lördag 21 februari 2026
Khamenei Aide Drops Epstein Bomb: Is This Iran’s Veiled Threat To Expose Washington’s Darkest Deals?
Hindustan Times
What Would Happen If Iran Targets US Aircraft Carrier With Khalij Fars or Abu Mahdi Missiles?
Hindustan Times
Pentagon In Full Panic Mode, Scrambling To Decapitate Khamenei &... Before Iran's Missiles Hit Base?
Hindustan Times
Russian invasion The world's response
Ukraine accuses Hungary and Slovakia of blackmail
Ukraine's Foreign Ministry has sharply criticized Hungary and Slovakia in a new statement, Reuters reports.
"Ukraine rejects and condemns the ultimatums and blackmail that Hungary and Slovakia are engaging in regarding the energy supply between our countries. Give the ultimatum to the Kremlin, not to Kyiv."
This comes after Slovak and Hungarian prime ministers Robert Fico and Viktor Orbán threatened to stop supplying Ukraine with emergency electricity if they do not again allow the transport of Russian oil through their country.
Slovakia and Hungary are the only two EU countries that are still largely dependent on Russian oil transported through Ukraine through the Druzhba pipeline, which was built during the Soviet era.
Slovakia threatens to cut off emergency energy supplies to Ukraine
Slovakia is threatening to cut off emergency energy supplies to Ukraine if the country does not allow Russia to pump oil through Ukraine within two days, Prime Minister Robert Fico said, according to Reuters.
"If oil supplies to Slovakia are not resumed by Monday, I will ask SEPS, the state-owned joint-stock company, to stop emergency electricity supplies to Ukraine," he wrote on X.
Slovakia accounted for 18 percent of Ukraine's electricity imports last month. But since oil supplies via the Soviet-era Druzhba pipeline were stopped on January 27, Slovakia has become increasingly vocal.
The supplies were stopped after Ukraine said a Russian drone had damaged pipeline equipment in western Ukraine.
In a letter seen by Reuters, Ukraine proposes several alternative routes for oil supplies to the EU
Latest news
US National Debt
Sources: US Military Can't Spend All the Money
The Trump administration is having trouble figuring out how to allocate the huge increase planned in the 2027 defense budget, sources told the Washington Post.
Last month, Donald Trump agreed to increase defense spending from around $900 billion to $1.5 trillion, a more than 50 percent increase.
The proposal came from Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, but faced internal criticism, including from White House budget director Russell Vought, who warns of an excessive increase in the national debt.
The White House is now two weeks late in submitting the budget proposal to Congress, partly because there has been no agreement on how much of the money should go to arms purchases and how much should be invested in technology such as AI.
- I'm not surprised they're having difficulties. It's a huge amount of money in one year, says G William Hoagland at the Bipartisan Policy Center think tank.
Tariff Crisis Votes on Tariffs
Analysis: More Headaches from the Supreme Court May Await Trump
There is no evil that does not have some good in it – for Donald Trump, the Supreme Court’s invalidation of his trade tariffs is a severe blow to his entire political platform, but it may also have saved the economy. CNN’s Aaron Blake writes in an analysis.
He points out that US growth during Trump’s first year was the second-worst since 2016, that the jobs figure was the weakest in decades and that inflation has taken hold.
“In other words – aside from the stock market – the economy is not doing so well,” he writes, adding that at least part of the reason for this is likely Trump’s tariffs.
However, there is no escaping the fact that the court’s decision is a severe blow to Trump. Especially since six of the Supreme Court's nine judges are conservatives and two of those who voted down the tariffs were appointed by Trump, notes the New York Times' Ann E Marimow.
She writes that the split between the conservative judges could be a warning bell for Trump, who hopes the court will let him fire the central bank governor and tear up the birthright constitution.
"The disagreement also opens the way for the court's liberal members to build coalitions [...] which could make the court's actions more unpredictable in the coming years," she writes.
Political situation in France
Thousands honor slain right-wing extremist
More than 3,000 people have gathered in Lyon during the day to honor Quentin Deranque, the right-wing extremist who was beaten to death earlier this week. This is reported by French media.
