in Iraq. In Lebanon, continued conflict could further weaken state institutions and increase the risk of internal unrest. In a war scenario a broader military escalation remains a possibility. The United States has considered expanded operations involving ground, naval and air forces. Potential targets could include Iran’s strategic oil export facilities, such as Kharg Island, as well as key islands controlling access to the Strait of Hormuz. More complex operations, such as seizing enriched uranium, are considered less likely due to the challenges involved. For Washington, any such operation would need to achieve a clear outcome. If a military campaign were to succeed, Lebanon would face major challenges, including addressing Hezbollah’s future and managing relations with Israel. Iraq could see an opportunity to strengthen state authority and consolidate internal stability. Failure could have significant consequences for the United States and its allies. The broader regional situation would likely remain unstable, with limited immediate impact on Iraq but continued uncertainty for Lebanon. (Source: Asharq Al Awsat - headquartered in London, England, owned by a member of the Saudi royal family)

Iraq
2026/03/29 11:34 AM  In a statement published on the State Department’s website, the United States today condemned an attack targeting the residence of Kurdistan Region of Iraq President Barzani in Duhok, describing it as a threat to Iraq’s sovereignty, unity and stability. Washington said it unequivocally condemns the terrorist attacks carried out by Iran-linked militias against the residence of the Iraq’s Kurdistan Region president. (Source: SANA - Syria)

(29 March 2026)  The British Embassy in Iraq today condemned the drone attack targeting the residence of Kurdistan Region President Barzani in Duhok, calling the incident unacceptable. The statement was posted on the UK mission’s X account. The drone strike on Barzani’s residence occurred yesterday, marking the fifth known attack on his headquarters since the onset of the ongoing conflict in Iran. (Source: Kurdistan24)

Mar. 29, 2026  Targeting Kurdistan Region President Barzani’s Duhok residence was a despicable and unacceptable act, Walai, secretary-general of Iraq's pro-Iran Kataib Sayyid al-Shuhada, said today, drawing similarities to last week’s attack on the residence of Fayyadh, head of Iraq’s Popular Mobilization Commission (PMC), and implying US-Israeli involvement in the attack on the Kurdish leader’s domicile. PMC was institutionalized and officially incorporated into the Iraqi state security apparatus as part of the Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF). The group was designated by the US State Department in September. Walai was citing the Kurdish leader’s opposition to a potential entry of Iranian-Kurdish opposition groups into the conflict. American-Israeli strikes have targeted PMF positions across the country since the start of the war, killing over 80 PMF fighters and wounding hundreds others. Iran has denied involvement in the attack, with the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) condemning it as an act of terrorism, and blaming the US and Israel for the strike. The US on the other hand blamed Iran and its proxies. The Kurdistan Region has repeatedly been targeted throughout the US-Israeli war with Iran. The attacks by Iran and its proxies have not been limited to US interests in the Region. On Tuesday, at least six Peshmerga were killed and 30 others injured in an Iranian ballistic missile attack on the forces’ bases in Erbil province’s Soran administration. President Barzani said in the early hours today that the Kurdistan Region has been targeted over 450 times since the war started. (The NewRegion - headquartered in Erbil Governorate, Iraq)

Israel
31.03.26, 11:50 AM  Knesset passed a law that allows death penalty by hanging for Palestinians convicted for murdering Israelis. There is a separate bill under consideration dealing with punishment for the October 7, 2023 attackers in Israel's custody. The Association of Civil Rights in Israel called the legislation discriminatory by design and said the parliament had enacted it without legal authority over West Bank Palestinians, who are not Israeli citizens. Many in Netanyahu's far-right coalition seek to annex the West Bank to Israel. The law also gives Israeli courts the option of imposing the death penalty on Israeli citizens convicted on similar charges - language that legal experts say effectively confines those who can be sentenced to death to Palestinian citizens of Israel and excludes Jewish citizens. (Source: Telegraph - India)

30 March 2026 11:12 (UTC +04:00)  The Health Ministry reports that in the past 24 hours, 232 injured people have been taken to hospitals as a result of the conflict with Iran. Since February 28, 6,008 people have been admitted to hospitals, 121 of whom are currently hospitalized. The casualty figures include soldiers and civilians. (Source: APA - Azerbaijan)

(Sunday), 29/03/2026 1:39 pm  The Israeli military announced today morning that it had thwarted a large-scale Iranian missile attack targeting the city of Dimona and strategic areas in the Negev desert in southern Israel. A military spokesperson confirmed that at least one ballistic missile was intercepted, while another landed in an open area. No casualties or significant damage have been reported so far. (Source: 'Voice of Emirates - headquartered in Dubai, United Arab Emirates)

Palestine
March 29, 2026 at 11:15 am  Mladenov, the former UN Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process, now the Board of Peace High Representative for Gaza, is misrepresenting Gaza to the full capability of Western complicity with colonialism. No amount of double speak by Mladenov can disguise the fact that disarmament and reconstruction facilitate Israel’s control over Gaza through the Board of Peace. The first stage actually points to the failure of maintaining the agreed-upon ceasefire in October 2025 and entry of humanitarian aid into Gaza. The second stage refers to the collection of the most dangerous weapons and destroying Gaza’s tunnels. While focusing on collecting weapons from Hamas – on a scale from the most dangerous to personal weapons, there is no mention of Israel’s US-made 2,000 pound bunker buster bombs. Hamas, resistance groups and Palestinians in possession of weapons are no match for Israel’s military arsenal. Verification is the third stage. Compliance is only requested from Palestinians, not from Israel which committed genocide against the Palestinians in Gaza. Mladenov noted that reconstruction will only take place if Hamas is disarmed, thus clearly implying that human rights and basic needs are now negotiable and cannot be taken for granted. In the fourth stage, which according to Mladenov addresses the people, Palestinians affiliated with resistance groups will be allowed to re-enter civilian life with dignity, through structured amnesty arrangements and reintegration programs. Israel will likely oppose any so-called reintegration; Hamas has been used as the narrative for genocide in Israel’s rhetoric, and Israeli leaders ’have called the entire population of Gaza a legitimate target for genocide’. The fifth state would verify the disarmament, and Israeli forces’ withdrawal from Gaza except for a presence in a security perimeter. Based upon verification of disarmament, reconstruction would then be able to start. Mladenov told the UN Security Council the end state is a reformed Palestinian Authority capable of governing Gaza and the West Bank, and ultimately a pathway to Palestinian self-determination and statehood. Reform and Palestinian statehood may look like a gradual progress in diplomatic rhetoric. The PA has not been able to negotiate one single demand towards Palestinian statehood, although it did celebrate its futile symbolic achievements while Israel further expanded its settlements in the occupied West Bank and eroded even the illusion of a Palestinian state. It is easy to see why Mladenov, Israel and the US would want Gaza to suffer the same fate as the occupied West Bank. The international community would benefit from the illusion of prosperity, of a society that partly mimics the normalised economic inequalities found in Western societies. Such discrepancies are easier to overlook than the unfolding genocide in Gaza, where the near total destruction of the land and its visibility have now reached an unwanted global scrutiny. Hypothetically, disarming Hamas will leave Israel with a lesser security narrative. However, turning Gaza into a replica of the occupied West Bank facilitates the colonial process for Israel. With Palestinian anti-colonial resistance stamped out, and the PA as the governing body, the West would envisage a similar scenario of donor funding creating dependence on the West and marginalising the resistance movements. One crucial detail which the Western narrative leaves out is Gaza’s strength as a representation of the entirety of the Palestinian population since 1948. Israel and Western leaders worked hard to consolidate an image of Gaza and the occupied West Bank as distinctive entities to fragment Palestinian liberation. The same colonial dynamics will now have an equally hard time convincing Palestinians in Gaza to subjugate themselves to what the occupied West Bank symbolises in terms of politics and security coordination with Israel, paid for by the West. (Source: The Middle East Monitor - financed by the State of Qatar)
by Wadi

Persian Gulf
(30.03.2026)  Since February 28, Iran launched 5,471 missile and drone attacks, targeting US bases and critical sites in seven Arab countries across Gulf as US-Israeli attacks on Iran and Tehran’s retaliation continue. Bahrain’s Defence Force General Command said 174 missiles and 391 drones were neutralised. Jordan’s military said 262 missile and drone attacks have been recorded. Kuwait said it intercepted 309 ballistic missiles and 616 drones. Oman said it was targeted by 19 drones. Qatar’s defence ministry reported 206 ballistic missiles and 93 drone attacks targeting the country. Saudi Arabia said at least 52 missiles and 1,006 drones targeted its territory. The United Arab Emirates defence ministry said its systems intercepted 414 ballistic missiles, 15 cruise missiles and 1,914 drones. (Source: TRT World - Turkey)

Southwest Asia
March 31, 2026 at 10:22am BST  The US has hit the central Iranian city of Isfahan sending a massive fireball into the sky. Nasa fire-tracking satellites suggest the explosions happened near Mount Soffeh. Isfahan is home to one of three sites earlier attacked by the US military in June. One of Iran’s highly enriched uranium is likely stored or buried or there. A satellite image taken just before the 12-day war in June between Iran and Israel suggests Tehran transferred a truckload of highly enriched uranium to its nuclear facility at Isfahan. The image shows a truck loaded with 18 blue containers going into a tunnel at the Isfahan Nuclear Technology Centre about two weeks before the US bombed the site. Analysts determined that the truck likely carried most or all of Iran’s stockpile of uranium enriched up to 60% purity. That is a short, technical step to weapons-grade levels of 90%. Israel and the US launched a new wave of strikes on Iran, hitting Tehran in the early morning hours. Sirens and loud explosions were also heard in Jerusalem. Tehran struck a fully loaded Kuwaiti oil tanker in the Persian Gulf, in Dubai waters. Iran has threatened to launch its own ground invasion of Gulf Arab countries and to mine the Persian Gulf if US troops set foot on its territory. Two dozen people have been killed in Gulf states and the occupied West Bank. In Lebanon, officials said more than 1,200 people have been killed, and more than one million have been displaced. The UN Security Council planned to convene an emergency session on Tuesday after officials said three peacekeepers in southern Lebanon had been killed in less than 24 hours, in the region where Israel is battling the Iran-backed Hezbollah. The UN peacekeeping mission did not say who was responsible for the deaths. Ten Israeli soldiers have died in Lebanon. In Iran, authorities say more than 1,900 people have been killed, while 19 have been reported dead in Israel. (Source: The Irish News - Ireland / Associated Press - U.S.)

