‘You can’t live without us’: Have fossil fuel giants gone back on their green promises?

Copyright AP.

By Liam Gilliver

Published on 21/03/2026 - EURONEWS

A new analysis warns that some of the world’s biggest fossil fuel companies have entered a ‘gaslighting’ phase to bolster their profits.

Oil majors have been accused of “quietly abandoning” their climate pledges in an attempt to justify the continued use of polluting fossil fuels.

New research from Clean Creatives, a project for climate-conscious PR and advert professionals, has tracked how Big Oil has been “systemically” changing its narrative over the last four years – despite repeated warnings around the planet’s warming.

The report, titled Toxic Accounts: From Greenwashing to Gaslighting, analyses more than 1,800 pieces of campaign material from fossil fuel giants BP, Shell, ExxonMobil and Chevron between 2020 and 2024.

This includes paid advertisements across social media sites such as Facebook, YouTube, TikTok and Instagram – as well as TV ads, library archives, press releases, investor communications and executive speeches.

Is Big Oil guilty of ‘climate gaslighting’?

The report found that campaigns at the beginning of the analysis emphasised climate targets and clean energy transition pledges, frequently positioning themselves as transition partners.

However, by 2023, messaging “increasingly framed” oil and gas as “permanent, indispensable and essential to economic stability and national security”.

In 2020, BP moved from its net zero pledge and ‘greening companies’ rhetoric to campaigns that Clean Creatives says defend its continued expansion of gas and oil, while scaling back its renewable ambitions.

Chevron also pivoted from its ‘Human Energy’ positioning to “nationalist messaging” linking domestic fossil fuel production to economic and national security, the report found.

Relate

Researchers warn that despite differences in tone, all of the oil majors in the analysis followed similar narrative shifts, moving from “part of the solution” to “you can’t live without us” messaging.

The report found that campaigns increasingly promoted liquefied natural gas (LNG), carbon capture and storage (CCS), blue hydrogen, biofuels and renewable diesel as climate solutions, despite evidence that these technologies remain fossil fuel-derived or unproven at scale.

“The speed at which companies shifted to energy-security messaging correlated with their financial performance,” the report states.

“Chevron and ExxonMobil were quick to shift their messaging toward fossil fuel dominance, and as a result, led the market.”

The report also found that Shell, which was accused of downplaying fossil fuels’ climate impact last year, transitioned from presenting itself as a net zero leader to emphasising LNG as a longer-term growth market.

Keeping fossil fuels ‘profitable’ amid changing attitudes

“Greenwashing has taken on a new form,” says Nayantara Dutta, head of research at Clean Creatives and lead author of the report.

“Instead of making false claims, oil majors are promoting false solutions like CCS and natural gas, even though they are derived from and create long-term dependence on fossil fuels.”

Dutta argues that oil companies are crafting a narrative that keeps them “profitable and in power” in the face of growing opposition.

Transitioning away from fossil fuels became a flashpoint discussion at last year’s UN COP30 summit in Belém, despite not being an official agenda item.

More than 90 countries, including Germany and the Netherlands, backed the idea of a roadmap to allow each nation to set its own targets to move towards green energy.

Despite the growing support for this idea, all mentions of fossil fuels were scrubbed from the final deal in the last hours of the summit. It means hope for a fossil fuel-free future now lies outside the UN’s remit.

A report by Carbon Majors recently found that 17 of the top 20 emitters in 2024 were firms controlled by nations that went on to block the COP30 roadmap. This includes Saudi Arabia, Iran, Qatar, India, Russia and China.

Big Oil and the war on Iran

“The transition from greenwashing to advocacy of fossil fuel energy dominance is the latest rhetorical twist in the manipulation of the public to accept greenhouse gas emissions as just part of doing business,” says Robert Brulle, an environmental sociologist at Brown University.

“Meanwhile, the war in the Middle East shows the folly of the idea that fossil fuels provide ‘energy security’.”

Multiple experts have used the war on Iran to highlight the urgent need for a clean energy transition, as oil and gas prices continue to soar.

Non-profit 350.org recently urged G7 nations to implement a windfall tax on fossil fuel giants that it says are “cashing in” on escalating conflict in the Middle East.

While the Iran war has also bolstered calls for the UK to open up licences to drill in the North Sea, an analysis from the University of Oxford found that focusing on renewable energy is far more likely to decrease household energy bills.

“What we’re seeing is climate disinformation evolving in real time,” says Dana Schran of the Climate Action Against Disinformation (CAAD) coalition.

“Instead of denying the crisis, oil majors like BP and Shell are reshaping the story to make fossil fuel expansion seem necessary and responsible. It’s a sophisticated effort to protect political influence and profits, even as climate impacts intensify.”

SPACE/COSMOS

 

Why 2027’s ‘eclipse of the century’ is worth travelling for

Copyright NASA/Gopalswamy

By Dianne Apen-Sadler

Published on 21/03/2026 - EURONEWS

The path of totality will pass through major cities including Málaga, Tangier, Jeddah and Luxor in August next year.

Astrotourism has been among the biggest travel trends of the past five years and it shows no signs of slowing down, particularly with a solar eclipse on the horizon later this year.

While the 2026 total solar eclipse on 12 August will be pretty special as the first, and only, one to be visible in Iceland in the 21st century, long-time eclipse chasers are already looking ahead to next year.

That’s because 2 August 2027 will see the “eclipse of the century”, aka the longest total solar eclipse on easily accessible land.

Major cities in the path of totality include Cádiz and Málaga in Spain, Tangier in Morocco, and Jeddah and Mecca in Saudi Arabia. Luxor in Egypt is set to be among the most popular destinations to view the eclipse, as the maximum duration of totality – which is six minutes and 23 seconds – will occur just 60 kilometres southeast of the city.

To find out more about why this eclipse is worth travelling for, we chatted to Dr. Kelly Korreck, a programme scientist for eclipses at NASA Headquarters.

Why the 2027 ‘eclipse of the century’ is so special

“So far, Earth is the only planet we know that gets this type of solar eclipse,” Dr. Korreck told Euronews Travel.

“There are other moons that pass in front of the sun, but to have a moon that is the perfect size and the perfect distance to be able to witness this is really special.”

Scientists are able to predict the date and time as well as the length of eclipses thousands of years into the future – and know when they occurred in the past – by looking at the orbits of the moon, the sun and the Earth.

Theoretically, the longest total eclipse possible would be around seven-and-a-half minutes long. For this to happen, the sun would need to be at apogee (at its furthest point away from earth), the moon would need to be at perigee (its closest point to earth), and the path of totality would need to pass along the equator, which as you can imagine is rather unlikely.

At six minutes and 23 seconds, the total solar eclipse on 2 August 2027 isn’t far off, though.

It far surpasses the 2026 total eclipse, which will have a duration of two minutes and 18 seconds, and the Great North American Eclipse in April 2024, which lasted four minutes and 28 seconds.

What to expect during the total solar eclipse

“It’s hard to explain, especially in this digital world, why it actually is worth going out and experiencing this in real life,” Dr. Korreck said.

“The pictures are beautiful, but they don’t do the whole body experience justice.”

