analysis

THE HOOK

Late Monday, Donald Trump signaled the ceasefire with Iran was effectively over, threatening fresh strikes and casting doubt on the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz. Brent crude jumped past $90 a barrel. By Wednesday morning, the US Dollar Index had climbed to 99.73 — its highest in nearly three weeks — and the 10-year Treasury yield touched 4.81%, just shy of a 52-week high. The reason: traders now put the odds of a September Fed rate hike near 65–70%, not a cut.

THE MECHANISM

The chain runs cleanly enough to name. Iran’s conflict with the US raises the odds of a shipping disruption through Hormuz, which carries roughly a fifth of global oil supply; oil-price risk feeds straight into headline inflation; and a Fed under Chair Kevin Warsh — already fighting credibility questions after an ambiguous hold in July — cannot afford to look soft on prices while a war pushes them up. That is why futures markets have swung from pricing no move in 2026 to pricing a hike at the September 15–16 meeting.

Higher US rates make dollar assets pay more relative to everywhere else, which is the direct channel behind both the stronger DXY and the 4.81% ten-year. The winners are near-term and narrow: holders of short-dated Treasury bills, whose yields rise with the policy rate; US money-market funds; and, oddly, the stablecoin issuers whose reserves sit almost entirely in T-bills and now earn more for holding them. The losers are broader and slower-moving: emerging markets carrying dollar-denominated debt face a double bill, since a stronger dollar raises the local-currency cost of repayment at the same moment their own borrowing costs rise in sympathy with Washington’s. Oil-importing economies — India, Turkey, Japan, the eurozone — take a second hit, paying more for crude in a currency that is simultaneously getting more expensive to buy. Gold, meanwhile, is caught between two forces: safe-haven demand from the war pulls it up, rate-hike expectations pull it down, which is why it sits near $4,304, off its recent peak but still up 21% over the year.

WHY IT MATTERS

The apparent contradiction — dollar strong this week, dollar weaker for the decade — is really two different clocks running at once. Reserve managers make multi-year diversification bets; traders react to a war in hours. The IMF’s COFER data put the dollar at 57.13% of allocated reserves in the first quarter of 2026, down from 72% in 2000, and a recent survey of reserve managers found roughly three-quarters expect that share to keep falling over the next five years. None of that is undone by one hawkish week from Kevin Warsh.

What is new is where the dollar’s reach is actually growing: not in central bank vaults but in stablecoins. The GENIUS Act framework — now the subject of a Treasury rulemaking comment period that closes in October — has pushed issuers to back their tokens almost entirely with short-dated Treasuries, and forecasts from Standard Chartered and Senator Bill Hagerty put potential T-bill demand from stablecoins as high as $2–2.3 trillion. That is dollarization happening retail-first, in emerging-market wallets and crypto exchanges, invisible to COFER. For Washington, a Fed hike timed to a war raises borrowing costs precisely when the deficit needs cheap financing, and when the countries least able to absorb dearer dollars — many of them US partners, not adversaries — get hit hardest. That is a form of collateral leverage no sanctions list ever names.

WATCH FOR

The September 15–16 FOMC meeting is the date that resolves this. A 25-basis-point hike would confirm markets are right to treat this as an inflation fight, not a growth scare, and would likely push the dollar and yields higher still. A hold — especially if Hormuz tensions ease and oil retreats from $90 — would suggest Warsh blinked, and could send gold back toward its highs faster than the dollar can catch up. Either way, watch the Fed funds futures curve shift in the two weeks before the meeting.

Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney supports a new global defense bank called the Defence, Security and Resilience Bank (DSRB), which aims to help allied countries rearm. The bank is looking to raise around €100 billion ($116 billion) to provide low-cost loans to governments and defense contractors for military projects. It will also guarantee loans for smaller, riskier firms. So far, Canada, along with Albania, Belgium, Greece, Latvia, Luxembourg, Romania, Turkey, and Ukraine, has expressed support for the initiative.

As of August, the DSRB had secured about €5 billion in commitments but aims for €20 billion in paid-in capital and an additional €80 billion available when necessary. However, major economies like Germany and Britain have not yet committed, which raises concerns about the DSRB’s ability to achieve the triple-A credit rating necessary for the lowest funding costs. Experts suggest that the participation of larger governments is essential to impress ratings agencies. Some potential members are hesitant about whether the DSRB can offer better financing terms than national governments, given their own budget limitations and existing commitments in similar initiatives.

Canada is actively engaging other countries ahead of the charter signing planned for autumn. DSRB founder Rob Murray emphasized the need for rearmament to address increasing security threats. He noted that many European nations are raising defense spending but are not close to meeting NATO’s targets. Carney has called for cooperation among middle powers to respond to what he sees as a changing world order.

The DSRB aims to provide funding for defense investments separate from current national debts but needs further backing to be impactful. Major European countries already have access to cheap borrowing but joining the DSRB would allow their domestic contractors to benefit from its funding. Some officials have raised concerns about overlap with existing financing programs like the EU’s SAFE program and Britain’s proposed Multilateral Defence Mechanism. There are worries about the upfront capital required for DSRB membership and the selection process for projects, as larger countries might need to contribute around €1 billion.

Murray highlighted that contributions could be spread over three years, and the DSRB could provide a more stable financing avenue for defense than existing programs. He stressed that increasing defense spending could lead to technology improvements, job creation, and economic growth while enhancing deterrence.

Canada hopes that under new Prime Minister Andy Burnham, Britain might reconsider its initial rejection of the DSRB, which was based on concerns over value for money. Burnham’s defense minister has described the DSRB as an innovative mechanism. If Britain joins, it may influence Germany’s decision to participate as well. Currently, Germany has been observing discussions but has not committed.

Industry groups in Britain and Germany are urging their governments to join the DSRB, fearing exclusion from projects financed by the bank. The DSRB has received about $10 million in support from various banks to help establish itself, and its proponents claim it is on track to achieve a high credit rating. Canada is willing to move forward with the current supporters, leaving room for other countries to join later, which could help secure the desired credit rating. The support of core shareholders is crucial for the creditworthiness of multilateral institutions.

With information from Reuters

BBC Sport pundit Joe Hart believes Alexander Isak dropping deep to receive the ball instead of staying forward is a sign the striker is low in confidence, and isn’t having the ball played to him in areas where he can be most effective.

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BBC Sport pundit Ashley Williams analyses Alex Scott’s “impressive” display, after the midfielder scored Bournemouth’s only goal in their 1-1 draw against Everton in the Premier League.

MATCH REPORT: Bournemouth 1-1 Everton – Premier League

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In early August, a Pentagon official stood in front of reporters and conceded something the department almost never says out loud: the world’s best-funded military cannot out-produce a country under invasion. Travis Metz, deputy director of the Defense Innovation Unit, put a number on it. Ukraine will manufacture six to seven million small first-person-view attack drones this year — roughly 500,000 a month, built in garages, repurposed furniture factories and basements within range of Russian glide bombs. The Pentagon’s own flagship drone program, a $1.1 billion initiative branded Drone Dominance, will have ordered fewer than 200,000 drones, cumulatively, by February 2027. Metz’s response was not defensive. It was aspirational: “I see no reason why we shouldn’t… be the world champions of this as well.” The gap he was describing is not a technology gap. It is a speed gap, and speed is the one metric wartime industry cannot fake.

The instinct is to read this as a story about Ukrainian ingenuity, and it is one. But it is also the epilogue to a specific American failure. In 2023 the Pentagon launched Replicator, a program to field “multiple thousands” of autonomous systems within 24 months to counter China. By its August 2025 deadline it had delivered “hundreds,” not thousands, after burning through roughly $1 billion — undone by drones that were unfinished at selection, software that could not command large numbers of different systems at once, and a Switchblade loitering munition priced above $100,000 a unit. Washington’s answer was not to slow down and fix the model; it was to bring in the Department of Government Efficiency to override procurement rules and reclassify small drones as disposable supplies rather than regulated weapons systems. Meanwhile, Russia’s own Shahed and decoy drone output is reportedly climbing toward several hundred, and by some Ukrainian estimates up to a thousand, units a day. The war that forced Ukraine to mass-produce cheap drones is the same war exposing how slowly America still moves.

