标签： Asia

Behind closed diplomatic doors, several Arab Gulf states have privately communicated to U.S. and European leaders that they do not oppose the idea of charging navigation fees for the Strait of Hormuz — a critical global energy chokepoint — but will not accept Tehran holding sway over the waterway, multiple senior U.S. and regional officials have confirmed in exclusive comments to Middle East Eye.

According to officials briefed on these confidential diplomatic exchanges, the distinction between accepting a fee structure and rejecting Iranian sovereignty over the strait is a subtle but strategically critical one, emerging at a moment of escalating bilateral tension between the U.S. and Iran that has sent shockwaves through regional energy markets.

Former U.S. President Donald Trump has repeatedly pushed for economic compensation in exchange for U.S. military security guarantees in the strait, a position that aligns with the quiet signals sent by Gulf Arab leaders. On a Monday earlier this year, Trump first publicly proposed a 20 percent fee on all transit, framing the U.S. as the primary guardian of the waterway and arguing that Gulf partners including Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Bahrain, and Kuwait should cover the cost of security provision.

Trump’s initial announcement immediately sparked internal division within U.S. political circles: on the same day, senior U.S. official Marco Rubio publicly contradicted the president, stating clearly that no nation has the authority to unilaterally charge tolls or fees in international waterways. Publicly, Gulf state officials including UAE representatives have joined Western powers in rejecting Iran’s attempts to impose unilateral transit fees on the strait.

By the following day, Trump walked back his original fee proposal, announcing on his social media platform Truth Social that he would replace the 20 percent reimbursement fee with trade and investment deals that Gulf states would make in the U.S. “Based on highly productive conversations with Middle East leadership, I have decided to replace the 20 percent United States Reimbursement Fee with Trade and Investment Deals that the various Gulf States will be making into the United States,” he wrote.

Even with this policy shift, the core demand for U.S. economic compensation in exchange for Strait of Hormuz security remains unchanged. Notably, Trump did not call for additional investments from Asian economies that rely heavily on Gulf energy imports, or from Greek shipping firms that control a large share of global energy transit through the waterway. He emphasized that Gulf leaders have already expressed enthusiasm for expanding their U.S. investments to record levels, a framework he frames as a reasonable alternative to an explicit fee.

“I spoke to all of them, and they would love to invest more money in the United States at record amounts, and that would be very acceptable,” Trump told reporters during a White House meeting with Iraqi Prime Minister Ali al-Zaidi. “This way, there’s no fee. I don’t like the concept of a fee, but at the same time, it’s not fair that we’re protecting this strait for the entire world, for China and everyone. I don’t mind protecting it for China. I don’t mind protecting it for anybody. But it’s unfair that we’re not, in some way, compensated.”

Trump’s public comments align with the anonymous assessments shared by officials, who note that for Gulf states, the financial cost of any fee or investment commitment is a small price to pay for the regional stability that guarantees unimpeded energy exports. “For some Gulf states, a toll doesn’t really matter. Financially, it is negligible to their bottom line. They want stability,” one senior U.S. official explained. “What the Gulf doesn’t want is Iran to have veto power over who can exit and enter the strait. They don’t want Iran to be able to flip a switch. The toll or payment is insignificant,” a separate senior regional official added.

Iran’s own plans to impose a unilateral service fee on strait transit have been significantly undermined in recent weeks by Oman’s decision to allow vessels to transit its territorial waters without coordinating with Tehran. Multiple U.S. and regional officials confirm that Muscat has faced intense international diplomatic pressure to break with Iran’s fee scheme, a move that strips Tehran of any potential legal justification for charging transit costs.

Under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, coastal nations may claim territorial sovereignty over up to 12 nautical miles of offshore waters. At its narrowest point, the Strait of Hormuz is just 21 nautical miles wide, with only Iran and Oman as littoral states. Legal experts interviewed by MEE note that if the two nations cooperated, they could build a legal case for charging reasonable “piloting fees” or “navigation service fees” for transit. But Oman’s decision to open its territorial waters to free transit eliminates that shared legal foundation.

In response to Oman’s move and regional opposition to its control ambitions, Iran has escalated maritime aggression, targeting commercial vessels linked to Qatar, the UAE, and Saudi Arabia that were transiting Omani territorial waters. This escalation has further raised tensions in the strategic waterway, through which roughly a fifth of global oil consumption passes each day.

Nearly two years have passed since a prominent U.S. seismologist specializing in nuclear test monitoring was taken into custody by Chinese authorities during a family visit to Beijing, according to claims from his family and U.S.-based hostage advocacy organizations. Chen Youlin, a 54-year-old naturalized American citizen who resides in Boston, was arrested in November 2024, and currently holds the designation of the only ‘wrongfully detained’ U.S. citizen by the U.S. government.

