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Tuesday, March 31, 2026
Monday, March 30, 2026
[Salon] Can we please stop calling Israel the ‘only democracy in the Middle East’ now? - Guest Post
https://strategic-culture.su/news/2026/03/30/can-we-please-stop-calling-israel-only-democracy-in-middle-east-now/
Can we please stop calling Israel the ‘only democracy in the Middle East’ now?
The murder of three Lebanese journalists brings the U.S./Israel war with Iran to a new level of depravity and desperation. But journalists are to blame for this.
It’s hard to fathom what is more shocking about the news of three Lebanese journalists being targeted by Israel’s IDF and killed while working: the actual murder of the journalists or the lack of hue and cry by western media who are partisan to both the practice of murdering journalists and to how the stories of them being killed are framed.
Israel for a long time has had an extraordinary hold on western media which largely operates like a PR platform for its objectives. Journalists are not allowed to enter Gaza and so have to resort to the Stockholm Syndrome working relationship with the IDF’s press office which gives them distorted ’facts’ about what’s going on the ground, omits critical information and in some cases actually feeds them fake news, lock, stock and barrel. We are told journalists cannot enter Gaza for their own safety, which is as preposterous as it is comical, as Israel has an impressive track record by now of targeting and assassinating journalists.
The murder of three Lebanese journalists though has raised the stakes of Israel’s war with Iran and shown us how desperate the government is, as it struggles to cope with the country being slowly reduced to rubble by Iran’s missiles pounding it every day. The war now seems to be less about the scoresheet of who hit what and more about forcing journalists at gunpoint to write up false ’news’ or, in the case of many major western outlets like the BBC, simply not report on Iran’s strikes on the ground. In this environment, of course, public opinion cannot be allowed to go rogue and hold both the U.S. and Israel to account, as what we are seeing on our TV screens is entirely distorted and bears little or no resemblance to reality.
The murder of the three Lebanese journalists will be seen as a great victory by the IDF as it will send a chilling reminder to all journalists in Lebanon that they have to follow the script, or they will be targeted. But it also marks itself as a milestone in war reporting in general, in that now there is no more ambiguity about journalists being seen as legitimate targets on the battlefield, and this will have a knock-on effect around the world as journalists fail to detach themselves sufficiently from armies, governments and regimes, and when they put on a flak jacket marked ’press’ they present themselves as partisan and therefore a regular target just like the soldiers they are with.
Corruption also is at the heart of this sad story. Both Netanyahu and Trump are either being investigated for corruption or will certainly be on a grand scale when they leave office. They simply cannot leave office, and their only way of staying in power is to create mayhem and chaos for media to feast on while the spotlight is turned off them temporarily. New footage has been recently released of Netanyahu being interviewed by police officers who are investigating him on graft allegations surrounding expensive gifts that are given to him by those who seek favours from his office. This is believed to be the tip of the iceberg, though, and when police officers dig deeper they will find larger, more significant examples of corruption. Bibi will certainly serve a prison term if investigators are allowed to work freely and the judiciary system is allowed time to process the case. But in this period of war, it is expected that his case will be stalled. The invasion of Lebanon, which has provoked Hezbollah to hit targets within Israel, served its purpose perfectly to take the state of emergency in Israel to a new level where such proceedings are expected to be left to settle dust. Trump on the other hand seems to have distracted U.S. media away from reporting on the thousands of pages of details about him having relations with children which, one would have thought, would have affected his support from his own base.
Both men desperately need to control the media narrative, and so murdering journalists and telling other media that those who were killed were working for Hezbollah and using the press as a front is straight out of the Donald Trump Art of the Lie handbook. Trump is telling so many lies at the moment on an hourly basis about what is happening in Iran that journalists cannot complain about being targeted for reporting on facts if the vast majority of them simply replicate everything that comes out of his mouth as fact, more or less. This is where the war is. If we don’t ask difficult questions and report what Trump and Netanyahu are saying or claiming as false, it’s easy to understand just how much power they think they can wield over journalists who largely play along with the false reporting simply due to fear of being targeted. Literally.