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Europe

Hungary
March 30, 2026, 7:08 AM  Orbán has become an icon in the global ’far-right’ movement. The Orbán government defines itself as both Christian-national and illiberal. 'Admirers' approve of his opposition to immigration and curtailing of LGBTQ+ rights, and applaud benefits to young families such as abolishing income tax for mothers with multiple children and providing state-backed loans to first-time homebuyers. Yet "such measures have not translated into youth support' for Orbán, who 'has drifted away' from partners in the European Union in favor of closer relations with Russia and China. Tisza has built his campaign on promises to end Orbán's 'drift' toward Russia and to 'revive the stagnating economy by recovering' billions in EU funds that are blocked. While many young people view Orbán's family support policies positively, their “very strong sense of justice is incompatible' with ’the authoritarian' exercise of power. “Young people, wake up!” Orbán said at a rally last week. “These are not times for taking risks, experimenting or trying new things. Believe me, today only Fidesz and my humble self can provide this country with security.” While Tisza 'leads in the polls’, its victory is far from assured. A generational gap 'is widening', Orbán has a lead among older voters and in much of the countryside. Loyal to the prime minister, Prépos, a retiree, said at one of Orbán’s recent campaign rallies that she was very happy with the government's pension policies, pension supplement for retirees, and that she's supporting Fidesz because it helps young people. “When I was young ... I didn’t get anything. Now young people have a lot of help,” she said. (Source: ABC News / Associated Press= U.S.)
by 'Spike'

Mar 27, 2026 14:13 IST  One of Europe's longest-serving leaders, Hungary's Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, who has been the PM of Hungary since 2010, has urged that Nato alliance should join the US to end the conflict swiftly with Iran as soon as possible. He believes that any delay could spiral into a wider crisis with a fresh wave of refugees into Europe and far-reaching consequences for Europe and the world, particularly for smaller nations like Hungary. Orbán made the remarks in an interview with journalist Nawfal, a geopolitical observer himself. 'To go in, it's easy. To get out is almost impossible,' Orbán said, drawing on his experience witnessing the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Energy vulnerability compounds the risk. As a landlocked nation poor in raw materials, Hungary suffered a 10 billion Euro economic hit when energy import costs surged during the Russia-Ukraine war. A renewed oil price spike from disruptions in the Strait of Hormuz would deliver another blow. "These are the main challenges, not how to reorganise the Middle East," Orbán said bluntly. "That's very nice, but that belongs to the big guys.’ Orbán warned that destabilisation could send migrants through Turkey and the Balkans toward Hungary's borders. Europe's earlier migration challenges, like the 2015 EU refugee crisis, has already left many nations in deep, deep trouble regarding identity and social cohesion, he noted. His statement comes even as the Nato alliance is divided over the war in Iran, as well as Trump's sabre-rattling over the Greenland. Other leaders - German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, French President Macron, and UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer - have emphasised that this is not Europe's war, and rejected direct military involvement or Nato's role in the Strait of Hormuz. Orbán emphasised, 'If this war ends fast, it will look like a success. If not, it becomes a disaster.' He acknowledged his own long friendship with Trump, even as he said that the US President represents a break from a tired, boring Western elite lacking new ideas. 'The Iran war is a consequence of the New World Order. Previously, the national interest was not common at all. But now big powers play an important role, and they act in their national interest. And that's what the US is doing,' Orbán explained. He argued that the Islamic Republic of Iran was 'the centre of a violent, anti-Semitic, anti-freedom network, suggesting that destroying its paramilitary capacity could advance peace'. However, he cautioned that failure to achieve this quickly could lead to an even bigger, complicated, longer war. As the conflict in Iran continues, with the US extending pauses on further strikes, Orbán's call for swift resolution and allied support shows that the stakes are high not just for the Middle East but for the whole world. (Source: India Today)

27/03/2026 - 07:49  Hungarian leader Viktor Orbán's officially declared wealth is fairly modest: some savings and a jointly owned villa in Budapest. 'The anti-corruption watchdog Transparency International has labelled Hungary as the EU's most corrupt country alongside Bulgaria in its Corruption Perceptions Index'. It highlighted systemic risks in public procurement and limited competition for the largest contracts which make up five percent of Hungary's GDP. The government rejected the ranking and insists Hungarian procurement rules comply with EU standards. ’The EU has frozen 19 billion euros ($22 billion) in funds’ destined for Hungary ’over persistent concerns about corruption and respect for the rule of law’. While Orbán claims to live modestly, several members of his family have grown spectacularly rich since his return to power in 2010. His father Győző, who is 85, owns several building material companies as well as the historic Hatvanpuszta estate he had rebuilt into a luxurious manor worth hundreds of millions of dollars. Protected by high walls, the sprawling domain close to the premier's home village has two swimming pools and its own wildlife park, as well as extensive outbuildings. Orbán's son-in-law Tiborcz has become one of Hungary's most influential entrepreneurs through public lighting contracts won by his former company Elios. The deals were partly financed by the EU - until the EU anti-fraud office OLAF found serious irregularities. Tiborcz has since switched to real estate and tourism. Orbán's childhood friend Mészáros, a former plumber, has become Hungary's wealthiest man worth $4.8 billion according to Forbes magazine, with an empire of construction, energy, banking and media firms thriving on public contracts. ’Independent lawmaker Hadhazy' said graft has drained the equivalent of 2.84 billion euros ($3.27 billion) from state coffers every year since 2016. Magyar, Orbán's top rival in the upcoming vote, ’has pledged to recover the funds if elected’ and to investigate how the current leaders and their families have grown so rich. The wealth amassed by Orbán's inner circle is fuelling the increasingly palpable frustration of a population grappling with sluggish growth, high inflation and worsening public services. (Source: 'France 24 / AFP')

Germany
29 March 2026 3:39pm BST  Chrupalla, the Alternative for Germany’s (AfD) co-leader has called for the withdrawal of all US soldiers from the country. He told a meeting yesterday in Saxony, that it was time to remove allied troops and nuclear weapons from Germany in order to pursue an independent foreign policy. Nearly 40,000 American troops are stationed in the country, which hosts more than a dozen major US military installations, including its European Command headquarters. Mr Chrupalla has previously claimed that Nato serves US interests too much. Yesterday, he also stressed that Germany should not be drawn into foreign wars and Spain was exactly right in deciding not to get involved in the Middle East conflict. The US president’s foreign policy, including his military action against Venezuela and Iran, has increasingly distanced the non-interventionist AfD from Washington. Mr Chrupalla’s comments put him at odds with the Trump administration, particularly over whether America should be able to use German bases for its military activities in the future. Germany’s Ramstein Air Base is being used by US forces as a hub to co-ordinate drone and missile strikes against Iran, attracting criticism from opposition politicians. The ’far-right’s' popularity is proving durable. A new poll released today showed the AfD and Merz’s Christian Democrats (CDU) were tied for first place among German voters at 26 per cent each. The German chancellor has also been criticised for not having a consistent policy on the Israeli-US war against Iran. The Social Democrats – currently governing as a junior partner – are still languishing at a historic low of 14 per cent, (the centre-Left Greens were at 12 per cent, while the liberal Free Democrats were at 3 per cent). Meanwhile, a recent state poll in Saxony-Anhalt indicated that the 'far-right' was within striking distance of an absolute majority at the state level. (Source: The Telegraph – United Kingdom)

European Parliament
30/03/2026 - 12:32 GMT+2  Orbán still retains ’some’ supporters in the European Parliament and across the EU. Orbán's Fidesz belongs to the Patriots for Europe (PFE or Patriots), the third-largest in the European Parliament, and Orbán’s government enjoys support even beyond his political allies, with over a hundred MEPs hoping for his reappointment as prime minister. The Europe of Sovereign Nations (ESN), a ’far-right’ group in the Parliament, will officially support Our Homeland Movement, a minor nationalist force that is part of the group and polls around 6%. However, ESN MEPs say they admire Orbán for his hard line on migration, his anti-EU and anti-woke narrative. "I hope that Fidesz remains in government, ideally in a coalition with our partners, as a corrective force. It is no secret that we maintain good relations with Viktor Orbán," Alternative for Germany (AfD) MEP Froelich told. Orbán's opponent, Magyar, leader of the Tisza party is a member of The European People's Party, group which is in full support of his party. Magyar has found backing left-wing lawmakers. Renew Europe group President Hayer is reflecting a widely shared view in the hemicycle, where Hungarian elections are seen as the most important vote of the year. French Socialist MEP Ridel hopes that Orbán loses the elections 'to prevent him from holding hostage the EU'. The Greens will use their social media to call upon ’all Hungarians’ to go to the vote and bring this system down, ’a MEP from the group said’. The Left in the European Parliament looks forward to the fall of Orbán, 'a group representative told. European ’nationalist’ leaders, including France’s Le Pen and Italy’s Salvini, showed their support for the current Prime Minister during an event called The Patriots’ Grand Assembly on 23 March in Budapest. Within the right-wing European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR) some parties are endorsing Orbán, such as Poland’s Law and Justice and Giorgia Meloni’s Brothers of Italy. (Source: Euronews - based in Lyon, France)
by ’Zsiros’