Why the gap isn’t about money

Start with unit economics, because they explain most of the gap. A Ukrainian FPV drone can be built for as little as $300 to $500 — an airframe, a camera, a battery and a warhead, assembled by hand and flown once. The Pentagon’s comparable systems have historically cost orders of magnitude more, not because the components are better but because they were designed inside an acquisition culture built for exquisite, low-volume platforms like fighter jets, where every part is sourced, tested and certified over years. Layer onto that a July 2026 rule requiring a “wholly domestic” supply chain — no Chinese-made motors, no Chinese battery packs — and the honest tension becomes visible: the policy meant to make American drone production more secure is, in the near term, also what makes it slower and more expensive to scale. Metz’s own explanation was blunt: it is “much harder to get from zero to 200,000” than to expand an existing line. Ukraine skipped that problem by never centralizing production in the first place — thousands of small, dispersed workshops that are individually replaceable and collectively enormous.

The deeper obstacle is not money but structure. Replicator had no dedicated budget line, was bounced between the Defense Innovation Unit and a newly created Defense Autonomous Warfare Group under Special Operations Command, and repeatedly selected systems that existed as concepts rather than finished products, in a rush to hit an artificial 24-month deadline. Congress, by its own research service’s account, has struggled to get basic cost and capability data out of the program. This is what forced DOGE’s intervention: not a shortage of appropriated dollars, but a procurement system engineered for careful, low-volume exquisiteness trying to behave like a wartime factory floor, and failing at both.

The strongest objection to treating this as a straightforward American failure is that the comparison is not apples to apples. Ukraine’s FPVs are disposable, short-range and built for a static front line; American planners are chasing autonomy, jamming resistance and long-range swarm coordination for a Pacific theatre defined by vast distances rather than trench lines, and that ambition costs more and takes longer to get right. That is a fair distinction — but it does not rescue the record. Years and a billion dollars into that more ambitious bet, the Pentagon still lacks software able to command mixed fleets of different drones, while Ukrainian manufacturers are already fielding AI-assisted terminal guidance on sub-$500 airframes, refined through thousands of real combat sorties a month. The ambition gap did not produce a capability lead. It produced the same failure as the cost gap: exquisite requirements colliding with a timeline the requirements were never built to meet.

Which is why the Pentagon’s actual fix looks nothing like a bigger budget. Six Ukrainian manufacturers, including F-Drones and General Cherry, are now required to form joint ventures with American companies — near Toledo, Ohio, and in New Hampshire — as a condition of future Pentagon orders. Washington is not just buying drones. It is importing the production model, and with it the tacit admission that the expertise now runs the other way.

Three ways this goes

What happens next depends on whether the joint-venture model actually transplants Ukraine’s manufacturing tempo onto US soil, or just its branding.

Base case (roughly 50 percent probability). The Ohio and New Hampshire joint ventures scale gradually. By 2027–28, US-based output climbs into the low hundreds of thousands annually — a real improvement, but still an order of magnitude below Ukraine’s current pace, held back by the domestic-sourcing rule’s cost premium. The program becomes a credible proof of concept for a future Indo-Pacific contingency rather than a fix for any current shortfall, and “Drone Dominance” quietly redefines success downward to match what it can actually deliver.

Downside case. The DOGE-driven bypass of standard testing repeats Replicator’s failure mode at greater scale: units purchased without adequate vetting turn out unreliable in the field, a GAO or inspector-general report documents it, and Congress reimposes the very procurement safeguards that were just stripped away. Combined with a Chinese-component ban that keeps unit costs well above Ukrainian levels, US output stalls again, and the gap that Metz conceded in August widens rather than closes by the time it next matters.

Upside case. The joint-venture model works as intended — not just as a purchasing arrangement but as a transplant of Ukrainian manufacturing culture, its dispersed micro-factories, rapid iteration and tolerance for combat-tested imperfection, into the American industrial base. That model, proven on drones, becomes the template for how Washington arms the next partner already fighting a war, whether Taiwan or a Baltic state: not a slow pipeline of finished stockpiles shipped from the continental United States, but manufacturing capability transplanted onto the partner’s own soil, and now, in this instance, onto America’s.

The takeaway

So: what does the mismatch reveal? Not that Ukraine builds better drones — the Pentagon never disputed that its own designs, on paper, are more capable. It reveals that capability on paper is not the same as capability in time, and that the American defense-industrial base, even backed by an executive order, a billion-dollar program and a DOGE override of its own rules, still cannot mobilize at wartime tempo on its own. The fix Washington has actually reached for is not more money. It is outsourcing the missing ingredient — speed — to the one partner that has been forced to master it under fire. That is the real admission, and it may be the more durable one: the next time the United States arms a country fighting a live war, it may look less like supplying an ally and more like apprenticing to one.

Watch for: whether the Ohio and New Hampshire joint-venture lines are shipping US-assembled drones at anything close to Ukrainian unit costs by the next Gauntlet test cycle at Fort Carson. If the “wholly domestic” sourcing rule keeps American-made units several multiples more expensive than their Ukrainian counterparts, the joint ventures will have transferred the branding of Ukraine’s drone war without transferring its speed.

On July 23, Volodymyr Zelensky told Ukrainians that Raytheon wanted to help produce Patriot interceptors on Ukrainian-linked lines. Five days later, Lockheed Martin signed a second license, this one for the PAC-3 MSE — the hit-to-kill missile that has spent three years picking Russian ballistic warheads out of the sky over Kyiv. For a moment it looked like a watershed: the United States handing a country still absorbing nightly missile and drone barrages the blueprint to build its own air defense. Then, within days, the story came apart in public. US Ambassador Matthew Whitaker said Washington would not allow Ukraine to build PAC-3s at all. Donald Trump called the technology transfer “a hard thing to give away.” NATO’s own envoy said no agreement would close before winter. Something had clearly been decided. Nobody could agree on what.

The Patriot system is the closest thing the West has to a proven shield against ballistic missiles, and it is scarce almost everywhere it is needed. Roughly twenty countries now compete for a production line that turns out about 650 PAC-3 MSE interceptors a year worldwide — Lockheed Martin’s entire global output, shared among Ukraine, Israel, Taiwan, Gulf states and the US Army’s own depleted stocks. Russia, meanwhile, has been firing 55 to 60 Iskander ballistic missiles a month at Ukraine alone, before counting the nightly Shahed drone waves that push crews to expend scarce interceptors on cheaper threats out of necessity. The Pentagon has spent much of the past two years quietly rationing Patriot allocations across allies, reportedly diverting orders meant for Taiwan and Ukraine to replenish American stockpiles. Against that backdrop, “Ukraine will build its own Patriots” is not primarily a sovereignty story. It is a story about whether the system that makes Patriots for everyone else can keep up at all.

What the deal actually requires

Start with what was actually signed, because the headlines overstate it. Raytheon’s license covers the PAC-2 GEM-T, an older blast-fragmentation interceptor effective against aircraft and cruise missiles. Lockheed Martin’s covers the PAC-3 MSE, the missile that actually stops Iskanders and Kinzhals. Neither license includes the radar, the fire-control system or the launchers; those still come from existing Patriot batteries. And neither company has committed to building these missiles on Ukrainian soil in the near term. Reporting from Reuters and Ukrainian officials both point to Germany, which already runs its own PAC-2 line, as the likely first production site, with capacity shifting to Ukraine only “after the war ends.” What was announced in July, in other words, is not a factory. It is paperwork that keeps a door open.

