NEWS

Less than a year after we got our first proper look at China’s wing-in-ground effect (WIG) craft, dubbed the ‘Bohai Sea Monster,’ the aircraft has appeared again, with evidence that it has a combat role, likely including launching weapons. We can also confirm that, contrary to some earlier assessments, the craft is powered by four turboprop engines, rather than turbofans. This confirms our original analysis that the craft may have propeller engines as opposed to jets.

The Bohai Sea Monster was first identified by submarine warfare analyst HI Sutton in June 2025. The aircraft, with its distinctive flying-boat hull and joined v-tail, was spotted on a pier on the Bohai Sea, at the northwestern end of the Yellow Sea. The following month, better imagery appeared, showing the craft on the water, but without its propellers fitted, adding to speculation that it might be jet-powered.

New images show the Bohai Sea Monster in greater detail, including its powerplants, which appear to be regular turboprops, rather than a hybrid-electric propulsion system, something that would make a lot of sense for an aircraft of this kind. Each of the four engines drives a three-bladed propeller.

Perhaps even more interesting is the appearance under each wing of a pair of hardpoints, which appear to be intended to release stores. Potentially, these pylons could be used to mount external fuel tanks or sensor pods. However, they appear to be fitted with shackles, which would clearly indicate a plan to release stores. While some kind of search-and-rescue payload, such as life-raft containers, is a possibility, the military paint scheme and PLA doctrine point more to the craft being armed with some kind of offensive weapons. Air-launched drones could be another payload, with this being an area of growing interest for the Chinese military.

The development raises questions about some reports that this is a “civilian” program nominally tied to the China Coast Guard, although cover stories of this kind are hardly unusual for Chinese military programs.

At the very least, the Bohai Sea Monster is certainly not a pure transport craft. Some kind of multi-role platform is also a strong possibility.

There is also the possibility, one that we raised in the past, that the Bohai Sea Monster is actually a subscale demonstrator, one that’s intended to prove out the WIG concept. If successful, this could then lead to a much larger craft and one that would, of course, have a different powerplant and much greater payload — including weapons.

The Bohai Sea Monster’s broad similarities to the now-abandoned, U.S.-designed Liberty Lifter could also point to the Chinese craft being a subscale technology demonstrator.

Notably, subscale demonstrators of flying boats are nothing new. Indeed, Germany built one to trial the flight characteristics of its planned Dornier Do 214 transatlantic flying boat back in World War II. In the 1950s, the Soviet Union built a single example of its first jet-powered flying boat, the Beriev R-1, before the same company fed this experience into the much larger and more ambitious Be-10 Mallow.

As for WIG craft in general, these were extensively explored by the Soviet Union during the Cold War, leading to some enormous vehicles, including anti-ship strike platforms and assault craft, which even saw some military service. In Russian parlance, they are known as Ekranoplans.

A video showing the Soviet Lun class missile-armed Ekranoplan:

Video Lun class Ekranoplan (Caspian)

Post-Cold War, the WIG concept fell from favor, but it has made something of a return in more recent years. These craft are able to skim the dense air above the surface of the water with relatively high efficiency and speed, while most are also capable of less-efficient higher-altitude flight.

In the context of the Pacific, specifically, WIG craft are seen as a potential partial answer to some of the challenges of fighting in that theater. This includes moving cargoes (including very heavy ones), as well as personnel and materiel to far-flung locations that may not be served by runways. In the process, large distances may need to be covered, and fast. It is for the logistics mission that the U.S. military was looking to the Liberty Lifter.

There is also the very important fact that, by skimming low over the water, a WIG craft can stay below the radar horizon, avoiding the gaze of surface- and land-based sensors. At the same time, it is immune to mines, submarines, and other hazards that can threaten even relatively safe waters. These advantages have to be weighed up against an airframe that remains generally vulnerable in a heavily contested combat zone.

For China, a platform of this kind would also be very useful, especially in the highly strategic South China Sea. In peacetime, a WIG craft could be used to support bases in the region, as well as search and rescue, and other missions. In a conflict, the same types of craft could perform rapid resupply, as well as surveillance, in island chains and littoral regions.

The People’s Liberation Army (PLA) is expected to be a recipient of the AG600 amphibious flying boat, which could perform similar missions. Unlike most militaries, the PLA has never fully moved away from operating flying boats, most recently the SH-5, a handful of which were completed, primarily for anti-submarine warfare, but were apparently withdrawn in recent years.

When it comes to an armed WIG craft, even in its current size, the Bohai Sea Monster could be a very useful sea control platform, undertaking both anti-submarine warfare and anti-shipping strike over regional distances, perhaps as a more ‘tactical’ counterpart to the AG600 and shore-based types. It would still be large enough to accommodate sensors, with up to four torpedoes or smaller anti-ship missiles carried underwing. Depth charges are another possibility.

Such a craft would be suitable for local patrols of littoral areas, as well as support of special forces, etc. A smaller WIG craft would also be valuable for combat search and rescue (CSAR), likely to be a key mission should China go to war in the Pacific.

Of course, a scaled-up Bohai Sea Monster would be much more capable across all these kinds of missions. It would likely offer the capacity for an internal stores bay, as well as a heavier payload, a more comprehensive sensor suite, and a longer range.

Exactly what role the Bohai Sea Monster will ultimately fill, and whether it represents an operational platform or merely a stepping-stone toward something far larger and more capable, remains unclear.

However, its reappearance with apparent weapons-carrying provisions strongly suggests China is exploring far more than a niche transport or utility aircraft. Instead, it points to a broader effort to revive and adapt the WIG concept for modern military operations in the Pacific, where speed, range, payload, and access to austere maritime areas could all prove critical.

At the same time, the craft joins a growing list of highly ambitious and sometimes novel Chinese aerospace and naval programs that are emerging at a remarkable pace, often revealing themselves only in fragments before their true purpose becomes apparent.

Contact the author: thomas@thewarzone.com

Gaza will not forget

The suffocating smoke still hangs over her ruins, thick with the acrid stench of explosives powder and dust carrying the scent of betrayal and the mark of courage. Her streets, once filled with children’s laughter, became Israeli fields of slaughter. Now they echo with the names and memories of martyrs.

The mass graves, the broken concrete, and the twisted steel are not just evidence of Zionist hatred. They are witnesses to those who stood with her, and to those who failed her. Today, Gaza’s rubble holds more memories than all the nation’s libraries.

Palestine will remember

She will remember the selfless sacrifices of doctors and healthcare workers who refused to abandon their sick patients as bombs rained on their hospitals; the journalists who became the news, targeted for daring to expose the truth; the mothers who wrapped their children in the red, black, green, and white flag of a nation Israel is desperate to erase.

These are not tales of despair, but of defiance, insisting on its right to breathe life amid death.

Gaza will not forget

She will not forget the silence of Western democracies. In a tragic inversion, most European nations, shackled by the ghosts of their past, traded morality for absolution. The self-proclaimed champions of human rights offered Palestinians on the altar of yesterday’s victims to atone for Europe’s sins.

Gaza will not forget the Biden administration, which vetoed every U.N. Security Council resolution calling to end the genocide. Nor Donald Trump, who poured fuel on the fire, then demanded recognition for dousing his own flames.

This week, Arab, Muslim, and world leaders gather like moths around the American arsonist-turned-firefighter, “celebrating” the ashes of Gaza.

Palestine will remember

She will remember the people who rose for Gaza, from Yemen to Dublin, from Cape Town to London and Madrid, while Arab capitals from Cairo to Riyadh slept. Ireland and Spain led the boycott, while Arab countries from the Gulf to Jordan opened their ports and highways to provide alternative routes for Israeli goods, even as Yemen imposed a sea blockade in the Red Sea.

Gaza will not forget — nor forgive — the Arab governments that opened their ports when shipyard workers in Italy refused, delivering American weapons used to annihilate her children and destroy her hospitals.

Palestine will remember

She will remember South Africa — not an Arab or Muslim nation — that led her case before the International Court of Justice, charging Israel with genocide. A country once scarred by apartheid became the moral conscience of a world too timid to speak. In that act of solidarity, South Africa rekindled the universal truth that justice knows no borders.

Palestine will remember the Lebanese resistance that gave its leaders for Gaza’s defense; Yemen, poor in wealth but rich in dignity, whose solidarity never wavered; and Iran, steadfast against Israeli hubris. She will remember Ireland and Spain, who did not turn away when Arabs did, proving that true solidarity transcends borders, faith, and kinship, resting only on shared humanity.

She will remember the heroes of the flotillas who braved waves of hatred and siege to carry messages of compassion; the nameless volunteers who left the safety of their countries to heal the wounded and feed the hungry; the American students who turned campuses into encampments of resistance; the artists, actors, and musicians who risked careers for justice; the employees who lost their jobs protesting the complicity of Google, Microsoft, and other tech giants in Israel’s crimes.

Gaza will not forget those who betrayed her

Palestine will forever be grateful to those who dared to speak the truth when it was dangerous, who marched when it was forbidden, who grieved when it was unfashionable.

Palestine will remember. History will remember. Justice will remember.

For nearly two years, Gaza has endured a genocide so relentless it defies descriptive language. Israel’s war machine has turned hospitals into morgues, UN schools into mass graves, and refugee camps into craters. Yet Gaza refuses to die.

Each time she is bombed “back to the Stone Age,” she rises — like the phoenix — to rebuild, not only her structures but her indomitable will. In that defiance lies the occupier’s greatest fear: memory.

Israel can destroy buildings but not erase remembrance. The siege may starve Gaza’s body, but it nourishes Palestine’s collective soul.

Gaza’s children will grow up with memories no child should bear. But they will also inherit something indestructible: dignity. In every demolished home and every shattered family lives a story that refuses burial.

Gaza’s memory will not fade. For the mind, unlike stone, cannot be occupied. It is the eternal archive of a people’s resilience, passed from one generation to the next, weaving the indelible tapestry of Palestine today.

The ruins of Gaza stand not only as testimony to Israel’s genocide but to the moral collapse of those who enabled it.