Born in China and naturalized in the U.S. in 2011, Chen has built his career around analyzing seismological data to detect and quantify underground nuclear tests, leading multiple research projects funded by U.S. government agencies. One of his most high-profile works, completed in 2020, drew on seismic readings from across Asia—including Chinese territory—to refine global nuclear test monitoring protocols and yield estimation techniques. His work has focused heavily on tracking North Korea’s known underground nuclear testing activity, though U.S. intelligence has also made unconfirmed claims about Beijing’s own expansion of its nuclear arsenal, claims Beijing has repeatedly denied.

Chen’s wife, Rong Yufang, herself a seismologist, has vehemently rejected the espionage allegations against her husband. In a statement released through hostage advocacy group Global Reach, she emphasized that Chen’s decades of work have been entirely public, collaborative, and centered on people-to-people scientific engagement—exactly the type of cross-border exchange the Chinese government has publicly claimed to support. After seeing no progress toward Chen’s release for nearly two years, the family made the decision to go public with their account of the detention.

Rong further detailed to Reuters that Chinese investigators have interrogated Chen more than 100 times about his research, and he was denied access to legal counsel for the first 13 months of his detention. She has not been able to communicate directly with her husband in more than 600 days, and says she is gravely concerned about his physical and mental well-being. The U.S.-based Foley Foundation has echoed these concerns, noting that Chen lives with chronic conditions including diabetes, high blood pressure, and high cholesterol, and that he cannot access consistent, appropriate medical care while in detention.

When pressed for comment on the case during a regular Tuesday press briefing, China’s foreign ministry spokesperson Lin Jian stated that Chinese judicial authorities process all cases in strict accordance with domestic law, and rejected the label of ‘wrongful detention’ applied by U.S. actors. Under Chinese criminal law, espionage convictions carry extremely severe penalties, up to and including life imprisonment or capital punishment.

Global Reach says U.S. government officials suspect Chen’s arrest was motivated by geopolitical tensions surrounding nuclear test compliance. The Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty (CTBT), which bans all explosive nuclear testing globally, has not yet entered into force because key nuclear-armed states—including both the U.S. and China—have not ratified the agreement. Both nations have maintained voluntary moratoriums on explosive nuclear testing, but U.S. intelligence has repeatedly raised unsubstantiated claims that China is conducting covert tests in violation of its moratorium, most notably a 2020 accusation from the Trump administration of a secret test at China’s Lop Nur testing site, which Beijing dismissed as baseless and politically motivated. Global Reach says U.S. officials believe China detained Chen to gain insight into U.S. seismic detection methods, allowing Beijing to develop countermeasures that could hide future nuclear tests from international monitoring.

The case of Chen comes just one month after China confirmed the arrest of another U.S. academic, Min Zin, who leads a Myanmar-focused think tank, on similar espionage and national security charges. U.S. political leaders have raised sharp objections to Chen’s detention: Democratic Senator Edward Markey, who represents Massachusetts where Chen resides, said that Beijing’s handling of the case has damaged bilateral cooperation and risks discouraging cross-border academic engagement between the U.S. and China. ‘It is my hope that increased attention on his unjust detention will force the Chinese government to do the right thing and release Chen,’ Markey said in a statement released earlier this week.

A bombshell new report from Time Magazine published Tuesday has uncovered that a covert social media initiative designed to undermine U.S. President Donald Trump’s ceasefire agreement with Iran was orchestrated by Brad Parscale, Trump’s former 2020 campaign manager.

The operation was launched under a broader contract between Parscale’s private strategic firm Clock Tower X and global advertising giant Havas, which was acting on behalf of the Israeli government. While the public mandate for the work framed it as an effort to counter antisemitism online, Time’s investigation reveals the unstated core goal was to stop rising criticism of Israel among young American conservative audiences.

Parscale exploited his senior leadership role as chief strategy officer at Salem Media Group, a conservative and Christian-focused national media conglomerate, to narrow his targeting to right-leaning young voters across the United States. He also tapped into a network of social media companies he founded or controls, including digital strategy firm Campaign Nucleus and influencer marketing platform Influenceable, to recruit conservative content creators and online personalities to join the campaign.

In private encrypted group chats, these recruited influencers received guided messaging instructions tailored for major platforms including X, Instagram and TikTok, all crafted to align with Israeli government interests. Content creators were paid based on the performance of their posts, with compensation tied directly to the number of impressions and user engagement their content generated, according to Time’s reporting.