Even so, the paperwork matters, because of what it concedes. Every PAC-3 MSE round carries a 24-month production lead time for the missile itself and 30 months for its solid rocket motor. Boeing manufactures every active radar seeker that guides it from a single facility in Alabama, capped at 650 to 700 units a year — a bottleneck no amount of Ukrainian factory floor changes. Aerojet Rocketdyne is the sole source for the motor. These are not obstacles a co-production agreement dissolves; they are structural limits on how fast the United States can arm anyone, Ukraine included. A government does not open its most tightly export-controlled missile program to a country still under nightly bombardment unless it has concluded that the existing pipeline, working alone, cannot meet demand. That is the admission buried in the announcement: not that Ukraine’s industrial base is ready, but that Lockheed’s and Raytheon’s are strained, and Washington needs help from a country it would ordinarily be supplying, not licensing.

The contradictions among American officials sharpen the point rather than undermine it. Whitaker’s flat denial that Ukraine would ever build PAC-3s, arriving days after Zelensky announced the license, is not really about Ukraine’s trustworthiness. A Republican congressional official close to the process gave the more candid version: the manufacturers are less worried about Ukraine leaking American technology to Moscow than about Ukraine improving on it and producing it “at scale, faster and for much less money.” That fear has a track record behind it. Fire Point’s Flamingo cruise missile, built in Ukraine during the war, reportedly costs around $600,000 — roughly a sixth of a Tomahawk and a fraction of a $2 million PAC-3 ACE round — while Ukraine’s home-grown Freyja interceptor is priced at roughly a fifth of the Patriot missile it is meant to substitute for. A country that has spent three years learning to manufacture air defense under fire, at a fraction of Western unit costs, is not the industrial partner a legacy prime wants loose inside its own supply chain. The reluctance is commercial before it is strategic.

The strongest objection to this reading is that Kyiv already produces a large share of its own weapons, so extending that into Patriots is a natural next step rather than a crisis signal. Zelensky puts the domestically produced share of Ukraine’s frontline weapons at close to 60 percent, up from roughly 40 percent a year earlier — drones, the Bohdana howitzer, the Neptune and Flamingo missiles. That is true, and it matters. But those are systems Ukraine designed and built from scratch under wartime pressure, with no legacy export-control regime standing in the way. Patriot is different: it is Washington’s most sensitive interceptor program, run by companies that have spent decades keeping production onshore for precisely the security reasons Whitaker cited. Handing over any piece of it, even nominally, to a country under active bombardment breaks with everything the export-control system was built to prevent. That the United States is doing it anyway — however slowly, however contested internally — says less about confidence in Ukraine than about how thin the interceptor pipeline has become.

Three ways this goes

What happens next depends on which of the deal’s obstacles proves harder to move: engineering or politics.

Base case (our estimate: roughly 55 percent probability). The license survives, but production stays offshore. Germany’s existing PAC-2 line absorbs the first Ukrainian-linked output sometime in 2027; Lockheed and Raytheon leave the seeker and motor bottlenecks unresolved; and Zelensky’s own target of “production capability by the end of 2026” slips the way most Patriot-related deadlines have slipped since 2022. The deal functions mainly as a signal — to Moscow, to Congress, to the manufacturers themselves — that the West is willing to widen its supplier base, without actually widening it before the war’s most dangerous phase has passed.

Downside case. Export-control friction, not battlefield risk, kills momentum outright. Boeing declines to license seeker technology, Congress balks at formally notifying an ITAR transfer into an active conflict zone, and the agreement quietly becomes what several earlier Patriot-adjacent announcements already have: a signed memorandum with no factory behind it. Unable to close its ballistic-missile gap through licensed production, Ukraine leans harder into Flamingo and Freyja — cheap and available, but not full substitutes for hit-to-kill interception. Iskander and Kinzhal strikes on Ukrainian cities continue at close to current tempo through 2027.

Upside case. Ukraine’s wartime manufacturing culture forces the restructuring the primes have been resisting. Facing a credible cheaper competitor, Lockheed and Raytheon accelerate second-sourcing of seekers and motors — the actual chokepoints — to defend market share rather than out of goodwill toward Kyiv. Patriot output rises for every operator, not only Ukraine, and Kyiv becomes the proving ground for a lower-cost interceptor variant that outlives the war. This is the scenario in which an admission of scarcity turns into a fix for it — plausible, but it requires the manufacturers to treat competition, not politics, as the threat that finally moves them.

The takeaway

So: is licensing Patriot production to a country under bombardment an admission? Yes — but not the one the announcements were built to convey. It does not say Ukraine’s industrial base has arrived. It says the American one has not kept pace with a war of attrition it did not plan for, and that Washington is now willing to test its most sensitive export controls against the same scarcity that has Israel, Taiwan and its own Army competing for the same missiles.

Watch for: whether groundbreaking on a German or Polish production line actually begins before the end of 2026 — Zelensky’s own deadline for “technical capability.” If it hasn’t started by then, treat every subsequent announcement as the political theatre this one increasingly resembles: a scarcity confession dressed up as an industrial handshake.

By chaining bilateral naval exercises across a widening circle of partners — Russia, Malaysia, Cambodia, Thailand, Vietnam, and now Indonesia — Beijing is not assembling an alliance. It is manufacturing the impression that a Chinese warship’s presence near every regional flashpoint, including the waters off Taiwan, is unremarkable.

On July 29th, the Indonesian frigate KRI I Gusti Ngurah Rai wrapped up a two-day naval drill with the Russian navy in Vladivostok, part of Exercise Orruda 2026. Two weeks later, on August 12th, China’s Ministry of National Defense announced that the same ship, on its way home, would run a “passing exercise” with a Chinese frigate, the Honghe — not in Indonesian waters, not in the South China Sea, but east of Taiwan. Jakarta’s navy described it in the blandest terms available: communications drills, a resupply run, “a universal naval tradition.” Taipei was not reassured. Taiwan’s foreign ministry said it “sternly condemns” the move and complained that Beijing had “unilaterally claimed” Indonesian participation before Jakarta had said a word about where, or why, this was happening.

That gap — between Jakarta’s shrug and Taipei’s alarm — is the story. It is also a useful corrective to how most coverage of Chinese naval activity is currently framed. The default lens is bilateral and confrontational: China versus the Philippines at Second Thomas Shoal, China versus Japan around the Senkakus, China versus Taiwan in the Strait. That lens catches real events, but it misses the connective tissue between them — a growing schedule of joint drills with third parties, each one small and individually deniable as “routine,” that collectively do something the confrontational track cannot: they make China’s presence in the surrounding water look normal to everyone except the state it is actually disputing with.

Indonesia and China have their own maritime dispute: Beijing’s nine-dash line overlaps Indonesia’s exclusive economic zone around the Natuna Islands, and Chinese fishing incursions there froze bilateral naval drills between 2015 and 2021. Those “Sharp Knife” exercises resumed in 2021 and have picked up pace since 2024. That history matters, but it is not what explains this month’s drill, because this drill did not happen anywhere near Natuna. It happened off Taiwan — waters Indonesia has no claim to and, until now, no naval presence in alongside China. Indonesia is simply the newest and most sensitive addition to a list that already includes Russia (the mature anchor partnership, most recently “Joint Sea-2026” in July), Malaysia (“Peace and Friendship 2025” in the Strait of Malacca last October), Cambodia (“Golden Dragon” at the newly built Ream Naval Base logistics center last spring), Thailand (“Blue Strike” and “Falcon Strike,” the latter launched again this month), and Vietnam (a Beibu Gulf coast guard and navy patrol series now past its fortieth iteration). All of this sits alongside a separate, unilateral track — a 100-plus-vessel show of force spanning the Yellow Sea to the western Pacific last December, and routine coast guard patrols around Scarborough Shoal and Second Thomas Shoal.

