Oliver Boyd-Barrett
War Crime President
Trump bloviating at the UN. The cowardly response has been more pathetic than Trump's own performance.
At the United Nations yesterday, US President Trump threatened the annihilation of Iran (under the Geneva Convention, an egregious war crime in itself, but one that barely merits a yawn in Western mainstream media); gloated over the violent US re-colonization of Venezuela - whose smiley, puppet (“interim president”) leader met with Trump at the UN; and confirmed the US economic strangulation-until-death of Cuba.
The Steal of Venezuela
As for Venezuela, US President Donald Trump has held talks with Venezuela’s interim President Delcy Rodríguez at the UN General Assembly, their first face-to-face meeting since Rodríguez succeeded the violent US kidnapping of legitimate President, Nicolás Maduro and his wife in January 2026. The meeting took place a few kilometers from the New York jail where Maduro is awaiting trial for drug trafficking and other charges. According to the BBC (BBC), Rodríguez said she and Trump (and Rubio) discussed “advancing a cooperation agenda in strategic areas such as energy, mining, and security”. Rodríguez’s government has already signed an agreement allowing the US to control more than 65 billion barrels of its oil, more than a fifth of the country’s reserves. The agreement-at-gunpoint grants a US-led company 100-year concessions over 17 oilfields in Venezuela.
In Responsible Statecraft, Orlando Perez (RS) notes significant discrepancies between different accounts of the deal. Rodriguez talks of a 25-year deal, the White House says 100.
Rodriguez’ account does not square with that of Trump who says there will be majority American ownership of the reserves - illegal under Article 12 of Venezuela’s constitution. A US official told AP that Washington would control 55% of the output of a new private company called North American Blue Energy Partners (NABEP), the second largest oil producer in Venezuela, with an ownership stake and the right to buy crude at cost for the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, and the military. The State Department apparently gets the right to buy 20% of output at cost.
According to the Washington Post, cited by Perez, the Pentagon’s Office of Strategic Capital, established by Biden in 2022, could oversee and help fund the oilfield licenses - but nothing in the law contemplates financing foreign upstream oil development. Since the Pentagon does not have authority to take an ownership stake in private companies it cannot deliver the 35% the administration has described.
In effect the Administration is forcing the US taxpayer to take on debt that private companies have eschewed. The financing authority floated to support the arrangement could sunset in 2028, unless Congress acts to reauthorize it. And because the Pentagon’s loans and guarantees need not be made public, no one can scrutinize the real cost to the taxpayer.
In the meantime, Article 12 of Venezuela’s constitution makes hydrocarbon deposits property of the government - property that is inalienable and non-transferable. Article 302 reserves the petroleum industry to the state, and Article 303 requires the state to hold all shares of PDVSA, as the state oil company is known. Rodriguez lacks the power to violate the Constitution. The White House claims to have veto power over whoever sits on the NAVBEP board although the current incumbent is sought by Swiss prosecutors on suspicion of financial crimes.
These fundamental problems with the proposed US deal are already inciting protests in Caracas, and not before time. Ratification requires a legislature, and the only chamber capable of acting is the 2025 National Assembly, led by Delcy’s brother Jorge and whose constitutional legitimacy remains unsettled.
The Houthi Offensive and Global Oil
Over the past 24 hours, the conflict in the Red Sea and Gulf regions has escalated significantly, marked by intense Houthi ground offensives in Yemen’s highlands and coordinated international defense support for Riyadh.
Houthi forces are actively fighting to capture the strategic Kahab mountains. This offensive aims to completely sever the Red Sea coast from the southern territories held by Saudi-backed Yemeni government forces. They also allow the Houthis superior advantage over vessels in the Red Sea.
