East

When Indonesian President Prabowo Subianto stood beside his Egyptian counterpart Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi at Al-Ittihadiya Palace in Cairo on Saturday, the joint declaration they signed marked more than a diplomatic formality; it signalled the rebirth of a transcontinental bond, anchored in history, redefined by pragmatism, and sharpened by today’s geopolitical realities.

Indonesia and Egypt have agreed to elevate their long-standing ties to a “strategic partnership”, setting a new tone for bilateral cooperation in sectors as wide-ranging as defence, education, trade, energy and cultural exchange. While this may read like a typical diplomatic communiqué, Prabowo’s visit and the deepening of ties with Cairo reflect a broader and more deliberate shift: Indonesia is seeking to diversify its global alliances, particularly in the Middle East, at a moment when traditional poles of power — Washington and Beijing — are both proving increasingly precarious partners.

Indonesia’s expanding outreach in the Middle East is no coincidence. Cairo is the third stop on Prabowo’s tour through the region, which includes high-level meetings in the United Arab Emirates, Turkey, Qatar and Jordan. This multi-nation effort is part of Jakarta’s evolving strategy to forge a more independent and dynamic foreign policy, one that not only resists alignment with the world’s dominant powers, but also prioritises partnerships grounded in mutual benefit and shared values.

For Egypt, too, the move makes sense. In a world destabilised by trade wars, multipolar realignments and ongoing regional tensions, Cairo is increasingly looking eastward. Egypt’s active engagement with ASEAN — a bloc wherein Indonesia is the largest economy — underscores its ambitions to tap into the economic dynamism of South-East Asia, particularly in areas like trade, food security and digital infrastructure.

The economic logic is compelling.

Bilateral trade between Indonesia and Egypt reached $1.7 billion in 2024, making Egypt Indonesia’s top trading partner in North Africa. Indonesian exports — palm oil, coffee beans and coconut oil — flow steadily into Egyptian markets, while Egyptian companies have invested in nearly 100 projects in Indonesia, including major ventures in energy and infrastructure. Egypt sees Indonesia not just as a partner, but as a regional hub, a gateway to the ASEAN market and a conduit for broader Afro-Asian collaboration.

READ: Over 1,500 Israeli armoured corps troops demand end to Gaza war, return of hostages

But economics alone don’t define this partnership. A key pillar of this Cairo visit was a joint call to address one of the most urgent and morally pressing issues of our time: the war in Gaza.

Both nations are aligned vocally in their support for Palestine. Prabowo, whose administration is bound constitutionally to uphold the end of colonialism in all its forms, made it clear that Indonesia sees the plight of the Palestinian people not just as a regional tragedy, but also as a universal injustice. Al-Sisi, leading a country that shares a border with Gaza and has played a crucial role in mediation efforts, echoed the urgency of halting Israeli aggression and beginning immediate reconstruction.

The joint statement from the summit rejected the forced displacement of Palestinians, condemned illegal Israeli settlements and reaffirmed commitment to a two-state solution based on the 1967 borders with East Jerusalem as the capital of a future Palestinian state. This alignment is more than rhetorical; it is strategic. As the United States continues to waver in its Middle East posture and China treads cautiously, Indonesia and Egypt see an opening to act, not as neutral observers, but as active proponents of peace grounded in regional legitimacy.

There is another dimension here that deserves attention: defence cooperation. While, traditionally, Indonesia has focused its military relationships on ASEAN allies and Western powers, its partnership with Egypt opens the door to a different kind of military diplomacy, one rooted in shared challenges and experiential learning. Egypt’s unique experience dealing with border tensions in Libya, Sudan and the occupied Palestinian territories offers valuable lessons for Indonesia as it recalibrates its security doctrines in a more unpredictable global landscape.

President Prabowo’s visit to the Egyptian Military Academy and his praise for the country’s training programmes were not just photo opportunities; they were symbolic gestures pointing toward future collaborations in defence education, joint training and possibly co-development of security technologies.

Cultural and educational exchange, too, are seeing renewed investment.

Egypt already hosts more than 15,000 Indonesian students, most notably at Al-Azhar University, a vital bridge in Islamic education and interfaith dialogue. The announcement that Egypt will expand its scholarship programme for Indonesians speaks to a soft power relationship that transcends politics; a commitment to building enduring people-to-people ties.

So why now? The answer lies in the shifting sands of geopolitics. As the world drifts toward a post-American and post-unipolar order, middle powers like Indonesia and Egypt are reasserting themselves, not as followers of global hegemons but as architects of their own regional futures.

For Indonesia, forging deeper ties with Cairo is not about choosing sides in the new Cold War between the US and China. It is about transcending that binary altogether; about carving a space where developing nations, through solidarity and strategic pragmatism, can assert agency on the world stage.

The strategic partnership between Indonesia and Egypt may not dominate global headlines. It could, though, offer a template for how nations of the Global South collaborate, not through dependency, but through dignity. And in a world sorely lacking in moral clarity, Jakarta and Cairo’s unified call for peace in Palestine may well be one of the few voices speaking with both principle and purpose.

Below the radar: Is the Trump-Netanyahu ‘unthinkable’ about to happen?

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

Summoned last minute by the president of the United States, the world’s most powerful leaders dropped their schedules to fly to Egypt on Monday, where they idled on a stage awaiting Donald Trump’s grand entrance.

They were there to celebrate a significant U.S. diplomatic achievement that has ended hostilities in Gaza after two brutal years of war. But really, they were there for Trump, who took a victory lap for brokering what he called the “greatest deal of them all.”

“Together we’ve achieved what everyone said was impossible, but at long last, we have peace in the Middle East,” Trump told gathered presidents, sheikhs, prime ministers and emirs, arriving in Egypt after addressing the Knesset in Israel. “Nobody thought it could ever get there, and now we’re there.”

“Now, the rebuilding begins — the rebuilding is maybe going to be the easiest part,” Trump said. “I think we’ve done a lot of the hardest part, because the rest comes together. We all know how to rebuild, and we know how to build better than anybody in the world.”

The achievement of a ceasefire in Gaza has earned Trump praise from across the political aisle and from U.S. friends and foes around the world, securing an elusive peace that officials hope will endure long enough to provide space for a wider settlement of Mideast tensions.

Trump’s negotiation of the Abraham Accords in his first term, which saw his administration secure diplomatic relations between Israel and the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Sudan and Morocco, were a nonpartisan success embraced by the succeeding Biden administration. But it was the Oct. 7 attack on Israel, and the overwhelming response from Israel that followed, that interrupted efforts by President Biden and his team to build on their success.

The Trump administration now hopes to get talks of expanding the Abraham Accords back on track, eyeing new deals between Israel and Lebanon, Syria, and most of all, Saudi Arabia, effectively ending Israel’s isolation from the Arab world.

Yet, while the current Gaza war appears to be over, the greater Israeli-Palestinian conflict remains.

Trump’s diplomatic success halted the deadliest and most destructive war between Israelis and Palestinians in history, making the achievement all the more notable. Yet the record of the conflict shows a pattern of cyclical violence that flares when similar ceasefires are followed by periods of global neglect.

The first phase of Trump’s peace plan saw Israeli defense forces withdraw from half of Gazan territory, followed by the release of the remaining hostages held by Hamas since Oct. 7 in exchange for nearly 2,000 Palestinian prisoners in Israeli custody.

The next phase — Hamas’ disarmament and Gaza’s reconstruction — may not in fact be “the easiest part,” experts say.

“Phase two depends on Trump keeping everyone’s feet to the fire,” said Dennis Ross, a veteran diplomat on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict who served in the George H.W. Bush, Clinton and Obama administrations.

“Israeli withdrawal and reconstruction are tied together,” he added. “The Saudis and Emiratis won’t invest the big sums Trump talked about without it. Otherwise they know this will happen again.”

While the Israeli government voted to approve the conditions of the hostage release, neither side has agreed to later stages of Trump’s plan, which would see Hamas militants granted amnesty for disarming and vowing to remain outside of Palestinian governance going forward.

An apolitical, technocratic council would assume governing responsibilities for an interim period, with an international body, chaired by Trump, overseeing reconstruction of a territory that has seen 90% of its structures destroyed.

President Trump speaks during a summit of world leaders Monday in Sharm El Sheikh, Egypt.

(Amr Nabil / Associated Press)

The document, in other words, is not just a concession of defeat by Hamas, but a full and complete surrender that few in the Middle East believe the group will ultimately accept. While Hamas could technically cease to exist, the Muslim Brotherhood — a sprawling political movement throughout the region from which Hamas was born — could end up reviving the group in another form.

In Israel, the success of the next stage — as well as a long-delayed internal investigation into the government failures that led to Oct. 7 — will likely dominate the next election, which could be called for any time next year.

Netanyahu’s domestic polling fluctuated dramatically over the course of the war, and both flanks of Israeli society, from the moderate left to the far right, are expected to exploit the country’s growing war fatigue under his leadership for their own political gain.

Netanyahu’s instinct has been to run to the right in every Israeli election this past decade. But catering to a voting bloc fueling Israel’s settler enterprise in the West Bank — long the more peaceful Palestinian territory, governed by an historically weak Palestinian Authority — runs the risk of spawning another crisis that could quickly upend Trump’s peace effort.

And crises in the West Bank have prompted the resumption of war in Gaza before.

“Israelis will fear Hamas would dominate a Palestinian state, and that is why disarmament of Hamas and reform of the PA are so important. Having Saudi leaders reach out to Israeli public would help,” Ross said.

“The creeping annexation in the West Bank must stop,” Ross added. “The expansion of settlements must stop, and the violence of extremist settlers must stop.”

In the immediate aftermath of Oct. 7, Netanyahu faced broad criticism for a yearslong strategy of disempowering the Palestinian Authority to Hamas’ benefit, preferring a conflict he knew Israel could win over a peace Israel could not control.

So the true fate of Trump’s peace plan may ultimately come down to the type of peace Netanyahu chooses to pursue in the heat of an election year.

“You are committed to this peace,” Netanyahu said Monday, standing alongside Trump in the Knesset. The Israeli prime minister added: “I am committed to this peace.”

US President Donald Trump has made a last-minute trip to the Middle East in the wake of the Gaza ceasefire deal. 

He landed in the Egyptian resort town of Sharm el-Sheikh late on Monday after flying in from Israel, where he addressed the Israeli Knesset.

The first phase of Trump’s 20-point ceasefire plan has now been completed, with Hamas releasing all 20 living Israeli captives in Gaza and Israel freeing Palestinian prisoners in the occupied West Bank.

So will this deal finally bring peace to the region?

And what does Trump’s plan mean for the broader Middle East?

Presenter: Neave Barker

Guests:

Sarah Eltantawi – Professor at Fordham University in New York City; political analyst and writer

Yezid Sayigh – Senior fellow at the Malcolm H Kerr Carnegie Middle East Center in Beirut

Kenneth Katzman – Senior fellow at The Soufan Center and former senior analyst with the US Congressional Research Service

When Indonesian President Prabowo Subianto stood beside his Egyptian counterpart Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi at Al-Ittihadiya Palace in Cairo on Saturday, the joint declaration they signed marked more than a diplomatic formality; it signalled the rebirth of a transcontinental bond, anchored in history, redefined by pragmatism, and sharpened by today’s geopolitical realities.

Indonesia and Egypt have agreed to elevate their long-standing ties to a “strategic partnership”, setting a new tone for bilateral cooperation in sectors as wide-ranging as defence, education, trade, energy and cultural exchange. While this may read like a typical diplomatic communiqué, Prabowo’s visit and the deepening of ties with Cairo reflect a broader and more deliberate shift: Indonesia is seeking to diversify its global alliances, particularly in the Middle East, at a moment when traditional poles of power — Washington and Beijing — are both proving increasingly precarious partners.

Indonesia’s expanding outreach in the Middle East is no coincidence. Cairo is the third stop on Prabowo’s tour through the region, which includes high-level meetings in the United Arab Emirates, Turkey, Qatar and Jordan. This multi-nation effort is part of Jakarta’s evolving strategy to forge a more independent and dynamic foreign policy, one that not only resists alignment with the world’s dominant powers, but also prioritises partnerships grounded in mutual benefit and shared values.

