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The Global Laser Weapon Wave

The UAE offers vivid proof that high-energy laser weapons are proliferating faster than anyone predicted — and the Iran war revealed a looming challenge on the horizon

Jared Keller, Laser Wars, May 12, 2026

On April 30, the Financial Times reported Israel had sent a version of its 100 kilowatt Iron Beam high-energy laser weapon to the United Arab Emirates to help Abu Dhabi fend off hundreds of missiles and drones fired by Iran since the beginning of the US military’s Operation Epic Fury. The FT notes the deployment is one of the first examples of major defense cooperation between the two countries since the 2020 Abraham Accords — a display of “the value of being Israel’s friend,” according to a regional official.

There is little information publicly available on Iron Beam’s performance in the UAE. But on May 7, Defence Blog reported a Chinese-made vehicle-mounted laser weapon had been spotted at Dubai International Airport. Tentatively identified as consistent with the Guangjian-21A system first displayed at the Zhuhai Airshow in 2022, there was no announcement of the systems’ export from Beijing or an acknowledgement of its arrival in the country from Abu Dhabi.1

The sudden appearance of laser weapons in the UAE isn’t a total surprise: the government has previously expressed interest in procuring foreign directed energy systems through both direct sales and strategic partnerships and even pushed to develop its own indigenous research and development ecosystem. But neither story mentioned that the Abu Dhabi was already in the process of acquiring an American laser weapon system as well. A notification to Congress published on April 15 revealed that the UAE had asked to buy 10 counter-drone Fixed Site-Low, Slow, Small Unmanned Aircraft Integrated Defeat Systems (FS-LIDS) from the US Defense Department for $2.1 billion — and, notably, the system’s command and control (C2) architecture was being specifically scoped to integrate an unnamed laser weapon “being purchased” by Abu Dhabi through direct commercial sales.2

Three laser weapons. Two geopolitical blocs. One customer. This is the state of the global laser weapons race: a competitive, proliferating market where systems from rival powers increasingly coexist in the same inventory and even the same operational theaters……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………https://www.laserwars.net/p/military-laser-weapon-arms-race-uae-israel-china-united-states?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=3569396&post_id=197062483&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=rq5yc&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email

May 14, 2026 Posted by | United Arab Emirates, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Are Trump’s nuclear plans illegal?

“Fifty years ago, the Atomic Energy Commission was abolished because they became too much of a promoter and lost the confidence of Congress and the public over safety,” said Paul Gunter, director of the reactor oversight project at Beyond Nuclear. “The NRC was established to provide a regulator that prioritizes safety and is obligated not to take shortcuts for a production agenda. Instead, half a century later, we are on the same dangerous collision course, casting aside the NRC in favor of the DOE, which doesn’t have the experience or the staff to get the industry in line with safety and security. This capitulation to the Trump agenda could lead to the NRC being abolished altogether, because nobody will have confidence in them.”

May 11, 2026, https://beyondnuclear.org/are-trumps-nuclear-plans-illegal/

13 organizations, including Beyond Nuclear and Nuclear Information & Resource Service, have filed comments to the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission, suggesting Trump’s nuclear “orders” may violate long-standing legislation

The so-called “Rubber-Stamp Rule”, an effort by the Trump administration to “Make America Nuclear Again”, violates key components of the Atomic Energy Act (AEA) and Energy Reorganization Act, according to comments filed this week by 13 organizations including the Nuclear Information and Resource Service (NIRS) and Beyond Nuclear. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s (NRC) proposed rule will allow reactor designs that the Department of Energy (DOE) and Department of Defense (DOD) have approved to bypass required safety reviews by the NRC. 

In a separate comment filing in March, 11 state attorneys general concurred with the organizations’ findings that the Department of Energy ‘s new policy to exclude “pilot reactors” from both NRC licensing and environmental reviews violates existing law. In that case, the Department of Energy announced, in violation of federal law, that it would exempt previously untested reactors that it approves to be built and operated from any review of their environmental impacts.

“Along with the DOE’s environmental ‘free pass’ policy, the whole ‘expedited licensing’ regime the administration is attempting to set up appears to be illegal,” said Tim Judson, executive director of NIRS and co-author of comments filed to the NRC. “The White House is trying to create a ‘regulatory tunnel’ around NRC’s safety regulations. That would mean DOE’s biases and obviously false assumptions about the safety of nuclear power plants become the new normal, exposing the public to unacceptable dangers to our health and safety.”  

The NRC’s proposed regulation would allow companies that want to build a nuclear reactor of the same design as one DOE has previously approved to merely submit documentation of that approval and claim that the previously built reactor “is safe.” Such companies would likely never have to go through a detailed safety review by NRC to build and operate such reactors. In 1974, Congress amended the Atomic Energy Act to prohibit such a scheme.

“Fifty years ago, the Atomic Energy Commission was abolished because they became too much of a promoter and lost the confidence of Congress and the public over safety,” said Paul Gunter, director of the reactor oversight project at Beyond Nuclear. “The NRC was established to provide a regulator that prioritizes safety and is obligated not to take shortcuts for a production agenda. Instead, half a century later, we are on the same dangerous collision course, casting aside the NRC in favor of the DOE, which doesn’t have the experience or the staff to get the industry in line with safety and security. This capitulation to the Trump agenda could lead to the NRC being abolished altogether, because nobody will have confidence in them.”

The groups also told NRC that it cannot simply “rubber-stamp” reactors that the military builds, either. “And while the law allows the DOD to build its own nuclear reactors,” said Tim Judson of NIRS, “it does not allow the NRC to skip safety reviews for civilian nuclear plants just because they use the same designs. The military routinely exposes its personnel to dangers that civilians are supposed to be protected from.”

“In its eagerness to short-circuit reactor safeguards, the Trump administration is once again doing what it does best – demonstrating a complete disregard for the law,” said Linda Pentz Gunter, executive director of Beyond Nuclear. “But nuclear technology is too inherently dangerous to operate as an outlaw. Ignoring those dangers will put millions of Americans at risk of another catastrophic nuclear accident.”

Download the press release

May 13, 2026 Posted by | Legal, USA | Leave a comment

No case for nuclear in Scotland

When the lobby group Britain Remade, proclaimed support for nuclear power in Scotland last year, they declined to disclose that 89% of their own poll supported home-grown energy within our own borders – that desire for self-sufficiency kills nuclear stone dead. Scotland has no uranium mines.

When the lobby group Britain Remade, proclaimed support for nuclear power in Scotland last year, they declined to disclose that 89% of their own poll supported home-grown energy within our own borders – that desire for self-sufficiency kills nuclear stone dead. Scotland has no uranium mines.

   by beyondnuclearinternational, https://beyondnuclearinternational.org/2026/05/10/no-case-for-nuclear-in-scotland/

What the country needs is the flexible, affordable power delivered by renewables, writes George Baxter

Editor’s note: With the sweeping victory in last week’s Scottish elections by the pro-independence Scottish National Party, the country’s moratorium against new nuclear power plants, that the SNP leads and supports, remains secure. The London-headquartered UK Labour Government has been pushing Scotland to lift the ban, an approach rightly viewed in Scotland as yet another example of Westminster treating Scotland as a vassal state.

