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World update

As the US-Israeli merger continues to escalate toward nuclear war, President Trump yesterday threatened once again to destroy the entire country of Iran (90+ million people).

https://www.yahoo.com/news/politics/articles/stressed-trump-stark-warning-iran-153737374.html

Donald Trump again issued a grave threat to destroy the "entire country" of Iran during a phone call with a Fox News reporter on Sunday.

The president told Fox's Trey Yingst that for him, the "question" was "if and when" it would be required to "blow the entire nation up" if Iran's government did not submit to his demands.

It's at least the second time the president has directly threatened to target Iran for widespread carnage, presumably affecting civilians. U.S. forces have already been criticized for strikes that have hit civilian areas, including a girls' school in Minab in February, which killed 120 schoolchildren….

"They better behave," Yingst said the president told him of Iran's government, adding that the choices included "wiping them out, letting Iran rot economically, or making a deal".

Trump’s threat itself would have been an international war crime before he repudiated any international law that might set limits on the horrors of war that the UN established after World War 2. He has stated that his entire sense of morality is based on his own mind.

https://thehill.com/policy/international/5680714-trump-morality-international-law/

That, of course, is the biblical definition of “the traditions of men,” which subordinates the law to one’s own power. It seems increasingly clear that Trump is transferring power from the UN to the Edomite state with the help of the modern Judas. In my view, he has lost the mandate of heaven, to put it in Chinese terms.

Nonetheless, there is a partial restraint still at play here. We are nearing the mid-term elections, and Trump does not want to be exposed as a warmongering president, especially after having been elected largely on the platform of peace. So he may have to wait until after the elections before doing anything too warlike.

In Ukraine, Zelensky too was elected in 2019 as a peace candidate. It’s funny to compare candidates with presidents. Promises not kept.

Meanwhile, Trump’s threats against Iran proved to be mostly hot air, and he backed down on his threat. Trump’s “art of the deal” is to threaten with overwhelming mayhem as an alternative to full surrender on his terms. When others call his bluff, he seems bewildered. No one ever did that before. The alt-news calls it TACO: “Trump Always Chickens Out.”

Instead, Iran issued its own demands for peace.

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/9/20/what-are-irans-new-conditions-to-end-its-war-with-the-us

• An end to the war on all fronts, including, in particular, Lebanon.
• The release of its frozen funds that run into billions of US dollars.
• An end to the naval blockade on Iranian ports.
• An end to US interference in Iran’s internal affairs.
• An end to US cooperation with “the opponents of our revolution”.
• An end to all US attacks on Iranian territory.

In other words, peace can be achieved when the US stops attacking Iran and Lebanon. I suspect that this also includes an end to the genocide in Gaza. Sounds reasonable to me.

The Hormuz Strait

Only a trickle of crude oil is flowing through the Strait of Hormuz in the Persian Gulf. Iran is restricting ships heading to Israel, which is trying hard to destroy them; America is restricting Iranian ships. So the world, especially US allies like South Korea, Japan, Taiwan, and the Philippines continue to suffer economically from high prices and shortages.

The Bab al Mandab Strait

Yemen has taken the Strait at the south end of the Red Sea. Until recently, it controlled just a bit of the coastline north of the Strait itself, because its control of the country was limited to the northwest portion of Yemen. While this territory was relatively small, it included the capital city and about 87% of the total population of Yemen. The western-backed government shifted south to Aden on the Gulf of Oman.

But new military conquests have put the entire South Yemen coastline (and key islands) under the control of Ansar Allah (or the “Houthis”). The Yemeni tribes north of the capital, which the British gave to Saudi Arabia in 1934, are now negotiating a return to Yemen. In those days, western interests often split tribes arbitrarily by military force. That worked only as long as the tribes themselves remained weak.

But now Yemen has proven itself to be the most powerful force on the Arabian peninsula. It beat back the US bombing campaign last year (March 15 to May 6, 2025), and in the last 2 weeks it has beaten the Saudis and the Saudi-backed portions of Yemen. So Yemen is now returning to its tribal roots and borders.

Meanwhile, Saudi Arabia is in dire straits, having almost no income at all. They appealed for help from both the US and from Israel, all to no avail. Having been bitten badly in June 2025 and again in March-April of 2026, neither wants another loss that needs excessive amounts of propaganda to convince people that it was actually a victory.

Furthermore, as the weeks pass, the fate of the royal family in Saudi Arabia is looking bleak.

With the two Straits now blocked to all Saudi shipping, Saudi Arabia has suddenly become a land-locked country. Thousands of Saudi princes will soon have no more stipends for their luxury yachts on the Riviera. Trump won’t like it if the Saudis are forced to dump their US Treasury bonds while Japan and other countries are doing the same.