The losses, just as one example, of U.S. military hardware is pure fiction. According to Trump, warships are out of action due to poor maintenance and fighter jets just keep falling out of the sky due to friendly fire. It’s a Hollywood movie script which a lot of journalists are helping him to develop each day. But the fact is that there are no U.S. journalists who are reporting the plain facts. The Straits of Hormuz has been taken over by Iran, the U.S. has almost no missiles left, its two aircraft carriers are limping home due to strikes, oil prices have risen which has given both Iran and Russia huge amounts of money to spend on their own wars, and Iran has emerged stronger, richer and a bolder new nuclear power which it wasn’t before. As a cherry on top of that spectacular failure by Trump and Israel, the U.S. has lost both its influence in the region and soon its petrodollars. I once wrote a week before the war that fake news will play a huge role in any war that Israel carries out with Iran and we should expect more journalists to be murdered, especially if the land invasion goes ahead and Trump will have to lie about the numbers of dead American soldiers. What I predict is that a second invasion somewhere will be staged just for the cameras which will be fed to journalists as ’handout’ video while the real battle surges forward with record casualties. Trump’s experience in reality TV and Israel’s already remarkable track record of video manipulation will play an empirical role, with the Lebanese journalists’ murder just encouraging them that anything is possible now with journalists.
Sunday, March 29, 2026
[Salon] Egypt’s economy: on a knife’s edge - ArabDigest.org Guest Post
Egypt’s economy: on a knife’s edge
Summary: the economic impact on Egypt of the US-Israeli war against Iran may be “relatively contained” but the longer hostilities continue the greater the damage to an already heavily battered Egyptian economy.
We thank our regular contributor Maged Mandour for today’s newsletter. Maged is a political analyst who also contributes to Middle East Eye and Open Democracy. He is a writer for Sada, the Carnegie Endowment online journal and the author of Egypt under El-Sisi (I.B.Tauris) which examines social and political developments since the coup of 2013.
In a press conference on 19 March, the IMF offered its evaluation of the impact of the war on Iran on the Egyptian economy, assessing that it was “relatively contained.” There are reasons for this cautious optimism. For example, the hard currency reserves hit a record of US$ 52.8 billion in February , offering a healthy buffer to meet mounting hard currency obligations. The banking sector as well has posted its highest net foreign currency assets since 2012, reaching US$ 14.5 billion making the banking system more robust. Finally, the outflow of hot money did not reach the level of 2022, when US$ 20 billion exited the Egyptian market in the span of a few weeks. At the time of writing the estimated outflow is anywhere between US$ 5 and 8 billion, with reports of returning inflows. These factors all provide a sense of comfort that there are enough buffers and that market panic has not yet been ignited in a way that would trigger a sudden collapse. There is, however, a degree of wishful thinking and tunnel vision in the above logic with a more holistic view revealing deep structural vulnerabilities that are blissfully ignored. There is good reason to argue that these buffers will buy time but nothing more.
Egypt faces deep structural risks from heavy reliance on volatile "hot money" and a strained state budget, compounded by the regional war's impact which has already slashed Suez Canal traffic by 50% and threatened the vital financial lifelines provided by Gulf allies.
Arguably the most volatile mix in the regime's economic vulnerabilities is the heavy reliance on hot money, which reached a whopping US$ 45 billion last September. A mass exodus would be disastrous. This, however, has not happened yet with markets still underestimating the impact on the global economy of the war dragging on. If investor appetite for risk diminishes and a mass exodus follows, the impact would be catastrophic. There are signs of increased risk aversion against investing in Egyptian debt. For example, on 16 March, and for the third time in a row, the Central Bank refused bids to sell EGP 10 billion worth of long term bonds due to the high interests rates demanded by investors which reached 30%. In the same offering the Central Bank was only able to sell 2% of a targeted EGP 38 billion with two and three year maturities. These are signs of increased perceived risks by investors. The situation is compounded by a fragile currency, which hit a record low against the dollar, trading below EGP 52 for the dollar, recording a drop of 4.3% in a single day driven by the initial exodus of hot money. The weakening of the currency does not only add pressure on the ability of the regime to meet its debt obligations but is bound to increased inflation which in turn will pressure the Central Bank to increase interest rates already at a high of 19%. This in turn will add pressure on an already strained budget to meet debt obligations which consumed 96% of state revenues in the first five month of the fiscal year 2025/26. It is worth mentioning too that in 2026, the total external debt obligation reached US$ 29 billion with the financing gap for the current fiscal year reaching US$ 8.2 billion, showcasing the heavy burden on the state budget.
