Donald Trump

Trump loves a winner. He is less keen on anyone blocking his objectives.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu used to be the former and is now the latter. Ukrainian President Volodomyr Zelensky used to the be latter and is now the former.

This was apparent to anyone watching the visits to Washington this week of Zelensky and Netanyahu. Zelensky and Trump were all smiles. Zelensky described the talks as “a good meeting” and the White House used the term “cordial.”  The bilateral summit was in stark contract to the February 2025 Oval Office showdown when Trump and Vice President Vance set out to publicly humiliate the Ukrainian leader.

Part of the explanation is simple: In February 2025, Ukraine was on the defensive, if not losing. By the summer of 2026 it had regained the initiative and for the first time in many months, was looking capable of improving its position, if not winning the war outright.

Netanyahu, on the other hand, won no favours when he refused to endorse Trump’s latest plans for Gaza. Trump ignored him and announced that Hamas had agreed to disarm. The Israeli leader also hurt his cause by having what were described as “frank discussions” in a private meeting with Vance – diplomatic shorthand for almighty row.

There is also the fact that Netanyahu is widely reported as having persuaded Trump to join him in an attack on Iran. It would be over quickly, he assured the president. It isn’t and Trump, America and rest of the world are suffering because of it.

The changing mood is reflected in Congress.  Support for Ukraine has become broader and more enthusiastic. Israel still commands considerable backing, but Netanyahu’s actions in Gaza, Lebanon and Iran has created fissures in its previously rock-solid bipartisan support.

Israel

Israeli West Bank settlers don’t have much time. There is a good chance that the complexion of the government  may change after elections on October 27 and the orthodox parties that back their West Bank land grab will be out.

So, they are seizing more territory and provoking more confrontations with Palestinian residents, calculating that this will lead the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) to deploy more troops to the area and facilitate more land grabs. “We are definitely initiating friction and we’re proud of this,” Elisha Yered, an outspoken settler leader, said in a recent interview.

The IDF claims to be enforcing order. But it has overseen a steep rise in violence against Palestinians. In the first six months of 2026 there were 660 “nationalistic” attacks in the West Bank, up from 405 in the previous six months, according to the Shin Bet, Israel’s security agency.

In some cases, soldiers have tried to restrain settlers, who have responded with violence. But in many more cases soldiers, either acting on their own initiative or as part of organised units, have been seen taking part in attacks against Palestinians or protecting settlers carrying them out.

The IDF has set up protective cordons around new settlements and built roads to dozens of them. In many cases the work destroyed swathes of orchards and vineyards owned by Palestinians.

The surge in violence seems likely to reap more violence. For the past three years, the war in Gaza has occupied Palestinian militants. But events in the West Bank have made an armed backlash or a more widespread Palestinian uprising there a distinct possibility.

Anthony Fauci

Every political movement needs issues that energise its supporters. If they can stick a face on the issue, so much the better. For MAGA Republicans Covid is the issue, and Dr. Anthony Fauci is the face.

The former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases is every MAGA person’s hate figure for the pro-mask and pro-lockdown position that he took during the Covid pandemic.

His opponents break down into two basic camps. The first are the libertarians who instinctively fight against being told to do anything by the government. They especially don’t like being told what to wear, where to go and whom to see.

The second are the businessmen who are opposed to government strictures on how to organise their offices or keeps customers away from their businesses.

Of course, Fauci, as a doctor who has studied infectious diseases for decades and served five American presidents, had a different brief: Keeping Americans alive.

It was Fauci’s job—one held through five presidents—to advise the administration on how best to combat the pandemic. The evidence from the Centre for Disease Control (CDC) indicates that Fauci was right to take a pro-mask, pro-lockdown stand. Health experts, however, are divided on whether Fauci’s advice went too far. What they are agreement on is that masks saved lives. Early restrictions ditto. Vaccinations ultimately saved more than either. But the United States—partly because of its politically divided federal structure—often applied the right measures too late, inconsistently or not at all.

