'If Our Security Is Not Guaranteed, There Will Be No Safe Infrastructure': Iran Warns US as Indirect Talks Continues."

Iranian Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf issued a blunt warning to the United States and other countries on Tuesday, declaring that if Iran's security is not guaranteed, "no infrastructure will remain safe" in the region, a threat aimed squarely at the oil infrastructure of the Persian Gulf, delivered as Washington and Tehran continue indirect negotiations over the Strait of Hormuz and Iran's nuclear program.

The Warning

Speaking during a public video conference released by Iranian state television, Ghalibaf addressed the message to "the delusional U.S. president," reacting to President Donald Trump's recent statements about the Strait of Hormuz and the movement of ships through it. The remarks were, he said, a repetition of previous claims "whose nature is known to everyone."

"In a region where we cannot sell oil, no one else will sell oil either," Ghalibaf said. "And if our security is not guaranteed, no infrastructure will remain safe."

He stressed that Iran would not be intimidated by threats, diplomatic pressure, or blockade, and warned that any aggression or "adventurism" against the country would draw a response he described as "hard, painful, precise and swift."

The statement is consistent with Iran's posture throughout the conflict that began with U.S. and Israeli strikes on February 28, and with its long-standing declared doctrine that Gulf energy infrastructure would be a target in any wider war. It also comes as a 45-day ultimatum issued by Iran's Supreme National Security Council on August 16, demanding an end to the naval blockade — is set to expire on Wednesday, September 30.

The Diplomatic Track

Ghalibaf's warning landed on a diplomatic landscape that is, by most accounts, still active.

Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi, departing New York after the UN General Assembly, said Tehran had held further indirect talks with Washington through Qatari mediators and that he expected a formal U.S. response to Iran's proposal to reopen the Strait of Hormuz.

Iran proposed a seven-day plan for a ceasefire and phased reopening of the strait last week, contingent on the U.S. meeting conditions laid out in the memorandum of understanding the two countries signed in mid-June before it collapsed.

Trump said Sunday he expects new talks with Iran this week, but he described the latest Iranian proposal as unacceptable. "They want to make a deal, but it is not the deal that I want to make," he told Axios.

On the American side, the talks are being run by special envoy Steve Witkoff, Jared Kushner, Vice President J.D. Vance, and Secretary of State Marco Rubio, according to a U.S. official cited in multiple reports. The official said Trump is prepared to discuss sanctions relief and the release of frozen Iranian funds as part of a possible agreement, on the condition that Iran makes concrete progress on the nuclear issue. Iran has shown readiness for some flexibility on nuclear matters, the official said, but a gap remains between the two sides on deadlines for implementing any commitments.

Two Tracks, One Week

The juxtaposition is the story: on a single day, Iran's parliament speaker threatened regional infrastructure while Iran's foreign minister awaited a formal American answer to a ceasefire proposal, and a U.S. president who rejected that proposal said he expects to talk this week.

Whether the week ends in negotiation or escalation may hinge on the calendar. Iran's August ultimatum expires Wednesday. What happens to oil, shipping, and the blockade on that date and whether Washington's expected response to Tehran's proposal arrives before it, will go a long way toward determining which track prevails.

First Woman Put to Death in the State Since 1820

Unless a court or the governor intervenes in the coming hours, Tennessee will execute Christa Pike on Wednesday, September 30, the first woman the state has put to death in more than two centuries, and the closing of one of America's most debated death-penalty cases.

The Case

Pike, now 50, was 18 years old in 1995 when she and her boyfriend, Tadaryl Shipp, then 17, were convicted in the torture and killing of 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer, a classmate at the Knoxville Job Corps center. The crime's brutality, Slemmer was stabbed, slashed, and beaten over an extended period in a wooded area, and a fragment of her skull was later found in Pike's pocket, made it one of the most notorious murder cases in modern Tennessee history.

Pike was sentenced to death. Shipp, a juvenile at the time of the crime, received life imprisonment with the possibility of parole, a split outcome that remains part of the case's contested legacy.

Pike does not deny her guilt. She has spent three decades as the only woman on Tennessee's death row.

The Execution and Its History

Pike is scheduled to die by lethal injection at Riverbend Maximum Security Institution in Nashville. If the execution proceeds, it will be Tennessee's first execution of a woman since 1820, a gap of more than 200 years. (Court filings by Pike's attorneys note that the historical record for the 1820 case, an execution recorded under the name Eve Martin, contains discrepancies; historians cited by NPR treat the date as the accepted reference point regardless.)

