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Title: February 17, 2026

GRAY ZONE BRIEF 17 FEBRUARY 2026
 
GLOBAL REPORTING
 
U.S. UNEXPLODED ORDINANCE IN IRAN
 
**Strategic Fumble: How a U.S. Dud Bomb May Have Delivered Iran the Keys to Israel’s Underground Fortresses** -
 
In the chaotic aftermath of the June 2025 U.S. airstrikes on Iranian nuclear facilities, a single unexploded ordnance has emerged as a geopolitical game-changer. According to Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi, ‘unexploded bombs remain at nuclear facilities struck by the United States during the June 2025 war, creating safety concerns that must be addressed before international inspections can proceed’ . Among these failed munitions, reports indicate, was at least one GBU-57/B Massive Ordnance Penetrator (MOP), a 30,000-pound bunker buster bomb designed to destroy deeply buried targets. The Iranian recovery of the intact GBU-57 represents an intelligence bonanza of historic proportions. As noted in analyses of such scenarios, having the physical weapon is ‘more valuable than blueprints’ for reverse-engineering efforts. The bomb’s guidance systems, hardened casing, and specialized fusing mechanisms—the product of decades of U.S. research and billions in spending—were suddenly laid bare for Iranian military scientists. Reports from Iranian media, including the Tehran Times, soon claimed the country had ‘successfully reverse engineered the giant munition’.
 
CHINA: XI’S NEXT PURGES?
 
**China Watchers Are Trying to Spot the Next Target of Xi’s Purges** -
 
After China’s shocking ouster of top general Zhang Youxia, foreign analysts known as “Pekingologists” are intensively parsing official imagery, seating charts, and attendance patterns to predict who may be next in President Xi Jinping’s widening purge of China’s political and military elite. Analysts note that absences from key events, seating rearrangements, or missing funeral wreaths can signal impending trouble, as seen in the cases of former generals He Weidong and Zhang. Speculation now centers on Politburo member Ma Xingrui, who has not appeared publicly since October. Beijing has not commented on his status.
 
JAPAN’S STANCE ON ISLAM
 
**Japan Fights Back Against Muslim Migration** -
 
With over 100 mosques and over 400,000 Muslims already occupying Japan, even though 95% of Japanese voters oppose Muslim mass migration, a political explosion was bound to occur. Now, Japanese voters have delivered a striking defeat to the forces of mass migration with a stunning win for Japan’s Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi, whom the media has already taken to describing as a ‘Trumpian’ figure for opposing mass migration, her Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), which won its largest victory to date, as did a number of other right-wing parties, including the one Kirk was addressing, demonstrating that voters were tired of mass migration. In Kawaguchi City, where so many Turkish Muslims now live on welfare that a Turkish candidate announced a run for mayor last year on a platform of “multiculturalism”, another conservative candidate candidate, Yuriko Okamura won with record turnout on a platform of cracking down on foreigners after statistics showed Muslims were 1,000% more likely to commit crimes than the native Japanese population. The media however blamed ‘misinformation’ and claimed that Kawaguchi was the central point for the spread of anti-Muslim xenophobia across Japan. By contrast, Reiwa Shinsengumi, a far-left party which welcomed mass migration, called for multiculturalism and spent much of its energy campaigning against Israel and for Islamic terrorists, fell from 8 parliamentary seats to only 1 in a crushing defeat for its agenda.
 
PAKISTANI MUSLIMS & INSURANCE FRAUD IN U.S.
 
**Pakistani Muslims Indicted in $10,000,000 Health Care Fraud** -
 
Two foreign nationals participated in a $10 million scheme to fraudulently bill Medicare and private insurers for nonexistent health care services, according to an indictment returned in federal court in Chicago. In 2023 and 2024, Burhan Mirza and Kashif Iqbal, along with several co-schemers, used nominee-owned laboratories and durable medical equipment providers to submit fraudulent claims to Medicare and private health care benefit programs for items and services that were not provided, the indictment states. Mirza, 31, is a Pakistani native who resided in Pakistan and obtained the identifying information of individuals, providers, and insurers without their knowledge and used the information to support the bogus claims submitted on behalf of the nominee-owned companies, the indictment states. Iqbal, 48, is a Pakistani native who resided in Lavon, Texas, and was allegedly associated with a number of durable medical equipment providers that submitted fraudulent claims to insurers. Iqbal also laundered fraud proceeds obtained by the co-schemers and coordinated the transfer of money obtained through the scheme to Pakistan, the indictment states.
 
