Tag: perpetual war

Bessent Says Rates Will Drop When Iran War Ends, Defends Trump On Media Ban And AI Policy

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent was a guest on CNBC’s Squawk Box this morning and covered a lot of ground including the interest rates, the China trade talks, AI accountability and the President’s decision to ban the White House press corps of MS NOW, CNN and Politico.

Bessent, in an interview that aired Monday morning on CNBC’s Squawk Box, shrugged off last week’s decision by the Federal Reserve to increase interest rates to 3.75% to 4% — its first rate hike since February 2023. “Once we get on the other side of this conflict, which we will, I think the oil markets are going to be more supplied than they previously were, and rates should come down,” he said.

Right now the 10-year note is yielding at 5% plus or minus on the treasuries. That’s up 100 basis points since the war with Iran began in late February. He admitted that the Treasury Department’s $5 billion plus buyback of 10- and 20-year notes on September 10 did nothing to bring down the yields on long-term bonds in the aftermath of the announcement. However, he said they would have gone up even more without the announcement.

“Since President Trump has come in, the U.S. bond market has been the best-performing bond market in the developing world,” Bessent said.

The official also spoke at length about his 12-hour meeting on Sunday with Chinese Vice Premier He Lifeng ahead of the Trump-Xi summit at the White House later this week. He outlined a safety framework for AI with He and established a channel to deal with any future incidents — whether caused by “uncontrollable agents,” nonstate cyber attackers, or even bioweapons. He also spoke about the November 10 expiration of the U.S.-China trade truce and how Iran’s biggest trading partner is China.

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Bessent Declares All Iran Airlines To Be ‘Shut Down Around The World’ Wednesday

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent declared on Monday that by Wednesday Sept. 23, “all the Iranian airlines will be shut down around the world.“

“If they land, you cannot provide them with fuel, you cannot provide them with landing services, you cannot sell them tickets, or you will be knocked out of the dollar system,” he described.

The new warning and ‘promise’ was issued after the US earlier this month imposed sanctions on “all remaining Iranian airlines” which had yet to face such penalties – thus Bessent’s new declaration is that these entities are about to collapse under the weight of Washington actions, which now is to include secondary targeting.

The Treasury Department has also lately targeted Iranian companies and industries supporting Iran’s aviation sector.

Some 27 airlines have already been sanctioned – also most recently the major Mahan Air has faced expanded sanctions (after first being targeted by Washington all the way back in 2011).

The Treasury has famed all of this as part of efforts to deny the Iranian government the ability to move “weapons, personnel, and illicit cargo”.

Bessent stated to CNBC that all Iranian airlines will be shut down globally on Sept. 23 – given that any fuel, landing, and ticket providers involved with the companies risk dollar-system exclusion.

Ironically, Iran’s President Masoud Pezeshkian and his delegation is expected to fly into New York City just the day prior, on Tuesday – to attend the UN General Assembly. He is set to give a formal address to the UN body on Wednesday.

This will provide rare opportunity for potential White House diplomacy to take place on the sidelines, which could happen as early as Tuesday.

As for the heavily sanctioned aviation industry, in recent years the Islamic Republic has suffered some significant aerial disasters, which included the May 19, 2024 death of President Ebrahim Raisi. His military helicopter went down in a rugged, mountainous area of northwestern Iran.

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Powerful Explosion Rocks Aleppo Ammo Depot In Latest Mystery Blast

A terrifying blast erupted outside the major northern Syrian city of Aleppo overnight, which caused area residents to evacuate their homes, and with sustained explosions visible for miles around.

The explosion happened at an army base in an outlying town, injuring at least four people, after which a series of blasts persisted, which unleashed shrapnel across the area.

State media outlet SANA later cited Ministry of Emergency and Disaster Management which indicated an ammunition depot was detonated.

Amid local evacuations, emergency crews were on “high alert… due to the continued explosions” – after being initially unable to get close given persisting and follow-on explosions.

An eyewitness in Aleppo’s Hamdaniyeh neighborhood told AFP of a “huge explosion” and that people in the area could see “large flames in the distance”.

Typically the first fear that Syrians have is that they are once again under attack by Israeli fighter jets, given this is a scenario which has played out literally hundreds of times over the past several years of conflict. There have been no initial statements describing what caused the disaster.

But several munitions and military warehouse accidents have occurred under the new Jolani government of late.

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Is Europe Restraining Israel – or Merely Protecting the Two-State Illusion?

This time, Europe seems serious about holding Israel accountable – or at least that is what 11 European countries, together with Canada, want us to believe.