The other obvious vulnerability is the heavy dependence on imported energy which leaves the country susceptible to imported inflation and a high energy bill that will consume the state's budget. This was reflected in the more than doubling of the energy import bill to reach US$ 1.65 billion per month since the start of the war. If the war continues to escalate then the pressure to raise import levels will increase resulting in higher inflation while hurting growth. Stagflation becomes the order of the day.
Adding to the pressure, the war is also expected to have a negative impact on the Suez Canal, with early indicators suggesting traffic has already dropped by 50% since the start of the war. Another less talked about stress is the expected increase in the price of food, due to the shortage in fertilisers, the price of which has already spiked by 30%, due to the blockade of the Strait of Hormuz. About a third of the world's fertiliser passes through the strait. Egypt, the world's largest importer of wheat and heavily dependent on food imports, is likely to be severely hit thus ramping up food price inflation, affecting the poor the most and causing poverty levels to spike.
The most alarming development, however, is the impact of the war on the GCC economies which will make it more difficult for them to again bail out the government. For example, Qatar's economy is expected to contract by 14%, while economies of the UAE - the Sisi regime's biggest backer - and Saudi Arabia are expected to contract between 3 and 5%. These contractions will make it less likely the GCC will continue to invest in Egypt at the same pace. There are already reports that the war has delayed US$ 20 billion worth of Gulf investments. This could leave the regime without a lifeline and if the war continues it can affect one of the main sources of foreign currency, namely worker remittances - which reached a record US$ 41.5 billion last year - thus leaving the regime in an extremely vulnerable position.
All of these factors speak to a potential crisis with devastating consequences. The regime's reserves are only buying it time but that does not change the fundamental dynamics. In many ways it is even more vulnerable to shocks with the war on the GCC countries making it ever more fragile. Policies that created a debt crisis and have caused near complete dependence on the Gulf reveal just how vulnerable Egypt's economy is. The eruption of another crisis would have consequences that are difficult to imagine, especially if the war continues and the economic damage Iran is inflicting on the GCC states Sisi relies on reaches a critical level.
Fr. Bob's Reflection for Palm Sunday - Guest Post
Holy Week is the perfect mixture of joy and sorrow. We arrive today at Palm Sunday – the first significant moment that leads to Jesus’ passion. The whole scene can often look and feel like a human drama.
As Jesus rides into Jerusalem, the crowds line the road, cheering and waving palm branches, eager to welcome Him as King. Yet everything about Jesus’ entrance challenges the world’s idea of royalty.
Instead of arriving in grand splendor on a warhorse, Jesus comes humbly, riding on a simple donkey. This intentional choice reveals the true nature of His Kingship. Jesus does not rule through force, wealth, or domination. His Kingdom is not built on power as the world understands it, but on humility, mercy and love.
Those who welcome Him are not wealthy or powerful. No rulers or social elites stand at the city gates to welcome Him. Instead, it is ordinary people who greet Him: the poor, the overlooked, the oppressed.
These are the very people Jesus always identified with throughout His ministry. In their simple gestures – waving palm branches and shouting words of hope – we see a faith that is humble, trusting and deeply human.
This moment is a striking contradiction to the expectations of a conquering Messiah. Jesus enters Jerusalem not in triumph as the world defines it, but in humility.
Throughout the Gospels, He teaches that true greatness is not found in status, influence or achievement, but in heartfelt service and self-giving. To follow Jesus is to embrace a path that values humility over pride and compassion over control.
Living this way is not easy. Our culture embraces success and recognition; the idea that you must always be the best. That mindset often leaves little room for us to act humbly. Yet Jesus invites us to something different. He calls us to use our gifts faithfully while also accepting our limitations.
