As soon as Iran launched the ninth phase of its retaliatory military operation, True Promise III, late Monday, Israeli regime imposed a sweeping media blackout.
According to reports, live broadcasts from the skies over Tel Aviv and Haifa, illuminated by a large barrage of Iranian missiles and drones, were abruptly cut off by regime authorities.
Simultaneously, major Western media outlets, including American broadcaster CNN, halted their live aerial coverage from multiple cities across the Israeli-occupied territories.
As the night progressed and Iranian strikes intensified, some livestreams showing the skies over the occupied land on video-streaming and social media platforms such as YouTube and Instagram were rapidly removed, deepening the media blackout.
Inside the occupied territories, the crackdown has escalated in recent days.
Israeli media outlets have confirmed the arrest of several domestic and foreign journalists for filming the multiple waves of Iranian retaliatory missile and drone attacks.
The Israeli military had previously warned that recording and sharing footage of missile and drone impacts, especially their timing and locations, would be considered “aiding the enemy during wartime.”
Since Friday, the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) aerospace division has carried out nine phases of Operation True Promise III, targeting sensitive and strategic Israeli sites.
On Monday morning, Iranian missiles specifically struck the Zionist regime’s command and control centers, employing advanced tactics and upgraded intelligence technologies, capabilities the IRGC attributes to the legacy and sacrifices of martyred commanders.
A day earlier, on Sunday, the IRGC announced that it had hit Israeli fighter jet fuel production facilities and energy supply lines in a major drone and missile operation on Haifa.
According to military analysts, these precision operations have dealt a significant blow to the regime’s image, exposing vulnerabilities and shattering the myth of its military invincibility, which has prompted it to enact a media blackout.
China has suspended several 2025 export controls on strategic materials — including rare earths, superhard materials, and lithium batteries – for a year. Is this a concession to the US, or a move in a far more complex game?
"The first aim of China’s export controls was to consolidate its leverage in negotiations. The second was to establish a long-term framework for managing such controls," says Yana Leksyutina, deputy director at the Institute of China and Contemporary Asia, Russian Academy of Sciences (RAS).
Сhina could activate this mechanism at any moment, and now everyone knows it’s a lever it holds, she explains to Sputnik.
Balancing the Mineral Market
"The moratorium on export bans to the US essentially resets the rare earth market to where it was previously," Jeff J. Brown, author of 'The China Trilogy' and founder of Seek Truth From Facts Foundation, tells Sputnik.
In the meantime, there will be a global rush by the US and its NATO allies to acquire as many rare earth ...
The Israeli regime has reportedly signed contracts worth millions of dollars in recent months to sway American public opinion as part of attempts to launder the occupying entity’s genocidal war crimes against Palestinians in the besieged Gaza Strip.
Israeli daily Haaretz reported on Friday that the multimillion-dollar campaign aimed to reshape US public opinion, both online and offline, through coordinated influence operations combining digital marketing, AI, geotagging, and religious messaging.
The contracts, signed between the Israeli regime and firms linked to US President Donald Trump, reveal a “hasbara [propaganda] campaign” and schemes to target millions of US churchgoers, deploy bots, hire influencers, and try to make ChatGPT more pro-Israel.
The largest contract, worth $6 million, was signed with Clock Tower X, owned by Trump’s former digital campaign chief Brad Parscale, to produce and distribute roughly 100 core pieces of pro-Israel content per month and thousands......