On September 8, Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Iceland, Ireland, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Spain, Sweden and the UK announced their intention to introduce national restrictions, support European restrictions, or actively consider measures against trade in goods with illegal Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank.

Undeniably, the announcement represents a significant political and legal precedent. Dismissing it outright would be impulsive, particularly considering the participation of governments such as those of Canada and the UK, which have historically provided Israel with extensive political and diplomatic support.

Yet celebrating the announcement as an earth-shattering event without examining its context, timing and potential effectiveness would be equally rash. Worse, it could contribute to weakening the public pressure that finally compelled Western governments to take even these limited steps.

The political meaning of the initiative notwithstanding, several important qualifications must be considered.

First, most of the 12 governments have announced intentions, rather than binding and immediately enforceable restrictions.

The decision is therefore still vulnerable to political negotiations, legislative delays, pressure from pro-Israel groups and changing electoral calculations. Without firm deadlines and enforceable mechanisms, today’s declared intentions could become irrelevant by the time they are implemented.

Second, France and Canada have yet to publish detailed implementation schedules. The UK, on the other hand, has announced a comparatively extensive package, covering settlement goods and services related to finance, construction, infrastructure, real estate and advertising. However, its restrictions could take six to nine months to enter into force.

Even if these measures eventually exert meaningful pressure, Israel has been granted additional time to advance its annexation plans and create further irreversible facts on the ground.

Third, the joint commitment focuses largely on goods, while Israel’s settlement enterprise depends on a far broader network of financing, investment, construction, technology and services. These connections often operate through complicated corporate structures that conceal whether a company or transaction is directly linked to a settlement.

Fourth, the initiative is primarily concerned with settlements, particularly the E1 project. E1 is the strategically located area between occupied East Jerusalem and the Maale Adumim settlement bloc. Israeli construction there would further divide the occupied West Bank, sever Palestinian territorial continuity and isolate occupied East Jerusalem from surrounding Palestinian communities.

Europe fears that completing E1 would destroy the remaining geographical basis for a future Palestinian state. That concern is defensible insofar as the two-state solution remains Europe’s declared foreign-policy strategy.

Yet the joint declaration does not refer to the genocide in Gaza. Nor does it confront the wider system of Israeli military occupation that enables settlement expansion, forced displacement and land confiscation. It addresses one particularly alarming manifestation of the occupation while leaving the larger structure largely untouched.

Fifth, there is still no coordinated suspension of the EU-Israel Association Agreement and no collective European arms embargo against Israel.

This omission is especially consequential when measured against the broader economic relationship. European Commission figures show that total EU-Israel trade in goods increased in both 2024 and 2025, the first two full calendar years following the beginning of the genocide.

Therefore, any losses suffered by the settlements – which represent only a small part of Israel’s overall trade – could therefore be absorbed through Israel’s much larger economic relationship with Europe.

The military contradiction is even more glaring. According to SIPRI, Germany provided 31 percent of Israel’s major arms imports between 2021 and 2025, making it Israel’s second-largest supplier after the US. Israel continued receiving major weapons throughout this period despite the ongoing genocide in Gaza and the escalating violence against Palestinians in the West Bank.

European states are also major purchasers of Israeli military technology. Europe received 41 percent of Israeli arms exports during the same period, helping sustain an industry deeply integrated into Israel’s military establishment.

Europe is therefore attempting to restrict the settlements while continuing to maintain economic and military relationships with the state that finances, protects and expands them.

A counterargument with some legitimacy is that the announced measures constitute a first step and that greater accountability may follow. But this argument carries weight only if we understand why these governments acted in the first place.

If the restrictions are primarily intended to weaken Benjamin Netanyahu before Israel’s October elections, they may prove to be temporary political instruments whose future depends on the electoral outcome.

Some hope, however, can be found in the growing public solidarity with Palestine across Europe.

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US Shipment Of F-35s Goes MIA In Shocking Detour To Hong Kong

Lawmakers and the Trump administration are investigating the odd disappearance of a U.S.-bound shipment of F-35 fighter jet components from Australia, which were originally meant to be repaired on U.S. soil, according to new reporting by Politico.

The report, published Friday and citing three anonymous sources, noted that an intermediary was transporting the equipment on behalf of American defense manufacturer Lockheed Martin through the Pacific Ocean before it was diverted to Hong Kong.

The three unnamed sources suggested that neither the Pentagon nor Lockheed Martin knows why the shipment ended up in Hong Kong.

The current whereabouts of the components remain unknown, triggering concerns over whether China may have gotten its hands on them.

