标签： Asia

Tensions over the strategically critical Strait of Hormuz have spiked in recent days, following a provocative territorial claim from former U.S. President Donald Trump that has drawn sharp pushback from Iranian officials, even as Tehran progresses on talks with Oman to establish a new temporary shipping lane through the waterway.

Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi announced Sunday that Tehran and Muscat have been in active negotiations to map out a temporary maritime route for commercial vessels, noting that the original shipping lanes currently remain non-functional after Iran imposed restrictions on navigation last month. “For now, we are designing a temporary route, which can then, at a later stage, be turned into a final route,” Araghchi stated, adding that talks are progressing and a final agreement could be reached in the near term.

Crucially, Araghchi emphasized that discussions of the new route are entirely separate from any potential full reopening of the strait. Even after the temporary lane is finalized, he clarified, a full reopening will only move forward if the United States meets pre-existing conditions that Tehran has laid out.

The diplomatic developments come just one day after Trump made an extraordinary threat during a speech at a New York police academy Friday. In the address, the former president claimed the U.S. had “badly defeated” Iran, and announced that Washington would “pretty soon” formally declare the Strait of Hormuz as U.S. territory. He also reiterated that the ongoing blockade remains in place, claiming “No ships get through unless we want them to.”

Iranian officials across government levels have responded to the claim with unified, fierce rejection. Iran’s Deputy Foreign Minister Kazem Gharibabadi dismissed Trump’s declaration in a post on X, arguing that the strait cannot be seized by social media post, military deployment, political speech, or executive order. “The Strait of Hormuz has been Iranian, is Iranian, and will remain Iranian; this strait will only be closed and opened under Iran’s command,” Gharibabadi wrote, adding that Iran will maintain its blockade as long as the U.S. refuses to abandon what he called “fanciful delusions.”

Iranian foreign ministry spokesperson Esmaeil Baghaei also weighed in, quoting a passage from Fyodor Dostoevsky’s *The Brothers Karamazov* to criticize Trump’s remarks. “The man who lies to himself and listens to his own lie comes to such a pass that he cannot distinguish the truth within him, or around him, and so loses all respect for himself and for others,” Baghaei wrote.

On Sunday, Iran’s army chief Amir Hatami issued an additional warning, per Iranian state media, stating that Washington would face lasting regret should it attempt any move to seize control of the strait.

This escalation comes amid a long-running standoff over the waterway, which has left broader diplomatic efforts to resolve the navigation dispute stalled. Iran first closed the strait on February 28 following joint military strikes carried out by the U.S. and Israel, and has since restricted all non-approved transit through the key chokepoint, which carries roughly 25% of all global seaborne crude oil trade.

As of latest reporting, commercial oil tanker traffic through the strait remains heavily disrupted. Reuters confirmed that only two vessels were recorded passing through the waterway on the day of the report, with no large-scale crude oil shipments documented.

Against a backdrop of months-long heightened tensions between the United States and Iran over control of the strategic Strait of Hormuz, the top commander of U.S. Central Command, Admiral Bradley Cooper, has traveled to the Arabian Sea to inspect the USS Abraham Lincoln, the nuclear-powered aircraft carrier leading the U.S. blockade of Iranian maritime activity.

Cooper’s on-board visit comes amid growing public scrutiny of the Lincoln’s unprecedented deployment: the carrier and its 5,000-plus crew have spent more than 250 consecutive days on station in the Middle East without a single scheduled port call — a break from standard deployment protocols that have left the crew grappling with widespread mental health distress, dwindling supply stocks, and plummeting morale.

