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Oil, war, and deaths
A Trump administration official said the mission in Iran has pivoted toward ensuring oil shipments can move through the strait of Hormuz after months of promised diplomatic breakthroughs and short-lived ceasefires.
US energy secretary Chris Wright defended the strategy on ABC’s This Week, saying, “We did a pause to try to get an agreement with the Iranian people to allow oil to flow without them attacking it,” and adding, “we’ve pivoted.”
The conflict has killed three more American troops, bringing the total number of American military members killed in the conflict to 17, and US Central Command said another service member was killed on Saturday “during a controlled detonation of unexploded ordnance” in northern Iraq.
US senator Mark Warner of Virginia described the conflict as a “war of choice” and said the enriched uranium the US wanted to get from Iran is “still there,” while also warning that “The continuation of this war, at this pace, will be a continuing disaster.”
Threats and political pressure
After the killings, the US launched retaliatory strikes on Sunday against Iran’s Revolutionary Guards (IRGC), and the article says Trump’s defense secretary Pete Hegseth vowed the military campaign in Iran would continue, writing on social media that the service members’ “sacrifice only stiffens our resolve.”
Donald Trump urged Congress to include Iran in pending Russia sanctions legislation, and the article says the move would further weaken the memorandum of understanding between the two countries in June aimed at resolving the Iranian conflict that included an agreement to end sanctions for Iran.
Alluding to the unexpected death on 11 July of US senator Lindsey Graham, Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform, “Republicans should add Iran to the Russian Sanctions Bill.”
The article also notes that Wright argued the mission has shifted to “assuring that that oil and gas and other products can flow through the strait of Hormuz with or without Iranian cooperation.”
Solomon’s Pools under threat
Israel is threatening to seize ancient water reservoirs near Bethlehem, with the Guardian reporting that the pools are part of Solomon’s Pools and that Bezalel Smotrich made an explicit threat in May to “erase” agreements confirming Palestinian ownership of Solomon’s Pools more than 30 years ago.
The Guardian says the pools date back as far as the second century BCE, with main construction carried out by the Romans a century later as part of a project of two reservoirs, aqueducts and tunnels to supply water to Jerusalem 8 miles (13km) away.
Mahmoud Jaber, a local activist and horticulturist from Artas, said, “It’s the only place now in all Bethlehem that you can find somewhere to sit and to enjoy the water, the shade, the green space – and now they are trying to steal it,” after Israeli soldiers carried out an unprecedented raid on 10 July firing teargas while children swam in the pools.
The Guardian frames the escalation as a new frontal assault on the Palestinian Authority (PA), noting that under the second Oslo Accord of 1995 Solomon’s Pools was made part of the wider Bethlehem area classified as Area A, under Palestinian civil and police control.
