The Three Conflicts Witkoff and Kushner Are Trying to Solve This Week

Iran, Ukraine and Gaza are in play as the Trump envoys conduct talks on all of them. But progress in each conflict is scant.

By Steven Erlanger

U.S. Gathers the Most Air Power in the Mideast Since the 2003 Iraq Invasion - The Wall Street Journal

U.S. Gathers the Most Air Power in the Mideast Since the 2003 Iraq Invasion  The Wall Street Journal

Amid tensions, Ukraine’s Chernobyl site remains part of a war zone

Al Jazeera's Nils Adler has seen how the site of the world’s worst nuclear disaster is affected by the war on Ukraine.

Ukrainian soldiers armed with scissors say they cut any fiber-optic drone cable they see — even if it might be their own

Fiber-optic drones can't be jammed, but can be stopped by destroying the cables that control them. Jose Colon/Anadolu via Getty Images Ukrainian soldiers are cutting the wires of any and all fiber-optic drones they find. Some carry scissors so they can be ready when they find one. They also use knives and their bare hands. The threat these drones pose means that they don't even stop to consider who they belong to. Ukrainian soldiers are out cutting and snapping any fiber-optic drone cables they come across, regardless of which side they belong to. They use scissors, knives, even their bare hands. Troops say it doesn't matter if a drone is Ukrainian or Russian. If they're not sure, they just assume it's hostile. These unjammable drones controlled by long, thin cables have flooded the battlefield as a countermeasure to the electronic warfare that often renders radio-frequency drones inoperable. As these drones have become increasingly prolific, the result has been forests and trenches snarled with discarded and active cables. Fiber optic drones can leave webs of cables across Ukraine. Francisco Richart/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images Dimko Zhluktenko, an analyst with Ukraine's Unmanned Systems Forces, said that he always carries scissors so that he can "cut each and every optic fiber that we see." He said that his unit "actually stopped considering them friendly or foe. We think that all of them are kind of the enemy drones." In a YouTube video about the gear he carries, Zhluktenko said scissors became so essential that when his unit started operating in areas littered with fiber-optic cables, every team member was required to carry a pair. He said that he bought retractors for his team so no one would lose them. An analyst with Ukraine's Unmanned Systems Forces said he carries scissors to cut the cables of fiber optic drones he comes across. Dimko Zhluktenko A Ukrainian soldier who spoke with Business Insider on the condition of anonymity said troops can often break the thin strands with their hands; that isn't often necessary, though. Soldiers in his unit already carry scissors for medical purposes. Many also have knives. He said that there can be so many cables about on the battlefield that "you don't know if it's a new thread or if it's an old one that's been lying around for a long time." So his unit severs any they find as often as possible. Not just fiber-optic cables Other similar behaviors have been observed on the battlefield. There are sometimes so many drones in the sky that soldiers looking up from the ground can't even begin to tell which is friendly and which is hostile. In such cases, soldiers can be ordered to shoot down any drone they see. Soldiers in charge of electronic warfare systems sometimes panic and jam everything in the air when they can't tell drones apart, Zhluktenko previously told Business Insider. Drones controlled by fiber optic cables are popular as they can't be jammed. Viktor Fridshon/Global Images Ukraine via Getty Images Zhluktenko told Business Insider that cutting the fiber-optic cables is not something that he had to do often, as his unit was typically working in areas further from the front-line fighting that had fewer of the fiber-optic drones. He described it as something that they "sometimes" encountered. Soldiers in Ukraine's 15th Mobile Border Detachment "Steel Border" previously said in a video for Ukraine's state border service that using scissors is a reliable way to disable the Russian drones. Russian soldiers have reportedly done the same. If the cable is intact on an active and operational drone, the only other way to stop it is to physically shoot it (troops say a shotgun works best); that requires a mix of skill and luck, though. Fiber-optic drones are a relatively new feature in this war that have not previously been fielded at this scale. That these drones can be disabled with simple tools — scissors, knives, bare hands — underscores a broader pattern in Ukraine: sophisticated systems are often countered with low-tech fixes. In many cases, some of the most effective counters to advanced technology have been older or improvised combat tools — from shotguns used against small drones to nets draped over vehicles and positions to blunt aerial attacks. Even the drones themselves are cheap innovations designed to overcome more expensive equipment and wartime demands. Read the original article on Business Insider

