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The War in Gaza and the Implications for Energy in the Eastern Mediterranean
Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett with Cypriot President Nicos Anastasiades and Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis in Jerusalem on Dec. 7, 2021. Photo: Amos Ben-Gershom / Government Press Office
The war with Hamas in Gaza, and the clashes in the north against Hezbollah, are inevitably affecting both the regional and global energy markets. Uncertainty is not good for economic markets, especially the energy sector. There have not yet been significant increases in oil prices, and natural gas prices have risen only marginally — but no major new deals are being made because the global energy market is waiting and watching, or showing “cautious nervousness.” This is mainly because there are still high quantities of gas available in the market. Europe has managed to overcome the lack of gas from Russia with supply from other sources (mainly liquified gas from the US and elsewhere), and European emergency stores are almost completely full.
Few have yet compared the current energy situation in the Middle East to the oil embargo surrounding the Yom Kippur War in 1973. A couple of weeks ago, the Iranian Minister of Energy called for a similar boycott at the gathering of the Islamic Conference in Saudi Arabia, but as expected, his call went unanswered.
With that said, the situation in the Eastern Mediterranean is complex. The Israeli Ministry of Energy’s October 9 instruction to Chevron to temporarily halt gas production in the Tamar field did not materially affect the local energy market. Chevron announced that it was able to compensate for the lack of gas from Tamar with other fields, both for the Israeli market and for the export markets in Egypt and Jordan. However, the situation could become more difficult as the fighting continues, especially if it escalates to include additional arenas.
It is important to keep an eye on this, especially with regard to the possible consequences for Egypt. Egypt is facing a shortage of natural gas for the local market that has led to power outages from time to time. Moreover, its dire economic situation necessitates the flow of gas from Israel — both for the domestic market and no less importantly for export in order to bring foreign currency into the depleted Egyptian treasury. Present estimations indicate a sharp decrease of gas export to Egypt of around 70%(!). This could have serious internal and regional political consequences. The angry reaction of President Sisi to what was interpreted as an Israeli attempt to evacuate Palestinians from the Gaza Strip into Sinai reflected his concern about both Egypt’s poor economic position and the strategic implications of the Gaza problem being pushed into Egypt’s front yard. A few days ago, fuel prices in Egypt increased by about 15%, but the government said it will not raise the price of basic products. Egypt’s worsening economic situation should be of considerable concern to the region and beyond.
An equally interesting arena is Lebanon. The drilling by the Total company in Block 9 did not yield positive results. Although no official announcement was made by the Lebanese Ministry of Energy, reports indicate that no gas was found. This is a fairly common result in the energy sector, as gas often fails to be found with the first drilling. But in view of Lebanon’s current economic and political circumstances, this is not good news. Reports indicate that the Lebanese government is trying to convince the relevant companies to drill in Block 8 to preserve “energy momentum”. In the present circumstances, with clashes between Hezbollah and Israel taking place, the energy angle is naturally being sidelined, but it will be very important later.
In the Cypriot arena, Chevron submitted an up-to-date action plan to the government regarding the Aphrodite gas field, including its intention to export the gas to Egypt. The government responded with reservations. The dispute has not yet been settled, though it probably will be in the next couple of months. The Israeli angle concerning this field is not clear (there is a dispute regarding the Israeli portion of this field), but when Chevron decides to proceed with Aphrodite, a means will likely be found to settle this angle as well.
In addition, the Italian company ENI is expected to drill in another field with positive potential in Cypriot waters at the beginning of next year.
There is uncertainty regarding the Turkish position on Cypriot energy potential. It should be expected that if Chevron takes practical steps in the Aphrodite field, Ankara will respond. Although the atmosphere between Turkey and Greece is improving, this is mainly on the bilateral level between those two countries. Cyprus is another matter. Intriguingly, however, the Turkish Foreign Minister made a statement in which he suggested finding a way to share the gas between Greek-Cypriots and Turkish-Cypriots even in the absence of a comprehensive solution to the Cyprus problem. Is this a serious idea? Will it be possible to motivate all the parties to take such a creative and pragmatic step? Time will tell, but clearly the Israeli-Lebanese maritime agreement has spurred some creativity about other conflicts in the region.
