Councilors of the CNE who answer to the two-party system of Honduras declared Nasry Juan Asfura Zablah as president-elect for the period 2026-2030, without concluding the special scrutiny or resolving the challenges presented.

Councilors Ana Paola Hall García and Cossette Alejandra López Osorio of Honduras’ National Electoral Council (CNE) consummated the electoral coup and declared Nasry Juan Asfura Zablah, of the National Party, as president-elect on Wednesday, December 24, for the term from January 27, 2026, to January 27, 2030.

The recognition of Asfura, a candidate publicly supported by Donald Trump, comes amid serious allegations of irregularities during the vote counting process, strong foreign interference, and a conspiracy orchestrated before the November 30 elections.

The allegations were supported by both the ruling Liberty and Refoundation Party (Libre) and the Liberal Party, as well as CNE councilor Marlon Ochoa, who, among other points, objected to the councilors’ refusal to conduct a recount.

Earlier, Liberal Party presidential candidate Salvador Nasralla rejected the National Electoral Council’s (CNE) eventual proclamation of election results. Nasralla strongly criticized the body’s decision, asserting that a large majority of citizens do not support the way the process is taking.

In a message addressed to council members Ana Paola Hall and Cossette López, Nasralla stated that the electoral institutions respond to interests other than the popular will and maintained that the system favors figures linked to corruption. He insisted that his candidacy represents a break with these practices and reiterated that the population rejects the way in which the electoral process is being concluded.

Meanwhile, former Foreign Minister Enrique Reina warned on Wednesday, December 24, about the CNE’s intention to declare a “de facto president-elect” in Honduras without completing the official vote count, thus consolidating the electoral coup. Reina posted on social media: “This is how Honduras wakes up, with an electoral coup underway and a National Electoral Council (CNE) comprised of two illegal members, marching toward declaring a de facto president-elect.”

Reina’s accusation comes after a CNE plenary session held on Tuesday, December 23, where magistrates Ana Hall (Liberal Party) and Cossette López (National Party) rejected the review of approximately 10,000 tally sheets with inconsistencies, thus dismissing the challenges.

For his part, CNE council member Marlon Ochoa described the measure as an electoral coup, arguing that the declaration was made without the completion of the special recount and without resolving the nearly 288 challenges filed, in addition to the approximately 10,000 tally sheets with inconsistencies still pending a vote-by-vote recount.

Ochoa filed a formal complaint with the Public Prosecutor’s Office in Tegucigalpa against the National Electoral Council (CNE) for its intention to declare the results without completing the vote count. As part of his complaint, Ochoa presented 10 new audio recordings that “prove the electoral fraud orchestrated by the two-party system.” These recordings, he indicated, contain the voices of a former president, a former presidential candidate from the Liberal Party, a foreign presidential advisor, the Argentinian Fernando Cerimedo, and other unidentified voices.

The CNE council member emphasized the “most vulgar and blatant foreign interference in the country’s history,” directly pointing to the United States government. Ochoa denounced a campaign of threats by the U.S. to influence the elections, and specifically the candidacy of Nasry Juan Asfura Zablah.

Ochoa highlighted “the litany of actions by the United States government,” including threats of economic sanctions if their preferred candidate, Nasry Juan Asfura Zablah, did not win. He also referred to the sending of millions of text messages to remittance recipients warning of the loss of their funds if the candidate of then-US President Donald Trump did not prevail, which Ochoa concluded constituted a “violation of respect for the sovereign will of the people.”

Marlon Ochoa reiterated that it is a “crime” to declare a president with hundreds of tally sheets still unprocessed and with evidence of inconsistencies. Upon leaving the Public Prosecutor’s Office, he detailed the illegal scheme seeking to sabotage the election results, stating: “What is even more serious is that when one analyzes the universe of tally sheets where the number of voters on the tally sheet matches the number of voters registered on the biometric device, the winner of the election is not the person they are now trying to declare as president of the Republic.”

LA PAZ, Bolivia (AP) — The facilities of the Anti-Imperialist Military School, which Iran financed in Bolivia during the leftist government of Evo Morales, will become a barracks for training military personnel in fighting forest fires, announced center-right President Rodrigo Paz less than a month after taking office.

Morales (2006-2019) founded the school in 2016 with the support of Iran and Venezuela as part of the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America (ALBA) with the aim of providing “anti-imperialist” training to military personnel from that bloc, created in 2004 by then-presidents Fidel Castro of Cuba and Hugo Chávez of Venezuela.