I’ve been through every argument that the nuclear industry makes promoting new nuclear power stations – but scratch the surface and they just melt through the floor.

New nuclear is fundamentally not needed – numerous studies, including by Stanford University and renowned energy modellers at LUT show that the UK, and indeed most, if not all, other countries can meet their energy needs with 100% renewables. Politicians’ fears about the wind and sun and the rain and the waves and tides being unable to meet all our needs are misplaced. Renewables, energy storage, energy efficiency and flexible power with a modern upgraded grid can do it all – cheaper, quicker, safer and a hell of a lot cleaner, and create many more thousands of jobs.

The cost of nuclear power is eye-watering. Look at Hinkley Point C and Sizewell C – nearly £100bn to build them both with massive delays and cost -over-runs. That is enough to install a 5kWh battery in every one of the 28 million homes in Britain, and leave £44bn for other things. Combine that with solar and every home becomes a power station with its own ‘baseload’. Alternatively, £100bn could fund planned upgrades to the grid needed to facilitate large and small renewables, twice over. The Coire Glas pumped hydro storage project in the Highlands could be built 50 times over. £100bn spent on a nuclear-free transition could be revolutionary.

What a renewable based system needs is flexible power, energy storage and a smart, modern grid. Surplus renewable electricity could also be used to generate ”green hydrogen” to generate electricity on calm, dull days. It could also be used to power heavy transport and industry.

Battery systems, including compressed air and pumped storage hydro, alongside vehicle to grid technology, can all be parts of the bedrock of energy security and an energy system that would be cooking with green power 24/7.

Nuclear does nothing to help any of this. Indeed, it is worse, it directly causes wind and solar plants to be switched off when green power is plentiful, because nuclear is so inflexible. Not only does nuclear cost an arm and a leg, it adds cost to the consumer for renewables.

We only have to look at the recent history of nuclear power to see how dangerous and polluting it is. Fukushima remains a slow motion disaster for the region as they scramble to deal with millions of gallons of radioactive water and melted reactor cores. Chornobyl’s 40 year anniversary is another timely reminder, that when things go wrong, they can go very wrong. At least when a wind turbine breaks down – you don’t need an exclusion zone for decades and mass public health measures – you just get some engineers with a crane and some spanners to go fix it. And despite what the ‘nuke, baby, nuke’ lobby says, there is no solution for the waste yet, other than to store and guard the most highly radioactive cores for hundreds of years to cool down out of the way somewhere. That’s the solution!

The hype about Small Modular Reactors is just that, hype. In fact, the only two operational SMRs are in China and Russia, and both have been beset by delays and cost increases. The economies of scale are lost, and studies have shown that they produce more highly radioactive waste for the same generating capacity than their slightly larger cousins.

These projects are pure spin, a clever wheeze by industry lobbyists intended to promote nuclear acceptability- small, click and collect, a kind of middle-aisle at LIDL feel to it.  In the words of energy expert Amory Lovins on SMRs: “This illusion neatly fits the industry’s business-model shift from selling products to harvesting subsidies.”

The Rolls Royce SMR – chosen by Great British Energy–Nuclear to be built at Wylfa in North Wales – is a 470MW reactor, not much smaller than the two Torness reactors, which are about 600MW each.

And then there is the fuel – uranium ore is needed and we don’t have any, (and the mining of it is handily missed out in nuclear promotional graphics comparing its land use to renewables, which also fail to point out that the land around solar arrays and turbines can still be used for traditional purposes).

Mind you, there is some recoverable uranium ore on the Orkney mainland – and when it was proposed to dig it up to use it at Dounreay last century, all hell broke loose and Orcadians stopped it by popular protest. So we would have to rely on imports of this global commodity – a market that is dominated by Russia and associates. Pete Roche of SCRAM put this well when commenting on a recent poll indicating only 14% of Scots thought we should focus on uranium fuelled nuclear reactors for our long term energy security needs: “Relying on a uranium-fuelled nuclear future is like jumping out of the oil and gas frying pan and into a nuclear fire – it makes no sense and Scots seem to get that.”

That Survation poll, surveyed 2000 Scots in the middle of the current election campaign, and found an overwhelming public preference to focus on a renewable energy future that would lower energy bills and tackle climate change more effectively. Only 12% of those polled thought the nuclear industry was the most trustworthy about its products, costs, pollutants and safety record.

When the lobby group Britain Remade, proclaimed support for nuclear power in Scotland last year, they declined to disclose that 89% of their own poll supported home-grown energy within our own borders – that desire for self-sufficiency kills nuclear stone dead. Scotland has no uranium mines.

We should just get on with building a country that is a renewable energy powerhouse so that future generations can look back and thank us for choosing a green, clean and sustainable energy route.  Nuclear is NOT a natural partner with renewables, indeed, it is a delaying tactic, holding back rapid decarbonisation, and adds extra and unnecessary cost to a renewables-based energy system.

George Baxter is the director of Green Power. He leads Green Power’s team delivering greenfield wind and solar developments both in the UK and Ireland.

May 13, 2026 Posted by | politics, UK | Leave a comment

Japan faces tough road ahead over nuclear-fuel reprocessing plant

Japan Times, 10 May 26,

Japan still faces a tough road ahead over the construction of a spent nuclear fuel reprocessing plant in Aomori Prefecture, whose completion date has been moved back 27 times.

With less than a year to go until the current deadline at the end of next March, Japan Nuclear Fuel is in time-consuming exchanges with the Nuclear Regulation Authority (NRA) over the plant.

The completion “will definitely be delayed” again, Aomori Gov. Soichiro Miyashita has said. Meanwhile, Chief Cabinet Secretary Minoru Kihara has said that the deadline remains unchanged.

Japan Nuclear Fuel began the construction of the plant, a key component of the country’s nuclear energy policy, in the village of Rokkasho in 1993, originally planning to complete it in 1997.

Delays primarily stemmed from a series of problems, including those with some equipment, before northeastern Japan was struck by the massive March 2011 earthquake and tsunami and the subsequent nuclear accident at Tokyo Electric Power Company’s Fukushima No. 1 power plant.

After the triple disaster, Japan significantly tightened nuclear safety standards. The NRA’s lengthy regulatory review to ensure the Rokkasho plant’s compliance with the standards led to delays in recent years.

The regulatory watchdog finished examining the plant’s basic design in 2020 and then started a detailed design review, which is still going on.