Gaza will rise again, brick by brick.

But what will never be resurrected is the Israeli lie, which, for eight decades, cloaked the Zionist project in the guise of victimhood, occupying Western narratives and manufacturing consent.

Gaza will rise — and the Israeli myth will remain buried beneath her rubble, forever.

The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Monitor.

The U.S. Air Force plans to send a new version of the glider-like Unmanned Long-endurance Tactical Reconnaissance Aircraft (ULTRA) drone with a turbocharged engine to the Middle East for an operational evaluation. The ULTRA Turbo can fly faster and higher than the original design, while still being able to stay aloft for multiple days at a time.

Earlier examples of the ULTRA drone, developed by DZYNE Technologies, have conducted at least one previous operational evaluation in the Middle East, back in 2024. Run by the Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL), the ULTRA program is one of several avenues the service has pursued in recent years to find ways to provide additional persistent aerial intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) coverage and do so at relatively low cost. The importance of this added capacity in the Middle East, in particular, has only been underscored by recent active combat operations against Iran and the ongoing blockade of Iranian ports. These capabilities that would be valuable elsewhere globally, too, including during operations across the broad expanses of the Pacific.

The Air Force’s 2027 Fiscal Year budget request includes details about the new planned operational evaluation and other plans for the ULTRA program. In April, DZYNE announced that it had secured a new contract to supply additional ULTRA Turbo aircraft to AFRL.

“FY26 [Fiscal Year 2026] funding will support an OCONUS OA [operational assessment outside of the continental United States] in CENTCOM’s [U.S. Central Command] Area of Responsibility (AOR), which is the next step (operational testing and evaluation) in developing the ULTRA system,” according to the Air Force’s budget documents. “This assessment will begin with the OCONUS OA in FY26. FY27 funding will continue the OA and fund needed capability improvements to meet user requirements.”

The Air Force’s ULTRA drones have a so-called “Multi-INT” configuration, according to the service’s budget documents, but no further specifics are provided. This term is generally used to refer to a mixture of sensors that could include electro-optical, infrared, or hyperspectral cameras; radars with synthetic aperture imaging and ground moving-target indicator modes; and/or signals intelligence suites. ULTRA drones have been seen previously at least with sensor turrets under their fuselages.

The budget documents also note that the new version of the drone is powered by a Rotax 916, a four-cylinder piston aircraft engine. The Rotax 916 is also used on a number of civilian ultralight aircraft, as well as other drones designed for military use, including the Hermes 900 from Elbit in Israel.

“The new engine unlocks power and operational capability at altitudes above 25,000 feet which enhances ULTRA’s mission flexibility and improves resilience in adverse weather,” DZYNE said in a press release announcing the new version’s first flight last year.

In February, DZYNE announced that the ULTRA Turbo had “completed a mission-representative flight achieving 60 hours at 25,000 feet altitude and 100 knots true airspeed (KTAS).”

At the time of writing, the company’s website says the baseline ULTRA design can stay in the air for more than 70 hours, fly at altitudes up to 25,000 feet and speeds up to 96 knots, and carry a payload weighing 450 pounds. ULTRA Turbo looks to trade some endurance (maximum flight time stated to be more than 60 hours) for increased speed and operational ceiling (120 knots and up to 30,000 feet).

A boost in speed would reduce the time needed to get to and from a designated operating area, especially one that is very far from the point of launch. This could also increase on-station time.

Especially for a glide-like design, being able to fly at higher altitudes can offer benefits when it comes to fuel economy. It also expands the available field of view for sensors, including when using a slanted flight pattern to peer deeper into a target area from a stand-off distance. As DYZNE has noted in past press releases, being able to operate at a higher ceiling offers benefits when it comes to getting above bad weather, as well.

DYZNE has also described the ULTRA family, the core design of which is based on a commercial sport glider, as being relatively cheap to acquire and operate, though the exact unit cost and cost per hour to fly are unclear. The drones are also said to have a small deployed footprint. The Air Force is currently asking for $16.57 million to continue work on the entire ULTRA program in the 2027 Fiscal Year.

What we know about the 2024 operational evaluation provides a more practical sense of the capabilities the ULTRA design offered even before getting a new turbocharged engine. There were indications that it involved drones flying sorties from Al Dhafra Air Base in the United Arab Emirates to Afghanistan, thousands of miles away, and back again. At the time, the Air Force was also using MQ-9 Reapers for these missions, but those drones offered only limited time on station after transiting from the Persian Gulf via the Arabian Sea and Pakistan.

As an aside, lower-flying MQ-9s have continued to be a key element of the U.S. military aerial ISR ecosystem in the Middle East since the ULTRA operational evaluation in 2024. At a hearing last week, Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Kenneth Wilsbach said the Reaper had been “perhaps the most valuable player” in the latest conflict with Iran, despite dozens of reported losses. The continued demand for MQ-9 coverage, but also the growing vulnerability of those drones, had already been highlighted during previous operations targeting Houthi militants in Yemen.

As noted, active combat operations against Iran and the continued blockade of the country’s ports have only underscored the U.S. military’s immense appetite for persistent ISR coverage. In April, TWZ explored these demands in great detail in the context of the emergence of a very stealthy, extremely long-endurance, very high-altitude ISR drone commonly (but unofficially) referred to as the RQ-180, or an evolution thereof, in Greece. The RQ-180 and related designs are, of course, in an entirely different class from the ULTRA family.

As mentioned, ULTRA is also not the only effort the Air Force and other branches of the U.S. military have pursued in recent years to help provide more persistent ISR coverage in environments that do not require a highly exquisite asset like the RQ-180. Drones and balloons designed to operate in the stratosphere have also been major areas of interest, including for use in and around the Middle East and the Pacific. These are platforms that can be used as high-altitude communications nodes and even potentially for launching smaller payloads, including drones or munitions.

The continued work on ULTRA comes at a time when the Air Force is looking again at what might succeed the MQ-9. The requirements the service has put forward publicly so far, including a range of up to 932 miles and a 20-hour endurance, point to a design that would have less reach than ULTRA or ULTRA Turbo. The service also wants the Reaper replacement to be lower-cost and readily producible, allowing for greater “mass” to be committed more freely in higher-risk environments. This might leave open an operational space that an enlarged fleet of ULTRA drones could slot into as part of a larger mix of capabilities.

Altogether, though the ULTRA program is still relatively small, it does continue to expand in scale and scope, with the drones now heading back to the Middle East with new turbocharged engines.

Contact the author: joe@twz.com

Two years ago, Bashir Muhammad received an invitation to attend a journalism summit in Niamey but declined. That decision, and the argument it provoked, told him everything he needed to know.

He runs one of the growing number of Hausa-language digital news platforms that have emerged across northern Nigeria in the past decade, serving local audiences that legacy English-language media have largely ignored. That profile made him a target. In 2024, Bashir was approached by Mariam Laouali – a woman known across West African Hausa media circles as Sarkin Abzin. She is a prominent Nigerien broadcaster and, as he would come to understand, a committed supporter of the military regime that had seized power in Niamey the previous year.

In July 2023, the military junta, led by General Abdurrahman Tchiani, overthrew the democratically elected President Muhammad Bazoum. The coup met with strong resistance from the international community, particularly the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), under the leadership of Nigeria’s President Bola Tinubu. This led to severe diplomatic tensions between ECOWAS and the new military regime in Niger, culminating in threats of invasion from Nigerian leaders and ultimately the division of ECOWAS and the formation of the Alliance of the Sahel States (AES). While some diplomatic efforts have been restored, tensions remain, and the Niger Republic, supported by Russia and its AES allies, has been engaged in information efforts to attack ECOWAS countries, particularly Nigeria and Benin Republic. Bashir felt this approach could be part of the recruitment efforts. 

The pitch sounded professional. Sarkin Abzin told him of a pan-African summit of Hausa-language journalists to be convened in Niamey. It was the first of its kind, according to her. She described it as an exercise in cross-border media cooperation and a chance for journalists from across the continent’s Hausa-speaking belt to build something together. 

Bashir had questions, but he did not like the answers, so he declined.

Sarkin Abzin pushed back, insisting that he should consider it, but he became more suspicious. The conversation escalated. By the end, she was visibly frustrated. It ended there. 

“She didn’t take it well,” Bashir told HumAngle, sitting in his home office while casually scrolling on his computer, searching for her Facebook page. “The way she reacted told you this wasn’t just about journalism.”

He was right. It was not all about journalism. The summit in Niamey was just bait. What Sarkin Abzin and her sponsors in the Niger Republic seemed to want was access to northern Nigeria’s forty million Hausa speakers and to exploit their grievances and distrust of Nigerian leaders.

Many Nigerians were consumed by anxiety and bitterness over the country’s dire economic pressures. Many also harboured deep anger toward their leaders – particularly President Bola Tinubu, against whom protests erupted in August 2024, during which some demonstrators raised Russian flags and called for a coup. For that reason, this was a country where recruiting the discontented would come easily, because the grievances were already there, waiting.

Pro-junta actors and AES-aligned influence networks have been weaponising TikTok’s virality to erode confidence in Nigerian democratic leadership, particularly targeting President Tinubu and the broader ECOWAS establishment.

Online influencers and sympathetic media outlets, including some based within Nigeria itself, have circulated claims accusing Nigerian politicians of backing insurgent networks and conspiring with foreign powers to destabilise the AES states.

The recruitment drive

Sarkin Abzin’s tour of northern Nigerian newsrooms and radio stations in 2024 was, in retrospect, the visible edge of something much larger. She moved through Kano, through the northwest, knocking on the doors of editors and station managers, carrying the same pitch: come to Niamey, meet your counterparts, and build solidarity. Several journalists, like Bashir, declined quietly. A general manager at a prominent radio station in Kano, who pleaded anonymity, told HumAngle that Sarkin Abzin had reached him, but that he had turned her down.

“Looking at the timing when there was a diplomatic rift between Nigeria and Niger, and the suspicion of foreign influence, I felt it was unwise to join,” he said.