For Egypt, too, the move makes sense. In a world destabilised by trade wars, multipolar realignments and ongoing regional tensions, Cairo is increasingly looking eastward. Egypt’s active engagement with ASEAN — a bloc wherein Indonesia is the largest economy — underscores its ambitions to tap into the economic dynamism of South-East Asia, particularly in areas like trade, food security and digital infrastructure.

The economic logic is compelling.

Bilateral trade between Indonesia and Egypt reached $1.7 billion in 2024, making Egypt Indonesia’s top trading partner in North Africa. Indonesian exports — palm oil, coffee beans and coconut oil — flow steadily into Egyptian markets, while Egyptian companies have invested in nearly 100 projects in Indonesia, including major ventures in energy and infrastructure. Egypt sees Indonesia not just as a partner, but as a regional hub, a gateway to the ASEAN market and a conduit for broader Afro-Asian collaboration.

READ: Over 1,500 Israeli armoured corps troops demand end to Gaza war, return of hostages

But economics alone don’t define this partnership. A key pillar of this Cairo visit was a joint call to address one of the most urgent and morally pressing issues of our time: the war in Gaza.

Both nations are aligned vocally in their support for Palestine. Prabowo, whose administration is bound constitutionally to uphold the end of colonialism in all its forms, made it clear that Indonesia sees the plight of the Palestinian people not just as a regional tragedy, but also as a universal injustice. Al-Sisi, leading a country that shares a border with Gaza and has played a crucial role in mediation efforts, echoed the urgency of halting Israeli aggression and beginning immediate reconstruction.

The joint statement from the summit rejected the forced displacement of Palestinians, condemned illegal Israeli settlements and reaffirmed commitment to a two-state solution based on the 1967 borders with East Jerusalem as the capital of a future Palestinian state. This alignment is more than rhetorical; it is strategic. As the United States continues to waver in its Middle East posture and China treads cautiously, Indonesia and Egypt see an opening to act, not as neutral observers, but as active proponents of peace grounded in regional legitimacy.

There is another dimension here that deserves attention: defence cooperation. While, traditionally, Indonesia has focused its military relationships on ASEAN allies and Western powers, its partnership with Egypt opens the door to a different kind of military diplomacy, one rooted in shared challenges and experiential learning. Egypt’s unique experience dealing with border tensions in Libya, Sudan and the occupied Palestinian territories offers valuable lessons for Indonesia as it recalibrates its security doctrines in a more unpredictable global landscape.

President Prabowo’s visit to the Egyptian Military Academy and his praise for the country’s training programmes were not just photo opportunities; they were symbolic gestures pointing toward future collaborations in defence education, joint training and possibly co-development of security technologies.

Cultural and educational exchange, too, are seeing renewed investment.

Egypt already hosts more than 15,000 Indonesian students, most notably at Al-Azhar University, a vital bridge in Islamic education and interfaith dialogue. The announcement that Egypt will expand its scholarship programme for Indonesians speaks to a soft power relationship that transcends politics; a commitment to building enduring people-to-people ties.

So why now? The answer lies in the shifting sands of geopolitics. As the world drifts toward a post-American and post-unipolar order, middle powers like Indonesia and Egypt are reasserting themselves, not as followers of global hegemons but as architects of their own regional futures.

For Indonesia, forging deeper ties with Cairo is not about choosing sides in the new Cold War between the US and China. It is about transcending that binary altogether; about carving a space where developing nations, through solidarity and strategic pragmatism, can assert agency on the world stage.

The strategic partnership between Indonesia and Egypt may not dominate global headlines. It could, though, offer a template for how nations of the Global South collaborate, not through dependency, but through dignity. And in a world sorely lacking in moral clarity, Jakarta and Cairo’s unified call for peace in Palestine may well be one of the few voices speaking with both principle and purpose.

Below the radar: Is the Trump-Netanyahu ‘unthinkable’ about to happen?

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

Hope for peace

TODAY marks the dawn of a new era of hope for the Middle East.

As US Vice-President JD Vance said yesterday, a truce brokered by Donald Trump has brought the region to “the cusp of true peace”.

1

While other world leaders postured and bewailed, the US President used his extraordinary power of persuasion to force Hamas and Israel to strike a deal to end two years of bloodshed.

It means thousands of Palestinians will return to what is left of their homes and get the food and medical aid they need, and Israelis can welcome back loved ones taken hostage during the terrorist massacre which started the conflict.

The 19th Century German Chancellor Otto von Bismarck once said that politics is “the art of the possible”.

But hard-nosed businessman President Trump has proved it can also be “the art of the deal”.

The path to lasting peace is still littered with pitfalls.

Hamas must be made to disarm and Israeli leader Benjamin Netanyahu will have to be persuaded to drop his opposition to a future, self-ruling Palestinian state.

More tears will be shed in the days to come.

Much trauma awaits Israeli families whose loved ones return alive but emaciated or, tragically, in body bags.

There will also be anger if terrorist killers are freed as part of the deal.

Yet despite these hurdles, this is the brightest glimmer of hope the region has seen in a generation.

And if, one day, it leads to a lasting peace, the whole world will rejoice.

Win for justice

THE phrase “justice must be seen to be done” is as relevant today as when it was first uttered in court a century ago.

That is why The Sun challenged an order banning a child rapist from being identified as an asylum seeker.

In a shocking example of two-tier justice, both the prosecution and the offender’s lawyer had opposed our attempt to report his status.

But this newspaper chalked up a landmark victory for open justice and Press freedom by fighting to have the order overturned.

Judge Maria Lamb gave an instant ruling that we were right.

The jury took just two-and-a-half hours to convict the serial offender.

A double triumph for common sense.

Silly Mili

ED Miliband’s fixation with Net Zero gets more desperate and costly by the day.

The Energy Secretary is targeting well-off families with £7,500 “bribes” to fit green heat pump systems most of us can’t afford.

His barmy campaign confirms what we already knew about Mr Miliband’s obsession with meeting unrealistic carbon emission targets.

It’s a waste of money — and he is a waste of space.

Donald Trump heading to Israel and Egypt on Sunday after Nobel Committee’s decision not to hand him Peace Prize after Gaza deal.

United States President Donald Trump is heading to the Middle East on Sunday as he looks to assert his perceived role as a peacemaker in the region after the Gaza ceasefire deal.

The visit would come days after the Nobel Peace Prize committee overlooked Trump’s public campaigning for the award and handed it to right-wing Venezuelan opposition leader Maria Corina Machado.

The White House has bemoaned the snub, accusing the Norwegian Nobel Committee of putting “place politics over peace”.

But in the Middle East, Trump is likely to be showered with praise from his hosts and credited with securing an end to the war in Gaza and the release of Israeli captives in the territory.

The White House said on Friday that Trump will depart for the Middle East on Sunday night, according to Al Jazeera correspondent Alan Fisher. The US president will first arrive in Israel, where he will make an address on Monday, before continuing on to Egypt, Fisher reported from Washington DC.

Israel and Hamas have already lauded Trump’s role in the negotiations.

But analysts stress that for the deal to turn into long-term peace in Gaza, rather than another brief truce, the US president must pressure Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu against restarting the bombardment after the Israeli captives are released.

“I think that Donald Trump wants to oversee this very closely, and I think he wants to continue to send the message to Netanyahu that this is it. At least, that’s what I’m hoping,” said Mohamad Elmasry, a professor at the Doha Institute for Graduate Studies.

“I assume he’s going to go and say very nice things about Benjamin Netanyahu; that’s what he always does publicly. But let’s hope, let’s hope, that he’s going to apply pressure.”

While Trump is taking much of the credit for the deal, experts say other factors pushed the truce over the line, more than two years into the brutal Israeli assault that United Nations investigators have concluded is a genocide.

Yousef Munayyer, head of the Palestine/Israel programme at the Arab Center Washington DC, said after destroying more than 80 percent of the buildings in Gaza while failing to free the captives, Israel was getting “diminishing returns” from its campaign in the territory.

“Israel is facing growing isolation and costs for continuing down this road. And I think there are also Israeli domestic political factors that influenced the timing of this as well,” Munayyer told Al Jazeera.

Similar proposals to the Trump plan have been on the table for the past two years, but Netanyahu has insisted on continuing the war.

However, the latest ceasefire comes at a time when countries across the world, including some of Israel’s Western allies, are condemning its blockade on Gaza and belligerence across the region, including its attack on Qatar last month.

Despite the international outrage, Israel has continued to receive military and diplomatic support from the US.

Not only did the Trump administration fail to denounce Israel’s policy of imposed starvation in Gaza, it also backed the GHF aid scheme to militarise humanitarian assistance, which killed hundreds of aid seekers.

As Trump celebrates his version of peace in the Middle East, rights advocates say there can be no true stability in the region without ending the occupation and ensuring accountability for the genocide in Gaza.

Nancy Okail, head of the Center for International Policy (CIP) think tank, warned that normalising the horrific abuses in Gaza could lead to the collapse of international institutions.

“If there’s no accountability for what happened in Gaza, it’s a licence for others to do similar things, and that weakens and puts everyone in jeopardy,” she told Al Jazeera.

US President Donald Trump said on Thursday that Iran is seeking to work on a broader Middle East peace deal after lending its support to his plan to bring a ceasefire to the Gaza Strip, Anadolu reports.

“Iran wants to work on peace now. They’ve informed us, and they’ve acknowledged that they are totally in favor of this deal. They think it’s a great thing, so we appreciate that, and we’ll work with Iran,” Trump said as he prepares to head to the Middle East this weekend.

“As you know, we have major sanctions on Iran and lots of other things. We would like to see them be able to rebuild their country too, but they can’t have a nuclear weapon,” he added.

Trump was alluding to strikes he authorized on Iran’s nuclear program in June, which he and his senior officials have maintained completely destroyed any Iranian nuclear capability.

The US president said during a Fox News interview Wednesday evening that Tehran was “about one month, maybe two months, away from having a nuclear weapon” when he launched the attacks during the 12-day war between Iran and Israel.

Trump earlier announced that Israel and Hamas agreed to the first phase of a 20-point plan he laid out Sept. 29 to bring a ceasefire to Gaza, release all Israeli captives being held there in exchange for around 2,000 Palestinian prisoners, and a gradual withdrawal of the Israeli forces from the entire Gaza Strip.

A second phase of the plan calls for the establishment of a new governing mechanism in Gaza without Hamas’ participation, the formation of a security force comprising Palestinians and troops from Arab and Islamic countries, and the disarmament of Hamas. It also stipulates Arab and Islamic funding for the new administration and the reconstruction of the Strip, with limited participation from the Palestinian Authority.

Arab and Muslim counties have largely welcomed the plan, but some officials have also said that many details in it need discussion and negotiations to be fully implemented.

Strictly Come Dancing’s spin off show It Takes Two came to a halt on Wednesday evening as Fleur East was forced to apologise for professional dancer Alexis Warr swearing live on air

Strictly Come Dancing’s spin off show It Takes Two came to a halt tonight, as Fleur East was forced to apologise halfway through George Clarke and Alexis Warr’s interview.

The pair took to the sofa to discuss their Strictly journey so far, and what they have coming up for this week’s Movie Week, but it seemed that Alexis got a little too excited, accidentally swearing live on air.

Speaking about their Paso Doble to Game Of Survival during week one, George opened up about how he felt during the nail biting first show.

READ MORE: Strictly’s Vicky Pattison apologises after being forced to pull out of BBC showREAD MORE: Amber Davies left ‘in tears’ during Strictly rehearsals as she hits back at critics

“I feel like the enjoyment came after it,” he said. “I feel like I blacked out throughout it. We got to the end of the routine, and I was like, ‘Oh my God, that was the best we’ve done it!'”

His professional dance partner Alexis added: “At the beginning, he hit his beginning position, and I knew right away he was locked in. I was like, ‘Yes George, yes George,’ and I almost forgot to go.

“I was like, ‘Oh wait, oh c***p, I have to move!’ I just noticed he was immediately locked in, in character. Yeah.”

