Missiles, Mobilization, and Tehran: Can the Houthis Wage a Wider War?
The Houthis’ latest attacks on Saudi oil tankers, renewed strikes on Saudi territory, and threats to maritime traffic have revived a question: Can the Iran-backed group sustain a prolonged conflict on multiple fronts?
In Do the Houthis Have the Capacity To Wage a Multi-Front War?, The Media Line’s Khaled Al-Ansi examines the military, political and logistical calculations shaping the Houthis’ strategy as fighting with Saudi Arabia intensifies and regional tensions continue to mount.
The immediate flashpoints include ballistic missile and drone attacks on Abha International Airport, a declared maritime “blockade” against Saudi shipping and disputes over Sanaa International Airport, where the Houthis insist on direct flights between Sanaa and Tehran.
Political analyst Abdul Salam Mohammed argues that these issues are part of a broader regional strategy directed by Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. He says major Houthi military decisions, including attacks deep inside Saudi Arabia and disruptions to maritime navigation, remain closely tied to Tehran’s regional objectives.
The Houthis insist they are prepared for a prolonged confrontation. A source working with the movement’s General Mobilization Forces told The Media Line that the Houthis possess an integrated command structure, advanced missiles, drones, attack drone boats and autonomous underwater vehicles capable of sustaining a war of attrition. The source declared, “The Ansar Allah [Houthis] are fully ready for this war,” while warning that “Bab al-Mandab, Saudi airports, and every other target are awaiting zero hour.”
Those claims are difficult to verify independently. Houthi-affiliated sources estimate the movement commands more than 200,000 registered fighters, another 250,000 personnel tied to mobilization units and broader tribal support. Yemen’s internationally recognized government, meanwhile, says it has reorganized its forces under a unified command and now fields about 400,000 fighters, although that figure also remains unverified.
Mohammed argues the conflict’s trajectory may ultimately depend less on the Houthis than on Saudi Arabia. If attacks on airports, energy infrastructure and shipping continue, he believes Riyadh could abandon its more restrained approach and fully back a government offensive toward Sanaa with direct US support, potentially opening a far broader phase of the war.
Rubio’s Paranoid Cuba Report Designed to “Justify a Military Attack on Cuba,” Says Democratic Rep.
A report published this week by the State Department is the latest weapon employed by the Trump administration in its campaign for aggressive intervention in Cuba, according to members of Congress and experts on the beleaguered Caribbean island nation.
Despite Cuba being severely hobbled by in the throes of a humanitarian crisis engineered by U.S. sanctions and fuel blockades, the new report paints the country as a major threat.
The report appears to be the brainchild of Secretary of State Marco Rubio, a first-generation Cuban American who has made the overthrow of the Cuban government a top priority under the second Trump administration.
Published Monday without a listed author, the report says Cuba is the “capital of 21st century communism,” ideologically immovable, and a permanent enemy committed to the destruction not just of the U.S. but also of “Western civilization” through the spread of “Third Worldism.”
If that sounds like a throwback to the long-settled Cold War, that’s because it is — something critics of the report in Congress seized upon.
Whatever truths the report contains, they’re largely overshadowed by a feverish paranoia about the alleged reach of Cuban intelligence into American civil society, according to Rep. Mark Pocan, D-Wis., days after returning from a fact-finding trip to Cuba.
“It may be the stupidest, most fantastical, most biased thing I’ve ever read from a governmental agency,” Pocan said in a statement Tuesday. “This report focuses on the 1960s & 70s with no clear connection to today. Yet somehow, the State Department uses this report to say that this impoverished nation is responsible for everything from Black Lives Matter to Antifa, the anti-ICE protests and more.”
Rep. Delia Ramirez, D-Ill., who went on the fact-finding mission with Pocan, said the report was aimed at manufacturing consent for an invasion of the island — and to crack down on dissent at home.
“While criticizing the regime in Cuba, it instead attacks Americans’ constitutional rights to free speech and free assembly.”
“This report was intentionally designed to instill fear of the Cuban people and to justify a military attack on Cuba,” Ramirez told The Intercept. “It’s hypocrisy at its finest, because while criticizing the regime in Cuba, it instead attacks Americans’ constitutional rights to free speech and free assembly.”
In sketching a broad, anti-American conspiracy in nearly dozens of left-wing social movements, organizations, and educational institutions, the report also functions as a broadside on civil society in the U.S — and hardly for the first time.
“Cuba is not a new cudgel,” said Miriam Pensack, a historian at Princeton University specializing in Latin America and the Caribbean. “The Cuban revolution was a galvanizing event for the way that the United States thought about its national security, really until the end of the Cold War. And it still has an ideological utility, even as the country is limping along.”