However, not everyone had the luxury of that suspicion, or the will to act on it. Musa Abba (not real name), a journalist at a private radio station in Kebbi State, saw a conference invitation and a chance to connect with Hausa journalists beyond Nigeria’s borders. His station was invited and the managers nominated him. Accommodation and food were covered by the organisers. The journey, according to him, was arranged through the Nigerian Union of Journalists (NUJ), in a vehicle shared with other attendees and, notably, with some politicians and government officials who had also been invited.

What he found in Niamey, however, upended the premise of the invitation entirely.

He concluded that “it was a sophisticated plan to form Hausa journalists who will be promoting the Nigerien junta and anti-West sentiment across Hausa-speaking countries.”

On her TikTok page, Sarkin Abzin does not hide her bias. She promotes Sahel juntas and specifically asks her followers to promote Tchiani. 

In a social media exchange with Fati Niger, a Kannywood musician originally from the Niger Republic who had called for a return to democratic rule, Sarkin Abzin’s response betrayed her sentiments. “We don’t care about entertainment,” she mentioned in a TikTok video. What mattered, she said, was building their country and confronting those she described as “hypocrites and oppressors within the West,” as well as “hypocrites among us here, those in exile in every country in the world, including Nigeria, and those Nigerians who support the old system [of democracy] and do not stand behind these soldiers under Abdourahamane Tchiani.”

The summit Sarkin Abzin organised had state backing, institutional cover, and a well-hosted programme. It had everything, in other words, that a genuine journalism conference would have – except genuine journalism at its centre.

The irony is that the junta in Niger has been repressing and arresting journalists in the country. Moussa Ngom, Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ)’s Francophone Africa representative, explained that “arrest and detention have become tools of choice for Nigerien authorities to try to control information they find undesirable.”

Human Rights Watch (HRW) reported that in October 2025 six journalists were arrested in Niamey – Moussa Kaka and Abdoul Aziz of Saraounia TV; Ibro Chaibou and Souleymane Brah from the online publication Voice of the People; Youssouf Seriba of Les Échos du Niger; and Oumarou Kané, founder of the magazine Le Hérisson – over their alleged role in circulating a government press briefing invitation on social media, criticising the introduction of the mandatory payment for “Solidarity Fund for the Safeguarding of the Homeland”, a form of security levy in Niger. 

The conference that wasn’t

The organisation behind the summit, Kungiyar Yan Jarida Na Afrika Masu Magana Da Harshen Hausa or, in French, Résegu Africain des journalistes en langue Haoussa (Association of Hausa-speaking Journalists in Africa), was founded by Sarkin Abzin herself. She held a senior position at RTN, the Nigerien state broadcaster. Her organisation, she told prospective attendees, had the backing of the Nigerien government institutions. 

Inside the hall at the Centre International de Conférences Mahatma Gandhi in Niamey, when the summit was opened on Aug. 24, 2024, the keynote speakers were not press freedom advocates, editors or media economists. They were politicians. Prime Minister Ali Lamine Zeine appeared as Tchiani’s representative, delivering a speech whose original French had been translated into Hausa. He spoke about Niger’s exit from ECOWAS as a show of sovereignty.

The junta had, by this point, accused ECOWAS countries, particularly Nigeria and Benin, of colluding with France to destabilise Niger and sabotage its economy- allegations that, according to independent fact-checkers, had no credible evidentiary basis but which had proven effective at consolidating domestic support by replacing accountability with external threat. The Niamey summit was the moment that the narrative was offered to Nigerian voices who could carry it home.

Among those who spoke was Hamza Almustafa, a Nigerian retired general and a politician who used the platform to denounce the West. Najaatu Muhammad, a prominent northern Nigerian political figure, delivered what several attendees described as the most incendiary address of the proceedings. She told her audience that the Nigerian federal government was conspiring to sever Niger from Nigeria – to cut through bonds of religion and culture that no colonial border had ever truly divided. Abuja, she suggested, served Paris and Washington before it served Kano or Sokoto.

“It was not really a journalists’ meeting,” Musa told HumAngle, “By the time the politicians started speaking, those of us who understood what was happening knew we had made a mistake.”

Sarkin Abzin’s organisation had achieved, in a single day, what overt propaganda rarely manages: it had placed legitimate reporters in a room and given the junta’s narratives the texture of a press conference. The journalists went to Niamey to cover something. They came back as part of it. 

HumAngle reached out to Sarkin Abzin for comment. She did not respond. 

The Hausa messages 

The Niamey summit was not the opening move in this campaign. 

On Christmas Day of 2024, General Tchiani sat before the cameras of Radio-Télévision du Niger and delivered what a casual viewer might have mistaken for a holiday address. Although French had been Niger’s official language, he spoke in Hausa – a lingua franca in both Niger and most of northern Nigeria, spoken by millions across West Africa. 

His choice of language was deliberate. The message was not addressed to Niamey alone. It was addressed to Kano and other Hausa-speaking states, particularly in Northern Nigeria, where there is an already visible pro-Russian and anti-West sentiment, as reflected in 2024 when Russian flags were raised during a nationwide protest against insecurity and economic hardship.

The claims Tchiani made were engineered to sound verified. He alleged that France had paid Nigerian authorities to establish a military base in Borno State with the sole aim of destabilising Niger and its Sahel Alliance partners. He also accused France of supplying Boko Haram fighters in the Lake Chad basin with anti-aircraft weapons. He claimed that France and ISWAP had struck an agreement to establish a Lakurawa training camp in the Gaba forest near Sokoto, and that Nigerian leaders were aware. He named Nigerian security officials by name. He cited dates and operational specifics to express the grammar of verified intelligence, though deployed in the service of disinformation.

The hook embedded in the allegations was not entirely invented, which is precisely what made it effective. Nigeria’s Defence Headquarters had classified Lakurawa as a terrorist organisation with jihadist affiliations just weeks earlier, in November 2024. HumAngle’s own investigations had revealed the group had operated in the northwest for around six years, with local security authorities having previously and dangerously dismissed it as a harmless faction of herders from across the border. The name was already known. The fear was already settled. Tchiani simply attached a culprit to both.

In Sokoto and Zamafara, where communities had been facing terrorist violence for years, the allegation did not sound outlandish.

“People said, ‘We always knew France was behind this,’” a civil society worker in Kano who monitors social media, Muhammad Hamza, told HumAngle. “Tchiani just confirmed what they already believed.”

When BBC Hausa published testimonies refuting Tchiani’s claims, the reaction was contemptuous. “We know you won’t agree because you’re all on the same side,” one commenter wrote. “But we believe what he said. We have seen the signs.”

A survey conducted by HumAngle in Kano State found that 50 per cent of the respondents believed Tchiani’s claims, 30 per cent were undecided, and only 20 per cent rejected them outright. Many pointed to President Tinubu’s perceived closeness to France as a reason for suspicion. 

One respondent, Abubakar Saidu, explained his reasoning, “President Tinubu has been close to France since he assumed power, and we all know that France can create terrorists to attack Niger due to their diplomatic fallout.”

Nuhu Ribadu, Nigeria’s National Security Advisor, had attempted to refute the claim, but it was unsuccessful. According to him, “Nigeria has never given its land to any foreign troops—not even Britain. When the [United States] requested a military base, we denied them, but Niger gave them.”

In a country with an audience that receives official rebuttals as confirmation of the original charge, its psyche could easily be captured. Nigerians didn’t believe Ribadu. 

“This is the new reality of information warfare. It is no longer just about truth versus falsehood. It is about who controls the language in which truth is told. It is about who defines the enemy—and, ultimately, who is believed,” Kano-based security analyst Balarabe Ismail told HumAngle in April 2025.

Tchiani returned to the theme in June 2025, this time in a three-hour televised address delivered in Hausa, Zarma, and French, in which he again accused Nigeria of conspiring with France and the United States to sponsor terrorism, alleging a covert meeting in Abuja in December 2024 attended by CIA agents and Nigerian security officials who discussed arming groups targeting Niger. 

The headquarters of disinformation 

Analysts had already identified increased activity from disinformation networks affiliated with Russia in Niger following the coup in Niger. 

According to a report by Al Jazeera, since the July 2023 coup, Niger had become the latest hotbed of disinformation in the Sahel, with social media inundated by false rumours, misleading videos, and manipulated audio clips. The template, according to the report, was borrowed from Mali and Burkina Faso, where Wagner-linked networks had deployed online assets, locally cultivated contacts, and Russian state media to produce a sustained information environment that preceded, accelerated, and then legitimised military takeovers. In Niger, the same playbook ran faster because the infrastructure was already warm.

Following the death of Wagner Group founder Yevgeny Prigozhin in 2023, these operations were absorbed into two successor structures: the Russian Africa Corps, which provides military presence on the ground, and the Africa Initiative news agency, connected to Russian intelligence services and overseen from Moscow. Africa Initiative is an upgrade and institutional legitimacy that Wagner never possessed. With press credentials, cultural programming, and regional language capacity, it successfully dressed influence as media development.

The three Alliance of Sahel States junta leaders — in Niger, Mali, and Burkina Faso — have converged around a shared political project. They launched a joint television channel to promote a unified narrative across their territories, a regional media infrastructure whose audience mandate extends explicitly beyond their borders — into the Hausa-speaking communities of northern Nigeria, who share language, faith, and enough legitimate frustration to make the narratives land without the need for fabrication in every detail. 

Sarkin Abzin’s journalist recruitment initiative sits within this structure. The goal may not have been to turn Nigerian journalists into salaried agents but to create a class of northern Nigerian media voices who feel a degree of solidarity with the junta’s framing. 

A security analyst who works on influence operations in West Africa and spoke to HumAngle on condition of anonymity offered some insight. “What Niger and Russia are doing is not complicated,” he said. “They are creating the conditions under which Nigerian citizens begin to see their own government as the enemy.”

