Iran said on Monday there were no talks under way with the United States and no plans for any meetings, contradicting Donald Trump who had ‌cited talks he said would take place that afternoon as justification for calling off attacks.

Over the weekend Trump repeated a pattern that has emerged throughout the past five months: announcing plans for "massive attacks" on Iran, only to cancel them at the last minute.

Iran's Foreign ⁠Ministry spokesman Esmail Baghaei rejected the claim, saying no negotiations with the United States were taking place and no meetings were scheduled. Iran had no plans to host foreign delegations or send negotiators abroad in the coming days, he said.

Russia has built a network linking socialist and anti-globalist groups abroad under the banner of support for left-wing causes. The effort often starts with seemingly benign events such as community cleanups and discussion clubs before developing into street protests, disinformation campaigns, sabotage operations in Western countries, and even recruitment for Russia’s war in Ukraine. The Insider has identified several British and U.S. citizens who were recruited to fight for Russia with the help of “communists” and far-left activists.

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In the name of the left

In late April 2026, the founding forum of an international socialist network called the Sovintern was held at Moscow’s House of Unions. The event was organized by the party Spravedlivaya Rossiya (lit. “A Just Russia”). The name Sovintern echoes the Comintern, the Soviet-era Communist International that Moscow used in order to coordinate foreign communist parties and advance Soviet influence abroad.

The Kremlin did not hide its warm attitude toward this kind of international activity: the event opened with a welcoming address from Vladimir Putin himself. Sovintern’s stated public task was to create as much information content as possible. Each participant was expected to spread common narratives back home, thereby motivating potential future participants to join in the efforts to discredit their own national governments.

Like the Comintern once did for the Soviet Union, the new organization also appears to function as a cover for Russian special operations abroad. In fact, several of its participants are directly involved in recruiting foreign soldiers for the war in Ukraine.

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One example is the American Communist Party (ACP). The party was founded only recently — on July 21, 2024 — by two Russophile Marxist-Leninist streamers: Adam Tahir, who uses the public name Haz Al-Din (and is also known as Infrared), and Jackson Hinkle. Their left-wing identity does not prevent them from being ardent admirers of the fascist ideologue Alexander Dugin and Nazi sympathizer Martin Heidegger.

Historically, communists in the United States have been represented by the Communist Party USA (CPUSA), whose leadership once actively cooperated with Soviet intelligence. The founders of the new ACP previously belonged to the shrinking CPUSA and have so far set up small chapters across the United States, as well as a branch in Canada. The party’s official activities are limited to community cleanup days, aid to the poor, and peaceful protests glorifying Stalinism and Chinese socialism. Party supporters also back Hamas and Hezbollah. Several members are even fighting against Ukraine on Russia’s side.

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In the UK, similar activity is handled by the Workers Party of Britain and its affiliated movement, no2nato. The party is headed by George Galloway, 71, a frequent guest on Russian propaganda shows. Aside from the direct disinformation work of its leader, the party’s members are also on the lookout for potential mercenaries.

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Until the start of its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Russia used a network of state-controlled cultural centers and associated agents abroad to recruit agitators and, at times, fighters for proxy military structures. The Insider previously described how this worked using the example of Alexander Ionov, president of Russia’s Anti-Globalization Movement.

After the full-scale war began, most such organizations were expelled or shut down across the Western world. As a result, semi-legal and often highly marginal socialist and far-left cells became disproportionately useful.

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Recruitment [of foreign soldiers for Russia's military] continues to this day. In late April 2026, Canadian Ryan Gallant — a member of his country’s branch of the American Communist Party — arrived in Irkutsk via China. Stimson said on his blog that the recruit was a professional helicopter pilot.

Sometimes the path is more complicated. One example is Kalen Pavan, a 17-year-old Canadian cadet who was recruited through socialist chapters and arrived at the Interbrigades headquarters in the Donbas in 2024 ... When it turned out that Pavan was under 18 and had lied slightly about his age, he was recruited by the FSB, Russia’s domestic security service, and sent to the European Union — first to Denmark and then to Poland — for intelligence work. But he failed the assignment and was detained and convicted.