During his remarks to the crew Saturday, Admiral Cooper framed the extended deployment as a historic milestone, stating, “History will record this deployment as one of the most operationally intense and consequential of the modern era.” But his words come as multiple alarming incidents have underscored the depth of the crew’s crisis. CNN first reported earlier this month that a sailor wearing a life vest fell overboard from the Lincoln; the service member was rescued within an hour and evacuated from the ship for urgent medical care, according to the network. That incident was far from an isolated event. U.S. military-focused publications Stars and Stripes and Navy Times have separately documented a second incident where crew members intervened to stop a fellow sailor from jumping overboard, as exhaustion and mental strain spread across the vessel. In testimony shared at a public town hall with Acting Secretary of the Navy Hung Cao, one spouse told officials her husband assigned to the Lincoln has become so despondent that he “hopes he doesn’t wake up tomorrow,” Stars and Stripes reported.

In response to mounting concerns from U.S. lawmakers over the well-being of the Lincoln’s crew, Pentagon officials confirmed this week the carrier will soon rotate out of the region. It will be replaced by the USS George Washington, the Wall Street Journal reported Thursday. The planned rotation comes just after U.S. Secretary of War Pete Hegseth publicly stated the U.S. blockade of Iran could be maintained “indefinitely,” even as clashes over control of the Strait of Hormuz — a critical chokepoint through which 20% of the world’s oil supplies pass — continue with no ceasefire agreement on the horizon. Tensions between Washington and Tehran have escalated sharply in recent months: Iran has targeted commercial vessels carrying oil and petroleum products owned by Gulf states outside the strait, while the U.S. has launched reciprocal strikes against vessels linked to the Iranian government and military.

While nine-month at-sea deployments are standard for U.S. aircraft carriers during active wartime operations, even extended deployments almost always include regular port stops to restock essential supplies, perform maintenance, and give crew members critical time off to rest and recover. The Lincoln’s extended stretch without any port access is highly unusual and has amplified strain on personnel.

Admiral Cooper’s regional trip also included stops in Israel, Bahrain, Iraq, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, where he held high-level talks with senior political and military leaders across the Gulf and Middle East, a Centcom spokesperson confirmed.

On Sunday, Iran’s armed forces general staff issued a defiant public statement, pledging to achieve the “complete defeat” of both the U.S. and Israel in the Middle East. The statement emphasized that Iran’s legacy of “resistance” to Western and Israeli influence has been fully passed to a new generation of Iranian fighters.

On a Sunday in Washington, former and returning U.S. President Donald Trump made a sudden, consequential policy shift, directing the Pentagon to sharply curtail a planned large-scale joint military exercise with South Korea that was scheduled to kick off later that same week. The announcement tied the move to two separate developments: a claimed South Korean refusal to back U.S. efforts to denuclearize Iran, and Trump’s own long-held view that large-scale drills send an unnecessarily hostile message to North Korea.

In a sudden announcement that upends long-standing U.S. security policy in Northeast Asia, former President Donald Trump has revealed that if he holds office, the United States will dramatically scale back its long-running joint military exercises with South Korea. The announcement, made in a Sunday evening post on his Truth Social platform, directly ties the proposed cut to Trump’s self-proclaimed positive rapport with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.

Trump argued that the large-scale military drills carry two major flaws. First, he emphasized the significant financial burden of the exercises, claiming that as has been the case in past security arrangements, the United States covers the majority of associated costs. Second, he contended that the drills send an unnecessarily hostile and inappropriate signal to Pyongyang, a framing that departs from the traditional U.S. position that the exercises are purely defensive in nature and designed to deter North Korean aggression.

In a notable addendum to his announcement, Trump also pointed out that South Korea recently refused to partner with the United States in efforts to advance the denuclearization of Iran, a remark that analysts say hints at a broader shift in U.S. alliance priorities under a potential new Trump administration. The comment comes amid growing debate over burden-sharing and strategic alignment between Washington and its key Asian allies.

Trump’s approach to North Korea has long broken with decades of bipartisan American foreign policy norms. He made history as the first sitting U.S. president to meet face-to-face with a North Korean leader, holding multiple summits with Kim between 2018 and 2019. His last in-person visit with the North Korean leader took place in 2019, when he made an unprecedented trip across the Demilitarized Zone to step into North Korean territory.