Amid all the excitement, Alexis didn’t even realise she let the swear word slip, but of course, Fleur was on the ball, and apologised to viewers straight away.

“Sorry about the language we just had there,” the former X-Factor star said. “We just get very excited!” she laughed.

George’s appearance on the BBC Two spin-off show comes after he revealed that he was rushed to a physiotherapist last week after injuring his back in rehearsals.

The influencer opened up about hurting his back on his podcast, The Useless Hotline Podcast – inviting on Strictly professional dance partner Alexis Warr for the first time.

“I didn’t want it to be a thing on the night,” he said. “That’s why they asked in the VT, they were like, ‘Do you want to mention your back?’ and I said, ‘I don’t want it to be a thing.'”

He added: “I had a pinched nerve all week in my back. I had acupuncture half way through the week. I went to physio four times.” As for how he did it, George admitted that the injury happened after a handstand went wrong.

“I was like, ‘I’ll throw in a handstand or something.’ I like doing a handstand, if I keep my legs together I’d probably be better at it but it doesn’t feel fun when you do it that way,” he said.

Like this story? For more of the latest showbiz news and gossip, follow Mirror Celebs on TikTok, Snapchat, Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and Threads.

Last week, a prominent Saudi Sheikh, Mohammed Al-Issa, visited the Auschwitz concentration camp in Poland to commemorate the 75th anniversary of its liberation, which signalled the end of the Nazi Holocaust. Although dozens of Muslim scholars have visited the site, where about one million Jews were killed during World War Two, according to the Auschwitz Memorial Centre’s press office, Al-Issa is the most senior Muslim religious leader to do so.

Visiting Auschwitz is not a problem for a Muslim; Islam orders Muslims to reject unjustified killing of any human being, no matter what their faith is. Al-Issa is a senior ally of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman (MBS), who apparently cares little for the sanctity of human life, though, and the visit to Auschwitz has very definite political connotations beyond any Islamic context.

By sending Al-Issa to the camp, Bin Salman wanted to show his support for Israel, which exploits the Holocaust for geopolitical colonial purposes. “The Israeli government decided that it alone was permitted to mark the 75th anniversary of the Allied liberation of Auschwitz [in modern day Poland] in 1945,” wrote journalist Richard Silverstein recently when he commented on the gathering of world leaders in Jerusalem for Benjamin Netanyahu’s Holocaust event.

READ: Next up, a Saudi embassy in Jerusalem 

Bin Salman uses Al Issa for such purposes, as if to demonstrate his own Zionist credentials. For example, the head of the Makkah-based Muslim World League is leading rapprochement efforts with Evangelical Christians who are, in the US at least, firm Zionists in their backing for the state of Israel. Al-Issa has called for a Muslim-Christian-Jewish interfaith delegation to travel to Jerusalem in what would, in effect, be a Zionist troika.

Zionism is not a religion, and there are many non-Jewish Zionists who desire or support the establishment of a Jewish state in occupied Palestine. The definition of Zionism does not mention the religion of its supporters, and Israeli writer Sheri Oz, is just one author who insists that non-Jews can be Zionists.

Mohammad Bin Salman and Netanyahu – Cartoon [Tasnimnews.com/Wikipedia]

We should not be shocked, therefore, to see a Zionist Muslim leader in these trying times. It is reasonable to say that Bin Salman’s grandfather and father were Zionists, as close friends of Zionist leaders. Logic suggests that Bin Salman comes from a Zionist dynasty.

This has been evident from his close relationship with Zionists and positive approaches to the Israeli occupation and establishment of a Jewish state in Palestine, calling it “[the Jews’] ancestral homeland”. This means that he has no issue with the ethnic cleansing of almost 800,000 Palestinians in 1948, during which thousands were killed and their homes demolished in order to establish the Zionist state of Israel.

“The ‘Jewish state’ claim is how Zionism has tried to mask its intrinsic Apartheid, under the veil of a supposed ‘self-determination of the Jewish people’,” wrote Israeli blogger Jonathan Ofir in Mondoweiss in 2018, “and for the Palestinians it has meant their dispossession.”

As the de facto ruler of Saudi Arabia, Crown Prince Bin Salman has imprisoned dozens of Palestinians, including representatives of Hamas. In doing so he is serving Israel’s interests. Moreover, he has blamed the Palestinians for not making peace with the occupation state. Bin Salman “excoriated the Palestinians for missing key opportunities,” wrote Danial Benjamin in Moment magazine. He pointed out that the prince’s father, King Salman, has played the role of counterweight by saying that Saudi Arabia “permanently stands by Palestine and its people’s right to an independent state with occupied East Jerusalem as its capital.”

UN expert: Saudi crown prince behind hack on Amazon CEO 

Israeli journalist Barak Ravid of Israel’s Channel 13 News reported Bin Salman as saying: “In the last several decades the Palestinian leadership has missed one opportunity after the other and rejected all the peace proposals it was given. It is about time the Palestinians take the proposals and agree to come to the negotiations table or shut up and stop complaining.” This is reminiscent of the words of the late Israeli Foreign Minister Abba Eban, one of the Zionist founders of Israel, that the Palestinians “never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity.”

Bin Salman’s Zionism is also very clear in his bold support for US President Donald Trump’s deal of the century, which achieves Zionist goals in Palestine at the expense of Palestinian rights. He participated in the Bahrain conference, the forum where the economic side of the US deal was announced, where he gave “cover to several other Arab countries to attend the event and infuriated the Palestinians.”

US President Donald Trump looks over at Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia Mohammad bin Salman al-Saud as they line up for the family photo during the opening day of Argentina G20 Leaders’ Summit 2018 at Costa Salguero on 30 November 2018 in Buenos Aires, Argentina [Daniel Jayo/Getty Images]

While discussing the issue of the current Saudi support for Israeli policies and practices in Palestine with a credible Palestinian official last week, he told me that the Palestinians had contacted the Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro to ask him not to relocate his country’s embassy to Jerusalem. “The Saudis have been putting pressure on us in order to relocate our embassy to Jerusalem,” replied the Brazilian leader. What more evidence of Mohammad Bin Salman’s Zionism do we need?

The founder of Friends of Zion Museum is American Evangelical Christian Mike Evans. He said, after visiting a number of the Gulf States, that, “The leaders [there] are more pro-Israel than a lot of Jews.” This was a specific reference to Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince, and his counterpart in the UAE, Mohammed Bin Zayed.

“All versions of Zionism lead to the same reactionary end of unbridled expansionism and continued settler colonial genocide of [the] Palestinian people,” Israeli-American writer and photographer Yoav Litvin wrote for Al Jazeera. We may well see an Israeli Embassy opened in Riyadh in the near future, and a Saudi Embassy in Tel Aviv or, more likely, Jerusalem. Is Mohammad Bin Salman a Zionist? There’s no doubt about it.

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

A US judge has dismissed a lawsuit accusing the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) of providing funding that enabled Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023 cross-border raid on Israel, The New York Times reported, Anadolu reports.

Judge Analisa Torres of the Federal District Court in Manhattan ruled that the UN agency is protected by immunity as part of the United Nations, the Times said on Thursday.

According to the report, the suit, filed on behalf of roughly 100 Israeli plaintiffs, including survivors of the attack, the estates of those killed, and at least one hostage, alleged that the UNRWA allowed Palestinian resistance group Hamas to divert funds for its own use.

The Trump administration argued in April that the UN agency and certain officials named in the suit, including Commissioner-General Philippe Lazzarini, should not enjoy immunity. In a letter to the court, the Justice Department claimed the agency and its officers “must answer these allegations in American courts.”

Last year, the previous Joe Biden administration maintained in court papers that the agency is immune from lawsuits. The judge’s ruling sided with that view.

The plaintiffs claimed UNRWA paid local employees in cash and required them to convert it through Hamas-affiliated money changers, generating millions of dollars in additional revenue for the group.

A lawyer for the plaintiffs did not immediately respond to requests for comment Thursday, nor did a spokeswoman for the agency, the report said.

READ: Over 417,000 displaced from northern Gaza since August: UN

Pushing back on unsubstantiated allegations

The agency has faced repeated allegations by Israel of links between its staff and “militant groups,” claims it has consistently denied, citing a lack of evidence.

Citing the allegations, though they were not substantiated, some Western politicians and countries called for defunding the UNRWA, despite the vital work it has done for decades for Palestinian refugees.

For the claims, Israel provided a list of 100 alleged “militants” but gave no substantiation despite the UNRWA’s repeated requests.

“Agency has requested on numerous occasions for cooperation from the Government of Israel by providing information and evidence to substantiate the accusations made against UNRWA,” the agency said in a document responding to Israel’s allegations.

“To date, UNRWA has not received any response, nor has the Government of Israel shared any evidence.”

Last year, at the request of the UN secretary-general, an independent investigation was launched by the highest investigative body in the United Nations, the Office of Internal Oversight Services (OIOS).

In the document, titled “Facts Versus Claims,” the UNRWA said the OIOS probe found no evidence in one case and insufficient evidence in nine others.

In the remaining nine cases, “the evidence obtained by OIOS – if authenticated and corroborated – might indicate that the staff members may have been involved, and their employment was terminated in the interest of UNRWA,” the document said.

READ: UN says Israel attack on Sumud Flotilla deepens Gaza blockade

The US on Wednesday announced new sanctions on dozens of individuals and entities tied to Iran’s nuclear and weapons programs, in support of the recent “snapback” sanctions by the UN on Tehran, Anadolu reports.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio said in a statement that 44 individuals and entities have been designated, including five people and one entity allegedly linked to Iran’s Organization of Defensive Innovation and Research (SPND), which he described as the successor to Iran’s pre-2004 nuclear weapons program.

The US also imposed additional export restrictions on 26 entities and three procurement-linked addresses.

“These actions highlight the importance of the September 27 re-imposition of sanctions and other restrictions on Iran pursuant to multiple UN Security Council resolutions,” Rubio said. “We will not hesitate to hold accountable anyone who supports Tehran’s proliferation activities.”

The measures come after France, Germany and the UK invoked a “snapback” mechanism under UN Security Council Resolution 2231, restoring sanctions that had been suspended since the 2015 nuclear deal.

READ: Iran slams reimposition of UN sanctions, accuses Europeans of abusing nuclear deal

Sept. 29 (UPI) — Humberto strengthened slightly on Monday, bringing threats to the U.S. East Coast and Bermuda, the National Hurricane Center said.

Humberto had maximum sustained winds of 145 mph, the National Hurricane Center said in its 11 a.m. AST update.

It was located about 340 miles south-southwest of Bermuda and was moving northwest at 13 mph, according to the forecasters.

Hurricane-force winds extend outward up to 70 miles from the center of the storm, and tropical-force winds extend outward up to 185 miles.

A tropical storm watch was in effect for Bermuda. While Humberto is expected to miss the island, its residents could begin to feel the effects of tropical-storm-force winds starting late Tuesday, the NHC said.

“On the forecast track, the center of Humberto will pass west and then north of Bermuda on Tuesday and Wednesday,” the NHC said.

The storm is expected to experience fluctuations in intensity over the next day or so, but gradual weakening is forecast after that. It is, however, to remain a “dangerous major hurricane” over the next few days, according to the forecasters.

Swells generated by Humberto will continue affecting portions of the northern Leeward Islands, the Virgin Islands, Puerto Rico and Bermuda through much of this week, and likely produce life-threatening surf and rip current conditions.

Dangerous surf conditions were expected to begin affecting much of the U.S. East Coast on Monday.

Humberto is the eighth named storm of the Atlantic season and became the season’s third hurricane on Friday morning.

On Sunday, it was joined in the Atlantic by Tropical Storm Imelda.

The Middle East has been one of the most sensitive regions, where one event of insecurity and chaos shakes the entire Middle Eastern dynamics and existing global order. The recent atrocious genocide of Palestinians since October 7, 2023, by Israelis has proved to be a major spark for escalated crises in the region. The recent Iran–Israel conflict ignited a fire from the underlying spark. Strategic attacks between both adversaries took place, which unveiled the volatile and porous security shield of the region concealing deepened internal weaknesses and discords. Israel attacked Iran by relying on its policy of “pre-emptive strike,” a sheer and illegal violation of international law. Iran retaliated while unable to hide the weaknesses and loopholes in its air force and defense system.

