Brent crude futures ended last week near $88.50 a barrel as traders awaited details of Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent’s planned escalation campaign of the economic war against Iran.

Bessent said Friday that Washington would announce unprecedented economic-isolation measures next week, warning that the coming pressure campaign would be unlike anything “seen in the history of economic isolation on a country.”

US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent announced upcoming unprecedented economic measures against Iran amid ongoing blockades of its ports pic.twitter.com/OV3etgd2k0

— Chay Bowes (@BowesChay) August 14, 2026

For clarity on Bessent’s upcoming economic-isolation operation against Iran, Derek Holt, head of Capital Markets Economics at Scotiabank in Toronto, provided clients with an assessment in which Bessent’s warning could signal a move well beyond sanctioning shadow tankers and refiners, toward dismantling the entire financial network supporting Iranian oil exports.

Holt explained:

WHAT COULD BESSENT MEAN?

What could Bessent do to economically isolate Iran further that has “never been seen”?

• Target China and India: China is the main buyer of Iranian oil and is involved in undermining US sanctions. The US sanctions some individual Chinese entities and, in April, announced sanctions against Chinese “Teapot” refineries (here). The US could step up its actions by sanctioning all Chinese banks, this time including large institutions, and blocking their access to the US and global financial systems. That would push China further away from the SWIFT system and block access to correspondent and other forms of banking. It could block access to US dollar funding markets. This would very likely enrage China and risk multiple forms of retaliation and escalation.

• Broaden the scope of sanctions on Iran: This would extend the scope to any global group, company or entity involved in buying, financing, insuring or shipping Iranian oil. Looking at you, global banks, currency exchanges, commodity traders, shippers, etc. Actions under this category would aim to entirely thwart the sale of oil from Iran to China in yuan and its conversion into dollars and other currencies via exchange houses in Iran and elsewhere. You target other Middle Eastern nations facilitating this trade by blocking their access to dollar funding and global banking markets, such as Dubai’s one-foot-in-and-one-foot-out stance on the war, which continues to facilitate Iranian transactions. Dubai fancies itself a financial center; you destroy such ambitions.

• Target Iranian crypto assets: This Treasury announcement last month targeted individuals and entities under a specific Iranian person’s name. The US could broaden this action to include freezing access to all Iranian global holdings of crypto, gold, real estate, foreign accounts, etc.

• Target global ports: Any foreign port that facilitates trade and transactions with shipping companies that transited Iranian ports could be targeted.

He continued:

And there may well be other creative options in scale and scope. The broad point is to escalate the economic and financial blockade of the Iranian economy and financial system by enveloping all parts of the global economy, namely China, and the global financial system that allow Iran to continue to sell oil and access funding markets.

Would it work? I’m not sure. Iran knows suffering. Iran is used to being a pariah. Iran still has friends in low places. Iran has its own means of escalating, including unleashing unspeakable terror.

The consequences to the global economy and financial system could also limit or entirely thwart the chances of success. I’m sure they know the risks, but Treasury would sharply amplify tensions with China and India and could potentially cripple individual banks while not ruling out increased systemic risk within the broader financial system. Cutting off access to dollar funding markets could destabilize major players in the financial system. The spillover effects through a complicated web of connections shouldn’t be treated lightly.

The US is finally getting that it can’t just bash and bomb its way to victory against Iran. I’m not sure it gets the limitations and risks that could be associated with escalating broader measures at an all-encompassing global level. It could well take a bungled war that the US and Israel entered without much thought, without a strategy and without an exit plan, while not consulting Congress or allies, and compound the missteps even further and potentially more seriously.

For context, China buys more than 90% of Iran’s oil exports, making it the most likely target in any effort by Bessent to cut Tehran’s energy revenues. But the escalating economic war would carry significant risks. Sanctions on large Chinese companies or financial institutions could escalate tensions with Beijing ahead of a planned meeting between Presidents Trump and Xi Jinping.

Also removing discounted Iranian crude from the global market could also tighten supplies and push already elevated Brent and WTI prices higher.

Professional subscribers can read more institutional commentary on the Gulf region, covering energy markets and policies, at our new Marketdesk.ai portal. 

Submitted by Patti Johnson,

Yep, you heard me right. This is not a joke or exaggeration. The facts are out there for all to see. I wrote about the tokenization of nature in my article “From Blockchain to Ball and Chain: Are We Being Borged?”

This article will deal primarily with the tokenization of the world’s water supply.

Tokenization: Turning Life Itself into a Tradeable Chip

For those who do not understand tokenization, here is a short and simple explanation: Tokenization means turning something real, like a share of water rights, a measured volume of water from a river or aquifer, or even credits for water that was “saved” or recycled, into a digital token (a unique digital certificate) that lives on a blockchain.

A blockchain is simply a shared digital notebook that many computers keep identical copies of at the same time, so the records of who owns what cannot be secretly changed by any one person or company.