When Japan Nuclear Fuel announced its 27th postponement in the summer of 2024, it said it would complete its submissions to the NRA by November 2025 and win the body’s approval by March this year, but the plans have not progressed as scheduled………………………………………………………………………………. https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2026/05/10/japan/japan-nuclear-fuel-reprocessing/

May 13, 2026 Posted by | Japan, technology | Leave a comment

Fires break out in exclusion zone around Chernobyl nuclear plant

Arpan Rai & Maira ButtFriday 08 May 2026, https://www.independent.co.uk/bulletin/news/chernobyl-fires-radiation-russia-ukraine-b2973234.html

A forest fire burns in the exclusion zone around the Chernobyl nuclear power plant (AP)

  • Russia has said it is carrying out enhanced radiation monitoring after fires broke out in the exclusion zone around the Chernobyl nuclear power plant on Friday.
  • The country’s national public health agency said that enhanced radiation monitoring was being conducted and the situation was now “stable”.
  • The 1986 Chernobyl disaster is considered to be the world’s worst civil nuclear accident.
  • It spread Iodine-131, Caesium-134 and Caesium-137 across parts of Ukraine, Belarus, Russia, northern and central Europe.
  • Meanwhile, Ukraine has continued its long-range attacks on Russia with a drone strike one of the country’s largest oil refineries, located in Yaroslav

May 13, 2026 Posted by | incidents, Ukraine | Leave a comment

Fears Royal Navy nuclear submarine docks will be built overseas

A multibillion-pound nuclear submarine maintenance contract is at risk of
being awarded to a foreign shipyard, despite safeguards that normally
dictate that high-security work must be performed at secure sites in the
UK. The Ministry of Defence is preparing to kick off a tender for the Royal
Navy’s Additional Fleet Time Docking Capability (AFTDC) programme to build
floating dry docks that are pivotal to national security. The scheme would
double the availability of nuclear submarine docks at HM Naval Base Clyde.
The new docks would allow concurrent dry-dock maintenance of two submarines
at the base, also known as Faslane.

Times 9th May 2026,
https://www.thetimes.com/business/companies-markets/article/royal-navy-nuclear-submarine-docks-programme-euston-v22btzbm3

May 13, 2026 Posted by | safety, UK | Leave a comment

Will Trump’s failed Iran war provoke his break from Netanyahu’s ironclad grip?

10 May 2026 AIMN Editorial – Walt Zlotow, West Suburban Peace Coalition Glen Ellyn IL, https://theaimn.net/will-trumps-failed-iran-war-provoke-his-break-from-netanyahus-ironclad-grip/

On Iran war day 71 it’s clear Trump has not only lost his war, he’s blundered the world into a looming economic catastrophe. As horrendous as that is, it wasn’t even Trump’s idea. Trump was simply following orders from his real boss, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. On February 11, Netanyahu arrived at the White House with Mossad Director David Barnea. They encouraged – if not demanded – invasion. The Netanyahu-Barnea tag team argued Iran would collapse within a couple of days from a combination of assassinating Iran’s leader Ali Khamenei, massive bombing, Mossad-fomented civil unrest and ground incursions by Kurdish fighters.

That couple of days has morphed into 71 days of arguably the greatest military disaster in US history. Instead of collapsing within a couple of days, Iran retaliated against the massive US, Israeli bombing onslaught with their own. Result? All 13 US bases in the neighboring Gulf States are damaged or destroyed. Gulf States infrastructure has suffered massive damage. So has Israel, suffering its worst bombing in its 78 years.

Worst of all, Iran shut down the Strait of Hormuz, choking off a fifth of world oil supply which may cause a worldwide recession, if not depression. The Netanyahu-Barnea presentation was a blizzard of lies Trump swallowed whole in spite of Intelligence assessments to the contrary.

As the world careens toward economic catastrophe, Trump is completely out of options to achieve any of his war goals. Check that. Friday he alluded to striking Iran with nuclear weapons. Trump told reporters on whether the ceasefire if off: “If there’s no ceasefire you’re just going to have to look at one big glow coming out of Iran.”

Assuming he either doesn’t order nuclear strikes, or his military commanders disobey this directive to do so, Trump is facing the worst military defeat in America’s 250 years, all brought on by his fealty to Benjamin Netanyahu. What motivated Trump’s caving to the Israeli Prime Minister? Was it the hundreds of millions in campaign cash showered upon Trump and his Republican Congress? Was it the ‘Epstein Button’, damaging evidence related to the Epstein pedophile enterprise that Trump dare not risk being exposed? Is Trump simply an ardent Zionist believing that any Israeli murder and mayhem to further Israeli expansion and Middle East dominance is worthy of Trump’s enabling?

While we’ll likely never know, Trump must be contemplating the enormity of the disaster he’s inflicted on the Middle East, and very soon the US and entire world. The one benefit that may result from Trump’s immoral, criminal war is he may be rethinking his special relationship with the man who brought on the greatest calamity of his life, Benjamin Netanyahu. Trump needs to truly become the peace president he campaigned to be in 2016. He can do that by quitting his senseless and lost Iran war. He needs to jettison his subservience to Netanyahu’s vision of Greater Israel. He needs to cut off all US military aid to Israel till Netanyahu or his successor end the genocide in Gaza, near genocide in Lebanon and quest to destroy its hegemonic rival, Iran.

If Trump refuses to do the right thing, events on the battlefield and the world economy may push Trump aside and hopefully implement that peace initiative without him.

May 12, 2026 Posted by | Iran, Israel, USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Christiane Amanpour Lays Out Her Fear for CNN With Blistering Attack on David Ellison’s CBS ‘Realignment’

David Gilmour, May 6th, 2026, https://www.mediaite.com/media/tv/christiane-amanpour-lays-out-her-fear-for-cnn-with-blistering-attack-on-david-ellisons-cbs-realignment/

Veteran CNN journalist Christiane Amanpour pointed to the “ideological realignment” at CBS News on Wednesday as she expressed her “concern” at what her own network might look like under the oversight of incoming owner David Ellison.

Speaking in London at the Truth Tellers Sir Harry Evans Investigative Journalism Summit on Wednesday, Amanpour voiced “concern” over Ellison’s influence on CBS News and what it potentially meant for CNN as his Paramount Skydance acquisition of the network’s parent company, Warner Bros. Discovery, moves forward.

The deal would place Ellison, the son of Oracle co-founder and Trump donor Larry Ellison, in control of the network where Amanpour has worked since 1983, alongside CBS News, which has already undergone sweeping changes under Paramount and Skydance leadership.

“[Defense Secretary] Pete Hegseth, the world’s favorite frat boy supremo, has said that the sooner David Ellison owns CNN, the better. And CNN has become this sort of lightning rod, hasn’t it, for this administration?” asked moderator Emily Maitlis, as the topic of corporate ownership takeover came up. “Does it change what you do? Do you fear what is coming at you now in terms of a change?”

“Clearly I’m concerned, and I’m not sure how much I’m allowed to say about a corporate thing that’s underway, but I am, obviously, as a person, as a journalist with a record, concerned,” Amanpour said. “And I’m concerned based on what’s happened to the other things that he’s taken over already like CBS News right? I mean, do I have to list what’s happening there?”

Amanpour then delivered a blistering takedown of the CBS News under Ellison’s leadership.

“I mean hemorrhaging viewers, probably hemorrhaging money, this ideological realignment of CBS and the destruction potentially of 60 Minutes,” she said.

In a passionate case for 60 Minutes, she praised the show as “one of literally the legacy” programs in American television journalism, adding: “Nobody can match 60 Minutes for a brilliant television magazine show that’s been doing hard news and cultural news, and for decades and decades.”

The comments come amid mounting scrutiny over the future editorial direction of major news outlets as billionaire-backed consolidation reshapes the media landscape.

Amanpour suggested staff at CNN were anxious about preserving newsroom autonomy under new ownership.