The operation has not yet achieved its full objective. Bashir Muhammad’s refusal was one of the resistance points among others. Some journalists who attended the Niamey summit have since spoken, cautiously, about the gap between what they were promised and what they found. The WhatsApp group formed after the summit, according to Musa Abba, the journalist who attended, had almost collapsed. 

“They promised to continue communicating via WhatsApp and to organise more summits in other countries, but more than a year later they said nothing and group members didn’t say anything either,” he said. Even Sarkin Abzin’s Facebook page is no longer active.  

This article was produced by HumAngle with support from the African Academy for Open Source Investigations (AAOSI) and the African Digital Democracy Observatory (ADDO) as part of an initiative by Code for Africa (CfA). Visit https://disinfo.africa/ for more information.

The Balochistan Liberation Army claimed responsibility for a train bombing that killed at least 30 people in Pakistan. Kamran Bokhari of the Middle East Policy Council argues that the separatist BLA is timing its attacks to exploit Pakistan’s other entanglements.

Gaza will not forget

The suffocating smoke still hangs over her ruins, thick with the acrid stench of explosives powder and dust carrying the scent of betrayal and the mark of courage. Her streets, once filled with children’s laughter, became Israeli fields of slaughter. Now they echo with the names and memories of martyrs.

The mass graves, the broken concrete, and the twisted steel are not just evidence of Zionist hatred. They are witnesses to those who stood with her, and to those who failed her. Today, Gaza’s rubble holds more memories than all the nation’s libraries.

Palestine will remember

She will remember the selfless sacrifices of doctors and healthcare workers who refused to abandon their sick patients as bombs rained on their hospitals; the journalists who became the news, targeted for daring to expose the truth; the mothers who wrapped their children in the red, black, green, and white flag of a nation Israel is desperate to erase.

These are not tales of despair, but of defiance, insisting on its right to breathe life amid death.

Gaza will not forget

She will not forget the silence of Western democracies. In a tragic inversion, most European nations, shackled by the ghosts of their past, traded morality for absolution. The self-proclaimed champions of human rights offered Palestinians on the altar of yesterday’s victims to atone for Europe’s sins.

Gaza will not forget the Biden administration, which vetoed every U.N. Security Council resolution calling to end the genocide. Nor Donald Trump, who poured fuel on the fire, then demanded recognition for dousing his own flames.

This week, Arab, Muslim, and world leaders gather like moths around the American arsonist-turned-firefighter, “celebrating” the ashes of Gaza.

Palestine will remember

She will remember the people who rose for Gaza, from Yemen to Dublin, from Cape Town to London and Madrid, while Arab capitals from Cairo to Riyadh slept. Ireland and Spain led the boycott, while Arab countries from the Gulf to Jordan opened their ports and highways to provide alternative routes for Israeli goods, even as Yemen imposed a sea blockade in the Red Sea.

Gaza will not forget — nor forgive — the Arab governments that opened their ports when shipyard workers in Italy refused, delivering American weapons used to annihilate her children and destroy her hospitals.

Palestine will remember

She will remember South Africa — not an Arab or Muslim nation — that led her case before the International Court of Justice, charging Israel with genocide. A country once scarred by apartheid became the moral conscience of a world too timid to speak. In that act of solidarity, South Africa rekindled the universal truth that justice knows no borders.

Palestine will remember the Lebanese resistance that gave its leaders for Gaza’s defense; Yemen, poor in wealth but rich in dignity, whose solidarity never wavered; and Iran, steadfast against Israeli hubris. She will remember Ireland and Spain, who did not turn away when Arabs did, proving that true solidarity transcends borders, faith, and kinship, resting only on shared humanity.

She will remember the heroes of the flotillas who braved waves of hatred and siege to carry messages of compassion; the nameless volunteers who left the safety of their countries to heal the wounded and feed the hungry; the American students who turned campuses into encampments of resistance; the artists, actors, and musicians who risked careers for justice; the employees who lost their jobs protesting the complicity of Google, Microsoft, and other tech giants in Israel’s crimes.

Gaza will not forget those who betrayed her

Palestine will forever be grateful to those who dared to speak the truth when it was dangerous, who marched when it was forbidden, who grieved when it was unfashionable.

Palestine will remember. History will remember. Justice will remember.

For nearly two years, Gaza has endured a genocide so relentless it defies descriptive language. Israel’s war machine has turned hospitals into morgues, UN schools into mass graves, and refugee camps into craters. Yet Gaza refuses to die.

Each time she is bombed “back to the Stone Age,” she rises — like the phoenix — to rebuild, not only her structures but her indomitable will. In that defiance lies the occupier’s greatest fear: memory.

Israel can destroy buildings but not erase remembrance. The siege may starve Gaza’s body, but it nourishes Palestine’s collective soul.

Gaza’s children will grow up with memories no child should bear. But they will also inherit something indestructible: dignity. In every demolished home and every shattered family lives a story that refuses burial.

Gaza’s memory will not fade. For the mind, unlike stone, cannot be occupied. It is the eternal archive of a people’s resilience, passed from one generation to the next, weaving the indelible tapestry of Palestine today.

The ruins of Gaza stand not only as testimony to Israel’s genocide but to the moral collapse of those who enabled it.

Gaza will rise again, brick by brick.

But what will never be resurrected is the Israeli lie, which, for eight decades, cloaked the Zionist project in the guise of victimhood, occupying Western narratives and manufacturing consent.

Gaza will rise — and the Israeli myth will remain buried beneath her rubble, forever.

The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Monitor.

Yamal, one of eight Barcelona players named in the 26-man squad, with seven Arsenal players picked by Luis de la Fuente.

Lamine Yamal has been included in Spain’s squad for the FIFA World Cup, named by coach Luis de la Fuente, who also included Arsenal midfielder Mikel Merino in the European champions’ roster after his recent return from injury.

For the first time since 1950, Spain’s World Cup squad will not include a Real Madrid player as De la Fuente opted against naming one in his 26-man squad announced on Monday.

Real Madrid’s Dean Huijsen was dropped due to an injury, and veteran Dani Carvajal was also excluded after struggling through an injury-hit campaign.

Along with teenage Barcelona star Yamal, Athletic Bilbao’s Nico Williams played a key role as Spain won Euro 2024, and he is in the squad despite a season badly disrupted by fitness issues.

Yamal, 18, is a doubt for the first matches of the tournament after suffering a hamstring injury with Barca, which has kept him out since late April.

De la Fuente played down the absence of Madrid’s players, preferring to highlight those who are in the squad.

“I’m the manager, and I don’t look at where the players come from. They’re ‌national team players; I don’t look at one club or another. I don’t have the same local bias that a fan might have. All I want is for these players to feel proud to represent the national team,” De la Fuente told reporters.

In addition to Yamal, Barcelona’s contingent includes Joan Garcia, Pau Cubarsi, Eric Garcia, Gavi, Pedri, Dani Olmo and Ferran Torres, while seven players called up are based in the Premier League.

“Excitement is the keyword. Passion,” De la Fuente said.

“The reaction of people all over Spain – adults and children ⁠alike – is that they are fully behind the national team. It is an ⁠honour for me to represent the national team.”

Arsenal provide three of Spain’s Premier League-based players in goalkeeper David Raya and midfielders Martin Zubimendi and Mikel Merino, while Manchester City’s Rodri gives De la Fuente a commanding presence in midfield.

The coach also addressed the injury concern regarding ⁠Yamal and Williams, who will arrive at the tournament nursing hamstring issues.

“We’re very relaxed. Barring any setbacks, we’ll have everyone available from the very first match. ⁠We’re in close contact with the clubs’ medical teams,” he said.

“We’ll call ⁠on them when we deem it appropriate. I’d like to reiterate that we’ll have everyone in top form and we’ll be able to enjoy watching them in the tournament.”

Spain will arrive at the World Cup carrying the confidence of their European Championship triumph in Germany two years ‌ago, but with the weight of expectation from a passionate fanbase.

Spain’s World Cup 2026 squad

Goalkeepers: Unai Simon, David Raya, Joan Garcia

Defenders: Marcos Llorente, Marc Pubill, Pedro Porro, Aymeric Laporte, Eric Garcia, Pau Cubarsi, Marc Cucurella, Alejandro Grimaldo

Midfielders: Rodri, Martin Zubimendi, Mikel Merino, Pedri, Gavi, Fabian Ruiz, Alex Baena

Forwards: Yeremy Pino, Victor Munoz, Mikel Oyarzabal, Ferran Torres, Lamine Yamal, Dani Olmo, Nico Williams, Borja Iglesias

A small boat believed to be part of the Global Sumud Flotilla that was carrying aid for Gaza has washed ashore in Alexandria, Egypt. Activists were intercepted and detained by Israeli forces in international waters in the Mediterranean Sea last week.

On the 80th anniversary of the first flight of the de Havilland Canada Chipmunk basic trainer, an aircraft that generations of British and other military pilots learned to fly on, it’s worth recalling perhaps the most unusual episode of its career. Between 1956 and 1990, a handful of these propeller-driven trainers kept watch on Warsaw Pact forces in the divided and heavily fortified city of Berlin — a front line of the Cold War.

One of the two Chipmunks flown last week by the Battle of Britain Memorial Flight is WG486 — formerly attached to the RAF Gatow Station Flight for intelligence-gathering flights over Berlin:

At the end of World War II, defeated Germany was left divided between the Allied powers of France, the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom, and the United States. The division of the country also extended to the former capital, Berlin, which was left deep within the Soviet occupation zone. Under the quadripartite agreement, the Western Allies retained the right of access to Berlin, using land and air corridors running into the Western-occupied zones of Germany.

The quadripartite agreement also included provisions for the Allied powers to maintain ‘liaison missions.’ Formally, these were supposed to ensure communications between the Western Allies and the Soviets. In practice, they soon became a critical way of gathering intelligence, especially since the Western missions were permitted to move, relatively unimpeded, in the Soviet zone, which would later become East Germany. The same applied to the Soviets in the West. For the British, the liaison mission was known as the British Mission to Soviet Forces in Germany (BRIXMIS), and it was based in Potsdam, just outside Berlin.