The timing of Trump’s announcement is particularly striking: the United States and South Korea are scheduled to launch their annual routine joint military exercises on Monday, a drill that has long drawn fierce condemnation from North Korea, which views the exercises as preparation for a potential invasion of the country. This breaking story remains ongoing and will be updated as new details emerge.

Less than one month after Israeli strikes targeted Iranian nuclear facilities in June 2025, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu traveled to Washington D.C. for a high-stakes private meeting with U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson in his Capitol Hill office. What has remained unreported until now, however, is the controversial materials Johnson shared with Netanyahu during their discussion: a two-part Bible study pamphlet produced by Capitol Ministries that repeats the ancient, widely discredited antisemitic blood libel of deicide — the false claim that all Jewish people bear collective responsibility for the crucifixion of Jesus Christ.

While the materials frame themselves as pro-Israel advocacy urging U.S. politicians to align with the Israeli government, they reiterate a deicide charge that has been rejected as baseless by all major world religious bodies for decades. The study, which was recycled from content first produced years earlier, was reposted in mid-June 2025 to build congressional and White House support for U.S. military intervention alongside Israel following Israel’s offensive against Iran.

Capitol Ministries, the organization that produces Bible study groups for members of the House, Senate, White House and U.S. governors, regularly repurposes older lessons to match current political events. The 2025 materials draw on text that dates as far back as 2011, when the guide first began warning about Iran’s nuclear program. Phrasing framing the study as a timely biblical primer for U.S. support for Israel has appeared in the document since at least October 2021, meaning the content was not newly written for the 2025 escalation. A 2011 note about Iran’s “nearly-enriched nuclear threat” also remained untouched in the revised pamphlet.

Over more than a decade, this recycled content has circulated among dozens of high-profile Republican leaders across the Trump administration and GOP-led Congress. Senate Majority Leader John Thune has been closely affiliated with Capitol Ministries and its founders Ralph and Danielle Drollinger for more than a decade, describing the group in 2015 as a guiding force that encourages elected officials to align their governance and personal conduct with Christian theology. Current Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth also regularly participates in the group’s White House Bible study, the Pentagon confirmed in 2025.

Weeks after the study materials were circulated, then-President Donald Trump ordered three separate military strikes on Iranian nuclear targets in late June 2025. Netanyahu’s meeting with Johnson on Capitol Hill preceded his scheduled White House talks with Trump. Following their discussion, Netanyahu noted publicly that “First comes strength, then comes peace,” while Johnson released only a brief general statement about the meeting. Full details of the exchange only emerged in Capitol Ministries’ 2025 annual report, where Johnson acknowledged sharing the two-part Drollinger study titled “The Biblical Case for Defending Israel” with Netanyahu, and that the pair discussed the content at length before Netanyahu departed with a copy. Johnson called Capitol Ministries “an invaluable resource” that provides timely biblical insight that shapes both personal conduct and legislative decision-making for hundreds of members of Congress.

The first of Drollinger’s two study guides explicitly repeats the deicide claim, arguing that the Abrahamic Covenant only applies to the Christian Church “for a time” because of Israel’s “present apostasy, having executed the Messiah.” In a companion video for the second lesson, Drollinger doubles down on the claim, stating that Jews were “sidetracked” by God “because they crucified their messiah.” Johnson is listed alongside dozens of other Republican politicians as an official sponsor of the study materials.

Neither Johnson’s congressional office nor the Israeli Embassy in Washington D.C. responded to requests for comment or confirmation of the exchange. This revelation marks not the first controversy tied to Drollinger, who has previously made headlines for derogatory public remarks targeting women, Catholics and LGBTQ+ people. Nor is it Johnson’s first unreported act of faith-based diplomacy with major national security implications: his previously undisclosed meetings with a Ukrainian evangelical advocacy leader ultimately led him to support U.S. military aid to Ukraine.