That example, however, appears to be more the exception than the rule. Those who leave for the war usually do not return home, either because they are killed in “meat grinder assaults” or because they risk criminal prosecution. If a recruit survives, after a while he may become a colleague of recruiters ... and begin looking for new recruits himself.

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Archived

Donald Trump has played this hand before during the 5-month-old Iran war.

It starts with a grim warning to Tehran that he’s on the cusp of ordering U.S. forces to “obliterate” its power plants or seize key parts of its oil industry if its leaders don’t quickly agree to U.S. terms to end the war. It ends with him edging away with a last-minute declaration, sometimes at the behest of Gulf allies, that he’s going to give diplomacy more time.

The hardball strategy — one that Trump honed during his years competing in New York’s real estate scene and has employed in politics — aims to create movement in negotiation through pressure and chaos. But the tactic is facing a challenge with an Iranian theocracy that believes it holds a higher threshold for strategic pain than Washington.

BEIRUT, Aug 3 (Reuters) - Iran is betting it can outlast Washington by turning the Middle East's trade routes, shipping lanes and energy infrastructure into pressure points that steadily raise the cost of confrontation, according to Gulf officials and analysts.

Rather than seeking a ​decisive military victory, Tehran is pursuing a strategy of calibrated escalation aimed at widening the conflict without triggering full-scale war.

Michael Singh, senior fellow at the Washington Institute, said Tehran believes it still holds the initiative, partly because the Trump administration appears uncertain how far it ‌is willing to ⁠go militarily.

"The Iranians are trying to press their advantage," he added. "They're interested in establishing sovereignty over the strait and exercising selective control over the waterway."

Alan Eyre, a former U.S. diplomat and Iran expert, said Tehran is pursuing a strategy of deterrence aimed at forcing Washington to lift its blockade and halt military strikes. "They don't want the U.S. to dictate the pace of events," he said.

Who would’ve thought??? EVERYONE!!!

A magnitude 5.5 earthquake struck near the Egyptian city of Suez early Monday, shaking buildings across Cairo and prompting authorities to activate emergency response plans. No casualties or significant damage were immediately reported.

Former Malian Prime Minister Moussa Mara has called for national unity, reconciliation and empathy after completing a one-year prison sentence. In his first public message following his release, Mara urged Malians to forgive one another and expressed concern over the disappearance of his lawyer.

The Italian navy has boarded a Russian tanker in international waters off Pantelleria, an island located between Sicily and Tunisia. The operation was carried out as part of an arms and oil trafficking monitoring mission with the support of a Greek vessel and a Polish maritime patrol aircraft.

Social media was a mistake.

Guinea says it’s opting out of the ECOWAS single currency. The 12 member West African economic bloc is set to launch the monetary union and eco currency in July 2027. Guinea is the first member state to say it's retaining its national currency.

The Restore Britain leader outlined five points that he said the pair would have to agree on to be able to find a "common way forward" and defeat the left wing.

Authorities in Ethiopia’s Tigray region accused the federal government of launching a military offensive on Saturday, reigniting fears of a return to war.

President Donald Trump has predicted that Greenland will be under U.S. control by the time he leaves office in January 2029.

Trump has fiercely pushed to acquire the semi-autonomous Danish territory in the Arctic since before he returned to the Oval Office. The globally unpopular move has helped strain America’s relationship with its European allies, who see it as a threat to Greenlanders’ sovereignty.

Real America’s Voice host Steve Gruber told Trump during an audio interview Friday, “I made a prediction on this program that before you left office, that Greenland would be under our operational control.”

Like fuck it will

Was browsing the news today and saw this. In my opinion, this should be mandatory not just in the EU, but that’s politics for you 🙄. Then again, in practice, what difference will this really make?