“These facilities will be useful to our Armed Forces, not from an ideological point of view, but in terms of serving the country,” Paz said during a visit Thursday afternoon to the school located in a rural area north of the city of Santa Cruz, in the eastern part of the country.

He added that “they will serve to protect our natural areas and reservoirs” from the forest fires that strike eastern Bolivia every year.

The president's announcement came in the context of a new geopolitical vision after nearly 20 years of leftist Movement Toward Socialism (MAS) governments characterized by alignment with Venezuela, Cuba, Iran, Nicaragua, and Russia.

After his election on October 19, Paz announced a rapprochement with Washington and promised “a fluid relationship with the United States.” Since the expulsion of the US ambassador in 2008, La Paz and Washington have had no relations at the ambassadorial level.

The school, where Bolivian officers attended lectures on anti-imperialist geopolitics and whose attendance was a requirement for promotion, was closed in early 2020 by then-interim president Jeanine Añez following Morales' resignation and renamed Héroes de Ñancahuazú in memory of the Bolivian soldiers who killed the legendary guerrilla Ernesto “Che” Guevara. It has been closed since then and was guarded by soldiers during the administration of leftist President Luis Arce (2020-2025).

Bolivia and Iran maintained close relations during the Morales and Arce administrations. Tehran donated a hospital in the city of El Alto and signed defense cooperation agreements that failed to materialize.

In 2011, the visit of the then Iranian Defense Minister, Ahmad Vahidi, to that school sparked a diplomatic row with Argentina that forced the Morales government to expel Vahidi, who had an international arrest warrant as the ideological co-author of the 1994 attack on the Buenos Aires headquarters of the Argentine Israelite Mutual Association (AMIA) that left 85 dead.

In line with the new political orientation of the Paz administration, the Bolivian army also restored its previous design on its official website on Friday and removed symbols such as the indigenous flag that Morales had created.

As of November 2024, the Pentagon maintained records for only 44% of the defense articles subject to enhanced monitoring, the report found, down from 69% before the war in Gaza began. Investigators said the oversight gaps were driven by staffing constraints and changes in the operational environment in Israel, and warned that such lapses increase the risk of sensitive U.S. weapons technology falling into the hands of hostile actors. “Without effective accountability, these [enhanced end-use monitoring, or EEUM] defense articles could be acquired by adversaries in the region,” the report stated. “Adversaries who obtain EEUM defense articles would have firsthand access and knowledge of sensitive U.S. weapon systems technology, decreasing the technological advantage in the battlefield and increasing the risk to the United States, partner nations, and allies.” The partially redacted audit did not detail the types of defense articles involved.

Federal law, under the Arms Export Control Act, requires oversight of defense articles sold, leased or exported to foreign partners through end-use monitoring programs. The investigation also determined U.S. Central Command and the Defense Security Cooperation Agency “did not conduct adequate oversight of the EEUM program in Israel.” Between October 2023 and April 2024, officials said they were unable to track 42 deliveries of more than four million munitions because much of the equipment had already been deployed in Israel’s ongoing military operations. CENTCOM faced similar challenges during the Iraq War from 2013 to 2017, when the hostile environment limited appraisals, according to the report. The Inspector General proposed that CENTCOM conduct either an in-person or remote Security Cooperation Organization inspection of the Office of Defense Cooperation-Israel in fiscal year 2026, a proposal the command has agreed to implement. The findings come as a U.S.-brokered ceasefire in Gaza, which took effect in mid-October, led to the release of the last 20 surviving hostages in the war-torn enclave in exchange for nearly 2,000 Palestinian prisoners and detainees. The U.S. has provided Israel with more than $200 billion in military and economic assistance since World War II.

The Chinese military has simulated battles near Mexico and Cuba during a wargaming exercise – a rare insight revealed in a report on state television. Cuba, the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean Sea, along with the Sea of Okhotsk and Taiwan, were among the locations of conflict scenarios visible on screens in a CCTV report on Friday showing People’s Liberation Army wargaming exercises. Despite closer economic ties with countries in the region, China has a minimal military presence in Latin America. But the fact that the PLA is modelling potential conflicts there suggests a shift in the Chinese military’s global ambitions. One screen in the report showed red and blue opposing unit “indicators” – represented by aircraft and ships – manoeuvring near the coasts of Cuba and Mexico. Some of the blue side congregated near Houston, Texas, and headed southeast into the Gulf of Mexico, while the red side was seen in the Caribbean Sea. In a typical PLA drill, the red side usually represents the Chinese military while the blue side is the enemy.