Meet The Real Cold War Spies Of BRIXMIS • FULL DOCUMENTARY | Forces TV

The agreement also ensured access to West Berlin for the Western Allies, flying through three air corridors in and out of the city. Each of the Western Allies had an airport in the city, with the British using RAF Tegel. These corridors were full of transport activity during the Berlin Airlift of 1948-49, when the Soviets attempted to cut off the Western sectors of the city by blockade. Outside the corridors, Western Allied military aircraft could also fly over the Soviet Zone of Berlin, although this was something Moscow was never happy about.

By the mid-1950s, relations between East and West were becoming more tense, and this airspace access began to be exploited for intelligence-gathering.

After the Berlin Airlift, the Western Allies were prohibited from flying combat aircraft in the corridors. Transport and training types, like the Chipmunk, were excluded from this rule, and in late 1956, the British launched the top-secret Operation Schooner (later renamed Operation Nylon), under which the trainers would conduct spy flights within the roughly 1,200-square-mile Berlin Control Zone.

Flying out of Gatow, the Chipmunk flights were officially for continuation training, which provided the required cover story. Actual training flights were also regularly conducted, also to preserve the cover.

From the mid-1950s onward, East Germany rapidly became the focal point for Soviet military expansion in Europe, and the British and other Western Allies had a growing need for precise intelligence on Soviet basing, equipment, tactics — anything, in fact, that provided a better understanding of the adversary and potential warning of an attack.

The U.K. Prime Minister’s office individually approved the Chipmunk flights from RAF Gatow. Two or three sorties were typically scheduled for each week. These were flown under visual flight rules (VFR) — so only in good weather — and not above 1,500 feet. The quadripartite Berlin Air Safety Center, which ensured the security of flights in the Control Zone, was notified in advance, and each flight was planned to last around three hours.

The primary ‘targets’ were the numerous Soviet military installations located within the Berlin Control Zone. The Soviet controller within the Berlin Air Safety Center, not coincidentally, often stamped the flight request card with the words “Safety of Flight Not Guaranteed.”

Mission equipment, at first, was a handheld camera, operated by a BRIXMIS member in the front cockpit of the Chipmunk, with the RAF pilot sitting behind. Each sortie required careful preparation, with the crew wearing oxygen masks at all times to prevent their identification. They would climb aboard the aircraft inside a hangar, with the cameras already loaded, and the engine would be started behind closed doors. After all, Soviet ‘watchers’ were posted around Gatow, and observation towers overlooked the base.

Though the Soviets were well aware of the real nature of these flights (once, according to one BRIXMIS account, a camera lens was accidentally dropped from an open cockpit onto a busy parade ground), the quadripartite agreement provided diplomatic immunity to the Royal Air Force pilots. Nevertheless, Moscow was upset about any Western flights outside of West Berlin, and harassment of aircraft was hardly rare. At least once, a Chipmunk was damaged by groundfire from a Soviet infantryman.

The importance of Schooner/Nylon increased as the Soviets made efforts to conceal their military activity in East Germany. To try to avoid the eyes of the liaison missions, they set up more Permanent Restricted Areas (PRA) — another provision of the quadripartite agreement. Within the Berlin Control Zone, the Chipmunks had access to several major Soviet divisional HQs, including some of its best-equipped and highest-readiness forces.

The construction of the Berlin Wall in 1961 underscored the East-West standoff and led to the Soviets further bolstering their military presence in and around the city, including new air defense missiles and surface-to-surface sites. According to some accounts, Chipmunks were among the first assets to bring back evidence of the extent of the border closures enacted by the Soviets in August 1961.

By the end of the 1960s, one of the Gatow Chipmunks had received a permanent camera installation, and both got new radios. According to one pilot, the new camera was powerful enough to “record the maker’s name from the inside of a tank if the turret was open.”

10 April 1978, the British BRIXMIS Liaison Mission had access to two Chipmunk aircraft, which they used for photo reconnaissance over parts of East Germany, between West Berlin and the Inner German Border. In this case they’ve captured a T-64 engine being removed for maintenance. pic.twitter.com/NQTdOn7Qul

— The Tank Museum (@TankMuseum) June 5, 2023

On one occasion, a BRIXMIS member recalled being intercepted and closely followed by a Soviet Mi-24 Hind attack helicopter, which escorted the Chipmunk from the Soviet helicopter base at Oranienburg to the north of Berlin.

Right at the very edge of the Berlin Control Zone was an especially interesting ‘target,’ the Soviet airbase at Werneuchen. This was latterly home to MiG-25 Foxbat reconnaissance jets, and it also hosted periodic deployments of Soviet long-range bombers. It was also deep within a PRA, making ground access very difficult. The Chipmunks would fly close enough to photograph every aircraft on the flight line, aware that if they strayed beyond the main runway centerline, they would be outside the Berlin Control Zone and would be shot down.

Also connected to Werneuchen and even more remarkable in terms of mission equipment is the fact that at least one Chipmunk was fitted with electronic intelligence (ELINT) gear. This modification was approved by the U.K. Prime Minister in 1981 but was only revealed by aviation journalist Ben Dunnell in 2024. It is known that the ELINT equipment was used to gather information about a new Soviet battlefield radar, equipping the 9K35 Strela-10 (SA-13 Gopher) short-range air defense system. However, it was also used in at least one flight over Werneuchen. No other details of the results of these missions have ever been released.

The Chipmunks remained busy until the fall of the Berlin Wall in November 1989 heralded the end of the Cold War. Immediately before German reunification, in 1990, BRIXMIS was stood down and, with it, the need for intelligence-gathering flights came to an end. At its biggest strength, the RAF Gatow Station Flight never had more than four Chipmunks assigned.

The Gatow Station Flight remained active until 1994, when the last Chipmunk departed. Gatow finally closed as an RAF station the same year.

Last week, as the Royal Air Force marked the 80th anniversary of the classic Chipmunk trainer, it is worth remembering the unique role that the aircraft played during one of the tensest periods of recent history, during which the intelligence it collected helped keep the peace between East and West.

Contact the author: thomas@thewarzone.com

US secretary of state says a ‘pretty solid’ deal is on the table in terms of opening up the Strait of Hormuz.

The United States will either secure a strong agreement with Iran or confront the country “another way”, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio says after President Donald Trump moved to temper expectations that an agreement to end the war is close.

“We thought we might have some news last night, maybe today. I wouldn’t read too much into it,” Rubio said in New Delhi on Monday, referring to the potential agreement to end the US-Israeli war on Iran, which began on February 28.

“We have what I think is a pretty solid thing on the table in terms of their ability to open up the straits, get the straits open,” he told reporters in the Indian capital, where he has been on an official visit.

Washington and Tehran have observed a ceasefire since April 8 while mediators push for a negotiated settlement although Iran has continued to block the Strait of Hormuz to most shipping and the US has blockaded Iran’s ports.

A day earlier, Trump wrote on Truth Social ⁠⁠that the US blockade would “remain in full force and effect until an agreement is reached, certified, and signed”.

“Both sides must take their time and get it right,” he added.

There was no immediate response from Iran’s government. But the Tasnim News Agency, linked to Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, said the US was still obstructing parts of a potential deal.

“We’re either going to have a good agreement, or we’re going to have to deal with it another way. We’d prefer to have a good agreement,” Rubio said.

Points of contention

A senior Trump administration official outlined what he said were the latest contours of the issues being negotiated.

Speaking on the condition of anonymity, the official told the Reuters news agency that Iran had agreed “in principle” to dispose of its highly enriched uranium and open the Strait of Hormuz in exchange for the US lifting its naval blockade.

The US understood that Supreme Leader ⁠⁠Mojtaba Khamenei had endorsed the broad template of the deal, he added.

There was no immediate confirmation from Iran or elaboration on what an “in principle” ⁠⁠agreement meant.

The US official said Washington envisioned first reopening the strait and lifting the US naval blockade. Negotiating the details of the nuclear measures would take more time, he said.

The official pushed back on suggestions that Iran had not accepted disposing of its stockpiled enriched uranium. “It’s a question about how,” the official said.

Charles Kupchan, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, said the back and forth between the US and Iran means a deal will not likely be agreed anytime soon.

“I think this is kind of par for the course for the Trump administration. One day they walk this way. The next day they walk that way,” he told Al Jazeera.

“Part of the conversations are private. Part of it is public diplomacy, but until we have a concrete sense that the Iranians are likely to say yes to getting rid of their highly enriched uranium … and to opening this Strait of Hormuz with no restrictions, I think one can say that we’re still far away from a lasting deal,” Kupchan said.

Victor Wembanyama scored 33 points to lead the San Antonio Spurs in a 103-82 rout of Oklahoma City and level the NBA Western Conference Finals at two games each.

The 22-year-old French 7-foot-4 (2.24m) centre shot 11-of-22 from the floor, 3-of-7 from three-point range, and added eight rebounds, five assists, three blocked shots, and two steals in 31 minutes for the Spurs on Sunday.

“I need to find ways to impact the game in many areas,” said Wembanyama. “I have a lot of responsibilities, but I’m here for it. All of us, we’re going to have to do things we didn’t sign up for.”

Hosts San Antonio pulled level at 2-2 in the best-of-seven playoff series, with Game Five on Tuesday in Oklahoma City and Game Six back in San Antonio on Thursday.

“This was our first deficit in the playoff series. We just responded,” Wembanyama said. “It was nothing amazing. It wasn’t magic. We just did what we needed to do. The series is far from over.”

Wembanyama knows what the Spurs must do to win the NBA title.

“We’ve got six more wins before we can rest,” he said.

The Spurs seek their first trip to the NBA Finals since winning the crown in 2014, while the Thunder hope to become the NBA’s first back-to-back champions since Golden State in 2017-2018.

Spurs coach Mitch Johnson said Wembanyama was aggressive to try and keep San Antonio from falling into a 3-1 series hole.

“Our competitive response all year has been pretty good, and he has been at the forefront of that,” Johnson said.

