🇺🇸🇮🇱 The US’ ongoing support for Israel can be explained by the White House’s concerns about the “powerful” Israel lobby in Washington, American political scientist John J. Mearsheimer told the YouTube channel Judging Freedom.

“Joe Biden understands full well – as does Barack Obama, Jimmy Carter and George H.W. Bush that if you cross the Israeli lobby, you will pay a political price,” Mearsheimer stressed.

He recalled that that the US political system “is set up in ways that allow a lobby to have a great influence”, pointing to the National Rifle Association as an example.

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🇮🇷🇸🇦 Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi arrived in Saudi Arabia on his first visit since the restoration of relations between Tehran and Riyadh

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🇷🇺🪖Russian drones work deep behind Ukrainian lines

Strike and reconnaissance crews have discovered and destroyed a communication hub used by Ukrainian forces using a Gastello FPV drone. The communication tower was located on the roof of a shopping center in the city of Seredina-Buda in the Sumy region.

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🇸🇦🇵🇸🇮🇱 Saudi crown prince at summit in Riyadh urges immediate ceasefire in Gaza, humanitarian aid access

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🇸🇦 Key points from Saudi crown prince's statements at Arab League Summit:

▪️Saudi crown prince called for the release of hostages held in the Gaza Strip

▪️Guaranteeing Palestinians the right to an independent state is the only way to stop the conflict in the Middle East

▪️Saudi Arabia is consulting with international partners to stop the fighting in the Gaza Strip

▪️Saudi crown prince accused the UNSC of failing to influence Israel to stop the fighting

▪️Saudi Arabia rejects attempts to forcibly displace Gaza Strip residents

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🇵🇸 Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas at the summit in Riyadh called on the US to end the "Israeli occupation" of Palestinian territories:

▪️The US is responsible for the lack of a political solution to the Middle East conflict

▪️The occupation authorities and those who support them are responsible for killing every child and woman in this unjust war

▪️The occupation forces have launched an unprecedented war of extermination against Palestinian people and have crossed all red lines

▪️The occupying forces have killed and injured more than 40,000 people in the Gaza Strip, most of them children and women

▪️Palestine will not accept military and security solutions if they have all failed

▪️Palestine is ready to hold general presidential and parliamentary elections in all Palestinian territories, including Jerusalem

▪️This is a historic moment and everyone must take responsibility for peace

▪️Palestine categorically rejects any attempt to displace our people from the Gaza Strip or the West Bank

▪️Palestine calls on the UN Security Council to approve the full membership of the State of Palestine

▪️Palestine demands that the refugee problem be resolved with international guarantees and a timetable for implementation

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🇵🇸🇮🇱 Key points from Arab League Secretary-General Ahmed Aboul Gheit’s speech at the summit in Riyadh

▪️"We will not allow the forced displacement of the residents of the Gaza Strip, the West Bank and East Jerusalem, which is totally unacceptable"

▪️No talk of separating the Gaza Strip from the West Bank and East Jerusalem

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🇯🇴 Key points from the King of Jordan’s speech at the Riyadh summit

▪️Israel preventing water and food from reaching the people of Gaza is a war crime

▪️"We cannot remain silent about the catastrophic, life-suffocating conditions in which the Gaza Strip finds itself"

▪️The two-state solution is the only way to end the suffering of the Palestinian people and resolve the decades-long crisis

▪️The world will pay the price for failing to resolve the Palestinian question

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🇪🇬 Key points from Egyptian President Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi’s speech at the Riyadh summit

▪️The people of Gaza have been subjected to killings, sieges and inhumane acts, which require a serious stance by the international community

▪️The policy of collective punishment of the people of Gaza is unacceptable and cannot be justified by self-defense.

▪️Egypt demands an immediate and unconditional ceasefire and the prevention of the displacement of Palestinians from their land

▪️Egypt demands a formula to resolve the conflict based on a two-state solution and the establishment of a Palestinian state on the 1967 borders

▪️Egypt warns that failure to stop the war in the Gaza Strip threatens to expand it in the region

▪️There must be an international investigation into violations by the occupying forces against Palestinians in the Gaza Strip

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⚡️🇮🇷 Iranian president calls on Muslim countries to arm Palestinians

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🗣 Don't mistake Hezbollah's restraint for weakness

"Hezbollah's restraint so far, I believe, is predicated on their belief that Hamas is holding its own with respect to the Israeli military invasion of the Gaza Strip, that Hamas is not in desperate straits of losing on the ground militarily... If you dig into it, the Hezbollah attacks along the northern border of Israel has led Israel to evacuate at least 1 million people out of various kibbutz and settlements. At the same time, Hezbollah has been effectively hitting Israeli military targets. So Hezbollah's sent a pretty clear message that, you know, they have a capacity to genuinely hurt Israel," Larry Johnson, retired CIA analyst, told Sputnik.

👉 Watch the full episode of our show on Rumble

🎧 Listen to more of McGovern’s analysis in our podcast New Rules

🇮🇷 Latest statements by Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi:

▪️The United States sends large shipments of weapons to Israel every day.

▪️The worst role in the war with Gaza is the role of America.

▪️The United States invalidates all international organizations.

▪️We demand a complete lifting of the blockade on the Gaza Strip and the opening of the Rafah checkpoint without restrictions or obstacles.