The Arab World’s normalization of relations with Israel, the anti-Western ideological perspective of Iran, the sponsorship of terrorism and proxy wars, the expanded nuclear arsenals of both competitors, and the Palestinian genocide by Israel have caused recent escalatory tensions between Iran and Israel. The war between both nuclear powers has escalated regional tensions and generated severe impacts: a vacuum for global powers to exercise influence in the Middle East, strict hatred against the USA and the West by Iran, regional instability and imbalance of power, an arms race, and alliance formation in the region.

The relationship between Iran and Israel can be divided into four phases, spotlighting a roller coaster of instability. The first phase starts from 1947 till 1953, in which bitter relations followed; Iran stood against the British and United Nations (UN) decision of inclusion of Israelis into Palestine (Iran was an anti-Israel state out of 13 states).Then comes the second phase, from 1953 till 1979, in which cordial ties were enjoyed during Iranian President Reza Shah Pahlavi’s regime (he was pro-Western). During the Iranian Revolution of 1979, the pro-Western regime of Reza Shah Pahlavi was ousted by Iran’s first Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, and post-Revolution Iran maintained bitter relations with Israel during its third phase till 1991.

However, further adversarial relations peaked after the disintegration of the Soviet Union in 1991 till contemporary times. The series of attacks between both states in the contemporary history of the world marked a possibility of a bigger conventional warfare that can take place between both states via the “Domino Effect.” The unprecedented support for surgical strikes, proxy wars, and attacks on ships, planes, military bases, and nuclear scientists was a common practice. Recent larger-scale tensions expanded when Israelis attacked on April 1, followed by Iranian retaliation on April 13, 2024, then full-scale attacks at the onset of June 2025, while utilizing their nuclear arsenals at a huge pace. Israel’s important port was attacked by Iran, along with the residence of Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu, who justified the attack on Gaza concealed under the right of self-defense. 

The ground for attack was prepared for a few reasons. Diverse factors escalated war at the conflict ladder, raising serious peace and security concerns and generating severe impacts. One of the major causes of the tensions is the religious factor. Iran being a Shi’ite majority state while Israel’s Zionism’s superiority claimed the conflict’s religious perspective. Iran stood with Palestinians, being a Muslim brother, and warned Israel of an unprecedented war if Israel did not back out, and it proved to be true. The recent Israeli attacks on Palestinians divided the Middle Eastern sections that claim to be united under the umbrella of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) and Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC).

This war took the shape of the Arab World vs. the Non-Arab World. The Arab World normalization of relations with Israel played a major role in heightening the conflict ladder. Israel wants to become a regional hegemon by balancing ties with the Arab States and maintaining superiority on all fronts. The religious factor has caused the formation of blocs and alliances by some states andneutrality by others. The Arab World and the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) met failure in proposing a genuine solution for wars in the region. Iran-Israel tensions escalated from small tactics of attacks from both sides. The nuclear warfare conceals religious superiority and intolerance towards other segments of the region.

Ideological differences between parties paved the way for a warfare scenario. Israel being the right hand of the USA in the Middle East is not acceptable to Iran (a staunch anti-Western state) in the region.Post-revolutionary Iran (post-1979) is against western policies and their implementations in the Middle East by any Muslim state. Even Pakistan’s Chief Marshall General Asif Muneer’s visit to the USA on June 14, on the 250th anniversary of the USA military, during regional tensions made Iran uncomfortable. The cover page of the Iranian newspaper “The Tehran Times” raised questions about why Pakistan went to the USA amid tensions in the Muslim world. Iran considers the backing power of Israel, the USA, a major reason for regional instability.

Iran challenges the USA’s interference in the region by confronting Israel. The USA provided military and economic aid to Israel in wars in the Middle East. In the case of Palestine, the Conflictual Theory of Karl Marx implies in this situation that the actions of one state generate the consequences, and the other (weaker) states bear the brunt of those consequences. Iran was against Saudi-led westernization structured on USA models. The USA and Israel mutually adopted a policy to neutralize Iran for being a regional hegemon. A step towards it was initiated by Israel.

Iran has an over-reliance on three elements.

·       Drones (struck down by the USA, UK, Israel, and Jordan). Jordan is justifying it by saying that I’ll not allow violation of my airspace.

· Missiles (Ballistic and Hypersonic). Around 80 ballistic missiles were used, not stopped by the USA and others, and reached Israel within 12 minutes. Hypersonic missiles comprise more speed.

·       Proxies in region.

The sponsorship of terrorism and proxies by both Iran and Israel in the Middle East is also one of the major reasons for advanced nuclear tensions between both parties, as they cost the peace of the region in the long run. One reason Netanyahu is quoting again and again is that Iran is an existential nuclear threat for Israel, and he is emphasizing diminishing its proxies. Hamas in Palestine, Hezbollah in Lebanon, Mehdi Malaysia in Iraq, the Houthis in Yemen, and Assad’s regime in Syria are all backed by Iran. These groups are alleged to have carried out terrorist activities in the Middle East. Israel claims to stand against them, but the reality check is different.

Israeli atrocities abstained Hamas from bearing tortures and eventually stood on October 7, 2023, by attacking Southern Israel on Yom Kippur Day. The terrorist acts and proxy wars destabilized the region in worst-case scenarios. The militant groups fought for their regional autonomy and basic independence in the states, which were undermined by stakeholders. The militant groups are majorly supported by Iran in their rights for freedom and regional autonomy rather than external influences and perpetual dependency on the global North and West. Houthis in Yemen are at a distance from Iran, and for attacks, Iran has to go through the Red Sea, as their access is strenuous. They stood in solidarity with Palestinians by blocking oil and trade ships of the USA, the UK, and Israel. These states then retaliated and caused much devastation to them by breaking the back of Iran.

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) submitted a report in May 2025 that Iran has grossly violated enrichment capacities and expanded its nuclear arsenals. The Israeli nuclear arsenal, backed by the USA and Western alliances, raised the regional imbalance of power and security dilemma but was accepted by the international community.Contrarily, the Iranian Nuclear Program, developed on its own, seems a threat in the region. The nuclear programs, uranium enrichment, expansion of weaponry, development of missiles (cruise and ballistic), and latest conventional warfare techniques have raised serious concerns undermining regional peace. The economic and nuclear sanctions on Iran crippled its societal structure, yet its nuclear standoff is unmatchable. The expansion of nuclear arsenals and weaponry has led to an arms race, with the latest technological advancements having raised serious concerns. Iran has weapons that cannot be detected by the missile defense systems of Israel.

Palestinian genocide by Israel is one of the major reasons behind Iran-Israel tensions. Massive ethnic cleansing of innocent Palestinians has raised serious human rights concerns. Iran has condemned the Arab World for staying silent and not assisting Palestinian liberation via united efforts. They have claimed to retaliate with full force if Israel does not back off from Palestinian genocide. Massive brutal assassinations of Palestinians have taken place. More than 50,000 children have been killed, with millions of deaths of civilians and injuries. In the case of Iran, more than 16 renowned nuclear scientists, with few other state officials, have been killed by Israeli attacks in the past ten days. If this crisis prevails, it will be difficult to mitigate larger regional warfare. Iran sided with Palestine rather than the tame Arab world. They demand immediate genuine solutions;Global Civil Society is already predicting the way towards World War III. Iran launched missile attacks on Israel, sending a clear message that it will not back down if Israel does not stop regional ethnic cleansing in the name of self-defense.

The Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) was signed in 2015, from which the USA administration quit under President Trump’s administration in 2017. Trump expanded the process of negotiations on multiple fronts (nuclear enrichment, proxy wars) with Iran after becoming president again in 2024. Oman played a major role in it. The sixth round of talks was ongoing when strikes between both parties took place. Israel was against any kind of negotiations with Iran. Israel has been convincing the Global North and West to attack Iran on the basis of several reasons (speeches), as its fear of unprecedented threats from Iran isn’t hidden. After its October 2023 attacks on Gaza, upon questioning by the journalist about what the common threat of Israel is, in an interview with CNN, Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu said, “Iran, Iran, Iran.” Pivotal stance on attacking Hamas was based on ceasing Iranian support and expansion in the region via Hamas. JCPOA negotiations failed in genuine terms and halted, as they were not acceptable to Israel, and do not seem possible in the future.

Netanyahu is facing opposition on multiple fronts, internally due to a vote of no-confidence against himself in Knesset. In order to foil that move, he successfully created a situation with Iran. Due to genocide and war crimes in Gaza, European allies step back in large numbers. The USA and European populace went to protests for Muslim victims for the first time in contemporary history. A wicked hard image of Netanyahu was projected globally; these steps seemed to make it better to erode it by diverting attention towards Iran.

Israel implemented an official policy of “preemptive strikes” against all proxies. This concept matured in the Bush era, mainly in 2003-04. Practically, it was utilized by both adversaries in strikes against each other, yet Israel got its benefits in the recent escalation. The attacks were unprecedented. No official statement was given by Israel, and certain media reports say that missile strikes were carried out and F-35 jet fighters were used. Special forces of Israel have conducted operations in Iran, including attacks in Tehran, at nuclear facilities, and at military bases, targeting journals, scientists, the army chief, military commanders, and around 100 civilians, claiming several precious and innocent lives.

Nuclear facilities of states are mostly underground, and Iran’s are based in Isfahan, Natanz, Fordow, and Arak. The depth of underground facilities is generally 60-80 meters deep underground. Simple missiles are not enough to destroy these, but Bunker Buster bombs are required, which are owned by the USA but lacked by Israel. According to The Security Brief Show (BBC News), nuclear sites in Isfahan were attacked by sea-based USA warships called TAM, or Tomahawk Land Attack Missile, that travels subsonically and can go very deep and is really hard to be detected by radar. The dismantling of the nuclear installations is still doubtful.

However, apart from bases, Iran claimed to have breached Israel’s sophisticated missile defense systems, which are among the most advanced in the world, by hitting a military intelligence center and an operations planning center for the Mossad spy agency. Iranian missiles managed to pierce through the Israeli Air Defense System by exhausting interceptor missiles and cruise and hypersonic missiles, according to an Al-Jazeera report.

Despite all these, the internal weaknesses of the Iranian intelligence system and defense capabilities to strike down attacks by Israel were all unveiled and made Israel more confident. The striking back capabilities of Iran encompassed the Air Force, which was very weak due to protracted sanctions via the international community. It has outdated jets, like the MiG-29. F-14 jet fighters are USA-based. The Israeli intelligence agency Mossad has deep penetration in Iran’s intelligence and military system. The attacks were carried out on the residences of the army chief, the Pasdaran-e-Islam chief, scientists, journals, and many others. The operation by commandos proved to be another bigger penetration of Israel (comprising intelligence and military). Reports by the BBC are claiming that Iran will go to Beijing for advanced fighter jets.

This war has major impacts on China, due to its growing imports and reliance on Middle Eastern hydrocarbons, especially being a major importer of Iran’s hydrocarbons. Absence of safety, hiked prices of energy resources, and escalated insecurity will devastate China in the economic sector via deteriorating trade and investments carried out by China under the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) and BRICS+. Unlikely, USA entanglement in regional wars has diverted her attention from the Taiwan Strait (emerging Silicon and technological warfare) and the South China Sea, a blessing in disguise for China to reclaim irredentism. The USA has more than 40,000 troops in the Persian Gulf.

The more the attention of the USA is on the Middle East, the less the attention is on China and Russia.

Trump projected himself (self-proclaimed) as a peacemaker—to avoid a confrontation policy with Iran. Iran was not in favor of war either (with the USA and Israel directly) and carried out a policy of utilizing the nuclear enrichment as a bargaining chip with the USA for the removal of sanctions, knowing its defense capacities and loopholes. Trump is projecting its peace-making image via regime change in Syria with more democratic and peaceful political agendas concealing regional influence, genocide in Gaza despite ceasefire truces, launching air and naval strikes on Houthis in Yemen in “Operation Rough Rider” in the name of promoting peace, and giving minute relief to so-called militant groups in the region. According to a recent report on the Red Sea crisis, Israel is urging Trump to resume strikes on Houthis in Yemen.