The march took place under heavy police guard and just before it started, President Emmanuel Macron came out and called for calm. It seems that those involved have complied, at least by French standards.
One person is said to have thrown eggs at the march from his apartment window, another was arrested for carrying a hammer and a knife. BFMTV writes that the police have filed a handful of reports against participants in the march who either chanted racist chants or made Hitler salutes.
Quentin Deranque was beaten to death by left-wing extremist activists in connection with a demonstration this week. This has led to a very tense situation between the groups at the far end of the political spectrum.
Protests in Iran
Iranian students in new protests against the regime
Students at several universities in Iran have launched new protests against the regime, reports the BBC.
The channel has verified video clips of marching students at Sharif University in Tehran on Saturday. Arguments are also said to have broken out between them and pro-regime students.
A sit-in protest was also held at another university in the capital, and at least one demonstration was held in the country's northeast.
This coincides with the observance of chehelom ("the 40th"), a traditional Persian and Shia Muslim period of mourning held 40 days after a death, for many of those killed in the January protests.
Trump's USA will lose
They think they know what power is – they are wrong
Published 22.15
Donald Trump's advisors think they know what power is – but they are reading history backwards.
A USA that continues on this path will lose.
For many people, nothing seems more seductive than the feeling of being right.
Especially if it also means that they have seen through something. That they have seen something that almost no one else sees.
Scroll for a few minutes on X, and you will see hundreds of examples: People who insist that a clip on Youtube is the truth, and all the world's accumulated knowledge is a lie.
This certainty of belief is often turbocharged by a kind of reverse reasoning:
Because those I dislike think one thing, my utterly stupid alternative must be right.
It is impossible to understand the Trump administration's ongoing world upheaval without this strange conspiratorial self-confidence.
What the White House gang believes they have understood above all is that the principles, institutions and rules that generations of Americans and Europeans have embraced have been nothing more than slush and nonsense.
That the silk mitten is best used as a comforter, and that all that can be taken seriously is the steel glove.
That the only thing that really counts is power.
- We live in a world, the real world, that is ruled by strength, that is ruled by power, that is ruled by power.
That's what Trump advisor Stephen Miller says.
- These are the iron laws of history since the beginning of time.
It is a view as dangerous as it is wrong.
Those who have confessed to it throughout history have one thing in common:
They have lost.
The first time we encounter these ”iron laws” is on the Greek island of Melos 2442 years ago, when the Athenian envoy threatens the Melians with a variation of Stephen Miller’s words.
What is right depends only on the ability of power to subdue, the historian Thucydides has the Athenians say.
The strong do what they are able to do. The weak endure what they must.
This supposedly eternal truth then immediately seems to prove itself.
The Athenians slaughter the Melians, and I must assume that Stephen Miller triumphantly finished reading there.
Twelve years after the massacre on Melos, Athens had lost the war, not least because the city had been abandoned by many of its exploited “allies”.
In this particular case, history repeats itself.
Time and again, other states join forces to bring an overconfident hegemon to its knees.
It was the German Empire’s “realism” and constant references to “the law of naked power politics,” notes historian Paul Kennedy, that helped unite the other great powers against Germany during World War I.
It is in this light that the US’s achievement over the past 80 years is so historically exceptional, argues Harvard professor Stephen Walt:
Not only was the US the world’s most powerful state—it was also able to lead the world’s most powerful coalition of states.
Formerly self-willed countries like Germany and Japan submitted—and became richer and more successful than ever.
Europe, the most warlike continent in history, experienced its most peaceful era.
An unprecedented prosperity emerged in our part of the world.
The miracle was based on the fact that the US did not abuse its role. Power was used for the benefit of all the countries that crouched under Pax Americana – it didn’t suck them out because the US is the best, and deserves to win the most.
Hard power is important.
The winner in a knife fight tends to be the one who brings the gun.
But along the roadsides of history lie drifts of autocrats and dictators who believe that hard power is enough.
Even though what it builds can never last.
When Winston Churchill suggested in 1945 that the Pope would be unhappy with a Soviet proposal about the future of Poland, Josef Stalin stroked his own mustache:
– How many divisions did you say the Pope has?
That was fun.
8 years later Stalin was dead.
38 years after that his entire empire.
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