For the time being, the war in Gaza has not created too many waves in either the regional energy sector or the global one. However, the uncertainty will increase as the crisis continues, especially against the background of the ground operation in the Gaza Strip. Escalation in the Lebanese arena would further exacerbate the situation. It is important to stress that although there is no apparent shortage of natural gas in the world market, and although it is to be expected that Saudi Arabia and its Gulf partners will adopt a responsible policy in this regard concerning oil, ongoing instability could have a negative effect on the energy sector. Obviously, Washington is aware of this and is paying close attention. Israel needs to do the same because of the strategic implications for the region.
Interestingly enough, the Cypriot Energy Minister stated on November 8 that the war might provide an impetus to plans for a pipeline conveying offshore natural gas to Cyprus for processing and shipping to foreign markets. He added that energy cooperation between Israel and Turkey might have fallen by the wayside given Turkey’s increasingly harsh criticism of Israeli actions in Gaza. While it is too early to assess the implications of the war for Israel’s plans for another export option for its natural gas, lessons should be taken the day after.
Ambassador (ret.) Michael Harari joined the Israeli Foreign Ministry and served more than 30 years in a range of diplomatic roles in Israel and abroad, including (among others) in Cairo, London and Nicosia. His final position abroad was as Israeli Ambassador to Cyprus (2010-2015). Today he serves as a consultant in the fields of strategy, policy and energy and lectures in the Political Science Department at the Jezreel Valley College. A version of this article was originally published by The BESA Center.
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Pro-Hamas Campus Groups Call for Toppling US Government, Killing Soldiers
A pro-Hamas demonstrator uses a megaphone at Columbia University, on the one-year anniversary of Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack, amid the ongoing Israel-Hamas conflict, in New York City, US, Oct. 7, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Mike Segar
The National Students for Justice in Palestine (NSJP) organization condemned the US bombing of nuclear facilities in the Islamic Republic of Iran over the weekend, threatening that the American government will be deposed.
The anti-government comments came one day after US President Donald Trump ordered the bombing of three key Iranian nuclear sites — Fordow, Isfahan, and Natanz — where Western governments believe the Islamist regime was working to build nuclear weapons. Tehran has claimed its nuclear program is for peaceful purposes
“The empire will fall, from Gaza to Tehran,” NSJP said, writing on the Instagram social media platform. “The unprovoked attacks the US and the Zionist entity have launched against Iran prove only one thing: imperialism in the region will not stop at suffocating Palestine. From Iraq to Lebanon, Libya, Yemen, Syria, and now Iran, the Empire [sic] demands constant expansion and destabilization.”
It added, “We must be clear: Nuclear development is neither a crime nor the reason for the US’ war against Iran. The US Empire cannot permit the continued existence of a country that dares to stand against Zionism and imperialism.”
On Monday, Asaf Romirowsky, a Middle East expert and the executive director of Scholars for Peace in the Middle East (SPME), said that NSJP is mirroring an ideology that university professors have trafficked and taught to their students since the 1960s.
“Left-wing academics have loathed ‘American imperialism’ since the Vietnam War and used it to explain and more importantly justify violent ‘’iberation movements’ around the world. Both communist and Muslim revolutions and insurgencies have been applauded over the years by American academics and their European counterparts,” Romirowsky said. “Some of that has been transmitted to students disinterested in the details of Islamic theology (which underlie Iranian policy). Anti-imperialism situates the Palestinian cause firmly on the political left and glosses over its theological basis in Sunni theology — which is perfectly well expressed in the Hamas Charter and countless other Hamas statements.”
