标签： Asia

A newly released public report from the U.S. Department of Defense’s inspector general has laid bare deep vulnerabilities in America’s military stockpiles and infrastructure, confirming that months of combat operations against Iran have created critical ammunition shortfalls, exposed production bottlenecks in the U.S. defense industrial base, and caused tens of billions of dollars in damage and losses – directly contradicting public assurances from former President Donald Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth that the conflict had not strained U.S. military capabilities.

In the report submitted to Congress on Monday, the watchdog noted that the heavy rate of munitions consumption during Operation Enduring Freedom against Iran has led to strategic gaps in national military stockpiles, while also highlighting longstanding constraints in the domestic defense industry that slow emergency resupply of key weapons. “The munitions expenditure on OEF has resulted in strategic inventory shortfalls and revealed industrial base bottlenecks for munitions resupply,” the report reads.

To address the growing gaps and production delays, the Pentagon has implemented a series of adjustment measures, including streamlining military procurement procedures, cutting production lead times for critical weapons, and building up stockpiles of key raw materials, components, and high-priority munitions, the report adds. Even so, the watchdog cautions that expanding domestic production capacity for advanced munitions requires years of lead time and substantial upfront investment, meaning shortfalls are likely to persist for the foreseeable future.

The inspector general’s findings line up with multiple independent reports from major news outlets that emerged in the early months of the conflict. Middle East Eye first reported at the conflict’s onset that the U.S. faced immediate shortages of missile interceptors, leaving allied Gulf states waiting for scheduled weapons deliveries. In August, The Associated Press reported that the drawdown of U.S. stockpiles for the Iran war had severely undermined America’s ability to support Ukraine’s defense against Russian invasion, leaving a “beyond critical” shortage of advanced Patriot missile interceptors, the primary system used to shoot down Russian ballistic missiles targeting Ukrainian cities.

Reuters further confirmed the scope of the stockpile depletion, reporting that the U.S. has nearly exhausted its reserves of sophisticated long-range standoff strike missiles. Citing two anonymous defense sources, the outlet reported that the Pentagon has used “virtually all” of its available surface-to-surface precision weapons, including ATACMS tactical ballistic missiles and the newer Precision Strike Missiles.

Beyond ammunition shortages, the inspector general’s report also documents extensive material losses across U.S. military assets in the Middle East. The tally includes four F-15 fighter jets destroyed in Iranian strikes, one F-35 stealth fighter damaged, seven KC-135 aerial refueling tankers damaged, and as many as 30 MQ-9 Reaper surveillance and strike drones destroyed. The report also confirms that the U.S. Navy’s primary regional logistics hub in Bahrain was repeatedly targeted by Iranian drone and ballistic missile attacks.

Across U.S. military bases spread across eight Middle Eastern nations – Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Oman, and Jordan – the report counts hundreds of buildings and structures that have been damaged or destroyed by Iranian strikes. The watchdog notes it remains unclear whether all damaged bases will be rebuilt, and equally unclear which government will cover the costs of reconstruction. As of the report’s publication, the cumulative estimated cost of the Iran conflict stands at roughly $33.4 billion, a figure that does not include additional infrastructure repair costs. Of that total, $3.7 billion is attributed to lost and destroyed equipment, while $22.3 billion covers the cost of munitions expended during combat operations.

This assessment aligns with previous reporting from Middle East Eye, which quoted current and former U.S. officials arguing that traditional forward-deployed base infrastructure in the Middle East is no longer a viable strategic posture, given Iran’s proven ability to strike fixed positions with large volleys of drones and ballistic missiles.

The report also outlines the human cost of the conflict: more than 50,000 U.S. personnel have been deployed across the U.S. Central Command area of responsibility to support operations against Iran, with more than 1,500 air combat missions conducted as of the end of June. According to the watchdog’s casualty tally, seven U.S. service members have been killed in combat operations, and another seven have died in non-hostile incidents connected to the deployment. An additional 417 service members have been wounded in action, the report confirms.

