united states

IRGC claims Bahrain radar strike is a response to attacks on Iranian telecom tower in southern Hormozgan province.

Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) says it has targeted a US early-warning radar in Bahrain in retaliation for what it described as an air attack on a telecommunications tower in southern Iran.

The claim came hours after Iran’s state news agency IRNA, citing official sources, reported that the port city of Sirik in Hormozgan province was hit by “enemy fire” on Thursday.

In a statement carried by the semi-official Tasnim news agency, the IRGC called the strike a “serious warning” to the “aggressor enemy” to stop what it said was a series of aerial provocations and oil smuggling in the Strait of Hormuz.

“Should these violations and acts of aggression recur, the IRGC Aerospace Force stands in full readiness to engage without limits,” the statement said.

The IRGC-affiliated Fars news agency said the IRGC’s Aerospace Force had “targeted and destroyed” the radar installation.

There was no immediate comment from Washington or Manama.

Bahrain hosts the headquarters of the US Navy’s Fifth Fleet.

First Bahrain attack since September

According to the Reuters news agency, it is the first time since early September that Iran has claimed an attack on US military assets in a Gulf country.

The claim comes as Israel’s security cabinet has ordered the military to step up preparations for a possible attack on Iran, according to Israeli media, including the public broadcaster KAN.

Iran’s security chief Mohsen Rezaei has warned that if the US launches another war, every military base involved, anywhere from West Asia to Europe, would be a legitimate target for Iranian strikes.

US President Donald Trump has said he is prepared to return to war if the diplomatic track offered by Qatar fails to deliver a deal.

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, however, has said economic pressure on Iran is working well enough that resuming large-scale military operations is unnecessary.

In an exclusive interview with Al Jazeera on Wednesday, Iran’s parliament speaker and lead negotiator, Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, said the Strait of Hormuz would never go back to how it was before the war, and that “the ball is now in the American court“.

Meanwhile, US Central Command says its forces are still strictly enforcing the naval blockade on Iranian ports.

The war began on February 28 with US and Israeli attacks on Iran.

Saying it’s ‘a failed nation’, the US president considers military intervention in Cuba before he leaves office.

US President Donald Trump has said he would “certainly consider” using military force against Cuba, adding that he wants to “get Cuba done” before he leaves office in 2029.

In a phone interview on Thursday with conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt, of Salem News Channel, Trump was asked whether he was considering “freeing Cuba” through a military intervention.

“I want to get Cuba done before I leave,” he said, adding that the administration was “watching it very closely”.

Trump called the island “essentially a failed … place, nation, whatever you wanna call it”.

Politico reported that it was the first time Trump had put a timeline on a possible operation.

Trump said Secretary of State Marco Rubio, whose parents are from Cuba, “would love to do it”.

“I’d love to be able to do it for the people, for the Cubans that came and were treated really badly, and they came to America,” Trump said. He added that he won the Cuban vote in Florida by a wide margin.

Pressure campaign

Trump has repeatedly threatened to topple authorities in Cuba.

On Monday, he said Cuba “will fall fairly soon” and that the US would help it “on a humanitarian basis”.

In March, he said he believed he would have “the honour of taking Cuba”, making the remarks as the island’s power grid collapsed.

Trump put Cuba under a de facto oil blockade in January, after the US seized Venezuela’s president, Nicolas Maduro, and cut off Venezuelan oil to the island.

He signed an executive order declaring Cuba an “unusual and extraordinary threat” to the US and threatened tariffs on any country that supplied it with fuel.

The blockade has caused repeated nationwide blackouts, fuel and food shortages, and a humanitarian crisis.

Cuban officials have called it “collective punishment”.

Washington has added sanctions, including on Cuba’s state oil company, President Miguel Diaz-Canel and relatives of former President Raul Castro, and announced a new round this month targeting 10 people and entities tied to the government, military and oil industry.

The US has also issued an arrest warrant for Castro. Officials from both sides have held talks on the blockade, but Cuba’s foreign minister said in June there had been “no progress”.

In March, the head of US Southern Command told senators that US troops were not rehearsing for an invasion of Cuba.

Cuban officials said the island was ready for any attack.

The report seeks to address concerns about the Trump administration’s handling of revenue held in trust for Venezuela.

The United States Department of State has released a report detailing what it says the US has done with more than $12bn in revenue from Venezuelan oil and mineral resources, nearly a year after it abducted the country’s leader, Nicolas Maduro.

The disclosure is part of an effort to “promote transparency and accountability in the management of these funds”, says the 53-page report, released on Thursday.

In January, US forces conducted a raid on the Venezuelan capital of Caracas, capturing Maduro and his wife and bringing them to New York City, where they are currently facing charges related to drug trafficking and torture.

Venezuela’s then-vice president, Delcy Rodriguez, took over after Maduro’s abduction and has since made agreements with Washington that saw the US take a direct stake in profits earned from the export of oil and other mineral resources from the South American country.

Since removing Maduro from power, the Trump administration has sought to directly control who buys natural resources from Venezuela and who earns profits from those sales.

US President Donald Trump issued an executive order in January establishing special bank accounts that would hold revenue from those transactions, to be eventually distributed back to Venezuela in a controlled manner.

Trump has made Venezuela a central part of his political narrative, touting the revenue he said the US would receive from sales of the country’s oil during election campaigning in the run-up to the midterm elections that were held earlier this month. Venezuelan rights activists have expressed concern that Washington may give outsized importance to oil revenues and take little interest in backing democratic reforms after the removal of Maduro.

The report released on Thursday covers flows into and out of US-controlled accounts between January 3, 2026 and September 30, 2026. The State Department has also contracted private Washington, DC-based auditing firm KPMG to examine the transactions.

The US took in more than $12.26bn from “verified and approved entities engaging in authorized activities” in Venezuela during that time, according to the report. Most of that flow came from crude oil and petroleum-based revenue, but it also included deposits stemming from transactions involving gold, minerals, and fertilisers.

More than $12bn of that revenue has been disbursed as of September 30, with some $169m remaining in the account, according to the report.

The US initially set up an account in the Qatar National Bank in January to take in funds from entities looking to buy authorised oil and other minerals from Venezuela. Approximately $500m was initially deposited into that account, with almost all of it distributed back to Venezuelan entities by late January, when a separate, dedicated US Treasury-controlled account was set up to handle future transactions.

The current account, controlled directly by the US Department of the Treasury, has taken in more than $12bn in funds, from about 20 depositors, whose identities are redacted in the State Department’s report. Approximately 99 percent of those funds were related to the purchase of oil, according to the report.

By the end of September, the State Department report says, nearly all of those funds had been distributed to a set of Venezuelan banks, to be used in foreign exchange interventions, transactions where banks sell those dollars to reduce the amount of local currency floating around and prop up the currency’s value, in this case the Venezuelan bolivar.

The report is heavily redacted and does not provide details about the final recipients of the more than $12bn in funds that was distributed in Venezuela, although it does note that approximately $9.4bn went to “legal entities” and $2.9bn to “individuals”.