Senior Houthi officials issued a direct warning that any direct US military intervention or air support for Saudi Arabia would result in the group targeting all US regional interests. They threatened to fully close the critical Bab el-Mandeb Strait to American shipping if Washington intervenes. Houthi Supreme Leader Abdulmalik al-Houthi publicly rejected Saudi-proposed truce offers. The group demands direct control over Yemen’s oil and gas revenues to fund public salaries before agreeing to any cessation of hostilities. The Houthis continue to leverage assurances given to the Trump administration that they will not target US-flagged vessels. This dynamic has successfully complicated the U.S.-Saudi alliance, leaving Washington hesitant to launch direct counter-strikes.
The Guardian has reported that up to 169 people, including fighters and civilians, have been killed in Yemen over the past three days due to strikes and fighting on the ground.
Saudi Arabia has successfully restarted its vital East-West Crude Pipeline, albeit at a reduced operational capacity. The pipeline had been offline for nine days following an Iranian-backed drone strike. This has allowed Saudi Arabia to resume partial oil exports via the Red Sea port of Yanbu. Brent crude spot trades around $100.51 per barrel, while near-term futures hover near $99.32 to $102.62, reflecting persistent geopolitical risks in the Middle East. High as these are relative to the situation before the start of the US war of choice (second in less than a year) against Iran in February 2026, they do not appear, in my judgment, to be accurate reflections of the gravity of the crisis.
Not the least of it is, in addition to the destruction of Gulf sources of oil production, rising prices (especially of diesel and aviation fuel, not to mention gasoline), insufficient supplies of crude oil for refinement into diesel, the (partial) closure of the Strait of Hormuz, the US blockade of vessels carrying Iranian fuel through the Arabian Sea, the Houthi blockade of Saudi tankers through the Bab al-Mendab strait on the Red Sea, and Ukraine’s hits on Russian refineries, there is an increasing shortage in the availability of large tankers, many of these stuck on much longer-than-usual journeys around the Cape of Good Hope and other excessively long journeys to get Middle East oil to Asian clients.
An expert source cited yesterday by Larry Johnson (Sonar21)argues that in recent decades China has developed a supply network that does not depend on the open-water tanker trade the way the West does, allowing it to pull crude down pipelines from Russia and Central Asia and sit on surpluses. It has never before been as expensive to move oil around. Some long-distance crude trades are no longer economic. Refiners respond by bidding up whatever sweet crude sits near them, which lifts regional prices for the accessible grades. The fuel used to run the tanker fleet is itself going short, pushing shipping rates up again.
But China is just fine, since it runs much of its supply through pipelines that no tanker rate can touch. Its own exports are booming. Says Johnson:
“The country that everyone predicted would be crippled by a Gulf shutdown is instead exporting fuel into the shortage, at its own discretion and on its own terms.”
To the partial relief of Saudi Arabia and its allies, the United Kingdom’s Royal Air Force has formally committed to providing defensive air-to-air refueling support to help Saudi fighter jets counter Houthi aerial threats. David Camp in Antiwar.com today cites Middle East Eye to the effect that British Defense Minister Luke Pollard said that the UK would deploy a refueling plane, a Voyager, from a base in Cyprus to provide “air-to-air refueling” for Saudi warplanes to support “defensive” activity. France has indicated readiness to help secure Saudi energy corridors and infrastructure.
Leaders of the G7 nations issued a joint statement strongly condemning the recent Houthi missile and drone strikes against Saudi territory, reinforcing diplomatic support for Riyadh.
Panic over the short-term future of oil supplies is pushing countries like Great Britain and France into consolidating their subservience fo the US at the very historical moment that they should be asserting their independence. They are quite incapable of new, original and safer strategic thinking.
The Saudis say their air defense systems (imported from the US, of course, and largely managed by the US) have successfully tracked and intercepted multiple Houthi ballistic missiles and drone clusters targeting civilian infrastructure in Riyadh, Taif, Yanbu, and Bisha, preventing further domestic casualties although, clearly, many missiles got through and have inflicted significant damage on Saudi oil infrastructure and US military assets. Around 2,700 U.S. military personnel are stationed in Saudi Arabia, located primarily at the Prince Sultan Air Base which is located roughly 40 to 60 kilometers south of Riyadh.