India’s sprawling electoral system includes a little-scrutinized layer of political entities that has recently drawn intense attention from tax officials and investigative journalists over alleged misuse of campaign finance rules. Known as Registered Unrecognised Political Parties (RUPPs), these groups hold legal registration with India’s election body but have never secured enough votes or seats to earn official recognition at the state or national level.

With more than 2,800 active RUPPs across the country, the system was designed to open space for small, emerging political groups to participate in democratic processes. Like larger national and state parties, RUPPs are eligible to receive untraceable small donations and offer tax exemptions to donors, who can reduce their taxable income by contributing to registered political entities. But long-standing concerns have emerged that these loose regulations are being exploited for illicit tax avoidance, with a months-long BBC investigation uncovering stark gaps between the massive sums some RUPPs report receiving and their near-non-existent electoral activity.

The investigation focused on six of the highest-donation RUPPs in the 2023-24 financial year, which together reported receiving roughly 17 billion rupees (approximately $180 million) in donations. Despite this enormous inflow of funds, the six parties collectively fielded only 15 candidates in India’s 2024 national general election – and none came close to winning a seat, with every candidate losing their election deposit. One of the most striking cases is the Gujarat-based Satyawadi Rakshak Party, which reported receiving more than 3.3 billion rupees ($35 million) in donations in the year ending March 2024. When the general election was held months later, the party fielded just one candidate, who lost. According to the party’s public financial disclosures, 84.8 million rupees was spent on election campaigning, while more than 3.16 billion rupees was marked as “public welfare” spending. When contacted, party president Swati Ben Patel told the BBC the money was spent on charity, but the party kept no formal records of expenditures. Reporters who visited the party’s registered headquarters – a locked residential flat in Anand, Gujarat – found no signage, campaign materials, or evidence of any ongoing political activity. The office was permanently closed.

Similar discrepancies appeared across all six parties investigated. Aam Janmat Party, founded in Patna, Bihar in 2020, reported no individual donations over 20,000 rupees (the threshold that requires public disclosure of donor identities to the Election Commission) in its first two years of operation. Then its finances exploded: the party reported 2.16 billion rupees in donations in 2022-23, and that figure nearly tripled to 6.2 billion rupees ($66 million) in 2023-24 – more than double the total donations reported that year by India’s main national opposition party, the Indian National Congress. Like Satyawadi Rakshak Party, Aam Janmat fielded only one candidate in the 2024 election, who lost his deposit. The party’s founding president, Anamika Paswan, told the BBC she resigned from the group in 2022 and is now a vice-president of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party in Bihar. Reporters who visited the party’s new registered address in Ahmedabad, Gujarat found the office permanently closed, and the party’s current president did not respond to repeated requests for comment. The party’s listed treasurer confirmed the group had halted all operations and said he had no knowledge of its finances. Remarkably, the party’s registered bank account remains active: the BBC successfully transferred a small donation to the account after the party claimed to have shut down.

Another group, Garib Kalyan Party, reported 1.38 billion rupees in 2023-24 donations but fielded only three candidates, all of whom lost. Its candidate Indradevi Hiralal told the BBC she never even visited her assigned constituency to campaign in 2024, despite the party’s website posting photos of supposed door-to-door canvassing. The party’s registered office was also found closed, and the president’s mother said tax officials had previously searched the family home, though she did not know the reason for the raid.

The investigation uncovered a common pattern of exploitation of existing tax rules, according to tax officials and insiders. Middlemen, including chartered accountants, connect taxpayers looking to reduce their tax bills with RUPPs that are willing to accept donations in exchange for small cuts of the funds. Donors get the tax exemption they are seeking, while the parties and their controllers keep the remainder of the sum. Surender Tiwari, president of Swatantrata Abhivyakti Party – which reported 2.19 billion rupees in 2023-24 donations – told the BBC he had no control over the group’s finances. He said a chartered accountant handled all financial matters, gave him a small sum for his campaign, and then used evidence of the election activity to market the party to donors seeking tax breaks. The accountant in question, Mayur Singh, denied any wrongdoing, saying his role was limited to filing required audit reports, though he acknowledged working for multiple of the parties investigated.

