Al Jazeera

By Heba Habib and Tracy J. Jawad

    US President Donald Trump has announced the launch of an unprecedented “crushing economic operation” against Iran after the two countries failed to reach a deal, warning that any country offering Tehran a lifeline will face severe financial retaliation.

    Earlier, Trump said Washington may resume talks with Tehran at “some point”, stating that US demands remain focused strictly on preventing Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons.

    Iranian Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf says the US is seeking an “honourable exit” from the Middle East while promoting a “new regional order”.

    Israeli attacks on Gaza City and Nuseirat killed at least 10 Palestinians on Wednesday, including the police chief of the women’s department, Colonel Fatina al-Sahhar, and several police officers in an air attack on police headquarters. Hamas has condemned it as “a new war crime”.

Israeli warplanes target south Lebanon overnight

    Israeli war jets launched a series of air strikes in southern Lebanon overnight, targeting the Ali al-Taher Hill and the nearby al-Dabsheh area on the northern outskirts of Nabatieh al-Fawqa and Dawhet Kfar Reman, the National News Agency reports.

    It said that the targeted areas were also subjected to intermittent artillery shelling through the early hours of the morning.

    In the Tyre district, Israeli forces carried out controlled demolition operations in the towns of Majdal Zoun and al-Mansouri overnight and at dawn, accompanied by artillery shelling on both localities, NNA reported.

France pushes for Lebanese army conference as talks with Israel stall

    France is pressing ahead with plans for an international conference to support the Lebanese army, even as talks on a broader Lebanon-Israel-US negotiating track remain deadlocked, with no date set for an eighth round of discussions, reports the country’s An-Nahar newspaper.

    According to the newspaper’s report, President Joseph Aoun received a letter from French President Emmanuel Macron inviting Lebanon to a preparatory meeting in Paris on September 17 ahead of the conference, which aims to help equip Lebanon’s armed forces with resources, training and logistical support.

    Aoun travelled to Rome, where he is due to meet Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni on Thursday, with southern Lebanon and the negotiating track expected to top the agenda. Italy is among the countries seen as a candidate to help verify disarmament in areas covered by a planned buffer zone in south Lebanon.

    Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri informed a delegation from the American Task Force for Lebanon that only Washington possesses the leverage to halt Israeli hostilities and secure a withdrawal to the international border, An-Nahar said.

What’s been happening in the occupied West Bank

    According to the Palestinian Wafa news agency, Israeli forces and settlers have continued a campaign of arrests, raids, demolitions, and land seizures across the occupied West Bank on Wednesday.

    Here are some of the reported incidents:

    For the 11th consecutive day, settlers under Israeli military protection continued besieging three homes in the village of Qusra, near Nablus, preventing families from entering or leaving amid a declared closed military zone.

    A 28-year-old Palestinian was beaten by Israeli soldiers during a raid in Nablus and taken to hospital.

    The Israeli army arrested 31 Palestinians across the West Bank in a single day, including in Tulkarem, Qalqilya, Hebron, Bethlehem, Jerusalem, Ramallah, and Nablus. Those detained include journalist Abdul Rahman Abdul Karim Mohammed Hassan and Jerusalem Affairs Minister Ashraf al-A’war. Several homes were also searched and damaged during the raids.

    Israeli forces stormed a town in the Tubas governorate overnight, raiding several homes and damaging their contents before withdrawing without reporting any arrests.

    Meanwhile, settlers bulldozed land and expanded an outpost on private property in the village of Umm Safa, near Ramallah. Settlers also forced residents off their grazing lands in Tubas, chasing away their livestock.

‘There are limits to what the US can do’

    The scale of US economic leverage should not be underestimated, according to Hassan Barari, a professor of international relations at the University of Jordan.

    Al-Barari told Al Jazeera that the importance of the US market to major global economies leaves countries like China and India vulnerable to US pressure. “The American market is very important to both the Chinese and Indian economies, so these countries could be affected if they don’t cooperate with the United States, and Iran cannot compensate them for that,” he said.

    However, Barari said that while Washington’s naval blockade is “inflicting very significant damage on the Iranian economy”, US power has limits too.

    Iran’s framing of the conflict as existential has successfully rallied citizens “around the flag, around the state, not the regime”, Barari argued, describing it as a dynamic that Trump and other war advocates fail to grasp, though he noted that Tehran’s capacity to hold out is not unlimited.

    “We cannot underestimate the significance and danger of the American move for the Iranian street, nor can we underestimate the Iranians’ desire to at least emerge strategically on equal footing with the United States,” the professor said.

Hormuz shipping stalls as US-Iran deadlock persists, data shows

    Shipping traffic in the Strait of Hormuz did not increase on Wednesday, preliminary shipping data showed on Thursday, as the deadlock in discussions between the US and Iran to end the war persists.