SJP splinter groups across higher education rallied to share NSJP’s post, as noted by the antisemitism watchdog group AMCHA Initiative on Monday. Faculty for Justice in Palestine (FJP) chapters at the University of California, Berkeley and the University of Florida reposted it to their Instagram stories, while an SJP group for graduate students of the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) did so as well. At Columbia University, a group which calls itself “Unity Fields” posted a photograph of the coffins of fallen US soldiers, captioning it, “Soon, Inshallah,” which means “God willing” in Arabic.
Within Our Lifetime (WOL), another pro-Hamas group which directs campus activities, said, “From Iran to Palestine, from Lebanon to Syria to Yemen, it is our duty from within the belly of the beast to stand against the US empire and zionist [sic] entity’s barbaric, illegal genocidal aggression, and to stand by all those resisting the ongoing genocide in Gaza by any means necessary.”
The tight coordination of the group’s messaging demands a complete accounting of NSJP’s funding, according to Alex Joffe, a historian and editor of the BDS Monitor for SPME.
“The relationship between NSJP and other action-oriented groups, such as Within Our Lifetime and the Party for Socialism and Liberation, suggest nearly complete overlap in interests and even personnel. Most problematic are the relationships between these Muslim and communist vanguard groups and the nominally legitimate Democratic Socialists of America and Working Families Party,” he explained. “These overlaps and penetrations into broader politics leaves outstanding the question of who is directing whom. The instant pivoting of Communist Chinese Party-backed groups like Code Pink to support Iran points to the fact that they, like NSJP, are not grassroots movements but primarily tools for state actors, above all Qatar, China, Iran, Russia and North Korea.”
He continued, “The question of who funds NSJP is therefore more important than ever. With NSJP and other organizations threatening and engaging in domestic violence, the national security threats have increased and should be addressed by local and federal authorities.”
As The Algemeiner has previously reported, National Students for Justice in Palestine, which has been linked to Islamist terrorist organizations, has publicly discussed its strategy of using the anti-Zionist student movement as a weapon for destroying the US.
“Divestment [from Israel] is not an incrementalist goal. True divestment necessitates nothing short of the total collapse of the university structure and American empire itself,” the organization said in September 2024. “It is not possible for imperial spoils to remain so heavily concentrated in the metropole and its high-cultural repositories without the continuous suppression of populations that resist the empire’s expansion; to divest from this is to undermine and eradicate America as we know it.”
The tweet was the latest in a series of revelations of SJP’s revolutionary goals and its apparent plans to amass armies of students and young people for a long campaign of subversion against US institutions, including the economy, military, and higher education. Like past anti-American movements, SJP has also been fixated on the presence and prominence of Jews in American life and the US’s alliance with Israel, the world’s only Jewish state.
On the same day the tweet was posted, Columbia University’s most strident pro-Hamas organization was reported to be distributing literature calling on students to join the Palestinian terrorist group’s movement to destroy Israel during the school’s convocation ceremony.
“This booklet is part of a coordinated and intentional effort to uphold the principles of the thawabit and the Palestinian resistance movement overall by transmitting the words of the resistance directly,” said a pamphlet distributed by Columbia University Apartheid Divest (CUAD), a Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) spinoff, to incoming freshmen. “This material aims to build popular support for the Palestinian war of national liberation, a war which is waged through armed struggle.”
Other sections of the pamphlet were explicitly Islamist, invoking the name of “Allah, the most gracious” and referring to Hamas as the “Islamic Resistance Movement.” Proclaiming, “Glory to Gaza that gave hope to the oppressed, that humiliated the ‘invincible’ Zionist army,” it said its purpose is to build an army of Muslims worldwide.
“We call upon the masses of our Arab and Islamic nations, its scholars, men, institutions, and active forces to come out in roaring crowds tomorrow,” it added, referring to an event which took place the previous December. “We also renew our invitation to the free people and those with living consciences around the world to continue and escalate their global public movement, rejecting the occupation’s crimes, in solidarity with our people and their just cause and legitimate struggle.”