Two donors interviewed by the BBC confirmed they had given money to a RUPP explicitly to claim tax benefits. One told the outlet he donated on a friend’s advice, saying, “I did it as a way to save tax, and have declared the same” – adding that authorities had not contacted him about the contribution.

Indian tax authorities have been aware of the suspected misuse of RUPPs for years. An internal Income Tax department document reviewed by the BBC shows investigations into the issue have been ongoing since at least 2002. The document identifies 55.91 billion rupees ($595 million) in suspected bogus political donations made by taxpayers seeking illegal tax benefits, as well as 6.65 billion rupees in suspicious foreign transactions. It also notes possible violations of tax laws, foreign funding regulations, and election rules. None of the six parties investigated by the BBC have been publicly named in the broader inquiry, and the outlet was unable to confirm that any of the parties committed illegal financial wrongdoing. Three of the six parties confirmed they or their officials had faced Income Tax department action, while a fourth confirmed a relative’s home had been searched. Tax authorities at both the state and central level did not respond to requests for comment on the specific cases.

Beyond tax fraud concerns, India’s Election Commission has been grappling with the large number of inactive RUPPs cluttering the official voter rolls. Last year, the commission delisted more than 800 RUPPs that had not fielded a candidate in six consecutive elections, but it lacks the legal authority to cancel a party’s formal registration, limiting the impact of these clean-up efforts. The commission did not respond to questions about whether tax authorities had shared information on suspected irregularities involving the six parties investigated. As scrutiny of the sector grows, authorities face a major challenge: untangling the web of donations, intermediaries, and shell entities to identify who actually controls these little-known parties, where their funds originate, and how the billions of rupees they receive are ultimately spent.

Turkish authorities have launched the broadest crackdown on the LGBTQ+ community in the country’s modern history, arresting hundreds of people ranging from grassroots activists and journalists to HIV service providers and ordinary members of the public across at least 15 provinces. The operation, branded the “My Family is Safe” initiative by the government, follows a years-long trend of escalating targeting of queer groups under the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP), and frames the action as an effort to defend traditional Turkish family structures. Those detained face a range of sweeping charges, including accusations of obscenity, facilitating prostitution, and maintaining improper financial ties with international entities.

More than 130 prominent British legal figures—including senior barristers, retired judges, and leading international law academics—have publicly challenged Prime Minister Andy Burnham’s administration, arguing that the new Israeli settlement sanctions unveiled last week by Foreign Secretary Ed Miliband do not fulfill the United Kingdom’s binding duties under international law.

In a detailed six-page open letter delivered to Downing Street on Tuesday, the legal signatories first acknowledged the government’s step to coordinate its action alongside Canada and France, a rare unified international response to Israel’s long-standing settlement expansion. But the letter makes clear that the limited targeted trade measures announced are nowhere near the comprehensive action required by the 2024 binding ruling from the International Court of Justice (ICJ), which ordered all states to actively end their complicity in Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territory.

Last week’s policy shift marked a historic turning point for British foreign policy: the UK officially formally recognized that Israel’s decades-long occupation of Palestinian territory violates international law. In his address to parliament announcing the new rules, Miliband also went further than any prior British foreign secretary, confirming that he believes a campaign of ethnic cleansing against Palestinian communities is currently underway in the occupied West Bank.

Off-the-record government briefings to Middle East Eye (MEE) confirmed that the new sanctions will cover Israeli settlements across all occupied Palestinian territories, including not just the West Bank, but also the illegally annexed Golan Heights and East Jerusalem. The UK is not acting alone: eleven additional nations—Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Iceland, Ireland, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Spain and Sweden—have already joined the UK in either implementing similar restrictions or actively considering their own sanctions on goods produced in Israeli settlements.

The list of signatories backing the criticism of the UK’s limited measures includes some of the country’s most respected legal voices: high-profile human rights barrister Michael Mansfield, former Lord Justice of Appeal Alan Moses, SOAS University of London law professor Nimer Sultany, and University College London international law professor Ralph Wilde, among many others.