That token can then be bought, sold, or traded on markets the same way people trade stocks or other assets. Instead of water simply belonging to the land, the local community, or the people who rely on it, it becomes a financial product that large investors, corporations, and institutions can own fractions of and exchange for profit. The right to use, claim, offset, or trade that water becomes the commodity.

Offset means making up for the water you use by helping save or restore the same amount somewhere else. A farmer switches to drip irrigation, a project restores a wetland, or a company reuses treated wastewater. That saved or restored water is measured and turned into credit. You buy or claim the credit. On paper your water use is balanced.

How Dare They Profit from Stealing Our Water

How dare they make money off this corrupt plan to steal, control, measure and meter the world’s water supply. Yes, I sound like Greta. The irony is thick: the same girl who made “How dare you” famous has been thoroughly programmed to cheer for Agenda 2030 and the very control grid she should be screaming against. Since she refuses to use her catchphrase where it actually belongs, then I will.

Water is the foundation of life itself. Every human, every animal, every plant depends on it. Yet the same elites who lecture the public about scarcity and climate are building the machinery to turn every last drop into a tradable asset they can profit from while ordinary people face rationing and surveillance.

This is exactly the process already described and promoted in official reports. Goldman Sachs itself published “Securing and Financing the Future of Water” in 2026, openly stating that tokenization can turn water rights into traceable tokens that track use across markets and deliver credits for companies that conserve or recycle water through connections to flow meters. Read it yourself: https://www.goldmansachs.com/insights/articles/securing-and-financing-the-future-of-water

The United Nations has declared the world has entered an era of “Global Water Bankruptcy.” Their report argues that the old system of local rights is finished and that new enforceable limits, transparent accounting, and centralized management are required. See the official collection: https://unu.edu/inweh/collection/global-water-bankruptcy

The Mapping Machines Are Already Flying Over Your Head

Look at how they are already doing it.

Across the United States, helicopters now fly low over farms and aquifers towing giant electromagnetic loops that map the groundwater beneath our feet like an MRI of the earth. California’s Department of Water Resources runs statewide Airborne Electromagnetic Surveys for exactly this purpose. Click here to read how the water mapping technology works: https://water.ca.gov/programs/sgma/aem

More detail and images of the surveys: https://water.ca.gov/News/News-Releases/2024/Mar-24/Understanding-the-Underground-DWR-Completes-First-Phase-of-Innovative-Groundwater-Mapping-Program

USGS examples of the same helicopter-based technology used for aquifer mapping: https://www.usgs.gov/news/state-news-release/media-alert-low-level-helicopter-flights-image-geology-over-wyoming-and

These surveys create detailed maps of every major water source so that usage can later be tracked and limited.

The The All-Seeing Eye of Oracle Returns: Now It Watches Every Drop You Use

Oracle Utilities already processes data from more than 100 million meters worldwide with AI systems that detect irrigation, leaks, and individual household use in real time. Their customer platform is designed for exactly this level of precise control: https://www.oracle.com/utilities/customer-platform/

Larry Ellison didn’t just dream of a panopticon. He said the quiet part out loud: “Citizens will be on their best behavior because we are constantly recording and reporting everything that’s going on.” That wasn’t a warning. That was a sales pitch from the man who still owns roughly 40% of Oracle, the company now quietly embedding itself into the pipes that deliver the most basic resource on Earth: water.

Once you own the real-time ledger of every drop that enters every home, every farm, every factory, you don’t need jackboots. You just need a dashboard. Throttle the water, and compliance follows. The same technocratic elite that spent decades consolidating data, finance, and surveillance is now moving on the last ungoverned commons, water itself, under the soothing branding of “customer platforms” and “smart utilities.”

And Ellison isn’t some lone eccentric billionaire operating in a vacuum. He’s a Trump donor who poured roughly $45 million into supporting the 2024 campaign and has since enjoyed the kind of access that turns political proximity into regulatory profit. The same circle that lectures about freedom while building the tools to score, monitor, and ration everyday life now has one of its most unapologetic surveillance advocates sitting in their inner circle.

The water meters are just the latest sensor in a system that already knows when you open the fridge, when and where you drive, when you yawn, drink, text or speak and soon, how long you shower and how many times you flush your toilet.

This is not innovation. This is the elite’s operating system for managed scarcity and behavioral compliance, dressed up as progress and sold by a man who openly celebrated the idea that constant recording would keep the public “on their best behavior.” Oracle isn’t managing utilities. It’s helping construct the choke points. What’s next Larry? Are you going to regulate and tokenize oxygen?

The infrastructure for control is already being paired with the financial machinery. Chainlink, a decentralized oracle network that feeds real-world data such as meter readings and conservation verification into blockchain systems, has published detailed guides on digitizing water rights and conservation credits into tokens so companies can buy offsets just like carbon credits: https://chain.link/article/tokenized-water-rights-credits

In Dubai, the DMCC (Dubai Multi Commodities Centre), a government-backed free zone and major international trading hub, has signed agreements to launch the world’s first digital token backed by verified freshwater reserves, positioning water itself as a tradable commodity on global markets: https://mediaoffice.ae/en/news/2025/june/17-06/dmcc-signs-strategic-mou

They Already Seized the Food and Are Playing God with the Weather

The elites have been systematically taking control of the world’s food supply for years. Bill Gates, through Cascade Investment, has become the largest private owner of U.S. farmland, holding hundreds of thousands of acres across nearly twenty states. At the same time, major asset managers like BlackRock hold massive stakes in the dominant agribusiness corporations that control seeds, fertilizers, processing, and distribution.