The claim of this piece is that these two tracks are not separate stories about Chinese assertiveness. They are one story, working in tandem: the unilateral patrols draw the lines, and the bilateral drills erase them, by training a widening circle of regional navies — and the publics who read about them — to treat a Chinese warship’s presence near contested space as routine bilateral traffic rather than a signal.

The Indonesia case is the clearest evidence yet, because the location was Beijing’s choice, not Jakarta’s. Indonesia had no dispute-driven reason to be operating near Taiwan; its dispute with China sits in the Natuna Sea, hundreds of miles away. What Jakarta had was a frigate already at sea, returning from Russia, and a willingness to let Beijing choose the itinerary’s final leg. Global Times, writing for a domestic Chinese audience, called the drill’s timing “of great significance” — language China’s defense ministry does not use for routine port calls. The exercise also landed in the same week that Elbridge Colby, the U.S. Under Secretary of War for Policy, was in Jakarta courting Indonesia’s alignment. Chaining a Chinese passing exercise onto the tail of an Indonesian-Russian one, in waters adjacent to the most dangerous flashpoint in the region, at the exact moment Washington was making its own pitch, is not the profile of a routine bilateral courtesy call.

The strongest objection to this argument comes from analysts of Malaysia’s drills with China, who point out that Kuala Lumpur treats “Peace and Friendship” as a hedging tool it controls, not a concession Beijing extracted — the exercises are deliberately unsophisticated (humanitarian assistance, counter-piracy, no live fire), and Malaysia’s own defense establishment remains wary of Chinese assertiveness even as it participates. That is a fair description of Malaysia’s intent, and it likely holds for Cambodia and Thailand too: these governments are managing great-power competition on their own terms, not capitulating to it. But intent on the partner’s side does not determine the effect on Beijing’s side. Whatever Kuala Lumpur or Phnom Penh tell their own publics, every additional bilateral drill lowers the diplomatic and psychological cost, for Beijing, of being seen operating a warship near water someone else disputes. Indonesia’s case shows why that distinction matters: Jakarta’s intent was almost certainly routine — a frigate coming home. Beijing’s was not. It picked the coordinates.

None of this means China is close to fielding a formal coalition in the NATO sense; nothing here involves interoperability, shared command, or mutual defense. What it means is narrower and, in some ways, more useful to Beijing: a maintenance routine that makes normalization cumulative rather than a single dramatic claim to defend. Each additional partner adds one more government that has, at least once, treated a joint Chinese naval presence near contested water as unremarkable — and one more precedent for the next invitation.

The guest list is also instructive. The one claimant conspicuously absent from it is the Philippines — the country with the loudest ongoing disputes with Beijing, at Scarborough Shoal and Second Thomas Shoal, and the one treaty ally the United States has directly on the South China Sea’s rim. Manila gets unilateral coercion, not invitations: coast guard patrols, water-cannon incidents, and jamming, rather than passing exercises. Every partner on the actual list — Russia, Malaysia, Cambodia, Thailand, Vietnam, Singapore, Indonesia — either has no U.S. mutual defense treaty or, like Thailand, treats its treaty commitments as dormant rather than active. That is not a coincidence; it is a selection criterion. Beijing is not inviting the states most capable of resisting the normalization effect. It is inviting the states most likely to accept it, and saving coercion for the one state structurally immune to the charm offensive.

What happens next

Base case (roughly 55 percent).  The Indonesia relationship deepens but recalibrates location. A higher-tempo revival of the Sharp Knife series continues, concentrated in Indonesian or South China Sea-adjacent waters near Natuna rather than repeated performances off Taiwan. Jakarta absorbs the diplomatic cost of this month’s episode privately — quiet reassurances to Taipei and Washington — while keeping the relationship with Beijing intact. The key assumption: the backlash from Taiwan and the attention from Washington made a second Taiwan-adjacent rerun more costly to Jakarta than its benefit to Beijing.

Downside case.  Beijing repeats the chaining tactic with a second partner within the next twelve months, most plausibly Brunei — the quietest South China Sea claimant, which in February 2025 already agreed to joint oil-and-gas development with Beijing in disputed waters it claims. A first-ever Brunei-China passing exercise, timed to overlap with a Brunei exercise involving another power and staged near a genuinely contested reef rather than international water, would confirm this is a repeatable playbook rather than an Indonesia-specific improvisation — and would be far harder for the U.S. and Japan to counter, since Brunei has never been a vocal claimant to rally around.

Upside case.  Taiwan’s public condemnation, paired with Washington’s trilateral drills with Australia and the Philippines, hardens into an explicit regional habit of naming the chaining tactic itself — not just the individual exercise — making it reputationally costly for the next candidate partner to accept the choreography. The coalition-of-drills strategy stalls not because China stops asking, but because fewer navies say yes.

The takeaway

Beijing did not build a coalition off Taiwan this month; it borrowed one, for two days, from a country with no stake in the fight. That is a cheaper and more durable tool than a formal alliance would be, and it will not show up as a single dramatic escalation — it will show up as a pattern, one passing exercise at a time.

Watch for:  whether Indonesia’s navy does it again, and where. A repeat performance near another sensitive location within the next two quarters would confirm the pattern; a retreat to home waters would suggest Jakarta drew its own line. Watch, too, whether Brunei’s navy — quiet for decades — puts to sea with a Chinese frigate for the first time following its 2025 oil-and-gas pledge in disputed waters.

Japan’s protest over Putin’s visit to the Kuril Islands is loud because its response is capped: Tokyo cannot meaningfully sanction the one Russian energy relationship — Sakhalin-2 LNG — it now depends on more than ever, after the Strait of Hormuz closure gutted its Gulf oil access and made that supply a load-bearing pillar of its energy security through at least December 2026.

On August 13th, Vladimir Putin toured a fish-processing plant on Iturup Island, the largest of the four southern Kuril Islands Japan calls its Northern Territories, with Sakhalin’s regional governor at his side. It was his first visit there in twenty-six years in power. He called the islands’ status “enshrined” as a permanent outcome of the Second World War and pointedly invoked the late Shinzo Abe, who spent years personally courting him toward a peace treaty that never materialised. Tokyo’s response was immediate: Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi called the visit “absolutely unacceptable,” and her Foreign Ministry says an “additional sanctions package” is under consideration. What went unmentioned is that this same government told Washington, in writing, ten months earlier that a full ban on Russian LNG would be “difficult.” That contradiction, not the visit itself, is the story.

The dispute is old: the Soviet Union seized the four islands in the war’s final days, and the missing peace treaty has been Tokyo and Moscow’s unfinished business for eighty years. What is new is the energy math surrounding it. Sakhalin-2, the LNG project sitting directly across the strait from where Putin stood, supplied Japan roughly 3.6–3.9 million tonnes last year — about 9% of its total LNG imports, and enough to make Japan the project’s largest single buyer. The US Treasury sanctions waiver permitting those imports, along with the Gazprombank clearing that finances them, was just extended to December 18th, 2026, pushed back from an original June deadline. Washington’s stated reason was blunt: global supply is “constrained amid the continued closure of the Strait of Hormuz.”

BEHIND THE VISIT

That closure is the piece most coverage of the Kuril visit leaves out. Since February 28th, when the US and Israel launched their air campaign against Iran, the Strait of Hormuz has been effectively shut, with roughly 20,000 mariners and 2,000 ships stranded and Brent crude spiking to $126 a barrel at its peak. Around 90% of Japan’s crude oil and 11% of its LNG normally transit Hormuz. Tokyo has spent 2026 losing its largest energy artery to a war in the Gulf, which means Sakhalin-2 has quietly gone from “one Russian supplier among several” to one of the few pillars still standing under Japan’s winter power grid. Putin picked this year, not an arbitrary one, to make his sovereignty claim visible on the ground.