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Pierre-Henri Chuet, who flew Super Étendard and Rafale M fighters from the aircraft carrier Charles de Gaulle, was formally placed under investigation after he was presented to an investigating magistrate last week, following his questioning by France’s domestic intelligence service, the DGSI.

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He is under investigation for four charges of espionage: disclosure of national defense secrets by a person entrusted with them, intelligence with a foreign power, collection of information relating to the fundamental interests of the nation, and delivery of information to a foreign power.

Chuet joins a long list of Western pilots who have been warned or investigated for training China’s PLA Air Force (PLAAF) aviators on tactics, procedures, and related skills. Training sometimes took place in China or in third countries.

Notably, former U.S. Air Force major Gerald Eddie Brown Jr., who also flew the F-35, was arrested in February this year in the US shortly after he returned from China. He was charged with providing and conspiring to provide unauthorized defense services to PLAAF pilots in 2023.

Similarly, Daniel Edmund Duggan, a former U.S. Marine Corps pilot, was charged in a 2017 U.S. indictment with conspiracy for allegedly providing training to Chinese military pilots, including aircraft carrier takeoff/landing tactics, techniques, and procedures. In April, he lost his appeal to resist extradition to the US.

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China has allegedly been facing a shortage of skilled naval aviators. A Chinese military magazine, Ordnance Industry Science Technology, reported in 2022 that the People’s Liberation Army Navy lacks sufficient qualified shipborne fighter-jet pilots.

Pierre-Henri reportedly traveled to China in September 2018 and August 2019 while still serving, without notifying his chain of command, as required by French military regulations.

Both trips were financed by a South African aviation company, already under the scanner for hiring Western fighter pilots to train Chinese pilots, Aerotime reported.

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Archived

Archived link

Transnational repression on Canadian campuses is an emerging epistemic threat that distorts Canada’s information environment and undermines Canadian sovereignty and NATO security efforts. Transnational repression occurs when foreign governments silence, intimidate, or control individuals in Canada, threatening the freedom of expression of students and faculty.

On Canadian campuses, transnational repression functions as a disinformation and epistemic threat because it interferes with the very processes through which knowledge is produced, shaping which perspectives are expressed, recorded, and treated as representative. Instead of injecting fake news into campuses, foreign states can suppress dissenting views that conflict with their interests, narrowing the range of permissible viewpoints and manufacturing a false sense of reality and consensus.

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Canada, in particular, is especially vulnerable because of its decentralized governance, highly internationalized campuses, and liberal pluralist system — a system designed to protect diverse cultural, ethnic, and political identities — which creates pockets for foreign actors to exploit and distort its information ecosystem. While transnational repression has existed as a hybrid threat for centuries, what makes it so volatile today is the scale, speed, and technology at which it is carried out.

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In September 2020, amidst the shift to online learning during the COVID-19 pandemic, the UBC administration formally requested that instructors place warning labels on course syllabi. The recommended text warned students to avoid course materials covering topics that could be considered illegal or censored by non-Canadian governments. While UBC framed the warnings as a measure to protect their students, critics argued that it fundamentally shifted the burden of safety. Instead of the institution actively securing digital privacy or pushing back against foreign authoritarian reach, they shifted the responsibility of safety onto vulnerable students, telling them to simply “exercise caution” or self-censor by avoiding courses entirely.

Despite good intentions, the practice was harmful as students were constrained from creating and contributing to new knowledge — the very purpose post-secondary institutions ought to serve. Chinese students vulnerableArchived link to the influence of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) regime face targeted threats, family pressure, and digital surveillance amplified by platforms like WeChat, as they are often the only way for students to reach family behind the Great Firewall, allowing the state to reinforce those pressures by tracking communications live and distributing propaganda into students’ primary and personal information sources. By using such tactics of disinformation to force self‑censorship, the PRC effectively deleted critical perspectives from Canadian institutions. This resulting chilling effect creates a false impression of consensus or indifference to current human rights issues affecting individuals in Canada.

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