“I would like to think that we would have the very basic, which is editorial independence, I’m hoping for that,” she said. “I know many of us at CNN are incredibly – including leadership – are very, very committed to that clearly.”

May 12, 2026 Posted by | media, USA | Leave a comment

Putin names condition for meeting with Zelensky

Face-to-face negotiations can take place, but only after a final long-term peace agreement is fully prepared, the Russian president has stressed

9 May, 2026 , https://www.rt.com/russia/639812-putin-names-condition-for-meeting-zelensky/

Russian President Vladimir Putin has stated that a meeting with Ukraine’s Vladimir Zelensky could take place “anywhere,” including in a third country, but only after a final long-term peace agreement is fully prepared and ready for signing.

“The Ukrainian side and Mr. Zelensky, they are ready to have a personal meeting… We have never refused,” Putin said during a press conference after Victory Day celebrations on May 9. “We can meet in the third country as well, but only after there is an ultimate agreement regarding a peace deal that must be a long-term deal.”

He stressed that the meeting should be the “final thing,” the signing ceremony, and not turn into negotiations. Recalling the Minsk Accords experience, Putin noted: “We can speak hours, day and night and it would yield no results. We need specialists to take care of that… then we can meet, we can sign.”

During the same May 9 briefing, Putin declared that the Ukraine conflict “is heading towards the end.”

These remarks came one day after US President Donald Trump expressed hope that the ceasefire declared by Moscow on May 8 could lead to the fighting wrapping up soon.

Last December, Putin reiterated that Russia seeks a peaceful resolution of the Ukraine conflict provided its root causes are eliminated.

May 12, 2026 Posted by | Russia, Ukraine | Leave a comment

Covert NATO initiative turns film into anti-Russia battleground

The Grayzone and Kit Klarenberg, May 10, 2026

A scandal has erupted over covert NATO conferences with the Western entertainment industry. Leaked documents reviewed by The Grayzone show how NATO has sought to infiltrate film and TV for decades, with UK intel operatives taking the lead.

On May 3, The Guardian revealed that NATO has held a series of secret meetings with film directors, screenwriters and TV producers in cities from Paris to Los Angeles. The disclosure suggests NATO is seeking to employ the entertainment industry in its propaganda operations as a European war looms.

To date, NATO’s “conversations” with scriptwriters have reportedly “inspired, at least in part” three separate unstated projects, which are already in development. At a forthcoming London summit, NATO operatives are set to meet with screenwriters tied to the Writers’ Guild of Great Britain (WGGB). In email correspondence, the union told its members the event will focus on the “evolving security situation in Europe and beyond.”

Organizers claim NATO was “built on the belief that cooperation and compromise, the nurturing of friendships and alliances, is the way forward.” The alliance is actively seeking to influence film and TV projects extolling this mantra, stating, “even if something so simple as that message finds its way into a future story,” as a result of the meeting, “that will be enough.”

But collusion between NATO and the entertainment industry has a well-established history. Over recent decades, NATO has covertly sought to employ film and television creatives as psychological operations specialists, while influencing popular culture. A core driver of this push has been Chris Donnelly, a veteran British Ministry of Defence and military intelligence operative, who led alliance expansion into Central and Eastern Europe during the 1990s.

Donnelly later developed the Integrity Initiative to cultivate support for conflict with Russia through covert networks of influential pro-war pundits and operatives. Hidden behind a seemingly legitimate think tank called the Institute for Statecraft, the Integrity Initiative only became known to the public after independent outlets like The Grayzone reported on leaked emails from Donnelly revealing its existence.

In leaked documents discussing NATO expansion, Donnelly stated, “What I needed in the 1990s and did not have” was a major international public relations firm to “scale up successful activities to have real impact,” and achieve “essential behavioural change” in audiences. To address the problem, he proposed “advertising campaigns on TV promoting change, a TV soap opera looking at the problem of corruption” and other innocent-seeming cultural products aimed at enhancing NATO control.

Donnelly expanded NATO – often against significant public opposition – in the former Soviet Union, Warsaw Pact and Yugoslavia by penetrating target countries’ governments, militaries and even religious institutions. This ensured a NATO-friendly lobby on the streets, and throughout corridors of power, across the region. This experience was fundamental to Donnelly’s founding of now-defunct ‘charity’ the Institute for Statecraft. Through its subsidiary Integrity Initiative, the Institute constructed clandestine nexuses of journalists, academics, and military and intelligence operatives throughout the Western world, known as “clusters”.

These networks could be mobilized to spread pro-NATO propaganda, and encourage public and state-level antagonism towards Russia. Integrity Initiative played a not insubstantial role in laying the Ukraine proxy war’s foundations. An essay published on the Institute’s website in July 2014 by MI6-connected academic Victor Madeira openly laid out this objective, declaring “economic boycott, breach of diplomatic relations” and “propaganda and counter-propaganda” could produce “armed conflict of the old-fashioned sort” with Moscow, “that Great Britain and the West could win.”

In a leaked Institute file, Madeira discusses precisely the kind of “propaganda and counter-propaganda” he meant. “We’ll need to go beyond old-style military ‘romps’ and get entertainment ‘outputs’ that draw out the nature of 21st-century conflict: diffuse, across society, without clear boundaries at times,” he wrote. “That’s the real fight we’re fighting; we can more than hold our own on the military side of things.”

Popular TV show ‘McMafia’ influenced by British intelligence

In February 2018, a veteran writer on US state cultural policy and public diplomacy named Martha Bayles emailed Donnelly to pitch a “multi-episode, multi-season dramatic television series” about Russia in the 1990s. Bayles pointed to a US-UK co-production called McMafia as an example of the “commercial and cultural dominance” of long-form TV with “an avid following among young and old alike.” The widely-watched program drew on former BBC World Service reporter Misha Glenny’s 2008 non-fiction book of the same name………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..

Donnelly and the British military-intelligence veterans who staffed his now-defunct Institute for Statecraft were hard at work weaponizing popular culture to drive public hostility to Russia. In January 2018, the British state broadcaster interviewed a staffer at Donnelly’s Institute, Euan Grant, about “the impact of suspect Russian money” on London, as part of BBC wider series enquiring “How Real is McMafia?”………………………………………………………………………………

As part of the proposed collaboration, NATO would be granted “input” into the show’s script. At the time, the Institute for Statecraft was the British representative of NATO’s Atlantic Treaty Association, a “community of policy-makers, think tankers, diplomats, academics and representatives from industry.” The organization described its mission as “inform[ing] the public of NATO’s role in international peace and security and promote democracy, individual liberty and the rule of law through debate and dialogue.”

Western popular culture infiltrated by NATO for years

Leaked files show Grant masterminded a dedicated Institute project countering supposed “Russian destabilisation” of “international financial sectors.” Contacts in journalism and the arts provided an ideal delivery mechanism. He argued the broadcast of popular TV shows and films referencing Russian organized crime provided an extraordinary propaganda bonanza for the British military-intelligence apparatus, potentially exposing millions of Westerners to anti-Russian programming……………………………………….