The incident also shines a light on a long-running debate over antisemitic rhetoric in Congress surrounding deicide claims. In 2024, then-Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer was advancing the Antisemitism Awareness Act, which would codify a legal definition of antisemitism that included labeling the collective deicide charge as antisemitic. Schumer warned that an unidentified Republican senator planned to introduce an amendment that would explicitly exempt deicide claims from the legal definition of antisemitism — meaning calling Jews “Christ-killers” would not be classified as a form of religious bigotry under federal policy.

Schumer approached Johnson, who had already shepherded the bill through the House, to ask for help attaching the antisemitism legislation to a must-pass military spending bill. This procedural move would have blocked the divisive deicide amendment from reaching a floor vote, which Schumer argued would embolden antisemitism across the United States. Johnson rejected Schumer’s request. In April 2025, reporting from The Forward identified Senator Bill Cassidy, a Republican from Louisiana and a Capitol Ministries sponsor since 2013, as the lawmaker planning to introduce the amendment. Representative Josh Brecheen of Oklahoma ultimately voted against the Antisemitism Awareness Act over its inclusion of deicide as an antisemitic claim, arguing that blaming Jews for the crucifixion is a “biblical and historical fact” and that the bill mischaracterized biblical text as bigotry. The bill collapsed after a flood of bipartisan amendments cost it the needed majority support.

Johnson only became an official sponsor of Drollinger’s House Bible study in May 2025, one month before he shared the Israel-focused study with Netanyahu. Just months earlier, senior leaders in the second Trump administration had revived the weekly White House cabinet Bible study run by Capitol Ministries. Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins, one of the leaders of the revived study, is currently facing a lawsuit for proselytizing to her non-religious staff. Office of Management and Budget Director Russell Vought, another key leader of the initiative, faced scrutiny during his 2017 confirmation hearing when he refused to reject the claim that non-Christians, including Jews, are “condemned” for not accepting Jesus as a savior.

There is no public evidence confirming whether Johnson’s policy positions are shaped by Drollinger’s teachings, or if he sponsors the Bible studies because their theology already aligns with his long-held personal beliefs. When asked in 2024 if he believed there was a biblical justification for U.S. support for Israel, Johnson confirmed his personal view that the Torah’s promise that God “will bless the nation that blesses Israel and curse the nation that curses Israel” is a core reason for his support, adding that faith adds a deeper layer to his already pragmatic support for the Middle Eastern democracy.

This position directly aligns with Drollinger’s core theology, as laid out in the study shared with Netanyahu. Drollinger argues that while Jews collectively committed deicide by killing Jesus — a claim that all major Christian denominations have formally renounced — God has only temporarily set the Jewish people aside, rather than voiding the original Abrahamic Covenant. Because of this, he argues, the promise of blessings for allies of Israel and curses for its enemies remains in effect, requiring Christian politicians to support Israel to receive divine favor. Drollinger also repeats other common antisemitic tropes in his materials, including claims that Jewish people are inherently “smart” and “good with money,” tropes that have been used to justify anti-Jewish persecution for centuries.

The irony of the moment is hard to overstate: Netanyahu himself has explicitly referenced the long history of antisemitic violence tied to the deicide myth, telling the United Nations years ago that “For centuries the Jewish people have been demonized with blood libels and charges of deicide.” The Anti-Defamation League similarly classifies the deicide claim as a dangerous antisemitic myth, noting that “the myth that Jews collectively murdered Jesus … has been used to justify violence against Jews for centuries. Historians as well as Christian leaders have agreed that the claim is baseless.” Multiple Jewish and secular advocacy groups condemned the 2025 Bible study for repeating the harmful slur.