Previous influencer campaigns run through Influenceable structured payments with a $2,250 base fee per post, plus an additional $1 for every 1,000 views earned, capped at two million views per post. Under this payment structure, top-performing influencers could walk away with as much as $4,250 for a single social media post.

One high-profile conservative pro-Israel commentator linked to the campaign is Eyal Yakoby, who boasts 300,000 followers on X and has appeared as a guest on major U.S. outlets including Fox News, CNN and The Washington Post. Yakoby, a vocal public supporter of Israel, maintains his work is focused on combating antisemitism, but he has also spread unsubstantiated claims tying New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani to the Muslim Brotherhood. When contacted by Time, Yakoby denied ever being paid to promote opinions he did not personally hold.

Parscale committed to delivering a minimum of 50 million monthly digital impressions through the campaign, with a stated goal of shifting how major artificial intelligence platforms including OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Google’s Gemini characterize Israel and the ongoing Israel-Hamas war. For this work, the Israeli government pays Clock Tower X $1.5 million every month. All of Parscale’s work for the Israeli government has been formally registered as required under the U.S. Foreign Agents Registration Act, a public disclosure requirement for foreign political actors operating in the United States. Prior reporting from The Intercept in May 2026 first revealed that Parscale’s firm had been hired by Israel for $6 million in September 2025, before signing a subsequent $15 million contract with Havas.

While the campaign itself has been active for months, Tuesday’s Time report carries new significance because it confirms that a close former ally of President Trump was actively working to sink a core foreign policy initiative of the Trump administration. The magazine notes that U.S. officials had already observed a coordinated wave of anti-ceasefire rhetoric on social media, though they had not previously confirmed the origin of the coordinated effort.

Measuring the campaign’s overall effectiveness remains an open question. Israel has seen consistent erosion in public support across all demographic groups in the U.S. since it launched its military campaign in Gaza following the October 7, 2023 Hamas attack that killed roughly 1,200 people in southern Israel. The Israeli military campaign in Gaza has killed more than 34,000 Palestinians to date, and widespread criticism of the operation as a humanitarian catastrophe has shifted public opinion across the political spectrum.

Even prominent conservative voices have broken with the Israeli government in recent months: long-time mainstream conservative commentator Tucker Carlson and former Trump chief strategist Steve Bannon have both publicly condemned Israel for dragging the United States into unnecessary conflict in the Middle East. Conservative comedian and podcaster Dave Smith has also built a large new audience for his sharp criticism of U.S. intervention in the region and Israel’s military actions in the besieged Gaza Strip.

Polling reflects this shifting opinion: a Quinnipiac University poll released last month found that 60 percent of U.S. voters believe potential U.S. military action against Iran would not be worth the cost.

This reporting was aggregated from original independent coverage by Middle East Eye, a publication that produces on-the-ground, independent reporting and analysis of the Middle East, North Africa and surrounding regions.

Exactly two months after his surprise appointment as Iraq’s prime minister, political outsider and former banker Ali al-Zaidi stood in the White House Oval Office on Tuesday, receiving public praise from the U.S. president who backed his rise to power.

Speaking to reporters in the room, former U.S. President Donald Trump made clear his active role in Zaidi’s ascent, noting he had thrown his full support behind the Iraqi leader after saying he was dissatisfied with the election’s expected frontrunner. “I think he’s going to end up being a great leader,” Trump told assembled media, adding that Zaidi has long been a friend to the United States. The president closed his introductory remarks with a lighthearted jab: “He’s young and he’s handsome, which I don’t like,” drawing laughter from Zaidi in attendance.

Beyond the ceremonial pleasantries, the meeting served as a platform for the Trump administration to lay out its core agenda for Iraq: moving Baghdad fully out from under Tehran’s sphere of influence, with the top priority being the full disarmament of Iran-aligned militias that operate under the umbrella of the Popular Mobilisation Forces (PMF) within Iraq’s state structure.

For his part, Zaidi reaffirmed his commitment to disarmament, telling reporters that his September 30 deadline for all unauthorized armed factions to surrender their weapons remains non-negotiable. “Whoever surrenders his weapons… We will cooperate with them,” he said via a translator, adding, “Factions are a need, not a profession” — a comment signaling his view that armed groups should integrate into formal state institutions rather than operate independently.