WASHINGTON — President Trump on Thursday pulled Vice President JD Vance away from negotiations with Iran, suggesting that the United States no longer needs to pursue a deal to end the Middle East conflict and instead directing Vance to turn his attention to corruption in states run by Democrats.

“We don’t need a deal with Iran. Those days have long since passed,” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “We’ve got their money, Hundreds of Billions of Dollars, and we’ve got the Strait!”

In the same post, Trump said he asked Vance, who has played a central role in talks with Tehran, to “focus his complete and total attention on the Massive Corruption and Crime taking place in Democrat run Cities and States.” He singled out California, Minnesota and Illinois, calling them “poorly run, corrupt disasters.”

The reassignment came as Vance and other Republicans have blamed the Iran war for the party’s sweeping losses in last week’s midterm elections. The morning after the election, Vance wrote in a lengthy social media post that “the reason we lost is the war.”

“If you’d like to argue it was worth it, that losing the Senate for the next six years was worth it, then do so. Argue it was worthwhile cost to pay,” Vance wrote. “Agree or disagree, that’s at least honest. But everyone knows why we lost.”

Trump insisted the post had not damaged their relationship, telling reporters last week that “a lot of people didn’t like his comments,” but that he didn’t mind them.

A White House official on Thursday said the United States remains in a “very strong position” in negotiations with Iran, citing a naval blockade and control of the Strait of Hormuz — even though there is evidence that struggles continue over the key oil route.

“President Trump holds all the cards, will do what is best for the United States, and will make sure that Iran will never have a nuclear weapon,” the official said.

Trump’s decision to pull away Vance from the talks was among a flurry of social media posts he fired off early Thursday morning that conveyed the president has little appetite for changing course nine days after voters rebuked his policies, in large part due to economic struggles triggered by the war.

President Trump speaks during an event Wednesday to mark Veterans Day at Arlington National Cemetery.

(Mark Schiefelbein / Associated Press)

In a series of posts that began around 6 a.m., Trump threatened to impose new tariffs on Mexico, called for the prosecution of Democratic lawmakers he has previously threatened, declared that Democrats were “CORRUPT AND EVIL” and claimed without evidence that they had won the midterms by cheating.

Trump also claimed an “invasion” of migrants was coming from Mexico in “huge CARAVANS,” returning to language he used to rally his base shortly after taking office. And at one point, he even cast doubt over this year’s election results, calling it a “perceived loss by the Republicans in the Midterms.”

It was yet another sign that Trump wanted to double down on the very issues that exit polls showed voters rejected on election day. His posts were a departure from a more reflective tone Trump had struck in the hours after the midterms, when he congratulated Democrats for their victories and conceded that his immigration policies and the war had played a role in his party’s losses.

“Congratulations to the Democrats. They did a good job. They’ve been looking for this one for 11 years and they finally got it,” the president told Fox News on the night of the election.

But, he added: “I don’t view it as a hit on me. I think we’ve had the greatest two years in the history of the president in terms of the economy, in terms of all the things that we’ve done.”

Democrats won at least 55 seats in the Senate and are projected to have control of at least 255 seats in the House, flipping seats in Republican strongholds like Kansas and Mississippi — a stunning sweep that Republicans have warned could take years to recover from.

In the days since the election, Trump has taken an aggressive approach to fighting the new Democratic majorities.

The White House’s top lawyers on Wednesday warned of the possibility of criminal inquiries into House Democrats who investigate Trump when they assume power next year.

He also attacked Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), who is expected to lead Democrats in the Senate, for saying he wants to address corruption in the United States. Schumer has said this in reference to dealings within the Trump administration.

“I assume he is referring to Democrat run Blue States such as California, Minnesota, Illinois, Maine and New York,” Trump wrote. “Hopefully his words will ring true! It will be an honor to work with him on this very big Democrat problem that, when solved, will literally balance the Budget of the U.S.”

Home sales dropped 5.5 percent in October, the lowest level since August 2010.

Sales of previously owned homes in the US have hit the lowest level since 2010 as mortgage rates hover above 7 percent.

The National Association of Realtors (NAR) said on Thursday that home sales dropped 5.5 percent in October to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 3.75 million units. That was the lowest level since August 2010.

“Home buying is difficult when mortgage rates have climbed to their highest levels since 2000, aside from a single month in 2023. As a result, home sales fell to their lowest level since August 2010,” said NAR Chief Economist Lawrence Yun.

He said, “It is just a tough market for buyers and sellers.”

“Sales decreased by 8.8 percent year-over-year,” the NAR report found. “Month-over-month sales declined in the Midwest, South and West and held steady in the Northeast. Year-over-year sales declined in all four regions.”

The home sales used in the report are counted at the closing of a contract and are a look at previously occupied ones. October’s sales likely reflected contracts signed in August and September.

“Despite fewer transactions in October, the 88 million homeowners across the country are largely in a comfortable financial position due to sizable housing wealth accumulation,” said the report.

First-time buyers accounted for just 29 percent of home purchases last month, down from 31 percent in September and 32 percent in October last year, NAR said. First-time buyers have historically made up closer to 40 percent of home sales.

The US housing market has been in a slump since 2022, when mortgage rates increased from pandemic-era lows. Sales of previously occupied US homes were essentially flat last year, stuck at a 30-year low. Yun expects home sales this year will likely end up lower than in 2025.

The average 30-year fixed-rate mortgage was 7.33 percent in October, according to the Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation, more commonly known as Freddie Mac, up from 6.86 percent in September and 6.25 percent one year ago.

The rate, however, averaged 7.18 percent last week, down from 7.24 percent in the previous week.

Rates on home loans are influenced by inflation, Federal Reserve policy and bond-market investors’ expectations for the economy, among other factors. They generally follow the trajectory of the 10-year Treasury yield, which lenders use as a guide to pricing home loans.

Until the past few weeks, mortgage rates had been on the rise since late February, when the US war with Iran began, pushing up the price of oil and driving inflation higher. The run-up in rates also reflected heightened bond market volatility, which led to rising yields on US Treasuries.

United States President Donald Trump travels to the Chinese city of Shenzhen next week for the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit, where he is due to meet Chinese President Xi Jinping.

The trip comes as Jensen Huang, Nvidia’s outgoing chief executive and one of Trump’s closest allies in Silicon Valley, faces mounting scrutiny over his relationship with Alice Huang, a former Megaspeed executive whom US officials suspect of working for Chinese intelligence. China has denied the allegations.

On Thursday, Nvidia announced that Huang would step down as chief executive.

Huang accompanied Trump on his May visit to Beijing.

His presence mattered for Nvidia, which has struggled to secure approval to sell its H200 AI chips in China. Now, his place in the next delegation is in doubt.

So could Trump’s closeness to Huang push his administration towards a tougher line on China? Here’s what you need to know:

How did Huang shape the US-China chip thaw?

As founder and CEO of Nvidia, Huang pushed Washington to ease restrictions on the sale of advanced chips to China, arguing that wider use of US technology would help Washington hold onto its lead in AI development.

In December 2025, Trump did approve sales of the H200, Nvidia’s second-most powerful chip, to China, with 25 percent of proceeds to be paid to the US government.

He did so despite opposition from China hawks in both parties.