In other leaked documents, Grant strategized a covert propaganda blitz to expose how the NATO protectorate of Moldova was supposedly “exploited” by Moscow, for “building Russian and Russian speaking influence in EU, EU applicant and Eastern Partnership countries.” He noted how recent Hollywood films and the smash French drama series Spiral had featured “Moldovan linked” plotlines, providing “opportunities” to Institute for Statecraft propagandists. He suggested the BBC “might also be interested” in covering recent books about Russian organized crime, “set in Moldova.”……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..

Were these top serials demonizing Russia organic products?

It is uncertain which recent Western cultural productions have resulted from NATO’s covert meddling. However, inexplicably timed historical dramas in recent years, featuring highly negative portrayals of Russia and Russians, raise serious questions……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………. https://thegrayzone.substack.com/p/covert-nato-initiative-turns-film?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=474765&post_id=197028664&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=4ds0bd&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email

May 12, 2026 Posted by | EUROPE, secrets,lies and civil liberties | Leave a comment

Israel targets southern Lebanon with internationally banned phosphorus shells

May 5, 2026 , https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20260505-israel-targets-southern-lebanon-with-internationally-banned-phosphorus-shells/

The Israeli army shelled towns in southern Lebanon with phosphorus munitions Tuesday, according to the National News Agency NNA.

The agency reported that the towns of Kounine and Beit Yahoun in the Bint Jbeil district were targeted with artillery shells containing phosphorus, which are banned internationally.

Israeli warplanes separately carried out airstrikes on the towns of Kafra, Braachit and Safad al-Battikh in the Tyre district, said the report.

Additional strikes hit Beit al-Sayyad and Mansouri, where three raids targeted residential homes, according to the agency.

No casualties were reported.

Despite a ceasefire that was announced April 17 and extended until May 17, the Israeli army continues daily strikes in Lebanon and widespread demolition of homes in dozens of villages.

Lebanon’s Health Ministry said Tuesday that the death toll from Israeli attacks since March 2 has reached 2,702, with 8,311 injured.

May 12, 2026 Posted by | Israel, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Press groups demand records on potentially corrupt Paramount acquisitions

May 7, 2026 / Freedom of the Press Foundation, https://freedom.press/issues/press-groups-demand-records-on-potentially-corrupt-paramount-acquisitions/

New York, May 7, 2026 — Today, Freedom of the Press Foundation (FPF) and Reporters Without Borders, Inc. demanded records from Paramount Skydance Corp. regarding potentially corrupt acquisitions and deals that could result in relinquishing editorial control of major news outlets to the Trump administration. Public reports suggest that David Ellison and his father Larry may have tried to secure regulatory approval to acquire Paramount and now Warner Bros. Discovery by, among other things:

  • Making a “side deal” to settle President Trump’s spurious lawsuit against “60 Minutes” by providing $15 million to $20 million worth of free advertising.
  • Installing a pro-Trump GOP donor without journalism experience as “ombudsman” at CBS News to evaluate complaints of “bias” and to eliminate all diversity, equity, and inclusion practices.
  • Promising to make “sweeping” changes to CNN, and to potentially fire anchors and commentators whom Trump dislikes.

Since Paramount Skydance announced its most consequential Trump-friendly changes at CBS News in October — acquiring The Free Press and appointing Bari Weiss as editor-in-chief — the company’s market capitalization has decreased by 40%, wiping out more than $8 billion in shareholder value. Ratings for key programs, like “CBS Evening News with Tony Dokoupil,” have also dropped precipitously. Freedom of the Press Foundation and Reporters Without Borders, which are both shareholders in Paramount Skydance Corp., are entitled to inspect the company’s books and records related to these developments under Section 220 of the Delaware General Corporation Law.

“Shareholders are entitled to know when the government uses its leverage over corporate transactions as a backdoor to meddle in editorial decisions that the First Amendment leaves to the press,” said Seth Stern, chief of advocacy at Freedom of the Press Foundation. “Larry and David Ellison’s capitulation not only harms the public and our democracy, it hurts Paramount by producing news shows people don’t want to watch and tanking the reputations of news outlets in order to appease Trump. If the Ellisons can’t stand up to their friends in the administration and defend the First Amendment, they should stay away from the news business.”

“We need to know what the Ellisons may have promised the president to secure these deals,” said Clayton Weimers, executive director of Reporters Without Borders, Inc. “This acquisition has all the warning signs of a political capture. The American public deserves to know whether the Ellisons are sacrificing editorial independence to appease Donald Trump and secure regulatory approval from an administration that is openly hostile to press freedom.”

“Our clients are entitled to the same records as any other shareholder in Paramount, and legally, the company must comply,” said Brendan Ballou, CEO of the Public Integrity Project. “If Paramount fails to do so, we are prepared to vindicate our clients’ rights in court.”

Under Delaware law, Paramount has five business days to respond to the shareholders’ request. Freedom of the Press Foundation and Reporters Without Borders are being represented by the Public Integrity Project and Ron Poliquin of The Poliquin Firm.

Please email Seth Stern (seth@freedom.press) for any follow-up questions or inquiries.

May 12, 2026 Posted by | media, USA | Leave a comment

The ongoing Fukushima nuclear disaster 15 years on: a photoessay

Peace and Health Blog. International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War Tilman Ruff, April 2, 2026

It is now 15 years since the Great East Japan Earthquake on 11 March 2011—and the tsunami it generated—wrought havoc on the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant (FDNPP). A predictably dangerous plant design, a corrupt and negligent operator, and Japan’s incestuous and corrupted ‘nuclear village’ involving collusion and revolving doors between government, regulator and operators, combined in a lethal mix.

The myth that a nuclear disaster couldn’t happen in Japan and therefore didn’t need to be prepared for continues to exact a high toll. The Fukushima Nuclear Accident Independent Investigation Commission, the only such body ever established by the National Diet of Japan, concluded that: 

“It was a profoundly man-made disaster – that could and should have been foreseen and prevented. … a multitude of errors and willful negligence that left the Fukushima plant unprepared for the events of March 11.” “… Bureaucrats … put organisational interests ahead of their paramount duty to protect public safety.”

The accident “was the result of collusion between the government, regulators and TEPCO … They effectively betrayed the nation’s right to be safe from nuclear accidents.”

“The Commission concludes that the government and regulators are not fully committed to protecting public health and safety”.

Despite this clear and damning indictment, the highest courts in Japan have acquitted Tokyo Electric Power Company’s (TEPCO) top executives and have not held the government accountable. No TEPCO executive or government official is in prison because of a huge and ongoing disaster they could and should have prevented.

The 40th commemoration of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster on 26 April this year provides another sombre milestone to reflect on humanity’s flirtation with the most hazardous technology ever invented, intimately linked with weapons that pose the most acute existential threat to the biosphere.

While both national and prefectural governments seek to present the Fukushima disaster as effectively over and the region being open for business, the resulting catastrophe is far from over. A visit to Japan in late 2025 provided a valuable opportunity to visit Fukushima for the sixth time since the disaster and learn from those grappling with the ongoing challenges to health, livelihoods and rebuilding a sustainable future in the regions affected by the disaster, which extend far beyond the boundaries of Fukushima Prefecture, even though government programs to address the disaster’s aftermath focus exclusively on Fukushima.