Dr. Korreck works as part of a team that focuses on the science that becomes possible when the moon blocks out the sun, including studies on the solar corona, the outermost layer of the sun’s atmosphere.

While NASA will be using sensitive equipment to study the solar corona, you’ll be able to see the wispy filaments with your own eyes during the totality.

Assuming a lack of cloud coverage in your choice of eclipse-watching destination, you’ll also be able to see bright stars and even some planets.

You won’t just see the difference either: You’ll feel it, too, as the temperature could drop as much as 10C while the sun is blocked by the moon.

“Human brains tend to start interpreting [the eclipse] as weird, and there might be some anxiety or fear because it’s becoming dark in a way we’re not used to,” Dr. Korreck notes.

“We’re perplexed. But then once you actually see totality, and see this beautiful outer part of the sun that you can’t see on a day-to-day basis, it’s awe-inspiring. As many times as you see it, you just want to see it again.”

How to view the eclipse safely

Proper eye protection is a key part of viewing an eclipse safely. Aside from the period of totality, when the sun is completely blocked by the moon, you will need specific solar viewing glasses.

Solar viewing glasses will need to meet the ISO 12312-2 international standard, which are thousands of times darker than sunglasses.

Alternatively, you can use a pinhole projector, which could be as simple as knitting your hands together and letting the light through, to watch on the ground below the eclipse.

The NASA website has detailed safety tips, including steps for how to make your own eclipse projector.

Gravitational Waves Leave Imprints On Light Emitted By Atoms




Gravitational waves modify the frequency (color) of light emitted by atoms depending on the direction of emission. Precise measurements of these frequency changes could offer a new way to detect gravitational waves. CREDIT: Jerzy Michal Paczos

March 21, 2026 
By Eurasia Review


Gravitational waves are ripples in spacetime produced by violent cosmic events, such as the merging of black holes. So far, direct detections have relied on measuring tiny distance changes over kilometer-scale instruments. In a new theoretical study accepted for publication in Physical Review Letters, researchers at Stockholm University, Nordita, and the University of Tübingen propose an unconventional approach: tracking how gravitational waves reshape the light emitted by atoms. The work describes a possible detection route, but an experimental demonstration remains for the future.

When atoms are excited, they naturally relax by emitting light at a characteristic frequency — a quantum process known as spontaneous emission. This happens through their interaction with the quantum electromagnetic field.

“Gravitational waves modulate the quantum field, which in turn affects spontaneous emission,” said Jerzy Paczos, a PhD student at Stockholm University. “This modulation can shift the frequencies of emitted photons compared with the no-wave case.”

The team predicts that the emission becomes direction-dependent: atoms emit photons at the same overall rate — which is why this effect has been overlooked until no — but the photon frequencies vary with emission direction. This directional spectral pattern would encode the wave’s direction and polarization and could help distinguish the signal from noise.

Low-frequency gravitational waves are a major target for future space-based observatories. The authors note that narrow optical transitions used in atomic-clock platforms offer long interaction times, potentially making cold-atom systems a promising testbed.

The atoms emit light like a music player that keeps a steady tone, but a gravitational wave changes how the note sounds in different directions. “Our findings may open a route toward compact gravitational-wave sensing, where the relevant atomic ensemble is millimeter-scale,” said Navdeep Arya, a postdoctoral researcher at Stockholm University. “A thorough noise analysis is necessary to assess practical feasibility, but our first estimates are promising.”

Old-Growth Forests Store A Lot More Carbon Than Managed Forests

March 21, 2026 
By Eurasia Review


Swedish old-growth forests store 83 percent more carbon than managed forests, according to a new study from Lund University. The difference is substantially larger than previous estimates and is mainly due to large carbon stocks in the soil.

The study, published in the scientific journal Science, is the most comprehensive mapping of how much carbon is stored in Swedish old-growth forests to date. The results show that old-growth forests store 78–89 per cent more carbon than managed forests in living trees, dead wood, and in the soil down to a depth of 60 centimetres.

“The most surprising result is the large amounts of carbon stored in the soil of old-growth forests. It is the same amount as all the carbon in managed forests – trees, dead wood, and soil, combined,” says Anders Ahlström, researcher at the Department of Environmental and Earth Sciences at Lund University.

The work behind the study took nearly ten years. Because there was no national map of old-growth forests, the researchers first had to identify and map forests that had been very little affected, or not affected at all, by direct human activity. Extensive fieldwork was then carried out across the country, including nearly 220 soil pits dug to a depth of one meter to measure carbon storage in the soil.

The total difference in carbon storage between old-growth forests and managed forests -including carbon stored in wood products – is about 3 to 8 times greater than previous estimates. This difference corresponds to approximately 211 years of Sweden’s current fossil carbon dioxide emissions, or about 1.5 times all fossil emissions since 1834.


“Carbon stored in wood products from harvested forests is relatively small and does not even compensate for the difference in dead wood, let alone the differences in living trees and soil. This is because most products are short-lived, such as paper and bioenergy, where the carbon quickly returns to the atmosphere,” says Didac Pascual, researcher at the Department of Environmental and Earth Sciences.

Old-growth forests serve as a reference for what Swedish forests would look like without forest management and land use. The difference in carbon storage between old-growth forests and today’s managed forests reflects the combined effect of direct human land use, all carbon gains and losses—primarily since the late 1800s, and especially since the 1950s when today’s large-scale forest management was established.

“Comparing carbon storage in old-growth and managed forests is crucial, because contemporary measurements of carbon uptake can miss large historical carbon losses. Carbon storage shows the full picture over time. Old-growth forests serve as a reference for understanding how forest management affects ecosystems and the carbon balance,” says Anders Ahlström.

The results are relevant to discussions about the role of forests in the climate transition. The large differences in carbon storage implies that converting natural forests into managed forests leads to much greater losses of carbon or potential carbon uptake than previously estimated. This affects calculations of the climate benefits of forest products such as bioenergy and building materials.

“Converting old-growth forests reduces the landscape’s carbon storage more than previously believed. Protecting remaining old-growth forests and allowing unmanaged forests to recover could provide substantially greater climate benefits than earlier studies have shown. A large portion of the clear-cutting that occurs each year takes place in old-growth forests,” concludes Didac Pascual.

The Freshwater Hidden Beneath The Great Salt Lake

A pragmities-covered mound that has formed on the dry playa of Farmington Bay. It was formed in recent years by freshwater getting pushed to the surface of the exposed lakebed. 

CREDIT: Brian Maffly, University of Utah


March 21, 2026 
By Eurasia Review

A potentially huge underground reservoir of freshwater beneath the Great Salt Lake is coming into sharper focus with a new study that used airborne electromagnetic (AEM) surveys to X-ray geologic structures under Farmington Bay and Antelope Island off the lake’s southeastern shore.

An analysis of this data by University of Utah geophysicists shows that freshwater saturates the sediments beneath the lake’s hypersaline surface to depths of 3 to 4 kilometers, or about 10,000 to 13,000 feet. The helicopter-borne geophysical survey was conducted last year after Utah scientists documented freshwater welling up under pressure at several spots on the lake’s exposed playa in Farmington Bay, manifesting as strange phragmites-choked mounds.