He asks us to recognize that God works not only through our strengths, but through our weaknesses and our dependence on Him. In short, He asks for humility. The same humility Christ showed when He entered Jerusalem on that solemn Sunday more than 2,000 years ago.
Yes, Palm Sunday is an invitation – an invitation to accept humility.
As we enter Holy Week, we are asked to look closely at the kind of King Jesus is – and the kind of disciples we are called to be. Jesus did not come to build a Kingdom based on wealth or power. He came to build His Kingdom through humility and self-sacrifice.
As we walk with Jesus toward the Cross this week, we must do more than admire His humility. We must live it.
This Holy Week, I urge you to choose the quiet path of service. Make room in your hearts for those who are overlooked. Follow the example of your humble King, not only with words and palms, but with action.
Live your lives shaped by humility and always remember the words of Jesus: “The greatest among you will be your servant.”
Yours in Christ,
Fr. Robert Warren, S.A.
Spiritual Director
Saturday, March 28, 2026
Friday, March 27, 2026
Thursday, March 26, 2026
Wednesday, March 25, 2026
Fr. Bob's Reflection for the Fifth Sunday in Lent - Guest Post
Many people are familiar with the Chicago Cubs, the famous baseball team long known as the “lovable losers.” For decades, they were known for never winning the World Series.
Then, in 2016, something extraordinary happened. The lovable losers finally became champions, winning their first World Series in 108 years. As the final out was recorded, the Cubs’ first baseman, Anthony Rizzo, was overwhelmed with emotion. He became teary-eyed.
But his tears were not only tears of joy, from winning a championship. At just 18 years old, Anthony had been diagnosed with cancer. He underwent treatment, and by God’s grace, overcame the disease. Months later, he returned to baseball and eventually to a normal life. The World Series was the second-greatest battle he had won.
Anthony later established a foundation to help children with cancer and has credited his Christian faith with carrying him through his illness.
We encounter that same kind of deeply moving beauty in today’s Gospel. Jesus stands at the tomb of Lazarus and weeps. It is one of the most powerful and tender moments in all of Scripture, because in that moment, Jesus shares His humanity with us.
We sometimes forget that Jesus was fully human. It’s easy to overlook that He became hungry in the desert, thirsty on the cross, weary on the road to Samaria and fearful in the Garden of Gethsemane.
Why is it so important to remember the humanity of Jesus – to remember the tears He shed? The answer is simple: we can identify with Him. Every pain, every tragedy, every loss we endure, Jesus has endured first. He understands what it means to be human, and that understanding gives us hope.
Yet today’s Gospel reveals something even more magnificent. While Jesus weeps for Lazarus, He also raises him from the dead. In doing so, Jesus shows us that He is not merely human. He is the Son of God. He reveals both His humanity and His divinity. He can touch our lives in a way no other human ever could.
There was once a military chaplain named Robert McAfee Brown who was traveling by ship with soldiers returning home from World War II. Some Marines invited him to join their daily Bible study. One day, they were reading this very Gospel passage.
During the discussion, one Marine shared that God had spoken to him through the story of Lazarus. He admitted that during the war, while stationed in Japan, he had committed serious sins and had become overwhelmed with guilt. He felt trapped, ashamed and even considered taking his own life.
But as he reflected on the Gospel, the Marine realized that Jesus understood his suffering because Jesus was human. At the same time, he came to understand that Jesus was also God, able to do something no one else could. Just as Jesus raised Lazarus from the tomb, He could raise him to new life.
The Marine discovered that Jesus is the resurrection and the life – not only in the next life, but in this one as well.
These three stories – Anthony Rizzo’s, Lazarus’ and the Marine’s – teach us something essential about Jesus. They remind us that Jesus shares our humanity. He knows pain, sorrow and loss.
But they also reveal to us that He is the Son of God, whose divine power brings healing, hope and new life. Just as He raised Lazarus, He continues to raise us beyond what we could ever imagine.
This is the Good News of today’s Gospel: Jesus’ humanity comforts us, and His divinity empowers us.
My friends, this is the promise of Christ, who always calls us forth to new life.