During the CCTV report, a close-up focused on Cuba showed the lines of trajectory of aircraft and ships in the region in what was likely a simulation of a tactical operation. Chinese researchers were seen pointing to the screen and discussing the situation. The footage was recorded at a PLA wargaming event held in Xuchang, Henan province, which was attended by 20 units from across the military and its academies. Dozens of simulation systems were demonstrated – all of them developed in China. The report did not provide further information about any of the conflict scenarios. In another map seen in the report, the red side was shown clustered near Russia’s far eastern coast while blue indicators were positioned over Hokkaido in Japan and the disputed Kuril Islands.

Taiwan also featured at the centre of a map in one of the wargaming systems shown in the report. Beijing sees the self-governed island as part of China, to be reunited by force if necessary. Most countries, including the United States, do not see Taiwan as an independent state, but many oppose any forcible change to the status quo. Washington is also committed to supplying Taiwan with weapons for its defence. With tensions rising in the region in recent years, the PLA has held frequent exercises around Taiwan and also conducted joint training with Russia in the Sea of Okhotsk and the Sea of Japan. The Chinese and Russian air forces held a joint patrol earlier this month, with two Russian Tu-95 bombers flying across the Sea of Japan to join two Chinese H-6 bombers over the East China Sea. That came after Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi enraged Beijing by suggesting last month that Japan could intervene militarily in the event of a conflict in the Taiwan Strait.

The CCTV report also showed the PLA simulating an air battle between Chinese J-16 fighters and French-made Rafale fighter jets. Details of PLA war games are rarely revealed – they are usually highly classified. According to the CCTV report, the wargaming event aimed to “help commanders learn how to fight without engaging in actual combat by creating a low-cost, immersive and repeatable adversarial environment”. It said the PLA’s wargaming systems covered land, sea, air, space and electromagnetic domains, with integrated cutting-edge technologies such as AI-powered models, big data analytics and real-time simulation engines.

China’s military aerospace sector is clearly in a period of rapid growth and innovation right now. As it continues to roll out new combat aircraft designs, crewed and uncrewed, for domestic use, it’s also lining up new exports of at least three of its in-production fighters. That’s one finding from the unclassified version of an annual Pentagon report to Congress on China’s military, released yesterday. The latest Pentagon assessment of the military and security developments involving China doesn’t include much in the way of new information on the individual aircraft programs for the People’s Liberation Army (PLA). The report does mention the debut in the last 12 months of “two stealth aircraft with novel tailless design features,” the aircraft that are now known informally as the J-36 and the J-XDS. Other debuts highlighted include the land-based J-35A fifth-generation combat aircraft and the J-15D carrier-borne electronic warfare aircraft. Also of note is the statement that the new airborne early warning and control aircraft based on the Y-20B transport is “meant to identify and track advanced stealth aircraft.”

Perhaps the most significant military aerospace development is the assertion in the report that China aims to produce six aircraft carriers by 2035, which would provide a total of nine (China’s third, the Fujian, began its inaugural sea trials in May). Recent imagery indicates that China is progressing with work on a new aircraft carrier, its fourth, which is expected to introduce nuclear propulsion. There are increasing reports that Beijing may also still be working on at least one more conventionally powered carrier, too. If these plans are accurate, then the gap between China’s fleet of carriers and the U.S. Navy’s 11 active nuclear-powered supercarriers is growing smaller at an even faster pace.

When it comes to China’s fighters for export, the report identifies the fifth-generation Shenyang FC-31 (export variant of the J-35), the fourth-generation Chengdu J-10C, and the JF-17, which it defines, somewhat puzzlingly, as a light combat aircraft. The last of these, also named Thunder, is a China-Pakistan coproduction, not used by the PLA. In terms of orders already achieved, the Pentagon states that, as of May 2025, the FC-31 has no sales. However, it does say that there are “interested clients,” which include Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates (UAE). The first prototype FC-31 took to the air in 2012 and was followed, in 2016, by a significantly reworked and greatly refined version, which we discussed in detail at the time. More recently, developmental focus has been on the J-35 version for carrier-based service with the PLA Navy. Alongside this, Shenyang has also developed the J-35A, a land-based stealth fighter that has been under development for some time and which publicly emerged late last year. The long-term PLA Air Force plans for the J-35A remain unclear, but the carrier-capable J-35 may well now be in operational PLA Navy service. Since the base design was developed primarily for export, foreign sales are almost certainly still being sought. Somewhat surprising is the fact that the Pentagon doesn’t link Pakistan with a potential FC-31 order. After all, there had been a previous announcement of official Pakistani plans to acquire a land-based version of the jet.