“Tonight he felt an obligation to set a tone for us in a variety of ways. The aggressiveness was a reflection of that… I think he wants that responsibility. He’s built for it.”

The Thunder had been unbeaten on the road in this year’s playoffs but were foiled in a bid to reach 6-0 by a strong Spurs defensive effort.

“Any time we can turn defence into offence, turnovers and rebounding, that’s when we’re at our best,” Johnson said.

“We can get out and run and play and get out in pace. Our activity was great tonight, and we’re going to need to get better at it as the series moves on.”

The Spurs stretched their lead as large as 25 points, while the Thunder were only ahead by a single point.

“I’m not going to get into details, but in general, being more disciplined and just trusting the game plan even more,” Wembanyama said of the secret behind the Spurs’ defensive effort.

The NBA Defensive Player of the Year also cited coming together defensively as the Spurs forced 17 turnovers and made 11 steals.

“That’s super important,” said Wembanyama. “We’ve got good individual defenders, and when we connect, we’re able to hold teams to low scoring numbers.”

NBA Most Valuable Player Shai Gilgeous-Alexander led the Thunder with 19 points.

Oklahoma City won an NBA-best 64 games this season, with the Spurs second on 62 victories.

Wembanyama sank a half-court shot at the buzzer – the longest made basket of his career – to give the Spurs a 50-38 half-time lead and himself 22 first-half points.

“I was just thinking shoot to score,” Wembanyama said. “I wasn’t messing around.”

The Spurs opened the third quarter with a 15-5 run to seize their biggest lead to that point at 65-43, and Oklahoma City could not catch San Antonio from there.

“We needed that momentum going into the second half,” San Antonio’s Devin Vassell said of the half-court “Wemby” hoop.

Vassell and Stephon Castle each scored 13 points for the Spurs, while De’Aaron Fox added 12 points and 10 rebounds.

This summer, the U.S. Navy will demonstrate the ability of the aircraft carrier USS Gerald R. Ford, with its two A1B nuclear reactors, to power a base on land. The test at Naval Station Norfolk in Virginia is part of a larger effort to ensure facilities can remain up and running even if existing power sources are lost due to attacks and other contingencies. Using ships to provide electricity ashore is not new, but being able to use a Ford class aircraft carrier in this way might open up additional operational possibilities, as well as help in future disaster relief scenarios.

Acting Secretary of the Navy Hung Cao briefly mentioned the planned test at a hearing before members of the House Armed Services Committee on May 14.

“This summer, Norfolk Naval Base [sic] is going to be powered from an aircraft carrier,” Cao said on May 14. “We’re going to export the energy from the aircraft carrier to the base.”

“The Department of the Navy is executing a multi-pronged strategy to ensure the delivery of firm, baseload power to our installations for energy resilience and mission assurance,” a Navy spokesperson subsequently told TWZ directly when we reached out for more information. “One line of effort in the strategy is to deliver power from a Ford class nuclear-powered aircraft carrier to a compatible shore installation, to demonstrate the capability to meet emergent, mission critical needs. An initial test of this capability is being planned for later this year at Naval Station Norfolk.”

This statement refers to the Ford class generically, but the USS Gerald R. Ford is currently the only ship of its kind to have been commissioned into service. It is also homeported in Norfolk and just recently returned from a marathon 326-day deployment. That is the longest an American carrier has been at sea since the Vietnam War, and included supporting the mission to capture Venezuela’s dictatorial former President Nicolas Maduro and combat operations against Iran.

USS Ford returns home after 11-month deployment for Iran war and Maduro’s capture

Supercarriers like Ford are already very much floating cities, with typical crew complements ranging from roughly 4,000 to 5,000 individuals, including members of the embarked air wing. They have immense power-generation requirements.

As noted, each Ford class carrier has two A1B nuclear reactors, the exact power output of which is classified. However, they are said to offer a 25 percent increase in “reactor energy” compared to the A4Ws used on Nimitz class aircraft carriers, as well as be simpler to operate. Based on that, the A1B is generally assessed to be rated at some 700 MWt. Two of them would then have a combined rating of 1,400 MWt. This is a fraction of what is offered by typical commercial power-generating reactors in the United States today. At the same time, those reactors are also designed to provide electricity across entire regions rather than just to a single military base.

Being able to use the Ford and other future carriers as floating power plants for major bases like Norfolk could offer a useful backup option for providing electricity if established power sources suddenly become unavailable for any reason. American officials have been increasingly sounding the alarm that many areas previously considered inaccessible sanctuaries, including in the U.S. homeland, could now be at risk during future conflicts. The scale and scope of long-range threats, as well as options for carrying out near-field attacks, only continue to grow. The proliferation of longer-range one-way attack drones, something where the barrier to entry is also low, has had a particularly pronounced impact on this threat ecosystem.

Demonstrating the ability of a Ford class aircraft carrier to provide power ashore might open up other operational possibilities. The U.S. military, as a whole, is increasingly focused on new distributed concepts of operations involving widely dispersed forces, many of which could be forward-deployed at operating locations with limited established infrastructure.

Turning an aircraft carrier into a floating powerplant could be valuable in a wide array of non-combat scenarios abroad and at home, including during disaster relief missions. Getting the power back on is often a critical component of those operations, which in turn can help restore access to medical care and other essential services.

Many critical U.S. military facilities are themselves in areas prone to natural disasters, the impacts of which can be severe and have significant second-order ramifications. Bases provide epicenters for recovery, too, routinely providing essential services after disasters. They could do so after attacks or in other contingencies. Making sure they have uninterrupted power in any of those scenarios would be critical. There are also long-standing concerns about the resiliency of America’s aging power grids, which could also be an indirect threat vector, including from cyberattacks.

During his testimony, Acting Secretary Cao highlighted how a carrier serving as a powerplant could also provide other support in a non-combat scenario.

“The energy that’s produced from these, we can … use it for a four-stage distiller making water, fresh potable water,” he said. “On a carrier, we’re pumping millions of gallons over the side every day of fresh potable water that tests at pH 7 [neutral pH], right, that we can now export in places like California, where you have a drought.”

As noted, none of this is entirely new. The U.S. military has a long history of using ships, including conventionally-powered aircraft carriers, to provide power ashore. One of America’s very first carriers, the USS Lexington (CV-2), helped provide electricity to Tacoma, Washington, between December 1929 and January 1930. At the time, the city’s grid relied on hydroelectric power sources, the output from which had dropped severely due to a mix of environmental factors. In 1931, Lexington also brought medical personnel and humanitarian aid to Nicaragua following an earthquake, an early example of the general value of carriers in the disaster relief role.

During World War II, the U.S. Navy and the Royal Navy in the United Kingdom collectively utilized at least seven Buckley class destroyer escorts as floating power plants. The Buckley class was well suited for this use given its propulsion system, which consisted of steam turbines powering electric motors. At least one of these ships, the USS Donnell, was converted to this role after suffering severe damage during combat operations in the North Atlantic. It was deemed to be too expensive to repair the ship to return to service in its original role.

An especially relevant past example is that of the MH-1A. This was a floating nuclear power plant converted from a World War II Liberty ship, originally named the SS Charles H. Cugle and later renamed Sturgis. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) operated MH-1A, which had a power rating of 10 MW, and used it to provide electricity in the Panama Canal Zone between 1968 and 1975. The ship and its reactor were subsequently returned to the contiguous United States. MH-1A was defueled in 1977. It remained in storage for decades before the decision was finally made to decommission it, a lengthy process that was only completed in 2018. Sturgis was subsequently scrapped.

At the time of writing, it is unclear if the Navy has any ships or barges in inventory that are explicitly capable of providing power ashore. Electricity is routinely provided to naval vessels in port from grids ashore, and the ability to send power the other way, at least in an ad hoc manner, has come up in the past. For instance, in 1982, the Navy considered sending the Los Angeles class attack submarine USS Indianapolis to Hawaii to serve as a floating nuclear power station in the wake of Hurricane Iwa. Indianapolis was not ultimately deployed for this purpose in that case.

As an aside, the Navy has also long used decommissioned nuclear-powered submarines as floating schoolhouses for sailors learning how to operate and maintain nuclear reactors.

There are examples of ship-to-shore power generation elsewhere globally. Currently, Russia’s Akademik Lomonosov is the only purpose-built floating nuclear power plant in operation today, and you can read more about it here. However, South Korea’s Samsung Heavy Industries is actively working on a new floating nuclear power station design, and similar developments could be on the horizon elsewhere. There are also non-nuclear floating power plant designs in service, notably with commercial firm Karpowership in Turkey, and in development today.

Floating Nuclear Power Plant (FNPP) “Akademik Lomonosov”

Powership Video

There are still questions about the viability of employing Navy carriers like Ford in this way today. For one, ships sitting in port are inherently more vulnerable than ones at sea. Carriers are high-value assets that would be top targets in any major conflict, to begin with. Using a carrier as a replacement for traditional power sources, especially for a base that may have already have been or still be under attack, could come along with substantial additional force protection requirements. At the same time, carriers are inherently well-protected and relatively hardened platforms, especially against lower-end, smaller-scale threats.

There is also an operational capacity question. The Navy is currently struggling to meet operational demands with the 11 carriers it has available now. Between continued delays in the construction of new Ford class carriers and the schedule for retiring aging Nimitz class ships, there is a possibility that the force could shrink further in the near term. The Navy just extended the service life of the USS Nimitz to bring its impending inactivation in line with the expected delivery date of the second member of the Ford class, the future USS John F. Kennedy.

Around the Yard at NNS: John F. Kennedy (CVN 79) Builder’s Sea Trials

Pulling any of the Navy’s heavily in-demand aircraft carriers, which provide unique power projection capabilities, out of rotation to sit in port generating power could be a tough sell. That being said, carriers that are in between deployments could be used in this way, in some cases with relatively minimal disruption to other aspects of the force generation cycle. The seriousness of the contingency in question would also factor into the Navy’s assessment of its general force requirements and priorities.