Yours in Christ,
Fr. Robert Warren, S.A.
Spiritual Director
Tuesday, March 24, 2026
[Salon] As the wheels come off the Iran conflict, it compels the decision: ‘Where do we stand?’ - Guest Post
https://strategic-culture.su/news/2026/03/24/as-wheels-come-off-iran-conflict-it-compels-decision-where-do-we-stand/
As the wheels come off the Iran conflict, it compels the decision: ‘Where do we stand?’
Alastair Crooke, March 24, 2026
Western propaganda machinery – the West’s most powerful strategic weapon – has repeatedly asserted that U.S. forces have been winning a swift and sweeping victory over Iran. In tandem, Israeli intelligence officials are briefing western media saying they see increasing signs of disarray and “chaos” within the regime in Tehran, adding that the Iranian chain-of-command has become marred by serious breakdowns.
And why not make such claims of sweeping victory? Trump presumably went into the war sublimely confident in America’s military prowess to obliterate the Iranian state structure, its command network and its military capacity. His generals seemingly endorsed the general proposition of destructive potential – adding however, several ‘buts’ that likely did not penetrate the Trumpian mental workings.
And that’s what Trump duly did – sweeping ‘obliteration’; continuous waves of stand-off bombing. To doubters of his success in collapsing Iran’s state structure, he retorts simply that we’ll obliterate all the more. ‘We’ll kill more of their leaders’.
Western (including Israeli) media, in wake of the 28 February strikes, in companion reports hailed too the devastating nature of the blow struck against Iran’s political and military leadership.
No attempt was made to critically think through the effect on a State that had been preparing an asymmetric response to this coming war for 20-40 years. No effort was made to think through the real impact of bombing a State that has taken all its military infrastructure (including its ‘air force’) off its land-surface, only to bury it in deep underground ‘cities’.
No effort was made to judge the impact of assassinations of Iran’s political and military leaders on the public mood. No understanding was made of how the Iranian de-centralised leadership ‘mosaic’ might provide a fast-reaction, pre-planned response to leadership decapitation. Nor was it considered that such a diffused leadership structure would allow Iran to pursue a long war of attrition against the U.S. and Israel – in contrast to the U.S.-Israeli insistence on short wars that do not strain popular resilience.
All mainstream reporting, by contrast, was focused on the scale of damage inflicted on Tehran and its people – carrying the implicit presumption that the civic demolition and high civilian deaths would, in itself, create the opposition that would ‘rise up’ and ‘seize’ the reins of national leadership.
That so little of this conflict was properly considered reflects the fact that the U.S. increasingly has modelled its war-fighting way-of-thinking on those long employed by Israel – with far-reaching consequences for the West’s future, perhaps.
Of course, there are professional U.S. military officers who repeatedly have warned of the short-comings of mass bombardment as a stand-alone strategic tool, arguing that it has never brought the expected results; but their cautionary messages have had little impact against the prevailing ‘obliteration’ zeitgeist.
The very language used by Trump and his team to describe Iranians as ‘evil’ and ‘murderous baby-killing’ sub-humans plainly is designed to polarise the clash to the point of excluding military strategies other than yet further ‘obliteration’.
Trump told New York Times journalists “that he did not feel constrained by any international laws, norms, checks or balances”, and the “only limits on his ability to use American military might” were “my [his] own morality. My own mind. It’s the only thing that can stop me”.
He reportedly expressed surprise that America’s sneak attack on the Iranian leadership had produced an immediate riposte of counter-strikes on American bases in the Gulf: ‘We hadn’t expected that’, Trump said; nor did he anticipate the subsequent selective closure of the Strait of Hormuz, although the Iranians explicitly warned that they would do exactly that. He knew the risk, yet still went ahead, saying he ‘did not think’ that the Iranians would assume control over the Hormuz choke point.
The consequence of Iranian control of the approximate 20% of global oil and a similar volume of gas that transits Hormuz gives Iran unique leverage over the whole dollar-based economic sphere. Yet it poses a special threat to Gulf States – for Hormuz also serves as the corridor for fertiliser, food supplies and much else too.