Simultaneously, cloud seeding programs and solar geoengineering research, backed by Silicon Valley money and governments, are rapidly expanding. These efforts claim to manage rainfall and cool the planet, yet they place the power to influence weather patterns in the hands of the very institutions already pushing centralized control over water and food.

In other words, they are running the classic Hegelian dialectic to consolidate power:

1. Create the droughts through weather geoengineering/modification

2. Declare an emergency and frighten the public.

3. Arrive with the “solution,” water tokenization that will supposedly save the planet but in reality just make them richer.

The pattern is unmistakable. Connect the dots. First, they buy the land that grows the food. Then they experiment with altering the weather that waters the crops. Now they are mapping, metering, and tokenizing the water itself so that every drop can be tracked, rationed, and sold.

This Is Not Theory. This Is the Takeover in Progress. Technocracy 101

They tell us water is too important to leave in local hands. They declare bankruptcy on systems that have sustained communities for generations. Then they create the digital and physical infrastructure to measure every use, enforce every limit, and profit from every token. The shared nature of water is being rewritten into a system of permission slips owned by the elite few who say that they, the experts, the financiers, the scientists, know best how to manage nature and humanity. It is all part and parcel of the plan of Technocracy Inc.

And make no mistake, this entire scheme sits squarely inside the United Nations Agenda 2030 and its Sustainable Development Goals. SDG 6 pretends to be about “clean water and sanitation for all,” yet the real machinery being built is the global accounting, metering, and financialization of every drop. The same institutions that wrote the goals now promote water “bankruptcy,” enforceable limits, transparent tracking, and market-based solutions that turn a basic necessity of life into a tradable asset class. What is sold to the public as sustainability and equity is in practice the transfer of control from communities and nations to the very financial and bureaucratic elites who drafted the blueprint. Agenda 2030 is the framework being used to justify seizing, measuring, and selling the world’s water under the banner of saving it.

This is the plan. It is already in motion. And the people pushing it expect the public to accept it as inevitable.

It is NOT inevitable.

Resistance is NOT futile.

Expose the plan. Shout if from the rooftops, news sites, podcasts and council meetings.

Don’t let the elites complete their takeover plan. They have the money but we have the numbers.

China has spent years pouring money and political capital into building a homegrown semiconductor industry. Yet when its AI companies need to train their most sophisticated models, many still turn to Nvidia, according to South China Morning Post.

The biggest obstacle may no longer be the chips themselves. It is everything developers have built around them.

Nvidia’s CUDA software has become deeply woven into the way AI labs operate. Models, training tools and internal workflows have been designed around the platform, meaning switching to Chinese hardware can resemble rebuilding part of the factory rather than simply swapping out a machine.

SCMP writes that Huawei’s Ascend processors are among the leading domestic alternatives, but moving an established operation onto them can require substantial engineering work. One researcher estimated that doing so could increase the time and expense of a project by at least 50%.

How painful that transition becomes depends heavily on the model. Widely available open-source models such as DeepSeek are easier because engineers can modify the code and lean on work already done by others. In those cases, migration might require only a few developers and several additional weeks.

Closed systems are another matter. Without access to the underlying source code, engineers may have to spend months rebuilding and optimizing parts of the training process. One industry estimate suggested a difficult migration could occupy roughly 10 engineers for more than half a year.

China has had more success moving the finished products onto domestic infrastructure. Once a model has already been trained, running it for everyday queries — known as inference — is generally much easier to adapt to different hardware.

And domestic chips are beginning to handle training as well. Meituan said its enormous LongCat-2.0 model was developed using a 50,000-chip Chinese computing cluster.

So China’s Nvidia problem is increasingly about inertia as much as technology. Domestic processors may continue closing the performance gap, but Nvidia has something much harder to manufacture quickly: years of software, developer familiarity and infrastructure built around its ecosystem.

Authored by Stacy Robinson via The Epoch Times,

A report released Aug. 13 by the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has shined a light on alleged fraud by health providers who performed pediatric gender procedures.

The report, titled “Wolves in White Coats: How Doctors and Hospitals Pushed and Profited from the Fraud of ‘Gender Medicine’,” examined the actions and motives of 225 healthcare institutions and found they allegedly put profits and gender ideology ahead of patient needs.

Here are five key takeaways from that study.

HHS Alleges Insurance Coding Fraud

The HHS report laid out an alleged pattern of deception, encouraged by groups promoting gender procedures in children, where hospitals and healthcare providers utilized incorrect insurance codes to ensure they got paid.

Rather than use already-existing, specific codes related to gender identity disorders, HHS alleged they used what the study called “proxy diagnosis codes” that were vague, or outright false.