Huang was a surprise late addition to Trump’s delegation to Beijing in May, in hopes of unlocking stalled H200 sales. Despite Trump’s decision to allow the sales, shipments were low because of slow import approvals from the Chinese government in a bid to support domestic chipmakers.

No breakthrough was announced.

Trump has stood by Huang throughout his recent personal scandal, calling him an “honourable guy”.

Will the Nvidia scandal prompt Trump to take a tougher stance with China?

Not immediately.

Huang’s removal from Nvidia’s board and the scandal leading up to that are unlikely to significantly affect relations between Washington and Beijing, which Steve Okun, a Singapore-based geopolitical analyst, told Al Jazeera is “a stalemate at best”.

Instead, if the US continues to impose restrictions on AI product sales to China, AI diversion and diffusion – how products are traded around the world both formally and informally – would be much more likely to cause tension between the two nations.

Gabriel Wildau, managing director at the advisory firm Teneo, told Al Jazeera earlier this week that Trump “shows no sign that he intends to disrupt the current US-China rapprochement”.

But he warned that the president “may face new pressure from Congress and hawkish voices inside his administration”.

Carsten Holz, an expert on the Chinese economy at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, said Trump “would not seem to have a coherent China policy and therefore his position in the upcoming talks in Shenzhen is hard to predict”.

Huang’s personal affairs “will be of little relevance” to China-US relations, he told Al Jazeera.

Where is the pressure to be tougher with China coming from?

Mostly from Congress, where control of both houses will pass to the Democrats in January.

Lian Jye Su, chief analyst at the technology research group Omdia, said a tough US line on AI and China was not Trump’s alone, calling it “one of the rare political consensuses domestically across the aisle”.

Trump, he said, “will do whatever he can to protect his contribution and legacy on this matter”.

On Wednesday, Democratic Senators Elizabeth Warren and Chris Coons asked Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and White House chief of staff Stephen Miller to preserve all records on Nvidia’s chip exports to China.

“This incident raises significant concerns about the federal government’s ability to effectively enforce our export controls and protect our national security,” the senators wrote.

The news website Axios reported that Lutnick had held up a planned crackdown on firms suspected of funnelling Nvidia chips to China.

Meanwhile, procurement notices seen by the AFP news agency show that a Chinese university linked to the country’s defence establishment bought Nvidia H200 chips through a third party in September and October.

How has China responded?

Beijing has rejected the spy claims and accused Washington of using them as cover to impose stronger restrictions and semiconductor export controls on China.

“The US side should stop fabricating such ‘spy’ narratives as a pretext for imposing a technological blockade,” Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesperson Mao Ning said on Thursday.

But Mao also said China is willing to work with the US to implement the consensus reached by the two leaders.

Omdia’s Su said China “has no interest in not engaging with Trump, given substantial interest in Nvidia graphics processing units”.

Chinese chipmakers may also gain from better access to US technology.

Shares in Moore Threads, MetaX and Cambricon, China’s leading makers of graphics processors, jumped nearly 10 percent on Thursday.

What happens after Shenzhen?

Holz, the Chinese economy expert, noted that the use of advanced Nvidia chips in Singapore data centres to serve customers in mainland China was “not new information”.

Still, Okun expects the pressure to build next year.

He said Congress could pass the Remote Access Security Act, aimed at stopping Chinese firms from reaching advanced chips through the cloud.

The Department of Commerce, he added, could put export controls on Megaspeed or require licences for advanced chips sent to countries such as Singapore and Malaysia.

If that happens, it will strain the US-China relationship in 2027, he said, adding “but that’s not going to happen next week”.

DEVELOPING STORYDEVELOPING STORY,

Nvidia loses more than $600bn in market value as CEO Jensen Huang steps down amid espionage and affair allegations.

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang has stepped down from the company following his reported affairs with a suspected Chinese spy and an Nvidia executive.

The $4.2 trillion tech giant has lost more than $600bn in market value this week as Huang’s scandals rocked the company, which supplies most of the chips powering advanced artificial intelligence (AI) technology. The stock slid more than 10 percent in premarket trading on Thursday.

The company appointed Colette Kress, Nvidia’s chief financial officer and executive vice president, as interim CEO on Thursday.

Nvidia’s board met on Wednesday night to discuss ousting Huang, whose relationship with the alleged Chinese spy triggered investigations by the FBI, the United States Congress and the California-based tech giant. Nvidia is also facing a shareholder class-action lawsuit.

The alleged Chinese intelligence asset, Alice Huang, is a former executive at Singapore-based Megaspeed, Nvidia’s primary business partner in Southeast Asia. Founded in 2023, Megaspeed has been investigated over whether it helped Chinese companies access its $4.8bn stock of powerful Nvidia chips.

The affair has raised national security concerns in the US, which restricts chip sales to China over concerns that the Chinese military, intelligence agencies or companies could use the advanced technology.

Huang, 63, is Nvidia’s co-founder, president and CEO. A close ally of United States President Donald Trump, he has pushed to ease US restrictions on chip exports to China. Trump said earlier this week that Huang told him he had “absolutely no idea” that he was in a relationship with an intelligence operative.

Huang owns about 3.6 percent of Nvidia’s stock, making him one of the richest people in the world. He is a powerful figure in the AI industry, which has driven record stock market and wider economic gains.

Nvidia’s board, which hired a law firm to investigate the affair with Alice Huang, met to decide Huang’s fate on Wednesday shortly after the New York Times reported that Huang also had an extramarital relationship with a Nvidia vice president who reports to him.

Nvidia’s stock has tumbled since the scandal erupted, falling to a 14-year low, the Reuters news agency reported.

Doha, Qatar — Late one morning in March 1999, a United States B-52 bomber took off from RAF Fairford in Gloucestershire, headed southeast. Seven more jets followed, at two-minute intervals.

It was the start of the US-led NATO bombing of Yugoslavia, a campaign in which the Fairford base served as both a pivotal launchpad for American jets and as a fuel station for fighter planes. The British base had served a similar role during the Gulf War in 1991, and would do so again during the 2003 Iraq war and in the early stages of the US-Israeli war on Iran that began on February 28, 2026.

But in October, the US pulled all 12 of its B-1 Lancer bombers from the Gloucestershire base, amid fears that they were no longer safe there from a growing Iranian threat. Days earlier, British security forces had made several arrests, and the country’s government has accused Iran of being behind a plot to target the base — a charge Tehran has denied.

RAF Fairford is not alone. Earlier this month, the US withdrew a dozen planes from another British base, RAF Mildenhall. And in July, reports said that the US had relocated many of its military assets from its bases in the Gulf that were badly hit by Iran during the war, instead moving them to bases in Jordan, while also considering a proposal to shift them to Israel.

For decades, these bases have served as the sharp edge of the US military’s ability to project power and wage wars thousands of miles from home. For close allies, whether in Europe or the Gulf, they also worked as security guarantors against other threats.

But Iran’s ability to severely damage US facilities in the Middle East during the war, and pose a threat as far as the UK, has for the first time turned these critical strategic assets into potential liabilities, both for American allies and for the US itself, say analysts.