The Tennessee Supreme Court recently denied a stay of execution, and Governor Bill Lee has denied clemency, clearing the final procedural hurdles.

The Opposition

Pike's lawyers and a coalition of supporters, including anti-death-penalty advocates who marched at the state Capitol in Nashville on Sunday, argue the execution is a disproportionate punishment. Their case rests on three pillars: her age at the time of the crime (18, barely an adult under the law), documented severe mental illness, and a childhood marked by exceptional abuse and trauma.

Courts have repeatedly rejected those arguments on the merits, and the state has proceeded on the principle that the jury's sentence, upheld through decades of appeals, should be carried out. Supporters of the execution note the brutality of the crime and the length of the legal process, three decades of litigation, as evidence the sentence is neither arbitrary nor hasty.

A Wider Context

The execution arrives amid a broader American retreat from capital punishment, executions have fallen dramatically from their 1990s peak, and public support is at multi-decade lows, yet it also reflects the persistence of the death penalty in a handful of Southern states, where most U.S. executions now occur.

The reference in recent coverage to the death at 102 of Frances Smith, an Alabama woman who famously escaped the death penalty eight times before her sentence was eventually commuted and who died this month of natural causes, has become a frequent point of comparison for death-penalty opponents, who note that even the most storied capital cases can end without an execution.

Pike's case has drawn international attention for the same reason it has divided Tennesseans: it tests whether the death penalty's machinery, designed overwhelmingly for men, and applied to crimes decades old, can fairly be applied to an abused, mentally ill teenager's crime three decades after the fact. The state's answer, absent last-minute intervention, comes Wednesday.

Donald Trump's months-long Greenland campaign ended on September 22 in an unlikely venue: a trilateral signing ceremony on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly in New York, where the U.S. president joined Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen and Greenland Premier Jens-Frederik Nielsen to sign a security agreement that settles the Arctic island's status, mostly on terms short of what Trump once demanded, and more expansive than his critics expected.

What the Agreement Says

The deal reaffirms Danish sovereignty over Greenland, an autonomous territory of the Kingdom of Denmark. But it grants the United States sweeping security rights: the ability to "modernize and expand" activities at Pituffik Space Base, the northernmost U.S. military installation, on the island's northwest coast and to build two new facilities, at Narsarsuaq in the south and Mestersvig in the east.

It also bars non-NATO countries from establishing military facilities in Greenland without the consent of the United States, Greenland, and Denmark, and prohibits entities from non-alliance or non-EU partner countries from monitoring or holding significant influence over "particularly sensitive sectors," language that covers critical infrastructure and resource extraction.

The agreement is of indefinite duration, cannot be amended without the consent of all three parties, and notably, remains in force even if Greenland someday gains full independence from Denmark. The fact is, this agreement was already in place and effect since 1951, “Agreement Pursuant to the North Atlantic Treaty between the United States and the Kingdom of Denmark Concerning the Defense of Greenland,” signed in Copenhagen on April 27, 1951. Nothing new other than photo ops and dusting of the file.

Three Victories Claimed

The signatories lined up to declare victory.

"With President Trump's foresight and leadership, this historic agreement forever guarantees the interests of U.S. security in the Arctic at no cost to U.S. taxpayers," said U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio. The White House called the deal "unprecedented," giving the United States "lasting control over security interests in Greenland."

NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte said the agreement "strengthens our collective security and contributes to a safer and more stable future for all of us," framing it as an alliance gain that keeps adversarial powers out of a strategically vital territory.

Frederiksen said Denmark "stands in a better place than we did yesterday." And Nielsen, whose government had been determined to avoid being trampled in a great-power transaction, emphasized Greenland's place at the table: "This is not just an agreement about us, it is an agreement with us. It takes into account the interests of the people of Greenland, our rights, our livelihoods and the development of our country."

The Gap Between Demand and Deal

For all the ceremony, the agreement is a step down from what Trump sought for most of this year. In January he said he wanted "total and complete control" of the island, achievable, as he acknowledged at the time, only through U.S. sovereignty. "I think ownership gives you what you can't get through a lease or a contract," Trump said then. He did not get ownership. Denmark's sovereignty is explicitly affirmed in the text.