Middle East experts have long suspected that foreign agents are conspiring with SJP chapters — and its spinoffs — in the US to convulse college campuses and lobby for the disintegration of the US-Israel relationship, an outcome that would benefit Middle Eastern powers such as Iran, whose leaders regularly call for the destruction of both the US and Israel.
In July 2024, then-US National Intelligence Director Avril Haines issued a statement outlining how Iran has encouraged and provided financial support to the anti-Israel campus protest movement and explaining that it is part of a larger plan to “undermine confidence in our democratic institutions.” Haines also confirmed that US intelligence agencies have “observed actors tied to Iran’s government posing as activists online, seeking to encourage protests, and even providing financial support to protesters.”
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.
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UK to Ban Group Palestine Action Under Anti-Terrorism Laws
Police officers block a street as pro-Palestinian demonstrators gather in protest against Britain’s Home Secretary Yvette Cooper’s plans to proscribe the “Palestine Action” group in the coming weeks, in London, Britain, June 23, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Jaimi Joy
Britain said on Monday it would use anti-terrorism laws to ban the organization Palestine Action, making it a criminal offence to belong to the group after its activists damaged two UK military planes in protest at London’s support for Israel.
The proscription would put the pro-Palestinian group on a par with Hamas, al-Qaeda, or ISIS under British law, making it illegal for anyone to promote it or be a member. Those who breached the ban could face up to 14 years in jail.
Palestine Action has regularly targeted British sites connected to Israeli defense firm Elbit Systems as well as other companies in Britain linked to Israel since the start of the conflict in Gaza in 2023.
In its latest and most high-profile action, two of its members entered a Royal Air Force base in central England on Friday, spraying paint into the engines of the Voyager transport aircraft and further damaging them with crowbars.
“The disgraceful attack on Brize Norton … is the latest in a long history of unacceptable criminal damage committed by Palestine Action,” Home Secretary [interior minister] Yvette Cooper said in a written statement to parliament.
“The UK’s defense enterprise is vital to the nation’s national security and this government will not tolerate those that put that security at risk.”
She said the group‘s actions had become more aggressive and caused millions of pounds of damage.
Under British law, the Home Secretary can proscribe a group if it is believed it commits, encourages, or “is otherwise concerned in terrorism.” The banning order will be laid before parliament on June 30 and will come into effect if approved.
Palestine Action, which says Britain is an “active participant” in the conflict in Gaza because of military support it provides to Israel, called the ban “an unhinged reaction” which it would challenge, and accused Cooper of making a series of “categorically false claims.”
“The real crime here is not red paint being sprayed on these war planes,” it said in a statement.
Earlier on Monday, the group was forced to change the location of a planned protest after police banned it from staging a demonstration outside parliament, otherwise a popular location for protests in support of a range of causes.
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MAGA Commentators Clash Over Trump’s Choice to Bomb Iran
Tucker Carlson speaks on July 18, 2024, during the final day of the Republican National Convention at the Fiserv Forum in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Photo: Jasper Colt-USA TODAY via Reuters Connect
US President Donald Trump’s decision to bomb three of Iran’s key nuclear facilities over the weekend has divided his longtime supporters, with some prominent voices in the so-called Make America Great Again (MAGA) movement opposing the strikes and others standing with the administration’s military action.
Mark Levin, the longtime conservative talk radio host and vocal pro-Israel voice, called out US Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) for her disagreement with the US strikes, known as Operation Midnight Hammer.
On Sunday, Greene wrote on X, “I don’t know anyone in America who has been the victim of a crime or killed by Iran, but I know many people who have been victims of crime committed by criminal illegal aliens or MURDERED by Cartel and Chinese fentanyl/drugs.” She warned that “Neocon warmongers beat their drums of war and act like Billy badasses going to war in countries most Americans have never seen and can’t find on a map, but never find the courage to go to war against the actual terrorists who actually do kill Americans, invade our land, and make BILLIONS doing it day after day, year after year.”