It is worth noting here that the U.S. military has already been making investments in other forms of energy resiliency at established bases, as well as the ability to provide significant amounts of power at forward locations, in recent years. Acting Secretary Cao’s comments last week about the upcoming test at Naval Station Norfolk were prompted by a question about ongoing work on new small modular nuclear reactors, or SMRs, to help power U.S. military bases. The U.S. Army is currently the lead service for those efforts, as you can read more about here. The U.S. Air Force has also been heavily involved.

“We’ve got to have an overall programmatic champion for the SMR program,” Chief of Naval Operations (CNO) Adm. Caudle, the service’s top officer, who also testified at the hearing alongside Cao, said. “So I think we’re dithering a bit there, and not really landing on the pilot, and laying out the program of record.”

“While the Army may be tapped to be the overall lead for it [SMR], I see no world in which the Navy is not going to be part of that discussion and bring our expertise through our long-established Naval Reactors [office], deep understanding of reactor physics, and understanding [of] safe operation.”

As an aside, the Navy just recently announced its intention to expand its nuclear-powered fleets by using this method of propulsion on the future Trump class battleships. This, in turn, has raised new questions about the outlook for those ships, which you can read more about here.

When it comes to using Ford class aircraft carriers as floating nuclear power plants, the test this summer will help in determining whether this could be another mission to add to the repertoire of these ships.

Contact the author: joe@twz.com

Both the US and Iran have recently signaled progress on efforts to reach a deal to end their conflict, though their accounts of its terms differ on some issues across respective media narratives, Anadolu reports.

US President Donald Trump on Saturday said an agreement with Iran to end the war was “largely negotiated” and awaited finalization.

On Sunday morning, Iran’s semi-official Tasnim news agency also published a report on the details of a potential agreement. However, certain aspects of what has been agreed seem to diverge.

Here is a comparison of the US and Iranian versions of the deal by key issues.

Strait of Hormuz

Citing a US official, Axios said the deal that Washington and Tehran are close to signing would extend a ceasefire by 60 days, during which the Strait of Hormuz would be reopened.

During the 60-day period, the Strait of Hormuz would be opened without any tolls, and Iran would remove the mines it has placed there to ensure unrestricted maritime passage.

In return, Washington would lift its blockade on Iranian ports, added the report.

The New York Times also said it was informed by three senior Iranian officials that Tehran had agreed to a memorandum of understanding to halt fighting and reopen the Strait of Hormuz.

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio also said on Sunday that the agreement could, if successful, result in a “completely open” Strait of Hormuz, with no tolls or restrictions on passage.

“They don’t own it. It’s an international waterway,” Rubio told reporters of the strait, in remarks that came during his visit to India.

A report by Iran’s semi-official news agency Tasnim, however, said that the Strait of Hormuz will not fully return to its pre-war status if the agreement is reached.

Instead, the number of ships allowed to pass would be restored to pre-war levels within 30 days, the outlet added.

Tehran also demands an end to the US blockade on its ports, arguing that no changes will be made in the strait if the blockade remains in place.

For its part, the US argues that the quicker Iran removes the mines and allows shipping to resume, the sooner the blockade will be lifted.

READ: Iran ready to reassure world it is not pursuing nuclear weapons, president says

Sanctions relief and release of frozen Iranian assets

Iran was seeking the immediate unfreezing of funds and a permanent lifting of sanctions, but the US position indicates these measures would only be granted after Iran made concrete concessions, according to the Axios report.

As part of the proposed 60-day agreement, the US is offering temporary sanctions waivers that would allow Iran to sell its oil freely. These waivers are explicitly linked to Iran reopening the Strait of Hormuz, removing mines, and ending restrictions on maritime traffic. Once these steps are taken, Washington would also lift its naval blockade on Iranian ports.

Tehran, however, says no agreement will be reached unless at least a portion of the frozen Iranian assets is released immediately. Iranian media confirmed the discussion of temporary oil sanctions waivers in the latest US proposal but insisted on broader and more permanent sanctions relief.

Nuclear file

The Axios report said the draft deal includes commitments from Iran not to pursue nuclear weapons, along with provisions to negotiate a suspension of uranium enrichment and the removal of its stockpile of highly enriched uranium.

The Iranian media reports, however, indicate that Tehran has not yet accepted anything on its nuclear program.

A potential deal would involve a 60-day negotiation window on Iran’s nuclear program, according to Tasnim.

Extent of ceasefire

Both US and Iranian media reports suggest that the cessation of hostilities would mean a halt to fighting on all fronts, including Lebanon.

This was also highlighted by Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmaeil Baqaei on Saturday, when he said Tehran was prioritizing an end to hostilities across all fronts, including Lebanon.

Context

Regional tensions have escalated since the US and Israel launched strikes against Iran in February. Tehran retaliated with strikes targeting Israel, as well as US allies in the Gulf, along with the closure of the Strait of Hormuz.

A ceasefire took effect on April 8 through Pakistani mediation and was later extended by Trump indefinitely. Washington and Tehran also held rare direct talks in the Pakistani capital Islamabad on April 11-12, but have failed to reach an agreement.

Trump’s Saturday remarks came after Pakistani army chief Asim Munir’s visit to Tehran. The visit was the second of its kind in recent weeks, as Munir is directly involved in Islamabad’s mediation efforts.

READ: Trump says Iran talks ‘constructive’ but blockade will remain until final deal is reached

Al Jazeera’s Heidi Pett reports on the Syrian legislative elections in Hasakah and the town of Kobane – areas recently reintegrated under government control after being held by pro-Kurdish fighters for more than a decade.

US president says any potential agreement with Tehran will be ‘good and proper’ as mediation efforts continue.

Cuba has announced the first shipment in an expected donation from China of about 60,000 tonnes of rice, as the Caribbean island contends with an ongoing humanitarian crisis.

In a series of social media posts on Sunday, Cuban President Miguel Diaz-Canel confirmed that the first load of 15,000 tonnes had arrived a day earlier in the port of Havana.

He also expressed “deep gratitude” to China, as well as to members of the European Parliament who denounced the pressure campaign his government faces.

Since January, the United States has increased its sanctions against Cuba, as part of a hardline turn under the second term of President Donald Trump.

“Thank you very much for the solidarity, and for the firm and unequivocal condemnation of the collective punishment to which our people are being subjected,” Diaz-Canel wrote, likening Cuba’s situation to “genocide”.

While Trump has sought to check China’s growing influence on Latin America, Cuba has increasingly relied on the Asian superpower for assistance.

Already, China has donated solar panels to Cuba to help update its ageing energy grid and transition the island away from fossil fuels. Currently, Cuba relies on imports for nearly 60 percent of its oil supply, according to the International Energy Agency.

But since the start of the year, the Trump administration has largely blocked the export of oil to Cuba.

The de facto oil blockade began shortly after January 3, when the US launched a military operation to abduct and imprison Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro.

Trump followed that operation with the announcement that no more oil or funds would be transferred from Venezuela to Cuba.

By the end of the month, he had also issued an executive order identifying Cuba as an “unusual and extraordinary threat” to the US and threatening economic penalties to any country that supplies it with oil.

Since then, only a single Russian tanker has been permitted to reach the island. Earlier this month, Energy Minister Vicente de la O Levy announced that the island had exhausted its oil supplies.

While Cuba is no stranger to power outages, the recent crisis has caused island-wide blackouts and has brought public services — including transportation and medical care — to a standstill in many areas.

But Trump has continued to impose sanctions on the island’s communist government, in an apparent effort to force regime change.

Media reports have indicated he has sought Diaz-Canel’s resignation and would be open to a situation akin to Venezuela’s, where Maduro’s government has been left largely intact, though Maduro himself has been replaced.

Trump has also repeatedly suggested he may consider a military response should Cuba fail to give in to his demands, though his administration has sent mixed messages about possible intervention on the island.

“Other presidents have looked at this for 50, 60 years, doing something, and it looks like I’ll be the one that does it,” Trump said last week from the Oval Office.

Negotiations between the two countries, however, are likely to be strained after the Trump administration unveiled a murder indictment against Cuba’s former president, Raul Castro, for the 1996 downing of two planes run by Cuban exiles.

Since the 1960s, Cuba has been under a sweeping US trade embargo that has weakened its economy.

US officials, however, have blamed the Cuban government for economic mismanagement and the oppression of its people, particularly political dissidents.

Earlier this month, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio disclosed that the Trump administration offered $100m in humanitarian aid to Cuba, on the condition it implement “meaningful reforms”.

In Sunday’s posts, however, Diaz-Canel sought to project defiance in the face of Trump’s “maximum pressure” campaign.

“The ‘maximum pressure’ strategy — which some in the US morbidly trumpet — is part of a strategy intended to justify the false narrative of an impending collapse, and thereby pave the way for military intervention,” he wrote.

Diaz-Canel added that Cuba would continue to strengthen its ties with the US’s economic and political rival, China.

“The cherished bonds of friendship and cooperation that unite us grow stronger in these crucial times,” he said.

Strategic ambiguity, the US policy of neither explicitly supporting nor opposing Taiwanese independence, has been considered effective for decades in maintaining stability in the Taiwan Strait. However, the summit between Trump and Xi Jinping on May 14-15, 2026, in Beijing revealed signs that this formula’s effectiveness is beginning to be limited. China pushed the US not merely to “not support” but to actively “oppose” Taiwanese independence. The US responded by displaying an inconsistent position. Taiwan openly asserted its sovereignty. All three responses emerged within less than 24 hours, and no international forum was able to manage the contradictions.

AT His strategic ambiguity is not simply a matter of US foreign policy. It reflects deeper limitations in the global governance system in addressing unresolved sovereignty issues. At the same time, China is actively promoting an alternative world order through its Belt and Road Initiative, non-interventionist principles, and multipolarity agenda, which indirectly influence how the Taiwan issue is positioned on the international stage. Without a concrete framework for joint governance, the potential for miscalculations across the Taiwan Strait will continue to increase.