    Nine commodity vessels transited the strait on Wednesday, unchanged from the previous day, according to Kpler data reported by Reuters.

Israeli strike on airbase had no justification, Syria’s foreign minister says

    Syria’s foreign minister says that Israel had no legitimate grounds for striking the Abu al-Duhur airbase this week, rejecting Israeli claims that the site was being used to establish a Turkish military presence.

    “There was no intention to establish a Turkish base there, nor to establish a permanent Turkish military presence or deploy Turkish forces at the site,” Asaad al-Shaibani told Axios. He said the base “was, in fact, largely empty”, adding that work there “was limited to rehabilitating the airfield and its facilities that were damaged during the war” for use by the Syrian Air Force.

    Al-Shaibani acknowledged that Turkish officers had visited the base days before the strike, but described it as “ongoing military cooperation in the areas of training and the exchange of expertise”, comparable to Syria’s cooperation with Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Qatar, and Russia. “Syria is a sovereign state, and it has the right to establish relations of cooperation and alliance with any country, including Turkiye,” he said.

    He said Damascus had told Washington it does “not trust Israel’s intentions towards Syria, and we believe current Israeli policy… does not contribute to stability in Syria or the region”.

    Al-Shaibani said Syria remains open to a security agreement, but added: “De-escalation cannot be the responsibility of one side alone.”

Trump’s social media posts ‘unite the Iranian people’

    We have more from Abbas Khamayar, a former Iranian diplomat and professor of international relations in Tehran.

    He said reports of widespread petrol shortages in Iran are overstated, telling Al Jazeera that petrol lines in the capital have not exceeded half an hour and represent a recent development.

    “Iranian per-capita fuel and petrol consumption is five times the global average” as a result of low prices and broad availability, Khamayar said.

    Turning to the domestic political climate, Khamayar pointed to huge public turnouts, including the funeral procession for former Supreme Leader Khamenei, as evidence that “Iranian society unites when it faces external challenges and foreign attacks”.

    Public statements from Washington have produced the opposite of their intended effect, he argued.

    “Trump’s statements and social media posts unite the Iranian people rather than create the rift he hopes to achieve through intimidation and psychological warfare,” Khamayar said.

    He further argued that superior US military capability has failed to translate into strategic success, pointing to Washington’s shifting objectives as evidence of an incoherent strategy.

    “American prestige has fallen in the eyes of peoples, and of the world,” Khamayar said.

    In an interview with Al Jazeera, Professor Nader Habibi of Brandeis University said that China would be the primary target of the threatened sanctions against countries aiding Iran, followed by Iraq and Turkiye.

    He said the UAE’s recent trade embargo on Iran was likely “induced” by the US after conversations between officials. Habibi said enforcement would be a challenge, particularly with China, as the Chinese government has warned its entities not to cooperate with US sanctions, while ground trade with Turkiye and Iraq would be difficult to stop.

Mossad chief called Syrian FM over Turkish military presence before airbase strike: Media report

    Reuters reports, citing three sources, that the head of Israel’s Mossad spy agency held a phone call with Syria’s foreign minister on August 14 to discuss Turkiye’s military presence in Syria, just days before Israel bombed a Syrian airbase.

    The call between Mossad chief Roman Gofman and Syrian Foreign Minister Asaad al-Shaibani represented one of the highest-level contacts to date between Israel and the Damascus administration led by President Ahmed al-Sharaa.

    According to Reuters, the same sources said that Turkiye’s military role in Syria dominated the conversation, with Gofman raising concerns over Ankara’s expanding military presence, arms sales, and drone deliveries to the Syrian army.

    Following Israel’s strike on the Abu al-Duhur airbase on Tuesday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu stated that Damascus had been on the verge of allowing Turkish troops to deploy at the facility, despite repeated warnings from Israel that such a move would endanger its security.

    Syria has denied the claims.

    Turkiye’s Defence Ministry, the Israeli prime minister’s office – which handles inquiries for Mossad– and al-Shaibani’s spokesperson all declined to respond to requests for comment from Reuters.

Iranian patience running out over US naval blockade

    Iranian patience with the tightening US naval blockade may be running out, according to Abbas Khamayar, a former Iranian diplomat and professor of international relations in Tehran.

    Khamayar told Al Jazeera that recent military leadership appointments and closed-door meetings indicate that “something is being cooked up in the kitchens of the decision-makers – a surprise,” adding that the topic has been widely discussed among Iranians in recent days.

    “I don’t imagine the Iranians here will remain patient much longer,” Khamayar said, warning that a continuation of the naval blockade or the ongoing “no war, no peace” standoff could trigger “major confrontations”.

    Should Washington fail to recommit to existing understandings on the memorandum of understanding with Tehran, any resulting escalation would not remain confined to Iran and the United States, he argued.