The letter lays out a clear roadmap for what comprehensive compliance with international law would look like for the UK. It calls on the government to expand the scope of sanctions beyond just trade in physical goods to include critical service sectors that enable settlement growth: insurance, accountancy services, and digital infrastructure that supports Israeli settlement expansion. The legal experts also demand that the government issue a public, binding confirmation that no UK public body, public sector pension scheme, or national sovereign fund maintains any investments linked to Israeli settlements. Most notably, the letter calls for the imposition of a full, complete arms embargo on Israel, a step that would mark a dramatic break from decades of close UK-Israeli military cooperation.

Ralph Wilde, the UCL international law professor, emphasized that while the government’s recent formal recognition of the occupation’s illegality is a welcome shift after years of British diplomatic inaction, the limited response does not match the scale of the legal duty the ICJ imposed on all UN member states. “The government’s decision to finally acknowledge that Israel’s occupation of the Palestinian Gaza Strip and West Bank is illegal is welcome,” Wilde said. “But the consequences of this illegality for the UK and other states—special legal duties to take comprehensive action to bring this and other illegal actions by Israel, including its genocide in Gaza, to an end—are far more wide-ranging than the important but limited actions against settlements and settlers announced.”

Nimer Sultany, the SOAS law professor, framed the core issue at the heart of the UK’s half-measures, noting that Israel’s occupation is not an unintended side effect of regional conflict, but a core, intentional policy. “The elephant in the room is that the occupation is not a bug, it’s a feature,” Sultany said. “Israel’s political consensus uniformly opposes the creation of a sovereign Palestinian state. Thus, ending Israel’s occupation of the Palestinian territories, as determined by the International Court of Justice, requires immediate, effective and comprehensive actions by the UK government, not a piecemeal approach that leaves the foundations of the occupation intact.”

The letter anchors its call for a full arms embargo in the UK’s existing obligations under the Arms Trade Treaty, specifically Article 6(3), which strictly prohibits any arms transfers when a state knows the weapons will be used to commit genocide, crimes against humanity, or grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions. “Having made that finding [that ethnic cleansing is occurring and the occupation is illegal], the UK Government cannot treat that knowledge as absent,” the letter argues. The legal experts also draw a sharp contrast between the UK’s robust, sweeping sanctions on Russia following its 2022 full-scale invasion of Ukraine, and the half-measures applied to Israel’s decades-long occupation. The Russian sanctions covered all major sectors of the Russian economy: major banks, energy firms, shipping networks, all arms exports, private investment activity, and cross-border financial services—all on the explicit grounds that these sectors enable and finance illegal occupation. That same logic, the letter points out, has not been extended to Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territory, despite matching the same legal threshold.

The letter also adds one more demand: the UK government must implement strict oversight to ensure that funds raised by UK-registered charities are not diverted to support illegal settlement activities. This call comes after a June statement from Labour MP Melanie Ward revealing that Israeli settlements have received at least £28 million in donations from 32 charities registered in England and Wales. In response to that disclosure, the UK Charity Commission launched a fact-finding inquiry into charities operating in Israeli-occupied settlement territories in August.

This report was published by Middle East Eye, a media organization that produces independent, on-the-ground coverage and analysis of the Middle East, North Africa and surrounding regions.

In the Galilee region of northern Israel, a wave of sustained daily demonstrations has erupted, led by Palestinian citizens of Israel, in response to a new settler outpost erected in the heart of Majd al-Krum, a town overwhelmingly populated by Palestinian Israelis. The outpost, established Friday by a group of settlers originating from Tekoa, a settlement located near Bethlehem in the occupied West Bank, has already become a flashpoint for long-simmering tensions over land rights and state-backed demographic policy.

The new encampment was set up shortly after Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich unveiled an election campaign platform that explicitly aims to “Judaize” the Negev and Galilee regions by bringing an additional 1 million Jewish residents into these areas. Smotrich, a prominent far-right figure in the current Israeli government, has publicly stated his goal to expand the West Bank settlement “revolution” into areas within Israel’s pre-1967 borders, regions that are home to the majority of Israel’s Palestinian citizen population.

Local authorities and community organizers have framed the outpost as a deliberate step to alter the demographic and geographic status quo on the ground. Izz al-Din Badran, an activist with Majd al-Krum’s popular committee, told reporters that residents first uncovered the settler encampment last Friday. Shortly after the discovery, the committee issued a call for continuous community mobilization to force the settlers to abandon the site.