Center of Global Conspiracy
Running 100 pages, the report lays out what its authors describe as a decadeslong effort by Cuba to foment revolutionary movements throughout the world and to build a latter-day “axis of evil” by allying with other governments opposed to U.S. interests, including the current-day governments of Iran, Russia, China, and North Korea.
“Even as it expands and revitalizes its network within the next generation of American left-wing activists, it has also forged new partnerships — or deepened and repurposed old ones — with other foreign governments and movements around the world,” the report warns. “The regime continues to act as a force multiplier for a much broader anti-American coalition, positioning itself as a staging ground for a wide range of foreign adversaries to conduct operations against the United States.”
Cuba, the authors allege, is “less a nation-state than an all-encompassing intelligence and subversion operation, focused around its existential revolution against the United States.”
The report goes on to list a slew of left-wing groups and individuals as accomplices, both witting and unwitting, of this intelligence operation, including the Democratic Socialists of America, Code Pink, Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass, and leftwing streamer Hasan Piker.
In a section stretching nearly five full pages on the National Lawyers Guild, a long-standing right-wing bugaboo, the report’s authors describe the venerable progressive law association as “one of the most persistently relevant — and insidious — organizations in Cuba’s U.S. network.”
Posting to X for the first time since March, the organization quipped, “We have been called much worse, by much better.”
Academic Freedom at Home
The report took aim at universities in the U.S. for maintaining exchange programs and partnerships with Cuban universities, implying that such programs functioned as a feeding ground for Cuban agents looking to recruit spies and fellow travelers.
The report singled out Harvard University, pointing to trips by faculty to Cuba as recently as 2017.
The Cuban government “would probably argue that it was U.S. universities that were trying to penetrate Cuban institutions and to foment subversion there!”
If anything, however, the Cuban government has been wary of exchange programs with American schools, according to Alejandro de la Fuente, a professor of Latin American history and economics at Harvard who chairs the university’s Cuba Studies Program and took part in a trip to Cuba in 2017 that is mentioned in the report.
“They did their best to delimit those exchanges as much as possible because they understood that knowledge production requires freedom and a plurality of viewpoints — precisely what they do not allow,” de la Fuente told The Intercept in an email Wednesday. “Indeed, they would probably argue that it was U.S. universities that were trying to penetrate Cuban institutions and to foment subversion there!”
Born in Cuba, De la Fuente is hardly an apologist for the Cuban government, at whose feet he laid the blame for the country’s collapse. He acknowledged that Cuban intelligence may have targeted American students and academics in the past, but scoffed at the underlying thesis of the report that Cuba continues to pose a grave threat to the U.S.
“The ineptitude and corruption of the regime have destroyed the country’s economy and society, to the point that the very existence of the nation is in danger,” de la Fuente said. “Can a country like this pose a threat to the national security of the United States today? The answer, any reasonable observer would agree, is emphatically no.”
“War on the Cuban People”
Cuba has made no secret of its support for revolutionary movements throughout the 20th century. And it was a vital partner to left-wing governments in Latin America in the 21st century.
With Cuba today crippled by sanctions and fuel shortages, however, Ramirez, the member of Congress, said the report’s notion of the country as a central node in some threatening conspiracy was a “fiction.”
Accusations about Cuba’s extensive reach into protests against U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, antifascist organizing, and Black Lives Matter don’t square with the reality of the severe crisis that has gripped Cuba. In early January, the Trump administration tightened its embargo of the country into a virtual blockade on all fuel arriving in Cuba.
Already weakened by internal tensions and by decades of economic sanctions imposed by the U.S., the island nation has in recent months been plunged into repeated, extended blackouts; its tourism-dependent economy has effectively collapsed; and its citizens face a daily question of where to find their next meal.
Her voice on the verge of tears as she described the humanitarian crisis she witnessed on the island, Ramirez forcefully rejected the notion that the U.S. has anything to fear from Cuba.
“Under no circumstances, at any moment during my trip, did I see anything to make me believe that Cuba poses an existential threat to the United States,” Ramirez said. “On the contrary, what I witnessed was a war on the Cuban people by the United States, and specifically by Donald Trump and Marco Rubio.”
Car rams crowd at Berlin Pride event, killing one and injuring 16
A manhunt is underway in Berlin after a car drove into a crowd attending the city’s Christopher Street Day Pride celebrations on Saturday night, killing one person and injuring at least 16 others.
The incident happened at around 10pm on Lennéstrasse, where the vehicle struck pedestrians before crashing into a tree. The driver then reportedly fled the scene.