Kosovo
Monday 30 March 2026 12:06 BST  Kosovo has announced its intention to deploy troops to Gaza, joining a US-backed international security force established in the wake of last year's ceasefire between Israel and Hamas. The decision was formally approved by Kosovo's government today. The initiative, known as the "Board of Peace" under US President Trump, aims to maintain stability and support a transitional administration in the territory. We are ready to participate and help the people of Gaza, because we ourselves have been and are beneficiaries of international forces since 1999, Prime Minister Kurti said. Kosovo, a Balkan country of 1.6 million people, is an ally of the US which backed its independence from Serbia in 2008. Trump's Gaza plan, to which Israel and Hamas agreed in October, sees Israeli troops withdrawing from Gaza and reconstruction starting as Hamas lays down its weapons. (Source: The Independent - United Kingdom)

Russia
29.03.2026)  A detachment of ships from Russia’s Pacific Fleet has arrived at Tanjung Priok port in Indonesia’s capital Jakarta. The detachment includes the corvette Gromky, the submarine Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky, and the sea tug Andrey Stepanov. Russia and Indonesia plan to carry out joint maneuvering and communications drills in the coming days. (Source: Anadolu Agency - Turkey)

Ukraine
28.03.2026  Zelenskyy said he secured diesel supplies for at least a year during his recent visit to the Middle East. Total supplies of diesel and gasoline for the entire country, including the army, amount to about 700,000 tonnes per month, he said. (Source: Anadolu Agency - Turkey)

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Africa

Uganda
March 26, 2026 at 8:08 am  “We want the war in the Middle East to end now. The world is tired of it. But any talk of destroying or defeating Israel will bring us into the war - on the side of Israel, Gen. Kainerugaba, chief of defense forces and son of President Museveni, said on the US social media company X. (Source: Middle East Monitor - location: London, United Kingdom)

Asia

China
March 25, 2026, 4:15 PM  Chinese shipping company Cosco has resumed bookings to send cargo containers to the Middle East. New bookings to the Bahrain, Iraq, Kuwait, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and UAE will resume immediately. The service from Asia was suspended on March 4 because of the Iran conflict. Nearly 3,200 ships are currently anchored in the Gulf, according to the Financial Times. Tehran said yesterday that it would allow “non-hostile vessels” to transit the Strait of Hormuz. (Source: Arabian Gulf Business Insight - headquartered in London, United Kingdom, with a primary newsroom located in Dubai, United Arab Emirates)

Iran
28 March 2026 19:27  Between February 28 and March 28, 2026, military and government facilities in at least 190 cities across 27 provinces of Iran were targeted by Israeli and U.S. airstrikes and missile attacks. The strikes targeted a wide range of installations, including Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) bases, Basij militia centers, military airbases, missile facilities, police stations, judicial institutions, intelligence headquarters, army barracks, and special forces units. 6,180 government military personnel have been killed, the majority affiliated with the air force, the IRGC, and the Iranian army. The highest military casualties have been recorded in the provinces of Tehran, Kermanshah, Hormozgan, Lorestan, Alborz, Khuzestan, Kurdistan (Sanandaj), and Sistan and Baluchestan. The highest numbers of civilian casualties have been recorded in the provinces of Tehran, Hormozgan, Lorestan, Kermanshah, Fars, Alborz, Ilam, and Markazi. At least 720 civilians have been killed. Intensive airstrikes by Israeli and U.S. forces targeted military and government positions in 35 cities across the provinces of Ilam, Kermanshah, Kurdistan (Sanandaj), and West Azerbaijan (Urmia). At least 250 military bases and security centers were struck in these areas. At least 1,540 Iranian military and government personnel were killed in these four provinces alone. At least 107 civilians were killed in these attacks. (Source: Hengaw Organization for Human Rights - headquarters in Norway; NGO, reporting and documenting human rights violations in Iran's Kurdish-populated areas)

March 27, 2026 at 8:36 am  Iran has announced the mobilisation of one million fighters to counter what it describes as a suicidal US ground war on Iranian soil. According to reports, Tehran is particularly focused on defending the strategic Kharg Island, from where nearly 90 percent of Iran’s oil is exported. In addition to the million-man force already equipped for ground combat, the Iranian news agency Tasnim quoted a military source who noted a massive surge in applications from Iranian youth over the past several days. Volunteers are reportedly flooding recruitment centers for the Basij paramilitary force, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), and the regular army, seeking to participate in the anticipated conflict. (Source: Middle East Monitor - 'financed by State of Qatar)

27 March 2026 11:31 (UTC +04:00)  The Israeli Air Force bombed in Yazd, Iran’s most central site for the production of naval missiles and mines, the military says. This is a site where most of the missiles and naval mines are developed by the Iranian navy forces, the military says. The facility was used by Iran to plan, develop, assemble, and store advanced missiles intended for launch from cruise vessels, submarines, and helicopters toward mobile and stationary maritime targets, the IDF says. (Source: APA - Azerbaijan)

27 Mar 2026  Russia is providing Iran with satellite and intelligence data on the locations of US warships and aircraft. Data on US military assets Iran is receiving most likely comes from Liana, Moscow’s only fully functional system of spy satellites. The [Liana] system has been created to spy on US carrier strike groups and other navy forces and for identifying them as targets, Luzin, a senior fellow at the Jamestown Foundation, a US think tank, told. Russia also played a key role in the development of Iran’s space programme and its key satellite, the Khayyam launched in 2022 from Russia’s Baikonur cosmodrome. The 650kg satellite orbits the Earth at 500 kilometres and has a resolution of one metre. Moscow can, in theory, receive and process data from Iran’s optical imaging satellite and share data from its own several satellites, Luzin said. On Wednesday, Tehran claimed to have struck the Abraham Lincoln carrier with multiple cruise and ballistic missiles, but the Pentagon called the claim pure fiction. On Sunday, Iranian media claimed that a massive blaze was caused by a strike on a US destroyer refuelling in the Indian Ocean. Moscow and Tehran loudly proclaim their strategic partnership. They do not have a mutual defence clause. Moscow has not intervened in the conflict directly. But the arms supplies have been mutual. Russia has, for decades, supplied weaponry to Iran, including advanced air defence systems, trainer and fighter jets, helicopters, armoured vehicles and sniper rifles, worth billions of dollars. Since Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine, Tehran has provided Moscow with ammunition and artillery shells, firearms and short-range ballistic missiles, helmets and flak jackets. There are the Shahed kamikaze drones – slow, noisy, yet cheap to manufacture – which have been launched on Ukrainian cities in swarms of dozens and then hundreds. Moscow has manufactured and modernised Shaheds, making them faster and deadlier, and equipping them with cameras, navigators and, occasionally, artificial intelligence modules. Now, some of the upgrades have made their way back to Iran. A Shahed drone ’with a pivotal Russian component’ launched by Iran-backed Hezbollah from southern Lebanon was able to hit a British airbase on Cyprus on March 1. ’It reportedly contained Kometa-B (Comet B), a Russian-made satellite navigation module’ that also acts as an anti-jamming shield, making drones more resistant to interference. Russia has also perfected the tactic of sending waves of real and decoy drones to exhaust and overwhelm Western-supplied air defence systems in Ukraine. These days, the scheme helps Iran hit targets in the Gulf, Western officials say. However, if Iran is suffering a shortage of drones – as some analysts believe it is – that would render the use of Russian tactics, as well as Russia-supplied satellite data useless, experts say. After four days of intensive strikes using up to 250 drones a day in early March, Iran has been launching only up to 50 drones a day, according to Mitrokhin, a researcher with Germany’s Bremen University. The Kremlin doesn’t pursue a breakthrough in this war, doesn’t help Iran break the United States and Israel, Suleymanov, an associate fellow at the New Eurasian Strategies Center, a US-British think tank, told. The current intelligence and military aid is more of a goodwill gesture, to show Tehran that despite the lack of formal commitments, Russia doesn’t leave its friend in need, he said. It seems that Trump’s assessment that Moscow “might be helping them a bit” may not be too far wide of the mark. (Source: Al Jazeera - Qatar)

00:14, 27 Mar 2026  Iranian state media has reported that any hotel used by US forces in the region is a legitimate target. (Source: Mirror - United Kingdom)

26/03/2026 2:54 pm  In an official announcement reflecting Israeli escalation deep inside Iran, Israeli Defense Minister Katz confirmed today the killing of Admiral Tangsiri, commander of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps Navy. This followed a precise airstrike by the Israeli military targeting a strategic site in the coastal city of Bandar Abbas. Tangsiri, who had led the navy since 2018, was one of the most prominent hardliners in the Iranian regime. He was also considered the chief architect of the fast boat strategy and mine warfare in the Persian Gulf. (Source: Voice of Emirates - United Arab Emirates ?)