In the case of Pakistan, the state’s second strike capability is strong, as it remained victorious in recent military strikes with India in post-Pahalgam aggression. India’s ideological isolationist nationalism and political pressure on Prime Minister Modi are shaping the current aggressive behavior of the world’s largest democracy. Its involvement in baking the proxies, extremists, and terrorist activities in neighborhoods and within Pakistan are expected to surge in Afghanistan, ex-FATA,and the Balochistan regions.

A ceasefire brokered by the USA on June 24, 2025, curbed both parties from engaging in further military and nuclear strikes, underlying diplomatic objectives. Iran denounces the claim of the USA. It has not ended fully; episodes still exist on political and diplomatic grounds, as Israel is not accepting negotiations with Iran at any cost. The Israeli Defense Minister said that we will not attack Iran, yet citizens should be prepared for counterattacks. They have to ensure their protection via the Underground Safety System of Israel. In an interview addressing the conflict, the Iranian Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf highlighted that the Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, played a pivotal role in orchestrating decisive strikes of Iran, which urged the USA and Israel to seek a ceasefire after the 12-day war.

Certain causes have generated massive effects, which need immediate and comprehensive solutions in order to de-escalate the deep Iran-Israeli tensions and other wars in the Middle East. Religious differences have to be tolerated and respected until they cross the threshold for massive outrages. Ideological differences have led the region to deepened grievances that need much time for their resolution. Iran is propagating an anti-westernization agenda, while Israel is working on Ideological Expansionist Nationalism (IEN) and Political Separatist Nationalism (PSN). All these have done nothing good in the regional affairs. Global powers take this opportunity to meddle in the regional affairs by being opportunists and want to take full advantage of the absence of an adversary. China filled the vacuum created by the USA in ameliorating the Iran-Saudi rivalry. 

To encounter terrorist activities and proxy wars, comprehensive strategic frameworks and effective governance are the ultimate solutions, developed by proper democratic means practiced within the state. Arms control should be ensured by both states by acting with rationality and maturity. The rational actor model best explains the cost and benefit analysis taken before going to war. In today’s world of nuclear warfare, there will be no winners, but devastations will take place at huge levels. The two-state solution will resolve the Palestinian ethnic cleansing. The Muslim world has to unite for brutally suppressed Palestinians and all other factions of the region. The Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) remained slow, as it did not conduct any remarkable session in the past few months. Iran spoke in the OIC session of 2023 for Palestinians. In the case of Iran-Israeli tensions, nothing profound seemed to happen, except the USA called for a ceasefire and mediation.

In the end, the escalated tensions between Iran and Israel generated serious repercussions for regional peace, stability, and security. If this aggression were not controlled (it seemed to be controlled as a ceasefire was brokered by the USA), it would lead towards another great World War III as small bilateral wars advance the ‘domino effect’ in generating large-scale warfare. This issue generated after the Israeli genocide of Palestine, the change of regime in Syria after a long civil war, and Israeli attacks on Lebanon to eliminate Iranian-backed Hezbollah.

The religious, ideological, terrorist, nuclear, and Palestinian factors paved the way for Iran-Israel tensions that are impacting the region at a larger scale. The formation of blocs, the failure of the Muslim world to stand in solidarity with oppressed states in the Middle East, massive terrorist attacks, the nuclear arms race, and the Palestinian blockade all demand immediate solutions. A comprehensive strategic plan for regional stability by the Muslim world is in dire need of time. As the Middle East is the most volatile region with respect to stability and security in the region. Conclusively, instead of sporadic efforts, a concerted plan is required by international stakeholders for the maintenance of the dignity and sanctity of international law, peace, and humanity.

The UN on Friday warned of devastating consequences for civilians in the Gaza Strip as Israeli forces intensified their attacks via airstrikes on the besieged enclave at an alarming frequency, Anadolu reports

Citing the Office of the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), UN spokesperson Stephane Dujarric said at a news conference that “Israeli forces have stepped up their operations over the past 24 hours, with devastating consequences for civilians. On average, this meant an airstrike every eight or nine minutes.”

He said the UN teams monitoring population movement “counted about 16,500 displaced people from Northern Gaza to the south” on Thursday alone.

Dujarric noted that aid workers remain positioned along displacement routes to provide support but warned of mounting challenges.

“Aid workers remain stationed along displacement routes, offering psychosocial first aid, referring people to specialized services when needed, and educating new arrivals on the danger of explosive ordinances,” he said.

Despite these efforts, hundreds of thousands of people remain in Gaza City amid widespread insecurity. They rely heavily on humanitarian assistance because more critical services have been forced to close or relocate, he said.

On Israel’s continued access restrictions, he reported that on Thursday, “out of 15 movements that we tried to coordinate with Israeli authorities to support people in different parts of Gaza, only seven were fully facilitated.”

Dujarric stressed that OCHA has urged Israel to “fully facilitate humanitarian operations, including unimpeded movements of aid into and across the Gaza Strip.”

Turning to the situation in the occupied West Bank, he said more than 3,000 Palestinians, half of them children, have been displaced by illegal Israeli settler attacks and Israeli access restrictions since October 2023.

Last week, a prominent Saudi Sheikh, Mohammed Al-Issa, visited the Auschwitz concentration camp in Poland to commemorate the 75th anniversary of its liberation, which signalled the end of the Nazi Holocaust. Although dozens of Muslim scholars have visited the site, where about one million Jews were killed during World War Two, according to the Auschwitz Memorial Centre’s press office, Al-Issa is the most senior Muslim religious leader to do so.

Visiting Auschwitz is not a problem for a Muslim; Islam orders Muslims to reject unjustified killing of any human being, no matter what their faith is. Al-Issa is a senior ally of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman (MBS), who apparently cares little for the sanctity of human life, though, and the visit to Auschwitz has very definite political connotations beyond any Islamic context.

By sending Al-Issa to the camp, Bin Salman wanted to show his support for Israel, which exploits the Holocaust for geopolitical colonial purposes. “The Israeli government decided that it alone was permitted to mark the 75th anniversary of the Allied liberation of Auschwitz [in modern day Poland] in 1945,” wrote journalist Richard Silverstein recently when he commented on the gathering of world leaders in Jerusalem for Benjamin Netanyahu’s Holocaust event.

READ: Next up, a Saudi embassy in Jerusalem 

Bin Salman uses Al Issa for such purposes, as if to demonstrate his own Zionist credentials. For example, the head of the Makkah-based Muslim World League is leading rapprochement efforts with Evangelical Christians who are, in the US at least, firm Zionists in their backing for the state of Israel. Al-Issa has called for a Muslim-Christian-Jewish interfaith delegation to travel to Jerusalem in what would, in effect, be a Zionist troika.

Zionism is not a religion, and there are many non-Jewish Zionists who desire or support the establishment of a Jewish state in occupied Palestine. The definition of Zionism does not mention the religion of its supporters, and Israeli writer Sheri Oz, is just one author who insists that non-Jews can be Zionists.

Mohammad Bin Salman and Netanyahu – Cartoon [Tasnimnews.com/Wikipedia]

We should not be shocked, therefore, to see a Zionist Muslim leader in these trying times. It is reasonable to say that Bin Salman’s grandfather and father were Zionists, as close friends of Zionist leaders. Logic suggests that Bin Salman comes from a Zionist dynasty.

This has been evident from his close relationship with Zionists and positive approaches to the Israeli occupation and establishment of a Jewish state in Palestine, calling it “[the Jews’] ancestral homeland”. This means that he has no issue with the ethnic cleansing of almost 800,000 Palestinians in 1948, during which thousands were killed and their homes demolished in order to establish the Zionist state of Israel.

“The ‘Jewish state’ claim is how Zionism has tried to mask its intrinsic Apartheid, under the veil of a supposed ‘self-determination of the Jewish people’,” wrote Israeli blogger Jonathan Ofir in Mondoweiss in 2018, “and for the Palestinians it has meant their dispossession.”

As the de facto ruler of Saudi Arabia, Crown Prince Bin Salman has imprisoned dozens of Palestinians, including representatives of Hamas. In doing so he is serving Israel’s interests. Moreover, he has blamed the Palestinians for not making peace with the occupation state. Bin Salman “excoriated the Palestinians for missing key opportunities,” wrote Danial Benjamin in Moment magazine. He pointed out that the prince’s father, King Salman, has played the role of counterweight by saying that Saudi Arabia “permanently stands by Palestine and its people’s right to an independent state with occupied East Jerusalem as its capital.”

UN expert: Saudi crown prince behind hack on Amazon CEO 

Israeli journalist Barak Ravid of Israel’s Channel 13 News reported Bin Salman as saying: “In the last several decades the Palestinian leadership has missed one opportunity after the other and rejected all the peace proposals it was given. It is about time the Palestinians take the proposals and agree to come to the negotiations table or shut up and stop complaining.” This is reminiscent of the words of the late Israeli Foreign Minister Abba Eban, one of the Zionist founders of Israel, that the Palestinians “never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity.”

Bin Salman’s Zionism is also very clear in his bold support for US President Donald Trump’s deal of the century, which achieves Zionist goals in Palestine at the expense of Palestinian rights. He participated in the Bahrain conference, the forum where the economic side of the US deal was announced, where he gave “cover to several other Arab countries to attend the event and infuriated the Palestinians.”

US President Donald Trump looks over at Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia Mohammad bin Salman al-Saud as they line up for the family photo during the opening day of Argentina G20 Leaders’ Summit 2018 at Costa Salguero on 30 November 2018 in Buenos Aires, Argentina [Daniel Jayo/Getty Images]

While discussing the issue of the current Saudi support for Israeli policies and practices in Palestine with a credible Palestinian official last week, he told me that the Palestinians had contacted the Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro to ask him not to relocate his country’s embassy to Jerusalem. “The Saudis have been putting pressure on us in order to relocate our embassy to Jerusalem,” replied the Brazilian leader. What more evidence of Mohammad Bin Salman’s Zionism do we need?

The founder of Friends of Zion Museum is American Evangelical Christian Mike Evans. He said, after visiting a number of the Gulf States, that, “The leaders [there] are more pro-Israel than a lot of Jews.” This was a specific reference to Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince, and his counterpart in the UAE, Mohammed Bin Zayed.

“All versions of Zionism lead to the same reactionary end of unbridled expansionism and continued settler colonial genocide of [the] Palestinian people,” Israeli-American writer and photographer Yoav Litvin wrote for Al Jazeera. We may well see an Israeli Embassy opened in Riyadh in the near future, and a Saudi Embassy in Tel Aviv or, more likely, Jerusalem. Is Mohammad Bin Salman a Zionist? There’s no doubt about it.

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

Sept. 25 (UPI) — U.S. President Donald Trump and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan will discuss a potential arms deal, lifting sanctions against Turkey and Middle East peace while meeting on Thursday.

Trump and Erdogan are meeting in the Oval Office of the White House, which will include discussions regarding Erdogan’s desire to purchase F-16 and F-35 fighter aircraft and Patriot surface-to-air missile systems, they told media before their closed-door meeting.

“We do a lot of trade with Turkey, and we’re going to do some more,” Trump told media.

He said a deal for F-16s is likely and a deal for F-35s and the Patriot missiles could be made.

“I think he’ll be successful,” Trump said of Erdogan’s effort to secure a deal for F-35 fighters.

Turkey also wants to buy 200 commercial aircraft, the BBC reported.

The presidents said they are friends and highly respectful of one another, which should make it easier to reach agreements on the many issues that they will discuss.

They also will discuss matters in Gaza and the Middle East, potential assistance for the Greek Orthodox Church and ending the war in Ukraine.

Trump said he wants Turkey to stop buying Russian oil and is prepared to lift existing sanctions against Turkey for that nation’s past purchase of Russian arms.

The president also said they will discuss tariffs and securing the release of remaining hostages held by Hamas in Gaza.

Trump said about 20 hostages likely are living and estimated about 38 likely are dead, many of them young boys.

Following his meeting with Erdogan, the president also is scheduled to meet with Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif on Thursday.