Berlin police said they had identified a suspect, named as 21-year-old Abdul B., who is “known to police” and believed to have links to Islamist circles. Officers released an image of the suspect and warned the public not to approach him, saying he may be armed and dangerous.
Three people remain in a life-threatening condition.
German Chancellor Friedrich Merz condemned the incident as a “despicable act”, saying hundreds of thousands of people had gathered peacefully to celebrate tolerance and diversity. He described the attack as an assault on society.
The Pride parade was cancelled following the incident.
The UN returns to Damascus at the edge of reconstruction
Seventeen years. That is how long it has been since a sitting United Nations Secretary-General last set foot in Damascus. When António Guterres’ plane touches down on Syrian soil, it will not be a ceremonial gesture. It is the diplomatic ignition point of Syria’s post‑Assad metamorphosis—a collapsed state now being re‑stitched through UN‑brokered legitimacy, Gulf‑conditioned constitutional engineering, Turkish‑regulated border sovereignty, and a covert Western–Syrian intelligence liaison that keeps the Islamic State’s remnants buried in the Badiya desert.
Yet for all the diplomatic choreography, one uncomfortable truth lingers: this nation of 23 million remains a house of cards, and any external anchor that slips could send it crashing back into the abyss.
The numbers tell a story of unspeakable ruin. Fourteen years of war have decimated Syria’s bureaucratic institutions. The economy has contracted by an estimated 85 per cent since 2011. Ninety per cent of Syrians now live below the poverty line. Reconstruction costs hover between $216 billion and $400 billion—twenty times the size of Syria’s GDP. Some 5.5 million people remain internally displaced, while 15.6 million continue to require humanitarian assistance. This is not a transition. This is a resurrection attempt on a patient flatlining for over a decade.
Guterres’ visit marks the moment Syria shifts from pariah to project. The UN Security Council has already lifted sanctions on Hay’at Tahrir al‑Sham, the former Al Qaeda affiliate whose cadres now control the country.
The Secretary‑General will address the newly minted People’s Assembly, conferring upon this insurgent‑turned‑government the symbolic mantle of statehood. But legitimacy conferred from without is not legitimacy earned within.
President Ahmed al‑Sharaa has appointed almost exclusively family members and longtime HTS loyalists to control key economic and security decisions. The “Idlibization” of Damascus—where former insurgent commanders retain operational control over intelligence apparatuses and revenue streams—creates a state that thinks like an insurgency, viewing politics as a continuation of war by other means.
The external scaffolding holding this fragile edifice together is as intricate as it is precarious. French President Emmanuel Macron’s July visit—the first by an EU head of state since Assad’s fall—brought with it the CEOs of TotalEnergies and CMA CGM, positioning Damascus as a pivotal transport link between the Mediterranean and the Gulf. Days later, al‑Sharaa sat across from Donald Trump at the NATO Summit in Ankara, securing explicit American backing for sanctions relief.
The Kirkuk‑Baniyas oil pipeline—a dormant 800‑kilometre corridor with an estimated rehabilitation cost of $4.5 billion to $8 billion and a planned capacity of 2 million barrels per day—has become the material artery of this new geopolitical order.
Yet pipelines do not build nations. The Golan Heights remains the primary geopolitical flashpoint capable of derailing everything. After the fall of Assad, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declared the 1974 disengagement agreement “collapsed” and ordered the army to occupy the buffer zone. Israeli forces have since carried out repeated incursions into southern Syria. Guterres’ planned visit to the UNDOF mission is not a photo opportunity—it is a desperate attempt to prevent the border from detonating into regional warfare.
The constitutional architecture designed to hold this fractured polity together is both ingenious and fragile. The proposed bicameral quota system allocates fifty of one hundred Senate seats to minorities—fifteen each for Alawites and Christians, twelve for Druze, five for Ismailis and Shia, and three for ethnic minorities.
Any legislation touching personal status laws, religious endowments, or cultural rights requires a two‑thirds majority in the Senate and a majority within each directly affected communal block. This is consociationalism as constitutional straitjacket—a mechanism designed to prevent hardline Islamist overreach.
But these protections are not internally generated; they are externally demanded by Gulf states as a condition for reconstruction aid. This is sovereignty by conditionality, where the internal social contract is underwritten by Saudi and Emirati sovereign wealth funds.
If the pipeline revenues dry up, does the constitutional architecture evaporate with them?
Observers warn that Syria’s new rulers are already mirroring the habits of the old regime, that the post‑Assad state remains extraordinarily fragile, and that no coherent roadmap for political transition exists. This is not a transition; it is a permanent state of probation.