One common diagnosis was “endocrine disorder—unspecified,” which allowed doctors to bill for cross-sex hormones. HHS data showed that between 2015 and 2025, more than $42 million was billed to insurance companies under the unspecified disorder diagnosis.

A 2023 study by the University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics found that out of 1,480 patients diagnosed with unspecified endocrine disorder, only 71 actually had such an illness. An analysis by the Manhattan Institute also found a 30 percent rise in such diagnoses between 2020 and 2022, HHS said.

Another common miscoding was for “precocious puberty,” which allowed the doctors to prescribe and bill insurers for puberty blockers. The study found that between 2015 and 2025, insurers were billed more than $11 million under this diagnosis for patients aged 13 to 17.

But that can’t be accurate, the report said, because 13 to 17 is the natural age for puberty.

Advocates Encouraged ‘Alternative Diagnosis Codes’

The World Professional Association of Transgender Health, Planned Parenthood, and other groups encouraged healthcare providers to use “alternative diagnosis codes” not related to gender dysphoria, the HHS report stated.

The Epoch Times reached out to these organizations for comment.

In one instance, a Harvard-affiliated gender clinic called Fenway Health advocated using “more vague” diagnosis codes, but also warned that using inaccurate coding is illegal.

Another organization, the Campaign for Southern Equality, put together a toolkit called “Insurance Coding Alternatives For Trans Healthcare” that outlined workarounds for patients with gender dysphoria.

Most insurers exclude gender procedures unless state law requires coverage, the document states. The toolkit shows which coding is frequently rejected by insurers, and which commonly accepted codes to use instead.

If the insurer denies coverage, the toolkit suggests appealing repeatedly. After the third appeal, the case “goes to an outside agency, and is often accepted.”

For example, a patient can claim orchialgia—persistent pain in the testicles—to justify surgical castration, according to the report.

“How do you do a mastectomy, but then bill an insurance company and not raise any red flags? … You bill it as breast reduction instead of a mastectomy,” said Dr. Eithan Haim, an author of the report.

“This guide is essentially a template for how to commit medical fraud. We should all remember that this is something that people go to prison for. This is a major deal.”

In 2024, Haim was indicted by the DOJ for allegedly exposing private information on patients after he accused a Texas hospital of secretly providing gender surgeries on minors in violation of state law. His case was dismissed with prejudice the next year.

Lifelong ‘Captive Patients’ and Revenue

So-called gender affirming care is lucrative as the “captive patients,” as the report called them, require continual medical maintenance that can last decades—or a lifetime.

“You take a little girl and put her on testosterone, or a little boy and put them on estrogen. Well, they’re going to be on that forever and ever, right?” Assistant HHS Secretary Adm. Brian Christine said in an interview with NTD, The Epoch Times’ sister media outlet.

The surgeries and hormone treatments can also result in severe side effects, requiring more doctor visits and racking up hospital fees, the report noted. Mental therapy is often needed, too.

Citing data from the Human Rights Campaign—an organization that supports these procedures in minors—the report said the costs can range from $25,000 to $75,000 per patient.

If the client chooses to have surgeries, the total can skyrocket as high as $170,000 and beyond. Those numbers don’t include peripheral costs, such as hair removal, voice therapy, or reversal procedures.

The report included testimony from one young man who was told that “facial feminization” surgery would cost him $200,000.

“This new patient cohort—young, insured, or Medicaid-eligible, and requiring perpetual follow-ups—represented a strategic area of growth,” the report stated.

“Endocrinology and surgery departments gained volume and prestige, while hospital administrators gained a reliable revenue line that helps subsidize lower-margin services.”

The industry has brought in an estimated $120 million since 2019, the report stated.

Biden Administration

According to the report, President Joe Biden’s administration facilitated youth gender procedures, putting pressure on hospital systems by threatening to go after institutions that refused to perform them.

The Biden administration said healthcare workers were bound by the rules of the Affordable Care Act, and refusing gender treatments was “discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity.”

“Attempts to restrict, challenge, or falsely characterize this potentially lifesaving care as abuse is dangerous,” a Biden-era HHS document stated.

The approach was multi-faceted. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission told employers that their insurance couldn’t exclude such procedures. HHS, the DOJ, and the Department of Education also “took the position in guidance, regulations, and litigation that prohibitions on disability-based discrimination … may apply to individuals with gender dysphoria.”

The Office of Personnel Management also mandated that federal insurance carriers cover the procedures. The National Institute of Health also conducted a $10 million study to probe the impact of gender procedures on children, the HHS report said.

The Biden administration’s gender initiatives were overturned by President Donald Trump at the beginning of his second term in office. The Federal Trade Commission has also sued the World Professional Association for Transgender Health, alleging youth gender interventions are offered under false pretenses since they don’t resolve patients’ mental distress.

WPATH, in a June statement, said the suit was a product of “a relentless and targeted campaign to undermine gender-affirming care.”

Vance Calls for Investigation

In the wake of the report’s publication, Vice President JD Vance asked the Justice Department to look into the fraud accusations.