U.S. and Pakistani officials in July secured a trade agreement to lower tariffs between the two nations.

The U.S. also agreed to help Pakistan develop its oil reserves.

In an overstuffed workshop in East L.A., Chris Francis reached out a heavily tattooed arm and pulled a single shoe box from one of the floor-to-ceiling shelves lining the walls.

“Anjelica Huston,” the shoemaker and artist said. “Let’s see what’s in here.”

Removing the top of the box, he revealed two carved wooden forms known as shoe lasts that cobblers use to make their wares. Beneath those were strips of yellowing shoe patterns and a tracing of the actor’s foot with a note written in loopy cursive:

To Pasquale
My happy feet shall thank you
— Anjelica Huston

The Di Fabrizio collection includes shoe measurements for stars like Nancy Sinatra, Kim Novak, Joe Pesci and Madeline Kahn, all adorned with green, white and red striped ribbon.

(Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times)

“Cool, huh?” Francis said, gazing reverently at the box’s contents. “Every time I open one it’s amazing. It’s like Christmas all the time.”

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For the last three years, Francis has been surrounded by a sprawling archive of famous feet originally amassed by Pasquale Di Fabrizio, the late shoemaker to the stars. From the early ‘60s to the early 2000s, Di Fabrizio created custom footwear for the rich, famous and notorious out of his humble shoe shop on 3rd Street.

The shoes went to his customers, but his voluminous collection includes shoe lasts, patterns, drawings, correspondences, leather samples and handwritten notes from thousands of clients, all stored in cardboard shoe boxes that the Italian immigrant trimmed with green, white and red striped ribbon.

The names, written in bold Magic Marker on the front of each box are a who’s who of entertainers from the ‘60s, ‘70s, ‘80s and beyond: Liza Minnelli, Tom Jones, Richard Pryor, Robert De Niro, Sarah Jessica Parker, Bea Arthur, Arsenio Hall, Nancy Sinatra, Ace Frehley. The list goes on and on.

Francis found foot measurements, wooden shoe lasts and a shoe in progress that Pasquale Di Fabrizio made for Ginger Rogers in a box marked with her name.

(Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times)

“Shoe Machine” is one of Chris Francis’ art pieces that he has shown at museums.

(Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times)

“So many great people stood on these pieces of paper,” Francis said, looking at the stacks of boxes around him. “Roy Orbison. Eva Gabor. Stella Stevens. Lauren Bacall. I could pull these down all day.”

Francis never met Di Fabrizio, who died in 2008, but in 2022 he traded two pairs of his sculptural shoe-art pieces to Di Fabrizio’s friend and fellow shoemaker Gary Kazanchyan for the entirety of the Italian shoemaker’s archive. Three years later, Francis is still making his way through it all.

The amount of material is overwhelming, but he is committed to preserving Di Fabrizio’s legacy. Ultimately, he wants to find a space where he can share it with others.

“I never want to be without it, but I’m realistic that it deserves to be appreciated by more than just myself,” he said. “If my life’s work ended up in somebody’s hands, I don’t think I’d want them to just keep it for themselves forever.”

A shoemaker’s journey

Francis isn’t just cataloging L.A.’s shoemaking history, he’s helping to keep it alive.

Over the last decade and a half he’s made a name for himself as a custom shoemaker, creating handmade bespoke footwear for rockers like former Runaways guitarist Lita Ford and Steve Jones of the Sex Pistols, as well as sculptural art shoes that are displayed in museums like the Craft Contemporary, the Palm Springs Art Museum and SCAD FASH in Atlanta.

Wooden shoe lasts hang from the ceiling as Chris Francis works on a shoe for the singer Lita Ford in his garage.

(Christina House / Los Angeles Times)

In his East L.A. workshop, he eschews modern technology, focusing instead on traditional methods of shoemaking, often with hand tools.

“The handmade shoe is alive and well in this shop,” he said, dressed in pressed black slacks and tinted sunglasses, chunky gold rings gleaming on his fingers. “There’s no computer here, and even the records half the time are vinyls or 78s.”

Making shoes by hand is time-consuming and expensive work — Francis doesn’t sell a pair of shoes for less than $1,800 — but for his mostly musician clientele, a sturdy, custom-made, comfortable shoe that also boasts over-the-top style is well worth the price.

“At my price point, my customers are buying something that’s really a tool,” he said. “It’s part of their look, but it also has to hit 27 guitar pedals, keep all of its crystal, be beautiful, last multiple tours and they have to be able to stand in it all night.”

Francis, who has a certain aging-rocker swagger himself, never expected to become a shoemaker.

After going to art school and hopping freight trains for several years, he moved to Los Angeles in 2002 originally to join the Merchant Marines. Instead he found work hanging multi-story graphics and billboards on the side of hotels and high-rises on the Sunset Strip and at casinos in Las Vegas. “That gave me the same thrill of riding a freight train,” he said. “Being on a high-rise building and rappelling down.”

Francis found fabric samples and designs for shoes that Pasquale Di Fabrizio made for a Broadway production of the musical “Marilyn: An American Fable.”

(Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times)

Shoemaker and artist Chris Francis makes shoes the traditional way in his workshop in East Los Angeles.

(Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times)

He discovered he had a knack for pattern making in 2008 when he began creating hand-stitched leather jackets to wear to the Hollywood parties he had started attending with his now-fiancee. One day a stranger approached him and said she knew someone who would appreciate a jacket like the ones he was making. She was a stylist for Arnel Pineda, the lead singer of Journey. Commissions from Mötley Crüe and other rock bands followed.

A few years later he became interested in making shoes, but although he knocked on the door of several shoe shops in town, he couldn’t find a mentor.

“They didn’t have time, or they’d say, ‘You belong in a rock and roll band, you’re not one of us,’” he said. “But I would say, ‘Just teach me one thing, one trick.’ And everyone had time to teach one trick.”

It was an education in much more than shoemaking.

“Almost every shoemaker I met had immigrated to the country,” he said. “So I learned how to make shoes from the Italians, from guys from Armenia, Iran, Iraq, Russia, Syria, from everybody. And while doing so, I learned about all these different cultures.”

‘He was the king’

As Francis dove deeper into the history of shoemaking in Los Angeles, one name kept coming up again and again: Pasquale Di Fabrizio.

The late Pasquale Di Fabrizio, a cobbler to the Hollywood elite, photographed in front of his collection of shoe lasts, circa 1982.

(Bret Lundberg / Images Press / Getty Images)

“I started asking other makers about him, and they were like, ‘Oh yeah, we remember him,’” Francis said. “He was the king.”

For more than 50 years Di Fabrizio was the most sought after shoemaker in Los Angeles. He made Liberace’s rhinestone-encrusted footwear and shod Mickey Mouse, Goofy and Donald Duck for touring productions of Disney on Parade. He was the go-to shoemaker for country western stars, Vegas showgirls, Hollywood movie stars, gospel singers and casino owners. The Rat Pack helped put him on the map.

“My best customer is Dean Martin,” Di Fabrizio told The Times in 1972. “He buys 40 pairs a year.”

Sporting a thick, bristled mustache and oversize glasses, Di Fabrizio had a tough reputation. He once kicked a movie star out of his shop because the star brought back a pair of patent leather shoes that he claimed were defective. Di Fabrizio accused him of missing the urinal and peeing on them at the Oscars.

“Never come back here again,” he said in his thick Italian accent.

The shoemaker occasionally made house calls, but his customers mostly came to him. In his workshop on 3rd Street near Crescent Heights, he would trace their bare feet on a piece of paper and measure the circumference of each of their feet at the ball, around the arch, the heel and the ankle. Then he would customize a pre-carved wooden last from Italy, adding thin pieces of leather 1 millimeter at a time to more perfectly mimic the unique shape of the client’s foot.

The size and shapes of the lasts varied wildly. He once told a reporter that it took “half a cow” to make shoes for Wilt Chamberlain, who wore a size 15. In his archives, Francis found a petite high heel shoe last roughly the length of his hand.

Francis holds a foot tracing and shoe lasts made for Robert De Niro by Pasquale Di Fabrizio.

(Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times)

“Di Fabrizio did lots of shoes for little people,” Francis said. “He really offered an important service for that community. They could have formal footwear rather than having only the option of wearing kids shoes.”

The same lasts could be used over and over again to make several pairs of shoes, as long as the heel height was the same. Each last went in its own box decorated with a ribbon in the colors of the Italian flag.

“It’s so simple, but he claims his territory with that ribbon,” Francis said. “He cared enough to take one extra step. It’s what really made that collection iconic.”

A legacy preserved

Francis first encountered Di Fabrizio’s archives in 2010 when Kazanchyan offered him a job at Andre #1 Custom Made Shoes on Sunset Boulevard. Kazanchyan inherited the shop from his uncle, Andre Kazanchyan, who once worked with Di Fabrizio and became his good friend.

Gary Kazanchyan and Di Fabrizio were close as well. When Di Fabrizio retired in the early 2000s, Kazanchyan hired all of the guys who worked at his shop. Di Fabrizio was at Kazanchyan’s wedding and when the older shoemaker was in a nursing home at the end of his life, Kazanchyan visited him every day.

For years Kazanchyan stored as many of the ribbon-trimmed boxes as he could fit in his Hollywood shop, but just before COVID he moved his shop to his garage in Burbank and transferred Di Fabrizio’s archives to his backyard. “At one point, my whole backyard was this mountain of shoe lasts,” he said.

Chris Francis, left, and Gary Kazanchyan at Palermo’s Italian Restaurant in Los Feliz.

(Deborah Netburn / Los Angeles Times)

Kazanchyan started a renovation on his house in 2022 and could no longer store Di Fabrizio’s archive in his backyard. He’d sold some of the most famous shoe lasts at auction — a bundle of Di Fabrizio’s shoe lasts for Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin and Sammy Davis Jr. went for $4,375 in 2013 — but he still had several tons of material stacked on pallets and covered in tarps. He remembered that Francis loved the collection, so he called him and asked if he wanted it. Francis did.

Francis didn’t have the money to purchase the collection in cash, but he offered Kazanchyan two art pieces that he’d exhibited and Kazanchyan accepted. The first carload of boxes Francis took to his studio included lasts for Wayne Newton, Paula Abdul, Ginger Rogers, Burt Reynolds and Sylvester Stallone.

“My excitement was on fire,” he said.

Francis spent a few weeks sorting through the archive and discarding lasts and shoe boxes that were too covered in mold or deteriorated to be worth keeping. Just before a rainstorm threatened the rest of the collection, he brought thousands of shoe lasts to his studio but even now regrets that he was unable to save it all.

“I tried to grab the big names, but there was so much I couldn’t keep,” he said. “It was heartbreaking.”

The boxes hold stories — and life lessons

Living and working among the Di Fabrizio collection has taught Francis a lot more than just the art of making shoes.

“I’m constantly seeing the obituary of a celebrity who has passed and I go to the workshop and there’s their box,” he said. “It really lets you know that life is for the living. It’s up to you to be responsible and live your life when you’re alive. Be yourself, teach others, leave something behind.”

Hanging onto the collection has not been easy — but Francis believes he was chosen from beyond to care for Di Fabrizio’s archive and to share it with others responsibly.

He’s still not sure what that will look like, but he’s determined to try.

And in the meantime, he is also determined to keep the traditional art of shoemaking alive in Los Angeles.

If you look around his workshop, you’ll spot several boxes adorned with red, white and blue striped ribbon.

Francis is making those boxes his own.

Working with hand tools, Chris Francis makes a custom pair of shoes for musician Lita Ford.

(Christina House / Los Angeles Times)

It should matter little to the Chinese that American diplomats and a handful of their western allies will not be attending the Beijing Winter Olympics in February. What truly matters is that the Russians are coming.

The above is not an arbitrary statement. It is supported with facts. According to a survey conducted by China’s Global Times newspaper, the majority of the Chinese people value their country’s relations with Russia more than that of the EU and certainly more than that of the United States. The newspaper reported that such a finding makes it “the first time in 15 years that China-US ties did not top the list of the important bilateral relations in the Global Times annual survey.”