Three trajectories lie ahead. The optimistic path—where the pipeline flows, the intelligence channels remain functional, and the minority veto satisfies Gulf conditions—could transform Syria into a strategic transit hub anchoring regional stability.
The status quo path—a Syria that muddles through, with pockets of stability and pockets of violence, never fully collapsing but never fully recovering. And the pessimistic path—where constitutional guarantees prove hollow, sectarian warfare resumes, or a Golan miscalculation triggers regional conflagration.
Guterres’ arrival in Damascus is a profound act of diplomatic faith. The UN is betting that extending international legitimacy will help produce the internal conditions for pluralism and security that justify it. But legitimacy is not a gift; it is a continuous performance.
The Syrian state is not sovereign in the classical sense—it is sovereign only through its connections: to Gulf capital, to Turkish veto power, to Western intelligence networks, to UN recognition. This is externally scaffolded sovereignty, and scaffolds are not foundations.
The question that haunts Damascus this July is not whether Syria can transition. It is whether the international community has the patience, the resources, and the strategic clarity to hold the scaffolding steady long enough for the nation to rebuild itself from within. Seventeen years of diplomatic absence cannot be undone in a single visit. But it can begin. And in Syria, beginning is everything.
The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Monitor.
Digital wallets have moved beyond salary payments to everyday purchases, reshaping commerce in northwest Syria while raising questions about access, security, and reliability
[IDLIB] Hassan leaves his home for the market in Sarmada, north of Idlib, to buy his family’s daily groceries. This time, he doesn’t check whether he has cash in his wallet. Instead, he simply grabs his smartphone.
At a vegetable stall, he selects tomatoes, cucumbers and peppers. Once the vendor totals the bill, Hassan scans the QR code displayed at the shop, enters the amount and taps “Send.” Within seconds, a notification confirms the transaction, and the vendor nods to signal that the payment has been received.
For years, Idlib has been associated with airstrikes, displacement camps and waves of fleeing civilians, becoming synonymous with one of the Syrian war’s most devastated front lines. Today, however, a different reality is taking shape. Residents are increasingly using a smartphone app called Sham Cash to pay for bread, vegetables, coffee and medicine, reflecting a shift in how money moves through an economy long shaped by war and limited banking services.
“The app has made financial transactions much easier since it was launched,” Hassan told The Media Line. “We can now buy our daily needs or sell our goods without having to rely on paper money in many cases.”
Customer in Idlib pays for items using app. (Salma Abdulrahman / The Media Line)
The practice is not limited to food markets. At a nearby café, Ahmad orders a cup of coffee. When it is ready, he pulls out his phone, scans the payment code, and completes the transaction in seconds. Ahmad, who was visiting Sarmada from Damascus, said the experience remains unusual elsewhere in Syria. “This level of convenience in payments doesn’t exist in any other Syrian city I’ve visited,” he told The Media Line. “So far, the app hasn’t spread this widely outside this region.”
Flower shops, pharmacies, retail stores and gyms increasingly accept digital payments alongside cash, reflecting the growing role of electronic payments in everyday life. Residents of Idlib do not claim that cash has disappeared from the markets, but many say they can now complete most of their daily purchases using digital methods.
The app’s adoption expanded significantly after it became the platform for paying salaries to public-sector employees and retirees, transforming it from a money-transfer service into a tool used for daily shopping, bill payments and other services. Idlib’s financial landscape has long been distinct from the rest of Syria.
After Idlib fell outside the control of the former Assad government, the Turkish lira became widely used in local markets alongside the US dollar, while the Syrian pound played a more limited role than in many other parts of the country. Today, as Syria’s transitional government seeks to reinforce use of the Syrian pound, the region is witnessing another financial shift with the growing adoption of digital payment applications, making smartphones an increasingly essential part of everyday commerce.
In the past, we had to stand in line for hours to collect our pensions. Now the money arrives on my phone while I’m at home.
According to a government source who spoke to The Media Line, the app now serves about 1.25 million public employees and retirees who receive their salaries through the platform. Nofal Al-Ahmad, a retiree from Idlib, said his daily routine has changed since he began receiving his pension through the app. “In the past, we had to stand in line for hours to collect our pensions,” he told The Media Line. “Now the money arrives on my phone while I’m at home, and I can immediately use it to buy what I need without carrying cash.”
The app has also become an integral part of store owners’ business operations. Mohammad Al-Qasim, a veterinary pharmacist in Idlib, said he prefers receiving payments through Sham Cash because it simplifies financial transactions with suppliers. “Most of my customers are sheep and cattle breeders, and a large percentage of them pay through the app,” he told The Media Line. “Like most business owners in Idlib, we receive payments this way and later transfer money to suppliers. The app has become an essential part of our daily transactions.”