The waiver renewal is the tell. Washington and Tokyo did not merely tolerate the Sakhalin-2 exemption through the Ukraine-sanctions years — they actively rebuilt it in 2026, in the middle of the Hormuz crisis, explicitly carving out maritime transport, financial clearing, and joint-operations funding through the end of the year. Putin then chose that same window, with that same regional government’s leadership standing next to him, to plant a public flag on the neighbouring islands. He is not testing whether Japan objects. He knows it will. He is testing whether the general logic of sanctioning Russia survives contact with the specific, recently-renewed exemption that keeps Japanese lights on. Compare that to 2010, when Dmitry Medvedev made the first-ever Russian presidential visit to the same islands: Tokyo protested loudly, recalled its ambassador briefly, and moved on within weeks, because no comparable energy dependency was on the table at the time. The script is recognisable. The stakes underneath it are not.

Takaichi’s own words undercut her “absolutely unacceptable” framing before she said it. In October 2025, briefing President Trump on the LNG relationship, she told him directly that a total ban on Russian gas “would be difficult” — an unusually candid admission from a leader now weighing a fresh sanctions package over the same relationship’s home islands. A prime minister who has already told Washington, on the record, that cutting the energy tie is impractical cannot now credibly threaten it without the threat being understood, in Moscow as much as in Tokyo, as theatre. What remains available is a narrow band of symbolic measures — travel restrictions, asset freezes on individuals connected to the visit or the regional administration — that let Tokyo be seen to act without touching a single LNG cargo.

The standard objection is that Japan has options: JERA, its largest buyer, points to a 30–35 million tonne portfolio and spot-market access, and Tokyo Electric-linked utilities cite early-stage interest in the $44 billion Alaska LNG project as a long-term alternative. That is capability, not near-term relief. Japanese firms remain openly cautious about Alaska LNG’s cost and logistics, with no binding offtake timeline in sight, and the global spot market Japan would lean on is the same market already absorbing cargoes redirected from Hormuz-blocked routes — tighter, not looser, than in a normal year. Sanctioning the actual molecules, rather than a list of names, risks the electricity-price and blackout warnings Japanese officials themselves used to justify keeping the Sakhalin-2 waiver alive in the first place.

THE SCENARIOS

Base case (~55%): Japan announces a narrow, largely symbolic sanctions package — individual travel bans and targeted asset freezes tied to the Far East regional government — while explicitly leaving Sakhalin-2 supply and Gazprombank clearing untouched, repeating the 2010 script almost exactly. The December 18th waiver renewal proceeds quietly, folded into the broader Hormuz-driven energy calculus, and Moscow reads the episode as confirmation that its Pacific energy leverage over Japan is durable regardless of who occupies the Kremlin’s chair on any given August.

Downside case: domestic backlash — the same “hardened public sentiment” Takaichi herself warned the visit would produce — pushes her government into a genuine review of the Sakhalin-2 exemption as its December deadline approaches, right as Hormuz remains tight heading into winter and Asian spot LNG prices stay elevated from redirected Gulf cargoes. The result is Japan’s first real taste of sanctions-driven energy pain from the Ukraine-era regime, a burden that has so far landed almost entirely on European households rather than Japanese ones, arriving in the worst possible month of the heating season and forcing utilities into the kind of emergency rationing talk Tokyo has avoided since 2022.

Upside case: Tokyo treats the compounding shock — Hormuz plus the Kuril visit landing in the same year — as the forcing function it has lacked for three years, converting Minister Yoji Muto’s long-stated goal of “steadily reducing dependence” on Russian LNG into actual contracted volume rather than a talking point: accelerated Alaska LNG offtake commitments, expanded US Gulf Coast term deals, and a public timeline for winding down Sakhalin-2 purchases that uses the December waiver deadline as a hard exit ramp instead of an automatic renewal. Even here, the earliest realistic substitution volumes arrive on a multi-year timeline, not by next winter.

THE AFTERMATH

Putin’s flag on Iturup was never really a test of Japan’s territorial resolve — Tokyo’s position on the Northern Territories has not moved in eighty years and was never going to move now. It was a test of whether that resolve has any economic weight behind it at the one moment Japan’s alternatives are thinnest.

Watch for: what actually happens to the Sakhalin-2 waiver around December 18th, not the sanctions package announced this week. A quiet renewal, carved out exactly as before, will tell you Japan’s outrage and Japan’s energy security are now permanently on separate tracks — and that Moscow understands the gap between them better than Tokyo would like to admit.

Israeli settlers have marauded across the occupied West Bank for months, attacking Palestinian towns and villages with impunity.

Events in Qusra, a village south of Nablus, where Israeli settlers have laid siege to three Palestinian households since Sunday, have even led to a rare condemnation of settler behaviour by the Israeli government, with spokesperson David Mercer calling the settlers’ actions “deplorable” and “unacceptable”, and promising that Israeli authorities would investigate and arrest those responsible.

Analysts, campaigners, and Israeli parliamentarians who spoke to Al Jazeera have reacted to that with disbelief and incredulity, pointing to the inability of the Israeli military to stop the siege, in which the settlers have cut off water and electricity to Qusra. Israeli soldiers were initially even seen mingling and even praying with settlers in Qusra.

Complicity

“Government attempts to distance themselves from the violence are ridiculous,” Aida Touma-Sliman, a member of the Israeli parliament representing the left-wing Hadash party, told Al Jazeera. “They can say what they want, but they’re complicit.”

“If you look at the West Bank, you can no longer differentiate between the army and the settlers,” she said, adding that many of the settlers had been allowed to carry out their military service protecting the same illegal settlements they had come from. “The government is supplying them, protecting and arming them. It isn’t opposed to them. Supporting them is policy,” she added.

“There is nothing new in what’s happening in Qusra,” Yair Dvir of the Israeli rights organisation B’Tselem said. “We’ve been seeing this for decades. When there’s international criticism of the violence, the government condemns it, the settlers withdraw, and then return as soon as attention shifts.”

“Let’s be clear, settler violence is state violence,” Dvir added. “They both have the same aim: to displace Palestinians and to take their land.”

The speed and brutality of the Israeli government’s encroachment upon Palestinian land, in defiance of both international law and the ruling of the International Court of Justice (ICJ) that it should stop its illegal settlement of Palestinian territory, has increased in recent months. United Nations Office for Humanitarian Affairs monitoring shows settler violence to be increasing with every week that Israel’s October election – and the potential end of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s far-right government – draws nearer.

“We’re definitely seeking an escalation of violence across the occupied West Bank, East Jerusalem, and in other areas, such as Gaza, in the build-up to the election,” saidNeve Gordon, a professor of International Law at Queen Mary University, London, and the author of “Israel’s Occupation”.

“The vote is like a rallying cry for that entire [settler] constituency that they have to do as much as they can, while they can,” he said of fears among settlers and the radical Israeli right that they might lose what many regard as their allies in Netanyahu’s coalition.

Settlement unchained

The Israeli government has done little to distance itself from the actions of the settlers. Instead, prominent members of Netanyhu’s Likud party have attended prominent settlement conferences, including those explicitly focused on ethnically cleansing Gaza. Netanyahu himself responded to recent violence in the Palestinian village of Tal – which prompted the United Nations to warn that the entire West Bank was at “breaking point” – by promising to recognise even more illegal settlements.

At the heart of government policy on settlements have been the polarising figures of National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir and Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich.

Smotrich has proven to be one of the most consequential Israeli politicians in history in promoting the cause of illegal settlements.

As well as normalising political references to the annexation of the Palestinian territory, Smotrich made being granted partial administrative control over the occupied West Bank a key condition of his joining Netanyahu’s coalition. He has since overseen the expansion of illegal settlements at an unprecedented rate.

Smotrich has also boasted of making the two-state solution a practical impossibility with the announcement of the E1 settlement project, joining occupied East Jerusalem and the Maale Adumim settlement, in August of last year.