In fact, some kind of an alliance is already forming between China and Russia. The fact that the Chinese people are taking note of this and are supporting their government’s drive towards greater integration – political, economic and geostrategic – between Beijing and Moscow, indicates that the informal and potentially formal alliance is a long-term strategy for both nations.

American hostilities towards China, as seen by the Chinese, have become unbearable, and the Chinese people and government seem to have lost, not only any trust, however modest, of Washington, but of its own political system as well. 66 per cent of all Chinese either disapproved of the US democratic system – or whatever remains of it – or believe that US democracy has sharply declined. Ironically, the vast majority of Americans share such a bleak view of their own country, according to a survey conducted by the Pew Research Centre in 2019 and again by the Michigan Public Policy Survey in 2021.

This leads us to two possible conclusions: First, the Chinese people will not be pushing for an American-style democracy any time soon and, second, the Chinese trust in the US does not hinge on what political party controls the White House or Congress.

OPINION: Turkey’s balancing act between Russia and Ukraine

While the Chinese negative view of the US is unmistakably clear, Beijing remains hopeful that existing divisions with the European Union would allow it to expand economically in a region that is rife with financial and political opportunities, thus strategic growth. This fact offers China and Russia yet another area of potential cooperation, as Russia is also keen to expand into the European markets using its recently completed Nord Stream 2 gas project. Though Europe is already struggling with gas shortages, Europeans are divided on whether Russia should be allowed to claim a massive geostrategic influence by having such sway over the EU energy needs.

Germany, which already receives nearly a third of its gas supplies from Russia – through Nord Stream 1 – is worried that allowing Nord Stream 2 to operate would make it too dependent on Russian gas supplies. Under intense pressure from Washington, Germany is caught between a rock and a hard place:  it needs Russian gas to keep its economy afloat, but is worried about American retaliation. To appease Washington, the German government threatened, on 16 December, to block the new pipeline if Russia invades Ukraine. But is Germany in a position that allows it to make such demands?

Meanwhile, Washington is keeping a close watch on Russia’s and China’s strategic expansion westward, and it views the ‘threat’ posed by both countries with great alarm. In his recent visit to Scotland to take part in the COP26, US President Joe Biden accused China and Russia of “walking away” on “a gigantic issue”, referring to climate change. China has “lost the ability to influence people around the world and here in COP. The same way I would argue with Russia,” Biden said on 3 November.

But will such rhetoric make any difference, or sway traditional US allies to boycott the lucrative deals and massive economic opportunities presented by the two emerging Asian giants?

According to Eurostat, in 2020, China overtook the US as Europe’s largest import and third-largest export partner. Moreover, according to Nature magazine, most European countries largely depend on Russian energy sources, with the European Union estimated to import nearly 40 per cent of its natural gas from Russia.

In the face of these vastly changing realities, the US seems to be running out of options. The Summit for Democracy, orchestrated by Washington last December, seemed like a desperate cry for attention as opposed to celebrating the supposed democratic countries. 111 countries participated in the conference. The participants were handpicked by Washington and included such countries as Israel, Albania and Ukraine. China and Russia were, of course, excluded, not because of their lack of democratic credentials – such notions are often of no relevance to the politicised US definition of ‘democracy’ – but because they, along with others, were meant to be left isolated in the latest US hegemonic move.

READ: Fewer ships sailing to Russia due to possible war in Ukraine, Turkish ship spotter says

The conference, expectedly, turned out to be an exercise in futility. Needless to say, the US is in no position to give democracy lessons to anyone. The attempted coup in Washington by tens of thousands of angry US militants on 6 January, 2021 – coupled with various opinion polls attesting to Americans’ lack of faith in their elected institutions – places the US democracy brand at an all-time low.

As the US grows desperate in its tactics – aside from increasingly ineffectual sanctions, aggressive language and the relentless waving of the democracy card – China and Russia continue to draw closer to one another, on all fronts. In an essay entitled ‘Respecting People’s Democratic Rights’, written jointly by the ambassadors of Beijing and Moscow in Washington, Qin Gang and Anatoly Antonov wrote in the National Interest magazine that the democracy summit was “an evident product of (US’s) Cold-War mentality,” which “will stoke up ideological confrontation and a rift in the world, creating new ‘dividing lines’.”

But there is more than their mutual rejection of American hostilities that is bringing China and Russia closer. The two countries are not motivated by their fear of the American military or some NATO invasion. Russia’s and China’s militaries are moving from strength to strength and neither country is experiencing the anxiety often felt by smaller, weaker and relatively isolated countries that have faced direct or indirect US military threats.

To push back against possible NATO expansion, the Russian military is actively mobilising in various regions at its western borders. For its part, the Chinese military has made it clear that any US-led attempt aimed at altering the balance of power in the Taiwan Strait would provoke an immediate military retaliation. In a virtual meeting with the US President, Chinese President Xi Jinping warned Biden on 16 November that the US was “playing with fire”. “Whoever plays with fire will get burnt,” he threatened.

The Chinese-Russian alliance aims largely at defending the two countries’ regional and international interests, which are in constant expansion. In the case of China, the country is now a member of what is considered the world’s largest economic pact. The Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP), which was officiated on 1 January, covers a global market that caters to around 30 per cent of the world’s population.

Russia, too, operates based on multiple regional and international alliances. One of these military alliances is the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO), which is currently involved in ‘peacekeeping’ operations in Kazakhstan. From Syria in the Middle East, to Venezuela in South America to Mali in West Africa and beyond, Russia’s military influence has increased to the extent that, in September 2021, Moscow signed military cooperation agreements with Africa’s two most populous nations, Nigeria and Ethiopia, challenging the traditional dominance of the US and France on the African continent.

Informally, China and Russia are already operating according to a regional and global model that can be compared to that of the now-defunct Warsaw Treaty Organisation (1955-91), a political and military alliance between the Soviet Union and several Eastern European countries that aimed at counter-balancing the US-led NATO alliance. The Warsaw Pact pushed back against US-led western hegemony and laboured to protect the interests of the pact’s members throughout the world. History seems to be repeating itself, though under different designations.

Historically, the two countries have had a difficult and, at times, antagonistic relationship, dating back to the 19th century. During the Nikita Khrushchev era, Beijing and Moscow even broke their ties altogether. The Sino-Soviet split of 1960 was earth-shattering to the extent that it transformed the bipolarity of the Cold War, where China operated as an entirely independent party.

Though diplomatic relations between Beijing and Moscow were restored in 1989, it was not until the collapse of the Soviet Union that cooperation between both nations intensified. For example, the decision, in 1997, to coordinate their diplomatic positions in the United Nations gave birth to the Joint Declaration on a Multipolar World and the Establishment of a New International Order. That agreement between Russia and China laid the foundations for the actively evolving multi-polar world that is currently transpiring before our eyes.

Present reality – namely US, NATO, EU pressures – has compelled Russia and China to slowly, but surely cement their relationship, especially on the economic, diplomatic and military fronts. Writing in Carnegie Moscow Centre, Alexander Gabuev explained that, according to data provided by the Russian Federal Customs Service, “China’s share in Russian foreign trade grew from 10.5 per cent in 2013 (before the Ukraine crisis and sanctions) to 16.7 per cent in 2019 and 18.3 per cent in the pandemic-struck 2020.”

READ: US, NATO dispute with Russia does not undermine Turkey Black Sea rights

Moreover, the two countries are holding regular large-scale joint military exercises, aimed at strengthening their growing security and military cooperation.

This already close relation is likely to develop even further in the near future, especially as China finds itself compelled to diversify its energy sources. This became a pressing need following recent tensions between Australia, a NATO member, and China. Currently, Australia is the main natural gas supplier to Beijing.

On its own, Russia cannot conclusively defeat Western designs. China, too, despite its massive economic power, cannot play a geopolitical game of this calibre without solid alliances. Both countries greatly benefit from building an alternative to US-led political, economic and military alliances, starting with NATO. The need for a Russian-Chinese alliance becomes even more beneficial when seen through the various opportunities presenting themselves: growing weakness in the US’s own political system, cracks within US-EU relations and the faltering power of NATO itself. Turkey, for example, though a NATO member, has for years been exploring its own geopolitical alliances outside the NATO paradigm. Turkey is already cementing its ties with both Russia and China, and on various fronts. Other countries, for example Iran and various South American countries, that have been targeted by the US for refusing to toe Washington’s political line, are desperately seeking non-western alliances to protect their interests, their sovereignty and their heavily sanctioned economies.

While it is still too early to claim that China and Russia are anywhere near a full-blown alliance of the Warsaw nature, there is no reason to believe that the cooperation between both countries will be halted or even slow down anytime soon. The question is how far are Beijing and Moscow willing to go to protect their interests.

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

Istanbul, Turkiye – Just hours after Israel launched strikes last week against Qatar – a United States-designated “major non-NATO ally” and one of Washington’s closest Gulf partners – pro-Israel commentators quickly shifted their attention to Turkiye.

In Washington, Michael Rubin, a senior fellow at the right-leaning American Enterprise Institute, suggested that Turkiye could be Israel’s next target and warned that it should not rely on its NATO membership for protection.

On social media, Israeli academic and political figure Meir Masri posted, “Today Qatar, tomorrow Turkey.” Ankara responded sharply. In unusually harsh language, a senior adviser to President Recep Tayyip Erdogan wrote: “To the dog of Zionist Israel … soon the world will find peace with your erasure from the map.”

For months, pro-Israel media outlets have steadily escalated their rhetoric against Turkiye, portraying it as “Israel’s most dangerous enemy”.

Israeli commentators have also framed Turkiye’s presence in the eastern Mediterranean as a “threat” and its role in rebuilding post-war Syria as a “new rising danger”.

With Israel’s regional aggression escalating and its war on Gaza showing no sign of ending, Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan retaliated in August by suspending economic and trade ties with Israel.

“In Ankara, this [anti-Turkish] rhetoric is taken seriously, with Israel seen as seeking regional hegemony,” Omer Ozkizilcik, non-resident fellow at the Atlantic Council, told Al Jazeera.

“Turkiye increasingly feels that Israeli aggression has no limits and enjoys American support,” added Ozkizilcik.

The strikes on Qatar also likely underscored Ankara’s doubts about US security guarantees as a NATO ally. Despite Doha’s special ally status with Washington, Israel faced no visible pushback from the US, leading to questions over whether the US would truly see any attack on Turkiye as an attack on itself, as the NATO charter dictates.

Unlike many Arab states, however, “Turkiye has long ago understood that it cannot rely on the US or NATO for its own national security interests,” said Ozkizilcik.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu himself now increasingly boasts of his country’s regional expansionist goals. In August, when asked whether he believed in the idea of a “Greater Israel”, he replied: “Absolutely.”

For Ankara, such rhetoric is not just symbolic – it signals an Israeli vision of dominance that stretches across the Middle East, potentially clashing head-on with Turkiye’s own regional outlook.

On Sunday, Fidan told Al Jazeera that Israel’s “Greater Israel” vision – which some religious Zionists believe extends into modern-day Syria, Lebanon, Egypt and Jordan – aims to “keep the countries in the region weak, ineffective, and especially to leave Israel’s neighbouring states divided”.

Over the last few weeks alone, Israel – in addition to continuing its genocidal onslaught in Gaza and nearly-daily raids in the occupied West Bank – also attacked Yemen and Syria, and is accused of hitting the Gaza aid flotilla in Tunisia.

Against this backdrop, Turkiye and Israel are already in a “geopolitical rivalry”, noted Ozkizilcik, adding that Israel’s actions clashed with what the analyst views as the “Turkish agenda to have strong [centralised] states” rather than decentralised states where multiple forces can hold power.

Regional hegemon

The sense that Israel is trying to become the region’s sole dominant power seemed to be confirmed in July when Tom Barrack, US ambassador to Turkiye and special envoy to Syria, made a startling admission: that Israel would prefer a fragmented and divided Syria.

“Strong nation-states are a threat – especially Arab states, [which] are viewed as a threat to Israel,” he said.

The subtext for Ankara was clear: Israel believes it needs to be the hegemon in the region to feel secure.

Israel’s actions bear this out. It has bombed Syria dozens of times since December 8 – when former President Bashar al-Assad fled to Moscow – and grabbed Syrian territory in the immediate chaos.