China, which has tightened its control of Hong Kong in recent years, has long sought to gather intelligence on the F-35 program.

The missing components were part of the F-35 Lightning II, which Lockheed Martin describes on its website as the “most lethal, survivable, and connected fighter aircraft” for America and its allies.

Specifically, among the missing items is an F-35 canopy, a major part of the fighter jet that contains sensitive technology, according to Politico.

The U.S. Government Accountability Office has called the F-35 the “most costly weapon system” in the U.S. military, and the Pentagon has already spent between $200 billion and $250 billion on the program, according to estimates.

The State Department and the Pentagon reportedly briefed lawmakers on the matter in June, the report added.

In a statement, the Pentagon office responsible for the F-35 jets said it was “aware of a shipment issue of unserviceable F-35 Lightning II components.”

The military office said an investigation is underway to retrieve the missing components and determine what happened.

Headline USA reached out to the office for further clarification but did not receive a response in time for publication.

Lockheed Martin, for its part, declined to provide information on the matter, citing security reasons, Politico noted.

“Our teams handle every shipment with the utmost diligence and safeguards to ensure the integrity of the F-35 program and the security of our allied partners,” the company said.

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$28 Billion in Munitions Later, What’s Left for a China Fight?

Twenty-eight billion dollars buys a tremendous amount of ammunition. It also raises a fairly important question when much of what was fired can’t quickly be replaced.

A new U.S. Central Command estimate puts the cost of the Iran war at roughly $43.6 billion through September 3. About $28.1 billion of that total reflects munitions expended during the conflict, an increase of more than $6 billion in weapons costs in barely a month.

From the Associated Press:

The financial cost is just one measure of the impact of the Iran war, which also is affecting oil prices and the stock market and has led to deaths and injuries of American troops. The political costs will be calculated in November’s midterm congressional elections, with Republicans facing increasing headwinds from the war’s unpopularity.

The latest cost estimate has emerged as the Trump administration pushes for a historic $1.5 trillion military budget proposal. The White House also is asking Congress to approve a $95 billion package that would help fund the Iran war and other priorities.

The Congressional Budget Office looked at the same war from another direction. Its Sept. 15 assessment estimated roughly $38 billion in Defense Department costs through Aug. 1, including replacement weapons, lost equipment, increased flying hours, operations, and fuel.

The dollars weren’t the CBO’s biggest warning.

The CBO identified America’s heavy expenditure of missile-defense interceptors as the conflict’s main military opportunity cost. The agency says U.S. interceptor inventories will remain reduced for several years because replacements can’t simply be produced overnight.

Then, the CBO brought up China.

A reduced interceptor stockpile would become especially troublesome during a conflict with an enemy possessing large inventories of ballistic and cruise missiles. The CBO specifically identified China and noted those weapons would probably play a major role in military conflict involving Taiwan.

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Ukraine Pounds Major Moscow Refinery As Global Diesel Crisis Threatens Economic Shock

Military conflicts, economic wars, and resource wars are converging ahead of the Northern Hemisphere winter.

Export restrictions on critical materials and energy products are adding economic pressure worldwide, raising the risk that supply disruptions and retaliatory measures widen existing conflicts. With no clear path to de-escalation, the potential for spillover from active war zones remains top of mind.

The most pressing news so far this morning is that Ukraine launched a major overnight drone strike on Russia, hitting a Moscow refinery despite President Trump’s request for Ukraine to stop striking Russian energy infrastructure as a global refining crisis deepens.

Bloomberg reports that the Gazprom Neft-owned Moscow Oil Refinery, about 16 miles from the Kremlin, was struck by drones. The facility has a processing capacity of around 245,000 barrels a day and supplies fuel to the surrounding metro area.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy wrote on X, “One of Russia’s key oil industry facilities and the aggressor’s logistics facility were hit. These are billions of dollars that sustain the war machine. The systems used included FP-1, RZ-100, MICH-2000, Palianytsia, Vendetta, Liutyi, Bars, Flamingo, Sichen, and Pelican.”

Last week, diesel futures and refining spreads climbed to record highs as worsening supply disruptions in the Gulf and Russia tightened availability of the industrial fuel that powers the global economy.

Potential export restrictions, or extensions of existing restrictions, are compounding the squeeze. A report on Tuesday said Moscow was considering extending its diesel export ban, while Senate Majority Leader John Thune told reporters that day he was “open to exploring” a US diesel export ban.