The study demonstrated for the first time the ability of AEM methods to detect freshwater underneath thethin layer of conductive salt water at the surface of the Great Salt Lake, according to lead author Michael Zhdanov. His team also characterized the spatial extent of the freshwater reservoir beneath Farmington Bay and studied the potential depth of freshwater-saturated sediments by delineating the basement structure.

“We were able to answer the question of how deep is this potential reservoir, and what is its spatial extent beneath the eastern lake margin. If you know how deep, you know how wide, you know the porous space, you can calculate the potential freshwater volume,” said Zhdanov, a distinguished professor of geology & geophysics and director of the Consortium for Electromagnetic Modeling and Inversion, or CEMI.
A larger state-funded research effort focused on a newly discovered aquifer

The results appear in the Nature-affiliated journal Scientific Reports. This study is part of a larger research project led by the U’s Department of Geology & Geophysics and funded by the Utah Department of Natural Resources to understand the groundwater beneath Great Salt Lake, the largest terminal lake in the Western Hemisphere.


Overseen by some of the geology department’s most senior faculty and their graduate students, this effort has already resulted in two other important papers, with more to follow.

The evidence produced in this new study suggests that freshwater is entering the subsurface toward the lake’s interior, not its periphery as would be expected, according to hydrologist Bill Johnson, a co-author on all the Great Salt Lake groundwater papers.

“The unexpected part of this wasn’t the salt lens that we see near the surface across the playa. It’s that the freshwater underneath it extends so far in towards the interior of the lake and possibly under the entire lake. We don’t know,” Johnson said on a recent appearance on KPCW’s Cool Science Radio show. “What we would normally expect as hydrologists is that that brine would occupy the entire volume underneath that lake. It’s denser than the freshwater. You’d expect the freshwater from the mountains to come in somewhere at the periphery. But we find it’s coming in towards the interior. And there’s what appears to be deep volume of this freshwater coming in underneath that saline lens.”
A potential water source to mitigate dust pollution

These studies were triggered by the appearance in recent years of circular mounds, each 50 to 100 meters in diameter and covered with 15-foot-tall thickets of reeds, on the dried-out bed of Farmington Bay. The lake’s declining water levels have exposed 800 square miles of lake playa which is now becoming a major source of dust pollution blowing into Utah’s population centers.


Johnson, a professor of geology and geophysics, wants to explore whether the artesian groundwater could be safely tapped to mitigate the dust which contains toxic metals.

“There are beneficial effects of this groundwater that we need to understand before we go extracting more of it. A first-order objective is to understand whether we could use this freshwater to wet dust hotspots and douse them in a meaningful way without perturbing the freshwater system too much,” Johnson said. “To me, that’s a primary objective because it’s very practical and it’s unlikely we’ll be able to fill Farmington Bay and other parts of the playa enough to avoid some dust spots appearing at the higher elevations. This would be a great way to get at that.”

Johnson and his Utah colleagues, including Mike Thorne and Kip Solomon, are seeking funding to expand the groundwater studies to cover a much larger portion of the lake.

This latest paper measured electrical resistivity to a depth of about 100 meters via airborne electromagnetic surveys to discern freshwater from brine, which is far more electrically conductive. To see if this could be done, Johnson and Zhdanov hired a geophysical crew from Canada to fly electromagnetic equipment dangled under a helicopter in February 2025. The helicopter flew 10 east-west survey lines spanning Farmington Bay and across the northern portion of Antelope Island, for a total of 154 miles.
Looking under the playa

Zhdanov’s team analyzed the resulting data to create a map of the saline-freshwater interface. It showed how one phragmites mound sat above a spot where freshwater pushed through a gap in the impervious layer underlying the lake.


“Red means very conductive, blue is resistive,” Zhdanov said while explaining the map. “You clearly see near surface is saline water, 10 meters underneath is resistive freshwater. You see clearly it’s everywhere.”

Zhdanov’s research group CEMI has developed a technique to build 3D images of Earth’s subsurface by integrating electromagnetic data gathered aerially with magnetic measurements. Applied in this study, the researchers were able to create a tomographic image extending deep beneath Farmington Bay, providing critical insights into its geological and hydrological structure.

The results of the magnetic data inversion show that the basement under the Farmington Bay playa, is relatively shallow, less than 200 meters down, but then abruptly plunges to 3 to 4 kilometers. The drop-off, which occurs under the phragmites mound, represents a significant structural boundary that should be more fully explored.

“This is why we need to survey the entire Great Salt Lake. Then we’ll know the top and the bottom,” Zhdanov said. “To study the top we use airborne electromagnetic methods, which gives us the thickness of the saline layer and where the freshwater starts under the saline layer. To study the bottom, we use magnetic data. We use different techniques to study the vertical extent of this freshwater-saturated sediments, to find the depth to the basement.”

This pilot study covered just a sliver of the lake, but Zhdanov believes his team can fly airborne electromagnetic survey lines spanning the lake’s entire 1,500-square-mile footprint.

A lake-wide airborne survey could help guide regional water-resource planning and inform similar searches for freshwater under terminal lakes worldwide.

Buoyed By Big Projects And A Big Lease Sale, Alaska Oil Companies Project Optimism

File photo of an exploration site at ConocoPhillips’ Willow prospect.

 (Photo by Judy Patrick / ConocoPhillips Alaska Inc.)

March 21, 2026 
 Alaska Beacon
By Yereth Rosen

(Alaska Beacon) — Representatives of major oil field operators on Alaska’s North Slope said Thursday they are bullish on the region’s future as a major producer for decades to come. Their optimism was reinforced in part by a record-breaking oil and gas lease sale held this week by the U.S. Bureau of Land Management.

For ConocoPhillips, Alaska’s largest oil producer, the most prominent source of future development is the company’s massive Willow project, said Marc Lemons, the company’s Alaska vice president of development and execution.

“Willow is a once-in-a-generation project,” Lemons said in a presentation at Meet Alaska, an Anchorage conference held annually by the Alaska Support Industry Alliance, a trade organization.

Willow, a project in the National Petroleum Reserve in Alaska on the western side of the North Slope, is set to tap into reserves estimated about 600 million barrels, with production peaking at 180,000 barrels a day, according to company estimates.


Lemons said the company is devoting $8.5 billion to $9 billion to Willow development. The project is about halfway to completion and on track to start producing oil in early 2029, he said.

Meanwhile, Lemons said, smaller projects will also boost North Slope output.

ConocoPhillips’ Nuna field started producing in 2024, with output that is now about 10,000 barrels a day but is expected to be double that in the future, he said. Next up for ConocoPhillips is boosted production at the neighboring Coyote field, where peak production is expected to be 13,000 barrels a day, he said. Another development, Narwal, is located near the large Alpine field, and ConocoPhillips continues to invest in its longstanding program to produce oil from West Sak, a reservoir within the Kuparuk region.

A busy exploration season is also underway to find the next generational project, he said.

“We have one of the largest exploration seasons planned in many years,” he said. It includes seismic surveys and drilling within the National Petroleum Reserve.