Because ‘luckily’ half the radioactive caesium (Cs) released by the reactor meltdowns and explosions is Cs-134, with a two year half-life, rather than the 30 year half-life of Cs-137 which makes up the remainder of the caesium released, the initial decline in residual radioactivity, to which caesium is the dominant contributor, has been faster than following the Chernobyl disaster. 

The multiple damaged nuclear reactors and spent fuel pools at Fukushima Daiichi are far from stable, and decommissioning as planned by TEPCO is barely progressing and looks increasingly unfeasible. Just 0.9 grams of fuel debris has been able to be removed to date, in two removals three years later than scheduled, while 880 tons remain with no plans yet for how to remove the bulk of this material. In addition, 1,007 tons of spent fuel remain in the spent fuel pools at Units 1 and 2. The melted reactors with spent fuel pools resting above them have been severely structurally damaged. In reactor 1 for example, robotic cameras have revealed that the concrete of the pedestal which supports the reactor has melted all the way around, exposing the internal reinforcing bars now providing effectively the only structural support. These damaged structures have heightened vulnerability to further earthquake and tsunami damage.


A major independent international assessment of a kind that Japan has resisted to date is warranted to assess the best means to address this extremely challenging, highly radioactive mess to order to most effectively and expeditiously secure the site as much as possible from further fires, meltdown or criticality events, further tsunami or earthquake damage, and ongoing or escalating release of radioactive materials. While it may be feasible and challenge enough to remove the fuel remaining in the spent fuel pools above Units 1 and 2, rather than stubbornly persisting with decommissioning plans going nowhere, aiming to stabilise the damaged fuel in the reactors so that active cooling is no longer required, and establishing durable physical encasement of the damaged facilities on all sides deserve more thorough consideration.


Decontamination and redistribution

Extensive decontamination by scraping away the upper 5 cm of surface soil for 20m around houses, in fields and gardens, in schools, childcare centres, parks and public gathering places, resulting in the accumulation of 14 million m³ of contaminated soil, has denuded areas and reduced fertility of agricultural land, but has had some useful effect in reducing radiation exposure to residents and contamination of vegetables grown in decontaminated areas. Use of potassium-rich fertiliser has also contributed to reducing caesium absorption by crops. However, forested areas, which comprise 70% of Fukushima, particularly covering hills and mountains which received higher fallout than valleys and low-lying areas, act as reservoirs of radioactivity, which is constantly washed down by rain and snow to flatter and lower-lying areas where people’s homes, farms, paddies and fields lie, and also washes into estuaries and beach sands. This contributes to patchiness and high variability of contamination at a local level, and hence the importance of localised and ongoing measurement.

Hot caesium-laden particles

An important discovery was made by Japanese geochemists, particularly Satoshi Utsunomiya, that caesium-rich microparticles 2-3 microns in diameter, small enough if inhaled to be retained in the alveoli of the lung, were not only widely present in hotspots in Fukushima, but also widely deposited in Tokyo on 15 March 2011, when the most intensely radioactive fallout cloud passed over Tokyo following the explosion of the Unit 3 reactor. 

These particles, assessed to be formed by the interaction of molten reactor fuel with concrete surrounding and supporting Fukushima Daiichi reactors 1 and 3, are intensely radioactive, more so than spent nuclear fuel. Contrary to conventional assumptions about the highly soluble nature of caesium and therefore (as a potassium analogue) its even dispersal in organisms and organs, these particles are insoluble, meaning they can deliver a much greater localised radiation dose to surrounding cells, and for a longer period. The main scientific publication of these findings was delayed some years because of academic infighting and political sensitivity. Their significant implications for human radiation exposures and radiation protection related to the Fukushima disaster, including the identification and isolation of radioactive hot-spots, have hardly been explored.

Public health and safety continue to be sidelined

National and regional government policies are still negligent in failing to prioritise public health and safety. In the early weeks after the disaster, the Japanese government, arbitrarily and without scientific justification, increased the maximum permissible radiation exposure for a member of the public from 1 to 20 mSv per year. This unacceptably high level is still in place, 15 years later, as the basis for government policy, including clean-up standards and the designation of areas suitable for residents to return to and ending their eligibility for government support. No other government has accepted such a continuing high radiation level for its population, including the most vulnerable, particularly children. The government is now even countenancing some return to areas where doses estimated to be received are up to 50 mSv/yr.

The Japanese government also continues other weakened protection standards, for example before the disaster, waste and soil with radioactivity more than 100 Bq/kg was regarded as strictly controlled waste, whereas since the disaster, soil which is contaminated up to 8000 Bq/kg has been classified as suitable to be treated as ordinary waste, suitable for incineration and reuse in construction works around the country.

In August 2023, Japan began discharging processed radioactive Fukushima wastewater into the Pacific Ocean. As of 22 Dec 2025, according to TEPCO, 127,000 m3 of contaminated water has been dumped, containing about 31.2 TBq of tritium. Such discharges are planned to continue for at least 30-40 years, in breach of Japan’s obligations under the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, which expressly prohibits ocean dumping of radioactive waste. This will no doubt include not only the 1.4 million m3 of wastewater already accumulated, but contaminated wastewater which continues to accumulate for the forseeable future, at a current average of 50 m3/day, containing a raft of radioactive contaminants. Alternatives such as prolonged storage in purpose-built large tanks, or incorporating treated wastewater into concrete for underground construction use, were given no serious consideration.

An epidemic of thyroid cancer in children ……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………… https://peaceandhealthblog.com/2026/04/02/the-ongoing-fukushima-nuclear-disaster-15-years-on-a-photoessay/#more-7185

May 11, 2026 Posted by | environment, Fukushima continuing | Leave a comment

America’s Suicide Pact

Trump is not an outlier. He is the naked, stripped-down expression of this suicidal pact. He does not pretend the system he inherited works. He lies with less finesse. He crassly enriches himself and his family. He speaks in crude vulgarities. He dismantles any government agency dedicated to the common good, including the Environmental Protection Agency, the Department of Education and the U.S. Postal Service. But he embodies what came before him, albeit without the liberal façade.

America’s suicidal march began long before Donald Trump. Trump and the buffoons around him are the inevitable final chapter of the decaying empire.

Chris Hedges, May 9, 2026 , https://scheerpost.com/2026/05/09/americas-suicide-pact/

Civilizations, as the historian Arnold J. Toynbee famously argued, “die from suicide, not by murder.” They collapse from within. They fall prey to moral, social and spiritual decay. They are seized by a parasitic ruling class. Democratic institutions seize up. The citizenry is immiserated, wealth is funneled upwards to the ruling class and coercion is the principle form of control.

Our suicidal march began long before Donald Trump and his bizarre court of buffoons, sycophants, grifters and Christian fascists took power. It began when the ruling class, especially under the Reagan and Clinton administrations, set out to harvest the country and empire for personal profit.

There is a word for these people. Traitors.

These traitors, ensconced in the leadership of the two ruling parties, stripped us of assets and power slowly. They used subterfuge, lies and legalized bribery. They pretended to honor electoral politics, checks and balances, a free press and the rule of law while subverting all of these democratic pillars. That old system, however flawed, was hollowed out. It was turned over to the amoral and the idiotic — look at the Supreme Court or Congress — those willing to do the bidding of the billionaire class.