TERRORISM
 
DAESH/ISIS IN THE NETHERLANDS
 
**Netherlands: 15 Muslims arrested for spreading ISIS propaganda and trying to get people to commit jihad massacres**-
 
Fifteen people were arrested in the Netherlands on Tuesday on suspicion of spreading propaganda for the Islamic State on TikTok and trying to persuade people to commit terrorist attacks, Dutch prosecutors said. The arrests were triggered by a TikTok account that spread large amounts of IS propaganda with Dutch subtitles, the prosecutors said. The TikTok posts, some with more than 100,000 views, encouraged people to join the Islamic State and glorified becoming a martyr for the violent Islamist group, they said. Thirteen of the suspects are Syrian, and four have Dutch nationality, prosecutors said, implying that some were dual nationals. Four are minors. The suspects, aged 16 to 53, were detained in raids across the Netherlands, following the arrest last month of a person who the prosecutors said was the main suspect.
 
U.S. TROOPS IN NIGERIA
 
**First U.S. Troops Arrive in Nigeria to Bolster Counterterrorism Fight** -
 
The first contingent of U.S. military personnel has arrived in Nigeria, beginning a deployment of about 200 advisers, intelligence analysts, and trainers to support Nigerian forces combating Boko Haram and other militant groups. Officials from both nations said the mission is strictly noncombat, focused on training, intelligence sharing, and establishing secure communications at joint bases across northern and central Nigeria. The move follows months of pressure from President Trump, who has criticized Nigeria’s failure to protect Christian communities and previously ordered a Christmas Day missile strike on militant targets. Additional U.S. aircraft and personnel are expected in coming weeks.
 
NIGERIA
 
**Rebels Target Niger Junta’s Oil Revenue**-
 
A Nigerien rebel group has attacked oil production infrastructure, which could weaken the country’s finances and threaten its ruling junta’s grip on power. Created in 2024, the Patriotic Movement for Freedom and Justice (MPLJ) has gained strength through a series of attacks on Africa’s largest pipeline, which stretches nearly 2,000 kilometers from Niger’s oil-rich eastern deserts to Benin’s coast. The rebels’ primary targets are two Chinese oil companies that represent the main source of income for the junta and its leader, Gen. Abdourahamane Tiani.
 
DAESH/ISIS GREATER THREAT THAN AL-QAEDA?
 
**Isis, not Al-Qaeda, is the West’s greatest terror threat**-
 
Western and other intelligence agencies last week told the United Nations that Al-Qaeda now has 25,000 members globally. Much of the ensuing press coverage has seized on the contrast: on 11 September 2001, the organisation was thought to have numbered just 500. The not-so-subtle implication here — that the Global War on Terror was worse than useless — must be resisted. The figures themselves should be treated with scepticism.
 
Assessing the size of militant groups, even non-clandestine ones, is fraught. Intelligence agencies presumably have sources researchers do not. Reliable or not, though, visibility is not the main issue. Even when its core consisted of a tight-knit cadre based in Taliban-ruled Afghanistan, defining who counted as an Al-Qaeda member was extremely difficult. The 9/11 Commission, which had an upper estimate of 5,000 core Al-Qaeda members, documented up to 20,000 jihadists trained at the Al-Qaeda camps, who spread out across the world and maintained various forms of coordination with Osama bin Laden. Do they all count as Al-Qaeda? How is the distinction made?
 
It is purely down to interpretation. Once Al-Qaeda created its “affiliates” structure after 2004, with its first branch in Iraq — what became the Islamic State (Isis) — and subsequent branches in West Africa, Yemen, and Somalia, things became murkier still. Perhaps Al-Qaeda is larger now than in 2001, but nobody can honestly claim to know that, and certainly not with any degree of statistical accuracy.
 
***NOTE: This is not to say Al-Qaeda does not pose a threat.
 
GZB INFOCUS: TERRORISM ATTACKS IGNORED IN GERMANY
 
***GZB reported on early January about a power outage caused by terrorists. The German government has done nothing.
 
• It seems almost unbelievable that the German state, which intensely surveils citizens' every word on the internet, does not have the faintest clue who might be behind these terrorist attacks.
 
• These are the same authorities, after all, who send law enforcement to raid the homes of ordinary citizens for posting satirical comments about leading politicians, and for supposedly "inciting hatred."
 
• German authorities, in fact, appear to have been hyper-focused on eliminating what they seem to see as political threats to their power instead of catching terrorists from the "left."
 
• Even the BfV's former president, Hans-Georg Maassen, is under surveillance by the agency for being a "right-wing extremist." He lost that job in 2018 after expressing concern about the obvious Islamist threat from then Chancellor Angela Merkel's policy of flooding Germany with Muslim migrants and for, ironically, refusing to put the AfD under surveillance. He said, "I am not a tool of the governing parties, nor is it the BfV's job to undermine their political competitors."
 
• Perhaps if the German government had been more concerned with fighting terrorism and less with fighting legitimate political opposition, it might have been able to locate the actual terrorists?
 