However, focusing on just two of the coalition’s more controversial figures was to miss the point, Gordon argued.

“It’s too easy to say it’s all the fault of these few people and if they were gone it would all be OK,” Gordon said. “It goes far wider.”

“The ethnic cleansing we’re seeing of the West Bank, as well as that being undertaken by the army in the territory’s refugee camps, such as Jenin, needs the complicity of the police, the attorney general, the military and, ultimately, the public,” the professor noted. “Without the umbrella they provide, none of this would be possible.”

Kuwait has since the beginning of the Iran War in February been targeted by Iranian drones and missiles 1,400 times. Why has this state—smaller than the US state of New Jersey—been targeted more than any of its larger neighbors including Bahrain, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates?

A military node

This question takes us all the way back to 1991 when the US intervenes when Iraq under Saddam Hussein invades Kuwait. In return, Kuwait has since hosted one of the the largest US armies in the Middle East of 13,000 troops, and has the fourth biggest deployment of the US military globally. Furthermore, Kuwait is one of five U.S. Army Prepositioned Stocks (APS) sites across the world— a cornerstone of the US’ global military strategy as it allows for rapid deployment and display of influence. And not only does Kuwait not charge the US for its land use, or restrict US troop movements on its territory—unlike most other host countries—but indeed pays the US for its troop presence, and subsidies energy and water costs for the military bases.

A geostrategic asset  

In exchange, Kuwait’s geostrategic location on the Arabian peninsula and along the air corridor between Asia and Europe makes the country an important location for the US to secure its interests and exert influence in the region and beyond. Indeed, the US has designated Kuwait as a Major Non-Nato Ally since 2004, and has located its biggest air logistics facility in the Middle East in conjunction with Kuwait international airport. Thus, Kuwait has proven a key logistical hub for US military operations in the region including against the Islamic State and during the withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021.

Furthermore, Kuwait holds 7% of the world’s oil reserves, reinforcing its importance for the US and other oil consuming countries, while also making it strategically vulnerable to Iranian attacks on energy plants in late July, as this adds to the ongoing energy insecurity created by the closure of the key oil trade route through the Strait of Hormuz.

The end of diplomatic balancing?

Despite these far-reaching strategic links with the US, Kuwait has long maintained a diplomatic balancing act, refusing to normalise relations with Israel while simultaneously refraining from condemning the Iranian regime. Moreover, Kuwait has often assumed the role of neutral mediator in the Middle East. For example, Kuwait mediated the 2021 rapprochement between Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates and Egypt, and has contributed to peace efforts in Yemen. In addition, Kuwait has been much more cautious in its statements concerning the Iranian regime, unlike its vocally critical, yet less targeted neighbors such as the United Arab Emirates, and has even refused to allow the US to use military bases in Kuwait for launching attacks on Iran.

Geographic liabilities

Even so, Kuwait has fallen prey to its geography. For one, its geographical proximity to Iran makes Kuwait a comparatively cheap and easy target for Iranian missiles, while its lack of naturally occurring fresh water and consequent reliance on desalination provides Teheran an additional pressure point, as illustrated by Iranian attacks on desalination plants in late July. Furthermore, its proximity to Iraq has exposed it to attacks by Iraqi Shia militias, allied with Teheran.

And the risk of further attacks in the future is high. On 1 August, Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi declared that it would react ”decisively” against any US strikes, and warned Gulf states against permitting the US and Israel to use bases on their territories to launch attacks against Iran. Similarly, Iraq announced that its military forces stood ready to ‘thwart any attempts at targeting neighbouring countries within our regional sphere.’ Thus, recent developments suggest that Kuwait might no longer be able to remain an independent diplomatically oriented actor that can stay out of the conflicts in the Middle East.

Ideology

While Iran’s official rationale for the attacks has been to target US military targets and assets, the attacks on energy and desalination plants are neither; these are civilian infrastructures. Hence it is Kuwaiti civilians—not the US military capacity—that bear the brunt of the attacks. This suggests that Iranian attacks have not only immediate military objectives in context of the current war, but also underlying psychological and ideological motives, as these attacks can be seen as a way of scaring countries that go against Iran’s exhortations—reiterated since 1979–to its Gulf neighbors to cut ties with the US. In addition, the attacks expose the limitations of US security guarantee, and undermine the credibility of the US promises of stability and protection to its allies.

A change of strategy

Consequently, Kuwait may pivot toward building up more national military defence capabilities, as the deterrence guarantee that the well-accommodated US presence was supposed to provide has ostensibly failed, while Kuwait’s lack of domestic military resources to retaliate further enticed Iranian attacks.

Hence, it appears that the security order in the Middle East is set to become even more fragile, with the US increasingly proving incapable or unwilling to ensure what has long been considered a stabilising presence, and with regional actors increasingly divided and polarized, making neutral mediation harder.

WASHINGTON — With Whitewater investigations likely to continue well into next year’s presidential campaign, the White House has decided on a hard-line legal and public relations counterattack that carries serious political risks for President Clinton.

On the legal front, the White House is relying on executive privilege as well as lawyer-client confidentiality to justify withholding notes on a November 1993 meeting at which the president’s lawyers and aides discussed Whitewater.

The notes have been subpoenaed by the Senate Whitewater investigative committee, and White House aides fear that they will be demanded by special counsel Kenneth W. Starr as well. Today the committee will vote to enforce the panel’s subpoena for the notes. Panel Chairman Alfonse M. D’Amato (R-N.Y.) said that the full Senate would vote on the matter before adjourning later this month and that he plans to seek an expedited court review.

Republicans have suggested that the 1993 meeting, which occurred when several federal agencies were investigating the activities of Clinton associates in Arkansas, may have dealt with ways to cover up damaging facts and obstruct justice.

And such charges, whatever their substantive merits, create a politically dangerous problem for an already embattled president going into an election year.

Some sources who have seen the documents insist that they contain no incriminating revelations. They say that the president is invoking executive privilege because waiving it would open the administration to a massive fishing expedition by partisan investigators. Executive privilege is the constitutional principle that a chief executive can maintain the confidentiality of internal communication involving the legal pursuit of his duties.

Yet even if the meeting notes are innocuous and the White House is holding them back only to protect a larger principle, the failure to make full disclosure can raise voters’ suspicions. Already, political opponents and some newspaper editorial writers are using such Watergate-isms as “stonewalling” to describe Clinton’s reaction.

Said a former Clinton White House official knowledgeable about Whitewater: “The problem here is that the courts might ultimately sustain the president but politically it’s a loser.

“In cases like these, the political dimension quickly overwhelms the legal dimension,” said this source. He predicted that Clinton eventually would find a way to release the documents in some form while continuing to assert that they are protected by either attorney-client privilege or executive privilege.

The Senate panel revealed Wednesday that in addition to the notes of the Nov. 5, 1993, meeting, the White House has not turned over four other Whitewater-related documents:

* A draft chronology of the Whitewater saga prepared by the Clintons’ personal lawyer, David E. Kendall. It was drafted five days after the Nov. 5 meeting.

* A letter written Jan. 4, 1994, to the president from Washington attorney James Hamilton, who has represented the family of the late Deputy White House Counsel Vincent Foster and who worked for the 1992 campaign.

* A New York Times article from Dec. 20, 1993, with notations Clinton wrote in the margin.

* Undated notes of White House aide Joel Klein.

Democrats said that the Clintons have every right to invoke privilege in this matter, and they suggested that the Republicans should try to negotiate a compromise rather than move toward a court battle. D’Amato described the Clintons’ position as “extraordinary and troublesome.” Sen. Paul S. Sarbanes of Maryland, the committee’s ranking Democrat, accused D’Amato of trying to provoke a confrontation for political reasons.

The White House is more concerned that waiving confidentiality would open the door for Starr to seek notes and testimony from Clinton’s attorneys.