“The US security umbrella is becoming a double-edged sword,” Simon Mabon, a professor of international politics at Lancaster University, told Al Jazeera. “When the security of US bases is called into question, it changes Washington’s calculation of their strategic benefits. It also gives European and Gulf states reason to think seriously about the bases, given that they are becoming targets.”

How the Iran war changed the bargain

Hosting American bases has long been perceived as integral to how US allies, whether in Europe, the Gulf or East Asia, deter threats that they themselves face.

Former US President Barack Obama once spoke of an “ironclad commitment” to Gulf security, while Britain regularly invokes its so-called “special relationship” with the United States. In doing so, Britain and the Gulf have long cast themselves as willing partners to a power that — at least before current President Donald Trump — presented itself as the benevolent guarantor of its allies’ security.

But a spate of recent security incidents, many linked to the war on Iran, is testing that narrative and raising questions about whose interests these commitments serve, and whether hosting American forces could be bringing danger closer to home.

US prosecutors have charged three men they describe as Iranian-backed operatives over their alleged roles in plotting nearly 20 attacks across the United States and Europe, including on RAF Fairford.

Meanwhile, in the Gulf, Iran explicitly cited the presence of US bases as justification for targeting its neighbours, bombing Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and Kuwait. Iran also bombed Oman, which does not have a permanent US base; and Jordan and Iraq, beyond the Gulf, which do host major US military facilities.

A report by the Pentagon’s watchdog released in September revealed that Iranian attacks damaged and destroyed hundreds of buildings and structures at US military installations in Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Oman and Jordan in the first four months of the war.

At least five KC-135 aerial refuelling tankers were damaged when they were hit at the Prince Sultan airbase in Saudi Arabia. At least one of these airborne early-warning and control aircraft was damaged on the ground in a subsequent strike.

Experts say these incidents are sharpening a security dilemma for US allies in the Gulf and Europe. Hosting US forces can expose them to retaliation in a war they had no say in starting, while those same bases help defend some of those host countries from attacks, including by intercepting missiles and providing weapons transfers.

The war has disrupted flights and shipping, threatening the oil and gas exports on which much of the region depends. US President Donald Trump said on Monday that further military action against Iran was unnecessary for now. But the US naval blockade remains in place, and shipping through the Strait of Hormuz has yet to return to normal.

“While the utility of hosting foreign military bases has always involved a calculus of risk versus the assumed assurance it provides, the perception among Gulf Arab states is certainly shifting,” Mohammad Ali Shabani, a Middle East analyst, told Al Jazeera. “The vulnerability of these assets is increasingly front-of-mind for host governments, who have not sought war, yet have been drawn into it without having had any real say.”

The US calculation

Washington faces a dilemma of its own. Bases in Europe or the Middle East give it the reach to fight faraway wars, but their presence has also provided Iran with a litany of targets.

In March, an Iranian drone hit a hangar at a British base in Cyprus that the US also uses for intelligence and logistics operations. Tehran threatened Bulgaria after reports emerged that the Eastern European NATO nation had allowed the US to use its Bezmer airbase for refuelling of planes used to attack Iran. Weeks later, Bulgaria’s defence minister announced that the US air tankers had left Bezmer for good, with the country’s president declaring that the “mission is over,” bringing relief to the village that the base draws its name from.

And in the Middle East, several key bases used by US troops have been almost rendered unusable, with those in Kuwait suffering the heaviest damage, say analysts. An attack on the Port of Shuaiba killed six US service members and destroyed an army operations centre. Iranian drones and missiles damaged aviation facilities and injured personnel at Ali Al Salem airbase, while strikes on Camp Buehring damaged maintenance and refuelling facilities.

In Qatar, an Iranian strike damaged the early warning radar system at Al Udeid airbase, which houses the headquarters of US Central Command’s (CENTCOM) air operations. In Bahrain, an Iranian drone struck communications equipment at the headquarters of the US Fifth Fleet.

This damage raises a question about how much the US can still use these bases once they come under attack. Gerd Nonneman, a professor of international relations and Gulf studies at Georgetown University in Qatar, told Al Jazeera the war had shown that some bases were “themselves very vulnerable” and “unable to fulfil many of the tasks they were established for”.

Why bases are harder to defend

Mark Hilborne, a senior lecturer at the Defence Studies Department at King’s College London, told Al Jazeera “large bases are indeed becoming more easily targeted”.

“One of the technologies that has allowed this, alongside fairly cheap ballistic missiles, is drones,” he added.

Iran has invested heavily in developing cheap, domestically produced drones that inflict disproportionate damage to targets and exhaust far more expensive interceptor missiles.

Meanwhile in the UK, drones present US airbases with different challenges. While the nature of the reported threat to RAF Mildenhall remains unclear, the Fairford case concerns an alleged plot. “The range of actors who might target bases has changed,” Urban Coningham, a research fellow and course lead at the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) in the UK, told Al Jazeera. “Bases are more vulnerable, and that changes the risk calculation.

“Anyone can manufacture a drone in a basement … People looking to create mischief or mayhem can recruit organised criminals, making attacks harder to attribute.”

All of that, he said, makes bases “more vulnerable, and that changes the risk calculation”.

‘Policy conundrum’

As Washington moves some military assets out of bases in the Gulf and Europe, it could also come to rely more heavily on Israel, its closest ally in the Middle East. Shabani said there were “already signs that CENTCOM is moving towards using Israel as a key forward base”.

Israel launched the war on Iran in February alongside the US. With the oil and gas exports on which Gulf economies depend at risk, keeping US forces nearby allows Washington to respond, but it also leaves those forces exposed to Iranian attacks.

“The longer-term solution is to work with partners and ensure that allied forces are ready to fend for themselves,” RUSI’s Coningham said.

“There is a debate within the US policy establishment, and the Iranians are referencing it and saying that as long as US forces are there, they are a target,” he said. “That is the policy conundrum for the US. Ultimately, they can’t see any alternative to having bases in some form.”

The meeting with Kushner and Witkoff comes after two days of trilateral talks in the UAE yielded no breakthrough.

United States envoys Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff have ⁠arrived in ⁠Moscow for talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin in their latest push for a peace deal ⁠in Ukraine.

Kirill Dmitriev, Putin’s special envoy, met Kushner and Witkoff at their plane on Thursday morning and accompanied them to central Moscow.

The meeting comes on the heels of two days of trilateral peace talks in the United Arab Emirates that concluded in the capital, Abu Dhabi, on Wednesday with news of another planned major prisoner exchange but no breakthrough on ending the nearly five-year war.

The US said differences remained on major issues, including territory, but some progress had been made on post-war security guarantees.

Kyiv has strongly rejected Putin’s demands to surrender all of its eastern region of Donbas in ⁠return for peace.

The Abu Dhabi talks were the first direct negotiations between Russia and Ukraine mediated by the US in nine months.

Al Jazeera’s Yulia Shapovalova, reporting from Moscow, said one of the goals of Thursday’s visit would be for the US team to persuade Putin to invite Europeans to the negotiation process.

“Ukraine and the US want the European partners to be involved while Moscow is adamant about talks without the Europeans, and that’s why they’ve been largely excluded from the process,” she said.