Middle East on boil: 5 reasons why Trump may attack Iran anytime now

The United States and Iran are nearing a potential military confrontation as diplomacy falters and military preparations intensify. A significant US military buildup in the Middle East, coupled with Iran's fortification of nuclear sites, raises fears of a major escalation. Despite ongoing talks, key gaps remain, and Washington is weighing military options.

By TOI World Desk

The US Must Be Confident It Has A Plan In Place To Lower Oil Prices Once It Strikes Iran

The US Must Be Confident It Has A Plan In Place To Lower Oil Prices Once It Strikes Iran By Michael Every of Rabobank Lots Of Xs Vs Lots Of Ys US vs. Iran: The media today talk of a “90% chance of war” and “as soon as Saturday.” We’ve long stressed there’s a high likelihood of a fresh US-Iran conflict, recent US logistics movements said soon, and an Axios headline yesterday refocused oil markets on it. The balance of risks now tilts to a US strike after market close Friday, even if the materiel moved to the Middle East suggests any attack is likely to last weeks rather than being over by the Monday open. One caveat is Secretary of State Rubio is set to meet with PM Netanyahu in Israel on February 28, hard to achieve if missiles are flying. Yet Israel is preparing for exactly that. Indeed, expectations are Iran will retaliate across the region, potentially via terror cells in the West (including in Europe), and perhaps in Hormuz directly if the regime sees itself as at risk. The broader region is flammable too, with tensions running: Egypt vs Ethiopia vs Eritrea; Somalia vs Somaliland; Sudan vs South Sudan; Yemen vs South Yemen; and the Saudis (and Turkey and nuclear-armed Pakistan) vs the UAE (and Israel and nuclear-armed India). To say that this could be market- and geopolitics-moving is an understatement. Oil, and presumably LNG, prices would spike. How quickly they come down would depend on exactly how this plays out. The US must be confident that it has a plan in place to mitigate these kinds of risks. It certainly did, in a much less risky environment, in Venezuela. The Fed: The latest minutes were significantly more hawkish than expected. Indeed, the Bloomberg take, accurate or not, is that several members may be leaning towards rate hikes not rates cuts. Given we are months away from the appointment of a new Fed Chair who wants to see the latter, that sets the Eccles Building up for some serious conflict ahead. Indeed, note the colliding views on what the AI revolution means for the US economy. Warsh, based on some optimistic thinking, says it means lower rates; Barr and Daly, based on surrealistic thinking, say it means higher rates. Our US strategist is sticking with 3 cuts this year for now, starting from June (see here). The ECB: President Lagarde is going to step down early, setting off a scramble for succession. Our ECB team do an excellent job of working through the labyrinth of Byzantine European monetary politics in this report. In a nutshell, it’s not so much about policy preference, or protecting the ECB from the pollutant of political populism, nor about the presidency per se; rather, it’s potentially perpetuating an ECB executive board seat for France. And what would any key European decision be without France trying to do that? C’est la guerre, c’est Lagarde. (And does she have a better gig lined up? The whisper had been Davos leadership, but post-Trump’s stomp on it, is that still a step up?) The RBA vs. the government: Strong wages growth and jobs data keep the pressure on the Reserve Bank. Private sector wages were +3.4% y-o-y in Q4 and public sector +4%. Jobs growth in January was 17.8K, broadly in line with expectations, but with a surge in full-time employment of over 50K, while unemployment fell a tick to a near-historic low of 4.1%. Yes, there are questions about data quality, population growth, and AI, even if Australia is hardly at the cutting edge in that key area. But what excuses can the RBA keep finding not to be hawkish, even if that eventually sets up a collision with the housing market? There’s already one underway between former RBA Governor Lowe and the government, the former saying the latter needs to stop spending to get rates down again, the latter saying that’s just a personal vendetta.   