Lawyers, including White House Counsel Jack Quinn, have advised Clinton that he cannot waive the privilege for only one meeting. If he waives it once, he cannot reassert it on another Whitewater issue.

While the White House public relations campaign is aimed at explaining Clinton’s case and marshaling support for it, it also is designed to discredit D’Amato as a political enemy with ethical problems of his own–a ploy guaranteed to stir more controversy and criticism of the president.

Times staff writers John M. Broder and Sara Fritz contributed to this story.

BBC Sport World Cup pundits Micah Richards and Wayne Rooney believe Thomas Tuchel should have included more full-back cover in the squad, following the withdrawal of Tino Livramento and injury concerns for Reece James, and now Jarrell Quansah.

MATCH REPORT: England 2-0 Panama – Group L

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WASHINGTON — Bobby Ray Inman’s bizarre withdrawal as the defense secretary nominee provides a glimpse into a peculiar Washington phenomenon–the insider who has spent so long behind the scenes that he is unprepared for the glare of the public limelight.

For more than 20 years, first as a Navy admiral and later as director of the National Security Agency and then deputy CIA director, Inman was part of a cadre of people who exercise great power in government but are insulated from the give-and-take of daily political life.

Inman’s remarks in announcing his withdrawal Tuesday and interviews with some of his friends suggest that the retired admiral was unequipped to step into the public arena. Despite his stated reasons, that lack of exposure to public life has emerged as the most plausible explanation for Inman’s abrupt turnabout.

“We thought: ‘He’s an insider–he probably knows the rules of the game.’ But he didn’t,” said Stephen H. Hess, a Brookings Institution political analyst. “We were all caught off guard by that.”

William Safire, the New York Times columnist accused by Inman of mounting unfair attacks, said Wednesday that he suspects Inman withdrew because he and other journalists were working on stories that might have damaged Inman’s chances for winning confirmation.

In his column appearing today, Safire wrote that Inman might have been worried by probes into reports that Inman had used a source on the Senate Intelligence Committee staff to help “manipulate” unsuspecting senators during Inman’s time at the CIA.

Inman had blamed a “new McCarthyism” in the press and the threat of a “partisan attack” by Republicans for his decision, but the media coverage and the GOP were overwhelmingly favorable toward him.

There were other ingredients as well: By Inman’s own admission, he did not thirst for the post. “I did not want a job in Washington,” he said in an interview.

He said he accepted Clinton’s offer because, as a career military officer, he found it difficult to refuse a presidential request.

Friends suggest that Inman’s longtime insecurities, apparently stemming from his days as a clumsy, bespectacled youngster, may have played a part by prompting him to overreact to fears that his reputation was being besmirched.

Inman’s experience is not unique in Washington politics. Others who have made the transition–notably Dwight D. Eisenhower, who went from five-star general to President, have had similar adjustments to make, although Eisenhower managed it more deftly.

Being an admiral or general provides a degree of insulation that often is a handicap for a would-be politician. Few are willing to criticize a senior military officer, especially in public.

And someone who has spent the bulk of his career as an intelligence officer is even more protected. By nature, the chiefs of the nation’s intelligence agencies stay in the background, even while advising presidents, briefing congressional leaders and influencing policies.

Especially during the Cold War, the bulk of their contact with the outside was behind closed doors–with lawmakers or reporters respectfully grateful for any morsel of information they were given.

Inman’s circumstances, and his own talents, accustomed him to receiving nothing but plaudits. Presidents, lawmakers and even the press praised him lavishly, extolling his brilliance and wisdom. Hardly an unkind word was to be found.

What Inman actually had to face during his few short weeks as defense secretary-designate was mild:

* A potential flap over his failure to pay Social Security taxes for a housekeeper peaked a few hours after it was announced, leaked by the White House to head off any serious brouhaha. The issue had been a major element in toppling two candidates for top Justice Department posts.

* News stories, backed up by bankruptcy records, noted his mixed performance in various business ventures. The articles were brought on mainly by Inman’s statements that he planned to bring more business techniques to government.

As Inman eventually admitted, the only real criticism came from a handful of columnists. News coverage and most editorials were heavy with praise; Inman said Tuesday that the working press had treated him fairly.

Inman did “more to besmirch his own reputation in his press conference than the press or the Republicans ever did,” Hess said. “Most people think his response bordered on the bizarre.”

Senate Minority Leader Bob Dole (R-Kan.), whom Inman accused–apparently without foundation–of spearheading a GOP attack against him, offered perhaps the unkindest cut of all:

“I think it’s probably a break for President Clinton that he didn’t get the job, the way he carried on yesterday,” the senator said Wednesday on CBS-TV’s “This Morning” program, in a view shared by some White House aides.

Times staff writer James Risen contributed to this story.

BEIRUT, Lebanon, June 19 (UPI) — The Iran war may be over, but southern Lebanon is likely to remain a battlefield and a bargaining chip in regional negotiations, despite Lebanon’s inclusion in the memorandum of understanding between Iran and the United States — a provision Israel rejected to preserve its freedom of action against Hezbollah, analysts said.

Violence in southern Lebanon subsided after the United States and Iran announced a 14-point preliminary agreement to end hostilities, reopen the Strait of Hormuz, and begin nuclear talks under a 60-day extended ceasefire.

The MOU was signed remotely on Wednesday by U.S. President Donald Trump and Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian, two days ahead of a formal signing ceremony scheduled to take place in Switzerland.

Rather than a cessation of hostilities, southern Lebanon witnessed a sharp escalation in fighting, with Israel intensifying its airstrikes and Hezbollah targeting Israeli forces seeking to seize the strategic Ali Taher hill in the Nabatiyeh district. Both sides traded accusations of violating the ceasefire established under the MOU.

The overnight exchange left 47 people dead, including women and children, and 97 others wounded in Israeli strikes on several areas of Lebanon, including Nabatiyeh and the eastern Bekaa Valley. Four Israeli soldiers, including a lieutenant colonel, were also killed by Hezbollah fire.

Israeli airstrikes continued beyond a new ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah, brokered by the United States and Qatar with Iranian assistance, and set to take effect at 4 p.m. Friday.

It remains to be seen how long this new truce will last, as is the case with the U.S.-Iran ceasefire, given ambiguities in the MOU and differing interpretations of its clauses.

Israel, which rejected Trump’s “betrayal” and the agreement with Iran, is seeking to change the arrangement by force in order to preserve its freedom of action against Hezbollah threats in southern Lebanon. It also seeks to maintain control of a security zone in southern Lebanon and is not willing to withdraw its forces unless its northern region is secured and safe.

Riad Tabbarah, Lebanon’s former ambassador in Washington, said Israel believes it has the right, as it usually does, to modify the agreement on the ground after “accepting it on paper, so as not to annoy Trump.”

“This is exactly what they did last time, and what they do every time,” Tabbarah told UPI. “Today, they are doing the same.”

He was referring to the Nov. 27 ceasefire agreement brokered by the United States and France to halt the war that began when Hezbollah opened a support front for Gaza on Oct. 8, 2023.

Despite the truce, Israel continued to carry out strikes against Hezbollah, which refrained from retaliation for 15 months as it sought to reorganize its ranks before resuming fighting on March 2 in support of Iran.

The March escalation increased the human and material toll in Lebanon after Israel applied what was described as a “scorched earth” policy to empty border areas of residents and render them uninhabitable.

More than 3,980 people have been killed and 12,001 injured in the past 109 days, with 1.2 million displaced under Israeli evacuation orders. Large areas were devastated, including the complete destruction of 70 villages and heavy damage to infrastructure.

It would be “pure imagination and illogical” to think that Israel would easily withdraw and relinquish the security zone it is building in southern Lebanon, intended to prevent anyone from crossing its border and carrying out kidnappings like Hamas did from Gaza on Oct. 7, 2023, according to Tabbarah.