“These allegations are crazy, and they demand investigation,” Vance said in a video posted to social media Aug. 13.

The Epoch Times reached out to the DOJ to learn if the department would do so but received no response by time of publication.

As Fenway Health noted in one of its guidance documents, deliberately miscoding to deceive insurers is illegal, and the liability risk increases when Medicaid is involved because such fraud can run afoul of the  Federal False Claims Act.

That law allows the government to recoup triple damages and impose other financial penalties, and opens the door for private citizens to file civil suits on its behalf.

Authored by Mike McDaniel via AmericanThinker.com,

During my second career teaching high school English, I noticed several darkly funny but disturbing trends in “higher” education.  They were fueled by three primary drivers: abandoning merit, the federal government taking over the student loan industry, and DEI hysteria.

It was Barack Obama who federalized the student loan industry, pushing the idea that everyone should go to college.

To make that idea a reality, it was necessary for the government to guarantee student loans.

That had plenty of unfortunate and foreseeable effects. Because Colleges no longer had any financial skin in the game, they went on a mad administrator-hiring binge, which required enormous amounts of money, which required unprecedented numbers of students. 

Combined with a faux-religious devotion to DEI, colleges admitted all manner of people who in past years would have reasonably been found to be poorly suited to do college-level work. To cover this, it was necessary to do away with any sort of predictive testing like the SAT. All that was required for college admission was a student loan, unless one was a white male applying at an Ivy League school. Those guys, regardless of academic qualification, were often denied.

Enormous DEI departments with all manner of administrators and functionaries were established, and hundreds of millions were wasted on DEI gurus imported to inspire them.

So unprepared were so many, colleges were forced to establish remedial high schools on campus. It was a great scam. Full tuition for no credit, and blame students’ lack of ability on high school teachers like me, who could have told them who wasn’t academically capable if anyone had bothered to ask.

Grade inflation was a direct result of these disasters. It was necessary to hide the scams, so professors were required not only to dumb down the content of their classes and to require far less work, but to award unearned grades. An entire generation of college students was conditioned to expect maximum grades for minimum and poor work. And God help any professor who gave a minority student the grade their lack of work deserved.

As a result, innumerable students took 6-7 years to get a 4-year degree at enormous cost, but many simply dropped out without a degree, bearing enormous debt they had no credentials or ability to pay off.

I’m certainly not arguing college should be denied to anyone. I’ve known many people who struggled greatly but managed to earn a degree and were better and more productive people for it. I am arguing for rational decision-making and fiscally sound, ethical colleges.

The second Trump Administration has seen substantial success in forcing higher education to do away with DEI and to restore some degree of credibility to college degrees, which in recent years have come to mean little or nothing. But as the University of Michigan has recently demonstrated, there remains much to be done:

Graphic: X Post

So, students get a semester off to “acclimate to the demands of a University of Michigan education?” Not terribly long ago, students were expected to be ready for that when they first set foot on campus, and if they weren’t, academic probation was ready to encourage them.

And there’s a “mental health crisis” at the University of Michigan caused by expecting college students to do college-level work? Graduating people who lack the mental stability to be sufficiently responsible to do college assignments tends not to give employers faith in University of Michigan degrees, particularly in science-related fields.

The misadventures of Jason Arday at Cambridge, one of the Western world’s storied universities, are instructive. Without question an outrageously DEI hire, Arday didn’t show up to teach classes, had no teaching ability, was a blatant plagiarist, and, when challenged, cried “racism,” and so did Cambridge in defending his indefensible conduct and manifest lack of ability. How he managed to obtain a doctorate remains unanswered, perhaps unanswerable. In the aftermath of Arday’s forced resignation, a Cambridge faculty member felt the need to remain anonymous:

Graphic: X Post

That academic’s conclusions are remarkable mainly because circa 2026, it would be necessary for anyone to publicly state such obvious understandings about the nature of higher education. Arday, whose supposed qualifications and accomplishments should have set off every alarm at Cambridge, was instead praised and defended despite being far more of a charlatan than Professor Harold Hill, but without the roguish charm.

Those lies apparently cost Arday far more than an academic reputation.

Replacing merit with identity/sexual politics and eternal grievance has been a disaster for higher education and for America.

College has been, and ever must be, a proving ground, a place where one not only learns a body of useful knowledge but demonstrates the character necessary to apply it.

Hard work, determination, reliability, sincerity, honesty, and more must be forged in that crucible, just as it still is in the professional trades where one produces or walks.

Predictably, Iran has on Saturday issued a full-throated rejection of President Trump’s Friday evening words related to the status on the conflict and energy transit in the region.

In a speech on New York’s Long Island, Trump introduced the idea of declaring the Strait of Hormuz a US territory. “After we finish defeating Iran, which is being very badly defeated — pretty soon, I’ll be declaring the Hormuz Strait a territory of the United States,” Trump told a crowd of law enforcement officers.