Despite this, the incident offers a clear reminder that evangelical Christian theology shapes U.S. foreign policy in underreported ways. While many evangelical leaders are vocal supporters of Israel, that support is often tied to end-times theology that requires a sovereign state of Israel for Jesus Christ to return to Earth — even as that same theology perpetuates core antisemitic claims like deicide. Following the U.S. entry into the 2025 strikes on Iran, the Military Religious Freedom Foundation received reports from active-duty service members that military commanders were openly celebrating the strikes as a sign that the biblical End Times were imminent, with grinning leaders telling subordinates the attack fulfilled prophecies in the Book of Revelation.

Drollinger argues that his work does not create new pro-Israel beliefs among members of Congress and the cabinet, but rather reinforces existing predispositions rooted in their cultural Christian backgrounds, providing a formal biblical foundation for their policy positions. “We need to buoy the convictions of our members based upon Scriptural truths … so that, when push comes to shove, they know why they believe they’re pro-Israel: from what the Bible says,” he explained. In recent years, as congressional Democrats have increasingly broken with Israeli policy and voted in growing numbers against U.S. arms transfers to Israel, Drollinger has argued that the Republican Party’s alignment with biblical teaching makes their pro-Israel stance righteous, while the Democratic Party’s departure from Mosaic law will lead to its political ruin. Drollinger insists he does not advocate for Christian nationalism or theocracy, but simply wants elected officials to align all their policy decisions with what he frames as God’s will.

This investigative report was originally published on Jonathan Larsen’s Substack and is republished with permission. Larsen is an independent journalist and former executive producer at MSNBC.

A high-profile Emirati political commentator and one-time aide to United Arab Emirates President Mohammed bin Zayed has sparked widespread outrage across social media after launching a scathing, derogatory attack on Pakistan amid growing tensions over a landmark regional security agreement between Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and Turkey.

Writing on the social platform X on August 15, 2026, Abdulkhaleq Abdulla questioned Pakistan’s role in the new regional security architecture, framing it as one of modern geopolitics’ greatest contradictions. In his viral post, which has amassed more than 1 million views to date, he argued that a nation where a quarter of the population lives in poverty and a third is illiterate, which has battled decades of corrupt military rule, chronic internal unrest, and repeated conflict with its closest neighbors, was acting opportunistically to position itself as a security guarantor for one of the world’s 20 largest economies. Abdulla also pointed to Pakistan’s estimated 170 nuclear warheads, dismissing the arsenal as the country’s only major strategic qualification for its role in the alliance.

His comments were directed at the recently signed Mecca Joint Defence Agreement, a trilateral security pact between Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and Pakistan, as well as a bilateral Strategic Mutual Defence Agreement between Pakistan and Saudi Arabia signed September 17, 2025, which obligates each nation to respond to any act of aggression against the other. Beyond the immediate controversy over his remarks on Pakistan, Abdulla’s post lays bare growing unease in the UAE over the new security bloc, which many regional analysts view as a direct counter to the growing military cooperation between the UAE and Israel.

The backlash to Abdulla’s comments has been swift, particularly given the close economic and social ties between the UAE and Pakistan: roughly 1.6 million Pakistani expatriates live and work in the Emirates, and their remittances form a critical lifeline for Pakistan’s domestic economy. Critics have pushed back on multiple fronts, arguing that Abdulla’s core premise is deeply flawed. “Comparing poverty and the size of the economy with the political stance is misleading,” one X user wrote in response to the viral post. The user added that Pakistan is a fully sovereign nation with the right to forge its own alliances, and its standing in global affairs is not conditional on its national wealth. “Reducing its qualifications to nuclear weapons ignores its demographic and geopolitical weight and its economy, which has exceeded 400 billion dollars,” the user continued.

Other users have exposed apparent contradictions in Abdulla’s past positions, pointing to older tweets that show he once publicly urged Pakistan to join a Saudi-led military intervention in Yemen. In a 2015 post about Operation Decisive Storm, the Saudi-led campaign in Yemen, Abdulla wrote that Gulf and Saudi diplomacy should deploy all its leverage to secure Pakistan’s participation in the operation. Critics also highlighted a previous tweet in which Abdulla condemned Gulf voices calling for normalization with Israel, a position that contrasts with the UAE’s official policy as the first Gulf state to formally normalize ties with Israel.