ConocoPhillips was one of the major participants in the just-completed federal lease sale held in the National Petroleum Reserve. The sale drew a record $163 million in high bids, the U.S. Bureau of Land Management announced on Wednesday.

Lemons said continued exploration in the petroleum reserve is a high priority for ConocoPhillips.

“Exploration is a 10- to 20-year play, and it is high risk,” he said. “But it’s necessary for the long-term stability of the North Slope.”

For Santos, an Australian company, the next expected milestone will be the startup this year of production at the huge Pikka field.

Pete Laliberte, Santos’ vice president of business development, said the first phase of Pikka’s development will tap into reserves of about 400 million barrels, with production peaking at 80,000 barrels per day.

Future phases of Pikka development are expected to tap into an even bigger resource, he said. “We’re just getting started” he said.

Laliberte said optimism about future North Slope oil prospects is seen in other companies’ actions.

The geologic feature called the Brookian Sequence, which includes the oil-bearing Nanushuk Formation, has been “driving the overall, like, renaissance on the Slope,” he said. Santos and other companies have shown they can be successful at drilling there, and the wider industry has taken notice, as demonstrated in the record National Petroleum Reserve lease sale.

“Right now, all of a sudden you’ve got a lot of international companies, and the big ones, taking notice of this and taking notice of the, and taking notice of the Brookian plays,” he said.

The Spanish company Repsol, which is Santos’ partner in Pikka, was one of the major bidders in the lease sale. In partnership with a Royal Dutch Shell subsidiary, Repsol bid about $90 million in the sale, according to preliminary results.


For Hilcorp, the privately held independent energy company that since 2020 has been the operator of the Prudhoe Bay field, the concept of development expansion is different.

As company vice president Denali Kemppel described it to the Alliance audience, Hilcorp’s longstanding business strategy has focused on revival of old legacy fields that larger companies sell off.

That has been the case on the North Slope, where Hilcorp began acquiring assets and operator positions from BP since 2014. When BP departed the state in 2020, it sold all of its remaining Alaska assets to Hilcorp, including its share of Prudhoe and the Trans Alaska Pipeline System.

Although its assets are old, Hilcorp is in the midst of a renewal program that is boosting their output, Kemppel said.

Part of that program is a project reinvigorating the Prudhoe Bay field. Called Project Taiga, it is a collaboration between Hilcorp and the other Prudhoe partners, ConocoPhillips and

“It involves building new roads, building new pads, infrastructure,” she said. “And so when we think about Project Taiga, what we think about is potentially 150 to 200 new drill wells. We think about, potentially a billion barrels of oil.” She said that new oil will be potentially starting to flow in 2028.

Hilcorp has also demonstrated success at Milne Point, a BP-developed field that the smaller company began operating in 2014, Kemppel said.

Since Hilcorp took over, Milne Point’s production has tripled from 2014 levels, she said. “We think this is just a real success story for the North Slope,” she said.

The oil revenue and production forecast crafted by state officials reflects the companies’ optimism.

A revised forecast issued earlier this month by the Alaska Department of Revenue anticipates a significant increase in North Slope oil production in the coming year. Production that is expected to average 457,000 barrels per day for the 12 months ending on June 30 is expected to increase to an average 517,800 barrels per day for the coming fiscal year, largely because of Pikka’s startup, according to the forecast.

North Slope production is expected to rise to an average 678,800 barrels per day by fiscal year 2034, thanks in large part to both Pikka and Willow, according to the new forecast.

While expected 2034 production is much lower than the 2 million barrel-per-day peak achieved on the North Slope in 1988, it is higher than production in all the years since 2009, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.


Alaska Beacon

Alaska Beacon is an independent, nonpartisan news organization focused on connecting Alaskans to their state government. Alaska, like many states, has seen a decline in the coverage of state news. We aim to reverse that.

How Gulf Airlines Are Staying Afloat Amid A War That Has Severed Key Aerial Corridors – Analysis



Dubai airport

March 21, 2026 
Arab News
By Jonathan Gornall

Up until about 0630 UTC on Feb. 28, air traffic over the Gulf and the wider region was operating normally.

The usual streams of aircraft heading to and from Asia were converging over the Strait of Hormuz, joining or leaving the conveyor belt of jets travelling along the waterway between Iran and the Gulf states.

As usual, some of the stream peeled off to head west for Riyadh and Jeddah, while aircraft bound for Europe carried on along the well-worn two-way aerial highway, passing over Iraq and Turkey.

Iranian airspace was busy, too, with large numbers of aircraft heading to and from destinations across eastern Europe.


Unnoticed at the time in the general clutter, a lone US Air Force Boeing KC-135R Stratotanker, an air-to-air refueling aircraft, was in a holding pattern over the Mediterranean island of Crete.

And then, at about 0620 UTC, the first reports of explosions in Tehran began to circulate.

Shortly afterwards, observers at global flight tracking company Flightradar24 began to notice something unusual. Aircraft flying over Iran had started to scatter, like a flock of birds startled by a gunshot.

Flightradar24 uses satellites and about 60,000 ground receivers around the world to collect and analyze in real time the constant stream of data being broadcast by the transponders with which all aircraft are fitted.

“The primary function of the transponder is that it greatly increases safety, by sending data to air traffic controllers and to tell other aircraft ‘I’m here, don’t hit me,’” said Ian Petchenik, director of communications for Flightradar24.

As he spoke, there were 19,282 aircraft in the air globally.

But the transponder also gives Flightradar24 a complete real-time picture of all aircraft movements around the world, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.

And by 0705 on Feb. 28, that picture showed that the line of aircraft travelling up and down the Gulf to Iraq had been abruptly severed. Now, as aircraft fled the scene, the only movement was northwards.

Over the lower Gulf, the once orderly procession of aircraft had coalesced into two distinct clumps, circling over Bahrain and Qatar and Abu Dhabi and Dubai.

New aerial highways were quickly developing. One diverted aircraft over Oman and along the bottom edge of the Arabian Peninsula.

Europe-bound traffic that normally would have been using the Gulf-Iraq corridor headed west over Riyadh to join a north-south stream of aircraft forming over the Red Sea.

By 0745, but for a lone Russian Ural Airlines Airbus A320, out of Yekaterinburg and bound for Dubai, Iranian airspace was completely empty of commercial traffic.

Military aircraft must also have transponders, and “in general, if they’re operating in commercial airspace they need to have a transponder on, unless there is a mission-critical reason not to do so,” Petchenik said.

That explains why none of the Israeli or US jets that have been attacking Iran can be tracked by commercial systems such as Flightradar24.

However, over the past two weeks, the US Air Force has chosen to leave the transponders on its air-to-air refueling tankers switched on.

At any one time, up to a dozen Boeing KC-135R Stratotankers have been shuttling back and forth between Tel Aviv and the Gulf coast over Kuwait, where presumably they are refueling the bombers attacking targets in Iran.

But having their transponders on did not prevent two of the Stratotankers colliding over western Iraq on March 12, killing all six crew members on board one of the aircraft.