As for Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates, all these nations are known to be looking for new fighters. Egypt was once destined to receive 24 Su-35s from Russia, before the threat of U.S. sanctions and a teased offer of F-15s put an end to that sale. In particular, Washington had said it would put sanctions on Cairo under the Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act (CAATSA). In the event, it appears those same Su-35s, or at least some of them, ended up in Algeria. In Saudi Arabia, meanwhile, the FC-31 would join a relatively packed list of competitors for that country’s next batch of fighters. Saudi Arabia was long expected to buy more Eurofighter Typhoons, in a deal that would be brokered by BAE Systems of the United Kingdom. With that potential deal held up by concerns over Saudi human rights abuses, Saudi Arabia entered talks to buy 54 Dassault Rafale fighters, as we reported back in 2023. More recently, Boeing confirmed that it was offering the F-15EX Eagle II to Saudi Arabia, while last month it was reported that the Trump administration was weighing up the sale of up to 48 Lockheed Martin F-35As to the kingdom. Selling the stealth jet to Saudi Arabia would be a significant policy shift, with Washington previously being unwilling to export F-35s to Arab states in the region, for fear of upsetting the strategic balance in relation to Israel. The same applies to the United Arab Emirates, where, like in Saudi Arabia, Beijing seems to be offering its stealthy FC-31 as a direct alternative to the F-35. An arms package for the United Arab Emirates, approved at the end of the previous Trump administration and valued at up to $23.37 billion, included 50 F-35As, among other weapons. In 2021, the Emirati government reportedly said it wanted to scrap the plan, due to concerns over stringent safeguards to protect these systems — somewhat ironically — against Chinese espionage.

For the J-10C, the report notes that the only exports of this type are the 20 units delivered to Pakistan. These are part of two previous orders from Islamabad totaling 36 aircraft since 2020. It’s unclear when the remaining jets are set to be delivered to the Pakistan Air Force. Since entering Pakistani service, the J-10C saw its combat debut in this year’s clashes between India and Pakistan. Many observers pointed to the potentially significant impact made by the jets, especially in conjunction with their much-vaunted PL-15 air-to-air missiles — the latter of which you can read about in depth here. Regardless, China went into overdrive to publicize the claimed success of the J-10C and its Chinese-made missiles in Pakistan Air Force hands. Meanwhile, Egypt, Uzbekistan, Indonesia, Iran, and Bangladesh are all said to have expressed interest in the J-10C. Aside from the aforementioned Egypt, Indonesia, Iran, and Bangladesh are all known to be looking for new fighter equipment. Indonesia signed a contract for the 42 Rafales, which it followed up by announcing plans to buy up to 24 F-15EX fighters, specifically a derivative known as the F-15IND, as you can read more about here. The prospects of a J-10C sale in Iran may be somewhat better. Iran’s geriatric air force has been particularly hobbled by historic arms embargoes and the country’s increasing pariah status in the global community. In the past, Iran has been linked with a potential transfer of Su-35s, which so far hasn’t materialized, while the country’s fighter force almost certainly suffered heavy attrition in the conflict with Israel earlier this year. As for Bangladesh, this country may also now be out of the market for a new fighter. Earlier this month, it was reported that it had signed a letter of intent with Italy’s Leonardo to buy an undisclosed number of Typhoons.

Turning to the JF-17, which is the lowest-end and cheapest offering of the three fighters, has also done the best in terms of exports. As of May 2024, the Pentagon records JF-17 sales to Azerbaijan, Burma, and Nigeria, as well as Pakistan. The report also says that, as of 2024, negotiations were underway regarding a possible JF-17 transfer to Iraq. Iraq is an intriguing candidate customer. Although it has been a keen customer of Chinese arms for many years, the country’s fighter needs would appear to be well met by its Lockheed Martin F-16s — provided they are still operational. Back in 2023, the Pentagon reported that the F-16IQ had become Iraq’s most reliable platform for carrying out airstrikes against ISIS terrorists, at least in part due to a shortage of spare parts for Iraq’s Russian-made attack helicopters as a result of the war in Ukraine. U.S. and Iraqi authorities were said to be looking into the possibility of modernizing the F-16IQ’s notoriously limited air-to-air capabilities. It’s unclear why Iraq might have started to look at buying JF-17s. One possibility is simply to increase the size of its fighter fleet and do it more cheaply, but it’s also possible that Iraq’s F-16s may be suffering from some of the same kinds of problems they did in the past. Indeed, as of 2020, it was announced that the withdrawal of maintenance teams from Iraq meant that its F-16 fleet was at risk of effectively ceasing to exist.