25.03.2026  Iran’s army claimed today that it targeted the USS Abraham Lincoln aircraft carrier with coastal cruise missiles. The state-run IRNA news agency said that cruise missiles capable of striking coastal targets were launched toward the US carrier group, forcing it to change position. (Source: Anadolu Agency - Turkey)

Iraq
25/03/2026 3:56 pm  Seven fighters were killed and 13 others wounded in an airstrike targeting medical and military facilities inside the Habbaniyah airbase - the second such attack in less than 24 hours. A previous bombing targeted Popular Mobilization Forces positions, resulted in 15 deaths and 14 injuries. These attacks raise serious concerns that Iraqi territory is becoming an open arena for settling regional scores. The Iraqi government announced today that it had summoned the US chargé d’affaires in Baghdad and handed him a strongly worded protest note following the heavy airstrike that targeted the Habbaniyah military clinic in Anbar province. (Voice of the Emirates - United Arab Emirates ? ; Egypt ? )

Israel
26.03.2026  Israel says 5,229 people have been wounded in Iranian attacks since war onset. 114 people remain hospitalized, including 14 in serious condition. According to Israel’s Institute for National Security Studies, at least 19 people have been killed since the start of the war with Iran. (Source: Anadolu Agency - Turkey)

March 25, 2026 5:00 a.m. EDT  Concern that Iran was amassing missiles to overwhelm defenses was a key factor in the push for war. Israel’s multilayered air defense system is considered among world’s best, fending off attacks from multiple fronts. Each layer is designed for a specific type of interception: Iron Dome for short-range rockets and artillery shells; David’s Sling for ballistic missiles, cruise missiles and medium-to-long-range rockets; and Arrow 2 and Arrow 3 for long-range ballistics. The expensive Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) system, developed by the U.S. Army, is a backup. A single Arrow missile costs about $3 million. David’s Sling interceptors cost around $700,000 each, experts say, and Iron Dome interceptors cost around $50,000 to $70,000. A THAAD interceptor costs about $15 million. The top level of Israel’s air defense network, the Arrow 3, is designed to intercept missiles outside the atmosphere. If it misses, Arrow 2 is used. An Israeli military official said that when planning the war, the IDF made sure it had enough interceptors to carry itself through a war it knew would take time. Recent strikes laid bare Israel’s vulnerability. In the first 23 days of the war, Israel has had a successful interception rate of about 92 percent. Shoshani, the IDF spokesman, said that at least 70 percent of Iran’s missile launchers and stockpile has been destroyed since the start of the U.S.-Israeli strikes on Feb. 28. He also said Iran’s fire rate was reduced by 90 percent. He said that in June, Israel saw 300 missiles per day launched toward it; today, it’s about 30 on average, he said. (Source: The Washington Post - U.S.)

25 March 2026  The skies over Tel Aviv yesterday. (Source: Daily Mail - United Kingdom)
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Kurdistan
March 28, 2026, at 11:18 pm  Kurdistan Region Prime Minister Masrour Barzani today strongly condemned the drone attack targeting the residence of Kurdistan President Barzani in Duhok, describing the incident part of ongoing security threats facing the Kurdistan Region. In a statement, Iranian foreign minister Araghchi strongly denounced the strike on Barzani’s home in Duhok and also suggested that the attack could be linked to operations by the United States and Israel, alleging that such actions aim to undermine relations and create tensions between countries in the region. He reiterated that Iran rejects any attacks that threaten stability or target national figures in the Kurdistan Region and Iraq. Türkiye's Minister of Foreign Affairs, Fidan, held a phone call with the Kurdistan Region President Barzani today evening and strongly condemned the drone strike on Barzani’s residence in Duhok and reaffirmed Türkiye’s commitment to supporting the security and stability of both the Kurdistan Region and Iraq. (Source: Kurdistan 24)

Pakistan
Mar 26, 2026 17:44 IST  Israel removed Iranian Foreign Minister Araqchi and Parliamentary Speaker Qalibaf from its hit list after Pakistan urged Washington to press Israel not to target them. Last week, Israel's Defence Minister Katz said that he and Netanyahu had authorised the military to target officials without prior authorisation. The two officials have been removed from the list for up to four or five days, the The Wall Street Journal said, citing US officials, but did not mention any Pakistani role in it. Pakistan, Egypt and Turkey are playing the role of mediator between Tehran and Washington to end the Iran war. Islamabad has maintained direct contact with both Washington and Tehran and it has also been seen as a likely venue if peace talks are held. (Source: India Today)

Persian Gulf
26.03.2026  US forces in Middle East operate from hotels and sites across temporary locations as Iran strikes bases, according to the New York Times. Due to Iranian attacks on multiple military sites, thousands of US troops dispersed across temporary locations, Pentagon officials say. Strikes at Port Shuaiba (Kuwait) killed six US service members and destroyed a tactical operations center. Other bases in Kuwait including Ali Al Salem and Camp Buehring, Al Udeid in Qatar and Prince Sultan in Saudi Arabia sustained extensive damage to aircraft, fuel, and communications facilities. (Source: Anadolu Agency - Turkey)

Philippines
March 26, 2026 5:23 AM  Due to a Reciprocal Access Agreement with Manila that came into force in September, the Japan Self-Defense Forces will send a large contingent of troops to the Philippines for the first time since World War II as it joins the major Balikatan drills-Tagalog joint military exercise next month. (Source: Miami Herald / Newsweek = U.S.)

Yemen
March 28, 2026 4:22 PM  The Israeli military said its aerial defense systems had intercepted a missile fired from Yemen. Saree, a Houthi military spokesperson, said the attacks from Yemen would continue until the aggression ends - a reference to both the U.S.-Israeli war with Iran and Israel's campaign against Hezbollah, another Iran-backed group in Lebanon. (Source: Miami Herald / Newsweek = U.S.)

(28 March 2026)  Houthis in Yemen announce entry into the conflict if any alliance joins the US and Israel. It looks like this is aimed at deterrence. (Source: InvestingLive - Cyprus)

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Americas:

Caribbean

Haiti
March 31, 2026, Tuesday // 11:09  At least 70 people have been killed and around 30 others injured after a violent gang assault in Haiti’s Artibonite region. Officials said the attack took place around 3 a.m. on Sunday in the Jean-Denis area and was carried out by armed members of the Gran Grif gang designated as terrorist organization by Washington. No major gang leaders have been captured so far. Since 2021, gang violence in Haiti has displaced over one million people, contributed to worsening food insecurity, and caused nearly 20,000 deaths nationwide, Haitian security forces, supported by a UN-backed international mission and a US private military contractor, have increased operations against armed gangs controlling large parts of the capital. (Source: Novinite - Bulgaria)

North America

United States
March 31, 2026, 5:20 p.m. ET  US deploys 3rd aircraft carrier - the USS George HW Bush - to Middle East, with a fleet of support ships in tow. The Bush carrier group departed from its base in Norfolk, Virginia. It will join two other aircraft carrier groups already in the Middle East - the USS Gerald Ford, in the Mediterranean Sea, and the USS Abraham Lincoln in the Arabian Sea. (Source: The New York Post - U.S.)

Mar 31 2026  Foreign central banks have slashed their holdings of Treasuries at the New York Federal Reserve to the lowest level since 2012. In the wake of the Iran war, the value of Treasuries held in custody at the New York Fed by official institutions - a group that is largely made up of central banks but also includes governments and international institutions - has dropped by $82bn since February 25 to $2.7tn, according to Fed data. Oil importers such as Turkey, India and Thailand are probably among those selling Treasuries as they pay higher prices for oil, which is denominated in dollars. The surge in energy prices triggered by Iran’s closure of the Strait of Hormuz, has upended the finances of countries that rely on oil imports, as well as boosting the dollar across the board. Foreign central banks are selling US bonds at a time when the Treasury market is already under pressure as traders worry that the Middle East conflict could drive up inflation. That has pushed yields on both two- and 10-year Treasuries up this month by the most since 2024, increasing borrowing costs for the government as well as businesses and households. It also comes at a time when some central banks have intervened in foreign exchange markets to prop up their currencies, a move that typically involves selling US dollars. A number of countries don’t want their currencies to weaken further because it pushes up the local currency price of oil - and either means more fiscal subsidies or more pain for households. Turkey’s central bank has sold $22bn of foreign government securities from its foreign currency reserves since February 27. Middle Eastern oil-exporting countries could also be selling those assets to make up for oil revenue, though they represent a small portion of overall Treasury holders. Treasuries are relied upon by global central banks as the pre-eminent reserve asset, since the $30tn market for the securities is the biggest and deepest in the world. Some investors said foreign central banks’ Treasuries holdings often drift lower as the dollar strengthens - as they seek to rebalance their assets and defend their currencies - but others said the data could be a sign holders are drawing on funds amid the market volatility. The data suggested foreign official holders could be stocking ’the war chest’ by cashing out Treasuries. Foreign official holdings of Treasuries held at the Fed have declined in recent years, as managers of foreign currency reserves have diversified away from dollars. That has made foreign private investors an increasingly important part of the market. (Source: Financial Times - United Kingdom)