Abu Khaled, who owns a candy store in Sarmada, said digital payments have become routine for his customers. “Most customers pay for sweets through the app,” he told The Media Line. “It has become part of people’s daily lives, and after getting used to it, it no longer makes sense not to use it.”
Not everyone, however, has embraced the shift. Umm Mahmoud, who receives her husband’s pension through Sham Cash, said the app makes collecting the payment easier, but she still prefers holding cash. “As soon as the pension arrives on my phone, I go directly to a money exchange office to withdraw it,” she told The Media Line. “I trust paper money more.”
I feel more secure when I have cash in hand
Government employee Akram Al-Qasim shares that view. While he acknowledged that the app has simplified financial transactions, he said he still withdraws his salary in cash immediately after receiving it. “I feel more secure when I have cash in hand,” he told The Media Line. “That’s why I withdraw my salary as soon as it arrives.”
The discussion extends beyond personal preferences for digital or cash payments to the uneven adoption of the technology across Syria. Hamza Zidan, who owns a company selling loudspeakers in Idlib, said the difference becomes obvious whenever he travels to other Syrian provinces. “I travel between Aleppo, Homs and Damascus,” he told The Media Line. “Whenever I ask to pay through Sham Cash, vendors are often surprised, or refuse because they don’t use it.”
Gym member pays with app. (Salma Abdulrahman / The Media Line)
As the app’s use continues to expand, the company behind Sham Cash says it is working to improve its services and strengthen its technical infrastructure. Mahmoud Al-Sheikh, a Sham Cash employee, told The Media Line that recent updates include improvements to the user interface, an expansion of cash withdrawal and deposit services through the addition of Al-Haram and Al-Fouad exchange companies, and enhanced security features such as fingerprint or PIN authentication.
Other updates include the option to hide account balances and support for multiple languages. He said that the company is also working to improve the app’s performance, particularly in areas with weak internet connectivity, while expanding its network of merchants and the range of services available through the platform.
Al-Sheikh warned that fake social media pages and groups posing as the app’s technical support team have sought users’ personal information, including email addresses and passwords. He said Sham Cash does not request such information through social media and urged users to ignore and report fraudulent accounts. Despite the app’s growing popularity, users still face challenges, particularly internet outages and technical disruptions that can delay transactions.
In March 2026, the app experienced a several-hour outage amid reports that it had been targeted by a cyberattack. Sham Cash denied that any user data had been compromised, saying the disruption was caused by a technical issue that was later resolved.
Umm Saeed recalled an encounter that surprised her while shopping at a market in Idlib. “A woman stopped me and asked for help,” she told The Media Line. “I told her I wasn’t carrying any cash because I use the Sham Cash app. To my surprise, she pulled out her phone, opened a QR payment code and asked me to transfer the money through the app.” The story illustrates just how far digital payments have spread, extending beyond stores and businesses into situations where many people would never have expected to see them.
From vegetable vendors and cafés to pharmacies, flower shops and candy stores, the smartphone has become more than a communication device. For many residents of Idlib, it now serves as a digital wallet accompanying them through their daily lives—a transformation that remains rare elsewhere in Syria.
Meteorite Crashed into a House Containing ‘Extraterrestrial’ Clues
A meteorite that smashed through the roof of a New Jersey home is now giving NASA scientists a rare look at the earliest days of the solar system — and the possibility that some of life’s key ingredients were already moving through space billions of years ago.
The space rock crashed into a house in Hillsborough, New Jersey, in Somerset County, on July 16, 2024, according to a new study published in Science Advances and authored by multiple NASA scientists. What could have been dismissed as a bizarre freak accident quickly became a major scientific opportunity, thanks to the homeowners’ careful response.
According to NASA, one of the residents is an amateur astronomer and immediately understood that the object might be scientifically important. Rather than handling it casually or throwing it away, he collected the meteorite fragments with protective gloves and safely preserved them until they could be turned over for study.
That quick thinking allowed researchers to examine a rare, freshly recovered meteorite that had a documented fireball path across the sky. Scientists used video footage of the meteorite’s trajectory, along with detailed lab analysis, to trace where the rock likely came from in the asteroid belt.
“When we have both a documented fireball and a quick recovery of its meteorite, we can learn not only what the rock is made of, but where it came from in the asteroid belt,” said Peter Jenniskens, the study’s lead author and a meteor astronomer at NASA’s Ames Research Center in California’s Silicon Valley and the SETI Institute, according to NASA.