Wavering on the Precipice of Negotiation or Conflict in the Gulf
In the Strait of Hormuz and the Arabian Sea the balance of power on the water continues to fluctuate daily. Over the past day, the UKMTO has reported that an additional cargo vessel and a Liquid Petroleum Gas (LPG) tanker were struck by unknown projectiles, suspected to be fired by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). Preliminary data shows that only three commodity vessels transited the Strait on Tuesday, down from four the previous day, and drastically lower than the 10-day moving average of 15 ships.
“On All Fronts?”
On the diplomatic front, Iran’s security chief Mohsen Rezaei has issued a strict five-day deadline for the U.S. to meet Tehran’s terms to open the Strait, threatening to ground flights from neighboring Arab states that cooperate with the US. Reports suggest that Iran is looking, at a minimum, for the lifting of the US blockade, an unfreezing of frozen Iranian assets held by the US, together with up to $270 billion in reparations. Other recent statements suggest that Iran is also holding to its demand in the now-defunct MOU (that the US and Iran both signed in June) that there be an immediate ceasefire “on all fronts,” widely understood to mean that Israel would have to stop killing Palestinians in Gaza and in the West Bank and withdraw from those territories, and to stop the killings in and withdraw its invading forces from Lebanon and Syria.
Clearly, Israel is not about to do any of these things, but is rather transfixed by evil: Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz, for example, has threatened to force about a million people in Gaza City to flee south if an Israeli soldier or civilian is kidnapped, citing what he called “various intentions and intelligence”. This is amidst numerous official statements in support of genocide or forced evacuation. In a statement that clings to the illusion of the possibility of a two-state solution (the dismantling of the apartheid State of Israel is the only plausible solution), UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has warned that Israeli violence, displacement and illegal settlement expansion in the occupied West Bank are undermining prospects for peace and raising the risk of “ethnic cleansing”. (sic)
Guterres used his final address to the General Assembly to denounce the scale of Israel’s “onslaught” on Gaza and warn that developments in the occupied West Bank were threatening Palestinians with ethnic cleansing. As Antiwar.com reports (Antiwar.com) that Guterres, with reference to Israel’s genocide in Gaza, said what followed October 2023 “was an onslaught on Palestinians in Gaza, with a scale of killing and destruction unlike anything I have witnessed in all my years as secretary general.”
Even as Qatar and Pakistan continue their mediation efforts with Iran (with little to show for it, so far), the US Navy has continued to escort vital crude oil vessels out of the Persian Gulf, utilizing a widened route closer to Oman to bypass localized IRGC naval forces. Assessments as to the efficacy of this strategy are contradictory. Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi held a rare direct meeting with U.S. Special Envoy Steve Witkoff on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly.
A new threat to global oil supplies comes from Libya where an unnamed armed group shut a valve on a pipeline from a major Libyan oil field, causing a drop in production, as confirmed by the National Oil Corporation (NOC). According to AfricaNews (AN) the disruption threatens production from the Al-Sharara field, a key source of crude for Libya, an OPEC member that holds Africa’s largest proven oil reserves. The Al-Sharara field is located 900 kilometers (560 miles) south of Tripoli, connecting with the coastal city of Zawiya, home to one of the country’s main export terminals.
Israeli Aggressions: Syria
In Syria, Israel says it will remain on Syrian Mount Hermon (Jabal al-Shaykh) indefinitely despite the Syrian government’s repeated demands for the “immediate and unconditional withdrawal” of Israeli forces to the lines held before December 8, 2024. Drop Site News (DSN) reports that in southwestern Syria’s Quneitra, Dara’a, and Rif Dimashq (Damascus Countryside) provinces, which abut the UN-patrolled buffer zone, Israeli incursions are almost daily, with night patrols, house raids, checkpoints, and drone flights overhead. Israeli troops are digging a continuous barrier of earthen walls and trenches four meters deep and four meters wide that stretches from the northern Israeli-occupied Golan Heights, down to the southern border tripoint between the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights, Jordan, and Syria, with increased surveillance over the entire area.