The outpost itself sits on state land that the Jewish National Fund had leased exclusively for small-scale livestock grazing. Despite the terms of the lease, hardline young settlers have occupied the area, pitching permanent tents and moving in household furniture to establish a long-term presence. Local residents say that multiple private Palestinian landowners hold claims to adjacent parcels in the area, and the new outpost raises immediate fears of eventual expansion into privately owned land, or permanent restrictions on local residents’ access to their property.

Badran emphasized that the settlers occupying Majd al-Krum are the same extremist actors responsible for routine violence against Palestinian communities in the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip. “They are the same people who are here, and they will not be allowed to take over land,” he said, confirming that hundreds of local residents have joined the ongoing mobilization. “The mobilisation will continue until they leave.” In line with this commitment, the local council and popular committee have scheduled daily protests running from 5 p.m. until nightfall, and demonstrations will continue until the outpost is fully removed.

Sami Abu Shehada, leader of the Balad political party and a candidate in Israel’s upcoming national elections, warned that the establishment of the Majd al-Krum outpost is part of a long-standing, coordinated tactic of land seizure that has been used for years in the occupied West Bank’s Area C. In that region, he explained, Israeli settlers typically start by grazing livestock on small parcels of land, before gradually expanding their presence to take over entire areas of Palestinian-owned territory. This tactic, he stressed, has now crossed the Green Line, the 1949 Armistice border that has functioned as the de facto boundary between Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories since 1967.

Abu Shehada argued that the ultimate goal of this campaign is to fully erase the Green Line, eliminate any recognition of separate Palestinian land, and invalidate the Oslo Accords. Under the ideological framework driving this project, all of historic Palestine is claimed as exclusive Jewish territory, with no legal distinction between land captured in the 1967 war and territory that was part of Israel prior to that conflict.

This push can be directly traced back to Smotrich’s 2017 “Decisive Plan,” a far-reaching blueprint that aims to eliminate all Palestinian national aspirations. The plan is rooted in the claim that the entire territory between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea belongs exclusively to the Jewish people, and presents Palestinians with three non-negotiable options: abandon all claims to national sovereignty and accept a second-class status under Jewish dominance, leave their historic homeland, or face violent repression if they resist displacement and dispossession.

Abu Shehada noted that Palestinian stakeholders have previously made the mistake of underestimating the seriousness of Smotrich’s plan, but the new outpost in Majd al-Krum makes the urgent threat clear. He emphasized that Smotrich does not act as an isolated extremist; he holds a senior position in Israel’s sitting government, and the settler movement is not a fringe group of independent actors. Instead, it operates as part of a state-backed network that enjoys police protection and influence at the highest levels of Israeli government.

“The danger comes from the fact that this is a state project, and a large part of the institutions of this state have adopted it and supported it,” Abu Shehada said.

Recent rapid military gains by Yemen’s Houthi movement, Ansar Allah, along Yemen’s western Red Sea coast have triggered a flurry of diplomatic and security maneuvering across the Middle East, with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu publicly offering Israeli military support to Arab Gulf states for a coordinated, comprehensive campaign against the group, according to regional media reports.

Lebanese outlet Al-Akhbar, in a report by its editor Ibrahim al-Amin, revealed that Netanyahu has been pressing Israel’s top security and military leadership to draft contingency plans for potential offensive action against both Iran and Lebanese militant group Hezbollah, a key Houthi ally. Israeli media outlets have framed the proposed Israeli intervention as a core component of a broader regional push to counter Houthi expansion and neutralize the threat the movement poses to commercial shipping through the Bab al-Mandeb strait and the Red Sea—one of the world’s busiest and most geostrategically important maritime trade corridors.