Inside the meteorite, scientists found something especially intriguing: evidence that ancient salty water once moved through the asteroid the rock came from. Using powerful microscopes, researchers discovered deposits left behind by brine, offering clues about the watery history of the asteroid long before the meteorite broke away and eventually slammed into the New Jersey home.
Even more striking, the study’s authors found that the salty water contained amino acids that are rare on Earth and are believed to be “likely extraterrestrial in origin.”
Those findings could help scientists better understand how water shaped rocky objects in the young solar system, and how some of the building blocks associated with life may have formed or traveled through space long before Earth became the planet we know today.
“If you follow the water through the solar system, you’re actually following life,” said Mike Zolensky, a meteorite researcher and co-author of the study, according to NASA.
“Following the history of water through the solar system is an essential part of understanding the origin of life,” he added.
The discovery makes the meteorite more than just a space rock that punched a hole through someone’s roof. It is a preserved fragment of ancient cosmic history, one that may help scientists piece together what conditions were like when the solar system was still forming billions of years ago.
Photos credited to M. Kirschner and M. Hankey of the American Meteor Society show both the rooftop hole where the meteorite landed and the meteorite itself.
The homeowners, who have chosen to remain anonymous, told ABC 6 that they understood almost immediately how unusual the event was.
“We knew almost immediately that what happened to us was incredibly rare and we felt a responsibility to preserve the meteorite for the scientific community,” the homeowners said in a statement to the outlet.
They said the experience still feels hard to believe.
“It’s still surreal to think that this meteorite traveled through space for millions of years before ending its journey in our home,” they added. “The entire experience has been incredible, and we’re honored to have played a small part in advancing scientific understanding through its study.”
EU Prepares for New US Tariffs as Trade Tensions Resurface
The European Union is preparing to accept a new wave of US tariffs on European goods, despite considering the measures unjustified, as Brussels prioritises maintaining the limits agreed under last year’s EU-US trade deal.
The expected duties relate to allegations over products linked to forced labour, with Washington arguing that insufficient action to tackle such supply chains is harming US businesses. The current US tariff regime is set to expire on Friday, with fresh measures expected shortly afterwards.
European Commission officials said their main objective was to ensure that any new tariffs remain within the 15% ceiling agreed in the Turnberry agreement signed in July 2025 by US President Donald Trump and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen.
While Brussels has rejected the US findings, arguing that the EU already has strict rules against forced labour products, officials appear unwilling to reopen a wider trade dispute that could create uncertainty for European companies.
The situation highlights the delicate balance facing the EU as it seeks to defend its trade interests while preserving stability in its economic relationship with Washington.
The new measures follow months of uncertainty over US trade policy after previous tariffs faced legal challenges. The EU is now closely monitoring Washington’s next steps, hoping the latest dispute remains contained within the framework of the existing agreement rather than escalating into a broader transatlantic confrontation.
Much of the Western debate about artificial intelligence centers on the machine itself. Will AI become conscious? Will it surpass human intelligence? Could it acquire goals of its own and escape human control?
Japan’s Society 5.0 begins from a different premise. Rather than imagining AI as an autonomous mind, it places AI inside a larger social and technological system. Sensors collect information from the physical world; digital networks carry that information into cyberspace; AI analyzes it; and the resulting knowledge is returned to people, organizations, machines and public services.
Intelligence resides less in a single machine than in the circulation of information through the system as a whole. In this respect, Society 5.0 is best understood as a cybernetic vision of society. AI is a service within the feedback loop, not the sovereign agent directing it.
Beyond the information society
Society 5.0 was introduced in Japan’s Fifth Science and Technology Basic Plan, adopted in 2016. The name places the program within a sequence of historical social forms: the hunting society, the agricultural society, the industrial society, the information society, and finally Society 5.0.
Japan describes it as a human-centered society created through the close integration of cyberspace and physical space. Its objective is not technological development for its own sake, but the reconciliation of economic growth with the solution of social problems.
Those problems are particularly acute in Japan. The country has an aging and declining population, rural depopulation, labor shortages, rising healthcare needs, deteriorating infrastructure, vulnerability to natural disasters, and growing energy and environmental pressures.
Society 5.0 proposes to coordinate data, AI, robotics, communications networks and public institutions to respond to these interconnected challenges.
A cybernetic society
Japan’s foundational Society 5.0 documents generally speak of “cyber-physical systems” rather than relying heavily on the classical term “cybernetics.” Yet the architecture they describe is unmistakably cybernetic.
Cybernetics studies how systems use communication, feedback and control to adapt their behavior. A thermostat provides the simplest example: it measures a room, compares the result with a desired temperature, and adjusts the heating.
More complex cybernetic systems continually collect information about their environment, evaluate it against objectives, act, and then measure the consequences.