By 0800 on Feb. 28, most of the aircraft still jostling for landing slots in Qatar, Bahrain, Abu Dhabi and Dubai belonged to local national airlines and were coming home to roost.

Amid the frantic scramble to re-route and land flights, that day air traffic controllers were earning their pay.

Typical of the uncertainty and chaos that morning was the disrupted journey of Fly Dubai flight 1549. Bound for Tel Aviv, it had taken off from Dubai at 0331. It had got as far as Jordan, circling a few times over Queen Alia International Airport, before turning tail and heading back to base.

By 0900, the passengers were back on the ground in Dubai, where their stress-filled journey had begun five and a half hours earlier.

By 1000, the skies over the Gulf were completely clear.

Since then, air travel in the Gulf has remained seriously and expensively disrupted. But, even as the war enters its third week, and Iranian attacks show little sign of letting up, national carriers are cautiously trying to return to pre-war schedules.

Stefano Baronci, director general of Airports Council International Asia-Pacific and Middle East, said the region’s aviation industry “has proven to be among the most resilient in the world.”

He told Arab News that the current disruption is no comparison to the one caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, which he called, “the most severe shock in the history of aviation globally.”

The current disruption is “geographically more limited,” Baronci said, “although it is nevertheless causing significant disruptions to air traffic in the region.”

However, he added that Gulf states and Jordan “are showing a high degree of resilience, enhancing their operational coordination.”

He said: “Airports in Saudi Arabia and Oman have played a pivotal role to secure connectivity within the region and beyond, welcoming airlines and passengers from neighboring countries more impacted by the conflict, with legacy carriers from Kuwait, Qatar and Bahrain relocating operational bases to other airports.

“The current situation has highlighted the value of close coordination among GCC aviation authorities, with regulators and air navigation service providers demonstrating that regional cooperation is essential to maintaining airspace resilience and operational efficiency.”

Baronci believes that “spirit of cooperation” will empower the imminent GCC Aviation Authority — announced in December — to drive the region toward an integrated aviation market.

The resilience, nonetheless, comes at a high cost. The financial pressures on all airlines affected by the war are enormous, Petchenik said.

“Much depends on how long this war goes on,” he said. “Obviously, places like Dubai and Abu Dhabi are losing important tourist spend, but airlines like Emirates and Etihad are protected to a certain extent because they are state-owned.


“If this were happening outside of the Middle East, I would expect to see some airlines fail in short order. But, as COVID showed us, national flag carriers are too important to a country to see fail.

“If we were talking about a low-cost carrier in the US which didn’t have state support — like Spirit Airlines in Florida, or Allegiant Air in Vegas, kind of akin to Jazeera Airways in Kuwait — I would say a month of complete shutdown might be irrecoverable.”

But for any airline, the costs that are not being offset by airfare income are huge — and could lead to compensatory hikes in ticket prices after the war finally ends.

“You have nothing coming in and a lot going out — you’re still paying ground crew, flight crew and cabin crew. It costs money to park aircraft, and you’re still paying leases or the interest on loans.”

Insurance policies are another cost that cannot be offset when aircraft are not flying.

There are, however, savings to be made when aircraft are idle — on fuel, which is a major cost, and on the many fees which have to be paid. These include “overflight fees” or “en-route air navigation charges,” which are paid to countries aircraft fly over and are calculated according to the distance flown and the weight of the aircraft.

RDC, an air industry data company that analyzes the extremely complex issue of charges for airlines, calculates that a Boeing 777-300ER with a take-off weight of 340 tons would be charged $16,800 to fly from Heathrow to Shanghai.

Parking an aircraft anywhere other than at its base is also expensive, which is why most carriers scrambled to get their jets back home as soon as the war began.

Over the past two weeks, Petchenik said, “we have of course seen a general decrease in commercial traffic, but we have also been seeing increased traffic from other airlines — not commensurate with the loss from the Gulf airlines, necessarily, but other airlines have been picking up the slack, so there has been a smaller decrease than I had expected.”

One day last week, for example, “Air India and Air India Express launched something like an additional 32 flights. They were not necessarily operating on the routes that airlines such as Emirates would operate on, but they are bringing Indian nationals back to India,” he said.

“So, there were very few flights coming out of Dubai, but there were a few out of Sharjah, Ras Al-Khaimah and Muscat, and a few out of Riyadh — from as many regional hubs as they could find.

While King Khalid International Airport in Riyadh has had fewer flights than normal, it is still open, although advising passengers that some flights might be delayed, rescheduled or cancelled, mainly due to bottlenecks created by regional airspace restrictions.

However, it may have benefited from the increase in overflight fees which it has been able to charge flights rerouted over Saudi Arabia from the Gulf.

“Saudi Arabia has been balancing the decrease in flights that would have operated from Qatar or the UAE with the increased number of overflights from other airlines, so maybe it has been experiencing a net flat rather than a loss,” Petchenik said.


By March 7, despite signs that the war was escalating, Flightradar24’s data showed that the regional airspace had begun to reopen partially, with airlines such as Emirates and Etihad starting to offer reduced flight schedules.

For example, from Feb. 28 to March 2, all Emirates flights from London Heathrow to Dubai were cancelled. On March 3, two flights got through and thereafter the number of flights began to creep up daily.

By March 10, there were six scheduled flights — the same as normal — and that number has held steady ever since.

Emirates has been wary of revealing its flight resumption timeline after Iranian drones targeted Dubai International Airport just hours after the airline announced plans to restore capacity to 60 percent of pre-war levels. Unconfirmed media reports said Dubai’s government was eyeing a return to 100 percent capacity by March 29.

That resolve was tested on March 16, when an Iranian drone struck a fuel tank near Dubai International Airport, sparking a fire. Flights were temporarily halted, but firefighters contained the blaze and operations resumed within hours.

Meanwhile, the war continues — and, following the bombing of military infrastructure on Kharg Island, the terminal from which 90 percent of Iran’s oil is shipped, and the US announcement that a Marines expeditionary force is on its way to the Gulf — the conflict seems likely to escalate even further.

On March 14, at about 0700 in the morning, the only aircraft with its transponder on over the Gulf was an MQ-4C Triton, a high-altitude, long-endurance surveillance drone operated by the US Navy. Flying at about 48,000ft, it was circling near the Iranian coastline between Bushehr and Kharg Island.

For several hours on Thursday, a Triton reappeared on station in the vicinity of Kharg Island. And as of 1630 UTC, US Air Force KC-135 Stratotankers, flying from Tel Aviv and Crete, could be seen on Flightradar24 continuing their round-the-clock refueling runs both over the Gulf and into Iraqi airspace.


At the same time, a Boeing B-52H Stratofortress, a US Air Force heavy bomber capable of carrying a variety of air-to-ground munitions, was approaching Middle East airspace over the coast of Israel. It had flown from Royal Air Force Fairford in the UK.