Trump on declaring the Strait of Hormuz a U.S. territory post the conflict with Iran 👇 pic.twitter.com/BjgW8pNKIQ

— Brian Schwartz (@schwartzbWSJ) August 14, 2026

“Essentially, that’s what it is. We have the blockade. No ships get through unless we want them to,” he added. He claimed oil prices were coming “way down”.

Some pundits pointed to what seemed like classic hyperbole and his penchant for floating extreme scenarios in off-the-cuff fashion; however, Trump made the statement without any qualifiers other than it will happen when Iran is “badly defeated” by the United States. That seems to be the big if in the future scenario.

A Saturday X response from Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister Kazem Gharibabadi asserted the US has zero authority to claim the strait:

“The Strait of Hormuz has been Iranian, is Iranian, and will remain Iranian,” he wrote, as translated from Persian to English. “This strait will only be closed and opened under Iran’s command.”

The Iranian official then claimed all of Trump’s assumptions about the conflict were delusional, showing that Washington does “not accept the reality of defeat” and so must stop indulging in its “delusions”.

The Iranians have been reiterating that they will continue to enforce their blockade, also as the US Navy continues blocking imports and exports from Iranian ports.

Tehran continues to present the Oman deal – still pending finalization – as completely independent of US desires and conditions, and so better not interfere:

Iran has reached an agreement with Oman on a shipping route map for the Strait of Hormuz after weeks of technical negotiations, Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmaeil Baghaei has told state-run Defa Press.

“Despite US obstruction, the talks have made positive progress over the past three weeks and an agreement has been reached on the shipping route map.”

He added that both sides were still negotiating outstanding issues, including a statement to be issued by Tehran and Muscat, noting that exchanges between the two countries would continue until the process was finalized.

Given the two sides continue holding to conflicting absolutist demands and conditions, there’s a likelihood of further fighting – though it could continue to at a limited, tit-for-tat and slow pace.

Some Republican hawks are calling for some kind of bold military action by Trump, such as ordering the takeover of Kharg Island in order to show the Iranians and the American public that Tehran does not have the upper hand ahead of US November midterm elections.

However, the nearly six months of war so far has tended to demonstrate that each new escalation has not tended to go well for Washington, as Iran digs in its heels and escalates a response in turn.

Summary: 

• Second Ceuta Border Invasion Attempt By Sub-Saharan Africans Ilegals 
• Public Health Disaster Unfolds In Ceuta After First Invasion, Weeks Ago
• Hybrid Warfare Fears Mount As Migrant Flows Weaponized 
• Italy’s Schengen suspension with Spain will remain until security risks disappear

Weaponized Migrant Flows: Spain’s Ceuta Border Under Attack (Again) 

Multiple open-source reports indicate that thousands of illegal aliens are massing near Spain’s Ceuta border, raising the prospect of coordinated attempts to breach the enclave for the second time.

If verified, the invasion attempt comes just weeks after the first round, in which more than 60,000 military-aged men attempted to breach the border. This only suggests that migrant flows are being deliberately weaponized to pressure the socialist government in Madrid, potentially marking a second phase of sustained border destabilization.

Official reporting from news outlet France 24 says:

Morocco has deployed heavy security around the border city of Fnideq after false social media rumours claimed the border to Spain’s Ceuta enclave would open. Hundreds of migrants, mostly from sub-Saharan Africa, have gathered nearby, raising fears of another mass crossing just weeks after tens of thousands attempted to enter the Spanish territory.

Paris-based, state-owned RFI (Radio France Internationale) says:

Scores of would-be migrants, most of them from sub-Saharan Africa, were intercepted in northern Morocco near the border with the Spanish exclave of Ceuta on Saturday, two weeks after tens of thousands of people attempted to enter the territory.

Publicly available footage in the social media domain, most of which was posted on X from late Saturday into early Sunday, shows what appear to be swarms of illegal aliens trying to breach the Ceuta border.

🔴 #ÚLTIMAHORA Cientos de inmigrantes se preparan para asaltar Ceuta. Desde Castillejos, cientos de inmigrantes se dirigen hacia Ceuta para volver a cruzar el espigón del Tarajal.

📍Informa @joanguirado desde la ciudad autónoma

🔗 https://t.co/94ygyUMWWY pic.twitter.com/RJDbU2cufI

— ABC.es (@abc_es) August 15, 2026

Thousands and thousands of illegal migrants trying to storm the border of Spain and Europe.

The assault on Ceuta continues pic.twitter.com/MnrtaMts2Z

— Visegrád 24 (@visegrad24) August 16, 2026

Thousands of Moroccan migrants again attempt to enter Spain’s Ceuta enclave, just two weeks after the previous mass influx. pic.twitter.com/EoECVfgHhT

— Clash Report (@clashreport) August 16, 2026

Let’s circle back to our briefing on Aug. 5, or about 11 days ago, that pointed to new signals that a second round of weaponized migrant flows would be heading to the Ceuta border by mid-month:

• New Signals Point To Another Possible Migrant Invasion Against Ceuta

Earlier, we commented on the deteriorating conditions in Ceuta as it faces a public health disaster posed by the military-aged invaders.