Analysts also question how much is genuinely new. The 1951 U.S.-Denmark defense agreement already gave Washington extensive basing rights on the island; at the height of the Cold War the U.S. operated more than a dozen facilities in Greenland, later closed for lack of need rather than lack of rights. The new agreement's real additions, on this reading, are the two new bases, the explicit exclusion of non-NATO rivals, and the indefinite, hard-to-amend character of the commitments.

Still others see the arrangement as a genuine innovation: a template for granting the U.S. deep security rights in a territory without annexing it, precisely the middle path between Trump's sovereignty demand and the status quo his pressure campaign had upended.

Nikita Belukhin, a researcher at IMEMO RAN quoted in Russian-language coverage, noted that the 1951 treaty was already linked to NATO planning and called the explicit exclusion of non-NATO forces from the new text a striking codification of the island's alliance alignment.

Greenland sits on the shortest flight path between North America and Russia, hosts the western anchor of the U.S. missile-warning network, and holds large rare-earth and mineral deposits. Chinese and Russian interest in the Arctic has grown as shipping lanes open; the agreement forecloses both from a military footprint on the island without tripartite approval.

For Greenlanders, the deal offers a measure of agency their 57,000 residents have rarely had in great-power dealings and an implicit acknowledgment that any future independence would not loosen the American security embrace. For Denmark, it ends a crisis in the alliance that began when Trump refused to rule out seizing the island. For Trump, it converts a demand he could not achieve into rights he can keep, the harder question, as ever with this president, is what the next demand will be.

READ FOR MORE.

The five men arrested near RAF Fairford, the British airbase used by U.S. bombers to strike Iran, have been released on police bail as the investigation continues, counter-terrorism police said Monday, hours after Iran's embassy in London "categorically rejected" any connection to the suspected plot and Prime Minister Andy Burnham convened an emergency government meeting on the case.

The combination, suspects freed, Tehran denying involvement, and the government treating the incident as a national security crisis, leaves the story exactly where it began: with more questions than answers.

Who the Suspects Are

The men, all British nationals aged between 23 and 25 with home addresses in the London area, were arrested early Sunday near the village of Whelford, roughly half a mile from the airbase, after police received a call about three suspicious vehicles, described in local reports as white vans, travelling toward the base. They were held on suspicion of offences under the Explosives Act and later also on suspicion of preparing a terrorist act. A bomb disposal unit examined the vehicles inside a 400-meter cordon, and about 85 households were evacuated overnight.

"We are currently working to establish the full circumstances of the activity of those arrested, their knowledge and any motivation behind this incident," Counter Terrorism Policing said in a statement Monday.

The force acknowledged the swirl of speculation around the case: "We are very aware of the levels of speculation about the motivation behind this incident, and the geopolitical questions that are being raised. However, at this point we would ask for the space needed to work carefully and thoroughly on this case."

Police have not named the men or announced charges. A BBC-verified photograph, whose sender said it showed the five men being taken into custody in Whelford, has circulated widely; the network assessed it as likely authentic.

Iran's Denial

In a statement posted Monday on X, the Iranian embassy in London said it "categorically rejects and strongly condemns the recent unfounded and malicious speculations published by some British individuals and media outlets attempting to link Iran" to the arrests.

The embassy gave no further comment on the case itself.

The denial addresses a line of inquiry that has dominated coverage since Sunday. According to a source familiar with the investigation quoted in multiple reports, a motive connected to Iran is being considered the most likely explanation. Other possibilities under investigation, the reports said, include a Russian sabotage operation and an Islamist plot. None has been confirmed, and counter-terrorism police have publicly declined to endorse any of them.

The Iranian angle draws its weight from the base's role in the ongoing war: RAF Fairford has hosted U.S. B-52, B-1, and B-2 bombers this year and has been used to launch strikes on Iran, after the U.K. government granted permission for what it called "defensive operations" against Iranian missile sites. In July, Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps warned that "any base used to launch attacks on Iranian territory is a legitimate target for our forces." Tehran's denial, however, is categorical, and no official has drawn a public connection between the warning and the arrests.

COBRA Convenes

Prime Minister Andy Burnham said he would chair a meeting of COBRA, the Cabinet Office Briefing Room A committee that coordinates the government's response to emergencies, attended by senior ministers, police, and intelligence officials, on Monday afternoon.

"Later this afternoon, I will chair a meeting of COBRA simply to make sure that we have the full picture, that we have a very clear view of the whole situation," Burnham told LBC radio.