AI, Humanity, And The Tower Of Babel – OpEd

March 21, 2026 
By Bert Olivier

One of the most suggestive allusions to Artificial Intelligence that I have come across lately came from Renaud Beauchard, a French journalist writing for Brownstone Institute. Right at the beginning of his essay Beauchard writes:

As the AI winter draws near, we must refuse to let any chance slip by to awaken our numbed senses. That means staying alert, at every moment, to welcome any sign. And a true labor of love is always one of those gifts that life, sometimes, brings when you are ready to receive them. That’s what a strange, luminous film projected at the Kennedy Center did for me a few days ago. Directed by David Josh Jordan, the movie is entitled El Tonto Por Cristo, which means ‘The Fool for Christ.’

What signs are we seeking? C.S. Lewis, I think, captured it best in his dystopian novel That Hideous Strength, a parable about the birth of artificial intelligence and the technocratic order that paves its way. In the story, the protagonist Mark, an ambitious academic, is drawn into an elite institute called N.I.C.E., whose demonic aims are cloaked in the language of ‘objectivity,’ a preparation for the arrival of superior beings.

It is not only the strangely portentous opening sentence (alluding to the imminent ‘AI winter’) that I immediately found intriguing, but – and this functioned as a kind of ‘sign’ to myself – Beauchard’s reference to the third of the so-called Space Trilogy of novels by C.S. Lewis, namely That Hideous Strength (published in 1945, after the earlier texts, Out of the Silent Planet and Perelandra), came as a timely reminder to me. What it prompted in my memory was the almost uncanny prescience that Lewis displayed in that powerful novelistic anticipation of what we have been living through in the last six years or so. This should not be surprising to anyone familiar with C.S. Lewis’s profound literary and philosophical contribution to (the history of) Western culture, as my recent essay on the resonances between his book, The Four Loves, and the Three Colours cinematic trilogy of Krzysztof Kieslowski demonstrates.

In fact, the very title of Lewis’s novel (That Hideous Strength) – which can be read as an oxymoron, because we usually associate strength with something attractive or handsome – could be applied to the globalist cabal which relishes wielding their evil medical-technological power. Through his obedient sycophant, Yuval Noah Harari, Klaus Schwab – until recently the leader of the WEF (arguably the ‘head of the snake’) – made no bones about these neo-fascists’ megalomania when he claimed that the technocratic cabal had acquired ‘divine powers.’

A condensed account of the novel’s narrative will have to suffice. It would probably not appeal to literary purists who insist on the distinctiveness of genres, insofar as it is a synthesis of dystopian science fiction (which always thematically includes technology), Christian theology and supernaturalist mythology, and Arthurian myth. I am no purist of that sort, primarily because I believe that new genres may emerge from the experimental blending of extant ones. Its science-fictional character is significant, particularly for the present, given the quintessential feature defining science fiction – first revealed to me by science fiction authority and connoisseur, James Sey, years ago – namely, the literary and cinematic genre which demonstrates thematically that science and technology comprise a pharmakon (simultaneously poison and cure) capable of constructing new worlds, but also of destroying them. That is what That Hideous Strength achieves, even in admixture with the other thematic and generic components mentioned earlier.


As you would know if you were familiar with the novel, the narrative’s main thread concerns Mark and Jane Studdock, a recently married couple whose lives are disrupted when Mark – an idealistic academic – is accepted (‘recruited’) by the National Institute of Co-ordinated Experiments, with its ironic acronym, N.I.C.E. Why ironic? Because, for all appearances, it is ostensibly only a ‘progressive’ scientific organisation, but is surreptitiously motivated by sinister, supernatural motives – in fact, eerily anticipating the WEF of today and the so-called ‘elites’ who are associated with it.

Mark becomes increasingly entangled in N.I.C.E.’s agenda of reengineering humanity and eliminating organic life altogether (something that seems to occur at the end of the movie, Transcendence, directed by Wally Pfister, 2014), while Jane – who gradually feels estranged from her husband – starts experiencing what turns out to be prophetic dreams. She feels constrained to seek help from a group at St. Anne’s Manor, under the leadership of Dr. Elwin Ransom, the character encountered throughout the trilogy as its chief protagonist. He is a scholar and spiritual leader, who is also in contact with celestial beings and is dedicated to counter N.I.C.E.’s demonic plans and forces.

From the above it should already be apparent that the novel explores profound themes: the corruption of institutions (which makes it a roman noir, albeit with a few twists), the menace of unrestrained scientific and technological power, the conflict between faith and dogmatic materialism, and last but not least, the redemption of relationships. One of the important occurrences in the plot consists of the awakening of Merlin, the legendary Arthurian wizard, who becomes a key ally in the battle against N.I.C.E. This situates the novel, at least partly, in the realm of fantasy, of course. The climactic events unfold at N.I.C.E.’s headquarters in Belbury, where the druid Merlin, empowered by divine forces, dislocates the organisation’s grip on control by sowing paralysing linguistic confusion among its members, during what was supposed to be its pivotal banquet, leading to its collapse.


This is also where the biblical story of the hubristic tower of Babel reveals its relevance. During the crucial N.I.C.E. banquet, Merlin invokes a supernatural curse echoing the biblical event directly, stating that those who have ‘despised’ God’s word would lose the capacity for linguistic communication. This ‘Curse of Babel’ has an immediate and catastrophic effect, insofar as the leaders of N.I.C.E., who prided themselves on manipulation and control through language, are abruptly reduced to uttering rebarbative nonsense, incapable of being understood by others.

In other words, the Curse of Babel manifests itself through the fact that their speeches become nonsensical gibberish, plunging them into confusion and chaos. This echoes the consequence of God, in the Old Testament, inflicting such pandemonium upon the builders of the Tower of Babel. Just how consequential linguistic confusion or misunderstanding can be was memorably explored in the film, Babel, by Alejandro González Iñárritu (2006), serving as a reminder of the paradigmatic status of the Biblical story in Genesis 11:1-9.

That the N.I.C.E. in Lewis’s novel appositely anticipates the WEF of today is readily apparent where Mark – in conversation with the aptly named Professor Frost, who is devoid of all human feelings (p. 317-319) – advances an argument in favour of preserving the human species, instead of reducing it through war. In response, Frost repudiates Mark’s opinion, stating unequivocally that there may have been a time when war had to preserve people who were still ‘useful’ at the time, but that in the present era, such people have become a ‘dead-weight’ – reminiscent of what the globalist murderers call the ‘useless eaters’ today. More pertinently, however, Frost resorts to the rhetoric of eugenics, telling Mark that the ‘scientific war’ of their day is aimed at preserving scientists, and



‘…to eliminate retrogressive types, while sparing the technocracy and increasing its hold on public affairs. In the new age, what has hitherto been merely the intellectual nucleus of the race is to become, by gradual stages, the race itself. You are to conceive the species as an animal which has discovered how to simplify nutrition and locomotion to such a point that the old complex organs and the large body which contained them are no longer necessary. That large body is therefore to disappear. Only a tenth part of it will now be needed to support the brain. The individual is to become all head. The human race is to become all Technocracy.’

If this strikes you as being familiar, don’t be surprised. Lewis actually anticipated the thinking of the eugenics-besotted, control-obsessed billionaire-class globalist technocrats of today with astonishing accuracy, as current WEF-leader Larry Fink’s remarks at a summit in Saudi Arabia in 2024 openly revealed:


During the WEF’s summit in Riyadh, Fink assured attendees that collapsing populations in nations around the world will not be a problem for the global elite.