It decapitated much of Hezbollah’s leadership in 2024 and still occupies parts of Lebanon despite a ceasefire, long seeking to weaken or destroy the group.

In June, Israel attacked Iran, sparking a 12-day war that struck Iranian military and nuclear facilities, killing senior commanders and nuclear scientists, and dragged in the US.

The attacks aimed not only to weaken Tehran’s defence and nuclear capabilities but also to push Washington towards regime change, targeting one of Israel’s strongest rivals in the region.

Israel may now view Turkiye as the next potential challenge to its regional hegemony, explaining its adamant stance that Ankara will not be allowed to establish new bases in Syria that “could threaten Israel” – as Netanyahu has previously said.

“The first manifestation of Turkish-Israeli friction will most likely appear in the Syrian front in the land and air,” warns Cem Gurdeniz, a retired Turkish admiral and architect of the Blue Homeland doctrine, a maritime strategy that calls for Turkiye to assert its sovereignty and safeguard its interests across the surrounding seas – the Aegean, Eastern Mediterranean and Black Sea.

“In parallel, Israel’s deepening military and intelligence footprint in Cyprus, tightly woven with Greece and the Greek Cypriot administration under American auspices, is perceived in Ankara as a deliberate attempt to fracture and contain the Blue Homeland,” Gurdeniz told Al Jazeera.

“To Ankara, this is not a defensive posture by Israel but an offensive encirclement strategy that could threaten both Turkish maritime freedom and the security of the Turkish Cypriot people,” he added, referring to Turkiye’s ties to the self-proclaimed Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus, which is only Turkiye recognises, rather than the rest of Cyprus, which is ruled by Greek Cypriots.

The division of Cyprus is a major source of discontent between Turkiye, Greece and Cyprus.

Reports that Cyprus received Israeli air-defence systems last week are likely to raise alarm in Ankara.

In tandem in Syria, Israel has made no secret that what it considers to be a stable Syria “can only be a federal” one with “different autonomies”, Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar told European leaders at a meeting in Brussels in February.

Turkiye, on the other hand, backs the new Syrian administration, which insists on a centralised and unitary state.

For now, tensions between Israel and Turkiye can be described as “controlled”, says Gokhan Cinkara, director of Necmettin Erbakan University’s Global and Regional Studies Centre in Turkiye.

“At present, the riskiest scenario for Turkiye would be an uncontrolled outbreak of intergroup conflict in Syria. For this reason, Ankara is likely advising the new Syrian administration to act with a degree of rational pragmatism,” Cinkara told Al Jazeera.

“The immaturity of Syria’s security apparatus makes any potential intergroup clashes harder to contain, and risks turning it into protracted ethnic and sectarian conflicts. In the short term, therefore, adopting a unitary model seems difficult,” he added.

Red lines and risks

Netanyahu, for his part, is pushing for a “Balkanised” Syria, divided along ethnic and religious lines, demanding the demilitarisation of much of southern Syria, mostly populated by the country’s Druze population.

That is a move that, if implemented, could light the touchpaper and ignite demands from members of other groups in the country, including the Kurds and Alawite, for their own tailored versions of de facto autonomy.

“Turkiye, however, has clear red lines in Syria,” says Murat Yesiltas, director of foreign policy research at SETA, a think tank in Ankara with close ties to the government.

“The US and Israel’s attempt to reshape the regional order carries various dangers and risks, deepening fragmentation in the Middle East,” Yesiltas told Al Jazeera.

In March, Israel’s most influential security think tank, the Institute for National Security Studies (INSS), published a piece that warned against the nascent peace process between Turkiye and the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), which is seeking to close a chapter on a four-decade armed campaign against the Turkish state in a conflict that has killed more than 40,000 people.

The INSS warned that this could “weaken the ability of the Kurds in Syria to continue to operate autonomously” and contribute to Ankara “expanding its influence in southern Syria, in a way that could increase the threat to Israeli freedom of action”.

Israel’s Defence Minister Israel Katz made clear that swaths of newly occupied territory in southern Syria will be held for an “unlimited amount of time”.

As Turkiye scoped out potential military bases in Syria’s Homs province and the main airport in Hama province in coordination with the newly established Damascus government, Israel bombed the sites.

“If Tel Aviv persists on this path, a conflict between Ankara and Tel Aviv will become inevitable. Turkiye cannot accept policies that perpetuate instability on its southern border,” said Yesiltas.

But full-blown rivalry is “not inevitable” as both sides recognise the costs of confrontation, particularly given economic interdependence, Andreas Krieg, associate professor of security studies at King’s College London, told Al Jazeera.

“Israel’s threat to Turkiye is not conventional military aggression but rather the targeting of Turkish interests via indirect means,” said Krieg, speaking about Ankara’s interests in Syria, the Eastern Mediterranean and the South Caucasus.

Given Washington’s full and seemingly unconditional support for Netanyahu’s bid to “reshape the region”, Krieg says Ankara’s prescription is to “strengthen strategic deterrence, especially through expanded air-defence, missile systems and intelligence capabilities” and to pursue regional coalitions with Qatar, Jordan and Iraq while maintaining open channels with Washington to “avoid full strategic isolation”.

“Ankara must recognise that future flashpoints are more likely to emerge in the grey zone – covert operations, air strikes, and proxy competition – than in formal declarations or diplomacy,” he added.

Most communities in southeastern Nigeria fall silent every Monday. Markets that once buzzed with commerce stand empty, schools that nurtured dreams remain locked, and roads that carried aspirations lie barren. This weekly ritual of protest, born from the continuous detention of Nnamdi Kanu, leader of the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB), has become both a symbol of resistance and a testament to a region’s suffering. Through the voices of ordinary people who live this reality daily, the human impact of this political stalemate reveals a story of economic devastation, social disruption, and unwavering determination.

The story of Kanu’s incarceration is deeply intertwined with historical grievances that predate Nigeria’s independence. For many in the South East, the continued detention of the secessionist leader represents another chapter in the systematic marginalisation of the Igbo people. This sentiment echoes through the region, from the bustling cities to the rural communities where memories of the 1967–1970 civil war remain fresh.

“You cannot understand the current situation without acknowledging the historical context,” said Prof. Chinedu Okafor, a historian at Nnamdi Azikiwe University, Anambra State. “The Igbo people have long felt like second-class citizens in Nigeria, and Kanu’s movement tapped into that deep well of frustration. His detention has become a symbol of wider injustices that people here experience daily, from inadequate infrastructure to limited political representation.”

The cost of empty streets

The sit-at-home protests have unleashed an economic catastrophe across South East Nigeria. Analysts estimate the region has lost between ₦900.9 billion and ₦7.6 trillion over roughly 191 days of forced closures since October 2021. But behind these numbers lie countless personal tragedies: businesses destroyed, dreams deferred, and livelihoods lost.

“Before this struggle, I could feed my family and pay my children’s school fees from my fabric business. Now, I’m deep in debt. Every Monday we’re forced to close, I lose customers who go elsewhere,” said Chinelo Ogadi, a trader at the Onitsha Main Market. “The worst part is we don’t even know when this will end. They’re killing us slowly, and nobody in government seems to care.”

Her frustration is shared across sectors, from petty traders to transport operators who keep the region moving. 

Ekene Okoye, a transportation business owner in Enugu, said the protests have crippled his business. Of his five buses that once ran between Enugu and Port Harcourt, three now sit idle. He has also laid off more than half of his drivers, “young men with families depending on them”. For Ekene, “this isn’t just about Nnamdi Kanu; it’s about all of us suffering for politics.”

The impact extends beyond direct losses. Small-scale businesses that relied on daily savings schemes now struggle to contribute on Mondays, undermining their ability to invest in future and creating a ripple effect that stifles growth across the region.

Education and community under threat

The sit-at-home has done more than crippling the economy. It has begun to erode the very social foundations of the South East. Education, highly valued in Igbo culture, has become collateral damage in this prolonged political struggle.

“How can I teach when classes are constantly disrupted?” Adaobi Nwosu, a secondary school teacher in Aba, asked. “My students are falling behind their peers in other regions. The worst was when protesters attacked primary school children taking entrance exams. Is this how we fight for freedom? By destroying our children’s future?”

The disruptions have been severe, with schools and universities repeatedly shutting down, denying students the stability of continuous learning. Beyond the classroom, the social contract that binds communities together is fraying under the strain of enforced compliance with protest measures.

“We’ve always prided ourselves on our strong community values, but this situation has created divisions. Some support the protests, others resent being forced to comply. It’s tearing at the fabric of our society in ways that will take generations to repair,” Onyia Kalu, a community leader in Owerri, the Imo State capital, told HumAngle.

Beneath the economic and social impacts lies a deeper psychological trauma affecting millions across the region. 

“My practice has seen a 300 per cent increase in patients with anxiety and depression since these protests intensified,” Amara Nwankwo, a psychologist in Awka, Anambra State, told HumAngle. “People are living in constant stress: fear of violence, economic uncertainty, and political instability. The trauma is particularly acute among children who don’t understand why their routines have been disrupted or why they sometimes hear gunshots.”

The psychological toll extends beyond clinical diagnoses. It manifests in the quiet desperation of parents who cannot provide for their children, the dashed hopes of graduates who see no future in their homeland, and the weary resignation of elders who have witnessed cycles of violence and protest throughout their lives.

Kanu’s health, a metaphor for regional decline

Concerns about Nnamdi Kanu’s health have become a powerful metaphor for how many in the region view their own situation. Claims that Kanu suffers from a “life-threatening heart condition” and receives inadequate medical treatment in detention mirror broader frustrations about healthcare infrastructure in the region.

His younger brother, Emmanuel Kanu, stated in a 14-paragraph affidavit that Nnamdi’s condition is serious and the medical facility where he is being detained is inadequate to treat him. These concerns have heightened tensions throughout the South East, with groups like the World Igbo Congress warning of “serious consequences” should he die in detention.

For ordinary people, these fears are folded into their daily struggles.

“The strange thing is that even those who weren’t supporters of Kanu before are now sympathetic because they see the government’s handling of the situation as unfair. It’s united people in ways I didn’t expect,” Ndidi Romanus, a restaurant owner in Umuahia, the Abia State capital, said. 

Younger Nigerians in the region, meanwhile, see little hope. “My generation is tired. We’re tired of the protests, tired of the economic hardship, tired of being afraid. But we’re also tired of a system that doesn’t work for us. Many of my friends are planning to leave the country. How can we build a future here?” Peace Emeka, a 22-year-old university student in Nnewi, said. 

From the pulpit, religious leaders echo the same sense of exhaustion. Livinus Mmadu, a religious leader in Owerri, said, “I see the pain in people’s eyes. We need dialogue, not confrontation. The government must understand that Kanu’s detention isn’t just about one man; it’s about the hopes and frustrations of millions. And those enforcing the protests must remember that violence against our own people contradicts the freedom we seek.”

Healing for the South East

As the Oct. 10, 2025, court date approaches, when Justice James Omotosho is expected to rule on a no-case submission that could lead to Kanu’s release, the region holds its breath. Yet, whatever the outcome, the underlying issues that fuelled the separatist movement cannot be solved in court alone.

Organisations like Ohanaeze Ndigbo, the apex Igbo socio-cultural group, have called for political dialogue to address the crisis at its root. John Azuta-Mbata, leader of the group, stated that “as Kanu is being incarcerated, even with a bail granted by a competent court, it is the entire Igbo that is being incarcerated”. 

Healing the South East will require more than legal decisions. The economic devastation requires targeted investment and recovery programmes to help businesses and workers affected by the prolonged protests. Schools need urgent support to catch students up after years of disrupted learning. Above all, community reconciliation processes are needed to heal the social divisions that have emerged during this period.

“We cannot solve today’s problems with the same thinking that created them. We need new approaches, new dialogues, and new understandings,” Mbazulike Amechi, an elder statesman in the region, said. “The future of our children depends on our ability to find peaceful solutions that recognise the dignity and aspirations of all people.”

As the silent Mondays continue, each empty street and closed market stand as a testament to the price ordinary people are paying for a political struggle that stretches back generations.