Tuesday 31/03/2026  The US military’s request for $200 billion in additional funding for the Iran war has met with a cool reception in the US Congress. President Trump has not yet sent a request for the Senate and House of Representatives to approve the sum and his administration has made clear that the number could change. Trump wants Arab states to help pay for Iran war as Congress resists funding. US president Trump has told aides he is willing to end the military campaign against Iran even if the Strait of Hormuz remains largely closed and leave a complex operation to reopen it for a later date, the Wall Street Journal reported today. Washington would then press allies in Europe and the Gulf to take the lead on reopening the strait. (Source: The Arab Weekly - headquarters in London, United Kingdom)

29.03.2026 3rd  ‘No Kings’ protest across US, voicing opposition to the Trump administration. The events were held yesterday in all 50 states and 16 countries. Organizers, including anti-authoritarian groups Indivisible and 50501, labor unions, and other grassroots organizations, reported more than 3,000 events nationwide. Critics, as reported by the Washington Post, cite his new conflict with Iran, rising gas and grocery prices, costly tariffs affecting everyday goods, and long airport security lines caused by government gridlock. (Source: Anadolu Agency - Turkey)

29 March 2026 11:49 (UTC +04:00)  Iran has shot down a US Boeing E-3 Sentry airborne early warning and control aircraft. It is a highly advanced reconnaissance platform used for airborne surveillance, command, and control operations. It plays a critical role in monitoring airspace, coordinating military assets, and detecting potential threats over long distances. (Source: APA - Azerbaijan)
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March 28, 2026 4:22 PM  U.S. casualties continued to rise as the war entered its second month: An Iranian strike on the Prince Sultan military base in Saudi Arabia injured two dozen American service members, two of them seriously, yesterday. The attack, which involved missiles and drones, also significantly damaged at least two U.S. KC-135 military refueling planes. (Source: Miami Herald / Newsweek = U.S.)

Mar 28, 2026, 12:17 PM EDT  More American forces are reaching the Middle East, with a Navy ship carrying about 2,500 Marines having now arrived in the region, U.S. Central Command announced today. The USS Tripoli, an amphibious assault ship, as well as the elements from the 31st Marine Expeditionary Unit that are aboard, are based in Japan. They were conducting exercises in the area around Taiwan when the order came to deploy to the Middle East almost two weeks ago. Central Command said that in addition to the Marines, the Tripoli also brings transport and strike fighter aircraft, as well as amphibious assault assets to the region. The USS Boxer and two other ships, along with another Marine Expeditionary Unit, have also been ordered to the region from San Diego. Central Command said yesterday that more than 300 service members have been wounded in the war, 10 were considered seriously wounded, 13 service members have been killed. The Islamic Republic’s overall goal is not killing American service members. It’s inflicting economic pain on U.S. allies and the world, Jeffrey, who is now a scholar at The Washington Institute for Near East Policy, said. (Source: Huffpost / AP = U.S.)

March 28, 2026 - 10:17:24  Trump says 'Cuba is next'. Commenting on Iran, Trump said that their leaders are dead. And: 'Their supreme leader is no longer supreme. He's dead. The son is either dead or in very bad shape because no one has heard from him. I think he's saying, 'just keep me out of this.'' He reiterated his frustration over the refusal by North Atlantic Treaty Organization allies to join the war. 'We are very disappointed, by the way, with NATO. They did not come to our aid,' he said. He went on to say, "I always said NATO is a paper tiger." "I always said we help NATO, but they will never help us," he said. (Source: The Koreas Herald / Yonhap = South Korea)

22:03 GMT, 27 March 2026  The US has already launched 850 Tomahawks, each costing between $2 million and $3.6 million depending on the variant, and prized because they allow the Navy to strike targets up to 1,000 miles away without risking pilots. Concerns about the stockpiles are now being whispered within Pentagon walls due to the difficulty in manufacturing the cruise missiles. Only a few hundred Tomahawks are made each year. Only 57 were purchased last year, according to the defense budget. The Pentagon has also fired more than 1,000 air-defense interceptor missiles in response to Iranian retaliatory strikes across the region, including from the Patriot and Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) systems. These are some of the most advance in the world and the US also has a limited stockpile of these munitions, which cost far more than the cheaper missiles and drones fired by the Islamic regime. multiple sources told Reuters today that the US can only determine with certainty that it has destroyed one-third of the Islamic Republic's arsenal. (Source: Daily Mail - United Kingdom)

Mar 26, 2026 14:35 IST  Even superior forces still face risks in modern combat. Iran's own air force, consisting of a motley crew of old and new US and Russian models, has been almost entirely knocked out. Over the course of the conflict, the US has lost at least 16 aircraft, including drones and jets, with several more damaged. The McDonnell Douglas F-15 Eagle, an American twin-engine fighter capable of both air-superiority and ground strike roles entered service in 1976, and cost up to $100 million a unit for the latest EX variant. On the night of March 1, three F-15's which were engaging Iranian aircraft, ballistic missiles, and drones over the skies of Kuwait were shot down in rapid succession - 'mistakenly shot down by Kuwaiti air defences' - with all six crew members successfully ejecting from their stricken fighter jets. The most likely culprit was a Kuwait Air Force F/A-18 jet, whose pilot launched three missiles at the aircraft. At least one Stratotanker - American air-to-air refuelling aircraft that entered service between 1957 - 1967, derived from the commercial Boeing 707 aircraft - was lost after it crashed in western Iraq on March 12, killing all six crew members abroad. CBS news reported that on the same day, a second KC-135 made an emergency landing at Israel's Tel Aviv airport. Officials told CBS that two aircraft may have been involved in a mid-air collision. The Wall Street Journal reported that at least five more Stratotankers were damaged on the ground after an Iranian missile strike on the Prince Sultan air base in Saudi Arabia on March 13. The first time that an F-35, which entered service 10 years ago, has been hit by enemy ground fire was on March 19. It was forced to make an emergency landing at a US air base in the Middle East. Bloomberg reported that the most likely culprit was an Iranian-operated infrared-guided 358 surface-to-air missile battery, which has a small, mobile launcher. They can hit targets at altitudes up to 25,000 feet and, because they have no radar, aircraft will have no warning they are being tracked. At least a dozen MQ-9's have been lost in combat as part of the war against Iran. The General Atomics MQ-9 Reaper (also called Predator) is a medium-altitude long-endurance unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) that first entered service in 2007. The Reaper is used primarily for reconnaissance, as well striking ground targets with its complement of Hellfire missiles. The Reaper drones, each of whom cost about $16 million each, were lost either to Iranian missiles while in flight or were destroyed on the ground by incoming fire. Key ground-based radar sets have also been hit due to a combination of Iranian action and operational accidents. As a result of an Iranian strike, the long-range AN/FPS-132 radar, located near Umm Dahal in Qatar is the most significant such loss. The structure, built at a cost of $1.1 billion, designed to provide early warning coverage across a 3,000-mile radius, had sustained damage to its main radar structure. A AN/TPY-2 radar, the primary sensor for a US THAAD missile defence battery, was struck and apparently destroyed at Muwaffaq Salti Air Base in Jordan during the second week of the war. This radar, valued at roughly $300–500 million. Other AN/TPY-2 radars associated with THAAD systems were also reported hit or damaged at sites in the UAE and Saudi Arabia. (Source: India Today)

Mar 25, 2026, 01:47 PM  Army raises maximum enlistment age to 42. The announcement comes as the Army continues efforts to widen its recruiting pool after falling short of its Regular Army enlistment goals in 2022 and 2023 before rebounding in 2024. The upper limit of the Army’s previous allowable enlistment age was 35, but waivers were sometimes granted for older enlistees. The Air Force and Navy allow recruits over 40, while the Marine Corps caps enlistment at 28 but allows hopefuls who are 29 or over to request waivers. (Source: Army Times - U.S.)

Wednesday 25/03/2026  Despite President Trump’s talk about a possible deal that would end the war with Iran soon, the Pentagon is expected to send thousands of additional soldiers. It was reported in recent days that the US will send thousands of Marines and sailors aboard the USS Boxer, an amphibious assault ship, along with its Marine Expeditionary Unit and accompanying warships to the Middle East. The 82nd Airborne Division, which can deploy within 18 hours of receiving orders, specialises in carrying out parachute assaults. The Pentagon is reportedly set to send between 3,000 and 4,000 soldiers currently stationed at Fort Bragg, North Carolina. Prior to the additional forces being sent to the region, there were 50,000 US troops there. The US has so far carried out strikes against 9,000 targets inside Iran since US and Israeli military operations against Iran started on February 28. A Reuters/Ipsos poll published yesterday found that 35 percent of Americans approve of the US strikes on Iran, down from 37 percent in a survey conducted last week. Some 61 percent disapproved of the strikes, compared to 59 percent last week. Thirteen US troops have been killed so far in the war and 290 have been wounded, a US official said. While ten remain seriously wounded, 255 troops have returned to duty. The New York Times reported yesterday that Washington sent Tehran a 15-point plan to end the war in the Middle East. Israel’s Channel 12 said the US was seeking a month-long ceasefire to discuss the 15-point plan. It said the plan would include the dismantling of Iran’s nuclear programme, ceasing support for proxy groups and the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz. Iran named Zolqadr, a former Revolutionary Guards commander and senior figure in the hardline political faction yesterday to replace the powerful head of the Supreme National Security Council, Larijani, killed in US-Israeli strikes last week. Tehran is now demanding significant concessions from the United States if mediation efforts lead to serious negotiations. In any talks with the US, Iran would not only demand an end to the war but also prohibitive conditions, including guarantees against future military action, compensation for wartime losses and formal control of the Strait of Hormuz. Iran would also refuse to negotiate any limitations to its ballistic missile programme. Tehran has denied that direct talks have taken place. Iran’s parliament speaker Qalibaf on Monday dismissed such reports as fake news. (Source: The Arab Weekly - with a primarily London-based editorial team, publication printed in the United Kingdom, U.S., and United Arab Emirates)