Hormuz’s selective closure therefore carries second and third-order global economic consequences for the world. As Lloyd’s Intelligence noted yesterday:
“Several governments — including India, Pakistan, Iraq, Malaysia and China — are in direct talks with Tehran, coordinating vessel transits via an emerging IRGC-run registration and vetting system … Lloyds … understands [that] the IRGC is expected to establish a more formalised vessel approval process in the coming days”.
So, why did Israel escalate so strategically in attacking Iran’s terminals receiving gas from the South Pars gas field that it shares with Qatar? Israel insists that Trump gave them a green light for the attack. Trump replied that “Israel attacked Iran’s South Pars gas field earlier today without informing the United States or Qatar”.
The attack on Iran’s energy infrastructure predictably enough triggered a reciprocal escalation with Iranian missile strikes on Gulf energy infrastructure – thus elevating the conflict to that of serious economic war.
Essentially what now is at issue are the terms on which the world will be able to buy oil and gas. Will purchasers be able to buy energy purchased in currencies other than the dollar? It seems so – Pakistan has been able to negotiate the passage of its cargo through Hormuz in just such a fashion – by proving that the cargo was purchased in Yuan.
At issue therefore is not just the U.S. military presence in the region – which Iran insists must be expelled – but rather, Iranian calls for the ending altogether of the Region’s dollar trading.
This – if Iran gets its way – could comprise the awkward gateway to continued economic survival for Gulf States.
Gulf States may soon have to decide where they stand on this war. On the one hand, they have embedded themselves wholeheartedly in the American mercantilist way of life. But Iran threatens to overturn that paradigm. On the other hand, future Gulf prospects – which they will need to ponder – may hang on Iranian acquiescence to allow them to traverse Hormuz.
If Iran’s ‘foot on the throat’ of the global economic system is pursued selectively – according to their specific criteria — it is possible that other states (including the Europeans) may be forced to the ‘negotiating table’ with Tehran to ensure their future economic well-being.
The U.S.’ unseen power structures
It is not however just the Gulf that will need to consider where they – the Gulf monarchs – stand in the wake of this ill-considered and potentially very damaging economic war. There are those in the U.S. insisting that Americans too need to discuss where they should stand as well.
U.S. commentator Bret Weinstein recently struck a chord with many Americans who, like him, had actively supported Trump, but were now confused and unsettled by Trump’s espousal of a war on Iran – especially as his Presidency hangs in the balance in consequence:
“Why would a man, [like] Trump, who understands politics make such an obvious mistake?”
In discussion with Tucker Carlson, Weinstein suggested that one answer is that Trump is not in fact in control:
“We Americans need to have a conversation with ourselves – not only about how broken the system is and what it results in us doing, but how does it actually work. [Who] is it that is driving us to do what we do”.
The question is deeper than the issue of Trump breaking his campaign promises of ‘no new foreign wars’. (Reuters today reports that “the Trump administration is considering deploying thousands of additional U.S. troops to the Middle East – as Trump weighs next steps regarding Iran which could include an attempt to secure the Strait”).
Weinstein pointed out in his conversation with Tucker Carlson that for some time (since 1961 or 1963), the U.S. system has seemed to be badly broken: It no longer had American interests at heart. In fact, American governance, he argued, visibly had become antithetical to Americans’ real interests – across many spheres, from finance to health. And the state had transformed into an “anti-Constitutional” structure since the events of November 1963 – the exact opposite to what the U.S. was intended to be.
Weinstein attributed this situation to ‘a something’ that is undeclared; something that cannot visibly be observed. It suggested a ‘hidden power structure’ whose control and interests are opaque: “What drives it? Who exactly holds the power in this system. We do not know”, he argued. What were the unseen interests that drove the U.S. to this succession of foreign wars in the Middle East?
This was why the Epstein episode was so crucial, Weinstein emphasised: The few details published have painted a power-structure involving intelligence services, money and corruption that spoke to an unspoken Constitutional and acute Security crisis within the U.S.
Americans urgently needed to be informed what this power structure is – and what its interests are. And to then discuss where Americans stand, and how to recover the elements that could lead to a recovery of a state governed by Americans’ own interests.
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