A doctor in Ceuta told the media: “I don’t know what diseases I’m bringing home. I can’t even take my dog for a walk. Every day we receive reports of girls who have been raped.”

Doctora en Ceuta: «No sé qué enfermedades me estoy llevando a casa. No puedo salir a pasear a mi perro. Todos los días recibimos denuncias de niñas violadas». #InvasiónCeuta #SánchezDimisión pic.twitter.com/VjHr5N0R5N

— 🇪🇦 Generación X (@JoseGeneracionX) August 14, 2026

We suspect Italy’s Schengen suspension with Spain will remain until security risks disappear. EU leaders have warned these migrant flows are part of ‘Hybrid Warfare’ … 

Must Reads:

• The Ceuta Crisis And The Emerging European Divide
• Italy Suspends Schengen Travel Agreement With Spain After Horrifying Ceuta Invasion
• 22 EU Leaders Demand “Immediate Action” As Migrant Invasion Raises Fear Of Hybrid Warfare

Spain’s Vox Party Demands Morocco Pay For Migration Crisis As Ceuta Faces Public Health Disaster

Via Remix News,

A massive influx of migrants into Spain’s Ceuta has pushed the autonomous city’s healthcare infrastructure to the brink of collapse, prompting urgent warnings from medical professionals and triggering a fierce political battle in Madrid over who should foot the bill.

Thousands of Moroccan migrants again attempt to enter Spain’s Ceuta enclave, just two weeks after the previous mass influx. pic.twitter.com/EoECVfgHhT

— Clash Report (@clashreport) August 16, 2026

With an estimated 8,000 to 10,000 migrants still remaining in an enclave of just 80,000 residents and 19 square kilometers, local resources are severely overstretched, leaving health services struggling to contain potential infectious disease outbreaks.

These health services are also dealing with cases of rape, physical assaults, and other injuries associated with the massive influx of migrants. Meanwhile, locals say the beaches are occupied by migrants, leading to sprawling tent camps, feces, urine, and the spread of infectious diseases during a critical holiday beach season.

🇪🇸🔴Ceuta beaches are completely occupied by migrants, according to locals.

“We can’t take our kids to the beach, we can’t go. They are occupied, they are full of shacks, people are eating there, throwing food, it’s full of clothes, feces, urine.”

Infectious diseases like… pic.twitter.com/XzFztXYJb6

— Remix News & Views (@RMXnews) August 13, 2026

Medical staff on the front lines describe a system operating under extreme uncertainty. At Ceuta University Hospital, officials have opened a specialized 30-bed emergency wing intended for disaster scenarios. Many of these beds are occupied not out of acute medical necessity, but because doctors cannot safely release vulnerable patients onto the streets. As sources at the facility explained, “admission responds to the impossibility of discharging patients and sending them back to the streets.”

The pressure extends far beyond hospital walls into improvised encampments, such as the one at Trampolín beach. Julián Domínguez, president of the Association for the Defense of Public Health of Ceuta, highlighted the immense logistical challenge of providing street-level care to thousands of unsheltered people.

“The lack of hygienic spaces and isolation areas makes monitoring and controlling communicable conditions particularly difficult,” he said.

Medical personnel are already identifying cases of concern, including scabies, tuberculosis, and unexplained fevers. Speaking on the news program En boca de todos, a Ceuta emergency physician warned that conditions are rapidly shifting:

“Scabies is not a disease that has been eradicated, but there were very few cases, which are currently increasing,” said the doctor.

#ÚLTIMAHORA | Alerta en Ceuta por posible riesgo de sarna y tuberculosis: “Muchos inmigrantes vienen con fiebre”.

➡️ ¿Infravalora Mónica García el riesgo de enfermedades? Te leemos en #EnBocaDeTodos.

🔴 #EnBocaDeTodos en @cuatro con @davidalemantv
➡ https://t.co/OiGsSTHtqS pic.twitter.com/k6iRfMkXfp

— En boca de todos (@EnBocaDe_Todos) August 13, 2026

Addressing the risk of other contagious illnesses, the doctor added: “There are still patients with tuberculosis from time to time, but we really don’t know if there will be many more with the massive entry of immigrants to Ceuta… We are having fever infections without focus, many immigrant patients who do not know exactly what the cause of the infection.”

Vox party demands Morocco foot the bill

The escalating medical emergency has sparked a fierce response from the anti-immigration Vox party. The party, led by Santiago Abascal, registered initiatives in Congress demanding that the Spanish government guarantee the operational capacity of the National Institute of Health Management (INGESA) and take decisive legal steps against Morocco.

Vox argues that Spanish citizens should not carry the financial burden of what it terms a “migratory invasion,” insisting that Morocco must pay for the consequences that “its act of aggression has caused Spain.”

🇪🇸🔴 JUST IN: A Spanish woman says she has only her dog to protect her on the streets of Ceuta after a mass migrant invasion.

“She is the only one who protects me! Because there are no military, no police on the street. We are terrified!”