The convening of a COBRA meeting signals that the government is treating the incident with the seriousness of a national security event, regardless of what the investigation ultimately establishes. Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood said the case serves as a reminder that "at a time of heightened threat, we must all remain vigilant."

The Farmer's Account

A local farmer told reporters she contacted police after seeing a group of "men with hoods and masks" running in the direction of the fields near the base, an account credited with prompting the rapid armed response in the early hours of Sunday.

U.S. President Donald Trump, commenting on the arrests, said the suspects intended to inflict "major damage" and had been under investigation by British and U.S. authorities for some time. "We had them under view for a long time, and we got them," he said, praising the cooperation with Britain as "an amazing job." No evidence for the claim of long-term surveillance has been made public.

Where the Case Stands

As of Monday evening, the five men are out of custody, under strict bail conditions, and under continued investigation. Police have not named a suspected sponsor or motive. The foreign state implicated by speculation has denied involvement in unambiguous terms. And the government that convened its crisis committee has yet to say publicly what crisis, precisely, it believes it is managing.

The next milestones are procedural: whether charges follow, whether the bail conditions are challenged, and whether investigators' working theory, whichever it turns out to be, survives contact with the evidence.

NATO's Article 5 Is Weaker Than the Myth — and Allies Know It

The Myth

Few provisions in international law carry as much popular weight as Article 5 of the 1949 Washington Treaty, the clause at the heart of NATO that treats an attack on one member as an attack on all. In public imagination, the essay argues, it works like Alexandre Dumas's Three Musketeers: "all for one, and one for all," with the United States automatically rushing to any ally's defense in full force.

That reading, the author contends, is a myth, and a dangerous one for allies who build their security on it.

What the Text Actually Says

The treaty's wording is deliberately ambiguous. Article 5 obliges each member to take "such action as it deems necessary," including the use of armed force, to restore security. There is no automaticity in the use of force, and that careful formulation was a condition of U.S. Senate ratification at a time when American policymakers abhorred entangling alliances.

Each ally, in other words, retains discretion over what "necessary" means. The clause commits members to a response, not to a particular response, a distinction that matters most when the attacker is a nuclear power.

The Cold War Record

The argument on the the myth was never tested even when the stakes were highest. After the Soviet Union developed intercontinental ballistic missiles in the late 1950s, U.S. strategy sought to avoid a direct nuclear exchange; any nuclear war was to stay limited and confined to Europe.

Berlin, a recurrent crisis point, was formally occupied territory with American garrisons, not an allied capital. The bloc's borders were tense but stable, and NATO and the Warsaw Pact were separated by neutral territory elsewhere. Article 5 was never triggered during the Cold War.

The only invocation in the alliance's history came after September 11, 2001, an occasion on which the United States, the victim, declined most allied offers of military help.

The Present Argument

Under today's conditions, analyst argues, the gap between the myth and the reality is stark. The current U.S. National Defense Strategy does not view Russia as a major threat, as the Trump administration shifts U.S. forces toward East Asia and the Pacific. Trump has pushed the burden of European defense onto NATO's European members; judged by his conduct in the Ukraine conflict, to contends, his ceiling for allies is selling arms and sharing intelligence, not committing U.S. forces.

Washington, likely takes seriously Moscow's warning that a NATO-Russia war would be "short," in plain English, nuclear and cannot be expected to risk a nuclear exchange with the only country capable of annihilating the United States on behalf of European allies.

The argument extends to Asia: where President Joe Biden said the U.S. would defend Taiwan, Trump is more circumspect, pushing allies like the Philippines and Japan to the fore and Taiwan's significance to Washington, this may diminish once its semiconductor industry is relocated to America.

The ongoing war with Iran, exposed U.S. security guarantees further: rather than shielding Gulf Arab hosts, American bases drew Iranian drones and missiles that damaged the host countries' infrastructure. Trump tuned down Mohamed Bin Salman's 911 call.

The Counterargument

Supporters of the alliance point out that Article 5's ambiguity cuts both ways: an attacker cannot know in advance what response a given U.S. administration would choose, which itself can deter. They note that NATO's history, deterrence holding through the Cold War without the clause ever being tested, suggests the arrangement has worked as designed. And European members' surging defense budgets since 2024 reflect the same conclusion: that security ultimately rests on one's own resources.

On that last point, at least, the alliance's advocates converge. For Ukraine, Europe, the Gulf states, and East Asia, the lesson is that security in the 21st century cannot be delegated to foreign powers, only built on one's own strength and stable relations with neighbors.