Shapovalova added that the US delegation would bring Putin an updated proposal for a peace plan and the presence of Dmitriev in the talks was an indication that they would address some of the more complex issues.

European leaders meet in Dublin

During the US-backed effort to revive talks, leaders from more than 40 European countries gathered in Dublin on Thursday for a summit focused on the continent’s security.

The meeting of the European Political Community (EPC) brought together heads of state and government from the European Union and other European countries, including the United Kingdom. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney and NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte also attended.

The EPC was established in 2022 as a forum for countries both inside and outside the 27-nation EU.

Zelenskyy and his European allies are expected to discuss this week’s talks in Abu Dhabi.

Kushner, US President Donald Trump’s son-in-law, and Witkoff are scheduled to meet Zelenskyy in Dublin on Friday after talking to Putin.

Audrey Macalpine, reporting from Kyiv, said Ukrainians do not believe the talks in Moscow will yield results. “Over the past two days, we saw just another prisoner exchange, which has been the case in previous talks,” the correspondent said.

“When it comes to the negotiations, not much has changed in terms of where these two sides stand,” Macalpine added. “Perhaps the biggest thing of note [in the talks] was that they took place at all.”

Meanwhile, French Minister Delegate for European Affairs Benjamin Haddad on Thursday ‌said the ⁠EU will approve more sanctions ⁠against Russia.

“On Monday, we will take new sanctions against ⁠Russia on 150 additional ⁠entities, 50 banks, and it’s ⁠France which proposed the ⁠bulk ⁠of the entities to add,” Haddad ‌told LCI television.

United States lawmakers are pushing for answers from Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang amid growing concerns over whether an affair he had compromised national security.

Huang, 63, has admitted to having extramarital relations during his time leading Nvidia, a major US tech firm. Media reports indicate the woman involved was Alice Huang, a former executive at Singapore-based tech company Megaspeed who is accused of working for Chinese intelligence.

As the scandal continues to grip Washington, Republican leaders of three committees in the House of Representatives have asked Huang to appear at a closed-door briefing to testify about the relationship.

House Foreign Affairs Committee Chair Brian Mast said he was prepared to subpoena Huang if he did not respond by the end of Wednesday.

According to The New York Times, US intelligence officials believe Alice Huang was recruited by Chinese intelligence to gather information about the Nvidia CEO and influence him to push for looser restrictions on chip sales to China.

In a statement on Sunday, Jensen Huang apologised to his family and Nvidia employees about the affair.

His company also launched an independent investigation, saying it had no reason to believe that “either national security or NVIDIA secrets were compromised”. Still, by Wednesday, media reports emerged that Nvidia was preparing to part ways with Huang over the controversy.

US President Donald Trump confirmed on Monday that the Federal Bureau of Investigation was looking into the matter, but he has stood by Huang, calling him an “honourable guy”.

But the pressure on Huang intensified on Tuesday when Republican Senator Kevin Cramer called for him to resign.

“The potential for extortion is so tremendous that something as sensitive as Nvidia chips, I just think he’s got to go,” Cramer said in an interview with Politico.

But Huang, who co-founded Nvidia more than 30 years ago, has shown no signs of heeding that call.

Despite the company’s assurances, experts say the affair raises concerns about what information Alice Huang may have been privy to and what role the relationship may have played in the Nvidia CEO’s decisions.

What are the national security concerns surrounding Nvidia?

Nvidia’s advanced chips, which power much of today’s artificial intelligence, have put the company at the centre of the race for tech dominance between China and the US.

Since 2022, Washington has restricted sales of some of the most advanced chips to China over concerns that they could be used by the country’s military or intelligence agencies.

According to US intelligence officials cited by The New York Times, Alice Huang was tasked with getting Jensen Huang to lobby for looser restrictions on chip exports.

The Nvidia CEO had already been pushing for an easing of the rules, arguing that China’s domestic chip industry would get stronger without better access to US products.

But some experts say it is worth looking at how Alice Huang may have influenced decisions Nvidia made specifically about her former employer Megaspeed, which bought more than $4.8bn worth of Nvidia chips over the span of about two years.

Megaspeed has also been investigated over allegations that it helped Chinese companies get access to restricted chips. Megaspeed denies the allegation.

Ryan Fedasiuk, a fellow at the Foundation for American Innovation who studies Chinese technology and intelligence activities, pointed to reports from Bloomberg and The New York Times that Nvidia contacted the US Commerce Department about its investigation into Megaspeed.

He also noted that, in disclosures to the government, Nvidia appeared to vastly undercount the value of the chips it sold to the company.

“The question at hand is whether Nvidia took specific actions with respect to Megaspeed that it might not otherwise have done,” Fedasiuk told Al Jazeera, “possibly as a result of the personal relationship between the two executives.”

What sensitive information could have been a risk?

There are also questions about what sensitive information Alice Huang may have had access to through her relationship with Jensen Huang.

In an analysis published by the Council on Foreign Relations, a think tank, senior fellow Jessica Brandt pointed to information about how Nvidia designs its China-specific chips.

“Information about its conversations with policymakers could be helpful for anticipating where those controls and other policies are headed,” she said. “Understanding where it disagrees with government could expose fault lines to exploit. And that’s before we get into anything touching R&D [research and development].”

Fedasiuk raised similar concerns about what Alice Huang could have learned about Nvidia’s internal operations and plans for future products, as well as its customer base, which includes American and foreign tech companies.

He also pointed to Jensen Huang’s close ties to Trump and other senior White House officials.

“I have to wonder what kind of information about those people and about those relationships may have inadvertently made its way to Ms Huang or to Chinese intelligence,” he said.

So far, however, there is no publicly available evidence that Alice Huang got access to sensitive information from Nvidia or influenced Jensen Huang’s decisions. US intelligence also has not made public any evidence that Alice Huang was working for Chinese intelligence.

China has flatly denied the allegations of espionage.

“The claim of so-called ‘Chinese spies’ is completely groundless and is nothing but a smear campaign against China,” said Foreign Ministry spokesperson Guo Jiakun on Monday.

DEVELOPING STORYDEVELOPING STORY,

Chip giants stock price falls more than 8 percent amid speculation over co-founder’s position.

Chip giant Nvidia’s stock price has tumbled amid reports that its board of directors is meeting to consider the future of CEO Jensen Huang.

Nvidia shares fell more than 8 percent in after-hours trading on Wednesday as questions swirled over Huang’s position at the top of the $4.2 trillion company.

The plunge comes after The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and the Financial Times reported that Nvidia’s board of directors would discuss Huang’s position amid controversy over his personal life.

Nvidia did not immediately respond to Al Jazeera’s requests for comment.

The reported meeting comes amid reports that Huang engaged in an extramarital relationship with an Nvidia employee, in addition to an affair with a woman accused of working the Chinese intelligence services.

This is a developing story.

BREAKINGBREAKING,

The historic victory delivers an eighth US Senate seat to Democrats after last week’s pivotal midterm election.

Democrat Scott Colom has won Mississippi’s closely watched United States Senate race, giving his party a rare, historic victory in a Republican stronghold that has eluded them for decades.