In the early morning hours of January 3, 2026, a reportedly leftist radical network, "Volcano Group" (Vulkangruppe), committed an arson attack against the power grid in Berlin, Germany, causing an electricity blackout that left 45,000 households and 2,000 businesses – approximately 100,000 people – without heat and light during freezing winter temperatures for up to five days. It was reportedly the longest blackout in Germany since World War II.
 
The radicals in Volcano Group claimed responsibility for the attack. In a statement, they said that the network had aimed to "cut the juice to the ruling class" and claimed that the attack was about action to protect the climate from fossil fuels, artificial intelligence and a "greed for energy."
 
Among those "ruling class" people who suffered the consequences of this terrorist attack were four hospitals, 74 care homes, and 20 schools.
 
It has been more than a month since the attack, yet the authorities have arrested no one, seem bewildered, and are apparently so desperate that they have finally offered a million-euro reward to anyone with information that leads to the arrest of the attackers.
Volcano Group, far from being new, has, since 2011, perpetrated several other terrorist attacks "on critical points of public infrastructure," according to Germany's domestic intelligence service (Bundesamt für Verfassungsschutz, or BfV).
 
“In Berlin and Brandenburg, arson attacks have been committed at irregular intervals on... public infrastructure since 2011. After the crimes, anonymous authors who describe themselves as 'Volcano groups' publish letters of responsibility on relevant internet platforms. The attacks often have a noticeable impact on the population. For example, there have already been several power and telecommunications failures as well as disruptions to public transport. It can be assumed that there is a network behind the 'Volcano groups'... Ideologically, they can be assigned to the violence-oriented anarchist spectrum."
 
Despite these attacks occurring in Germany at intervals for more than a decade, including one against the Tesla factory in Brandenburg, curiously, no one has ever been arrested. It seems almost unbelievable that the German state, which intensely surveils citizens' every word on the internet, does not have the faintest clue who might be behind these terrorist attacks.
 
These are the same authorities, after all, who send law enforcement to raid the homes of ordinary citizens for posting satirical comments about leading politicians, and for supposedly "inciting hatred." Approximately every six months, most recently on June 25, 2025, German police, under the coordination of the Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA), carried out its "12th Day of Action to Combat Criminal Hate Postings.”
 
On this exalted occasion, it carried out a total of 46 searches, 66 interrogations, and 26 other measures nationwide, targeting suspected authors of "online hate speech and incitement."
 
Authorities, however, are unable to find or arrest a single perpetrator from the Volcano Group, which conducts actual terrorism?
 
In an interview for broadcaster ZDF, German Minister of the Interior Alexander Dobrindt said.
 
"We see very clearly that attempts are being made here to carry out attacks against infrastructure, against our economy, against the population, against society, which are ultimately intended to massively harm people and could even cost them their lives."
 
ZDF summarized Dobrindt's belief that far-left extremism in recent years has not been taken sufficiently seriously in Germany:
 
"In recent years, left-wing extremism has not received much attention and has no longer been seen as the threat of our time. There has also been 'a high degree of trivialization.' For example, the chairman of the Left Party said that left-wing crimes serve the common good."
 
That is quite an understatement. German authorities, in fact, appear to have been hyper-focused on eliminating what they seem to see as political threats to their power instead of catching terrorists from the "left." In May 2025, Germany's domestic intelligence agency classified Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) — the party with the second-largest number of seats in parliament — as a "confirmed right-wing extremist organization" after an "intense and comprehensive" examination, which included authoring a staggering 1,100-page report. Imagine if that same sort of dedication had been expended on arresting terrorists from Volcano Group.
 
As US Secretary of State Marco Rubio bluntly said at the time, this classification of AfD gave the BfV intelligence agency "new powers to surveil the opposition. That's not democracy - it's tyranny in disguise."
 
Since the classification, the AfD has been under expanded surveillance by authorities. This new snooping potentially includes the use of wiretaps, monitoring electronic correspondence and communications, and undercover informants to spy on party officials and anyone else connected with the AfD.
 
Even the BfV's former president, Hans-Georg Maassen, is under surveillance by the agency for being a "right-wing extremist." He lost that job in 2018 after expressing concern about the obvious Islamist threat from then Chancellor Angela Merkel's policy of flooding Germany with Muslim migrants and for, ironically, refusing to put the AfD under surveillance. He said “I am not a tool of the governing parties, nor is it the BfV's job to undermine their political competitors."
 
Perhaps if the German government had been more concerned with fighting terrorism and less with fighting legitimate political opposition, it might have been able to locate the actual terrorists?
 
Pray.
 
Train.
 
Stay informed.
 
Be vigilant.
 

—END REPORT