Photos: BGNES/ERA.

Trump Asked Xi Whether China Would Buy American Weapons, Ambassador Says

President Donald Trump asked Chinese President Xi Jinping whether Beijing would be interested in buying American weapons, according to U.S. Ambassador to China David Perdue, an offhand-seeming offer that, if ever consummated, would upend decades of U.S. policy and law.

The Revelation

Perdue disclosed the exchange during an interview on "Fox News Sunday," while defending Trump's record on Taiwan and discussing continued American arms sales to the island.

"President Trump continues to say, 'Hey, we sell arms to other people around the world,'" Perdue told host Shannon Bream. "He actually asked President Xi, would he like to buy some, at one point."

The ambassador did not say when the question was raised, what weapons were discussed, or how Xi responded. The two leaders have met twice this year, in Beijing in May and during Xi's three-day state visit to Washington last week. Perdue pushed back on questions about Taiwan, insisting Trump "is as strong on Taiwan as I've ever seen anybody" and portraying the remark as characteristic of the president's deal-making style rather than evidence a formal sale was contemplated.

AP reported that Trump has justified the pending Taiwan arms package to Xi by downplaying it as one of many sales Washington makes worldwide. The White House did not immediately respond to requests for comment on the remark.

The Legal and Strategic Obstacles

Any actual sale would face major hurdles. Congress restricted the export of U.S. Munitions List defense articles to mainland China in 1990, and the restrictions — subject to limited exceptions and presidential national-interest determinations, have effectively maintained a U.S. arms embargo on Beijing for more than three decades.

Meanwhile, Washington remains Taiwan's principal foreign weapons supplier, officially under the 1979 Taiwan Relations Act, which commits the U.S. to making defense articles available in quantities necessary for the island's "sufficient self-defense capability." Beijing considers Taiwan part of China and demands an end to the sales, arguing they violate its sovereignty; ahead of Xi's visit, China's Defense Ministry urged the U.S. to exercise "extreme caution" on the issue.

The Trump administration approved an $11 billion Taiwan package last December, the largest announced to date. A further package worth roughly $14 billion has sat on hold for months, with Trump calling it a "very good negotiating chip." The White House's post-summit materials announced no decision on the stalled package.

What Could China Even Buy?

Analysts note the offer faces a practical problem as well as a legal one: it is unclear what Washington could sell that China does not already produce. China is self-sufficient across most major conventional weapons categories, and widely cited rankings placing it behind the U.S. rest on dollar-denominated arms revenues rather than physical output.

In shipbuilding, where output can be compared directly, China's industrial capacity is estimated at roughly 230 times that of the United States; congressional testimony has put its small-drone output at more than 100 times the U.S. level. That leaves advanced technologies and know-how, areas where Washington retains an edge, as the only plausible products, and precisely the capabilities the U.S. treats as most sensitive and is least likely to share with its principal strategic rival.

Photo: BGNES | #XI #Trump #China

Seoul Demands Apology From Zelensky Over Revealed POW Transfer

South Korea has demanded an official explanation and apology from Ukraine after President Volodymyr Zelensky disclosed a secret transfer of two North Korean prisoners of war to Seoul during his UN General Assembly address, accusing Kyiv of breaching a confidentiality agreement and then falsely denying one existed.

Seoul's Statement

"We express strong regret over the Ukrainian government's unilateral disclosure in violation of the confidentiality agreement, and its subsequent false public statement denying the existence of an agreement, and demand an official explanation and apology," said Seong Ghi-hong, senior presidential secretary for public relations, in a statement on Sunday. He added that Seoul is reviewing unspecified "further necessary measures."

According to Seong, the two governments had discussed the transfer through multiple channels, with Ukraine itself requesting that the arrangement remain secret. Kyiv was reportedly concerned that publicizing it could draw domestic criticism for giving up two North Korean soldiers who might otherwise have been exchanged for Ukrainian prisoners.

The Disclosure

Zelensky announced the transfer during his UN address on September 23, saying Ukraine had recently sent the two men to South Korea and that it was "not easy to capture them alive." The soldiers were captured on a Ukraine-Russia battlefield in early 2025, among the thousands of North Korean troops Pyongyang deployed to help Russia repel Ukraine's incursion into the Kursk region in 2024-25.