Society 5.0 applies this pattern on a societal scale. Physical activity generates data through sensors and connected devices. That data moves into cyberspace, where it is combined and analyzed. The resulting recommendations or decisions return to the physical world, producing new conditions and new data. The cycle then begins again.
The cybernetic connection becomes explicit in later Society 5.0-related programs. Japan’s Moonshot research program, for example, includes a goal devoted to “cybernetic avatar infrastructure.”
It envisions people using networked robots and digital avatars to extend their physical, cognitive, and perceptual capabilities. The stated purpose is not to replace humans with autonomous machine agents but to expand what people can do while preserving inclusion and social participation.
Society 5.0 can therefore be understood as a modern form of social cybernetics: data circulates among people, machines, institutions, and environments, enabling the wider system to respond more effectively.
AI as a service
Artificial intelligence occupies an important but carefully delimited place within this architecture. It processes information; it does not define society’s purposes.
In a 2017 speech explaining Society 5.0, then-prime minister and now deceased Shinzo Abe described how sensors connected through the Internet of Things would accumulate large quantities of data. AI would analyze that data, he said, producing “new wisdom.”
The examples he gave were practical: finding patterns in medical data, improving factory maintenance, and helping automated vehicles respond to road conditions.
This formulation is revealing. AI is treated as a service and tool that turns data into useful knowledge, enhancing human capabilities rather than establishing its own goals. The system’s objectives — health, mobility, safety, sustainability and well-being — remain socially determined.
That does not mean every decision must be made manually. Automated systems may control vehicles, balance energy demand, coordinate logistics, or detect medical abnormalities. But their agency is functional and delegated. They operate inside architectures established by people and institutions.
In other words, AI may optimize the means, but it does not determine the ends.
AI industrial roadmap
Japan’s Artificial Intelligence Technology Strategy translated this philosophy into an industrialization roadmap.
Rather than organizing policy around the creation of a single general-purpose artificial intelligence, the strategy concentrated on three domains: productivity, health, medical care and long-term care, and mobility. Information security supported all three.
The roadmap anticipated a phased development. In the first phase, data-driven AI would be introduced into individual industries and services. In the second, AI and data use would spread across public domains. In the third, formerly separate fields would become interconnected, producing a broader ecosystem.
The underlying logic was cumulative. AI applied to healthcare could reduce the burden on medical workers and help people remain healthy longer. AI applied to mobility could improve transport for older people and residents of depopulated regions.
AI applied to manufacturing and logistics could compensate for labor shortages. Once these systems exchanged information, their value would exceed that of isolated applications.
This is another cybernetic characteristic of Society 5.0. The intelligence of the whole emerges from coordination among specialized components. No single AI needs to become generally intelligent because capability is distributed across the system.
Model-centered to system-centered
This distinguishes Society 5.0 from model-centered visions of AI that dominate much contemporary discussion. In a model-centered approach, progress is measured primarily by the intelligence of the model: how well it reasons, writes, codes, plans, or competes with humans.
Society 5.0 instead asks how many elements can be coordinated around a social purpose. The important questions are whether healthcare data can improve treatment, whether transport systems can respond to changing demand, whether infrastructure failures can be predicted, and whether services can reach people regardless of age, location, or disability.
AI is not absent from this picture. It is ubiquitous. But it becomes ubiquitous by disappearing into infrastructure.
Society 5.0 is not simply an AI strategy. It is an attempt to define the social system within which AI should operate. Its central question is not whether a machine can become an independent intelligence, but whether networks of people and machines can make society more adaptive, inclusive, and resilient.
The distinction is fundamental. In Society 5.0, AI is not an artificial person waiting to awaken. It is a component of a larger cybernetic system, a tool for converting data into new wisdom, while human beings retain responsibility for deciding how that wisdom should be used.
In the occupied West Bank, the story often starts too late.
It starts when an Israeli settler is killed, injured, or frightened. It starts when Israeli officials speak, when the army enters Palestinian villages, and when headlines describe a “clash” or a “terror attack”. Suddenly, the settler becomes the victim, the Palestinian village becomes the threat, and the occupation disappears from the story.
But Nablus cannot be understood from the middle of the story.
For years, Palestinian villages around Nablus have lived under daily pressure: land seizures, settlement expansion, military raids, road closures, intimidation, and settler violence.
This is not a normal conflict between two equal communities. It is a system where one side expands with weapons, army protection, and state support, while the other side is expected to remain silent
That is why the recent events of yesterday near Nablus cannot simply be called a “clash”. The word sounds neutral, but the reality is not neutral. A clash suggests two equal sides. But there is no equality between armed settlers living on occupied land and Palestinians living in villages surrounded by settlements, checkpoints, and military control.