There are nine Israeli military bases between Mount Hermon on the Syria-Lebanon border in the north to the Yarmouk River in the southern border with Jordan. The newly occupied bases have become launching points for Israeli patrols and military operations against locals.
Syria’s illegal and former-AQ/ISIS president Ahmed al-Sharaa, has accused Israel at the UN of violating Syria’s sovereignty, and called for Israeli troops to withdraw from Syrian territory to the lines set under a 1974 disengagement agreement. Since December 2024, he claimed, Israel had carried out nearly 500 air and artillery strikes, conducted more than 1,200 incursions into Syria, and detained around 300 people. Residents in southwestern Syria confronting Israeli forces on the ground say the government in Damascus has done little to come to their aid.
NATO v Russia
As for NATO’s war with Russia over NATO’s proxy (not a member of NATO, nor ever likely to be), Ukraine, recent updates show persistent hybrid pressures and strategic positioning by both sides, though no single decisive shift occurred in the exact last 24 hours.
More and more, Western sources are conceding that Russia maintains the attritional advantage, with a higher production rate for basic ammunition, drones, and precision missiles than Western industrial output. Dwindling stocks of interceptors like Patriots leave Ukrainian infrastructure vulnerable to ballistic strikes, to the extent that Russia, in its almost daily attacks on Kiev (the latest taking place in daylight hours), seems no longer to require ballistic missiles but leaves the job to drones, Geran and others, confident that many, if not most of these, will find their targets.
The recent Duma elections have increased the representation of United Russia in which Putin’s party officially secured well over 50% of the vote. IntelliNews is skeptical, noting that while on paper it won 57.83% of the party-list vote and 355 of 450 seats in the almost final count - thus clearly meeting the 300+ threshold for a constitutional majority - this does not jibe at all with the expectations of even state pollsters before the election, who predicted that United Russia would get 35.6% of the vote, equivalent only to 219 seats (beneath the 226 seats needed for a straight majority).
Without evidence (to my knowledge), IntelliNews assumes that an additional 20% of the vote was somehow magically lopped on to the unsatisfactory 35%. That this has not caused more public consternation, IntelliNews speculates, is because of the war factor and the continuing popularity (over 70%) of Putin, which puts all other European leaders to shame.
Certainly, the results are a great deal more robust than those of recent elections in Europe’s strongest (but flailing) economy, Germany.
The recent regional elections held on September 20, 2026, delivered a historic reshaping of the political landscape in Germany, resulting in a “disaster” for Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s center-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU). The vote highlighted extreme political polarization, with the “far-right” Alternative for Germany (AfD) securing major gains in the northeast and the “far-left” Die Linke dominating the capital. In Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, AfD (Alternative for Germany) won 37.9% - 38%. Co-leader Alice Weidel declared the party had officially reached the mainstream. The CDU (Christian Democratic Union) received only 4.9%. The Chancellor’s party fell just short of the 5% threshold required to enter the state legislature. In Berlin, Die Linke was a clear winner, while the ruling CDU lost significant ground.
The results came two weeks after another major AfD victory in Saxony-Anhalt. Public dissatisfaction with Chancellor Merz’s war and energy policies which have increased German debt, cut social benefits and deindustrialized Germany along with questionable economic reforms, high housing costs, and energy prices, heavily influenced voters. Merz has vowed to remain in office and push through his economic agenda.
Together with the recent electoralm ousting of Keir Starmer in Great Britain, the likely success of Marine Le Pen’s National Assembly party in France in April 2027, the rapid growth of AfD in Germany is deeply troubling to the warmongers of the European Commission.