The BOE: Reform Party not-Shadow Chancellor Jenrick pledged to retain BOE independence and the Office for Budget Responsibility, while…. drum roll… reforming both. The BOE will be stripped of political goals and a climate mandate, with a focus purely on inflation: QE was mentioned as a bad thing. The OBR is to change its models, with competitions to see which forecaster is most accurate in calling growth and the budget deficit right (as if it’s the salary that makes forecasting hard). He also spoke of making The City a ‘crypto leader’… but is that in Bitcoin, dollar stablecoins, or Euro or sterling ones? Expect major collisions on that front both between legacy banking and crypto, and between crypto players… albeit only from 2029 onwards, barring a political shock. France vs Germany: Aside from ECB politics, Chancellor Merz has just said that the Eurofighter project that was supposed to be built between France and Germany ‘fails to meet Germany’s needs’. That follows similar recent spats over protectionism and trade deals. More broadly, as Germany rearms, adding military muscle to its existing, if shrinking, economic heft, Franco-German tensions are only going to increase on multiple fronts, forging new intra-EU alliances to emerge. Canada vs the US: ‘Carney offers to ‘broker a bridge’ to build giant anti-Trump trade club’ - joining the EU with the CPTPP’s Canada, Mexico, the UK, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, Vietnam, Singapore, Malaysia, and other Pacific nations. Really? Mexico is deepening trade integration with the US behind a de facto common external tariff. The UK is trying to get back in with the EU via dynamic regulatory alignment, but the benefits are likely to be low given businesses know Reform could win the next election and reverse it. Japan is all in on the US. Australia is close to an FTA with the EU, NZ has one, and both rely entirely on the US security umbrella. The smaller Asian economies are linked to China, with US trade deals not allowing transshipment. And almost all those countries want to net export to the US. With USMCA renegotiation months away, does Canada think this is leverage when the US holds the best cards? Green vs not green: ‘US pressures global energy body to drop net zero modeling’. “US Energy Secretary Chris Wright made the call to other energy ministers at a closed-door ministerial meeting of the International Energy Agency in Paris on Wednesday, two people who were part of the discussions told POLITICO. The comments met with a muted response from other ministers, the people said…. It comes just a day after Wright publicly threatened to quit the organization unless it abandoned its focus on the energy transition… Wright said the agency should stop basing its modeling on assumptions that it's possible to cut emissions to zero, arguing such targets will never be met… Doing away with those baseline assumptions would be a significant shift for the IEA, which has made them central to forecasts that have in turn formed the basis of global political decision-making around the green transition and underpinned billions in green energy investments.” Free speech vs hate speech: Welcome to glasnost, reverse-Gorbachev style. Reuters reports the Trump admin is to set up a website, Freedom.org, as a portal which everyone globally can use to access whatever information or apps that they want, regardless of what their own governments won’t let them see for various reasons. This would apparently operate via a permanent VPN. Obviously, this is going to cause tensions with the likes of China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea… and Australia, the UK, and much of Europe. (Many readers will nod at immediately: but stop for a moment and think just how bizarre that would have read 10 years ago.) Young vs. Old: ‘Over 65? Congratulations, You Own the Economy’. As the Wall Street Journal puts it, “The elderly are physically and financially healthier than ever. So why do their needs keep taking priority over younger generations?” Tyler Durden Thu, 02/19/2026 - 10:15

By Tyler Durden

Peace Council underway: Possible deal with Iran in 10 days, says Trump (live)

Leaders from 40 countries have pledged to provide $5 billion and thousands of personnel for the reconstruction of Gaza The post Peace Council underway: Possible deal with Iran in 10 days, says Trump (live) appeared first on ProtoThema English.

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