Colom, a prosecutor who will become the state’s first Black senator in more than 140 years, garnered a narrow victory on Wednesday over incumbent Republican Senator Cindy Hyde-Smith in one of the US midterms’ biggest upsets.

The win builds on Democrats’ success after the party delivered an electoral drubbing last Tuesday, winning at least eight US Senate seats that are currently held by Republicans. A US Senate race in Alaska remains uncalled.

For more than a week, the Mississippi contest has remained too close to call as election officials worked to count more than 100,000 mail-in ballots. Thousands of other residents, who could not confirm their registration at voting sites, cast provisional ballots that required confirmation of their eligibility.

Colom and Hyde-Smith took markedly different approaches as remaining ballots were counted.

Hyde-Smith, who was not seen publicly until she returned to Washington this week as the Senate returned to session, had expressed confidence she would win after “every legally cast vote is fully and accurately counted”. But after the election, Colom continued to hold a series of public events where he castigated his opponent.

“Ultimately, at some point, the senator needs to speak out. Where is Cindy Hyde-Smith?” Colom told reporters on Friday in Jackson, Mississippi. “We want to hear from her. She needs to answer questions. What is her path to victory? She doesn’t have one”.

The US Senate race also was not the first time the two had crossed political paths.

Hyde-Smith, citing concerns about Colom’s position on transgender athletes, previously blocked him from serving as a federal judge in 2023 after he was nominated by former US President Joe Biden. The position had required Senate approval.

Colom’s win defies political gravity in a state that US President Donald Trump won by just over 22 points in the 2024 presidential election.

The last Democrat to win a US Senate race in Mississippi was 1982, when John Stennis claimed victory over Republican challenger Haley Barbour, who later became governor of the state.

Colom, who has been a proponent of raising the minimum wage, increasing protections for rural hospitals and ending the US war in Iran, will be sworn in next January. He will be the chamber’s seventh Black lawmaker.

Saudi Arabia has boosted crude outputs to their highest levels since before the Iran war disrupted supplies in February, triggering a global energy and shipping crisis.

An OPEC report issued on Wednesday said the world’s biggest oil exporter pumped 10.563 million barrels per day (bpd) of crude in October, up by over two million bpd from its September output.

That is the highest level since the United States and Israel launched the war on Iran in late February, when Saudi Arabia produced 10.882 million bpd.

Rising oil production by Saudi Arabia and Russia helped increase outputs for the OPEC+ group, which includes the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) and other nations including Russia.

OPEC+ pumped 41.23 million bpd in October, up by about 2.04 million bpd from September, according to its monthly report. Russia’s output increased as US President Donald Trump lifted sanctions on Russian energy and announced an “energy ceasefire” between Ukraine and Russia in mid-October.

Fuel prices ease

Riyadh sharply increased its production in February ahead of US and Israeli strikes on Iran.

Saudi Arabia’s reported increase in oil production “could help ease some of the inflationary pressure facing American consumers”, Umud Shokri, an energy strategist and senior visiting fellow at George Mason University, told Al Jazeera.

“When more oil enters the global market, prices generally come under downward pressure, which can eventually translate into lower gasoline, transportation, and production costs in the United States,” he said. “However, higher Saudi production does not automatically mean lower prices at American gas stations.”

While US prices for petrol or gasoline fell below $4 a gallon for the first time in months this week, concerns over the stubbornly high cost of living drove the Democratic Party’s sweeping victories in US midterm elections last week.

Inflation has spiked since February, when it stood at 2.9 percent. Annual personal consumption expenditures (PCE) shot to a three-year high of 4.1 percent in May, when energy prices soared as the conflict closed off roughly one-fifth of global oil supplies transiting through the Strait of Hormuz.

Other producers managed to regain their supply positions, including the US.

However, the report noted a decline in imports by one of the world’s largest economies – Japan – where “crude imports fell sharply in September amid renewed disruptions to trade flows”.

The report data, while based on secondary sources, indicate that Gulf oil producers are recovering exports by using workarounds such as ship-to-ship transfers to bypass disruptions caused by the conflict.

“The UAE regained its position as the top supplier in September with a share of 49 percent, compared with 25 percent the previous month. The US was second with 28 percent, followed by Saudi Arabia with 14 percent,” the OPEC report noted.

The report indicated that Saudi Arabia’s exports have stabilised despite a secondary oil supply route – Saudi’s East-West Pipeline – coming under attack by Houthi rebels in neighbouring Yemen. The Houthis, who are fighting the Saudi-backed internationally recognised government in Aden, continued to target the pipeline this week.

Shokri explained that “one reason Saudi Arabia has been able to recover some of its exports is its East-West Pipeline, which allows crude oil to move across the country to the Red Sea port of Yanbu without passing through the Strait of Hormuz”.

While no longer an OPEC member, the United Arab Emirates remains a major supplier and “has a similar advantage through its pipeline to Fujairah, located outside the strait”, he said.

“The bigger picture is that Gulf countries are learning how costly dependence on a single maritime chokepoint can be,” Shokri warned. “They are looking for ways to make their exports more resilient, but Hormuz remains too important to the global energy market to be easily bypassed.”

Oil forecasts unchanged

Oil output in October was equivalent to 97 percent of the 42.72 million bpd produced by OPEC+ in February, according to Reuters.

OPEC left its forecasts for global oil demand growth unchanged after cutting them for six straight months, and made no changes to its 2027 outlook.

The producer group expects global oil demand to rise by 2.55 million bpd next year to an average of 108.3 million bpd. It forecasts growth of 180,000 bpd in 2026.

The report also forecasted that Qatar, Canada, Brazil and Argentina will drive growth in energy-related liquids production in 2027.

The report offered an optimistic outlook for the Middle East’s economic performance in the near term.

“In 2027, the region’s economy is expected to rebound and economic activity to recover, supported by a resilient non-oil sector and robust domestic demand,” it said.

It has been more than a week since voters in the United States cast ballots in the midterm elections.

But the size of Democrats’ majorities in the House of Representatives and Senate remained undetermined. More than a dozen congressional races are still waiting to be called.

Democrats have already won 54 Senate seats in the incoming Congress in January, but they could pick up one or two more as votes are counted in Alaska and Mississippi.

Meanwhile, in the House of Representatives, Democrats have notched their largest elected majority since 2008, with 255 seats in the 435-member chamber. But they have the potential to add to their lead with several more seats as the remaining races are decided.

Here’s a look at where things stand in some of the uncalled races:

Mississippi’s Senate seat remains too early to call

Late on Tuesday, Democrat Scott Colom was about 2,600 votes ahead of Republican incumbent Cindy Hyde-Smith in the race for the US Senate in Mississippi.

There are two key deadlines in the vote-counting process in Mississippi this week: Mail-in absentee ballots must be received by Tuesday, and counties are required to submit their certified election results — including tallies of provisional ballots — to the state by Friday.

It is unclear exactly how many ballots are left to count.

Unlike in some other states, there is no central vote reporting system for Mississippi, and few counties release election results online. Instead, journalists from The Associated Press and analysts communicate with each of the state’s 82 counties directly for the latest available information on vote counts.

The state will certify its results on December 3.