“I feel fear in my own city! In my… pic.twitter.com/aXIMsKOUe0

— Remix News & Views (@RMXnews) August 10, 2026

In its congressional filings, Vox demanded that the central government “conduct a rigorous audit of all expenses arising from the crisis and subsequently demand your refund from Morocco.”

The proposed audit would cover all extraordinary expenditures, including security deployments by the Armed Forces, National Police, and Civil Guard; emergency rescue operations; direct healthcare and pharmaceutical costs; temporary housing; and infrastructure damage.

Echoing warnings from the Official College of Physicians of Ceuta, which characterized the situation as a “healthcare catastrophe,” Vox pointed to documented cases of tuberculosis as evidence that recent events “put the public health of Ceuta residents at risk.”

🇪🇸🔴 A young Spanish woman is fleeing Ceuta because she no longer feels safe.

“I don’t want to feel anxious every time I step outside… It seems awful to me that all this is allowed to happen and nobody can close the border or do anything.”

However, she also claims that the… pic.twitter.com/o6KVfhR7p8

— Remix News & Views (@RMXnews) August 10, 2026

To resolve the staffing shortages hindering the medical response, Vox called for the immediate application of incentives for health personnel positions in Ceuta and Melilla that are notoriously difficult to cover. Above all, the party insists on diplomatic and economic pressure to ensure Rabat reimburses all accrued costs, “preventing the economic consequences of a massive and illegal entry from falling on Spanish taxpayers.”

Meanwhile, local residents of Ceuta have taken measures into their own hands, hosting a massive rally on Aug. 9. Under the slogan “Enough is enough. Ceuta will not give in,” protesters organized by religious communities and neighborhood associations brought together thousands of people to demand action against the mass arrival of migrants on July 30. The organizers put the turnout at over 10,000 people.

Read more here…

Ukraine launched one of its largest kamikaze drone attacks of the war against Russia on Sunday, with Russia’s Defense Ministry saying air defenses intercepted 822 Ukrainian drones overnight, including roughly 600 headed toward Moscow.

Ukrainian long-range missiles and drone swarms have targeted high-value military assets and oil and gas infrastructure deep inside Russia this year, with Ukraine stepping up its latest attacks on logistical networks, such as Russia’s version of Amazon, called Wildberries.

🔥 Ukraine has taken 7 of Wildberries’ 10 largest logistics hubs out of operation.

On Sunday night, following a large-scale drone attack on the Moscow region, the company’s logistics hub at the Koledino industrial park also ceased operations, alongside the warehouse in… pic.twitter.com/WzqpwdEf5W

— Defense of Ukraine (@DefenceU) August 16, 2026

Another Wildberries logistics warehouse was struck on Sunday, this time near Moscow. That brings the total to 20 of the e-commerce giant’s warehouses across Russia that have been targeted by Ukraine since mid-July.

Breaking news Telegram channel Astra reported that the latest Wildberries warehouse to be attacked is in Podolsk, Moscow Region, and is the “largest” warehouse owned by the e-commerce giant.

BREAKING:

Ukrainian long-range drones just obliterated the largest Wildberries logistics center in all of Russia.

A massive fire has engulfed the entire 250 000 sqm logistics center in Koledino in the Moscow region. 13 000 people were employed there. pic.twitter.com/KEwfGqMJnR

— Visegrád 24 (@visegrad24) August 16, 2026

For context, Wildberries is Russia’s largest online retailer and a critical national distribution network, with roughly 98,000 pickup points supporting tens of thousands of merchants.

The latest figures suggest that, as of Aug. 7, excluding the warehouse in Podolsk, Wildberries had 20 facilities and more than 1.18 million square meters of warehouse space, equivalent to over one-fifth of its capacity, taken offline by drone attacks. 

WILDBERRIES BINGO 👌 pic.twitter.com/iISjd3GyVB

— MAKS 26 🇺🇦👀 (@Maks_NAFO_FELLA) August 16, 2026

The resulting inventory losses and delivery disruptions have sparked concerns about seller bankruptcies, inflation and potential state support.

Wildberries and another Russian e-commerce platform, Ozon, together sell goods and services worth 8.5% of Russia’s gross domestic product. They provide jobs for 4 million people, or more than 5% of the country’s workforce.

Breaking on Saturday:

• Ukraine Hits Key Russian Space Facility With Flamingo Cruise Missiles

Previous Wildberries reporting:

• Wildberries – Russia’s Amazon – Has Seen Four Major Hubs Attacked In Quick Succession
• Yet Another Wildberries Facility – Russia’s Amazon – Goes Up In Flames After Ukraine Drone Strike

Meanwhile, Ukrainian forces continued striking Russian military assets and energy infrastructure in occupied Crimea. Russia retaliated overnight with strikes on Kyiv, targeting what Moscow described as facilities supporting Ukraine’s military.

Neither side has demonstrated an ability to shut down the other’s expanding long-range strike campaign. Kyiv’s attacks on Russia show that targeting is shifting to logistics and economic infrastructure, while Moscow continues targeting Ukraine’s defense-industrial base.