In fact, Fink gloated that the collapse of civilization would be an advantage for those ‘big winners’ who have been ‘substituting humans’ with ‘machines.’

Fink continues by bluntly declaring that the goal of the globalists is the maximum destruction of the planet’s population.

‘I can argue that in developed countries, countries with declining populations will benefit,’ Fink said during the WEF panel discussion.

‘The big winners are those with shrinking populations.’

‘That’s something that most people never talked about,’ he admitted while saying the quiet part out loud.

Returning to Frost’s observation, above, that ‘…the individual is to become all head…,’ the last term assumes a central place in Lewis’s narrative, specifically as ‘The Head,’ which is what the head of a beheaded criminal, François Alcasan, has become through sustained technological preservation by N.I.C.E. scientists. It is not difficult to see in The Head as a forerunner of contemporary Artificial Intelligence (AI), notwithstanding the fact that it is not literally a machine. Why? Because, as the narrative indicates, it functions very much like the AI of today; to wit, a disembodied intelligence that, in addition to providing information, plays a crucial controlling role regarding events and global planning.

The Head’s integration with N.I.C.E., and its ability to influence human behaviour, plan global conquests, and control infrastructure, arguably – in Lewis’s treatment of it – anticipated fears about autonomous AI systems gaining control over human society. It is therefore no understatement that The Head serves as a powerful philosophical and literary precursor to AI, embodying as it does the dangers of a dehumanised, centralised (or, in the case of many such entities, decentralised, but ultimately coordinated) intelligence, operating without any moral or spiritual constraints.

In the novel, The Head is described as a ‘Macrobe’ – a non-human, if not inhuman, unearthly intelligence suggestive of a consciousness that is a fusion of technology (despite originally having been part of an organic body) and supernatural evil. Apropos of this uncanny entity (half-organic, half-technical), in a review of the novel, Phillip E. Johnson writes (I quote at length):

The NICE turns out to be demonic in inspiration, and intends to impose upon England a regime of ruthless social engineering that Joseph Stalin would have admired. The apparent ‘Head’ at the NICE’s mansion at Belbury is the head of a guillotined murderer, kept alive with advanced life support systems, but this gruesome object is merely the conduit for orders from the dark powers. Belbury’s human leaders recruit and flatter Mark, but the human resource they really want is Jane. She is a seer, whose visions involve the return to life of the magician Merlin, long entombed under Bracton Wood. If Belbury can unite its materialist magic with Merlin’s old–fashioned kind, it can achieve its dream of freeing the mind from messy organic life. ‘In us organic life has produced Mind. It has done its work. After that we want no more of it.’

Does that sound far–fetched? Artificial intelligence visionaries are keen to make it a reality. While the biologists make plans to reprogram the human genome, the cybergurus dream of uploading the human mind into advanced computers. Freed of the limitations of biology and possessed of superhuman intelligence, these ‘spiritual machines’ might explore and conquer the cosmos. Or they might not bother to do so, since they could create a virtual reality for themselves that would be better than the real thing. Then ‘we’ would truly be like God. But who is ‘we?’ In real life, as in C. S. Lewis’ fiction, the dark side of the technological utopia is that it implies a huge difference in power between the few who do the programming and the many who are programmed. Belbury’s chief scientist understands that ‘it is not Man who will be omnipotent, it is some one man, some immortal man.’ Those who understand what is at stake pursue a murderous rivalry to gain control of the power to program.

What Johnson is alluding to is well known to us today. It is the same transhumanist ideal which C.S. Lewis prognosticated with great prescience 80 years ago – where consciousness is detached from biology and wielded for domination – and which we know the globalist technocrats have been promoting for some time now. In Lewis’s novel he had the literary license to combine supernaturalism and magic to undermine and eventually destroy the technocrats of N.I.C.E. – Merlin’s ‘Curse of Babel’ serves hilariously well to cause mutual linguistic incomprehension, and hence pandemonium, at their banquet, assisted by the creatures magically conjured up to destroy these transhumanist evildoers.

But what do we do today to rid humanity once and for all of their equally unscrupulous contemporary counterparts, or at least to disempower them conclusively? We lack a Merlin, and a Ransom (the leader of the St Anne’s group combating the technocrats). Nevertheless, the technocrats of today are arguably – like their precursors in Lewis’s novel – linguistically confounded by the fact that we, their adversaries, are fluent in the language of moral responsibility and unshakeable commitment to the values of civilization, instead of destruction, which is their forte. In sum, we have ethical resolve, courage, and the determination, never to give up in our fight against this merciless foe.

This article was published at Brownstone Institute


Bert Olivier

Bert Olivier works at the Department of Philosophy, University of the Free State. Bert does research in Psychoanalysis, poststructuralism, ecological philosophy and the philosophy of technology, Literature, cinema, architecture and Aesthetics. His current project is 'Understanding the subject in relation to the hegemony of neoliberalism.'

Iraq Pulled Into Iran War As Tehran Expands The Battlefield – Analysis

March 21, 2026 

 RFE RL
By Frud Bezhan


Since the United States and Israel launched their bombing campaign against Iran, Tehran has expanded the battlefield across the Middle East.

That includes in Iran’s western neighbor, Iraq, where Tehran’s proxy forces have carried out almost daily attacks against US targets, including diplomatic and military facilities, triggering retaliatory American air strikes.

Iran itself has carried out waves of missile and drone strikes in Iraq’s semiautonomous Kurdish region in the north, where Iranian Kurdish opposition groups operate camps and offices.

The intensifying violence has threatened to destabilize Iraq, a Shi’ite-majority country of some 46 million people that is still recovering from years of insecurity following the US-led invasion in 2003 and the long conflict it set off.


“The chances of Iraq being pulled deeper into the Iran war are extremely high,” said Colin Clarke, executive director of the Soufan Center, a New York-based think tank.

“That’s partly a result of Tehran’s influence, especially over the past two decades, where the regime has become in many ways inextricably linked with Iraqi militias.”
‘Existential War’

When Israel and the United States conducted a bombing campaign in Iran in June 2025, Tehran’s proxies in Iraq largely stood on the sidelines.

But the so-called Islamic Resistance in Iraq, an umbrella organization of Shi’ite, Iran-backed armed groups, immediately joined the fray this time.

Unlike the 12-day war last June, Iran views the current conflict as a war for survival, experts say, with Tehran using the full force of its own military capabilities and the asymmetric abilities of its proxies across the Middle East to hit back at the United States and Israel.

“The main sponsor and supporter of those groups in Iraq — the Iranian regime — is in an existential war right now and it is a ‘now or never’ moment for them,” said Farzin Nadimi, an Iran defense specialist at the Washington Institute.

Some of the Iran-backed groups that form the Islamic Resistance in Iraq also belong to the Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF), an umbrella organization of mostly pro-Iranian militias that has nominally been a part of the Iraqi army since 2016.