The announcement drew a sharp rebuke from President Lee Jae-myung, who called the transfer an exceptionally sensitive matter affecting security on the Korean Peninsula and accused Zelensky of putting short-term political interests ahead of shared national interests. Lee said breaching the confidentiality arrangement was "deeply regrettable," and separately warned that those who jeopardize lives, national security, and the national interest for political gain can be called "killers or traitors."

Kyiv's Denial and Its Critics at Home

Kyiv has denied that any secrecy agreement existed. Zelensky adviser Dmitry Litvin insisted "there was no agreement to remain silent," and a source in the Ukrainian presidential office told local media that Ukrainians had a right to know what happened to prisoners captured by their forces.

But the dispute has spilled into Ukrainian politics. Oksana Torop, a media adviser to Valery Zaluzhny — Ukraine's former top commander, now ambassador to Britain — said a confidentiality agreement did exist and criticized Zelensky's announcement as a "show" and "exaggerated publicity."

The spat places a rare public strain on relations between two countries that have largely aligned against Russia and its partners. For Seoul, the handling of North Korean defectors and POWs is among the most delicate issues in its foreign policy, involving both inter-Korean sensitivities and the personal safety of those transferred. For Kyiv, the affair has become a domestic political flashpoint between Zelensky's office and Zaluzhny, widely seen as a potential future rival.

Whether the apology Seoul demands is forthcoming and what "further measures" might follow if it is not, remains the open question.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has ordered the preparation of a potential case at the International Criminal Court against Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, according to a report by i24NEWS citing sources, the latest escalation in one of the Middle East's bitterest bilateral feuds, and one with an unusual twist: the Israeli leader preparing it is himself the subject of an active ICC arrest warrant, and his government does not recognize the court's jurisdiction.

What the Report Says

According to i24NEWS, Netanyahu has instructed an interministerial team and the head of the International Law Department at Israel's Justice Ministry to compile a legal dossier against the Turkish president. The file would focus primarily on alleged attacks against Kurdish minorities in Turkey, and would also address claims that Erdogan's government funds Hamas and has hosted Hamas leaders.

The outlet reported that Israel would more likely pursue the case through a third party, likely a state party to the Rome Statute — than file directly, though both options remain open. According to the sources, however, Israel hopes to avoid taking either step: the existence of the case is intended as leverage and deterrence against Ankara.

The Escalating Feud

The move follows Türkiye's announcement in August that it had asked Interpol to issue a Red Notice for Netanyahu after a Turkish court issued a warrant for his arrest on charges including genocide, connected to Israel's interception of the Gaza-bound Global Sumud Flotilla earlier this year.

Netanyahu has responded with scathing personal attacks on Erdogan, calling him "an antisemitic dictator," accusing him of massacring Kurds and harboring Hamas members, and in his address to the UN General Assembly on September 24, describing Türkiye as "the latest country to become a super spreader of antisemitic lies." In that speech he also accused Erdogan of having "murdered thousands of Kurdish civilians," imprisoned journalists and opposition figures, and denied the Armenian genocide.

Türkiye's communications director, Burhanettin Duran, dismissed the accusations as baseless. Ankara has not publicly responded to the reported ICC preparation.

A Court Neither Side Recognizes

The ICC, established in The Hague under the 1999 Rome Statute (in force 2002), prosecutes genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity. Neither Israel nor Türkiye is a party to the statute — a fact that would complicate any prosecution of Erdogan but does not prevent the court from acting on referrals concerning nationals of non-party states under certain circumstances.

The irony at the center of the story is noted by analysts on all sides: in November 2024 the ICC issued an arrest warrant for Netanyahu himself, accusing him of using "starvation as a method of warfare" and intentionally directing attacks against civilians in Gaza — charges Israel rejects and which the court cannot enforce without member-state cooperation.

The United States, Israel's closest ally and a vocal opponent of the Netanyahu warrant, is also not a Rome Statute party. Washington sanctioned ICC President Tomoko Akane and senior trial lawyer Abdoulaye Seye, accusing the court of exceeding its mandate; the ICC said it "strongly rejects" the designations, calling them "a flagrant attack against the independence of an impartial judiciary."

Oil prices rose sharply on Monday after U.S. President Donald Trump rejected an Iranian peace proposal aimed at ending the seven-month conflict between the two countries and reopening the Strait of Hormuz, keeping supply worries at the center of global energy markets.