Of course, individual settlers can suffer. Death is death. Fear is fear. No human pain should be mocked or ignored. But the pain of one incident cannot erase the larger reality. A settler can be a victim in one moment, while still being part of a wider system that causes fear, dispossession, and daily suffering for Palestinians.
This is the contradiction: the executioner becomes the victim only when the story is cut away from its history.
When the headline begins with Israeli pain, Palestinian pain becomes invisible. The settler becomes a civilian under attack. The Palestinian becomes a security threat. The settlement becomes a neighbourhood. The occupied village becomes a battlefield. The army becomes “protection”. Resistance becomes “terrorism”. And the occupation, which created this whole reality, disappears.
This is not by accident. This is how power protects itself.
The settlement movement has always tried to make its presence in the West Bank look normal. It wants the world to see settlers as ordinary residents, not as people living inside a political project built on occupied land. It wants attacks on Palestinians to look like isolated events, while every Palestinian reaction is used to say that Palestinians are violent and must be controlled.
But the truth is simple: a system built on domination cannot bring security.
It can bring temporary control. It can create fear. It can silence people for a while. It can build walls, checkpoints, settler roads, and military zones. But it cannot bring peace. When land is taken, when homes are attacked, when settlers enter Palestinian villages, and when the army protects one side only, violence is not an accident. It becomes part of the system.
This does not mean every settler carries the same guilt. It does not mean every Israeli death should be dismissed. It means that individual suffering should not be used to hide collective power. The victimhood of the settler cannot be used to erase the long victimhood of the occupied.
Yet this is what often happens.
The Palestinian is asked to explain his anger. The settler is rarely asked to explain why he is there. The village is asked to condemn violence. The settlement is rarely asked to justify its existence. The occupied are told to stay calm, while the occupier calls control “security”.
That is why the phrase “when the executioner becomes the victim” matters. It is not a denial of human pain. It is a refusal to forget the political reality.
A settler killed in one incident may be a victim of that incident. But the settlement project remains a machine of dispossession. The grief of one Israeli family does not erase the daily fear of Palestinian families living beside armed settlers, checkpoints, and expanding settlements. One tragic day does not erase decades of occupation.
Nablus shows this clearly. The more Israel protects settlements, the more tension it creates. The more settlers expand, the more Palestinian space shrinks. The more Palestinian life is controlled, the more resistance becomes likely. Then, when violence erupts, Israel presents itself as surprised, as if it had no role in creating the conditions.
This is the oldest trick of domination: create the wound, then cry when the wound bleeds.
The question after Nablus is not only who fired first. That question matters, but it is not enough. The deeper question is: who built the reality where armed settlers, occupied villages, military raids, and daily humiliation became normal?
Who allowed settlers to move through Palestinian land with confidence, while Palestinians move through their own land with fear? Who turned settlements into protected facts, and villages into security zones? Who decided that Palestinian life could be restricted every day, then acted shocked when this reality produced violence?
Until these questions are answered, every incident will be treated as a beginning, when it is actually only another consequence.
When the executioner becomes the victim, the world must be careful. It must see human pain, but it must also see the political structure. It must mourn the dead, but it must not forget the system that keeps producing death.
Because the real tragedy is not only that people die. The real tragedy is that occupation creates the conditions for death, then asks the world to feel sorry when those conditions return to its own doorstep.
The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Monitor.
Energy Crisis Set to Keep Food Inflation Elevated, UN Warns
Rising energy and fertiliser costs linked to ongoing conflicts and global supply disruptions are expected to continue fuelling food inflation, threatening efforts to make healthy diets affordable worldwide, according to a new United Nations report.
The UN warned that while global hunger has eased slightly in recent years, progress remains fragile, with more than 500 million people still projected to face chronic hunger by 2030. Africa is expected to carry the heaviest burden.
Conflicts including the war in Ukraine and instability affecting energy routes are driving up the cost of fuel, fertiliser and agricultural inputs, creating further pressure across food supply chains. The International Fund for Agricultural Development warned that prolonged shocks could push millions more people into hunger.
The impact is particularly severe for small-scale farmers, who rely heavily on fuel for irrigation, harvesting and transporting produce. Higher costs are ultimately passed on to consumers, adding to inflationary pressures.
The report highlighted that the average global cost of a healthy diet has already increased significantly, with affordability becoming one of the biggest challenges facing food security.
The UN said strengthening agricultural resilience, improving infrastructure and reducing supply chain vulnerabilities will be essential as conflicts and climate-related disruptions continue to reshape global food markets.