Abdulla had publicly signaled his skepticism of the Mecca pact within days of its signing. On August 7, the day the agreement was finalized, he wrote: “Congratulations on the establishment of this alliance, but strengthening Gulf military and political cooperation and unifying the Gulf house is far more important than investing in regional military and political cooperation that includes countries whose credibility and ability to confront the Iranian-Israeli threat are not taken seriously.” He also questioned the core foundation of the new bloc, asking, “One of the conditions for the success of any alliance is identifying the common enemy. So who is the enemy for the countries of this alliance?”

Abdulaziz al-Tuwaijri, former head of the Islamic World Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (Isesco), the OIC’s Rabat-based cultural body, was among the most high-profile critics of Abdulla’s latest remarks. Al-Tuwaijri, who previously clashed with Abdulla over the UAE’s ties to Israel, hinting that “anyone who betrays and collaborates with the Zionists will never find security,” responded to the Pakistan tweet by writing, “It seems that the Mecca Agreement syndrome has left you dizzy.”

This public verbal exchange is far more than a social media spat: it lays bare a deepening geopolitical rift between the UAE and Saudi Arabia, two major Gulf powers that have grown increasingly at odds in recent months. Tensions have already soured over Saudi Arabia’s support for southern Yemeni separatist groups, a position that directly conflicts with Emirati interests. The new Mecca defence pact has amplified these frictions, as it is widely interpreted as a counterweight to the growing military cooperation between the UAE and Israel, a partnership that remains deeply unpopular across most of the Middle East outside of Israeli and pro-U.S. circles.

Theodore Singer, a former U.S. intelligence officer, told Middle East Eye that the two competing blocs offer very different value propositions for their members. “At first glance, the UAE-Israel bloc delivers more tangible gains for both parties, but the Mecca pact may ultimately resonate more broadly and less transactionally,” Singer explained.

The divide between Riyadh and Abu Dhabi has played out in very public view in recent months. In May 2026, after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu claimed he had made an official visit to the UAE amid the war on Iran, Abu Dhabi swiftly issued a formal denial of the report. In contrast, the signing of the Mecca pact was accompanied by a high-profile public celebration: Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan jointly led Friday prayers in Mecca, Islam’s holiest site, to mark the occasion.

Some regional analysts argue that the public, formal codification of the Mecca pact gives the alliance unique room to grow in ways that the closed, transactional UAE-Israel bloc cannot match. The rivalry between the UAE and Saudi Arabia has also spilled over into debates over membership expansion for the new pact. Saudi Arabia has repeatedly blocked efforts by Egypt to join the bloc, with Riyadh citing growing concerns that Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi has aligned too closely with Abu Dhabi.

MEE has previously reported that Egypt has provided substantial military support to the UAE in recent years, deploying air defence systems and fighter jets to the Emirates in response to Iranian attacks, and Sisi has met repeatedly with UAE President Mohammed bin Zayed throughout the ongoing regional conflict. No equivalent support has been extended to Saudi Arabia, a fact that has deepened Riyadh’s mistrust of Cairo. Saudi Arabia also views a range of Emirati policies as directly contrary to Egyptian and Saudi strategic interests: these include the UAE’s deepening engagement with Somaliland, its formal strategic partnership with Israel, its public support for Ethiopia in the long-running dispute over the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam, and its backing of the Rapid Support Forces in Sudan’s ongoing civil war.

To date, Cairo has attempted to maintain neutrality between the two competing emerging blocs: one anchored by Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and Pakistan, and the other by Israel, the UAE, and India. However, Egypt’s existing defence treaty with the UAE and its deployment of fighter jets to Abu Dhabi after Iranian strikes in May have led Saudi Arabia to conclude that Egypt can no longer be counted on as a reliable partner in the region.