Brent crude futures, the European benchmark, rose $3.43, or 3.3 percent, to $107.75 a barrel in morning trading, according to exchange data cited by Arab News and other outlets. U.S. West Texas Intermediate crude gained $2.14, or 2.3 percent, to $94.55 a barrel. Earlier in the Asian session, Brent had opened more than 1 percent higher before extending gains in European trading.

The Rejected Proposal

Iran unveiled the offer last week on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly in New York. Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi told reporters the Strait of Hormuz would reopen and nuclear talks with Washington would restart within seven days, provided the United States met Tehran's conditions, which Iranian officials have described as an end to U.S. "acts of aggression," the lifting of the naval blockade on Iranian ports, the easing of restrictions on Iranian oil sales, and the release of frozen Iranian assets.

Tehran says the proposal was transmitted to the American side through Qatari mediators.

Trump confirmed on Saturday that he had turned the offer down.

"They made a proposal but I rejected it," he told reporters. In a telephone interview with Axios on Sunday, the president said the offer was "not the deal that I want to make" describing it as something "we would have maybe agreed to a year ago," but added that he expected U.S. negotiators to hold new talks with Iran this week. Asked whether he thought there would be progress on reopening the strait, he replied, "I think we're going to do great."

The Wall Street Journal, citing unnamed U.S. officials, reported that Trump has told aides he expects U.S. strikes on Iran to resume after November's midterm elections. The White House has not commented on that report.

READ: Trump, Iran and the Gulf: Deal Before Midterms, or War After Midterms?

Market Reaction

"The rejection has lowered hopes for an immediate breakthrough, although diplomatic efforts have not ended," said Sugandha Sachdeva, founder of New Delhi-based research firm SS WealthStreet.

The rise reverses some of the optimism that had lifted markets late last week, when Brent had briefly traded near $108 on Thursday before falling back on Friday as news of the Iranian offer emerged.

Oil's week-on-week picture remains divided. Brent edged up 0.4 percent last week, while the U.S. benchmark plunged 7.9 percent, a divergence driven not by geopolitics but by the domestic American fuel market.

The Diesel Dilemma

The unusual split between the two benchmarks reflects fears that Washington could ban diesel exports to curb record-high prices at home, a step analysts warn would backfire on U.S. refining.

"Refined petroleum products remain a problem area, with record U.S. diesel prices intensifying inflation risks and renewing debate about possible export restrictions," analysts at ANZ said in a note. Any restriction on U.S. diesel exports, they said, would tighten supply outside the country, with European prices reacting to the prospect of a reduction in U.S. supplies.

U.S. diesel prices hit a record level earlier this month, one widely cited figure is $6.53 a gallon, up from an average of about $3.50 in January, before the Middle East conflicts began. U.S. refiners are already running near capacity, with utilization above 95 percent for much of the summer, leaving little headroom to raise output. Analysts at S&P Global estimate a full export ban could ultimately force U.S. refiners to cut crude processing by more than 10 percent.

Six of the seven largest buyers of U.S.-refined diesel are in Europe or Latin America, Brazil, Chile, Mexico, Peru, France, and the United Kingdom, meaning any U.S. restriction would land hardest on those importers.

Supply Flows Recover — For Now

Underlying the price moves, physical oil flows in the region have partially recovered from the lows reached after the war began in February.

Crude exports from key Middle East producers rebounded in September to 12.8 million barrels a day, the highest level since the start of the war, according to preliminary data from the analytics firm Kpler. The increase was driven by higher exports from Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.

Deliveries through the Strait of Hormuz have also picked up, and are expected to reach about 7.4 million barrels a day this month, the data showed. Saudi Arabia has redirected exports from the Red Sea port of Yanbu back to its eastern port of Ras Tanura following attacks that damaged the East-West pipeline, a rerouting that has kept barrels moving despite the fighting, but at higher cost and risk.

The recovery remains fragile. Yemen's Saudi-led coalition said Saturday it had intercepted two ballistic missiles and two drones launched by Iran-aligned Houthi forces toward the kingdom, and ANZ analysts noted that "geopolitical risks remain elevated," with regional supply flows still vulnerable.

Three dates and dynamics now frame the market: whether the new round of U.S.-Iran talks Trump predicted for this week actually materializes; the state of American fuel policy ahead of the November midterm elections, which analysts see as a factor in the diesel export debate; and the trajectory of tanker traffic through the Strait of Hormuz, on which Europe and Asia's supply and the global price of oil, continue to hinge.