On May 16, 2026, the day after Trump left Beijing, Taiwan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs issued an official statement. Taiwan is a sovereign and independent nation. It is not under Chinese rule. This statement was not new rhetoric.

What makes this significant is the context. Trump had just called a $14 billion arms sale to Taiwan a bargaining chip in negotiations with Xi Jinping. China had just successfully pushed the US to soften its tone on Taiwan. In less than 24 hours, three main actors make statements that cannot all be true at the same time. And there is no one international institution that has the authority to decide which is more valid.

This isn’t a sudden diplomatic failure. It’s the result of a policy of strategic ambiguity that has been in place for more than five decades and is now beginning to show its limitations.

Strategic ambiguity was once effective because all parties had an incentive not to test its limits. That situation is changing. China is becoming increasingly assertive. militarily and increasingly actively shaping an alternative global order. Taiwan is becoming more assertive in claiming its political identity. The US under Trump is increasingly unpredictable. In these conditions, the ambiguity that once served as a buffer for stability has now become a source of uncertainty. The global governance system lacks adequate instruments to fill the gaps left by this increasingly outdated formula.

Starting from the background, a US strategic ambiguity towards Taiwan was born of deliberate compromise. In the Shanghai Communique (1972), Washington used the word “recognizes” China’s position that Taiwan is part of China, not “accepts.” The difference in vocabulary was no accident. It opened diplomatic normalization with Beijing without formally abandoning Taipei.

This formula was then codified through the Taiwan Relations Act of 1979 and three joint US-China communiques. During the Cold War era and the two decades that followed, this formula remained relatively stable because China was not yet strong enough to challenge it militarily and Taiwan was not yet confident enough to challenge it politically. As noted by T.Y. Wang in the journal Politics and Policy, strategic ambiguity is designed not only to deter China from attacking Taiwan but also to restrain Taiwan from taking steps that Beijing might deem provocative.

But the conditions that made that formula effective have changed structurally. Taiwan’s democratization since the 1990s has produced a political identity increasingly independent of the “One China” narrative. The PLA’s military modernization has changed the cost calculations of conflict. And Trump’s return to the White House has brought a transactional approach that, as noted by the Global Taiwan Institute, exacerbates existing ambiguities with conflicting signals that are record arms sales accompanied by a striking rhetorical silence on US security commitments to Taiwan.

On the ground, this uncertainty has already resulted in a measured escalation. Military exercises: Justice Mission 2025 In December 2025, a full-scale blockade of Taiwan was simulated, with over 90 aircraft crossing the median line of the Taiwan Strait in a single day. These median line violations were not an anomaly. Since 2022, they have become increasingly routine and have rarely elicited an organized response from the international community.

The most important part to understand next is about the One China Policy. The One China Policy affirms that a single label includes three irreconcilable positions. Beijing maintains that Taiwan is an unreturned province and that reunification is a non-negotiable goal. Taipei maintains that the Republic of China (ROC) is a sovereign state that predates the People’s Republic of China and that the two have never ruled each other. Washington maintains its own version, based on the Taiwan Relations Act, that recognizes Beijing’s position without explicitly endorsing it.

These three positions exist simultaneously because they have never been tested in an international forum that has the authority to decide which is more valid. Brookings Institution; he noted that this policy was originally designed for a period when China was not yet acting like a revisionist power. Now, conditions have changed, and the old formula requires a recalibration that has yet to materialize.

There’s a compelling argument here. Strategic ambiguity has also served as a deterrent to war. It prevents China from attacking because it’s unsure whether the US will intervene. It also prevents Taiwan from declaring formal independence because it’s unsure whether the US would defend it. In this logic, ambiguity is a feature, not a bug.

However, analyst Brandon K. Yoder in the European Journal of International Relations, The effectiveness of deterrence hinges on credibility, which is currently eroding. When Trump called weapons for Taiwan a “negotiating chip,” he indirectly communicated to Beijing that the US commitment was conditional. When commitments are conditional, their deterrent effect is significantly weakened.

What results is not new stability, but rather an increasingly unpredictable gray area. Each party operates based on its own assumptions about the limits that can be tested. Without governance mechanisms that explicitly clarify these limits, the risk of miscalculation continues to grow.

The Taiwan issue cannot be read in isolation from China’s broader agenda of reshaping the global order. Over the past two decades, Beijing has not only protested the existing international system but also actively developed an alternative.

The Belt and Road Initiative, which now encompasses more than 140 countries, is more than just an infrastructure project. As analyzed in China Quarterly of International Strategic Studies, BRI serves as both a governance and economic mechanism, linking infrastructure development with new standards of connectivity and cooperation that reflect the Chinese model of development without political conditions.

Beyond the BRI, China is actively pushing three major initiatives: the Global Development Initiative, the Global Security Initiative, and the Global Governance Initiative. They share a common thread that is strengthening the norm of sovereignty, rejecting intervention based on Western values, and promoting multipolarity as a substitute for single-party hegemony. Bruegel noted that the concept of “Community with a Shared Future for Mankind” popularized by Xi at Davos 2017 has even been included in several UN General Assembly resolutions, demonstrating how far China has succeeded in pushing its global narrative into multilateral institutions.

The relevance to the Taiwan issue is that the more countries accept China’s sovereignty-based, non-interference-based governance framework, the more limited the space for international mechanisms to challenge Beijing’s claims to Taiwan. China’s global governance agenda and its claims to Taiwan are not separate issues. They are part of the same project: redefining who has the right to set the rules of the game in what have traditionally been called “internal affairs.”

This also makes Trump’s and Xi’s bilateral approach a more suitable instrument for China’s interests. When the Taiwan issue is managed through negotiations between the two great powers, broader norms, such as the right to self-determination and representation of sovereign entities, are not discussed. Observer Research Foundation noted that BRI cooperation with the UN from 2015 to 2019 was more about mutual legitimacy than structural integration, and a similar pattern is seen in the way China uses multilateral forums to validate its diplomatic positions without actually committing to the process.

Trump’s and Xi’s meeting in May 2026 shows a pattern that deserves serious attention. That is, the Taiwan issue is now managed almost entirely outside the multilateral framework. There are no regional forums, no UN mechanisms, no activated joint protocols. There are just two leaders, two delegations, and an agenda far broader than just Taiwan.

Observation: Both sides reveal a glaring asymmetry. In China’s version, Taiwan is referred to as the “most important issue,” and Xi warned of potential conflict if handled incorrectly. In the US version, Taiwan is not mentioned at all. CSIS noted that the meeting resulted in a commitment to “strategic stability” without concrete instruments to realize it. The lack of crisis communication protocol. Limited incident management framework. There isn’t any commitment to refrain from provocative military exercises.

This is not simply a shortcoming of the meeting. It reflects a more systemic limitation. namely the limitations There is no sufficiently authoritative multilateral platform to address this issue. The UN Security Council is hampered by Beijing’s veto power. ASEAN adheres to the principle of non-intervention, which actually benefits China’s narrative. The G20 has no mandate to address sovereignty disputes.

The result is what could be called a governance deficit. This doesn’t mean there are no institutions, but rather that the existing ones are insufficiently effective for the situation. And it’s in this deficit that military escalation moves in to fill the space that structured diplomacy should be filling. Modern Diplomacy noted that the US approved an $11.1 billion arms package for Taiwan by 2025 while simultaneously sending ambiguous rhetorical signals, a combination that makes it difficult for both China and Taiwan to read exactly where the real line is.

The following three recommendations are not intended to resolve the Taiwan status question. Their purpose is more limited and more immediate. namely for reducing the risk of miscalculation before a minor incident escalates into an uncontrollable crisis. All three rely on existing political conditions and momentum.

First, the momentum of the Trump-Xi meeting should be used to establish a permanent, dedicated military crisis communication channel for incidents in the Taiwan Strait. The most relevant precedent is the Washington-Moscow hotline, established after the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, precisely because the world had nearly come to war due to miscommunication, not intention. CNBC noted the May 2026 meeting resulted in a relatively constructive atmosphere between the two leaders. This is a rare window of opportunity and should be used for something concrete.

Second, Indonesia, as a BRICS member and ASEAN dialogue partner with a relatively balanced working relationship with Washington and Beijing, could propose a regional consultation forum focused on managing incidents in the Taiwan Strait. This would not be a forum to decide Taiwan’s status, but rather a technical mechanism for de-escalation procedures and crisis communication. ASEAN has the foundation for this through the Treaty of Amity and Cooperation, and Indonesia’s current position within BRICS provides added legitimacy in Beijing’s eyes.

Third, the US, China, Japan, and South Korea need to negotiate a joint commitment that no party will change the status quo in the Taiwan Strait through force. This is inspired by the Helsinki Final Act of 1975, which successfully committed European countries not to change their borders by force, despite many of their mutual distrust. The agreement did not resolve existing disputes, but it did raise the costs of escalation measurably. With Xi seeking economic stability before 2027 and Trump seeking to avoid military engagement far from the US mainland, both sides’ calculations are now more open to this type of commitment than in previous periods.

It can be concluded that strategic ambiguity is one of the most ingenious products of Cold War diplomacy. It maintained stability in the Taiwan Strait for decades, not by solving the problem, but by making all parties unsure whether testing its limits was a good idea.

The conditions that make that formula work are changing simultaneously. China is stronger and more assertive. Taiwan is more assertive in its political identity. And the US under Trump is sending signals that are more easily read as conditional than committed. These three changes are not occurring one after the other, but simultaneously, and the global governance system has not yet responded accordingly.

The Trump-Xi meeting in May 2026 is neither a turning point in the war nor a step toward a resolution. It is a reflection of the current situation: three actors with three different interpretations, no referee, and increasingly little room for error.

What’s needed isn’t a final solution on Taiwan’s status, as that won’t come anytime soon. What’s needed are concrete steps that reduce the risk of miscalculation while keeping all options open. Crisis channels, regional consultative forums, and non-escalation commitments are small steps but have clear historical precedent. The question is whether the political will for these small steps can still be found amidst the escalating rivalry.