On Monday, Mississippi Secretary of State Michael Watson said about 14,200 provisional ballots had been processed, of which about 80 percent were accepted, and about 2,700 mail-in absentee ballots had not yet been returned.

Mississippi does not have automatic recounts or permit candidates to request a recount. Recounts in the state are held only in the event of a court order. The Associated Press may declare a winner in a race that is eligible for a recount if it can determine the lead is too large for a recount or legal challenge to change the outcome.

The vote count is ongoing in Alaska’s Senate race

Democrat Mary Peltola led Republican Senator Dan Sullivan by about 2,500 votes in Alaska’s US Senate race as of Tuesday, with an estimated 76 percent of the vote counted.

Absentee ballots are among those that continue to be counted. The final absentee ballots mailed from outside the US are accepted as late as November 18, which is 15 days after Election Day.

Ranked-choice voting could also affect the timeline. Peltola is just over one percentage point short of the majority needed to win outright. If neither candidate wins a majority, the race will proceed to ranked-choice tabulation on November 18.

The state’s “target date” for certifying the election results is November 25.

Recounts in Alaska are automatic only in the event of a tie vote. Candidates may also request a recount within five days of the state’s certification.

A dozen House races are still up in the air

In most of the US House races that have not been called, the margin between the leading candidates was less than one percentage point among votes counted, as of late Tuesday afternoon.

In North Carolina, four races remain undecided, the most of any state, and Republican incumbents were being challenged in each one. There are no automatic recounts in North Carolina, but candidates may request a recount if the margin between candidates is one percent or less of the total votes.

The state must receive the recount request by noon Eastern Time (17:00 GMT) on November 17, two business days after the county canvass in the state. The state is scheduled to certify its results on November 24.

In California, only one of the remaining House races, in the 23rd District, will affect the chamber’s balance of power. The other uncalled race is between two Democrats. Mail-in ballots must be received by Tuesday, and counties must certify their results by December 3. The state will certify its results on December 11.

In South Carolina’s 2nd District, a recount is ongoing in the race between Republican incumbent Joe Wilson and Democrat Zyon Khalifa. Wilson led Khalifa by only about 3,000 votes in the original tally by late Tuesday afternoon, when 99 percent of the votes had been counted.

In Minnesota’s 1st District, the race was still undecided late by Tuesday, with about 300 votes separating the top two candidates and an estimated 99 percent of votes counted. Recounts are not automatic in Minnesota, but a candidate can request a publicly funded recount if the margin between the winning and losing candidates is less than 0.25 percent of the vote.

In Tennessee’s 4th District, about 300 votes lay between Democrat Victoria Broderick and Republican incumbent Scott DesJarlais as of Tuesday. In that state, recounts are held only as part of a legal challenge in the courts. There are no automatic recounts, and losing candidates may not request recounts.

Two governorships remain undecided

In the race to be Kansas’s next governor, Democratic state Senator Cindy Holscher led state Republican Senate President Ty Masterson by less than one percentage point on Tuesday.

On November 4, the state announced that a close-race audit had been triggered in six close Kansas races, including the gubernatorial race.

That process requires a hand count of selected ballots, and it must be completed before November 16, the day by which counties must certify their results.

In the race for governor of Alaska, only about 76 percent of votes were estimated to have been counted by Tuesday.

The Democratic gubernatorial candidate, Jonathan Kreiss‑Tomkins, was leading Bernadette Wilson by about 45,000 votes, 49.6 percent to 28.9 percent. The race will advance to ranked-choice tabulation if no candidate receives more than 50 percent of the vote.

Wexford, Ireland – They cross the ocean floor between continents, carrying nearly all our data, from messages and calls to trillions of dollars in financial transactions each day.

Subsea cables underpin global communications and power economies, but they are also increasingly seen as vulnerable to sabotage.

About 75 percent of transatlantic subsea cables pass through or near Irish waters, according to the Irish government, connecting North America with Europe – giving the small European Union member outsized strategic importance.

Ireland is also a major hub for United States tech multinationals, including Google, Microsoft and Meta, with a growing concentration of data centres supporting the digital economy.

But increased activity by Russian vessels near undersea infrastructure in recent years has raised concerns that cables around Ireland could become targets of interference.

In November 2024, the Russian ship Yantar, officially an oceanographic research vessel but described by the United Kingdom Ministry of Defence as a spy ship, was monitored near undersea infrastructure in the Irish Sea before being escorted out of Ireland’s exclusive economic zone by the Irish Navy.

Two months later, the UK’s Defence Ministry said the vessel had been “caught loitering over critical undersea infrastructure in UK waters.”

In late 2025, the British government accused Yantar of directing lasers at Royal Air Force (RAF) pilots monitoring its movements in the North Sea.

‘Ireland is absolutely Europe’s weakest link when it comes to defence’

Ireland has limited capability to monitor its waters – it has the lowest defence spending as a share of gross domestic product (GDP) in the EU, and its navy has no submarines. It is militarily neutral and not part of NATO.

Irish senator Tom Clonan, a strong supporter of Irish neutrality, argued that it should not be a barrier to boosting defence.

“Because of the end of the violence and the conflict in Ireland, and with the ceasefires and the peace agreement, we’ve had a peace dividend. So for the last 30 years, successive governments have really taken their foot off the accelerator when it comes to defence and security. And then, more broadly, Europe has enjoyed a peace dividend after the fall of the Berlin Wall,” he told Al Jazeera.

“So as a consequence of those two things, Ireland is absolutely Europe’s weakest link when it comes to defence in the air, maritime, ground and cyber domains,” he added.

The Irish government recently boosted its naval powers, allowing the navy to board and inspect suspicious vessels.

Ensuring defence against “emerging threats in our waters, particularly from vessels linked to the Russian shadow fleet” is a priority, Defence Minister Helen McEntee said in March, referring to the ageing, often uninsured tankers used to transport Russian oil and circumvent Western sanctions.

Their presence in Irish waters has raised concerns about both accidental damage and deliberate interference with undersea infrastructure. Moscow disputes the term “shadow fleet” as a political fabrication.

“Recent events in the Baltic Sea and the activities of Russia’s shadow fleet have highlighted the importance of ensuring that we have the legal framework necessary to respond to evolving threats,” McEntee continued.

In December 2024, a tanker suspected of belonging to Russia’s shadow fleet was investigated after power and telecoms cables were damaged in the Gulf of Finland.

A year later, in December 2025, a cargo ship sailing from St Petersburg under the flag of St Vincent and the Grenadines damaged telecommunications cables between Finland and Estonia. A Finnish court convicted its Russian captain and Azerbaijani boatswain of aggravated sabotage, according to the Reuters news agency. Both denied wrongdoing, and the conviction can be appealed.

For Daniel Mulhall, Ireland’s former ambassador to the US, that much of the world’s digital infrastructure passes through Irish waters means the country can no longer assume that its geographical position offers protection.

“It’s the fact that there are 850 US multinationals that have operations in Ireland. Many of them have big data centres to manage their data in our country,” he told Al Jazeera. “We are an integral part of the Western digital economy. And therefore, any sort of cyber threat to that economy is going to be potentially aimed at Ireland, or at least we could be victims of it, even if we’re not the prime target. So I think the world has become a far more complex place. And I think Irish people are waking up to that fact.”