In response, Levin labeled Greene a “shameless nitwit” and asked, “How incredibly dumb is this Marjorie Taylor Green? She doesn’t know anyone in America who has been a victim of crime or killed by Iran? You mean the thousands of Americans, especially military personnel, killed and maimed by the Iranian terrorist regime?”
Levin aimed his ire at other leaders on both left and right who he christened “America’s Iranian nukes coalition.” He wrote that “if the radical Democrats and their Isolationist fake MAGA reprobates had their way, Iran would have nuclear weapons. This is the new gravely dangerous coalition of Marxists-Islamists-isolationists-grifters. They’re represented by the likes of Bernie Sanders- AOC-Schumer-Jeffries and Rand Paul-Massie-MTG- Qatarlson-Bannon. And they’re giving aid and comfort to a regime that has murdered directly and indirectly thousands of Americans. Never forget. They will forever be opposed and challenged by we, the people — America First loving patriots.”
Tucker Carlson, the former Fox News host-turned-podcaster, has faced recent accusations promoted by social media influencer Laura Loomer, alleging links to Qatar, claims which he denies, thus prompting Levin’s “Qatarlson” epithet. Carlson had clashed over Iran in a recent interview with Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), reportedly watched by Trump.
Steve Bannon, the former Breitbart News CEO-turned-presidential adviser-turned America First podcaster, declared his disagreement with Trump’s invocation of America’s potential engagement toward regime change in a Truth Social post on Sunday.
“Is this because the ultimate goal is regime change?” Bannon asked. “And if that’s fine, Israelis, have at it. If you want regime change, go for it, baby. Just no participation by the United States government.”
The Daily Beast reported that according to anti-Trump biographer Michael Wolff, unnamed sources within the administration described how Trump had initially leaned toward the Carlson-Bannon isolationist position until shifting Friday under congressional Republicans’ influence toward seeing the value to his image of a successful strike. “The tenor of the phone calls was him saying, ‘I think I’m gonna look very good if I do this,’” Wolff said.
Further exposing the extent to which the Iran strikes have diverged from the last decade of the MAGA movement’s tilt toward isolationism, two of Trump’s former close allies who later parted ways with him and went on to criticize his actions have now voiced their support.
Former Vice President Mike Pence and former National Security Adviser John Bolton have both historically identified with former President Ronald Reagan’s “peace through strength” hawkish foreign policy philosophy. Each praised the bombings of Iran’s nuclear sites.
Pence said to Fox News on Sunday that even though “the president and I have had our differences,” he “couldn’t be more proud [sic] of President Trump’s decisive leadership in this moment or the extraordinary professionalism and courage of our armed forces that brought about this historic mission.”
On Sunday morning, the conservative magazine Washington Examiner published an article with the headline “Trump did the right thing in Iran” by Bolton, one of the conservative movement’s most steadfast and robust Iran hawks.
“It was long past time that Washington did more to aid Israel in defeating Iran and took direct action against Tehran’s nuclear proliferation efforts,” Bolton wrote. “There are undoubtedly additional measures now underway to protect American deployed forces and civilian personnel in the region against Iranian retaliation now that we have taken offensive military action. Similarly, we should continue bringing forward additional forces to bolster Israeli and Gulf Arab state defenses against Tehran military retaliation.”
Bolton warned that “peace and security in the Middle East are impossible while the ayatollahs rule in Tehran.” He urged that “overthrowing the current regime is a necessary, even if not a sufficient, condition to reach that goal. The sooner the better.”
Trump said after Saturday night’s strikes that the US was acting to prevent Iran from building nuclear weapons but not seeking regime change. The next day, however, he seemed to entertain the idea. Writing on Truth Social, he posted: “It’s not politically correct to use the term, ‘Regime Change,’ but if the current Iranian Regime is unable to MAKE IRAN GREAT AGAIN, why wouldn’t there be a Regime change??? MIGA!!!”
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