March 24, 2026 11:18 IST  Yesterday at 7:22 pm local time an explosion shook Valero's oil refinery in Port Arthur, Texas, sending smoke and fire into the sky. The refinery  employs around 770 workers and produces 435,000 barrels per day of crude oil, which is then processed into gasoline, diesel and jet fuel. Port Arthur is a city with a population of about 56,000. The port is a critical piece of the US’s fuel supply chain. (Source: The Week - India)
Audio, video

South America

Colombia
(Tuesday), March 24, 2026 1:58 AM ET  A military transport plane with 128 people on board crashed shortly after taking off yesterday in Puerto Leguizamo, Colombia, killing at least 66 soldiers. Puerto Leguizamo is located in Putumayo, an Amazonian province that borders Ecuador and Peru. The Hercules C-130 that crashed Monday had been donated by the United States to Colombia in 2020. Critics of the president pointed out that military aircraft have been given less flight hours under the Petro administration due to budget cuts, which leads to less experienced crews. (Source: NPR / The Associated Press = U.S.)

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Space

Around Earth
Tue 31 Mar 2026 12.15 CEST  A satellite-smashing chain reaction could spiral out of control. In the space around Earth more than 30,000 objects are in orbit. That figure is rising exponentially. Soviet Union scientists achieved a historic breakthrough in 1957, sending a metal ball with four radio antennae – called Sputnik – so high and speeding so fast that it would reach such a velocity that it would spin in orbit around Earth. Space race gathered pace between the United States and the Soviets. The Apollo 11 mission successfully landed humans on the moon in 1969. By the end of the 1970s, over 14,000 tracked objects had been launched – with around 7,000 still in orbit. The 1980s and 1990s were especially busy decades for launches. Over decades, other countries joined. Around 20,000 objects were being tracked in orbit at the turn of the millennium. Space launches soared in the 2020s. Today, Earth’s orbit is packed with around 32,000 satellites and fragments, all circling the planet at immense speed, even after accounting for the fact that a lot of satellites have fallen out of orbit and been destroyed. Reports suggest that by the end of this decade there could more than 60,000 active satellites in space - scientific and military spacecraft objects, publicly and privately owned, placed into different orbital lanes, each serving a variety of purposes, including communication and weather satellites, navigation satellites and Earth observation technology that takes images of the surface. Over time, satellites gradually lose altitude due to atmospheric drag, eventually reentering the atmosphere and usually being destroyed. Of the 60,000+ objects ever launched into space, more than half have since decayed and reentered. In the 21st century, the focus of space exploration shifted from government-led missions to a private age of satellites, private companies began to launch satellites at unprecedented rates, fundamentally changing how people access and utilise Earth's orbit. This transition was accelerated by companies such as Musk's SpaceX, which launched its first Starlink satellites in 2019, marking the beginning of the ’mega-constellation’ era. Unlike the solitary, school-bus-sized satellites of the past, these private ventures rely on thousands of ’smaller’, mass-produced spacecraft launched in ’trains’ to provide ’global high-speed internet’. By 2026, the number of active satellites has exploded, with other private players such as Amazon joining in. Space debris - often called space junk - is there too; discarded rocket stages and the remnants of defunct satellites, as well as fragments from collisions between two satellites. The US and Russia, whose count includes all former Soviet Union launches, are responsible for the biggest number of orbital objects by a long stretch. Yet only China and France have launched over 1,000 objects into orbit, with several others responsible for a handful of satellites. Russia has only launched 284 objects into space in the 2020s – 1% of its total. The US and China are becoming increasingly dominant players. The US has launched 49% of its total in the 2020s, China 36%. Still, these new mega-constellations have significantly added to the complexity of managing orbital traffic in an increasingly crowded space. A satellite can have different speeds and heights throughout its lifetime. The surge in orbital activity has created a significant collision risk. There have already been crashes, including a 2009 event where a US satellite hit a defunct Russia military satellite. Tens of thousands of tiny fragments of metal are now spinning at high velocities. There is a genuine threat of a chain reaction from satellites smashing into each other. The big fear is that future collisions will cause a domino effect where Earth’s orbit becomes cluttered with tiny, high-speed bits of metal. The cascade potential could create a near-impenetrable layer of debris that would make space launches so dangerous it would essentially trap humans on Earth. The current system of tracking satellites only works as it relies on constant cooperation. Satellite operators move their craft daily to avoid collisions. If they stopped, it would take only days or weeks for the situation to spiral. Getting rid of large defunct satellites would help reduce the risk. Space agencies are actively testing ways to deorbit satellites, including by capturing them with nets or a robotic arm attached to another satellite, or by shooting them off course with high-powered lasers. (Source: The Guardian - United Kingdom)

International Space Station
Monday 23 March 2026 14:44 GMT  The International Space Station (ISS) has captured NASA photographs, which were taken on 27 December, 2025, which appear to show Russian ballistic missiles being fired towards Kyiv. (Source: The Independent - United Kingdom)
Video

Moon
(3 April 2026)  The Artemis II mission plans to take the astronauts further into space that humans have been before - more than 7,600 km beyond the Moon - before gravity swings them back. Artemis II leaves Earth's orbit on track for far side of the Moon. The four astronauts on the Artemis II mission have now left the Earth's orbit, after their Orion spacecraft fired its main engine for a final push towards the Moon. The five minute and 55 second engine burn is known as the translunar injection (TLI). Artemis II is now on a looping path that will carry the crew around the far side of the Moon and back again. It is the first time since 1972 that humans have travelled outside of the Earth's orbit.  The team have run hundreds of thousands of simulations to ensure that they are able to get the crew home safely, Orion programme manager Hu said before the launch. In the event of an emergency, the U-turn is the fastest way home in the first 36 hours after the TLI. After that it can be just as quick, and often simpler, to stay on course around the Moon and fall back to Earth, he added. The astronauts' orange suits can provide life support for up to six days in the event of an emergency. In the first public video conference with the crew since the launch, Commander Wiseman said as the spacecraft moved away from Earth they were afforded a spectacular view. The astronauts said in their maiden video call they had been glued to the window as the view changed before them. As Orion surges into deep space, the Earth is shrinking to a small blue and white marble behind them, while the Moon grows from a bright disc into a heavily cratered world filling the frame of the windows. On about the sixth day of the mission, as Orion cruises beyond the Moon, the astronauts will get to see a total solar eclipse. The Moon will slide directly in front of the Sun so its bright face is completely covered to reveal its normally concealed shimmering halo, with Earth hanging off to one side. (Source: BBC - United Kingdom)

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Black Sea

26/03/2026  Crude oil tanker Altura, with about 1 million barrels of crude ​oil sailing from the Russian port of Novorossiysk to Istanbul was hit by a naval drone 33 km from the Bosphorus strait near Istanbul, today morning. The attack took place just outside Turkish territorial waters. The attack had targeted the ship's engine room. (Source: Anadolu Agency - Turkey)