But in the wake of the pandemic, MAGA needed a hate figure. Dr Fauci was the obvious candidate. In his 2024 election campaign Donald Trump vowed to prosecute Fauci. President Joe Biden attempted to head off such a political witch hunt by issuing a pre-emptive pardon for Dr. Fauci.

But Republicans have continued to demonize Fauci, ginning up anger against him in their base even as the rest of the country has moved on. Now, with the political tides running so strongly against the Republicans before the 2026 midterm elections, they are clearly trying to rekindle the fury of the last presidential election.

Leading the pack is Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) who has accused Fauci of lying about the origins of Covid and repeatedly called for Fauci’s arrest and imprisonment . In 2023, published a book with Fauci on the cover, explicating what he called the “Great Covid Cover-Up.”

Health Secretary Robert Kennedy Jr recovered Dr Fauci’s digital diary from government servers which he passed on to Senator Paul who, as chairman of the Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee, subpoenaed Fauci to appear before the committee.

He appeared this week—reluctantly, making it clear in his opening statement that he believed “the sole reason [Paul] is calling me before this committee is to get me to say something—anything—that could vindicate his repeated public pledges that I end up, in his words, quote, behind bars, unquote.”

“Any reasonable person who has followed his unhinged obsession with me would readily come to the same conclusion,” he said. “Therefore, although it pains me to do so because of the respect I have for the legislative branch of government and my decades-long record of cooperating with Congress, under the advice of my attorneys, I will invoke my right under the 5th Amendment of the Constitution to refrain from answering your questions.”

More than 100 times he did exactly that as Republicans berated him, calling him “a narcissist and a megalomaniac and a liar,” mocking him, and repeatedly resorting to expletive-laden questioning. What Republican senators failed to do was introduce any evidence that the 85-year-old lifelong public servant had broken any laws. The end was a clear victory for 85-year-old medical professionals and humiliation for Republican senators and—by association—the president and his MAGA base.

Global warming

It is hot. But as the thermometer in my London garden inched towards 30 degrees this week, the temperature hit 47 on the streets of downtown Kuwait City. The Kuwaitis, however, along with other denizens in the Gulf Region, simply shrugged their shoulders and carried on.

This is because the Gulf states have become the world’s leading experts in air conditioning. Oil money has been ploughed into technology for round the clock cooling in offices, homes, shopping centres… in fact, almost every enclosed space.

The GCC countries are, in fact, possibly the coolest countries on the planet – indoors.

There is, of course, a price to pay for sweat-free living. Air conditioning in the Gulf soaks up as much as two-thirds of peak electricity demand. The demands on the electricity grid have prompted the Arab countries to seek systems that keep their cities liveable while reducing cost and the damage to the environment.

In some Gulf cities a central plant chills water and pumps it through a network of buildings. Energy use is reduced by sharing peak loads across the network. This reduces power by up to 80 percent compared with cooling individual units using separate air-conditioning systems. The central plant also acts as a sort of battery with chilled water is stored in tanks for use during periods of high demand.

District cooling requires copious water, a challenge in a water-scarce region.  Gulf countries have cut freshwater usage by running the systems on treated wastewater. A plant in Saudi Arabia is also using seawater. More recently, the countries have been looking to integrate cooling-hungry data centres for artificial intelligence (AI) applications into district-cooling systems. One company is also experimenting with adding tiny particles to cooling water, letting it absorb more heat.

It is estimated that global warming will increase international demand for air conditioning by 300 percent by 2050, according to a UN estimate. The technology that is in place—and being developed—in the Persian Gulf could become the norm in historically temperate northern climes.

* Tom Arms is foreign editor of Liberal Democrat Voice. He also contributes to “The New World” magazine and lectures on world affairs. He is the author of “America Made in Britain,” two editions of “The Encyclopaedia of the Cold War” and “The Falklands Crisis.”