The squeeze was even more severe in refining spreads. The US heating oil crack, which measures the difference between fuel and crude prices, surged to $117 a barrel on Wednesday, the highest level in Bloomberg data going back to 2009.

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Ukraine Fires over 1,000 Drones at Russia, Including Hundreds at Moscow

Ukrainian forces fired more than 1,000 drones at Russia overnight, including hundreds that were launched toward Moscow, officials said Sunday as the Kremlin was wrapping up the third and last day of its parliamentary elections.

Moscow´s mayor described the wave of drones as the “largest ever” attack on the Russian capital and said there had been damage to a Moscow oil refinery and a residential building.

Across the wider Moscow region, the attack killed two people and wounded 20, local Gov. Andrei Vorobyov said. The dead were a 74-year-old man and a 44-year-old woman, he said.

Writing on social media, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said that Kyiv had used a range of missiles and drones in the attack – including Ukraine’s domestically made Flamingo and Pelican missiles – to hit oil and logistics facilities.

“These are billions of dollars that sustain the war machine,” Zelenskyy said, referring to the financial pressure that Kyiv hopes to put on Russia’s economy.

Ukraine also continued to fend off Russian attacks, Zelenskyy said. A Russian drone strike hit a monastery in Ukraine’s Kherson region Saturday, killing a member of the clergy and wounding four people, he said.

A Russian attack on the Ukrainian capital also killed two children and their mother on Saturday evening, said Tymur Tkachenko, head of the Kyiv regional state administration. He later said that another child wounded in the same attack had died in hospital on Sunday.

The attack took place on the final day of Russia’s first wartime parliamentary election – balloting that has been virtually devoid of opposition to President Vladimir Putin’s policies and is all but certain to cement the Kremlin’s dominance.

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‘As of Today, Ukraine Doesn’t Have a Steel Industry Anymore’: Mining CEO Reveals How Russian Strikes Are Destroying Kiev’s Economy

While Ukraine is ‘winning’ in the MSM headlines, its economy is being depleted by overwhelming drone and missile strikes.

If you look around the MSM today, all you’ll see is the image of oil refineries on fire in the Moscow region, after the largest drone attack on the Russian capital since the beginning of the war.

While there’s no denying that the attack on the last day of Russian elections is quite the ‘PR victory’ for Kiev regime leader Volodymyr Zelensky, it is nothing compared to the absolute havoc wreaked by the relentless Moscow strikes on Ukrainian economic targets.

We feel tempted to say that Russia’s new jet drones struck Kiev every day in September, but it is not entirely the case.

Drone attacks on Kiev were recorded on September 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5; on September 8, 9, 10 and 11; on September 15, 17, 18, 19 and today, 20.

It’s important to stress that these attacks often came in multiple waves per day, targeting military, economic and infrastructure targets.

Today, as the Globalists gloat with the disruption of Russian elections, Kiev residents wake up to a city shrouded by smoke from the relentless strikes.

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America Spends More On Defense R&D Than Any Other OECD Country – By A Mile

On the OECD’s yardstick – defense R&D budget allocations per $1,000 of GDP – the United States spends $3.64. The next country on the list, South Korea, spends $2.06, and nobody else clears a dollar.

Britain is third at $0.97, Germany fourth at $0.79, France fifth at $0.50. The average across the 20 countries ranked is $0.58; the median is $0.27. Greece, at the bottom, spends nine cents.

The gap is about to get wider: the Department of War’s request for fiscal 2027 is $1.5 trillion, 42% above this year’s funding.

As Visual Capitalist explains further, defense research and development is one way countries invest in future military capabilities, from advanced weapons systems to emerging technologies.

This visualization ranks selected OECD countries by defense research and development (R&D) budget allocations per $1,000 of GDP. The data comes from the OECD Economic Outlook, Volume 2026 Issue 1, with figures covering 2024 or the latest available year as of August 2026.

Defense R&D has also historically played an important role in shaping civilian technologies. Research tied to national security has helped support breakthroughs in fields such as computing, aerospace, satellites, medicine, and advanced materials. However, the link between military spending and innovation is not automatic, as secrecy can impede knowledge diffusion, among other factors.

The U.S. Leads by a Wide Margin

The United States ranked first, with defense R&D budget allocations equal to $3.64 per $1,000 of GDP. In absolute terms, the U.S. is also the world’s highest military-spending country by a wide margin, with 2025 spending totaling $954 billion and accounting for one-third of global military spending that year.

The U.S. allocation was nearly 1.8 times South Korea’s and more than 3.7 times the United Kingdom’s, which ranked second and third, respectively.

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