Europe

Hungary
26 March 2026  Prime Minister of Hungary Viktor Orbán’s dynamic tour of the country, which the opposition did not expect on this scale, is drawing crowds in every town. Is Hungarian opposition already preparing a Plan B in case of defeat? Transcripts of conversations intercepted have been widely circulated in the European media: Szijjártó talks to Lavrov, ’supposedly selling him the secrets of EU Council meetings at ministerial level’. It is difficult to find any real scandal in contacts with Lavrov or great secrets in the Hungarian government’s requests to the Russian government regarding the situation in Slovakia. The conversation took place in 2020. Szijjártó emphasises that as many as 80 people are present at Council meetings and they all have mobile phones so it is difficult to speak about any special secrets there. The topics discussed there are widely reported in the media by the participants beforehand, and discussed at press conferences after the meetings. The Hungarian Ministry of Foreign Affairs assured in an official statement of the “full transparency” of diplomatic activities and “loyalty to European Union partners”. There is no evidence to suggest otherwise. The real scandal is that Panyi - an activist with ’non-governmental organisations, financed from abroad' and opposition media outlets - is alleged to have passed on the foreign minister’s telephone number to one of Europe’s foreign intelligence services. This is the same man, who published the transcript of the conversation from 2020. Observers say his actions bear no resemblance to journalism, let alone investigative journalism. The weekly Mandiner received an email on the matter which contained a recording of a conversation in which Panyi allegedly passes on the minister’s telephone number. From context it may be assumed the conversation took place last year. The letter’s authenticity has been confirmed and reveals that Panyi and other people associated with the opposition party TISZA are in contact with foreign secret services. Panyi not only works with TISZA politicians but is also a friend of Orbán (no connection to Viktor Orbán), who is tipped to become Hungary’s foreign minister should TISZA’s Magyar win. The unconventional move taken by opposition figures to discredit a key FIDESZ politician may indicate that the opposition’s plan is falling apart. The attempt to create the impression, using opinion polls that the outcome was already decided, has failed. (Polls are unreliable in Hungary and have been wrong on numerous occasions). Orbán weathered Magyar’s attacks and launched a counter-offensive. The big showdown at the rally on March 15 did not result in a triumph for TISZA, and there is evidence that Viktor Orbán attracted more supporters. His dynamic tour of the country, which the opposition did not expect on this scale, is drawing crowds in every town. The focus of the campaign has shifted to issues of security, energy supplies, and attitudes towards the war and Ukraine. A very strong surge of support for FIDESZ emerged from the annual Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in Hungary. Polish President Nawrocki broke ranks and, despite attacks at home, visited Budapest and backed the Hungarian Prime Minister. A visit by US Vice President Vance is expected.     The opposition has therefore decided to resort to a smear campaign: - wiretaps thrown onto the table in a sensationalist tone, overt interference by the secret services of other countries, a false plot, alleged ’leak about a fake assassination attempt on Orbán' - likely concocted by Magyar’s Polish political friends. The common denominator: Creating the artificial impression that the elections are neither fair nor lawful, laying the groundwork for action following Viktor Orbán’s victory. The European establishment will likely attempt to intervene and refuse to recognise these elections, seeking to have the results annulled. It has growing experience in this: The annulment of the first round of the presidential elections in Romania and the attempt to refuse to recognise the result of the presidential elections in Poland. As early as last Monday, European Commission spokeswoman Hipper spoke of deep concern over press reports regarding the ’absolutely unacceptable’ talks between Szijjártó and Lavrov. Behind the scenes in EU institutions are voices suggesting that if the allegations are confirmed, Hungary ’could face serious consequences, including political sanctions or restricted access to certain information and decision-making processes’ within the EU. There are also suggestions that, regardless of the election result, Brussels will attempt to oust Prime Minister Orbán. Today, he is effectively the last major obstacle to the extra-treaty restructuring of the Union towards an even more centralised structure, with even more limited sovereignty for nation states. Aaltola, a Finnish politician and member of the European People’s Party (EPP) group – which includes the members from Tisza Party – wrote in a post published on X that ’the European Union would intervene in the Hungarian elections’ through legal means should FIDESZ win. He is already putting forward claims of ’rigged’ elections. The politician cites Article 279 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union, which would allow him to request an extraordinary measure from the Court of Justice of the European Union. The 279 article mentioned ‘provisional measures.’ This means that Brussels’ plan for Hungary is simple: Either it will succeed in defeating Orbán, or it will attempt not to recognise the election results. As can be seen, what is at stake is not only who will govern Hungary, but also whether voters in this country still have a real choice. (Source: Brussels Signal - Belgium)
by Karnowski

March 26, 2026 7:03 pm CET  Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s government accused journalist Panyi of being a spy. '[What’s] serious is that this Hungarian journalist, who maintains active ties with foreign services, belongs to the innermost circles of the Tisza Party,' FM Szijjártó said in a Facebook video. 'Panyi … spied against his own country in cooperation with a foreign state,' Minister of Prime Minister’s Office Gulyás said today at a press briefing. Previously, Orbán accused EU institutions of interfering financially in the Hungarian election campaign to prevent him from being reelected. Szijjártó and Gulyás, both members of Viktor Orbán’s Fidesz party, have publicly accused the Tisza party and Ukraine of being involved. Later today, Gulyás linked the probe to another espionage case with two more alleged spies involved, both of whom 'were trained abroad, maintained contacts, and moved in and out of the Ukrainian embassy.' (Source: Politico - U.S.)

(26 March 2026, about 18h, CET)  Viktor Orbán's Fidesz government in Hungary stands accused of mass voter intimidation in a film aired today evening at a Budapest cinema and on YouTube ahead of 12 April parliamentary elections. The documentary film presents the results of a six-month investigation by 'independent' filmmakers and reporters. The campaign has been shrouded by almost daily claims alleging domestic and foreign plots to undermine a fair vote. A significant proportion of Hungary's Roma minority live in deep poverty. According to Hungary's state-supported Maltese charity, 270,000 of them live in the 300 poorest settlements in Hungary. 'One of the most shocking allegations made by several characters in the film is that crack or smok – a cheap and highly addictive synthetic drug widely used in poor villages - is also being used to buy votes'. "Hungary under the Fidesz government has some of the toughest drug criminalisation laws in Europe". To tackle the crack epidemic, the Delta programme of the Hungarian police was set up in March 2025. Fidesz officials, including the prime minister, allege interference by the EU and Ukraine to prevent a fifth consecutive Orbán victory. "We will not abandon the national interest, even if there is very crude foreign intelligence interference in the Hungarian elections with the participation of Brussels.' Yesterday, 'the Median agency reported a 58% to 35% lead for Tisza.' "The government-funded Nézöpont put Fidesz ahead by 46% to 40%." (Source: BBC - United Kingdom)
Note: Before the film was released on YouTube, the broadcaster already shared details about it.

25.03.2026  Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán in a Facebook post announced that Hungary would begin reducing gas deliveries to Ukraine and instead store remaining volumes domestically, citing concerns over energy security. Ukraine halted deliveries of energy resources via the Druzhba pipeline. Until Ukraine provides oil, it will not receive gas from Hungary, Orbán said, accusing Kyiv of blocking the operation of the Druzhba pipeline and attacking infrastructure supplying Hungary. Hungary has maintained that it must break the oil blockade and secure stable energy supplies while also preserving regulated fuel prices domestically, which Orbán said remain among the lowest in Europe. Hungary and Slovakia have accused Ukraine of intentionally blocking shipments to gain political leverage and have since decided to suspend diesel fuel supplies to Ukraine in response. (Source: Anadolu Agency - Turkey)

23.03.2026  Hungary’s foreign minister has denied allegations that for years he shared confidential EU information with Russia, calling the reports fake and lies. 'Fake news as always,' Szijjártó wrote yesterday on US social media platform X. 'You are telling lies in order to support Tisza Party to have a pro-(Ukraine) war puppet government in Hungary,' he added, referring to the main opposition party ahead of the country’s April 12 parliamentary elections. He said the allegations were part of Ukrainian propaganda aimed at supporting the opposition and influencing the election outcome. A story in The Washington Post, cited by multiple European outlets, said that Szijjártó regularly briefed Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov on closed-door discussions held during EU Council meetings. 'EU Commission spokesperson Hipper called the allegations greatly concerning'. (Source: Anadolu Agency - Turkey)

Denmark
March 25, 2026, Wednesday // 09:00D  Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen's Social Democrats recorded their poorest election result in more than a century. The vote delivered 84 seats to the left bloc in the 179-seat Folketing, compared with 77 for right-wing parties, setting the stage for complex coalition negotiations. Frederiksen, who has led Denmark since 2019, signaled she intends to remain in office. Her party is projected to secure a vote share to around 21.9 percent - 38 seats, a sharp drop from the 50 won four years ago. The outcome reflects growing dissatisfaction among voters, highlights the strength of anti-immigration sentiment. Domestic issues dominated: rising living costs, debates over taxation and dissatisfaction with welfare policies shifted attention away from foreign policy 'achievements' - navigating relations with US President Trump and Europe’s response to the war in Ukraine. The result underscores a shift in voter priorities, with domestic concerns taking precedence over international issues and leaving Denmark facing a period of political bargaining. (Source: Novinite - Bulgaria)

France
24/03/2026 - 18:58 GMT+1  'A fake Euronews-style article and website claiming that Hungary's opposition leader Magyar insulted Trump is circulating online as part of a wider campaign researchers have linked to Storm-1516, a Russian disinformation operation. 'The article, which utilises a real byline and appeared on a fake Euronews website that has since been taken down, claims that Magyar delivered a blistering critique of Trump at a campaign rally. Among other claims, the article says Magyar called Trump a senile grandpa and promised to undo key agreements made with the US, should Magyar win parliamentary elections in Hungary scheduled on 12 April. (Source: Euronews - based in Lyon, France)

Germany
26.03.2026  German parliament 'approves measures to combat high gas prices': Move includes stricter rules on price increases at gas stations - for a limited time, price increases will be permitted only once a day, at noon. (Source: Anadolu Agency - Turkey)

Greece
March 23, 2026  Souda Naval Base is one of the most important US Navy bases in the world. At least three men have been arrested over the past year for illicitly taking pictures of American warships at the Souda Naval Base on Crete. Iranian handlers were specifically interested in the movements of the US Navy and Air Force. Since January, the Greek National Intelligence Service and the Greek police have arrested several foreign nationals spying on US military movements at Souda Naval Base on the island of Crete. A 26-year-old Azerbaijani with a Polish passport had taken some 5,000 photographs of Souda Naval Base and the movements of US Navy warships. He had been sending the material to an unknown recipient through specialized cryptographic software. The second spy, a 36-year-old Georgian man, was arrested in February. On his person, Greek authorities found photographs of US Navy and Air Force assets from Souda Naval Base. A third spy - the 58-year-old Polish man - was arrested on March 12. Greek law enforcement officers found binoculars, data storage devices, multiple SIM cards, a laptop, a tablet, as well as handwritten notes with his observations in his possession. A digital forensics investigation revealed photographs of the USS Gerald R. Ford aircraft carrier, a guided-missile submarine, F-22 Raptor stealth fighter jets, KC-135 Stratotankers, and Arleigh Burke-class guided-missile destroyers. The spy was transmitting the information to at least 10 unknown people. Using spies to snap pictures often amounts to a waste of resources. The global strategic landscape is largely transparent: access to commercial satellites is easy, X accounts monitor the movement of warships and combat aircraft with surprising precision, and maritime traffic websites map out naval traffic. American and Israeli intelligence officers have managed to recruit assets to penetrate Tehran’s political, military, and intelligence establishment. As a result, the country’s head of state is dead and its senior leadership has been decimated. Iran’s attempts to gather intelligence on its enemies seem amateurish by comparison. (Source: The National Interest - U.S.)