Washington and Tehran are still communicating through an informal channel that opened during UN General Assembly week in New York, but a 45-day Iranian ultimatum tied to the naval blockade expires next Wednesday, a date that could determine whether the war reignites, according to veteran geopolitical analyst Pepe Escobar.

Escobar, a Brazilian-born, Bangkok-based foreign correspondent of three decades who has reported from across the Middle East and Central Asia, made the remarks on "Judging Freedom," the daily foreign-policy podcast hosted by Andrew Napolitano, a former New Jersey Superior Court judge and former Fox News judicial analyst.

A Channel Runs Through New York

At the center of the discussion was a question that has hung over the conflict since the US and Israel struck Iran on February 28, 2026: are the two countries still negotiating?

Escobar's answer was yes, with qualifications. He told Napolitano that American and Iranian negotiators communicated during General Assembly week, though not in the same room, confirming rather than contradicting President Donald Trump's claim, made after his UN speech, that the negotiators had met.

The potential vehicle for a settlement, Escobar said, is a memorandum of understanding signed by Trump and Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian before the war began. Under it, he said, the US would return to diplomacy and the situation could revert roughly to its pre-war status, opening the way for staged negotiations on Iran's nuclear program.

Napolitano, who met Pezeshkian and Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi in New York alongside economist Jeffrey Sachs, said the Iranian officials told him they are skeptical the United States would honor an agreement they signed, but are prepared to implement the memorandum immediately.

"President Pezeshkian and Foreign Minister Araghchi said the fatwa exists until it is rescinded, and it has not been rescinded," Napolitano said, referring to Iran's religious prohibition on nuclear weapons. "It is more than the law of the land. It is the law of our hearts."

In a Fox News interview with Bret Baier, Pezeshkian denied Iran seeks a nuclear bomb, offered to dilute enriched material and accept verification, and said the US response to diplomacy had been to bomb first.

What Xi Told Trump

In the private, camera-free portion of a three-hour meeting between Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping in Washington, the two leaders, their translators, and a note-taker.

Xi's messageto Trump on Iran, was that an off-ramp exists: the signed memorandum of understanding. He said the position had been coordinated in advance between Beijing and Tehran, with Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi and Araghchi meeting twice at the BRICS summit in New Delhi before Araghchi flew on to Beijing.

The Chinese readout of the meeting, described it, also laid out three points for the broader US–China relationship: competition is acceptable on trade; on artificial intelligence, the two should compete but exchange information; and Taiwan is the sole red line.

Trump's own UN remarks framing his Iran choice as one between a deal that "lets them rebuild and create a far greater country than it ever was before" and a vow to "annihilate the Islamic Republic... never giving them a chance to kill and destroy people and countries again," while predicting a deal would come "right after the election."

Napolitano characterized the passage as a threat against a nation of roughly 91 million people; Escobar called the rhetoric "beyond terrifying" and said it had been normalized at the UN podium.

The September 30 Deadline

The most concrete revelation of the conversation was a date. Escobar said that on August 16, Iran's Supreme National Security Council declared that if the naval blockade of Iranian ports were not lifted within 45 days, Iran would take the offensive. The deadline falls on Wednesday, September 30, with Iranian officials, in his words, signalling that "our hands are on the trigger."

Because the ships enforcing the blockade are positioned 800 to 1,000 kilometers away in the southern Indian Ocean, Escobar said, any Iranian response could pull the conflict out of the Persian Gulf and into the Indian Ocean.

Escobar sketched three paths: the US resumes bombing after the midterm elections; Iran strikes preemptively, potentially as early as September 30, if it detects attack preparations; or a period of high but managed tension holds until the midterms, after which, he said, "all bets are off."

He said Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been pressing Trump for an "October surprise," a combined air, land, and sea attack and assessed that Iran has moved from a defensive to an offensive posture. Those judgments are Escobar's own.

The atmosphere at the UN, where Pezeshkian accused the international community of double standards, nuclear weapons in Israeli hands, inspectors in Iran and where Israeli Ambassador Danny Danon attempted to hand a Starlink laptop to an Iranian diplomat on the General Assembly floor, saying Israel prays for regime change. The Iranian official did not engage. Was the best way to handle the situation.

The exchange, taken together, describes a moment in which diplomacy and escalation are running side by side: a channel both governments acknowledge exists, a signed memorandum either could revive, a deadline next Wednesday that few outside the region are watching, and an American election calendar that all sides appear to be treating as a decision point.

Whether any of the off-ramps are taken and whether September 30 passes quietly, remains to be seen.