▪️We must urgently demand the Zionist regime to leave the Gaza Strip.

▪️All countries, including Islamic ones, must ensure the security of Palestinians in the occupied territories.

▪️A sustainable solution is to create a Palestinian state from the sea to the river.

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🇷🇺🪖 Key points of Russian MoD briefing on progress of special military op in Ukraine:

▪️The Russian Army repelled three Ukrainian attacks around Kupyansk

▪️Ukrainian losses in the Donetsk region amounted to up to 305 killed and wounded

▪️Russian forces repelled two Ukrainian attacks in the Krasny Liman area, eliminating up to 80 Ukrainian soldiers

▪️Russian air defenses destroyed a Ukrainian MiG-29 aircraft, intercepted five HIMARS rockets and bought down 38 drones

▪️Russian troops eliminated up to 60 Ukrainian troops in the Kherson region

▪️Russian forces eliminated two Ukrainian brigades in the Rabotino area, with Ukrainian losses amounting up to 50 soldiers

▪️Ukrainian losses in the South Donetsk region amounted to up to 140 troops

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Hezbollah has carried out strikes on concentrations of Israeli troops on the border with Lebanon.

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✈️ New Russian transport aircraft Il-76MD-90A designed for airlifting both cargo and personnel has successfully demonstrated its ability to land on a rough airstrip.

The plane’s powerful engines and resilient landing gear allow it to land on and take off from unpaved airstrips in various climate zones.

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❗️Speech by Hezbollah Secretary General Hassan Nasrallah on the occasion of “Martyr’s Day” in memory of the fallen members of the organization:

▪️The (Israeli) aggression taking place in Gaza is a dangerous, large-scale and exceptional event, and these crimes are the cruel revenge of Israel;

▪️The Palestinian resistance heroically resists the occupation, which with its crimes wants to force people to surrender, to forget about their land, prisoners, holy places and Palestine;

▪️The enemy is openly attacking hospitals in the Gaza Strip in front of the whole world, his cruelty is not decreasing, but rather only increasing every day;

▪️The crimes of occupation over the past decades and even the July aggression (2006) did not force the Lebanese to give up resistance;

▪️“It is the Israelis who should despair that they will not be able to achieve their goals, not our peoples, who have proven that their choice is the choice of victory, liberation and dignity”;

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▪️The occupation, the barbaric essence of which is now clear to everyone, dealt a mortal blow to all projects related to normalization, from now on the position of our peoples who reject it will be even tougher;

▪️The change in global public opinion, especially Western public opinion, which is occurring in the United States and Europe, is important;

▪️The occupation is under time pressure and no one else supports it except the American and British regimes;

▪️Only the one who controls this aggression, that is, the United States, can stop this aggression;

▪️The occupation is making a mistake again, it will fail and not achieve its goals;

▪️All the pressure should be on the Americans, since they are the ones who govern, decide and fight this battle;

▪️Resistance fighters, despite the painful psychological reality, fight gloriously against the strongest elite brigades, which indicates the inability of Israel, which has achieved nothing that it can pass off as an achievement to its domestic audience.

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What could Israel’s security control over Gaza look like?

There should be an international and regional framework that will address the security situation in the Gaza Strip, independent Middle East strategic intelligence analyst Avi Melamed told Sputnik. According to him, the regional framework could include “major Arab states” such as Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Jordan, and Egypt.

Melamed called for “a very decisive action” against Hamas “to make sure that the Palestinian militant group will not be able to become yet again a relevant player."

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🇩🇪📉 Germans shower less to save money amid energy crisis

The ongoing anti-Russian economic sanctions waged by the United States and its European allies have ended up negatively affecting the lives of the people living in these very countries instead of crippling Russia’s economy as intended.

A considerable number of Germans have changed their grooming habits in an attempt to save money, a new poll has concluded.

Some 31 percent of Germans have started taking less time showering than before the recent spike in energy prices, according to the results of a YouGov poll that surfaced in local media.

Likewise, 57 percent of respondents started taking shorter or colder showers, or began showering less frequently in 2023, while only 51 percent of respondents gave a similar answer the year before.

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Will US investigate Nord Stream explosions?

Moscow insists that the September 26, 2022, terrorist attack on the Nord Stream gas pipelines is the work of the United States and the United Kingdom.

The Biden administration is not interested in a probe into explosions at the Nord Stream gas network, Vladimir Vasilyev, a chief research fellow of the Moscow-based US and Canada Institute think tank, told Sputnik. He, however, believes this could happen only in case a new POTUS shows interest in such a probe.

Vasilyev recalled that the White House earlier rejected US journalist Seymour Hersh’s accusations related to Washington’s involvement in the explosions as a "fabrication from the beginning to the end."

At the same time, the analyst did not rule out that the leaks Hersh relied on in his investigation could be sanctioned by the US administration to show that “it is useless to fool around with Washington” and to demonstrate how far America can go.

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EU foreign policy chief says Russia's defeat in Ukraine conflict 'not expected in near future'

🗣 "We are facing many problems. Europe is dealing with a double challenge. Firstly, it is Ukraine where Russia's defeat is not expected in the near future," Borrell said in his video address to the congress of the Party of European Socialists.

Despite this fact, the EU should keep supporting Kiev since assistance provided to it by the United States is "highly likely to decrease," he added.

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