U.S. opposition to Iranian influence in Iraq is not a new policy, but current tensions have pushed Washington to ramp up pressure dramatically in recent months. In April, amid escalating tit-for-tat hostilities between the Trump administration and Tehran in the Strait of Hormuz, the U.S. froze dollar shipments to Iraq and suspended security cooperation to pressure the Iraqi government ahead of Zaidi’s appointment. Within days of Zaidi’s confirmation as prime minister, the funds were immediately unfrozen, a clear signal of U.S. backing for the new leader.

The structure of Iraq’s economy gives Washington significant leverage over Iraqi politics: since the 2003 U.S.-led invasion, nearly 90% of Iraq’s state revenue — almost all drawn from oil exports — is held in the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, and the Iraqi government requires explicit U.S. approval for cash reserves to be airlifted back to Baghdad for domestic use.

Unlike many previous Iraqi political leaders, Zaidi built his career in finance rather than partisan factional politics, and his core agenda centers on rebranding Iraq as a stable, economically attractive destination for foreign direct investment. Analysts note he is also positioning himself as a committed anti-corruption reformer to win over international investors. “He wants to portray himself as someone who’s leading a campaign against corruption within his country, and I think his approach is to kind of convince, in this case, U.S. investors that Iraq will be a country where the rule of law is honoured,” explained Gordon Gray, a former senior adviser to the U.S. ambassador in Iraq from 2008 to 2009, in an interview with Middle East Eye.

To his credit, Zaidi has already launched an unprecedented anti-corruption crackdown that has resulted in the arrest of two former Iraqi oil ministers alongside dozens of other high-profile figures, with authorities seizing millions of dollars in untraceable cash and gold bars from the suspects.

Still, critical questions linger over Iraq’s ability to exercise full sovereignty over its own affairs. How can a country be fully self-determining when it cannot access its own oil revenue for domestic development without U.S. approval? And how can it act independently when Tehran continues to interfere in key policy projects, from energy development to security? Former U.S. ambassador to Iraq Stuart Jones argued that Iraq’s vast natural resources should make it one of the wealthiest countries in the Middle East. “They should be richer than Saudi Arabia. They should be richer than Qatar,” Jones told Middle East Eye. “But they have not created the platform for themselves that allows them to enjoy that wealth, and that’s going to require investment in infrastructure, and it means making independent decisions from Iran.”

Many regional analysts point out that the Trump administration’s own maximum pressure campaign against Iran has itself been a major source of economic and political instability for Iraq. Giorgio Cafiero, CEO of Gulf State Analytics, noted that the closure of the Strait of Hormuz amid escalating U.S.-Iran tensions plunged Iraq’s already fragile economy into a deep crisis, costing the country tens of billions of dollars in lost revenue. Early in the standoff, media reports also emerged that the CIA was working to arm Iraqi Kurdish groups to destabilize Tehran, a move that Kurdish officials publicly distanced themselves from, warning that involvement in U.S.-Iran hostilities would plunge their autonomous region into chaos. Cafiero summed up the country’s precarious position: “Iraq seems to be a victim of chaos in the region.”

Trump offered a far more optimistic framing during the meeting. When asked about relations between Baghdad and Iraq’s semi-autonomous Kurdistan Region, Trump claimed the Middle East was moving toward unprecedented unity. “We are getting rid of the bully of the Middle East. Iran was the bully of the Middle East. They bullied Iraq. They bullied every country,” he said. “There’s no fear anymore because their military capability has been knocked to hell.” Tehran has repeatedly rejected claims that its military capabilities have been severely degraded, and has little incentive to agree to the disarmament of its allied militias in Iraq, which give it critical strategic leverage in the region.

Cafiero says he remains skeptical that the Iraqi state will be able to establish a full monopoly on the use of force by disarming Iran-aligned groups. “I am quite sceptical about this idea that the Iraqi state will be able to assert its monopoly” on Iranian-backed factions, he said. “I have a rather tough time imagining that.”

If there is a path to tangible progress under Zaidi, analysts say it likely stems from the personal rapport he has built with Trump, a leader who has openly prioritized personal relationships over institutional diplomatic norms. Both men are political outsiders with backgrounds in business, a shared identity that makes them open to cutting high-stakes deals.

Zaidi’s first official visit to the U.S. includes more than just the White House meeting. After leaving Washington, his next stop is Houston, where he will meet with senior executives from major U.S. energy companies to discuss investment opportunities. A key item on the agenda is a proposed deal with Chevron to build a new oil pipeline, a project that would give Iraq an alternative export route and reduce its vulnerability to disruptions in the Strait of Hormuz. The visit will conclude back in Washington on Friday, where Zaidi will address the Iraqi American Chamber of Commerce to pitch Iraq as a viable investment destination to U.S. business leaders.