Al-Akhbar separately noted that the Houthi seizure of the key coastal city of Mocha and the group’s steady expansion along Yemen’s western coastline have emerged as a top security priority for Israeli intelligence and defense officials. Israeli strategic assessments warn that full Houthi control over the western coast and the Bab al-Mandeb strait would not only place unprecedented pressure on global shipping but also test the limits of U.S.-led maritime security initiatives in the region. Israeli intelligence agencies are currently maintaining continuous, close surveillance of Houthi troop movements, with particular focus on how control of Mocha could enhance the group’s capacity to intercept and disrupt oil tankers and commercial vessels transiting the Red Sea. The report also cites Israeli defense analysts concluding that the accelerating Houthi advance will likely require Israel to increase its naval presence in waters adjacent to the Bab al-Mandeb strait.

The fall of Mocha has significantly strengthened Houthi control over the entire maritime corridor connecting the Red Sea to the Gulf of Aden and Indian Ocean, opening new opportunities for enhanced regional security cooperation between Israel and Saudi Arabia, according to some Israeli analysts. Yoel Guzansky, a researcher at Israel’s Institute for National Security Studies, was cited as saying that simultaneous pressure on Saudi Arabia from Iran, the Houthis, and pro-Iranian militia groups in Iraq creates an opening for quiet, pragmatic security collaboration between Riyadh and Jerusalem. This potential cooperation could cover intelligence sharing, early warning systems, and joint defense against missile and drone attacks, Guzansky argued.

Israeli mass circulation newspaper Israel Hayom further reported that Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman has requested security assistance from regional partners to counter the Houthi advance, and made an indirect appeal for Israeli support through U.S. Central Command. According to the report, Riyadh specifically asked for help preventing the Houthis from sealing off the Bab al-Mandeb strait entirely. Still, Israeli defense officials have signaled that the country is unlikely to rush into a direct active military role, as Israeli strategists warn that open participation in the conflict would prompt the Houthis to resume large-scale missile and drone attacks targeting Israeli territory—a risk Israeli leaders are not eager to take at this juncture. Despite this caution, many Israeli analysts view the current Red Sea crisis as a rare opportunity to formalize and deepen long-unacknowledged security ties between Riyadh and Jerusalem.

On the ground, the military situation has evolved far beyond the initial Houthi capture of Mocha. After securing control of the Hays and Al-Khawkhah districts in western Yemen, Houthi forces advanced rapidly to seize Mocha, a strategic deep-water port. Since that victory, the group has announced the capture of Mayyun Island, located at the southern entrance of the Red Sea in the Bab al-Mandeb strait. Forces loyal to Yemen’s internationally recognized government have responded with a series of air strikes targeting Houthi positions across the contested region, and fighting has now spilled across the border into southern Saudi Arabia.

The human cost of the renewed conflict has climbed steeply. The International Organization for Migration reported Sunday that nearly 86,000 people have been displaced by the recent fighting, with around 10,000 additional people displaced in a single 24-hour period. More than 2,000 displaced people have already fled by sea to neighboring Djibouti, and the fighting has killed more than 500 combatants to date. On Sunday, the Houthis claimed responsibility for a coordinated ballistic missile and drone attack targeting a Saudi military base in the southern Saudi region of Sharurah. Houthi military spokesperson Yahya Saree stated that the strike targeted weapons depots and command-and-control centers used by Saudi forces to coordinate what the Houthis call “aggression against the Yemeni nation.” Saree confirmed that the strikes hit their intended targets and issued a warning that the group would launch larger strikes deeper inside Saudi territory if the Saudi-led military campaign against Yemen continues. Separately, the Yemeni military announced that its air force had carried out three strikes against Houthi positions and barracks in the Taiz region.

Prominent regional news outlet Al Jazeera has characterized the latest Houthi advance as far more than a temporary tactical win on the battlefield. Securing full control over the Red Sea coast and nearby strategic islands not only gives the movement far greater capacity to disrupt global commercial shipping but also lays bare the deep internal divisions and institutional weakness of Yemen’s internationally backed government, Al Jazeera reported. As the conflict intensifies and the threat to shipping grows, commercial traffic through the Bab al-Mandeb has plummeted: from an average of 70 vessels per day before the latest crisis to just 26 vessels per day at present.

This reporting draws on independent on-the-ground and regional analysis from Middle East Eye, a leading source of independent coverage of Middle East and North African affairs.