Armed with billions by the mortal enemy of the demos — the oligarchs and corporations — the political elites, Republicans and Democrats, destroyed the careers of those politicians who resisted. They crushed labor unions. They blacklisted honest journalists and consolidated the press into the hands of a handful of corporations and oligarchs. They slashed regulations that constrained unfettered greed and protected the population from predatory corporations and environmental toxins. They passed legislation that created a de facto tax boycott for the rich — Trump famously paid no federal income taxes in 10 of the 15 years prior to his presidency — while stripping the country of its industry and throwing some 30 million people out of work. Wealth is no longer created by producing or manufacturing. It is created by manipulating the prices of stocks and commodities and imposing a crippling debt peonage on the public.

These parasites cut or abolished social programs, militarized the police, built the largest prison system in the world and pumped funds into a bloated and out-of-control war industry. German socialist and politician Karl Liebknecht, on the eve of the suicidal folly of World War I, called German imperialists “the enemy at home.” Our rulers, our enemies at home, mounted a series of futile wars that degraded the empire’s global hegemony and poured trillions of dollars of taxpayer money into their bank accounts. Iran is the most recent example.

Trump is not an outlier. He is the naked, stripped-down expression of this suicidal pact. He does not pretend the system he inherited works. He lies with less finesse. He crassly enriches himself and his family. He speaks in crude vulgarities. He dismantles any government agency dedicated to the common good, including the Environmental Protection Agency, the Department of Education and the U.S. Postal Service. But he embodies what came before him, albeit without the liberal façade.

“Trump is not an anomaly,” I wrote in “America: The Farewell Tour”

He is the grotesque visage of a collapsed democracy. Trump and his coterie of billionaires, generals, half-wits, Christian fascists, criminals, racists, and moral deviants play the role of the Snopes clan in some of William Faulkner’s novels. The Snopeses filled the power vacuum of the decayed South and ruthlessly seized control from the degenerated, former slaveholding aristocratic elites. Flem Snopes and his extended family — which includes a killer, a pedophile, a bigamist, an arsonist, a mentally disabled man who copulates with a cow, and a relative who sells tickets to witness the bestiality — are fictional representations of the scum now elevated to the highest level of the federal government. They embody the moral rot unleashed by unfettered capitalism.

The Epstein files, a window into the degeneracy of our ruling class, included not only Trump, but former U.S. president Bill Clinton — who allegedly took a trip to Thailand with Epstein — Prince Andrew, Microsoft founder and billionaire Bill Gates, hedge fund billionaire Glenn Dubin, the former New Mexico governor Bill Richardson, former secretary of the treasury and former president of Harvard University Larry Summers, cognitive psychologist and author Stephen Pinker, Epstein’s lawyer and arch Zionist Alan Dershowitz, billionaire and Victoria’s Secret CEO Leslie Wexner, the former Barclays banker Jes Staley, former Israel prime minister Ehud Barak, magician David Copperfield, actor Kevin Spacey, former CIA director William Burns, real estate mogul Mort Zuckerman, former Maine senator George Mitchell and disgraced Hollywood producer and convicted rapist Harvey Weinstein. They all orbited Epstein’s perpetual Bacchanalia.

Anand Giridharadas, who wrote “Winners Take All: The Elite Charade of Changing the World,” notes that the circle of powerful men, and a handful of women who surrounded Epstein, are emblematic of a privileged caste that lack empathy in the suffering and abuse of others, whether that is sexual abuse, including that of children, financial meltdowns they orchestrate, wars they back, addictions and overdose they enable, the monopolies they defend, the inequality they turbocharge, the housing crisis they milk and the intrusive technologies they refuse to protect people against:

People are right to sense that as the emails lay bare, there is a highly private merito-aristocracy at the intersection of government and business, lobbying, philanthropy, start-ups, academia, science, high finance and media, that all too often takes care of its own more than the common good. They are right to resent that there are infinite second chances for members of this group even as so many Americans are deprived of first chances. They are right that their pleas often go unheard, whether they are being evicted, gouged, foreclosed on, A.I.-obsolesced — or, yes, raped.

“The Epstein emails, in my view,” Giridharadas writes, “together sketch a devastating epistolary portrait of how our social order functions, and for whom. Saying that isn’t extreme. The way this elite operates is.”

“If this neoliberal-era power elite remains poorly understood,” he continues, “it may be because it is not just a financial elite or an educated elite, a noblesse-oblige elite, a political elite or a narrative-making elite; it straddles all of these, lucratively and persuaded of its own good intentions.”

“These people are,” Giridharadas reminds us, “on the same team. On air, they might clash. They promote opposite policies. Some in the network profess anguish over what others in the network are doing. But the emails depict a group whose highest commitment is to their own permanence in the class that decides things. When principles conflict with staying in the network, the network wins.”

You can see my interview with Giridharadas here.

The entire system is rotten. It will not reform itself.

The Democratic Party has hit on the novel campaign issue of reducing taxes to win this year’s midterm elections. It will, no doubt, anoint another vapid, issue-less and genocide-supporting presidential nominee. Democratic donors pumped a staggering $1.5 billion into Kamala Harris’s abridged 15-week celebrity-fueled presidential campaign. She became the first Democratic presidential candidate to lose the national popular vote in two decades and be defeated in every battleground state.

The Democratic Party is not a functioning political party. It is a corporate mirage. Its members can, at best, select preapproved candidates and act as props in choreographed conventions and rallies. Party members have zero influence on party politics.

The more the diminishing power of the empire becomes apparent, evidenced in Trump’s debacle with Iran, the more a confused population retreats into a fantasy world, a world where hard and unpleasant facts do not intrude.

In the final days of a civilization, a population wallows in self-delusional hubris and trumpets false virtues. It looks for scapegoats to explain its failures — Muslims, undocumented workers, Mexicans, African-Americans, feminists, intellectuals, artists and dissidents.

Magical thinking and the myth of American exceptionalism dominate public discourse and are taught in schools. Art and culture are degraded to nationalist kitsch. Science is dismissed, even in the midst of the environmental crisis. Cultural and intellectual disciplines that allow us to see the world from the perspective of the other, that foster empathy, understanding and compassion, are replaced by a grotesque and cruel hypermasculinity and hypermilitarism.

Trump is perfectly tailored for these death throes. He is not a freak or an anomaly. He is the naked visage of our pathological sickness.

May 11, 2026 Posted by | politics, USA | Leave a comment

War Dividends: Potential U.S. Arms Sales to the Middle East Surge in Q1 2026

On March 19, the U.S. approved $8.5 billion in potential sales to the UAE, split across four potential deals. These approvals included a $4.5 billion sale of a Long Range Discrimination Radar (LRDR) for integration with the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) air-defense system, a $2.1 billion sale of counter-UAS equipment, a $1.2 billion deal for 400 AIM-120C AMRAAM air-to-air missiles, and a $644 million sale of F-16 munitions. Kuwait was approved to purchase eight Lower Tier Air and Missile Defense Sensor (LTAMDS) radars on the same day, at a cost of $8 billion. The U.S. also signed off on $70.5 million in aircraft and munitions support for Jordan

 – by Jon Hemler and Derek Bisaccio, https://dsm.forecastinternational.com/2026/04/23/us-foreign-military-sales-q1-2026-middle-east-iran-war/

During the first quarter of 2026, the U.S. government approved over $45 billion in potential Foreign Military Sales (FMS) with the overwhelming majority supporting Middle Eastern allies. Of total global approvals, the region garnered 81 percent, or over $36.6 billion in estimated sales value for defense equipment. 