Mulhall argued that protecting the cables will require international cooperation.

“I don’t think anyone can guarantee that those cables will be safe, least of all Ireland. But I think with collective effort, we can make reasonable preparations to strengthen our ability to protect those cables from malign actors that might wish to interfere with them,” he added.

“They’re the bloodstream of our economy. And if that bloodstream is interfered with, the economy will have serious trouble.”

Tehran, Iran – After months of oscillating between new bouts of fighting and negotiations, the administration of United States President Donald Trump has reportedly opted for a third option – gradual economic pressure on Tehran.

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio told his Group of Seven (G7) counterparts in Paris on Tuesday that a naval blockade, stringent sanctions and overland border disruptions could continue without a clear endpoint in sight, according to US media. He later said that Iran’s economy “continues to collapse” and predicted worsening conditions over the next one to three months.

Tehran-based economist and market analyst Isaac Saidian said that if the persistent economic siege on Iran brings the country’s oil incomes down to near-zero levels, Tehran will be faced with one of the most difficult challenges in its recent history.

“The issue is not just a decline in foreign currency incomes, but the government’s ability to account for current expenditure, paying salaries and pensions, providing essential goods, preserving the value of the national currency, and preventing budget deficits from turning into a new inflationary wave,” Saidian told Al Jazeera.

Iran’s President Masoud Pezeshkian has indicated that the cash-strapped civilian government is preparing to deal with a prolonged economic crisis caused by siege and sanctions, but has admitted that the lingering “no war, no peace” conditions will be harmful.

But the authorities have stressed that there are no prospects of economic collapse. They have also raised the prospect of “breaking the blockade” if necessary, although it remains unclear by what means.

In a budget directive on November 3, Pezeshkian’s administration set out two scenarios. One was the continuation of sanctions, the maritime blockade and present regional conditions. The other prediction was an improvement of the situation involving fewer financial and commercial restrictions, including a substantial or complete removal of the blockade.

“The government must prepare for circumstances in which oil revenue reaches zero,” Mohammad Ghasemi, deputy for coordination of planning and budget at Iran’s Plan and Budget Organization, told local media on Monday about a contingency for next year.

The US military first imposed a naval blockade of Iran’s southern ports, through which most of the country’s trade passed, on April 13. A memorandum of understanding in June lifted the blockade and allowed some oil and trade to pass through the Strait of Hormuz, but the deal fell apart within weeks. The second blockade has been in place since July 14, as Iran and the US fight for control of the Strait of Hormuz.

The US military says it has redirected 147 ships and disabled five while enforcing the blockade. It also claimed to have destroyed 10 Iranian oil tankers linked to the shadow fleet of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). According to the US Treasury, the blockade has led to Iran loading no oil onto vessels since August 25.

A late October assessment by Kpler said Iran’s oil production had fallen below 2 million barrels a day in the preceding months. Iran produced 3.45 million barrels of crude per day in January and 3.59 million in the following month, but Israel and the US’s war on Iran began on February 28.

The volume of Iranian crude and condensate floating outside the blockade zone had also fallen from 88.8 million barrels on July 14 to zero in mid-October. Because Chinese buyers generally pay one to two months after discharge, Kpler anticipated crude and condensate receipts potentially drying up around mid-December. Around 43 million barrels remain stranded inside the blockade area.

The US sanctions have also limited air travel to and from Iran, while a new US task force announced this week aims at closing or disrupting most of Iran’s land borders with its seven neighbours.

The Iranian economy has already been dealing with chronic inflation, falling investments and purchasing power, as well as banking and budget imbalances for years. So removing oil revenues will undoubtedly exacerbate the situation.

The government has increasingly relied on taxes to account for a larger share of the budget, but oil still accounted for roughly one-third of planned government funding in the 2026–27 budget proposal.

Economist Saidian said if oil revenues fall sharply, the government’s next step should be to review public spending. Cutting spending on overlapping administrative structures and opaque budgetary grants, while suspending low-return public investment projects, could ease some of the fiscal pressure on the state, he said.

Reforming tax exemptions and tackling tax evasion, as well as carefully managed bond issuance and sale of some non-essential government assets, are other options. But he cautioned that any abrupt drops in salaries, pensions, or social support budgets would only deepen poverty.

The government has signalled that it will likely have to resort to reducing fuel and other energy subsidies again, which will increase prices, but the process will be gradual to lessen the impact on inflation.

“Expanding non-oil exports and facilitating trade with neighbouring countries are also essential,” Saidian said. “Even so, these exports cannot be expected to replace oil revenue in the short term, especially while restrictions on banking, insurance and transport remain in place.”

Government spokesperson Fatemeh Mohajerani said on Tuesday that next year’s budget would prioritise inflation control through fiscal discipline, household support and tighter oversight of banks. The administration will continue handing out electronic food coupons, although it has been struggling to preserve their value due to runaway prices.

Year-on-year inflation was at nearly 89 percent in the Iranian calendar month ending October 22, according to the Statistical Center of Iran.

Saidian pointed out that no amount of austerity measures or budget reforms can fully replace sustainable access to foreign trade, investment and foreign currency incomes, so exiting inflationary stagnation for a prolonged period would require reduced tensions.

“The historical significance of the 2027-28 budget lies in what it can reveal about how prepared Iran’s government is to move beyond an oil-dependent economy and toward transparent, accountable fiscal governance. The budget should not merely be a plan to manage the government in a difficult year, but a plan to prevent passing on today’s crisis to future generations and to start structural reforms in Iran’s economy,” he said.

“The greatest danger is not that the government might run short of funds for a few months. The real danger is that it could stay afloat on paper while passing the cost of doing so on to the public, leaving society poorer, eroding the middle class, widening poverty and weakening the country’s productive capacity.”

After the earthquakes, Defence Minister Gustavo González López and former Foreign Minister Félix Plasencia stand alongside Maj. Gen. Kevin Jarrard and other US military officers. US personnel then gained access to Maiquetía’s control tower and operations. Source: US Southern Command.

How are the National Bolivarian Armed Forces (FANB) and the rest of the security apparatus actually changing? Both publicly and behind closed doors, a military institution forged in Hugo Chávez’s operational doctrine and hardened under Nicolás Maduro’s governance of patronage, corruption and systemic repression is now actively coordinating with the foreign force that entered national territory on January 3, inflicted heavy casualties across the FANB (predominantly among young service members) and captured the man they answered to as Commander-in-Chief.

The recent news cycle offers hints of how this military cooperation is taking shape in the bilateral Caracas–Washington relationship. On Tuesday, November 3, The New York Times reported that the Trump administration is seeking to lay the groundwork for US military forces to operate and establish a footprint inside Venezuela. Days earlier, local human rights group FundaRedes reported a lethal FANB offensive against the National Liberation Army (ELN) in Apure state, which was reportedly mirrored shortly after in a mining zone in western Bolívar state. Sources cited by the Times noted that the Apure operation was conducted with direct US intelligence and drone assets.