European Commission
Mar 25, 2026 - 20:26  Who recorded and why a phone call between der Leyen’s chief spinmeister, Henman, and Politico reporter Fortuna? Fortuna wanted to know whether the Commission was pressuring Ukraine to allow EU inspectors access to the damaged Druzhba pipeline, which supplies both Hungary and Slovakia with oil. 'One theory is that whoever is behind it were sending a message to der Leyen that they have more. (Source: Euractiv - Belgium)

March 25, 2026 1:37 pm CET  'Euro-speach': 'Comitology'. The General Court in Luxembourg ruled today in favor of ClientEarth, an NGO that challenged the Commission’s refusal in 2021 to provide information it requested about the renewed approval of cypermethrin - a substance known to harm bees and fish. The NGO had asked to see the positions shared by EU countries in closed-door meetings. At EU level, country representatives and the Commission regularly authorize chemicals in private committee meetings through a procedure known as comitology - a system now likely to face fresh pressure in Brussels to open up. It adds to a growing line of cases testing how far transparency rules stretch when institutions argue disclosure could disrupt internal deliberations. Today's ruling is the latest in a string of judgments where the General Court has found the Commission has not been forthcoming enough with access to documents. In 2024, the General Court found that the Commission was not transparent enough when it published Covid vaccine contracts, choosing to redact large parts of the documents. The Commission is currently fighting that ruling at the EU's top court. In May 2025, the court found that the EU executive was wrong to block access to the text messages exchanged between Pfizer CEO Bourla and Commission President der Leyen at the height of the Covid pandemic. (Source: Politico - U.S.)

Greenland
25.03.2026  Guillot, commander of US Northern Command, told a Senate hearing on March 19 that the US is seeking to extend its military footprint beyond Pituffik Space Base, the former Thule Air Base in northern Greenland. Analysts say potential sites could include Narsarsuaq in the south, Kangerlussuaq in the southwest, and areas near Pituffik - all of which retain strategic infrastructure such as airfields or deep-water ports dating back to Cold War-era US military presence. (Source: Anadolu Agency - Turkey)

Russia
25/03/2026 - 15:48  Russia launched nearly 1,000 drones at various sites in Ukraine yesterday. The raids claimed several lives and caused damage in various cities, hundreds of kilometres from the front line. (Source: France 24)

March 25, 2026 13:17 CET  A fire broke out at the Ust-Luga oil port in Russia's Leningrad region following a Ukrainian drone attack today, say Russian officials. The port of Ust-Luga is one of Russia's largest multipurpose ports on the Baltic Sea, located in the Gulf of Finland. (Source: RFE/RL -U.S.)

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Asia

Israel
March 22, 2026, 12:11 am EDT  Iranian missiles sow panic, destruction in Israeli towns. Israel's Magen David Adom emergency medical service said 84 wounded people were taken to hospitals from the Arad scene, including 10 in serious condition. An earlier missile attack hit the town of Dimona, about 25 kilometres southwest of Arad. The missile fell about five kilometres away from the facility, leaving about 30 people wounded according to rescuers. (Source: Barrons / Newsweek = U.S.)
Photo, video

05:16, 22 Mar 2026  Iranian missiles rain down on towns near Israel’s secretive arsenal of nuclear weapons. More than 180 people have been wounded in Dimona and Arad, in southern Israel. The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) confirmed it had received no indication of damage to the Shimon Peres Negev Nuclear Research Center at Dimona itself, and that no abnormal radiation levels had been detected in the area. The research centre, built in secret with French assistance, opened there in 1958. While Israel is a member of the IAEA, it does not allow the watchdog to inspect its nuclear sites as it has not signed the Non-Proliferation Treaty. Israel is widely believed to possess the only nuclear arsenal in the Middle East. 'If the Israeli regime fails to intercept the missiles in the highly protected Dimona area, it is operationally a sign of entering a new phase of the battle,' Ghalibaf, speaker of Iran’s Parliament wrote in a post on X. Iran said the strikes 'were retaliation' for attacks on its own nuclear site at Natanz, one of the country’s most important uranium enrichment sites, about 135 miles southeast of Tehran. (Source: The U.S. Sun)
Photo, videos

22.03.26, 10:44 AM  Late Saturday, Iran launched a strike on Arad, marking the first time the area near Israel’s nuclear research centre was hit during the conflict, resulting in multiple deaths and extensive damage to buildings (Source: The Telegraph - India / Reuters - United Kingdom)
Photo

Pakistan
Mar 22, 2026 09:58 IST  At a time when geopolitical tensions remain elevated, even hypothetical remarks have drawn attention for their potential impact. Former Pakistan High Commissioner to India, Basit, suggested that Pakistan could target India in the event of a foreign attack. Speaking during a discussion centred on a hypothetical conflict, Basit said, 'If America attacks Pakistan we have to attack India, Mumbai, New Delhi, without a second thought. We won’t leave it we’ll see what happens later.' (Source: India Today)

Persian Gulf
22.03.2026  A coalition of 22 countries, led by the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, and key Western powers, has formally declared its readiness to secure maritime navigation through the Strait of Hormuz. The strategic alliance includes Australia, Bahrain, Canada, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Latvia, Lithuania, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Romania, Slovenia, South Korea, Sweden, United Arab Emirates and the United Kingdom. (Source: Yeni Şafak - Turkey)

Southwest Asia
(Tuesday), 24.03.26, 11:58 AM  Yesterday, Trump had postponed for five days a plan to hit Iran's energy grid. No negotiations have been held with the US, Iranian parliament Speaker Qalibaf posted on X, adding that 'fakenews is used to manipulate the financial and oil markets.' Iran fired three waves of missiles at Israel early today, with reports of an impact in the country's north. Iran has threatened that if the US appears to be on the verge of landing troops it could mine the Persian Gulf, which would complicate an amphibious assault and also imperil all shipping in the area. The delay could be timed to coincide with the arrival of US Marines in the region, expected Friday. Iran's death toll has surpassed 1,500, its Health Ministry has said. Israel has suggested its ground forces could take part in the war. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Israel will continue to strike Iran and Lebanon. Israel, on its part, pounded Beirut's southern suburbs saying that it was targeting infrastructure used by the Iran-linked Hezbollah militant group. In Israel, 15 people have been killed by Iranian strikes. In Kuwait, power lines were hit from air defence shrapnel, causing partial electricity outages in several hours. Missile alert sirens sounded in Bahrain, and Saudi Arabia's defence ministry said it had destroyed 19 Iranian drones targeting its oil-rich Eastern Province. At least 13 US military members have been killed, along with more than a dozen civilians in the occupied West Bank and Gulf Arab states. Oil prices: $104 a barrel in morning trading. (Source: Telegraph - India)

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United Nations

The International Monetary Fund
March 23, 2026 11:45 a.m.  Time for the IMF to stop blaming the victim. The IMF standard analysis of imbalances puts too much blame on Europe and way too little on China. (Source: Council on Foreign Relations - U.S.

Security Council
23 March 2026  Ukraine violence worse than ever, the head of UN political and peacebuilding affairs said today in a briefing to the Security Council. DiCarlo reiterated the UN’s long-standing call for a ceasefire. Since the war began, 15,364 civilians have been killed, including 775 children, and more than 42,000 others injured, though actual numbers are likely to be higher. The longer the war exists, the deadlier it becomes, with growing risks to regional and international security, she said. Russia has reported Ukrainian attacks that have impacted civilians and civilian infrastructure in its territory. The largest drone attack targeting the capital, Moscow, occurred over the weekend from 14 to 16 March when at least 250 drones were reportedly shot down. No civilian casualties were reported. In Russian regions bordering Ukraine – Kursk, Belgorod and Bryansk, as well as the southern Krasnodar region – local officials have reported civilian casualties and damage to infrastructure from alleged strikes, she said. Damage to Ukraine’s energy infrastructure brought the country’s energy grid to the brink of total collapse, she told ambassadors. Some 60 per cent of gas production capacity has been destroyed and all power stations are damaged, which has caused persistent disruption in electricity, heating and water supply across the country. Reports point to an increase in strikes targeting railroads and other transport infrastructure. In Odesa, energy, industrial and port infrastructure have been damaged. Damage to the Novodnistrovsk hydroelectric plant in the south of Ukraine on 7 March led to an oil spill and widespread water pollution of the Nistru River in neighbouring Moldova, she said. The crisis prompted a 15-day environmental alert. Ms. DiCarlo underscored that a full, immediate and unconditional ceasefire is imperative. She welcomed diplomatic efforts led by the United States over the past year to advance peace. These efforts require sustained commitment and support, she said. UN Emergency Relief Coordinator Fletcher also briefed the Council. One of his requests was for greater financial support for the $2 billion humanitarian plan to assist 3.6 million people this year. Nearly three quarters of that plan is still unfunded. (The United Nations Office in Geneva - Location: Switzerland)

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