The Islamic Resistance in Iraq, which rose to prominence in recent years, has launched scores of attacks on US troops in Iraq and Syria since Israel began its war in the Gaza Strip in October 2023. The attacks by the Iraqi groups have triggered deadly US air strikes.
Tit-For-Tat Attacks

Since the start of latest US-Israeli air campaign on Iran on February 28, the Islamic Resistance in Iraq has carried out regular drone and rocket attacks on the sprawling US Embassy compound in Baghdad.

An American diplomatic and logistics center near Baghdad International Airport, which houses US troops, has also been repeatedly targeted.

Pro-Iranian groups are also suspected of firing drones toward a major US military base and consulate complex in Irbil, the capital of Iraq’s semi-autonomous Kurdistan region.

Kataib Hizballah, one of the most powerful members of the PMF and a US-designated terrorist group, issued a statement on March 17 demanding that every “foreign soldier” leave Iraq, where around 2,000 US military personnel are stationed.

The United States has responded by targeting PMF command centers and leaders in Iraq.

The PMF said two of its fighters were killed in two separate air strikes on March 19 near the northern city of Mosul. The group blamed the attacks on the United States and Israel.


A day earlier, the alliance said three of its fighters were killed in a suspected US air strike on a PMF command center in Anbar Province, near the border with Syria. Six PMF fighters were killed in the same area on March 16, the group said.

One the same day, reports said a strike targeted the residence of Abu Ala al-Walai, the leader of Kataib Seyyed al-Shuhada, one of the largest pro-Iranian armed groups in the PMF. Local media reported the deaths of six people, but it was unclear if Walai was among them.

Kataib Hizballah announced on March 16 that a senior commander and spokesman for the group, Abu Ali al-Askari, was killed in Baghdad, without providing details on the circumstances of his death.

Despite the US attacks, the Iranian-backed Iraqi militias retain significant fighting capabilities, according to experts.

“It’s uncertain how the supply chains of Iranian weapons have been impacted” by the ongoing war, Clarke said. “But this remains a wild card for Tehran, a tripwire it can use to increase or decrease pressure.”

Meanwhile, Iran continues to fire drones and missiles on Iraq’s Kurdish region, home to around a dozen Iranian Kurdish opposition groups who have been waging a low-level insurgency against Tehran for years.

Iranian attacks increased after reports emerged of the United States possibly supplying weapons to the Iranian Kurdish groups and supporting potential cross-border ground attacks in western Iran.
Strength Of Proxies

The PMF is made up of dozens of militias. Besides Kataib Hizballah and Kataib Seyyed al-Shuhada, prominent groups in the umbrella include Asa’ib Ahl al-Haq, Harakat al-Nujaba, and the Badr Organization.

The strength of each group within the PMF varies widely, with some containing as few as 100 members and others, such as Kataib Hizballah, boasting around 10,000 fighters.

Several militias within the PMF operate as Iran’s proxies, experts say, while others are more independent.


The sway Iran held over the PMF has eroded since the 2020 killing by the United States of powerful Iranian commander Qassem Soleimani, who headed the Quds Force — theforeign arm of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC), an elite branch of Iran’s armed forces.

The Quds Force oversees Iran’s so-called axis of resistance, its loose network of proxies and militant groups against archfoes Israel and the United States. The axis includes the Islamic Resistance in Iraq, Lebanese militant group Hezbollah — regarded as a terrorist organization by both Israel and the United States — and Yemen’s Houthi rebels.

Frud Bezhan is Senior Regional Editor in the English-language Central Newsroom at RFE/RL, leading coverage of the Middle East, South Asia, and Central Asia. Previously, he was the Regional Desk Editor for the Near East, with a primary focus on Iran, Afghanistan, and Pakistan. As a correspondent, he reported from Afghanistan, Turkey, Kosovo, and Western Europe.

Tiktok ‘Lion Cubs’ Lure Children To War

Images from TikTok feature a ‘lion cub’ child soldier alongside members of the Sudanese Armed Forces and others. Photo Credit: BELLINGCAT via ADF

March 21, 2026 
By Africa Defense Forum

Known across social media platforms as “lion cubs” (“shibli” in Arabic), child soldiers have become a recruitment tool for both sides in Sudan’s civil war in violation of international law.

“They’ve become famous, almost equivalent to Disney child stars in the U.S., where everybody knows their name,” analyst Mia Bloom recently told the British open-source investigative cooperative Bellingcat.

Bloom, a professor of communication and Middle East studies at Georgia State University, is a leading expert on armed groups’ exploitation and recruitment of children. She added that child soldiers become powerful tools for recruiting adults and young people into armed groups.

Under the international agreement known as the Paris Principles, a child soldier is anyone under 18 recruited or used by a military or armed group “in any capacity.” The children need not be involved in combat to be considered a soldier. Sudan is a signatory to the Paris Principles.

A joint investigation by Bellingcat and Sudan’s Radio Dabanga examined 12 cases in which child soldiers have posted content on TikTok in violation of the company’s own policies. The accounts studied were geolocated to sites held by the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF).

On the SAF side, a young boy whose TikTok account had more than 700,000 followers and received millions of views across multiple videos, recited a poem mocking RSF leader Mohamed Hamdan “Hemedti” Dagalo. The boy appeared with Darfur governor and SAF militia leader Minni Minnawi and called for a united Sudan from a raised platform surrounded by soldiers.

Although that boy is never shown in combat, he frequently wears a uniform with SAF insignia.

In another, RSF commander Salih al-Foti appeared in a video with a young boy on his shoulders celebrating the conquest of the SAF’s 22nd Division base in West Kordofan. An RSF spokesman dismissed the video as the commander’s son joining him after the battle.

In another RSF-related video posted in January, another child, described as a young teenager, is shown at the same location. “I see people on the [social] media saying that I will die. “For the person who dies, it’s as if he has paid his debt,” he said.

The video was viewed more than 1.6 million times before questions from Bellingcat prompted TikTok to take it down.

The SAF and the RSF deny recruiting children to fight. However, analysts told Bellingcat and Radio Dabanga that the evidence suggests otherwise.

United Nations investigations in 2023 and 2024 found child soldiers being recruited on both sides of the war.

U.N. reports found that the RSF “systematically recruited and used children in hostilities.” The paramilitary used food shortages, displacement and other hardships to bring poor or isolated children into its combat ranks and used them to staff checkpoints and produce social media content. Recruiting child soldiers with food and promises of safety amounts to contemporary slavery under international law.

“The deteriorating humanitarian situation and lack of access to food and other basic services make children, especially unaccompanied and separated children on the streets, easy targets for recruitment by armed groups,” Siobhán Mullally, the U.N.’s Special Rapporteur on trafficking in persons, wrote in her 2023 report.

The SAF also was accused of supporting the mobilization of youth groups as part of the Army’s call for help. Online videos showed SAF officers training children who later turned up at checkpoints in SAF-controlled areas.

Analysts told Bellingcat and Radio Dabanga that the SAF and RSF do not need to recruit child soldiers directly. Videos such as those on TikTok praising children as “lion cubs” and celebrating their activity in the war do that work for them.

“The message becomes: ‘Look how famous he got by doing that — maybe if I join the movement, I can also be famous,’” Bloom said.