What could stop the frustrated Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu from sabotaging Trump’s efforts to finalize a lasting peace deal with Iran and continuing his military campaign in Lebanon?

The tension between Trump and his administration on one side, and Netanyahu and his government officials on the other, over the Iran deal “is growing, and we need to wait and see how it will develop,” said Lebanese former foreign minister Fares Boueiz.

As for Iran, Boueiz noted that as long as it believes it is benefiting from the deal with Trump, it “won’t do anything to jeopardize the understanding.”

“It is clear that the U.S.-Iran war is over, with no winner and no loser and no complete victory for anyone,” he told UPI. “The next 60 days will determine whether a final agreement is reached and whether Netanyahu will be able to obstruct it.”

The fear that Lebanon remains an open battlefield and a bargaining chip has grown, despite Iran’s pledge to Hezbollah that it will not proceed with the MOU talks if Israel fails to observe a full ceasefire in Lebanon and withdraw from the southern region.

Lebanese retired Maj. Gen. Abdul Rahman Chehaitli argued that the war in south Lebanon was “an Iran-Israel war sponsored by the U.S.”

“Now that Iran has reconciled with the U.S., signed an agreement, and is negotiating, the battle is over for them,” Chehaitli said in an interview with UPI. “This means that Lebanon should work toward a solution with Hezbollah and engage in serious negotiations to secure Israel’s withdrawal and end any illegitimate armed presence.”

Lebanon, which opted for U.S.-mediated direct talks with Israel to end the war despite Hezbollah’s objections, is preparing for another round of diplomatic talks with Israel scheduled to take place in Washington next week.

While Hezbollah leader Sheikh Naim Qassem has set new terms for the talks, saying they should be limited to “mutual security,” Israel is insisting on disarming the Iran-backed group and keeping it away from its borders.

Hezbollah has also been pushing to drop the Lebanon-Israel direct negotiations in favor of the U.S.-Iran track.

“Hezbollah can say whatever it wants, but Lebanon should negotiate on its own,” Chehaitli said, adding that the militant group “is concerned about the day after, seeking security guarantees or immunity.”

Lebanon has no option but to negotiate its way out of the war, but the process will be long, and southern Lebanon will remain under Israeli fire and a bargaining chip in Iran’s hands until a final deal with Washington is reached, according to some analysts.

Tabbarah argued that Israel did not go through all this war only to back down, while Iran seeks a high price in return for Hezbollah and its other regional armed proxies.

“I don’t think Iran will go to war again. It will find a formula to save face for its armed militias,” he said, adding that the U.S., on its part, will have to restrain Israel and force Netanyahu to accept a full ceasefire in Lebanon.

He explained that a decision by Trump to stop U.S. military assistance to Israel, or “anything of the sort,” would be a serious step.

Tabbarah, however, warned that the solution “is not for tomorrow unless Israel drops its dream of establishing Greater Israel.”

WASHINGTON — Independents have grown increasingly unhappy with President Trump during his second term, a new AP-NORC polling analysis finds, particularly those without a college degree.

The analysis from researchers at The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research shows that while about half of independents without a college education had a positive view of Trump around the 2024 election, his approval with that group fell to about one-quarter this spring. That shift has erased the large education gap that existed among independents in the months before Trump took office for his second term, with independents now holding similarly negative views of the president regardless of their level of education.

The analysis was conducted by aggregating nearly two dozen AP-NORC polls conducted between July 2024 and April 2026, allowing for a deeper look at how support for Trump changed during several distinct periods, including the last six months of 2024, the first 100 days of Trump’s presidency, the summer of 2025 when the One Big Beautiful Bill passed, last fall’s government shutdown and the beginning of the Iran war.

The compiled polling shows a steady decline among independents throughout Trump’s second term. His standing has also dropped among several small but important groups that moved toward him in the 2024 presidential election, including Black and Hispanic independents.

More Americans than ever consider themselves independents, and they are among the groups that shifted toward Trump in the 2024 presidential election. Any erosion in that support could signal trouble for Trump and Republicans headed into the midterm elections, which are often seen as reflection of how voters feel about their governing party.

Tafari Torres, a senior research associate at NORC who co-authored the analysis, noted that while Democrats’ and Republicans’ views of Trump have held largely steady in his second term, independents’ opinions are still moving.

“Independents are, broadly, the people who are reacting to the events and dropping in their support,” he said.

Dramatic declines during Trump’s first 100 days

Trump’s return to the White House was in part fueled by independent voters who saw him as the stronger candidate on key issues like the economy. The new analysis, which looks at Trump’s favorability and presidential approval ratings, shows that once he took the helm, their views quickly soured.

Independents without a college degree had a much more positive view of Trump than college-educated independents did during and shortly after the 2024 election, but that shifted in the first few months of his term. Positive views of Trump among independents without a college degree fell from 48% in the months before he returned to office to 31% in polling conducted during Trump’s first 100 days back in office. Those warm views declined even further, to about one-quarter, during the government shutdown and the early months of 2026.

Only about 3 in 10 college-educated independents, by contrast, had a positive view of Trump before he returned to office, making their drop to about one-quarter much less dramatic.

“The decline among no-college independents was steeper and it was greater than the slight decline in college independents,” said Sean Collins, a research associate at NORC who co-authored the analysis. “That was surprising, especially given, when you think of Trump’s coalitions, those without college degrees is usually one of the ones that that stands out.”

Hispanic, younger independents grow disenchanted

Americans without a college degree have long been a key part of Trump’s coalition. But Trump also won in 2024 by making gains among groups that tend to support Democrats, including Hispanic adults.

About 4 in 10 independent voters — 42% — voted for Trump in 2024, up from 37% in the 2020 presidential election. Independent voters without a college degree were a little more likely to back Trump over former Vice President Kamala Harris in the last election, according to AP VoteCast, and Hispanic independents were about evenly split between the two.

The picture looks much bleaker for the president now.

Nearly half of Hispanic independents — 46% — saw Trump favorably in the polling conducted around the presidential election. His approval among these adults dropped quickly in his second term, falling as low as 15% during last fall’s government shutdown before landing around one-quarter in the spring.

Younger independents also became less supportive of the president, while independents age 60 and older remained mostly stable. Other AP-NORC polling has pointed to Trump losing ground among younger Republicans over inflation concerns and Hispanic Americans growing increasingly discontented.

“The gains Trump appeared to make during the election, I don’t know if they’re sticking around. He’s experienced some significant shifts among those people,” Torres said. “From our research, they don’t appear to be permanent gains.”

The economy is frustrating many independents

Polling suggests that the economy is at the root of many Americans’ frustrations with Trump, including independents.

About half of independents who supported Trump in 2024 said inflation was the single most important factor for their vote, AP VoteCast found, and most expressed high levels of concern about the cost of food and gas.

More than a year into Trump’s second term, inflation remains high, fueled by gas prices that remain elevated as the Iran war continues. An AP-NORC poll conducted in April found that about 3 in 10 independents were “extremely” or “very” concerned about being able to afford groceries in the last few months, and a similar share were worried about being able to afford gas.

The analysis found that Americans’ views of the U.S. economy tend to align with their view of the president. Those with negative views of the country’s economy tended to have negative views of Trump, and about 8 in 10 independents described the U.S. economy this spring as poor.

The latest AP-NORC polling from May found that only about 3 in 10 independents approve of how Trump is handling the economy, in line with the roughly 3 in 10 who said that at the beginning of his second term. The April poll found only about 1 in 10 independents — 12% — approved of how Trump was handling the cost of living.

This AP-NORC analysis of 4,836 independents was conducted over 21 AP-NORC surveys, blocked into five time periods before and during President Donald Trump’s second term. Independents are classified as panelists who do not select that they identify with or lean toward either the Democratic or Republican Party.

Sanders writes for the Associated Press.

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