Direct comparisons between first-quarter FMS approvals and the combat systems currently being used by the United States, Israel, and allied Arab states are imperfect. Approved agreements do not automatically translate into deliveries. Follow-on contracts, payments and shipments might not materialize for months or years, if at all. Even so, FMS activity can be a meaningful indicator of geopolitical and industrial trends. This is increasingly true given the scale of combat, stakeholders involved, and weapons consumption driven by the Iranian War.

Middle East
Countries in the Middle East spend heavily on defense, devoting some $177.5 billion to military expenditure in their FY26 budgets by conservative estimates. Many of the region’s governments, moreover, possess immense reserve assets that can be leveraged to support procurement when needed. 

Over 81 percent of FMS approvals in the first quarter of 2026 covered potential sales to American partners in the Middle East, corresponding with the deterioration in the regional security environment during this timeframe. These approvals can be generally grouped into two tranches, with the first set announced around the end of January. On January 30, the U.S. approved a Saudi request for 730 Patriot PAC-3 MSE missiles, which, together with support equipment, carry an estimated price tag of $9.0 billion. That same day, the U.S. also approved four sales to Israel worth a combined $6.6 billion, with the largest being a potential $3.8 billion sale of 30 AH-64E attack helicopters.

The U.S. and Israel began military operations against Iran on February 28, beginning a weeks-long air campaign in retaliation for the country’s brutal crackdown on protesters the month before and aiming to dismantle Iran’s offensive military capabilities and nuclear program. Iran retaliated with missile and drone salvoes targeting Israel, regional U.S. military bases, and the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries. According to some estimates, Iran fired as many as 6,400 missiles and drones at the GCC countries and Jordan across 41 days of operations. The majority of these attacks were intercepted, but Iranian attacks did manage to penetrate Gulf air defenses and hit sensitive sites. Amid these barrages, the GCC countries made a series of requests for ammunition and radar systems from the U.S., leading to a group of FMS approvals in mid-March.

On March 19, the U.S. approved $8.5 billion in potential sales to the UAE, split across four potential deals. These approvals included a $4.5 billion sale of a Long Range Discrimination Radar (LRDR) for integration with the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) air-defense system, a $2.1 billion sale of counter-UAS equipment, a $1.2 billion deal for 400 AIM-120C AMRAAM air-to-air missiles, and a $644 million sale of F-16 munitions. Kuwait was approved to purchase eight Lower Tier Air and Missile Defense Sensor (LTAMDS) radars on the same day, at a cost of $8 billion. The U.S. also signed off on $70.5 million in aircraft and munitions support for Jordan

All six of the deals announced on March 19 were approved under an emergency exception to Section 36(b) of the Arms Export Control Act, waiving the typical Congressional review requirement. That process would normally take roughly 30 to 40 days, during which the sides would be unable to move forward with contract negotiations. 

Europe

Around $3.8 billion in FMS approvals in the first quarter of 2026 – 8.5 percent of the overall total – target European requirements. A sizable chunk of this total comes from Spain’s $1.7 billion request for mid-life upgrades to its Álvaro de Bazán-class frigates. The upgrade program will principally include integrating the AEGIS weapon system to expand the warships’ air-defense capabilities. 

On March 10, the State Department approved the sale of 20 M142 High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems (HIMARS) to Sweden, with a price tag of $930 million. Should Stockholm move forward with a purchase agreement, it would become the eighth or ninth European customer for the multiple rocket launcher, joining Croatia, Estonia, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, and Romania. (Hungary, another potential customer, announced plans to acquire HIMARS on April 9, ahead of the incumbent government’s loss in general elections several days later.) 

The U.S. also approved an FMS deal with Denmark, blessing the sale of 100 AGM-114R HELLFIRE air-to-surface missiles at a possible cost of $45 million. Relations between Washington and Copenhagen have become turbulent in the second Trump administration over Greenland’s political future, but beneath the headlines, the two countries remain strong defense partners. 

Only one FMS approval for Ukraine (which Forecast International groups in the Eurasia region) was announced in the first quarter of 2026, on February 6. Kyiv requested to buy spare parts for its U.S. Army-supplied vehicles and weapons, at an expected cost of $185 million. 

Over time, European countries are aiming to reduce their dependency on the U.S. for military equipment, pursuing various national and intra-European projects to improve the continent’s own defense industry. This process was jump-started in 2022, in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and has accelerated over the past year as European capitals increasingly worry that the U.S. may withdraw from the NATO Alliance. 

Europe (not including Ukraine and Russia) is expected to spend $508.9 billion on defense in FY26, up from around $300 billion on the eve of Russia’s war on Ukraine. Five years ago, only a handful of NATO countries met the Alliance’s 2 percent of GDP target, but most are now at least at that threshold, if not well exceeding it.

Industry Trends

From a weapons systems standpoint, missiles and related equipment represent the largest category of approved potential sales from the quarter at nearly $16.0 billion and 35 percent of the total. Relatedly, the three highest-cost possible deals involve various offensive and defensive missile and networked electronic systems that have featured prominently in military operations during the war in Iran.

Of these, American defense giants Lockheed Martin and RTX are well-positioned to capitalize on a prospective windfall of over $21 billion in the aforementioned FMS to Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and the UAE. Domestically, Lockheed Martin and RTX both emerged as beneficiaries of several historic multi-year framework agreements with the Pentagon during Q1 2026, to boost precision munitions and interceptor production for the U.S

Like FMS approvals, these agreements do not indicate signed contracts or solid revenue. However, subsequent large-scale contacts are likely to follow in the coming years as the U.S. moves to surge critical munitions production. Some related contracts are already unfolding. In early April, Lockheed Martin received a $4.76 billion award supported by U.S. Army and FMS allocations for PAC-3 Missile Segment Enhancement missiles.

Raytheon, an RTX company, also won a handful of LTAMDS contracts from the U.S. government during the first quarter, including a $905 million production contract on April 16 that contributes to an overall $5.36 billion cumulative framework. 

Strategic pivot

The awards to Lockheed Martin and RTX, alongside FMS approvals for key systems emerging from the Iranian War, underscore a broader shift in Washington’s approach to weapons deals. On February 6, 2026, the White House issued an Executive Order entitled “America First Arms Transfer Strategy” to reshape priorities for foreign military equipment sale policy.

Though the Trump Administration’s order references arms transfers as a foreign policy tool, the text primarily focuses on strengthening the U.S. defense industrial base. Indeed, the order states that the strategy “will ensure that future arms sales prioritize American interests by using foreign purchases and capital to build American production and capacity.” A deeper read of the subsections signals a reprioritization of strategy – one that emphasizes utilizing arms sales to bolster domestic industry over foreign policy objectives. 

May 11, 2026 Posted by | MIDDLE EAST, USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

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